One of the powerful choices Americans avail themselves of in every election is the choice not to vote. It is correct to believe that there are basically two sorts of people in the *electorate* but there are three sorts of adult Americans. About 74 million Democrats, about 76 million Republicans, about 116 million did not vote. So it is often confusing to people like Ross Perot and his many flip charts or the mElon and his many indignations that Americans who are not represented by either of the major parties do not embrace any new third party that wanders in. Americans do not embrace the Libertarian party, the Green party, the Constitution party, did not embrace the Reform party, and won't embrace the America party. Of course, that's fine by the mElon because Americans need not apply.
It is an interesting fact that about 90,000 free men of colour fought in Confederate uniforms. So it was not only the northern side that put blacks in their army. Before the war of northern aggression, there were black slave owners. If you look into the history of Liberia, you find a great many slave owners there, as well. Monroe wanted to share the culture of Virginia with the peoples of Africa.
There aren't any political solutions to the problems caused by the excesses of politics. Put another way, it isn't possible to end cannibalism by eating cannibals.
Not sure how this fits into the above narrative, but I live in a decaying rust belt city in the Midwest. My parents were legal immigrants, and I personally know many first-generation Americans and also (by virtue of the close connections my family maintained with the old country) many naturalized Americans. The following is purely anecdotal but I stand by it nevertheless: I have not met a naturalized American (with an accent) who did not vote for Trump in the last three presidential elections. Of course these were all at some point legal immigrants, not imported lumpen, tech or otherwise, but it is still jarring enough to be noticeable. Almost all of them understand the pathologies of the areas they left and the promise that America still holds for people willing to work hard. In contrast, the most fanatical “progressive” drones (I am a university professor so I see these on a daily basis) are multi-generational native Americans whose hatred of America exceeds even that of a few actual communists I knew in Europe.
When I say, people who don’t benefit from mass immigration vote Trump, that category includes a lot of immigrants themselves. New arrivals mean lower wages and social cohesion, and even newer arrivals mean less of the same for those who wanted a new life previously. It’s what pollsters missed about Hispanics trending Republican.
America is neither purely an “idea” or principle or a specific place and people AKA “blood and soil”. It is both, neither can be denied. Worth fighting for and protecting.
“A true patriot protects his country from its Government “
A carefully-crafted and essential essay. Social, political, historical, literary—and a fine handling of English prose welds those strands together. Great job.
I think Elon has done more damage to his political ambitions than he knows. In a perfectly executed, yet completely planless campaign, he has managed to serially join, then utterly alienate every possible political base. I hope he treats his customers better than his fans. His biggest customer, the state, is quite capable of severing its nose to spite its face.
There was a reason that the Red Republicans of 1848 so happily embraced the Black Republicans of the 1850s. I'm of the opinion that Musk's third party would strip away more Normie Democrats than Normie Republicans, and any Vichy Republicans like that scummy shitweasel Pence who jump aboard are welcome to, as we are better off with them outside. The smartest thing Trump can do is purge the Republican Party first.
I became enamored of Libertarianism in the 1980's, while living in NYS. I joined the Party, contributed financially, and had high hopes. Sadly, they never achieved permanent ballot status, which forces any nascent party to expend a disproportionate amount of its resources just to be listed along side R and D on the ballot. A decline in my personal fortunes, along with increasingly bad candidates and miserable results wore down my resolve. Then came 9/11/01. My latent neo-con suddenly came to the fore, and Libertarians seemed too willing to blame us for the attack. I was all in on the War on Terror, and I wanted to kill every last perpetrator and let Allah sort them out later. Unfortunately, most of the clever and brave military figures you described so colorfully here had been replaced by bureaucrats who were great at wasting money and lives while failing to win wars. (I did kind of dig Stormin' Norman, though.) It was, along with the tireless drumbeat of DEI and self-flagellation, fertile ground for MAGA. It's way too soon to judge any lasting impact, and we can already see President Trump having difficulty dragging the sludgy GOP along. There's a lot of grand talk of remaking the Republican Party, but they don't call it The Deep State for nothing. Elon's America Party seems ill-timed; a hissy fit by a rich guy scorned. I'd be surprised if it goes anywhere, and I sincerely hope someone talks some sense into Elon (or gets his meds adjusted properly). His spat with The Donald isn't helping anything. Better he should spend his money countering all those judges and prosecutors Soros bought, than primarying Republicans who voted for The Bill. Meanwhile, we have very real enemies out there licking their chops while we fight each other.
