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irony: when reality catches up with you

friday, august 15th, 2025

Irony is a term whose meaning is elusive and which escapes precise definition. A lot of people think they know what it means when they actually don’t. About the best that can be said is that irony is the quality of a situation in which not only are prospects ruined and even reversed, but done so resoundingly – irony not only wrecks your plans, but does so while turning you into an object lesson.

[FULL TITLE: "Irony' Can Mean The Moment When Reality Catches Up With You"]

Irony occurs when the postman rings twice for the drifter Frank Chambers, who is arrested, tried, and executed not for the murder he unquestionably committed, but for the accidental death over which he had no responsibility. Irony is what you’re left with when Jay Gatsby is shot, not by the outraged husband of his former girlfriend Daisy, but by a demented gas-station owner whom he scarcely knows exists.

Randy Newman constructed an entire career on irony, writing songs in which the actual meaning was 180 – at least – to what the lyrics were saying. The public lost its collective mind over “Short People,” in which Newman suggested mass annihilation for everyone under a certain height. It’s a good thing they didn’t listen to “Sail Away” or “Rednecks.”

Irony can be tricky. A lot of people find it difficult to grasp and try to take it straightforwardly or view it as a joke, and in either case, end up confused and bewildered. (One particular case involves Saul Alinsky, whom, we are earnestly told by droves of people who should know better, dedicated his book to SATAN!!! Actually, he dedicated it to his wife Eileen, as a single flick of a page would reveal. What he did do was introduce Rules for Radicals with several epigrams—quotes intended to set the tone for the work. One of these, that I’m convinced is meant ironically, since it makes no sense otherwise, involves Lucifer, pointing out that, whatever else can be said, he did end up with his own kingdom. This, I believe, was intended as a backhand aimed at the Stalinists, whom Alinsky – a social democrat – loathed.)

We now live in an age of irony, an epoch in which irony rules all. Jews accused of Nazism, mentally ill teenagers leading international environmental crusades, men posing as women on varsity athletic teams, a former KGB operative praised as a champion of peace and democracy. It’s everywhere you look, and you cannot escape it.

Amid all this, the Democrats have become the party of irony. We have Adam Schiff, Inspector Javert with a neck three inches in diameter. Charles Schumer’s Senate seat is now under threat from “New Democrat” Sandy O. Almost all the Democrat lawyers involved in the persecution of Donald Trump are up to their necks in legal trouble, Letitia James facing jail for mortgage fraud, Fani Willis enmeshed in corruption scandals so convoluted as to be indescribable, and Jack Smith under investigation by the Office of the Special Counsel. Texas Democrats who fled the state in protest of GOP redistricting are largely hiding out in the most blatantly gerrymandered state in the country, if not in the entire historical record.

When irony enters politics, it almost always does so as a form of punishment. The Democrats—particularly the Deep State’s effective leaders, not the official DNC leadership; they’re just puppets, but Obama, Susan Rice, Pelosi, and Schumer are beginning to learn this.

What is occurring now as regards the events of 2016 and 2020 is irony in its purest, most unalloyed form.

When the Democrats went after Donald Trump, they thought they couldn’t lose. Ninety-odd indictments, fines amounting to hundreds of millions, a conviction for “rape” (or so they thought), not one, but two impeachments, and to top it off, a synthetic “insurrection” carried out with the help of a few turncoats and some of the dumbest individuals in the MAGA movement. There was no way Trump could survive this. Surely, they’d brought him down. Surely, they must have broken him.

They had given fair warning not to try it again. Attempt to reform the system, and we will destroy you. The GOP had been returned to its customary lap-dog status – a collection of RINOs with the duty of formalizing the Democrat agenda as the right wing of the elite. The transformation of America could proceed unimpeded.

But the Dems had overlooked a few things. Quite a few things, actually. Dominant above all was the fact that they’d demolished a precedent, broken one of the unwritten rules of American politics: that you don’t target your opposition. There is no revanchism in American representative democracy. No Gestapo taking away the opposition in the middle of the night. No matter how ferocious the politics, how wild-eyed the rhetoric, when your opponent leaves office, he gets to go home. He gets to go home in safety, unharassed, unattacked, to abide beneath his vine and fig tree. This has been the rule for the past two and a half centuries. Richard Nixon was pardoned after Watergate for exactly this reason. It’s one of the crucial elements that distinguishes us from banana republics, or, for that matter, the kind of parliamentary system the Europeans are so fond of.

