Feeling a bit lazy, I decided to see what the world of sports entertainment was offering on a Tuesday before Thanksgiving. In a better age, the answer would have been nothing unless you lived in a city with an NBA or NHL team. They would play their games before the weekend and then take off for the holiday. In this age, the people who run the sports leagues think Christmas is the perfect time to make their mostly black employees perform for them and the rest of us.

A few minutes looking at the sports sites and it was clear it was going to be college basketball or nothing at all, always a good option. It has been so long since I have consumed college basketball, it was a bit confusing. The game that jumped out at me was Midway University versus Bellarmine. Midway is not located on a Pacific island, as the name would suggest. It is in Kentucky and originally called the Kentucky Female Orphan School. Now they play men’s basketball.

One of the things you quickly notice when scanning the college basketball schedule is that we have far too many colleges. Not to pick on the good folks at the Kentucky Female Orphan School, but what is the point? When it was actually a female orphan school, it made some sense. Taking care of female orphans is a good thing, but now it is a university handing out worthless credentials. We could easily shutter half of our colleges, and no one would notice.

That aside, the other thing that caught my eye is the array or weird platforms on which these games are now broadcast. The shift away from traditional television to the internet has led to a proliferation of sites. There was a tournament broadcast on something called FloSports, which sounds like a name created by the con men who run the sports nutrition rackets. It turns out that they specialize in low interest niche sports and the small-timers in major sports.

They charge $30 per month for their service, which seems like a big number for the content they are offering. Perhaps if you love F1 racing and you live in the United States, that is a bargain. They are sponsoring college basketball tournaments on the assumption that the fans of the teams involved will spend the money to watch a few games of their favorite team. It is a clever racket, but it also a form of kidnapping in that they are holding the content hostage.

This is something happening with all sports. The NFL is now posting games on Amazon Prime, thus forcing fans to subscribe to it for games, in addition to whatever they use for other television content. There is a network called Peacock that now has select college football games. If you are a fan of Notre Dame, you now must subscribe to the Peacock thing to see their games. It will not be long before much of the sports content is behind an array of paywalls.

This is a sign of decline. As these pay-per-view schemes proliferate, the ways around them proliferate just as fast. Getting the content from FloSports, for example, is simple if you know where to look. There are lots of overseas operators who are indifferent to the financial dreams of our entertainment schemers. With a VPN you can watch just about any sporting event on earth without paying a dime. In fact, you can get any content you like this way, even new release movies.

What you see forming up is what happened to the music rackets. By the 1980’s, the music industry was dependent on two bottlenecks. One was album sales where you paid for ten songs, even though you wanted just one song. The other was commercial radio where you could listen to that one song, but also hours of ads and live reads from drug-addled disc jockeys. The music rackets charged the crap out of the radio stations for use of their content.

Then the mp3 arrived and that was the end of the music rackets. Suddenly you could get that one song without buying an album. Not only that, but the song was also free, and you could easily make copies for your friends. The music industry fought this, but eventually they lost the fight. Now recorded music is just a marketing expense to promote live shows and sell other product. Bands now make more money selling t-shirts and caps than they make from recorded music.

This is what is happening to sports. People are willing to watch a game made twice as long by the insertion of advertising. They will pay a small fee to watch games with the same ads, but if they have choices. They will pay a higher fee for ad free content and lots of choices. They will not pay high fees for what amounts to a three-hour ad campaign with some sports content sprinkled into it. They will find other ways to see the games or simply stop watching.

The lesson of the mp3 is that you cannot beat technology. The music companies sued people for sharing music, but it had no impact on the process. The sports leagues can try the same thing with the pirate sites, but it will fail too. It is simply too easy to access these sites. What is even funnier about this is most of the pirate sites block the ads during the games. The leagues cannot even say to their advertisers that their ads are getting viewed by the pirate users.

There is a cost to this. Pop music has reached a nadir because the only way to make money is to generate Potemkin stars like Taylor Swift. The reason you never hear anyone talk about the content of a Taylor Swift song is because even her fans do not care about the content. It is simply a thing to be swept up in until she gets too fat to make it work and a new star is generated. The same is true for the butt wigglers who target the black music audience.

This may be why movies and television are terrible now. On the one hand, they need to make going to the theater appealing, which means massive computer-generated worlds that dazzle on the big screen. On the other hand, it means dealing with the reality that content best watched at home is easily pirated. That leaves little motivation to pay for quality writing and directing. Instead, the money goes to attention grabbing nonsense like race-swapping and girl bosses.

That paints a bleak picture for sports entertainment. A model built on the assumption that television revenues will continue to grow at double digit rates is not going to do well when the revenue stops growing entirely. Throw in the fact that owning a team is mostly about tax dodging and rent seeking and you see the problem. Like music in the 1980’s, the sports entertainment world is a massive bubble. Similarly, technology is the pin that will pop that bubble.

If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at

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It appears the plan is to fill the time between now and when Donald Trump regains the White House with stories about starting a nuclear war with Russia. First, we got the NATO missiles strikes on Russia, then it was the Russian use of a mystery weapon that should terrify everyone. Instead, the response from NATO is a series of stories about doing even dumber things than the missile strikes. It is as if Western leaders are in a contest to see who can think of the dumbest idea possible.

So far this week we have stories leaking out from Europe that the Brits and French are talking about sending an “expeditionary force” to Ukraine. That was followed by comments from the head of the NATO Military Committee, Admiral Rob Bauer, suggesting NATO launch preemptive strikes on Russia. All of this is taking place in the looming shadow of a second Trump administration. The Europeans are carrying on as if Godzilla is approaching the continent.

Of course, all these ideas are being floated by people who would urinate themselves if faced with a physical confrontation. Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron are ridiculous people who have landed in these positions due to the collapse of their respective political classes. The rest of the European political class is equally silly, but most lack the vanity of these two. Most are like German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who seems to cherish being a middling mediocrity.

The question that is never asked is how did it come to this? Surely Britain has better men than Keir Starmer. The UK has a lot of problems, but it still has some of the best human capital on the planet. The same is true of France. This is a country that defined diplomacy in the West. There must be a deep well of talent in the country, despite generations of bad policy making. How in the world did these two feckless nitwits end up ruling these two once great nations?

Obviously, these two men did not arrive on the scene by chance. They were selected and groomed by the political system that rules their countries. They made the right friends, followed the right advice and most importantly, never asked the wrong questions about the current narrative. In many respects, these two men were selected purely on narrative grounds. They filled a role in the story better than the alternatives, so they got the job and here we are on the verge of war.

It is the machine that generates the narratives that makes it possible for so many mediocrities to bubble up to the surface of the system. For example, the crackpot idea of an expeditionary force was not dreamed up by Starmer or Macron. This has been floated by the best thinks tanks in the West. Here is a post from the Center for Strategic and International Studies talking up the expeditionary force. It was written by what the system calls an expert on the topic.

This idea is part of a larger narrative that assumes, like all managerial class narratives, that the world can be set right if the managerial elite simply has the will. That is the themes of this post in The Guardian by one of the UK’s top experts on the war in Ukraine and Russia in general. It is a completely insane post that has no bearing on objective reality, but that is not important. What is important is it tells guys like Starmer that the good guys have the will to make the narrative real.

That post is not written by the typical kook that fills the pages of The Guardian, but by a fellow calling himself James Nixey. He leads the Russia-Eurasia program at Chatham House, which is a prestigious think tank in the UK. In other words, he is a guy people like Starmer will call for advice on Russia. Note that Mr. Nixey is barely qualified to offer tour advice on Russia. His entire life has been about sitting in a room somewhere imagining what life is like outside that room.

This is a recurring theme in Western politics. From top to bottom it is people who are very good at playing along inside imagination land and even better at avoiding anything that resembles real life experience. Generations ago, the Prime Minister would have served in the military and maybe even seen war. Even the more effete politicians could rely on a class of men who understood how the world actually worked. Today such men are treated as skunks at a picnic.

In the fullness of time, the defining characteristic of managerialism will be its boiling off of the capable, independent men in favor or complaint mediocrities. Lacking genuine men of action, the compliant mediocrities search for consensus, which becomes their authority figure and their moral authority. It is why everything that comes from the think tanks and media reinforces the agreed upon positions. The most terrifying thing for a mediocre man is to stand alone against the consensus.

The narratives we keep seeing serve to make manifest the consensus and cast those within the consensus as the white hat in the drama. Much of what seems to drive these mediocre men of late-stage managerialism is moral affirmation. It is why they have all herded themselves off the Ukraine cliff. They care only for being seen at the sincerest believer in the prevailing narrative. For the political class, it means public policy is always a public act of piety.

If the crew of a ship all die at once, the ship does not immediately capsize. It will float around until it runs aground or succumbs to a big wave. On rare occasions it makes its way to land in one piece. That is the West right now. It is a ship bobbing around, crewed by mediocre men who are terrified at the thought of being in charge. Instead, they huddle together inside a consensus and ruthlessly enforce it. To continue the metaphor, they are below decks debating the need for a captain.

If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at

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Note: Behind the green door I have a post about my various handyman-DIY projects, a post about magnificent short film about Star Trek called Unification and the Sunday podcast. Subscribe here or here.

