My 2024 Airing of Grievances

Gather Around the Festivus Pole

“I’ve got a lot of problems with you people, and now, you’re going to hear about them!” - Frank Costanza

Friends, Rabblers, Countrymen, Lend Me Your Animus

Well, dear readers, another year on Clown World is almost complete, and it is time for our second annual “Airing of Grievances” here at The Wayward Rabbler. I must admit, I go into 2025 less angry and pessimistic than I have for many years prior. That said, somehow life kept getting in the way of writing this, which was irritating. Regardless, while Donald Trump certainly makes my list, it is undeniable that it feels like sanity, and yes, joy, has returned to America and that 2025 will be a better year than for several past. Am I setting myself up for disappointment? Certainly, but the vibe is strong. The scolds have, at least for now, been driven back. It appears we will get a real Trump Presidency and not four more years of “resist libs.” In fact, it seems as if they are doing a sort of “Benedict Option” and have retreated into their purgatory of Bluesky, while many in Trump’s orbit refuse to talk to the hacks in the “mainstream” media. MSNBC is outright failing. There is plenty to be optimistic about.

That said, there are also no shortage of things to criticize over the last year, from banning TikTok to lying about Biden’s fitness and suddenly replacing him with the only less competent person in DC to deciding an Al Qaeda terrorist leader is actually woke Thomas Jefferson. The “liberal internationalists” continue their trend of only being bold and creative when it comes to opening up new frontiers in shamelessness.

So here I have for you, in no particular order, 12 grievances for the 12 months of 2024. These are some ways the world has disappointed and irritated me in the last year:

The Libs Trying to Sane-Wash Themselves

The biggest story of 2024 in America is not just the Trump victory but that a wide coalition gave him a popular vote victory, albeit a relatively narrow one. Still, if anything Trump deserves a handicap given the years of lawfare, the media being fully in the tank for Harris, and and the vast outspending by Democrats. This time, most are going to kiss Trump’s ring, instead of being The Resistance™. I wouldn’t, though, call it capitulation, so much as acceptance that Trump should be resisted on normal terms, and not in a constant string of breathless conspiracy theories.

That said, it seems like the “progressives” will be relying on a great forgetting. To borrow their own term that they use to describe the media supposedly supporting Trump and running cover for him [yes they are that deranged] they are trying to “sanewash” themselves. This was, I suppose, a long time coming. In May of 2020 or so, a prominent libertarian, perhaps Tom Woods but I’m not sure, said “by fall, no one will be willing to defend lockdowns.” Now, the timetable was off [the scourge of anyone who tries to predict!] but, something like that has come to pass, only much more nefarious. Instead, it is “we never had lockdowns,” “no one was forced to take a vaccine,” “no one wanted to defund the police,” “no one supported sex changes for minors,” and more.

Kamala Harris is perhaps he most illustrative of this, because she positioned herself as the left-most of the party in 2020, but tried to ignore all of it this year instead of actually repudiating her positions. We were even treated to a journalist assuming it was made up that she supported taxpayer funded sex change operations for illegal immigrants in detention centers, only to discover Kamala had in fact put that on an ACLU survey [which is to say, even to liberals some of these positions sound like a right wing fever dream.] We also had the Democrats defending “Tampon Tim” Walz, pretending as if he only had menstrual products put in girls school bathrooms, not boys, which was what people were criticizing him for. They want it all to have not happened, which is at least a sign that they see how discredited they are, even if they will not admit it.

There is still plenty of fighting to do: vaccine commercials are still on the radio, Daniel Penny is villainized by BLM types, and a Democrat Congressman was attacked by his party for acknowledging concerns about his daughters competing against boys, but the needle has moved in a significant way. However, no matter how well it goes we are left with the maddening shamelessness of these people pretending they didn’t try to destroy the lives of anyone who would not go along with their deranged programs of medical totalitarianism, trans toddlers, or whatever other cause du jour they tried to force us to accept. Never forget how far they are willing to take things.

The “Axis of Resistance” Killed the Palestinian Cause

At the beginning of 2024 Israel seemed embattled. 2023 was a remarkably bad year for Israel, defined by the judicial reform protests until the October 7th attacks. It didn’t appear that Israel’s brutality was going to achieve its goals, and it seemed as if the backlash might matter. Things look very different at the end of the year, with Gaza almost entirely destroyed, Nasrallah and the senior Hezbollah leadership dead, Assad chased from power, and Iran impotent. The Houthi campaign of shutting down Red Sea shipping was remarkably effective, but did not greatly impact Israel and was highly unsympathetic to almost anyone who isn’t already a radical.

