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In one of last week’s columns, I said something that generated a little bit of feedback; namely, I said that modern victimhood culture leads to the end of civilization because its proponents blow up the rules by which civilization is agreed on. And without dragging the reader of this column through that previous argument, I’ll explain the point this way — people whose goal is to achieve their own victimhood will act in highly destructive and irrational ways. Or at least, irrational in any other respect outside of achieving victimhood. An example I gave was the video of the Antifa agitator in Portland berating an ICE officer and then spitting on him, which generated the predictable result that Antifa Boy was promptly roughly arrested, and that was the result he was looking for. The rough arrest made him a victim, you see, and if the video was edited just right, the arresting officers would then be made to look like thugs. Victimhood culture is poison. It’s very, very bad stuff. Eventually the infrastructure on which it depends frays and then tears. Which, of course, is the aim of victimhood culture, and then the “victims” almost immediately morph into the aggressors. But only in one scenario. In another, the people accused as victimizers stop caring about the accusation. As I noted, the practitioners of this grift in the modern political arena are riding on the coattails of the Civil Rights movement, which used nonviolent means to highlight the victimization of the black community by racist Southern society. And those methods were adopted from the nonviolent struggle that Mohandas Gandhi and the Indian independence movement adopted in its efforts to throw off British rule. But Gandhi himself, asked once whether his methods would be successful in varying circumstances, unequivocally stated the answer was no. Specifically, he said that if it was Nazi Germany rather than the British Empire that held India under its boot, nonviolent methods would be suicidal. It takes a moral society to redress victimhood. Any other will be thoroughly unmoved. And that’s true when the victimhood is real. When it’s fake and contrived, which is the case with respect to the modern practitioners of victimhood culture, even a moral society is within its bounds to reject it. I bring this up because of something that I can only describe as both incomprehensible and illuminating. Specifically, this… ? BREAKING: In an insane move, Justice Ketanji Jackson declares we need to draw Congressional districts based on race because black people are like disabled people pic.twitter.com/JGLk7aJKlM “They don’t have equal access to the voting system. They’re DISABLED!” This is utter… — Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) October 15, 2025 Ketanji Brown Jackson is the Supreme Court’s chief practitioner of victimhood culture. In fact, her entire existence on the Court is a function of victimhood; she was, after all, nominated by Joe Biden expressly because she is black and female, and those were the two immutable characteristics to which Biden limited his pool of nominees. Limiting a pool of applicants to only a specific race is the very essence of racism and the antithesis of meritocracy — which was the basis under which America adopted the narrative of the civil rights movement. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. captured the nation’s imagination in his famous 1963 Washington Mall speech when he asked that we not judge by the color of skin but by the content of character. And some 60-odd years later Charlie Kirk was castigated as a racist for applying King’s formula to Jackson’s confirmation on the Supreme Court and finding it wanting. That’s what victimhood culture has done. Almost nobody is satisfied with Ketanji Brown Jackson on the Court. I’m not sure how satisfied black people are. A couple of my black friends, one of whom is a Democrat (I’m working on her, though), cannot stop expressing how embarrassing she is based on the stupid things she says even inside the ambit of her job on the Court. Biden’s everlasting shame in this case (there are many other cases, of course) is that by saddling the black community with Jackson, who is far and away the dumbest and least analytical justice in the building and who lacks the respect even of the other two leftists on the Court, he sentenced them to long-lasting embarrassment. But the criteria that unjustly elevated her beyond her capabilities also apply to Congress and how its districts are drawn, which makes it unsurprising that Jackson would resort to the stupid arguments she does in defense of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the central statute at issue in the Louisiana v. Callais case the Court heard oral arguments in on Wednesday. Because black victimhood in the Jim Crow South all those years ago must apparently be served forever, according to Ketanji Brown Jackson and the current luminaries of the “civil rights” movement. And the civil rights in question apparently include the right to win elections. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is the legal lodgepole that creates a necessity for affirmative action/DEI congressional districts for black Democrat politicians. And I’m styling it that way because there are so many black politicians who have been able to win elections for major political offices that it’s utterly unremarkable when one wins a statewide office or a seat in a majority-white district somewhere. Ilhan Omar getting elected in a 70 percent white congressional district puts paid to any notion that white voters won’t vote for a black politician. If you’ll vote for Omar, to say that you aren’t bigoted against black people is just about the only kind thing I can say about you. Many of those same people elected Keith Ellison to Congress and then made him Minnesota’s attorney general. As Daniel Cameron was elected Kentucky’s attorney general, as a Republican. Mark Robinson (North Carolina) and Winsome Earle-Sears (Virginia) were elected lieutenant governor in Southern states. Robinson ran and lost for governor, while Earle-Sears could well win her race for that position this year. As could Congressman Byron Donalds in Florida next year. Tim Scott is already a U.S. senator, you know. From South Carolina. I could regale the reader with many more successful black candidates who have won over majority-white constituencies. The idea that black politicians must have black districts in order to be successful is utter bunkum; it is forwarded by people whose “disability,” to use Jackson’s term, is ideological rather than racial. The Callais case arises from a lawsuit filed by white voters against the state of Louisiana for drawing a majority-black congressional district under pressure from an Obama-appointed federal judge in Baton Rouge. The suit alleged that the racially gerrymandered Sixth Congressional District, a Rorschach test monstrosity stretching from Baton Rouge northwest to Shreveport, violated the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection clause, and both the Western District of Louisiana and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed. The current officeholder in that district, an omnipresent political cat named Cleo Fields who is regarded as a joke by virtually everyone in Louisiana outside of his hardcore supporters, threw in an argument as the case wound its way to Washington that Jackson would echo. Fields asked, “How many Blacks have Louisiana elected to Congress from a majority white district? The answer to that is zero. Without the Voting Rights Act, people of color don’t have an opportunity to participate in the process.” I asked in response what Fields has done to make himself marketable to white voters and have not received an answer. The reason is that there is no answer to be had; Fields’ entire political career fits inside a petri dish of black victimhood and grievance and depends on the assuagement of that grievance with goodies from the public trough. Like a ready-made congressional seat, which Fields has had drawn for him not once but twice. If the Callais case results in a redrawn Louisiana congressional map, it will be the second time his district has been struck down for racial gerrymandering; the first time was in the early 1990s. And if Callais goes the way it appeared it might from the oral arguments presented Wednesday and the justices’ reactions, there will be a goodly number of sad Cleo Fieldses. And Hank Johnsons. And Bennie Thompsons and Frederica Wilsons. And other members of the Congressional Black Caucus representing electric-blue, majority-black districts in red states. Because those Republican Southern states forced to carve out DEI districts to pay for the sins of ancient and long-dead Democrats won’t continue honoring this fraudulent victimhood, you see, and their legislators will go to work in redrawing maps to introduce merit as a metric of success where victimization currently rests. Does that mean fewer members of the Congressional Black Caucus? Sure, maybe. It does mean the character of successful black politicians will necessarily change. It means we would likely see more Harold Fords and less Sheila Jackson Lees. And that would be of great benefit not just to America as a whole but to the black community. Maybe even to the Democrat Party, though that isn’t a consideration any of us should spend much time contemplating. Callais isn’t decided yet, so this is all speculative. Aspirational. But after Wednesday’s oral arguments in the case, what’s clear is that victimhood is a very poor substitute for merit. And there is now an opportunity to free ourselves from one major manifestation of that substitution.