Last week, NATO began firing long range missiles into Russia and in response the Russians fired something entirely new at Ukraine. There is not much data on what it was and what it did, but the Russians claim it was their Oreshnik system, which is a type of intermediate-range missile. The Ukrainians, of course, claim it never happened and Western media is saying it was a ballistic missile. Whatever it was is serious enough to warrant an emergency NATO meeting this week.

From independent sources, the most likely answer is that the Russians demonstrated the first combat use of a hypersonic glide vehicle in this attack. The word “hypersonic” gets tossed around quite about by online “geopolitical analysts” because it is a cool sounding word that is often used in video games. There is nothing all that new about hypersonic missiles, as many long-range ballistic missiles reach or exceed Mach 5 as they descend toward their target.

In fact, there is nothing new about hypersonic glide vehicles. The Russians started working on this technology in the 1960’s. America also had a program testing this technology for weapons. Both sides of the Cold War figured out that traditional ballistic missiles were good enough for the job of terrifying the other side with the prospect of nuclear annihilation, so the technology never went into use. The cost of hypersonic vehicles was simply too high for the task.

There was another problem with hypersonic glide vehicles. Traveling through the atmosphere at those speeds made them impossible to hide. Satellites would be able to track them as soon as they were launched and ground radar would then also be able to track them, even if they have some maneuverability. A pretty good rule of air defense is that if it can be tracked it can be killed. At the minimum, the other side sees it coming and has time to get its own missiles in the air.

That is a bit of the arms race that has been forgotten. It was not just the race to have the most devastating warheads, but also a race to have the best detection systems and the best cloaking system. If the other side could not anticipate your launch or see it coming right away, you had an obvious advantage. This is why both sides eventually banned intermediate range missiles in Europe in 1987. The United States unilaterally withdrew from the treaty in 2019.

The intermediate range missile presents a big problem if your goal is to avoid wiping out mankind in a nuclear war. Because it can hit its target in less than thirty minutes, there is no way to respond, short of mag-dumping your ICBM’s. By the time the launch is detected, the missiles are closing in on the target. Missile defense in the nuclear scenario depends on hitting them in their boost phase or as they leave the atmosphere to prevent them from exploding over your territory.

It is unclear when the Russians resumed their intermediate missile program, but it was probably not long after the U.S. withdrew from the treaty. It is not all that clear when the Russians resumed working on hypersonic glide vehicles either. There is growing evidence that they have been collaborating with the Chinese on this project, because last year the Chinese demonstrated a hypersonic weapon. It combined a hypersonic glide vehicle and a fractional orbital bombardment system.

That last bit is another clue that the Chinese have been working with the Russians on this project, as the fractional orbital bombardment system is technology that dates to the Soviet Union. The Russians first developed this technology in the 1960s for its nuclear program. Unlike a ballistic missile, the FOBS only reaches low-earth orbit and can then deorbit over the target. This makes it very hard to track, because the warhead does not follow a predictable path.

When the Chinese demonstrated the combined use of FOBS and hypersonic glide vehicles, American military planners had a panic attack. General Milley famously compared it to Sputnik, by which he meant a moment when the West suddenly realized it had fallen behind the Soviets in space technology. Everyone dismissed his comments, because he is a notorious liar, but he may have been right. The possible use of this type of weapon by the Russians likely proves it.

The Russians have not said much about this system, other than stating that the West has no defense against it. The usual suspects are claiming that it is just an old intermediate missile system, and the Ukrainians say it was an ICBM. What we know is that minutes after it was launched, multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles slammed into targets in Ukraine at speeds above Mach 5. Some claim Mach 10, but that is probably an exaggeration, but Mach 5 is still very fast.

What this means is that the Russians, if sufficiently provoked, could remove any European city from the game board in a matter of minutes. There is no defense and not much of a warning to the target country. If France, for example, starts firing SCALP missiles into Russia, Paris could cease to exist within a few minutes of someone telling Macron that he better say his prayers. It is easy to see why the deployment of such a weapon is so terrifying to fans of human civilization.

Of course, it is why the treaty banning the development of such weapons was viewed as an important step in deescalating the Cold War. This technology puts the world on a hair trigger with no time to pause for communication with the other side. It is also why the neocons desperately wanted the U.S. to withdraw from the deal. John Bolton was instrumental is convincing American officials to pull out of the treaty. In 2018, politicians still thought listening to psychopaths was a good idea.

The path to this point is a familiar one. The neocons first invent a threat, in this case the threat was that China and Iran were developing intermediate range weapons. There was little evidence of this, but that never matters. This is then turned into a justification for the United States to do something stupid. Famously, the invasion of Iraq was based on the entirely false assertion that Iraq was building doomsday weapons. It turned out that they only had WW1 vintage chemical weapons.

For the next two months, the psychopaths are still in charge of Ukraine policy, so they will no doubt keep poking the bear. It is pretty clear they want the Russians to use nukes in Ukraine. They have been yapping about it since 2022. That means the NATO meeting this week will be about getting the Germans to start launching their Taurus missiles at Russia. The excuse will be that they need to call the Russian bluff, but the real reason is they want a reason to fire the nukes themselves.

It remains to be seen if Trump is up for the difficult task of deescalating the arms race with China and Russia. He fell for every trick Washington could muster the first time, even some tricks they invented just for him. He seems to be set on keeping the neocons out of his administration this time. Even so, he will inherent a world that is now infinitely more dangerous thanks to the reckless behavior of the Biden admin. Simply surviving the next term might be the best he can do.

If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at

sa***@mi*********************.com











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This Week’s Show

Contents

• 02m01s Musk, Friedman, and Milei
• 06m44s The Uniparty strikes back
• 13m56s Masculinity past, present, east, and west
• 20m24s Report from Jim Snow America
• 24m03s The Penny Trial
• 27m29s Jussie off the hook?
• 29m13s Nations of the mind
• 31m47s Advice from the Duke
• 34m45s Signoff  with the King

Direct Download, The iTunes, Podcast Addict, RSS Feed

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On Rumble

Full Show On Odysee 

Transcript

01 — Intro.     And Radio Derb is on the air! Welcome, listeners; this is your suavely genial host John Derbyshire with edition number 972 of America’s longest-running National Conservative podcast.

I should of course commence by wishing Happy Birthday! to our President Joe Biden, who turned 82 on Wednesday.

No, I didn’t vote for him. I think his Presidency has been a disaster and I think the leading elements of the Ruling-Class faction who made it happen should all be incarcerated and put to hard labor.

Joe Biden’s the President, though; we only get to have one at a time; umpteen millions of my fellow citizens voted for him; so he’s entitled to some respect. Happy Birthday, Sir!

President-Elect Trump’s nominations to cabinet and other senior posts in the coming administration proceed apace. Of the 27 that need Senate confirmation, 17 have already been named, although of course none yet confirmed.

I’ll take a look at one recent development. First, though, some general observations on our federal government

02 — Musk, Friedman, and Milei.     Elon Musk, preparing to take up his post in the Department of Government Efficiency, has posted to X an interview given 25 years ago to Peter Robinson by star 20th-century economist the late Milton Friedman, who was already 87 years old at the time of the intervew.

In the matter of federal government departments, Friedman was a minimalist. Robinson went through the federal departments one by one, inviting Friedman to say whether the department should be kept or abolished. Department of Agriculture? “Abolish!” Department of Commerce? “Abolish!” Department of Defense? “Keep it.” Department of Education? “Abolish!” …

We ended up at last with just departments of Defense, Justice, State, and Treasury, with grudging acknowledgement that the Feds might need some small involvement in Healthcare.

That would be a huge reduction in the power of the federal government, even more so now than it would have been 25 years ago. We have more federal government now than we had then. We have, for example, the Department of Homeland Security, which, under Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, is doing so much to keep our homeland secure.

I totally approve of Milton Friedman’s attitude, of course. It’s encouraging to know that Musk, who obviously also approves, has the ear of our President-Elect.

Some commentators have expressed doubts that the Musk-Trump bromance can endure for four years. I share those doubts. History doesn’t offer many examples of two strong-willed, energetic men sharing power amicably at a high level. “There can only be one Sun in the sky …” But we shall see.

In the meantime it’s heartening that these minimalist ideas are taken seriously by the coming administration. One influence has been Javier Milei, who will shortly begin his second year as President of Argentina.

One of Milei’s first acts was to halve the number of government departments from 18 to 9, adding only a Ministry of Deregulation. He’s cut government spending by one-third and laid off tens of thousands of public employees.

Milei’s efforts are an inspiration, but also a warning. You can’t break that many “iron rice bowls” without making a lot of people angry. Argentina’s going through a recession; there have been strikes and demonstrations.

I doubt the Trump-Musk reforms will bring disorder on that scale: pre-Milei Argentina was in far worse shape than Biden’s U.S.A. These things need to be done with skill and tact.

They can be done, though; and there was no way they were going to be done by Biden and his people — or the Obamas and their people, which seems to be closer to the truth of what we’ve been living through.

So go to it, Mr Trump and Mr Musk! If we do this right, four years from now we shall be living in a freer, safer, more prosperous country.

03 — The Uniparty strikes back.     On the Trump nominations, this week’s big news was Matt Gaetz stepping down as Attorney General-designate.

