The world is coming apart, the Middle East is in savage chaos, we have a president determined to destroy the country, and the most important news event of the century is the transformation of Bruce Jenner into Caitlin Jenner. There are those who want to take his Olympic medals away because he was a woman, and feminists who insist the birth certificates of his children be changed to list him as one of the two mothers. But he is not a woman now, appearances to the contrary, and never was. He may very well have always been homosexual or bi-sexual, but still a biological man. Whatever his sexual orientation, he is obviously suffering from a severe mental disorder, and needed a psychiatrist more than he needed a surgeon. I can sympathize with Bruce/Caitlin for thinking he was someone else, because I once briefly thought I was Captain Marvel, a 1940s comic book superhero. Fortunately I didn’t require surgery, just a pair of red socks and a white cape.

Transgendered now is all the thing
And men are women too
And queens may choose to be a king
Who wouldn’t, wouldn’t you?
Birth records now leave spaces blank
Where once were fathers names
For every Joe and Bob and Frank
Have now become cute dames
No longer surgeons we employ
But madamegeons instead
So just be careful, little boy
With whom you take to bed

The Founders built an impenetrable and impervious granite wall around the new Republic, keeping it safe from outside forces that might wish to destroy it, but they could not build a wall that looked inward, to the enemy within. Historians will note, some with regret, some with satisfaction, that the grand experiment, the American Republic, had come to an end at a known time, date and place, on the steps of the Capitol, at twelve noon, the twentieth day of January 2009.

They built a wall of granite blocks
Great oaken doors and cast iron locks
Guard towers musket shots apart
All guarded by the free man’s heart
The walls were sturdy, wide and high
In length horizons met the eye
Secure so long as ramparts stood
So long no granite turned to wood
Yet turn to rotting wood they did
As deep within the people hid
The enemy who crept unseen
Whose touch turned all to that unclean
The walls gave way, now worn and thin
Torn by the enemy within

There are those who believe the world today is a dark and gloomy place, that Western civilization is in decline and soon to die. I don’t think things are this dark. Throughout history every society has produced a man who rises up to save the day. Cincinnatus, Themistocles, Washington, Lincoln, come instantly to mind. Of course the world has seen the Napoleons and Caesars as well, but so far we have avoided such a course, and there is every reason to believe we shall do so again. ISIS may not be the junior varsity in its region, but how long will they stand up against the full weight of the US Air Force and the Fourth Infantry Division? And that is what it will come to, and then it will be all over for ISIS, al Qaeda, the Taliban, Hamas and all the rest, as well as every Muslim state allied with them.

When things look very dark and gloomy
The bravest say “Just leave it to me!”
The Left elites are still in power
But free men rise when comes the hour
To take a stand and grab a rifle
The world has found it’s not to trifle
With those Americans when pissed
Who put the names of those on lists
Who wind up pushing up green sod
And crying to unhearing God

Richard Fernandez, the creator and writer of the essential conservative blog The Belmont Club, asks how can ISIS receive so many blows and not only survive those blows but thrive. He answers his own question by saying ISIS is resistant to whatever we throw at it because it is not a nation state. Westphalian nation states are very good at making war against other Westphalian nation states, but ISIS is an amorphous blob of fighters who, when hurt or defeated, simply reform and fight on. There is no capital city to be conquered, no Emperor or Tsar to hang, nothing to really get at with modern weapons. The thunderbolts of Zeus do not work against a force like ISIS or al Qaeda. It seems to me, then, that the solution is to make ISIS a Westphalian State and, Pygmalion-like, turn it into a puppet. It should be an easy task for Obama to assume the role of Pygmalion, for does he not already consider himself a Greek god? The problem arises when Obama, again Pygmalion-like, falls in love with his jihadi puppet.

Create a State Westphalian
From ISIS, like Pygmalion
Has done in times long past when there was Zeus
Make them a nation state
Give them their Caliphate
And then like Zeus a thunderbolt cut loose
Give them a lordly king
Line up to kiss the ring
And give them letter agencies and such
An EPA of course
For stocks and bonds a bourse
A crazy leftist polis like the Dutch
And once that this is done
You’ll find the war is won
Without a shot, for when push comes to shove
Obama can create
A modern Leftist state
And like Pygmalion, he will fall in love

President Obama’s overriding goal is the re-creation of the Ottoman Empire, with the destruction of the United States a by-product of that ambition. What will Obama gain by realizing this ambition? He will gain the place in history he has dreamed of since his birth to his virgin mother as he accepts the Sword of Osman and reigns for life as Caliph Hussein Mehmed 1, the Conqueror of Constantinople and the Bringer of The Light of Islam To The World, with the minor benefit of a hareem of beautiful young boys and the pleasure of turning Michelle into a castrati in the expectation that the royal boys choir will need another soprano.

The Sultan sits upon his golden throne
Surveying all in his all-seeing eye
Adoring choirs sing for him alone
As from his lips from time to time a sigh
For seldom has he time to play the lute
Nor time to write the books once slickly Ayerd
He mourns that his strong loins will bear no fruit
Because his chromosomes were all X paired
He reigned until his death by accident
As Janissaries playful cut him down
His legacy a lovely precedent
His fine castrati voice of much renown

Memorial Day was created to honor the dead of the Civil War, and has since come to mean honoring the dead of all the country’s wars. That is the idea. The reality is that Memorial Day is a beach or lake or picnic holiday, surrounded by Memorial Day car sales, all observed by vast numbers of Americans who have no clue what the day is meant to be. Except for those who have lost someone, the ones who still put the tiny flags on the cold, cold  graves.