It has taken some time to get a clear picture of what happened on 10/7. We know from the incredible Ynetnews report in January that random marauders outnumbers Hamas perhaps 10:1. We also know from that reporting, as well as Haaretz in July that Israel did in fact implement a mass “Hannibal Directive.” It appears to be the case that Hamas planned the normal kind of raid to grab a few hostages to exchange and did not expect Israel’s defenses to fail. They also didn’t expect the IDF to panic and kill some large number of Israeli citizens. In short, though they surely expected some kind of retribution, they did not know that the day would play out in such a way as to bring this kind of apocalyptic destruction on the Palestinian people. Though I try to avoid this kind of thinking, it’s hard to not notice that everything has led to the results Likud wanted, but on a balance it’s probably more likely that they are depraved and opportunistic than strategic geniuses who intentionally and with foresight lit this fuse.

Either way, what we have learned in 2024 is that what seemed like wisdom and restraint on the part of Iran and its allies/proxies was in fact weakness and cowardice. Even when Israel was clearly on its heel, they did not move against Israel beyond a smattering of rockets, sent at targets across the Middle East. Even when Israel had its “day of infamy” and, among other things, bombed an Iranian consulate in Syria, Iran’s entire armada of missiles proved mostly harmless. It’s as if everything between Iran and Israel is some sort of Kabuki theater, and perhaps it is.

None of the above is to say I side with the “Axis of Resistance” and wanted to see Israel’s destruction, though Israel’s evil acts and its horrible supporters have really got to me over the last year. The point is something different. If these militant factions aligned with Iran were never going to go to war for Palestine in a real sense, all they have done is discourage Palestinians from making whatever deal they can and put them in the way of more harm. Now, with the fall of Syria, Israel has severed the connection between Iran and the weakened Hezbollah, and further destroyed Syria’s remaining advanced weaponry and defenses.

Meanwhile, Israel’s extremist Finance Minister Smotrich is openly trying to implement plans to annex the West Bank in 2025 and Israel has invaded Syria to create a “buffer zone.” I wonder if it isn’t the case that Israel will fill that “buffer zone” with 2.75 million West Bank Palestinians before giving it back to Syria. As it stands, the only thing restraining Israel’s violence towards Palestine- besides that munitions are always finite- is that Netanyahu likes Trump and probably doesn’t want this matter to cause Trump domestic problems. In short, though their Fortune may change in the future, 2024 was the year of Israeli triumph, and the Palestinian cause is all but dead: as much as Israel, Iran and its proxies killed it.

We still have a holiday sale going until the end of 2024. You can get 20% off subscriptions for a year! Please consider a paid subscription, as the writing and audience-building part of this endeavor is going well, but the making money part is not.

The Media Pretending Joe Biden Was Fit

The media lying about Joe Biden dates back to well before 2024. It was clear he was pretty far gone in 2020, but even so, he got substantially worse while in office. During the 2020 election they at least had the covid premise to keep him out of the spotlight, but we all watched the slow-moving trainwreck of his administration while being told he was “vigorous behind closed doors.” Here is how I described the situation back in February of this year:

“Leo Tolstoy wrote, “Kings are the slaves of history” [War and Peace, III.I.I] and the same can be true of Presidents, if less frequently. It is certainly true of Joe Biden, who is perhaps more accurately the re-animated corpse of history. Trapped in a dying body, moved from place to place on legs that barely walk, talking through lips that barely speak, with black eyes that look but cannot see, what soul the fiend once had seeking escape, his whole being yearning for the wholesome comfort of the chair next to the soft-serve machine in an old folks’ home, America’s President makes for a sad sight.”

To the sane there was no hiding this, so it isn’t even fair to say it was covered up so much as they simply lied and tried to create an alternative reality. Remember their “cheap fakes” which was just their way of saying they don’t a video? Remember at the G7 summit when Meloni had to corral him and try to and stop him from wandering off?

Finally, of course, it was the debate performance that did him in, though to those of us who were aware of his state, the debate wasn’t so bad. This was the Joe Biden we all knew, his drug cocktail had just kept working at key moments. Apparently the media’s lies did deceive some segment of the population. It’s hard to not feel bad for someone whose ability to understand reality is that far gone, but of course instead of having sympathy I see this as more proof that Democrats must be politically dominated. Regardless, following Kamala’s Coup and the old rascal’s unceremonious defenestration, we were treated to the idea that he was somehow our modern Cincinnatus, having chosen to give up power because of his great integrity and love of American freedom:

There was some discussion about if Joe Biden could continue to be the President if he wasn’t suitable to run for office: the obvious answer was that he wasn’t fit in the first place. However, since they were pretending Kamala wasn’t the incumbent, they couldn’t very well have her take over. Still, he has had his moments of lucidity, which must be a result of switching up his medicine. He briefly seemed fine after Trump won:

But, the truth is, what brain he ever had is fried with old age. He even wandered off into the Amazon, though sadly for his personal story arc, which almost had an epic ending, he was seen again.