The stepping-down was done with dignity and class. Quote from him, posted on X, quote:

There is no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle, thus I’ll be withdrawing my name from consideration to serve as Attorney General. Trump’s DOJ must be in place and ready on Day 1.

I remain fully committed to see that Donald J. Trump is the most successful President in history. I will forever be honored that President Trump nominated me to lead the Department of Justice and I’m certain he will Save America.

End quote.

That’s straightforward and gentlemanly. I’m liking Matt Gaetz more and more.

What’s he going to do now? He was a Congressman, but resigned his seat when he got tapped for the A-G position nine days ago. The week before that, however, he’d been re-elected to the seat; and under the rules, he can rejoin the House when Congress convenes on January 3rd. He told the House Speaker he wouldn’t, but he might change his mind.

Or assuming Marco Rubio is confirmed as Secretary of State, Rubio will resign his seat in the Senate. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis might then tap Gaetz to fill the seat temporarily pending a special election for new Senator in 2026 to complete Rubio’s term, which ends in 2028.

Matt Gaetz might also be appointed to some position that doesn’t require Senate confirmation. There are plenty of those. Trump has already named a Chief of Staff and four — count ’em, four — Deputy Chiefs of Staff. Why not five? Yeah, yeah, it goes against the Musk-Friedman spirit of my previous segment, but for Matt’s sake I wouldn’t mind too much.

The reason for Matt Gaetz stepping down was, he told associates (according to the New York Times), that four Senators would vote against his appointment. The four would be: Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and Senator-elect John Curtis of Utah.

No surprise on the first three names there: McConnell, Murkowski, and Collins are stalwarts of the GOP’s Never Trump faction.

John Curtis I knew nothing about. Looking him up, I see that he has succeeded to Mitt Romney’s Senate seat following Romney’s withdrawal. To judge from as much of his political history as I could be bothered to read, I’m guessing he has Romney’s full approval and support; in which case, no surprise there either.

Why would these Uniparty hacks refuse to approve Matt Gaetz for Attorney General? Because the Ethics Committee of the House of Representatives has been investigating allegations against him: allegations that he paid for sex with females only a few years into their sexual maturity, went to parties where drugs were going round, and, quote, “dispensed special privileges and favours to individuals with whom he had a personal relationship,” end quote.

Good grief! Such misbehavior by a public servant! Thank Heaven we shall never suspect such things of Merrick Garland, Anthony Blinken, or Alejandro Mayorkas! Our liberties and property are safe in their hands! Not to mention Joe Biden and Kamala Harris …

Matt Gaetz has denied all the allegations. They have, he says, been cooked up by the many enemies he has acquired in Congress.

I wouldn’t rule that out. As I noted last week, I don’t think the phrase “team player” fits Matt Gaetz very well; although when the congressional team has players on it like Senators McConnell, Murkowski, Collins, and Curtis, not being a team player looks to me like a positive.

Shall we find out whether these allegations are true? Possibly not. The House Ethics Committee has, as I said, been doing an investigation and compiling a report; but when Gaetz resigned from his House seat, the report was shelved.

Quote from House Speaker Mike Johnson at the time, quote: “We don’t issue investigations and ethics reports on people who are not members of Congress.” End quote.

So that’s another reason for Gaetz to not take up his House seat on January 3rd. Whatever there is in the report, it’ll be newsy and distracting when the incoming Trump 47 administration really doesn’t need any distractions.

Matt Gaetz is a fighter, though, and he may want to fight this to the end.

04 — Masculinity past, present, east, and west.     I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that this Tuesday, November 19th, was International Men’s Day. The point of the thing is to, quote from their home page, quote:

celebrate worldwide the positive value men bring to the world, their families and communities. We highlight positive role models and raise awareness of men’s well-being. Our theme for 2024 is “Positive Male Role Models.”

End quote.

That’s all very positive stuff, although a bit bland. There’s a page you can link to listing “30 Great Manhood Quotes.” Again, it’s nothing remarkable, but nicely assertive, nothing at all woke. Sample, from writer and evangelist John Eldredge, quote:

Men want a battle to fight, an adventure to live, and a beauty to rescue. That is what is written in their hearts. That is what little boys play at. That is what men’s movies are about. You just see it. It is undeniable.

End quote.

So I have no problem with International Men’s Day. I did, though, wince slightly seeing them quote Mahatma Gandhi on the home page.

I have no problem with Gandhi, either. He was a great man who accomplished great things. It’s only that I saw that quote just after reading those allegations about Matt Gaetz having the leg over with a 17-year-old female. If you’ve read Gandhi’s autobiography you’ll know where I’m going with this.

Gandhi married his wife Kasturba when he was 13 and she was 14 — a perfectly normal thing in 1880s India.

Two and a half years later, when Gandhi was 16, his father died. The passage in the autobiography that caught my attention when I read it thirty-some years ago concerns the psychological pain he suffered when his strong sense of filial piety collided with his adolescent sex drive.

His father was bedridden in his final illness. Gandhi stayed up late one evening, massaging his father’s feet. Edited quote from the autobiography, quote:

My uncle offered to relieve me. I was glad and went straight to the bed-room. My wife, poor thing, was fast asleep. But how could she sleep when I was there? I woke her up. In five or six minutes, however, the servant knocked at the door. I started with alarm. “Get up,” he said, “Father is very ill.” I knew of course that he was very ill, and so I guessed what “very ill” meant at that moment. I sprang out of bed.

“What is the matter? Do tell me!”

“Father is no more.”

So all was over! I had but to wring my hands. I felt deeply ashamed and miserable. I ran to my father’s room. I saw that, if animal passion had not blinded me, I should have been spared the torture of separation from my father during his last moments. I should have been massaging him, and he would have died in my arms …

The shame … was this shame of my carnal desire even at the critical hour of my father’s death, which demanded wakeful service. It was a blot I have never been able to efface or forget, and I have always thought that, although my devotion to my parents knew no bounds and I would have given up anything for it, yet it was weighed and found unpardonably wanting because my mind was at the same moment in the grip of lust. It took me long to get free from the shackles of lust, and I had to pass through many ordeals before I could overcome it.

Before I close this chapter of my double shame, I may mention that the poor mite that was born to my wife scarcely breathed for more than three or four days. Nothing else could be expected. Let all those who are married be warned by my example.

End quote.

I think we can sympathize with Gandhi for the lifelong torment that incident left him with, while at the same time recognizing that such torments can be culturally rooted, not easy for men of a different time or place to relate to.

05 — Report from Jim Snow America.     We live in Jim Snow America, with different standards of justice for blacks and for whites. The most appalling, most horrifying example of this is the case of the Brunswick Three, which I have commented on many times, most recently in the October 25th podcast.

There are many other cases, though. There is, for example, the case of Ashli Babbitt, the young white female protestor shot dead in the U.S. Capitol on January 6th 2021. Ms Babbitt was, contrary to what President Biden and other Establishment spokespersons have said, she was the only person who died in those protests.

Ashli Babbitt’s killer was a black officer of the Capitol Hill Police, Lieutenant Michael Byrd. He shot Ms Babbitt, who was unarmed, at point-blank range, without warning. There were police officers standing directly behind her.

The Capitol Police conducted an eight-month investigation of the event. The report determined that, quote: “the officer’s conduct was lawful and within Department policy, which says an officer may use deadly force only when the officer reasonably believes that action is in the defense of human life, including the officer’s own life, or in the defense of any person in immediate danger of serious physical injury.” End quote.

Two years later Michael Byrd was promoted from Lieutenant to Captain.

This week the investigative website JustTheNews ran an article about Michael Byrd. The article, based on congressional and police documents, tells us that Captain Byrd falls considerably short of the standards we should expect in a law-enforcement professional. Quote:

The issues in Captain Michael Byrd’s background included a failed shotgun qualification test, a failed FBI background check for a weapon’s purchase, a 33-day suspension for a lost weapon and referral to Maryland state prosecutors for firing his gun at a stolen car fleeing his neighborhood.

End quote.

They go into details on Michael Byrd’s various delinquencies and note that records for some others seem to have gone unaccountably missing from the Capitol Police files.

Legal scholar Jonathan Turley gave good coverage of this latest news at his own website on Thursday.

Following all this I fully expect to hear soon that Captain Byrd has been promoted again.

06 — The Penny Trial.     Another report from Jim Snow America: the trial of Daniel Penny in Manhattan Supreme Court.

Penny is white, 26 years old, a Marine Corps veteran with no criminal record at all. He was a passenger in a New York City subway train carriage in May last year when a 30-year-old black man named Jordan Neely with a track record of mental-health problems and drug abuse, entered the carriage ranting, yelling threats — including death threats — throwing garbage at passengers, and doing his utmost to scare everyone to death.

Penny came up beind Neely, put him in a chokehold and wrestled him down. When he let him go, Neely still had a pulse, but he died later. Penny is charged with manslaughter.

Two different forensic pathologists have testified at the trial: one a white lady from the City Medical Examiner’s Office, the other a South Asian gent brought in by Penny’s defense counsel. The lady says the chokehold caused Neely’s death; the gent says no, it was drugs and Neely’s psychiatric condition.

Hmm. White guy … misbehaving black … choke hold … disputed cause of death … There’s something familiar about this one.

