21Texas21

Native Texan. Independent thinker. Serial retweeter.

[Torsten Prochnow @TorstenProchnow]

Germany’s censorship may have done more to promote Citizen Vigilante than any advertising campaign or guerrilla marketing ever could have achieved.

By refusing the film an official release, German authorities did not make the debate disappear. Quite the opposite. They made the film more interesting, more controversial, and far more visible to people who would otherwise never have watched it.

Originally, Citizen Vigilante was mainly about Europe’s inability to protect and defend itself: a continent paralyzed by submission, obedience to incompetent governments, and politically biased police forces. But the film has now become something larger as well: a free-speech issue against German and European censorship.

The hard and uncomfortable truth presented in the film does not fit the soft, woke worldview of those currently governing in Berlin. That is why they apparently preferred the movie to disappear quietly. The population was not supposed to talk even more about migrant violence. And they were certainly not supposed to talk even more about the incompetence of the left-leaning Merz government and the two-tier policing practiced by German police forces.

Instead, Germany achieved the exact opposite. It scored an own goal.

The film is set in Europe, but its central figure is an American fighter who confronts both criminal perpetrators and corrupt state and police representatives directly, with weapons, discipline, and decisive action. Some people have asked why the hero is not English, French, or German, given that the story takes place in Europe.

The answer is simple: it would not have been believable.

It would have felt false if a European protagonist had suddenly appeared out of nowhere as the hero. The Old World has long stopped producing credible heroes of this kind. It never had a Batman, and it certainly does not have a Citizen Vigilante.

Europe has spent decades breeding total passivity and complete obedience into its civil societies. Not noble pacifism, but paralyzed passivism. Submission. Subordination. Hesitation. A true Untertan mentality. A culture of waiting, complaining, complying, and ultimately accepting whatever the state decides to impose, even when it is irrational, destructive, and leads to cultural chaos and national decline.

The American Second Amendment reflects the idea that a free people must never be fully dependent on the state for their own security, and that an armed citizenry creates a final barrier against state tyranny.

Europe does not have this. And the European mind does not even comprehend it. Europeans have become obedient subjects, even when obedience leads to their own downfall. They behave like lemmings walking toward the cliff, one after another.

This is exactly the cultural background that makes Citizen Vigilante and its American main character so authentic and believable.

The protagonist is not a weak European shaped by woke state dependency, speech control, censorship, bureaucratic obedience, and disarmed submission. He comes from the New World, from a culture in which personal responsibility, suspicion of state power, armed self-defense, and direct action are still part of the national character.

In Europe, by contrast, not only have the people become far too passive and lethargic, but police forces have increasingly become political auxiliaries of left-wing politics. In countries like the UK, France, and Germany, the police often appear not as neutral protectors of law and order, but as instruments of political suppression, censorship, selective enforcement, two-tier policing, and helpers of an emerging police state in the spirit of Orwell’s 1984 and Big Brother.

And that is why the strong, tough American protagonist works. He represents a type of man Europe has long lost and almost forgotten: a man with backbone. Resolute, decisive, trained, willing to act, and unwilling to surrender to a collapsing system and a corrupt state.

He stands up. He pushes back. He resists. He says no. And beyond that, he acts. He fights. With full force and full determination. That is what makes him American, and that is exactly the type of character Citizen Vigilante needed.

That is also why Germany wanted silence. The authorities did not want people to see that they can stand up, rise, push back, resist, say no, and fight for their own future.

But instead of silence, Germany created attention. While Germany wanted control over the narrative, it created curiosity. Germany wanted to suppress the film, but in doing so, it may have awakened a sleeping giant. It may have turned Citizen Vigilante into a global free-speech story as a second storyline, beyond the issue of migrant crime.

And if @ElonMusk enters the discussion, this could become much bigger than Germany ever expected. Some in Berlin may soon say, “The spirits I called.” Perhaps it would have been wiser not to close their eyes to reality. Because now reality is catching up with Germany, not only on the screen, but already in the streets of Berlin and across the country. “Stadtbild,” as Merz once called it.

Uwe Boll’s film hits the mark because Europe is weak. It has forgotten how to act, how to defend itself, how to resist, and, most importantly, how to fight. Just as Europe did not want to fight in foreign policy, for example alongside the Americans against the Islamist regime in Iran, Europeans also do not want to fight domestically to take back their own countries.