While the narrative progression of the Biden coverup has not reached “of course he is mentally disabled, and here’s why that’s a good thing,” it did get to a full admission that they’ve been covering it up the whole time. The Wall Street Journal just published an article within the last week titled, “How the White House Functioned with a Diminished Biden in Charge” which seems to give away the whole game. It’s beyond our scope to go into it here, but suffice to say, a few close aides were controlling everything and Biden generally only had a big picture impact as they tried to maintain some semblance of his competence. It would all be one thing if the world was at peace and these were easy times, but he is leaving a world on fire for Trump to inherit [clearly by the design of malicious staffers.]

Honestly though, I don’t blame the Biden people for running this grift, my malice is more or less entirely directed at the media for so blatantly lying to us about something so obvious.

Still, while we can be angry at their shamelessness, let’s not downplay just how funny it is that they humiliated themselves in this fashion. Here is Joe Scarborough back in March, saying this is the best Biden there has ever been:

Pantsuit Mafias, in Georgia and Elsewhere

As readers know, there are few things in this world I hate more than useless women [and effeminate men] with Master’s Degrees who work for the government, or even worse, for NGOs. Georgia, as I have covered repeatedly, is one of the most NGO infested countries on Earth. A whole class of Georgians is grasping towards the “European Dream” and the “End of History” that comes with it. However, with a combination of wisdom, good campaigning, and, yes, oligarch money, the Georgian Dream party has kept them to a heel, definitively winning this year’s elections after the big fight over trying to reign in foreign influence:

Well, it looks definitive to all of us. Unfortunately this Frenchwoman in the center of that picture, Georgia’s soon-to-be-former President, became a huge election denier and is on a tour making absurd claims and begging people to intervene in their country. It’s a simultaneously sad and infuriating display, especially since there are many clear reasons that the opposition didn’t win, most of all that they are very divided and lack leadership. They also just suck, and don’t seem to know how to talk to the general public, who are probably the most interested in joining the EU for material, not ideological, reasons, but also want to maintain a degree of dignity as Georgians and not die in an unnecessary war with Russia. None of this is stopping this mad woman from going saying she will refuse to leave the Presidency, despite that under any circumstances her term would be expiring.

This prominent NGOist is describing the normal constitutional process.

Despite the defeat, they just won’t go away, and they have many partners in their labors from across the “West.” It’s a sad thing to me because it feel as if Georgia is one of the few countries where the government is doing a notably good job at managing a difficult situation and trying to maintain a society in which all members are included, but this class that receives and distributes propaganda simply isn’t having it and will not stop showing their disdain for the democratic process as well as the public.

Of course, the anti-democratic class did even worse things in Romania, but since my last article was a full length explanation of that whole affair, it doesn’t bear going into here- though I must give you an update to say there are now claims that the ruling party paid for the TikTok campaign they later claimed was done by Russia! Suffice to say, despite that the Pantsuitists are losing elections, they are sure to continue to be a target of my hatred going into 2025, as they themselves won’t sleep. There is a fair amount of talk about college degrees having become too common in the United States, but people with Bachelor’s Degrees who can’t use them are just disaffected citizens. People trying to make use of useless Master’s Degrees are a real menace to society. In fact, a recent book suggests that “wokeness” was only a scramble for resources by people from that class [which, frankly, was always kind of obvious.] A Master’s Degree worth of knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Trump’s Hawk Cabinet

Last year, in my Airing of Grievances, in a section titled “The Lawfare Making Trump More Powerful” I said that nothing could make me properly support Trump. This changed in response to the assassination attempt, though admittedly, I was probably waiting for an excuse to come around. Everything did line up for it being the year for all the people on the edge to come to Trump. Regardless, I did know what I was getting myself into, having written an extensive guide to Republican foreign policy in the summer of 2023, and giving Trump a D- [which tied him for first place with Vivek, but of course is still a very bad grade.] The reality is that while the conventional anti-war wisdom is that, if you vote at all, you should vote for President based on foreign policy because it’s where the President has the most unilateral powers, these motherfuckers have been so annoying it is hard to show requisite concern for the well being of others. More importantly, Trump unfortunately seems to have got the message that domestic issues are where he is allowed to act, whereas he will be destroyed if he seriously challenges foreign policy orthodoxies [though the War in Ukraine is either ending or massively escalating regardless, and the President probably has little to do with which happens.]