The Daniel Penny trial is yet another project of antiwhite black progressive D.A. Alvin Bragg, the same D.A. who sicced the city’s justice system on Donald Trump, charging Trump with 34 felonies. New Yorkers are saying openly — they’ve said it to me — that if Penny were black and Neely white, there’d have been no prosecution.

For some perspective on New York City’s justice system, here’s Ramon Rivera, a 51-year-old homeless man with a 20-year history of arrests, incarcerations, and psychiatric hospitalization. Monday morning, taking a walk across Manhattan, he stabbed to death three perfect strangers.

Four weeks prior to that, October 17th, Rivera had been released from jail after serving an eight-month sentence for felony burglary and assault. That very day — the day he was released! — he was arrested again for petit larceny. A local judge let him go without bail. And now three innocent people are dead.

07 — Jussie off the hook?     One more from the crime log. I’m not sure this one belongs under the Jim Snow heading, but there’s probably black privilege lurking here somewhere.

This is the Jussie Smollett case. You’ll recall that Smollett, a black homosexual, staged a fake hate crime back in January 2019.

In March 2022 Smollett was convicted on five felony counts of disorderly conduct for lying to police and sentenced to five months behind bars, along with 30 months probation, a $25,000 fine and $120,000 restitution to the city of Chicago.

He only served five days, then was released pending the result of an appeal. Jussie’s been free ever since. Now, after to-ing and fro-ing with appeals, the Illinois Supreme Court has tossed out the case against him on a technicality.

It’s not clear to me whether Smollett is now totally off the hook. Today’s New York Post says he’s liable for 16 hours of community service and the forfeit of his $10,000 bail.

Whatever: I’m pretty sure Jussie will be spending no more time in jail cells.

08 — Nations of the mind.     Last week’s podcast included a brief item about Japan launching into orbit a satellite made of wood. I closed that item thus:

[Pips.]

I can’t explain why, but there is something very Japanese about the idea of wooden satellites. If you had asked me, at any time prior to this news story, which nation would be the first to launch a wooden satellite, I’m sure I would have replied — I mean, once I’d stopped laughing — “Japan.”

It’s something to do with the generalized image we carry around in our heads of foreign nations we know only from reading about them.

Let me give it a try. Which nation do you think will be the first to launch into orbit a satellite made of leather?

[Pips.]

I got several emails on that, and one or two entries in the comment thread at the Z-man’s website.

Germany was the clear winner. I don’t know why that should be; possibly because the Nazis displayed a lot of leather — you know, jackboots and such. If that’s the reason, it’s depressing. Can we please get over the Nazis, for Goodness’ sake?

One listener proposed Argentina, apparently because that nation’s president favors leather jackets. The remainder were all for Scandinavian countries — Sweden, Norway, Denmark.

Those I really don’t get. Only one emailer gave me a reason, one of the voters for Sweden. The English word “suede,” he pointed out, as in “suede shoes,” “suede gloves,” and so on, is simply the French name for Sweden. I confess I did not know that.

09 — Advice from the Duke.     Finally, I can’t let that reference to suede go by without passing on a story I did not know until a showbiz-savvy listener sent me a link to it in mid-October. If you do know it, you’ll probably enjoy hearing it again anyway; it’s a great story.

The occasion for that listener sending it to me was, that I signed off my October 11th podcast with Cilla Black singing the theme song from the 1966 movie Alfie. That was one of the earliest movies with Michael Caine in a leading role.

Well, here was Michael Caine in a TV chat show six years ago, talking about his early career.

[Clip:  I was a week on my own in Hollywood and I was just … I’d never been to America. And I was a week on my own and they put me in a luxurious suite in the Beverly Hills Hotel.

And then nobody ever talked to me or phoned to me. I was just in this luxury hotel ordering caviare and champagne — all on my own for a week. And in the daytime I used to go down into the lobby and sit in the corner to see if I could see any stars. (Laughter)

Yeah. And one day a helicopter landed and all the flowers went up in the beds outside, up in the air, and in walked John Wayne! In a complete cowboy hat, just like that, look … (Laughter) Just like that.

And he was registering in the Beverly Hills Hotel and he looked up and he saw me in the corner. And he said to me: “What’s your name, kid?” I said: “Michael Caine.” He said: “Are you in that movie Alfie?” I said: “Yes.” He said: “I saw that. You’re going to be a star, kid.” I said: “Oh, thank you, Sir.”

And he said: “But let me give you some advice.” He said: “Talk low, talk slow, and don’t say too effing much. (Laughter.) And I had on suede shoes. And he said to me … (aside, to another participant) have you got ’em? (“Yeah,” laughter), he said: “Never, never wear suede shoes.” (Laughter.)

I said: “What?” He said: “Never wear suede shoes.” So I said: “Why?” He said: “Because I just told you, you’re going to be a star, kid.” He said: “And you’re going to be in the Gents’ toilet taking a pee … (Laughter) He said: ” And the guy next to you is going to be taking a pee; and he’s going to look and he’s going, ‘Michael Caine!’” (Much laughter and applause.) He said: “And then he’s going to pee all over your shoes.” (More laughter and applause.)

10 — Signoff.     That’s it, ladies and gents. Many thanks for your time and attention, for your comments and emails, and of course for your donations to help what I do here. The home page of my website johnderbyshire.com has full instructions for how to donate; just scroll down a page or two to the “Introduction” section.

If you know my style you will already have guessed what I’ll be playing for signoff music. Here he is: the King.

There will be more from Radio Derb next week.

With the holiday season upon us, it means I clean out the podcast attic of topics I thought about doing but did not do for some reason. One topic is the categorization of the political tribes and subcultures in this age. Despite the billions of words spewed forth by the internet every day, we lack a sensible way of describing our politics. We still fumble with antiquated terms like left and right.

It can be frustrating for people with a speaking role in politics, as you are often lumped in with people with whom you have little in common. An example in the show is Keith Woods, who claims to be a leader of the dissident right, even though the term was invented before he was born by and for people in a country with whom he shares little in common in terms of politics.

Of course, the reason he embraced the label “dissident right” is that the prior labels he used got a bad odor about them. His politics have not changed as the labels changed, so the labels only confuse things. This is why the term “dissident right” has lost its meaning and is no longer useful. As with citizenship, if anyone can join the dissident right, then there is no reason for it to exist.

This is not unique to the dissident right. “Conservative” has been a meaningless label in the United States since the Cold War. At one point, Bill Kristol, Bill Buckley and Goth Fonzi were all on Team Conservative. The only thing they had in common was the guys signing their paycheck. Conservatism became a land of unwanted toys and now it is just a punchline.

That is the show this week. It is a disorganized mess as I was mostly thinking out loud about the obvious political categories. At some point I would like to create a map like the one done years ago for the so-called right. Maybe something not tied to individuals who come and go, but to more permanent categories of political thought. It would also be nice to have some useful labels for these things.

For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation via crypto. You can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks. Thank you for your support!

This Week’s Show

Contents

• Intro
• The End Of Dissident Right
• Labels & Ideology
• Naming Names
• Dissidents

Direct Download, The iTunes, iHeart Radio, RSS Feed

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On Rumble

Full Show On Odysee

In his podcast on the Persian empire, Dan Carlin told a story from Herodotus about a Spartan Greek who found his way in the court of Cyrus the Great. In the story, the emperor made the point to the Greek visitor that the Persians would have little trouble subduing the Greeks because the Greeks were all liars. They lied to one another in their political debates, and they lie to one another in their economic dealings. A collection of liars could never band together and fight the Persians.

The story is certainly apocryphal, as Herodotus was fond of explaining history through fictional accounts. Carlin further dramatizes it in his telling, in order to emphasize the point Herodotus was making with the story. This fanciful tale gets across the point that lying was highly immoral in Persian society. So much so that lying could get you executed if you lied to the wrong person. In other words, a made-up story by a famous storyteller helps explain the honesty of the Persians.

In fairness to the Greeks, not all of them were liars. The Spartans, for example, were not as fanatical about truth telling as the Persians, but they also looked down about the perfidy of the Athenians. Most of the Greek city-states shared their disdain for lying to one degree or another, depending upon their embrace of democracy. The more they embraced the Athenian democratic culture, the more likely they were to have a casual relationship with the truth.

It is something familiar to us today. As the democratic mindset has settled upon us, the truth has been pushed to the edges of the public domain. Back in the bad old days when certain parts of the population were discouraged from voting, politicians were discouraged from lying. As we have become obsessed with making sure every voice is heard, politicians are now rewarded for perfidy. America is on the verge of becoming a nation of liars, just as Cyrus described the Greeks.

This is by design. The argument for democracy and the “free market” is that the magic of the marketplace will solve the perfidy problem. The expert who is always wrong, due to incompetence or discerption, will be revealed and ignored. The seller who rips off his customers will be found out and before long word will get around that he is a bad guy, and no one should buy from him. We no longer need a moral code in a democratized society, because the market will do the policing.

It turns out that this was a lie. For example, the drug makers lie about all sorts of things and never face any consequences. The miracle weight loss drug Ozempic may cause your heart to explode, but at least you will look good in the casket. Time after time we see the drug companies roll out miracle cures that are worse than the thing they seek to cure, but they suffer no loss of reputation. The people who needed to redefine the word “vaccine” are no redefining the word “healthy.”

