Thursday, February 19, 2026

Europe’s Civilizational War Will Be Bloody


It seems as if every month a new story comes out of Britain warning about the likelihood of future civil war.  Retired colonel Richard Kemp recently gave a television interview during which he warned that the “Islamification” of the United Kingdom would lead to “inevitable conflict.”  Several British academics specializing in the preconditions for civil conflict, including professors David Betz and Michael Rainsborough, have argued the same point.  

Kemp’s point of view carries the added weight of someone who has witnessed insurgent fighting firsthand.  A former commander who carried out counter-insurgency operations in Northern Ireland, led British forces in Afghanistan, and held intelligence roles in Westminster, Kemp says Islamic immigrants’ refusal to integrate into British society means that things in the U.K. are “getting bad” and about to “get worse.”  Among other provocative comments that will no doubt ruffle the feathers of Britain’s “ruling class,” Kemp notes, “There were more British Muslims with the Taliban than in the British Army.”  

The combat veteran argues that Britain’s political class has failed citizens by putting them in harm’s way and is simultaneously incapable of mitigating its failures due to suffocating concerns for what can be said out loud.  “No government,” Kemp argues, “has the guts to stop…the Islamification of the U.K.”  Consequently, ordinary Brits now need to prepare for the likelihood of “civil war in Europe.”  Describing the looming conflict in the U.K. as a far more serious and deadly situation than what gripped Northern Ireland for decades, Kemp predicts that the coming civil war will involve “indigenous British and some of the immigrant population and the British government all on three different sides fighting against each other.”  

Drawing on his experience with insurgent forces, the retired colonel blames disenfranchisement in Britain for the future violence: “The big problem that British people have is they don’t have political choice.  We don’t really live in a democracy….Whatever party you vote for, you get the same policies.  That applies also to immigration and to the way in which the Islamic population is allowed to grow in numbers and dominance.”  As academics Betz and Rainsborough have also argued, Kemp sees the unwillingness of the U.K.’s political class to respect the will of voters with regards to immigration, Brexit, and the preservation of traditional culture as the proximate cause of the civil war to come.  

Democratic institutions provide citizen-voters with a “release valve” through which they can express pent-up frustration without resorting to violence.  The problem is that a political “uniparty” operates in the U.K., as it does throughout most of the West.  It doesn’t matter whether Brits hand power to a Labour or Tory prime minister; they get non-stop Islamic immigration regardless.  When native Brits publicly protest the “Islamification” of the U.K., both Labour and Tory members of parliament call them “racist” and prosecute them for “hate.”  When native Brits march through downtown cities to condemn Islamic rape gangs and Islamic terrorism, both Labour and Tory members of parliament call them “racist” and prosecute them for “hate.”  When native Brits rally to prevent the construction of super-mosques in rural parts of Britain, both Labour and Tory members of parliament call them “racist” and prosecute them for “hate.”  Therefore, citizens in the U.K. have learned that voting accomplishes nothing and that their so-called political “leaders” are incapable of defending British lives or British ways of life.

The British pot is boiling, and Kemp adds his voice to a growing chorus of professionals with expertise in violent civil conflicts who predict a war-ravaged kingdom in the near future.  “I think the people will feel they have no option than to take action into their own hand rather than rely on political leaders who are doing nothing,” Kemp stated in another interview.  “I think there is every likelihood” of  “civil war in the U.K. in the coming years.”  

What Kemp describes in the U.K. is occurring all over Europe.  While members of the continent’s “elite” political ruling class have spent the last several decades obsessing about the weather and how to make the world “green,” technological innovation, entrepreneurial spirit, and industrial self-sufficiency have diminished.  Although most nations of Europe have replaced historic monarchies with forms of representative democracy, a class of aristocratic nobles has managed to insinuate itself into the powerful positions of “representative” government.  Perhaps because of this feudal mentality, European politicos cannot resist the appeal of centralized, top-down, government-controlled economies.  While “elites” micro-manage European industry and commerce and choose “winners” and “losers” as lords do vassals, free markets malfunction.  The end result is that Europeans get poorer, have fewer babies, and perpetuate a century of decline.  

Europe’s aristocratic ruling class has responded to this demographic decline by inviting third-world migrants from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East to become citizens of Europe.  Rather than successfully addressing the continent’s generational crisis by replacing local babies with foreign ones, European “elites” have engineered a certain “clash” between Western and Islamic civilizations.  In the U.K. alone, ten major cities — including Birmingham, Bradford, Manchester, and parts of London — are on their way to having majority-Muslim populations over the next decade or two.  These are historically blue-collar areas where native Brits have gotten only poorer as foreign nationals take over neighborhoods that locals once called home.  Mosques are rising everywhere.  Islamic groceries, restaurants, festivals, and religious celebrations replace the food and customs of local families whose presence goes back centuries.  There is no social integration of any kind.

