After over a year of campaigning, countless campaign ads, and several groan-inducing paeans to Hillary Clinton by post-punk rock bands, we’ve arrived at the moment of truth. The day when all of the bickering over polling averages will be rendered moot and we will see who America, in its infinite wisdom, has selected to lead her for the next 4 years. Although we’ve highlighted the perspective of conscientious non-voters in the past, we’re well aware that anywhere from 57 to 64% of eligible voters will participate in Election Day 2016, to say nothing of the millions of voters who might have already decided who wins. If current polling is to be trusted, then it will have proven this City Lab article from earlier this year exploring the Democrats demographic advantages correct. Even if it’s not, the problems facing the Republican Party in the future won’t decrease in the years ahead. 

Although predicting the future is a notoriously tricky business, it’s hard to imagine an ethical Clinton administration. Perhaps because the last one left so much to be desired in the way of scrupulous adherence to the law. It’s worth noting that the late Janet Reno-whose chief accomplishment as head of the Department of Justice was the deliberate incineration of over 70 American citizens-attained her position as Attorney General at the behest of Hillary Clinton, whose brother was a colleague while working for the Dade County Public Defender’s office. Something to ponder as you head off to cast your ballot later today.

Some initial thoughts:

-Without being able to peer into the mind of Donald Trump, it’s hard to discern what prompted him to pick Governor Pence. If we take his words at face value, party unity was one of the primary motivating factors. That undoubtedly played a role, although I doubt it will sway Republicans in the Dump Trump camp, whose obsession borders on the pathological and will undoubtedly persist through Cleveland. My take is that this choice is a bid to boost the perceived statesmanship of the GOP going into November. The gravitas deficit, a la Dick Cheney and Gaffes Biden, who was at one point inexplicably believed to add stature to a presidential ticket, is something HRC’s media lapdogs have tried to play up throughout this campaign. Keep in mind, Donald Trump’s opponent is a woman who owes her political career to the slanders she professed in defense of a man who used the Oval Office as a brothel, but this is the world we live in.

-While some analysts have already mocked Pence’s pronounced lack of charisma, the truth is that this is one area in which the Republican ticket needs no artificial enhancement. If Republicans had nominated another sacrificial lamb like Mitt Romney, a man who can be emasculated by the likes of Candy Crowley in front of a national television audience, then perhaps a fire-eater would be in order. However, Donald Trump is an individual who is not only capable of eviscerating his Democratic opponent and her myrmidons in the press, but relishes the opportunity. As Michael Malice has pointed out, Trump has already neutralized nearly the entire playbook the Democratic Party has used to great effect in previous campaigns. He has the rhetorical equivalent of a Predator drone at his disposal, while Hillary will be bringing a pistol whose cartridges are mostly blank. The need for Pence to assume the traditional attack dog role of a presidential running mate has not only been lessened, it’s been virtually eliminated.

-The ideological reservations expressed by Trump supporters is a more serious matter. Although I don’t share Ann Coulter’s revulsion, I do appreciate the sentiment, especially as a staunch advocate for lower immigration levels and more stringent immigration enforcement. There’s no getting around the fact that Mike Pence was-even if he’s not currently-a supporter of amnesty. Or, as some have dubbed it, amnesty lite. Even more disturbing is the reaction of the Club For Growth, which can only be described as jubilant. If you want a barometer for terrible immigration policy, then the CFG is your 501(c)(4). To compound matters, Pence is also an enthusiastic supporter of the TPP, a trade agreement that repulses both protectionists and genuine advocates of free trade but which is lauded by globalist, managed trade political consensus, i.e. Hillary’s base. That being said, even philosophically Pence is not a complete loss, as a predictably tendentious New York Times profile reminds us. Opposing both the fiscally calamitous-and potentially catastrophic-prescription drug benefit AND federalization of education bequeathed to us by an unholy alliance between Ted Kennedy and George W. Bush? The horror!