I think you're conflating idiotic Bush family foreign adventures. Stormin' Norman was the charming and effective battlefield commander of the pointless war which chased Iraq out of Kuwait, in 1991. I'm pretty sure that he was retired by 9/11.
I did actually recall that, but I was looking for a relatively modern military figure you REALLY did not want to mess with. Perhaps "Mad Dog" Mattis would have been a better example? By the way, Gulf War 1's whole point WAS to chase Saddam out of Kuwait, so mission actually accomplished. The only thing that bothered me about that war was being treated like the hired pest-control guys by effete Arabs. But having lived through 2 previous oil crises, I wasn't anxious for a third. And hey, that conflict produced some great comedy. Sam Kinison did a hilarious riff on our "100 Hour War" and Saddam's infamous scud missile threat: "You fire it out of the trunk of your car, then go home and watch CNN to see where it lands."
But Pat Buchanan had it right in the summer of 1990, when he said of Saddam's grabbing of Kuwait and why we should do nothing about it: "What do we think he's going to do with that oil? He's going to sell it to us!"
I had a doctor, a devout Christian, who was in on Desert Storm, and was disgusted with the Saudi impositions on the American Christians' worship. The way he described it, they had to conduct it as if they were kids at summer camp after lights out: very, very quietly.
And it does seem to be so that Osama was outraged by the presence of infidel troops on Saudi territory, which drove him to begin plotting 9/11.
So, the dumbness and cowardliness induced in Bush I. by Margaret Thatcher ( "Now, don't go all wobbly, George ) led to the slaughter, ruin, and general chaos brought to the Arab Middle East by Bush II. That's rather admirable don't you think? Who doesn't admire family traditions?
H1B is the pumping heart of “American” innovation. Has it been abused? You’re damn right it has. Make it expensive then. Spitballing here but 0.5% of revenue up until $250k.
If there is to be a third party, musk is the last person I would trust. No matter, even if there are 25 parties, it will still be government...that is the gigantic problem.
This simple recipe of eloquently teaching something not on the popular syllabi of history classes while managing to inspire with that anecdote is a fantastic combination.
Wonderful essay. Dropping Taylor's father at the end was a cherry on top.
I thought about this article on my walk tonight and it’s funny it might have filled in some gaps in my family history. My English/Virginian great great great grandmother somehow married my Germanic great great great grandfather (last name literally means mercenary) right around the civil war. He was already in Nebraska by that time because I found his mother’s grave dated to 1850s. I always wondered how my Virginian line ended up in Nebraska in the mid 1800s, so he must have went east during the civil war but I can’t find any records of it.
There had to have been a shortage of men in the entire region.
Because you opened the door to snotty literary pretension, I will niggle with this:
"Alexander the Great was a foreigner in Greece..."
Herodotus (aka "The Father of History") famously appeared to disagree.
(From Book 5, Chapter 22 of The Histories)
"Now that these descendants of Perdiccas are Greeks, as they themselves say, I myself chance to know and will prove it in the later part of my history. Furthermore, the Hellenodicae1 who manage the contest at Olympia determined that it is so, [2] for when Alexander (I) chose to contend and entered the lists for that purpose, the Greeks who were to run against him wanted to bar him from the race, saying that the contest should be for Greeks and not for foreigners. Alexander, however, proving himself to be an Argive, was judged to be a Greek. He accordingly competed in the furlong race and tied step for first place. This, then, is approximately what happened."
But we will either agree to disagree, or call Alexander the Great - pupil of Aristotle, conqueror of Persia, inventor of One Horse Towns - the exception that proves your (very well established) rule. It wouldn't be his only exceptional quality.
Almost no one noticed — which, in this case, says more about the media than about politics: the mere speculation that Elon Musk might launch a new political movement in the U.S. has silently raised alarms behind the scenes of New York’s municipal contest. Not that Musk is a statesman — he’s more of a performative plutocrat with a digital Caesar complex — but the timing of the move reveals something bigger: the American party system, especially in the major progressive metropolises, has suffered a multi-organ failure.