Despite my understanding what I was getting myself into, the Trump foreign policy picks have been worse than I expected. We may have avoided Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley, but Marco Rubio is going to be the Secretary of State- and while some appointments may be a challenge, there won’t even be a fight over his confirmation. My hope here is that Little Marco is less of an ideologue than a hack and that he will be Trump’s hack, but that is stretching the limits of plausibility. We are also to be treated to other hawks like Mike Walz and the deranged Sebastian Gorka in key positions, while one Alex Wong is suppose to put an Asian face on the China hatred [because in our idiot country people still don’t understand the perils of giving a shit what people have to say about their homeland.] This Pete Hegseth who may become the Secretary of Defense does claim to be a “recovering” neo-con, but since he became politically active encouraging sending more troops to Afghanistan, it isn’t hopeful. He’s at least a colorful character, which is worth plenty to me as an observer of the irony of human affairs.

I don’t feel like going into this at great depth here, but Branko Marcetic has a piece on Responsible Statecraft titled “Meet Trump’s new National Security Council” if you want more. I do have a few more copes here to lay out though. the first of which is that Tulsi Gabbard as the National Security Advisor is a bright spot, and its glorious to see the premise of her overseeing people who were surveilling her. Still, Gabbard has always been mostly on board with the Global War on Terror, just against regime change wars to spread “liberal democracy,” and she is seemingly ever more slavishly devoted to Israel. One also never knows how Trump intends to use people he hires, and if he will listen to them at all.

Our biggest hope is just that Trump likes to make deals and wants to be seen ending wars for the benefit of his own legacy and ego. We can at least take some comfort in knowing there is really nothing Kamala would have been better on, whereas Trump has big domestic upsides and talks about peace and the dangers of nuclear war. [In fairness, a Harris Administration probably would have been relatively less hawkish on Iran, but like Biden, so weak and indecisive that it was still more dangerous than Trump’s hawkishness.]

One way or another, we can be sure that at least when it comes to international relations, the Deep State has a place at the Trump table, and it doesn’t even appear they had to fight for it.

Biden the Commuter-In-Chief

Was it really only four years ago that the Hunter Biden Laptop was Russian disinformation? Honestly, as I’ve said, I don’t blame Biden for pardoning his son, though every part of it is amusing given the narratives we’ve now been hearing for years, you know about how it is fascism to say the justice system has been weaponized and how Biden has great respect for the law. I wouldn’t have destroyed my son’s soul forcing him to make corrupt profits for the family, but had it already reached that point, I would certainly pardon my son given the opportunity. Even so, the sweeping and unprecedented amnesty that he was given is something else. While Biden’s position is understandable, as with hiding his dementia, it is the media that can’t justify its position here. Check out this supercut of them claiming he would never pardon Hunter because he believes in the rule of law:

It was always obvious that Hunter would get a pardon, but of course, as with their pride in being “deceived” when he was replaced by Kamala, the worst of the shitlibs were joyous that this should happen after they spent so long convincing us it wasn’t going to.

I must add that through the magic of Grok, I was able to determine that Biden’s statement pardoning Hunter is quite compelling if phrased as a Shakespeare soliloquy:

A Soliloquy from President Biden, Upon the Pardon of His Son

O Hunter, son of mine, thou wayward youth, In whom the seeds of greatness did once lie, And yet, thy path did wander from the truth, Entangled in the thorns of life gone by.

What father's heart could ever find the peace, To see his child in chains, his spirit low? Is it not better, then, with love's increase, To grant thee freedom, though the world say no?

Behold, I stand in this most hallowed place, Where justice meets with mercy's gentle hand, To speak these words, with all the weight of grace, To bid farewell to sorrow's heavy band.

"By virtue of the power that I hold, And with the love that time can ne'er erode, I hereby pardon thee, my son, be bold, To walk anew, in sunlight, not in goad."

Oh, let not others judge with hearts of stone, For who among us has not erred or strayed? I do this not for me alone, but shown A father's love, unyielded, undismayed.

Thus, Hunter, rise, and take thy place once more, Amongst the living, free from guilt and strife, And know, in this, I've settled an old score, Between a father's love and son's dear life.

Touching stuff. Less touching is some of the absolute monsters whom Biden commuted that he has no personal connection to. The most notable is that cash-for-kids judge who took kickbacks to send children to contract juvenile facilities. Another is the lady who stole $53 million from a small city in America’s largest embezzlement cases. Pretty funny to think back to this “evergreen” tweet:

I couldn’t resist asking Grok to explain this Tweet when I went to grab the screencap. Flawless answer.