The Dems broke it. They broke it blatantly and openly, and without a single sign that they’d even thought about it. All that mattered was to get Trump, by whatever means necessary. And if the country, the entire system that we live by, was demolished in the process, well, comrades, that was just the way it goes.

So they’ve made their move, and now they get to meet Mr. Consequences. The masks, all of them, the ones they’ve worn with so much success for so long, have all fallen – the mask of compassion, the mask of the party of the people, the mask of impeccable moral virtue. What’s left is the naked face itself. The face of the thug who does what he damn well pleases, and to hell with everything else.

There’s a quote beloved of movement conservatives that you used to see all the time, though not much lately. It’s from a play by Robert F. Bolt titled “A Man for All Seasons,” (Later made into an excellent movie) which dealt with the heroic cleric Thomas More, who stood up against the demented Henry VIII. More’s son-in-law argues that it’s acceptable to ignore the law in order to destroy evil. More insists that he’s wrong: "And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned around on you—where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?"

That’s where the Dems find themselves now. Not facing the Devil, of course. Just a billionaire with a volcanic temper and a habit of getting things done. The same machinery that they commandeered and primed to get Trump is being used against them. It’s doubtful that they’ll stand up to it as well he did.

Or are they? Because in fact, the laws aren’t down at all. They have risen up once again to trap the people who misused them. This isn’t lawfare. Nobody is manipulating and abusing the written statutes the way that Willis, James, Pelosi, and Smith did against Trump. The justice system that they weaponized is now being turned against them, operating exactly the way it’s supposed to. Only on much better grounds and with clear evidence.

Which brings us to the greatest irony of all: that this series of maneuvers, intended by Obama and the Dems to render their political reign permanent and unchallengeable, may well instead mark the destruction of their party as a political force.

The last thing they’ll learn is that irony can hurt.

And a side note:

I once read a brief piece – it couldn’t really be called a “story” based on the premise that a historian several hundred years from now was trying to work out the actual history of the 20th century, since what they had was obvious mythic nonsense: “Sure – the demonic universal enemy is named “Adolf” – Wolf Prince. And the allies who are fighting him? Stalin, Man of Steel. Churchill – speaks for itself. Roosevelt – Field of Roses, the man who brings peace. And who do they send to fight the Wolf Prince? Eisenhower – Iron Hewer, the great swordsman.” The same is true of Trump: Here is this guy, beset by hundreds, if not thousands, of enemies attacking from all sides, and he defeats them all. And what’s his name? “Trump.” Which happens, in this ancient language, to mean “Victory.” Righto.

A Day In The Life.

Up at 8:30a on Friday, another delightful 67°F, forecast to hit only 82°, sunny and cobalt-blue sky morning, I made coffee, fired-up the Win-7 Pentium HP Desktop to let 32 million lines of code load, had a couple smokes in the garage and checked the leftover errands list. I scanned the news and weather -- nice today and tomorrow, but -- getting bad next week -- and tuned into the "CP Show LIVE", from 9-12. Brunch was Crispy Hash Browns with Chilli-Fried Egg, and that'll do fine until 5-6p.

I did a couple nearby errands, finished-up a lingering condo chore, and Sherry arrived after 5p, when she'd finished working for Daughter, Hollie, and we had some nice time together. After she left, around 7:30, I had some dinner, watched a few news programs, did some computer work, and switched to Discovery's "Gold Rush" series, until 1a. Lights out.

Up at 9:30a on Saturday, a bright, sunny, slightly overcast, 73° morning, forecast to get back into the hot/humid upper-90s, made some new "Opio Kona" Coffee and scanned the weather and news. The weather and coffee were wonderful. The world's lunacy continues, and grows, daily. Except for the past few years, I enjoyed commenting -- "Now In My 30th Year & Still Commenting Weekly, On The World's Daily Dose Of Lunacy, In The InterNet's Longest Running Journal, Since January, 1996" -- and *maybe* I'll have to start doing that again.

I tried to get some news from FNC's TV "Big Weekend Show", which is dogshit -- no news there, just 4 talking head idiots spouting bullshit -- and had to go to the usual websites for any news. After dinner, I switched to Discovery's "Expedition Unknown", and after 2hrs of reruns, saw a couple of episodes that I hadn't seen before. By 1a, I was nodding-off, and unplugged for the night.