In New York, the leading candidate in the Democratic primaries is Zohran Mamdani — an incendiary leftist activist of identity politics who honors Hamas leaders in teenage rap songs, advocates defunding the police in neighborhoods he himself doesn’t enter, and positions himself as a liberator. The Republicans, meanwhile, in NY, remain anesthetized, lacking leadership, urban base, or language.
In this vacuum, the idea of a third way — well-funded, well-connected, aesthetically moderate but rhetorically aggressive — is not just possible. It’s inevitable. Michael Bloomberg built his career along these lines. And perhaps that’s why Musk is moving. Not because he has civic virtues — but because he senses opportunity where ideological collapse has opened space.
Creating an alternative movement might be the lifeline for a city whose cultural elite has already normalized absurdity, offense censorship, banditry as cultural expression, and racial blackmail as a public policy criterion. New York’s left has reached the point of resembling what they claimed to oppose: intolerant, authoritarian, paranoid, and full of social resentment wrapped in academic vocabulary.
If Musk’s — or whoever embraces this project’s — plan succeeds, it won’t be due to brilliance. It will be due to lack of competition. New York is so mired in slogans and identity fanaticism that any rational alternative, even if wrapped in self-promotion, will seem sensible by comparison.
The question isn’t whether a third way can change the election.
>It’s a perennial, lazy staple of libertarian political theorizing that the two-party system is in >reality a uniparty
Can't tell you how many times I have heard this little chestnut from some AF newbie or cucked Boomer at my local dissident right get togethers. They always say it, like its some huge revelation and the secret to all things and about how they are above party politics.
Reading your stuffs I feel like GenX finally has voice in the public sq!
One of the powerful choices Americans avail themselves of in every election is the choice not to vote. It is correct to believe that there are basically two sorts of people in the *electorate* but there are three sorts of adult Americans. About 74 million Democrats, about 76 million Republicans, about 116 million did not vote. So it is often confusing to people like Ross Perot and his many flip charts or the mElon and his many indignations that Americans who are not represented by either of the major parties do not embrace any new third party that wanders in. Americans do not embrace the Libertarian party, the Green party, the Constitution party, did not embrace the Reform party, and won't embrace the America party. Of course, that's fine by the mElon because Americans need not apply.
It is an interesting fact that about 90,000 free men of colour fought in Confederate uniforms. So it was not only the northern side that put blacks in their army. Before the war of northern aggression, there were black slave owners. If you look into the history of Liberia, you find a great many slave owners there, as well. Monroe wanted to share the culture of Virginia with the peoples of Africa.
There aren't any political solutions to the problems caused by the excesses of politics. Put another way, it isn't possible to end cannibalism by eating cannibals.
Brilliant! Thank you
Not sure how this fits into the above narrative, but I live in a decaying rust belt city in the Midwest. My parents were legal immigrants, and I personally know many first-generation Americans and also (by virtue of the close connections my family maintained with the old country) many naturalized Americans. The following is purely anecdotal but I stand by it nevertheless: I have not met a naturalized American (with an accent) who did not vote for Trump in the last three presidential elections. Of course these were all at some point legal immigrants, not imported lumpen, tech or otherwise, but it is still jarring enough to be noticeable. Almost all of them understand the pathologies of the areas they left and the promise that America still holds for people willing to work hard. In contrast, the most fanatical “progressive” drones (I am a university professor so I see these on a daily basis) are multi-generational native Americans whose hatred of America exceeds even that of a few actual communists I knew in Europe.
When I say, people who don’t benefit from mass immigration vote Trump, that category includes a lot of immigrants themselves. New arrivals mean lower wages and social cohesion, and even newer arrivals mean less of the same for those who wanted a new life previously. It’s what pollsters missed about Hispanics trending Republican.
"when you invite me to your home, I close the door behind me"
Good analogy from a fanatically pro Trump Mexican immigrant
America is neither purely an “idea” or principle or a specific place and people AKA “blood and soil”. It is both, neither can be denied. Worth fighting for and protecting.