It is not just that these companies are not held accountable, but that they continue to hold a prominent place in society. It is not that all their products are deadly or simply a fraud like the Covid vaccines. There are drugs that genuinely improve the health of people, but many of their products are a disaster. In some cases, like the Sackler family’s scheme to addict the world to opioids, the sole motivation behind the product is to harm the intended audience.

Consequence-free lying is most obvious in the public square. Here is a thread about a fellow calling himself Phillips P. OBrien. He is a professor of strategic studies at a Scottish university. He likes to go on about the war in Ukraine. He has been wrong about every aspect of the war, even some that no one thought were important to discuss, suggesting he is a man on a mission. That mission is to deceive, which may explain why he spells his own name wrong.

Of course, the news media is full of lies and there are never any consequences to the media organs for lying. We just went through an election in which the media consciously organized itself around the promotion of Kamala Harris. A major part of that campaign was to bullshit the public into thinking she was a wildly popular person to whom the nation was flocking. They lied and they knew they were lying, yet they will keep on lying about the next thing.

The election is a useful way to imagine the opposite. Imagine a world where lying was the worst offense to the general morality. So much so that people convicted of lying had to be held in special prisons, like we do with child molesters. It is the world of the ancient Persians where men swear oaths like, “If I am lying, I’m dying” in which the result of a lie would be death. The news coverage of the election alone would have been unimaginably different.

The question is why is it that everyone seems to be fine with America evolving into a massive lie machine? Most Americans do not realize it, for sure, but lots of people have noticed the collapse of honesty and integrity. Trump labeling the media “fake news” did not set off alarms. It became a joke and then was internalized. Sensible people know that if it is in the media, it is most likely false. The truth may remain hidden, but at least we know what option that is not the truth.

Perhaps it is self-correcting. In the last election, the Harris campaign spent a billion dollars telling one lie after another. The media added untold billions to the effort with their own gaslighting in her favor. The government and corporations chipped in billions of their own to the cause. It was the most expensive lie machine ever built and yet it failed to fool enough people to make a difference. Perhaps there is a limit to lying and we are reaching that limit.

That raises another question. If the people running the media, to use just one example, reach the point where they see a negative return on lying, how can they change course and stop lying? How do people get used to trusting the media after having been conditioned to not trust them? It may be that once a society heads down the road of democracy is ends up as a low-trust society and then dies. The Greeks never could shake their habit of lying to themselves.

This may be why people were always so terrified of democracy. They understood that as soon as you open everything up for debate, you open the door to the worst aspects of the human condition. That sets off a process from which there is no turning back until it is a war of all against all. Maybe that is the end for the great experiment in self-government we call America. In the end, we are all standing around telling whoppers to each other as the roof falls in on us.

If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at

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This week, Erik Prince, the founder of the private military company Blackwater, posted a condemnation of the Venezuelan ruler on Twitter. Prince has connections to the inner circle of Donald Trump, so his opinions about such things could reflect Trump’s opinion or may influence Trump’s opinion. He also linked to this New York Times puff piece on Venezuelan “opposition leader” María Corina Machado, which paints her as the Margaret Thatcher of South America.

The quotes around the term “opposition leader” are because there is nothing authentic about María Corina Machado. Like Juan Guaidó, who preceded her as the official opposition leader, Machado is largely a product of the American foreign policy machinery, which produces these figures on demand. The United States intelligence community runs a complex program to select, filter and groom opposition candidates for just about every country on the globe.

That is not to say Machado is not a real Venezuelan, but that like most of these American made opposition leaders, she is more comfortable in an American faculty lounge than on the streets of Caracas. This was the problem with Juan Guaidó, who is now driving an Uber in Miami. The people who select and groom these people select and groom people who are compelling to them, rather than the target audience, which is why they tend not to do so well in their home country.

It speaks to the insularity of the American managerial elite, as well as to the poverty of human intelligence. They never think about why Nicolás Maduro remains popular, despite the conditions in the country. He may not have majority support, it is impossible to know, but he has a strong base of support. The same was true of Hugo Chavez, who preceded Maduro. The American elites just see a thug and assume everyone sees the same thing, so he must be illegitimate.

That is not to say Maduro is a good ruler. By objective measures, he is a terrible ruler, outside of his ability to survive American regime change efforts. Otherwise, his policies have been terrible, and they have helped plunge his country into economic collapse, resulting in a flood of people out of the country. It is a disgrace that the American government has not been able to do anything to address this problem. After all, this is the backyard of the American Empire.

Since President Monroe first articulated it in his State of the Union address, it has been the official policy of the United States to protect and safeguard the countries of the Western hemisphere. At first it was intended to defend them against the colonial powers of the Old World. In the 20th century, it evolved to include protecting the people of the New World from their own rulers. Controlling guys like Maduro used to be a primary mission of American foreign policy.

It is not as if America has not tried to regime change Venezuela. It just so happens that Maduro is better at being gangster than the gangsters in Washington. This gets to another problem with American foreign policy. In the old days, when the people making policy traced their family line to the Mayflower, dollar diplomacy and clever statecraft were used to manage these problems. These days, the people making policy can only think of using force to get their way.

That is where you see other problems turning up in South America. China just opened a massive new port in Peru, which will allow it to service the South American market and buy lots of new friends in the region. Chinese companies have acquired concessions for two of the five ports adjacent to the Panama Canal. China is investing billions into infrastructure projects in and around the canal. Of course, China and Brazil are partners in BRICS and the Belt and Road Initiative.

While The Lobby demands the Levant get all the attention of the American empire, the neocons demand Russia get all the attention and the China hawks demand Taiwan get all the attention, the backyard of the American Empire is ignored. This is in spite of the fact that the two major problems facing the United States have their source south of the Rio Grande. The flow of drugs and migrants into the country is entirely due to neglecting American duties in the hemisphere.

Donald Trump’s focus on immigration suggests he will make the Western Hemisphere a priority again, but it remains to be seen if the foreign policy establishment will go along with it or rethink its tactics. Thirty years of thuggery not working should cause some rethinking, but these are people who struggle to learn from failure. The tone of that tweet from Erik Prince is not encouraging. Perhaps it will take another failed regime change effort to change some minds.

What is happening in South America is a microcosm for what has been happening with the American Empire since the Cold War. Everything close to home is ignored in favor of distant ventures on the periphery of the empire. Policy makers in Washington think more about infrastructure in Ukraine than in the United States. The lack of a response to the hurricane in North Carolina is a great example. If that happened in Armenia, the empire would have swung into action immediately.

In the area of foreign policy, the empire has been doing what it has done with regards to domestic policy. The focus is always on what is furthest away and has the least impact on the citizens. Buckets of tears are shed over “refugees” entering illegally while the millions of Americans poisoned by drugs are ignored. Millions are spent on “securing the safety” of imaginary online communities rather than on the actual safety of the food supply or the physical health of the American people.

The same hollowing out of American culture and the physical homeland has been happening with foreign policy. Trillions are spent trying to change ancient cultures around the globe, while the problems in our backyard are neglected. The Panama Canal matters far more to Americans than Gaza, yet the former is neglected, while the latter is an obsession. As with domestic neglect, there will be a cost to ignoring our backyard in favor of the other side of the world.

If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at

sa***@mi*********************.com











.

Lost in the excitement of Trump’s proposed cabinet appointment is the lack of neocons in the list of foreign policy names. There are plenty of pro-Israel people, no doubt suggested by the Israel Lobby. It is rather clear that Trump made a deal with The Lobby in exchange for their support in the general election. All his proposed foreign policy people are Iran hawks, except for Gabbard. Otherwise, it is looking like an Israel first foreign policy shop under Trump.

It is important to note that the neocons are not part of The Lobby. They may have a lot of things in common, but they are different gangs with different agendas. The neocons are not Zionists. In fact, they come out of the anti-Zionist intellectual sphere with roots in international communism. The neocons are happy to work with the Zionists and the Israel Lobby when it suits their interests and vice-versa. As we saw under Biden, they are also happy to work against the Zionists as well.

To some degree, Trump’s victory is due to the Biden administration making the strategic blunder of prioritizing Ukraine over Israel after October 7, 2023. Israel looked at that Hamas attack as the opportunity to settle issues dating back to the Six-Day War, when Israel controlled much of the land that the Zionist consider part of Greater Israel but was given up in order to make peace. Netanyahu also imagined a regional war, drawing in the United States to topple the Iranian regime.

Instead, the Biden admin worked to prevent a full-blown regional war, often choking off support to Israel, at least in the view of The Lobby. It turned out that the “arsenal of democracy” did not have enough arms for both Israel and Ukraine, so the neocons running the Biden administration chose to favor Ukraine. Further, The Lobby thought the Biden administration failed to handle the anti-Israel protests that broke out at elite college campuses after Israel launched war on Gaza.

The result was The Lobby backed Trump over Harris and Trump committed to prioritizing Israel over all else in his foreign policy. This is one reason the neocons are escalating in Ukraine and will continue to do so. They think it could tie down the Trump administration in Ukraine and prevent them from delivering on Iran. Again, there is no love lost between the neocons and The Lobby. Contrary to what some believe, these are not two faces of the same collective hive-mind.

