Blackcap Blog

Published at 09:43 on 29 March 2026

First, why “no tyrants” and not “no kings?” Because I live in Canada and Canada is an actual monarchy. There are some small-r republicans here (I would be one of them), but overall most people don’t have a big problem with Charles III (and I will readily admit that, unlike Trump, Canada’s king doesn’t make me feel personally threatened).

Anyhow, I was there. Here are some of the better signs I saw:

Of note were the Iranian flags, or should I say flags and graphics based on same:

None of those are flags of either the old monarchy or the Islamic republic. They merely make use of the green/white/red background which is common to both. (If you’re curious about “women, life, freedom” it is the English translation of a common protest slogan in Iran.) That’s a sentiment I can get behind: neither the current order, nor the one it replaced, is what is best for the people of Iran.

Some friends of mine are dismissive of these protests, because not enough of a break is being made with the status quo fast enough. I both agree and disagree with this sentiment. Sure, I’d like to see more radical consciousness, but such widespread consciousness currently does not exist, and the process by which such consciousness emerges historically takes time. Ultimately, though, that enough people are upset enough about what is going on in the USA to take it to the streets in numbers this large is a positive sign.

I think East Coast It Notes (facebook, reddit, instagram) got it right:

Where from here? As I have written before I think the fascists are going to cheat in the coming election, and have far more success at doing so than is commonly believed possible. At that point, things might really start to get interesting. If they do, the status quo could change surprisingly rapidly. That is the nature of tipping points: they happen suddenly.

Or perhaps not.

The war will probably continue to go badly so long as Trump keeps it going (and, being surrounded by yes men, he just might). It may continue to go badly even if Trump decides to end it. Because, to paraphrase former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, the enemy always gets a vote. If Iran is having a lot of success humiliating the USA, they may just opt to keep the humiliation going. (Sure, a terrible cost is being imposed on the Iranian people, but that government has amply demonstrated its willingness and ability to impose such costs.)

Either way, at that point, state and local Republicans, who are not surrounded by yes men to the degree that Trump is, may by Election Day be able to read the writing on the wall: either they sit on their hands, run a fair election, let the GOP lose, and trigger a gradual and lesser change, or they risk a sudden and more personally perilous period of change. Again, the enemy always gets a vote.

What happens, in other words, depends to a very large degree on current events, which the relatively small number of us political leftists for the most part do not control.

Anyhow, protests like the ones we just saw are far from useless. If they’re not your thing, I can understand. Consider a side quest or two.

Published at 21:59 on 19 March 2026

He might. He’s a norm-breaker, who views himself exempt from the norms others must follow. Plus, the war is likely to continue not going well for his regime, inspiring frustration on his part. Cornered, he might resort to desperate measures.

He would warn first. This is just a personal judgement on my part. I think he would threaten to use them before actually pulling the nuclear trigger. It seems in character, plus it offers the hope of scoring a win on bluster alone, which I think he would regard as a huge personal win. But, it probably wouldn’t work, since I view Iran as highly likely to call his bluff.

So, not much grounds for immediate worry, but if the nuclear sabre-rattling commences, it will be time to be very concerned.

Remember, the Doomesday scenario in Threads started with nuclear weapons being used in an escalating conflict in Iran.

Published at 07:49 on 11 March 2026

I couldn’t figure out how to work this into my previous piece, so I figured I’d post it separately.

Anyhow, there is a very real risk that Iran may well decide to bring the war home to the U.S.A. via unconventional means. In other words, terrorism.

This would be a risky strategy for Iran because it might not weaken U.S. resolve (which, conveniently for Iran, is already on the low side) the way they may think it might. Most of the world knows — correctly — that the U.S. voting public is not exactly known for its great knowledge of the world outside their own national borders. (This is probably deliberate on the part of the U.S. ruling class, as enables pro-empire politicians to win elections they otherwise would not, but I digress.) Anyhow, this means that if the attacks come, they may well be perceived as random acts depravity instead of the easy-to-anticipate retribution they actually are.

That same populace is also not known, contrary to popular mythology, for its great love of freedom or its distrust of government power. The U.S.A. has for decades been the world’s number one jailer of its own people. Questioning this is regarded, within the U.S. political spectrum, as a distinctly odd minority position. We have, in other words, a culturally meek and submissive people, desirous of order imposed from above, and averse to independent thought: in short, the sort well-primed to submit to the authority of a dictator. (There is a gun culture and a lot of role playing around it that runs directly counter to this, but its largely hollow and performative nature is best exhibited by how the vast preponderance of its members are loyal devotees of Trump.) This in fact explains a lot of how Trump has been able to be successful and accepted as a politician.