It turns out that the reason Biden made this crazy list of commutations is that these people were released to house arrest under the SAFE Act during Covid, which was designed to reduce prison overcrowding so they could comply with idiotic distance rules and that sort of thing. Then, the ACLU requested a commutation of all of those people on the grounds that they hadn’t re-offended while on house arrest. This is a somewhat strange line of reasoning since the judge selling kids would already never be in the position to do that again, and I don’t think the municipal embezzlement record holder is becoming a comptroller again [though this is America, a country of second chances, at 71 she is almost old enough to start a Senate career.] It should be acknowledged that such acts of mercy are an ancient prerogative of Heads of State and that the public generally finds it magnanimous, but this is just Joe Biden kowtowing to left-wing activists to forgive some of the most corrupt actions our society has seen over the last decades.

We might not have seen the worst of it yet though. There is talk about also giving amnesty to Fauci, the January 6th Committee, and more. The corpse of Joe Biden is on a commutation spree, and it doesn’t seem primed to end before January 20th. There is no indication that Biden intends to amnesty those people, but the dialogue about it is a crazy admission of perceived wrongdoing, given as all of those people are supposed to be heroes who are undeniably right about everything all the time and who would never do anything wrong. The alternative, I suppose, is the admission that “justice” has been weaponized and will easily be turned around on them…ain’t that a bitch, Democrats.

Everything About the Spy Agencies

Any year one could go on about the spy agencies. Perhaps Kash Patel will bring destruction down on the FBI, but it is likely that in one way or another these will continue on as before. Regardless, it was a hell of a year for US “intelligence.” The most notable failure is of course the Trump assassination attempt. We still never got a good picture of what those idiots were doing, but this graphic made by some internet user seems to cover it pretty well:

It should be the Secret Service enjoying some afternoon sodomy, but you get the idea.

As countless people have pointed out, all this time later, we still know next to nothing about this Matthew Crooks character. Compare this to Luigi Mangione, whom we learned everything about rapidly. Mangione we could, at least to a great extent, see the progression to the crime. Crooks remains a mystery, and being some sad dweeb, it is hard to come to a different conclusion that that he was manipulated by a different intelligence agency seeking to exploit the Secret Service’s clear incompetence. We may never know, though since this relates to Trump’s own life he may not be a pussy about declassifying all relevant information.

The situation with Ryan Routh, the attempted golf course ambusher, is quite a lot more clear, but in that case, we are still left wondering how they failed to shoot the guy:

Note who it is making that comment.

On top of all of this, and the myriad of other annual crimes, we were recently treated to the knowledge that 26 Federal Informants were there on January 6th, confirmed what we all know [this goes back to talks about giving the J. 6 committee immunity.] In a hilarious move, the hacks at Politico claimed the same report “debunked” a main conspiracy theory, on the grounds that they were “informants” not agents.

I could go on all day about hating the 3 letter “intelligence” and “law enforcement” agencies, but on this one at least, I know you get the idea.

The Rise and Fall of Kamalot

What to say about Kamala Harris that hasn’t already been said? It was truly a scene for the ages to watch the Democrats love this woman because they were told to, as I outlined at the time:

In Kamala Harris the Democrats found perhaps the only major figure in Washington DC who is even less coherent than Joe Biden. If we learned anything from this experience, it’s that you shouldn’t mix chardonnay and valium, though of course we all learned that from Karen Walker on the show Will & Grace 25 years ago. Pretending that Kamala Harris was somehow suitable to be President was perhaps an even more extreme example of pissing on you and telling you its raining than the people claiming Biden was still with it. This woman not only could not explain why she should be President, she didn’t appear to have any interest in or understanding of politics besides being obsessed with abortion, a terrible look for a childless woman pretending to be a parent. She truly was a DEI candidate in a year of great backlash, not just in that Biden openly chose her because he pledged to choose a black woman, but because her entire short career in the Senate was defined by DEI legislation and her aides acknowledged when they brought anything to her they had to explain how it impacted various identity groups because that was her obsession. She was the worst candidate for 2024, though she wouldn’t have made it any year. The Democrats are so broken they swallowed it, with glee. They even helped her raise so much money that was misspent there are calls to audit her campaign and people saying it was itself just a grift.

