Today is the 75th anniversary of Joe McCarthy's infamous Wheeling speech, which kicked off the so-called Red Scare. I've written a lot about McCarthy over the years, and so I thought I'd share some facts about him that you may not know...

🧵 1. As a teenager, McCarthy worked several full-time jobs rather than attend high school. At 20, he completed four years of schooling in just 9 months to obtain a diploma

2. At Marquette, he trained and competed as a collegiate boxer

Taking and holding onto power is the priority; everything else is just window dressing. For all the grumbling over bad leaders and corruption, for all talk of fighting and winning, most people are terrified to touch power. There are millions of crowns in the gutter. Your local zoning board has more real power than your favorite podcaster or activist.

Between 1939 and 1943, Russell Lee, Jack Delano, and Marion Post Wolcott took the following photographs for the Farm Security Administration...

Texas.



Louisiana.

It shouldn’t have to be said, but most Americans don’t know their own history:

Americans were overwhelmingly hostile to communism and fascism during the 20s and 30s. The idea that they weren’t, and that the country was dangerously close to flipping Brown or Red is just plain wrong.

It matters because when the tragedy of the 20th century gets pinned on your fathers and grandfathers, it also gets pinned on you. Communism and fascism destroyed the Old World, but they did not win here (a controversial take for some of you, I know). America has always been something separate, and all the horrors of the Old World are not yours to take on, past or present. You are not stuck in some 1930s samsara, locked in a battle between communism and fascism. We have our own tradition here, and it lives on. I’ll be the first to tell you that the Soviet infiltration of our government was a serious problem and did untold damage, and we have yet to come to terms with that, but it did not conquer us.

Message to aspiring elites (thread)...

Maybe you're like me, a sharp kid from the lower middle-class who left a deep-red area for a good job and elite education and is now doing better than the folks back home. Maybe you're like me and the shock of going somewhere from nowhere had you reeling, and you had to learn the hard way that the humble values you grew up with, even your patriotism, aren't respected in your new environment... Maybe you felt like an alien imposter. Maybe you slowly adopted their ways—talking and even thinking like them—hiding your light under a bushel... or worse, maybe you felt ashamed where you came from and started looking down on the folks back home. Maybe you were scared that if you truly brought your "whole self to work," you'd strain relationships, miss out on opportunities, and risk sliding down that greasy pole... back to where you came from.

V-J Day: had someone in the family survive the Bataan death march. He was uneducated, a nobody from nowhere… but he was a rancher, tough and gritty, and it probably saved his life. He had to carry weaker comrades most of the way: Decent, brave soldiers from good families who were just as committed to the fight as he was, but who were not hard men. A comfortable childhood had left these soldiers unprepared for horrific conditions of the march, and so many had to be dragged or carried.

As my relative recalled years later, he and the other hayseeds fought desperately to keep these men alive, taking turns carrying and shielding them from the guards. An officer he carried most of the way eventually attracted the attention a Japanese soldier, who threw the exhausted man to the ground, dragged him away, and bayoneted him. Thankfully my relative and many of the hayseeds from his unit did survive, but he never forgot the horror of watching good men die, especially the killing of that officer.

As the country comes apart, I’ve thought about this experience from time to time… the cultural and class divides between town and country were more stark then, and education was hard to come by… But war brought everyone together, and in extreme suffering such differences melted away and every man came to see his fellow for what he was: a man. My relative had never been to a big city or darkened the door of a lecture hall, but he had brotherly love for his comrades who had, and he mourned them for the rest of his life.

I don’t know what the future will bring, but I do know that the only way this nation can possibly come together again will be through extreme suffering and shared sacrifice… and what that might look like makes my blood run cold. 🥃

It’s hard to believe these were designed and built in the 30s, but they were…

🧵

1936 KJ Henderson Westfall

1934 BMW R7

(never entered production)

Maybe after everyone’s been canceled we’ll just find ourselves back at the beginning, when people minded their own business, despised each other honestly, and nobody had time or patience for freaks, weirdos, and bitter mediocrities. Who knows? I mean, how much longer can we pretend to take these people seriously?