So Trump may well get to pull a Hitler, declare an emergency in response to the attacks, and get to be the dictator he has always dreamed of being, all with surprisingly little resistance. Or perhaps not — it’s not as of the US/Israel war against Iran is little known amongst the public.

My point is mainly that we don’t know. A wave of retaliatory attacks may well come, and they could just as easily serve to solidify fascist rule as they could to undermine it.

Published at 19:06 on 10 March 2026

Why the Weakness?

It’s not just Mark Carney refusing to give the fascist Trump regime the sort of full-throated denunciation it deserves. The German chancellor has been equally weak. The United Kingdom started out weak but then backpedaled in response to domestic pressure. In Western Europe, only Spain can as of this time be said to have stood tall. I have several theories as to what is going on here.

Old habits die hard. The U.S. empire has always had its ugly side, but it has only been relatively recently that it has been this ugly. And the business end of the ugly has traditionally been aimed at the Second and Third worlds, not the First. For whom, I might add, the U.S. Empire has generally been a good deal since the end of World War II. The new reality is unpleasant, unpleasant facts are not nice to face, and to reiterate old habits die hard.

Ukraine. One of the reasons the old empire worked out well for Europe was they got to benefit from high U.S. defence spending without having to spend so much themselves (this has long been a sore point on the U.S. political right). Now that Ukraine needs military help, Europe is not in a position to do it all by themselves (not yet, anyhow). European leaders correctly perceive the risk of letting Russia get away with its aggression, and are afraid that a U.S.A. both preoccupied with a war in the Middle East and snubbed by Europe will snub Europe back by directing materiel from Ukraine to the new Iran War.

Their nationals. There’s a lot of expats living in the region, particularly in the U.A.E. (home of Dubai). The war puts them at risk, and they want to cooperate with U.S. forces in evacuating their expats to safety.

For whatever reason, it is imperative that the weakness come to an early end. The U.S.A. cannot be counted on to help Ukraine indefinitely, and alternate measures need to be put in place (the Europeans already realize this and are working on it). Those at-risk expats should be offered rides home; if they refuse to accept, the consequences are then on them.

Iran, after all, whatever the many faults of the regime there, has not threatened the territory of any European nation the way the U.S.A. has been repeatedly threatening the Danish territory of Greenland. (And one can say the same for Canada.) To ignore this is beyond foolish, and calls to mind how Hitler’s expansionist rhetoric was similarly downplayed.

It is the U.S.A., not Iran, that is the greater threat to world peace here here. Which brings me to my next point.

Nuance and Complexity

The world is a complex and messy place that tends to defy easy classification into simplistic categories. Just because the regime in Iran is truly awful does not make it automatically the No. 1 threat to world peace everywhere. This is particularly the case now that Iran’s military is being seriously degraded.

One must look beyond raw malicious intent and figure in power to actualize that intent. Once this is done, the conclusion in the final paragraph of the previous section becomes inescapable.

It is Iran that is now doing the world the useful service of preoccupying that No. 1 threat and depleting its weaponry reserves. Whether this is being done as an expression of international goodwill (it is not) is beyond the point. The service is being rendered and it is useful. Saying this does not make the internal human rights record of that regime any less awful.

The Iranian Diaspora

Many of them have been enthusiastic supporters of Trump and Netanyahu’s war. This is understandable for two reasons.

First, we have the loyalists of the old absolute monarchy to contend with. They had no problem with the Shah’s secret police ripping out the fingernails of their opponents. They only have problems when someone else oppresses them. They are nothing more than the ghouls of the old ruling elite. Their pathetic bleatings are not to be taken seriously.

That doesn’t describe the entire disapora, of course. But it does describe some of them. Again, nuance and complexity. Conflicts are not always good versus evil. Sometimes it’s evil versus evil.

Regarding the rest of the diaspora, a lot of them are true victims and refugees of a brutal regime. It is possible to be both oppressed and wrong. Personally, I cut them some slack. They’ve been waiting for the fall of the regime for decades. Now, at long last, events start turning in ways that imperil that regime. Of course a lot of them are going to be happy.

But, ultimately, it does not matter. The naïve and unrealistic hopes of the oppressed are still naïve and unrealistic. Look at what Trump is doing within his country’s own borders with masked secret police and concentration camps. Look at how eager he was to cut a deal with the oppressive and undemocratic regime in Venezuela. To assume that his motive in Iran must be human rights is, quite simply, preposterous.

