Blackcap Blog

Published at 07:15 on 22 June 2025

Now we get to see how many Trumpers rescind their support for Trump as a result, and how many will convince themselves that Big Brother just increased the chocolate rations.

We also get to see how Iran retaliates. If Iran does not retaliate, it will show how weak and ineffectual the regime is, which will hasten its demise. Those who run that regime know this.

Iran gets to choose the time, place, and means of retaliation, and they will choose it with an eye to maximizing the surprise factor and the effectiveness of the mission.

Welcome to war.

Published at 08:49 on 20 June 2025

Short Answer

Who knows? It will depend largely on his whim at the moment, and that is famously unpredictable.

Longer Answer

It is not the definitive “yes” answer that Rick Wilson seems to think it is.

Why? Because Trumpers are not what he thinks they are. Many Republicans warmed to Trump’s willingness to burn it all down in part because they felt betrayed by their own elite, who led the USA into a number of futile “forever wars” in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Wilson is of course one of that old elite, he hates Trump, and this reality is therefore most unpleasant to him.

So he constructs an alternate reality in which much of the Right just became inexplicably depraved for no good reasons at all. And, conveniently enough, there are plenty of examples of depraved beliefs to back this whole “depraved” narrative up.

I sometimes interact with Trumpers online, and one common narrative they volunteer as to why they are what they are does fall back on these forever wars. It’s why they can so easily wave off all the concerns of the Never Trump crowd (largely dominated by those same neoconservatives who led the USA into those wars).

And keep in mind: this is what has been volunteered to me, repeatedly, for years now. It’s not some new stuff that some echo chamber media voices thought up on the spot just to help them argue “no, we don’t want to get more involved in the Israel/Iran war, trust me.” It really seems to be a genuine motive.

As such, I rate it as highly likely that if Trump does get the USA heavily involved, it will hurt him.

Sure, a lot of his base are fascist follower types who will pivot on a dime and not only argue but actually believe that Big Brother just increased the chocolate rations. A lot. But not all. Some won’t.

And Trump didn’t win by much, so he can’t afford to lose much support. He’s already underwater on most issues in the polls.

Getting the USA directly involved is highly likely to hurt Trump. And Trump might realize that, which reduces the odds that he will. It is revealing that his current line is that he will decide in “two weeks.” That seems to be his stock phrase for kicking the can down the road and often doing nothing at all.

Trump’s only loyalty is to himself. He has no loyalty to anything or anyone else, including Israel and/or Netanyahu.

Anyone giving almost-certain answers on this one is missing some important points.

Published at 09:17 on 14 June 2025

There has been a lot of hand-wringing recently from many on the anti-Trump side of how the recent protests against ICE are doomed to be a disaster because they are not perfectly adhering to the ideals set forth by those wringing their hands.

Look, this is a stupid basis on how to judge things. No set of protests of any size and consequence is ever going to strictly adhere to any one individual’s pet set of standards for political protest. It’s just not going to happen.

This sort of unrealistically high standard is almost uniquely applied at home and nowhere else. Look at any other authoritarian country where open opposition emerges, and you will find incidents of, at the least, property destruction and retaliation in kind against police violence. Of course, the narrative is never about the property destruction or retaliation then. In fact, that stuff usually gets papered over in the mass media. But it’s fairly easy to find the images of burning vehicles and protesters throwing rocks at police if you look for them.

Almost never is there the “oh, dear, the protester’s tactics are going to alienate people from their cause” take for such protests abroad. Rather, the sign that protests are emerging at all is seen as a positive sign that the regime’s spell over its populace is breaking.

And yes, at this point, the USA is best understood as some form of a soft authoritarian regime. It’s really the only honest way to characterize a society where masked secret police go around disappearing people, with (up until the last week or so) very little resistance from the populace.

No, that doesn’t mean that optics are unimportant, or that there are not big issues on the American Left. I have written before on how much the American Left is an inward-looking subculture and of the necessity of any protest movement to break out of that subculture.

But that latter point cuts both ways. There is also a need for any protest movement to break out of the control of the Democratic Party and its allies. That crowd is so stunningly incompetent at the whole politics game that any leadership role on their part probably dooms opposition to ineffectiveness. What we don’t want is protests that can be turned on and off at the whims of the Democratic Party. We need the heat to stay turned up on Washington even after Trump is, one way or another, removed from office. The Democrats did very little to fight fascism under Biden and there is exactly zero reason to assume they will, absent a lot of pressure from below, do much about it again if they ever manage to regain power.

And this leads me to the really worrying thing about the planned No Kings protests. From what I have been able to determine, it’s all being run by a centralized leadership that is, in fact, closely linked to the Democratic Party.