Up at 8:30a, a sunny, cobalt blue sky, breezy, low humidity, beautiful 67° morning, I made coffee, scanned the weather and news websites, and had a few smokes on the back patio. No F1 GP races this weekend, so after getting ready for the day and week, I started the first of two loads, got the recycle bin and garbage bag ready to put out, and worked on some weeding in the two gardens. By 6, the crappy FNC "Big Weekend Show" (TV) was a rerun of the afternoon's crap show, and I switched to NEWSMAX for the day's news. There was dogshit on TV -- an "NBC Night" -- so I bagged it early.

Up at 8:30a on Monday, another sunny, cobalt blue sky, increasing humidity (73% and rising), 68° morning (90s forecast all week), I made coffee, had a smoke in the garage. The recycle truck was moving thru the condos, across the street, and I tuned into the "CP Show LIVE", from 9-12. Every time I went out to the back patio for a smoke, the humidity had increased noticeably. Yuk. I left at 12:30p, traffic was VERY HEAVY -- except for construction choke points, I can't figure out why -- and was back by 2:15. By 3, I finally got around to some lunch, and a short 1hr nap on the LR couch.

After dinner, I watched the usual FNC news offerings, for 15-20mins -- after that it's just fluff -- switched to Motor Trend's "Iron Resurrection" until 1a. Lights out.

Summer's back!

Up at 8:15a on Tuesday, an overcast, humid, 74° morning, forecast to be in the 90s. After scanning the news headlines, I got informed and disgusted, once again. I tuned into the usual morning "CP Show LIVE", from 9-12, caught-up on the eMail load, did some paperwork and paid a few bills online (I auto-pay w/ my bank CC; I do NOT let anyone into my checking/saving/investment bank accounts! NEVER).

I did 3 local errands, was back home around 2:30, had some lunch, had a delivery from WEIS Market (Enola, PA) and worked on "The Document" for a couple hours. I watched the news, then switched to NEWSMAX for background news, while I scanned the news and weather websites. Lights out at 1a.

Up at 7:30a on Wednesday, a high-overcast, Very humid, 87° morning, forecast to get into the mid-90s and even more humid, as is the rest of the week. I made coffee, scanned the news and weather sites, and tuned into the "CS Show LIVE" until 9, and switched to the "CP Show LIVE" until 12noon. Sherry arrived at around 1p, and we had 5 glorious hours together, driving to Flinchbaugh's Orchard & Farm Market, to get some fruit and other goodies.

She left around 6p, I watched the evening news, had some dinner, and switched to Discovery's "Expedition Unknown" until 12 midnight, and had a security "fault" alarm go off in the condo, with the garage overhead door; then unplugged.

Up at 9a on Thursday, another high-overcast, breezy, humid 77° morning. I made a new bag of Kona "Opio" Coffee, scanned the news and weather, and switched to the "CP Show LIVE" from 9-12. I tried to negate the garage door "fault", but everything I tried didn't seem to work. The lawn mower crews showed-up around 10, and the frigging noise continued thru 1p. I lounged around in gym shorts and a t-shirt until 1, got ready for the day and moved the Jeep out of the garage, so I could continue to look at the overhead door "fault" security problem, which I'd fixed twice before over the years.

T-storm cells rolled thru the area, and we got a nice 15-20min shower, as by now, the lawns were browning-off. An hour later, we got torrential downpours and 50-60mph wind! Almost 2" in an hour. Woo-hoo! I worked on the garage door more, doing the obvious: cleaning the electric eye beams from one side to the other. The only other step I can take next, is to re-measure the 2 electric eye mechanism on both side of the door track, and re-center them exactly; no 'fudge room' on that step. Meanwhile, it's disarmed.

The afternoon went quickly, with more rain, so I had an occasional smoke in the sauna-like garage, watched the 6p FNC evening news, had some dinner, and switched over to MT's "Roadworthy Rescues", until the 11p news came on. Lights out at 12 midnight.

Tomorrow starts a new week, here in the "Journal", with a Dr's app't and my cleaning lady in, so I'll set-up a day for Sherry and me, when she stops by tomorrow, mid-afternoon. We probably won't get a break from the temps and humidity, but hey: IT'S STILL SUMMER. Duh.

Going, Going Gone. . .

In case you’re wondering why the Democratic Party is in a death spiral, it is the proportionate response to the damage they have done to American culture and politics. You might think that they fell haplessly into error, but their turn to Marxian idealism was a cover for a matrix of hustles and rackets to make up for a void of any sane political program.

