Better in their words…

WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY

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The media’s odd and awkward coverage of President Trump’s gunboat diplomacy with Venezuela alerted me that something was off. Yesterday, I finally found it: an astonishing Harvard CAPS/Harris poll, which released over two weeks ago with nary a peep from the big media platforms. The unhelpful title blared, “70% of Voters Oppose Government Shutdown, With 65% In Favor of Democratic Concessions.” Harvard tried to make it all about the shutdown, but they buried the real lede deep in a sunken narco-submarine.

The least interesting part of the poll —which corporate media completely ignored— was that a majority of the public supports a stunning eighteen out of twenty Trump policies. (The two underwater ones were still near 50% support.) Most of the policies are classic 80/20 issues, like deportations, which helps explain why the “No Kings II” white liberal boomer parades were unmoored from opposing any actual policy but instead just chased anti-monarchical political phantoms.

That was interesting, but it was the next set of polling data that explained so much: A whopping supermajority (71%) of American voters support blowing up cartel boats.

In one sense, these figures confirm Donald Trump’s unparalleled political instincts for picking popular issues. But also, and more to the point, they expose complete Democrat incoherence; they have failed to come up with a single opposing narrative that sticks. Now we know why the media didn’t go berserk with Trump’s “we’ll just kill them” quote last week.

They knew Americans agreed with the President. He was daring the media to step on a rake of another 20% issue.

Imagine how frustrating it must have been for them to leave the “we’ll just kill them” quote on the cutting room floor. They began last year (2024) in nearly complete control of the narrative. Now they find themselves on unstable ground, unsure of whether the latest Trumpism is a gaffe or bait.

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But what really made complete our Sunday reading list was a remarkably smart essay published in (of all places) Politico, headlined, “The Theory Behind Trump’s Gunboat Diplomacy.” The sub-headline confirmed months of C&C analysis, succinctly observing that: “Venezuela has become Trump’s test of hemispheric reengineering.”

It’s not just about the drugs.

The article is a fascinating deep dive into historical American political theory, mustering for duty three Presidents: William “Mount” McKinley, Teddy “Bear” Roosevelt, and James “Doctrine” Monroe— all three being Trump’s favorites. What the three Presidents and Trump share is an anti-globalist view of American hegemony that does not extend sideways —East to West— but envisions a view of muscular American independence and security that runs top to bottom, North to South.

The article’s author, Thomas P.M. Barnett is a published historian who posited that, following the dreadful calamity of World War II, an appalled America —long accustomed to minding its own geopolitical business— concluded that leaving the Europeans and Asians unsupervised for too long only created bigger messes to clean up later. And so began the Globalist Century, as America planted its babysitting centers all over the world.

But now Trump is turning back the clock. Or maybe more accurately, Trump has adapted Americas-first (plural intended) gunboat diplomacy for a new age of AI, starships, and self-driving cars.

Barnett observed that, “The American hemisphere”— meaning South America through Greenland and the Arctic—“becomes both resource base and security zone — a closed system powering an open-ended nationalism.” Whereas, “the Eastern Hemisphere, in Trump’s view, offers only headaches and headlines.”

As we have long observed, the evidence of Trump’s new “multipolar” geostrategy is everywhere you look. One of Trump’s first major moves once back in the office was evicting the Chinese from the Panama Canal and threatening to take it back wholesale. Not coincidentally, it was President Teddy Roosevelt who built the Panama Canal with blood and gunpowder. (And without prior Congressional approval, one might add. Roosevelt famously boasted, “I took the Canal Zone and let Congress debate.”)

Roosevelt, who helped carve a new nation (Panama) out of Colombia to create the Canal, saw it not as foreign interventionism but “hemispheric housekeeping.” He kept a tidy household in the American hemisphere using “gunboat diplomacy,” extending a doctrine of local muscularity minted by Monroe and carefully cultivated by McKinley.

Barnett pointed out that, just like the trio of presidential predecessors, Trump “no longer describes the Western Hemisphere as a neighborhood to protect, but as a domain to dominate.” In other words, “Trump’s up-tempo Monroeism isn’t about resisting foreign interference; it’s about expelling foreign presence outright.”