Join us this evening, Thursday, October 16, at 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time to watch The American Spectator Foundation’s 57th annual Robert L. Bartley Gala live online! Please go to The American Spectator’s Facebook page, found here, to watch the event. This year, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin will be awarded our inaugural Good Governance Award and commentator Scott Jennings will be awarded the 2025 Barbara Olson Award for Excellence and Independence in Journalism. The evening also features a Q&A with American Spectator editor Paul Kengor and senior editor Daniel J. Flynn about Flynn’s new book, The Man Who Invented Conservatism: The Unlikely Life of Frank S. Meyer. The evening additionally showcases a special preview and discussion of Robert Orlando’s new documentary, Surviving the Kultursmog: R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr, and the Rise of The American Spectator. The event honors Robert L. Bartley, editor of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page for more than 30 years. It will take place at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

Europe today is the spoiled brat of the West. The sulky teenager who rebels against everything he’s supposed to obey, who governs from daydreams divorced from reality, and who’s forever trying to dodge responsibility. Europe reminds me of myself at 15, when I used to hide in my room playing video games just to avoid going out to buy bread. My life was pure misery: Dad always found me. Then I fell in love with the new baker. I still remember those blue eyes. My parents were astonished that I suddenly wanted to buy bread six times a day. She was drop-dead gorgeous. But that’s another story. Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our fall 2025 print magazine. The United States has become Papa America. Its power is overwhelming. Every now and then, it clears its throat and says nothing at all — and even that’s enough to make Brussels tremble. If the Brussels bureaucrats had their way, we Europeans would all be zipping around on electric scooters, paying even higher taxes than the ones already bleeding us dry, munching on crickets, living in eternal lockdown, cheering for Hamas instead of Israel, and probably all identifying as transgender — if one can even draw a line between the surgeon’s scalpel and the quarterly castration of European taxes. Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our latest print magazine. The woke plan — the 2030 Agenda — is blowing up in the faces of European politicians. Farmers and ranchers have had it with the endless stream of idiotic regulations. A recent example: Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, and Greece suffered devastating forest fires this summer, with entire villages and farms reduced to ash. Rural people know why. “Until a few years ago, they let us clear the underbrush in our forests,” a friend in northwest Spain told me. “Now, thanks to the endless web of national and European environmental regulations, we’re not allowed to, especially in so-called protected areas — which is basically all of them. So when a fire starts, the whole place goes up uncontrollably. They don’t even let us graze sheep or cows in the forests anymore — the best brush-clearing method there is. And in the end, they just tell us every fire — arson, mind you — is climate change. Crooks, the lot of them.” The anger is real. If fires are blamed on climate change while arsonists keep getting arrested, then apparently “climate change” has a first and last name. Great, now we know how to take climate change down — no taxes required! Citizens are fed up. We can’t even drive in our own cities. The middle classes refuse to be forced into electric cars. And Ursula von der Leyen and Angela Merkel’s suicidal immigration policies have turned European cities into daily crime scenes of machete and knife attacks. The elites promised us that illegal immigrants would work, contribute, and pay our pensions. Right now, we’re the ones paying them. Meanwhile, in many neighborhoods of Europe’s major cities, you can’t walk out your front door alone after 10 p.m. The backlash is obvious: A new alternative Right has emerged that is determined to confront globalism, climate hysteria, wokeism, and illegal immigration. And, of course, to restore old-fashioned national sovereignty. These are politicians who defend their values unapologetically — something Europe’s so-called center Right, which is often more progressive than the socialists, has long failed to do. When Donald Trump returned to the White House, things got complicated for these new parties. In countries like Germany and France, they’ve been harassed by courts and the media alike, with the old parties doing everything