Category: Access

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Neocons Freak Out (Free)

One of the pleasures of the impending Trump presidency is watching the neocons freak out, as we said in the 1960s. One of the biggest freak outs is by Charles Krauthammer, top columnist at the old CIA in-house organ, the Washington Post. Like almost all neocons, he’s really just a warmongering liberal. In his case, he even wrote speeches for Mondale, afterword moving slightly up from Mondaleism. In his most recent column, “Aleppo and American decline,” he wrote, “The fall of Aleppo just weeks before Barack Obama leaves office is a fitting stamp on his Middle East policy of retreat...

4

When Christmas Was Coming! (Free)

When Christmas was coming, Mama would start collecting medium-sized boxes which she would later decorate with bright Christmas paper for the purpose of taking food as a gift – a canned ham, some fruit, some nuts and some homemade candy- to the numerous “shut-ins” in and around Pollock. When Christmas was coming, out would come the reserve box of Christmas cards which were chosen, filled out, and stamped at the dining table some pre-Christmas night after supper. I usually chose a card for a particular person or family; Mama filled it out and addressed the envelope, and Daddy would break...

2

Wednesday’s Child:  Wheat of the Saracen (Free)

“Idiot!” exclaims the driver of the car I’m in, referring to the man ahead who has just pulled out, or cut him up, or whatever it is that motorists do to each other which they oughtn’t.  In exclaiming thus he pronounces judgment on his fellow man where the verdict is shorter than a sentence.  It’s called an insult. An insult is different from a slur in that no inferences are drawn about the person apart from those suggested by his behavior of the moment. He was cursed, yet remains a stranger.  Calling the erratic driver in front a “bastard” would...

1

Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk! Our Delusional Opponents

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” Sun Tzu The great Chinese strategist’s words explain why Hillary and the Left lost, and still are losing. They didn’t know their enemy, nor themselves. They had no idea Trump would trounce them. And they continue to live in a world of delusion – or, as we say in psychotherapeutic America, they’re “in denial.” On the Fleming Foundation site, I wrote about the Left’s obsession with Russia here and here. Not the atheist, communist Russia of 1917-91, which the Left commonly defended, or at...

0

The Fleming Foundation Wants You

Wanted:  A Few Good Men and Women Dear Subscribers and Readers: The Fleming Foundation needs help.  We have virtually no staff but the broken-down old editor plus some part-time help from volunteers, and, if we are going to thrive and grow, we need more. If you have any useful skills—beyond talking a good game or thinking great thoughts —please consider joining our dedicated band of volunteers.  What sorts of skills?  Computer and internet experience, for example, secretarial skills, business administration, book editing and publishing, writing and editing…  We are deficient in every area. And compensation?  Initially, nothing but good will. ...

10

Jerks 2: Taxonomy, Part D

Self-made millionaires set the tone for this class, and any scholar or man of letters who has had to raise money among men of wealth and influence will see himself in Eliot’s Prufrock.  These poor fools have to listen, hour after hour, to Dives’ tales of victories on the golf course and of his personal prowess in beating down less competent or less ruthless rivals.  I have friends who used to know a Georgia business tycoon—let’s call him Ted—and they regaled me with tales of how the buccaneering plutocrat boasted of besting not just his enemies but his friends.  Once,...

2

Why the Russians Couldn’t POSSIBLY Have Helped Trump

  “If your opponents are digging a hole for themselves, let them,” advises “Debate, Student Edition,” a guide for high schoolers. I also remember Franklin Roosevelt said something similar, “If you opponent is committing suicide, don’t interfere.” But I can’t find the reference online. Perhaps the Russkies deleted it to sabotage the reputation of Uncle Joe’s old Yalta pal. That’s the best reason the Russkies actually didn’t interfere in our election to help Trump: They knew Hillary’s campaign was a loser and didn’t want to interfere with her slide toward oblivion. Only Hillary and her brainwashed Main Sleaze Media worshippers...

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Trump Must Break Up the CIA, Reform Entire Military

Back when I marched as a soldier in the U.S. Army in West Germany from 1979-82, I used to listen to Radio Free Europe and the Voice of America. They broadcast in English, German, Russian, Czech, Polish and other languages. I had never heard them back in The World, as we called our free America, because they were banned from broadcasting in the United States. All federal intelligence agencies, especially the CIA, were banned from interfering in any way with our domestic politics, even to reveal the horrors of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. But three years...

2

Dealing with Putin

Andrei Navrozov has posted a very timely remark on my piece “Donald and the Russians”: “Indeed, let us not “build an even more costly, inefficient, and tyrannical intelligence apparatus.” Let us instead rebuild a military decimated by 30 years of wishful thinking, fraudulent arms control treaties, and suicidal unilateral disarmament.” I agree with my Russian friend, with this proviso: that we take an honest look at who has gained the most since the death of Brezhnev. Where once the West confronted the Soviet Empire in Germany, we now enter into contests of subversion and electioneering in Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, et...

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Wednesday’s Child:  A Samizdat of the Internet

My childhood reading in Russia was divided between ordinary printed books–that is to say, rectangular objects recognizable by their covers and spines–and loose paper sheaves, underground artifacts that friends of friends of friends had been disseminating and passing to friends of friends until a copy reached one friend or another of my father’s. The principal engine for the dissemination of “samizdat,” as those sheaves were called, was the typewriter, loaded with as many as six carbons, and the avowed aim of the disseminators was the collapse of the existing regime. The disseminators of those forbidden typescripts, who were known as...