“A true patriot protects his country from its Government “
Thomas Paine.
"Also, Moby Dick, because there can never be enough pretentious literary allusions."
Quite right! GRIN
"Benjamin Butler was a crooked politician before the war, so it just made sense to put him in charge of occupied New Orleans"
Now that's funny!
A carefully-crafted and essential essay. Social, political, historical, literary—and a fine handling of English prose welds those strands together. Great job.
Thank you
I think Elon has done more damage to his political ambitions than he knows. In a perfectly executed, yet completely planless campaign, he has managed to serially join, then utterly alienate every possible political base. I hope he treats his customers better than his fans. His biggest customer, the state, is quite capable of severing its nose to spite its face.
There was a reason that the Red Republicans of 1848 so happily embraced the Black Republicans of the 1850s. I'm of the opinion that Musk's third party would strip away more Normie Democrats than Normie Republicans, and any Vichy Republicans like that scummy shitweasel Pence who jump aboard are welcome to, as we are better off with them outside. The smartest thing Trump can do is purge the Republican Party first.
I became enamored of Libertarianism in the 1980's, while living in NYS. I joined the Party, contributed financially, and had high hopes. Sadly, they never achieved permanent ballot status, which forces any nascent party to expend a disproportionate amount of its resources just to be listed along side R and D on the ballot. A decline in my personal fortunes, along with increasingly bad candidates and miserable results wore down my resolve. Then came 9/11/01. My latent neo-con suddenly came to the fore, and Libertarians seemed too willing to blame us for the attack. I was all in on the War on Terror, and I wanted to kill every last perpetrator and let Allah sort them out later. Unfortunately, most of the clever and brave military figures you described so colorfully here had been replaced by bureaucrats who were great at wasting money and lives while failing to win wars. (I did kind of dig Stormin' Norman, though.) It was, along with the tireless drumbeat of DEI and self-flagellation, fertile ground for MAGA. It's way too soon to judge any lasting impact, and we can already see President Trump having difficulty dragging the sludgy GOP along. There's a lot of grand talk of remaking the Republican Party, but they don't call it The Deep State for nothing. Elon's America Party seems ill-timed; a hissy fit by a rich guy scorned. I'd be surprised if it goes anywhere, and I sincerely hope someone talks some sense into Elon (or gets his meds adjusted properly). His spat with The Donald isn't helping anything. Better he should spend his money countering all those judges and prosecutors Soros bought, than primarying Republicans who voted for The Bill. Meanwhile, we have very real enemies out there licking their chops while we fight each other.
I think you're conflating idiotic Bush family foreign adventures. Stormin' Norman was the charming and effective battlefield commander of the pointless war which chased Iraq out of Kuwait, in 1991. I'm pretty sure that he was retired by 9/11.
I did actually recall that, but I was looking for a relatively modern military figure you REALLY did not want to mess with. Perhaps "Mad Dog" Mattis would have been a better example? By the way, Gulf War 1's whole point WAS to chase Saddam out of Kuwait, so mission actually accomplished. The only thing that bothered me about that war was being treated like the hired pest-control guys by effete Arabs. But having lived through 2 previous oil crises, I wasn't anxious for a third. And hey, that conflict produced some great comedy. Sam Kinison did a hilarious riff on our "100 Hour War" and Saddam's infamous scud missile threat: "You fire it out of the trunk of your car, then go home and watch CNN to see where it lands."
But Pat Buchanan had it right in the summer of 1990, when he said of Saddam's grabbing of Kuwait and why we should do nothing about it: "What do we think he's going to do with that oil? He's going to sell it to us!"
I had a doctor, a devout Christian, who was in on Desert Storm, and was disgusted with the Saudi impositions on the American Christians' worship. The way he described it, they had to conduct it as if they were kids at summer camp after lights out: very, very quietly.
And it does seem to be so that Osama was outraged by the presence of infidel troops on Saudi territory, which drove him to begin plotting 9/11.
So, the dumbness and cowardliness induced in Bush I. by Margaret Thatcher ( "Now, don't go all wobbly, George ) led to the slaughter, ruin, and general chaos brought to the Arab Middle East by Bush II. That's rather admirable don't you think? Who doesn't admire family traditions?