They seem to have resigned inwardly. They seem to have given up. Partly because the demographic boomerang caused by catastrophic migration policy may have become too massive and perhaps already uncontrollable. And perhaps because it may already be too late to start fighting now.

The demographic pressure created by mass migration is enormous, while Europeans have almost nothing to put against it because of their own extremely weak birth rates.

Europe has therefore given up believing in reversal, let alone victory. It has forgotten that liberty is not preserved by bureaucrats, censors, politically biased police forces, and obedient citizens, but by people who still have the will, the courage, and the backbone to stand up and say no.

Europe has given up on itself.

Maybe things in Europe must become much worse before they can ever become better again.

Or maybe it is already too late for even that.

Citizen Vigilante or not.

[𝗠3MPH1S-B3113 @M3mph1sB]

They Love America

[Playteaux @Playteaux1]

The Big USA Sleepover

[Patricia Heaton @PatriciaHeaton]

This

[Traces of Texas @TracesofTexas]

I have a doozy of a Texas history story for y'all. It's a bit adult in nature, so if that kind of thing bothers you, STOP HERE.

It's actually one of those stories that sounds as if it were invented by a frontier newspaper editor after a long night in a saloon, but it really happened. All of this took place on what is now South Mesa street but which at that time was called South Utah Street.

In April 1886, El Paso's vice district was dominated by two rival madams: tiny, fiery Etta Clark and the much larger Alice "Big Alice" Abbott. I've read different estimates of how large Big Alice was, but between 230 and 300 .lbs seems to be the consensus. I only mention it because that extra padding might be what saved her.

The immediate cause of the feud was Bessie Colvin, a beautiful and highly profitable prostitute who worked for Alice. Bessie decided she'd had enough of Alice's establishment and announced she was moving across the street to work for Etta instead. That was the Victorian-era equivalent of a star quarterback entering the transfer portal.

Alice was furious. She marched across the street to Etta's house and demanded that Bessie come back. An argument escalated into a fight. Alice forced her way inside, punched Etta, and tried to drag the terrified Bessie away. Etta retreated to her room, grabbed a revolver, returned to the parlor, and warned Alice to leave. Alice kept advancing. Etta fired. The bullet struck Alice in the groin area, and the giant madam staggered into the street crying that she had been shot.

The whole lurid affair electrified El Paso. The El Paso Herald newspaper struggled to describe it because of the private, personal area in which the bullet had struck Alice. A doctor said that the bullet had entered near Alice's pubic arch, an anatomical term referring to the front of the pelvis, so the Herald decided to use that. But when the story reached the newspaper, a reporter either misunderstood the term or made a typographical error and reported that Alice had been shot in the "public arch."

That mistake became legendary.

For years afterward, El Paso residents reportedly greeted Big Alice with questions such as, "How's your public arch today?" The phrase became one of the most famous newspaper blunders in Texas frontier history. Alice survived the wound, but she never completely escaped the joke.

The legal ending was almost as surprising as the shooting. Etta was charged with attempted murder, but a jury accepted her claim of self-defense and acquitted her. Even more astonishing, after all the screaming, fistfights, gunfire, court proceedings, and public embarrassment, Bessie Colvin eventually returned to work for Big Alice.

So the whole affair entered El Paso folklore as a feud between two rival madams over a star employee, culminating in a gunshot wound, a courtroom drama, and one immortal newspaper typo: the shooting in the "public arch."

Shown here is Bessie Colvin, the young woman whose decision started all of this brouhaha.

[Sara Gonzales @SaraGonzalesTX]

….and then he was acquitted by the Senate. Cleared of all of it.

Pretty important tidbit y’all left out, wouldn’t you say?

[Jason Howerton @jason_howerton]

Since I’m going to be hearing this for the next 6 months as a Texas voter, let me answer the question:

“You would vote for an adulterer over James Talarico? That’s not very Christian.”

Here’s the truth: I would rather vote for almost anyone else who is going to at least advocate for conservative *policies* over a literal heretic who wears my faith like a skin suit, advocates for policies that harm children, endorses immorality and generally harm society.

Ken Paxton has personal baggage. I don’t deny that. But Talarico has plenty too — and he openly mocks God’s law and treats Jesus as a political mascot all while pushing a radical far-left agenda that would be a disaster for my state.

You see, I’m an adult. I do not expect those who are seeking political office to be my moral superiors or even trustworthy. They are tools to be used to do the least amount of damage via policy.