This does not change the fact that the neocons are headed for the political wilderness come January. While legacy conservatism would welcome them back, the future of what we call the right is anti-neocon and increasingly anti-interventionalist. The neocons have slithered back to their home on the side we call the left, but they will run into the same problem they now find with the so-called right. The groups in that coalition have little interest in the neocon agenda.

Despite Trump’s commitment to the project, it is not all good news for Israel, or the vast support network called The Israel Lobby. The main problem is the political instability within Israel that could blow up before Trump takes office. Protests against Netanyahu are a regular feature in Israel. Netanyahu is slowly losing the judicial fight surrounding his many corruption probes. Then you have the hardliners in his coalition, who are gaining power as he struggles to maintain his position.

Making matters worse is the fact that it may no longer be possible to bully Iran with the threat of military strikes. The tit-for-tat between Israel and Iran revealed serious flaws in Iranian security, but it also revealed newfound military prowess by Iran. On the one hand, Iran’s missile and drone program is far more advanced than what had been assumed until this exchange. On the other hand, her air defense capabilities are also much better, largely due to Russian assistance.

Then you have the withering of support for Israel in America. The Lobby has roots going back to the middle of the last century, where it capitalized on certain events in the Second World War to build a vast network of support for Israel. Much of this rested on the sense that the Jews deserved special consideration due to what happened to them in the war. Demographic change and the actuarial tables are slowly eroding this base of support, both politically and morally.

Taken together, the ground is shifting underneath the feet of The Lobby, as the state of Israel succumbs to its own demographic revolution and the conditions in the Middle East change to reflect the reality of the multipolar world. The Lobby might not fear the sight of an American carrier on fire in the Persian Gulf, but the Trump people certainly do, and they will have to adjust to this possibility. As with many other things, Trump may be a transitional figure regarding American Zionism.

Put another way, the Zionists may be about to follow the neocons into the political wilderness, despite having their guys in the White House. American Zionism, like neoconservatism, is a creature of the last century. It evolved for conditions that are slowly fading into the history books. Like so much of American politics, it has failed to adapt to the new reality. Just as the Biden administration was the last gasp of neoconservatism, Trump may be the last gasp for American Zionism.

That does not mean the end of Israel or The Lobby. Unlike neoconservatism, Zionism and Israel have a future. There is no interest in the “destruction of Israel’ within the Arab world or among its new friends in the multipolar order. Israel can maintain itself, even without the unlimited support of America. Zionism and The Lobby simply must adapt to the reality of the multipolar world and the changing role of the American empire as it slowly returns to being a normal country.

While Trump could turn out to be the last Zionist in the old school sense of it, he could also become the first Zionist in the new sense of it. On the other hand, if he fumbles the problem of Iran, he could simply be the last American Zionist. The images of an American carrier on fire in the Persian Gulf would signal then end of public support for Israel and The Lobby. Either way, Donald Trump is most likely the last of the old school Zionist presidents and the last gasp of this version of The Lobby.

If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at

sa***@mi*********************.com











.

Note: Behind the green door I have several posts about my trip to Nashville, a post about the culture of fraud and the Sunday podcast. Subscribe here or here.

Word leaking out of the Biden White House is that the people actually running foreign policy got the old man to sign off on the limited use of ATACMS missiles inside the borders of pre-2014 Russia. The Ukraine press immediately began to lie about this, as that is what they always do, claiming that this now means they can launch unlimited strikes into Russia using American weapons. The Ukraine lobby makes the Israel lobby look candid and transparent by comparison.

For this unfamiliar, ATACMS stands for Army Tactical Missile System. This is a supersonic tactical ballistic missile that can be fired from mobile launchers and has a range of about 200-miles. This is a precision guided weapon, which means it relies on the American military global positioning system to reach a precise target. It can carry a variety of warheads, including nuclear, chemical or biological. Those last two officially do not exist, but they do exist, and Russia knows it.

That is why the United States has not “allowed” Ukraine to use these weapons against targets inside of Russia. Ukraine is not actually operating these weapons systems because they lack the cognitive and technical ability. Ukraine operators can do the minimal to operate the system, but the targeting and guidance is done by the American military hidden away in bunkers in Ukraine. It is a thing everyone knows is true but pretends is not true to avoid nuclear war.

Despite the lie machine saying otherwise, the latest escalation is limited to the Kursk region, where Ukraine launched an ill-fated attack inside Russia. Their forces are now bottled up there, getting hammered into bits. This limited use of ATACMS there may be in preparation for a retreat or just another crackpot scheme to continue a project that has no chance for success. It also created a problem for the Trump administration, which will inherit the Ukraine mess in two months.

That may be the real motivation. The Kagan cult is sure that Trump will make a deal with his bosses in Moscow to abandon those freedom loving Ukrainians to the Kagan’s ancient enemy to the east. They have two months to throw sand in the gears in what they imagine will be the Trump Ukraine strategy. This is one reason Trump has refused to say anything about his plan for Ukraine to this point. He seems to have figured out that the people responsible for this war are insane.

Of course, the point of permitting Ukraine to use these weapons is to bait the Russians into responding. This is a standard neocon tactic. They provoke a target into responding and then claim it is an unprovoked “act of aggression” against them. Coincidentally, this is the standard operating procedure for Israel. They did everything possible to provoke an attack from Iran, so they could then claim to be the innocent victim and then call in the United States to wage war on Iran.

That is the real concern between now and January. If the neocons running Biden foreign policy continue to poke the bear, the Russians can always take the restraints off Iran, which would like to send another volley of missiles to Israel. The Russians have no illusions about the Ukraine war. They talk about it as a NATO proxy war against them and have repeatedly warned about NATO escalation. They have made clear that their responses will not be limited to Ukraine.

This is where the geopolitical game of chess comes into play. The Kagan cult may also be looking to set a trap for Trump. By escalating in Ukraine, they may think Russia will escalate in the Middle East, perhaps leaving it on the brink of war. Trump’s plan to stack his foreign policy team with Iran hawks is read as a plan to be especially tough on the Iranians this time around. The schemers running foreign policy at the moment would love to see Team Trump step on that rake.

Note that the one of the things the foreign policy establishment does is make it impossible for presidents to negotiate. Every issue around the world is cast in extreme moral terms and every rival is Hitler. This means any deal is akin to Neville Chamberlain ceding the Sudetenland. To even suggest making a deal to resolve a dispute is to acquiesce to evil. Team Trump looks primed to fall into this sort of trap when they take over Iran policy, but we shall see.

It is not hard to imagine a scenario in which the Trump administration is dealing with spiraling of attacks between Israel and Iran. Then the warmongers in the GOP will be demanding war with Iran. The press will be full of reports of how the Russians are supplying Iran with weapons. That means any effort to make a deal with Russia over Ukraine gets the Chamberlain treatment. For the neocons, this at least buys time to keep Project Ukraine going.

Of course, the Israel lobby is fine with this. They want war with Iran as they think the American military will easily defeat them, which will lead to a collapse of the Iran government, paving the way for Greater Israel. It is a good example of how the neocons draft on the Israel lobby to keep their various schemes going. If they can pin down the Trump admin in the Middle East with another proxy war with Russia, then according to their logic, there can be no deal over Ukraine.

There are, of course, many other schemes bubbling up in the fever swaps of the neocons and the Israel lobby. They have two months to poison as many wells as possible, in anticipation of a Trump administration that would prefer to wind down the foreign conflicts. It is why no one should be optimistic about foreign policy under the next Trump administration. He will inherit a foreign policy establishment that is hopelessly corrupt.

Even if his team is sober-minded and realistic about he various hot spots they will inherit, they will be inheriting problems that have been caused by successive administration who have burnt up a lot of political capital. That means they walk into a world full of traps. Some have been set on purpose, while others are just the result of mismanagement over the last thirty years. Simply making to through the next four years without a war will be an accomplishment.

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This Week’s Show

Contents

• 01m13s Trump’s personnel picks
• 20m09s Fertility and feminism
• 26m59s Righteous dismissals
• 30m59s RIP Timothy West
• 33m14s Churchill’s return
• 36m17s A very Japanese project
• 38m42s Signoff with Gracie
• 00m00s Signoff

Direct Download, The iTunes, Podcast Addict, RSS Feed

Full Show On Spreaker

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Full Show On Odysee 

Transcript

01 — Intro.     And Radio Derb is on the air! Greetings, listeners, from your precipitously genial host John Derbyshire with some observations on the week’s news.

Today’s podcast will depart somewhat from the usual format. My custom has been to offer five or six longish segments and then a miscellany of shorter items. The way it came out this week was as one lo-o-o-o-ng segment followed by five much shorter ones. Unable to make that fit into the customary format, I shall present each as a segment of its own, with no closing miscellany.

So first, the long one.

02 — Trump’s personnel picks.     Dominating the political news this past week have been President-Elect Trump’s declared personnel picks. I’ve been watching with interest.

By Mid-day Friday I’ve counted twenty-five named nominees, of which twelve are, I am pretty sure, cabinet-level: Vice President of course, White House Chief of Staff, Attorney General, Secretaries of State, Defense, Interior, Health & Human Services, Veterans’ Affairs, and Homeland Security, Director of National Intelligence, U.N. Ambassador, and EPA Administrator. Some others — National Security Advisor, CIA Director, … — I’m not sure if they count as cabinet-level, but I’m including them in my twenty-five anyway.