It must be added that another thing this campaign did to us was bring Tim Walz into national public life, one of the saddest woke shitlibs out there. He was like the dad in a commercial that nothing is going right for until someone helps him refinance his credit. In this environment the media ran a massive campaign trying to say “JD Vance is weird” because of some conversations from years before they kept highlighting. They were unable to see that JD Vance is interested in ideas and that to the rest of us who are not progressive ideologues, there is a difference between ideas and policy: you can be interested in something but not think it is feasible to implement at a national scale [and indeed, you should hold this view about at least some things.] Regardless, it was another hopeless propaganda campaign, as JD Vance is quite obviously not only charismatic and intelligent, he is one of the most talented politicians to have entered public life in decades. Any normal person can see this, they only confirmed all the memes about how they think being a freak is “normal” but it is a rebellion to be what was normal 20 years ago. Meanwhile, the “mainstream” media believers cannot shake the belief that JD Vance is widely hated and gives women “the ick,” despite that half of women in this country are really hot for him,

I suppose there is no reason to say much more about Kamala Harris, we can hope besides her inevitable post-Vice Presidency book, she is leaving public life…though incredibly her staff are apparently undecided between if she should run for Governor of California in 2026 or for the Presidency again in 2028, because no one attached to her is talented enough to get a job for a real candidate.

Coming soon, I’m sure.

Woke Al Qaeda Conquers Syria

The sudden fall of the Syrian Arab Republic is one of the most shocking political events in memory, but at the same time, it must be acknowledged that this many years into Clown World we were in fact overdue for Moderate Radical Islamic Terrorists. For some reason, after all of these years, Assad doesn’t seem to have even tried to fight. It’s clear the US and Turkiye helped the “rebel” offensive, but they had been on that side for over a decade. Perhaps, as I wrote recently, our confusion is because we don’t understand how history functions. Still, this is all next level.

We can’t know why Assad didn’t fight, though he certainly holds my ire for putting his country through all of these years of war only to finally abandon them without a fight. Perhaps we will never know why. At the same time, maybe putting it off so long did accomplish something, because the new Al Qaeda are multicultural, religiously tolerant, and believe in democracy and institutions. Their leader, Jolani, not only traded in his robes for a blazer, he has even now upgraded to a suit, outdoing Zelenksy:

I don’t know what “monk straps” are. This Al Qaeda terrorist now has dress clothes I haven’t even heard of.

He seems to have learned that the West only cares about appearances. Though we’re finally going the other way, for the past 10 years it’s been the case that if you said the N-word in a Tweet in 2009 or slapped a girl’s ass in highschool in the ‘80s they would try to destroy your life, yet for Jolani being a terrorist was just a “phase.” He was just a young hothead! I wonder now if Syria will face something worse still than hordes of headchopping terrorists: hordes of women in pantsuits employed by NGOs. Perhaps they really have turned him into a shitlib.

This is satire, but is rapidly becoming reality.

Despite that there was a $10 million reward from the US State Department for capturing this man, and that we supposedly “don’t negotiate with terrorists,” the US is going along with everyone else to kiss his ring, while we are treated to endless stories about him getting the New Syria into shape. We had CNN’s Clarissa Ward “free” the man from prison in the most obviously staged piece of fake news I have ever seen, only to then “correct” it by saying the guy was actually an Assad regime torturer, as if the man’s identity was the problem. At a certain point the media is doing these things to insult our intelligence. They’ve even gone as far as to say we are getting DOGE with terrorist characteristics:

Kinda makes you wonder what the Global War on Terror was for if we’re going to be happy about Al Qaeda marching into Damascus, but the obvious answer is it was for military contractor profits.

They’re Banning TikTok

The TikTok sale deadline for mid-January has been upheld by an appeals court. The claim, of course, is that the nefarious Chinks can pressure the parent company, ByteDance, to hand over your data. While that may be true, this is also a case of projection as the US Government knows how much data it gets from social media companies centered here, including from people all over the world. Everything I wrote in the spring remains true:

While, in theory, after a sale it can continue operating, it is a terrible precedent for speech, free enterprise, and really freedom all around, and its not clear they will agree to sell. Perhaps more importantly, I’m substantially less worried about the People’s Republic of China having my data than the spooks of our own country. It’s also almost definitely the case that anything the Chinese have the desire to know about me they can find out one way or another but that they have very little use for surveilling me.

I don’t personally use TikTok [though I would like to, if I ever get a decent phone, I hear it is a good way to promote your work.] However, it is clear it is a key vector by which people spread information. Just look at the situation in Romania referenced above, the country in Europe with the highest TikTok usage. The government is upset because it is where kids are and they can’t reach them, little different from the panic about Rock and Roll music so many decades ago.