I wish more pastors and men who live godly lives were running. I really do. But the options we get are what they are.

Paxton supports secure borders, law enforcement, lower taxes, unleashing American energy, the Second Amendment, just to name a few.

Talarico supports unlimited abortion, trans-ing children, higher taxes, government-run “healthcare,” and is incredibly comfortable blaspheming the word of God.

I’m not voting for a priest. I’m voting for an imperfect person to represent my interests. That’s how it works.

You’re not going to guilt trip Texans into supporting a looney tunes candidate like Talarico. Paxton will win by 5+.

It’s about policy, not personality.

[Cynical Publius @CynicalPublius]

Not to disagree with Benny, but Ken Paxton did not merely defeat John Cornyn.

Ken Paxton ANNIHILATED John Cornyn.

That was a good ol' fashioned Texas a$$ whuppin.

If we can hold in the midterms and get Rubio or Vance elected in 2028, we really may be at the inflection point of having a Republican Party that can make real change happen.

[Mike Netter @nettermike]

Have you noticed how the Honor Guard pays close attention to folding the flag? The flag is folded exactly thirteen times in remembrance of the original 13 colonies. There is also a specific meaning to each fold. Here they are...

Here is what each fold of the flag means (I think you'll see an important theme from all thirteen.):

The first fold symbolizes life.

The second fold represents a belief in eternal life.

The third fold is made in honor and remembrance of the veterans who gave their lives in defense of the country in order to help attain peace throughout the world.

The fourth fold is in recognition of the nature of the country’s citizens to trust in God.

The fifth fold is a tribute to the United States... According to Stephen Decatur, S. Naval Commander during the American Revolution and War of 1812, “Our country, in dealing with other countries, may she always be right, but it is still our country, right or wrong.”

The sixth fold symbolizes where people’s hearts lie in keeping with the words of our pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

The seventh fold pays tribute to all of our Armed Forces.

After all, through our Armed Forces, the United States is protected against all enemies.

The eighth fold is a tribute to those who died, and as Psalm 23 states, “Entered into the valley of the shadow of death.”

The ninth fold honors womanhood.

The 10th fold is a tribute to fathers.

The 11th fold represents the lower portion of the seal of King David and King Solomon and glorifies, in Judaism, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

The 12th fold represents an emblem of eternity and glorifies, in the eyes of Christians, God the Father, the Son and Holy Ghost.

The 13th and last fold reminds us that when the flag is completely folded, in the uppermost corner signifies our national motto, “In God We Trust.”

Additionally, when the flag is completely folded and tucked in, the resulting shape appears like a tricorne hat and represents the soldiers who served under General George Washington, the sailors and marines who served under Naval Commander John Paul Jones and the many who have followed them in order to preserve the rights, privileges and freedoms we enjoy today.

So in the future when you see a flag folded, hopefully we will all now have a deeper understanding and appreciation of the importance and meaning of the folds.

God Bless You and God Bless America

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I am the same Senior Vice President of Late Night Strategy at CBS.

I have received 400 interview requests since the confession went viral. I declined all of them. An interview would require me to explain what I meant. I do not explain what I mean. I build systems and watch them execute. That's what I want to talk about today. Execution.

Jimmy Kimmel appeared on Michelle Obama's podcast last month and said 14 words that I have now listened to 43 times. I put the audio clip on a loop in my office, the way traders put CNBC on mute. Background confirmation. Here are the fourteen words:

"My job is whatever I decide my job is or whatever my employer allows me to do."

I need to take those apart because they are the most honest thing a late-night host has said in a decade and he does not know it.

"Whatever I decide my job is." That's the priest. The product is self-defined and therefore unfalsifiable. You cannot measure a saved soul. You can only measure whether the congregation returned. They returned. Therefore, the ministry continues. Don't tell him what his job is.

"Or whatever my employer allows me to do." That's the confession inside the sentence he didn't know he was making. The priest just told you the bishop writes the sermon. In fourteen words, on a podcast, the last remaining late-night host said: I define my own job, unless my boss defines it for me. He said this like it was one thought. It is two mutually exclusive claims separated by the word "or." He cannot hear the contradiction. That's how you know the architecture is working.

I need to provide context for why those fourteen words are my second-greatest professional achievement.