We still have yet to see any sort of broad none-of-the-above movement emerge. This limits my optimism, although it is also true that in this sort of situation, any protests almost always beat no protests. So I am more optimistic than I was a month ago, but it will take significant changes in the nature of the opposition to Trump to raise that optimism to a truly significant level.

Published at 16:15 on 7 June 2025

Nice Liberals might fret about stories like this, but I see them as signs of hope. At long last, grassroots resistance to Trump seems to be emerging on the streets, and hopefully in time for Trump to have a long, hot summer.

Because, yes, unrest can involve excesses, but so far, these are not happening. A little graffiti and blocked traffic? Sure, those things are illegal. But Trump is breaking laws left and right (and getting very little pushback from the Democrats) and getting away with it, so let’s have some perspective here.

I mean, really now. There are literal gangs of masked fascist goons arresting people without due process under the president’s orders, and yet the real problem is supposed to be some graffiti, disrespectful chanting, and blocked traffic? Please.

It is interesting to note that the Nice Liberals were wringing their hands when MLK was disrupting business as usual in the Civil Rights Era. So much so that MLK himself wrote about the phenomenon in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. And yet, real substantive gains were won as a result of that unrest, gains that had failed to happen in well over a century of quiet, polite, obsessively lawful action (or, more commonly, inaction).

And, a lot more recently, Biden cruised to victory on the heels of Black Lives Matter protests (and even a few literal riots) that disrupted business as usual.

Historical evidence indicates unrest is not so universally toxic as the Nice Liberals claim it to be. In fact, it often tends to accompany or precede periods of progressive change.

Published at 11:08 on 13 May 2025

Suppose, just for sake of argument, that all the stuff J.B. Pritzker recently said in New Hampshire is sincere and not just hot air and politicking. What then?

Well, first he’s just one Democrat. He speaks for himself, and nobody else. And yes, while he’s not the only one, what is being done here is to cherry-pick Democrats. Overall, and in the aggregate, it is a party that has been a willing co-participant in the USA’s transition to an authoritarian, fascist (or at least quasi-fascist) state.

Realistically, what hope is there for that trend changing, for no apparent good reason, in the near future, just because it is politically convenient? Let’s be realistic here: it is somewhere between slim and none.

So even if JBeefy is serious, and even if he gets to the White House (and he is definitely running, even though he hasn’t officially announced it yet), it will be just him and a few other exceptions that prove a general rule. It is pretty obvious that, overall, the general rule will prevail.

And if it is just hot air and politicking? Basically the same result, just with a little less sturm und drang, that is all.

So J.B. is irrelevant.

He is irrelevant, that is, so long as action is mostly limited to voting for the self-proclaimed “opposition” party and/or candidate.

Until the none-of-the-above movement of which I have written earlier emerges, elections are more irrelevant than most think. But if such a movement emerges, it might be able to hijack the Democrats and use them to serve its end, in much the same way as Trump hijacked the Republican Party.

Will it happen because Democrats are opportunists and want to pander? Yes. Will it happen in spite of Democratic Party insiders’ attempts to contain, manage, and minimize it? Yes. Will those insiders have to be fought for true control? Yes.

But it doesn’t matter so much. A Democratic Party that does the right things for insincere reasons, does the right things against the wishes of its operatives, is still ultimately doing the right things.

But just voting alone will not and cannot make this happen.

Published at 12:23 on 8 May 2025

Sometimes, you can tell a lot from a name.

This was certainly the case for Leo XIV’s predecessor. The instant the name “Francis” was uttered, it became obvious to anyone with even a passing knowledge of Catholic history what sort of pope he would probably be.

It’s not nearly so obvious, but I think think the name “Leo” might be similarly telling. The last pope to take this name was instrumental in developing many of the contemporary social teachings of the Catholic church, particularly those with respect to the rights of workers.

In choosing a name that is both traditional and associated with reformism, this pope might be saying that he will be less of an innovator than his predecessor, but is still very much grounded within the more liberal tradition of the Catholic church, and will defend those aspects of church doctrine.

We shall see.

And yes, this is all more in the vein of damage avoidance than anything. But damage avoidance is not nothing. Imagine the harm someone like Cardinal Erdő (Hungarian, staunchly traditionalist, closely allied with the neofascist government there) could have done as pope.

Update: Leo XIV is now on the record as having his name choice inspired by Leo XIII’s social teachings.

Published at 11:25 on 8 May 2025

Which is about the best that could be reasonably hoped for.

Here’s what the Associated Press had to say about him (scroll down) pre-conclave (he was considered a contender, although not a top one).

Published at 09:46 on 29 April 2025

And it happened pretty much why I said it might.