And good riddance.

Put simply, Trump conceives of a vertically integrated Americas: unifying South, Middle, North. Globalization, by contrast, “dispersed power horizontally — a thousand supply chains radiating outward.” But, Barnett explained, “hemispheric consolidation is vertically efficient: energy in Texas, lithium in Bolivia, agriculture in Argentina, manufacturing in Mexico.”

I didn’t agree with all of Barnett’s claims and conclusions, but he is on the right track.

🔥 As fascinating and well-written as it was, I included the article as a proof of concept. For months here at C&C, we have argued for this same proposition: that President Trump is furiously collapsing globalists’ dream of a one-world, hegemonic, UN-controlled government— the ultimate fulfillment of leftwing, utopian promises first seeded by the post-WWI League of Nations.

Instead, Trump the builder is frenetically constructing a triple axis of stable multipolarity: the (1) Americas, (2) Europe and Africa, and (3) East Asia.

This historic realignment, the restoration of American protectionism for the 21st Century, has now become undeniable— even though the Trump Administration has never formally declared its evident policy in any clear form. Sure, our Secretary of State has repeatedly referred to “the multipolar world,” and our Vice President has openly declared the death of globalism, right to the globalists’ faces, but there’s been no white paper, no gold-star committee, no party platform.

It’s a plan. We don’t know the plan (nor should we). But now, everyone can see it plain as day.

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On Friday, CNN ran a darkly hilarious article headlined, “Graham Platner’s claims that he didn’t know tattoo was Nazi-linked undercut by new evidence.” The depths of Democrat hypocrisy truly know no bounds. They have circled the wagons around a real Nazi who, after being outed, currently enjoys a +30 primary polling advantage running for the Senate in Maine.

CLIP: Scott Jennings single-handedly debates 100% female CNN panel—Nazis! (3:26)

If you think back, you may recall a momentary gesture by Elon Musk last year that resulted in two months of unbridled media hysteria and several unfortunately firebombed Tesla dealerships, as progressive Nazi-hunters tripped over each other in their enthusiasm to root out secret symbols of Hitler-worship and Fascist dog whistling evident to them from a random arm movement.

Now meet Graham Platner.

Platner is a Marine veteran and political newcomer currently running for the Democrat nomination for U.S. Senate in Maine. His campaign recently came under controversy over a chest tattoo he received in his 20s, a death’s head of Nazi SS symbolism, a skull-and-crossbones image called the Totenkopf.

It’s a symbol used by the top Nazi SS units in World War II, the ones that oversaw the death camps.

Platner outrageously claimed he didn’t know about the Nazi association until the scandal erupted, claiming he’d randomly picked the tattoo after a night of drinking in Croatia because he thought it looked cool, and only just learned about its background after all the increased public scrutiny.

Substantial evidence subsequently emerged undercutting Platner’s plaintive claims of ignorance. Archived Reddit discussions show Platner discussing Nazi-related military symbols and dismissing criticism of such imagery, arguing they were merely cultural markers within Marine Scout Sniper units rather than racist symbols. Even when questioned, Platner insisted these tattoo symbols weren’t tied to hate but to military culture, claiming he personally knew black Marines with similar tattoos. (I even have black friends.)

Nobody from the military has confirmed Platner’s claims about similar tattoos. To the contrary, other Marines denied Platner’s goofy theory. For example:

CNN’s story also described acquaintances and a former political director who said Platner often referred to his tattoo as “my Totenkopf” —years ago— showing he knew exactly what it was. His former campaign manager (now quit) said he told her the Nazi death’s head might be a problem well before the story broke. Platner has since revised the tattoo, turning the death’s head into a squash or something, and denied all allegations that he knowingly sported Nazi-linked imagery for years.

Platner’s now-deleted social media posts also included other saucy comments, like calling himself a “communist,” calling all cops “bastards,” using “vulgar, antigay slurs,”

and deploring rural White Americans— comments he has since distanced himself from, chalking them up to a difficult time in his life when he was angry.