-So, we’ve established that Pence does have some conservative principles, although not nearly as many as conservative voters and Trump supporters would like. In my view, the above analysis is pretty superfluous at the end of the day because Vice-Presidents do not mean very much, an opinion shared by at least one former VP. The Trump candidacy will rise and fall based upon what is done by, and how the electorate responds to, Donald Trump. The same holds true for any theoretical presidency. With the exception of Vice-President Cheney, it’s hard to think of a VP in recent memory who exercised a significant influence over White House domestic or foreign policy and I don’t see why Mike Pence would be the exception to that rule. For all the sturm und drang over this pick-which is, admittedly, the most important personnel decision Trump has made so far-it doesn’t really matter. This election will be determined by how voters feel about Donald Trump and his opponent, a politician who is truly frightening.

Our old friend Michael Malice explores the absurdity of this election cycle, as well as investing your hopes in electoral politics, with contrarian historian Tom Woods. The anti-democracy essay referenced during this discussion is worth reading for those of you interested in understanding the mindset of over half the American public. Personally, whenever I hear someone wax poetic over a particular candidate or political party I flash on The Right Man, a falsely sentimental song from the off-Broadway satire of American democracy How To Steal An Election.

Is there really a right man, or woman? Is the problem simply too many ignorant voters? Sorry, David, but I don’t think it is. Democracy has a much more fundamental flaw which virtually none of the pearl-clutching political analysts will acknowledge-except, of course, Michael Malice and Tom Woods. And for that, we thank them.

As I’ve said before, there are many legitimate reasons to oppose Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy, although it takes a special kind of smugness, lust for pointless military interventions, and/or disdain for the intelligence of your fellow countrymen for an ostensible conservative or libertarian to endorse Hillary Clinton. Putting aside the subsidiary partisan reasons, we’re talking about a politician who rejects the very principles upon which our government is supposed to operate. The mental gymnastics required to embrace a woman who has loudly and repeatedly proclaimed her desire to eviscerate the Bill of Rights-including the 1st and 2nd Amendments to the Constitution-would impress Béla Károlyi.

However, even those Dump Trump dead-enders who oppose Hillary’s ascension to power are not completely without blame. Putting aside the willful delusion required to support its chief aim-which is rightly mocked even by gormless, repellent bloggers of the Gawker variety-the movement itself is a bizarre exercise in denial. By enlisting in the anti-Trump movement you’re asserting that the pre-Trump Republican Party, and by extension, the country itself, is doing just fine. Aside from being the antithesis of how the overwhelming majority of voters feel-and presumably, these are people whose support you seek-it’s simply not true.

You don’t have to believe that this nation is physically challenged in order to understand that it is not in a good way. 8 years of an Obama administration have delivered zero income growth. Only last month were American job-seekers in a better position than they were before the advent of the Great Recession. The savings rate-as well as the corresponding indebtedness-of America remains at a parlous level. This is occurring even as the fair-haired boy of the anti-Trump movement is conniving with the White House to burden taxpayers with a massive bailout of the now insolvent Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

Even if these fiscal and economic disasters could be ignored, it defies reason to claim that Donald Trump, as a deeply flawed candidate, poses the single greatest threat to the future of our republic. The United States is in the process of being permanently effaced by a group of people who resent the purported values espoused by the anti-Trump movement, and who want to ensure that those values are not even part of our public discourse in the future. Even as we pursue a fruitless debate over who is or is not a true conservative, a true socialist is registering scores of non-citizens in the hope of electing a new people.

This is the crux of the issue. Americans who hold a traditional view of what this country means, both domestically and abroad, are being erased from the equation. To think that anti-Trump conservatives will be in a better bargaining position with prospective voters 4 or 8 years from now-after 10-20 million new citizens with antithetical values are minted-is simply delusional. It’s the same type of self-congratulatory, blinkered thought pattern that leads people to assert-to this day-that Pete Wilson, and not the wholesale demographic transformation of his state, is responsible for the Republican Party’s disappearance from the state of California. It’s a maladaptive coping mechanism used to avoid unpleasant truths.