Of the twenty-five I have date of birth for twenty-four: six Boomers, eleven Gen-X-ers, seven Millennials. The median age is 52.

That’s a younger crowd than Joe Biden’s current cabinet. I can only match off twenty titles in Joe Biden’s White House with titles on my Trump list of twenty-five. Biden’s twenty are twelve Boomers, eight Gen-X-ers, and no Millennials at all, median age 61 — nine years older than the median for Trump’s people.

So yes: bye-bye Boomers. We’re trading you in for Gen-X and Millennials. Every generation has its hour in the Sun. We Silents had ours, now the twilight’s coming down on you Boomers. No use complaining; it’s Nature’s way. You Gen-X-ers, Millennials, and Gen-Z-ers: you’ll find out.

Of the forty-four dates of birth I looked up there, the oldest are for RFK, Jr., whom Trump has nominated for Health & Human Services Secretary; he’s seventy. On the other side is Merrick Garland, Biden’s Attorney General, who just turned seventy-two on Wednesday.

The nomination that has generated the most shrieking and wailing so far has been that of Matt Gaetz as Attorney General. It’s also the only one I can claim any personal acquaintance with, though at a low level: I was once at an informal small gathering at which Matt Gaetz was also present. I don’t recall him saying much through that evening; but he was perfectly well-mannered, and what he did say was sensible and well-informed.

For all seven years he’s been in Congress, though, I’ve been hearing talk about Gaetz as somewhat of a loose cannon. It was picayune stuff — mis-use of funds, illicit drug use, sexual hanky-panky — and all colored by personal antagonisms. I don’t think the phrase “team player” fits Gaetz very well.

For example, it was Gaetz who last year moved the motion to dump Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker for being too accommodating to House Democrats. There’s been bad blood between Gaetz and McCarthy ever since. They famously jousted on CNN this July, during the Republican convention. Quote from McCarthy on that occasion, quote:

… he’s got an ethics complaint about paying, sleeping with a 17-year-old …

End quote.

So is Matt Gaetz a sleazebag, or what? I have no idea. He didn’t seem like one, that one evening I was in company with him. None of the negative things I’ve heard about him rises above the picayune level. “Sleeping with a 17-year-old”? For goodness’ sake: don’t people listen to the Beatles any more? [Clip:  “She was just seventeen, you know what I mean …”]

Just speculating now: I note that Gaetz’s Congressional seat represents Florida’s 1st District, encompassing much of what I have heard referred to disparagingly as “the Redneck Riviera.” Apparently it’s a favorite vacation and retirement spot for Deplorables from the Old South. It’s also where Gaetz was born and raised.

Born and raised in England myself, I’m hypersensitive to class issues, so I may be overthinking this; but possibly the snobs in Congress, including the GOP snobs, think that Gaetz’s close associations with the Redneck Riviera make him too much of a slob for them to take seriously. I don’t know, I’m just speculating.

There’s talk that Trump might have trouble getting Gaetz’s appointment confirmed by the Senate. In this morning’s news, even Senator Ted Cruz has publicly expressed doubts.

The question is being asked: Why did Trump nominate for Attorney General someone as controversial as Gaetz? The answer is probably that after unhappy experiences with two A-Gs in his first term, Trump wanted someone as far removed as possible from anything like Uniparty consensus politics.

You might argue — I will argue — that those two first-term unhappinesses, with Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr, were at least as much Trump’s fault as theirs. Lots of luck getting the Donald to agree with you.

This is all very Trumpian. We’ll have to wait and see how it plays out.

Pete Hegseth’s nomination for Defense Secretary was a close second in the scoffing stakes. He’s best known as a reporter and host on cable TV — on Fox News, woo hoo hoo! A TV host giving orders to our nation’s armed forces? Will they listen?

In fact Hegseth, after graduating from Princeton and Harvard, was a combat infantryman in Iraq and Afghanistan and won two Bronze Stars. From those experiences he wrote a book, The War on Warriors, published earlier this year. Here are the opening two paragraphs from the book’s page at Amazon, quote:

Pete Hegseth joined the Army to fight extremists. Then that same Army called him one. The military Pete joined twenty years ago was fiercely focused on lethality, competency, and color blindness. Today our brass are following the rest of our country off the cliff of cultural chaos and weakness.

Americans with common sense are fighting this on many fronts, but if we can’t save the meritocracy of our military, we’re definitely going to lose everywhere else.

End quote.

If you want to hear Hegseth talk about his book, and these issues, I recommend his November 7th appearance on the Shawn Ryan show, which you can find on YouTube. It’s two and a half hours long, which may be too much for you; but for a good sample, just listen to him talking about women in combat roles, starting 53 minutes twenty-six seconds into that interview. Hegseth’s against it, and so am I. You may disagree, but at least hear Pete Hegseth arguing the case. He’s a very smart guy.

Trump’s nomination of Mike Huckabee to be our Ambassador to Israel has ruffled some feathers.

Huckabee is a Christian Zionist, as pro-Israel as it’s possible for a Gentile to be, so his nomination has stirred up anti-Zionists of every variety.

There are of course many such varieties. At one end of the passion spectrum there are rabid old-style Christian Jew-haters. They killed our Lord! At the other end are, ahem, mild-mannered isolationist patriots who, while wishing Israel well, nurse reasonable concerns about what George Washington, in his farewell address, referred to as entanglements and the, quote, “insidious wiles of foreign influence,” end quote.

Presumably the main focus of Trump’s Israel policy will be to revivify the Abraham Accords, in the hopes of building some kind of bulwark of Arab states — Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, perhaps Egypt, possibly Lebanon — against the lunatics in that region. I don’t see how posting a Zionist Christian as our Ambassador would hinder that. If Lebanon comes into play, it may help it.

And then, Marco Rubio as Secretary of State. I’ve never held Rubio in much regard, having somehow acquired the impression that he’s a bit of a neocon world-saver type.

A person I do hold in very high regard is David Goldman, columnist at Asia Times, writing mostly under the pseudonym “Spengler.” Goldman’s articles on geostrategy, especially where China is concerned, are well-informed and deeply thought out.

Tuesday this week Goldman published an article — this one under his true name — with the title “Rubio brings China Realism to the State Department.” Reading it, I came away with a whole new outlook on Rubio.

I urge you to read Goldman’s article for yourself, but here’s a sample quote. Edited quote:

A bright line divides realists from Utopians among Washington’s China hawks. Neo-conservatives like Dan Blumenthal, popular publicists like Gordon Chang and Peter Zeihan, and true believers like former Secretary of State and CIA director Michael Pompeo believe that China is about to collapse and that the United States should hasten the fall by confronting China militarily and economically …

On the other side are realists who may detest China and accuse it of nefarious behavior but nonetheless recognize that China has made remarkable accomplishments in high-tech industry at home and in global trade. Rubio is the best-informed among the realists and he dismisses the Utopian vision in the conclusion of his report.

End quote.

Again I urge you to read Goldman’s article yourself. It quotes Rubio at length. If you think, as I did until Tuesday, that Rubio is unimpressive, it will change your mind.

Where foreign policy is concerned, the criticisms we’re hearing from the regime media all take as established truth the deceptions and self-deceptions of our post-Cold War foreign-policy establishment.

Tulsi Gabbard’s past comments on Russia cloud her nomination by Trump growls a headline in The Washington Post. What past comments would those be? Reading the story, they turn out to be remarks Tulsi Gabbard made — true and accurate remarks, it seems to me — about the colossal stupidity of our Russia policy across thirty years.

Of all the objections I have so far seen to Trump’s nominations, the silliest one has come from the senior U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren, a.k.a. Princess Pocahontas.

To the official announcement that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are to head up a new Department of Government Efficiency, Pocahontas tweeted that, tweet:

The Office of Government Efficiency is off to a great start with split leadership: two people to do the work of one person.

Yeah, this seems REALLY efficient.

End tweet.

My old friend Andrew Stuttaford returned that right back across the net with, tweet:

How many U.S. Senators does Massachusetts have?

End tweet.

So the objections I’ve seen to Trump’s personnel picks don’t seem to me to carry much weight. Objections aside, though, there are reasonable speculations we can indulge ourselves in.

Will there turn out to be one or two duds among the nominees? Possibly; nobody’s judgment is perfect, certainly not Trump’s.

Will one or two nominees, when appointed, get on Trump’s wrong side and be told “You’re fired!” like Jeff Sessions? I wouldn’t rule it out.

At this early stage, though, with the Biden people — who are really the Obama people — still in power, all we can do is line them up against Trump’s picks and do broad comparisons: Merrick Garland against Matt Gaetz, Lloyd Austin against Pete Hegseth, Alejandro Mayorkas against Kristi Noem, Pete Buttigieg against anyone at all — I haven’t heard a Trump nominee for Transportation yet, but Pee Wee Herman, if he were still with us, would be an improvement on Buttigieg — and so on.

When I line up the two cabinets like that, Biden’s against Trump’s, the conclusion seems plain: We shall soon have a way better federal government than we’ve had this past four years.

03 — Fertility and feminism.     Apparently I owe an apology to the Amish people. In last week’s podcast I complimented the Amish on having voted solidly for Trump, and also for their admirably high fertility.