As economic conditions continue to decline and cultural flashpoints become more frequent, globalist politicians who praise “multiculturalism” as if it were a virtue and repeat, “Diversity is our strength,” as if it were a divine truth are about to discover how dangerous it is to mix many incompatible cultures together.  Like a carbonated beverage shaken without any concern for the mess, the cultural pressure within these Islamified European cities is ready to explode.

As retired colonel Richard Kemp argues, this cultural explosion will be much worse because Europe’s political “ruling class” has prevented voters from making course corrections that are popular with the public but unpopular with European “elites.”  In France, the Netherlands, Germany, Romania, and elsewhere, ruling “elites” use institutional gamesmanship to block “populist” political parties from coming to (or exercising) power.  Anti-immigration political candidates are prosecuted for “hate crimes,” “Russian collusion,” or other made-up crimes.  Unelected aristocrats on the European Council secretly fund pro-immigration candidates in national elections and censor European citizens who express outrage on social media platforms over mass migration from foreign cultures.  In national parliaments and the European Union, members continue to pass laws that effectively criminalize public dissent to official government policies.

Europe’s political “ruling class” has angered a growing share of the European public, and rather than address the reasons for the public’s anger, that same “ruling class” has chosen to silence ordinary Europeans and threaten them with prosecution and imprisonment.  When all of the “release valves” for a civil society have been welded shut, society stops being “civil.”  Europe’s “elites” have created the conditions for a bloody civil war — because entire civilizations will be warring against each other.


Entertainment and podcast thread for Feb 19

 


what a day!

A Revolving Door of Predators



America’s growing sense of danger is often discussed as if it were a mystery -- something caused by “complex social forces” that no one can quite identify, much less change. But what is happening is not mysterious at all. A society that tolerates predatory behavior will get more of it. Criminals respond to incentives as reliably as everyone else does.

If the odds of punishment and the cost of punishment do not outweigh the benefits of crime for a would-be predator, there is no deterrence. It becomes a simple risk-reward calculation.

One of the most stubborn facts in modern criminal justice is that repeat offending is not just an occasional occurrence. It is the norm. The Bureau of Justice Statistics tracked state prisoners released in 2005 and found that 68% were arrested again within three years, 79% within six years, and 83% within nine years. Over that nine-year period, those 401,288 released prisoners racked up nearly two million arrests -- about five arrests per released prisoner.

That is not a “few bad apples.” That is a revolving door.

A newer BJS study of prisoners released in 2012 across 34 states found similarly grim patterns: 62% arrested within three years and 71% within five years, with 46% returning to prison within five years either for a new sentence or for supervision violations.

These numbers do not mean that every offender is irredeemable. They mean something more basic: the system is routinely returning high-risk people to the public. Although clearly failing to protect the public, those responsible often congratulate themselves for being “smart,” “humane,” or “evidence-based.”

The question then becomes: who is making the choices that turn rampant recidivism from a warning sign into a business model?

Start with prosecutors. Prosecutors are not merely lawyers; they are gatekeepers. They decide whether to charge, what to charge, whether to stack charges, whether to bargain down violent conduct into something less serious, and whether to seek enhancements for repeat offenders. In theory, they are ministers of justice. In practice, they operate under incentives that have little to do with the safety of ordinary people.

A prosecutor who insists on serious charges for violent repeat offenders inherits hard work, courtroom risk, political criticism, and the possibility of a trial loss. A prosecutor who pleads cases down can claim “efficiency,” produce impressive conviction statistics, and clear a docket -- often at a discount paid by a future victim.

Then come judges, who have enormous discretion in sentencing, diversion, probation, and release decisions. The public is told that judges are correcting for “over-incarceration” or that they are applying “individualized justice.” But individualized justice can become individualized excuses -- where the life and limb of the innocent are treated as a secondary concern, while the biography of the offender becomes the main event.

The deeper problem is cultural. When a society explains violence as if it were a weather pattern -- something that simply happens -- then the people who can stop it feel less obligation to do so. Accountability becomes optional. Predation becomes a “cry for help.” And the victims are told, in effect, that their suffering is unfortunate but unavoidable.

Nowhere is this softer, more dishonest thinking clearer than in how we talk about “life sentences.” The phrase suggests finality. It suggests that the most dangerous people are removed permanently from the streets. In reality, “life” often means “eligible for a hearing” after a set number of years, with release hinging on shifting political winds, administrative boards, and legal changes.