It was a dumb excuse nobody buys except partisan Democrats, who lapped it up like miniature poodles.

Scores of far-left Democrats endorsed Platner’s Senate run, and they’ve all now doubled-down. Kooky Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders told reporters that Platner probably just had PTSD at the time. I’m not making that up. The Hill, Thursday:

🔥 Platner is running in the Democrat primary for the Senate against popular Maine Governor Janet Mills, and after the controversy his polling figures shot up to a thirty-point advantage. Chuck Rocha, a senior political advisor to Bernie Sanders, told the Hill that thanks to President Trump, “folks don’t have to be perfect. They can have some rough edges and America is pretty forgiving.”

I bet Elon Musk’s rough edges would’ve enjoyed some of that gracious forgiveness.

“There is a huge difference between a Republican that supports Trump’s gestapo-like tactics, and someone who has a Nazi symbol associated with themselves,” explained Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “It’s just an unfortunate bump in the road,” he added. “Somebody who makes a mistake, admits it, and moves on to fighting for working people is more favorable to most people than a 77-year-old governor who is perceived as a Chuck Schumer-endorsed creature of the inside.”

“For now,” the Hill said, “Platner enjoys good standing with Maine’s Democratic voters.” Platner leads with 46% support among Democrat primary voters, with Ms. Mills trailing at 25%.

What’s clear is that Democrat primary voters, at least, do not care about realNazi affiliation. My guess about what explains their soaring enthusiasm is Platner’s comments about being a communist, which is historically tone-deaf since communists hated the Nazis.

It almost makes you think that whenever Democrats decry fascism, they are projecting. One’s mind wanders back to all the Ku Klux Klan members who were welcomed into the ranks of top Democrats back in the day. But never mind.

Enjoy that clip I linked at the start of this segment, where Scott Jennings, bless him, holds his own against a hectoring panel of all-female CNN hostesses.

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On Friday, the Stanford Report (and only that publication) ran a story headlined, “Faculty Senate votes against power to condemn or rebuke.” The sub-headline explained, “The Faculty Senate’s power to condemn or rebuke has been under considerable debate for the last couple of years following a 2020 censure of a Hoover Institution fellow.” That fine fellow was one Scott Atlas, the former, short-lived White House covid advisor who was rebuked and condemned for spreading covid misinformation.

Now, five years later, the controversy still simmers. The latest evidence this week appeared when the same faculty senate that’d rebuked Atlas in 2020 voted that “it does not have the power to condemn or rebuke individuals.” It’s all meaningless bureaucratic babble, since Stanford’s faculty senate could just as easily vote back its rebuking powers the next time it gets itself all stirred up.

A ‘faculty senate’ is a group of university professors (usually the wokest ones) who are elected or selected to represent the teachers and researchers at the school. The ostensible purpose of a faculty senate is to give the teaching staff a voice in how the university is run, especially regarding academic policies, standards, and governance. How this charter extends to censuring former faculty members shows how moronically misaligned faculty senates have largely become. It’s kind of like a local county commission passing a resolution condemning President Trump for making peace in the Middle East. Useless but noisy.

NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, who is also from Stanford and was also caught in the gears of covid censorship (though not rebuked by the faculty), is enjoying his new public platform, and could have collected a pound of faculty flesh, but was characteristically gracious on X about the vote:

For a short and promising time during the early pandemic, Dr. Atlas was the lone voice of reason at the White House, until the political players managed to push him out, crushing hopes that sanity might prevail. Who knows what might have happened differently had Atlas hung around? Who knows how it could have lessened the vast human cost of poorly designed pandemic policy? Atlas may remain a historic footnote in the official records. But wehaven’t forgotten.

And apparently, neither has the majority of the Stanford faculty senate. The pandemic’s fallout continues slowly drifting down on the institutions and giving them political radiation poisoning.

Have a blessed Sunday! Thank you, once again, for your continuing loyal support and assistance furthering the C&C mission. Come on back tomorrow morning, and help me kick off another terrific week of essential news and commentary as we count down the final week of October and head into Halloween.

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