Jacob Hamblin’s Rules for Dealing with the Indians

1. I never talk anything but the truth to them.

2. I think it useless to speak of things they cannot comprehend.

3. I strive by all means to never let them see me in a passion.

4. Under no circumstances show fear, thereby showing to them that I have a sound heart and a straight tongue.

5. Never approach them in an austere manner nor use more words than are necessary to convey my ideas, not in a higher tone of voice than to be distinctly heard.

6. Always listen to them when they wish to tell of their grievances, and redress their wrongs, however trifling they may be if possible. If I cannot I let them know I have a desire to do so.

7. I never allow them to hear me use profane or obscene language or take any unbecoming course with them.

8. I never submit to any unjust demands or submit to coercion under any circumstances, thereby showing them that I govern and am governed by the rule of right not by might.
Hamblin traveled approximately 30,000 miles in this saddle during his peacemaking with the Southwest Indian nations.

A little insight from an experienced husband and father: when one of your children gets injured or struggles with friends or school, your wife *feels* it. It hurts her, sometimes deeply, and there's usually some guilt involved. Your job is to help alleviate this burden... That doesn't just mean fixing the problem, but providing strength, certainty, and reassurance. In our home, humor is the best way to cut through the pain and relieve some of that guilt and anxiety. It can be difficult to navigate, but if you learn to appreciate this bond between mother and child, you can make a big difference in a tight spot.

You’re mad about an interview, I’m mad that no one in our government has even tried to explain why other countries’ borders are worth defending when our own is not… Honestly, no one would be interested in Putin’s side of the story if the past two years hadn’t been a complete sh*tshow.

Some are trying to paint the backlash against higher ed as unhinged populist rage, but they’re wrong. There is resentment toward elite universities, but it’s not so much about envy as a desire for justice.

Ordinary Americans know the value of an elite education. They hear the names of prestigious schools at campaign events, presidential debates, and confirmation hearings. The news they read and the movies they watch reference these places, and their favorite products bear the fingerprints of alumni. They tell their kids to study hard because, maybe, one of these schools could be within reach. Most people know someone—a friend, a neighbor, a long-lost relative—who attended an Ivy, and it’s always mentioned with great pride. When a family sends a child to an elite school everyone holds their heads a little higher—even as they quietly pinch pennies and groan at the price of tuition.

For years ordinary people tolerated the radical politics of elite universities because it was distant and contained. Except for a shocking news story every now and then, there was little exposure and most grumbling limited to talk-radio or cable news.

But thanks to a reordering of incentives and the aggressive introduction of DEI in the wake of the Great Recession, radical campus politics have been grafted onto the American body politic.

Obscure theories once confined to the classroom are now present in every workplace, enforced by a cadre of consultants, managers, and specialists who control hiring, manage incentives, and shape corporate culture. Companies with any involvement in the public sector are required to adhere to DEI guidelines, and a constellation of NGOs, nonprofits, and activists groups pressure organizations to meet stringent diversity goals or face boycotts, lawsuits, and bad press.

Most striking has been the transformation of the public square, where free speech is rapidly eroding and a culture of censorship, surveillance, and intimidation taking its place. Important political questions that, until recently, were always up for debate—borders, childrearing, crime, education, housing, public spending, and war—are increasingly distorted by activist frameworks that boil every issue down to an oppressor/oppressed dichotomy. The effect has been to push ordinary people outside the political sphere and outsource age-old rights and privileges to an anointed caste of activists, experts, and bureaucrats. Resistance is treated harshly, and everyday Americans who deviate too far can expect to lose a job or career, endure smears in the press, face harassment and mob violence, and find themselves standing against a host of hostile public and private entities with the power to impoverish and humiliate.

As Andrew Sullivan has said, “We all live on campus now.”

The most destructive pathologies of elite universities are now laundered through education, finance, healthcare, law, news & entertainment, national security, and tech… and yet despite all the dysfunction and disharmony in their daily lives, ordinary Americans have little recourse, for they have been evicted from the political sphere.

What we have experienced over the past 15 years can only be described as a spiritual conquest and the establishment of a new state religion, with all roads leading to the university—the spiritual center of this new regime.