Consider how “life” is described in California’s own parole framework: many indeterminate terms are explicitly “life” sentences with the possibility of parole, such as “25 years-to-life.” The punishment is structured so that a person convicted of grave violence may be entitled to ask for release after a minimum term. California also notes that “lifers” can become eligible through special tracks such as youth-offender or elderly parole processes. More often than not, a life term is more for public consumption than actual policy.

At the federal level, parole was prospectively abolished for most cases after the Sentencing Reform Act era, but “time served” is still not identical to the sentence imposed because offenders can earn good-time credit that reduces time behind bars.  And historically, even federal “life” cases have sometimes ended in release: a Bureau of Justice Statistics time-served report found that, between 1986 and 1997, federal offenders committed for life were released on parole after about 16 years in prison.

If “life” can mean “a hearing in a couple of decades,” then the public has been sold a comforting fantasy rather than a protective policy.

Notice what recidivism data implies about our current posture. When BJS tells us that roughly seven in ten released prisoners are rearrested within five years, it is not simply describing individual failure. It is describing institutional design. A system that repeatedly releases people who repeatedly reoffend is not merely making mistakes. It is operating as built -- pushing risk outward onto the public because internal actors (prosecutors, judges, administrators) bear little personal cost when the gamble goes wrong.

And it goes wrong in the most lopsided way imaginable: the benefits of leniency accrue to the decision-makers’ reputations and caseloads, while the costs are paid by nameless victims who did not get a vote in the courtroom.

A serious society would respond in three ways.

First, stop treating violent recidivism as an acceptable externality. Prosecutors should default to charging violent conduct as violent conduct -- without laundering it into lesser categories for convenience. Repeat violent offenders should face sentencing that reflects demonstrated risk, not optimistic storytelling.

Second, judicial discretion should be tethered to public safety outcomes, not just good intentions. When a judge repeatedly grants leniency to defendants who reoffend violently, that is not “compassion.” It is professional negligence in a robe.

Third, honesty in sentencing language must return. If a jurisdiction intends to allow parole hearings after 15, 20, or 25 years, then stop calling it “life” in the way ordinary people understand the word. The public cannot evaluate policy when policy is marketed through euphemism.

The most dangerous myth in criminal justice is that we can be “soft” on predators without being “hard” on the innocent. We cannot. Every reduction in consequences for violent behavior is an increase in consequences for someone else -- someone who will be assaulted, robbed, maimed, or killed, and who will then be treated as collateral damage in a moral drama centered on the offender.

When a society chooses to tolerate violent behavior, it does not abolish violence. It reallocates it -- away from criminals and toward law-abiding people. And that is what an increasingly unsafe America looks like: not chaos out of nowhere, but predation subsidized by leniency, enabled by prosecutors and judges who face fewer consequences than the predators they keep putting back on the streets.

What Do the Dems Do After They’ve Done Their Worst and It Flops?


When you hear that Donald Trump and, by extension, we patriots are the most fascist, racist, sexist, corrupt, perverted, and also fascist monsters in the history of ever, you have to wonder something. You don’t wonder why they’re saying it. You know why they’re saying it. They’re liars and dirtbags, and they are losing their grip on power, and they’re desperate. What you have to wonder is “Where do they go from here?”

That’s a great question. Pity the Democrats. They’re kind of in a quandary. Where do you go next when you call somebody “literally Hitler” and nothing happens? Where do you go when you call somebody “racist” and he doesn’t care? Where do you go when you call somebody “sexist” and he wonders what’s wrong with being sexy? Where do you go when you label somebody “corrupt” and he starts a bitcoin company? Where do go after you scream that someone is Epstein‘s pal, and the world doesn’t collapse because you called him Epstein‘s pal?

Where do you go next when you say the worst things imaginable about someone, and it doesn’t matter?

That’s where we are now, and it should be no surprise to anybody who has ever heard about the boy who cried “Wolf.” Maybe the left doesn’t like that fable because they’re assuming the gender of the brat who fakes alarms over dreaded predators and finally gets gobbled up when the dreaded predator arrives, and nobody believes him, her, or them. Regardless, they’re not paying attention to the moral of the story.

Nobody who doesn’t already believe the Democrats believes them now. We’ve had ten years of Trump, and by extension, we patriots, being bombarded with the worst possible accusations and…nothing? Calling somebody “Hitler” should mean something. Hitler was bad, really bad, and to equate somebody with Hitler should be something that one takes seriously because no serious person would casually equate another with Hitler, unless the accused had done something positively Hitlerean. But that’s not the case today. It doesn’t mean anything because everything they say, every lie, epithet and slander, is meaningless. They call Trump “Hitler.” Everybody knows he’s not Hitler. So, no one cares that he gets called “Hitler,” least of all the guy who’s supposed to be Hitler 2.0.