H1B is the pumping heart of “American” innovation. Has it been abused? You’re damn right it has. Make it expensive then. Spitballing here but 0.5% of revenue up until $250k.
No its really not.
Concise, boarding on sparse
If there is to be a third party, musk is the last person I would trust. No matter, even if there are 25 parties, it will still be government...that is the gigantic problem.
This simple recipe of eloquently teaching something not on the popular syllabi of history classes while managing to inspire with that anecdote is a fantastic combination.
Wonderful essay. Dropping Taylor's father at the end was a cherry on top.
Thank you
I thought about this article on my walk tonight and it’s funny it might have filled in some gaps in my family history. My English/Virginian great great great grandmother somehow married my Germanic great great great grandfather (last name literally means mercenary) right around the civil war. He was already in Nebraska by that time because I found his mother’s grave dated to 1850s. I always wondered how my Virginian line ended up in Nebraska in the mid 1800s, so he must have went east during the civil war but I can’t find any records of it.
There had to have been a shortage of men in the entire region.
Excellent piece, Librarian
Because you opened the door to snotty literary pretension, I will niggle with this:
"Alexander the Great was a foreigner in Greece..."
Herodotus (aka "The Father of History") famously appeared to disagree.
(From Book 5, Chapter 22 of The Histories)
"Now that these descendants of Perdiccas are Greeks, as they themselves say, I myself chance to know and will prove it in the later part of my history. Furthermore, the Hellenodicae1 who manage the contest at Olympia determined that it is so, [2] for when Alexander (I) chose to contend and entered the lists for that purpose, the Greeks who were to run against him wanted to bar him from the race, saying that the contest should be for Greeks and not for foreigners. Alexander, however, proving himself to be an Argive, was judged to be a Greek. He accordingly competed in the furlong race and tied step for first place. This, then, is approximately what happened."
But we will either agree to disagree, or call Alexander the Great - pupil of Aristotle, conqueror of Persia, inventor of One Horse Towns - the exception that proves your (very well established) rule. It wouldn't be his only exceptional quality.
Almost no one noticed — which, in this case, says more about the media than about politics: the mere speculation that Elon Musk might launch a new political movement in the U.S. has silently raised alarms behind the scenes of New York’s municipal contest. Not that Musk is a statesman — he’s more of a performative plutocrat with a digital Caesar complex — but the timing of the move reveals something bigger: the American party system, especially in the major progressive metropolises, has suffered a multi-organ failure.
In New York, the leading candidate in the Democratic primaries is Zohran Mamdani — an incendiary leftist activist of identity politics who honors Hamas leaders in teenage rap songs, advocates defunding the police in neighborhoods he himself doesn’t enter, and positions himself as a liberator. The Republicans, meanwhile, in NY, remain anesthetized, lacking leadership, urban base, or language.
In this vacuum, the idea of a third way — well-funded, well-connected, aesthetically moderate but rhetorically aggressive — is not just possible. It’s inevitable. Michael Bloomberg built his career along these lines. And perhaps that’s why Musk is moving. Not because he has civic virtues — but because he senses opportunity where ideological collapse has opened space.
Creating an alternative movement might be the lifeline for a city whose cultural elite has already normalized absurdity, offense censorship, banditry as cultural expression, and racial blackmail as a public policy criterion. New York’s left has reached the point of resembling what they claimed to oppose: intolerant, authoritarian, paranoid, and full of social resentment wrapped in academic vocabulary.
If Musk’s — or whoever embraces this project’s — plan succeeds, it won’t be due to brilliance. It will be due to lack of competition. New York is so mired in slogans and identity fanaticism that any rational alternative, even if wrapped in self-promotion, will seem sensible by comparison.
The question isn’t whether a third way can change the election.
It’s why no one tried sooner.
Thanks god for you sir.
>It’s a perennial, lazy staple of libertarian political theorizing that the two-party system is in >reality a uniparty
Can't tell you how many times I have heard this little chestnut from some AF newbie or cucked Boomer at my local dissident right get togethers. They always say it, like its some huge revelation and the secret to all things and about how they are above party politics.
Reading your stuffs I feel like GenX finally has voice in the public sq!