We did not consent to this, we were never asked. There’s schadenfreude in flyover country this week, to be sure, but it can’t compare to our genuine desire for justice and freedom from tyranny… a tendency as American as apple pie. I referenced the Great Recession because during that time we saw Washington, Wall Street, and Silicon Valley come closer together, a dramatic reordering of corporate incentives, the rise of “nudge,” and the birth of DEI…

Either the world is as dangerous & complex as the serious people would have you believe—meriting rigorous institutions like Harvard. Or it’s not, and we’re all just tolerating a $50 billion fantasy camp for star-belly sneetches…

Even Harvard can’t eat its cake and have it too. Clearly institutions like Harvard don’t take their own academic and ethical standards seriously, otherwise a Claudine Gay would have never ascended and her many violations would have been exposed years ago…

The greatest Americans were those who settled this country.

George Dangerfield: "... the settler who committed himself to the westward migration wa like a man entering a whirlpool, who passed as he sank the various stages of civilization, all of them intensely active, and who sank, more often than not, forever out of sight and memory..." "... the movement was relentless and imaginative, and the backwoodsmen who sold their rude clearings or abandoned them at the first approach of civilization, and 'lit out for the tall timber,' were more typical than were those who settled in one place for the rest of the lives.."

I’m seeing the same thing here.

All for the better.

https://twitter.com/ajiazhang/status/1693959799145120078

The “nation” most Americans cling to is a political arrangement devised in the midst of an economic depression and world war. It’s a political system that could only be established by a dictator in the age of dictators—when the choice was fascism, communism, or some unholy combination of the two…

I agree w/@FischerKing64, and to underscore the point, here’s a thread I wrote back in 2021:

30 years ago, Nirvana releases "Nevermind" and within a month it’s the #1 album in the country

30 years before and to the day, the #1 album is “Holiday Sing Along" by Mitch Miller /1 https://t.co/TS1BVD1tMJ

https://twitter.com/fischerking64/status/1689773358765035520

Revolutions in popular music tend to share the same origin story: a tragic figure trespasses against a world of lies, preaching something pure & true

Lacking formal training, he razes the old order; he wields his honesty like a hammer.

Robert Johnson.

Hank.

Cobain.

/2

Nolan's new film has me reexamining the life of Robert J. Oppenheimer, and this morning I made an interesting connection that involves Harry Hopkins.

One of Oppie's most controversial associates was Stjepan Mesaros—better known as "Steve Nelson"... https://t.co/GZlTUK88Ts

https://twitter.com/Partisan_O/status/1597268533289037825

Croatian-born "Nelson" immigrated to the United States in 1919, and within a few years joined the CPUSA. Nelson traveled to Moscow in 1931 to attend the International Lenin School, where he was made a courier for the Comintern...

When I was in the Army I worked with sophisticated tools and equipment systems worth hundreds-of-thousands, if not millions, of dollars. These technologies, with enough mastery, could effectively disrupt and destroy the enemy and ultimately save American lives… Even as an experienced operator, the expertise, knowledge, and skill required to design and produce these tools was impossible to grasp. I wasn’t a scientist or engineer—I was the operator. For the most part, the theory and design were irrelevant.

Harry Dexter White: Assistant Secretary at US Treasury, special advisor to Henry Morgenthau, architect of the post-war financial order—World Bank, IMF, and Bretton Woods Agreement.

Paid Soviet agent.

https://twitter.com/condornixon/status/1663571514216656897

Lauchlin Currie: White House economic advisor to FDR during WWII.

Paid Soviet agent.

Most of you are good, decent people. By leading honest and productive lives, you bring order, peace, and prosperity to your communities and lend strength and stability to your nation. You are the backbone of this great country of ours—always have been... You are strongest when you cling to the good and true and refuse to budge. There are some who hate you for this, and they are hard at work trying to lure you into unfamiliar terrain where you can be more easily ambushed and destroyed...

Months after Lexington & Concord, John Dickinson—who had long encouraged reconciliation—joined Thomas Jefferson in drafting the "Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms," a resolution explaining why the 13 Colonies had taken up arms against their mother country: (A few selectively edited excerpts)
"Our forefathers..left their native land, to seek on these shores a residence for civil and religious freedom. At the expense of their blood, at the hazard of their fortunes, without the least charge to the country from which they removed...