What they make are objectively false claims. That goes without saying. It’s an interesting tangent to ponder what the people offering these slanders actually think. There are two options. First, they are stupid people who actually believe these stupid lies. That’s entirely possible. Being a Democrat is closely correlated with being a moron. But being a Democrat is also closely correlated with being a cynical exploiter of morons. The second possibility is that these Democrats think their constituents are morons, and more often than not, they are correct.

But whether they believe it or not is really beside the point.

The point is that hyperbolic slander is the best they’ve got. This is their only weapon right now, and it’s firing blanks. Remember, they don’t have any power other than what we give them. For them to rule over us requires that we allow them to rule over us. In the past, we defaulted to the American political system, where one party would win the election, and it would take power, exercise power, pass laws the opposition didn’t like, then have another election, and then things would eventually change. We took turns running things. America operated on the consent of the governed. We never really thought about not consenting because the system seemed to work pretty well, not perfectly, but pretty well. 

But things changed a couple of decades ago. The Democrats convinced themselves that we conservatives are morally unfit to participate in our own governance, that the act of exercising electoral power won at the ballot box by anyone who wasn’t a leftist was inherently illegitimate. We’re Americans, we’re citizens, we’re voters, and we need to shut up and do what we’re told because everything we want to do is bad, and we can’t do them because Democrats stopped consenting to being governed when it is our turn to govern.

But of course, we can do them if we choose. We can choose not to cede our power to them. And we made that choice in 2024 when we put President Trump in the White House again, and we gave both houses of Congress to the Republicans. But the Democrats don’t believe we had the right to make that choice. We don’t have the right to do anything, in their minds. 

Cue the resistance. They manifest their lack of consent through active civil disobedience and uncivil disobedience – besides trying to murder Donald Trump, and actually murdering Charlie Kirk, leftists have already murdered several people, including illegal aliens at that ICE facility they shot up. They also support and applaud judicial shenanigans where judges make up law out of whole cloth to stop us from enacting the conservative we voted for. There’s that lack of consent to be governed thing again; for them it’s option, for us it is mandated by their divine right to rule.

But their loudest tactic this slander spasm. We have Democrats and their adjuncts screaming these lies 24/7, on social media, on leftist outlets, and in the regime media. What’s the purpose of this campaign of hysterical hyperbole? It has several purposes. One of them is that it is to the benefit of leftist actors to become more extreme, because they build their personal brand that way and get more attention. Another reason is that it demonstrates some sort of resistance. It keeps up their morale even as Trump enacts based policy after based policy. And it’s also designed to try to sway the weak away from patriotism and to the left. Now, this works on some normals who don’t have any other frame of reference. It also works on weak-willed Republicans, of whom there are far too many. 

The incessant screaming about how everything Trump or someone Trump-affiliated has done is literally the worst thing that anyone has ever done in all of mankind’s history can make the wimpy waver, but people with even a little bit of brains and self-respect don’t fall for it. They tune it out. They don’t care. Do you even remember the Lion King video scandal that was supposed to lose us the midterms? That’s what they were saying just a couple of weeks ago. Like every other scandal du jour, it has faded away into the ether. None of this stuff matters after 72 hours anymore. Trump talks about buying Greenland? Oh well. Some leftist judge writes a soon-to-be-reversed opinion in the style of a teenage girl scribbling her feelz in her dream journal about how Trump is violating the rights of people who shouldn’t even be here? Whatever. Some leprechaun-licking mick gets locked up after sticking around on an expired visa for 20 years? Erin go home! A couple of communist dummies get themselves ventilated while hassling cops? File them under “Cindy Sheehan.”

Every vile epithet, every fake scandal, every incident that’s supposed to tug on our heartstrings goes nowhere; as far as we’re concerned, they can go tug something else.

It doesn’t work anymore. They’ve been crying “Wolf!” except there’s no wolf.

But it’s all they’ve got. They don’t have any power in government or in the courts except to slow things down. Donald Trump is pursuing his agenda with a vengeance, or his vengeance with an agenda – either way is good with us. The only power they have is the power to convince us to stop, and now that we’re not listening to them and their nonstop parade of phony horribles, they’ve hit a wall. Where do they go from here?