Of course, the biggest problem is that videos critical of Israel have done well on TikTok. The reality is that the idealism of youth, general support for “underdogs” and everything else always lead the young to be more sympathetic towards Palestine. It’s also the case that Israel is committing genocide in front of our eyes and they keep uploading war crimes to the goddamn internet. Sure, it is easy to go down a TikTok “rabbit hole” because of how targeted the algorithm is, but that is true of everything else, it’s just the videos are shorter and catchier.

Most important of all of this though is pay attention to what they are angry about. It isn’t that TikTok is spreading harmful “misinformation,” it is that people on TikTok are sharing unapproved truths. We should not let these bastards take this key form of communication from us if there is anything we can do to stop it. It is just more censorship, because they are unwilling to govern well enough that you would genuinely support them.

The “Alt-Media” and its Total Lack of Accountability

It has been glorious watching the fall of the “mainstream” media’s credibility, there is no denying that. I’m happy that they’re trying to sell MSNBC. Newspapers of all levels have failed the public about national and state level political issues, though admittedly their local beats of going to city council meetings or covering water rights disputes are more or less irreplaceable by independent media. Really, we Substackers kind of downplay how much we need them for what we do, even if they suck, but that is not may main point here.

My point is that while the media may be nefarious, and it may be true that you can never doubt them enough, there is an entire system to their industry that isn’t particularly hard to understand. They have lawyers and sourcing rules and the like, even if they are not properly followed and they print obvious falsehoods. They do come back with corrections, even if they are a minor note on a page no one looks at. Someone like Rachel Maddow is as bad as the worst random lunatic online, but the real newspapers do have some standards, even if their primary purpose is to manipulate and mislead.

Meanwhile, in the face of their failure, we have Elon Musk saying, “you are the media now,” whatever that means. This sounds good when it is someone that is actually some sort of independent journalist going around with a camera and interviewing people. I love independent media and it is important. However, the entire alt-media ecosystem has little to no verification or correction process. Take someone like Mario Nawfal who is heavily promoted by Musk. He is just some [alleged] crypto scammer who started a fake Twitter media company and posts nonsense all the time. You might catch a story first from Mario’s page, but you have to be so incredibly plugged into the media to know what is true or false that by extension you don’t have any need for his page.

Assuming that the opposite of what the corporate media tells you is true is a decent enough rule of thumb for the average person, but there are commentators who make an entire career out of this and are equally wrong themselves. One of the worst offenders is Douglas MacGregor, the former colonel who has become a darling of all the NATO skeptics and/or Russia lovers. The dude has been saying Ukraine was going to collapse in a matter of weeks for almost three years and hasn’t at any point bothered to change his tune, and shares outright false stories all the time. Somehow, because he is on side he is considered credible; very few have stopped bringing the guy on. There are countless examples, he is just prominent.

Alternately, someone like Michael Tracey is the best example of independent media, because he goes around getting original stories and is meticulous about facts. Tracey may autistically argue some minor point for days on end to the detriment of understanding the bigger picture, but you can be sure that if he gets something factually wrong [which is rare] he’ll be the first to correct it and fix his mistake. He is also among the most insightful about what is wrong with the alt-media space.

There are, of course, advantages to being willing to talk about a story before it is all the way confirmed and before the narrative wheels of big media are rolling, but how hard is it to include language like “unconfirmed reports” and to correct the story if it was wrong? Even Laura Loomer, who is a lunatic, is worth following because she does get ahead of stories enough that she adds value, even if she is wrong other time and has many atrocious political and social views. The problem is the alt-media is full of people who are as attached to a narrative as any CNN addict and no better about fact checking. If we’re going to successfully counter the government lies we have to show our own integrity instead of promoting clickbait garbage that follows our preferred narrative.

You are the media now, and if anything you’re more stupid than the people the corporations are willing to pay. It is to my great distress that Mr. Potato Head Brian Stelter is kind of right in his comments here. Sorry, but I calls ‘em like I sees ‘em. An Airing of Grievances is no place to worry about offending my readers. Stop to think for a second about just how much bullshit you personally have found yourself tolerating from alt-media figures because they happen to be on side. For every talented independent journalist challenging narratives by presenting new facts there are multiple dissident “influencers” throwing shit against a wall and seeing what sticks.