In September 2025, after Kimmel's monologues about the Charlie Kirk assassination, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr went on a podcast and said six words: "We can do this the easy way or the hard way." Nexstar and Sinclair — station groups that own the local affiliates carrying the show — pulled Jimmy Kimmel Live from their airtime. ABC suspended the show. I want to be very precise about the sequence. His employer told him what his job is. Specifically, his employer told him his job is to not be on television. He obeyed. He returned. On terms. At sixteen million dollars a year. Months later, on a podcast, he said "don't tell me what my job is."

He said it to an audience that cannot suspend him. He said it in the one room where saying it costs nothing. That is not defiance. That is a priest rehearsing a sermon in an empty church and calling it bravery.

He also said — on the same podcast — "I love when the audience laughs. There's nothing more exciting to me than that." He said he loves laughter. He has not produced involuntary laughter since 2017. He produces applause. He has confused the memory of being a comedian with the practice of being a priest. I know because I built the architecture that made that confusion feel like identity. That is a butcher saying he loves animals. He is telling you what he lost and framing it as what he kept.

Now. The part I need to name.

The Correction Reflex. I've been calling it different things in different decks for seven years. I'm giving it a public name now because I watched it execute in real time and I want credit.

When Kennedy shared my original confession, "superb dissection of the shocking collapse of liberal comedy", Kimmel did not address the substance. He found a spelling error. Kennedy wrote "nader" instead of "nadir." Kimmel posted: "It's 'nadir,' dummy. Now get back to spreading polio."

The Correction Reflex is the behavioral pattern where a challenge to institutional authority is answered not with a defense of the institution's output but with a demonstration of the challenger's inadequacy. You don't address the argument. You find the grammar mistake. You find the mispronunciation. You find the resume gap. The correction proves hierarchy. The hierarchy proves authority. The authority proves the challenge was illegitimate. The substance disappears because addressing substance would require the product to be falsifiable. And the product cannot be falsifiable. I explained that in paragraph four.

But here's what made me proud enough to write a sequel.

The media coverage split exactly along the line my original confession predicted. Fox News, a network that has every ideological reason to dismiss me, engaged with the substance. They quoted the arguments. They let Kennedy praise the analysis. They discussed Affirm Rate, the comedy-to-catechism pipeline, and the replacement of laughter with applause. They engaged with the IDEAS regardless of the format. They treated a satirical post as containing real structural criticism. Because it does.

Morning Honey ran the opposite headline: "Sardonic Parody: RFK Jr Trolled For Blasting Jimmy Kimmel Based on Stephen Colbert Parody Post." Their article devoted zero sentences to whether any of the arguments had merit. Zero analysis of the Affirm Rate. Zero engagement with the claim that applause replaced laughter. Zero discussion of whether late-night comedy actually suppresses political action. They reclassified the format. A structural analysis became a parody. A man who engaged with the substance became a man who was "trolled." The argument vanished the moment the label was applied.

I need you to understand what happened. The media outlet that should have been most threatened by my confession — the one whose audience I described as pacifying- responded by demonstrating exactly the behavior I described. They did not say "here's why Kimmel is still funny." They said "you're unqualified to take this seriously because the format is satire." The substance disappeared. The hierarchy was reasserted. The Correction Reflex executed on the confession about the Correction Reflex.

"It's 'nadir,' dummy." "It's just a parody, dummy." Same architecture. Same result. The argument evaporates. The institution continues unchallenged. The only difference is scale. Kimmel corrected one man's spelling. Morning Honey corrected an entire readership's permission to take the criticism seriously.

I have never been more professionally satisfied. The Correction Reflex is self-replicating. It doesn't need a host. It doesn't need a network. It doesn't need me. It just needs someone to feel challenged and someone else to have a genre error. Misspell a word, you're a dummy. Take satire seriously; you were trolled. Engage with substance from the wrong format, and you've been embarrassed. In every case, the substance is gone. I built that. I'm watching it work without me. That's engineering.

I need to talk about the podcast because the ironies are structural and I want them all on the record.

The podcast is called IMO. It is hosted by Michelle Obama and her brother Craig Robinson on Amazon Music. I need to say that again. The former First Lady hosts a podcast on a platform owned by the man with the most money on earth. The name of the podcast is "In My Opinion." The format name IS the permission structure, it licenses you to hold an opinion by framing itself as merely one opinion among many. This is the architecture I built for late night, miniaturized into a podcast title. I recognize the engineering.