That’s where it gets concerning. There are two ways they can go. They can try to take power back in the appropriate and proper way, which is by winning elections. Whether screaming like five-year-olds having a tantrum because Mommy took their blankie will work to convince the American people to trust Democrats with power again is an open question. If the economy continues to boom, the Republicans stand a pretty good chance of defeating the historical trends against them in the midterms, regardless of how shrilly Dems and their affiliates scream. If people perceive the economy is still Biden-bad, the Republicans are going to lose because of that, regardless of what the Democrats say.

But remember that these are religious fanatics, and their religion is leftism. The fight against Republicans is not just a political match but an actual jihad. Again, we’ve already seen people murdered. That should be no surprise. One of the collateral effects of all this screaming about how Donald Trump, and we, are the enemies of humanity who are literally the worst people who have ever existed is that some of these leftist creeps believe it and will act on it. When you simultaneously label your political opponents as outside the bounds of acceptable political discourse, while also losing to those political opponents, you create a level of frustration that is going to drive some of your acolytes to violence. And that won’t be entirely unwelcome to the Democrat establishment. As we’ve seen, they don’t mind violence. They see it as politics by other means – ironically, since Clausewitz is a dead cisgender male identifying person of pallor. But what we’re talking about here is wide scale, targeted violence, at least on the level of the small-scale insurgency by the left that detonated thousands of bombs and killed hundreds of people in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Those “Days of Rage” could happen again. And it could be even worse, because now you have state governors and officials collaborating with the left. That takes it all up a notch. The potential is real for real trouble. The hate is out there, and it’s being fueled by the very language we’re talking about here. But on the right, we’re not in the mood to take any more casualties. We’re not in the mood for games. We are not giving up our dogs to please Dem constituents. And we are definitely not in the mood to become second-class citizens in our own country. 

If there’s a fight coming, we’ll fight back.

This could get very ugly. These people are playing with fire, but they don’t understand that we’re not going to play along. The conflagration they ignite may very well end up burning them instead of us.



Teachers Are Fomenting Anti-ICE Hysteria

Teachers Are Fomenting Anti-ICE Hysteria

Alleged ICE activity at schools is being used as a pretext to indoctrinate children. 

Employees of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have been busy lately, working to fulfill their mandate to remove undocumented immigrants. Perhaps the most controversial aspect of ICE’s activities is its alleged presence in public schools across the nation.

But is ICE actually going into schools?

Absolutely not. While there are a few reports of parents being detained at bus stops near schools and images of ICE agents tackling people on school grounds, they are not actually entering the schools.

Tricia McLaughlin, the Homeland Security Department’s assistant secretary for public affairs, explains that agents’ actions in and around schools are intended to protect children.

“ICE is not going to schools to arrest children—we are protecting children. Criminals are no longer able to hide in America’s schools to avoid arrest. The Trump administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement and instead trusts them to use common sense.”

McLaughlin adds, “An arrest might be made at school if a dangerous illegal alien felon were to flee into a school or a child sex offender is working as an employee. But this has not happened.”

Nonetheless, teachers are organizing their students to battle ICE.

As reported by Erika Sanzi, director of communications at Defending Education, teachers in Minnesota have been coordinating student protests on social media.

“There is nothing organic about these events, and despite claims to the contrary, they are almost never spontaneous expressions of student speech. They are basically field trips without the parent permission slip,” Sanzi said.

In Oregon, a video shows kindergarten studentsparticipating in a protest, and numerous schools nationwide have preemptively canceled classes so students could protest.

The teachers’ unions have also seized on ICE’s alleged misdeeds to indoctrinate students.

According to materials obtained by Defending Education, the United Teachers Los Angeles gave a presentation last year titled “Preparing for ICE at Your School” that urged its members to engage in political activism and suggested using school resources to thwart ICE operations.

The UTLA documents guide educators on how to resist the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration and urge parents and teachers to collaborate on resistance efforts. It is part of the union’s broader efforts to “build a comprehensive response to immigration enforcement.”

One slide shared with educators reads, “The fight is far from over. We need to keep fighting together!” Another slide titled “What can you do?” instructs educators on how to respond to ICE operations.

Ron Gochez, a teacher at Dr. Maya Angelou Community High School in Los Angeles, a winner of the California Teachers Association “Human Rights Award,” and a spokesman for Unión del Barrio, a Chicano Marxist revolutionary political organization, is at the forefront of the anti-ICE movement in L.A.

During a recent ICE protest in Los Angeles, Gochez told his compadres, “Don’t forget where you’re standing. This is South Central Los Angeles. They (ICE) are not the only ones with guns in this city. Don’t forget that. And I don’t say that because I’m calling for violence; I’m saying that because the people have every right to defend themselves against masked, unidentified gunmen. The people have every right to defend themselves.”