Nothing wrong with any of that; but several listeners have emailed in to tell me that I pronounced the word “Amish” wrong. I was saying “Ay-mish” instead of “Ah-mish.”

Checking with my Webster’s Dictionary, 1961 edition, I see that they do indeed give “Ah-mish” as their first choice for pronunciation, with “A-mish” as their second — I’ve never heard that — and my “Ay-mish” as their third.

With the traditional immigrant’s desire to be just as American as the Americans, I shall in future try to say “Ah-mish.” There’s a teeny little anomaly here, though.

Webster’s also favors “ah-men” as the conclusion to a prayer, and that is the pronunciation I learned in my Anglican childhood. The Pastor at my local Baptist church here on Long Island, though, along with all his congregation, prefer “ay-men.”

What’s up with that? Shall I ever get fully, properly acquainted with American English? Or “Ah-merican” English, or “Ay-merican” English? …

And having mentioned Amish fertility back there, in among all the demographic analyses of this months’ election there have been two interesting scatter plots posted by someone at X tweeting under the name Charlie Smirkley.

The first scatter plot has, along the horizontal axis, the average age of white mothers at their first birth, with a range from 25 to 35. The vertical axis shows Trump’s percentage share of the vote, range from five percent to 75. There is one teeny “x” marked for each state.

The scatter plot of those x-es is plainly from top left to bottom right, correlation coefficient −0.91. So states where white mothers are younger at their first birth vote more for Trump.

The second scatter plot has Trump’s share of the vote, five percent to 75, along its horizontal axis, while the vertical axis shows Total Fertility Rate, range 1.1 to 2.1. That’s the average number of children a woman will have in her lifetime. Again, one teeny “x” marked to represent each state.

The trend line here goes upwards from bottom left to top right. The higher a state’s fertility level, the bigger a share of the vote went to Trump, correlation coefficient positive 0.78.

I haven’t checked Charlie Smirkley’s source for those plots, but they agree with my intuition that Trump-voting slobs are more fertile than Trump-hating snobs, starting at younger ages.

It also keys in neatly to the feminist 4B Movement we’ve been hearing about.

This movement started in South Korea a decade ago. The four Bs are: no dating men, no sex with men, no marriage with men, no childbirth. Why are they called Bs? Because the Korean word for “no” begins with “b.” Don’t blame me; I just report this stuff.

Quote from the London Guardian newspaper, yesterday, quote:

As Donald Trump secured victory in the US presidential election, an unexpected phenomenon began trending on social media: young American women declaring their commitment to “4B,” a fringe South Korean feminist movement advocating the rejection of marriage, childbirth, dating and sex.

End quote.

Yes: women afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome and so furious at the election result are going to take their anger out on the world by shunning men. Charlie Smirkley’s scatter plots tell us they were already doing so; but presumably if this 4B Movement takes off here, the trend will intensify.

I don’t see any downside to this. Behavioral genetics tells us that most aspects of the human personality are to some degree heritable. If these cranky TDS-afflicted feminists stop reproducing, there’ll be fewer like them each generation. I’m fine with that.

04 — Righteous dismissals.     I can personally testify that unemployment is no fun. Sometimes, though, reading about a person being fired, or resigning in the sure knowledge that he or she was about to be fired, brings a happy smile to my face.

Two of those this week. Number One: Mam’i Washington, the supervisor at FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who told her staff, cleaning up after those terrible storms last month, not to give any federal disaster relief to houses displaying Trump campaign signs.

Ms Washington was fired last week, quite rightly of course. In an interview with a podcaster, though, she’s been claiming that she was just following official FEMA policy.

A FEMA official, on condition of anonymity, has supported her claim. He or she told the New York Post that, quote:

I have heard from other entities who are serving in North Carolina that there was clear guidance saying to be “mindful” of the types of people who are in Western North Carolina — they’re largely Republican, very conservative — very derogatory sorts of references in their culture.

End quote.

This informant said, however, that FEMA employees are trained to deal with unruly deplorables after a disaster and that FEMA’s real motive in avoiding certain areas in need is “equity.”

Ah yes, “equity.” It’s all too believable. As happy as I am that Ms Washington got canned, I’m sure there are officials in the higher ranks of FEMA equally at fault. Perhaps the Department of Government Efficiency will take the matter in hand once Elon and Vivek have it up and running.

Number Two well-deserved pink slip: Laura Helmuth, the editor of Scientific American magazine. I told you last week about Ms Helmuth’s appalling, foul-mouthed reactions to the election result.

Here she was yesterday, Thursday, posting on BlueSky, a social media platform for lefty progressives. Quote:

I’ve decided to leave Scientific American after an exciting 4.5 years as editor in chief. I’m going to take some time to think about what comes next (and go birdwatching) …

End quote.

Take all the time you need, Laura. You won’t be missed — nor, I’m guessing, re-hired. Nor will you ever be forgiven by lovers of scientific truth for contributing to the destruction of a fine old magazine — America’s oldest magazine, I believe.

05 — RIP Timothy West.     Four years ago, in my Diary for November 2020, I had a segment about British columnist Ed West, who used to write for UnHerd.com but who nowadays I think posts mainly to his own Substack account.

I had things to say about Ed’s very talented family, with whom I’ve been acquainted in a literary way — as a consumer, I mean — for more than forty years.

Among those things was the following, quote from me:

Ed is also a first cousin once removed of actor Timothy West, who lingers in my mind as the definitive stage portrayal of Stalin. That was in David Pownall’s play Masterclass around 1984, when the U.S.S.R. had loosened up some and there were a lot of Russians in London. It seemed like every one of them was in the theater that evening. Each time Timothy West’s Stalin hoicked up his withered arm they all sighed Aaaah! in unison.

End quote.

Timothy West died on Tuesday at the age of 90. The London Times ran a full obituary. He’s survived by his wife Prunella Scales — Sybil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers — although unfortunately she’s disabled by dementia. The two were married for 61 years.

Rest in peace, Sir. Meaning no offense at all, to me you will always be Stalin.

06 — Churchill’s return.     Two weeks from now, at the end of this month, you’ll be hearing about Sir Winston Churchill. November 30th will be Sir Winston’s 150th birthday.

I never met Churchill, though I followed his funeral procession through the streets of London in 1965 when I was a student there. Nowadays there’s a lot of negativity about him. He was an alcoholic and a spendthrift, you’ll read, who sold his soul to Jewish financiers and got unnecessarily large numbers of his countrymen killed.

That is nothing new to me. My father was a Churchill hater. Dad — who, as it happens, died forty years ago yesterday — served in World War One. He blamed Churchill for the Gallipoli fiasco in that war — unfairly, I do believe.

My own view of Churchill is more conventional and respectful. He was a great man. For an excellent essay taking that point of view I refer you to the current issue — that is, the November issue — of The New Criterion. The last article in the magazine is by Larry Arrn, the President of Hillsdale College. Title: “One hundred fifty years of Churchill.” I recommend it to your attention.

In other Churchill news, we have been told that Donald Trump, on re-entering the White House, will restore the bust of Churchill to the Oval Office.

The bust was a gift to Lyndon Johnson, then President, following Churchill’s death in 1965. It sat happily in the Oval Office for 44 years until Barack Obama replaced it with one of Martin Luther King.

Trump, who is a major Churchill fan, restored it in 2017 but then Joe Biden removed it again in 2021, replacing it this time with one of immigration restrictionist Cesar Chavez. No, that doesn’t make sense to me, either; but that’s Joe Biden for you.

Come January the old bulldog will be back in the Oval Office. Long may he remain there!

07 — A very Japanese project.     November 5th, while we were lining up at our polling stations, Japan launched into space the first ever wooden satellite, named LignoSat.

Quote from the Reuters report, quote:

Once deployed, LignoSat will stay in the orbit for six months, with the electronic components onboard measuring how wood endures the extreme environment of space, where temperatures fluctuate from −100 to 100 degrees Celsius every 45 minutes as it orbits from darkness to sunlight.

End quote.

The Japanese scientists running this project are full of optimism about the potential for wood in space exploration. As one of them pointed out to reporters, quote: “Early 1900s airplanes were made of wood,” end quote. Yes, they were. He went on to predict that metal satellites may be banned in future.

I can’t explain why, but there is something very Japanese about the idea of wooden satellites. If you had asked me, at any time prior to this news story, which nation would be the first to launch a wooden satellite, I’m sure I would have replied — I mean, once I’d stopped laughing — “Japan.”

It’s something to do with the generalized image we carry around in our heads of foreign nations we know only from reading about them.

Let me give it a try. Which nation do you think will be the first to launch into orbit a satellite made of leather?

08 — Signoff.     That’s all I have, ladies and gents. Thank you for your time and attention — especially through that long opening segment — and thanks as always for your encouragement and support.

Concerning which, forgive me for reminding you that the home page at my personal website johnderbyshire.com has full instructions on how to support my work using snail mail, PayPal, or crypto, or via Zelle direct to my bank. To make a tax-deductible donation, earmark a check with my name and mail it to: The VDARE Foundation, P.O. Box 211, Litchfield-with-a-“t”, CT 06759. Thank you!

There will be more from Radio Derb next week