This Has Fractured Trump’s Base

I did not expect this. It turns out that there are limits to how much at least some of Trump’s MAGA base are willing to play the role of the fascist follower. I’ve seen it online and you can see it in the news. Figures like MTG and Tucker Carlson are not happy about this turn of events.

It turns out that Iraq and Afghanistan war burnout, and anger at the neocon establishment for getting the U.S.A. involved in two simultaneous conflicts, really was a big part of the equation that led many on the right to Trump.

Trump has, despite all his boasting about “landslide” wins, never really won by that much. Particularly now that he’s lost a lot of fence-sitting low-information voters, he can’t afford to lose a significant chunk of his formerly loyal base. This is a real opportunity to break Trump once and for all.

Revolution, not Reform

Because that ship has already sailed; the U.S.A. in in the midst of a fascist revolution already. The only question now is whether it is possible to have a prompt counterrevolution to that fascist revolution.

Even Democratic Party strategists are starting to admit that electoral politics won’t be enough: absent a groundswell of support from below, they won’t be able to turn this ship around. That is about as close an admission of the obvious as you are going to get from that crowd.

Minneapolis has shown the sentiment is out there. My money is on the Trump regime trying to stack or suppress the 2026 midterms, and having far more success in this endeavour than many now realize is possible.

Once that happens, there may be enough nationwide outrage for things to start getting interesting.

In other words, it’s all going to get significantly worse. Then it’s either going to get significantly better, or get worse yet.

Published at 13:54 on 7 March 2026

At Largest ICE Detention Camp, Staff Bet on Detainee Suicides, AP Reports (Mother Jones).

Published at 07:03 on 4 March 2026

If you want to have some idea how this war is likely to go, I recommend paying attention to what experts, experts with a lot of inside information, were saying about a dozen days ago. And the answer is “not likely to go well for the Western imperialists.”

Published at 08:09 on 1 March 2026

Canadian military members likely involved in planning U.S. strikes on Iran, retired general says (CBC News).

Published at 17:11 on 28 February 2026

The more I think of it, the more it becomes clear to me that Carney’s sucking up to Trump on the Iran attacks shows incredibly bad judgement. The Trump regime has threatened Canada before, and will threaten Canada again. Sending a message to the rest of the world that this fascist regime’s aggression can at times be acceptable is not only morally repulsive, it undermines Canada’s national security.

The was against Iran has nothing — absolutely nothing — to do with upholding international norms. To think that the actions of lawless president who has flaunted norm after norm, both domestic and international, can be being taken for such ends is beyond naïve.

It also has absolutely nothing to do with promoting democracy. Just look at what happened in Venezuela. The same regime remains in power, now with US backing, just with a different, more subservient, leadership. It would not surprise me in the least to see an analogous outcome in Iran.

Published at 07:15 on 28 February 2026

This is just about the worst take on anything ever from this PM. To assume that two fascist governments flexing their muscles in an attempt to make a third sovereign nation submit to their will could have anything in the least to do with democracy, human rights, or international norms is simply beyond belief. And to assume that two nuclear powers, one of them a nuclear proliferator who helped arm the apartheid regime in South Africa, have anything in principle against nuclear weapons, simply boggles the mind.

No thinking person is a fan of the vile regime that currently rules Iran, but come on. This is exactly the sort of naïveté that led democracies to underestimate the growing global threat posed by Hitler, who got people to tolerate his initial exercises in military adventurism by mostly directing them eastward, towards the widely-disliked Soviet regime.

It looks a whole lot like Carney just put the sign back in Canada’s window.

Published at 08:12 on 27 February 2026

Many of Trump’s critics are rightly denouncing the efforts of the RFK-led Department of “Health,” but I think they are missing the true scale of the malice behind it.

My theory is much darker. It is merely part of American fascism’s project of creating a fact-free world, so that disease is no longer based on its actual causes, enabling a fascist government to scapegoat the groups it hates. Nazis decried the Jews (and homosexuals) as “unhygienic;” expect the Trump regime to do so in earnest for the nonwhite immigrant groups it despises (not to mention the LGBTQIA community) once a critical mass of its base is sufficiently distant from fact-and-science-based theories of health.

It’s not about increasing the market for quack cures, it’s about increasing the market for fascist measures. They are building concentration camps and they intend to use them.