Revolutionary activities are hardly new to Gochez. In August 2024, a UTLA meeting focused on “How to be a teacher & an organizer… and NOT get fired,” during which Gochez outlined stealth methods for indoctrinating his students. He described transporting busloads of students to an anti-Israel rally during the school day without arousing suspicion.

“A lot of us that have been to those (protest) actions have brought our students. Now, I don’t take the students in my personal car,” Gochez said. Then, referring to the Los Angeles Unified School District, he explained, “I have members of our organization who are not LAUSD employees. They take those students, and I just happen to be at the same place and the same time with them.”

Not surprisingly, the National Education Associationaligns with various revolutionary groups, including the Sunrise Movement, which is funded by several left-wing billionaires, including George Soros. The group began with a focus on environmental issues but is now dedicated to virtually every radical proposition imaginable, with a particular emphasis on brainwashing students and organizing within schools.

In January, the NEA, under the guise of protecting children, blasted out an anti-ICE message across various social media platforms, saying, “As thousands of ICE agents carry out aggressive enforcement in Minnesota, hundreds of teachers, counselors, parents, school staff, activists, and union leaders are organizing and showing up in powerful ways—from delivering groceries and schoolwork to organizing solidarity actions and mass protests calling for ICE to leave schools and neighborhoods.”

Pushback against the blatant propaganda is mounting, however.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott declared that protests should be considered unlawful. The state education agency has warned that it could impose sanctions and investigate schools that facilitate “inappropriate political activism.”

“Schools and staff who allow this behavior should be treated as co-conspirators and should not be immune for criminal behavior,” Abbott told reporters.

In Florida, the state’s Education Commissioner, Anastasios Kamoutsas, said schools have a responsibility to ensure that protests do not disrupt school operations and suggested that discipline would be warranted for staff who facilitate or encourage protests during classroom hours.

“We will not tolerate educators encouraging school protests and pushing their political views onto students, especially ones that disparage law enforcement,” Kamoutsas said on social media.

Some Indiana school leaders are also calling for discipline after hundreds of students walked out of class to protest, a move that Republican Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith criticized as unacceptable.

Many parents are unhappy with the protests. One outraged Washington mother, seen in a video, has informed school officials that she is withdrawing her daughter from the district after teachers encouraged students to walk out to protest ICE activities.

When children go off to school each day, teachers act in loco parentis. Unfortunately, these days, “loco” has a whole different meaning.

*   *   *

Larry Sand is a retired 28-year classroom teacher who served as president of the nonprofit California Teachers Empowerment Network from 2006 to 2025. He now focuses on raising awareness of our failing education system.


🎭 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓

 

Welcome to 

The 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓 

Here’s a place to share cartoons, jokes, music, art, nature, 
man-made wonders, and whatever else you can think of. 

No politics or divisive posts on this thread. 

This feature will appear every day at 1pm mountain time. 


Red, White, and Blue: Air Force One to Get First New Paint Design Since Kennedy Era


RedState 

It’s been the norm since the John F. Kennedy administration — the light blue and white paint design on Air Force One and other jets that fly around top officials. It’s getting a change, though, one that President Donald Trump has been advocating for since 2018, and its new colors will be those of America’s flag: red, white, and blue. It will also feature a gold stripe.

A number of aircraft will get the makeover

Both the luxury jet donated by Qatar and new VC-25B Boeing jets will feature the new colors, an Air Force spokesperson told NewsNation. The Air Force One title is given to any aircraft carrying the president. 

Four smaller C-32 aircraft — which are referred to as Air Force Two when the vice president is aboard — are also set to receive new paint jobs, per NewsNation. Those jets are also used by the first lady and Cabinet secretaries when they travel.

One C-32 has already been painted, and the Air Force says it’s expected to be delivered in the next few months.

Trump had advocated for the change since his first term, but the Grinch Joe Biden nixed it.

For more than six decades, the familiar robin’s egg blue and white exterior has served as a global symbol of the American presidency. The color scheme dates back to the early 1960s, when it was introduced during President John F. Kennedy’s administration and became one of the most recognizable aviation designs in the world.

During his first term, Trump unveiled a model aircraft reflecting his preferred red, white and blue palette. That version of the design was later canceled for the VC-25B program during the Biden administration.