The cemetery’s winding walk
The grass as green as grass can grow
Beneath the grass the soldiers talk
And wonder if the people know
What it is like to die so young
Alive until that fateful time
When in the balance living hung
Without a reason or a rhyme
They talk together in the cold
And don’t bemoan their awful fate
For ever young, for never old
They can but rest and patient wait
They know what day it is today
They feel the gentle press above
They smell the wreaths their families lay
And know the tiny flags are love

ISIS has captured the important city of Ramadi in western Anbar province, the largest province in Iraq, and American pundits are already wondering if this is another Tet, the offensive by the North Vietnamese in 1968 that was defeated in every battle, with the North Vietnamese suffering great losses, yet was a victory because it turned American opinion against the war. At the fierce battle for the important city of Hue, the US Marines reduced the flower of the North Vietnamese army to rotting corpses, but Walter Cronkite, the anchor of CBS News and the most trusted man in America, convinced President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara that the Tet offensive showed that the war was lost. The media has no such power today. Today it is Obama making every attempt to convince Cronkite that the war is lost.

The differences are stark, and yet
Ramadi may yet be a Tet
If our Barack will ISIS save
And Cronkite rolls inside his grave

Europe, and particularly Italy, is being inundated by waves of Muslim refugees fleeing the Sunni/Shia civil war, so many that European countries are abandoning the policy of compassion and are now denying the refugees entrance by destroying the boats and ships before they can be loaded. Mercy and compassion are private things, not to be entered into lightly by nations, for whom the well-being of their own people is the first consideration, particularly when the refugees are of a different culture and worldview from your own. Otherworld refugees from violent and bloody war carry their otherworld culture with them as well as all the trauma of that violent and bloody dislocation, and often carry the plagues of war with them as well. Thus, after accepting the first wave of otherworld refugees into the country out of compassion, straining the hosts’ resources and patience, allowing boatloads of successive waves of otherworld, other culture refugees to wander the seas in futile search for succor is not a criminal act, but one of self-preservation. Self-preservation works both ways, and once it becomes clear that no one will take in any more, they will no longer board the boats, but will stay in place and wait it out, as most have done throughout history, for people do not willingly leave the land of their fathers, do not willingly abandon the bones of their ancestors. No war has ever lasted forever, and no people has ever been permanently homeless.

The quality of mercy is not strained
At least this many years sayeth the Bard
But mercy once dissolved is not regained
Though consciences may take the loss quite hard
What can you do when millions clamor out
For succor and for just the chance to live
When one’s compassion then begins to doubt
And giving all is more than one can give
The history of mankind is quite clear
That murder and destruction will not cease
The dispossessed forced from their land held dear
To wander and to wonder if there’s peace
A place where kindly strangers take them in
And see their wives and children taken care
Knowing that their one and only sin
Was being in a place when war was there
But when the first small stream becomes a flood
And refugees pile up before the gate
It’s when the stream turns red with flowing blood
That doors are closed and then it is too late
For mercy is at most at private thing
A nation cannot risk its peoples’ lives
Allowing in the plagues the migrants bring
The plagues that follow all when war arrives

The only difference between Zimbabwe and the current United States is the name of the dominant political party. Both claim to be small d democrats, but the reality is that both rule by destroying the democratic process, Robert Mugabe by allowing one vote, one time, then declaring himself president for life. The Democratic Party took a longer, but no less effective route in the destruction of American democracy. Seventy years of progressive salami slicing has done the trick, beginning with racial politics that put once freed African Americans back on the Democrat plantation, and ending with seducing low IQ voters with promises of other peoples’ money. By definition one half the populace has an IQ below 100 and once seduced they stayed seduced. The opposition party occasionally wins an election, but the power remains with the far left radical Progressive Democrats, who seem to survive, and even thrive, despite the enormous damage they have done to the country. The Democrats have given African Americans and low IQ voters what is essentially one vote, one time.

The Democrats, I will admit
Have much that’s recommended
And in return they will permit
A freedom that’s pretended
The people put in office
Democrats who then will harden
Their grasp on power and who when
Arrested get a pardon
It matters not that thieves and crooks
Adorn the halls of power
They smile and slyly cook the books
And watch the money shower
It’s all Mugabe, all the time
Tyrannical precision
Eternal rule because of a
One vote, one time, decision

The pundits at the New York Times and elsewhere have now voiced the considered opinion that the Assad regime is finished, and they are concerned about the uncertain future of Syria, believing the county itself might not survive the current civil war. Assad may not survive, and probably won’t, but the country will. Syria is an ancient land, and her present troubles are just that – present troubles – for Syria has seen many such troubles since the dawn of recorded history and has survived. Syria was old when kings first built palaces of hand formed sun dried mud bricks, and wore the royal purple from Tyre. Syria was old when the Pharaohs came, and watched Egyptian war chariots travel the Damascus Road. Present troubles will fade, to be succeeded by future troubles, for there will always be troubles in the Middle East.

It surely is Assad, sad sight
And I don’t want to weary ya
But it’s not right the Alawite
Should rule so long in Syria
A land old when the Pharaohs came
And ruled the mountains and the coast
A land where Hittites played the game
And then at Kadesh made their boast
Phoenician ships sailed the Great Sea
With cedar for the world’s great kings
And with great skill remained men free
Till forced to kiss Assyrian rings
The land our alphabet was born
Where ocean going ships first sailed
And now in war and chaos torn
So long it’s lived, and now has failed
But only man will feel the pain
The land survives, the mountains, fields
The warming sun, the life gift rain
Will over watch, life never yields