Because they can no longer distinguish between fantasy and reality, they are too crazy to lead this country, and Americans know it.

Coming into the 21st century, our country was beset by looming decline. Our industrial base was going, going, gone, and with it millions of well-paying blue-collar jobs, the Democratic Party base. It was replaced by a so-called “financialized economy,” which was sanitized language for sets of swindles and frauds allowed to operate in the de-regulated banking system, in concert with the politicized Federal Reserve and crooked Congressional interests — you notice how many politicians paid $175-K a year somehow acquired multi-million-dollar fortunes?

What mainly grew in this period was government and things that fed off of it, such as the war industries, computer tech allied with the Intel gang, and especially the burgeoning universe of government-sponsored non-profit advocacy orgs, which became the jobs program for otherwise unemployables churned out of higher education, a racket that fed on federal loan guarantees. It was in the racketeering ecosystem that billionaires such as George Soros and Bill Gates could use their fortunes to advance their own personal obsessions through webs of non-governmental orgs (NGOs) to influence public affairs.

By 2016, that was really all that the Democratic Party had left. It was the source of their money and their power. They also had the accumulated political capital of race advocacy, starting with the civil rights crusades of the 1960s. After our victory over manifest evil in World War Two, the Jim Crow system had to go, or else America could not pretend to lead the so-called “free world.”

By some paradoxical alchemy of government policy and human nature, the civil rights campaign eventually produced a larger and more intractable “underclass” than existed before. This baffled liberal idealists who had expected a new era of brotherhood and equality. They could only account for it by “structural racism,” and the Marxian trope of “oppressors-and-victims” fit into that scaffold perfectly. It lured them into Marxian “praxis” generally, which by then was already failing everywhere else in the world it had been tried as “communism.”

One way to counter “structural racism” was to declare a new ethos of “multiculturalism,” meaning each ethnic or racial group could behave according to its own particular standards and values. It was like waving a magic wand to make failure disappear and it worked through the 1990s, (which happened to be the fattest years of cheap oil production in America). The trouble with multiculturalism was that it negated the thing that had held America together through vicissitudes such as the Great Depression and World War Two: The American common culture, the thing that belonged to everyone.

The MAGA movement has largely been an effort to reconstruct an American common culture, a consensus of values and behaviors we can all agree on. The Democratic Party opted to oppose that — a poor choice. In fact, they apparently viewed that effort as an existential threat to the hustles and rackets that were sustaining the party. For instance, the jobs program for otherwise unemployable college grads who styled themselves as “activists” working for NGOs under the umbrella of USAID.

This was the party’s army of influencers, organizers, ward-heelers, and ballot-harvesters, laboring on behalf of the “victims of oppression.” Quite a few of them resided in Academia, where they cultivated a whole lexicon of arcane, gnostic, crypto-Marxian ideology aimed not just at opposing the recovery of a common culture, but destroying whatever remnants of it remained.

The catch was: they didn’t believe in “social justice” or “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” That was just a smokescreen of verbiage over their race hustle, which means extorting money, unearned advantages, and status dishonestly. Thus was DEI birthed. And, with it, colossal frauds of “victimhood” such as the beatification of George Floyd and a long line of similar “justice-involved” cases that generated an impressive revenue flow for the Democrats.

That revenue flow and its utility for holding power was all they had left in 2024. It explains the empty symbolism of running Kamala Harris for president. Now, the money flow is gone and so is the party’s power and perhaps its last remaining reason for existence: the maintenance of its own power. Notice that the Democrats can’t even advocate for the return of USAID, now that it has been unmasked as rife with financial fraud and crime.

There is surely a need for an opposition party to any in-party, which happens to be Mr. Trump’s Republicans at the moment, if only because power corrupts. You can see the outline of what that new opposition party might be: a party of re-localization, of small business and small farmers, of traditional towns as opposed to still-rampant and malignant suburban sprawl. Some related issues already belong to MAGA, such as smaller government, the protection of privacy, respect for the Bill of Rights — but these would be implicit in the restoration of an American common culture, a set of values and standards of behavior that both parties in a two-party system can subscribe to.

Democratic Socialists of America Hold Panel on Abolishing the Family.

Earlier this week the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) uploaded to YouTube the video of a panel discussion from its annual Socialism Conference, held in Chicago over Independence Day weekend. For those who hear the term democratic socialism and picture happy Scandinavians living their best lives instead of being chewed up in a capitalist rat race, it’s worth noting that the discussion featured open calls for the abolition of the nuclear family in the United States.