"We're painting it red, white, and blue like the American flag, which is incredible," Trump told Fox News' Sean Hannity in an interview in 2025. He also wouldn't mind a bigger plane:

The story behind the robin’s egg blue and white takes us into the past: The Air Force had planned for a red and gold paint scheme, but JFK and then-First Lady Jackie didn’t think it looked refined enough. They hired renowned industrial designer Raymond Loewy, who had come up with the Coca-Cola bottle design, and he and Jackie sat on the floor with crayons, scissors, and paper to brainstorm.

What they came up with is known around the world, and all presidents from JFK through Trump 2.0 have used it. That’s soon to change, and it won’t be long before the red, white, and blue — with a little gold thrown in for good measure — will fly all over the world.


While Democrats’ Anti-ICE Fury Escalates, Americans Show They Want Immigration Laws Enforced


As protests and riots against ICE grow more common, formal state and local LEO cooperation with ICE grows far more common.



Rhetoric versus reality, plainly illustrated.

If you read or watch the news, you see constant marches and riots over the enforcement of immigration laws. Activists chase ICE and Border Patrol personnel in the streets, screaming insults and blowing whistles to alert others to the presence of Trump’s mean immigration cops. High school students storm out of their classes (behind their activist teachers, following authority as they protest against government) to “march against hate,” attacking people who disagree with them.

If you believe what you see, the enforcement of immigration laws is becoming less popular by the day, as Americans rally to protect the people leftists call “our undocumented neighbors.” They seem to be winning. The streets say that America wants a large and permanent population of illegal immigrants, consuming a growing set of public resources and driving the explosive growth of both government and government-funded NGOs. We want the Biden years back. We’re for this, passionately, and we want as much as we can get:



But a remarkable story from the Spanish news site El Pais reports this week — the link is to the English-language version — on a development that will only be surprising if you believe what you see on CNN. “Local police agreements with ICE are skyrocketing in the United States, reigniting debate over public trust,” the headline says. From that story:

An analysis of official data by FWD.us, a nonpartisan organization that advocates for comprehensive immigration and criminal justice reform, shows that 1,168 police departments had officers enrolled to assist ICE at the end of January, up from 135 during the Biden administration and 150 at the end of Donald Trump’s first term…

According to data published by ICE itself, as of February 13, 2026, the agency had signed 1,415 memoranda of understanding under section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, covering 40 states. In the first few weeks of 2026 alone, nearly 150 new local agencies joined the program.

You can find extensive information about 287(g) agreements, which allow state, local, and tribal police agencies to formalize agreements with ICE to cooperate in the enforcement of immigration law, on the ICE website. There are nuances to the agreements, which can take several different forms, but overall the regularly updated numbers on the ICE website are a little higher than the numbers in El Pais: “As of February 17, 2026 5:10 pm ICE has signed 1,427 Memorandums of Agreement for 287(g) programs covering 40 states.” A dozen additional agencies have applications pending for new 287(g) agreements.

So as protests and riots against ICE grow more common, formal state and local cooperation with ICE grows far more common. The activist narrative collides with the increasing consensus on the value of routine institutional cooperation to enforce America’s longstanding immigration laws.

The people have actually spoken. And not by blowing those idiotic whistles.

This week, in an outburst of alarm, mainstream journalists have begun to notice. In Democrat-captured states, leftist politicians are fighting to end 287(g) agreements in order to protect the massive stream of free public money that flows to their party’s client classes. On her first day in office, Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger signed an executive order forbidding the agreements between ICE and state (but not local) police agencies. She protected the Democratic machine’s high-cost clients. And Maryland Governor Wes Moore just signed emergency legislation forbidding 287(g) agreements in that state.



But put those two things together: Democrats and the media oppose 287(g) agreements with a growing sense of panic, while the actual number of those agreements in effect is growing rapidly. Side by side, those two realities tell you quite a bit about what Americans really want, and how well Democrats really represent that consensus.

The Chomsky Moment And The Cracks In Cultural Hegemony

The Chomsky Moment And The Cracks In Cultural Hegemony

The end of moral asymmetry in American intellectual life.

S.R. Piccoli for American Thinker




In 2023, newly disclosed documents related to the late financier Jeffrey Epstein revealed meetings and financial interactions between Epstein and the eminent linguist and public intellectual Noam Chomsky. The disclosures did not accuse Chomsky of criminal conduct. But they confirmed that, years after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for soliciting a minor, Chomsky met with him multiple times and discussed financial matters.


Chomsky’s response was characteristically blunt: his meetings with Epstein, he said, were “none of your business.” The tone may have been legally defensible. Culturally and symbolically, it was something else.