It’s clear what happened the moment you look at the results and compare them to what happened in 2021:

Party	2021	2025 (Preliminary)
Liberal	32.62%	43.6%
Conservative	33.74%	41.4%
Bloc Québécois	7.64%	6.4%
New Democratic	17.82%	6.3%
Green	2.33%	1.2%

Despite being widely-heralded as the losers of this election, the Conservatives actually increased the number of votes they received, and significantly so. To give you an idea how significant a 41.4% vote share is, that is better than the Conservatives ever received under the leadership of Stephen Harper, a three-term Conservative PM. You have to go back to Brian Mulroney to find a Conservative party leader that did better at the ballot box than Poilievre just did.

The above is doubtless why, despite having just lost both the election and his own seat in Parliament, he has announced his intention to stay on as party leader. (But it’s not entirely up to him. Justin Trudeau really wanted to remain the leader of the Liberals, and we all know how that one played out.)

The rub is, lots of Bloc, Green, and particularly NDP voters practiced strategic voting, voting against what they least wanted (i.e. Pierre Poilievre becoming PM), instead of voting their normal party preference.

Despite winning, the Liberals won’t have a majority of the seats. This means that should they so choose, the minor parties could cooperate with the Conservatives and vote to bring the government down.

It is my view that this is precisely what they should threaten to do unless the Liberals agree to pass election reform (most likely some form of ranked-choice voting), that enables voters to vote their preference without having to pay the cost of an outcome they regard as particularly averse. One of the rules of politics is that if you have power, use it.

Published at 10:01 on 23 April 2025

Timothy Snyder seems quite sure that it will come, and Trump fascists will exploit it.

His essay is incomplete, though. It fails to mention the possibility of left-wing, anti-Trump terrorism. Or, should I say, politically-motivated crime, since that is basically what “terrorism” is. “Crime” is of course itself a political term, as it merely means anything the government has proclaimed to be a crime.

It doesn’t even have to involve violence in the normal sense, i.e. violence against people. Vandalism of Tesla property is now being called “terrorism” even though vandalism has traditionally been considered a property crime, not a violent crime. Of course, that doesn’t stop politically-motivated vandalism from being labelled “violence”, either.

The above all just goes to show how politically-charged common terminology is. Even the Associated Press, normally regarded as one of the better mainstream news agencies (to the point that it is currently engaged in a court battle with the Trump regime), is getting in on the game.

Anyhow, don’t dismiss the possibility of some real terrorism on the Left, as Snyder apparently does in his essay, seeing as how he simply doesn’t mention it. Margaret Killjoy is considerably more honest in her recent essay that touches on the same subject.

However terrorism comes, if it comes, Trump is likely to exploit it. And if it comes in the form of left-wing terrorism, Trump is particularly likely to exploit it. However, it might not come. Contrary to popular mythology, the American populace, especially the more left-leaning parts of it, is remarkable in particular for its docility.

This makes left-wing terrorism less likely, but it makes a backlash more likely should it happen, because many otherwise opposed to Trump will side with the fascists if it does. Gotta take a firm moral stand against “violence,” after all, even if nobody gets hurt in the “violence” and the State is engaging in far worse actual violence.

As Killjoy points out, this would be a strategic error. Trump wants to create a fascist state regardless of what the Left does. Trump exists in the context of a nation with an exceptionally docile and acquiescent Left. Just compare the USA with the likes of France and Greece when it comes for the propensity for unrest to emerge in response to outrages from the Right, or with what the Left was doing in Germany, Italy, or Chile before those countries underwent fascist transitions in the 20th century.

Yet it is the USA that is presently undergoing a transition to fascism, not France or Greece. If a docile Left actually prevented fascism, we would not be where we are today.

To sum up: If fascists try to take freedom away, some people will attempt to resist it. The resistance will not be 100% coordinated and optimized. Some elements of it might choose tactics you (or I) disagree with and/or regard as unstrategic. The root problem is, however, not the resistance. It is the fascism.

I don’t know what to do about this other than to point it out. To fall for the whole “the Left provoked fascism” garbage is basically the same thing as a battered wife falling for her abusive husband’s lie that she is forcing him to hit her, and that she needs to try to be a better wife.

Published at 09:21 on 22 April 2025

The title of this entry is an Italian saying that literally translates literally to “with every death of a pope,” and idiomatically to “once in a blue moon.”

Well, it happened, and it was inevitable. And odds disfavour the next pope being as liberal as the current one is, simply based on the pool of most likely candidates. My hope is that he’s at least not going to be a raging fascism-abetting reactionary who goes around loudly praising the likes of Trump, Netanyahu, Putin, and Orbán.