You won’t grasp these truths by contriving implausible counterfactuals, although that seems to be the preferred strategy among anti-Trump dogmatists.  The reasons why Republican voters repeatedly and emphatically rejected the message of Dump Trump have been delineated over and over again, for those who are willing to open their eyes. As the conservative establishment is poised to exile one of the icons of modern conservatism in a fit of anti-Trump pique, the failure of Conservatism Inc. to engage in any sort of introspection is telling.

The idea that a fat-jowled actor portraying Alexander Hamilton writing the Constitution-as a stentorian narrator reels off a series of generic cliches-will be seen as anything but risible to normal American voters in the 21st century illustrates how detached most of these people are from reality. Whether or not they’ll ever recognize this deep disconnect remains to be seen, but judging by their post-primary reaction I’m not holding out much hope.

Apologies for the delay, but the news cycle seems to have gotten the better of us. Without further adieu, here are some of the fantastic photographs taken by our good friend Pamela Hall-with whom we’ve collaborated in the past-outside of the GOP Gala held prior to last Tuesday’s Republican presidential primary. We urge you all to visit her website, The Silent Majority No More, which contains many more brilliant photo essays-as well as some great video footage-exploring some of the issues, e.g. stealth jihad, mass immigration, the pernicious hold of non-profit and public sector employees over the political process, which concern us all.

It’s always good to step away from the issues, grave though they may be, which dominate the news cycle and examine how we arrived here as a nation. To that end, I’m sharing a gripping debate between author Michael Malice and historian and broadcaster Tom Woods which took place at the General Society Library recently, under the auspices of Junto. Feel free to contribute, whether you believe Alexander Hamilton to be a villain or this nation’s savior, in the comments section below. You can also listen to a post mortem on the debate which occurred on the Tom Woods Show.

Although most of you are at least partially familiar with the work of Brooklyn author and Fox Business pundit Michael Malice, there’s always more to learn. Which is why I decided to sit down with him this week and pick his mind about topics ranging from the calculated inhumanity of the Kim Dynasty to the rapidly evolving publishing industry.

I’d like to express my gratitude to the folks at The Silent Majority No More for helping me put this interview together.

Sony’s capitulation in the face of threats by unidentified sources, who are presumed to support the odious Kim dynasty, serves to confirm what most of us have known for some time. Namely, the extent of allowable political discourse in popular culture is inextricably linked to the willingness of the objects of political criticism to violently suppress that criticism. Or, at the very least, intimate the unpleasant nature of the response in store for those willing to offer a dissenting voice. An interview the iconic Indo-British author and apostate Salman Rushdie did with Irshad Manji several years ago is worth watching again, if only because in it Rushdie makes the ineluctable observation that with each acquiescence to the grievances of Islam-whose appetite for grievance is insatiable by its very nature-Western society weakens its resolve to stand up to less imposing gangsters and their intimations of violence. As this complete and utter surrender to a third-rate, despotic Asian reich demonstrates.

In some ways, the comparison is exceedingly apt. Even though the Kim dynasty is often described as a cult of personality, it could just as accurately be called the civic religion of North Korea. And just as devoted Muslims view any desecration of their holy book-real or imagined-as an offense worthy of death, the penalty for not properly venerating the image of a Kim is something best not contemplated. So it’s no surprise that a film which-initially, at least-concluded with the assassination of the current ruler of the DPRK would occasion the type of response it has engendered, even if Kim Jong-un is not as beloved as the man whose legacy he hopes to emulate.

It’s worth noting that the less personal cinematic assault against Juche dogma which was released in 2012 did not occasion similar retaliatory strikes from the North Korean regime, although it and its supporters were  displeased by that film as well, naturally enough. There is an artistic work of much greater value than the one starring Seth Rogan and his friend James Franco which explores the tragedy of North Korea while utilizing humor, albeit in service of illuminating a seemingly impenetrable prison, which I think my readers would enjoy. I’m speaking of Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography Of Kim Jong Il, which relates the ongoing tragedy taking place in that state in the most remarkable way I’ve ever seen in print-you can read my review here.