possible not only to block their electoral victories but to stop them from even running. Von der Leyen herself, in one of many outrageous abuses of her supposedly neutral position, has spent years threatening the parties she brands as “far-right” — sometimes called “Trumpist far-right” by the obedient press — and, even worse, threatening the voters who dare to support them in Italy, Hungary, and Spain. A new alternative Right has emerged that is determined to confront globalism, climate hysteria, wokeism, and illegal immigration. Javier Milei’s victory in Argentina was a gust of fresh air for Europe’s conservatives — a blessing and an endorsement. But with Trump back, the joke is over. Europe’s elites can no longer hold their citizens hostage. The entire West is experiencing a wave of new conservatism, a return to common sense, and a reclamation of sovereignty as the guarantee of individual freedoms. Those clinging to power in Brussels can’t keep doubling down on the same destructive policies that have gutted Europe’s middle classes, families, industries, and pride — policies that have left us uprooted from a history that, just a generation ago, we celebrated, but are now told to be ashamed of. The recent Trump–von der Leyen meeting was pure delight for those of us who always suspected that, in a previous life, the German politician from the European People’s Party had been a witch who dined by nibbling on Victorian teacups. Trump made one of the most sectarian, arrogant politicians of this century kneel like a lamb, saving her shrill anti-Trump theatrics for another day. All she lacked was throwing herself on the floor to shine his shoes — though, had she done so, Melania might have seized the chance to plant a heel in her backside.  It’s a mistake to think Trump is hated most by Europe’s Left. The ones who truly hate him are von der Leyen and the Christian Democrats of Brussels — the so-called center Right, who in reality are just leftists dabbling in center-right cosplay. My theory: The reason these hollow, principle-free politicians so distrust Trump is that deep down they envy him. They wish they had his resolve, conviction, and, above all, ability to connect with the middle classes.  For Europe’s Christian Democrat elites — the hundred thousand political children of the idiotic Angela Merkel — it’s intolerable that ordinary workers now despise them and instead bat their eyelashes at Trump. That’s the same reason they keep trying to cancel Giorgia Meloni, Santiago Abascal, Viktor Orbán, and Marine Le Pen. But it’s too late. The West is turning in another direction. It’s unstoppable. And Donald Trump is steering the wheel. By Bill Wilson for The American Spectator Europe has spent years importing all the ideological junk America’s Democrats churn out. From immigration (“No human is illegal” and other kindergarten Beatles lyrics) to climate change, Obama and Biden have exported mountains of ideological trash that Europe’s politicians embraced with enthusiasm. They called it progress and modernity — simply because it came from America. And now, the same elites want to block Europe from catching the wave of new conservatism, which in private they dismiss as pure fascism. They won’t succeed. They’re simply too stupid. The West is turning in another direction. It’s unstoppable. And Donald Trump is steering the wheel. In short: Donald Trump has been Europe’s alarm clock. Under Joe Biden, the entire European Commission drifted in a deep, hypnotic sleep, lulled by the former president’s soporific powers. Trump barged into their nursery armed with a bass drum and three cymbals, crashing away as loudly as Will Smith slapped Chris Rock, jolting the politicians into finally working for the citizens they’re supposed to serve. We will win. As much as it pains me — given my incurable addiction to humility — I have to admit I’m always right these days. And we will win. Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our fall 2025 print magazine.

by Eric Zuesse, The Duran: https://www.youtube.com/live/Z7AtO3EcBSs “Col Doug Macgregor: Trump’s Tomahawk Talk: HUGE MISTAKE” 14 October 2025 Danny Davis / Deep Dive 20:14 MACGREGOR: It boils down to Germany, France, and Great Britain. And again, I think 20:20 President Putin is watching carefully what happens in those countries. I mean, I’m sure you’ve seen the unrest […]

by Hailey Gomez, All News Pipeline: Former Democratic Tennessee Rep. Harold Ford Jr. suggested Monday on Fox News’ “The Five” that Congress should pass a crime bill to address issues like cashless bail, prompting co-host Greg Gutfeld to ask why lawmakers haven’t already done so. In an effort to crack down on crime and civil […]

In a statement, Urban apologized and said he never takes his fans for granted. Continue reading…