Because Chomsky is not merely a professor emeritus at MIT. For over half a century, he has been one of the central intellectual pillars of the American Left — a figure whose authority extends far beyond linguistics into foreign policy, media criticism, and moral judgment on American power. His 1988 book Manufacturing Consent shaped generations of students’ understanding of media, propaganda, and elite influence. To admirers, he has represented intellectual courage against empire; to critics, an implacable critic of Western liberal democracies.


But in either case, he has stood as a moral voice.


And that is precisely why the Epstein association matters — not as a criminal allegation, but as a symbolic rupture.


From the 1960s to Cultural Hegemony


To understand the magnitude of that rupture, one must place Chomsky within the broader intellectual ecosystem that reshaped American academia after the 1960s. While not formally a member of the Frankfurt School, his work converged with its critique of capitalist modernity, mass culture, and liberal-democratic institutions. Thinkers such as Herbert Marcuse and Theodor Adorno helped institutionalize a style of critical theory that viewed Western society as structurally oppressive beneath its democratic veneer.


Overlay that with the influence of Antonio Gramsci and his theory of cultural hegemony: the idea that ruling classes maintain dominance not only through economic power but by shaping cultural norms, education, and moral language. Change the culture, and you change the political order.


The American New Left absorbed this framework. Over decades, it migrated from street protest to faculty lounges, from counterculture to curriculum committees. The result is what we now call Critical Theory’s progeny: identity-centered scholarship, postcolonial critique, and ultimately the framework popularly labeled CRT. While Chomsky himself has often criticized certain excesses of identity politics and has not endorsed every development in “woke” culture, his lifelong assault on American institutions provided intellectual scaffolding for the suspicion of Western norms that now permeates large sectors of academia.


The point is not that Chomsky caused CRT. It is that he helped legitimize a moral architecture in which America is presumptively guilty, power is presumptively corrupt, and Western institutions are structurally suspect.


For decades, that critique carried a tacit moral asymmetry: the critics stood above the system they condemned.


The Weberian Problem


Here is where the scandal intersects with political theory.

Max Weber famously distinguished between the “ethic of conviction” and the “ethic of responsibility.” The former acts from purity of principle; the latter accounts for the foreseeable consequences of one’s actions in the public sphere.


Chomsky’s career embodies the ethic of conviction. He has consistently argued from first principles against war, imperialism, and elite hypocrisy. But when a public intellectual of such stature maintains a relationship — however defined — with a convicted sex offender embedded in elite financial networks, the question shifts from private intention to public consequence.


Even if the meetings were purely intellectual.


Even if the financial discussions were routine.


The symbolic impact is unavoidable.


A figure who built his reputation exposing the moral compromises of power was, at minimum, socially entangled with a man whose entire operation depended on elite protection.


That tension does not prove corruption. It exposes fragility.


The Collapse of Moral Asymmetry


For many on the Right, the Epstein scandal has become shorthand for elite decadence across party lines. But for the American Left, it strikes deeper. The post-1960s intellectual project has relied not only on critique, but on moral differentiation — the implicit claim that progressive institutions and thinkers occupy higher ethical ground than the corporate, military, or conservative establishments they oppose.


The Chomsky episode does not invalidate every argument he has ever made. It does something subtler: it undermines the aura of moral insulation.


If even the most relentless critic of American elite corruption can be found in the appointment book of one of the most notorious financiers in recent memory, then the narrative of unilateral moral superiority begins to erode.


And once moral asymmetry collapses, the logic of cultural hegemony weakens.


Because Gramscian influence depends on credibility. Cultural authority must appear ethically elevated to justify reshaping curricula, institutions, and norms. If the intellectual class is perceived as subject to the same gravitational pull of wealth, access, and prestige as everyone else, its claim to exceptional moral insight diminishes.


A Myth from the Sixties Meets the Twenty-First Century


The myth born in the 1960s was that radical critique purified the critic. That standing outside “the system” conferred immunity from its temptations. Over time, that myth helped fuel a worldview in which America’s sins were magnified, while the critic’s own milieu was presumed enlightened.


The Epstein revelations do not topple Chomsky’s scholarly contributions to linguistics. They do not erase his influence. But they puncture the myth that critique equals virtue.


And that puncture comes at a moment when the intellectual descendants of the New Left are facing growing resistance from parents, voters, and lawmakers who question the premises of CRT and institutionalized “wokeness.”


The Chomsky moment, then, is not about scandal in the tabloid sense. It is about the exposure of a structural paradox: those who claimed to unmask power were not immune to its proximity.


Cultural hegemony depends on the perception of moral altitude. When that altitude drops, even slightly, the entire architecture wobbles.


The collapse is not judicial.


It is symbolic.


And symbols, in politics, often matter more than verdicts.