Perhaps unsurprisingly given the subject matter, and the craven nature of American publishers, although it’s shared by many others, Dear Reader is a self-published book. Nevertheless, it’s one of the outstanding pieces of literature on this subject and deserves to be read by as many people as possible, especially those who see the North Korean regime as some sort of penny dreadful or Saturday Night Live skit, rather than the horrific concentration camp for over 20 million human lives which it is.

In which we discuss Zack Snyder’s latest, liberal interpretation of the second Persian invasion of Greece, the pre-Islamic cultural history of Persia, Dear Reader, Michael Malice’s unauthorized autobiography of Kim Jong-il, the fickle nature of social media, and, naturally, comic books! 

Enjoy.

Update: Here’s a link to a somewhat more concise review I did for Goodreads. 

One of the most common critiques of contemporary American society, and Western culture more broadly, is its purported enthrallment to the opiate of celebrity. The notion that ordinary Americans are so dumbfounded by popular entertainment that they can’t understand linear, logical thought, let alone come up with workable solutions to complex problems which require such understanding, is not new. The late Neil Postman wrote an entire book exploring the damage wrought by modern communication techniques-namely, television and advertising-to the process of information-gathering, and by extension, rational argument and inquiry. However, even Henry David Thoreau-who lived before radio had attenuated the attention spans of humans weaned on the printed word-lamented the prospect of instantaneous communication.

Even so, you can’t properly understand the term celebrity until you’ve looked at a totalitarian state which is dominated not so much by an ideological impulse or dogma as by a cult of personality. That’s why the book written by celebrity ghostwriter Michael Malice-seen above in his dashing North Korean suit-about the late despot Kim Jong-il serves as an invaluable resource.  Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong Il-gives a western audience the rare opportunity to peer into the mind of someone who stood at the apex of a regime in which there was only one family and one person who was to be celebrated-upon pain of imprisonment, torture, and death. 

The unique nature of the North Korean state lies not so much in its depraved sadism-although it’s difficult to argue that it doesn’t equal or exceed even the most barbarous governments on the planet in this regard-but in the fact that it has managed to extirpate any public expression of individuality. Not only has the Kim dynasty suppressed any and all political dissent for the better part of seven decades, it has succeeded in effacing the personality of 24 million Koreans. In the tropical gulag that is Cuba you will find exuberantly defiant bloggers standing up to the Castro brothers tyranny. In the despotic theocracy that is the Islamic Republic of Iran, you will find courageous resistance to the Khomenist regime and first-hand accounts of what it’s like to be incarcerated in the notorious Evin Prison.

You won’t find internal dissidents in the DPRK, because to all intents and purposes, they do not exist. To dissent is to sign your own death warrant-not only for yourself, but for three generations of your family. You won’t hear the conditions inside of kwan-li-so described, because-with a few exceptions-no one leaves these concentration camps alive, and the only way outsiders are able to view them is through satellite photographs.

The brilliance of Dear Reader is its ability to convey these horrific truths in a way which compels the reader to look at North Korea in all its unvarnished brutality. At first glance, the concept of writing a book about an ongoing holocaust which relies upon humor to any extent is controversial, if not revolting. One of the reasons that a film like Goodbye Lenin can be enjoyed by ordinary people is because they recognize that it satirizes ugly crimes perpetrated by a regime which is safely immured in the past, and which will in all likelihood never be resurrected. The atrocities being committed in the DPRK, on the other hand, show no sign of abating.

The truth is that this book is suffused with humor, but not the type of humor that most people associate with Kim Jong-il or Kim Jong-un. It’s not designed to focus on the trivial manifestations of their well-cultivated international image of eccentricity, e.g. the goodwill tour by washed-up  NBA power forward/media spectacle Dennis Rodman. It’s used as a means of illustrating a lethally serious point. Namely, that this ruling clique has successfully employed an architecture of myth-based upon fear, ignorance, anger, and the desire for vengeance-in order to not only immiserate the Koreans under their rule materially, but to also impoverish their spirit and their souls.

