Mick Hartley, on recent goings-on near the Korean border:

‘It’s like constantly presenting sweeties and prettily wrapped gifts to a pack of hyenas, in the hope that eventually they’ll come round and start to be nice and friendly. They won’t, because they’re hyenas, and what hyenas want is to eat you.‘

Consider the adolescent and murderous righteousness of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara; their militaristic and guerrilla mindset, but combined with a Stalinist-backed, family-led cult.

It’s always 1948. Constant struggle and ideological loyalty are essential. Murder is commonplace. Mythic and ideological revelation is knowledge enough to have the Kim dynasty ruling in perpetuity. There will be absolutely no individual autonomy.

When you listen to how awful life still is in North Korea (a regime fine with only 10% of the population surviving), it’s enough to make you cry:

The fact is many prominent intellectuals in the West spent a good chunk of the 20th century deciding how much to actually distance themselves from Communist ideology.

I don’t see us at an inflection point of placing Nazi and Communist ideology in the same horrible basket.

In fact, liberal idealism and secular humanism in the United States has embraced radical chic enough to normalize activist, anti-nation and anti-speech thinking. Perhaps out of the postmodern morass comes excessively individualistic, radical and existential doubt. Out of such doubt comes the collectivism, soft and hard authoritarianism beneath the ‘neo-liberal capitalists.’

Those Nazi-hunting anti-fascists are actually kind-of fascistic, you say? Well, we aren’t about to really confront such facts. Most of us, most of the time, will double down on anti-religious, anti-traditional and anti-authoritarian authoritarianism.

Are you convinced?

On that note, Walter Russell Mead suggests we won’t be leaving the Pacific Theater anytime soon:

‘Assessing the nature and depth of America’s commitment to the Indo-Pacific is a life and death question for countries wondering whether to accommodate or resist China’s determination to project greater influence over neighboring states.’

Any thoughts and comments are welcome.