No surprise there. The DSA is not a separate political party but aligns with far Left Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (until they determined she wasn’t pro-Hamas enough) and Independents like lifelong communist Bernie Sanders. Like the Democrat Party itself, the DSA has become increasingly radical with younger generations over the last half century. Their anti-family stance aligns with Karl Marx’s imperative to abolish the family, which is essential to the establishment of his collectivist utopia. Why is it essential? Because Marx and the DSA view the nuclear family to be – as the video description on YouTube declares – “an inherently repressive, racist, and hetero-sexist institution that functionally reinforces and reproduces capitalism.” So it must be deconstructed, dismantled, and discarded on the ash heap of history.

The panel, titled “The Left and the Family: A Roundtable,” took place on July 4, while patriotic Americans everywhere were celebrating their freedom from tyranny. Socialist ideologues have no time for such unserious recreation; after all, they have an entire, deeply entrenched system of oppression to tear down. As my friend, author Michael Walsh, is fond of pointing out, “The Left never stop, they never sleep, they never quit.”

The all-female panel featured speakers Emily Janakiram of New York City for Abortion Rights, University of Chicago sociologist Eman Abdelhadi, Katie Gibson of the University of Chicago, and long-time BDS activist and Portland DSA member Olivia Katbi. As an aside: of course she is a BDS activist, because the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement designed to permanently destroy Israel as a Jewish nation-state has in recent years become one of the more prominent intersectional goals of socialism; at the DSA national convention in August 2017, for example, the organization passed a resolution explicitly affirming “solidarity with Palestinian civil society’s nonviolent [!] struggle against apartheid, colonialism, [and] military occupation, and for equality, human rights and self-determination.”

In the video (the comments section of which has been turned off, unsurprisingly, because the Left is totalitarian at heart and doesn’t tolerate opposing opinions), Abdelhadi declared that she and her fellow socialists are in a “reactionary, fascist moment” and must keep their eyes on the prize of a “radical liberatory horizon” in which food, housing, education, and child care are collectivized – just as Marx envisioned. She stated that black women and “indigenous communities” – groups that she claimed are “disposable to capitalism” – have already modeled this and the rest of the world should follow suit, as if this sort of collectivization is such a rousing success. She didn’t mention that a disproportionate number of black women have been forced to model this way of life because there is no husband and father in the home, which has proven disastrous for the black community and society at large.

Katie Gibson championed the liberation of children from the legal authority of parents, saying, “If you are born into a home headed by a Christian fundamentalist tyrant, for instance, you have [only] the rights that that Christian fundamentalist tyrant gives you.” Imagine if she had said “Muslim fundamentalist tyrant” — her DSA card would be revoked.

Janakiram questioned the very legitimacy of marriage, invoking a quote from Burkina Faso revolutionary Thomas Sankara: “The only real difference between marriage and prostitution is the price and duration of the contract.” She also asserted, “The institution of marriage can only exist alongside the criminalization of sex workers,” adding, “Women lead the fight against capitalism and imperialism, period.”

“I’m ambivalent about whether we use the F word [family] or not,” Abdelhadi said. “But I think for me it’s about focusing on policies, right? And being really clear about what material benefits we are gonna give people.” She emphasized that the Republican Party provides people with a “narrative,” and that the Left must offer a competing one with clear policy aims. She later lauded the far-Left proposals of New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, an avowed communist, saying, “All of that stands out for me as the kind of work that we need to be doing.”

During the Q&A segment of the discussion, one self-identified Baptist minister from Austin, a DSA member, told the panel he wants to be able to “perform abortions at a church” as part of the “revolutionary horizon.” What kind of demonic dream is this? What kind of church tolerates such a satanic saboteur as its minister? What kind of political movement embraces such a dark vision?

Activists like these at the DSA are in thrall to the most destructive atheist ideology known to history, but they are very serious, very committed, and chafing at the bit to overthrow the bourgeois status quo and to reach that utopian “liberatory horizon,” which includes the dissolution of family bonds so that mothers and fathers can commit themselves fully to the service of the state, while the children are raised by random adults in the “collective.” MAGA Americans are currently riding a wave of successes under the transformative Trump administration, but we must be on guard against complacency and over-confidence lest anti-capitalist revolutionaries like the DSA build momentum. New York City, after all, seems poised to elect a Muslim communist, who openly calls for seizing control of the means of production, as its next mayor.