One of the ways the author makes this viscerally disturbing narrative digestible is by contextualizing the Kim dynasty. People today can’t comprehend how a state created out of the spoils of World War II, a vestige of the Cold War conflict between the United States and USSR, became a singularly isolated and defiant  national socialist, i.e. fascist, regime predicated upon the worship of a single individual and intense, multigenerational racialism.

He does this in a number of ways, most interestingly perhaps by humanizing his subject, i.e. one of the most loathsome dictators of the past half-century. As off-putting as this might seem to the uninitiated, it’s a surprisingly effective means of explaining how and why the North Korean state exists, in spite of an increasingly porous web of information control. Taking traditional biographical tropes about family life and adolescent angst and transposing them into a story about Southeast Asia’s most iconic despot is an unconventional technique, but ultimately a successful one. A particularly affecting anecdote involves a young Kim Jong-il guarding the study of his father, Kim il-Sung, as he sleeps. Oddly moving, it serves as a metaphor for his guardianship of his dad’s legacy, even at the cost of the enforced starvation of over a million of his countrymen.

This highlights another aspect of North Korea’s unique regime, which is later revealed explicitly by Kim himself, when he admits that his advisors are not chosen because of any technical competence or foresight they may display, but because of their intense loyalty to Kim il-Sung, i.e. Kim Jong-il, thought. The consequent economic, social, and environmental disasters that resulted from this leadership method are, naturally, a necessary evil for preserving the sanctity of the true Korean state in the eyes of the Dear Leader.

Malice makes the sclerotic nature of this system comprehensible, which might come as a surprise to many of us who have been repeatedly told that there is no rhyme or reason to the actions taken by the DPRK’s leadership. In fact, there was a brutal internal logic and rationality to the actions of Kim Jong il, from extolling a juche philosophy that seemingly prized autarky-even while living parasitically off the extorted handouts from hostile neighbors and the United States-to an incomplete series of garish monuments exalting the only family to have ruled North Korea since its creation.

Therefore, the Agreed Framework between the United States and the DPRK was not a shameful capitulation, but a necessary expedient to preserve the Juche ideal, while also debasing both a former and current President of the United States. True to the promise on Dear Reader’s book jacket, this part is 100 percent “true,” as a perusal of Bill Clinton’s letter to Kim Jong-il at the time demonstrates. The bellicose rhetoric emanating from North Korea is not the rantings of a paranoid lunatic, but Songun diplomacy, which, regardless of its dubious morality, was extraordinarily efficacious. Kim’s explanation of an humanitarian aid package accepted five years later illustrates why:

After much grandstanding and hyperbole, the American and Korean negotiators reached a compromise. The Americans claimed that they were neither rewarding me nor condoning my violent rhetoric. That is absolutely true. They didn’t “reward” me or “condone” my rhetoric. On the other hand, they did financially compensate me because of my aggression. 

Accepting charity from the Yank devils was not a repudiation of the principles undergirding his very regime, but a brilliant strategic maneuver. And it wasn’t charity but reparations for the harm inflicted upon the DPRK for decades by the American imperialists.

This didn’t contradict the Juche principle of self-reliance one bit. I didn’t look at the package as aid so much as the repayment of a debt. The US imperialists had been threatening Korea for decades. It was entirely their fault that I’d had to expend such enormous sums on the military. 

Even actions that seem completely inscrutable to outside observers, e.g. the North Korean government’s evident pride in being lavished with praise by equally dysfunctional nation-states like the West African, Marxist backwater Burkina Faso or the South Asian dumpster fire that is Pakistan, become explicable once you understand them from the perspective of the man pulling the strings. As absurd as having Mali as one of your strategic partners might seem to us, it serves the interests of the Kim regime. Just like its arsenal of ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons, the International Friendship Museum is intended for domestic consumption, not for our benefit.

If there’s one thing to take away from Dear Reader, it’s that there is a calculated reason for every decision made at the upper echelons of power within North Korea. As Kim Jong-il avers himself, he was “no buffoon,” and his actions-however clownish they may have seemed to foreigners-had deadly consequences which were methodically plotted out beforehand. This is a book worth reading, if only because it illuminates the dark corners of a society whose people have suffered for too long in the shadows of their loving parents.