Western Newspapers not Covering Haaretz

One of the few genuinely good things about Israel is its robust and relatively free media environment, though it has its own challenges. Haaretz, the newspaper of Israel’s liberal, educated, secular, minority, is one of the best newspapers in the world. It has had a big year, and has received criticism from all sides. In one of their more noteworthy stories, they discovered why a Palestinian had been under “administrative detention” [IE without trial] but weren’t allowed to print why, and published their article as it was written but with sections blacked out:

I happen to remember at the time Glenn Greenwald thought I was simping for Israel by praising Haaretz’s handling of the situation, but it has to be able to work in Israel and continue to print, or else it can’t do anything good at all. The great majority of newspapers confronted with this situation back down and just write a different story avoiding any form of confrontation. Alternately, Haaretz brought the maximum amount of attention to the censorship, even moreso than publishing the original story and letting it move through the court system. Ultimately, the Likud government, which is getting worse about press freedom, cut all ties with and sanctioned Haaretz.

All of the above is actually beside the point. The point is that Haaretz has had huge stories this year, and they have been entirely ignored by Western media. I have been saying the whole year that US newspapers need a dedicated Haaretz reporter just to make sure that stories from Haaretz make it into Western papers. The New York Times plays a specific role in the US press, where once it covers something, even if months late, in a middling fashion, or after lying previously, it enters the realm of acceptable discourse. Haaretz should be playing this role as it relates to Israel, but it is entirely ignored, and just being knowledgeable about what is reported in Israeli media will get you called an anti-semite conspiracy theorist by Zionists…in the case of Israeli Zionists completely disingenuously, but in the case of American boomercon Zionists out of brainwashed ignorance. Haaretz was inexcusably late to discuss why Zaka isn’t credible as a source on 10/7 given that they are the ones who broke the main Yehuda Meshi-Zahav sex abuse story some years ago [it took them until the end of January.] However, once they got there, Western media should have followed suit.

Most importantly though, the Western media completely blacked out the Hannibal Directive stories that were discussed throughout the Israeli press, and to this day most Americans have no idea that it is known throughout Israel that the IDF caused a large number of civilian casualties on 10/7. Though I wrote an entire story called “A Hannibal Directive by any Other Name”, half a year later Haaretz reported that they did in fact issue Hannibal directives by name. This is just one example of enough that I have lost track over the year. I had Grok give me a summary of some others this year, out of many. Once again, Haaretz can be over cautious and couch their language and at heart they are liberal Zionists, but it is absurd we give limitless money to Israel with which they do evil things, and our domestic debates are wholly ignorant of things reported in the country’s most significant newspaper. This is an inexcusable and intentional failing by the Western press.

I don’t think this guy quite has it right, because they must know that no one in the West even bothers to cover what is in Haaretz. Regardless, it is absurd and completely limits American public understanding of Israel, which is, of course, the point. One way or another its always about controlling your mind.

The Feats of Strength

Congratulations to all of my readers who hopefully weathered most or all of these lies without giving in, that is the real feat of strength. By the way, while we’re here, we should really stop using “psy-op” and “gaslight” so much when we just mean lie. The generic “lie” is better in many instances, or that they’re creating a narrative. A psy-op has to be some sort of organized disinformation operation, whereas gaslighting is specifically telling you you’re crazy for noticing the lies. We may as well be specific, as in the coming year we can expect plenty more lies, narratives, psy-ops, and gaslighting.

Still, as I said at the beginning, I am less angry at the world than I have been in years, which made this hard to write. My feeling better is kind of fucked up given that we watched the world accept genocide in Gaza, not to mention stand mostly helplessly at the horrible humanitarian situation in Sudan. Really, there are unspeakable horrors in the world, perhaps in 2024 moreso than usual, but for my sins, it is being lied to that bothers me more than anything. I suppose I could justify this by remembering that Assange said something like “if wars can be started by lies, perhaps they can be prevented by truth.”

It seems 2020 ideas are as out of fashion as Game of Thrones.

Either way, what we can see is that in many ways our elites are suffering from systemic narrative collapse. Who knows in what way they may strike back or in what new methods they can come up with, but as it stands, they are barely holding on. We are in some sort of transitional period, more than just between Presidents. Too much of the public realizes that our society is a scam and that they are sleepwalking us into a major war so the rich can keep getting richer while our liberties are constantly under attack. The Trump victory felt like sanity washing back over us, which says something really disturbing about the baseline we have come to live with in the last decade, because in 2015 Trump entering politics was the craziest thing.

Stay strong out there, and for real, please consider a paid subscription through the Holiday special. Until one of you can pin me in a wrestling match, Festivus is not over!

Thank you for reading! The Wayward Rabbler is written by Brad Pearce. If you enjoyed this content please subscribe and share. My main articles are free but paid subscriptions help me a huge amount. I also have a tip jar at Ko-Fi. I am a regular contributor at The Libertarian Institute. My Facebook page is The Wayward Rabbler. You can see my shitposting and serious commentary on Twitter @WaywardRabbler.