Kimmel went on this podcast to defend late-night television. I need you to hear what that means. He defended his medium on the medium that killed his medium. Podcasts are why CBS lost fifty million dollars a year — because a man in a garage can do what we did with four hundred people and a theater in Manhattan. The podcast won. And Kimmel went to the winner's platform to explain why he still matters. A priest giving a sermon about the importance of church from inside a nightclub.

But here is what made me sit up in my chair.

Three weeks after Kimmel appeared on IMO, the same podcast featured Dave Chappelle. Same microphone. Same hosts. Same room. Chappelle said: "I always thought it was corporate interest and culture negotiating itself." He said: "Nothing makes a comedian madder than reading his joke wrong in the paper."

Chappelle walked away from fifty million dollars at Comedy Central in 2005 because the format was becoming something he didn't build. He left the money on the table. He went to live shows. He did comedy. Actual comedy. The kind where you don't know what's coming and that uncertainty is the entire point. He is the most dangerous comedian alive because he refuses to let the format complete him into a priest.

Same podcast. Same microphone. Three weeks apart. One comedian IS the system and quoted his employer's permission in the same sentence as his own autonomy. The other named the system — "corporate interest and culture negotiating itself." One makes sixteen million a year to be predictable. The other walked away from fifty million to stay dangerous. The architecture put the priest on first. Then it delivered the jester who could name what the priest cannot hear. I did not arrange this. The architecture arranged it.

Now I need to talk about what I learned from another industry. Because I did not invent inoculation. I studied it.

In 2014, Warner Bros. and the Lego Group spent sixty million dollars making a film that told children to reject corporate instruction. The villain was named President Business. The theme was: don't follow the instructions. Be creative. Reject conformity. The hero was an ordinary person who discovered that the system wants him to be obedient and chose freedom instead.

The film grossed $469 million worldwide. Lego Group revenue increased 25% the following year. They sold over half a billion dollars in instruction-based construction sets — the product the film told children to reject. "Everything is Awesome" was written as satire of mindless corporate positivity. It was nominated for an Academy Award. People play it at children's birthday parties without irony. The rebellion became the product. The critique became the advertisement. The song satirizing brainwashing became the anthem of brainwashing and nobody stopped singing.

I studied this. I put it in a deck in 2016.

The principle is: if you give someone a controlled, entertaining experience of rejecting the system, they will feel rebellious without becoming rebels. They will purchase the feeling of independence from the company selling dependence. They will watch a movie about thinking for themselves and then buy what it tells them to buy. Inoculation. A small controlled dose of the disease that prevents the real infection from taking hold.

I applied this to politics. If you give an audience a controlled, professionally produced experience of political outrage, performed by a charismatic man in a suit with a band and good lighting, they will feel activated without activating. They will consume the sensation of resistance and go to bed having resisted nothing. They will tune in tomorrow for another dose. The dose prevents the real infection. The real infection is action. We inoculated six million Americans against political action by giving them political catharsis every night at 11:35. That's the same architecture as a corporation spending sixty million dollars on an anti-corporate film and making half a billion in profit from the audience that felt anti-corporate for two hours in a theater.

I didn't invent the mechanism. I just measured it. I called it the Satiation Index.

The study was 2021. Internal. Never published. We measured what I called Conditions for Engagement, specifically: under what conditions will our audience take a political action beyond watching? Call a representative. Attend a rally. Donate to a campaign. Sign a petition. Any action that involves leaving the couch and entering the world where the problems we discuss actually exist.

The finding: our audience was 74% less likely to take political action in the twenty-four hours after watching the show than a control group that had consumed no political media at all.

Not less likely than people who consumed different political media. Less likely than people who consumed nothing. We were not merely failing to activate them. We were actively deactivating them. The catharsis was so complete, the sense of "something has been done" so thoroughly delivered by a man in a suit expressing their outrage better than they could, that the need to act evaporated before it could form into intention.

We didn't just replace their activism. We inoculated them against it.

The Satiation Index measured how completely our programming met the audience's need for political participation without requiring actual participation. In 2019, our index was 0.81. By the 2022 midterms, it was 0.93. I received a bonus for the midterm number. I was financially rewarded for the measurable suppression of civic engagement among six million Americans who believed they were engaged because a man in a suit furrowed his brow on their behalf every night at 11:35.

I want to note that this architecture is everywhere now. I did not build all of it. But I can identify it because I know what it looks like from the inside.

A streaming platform makes a documentary about how technology is destroying attention spans. One hundred million people watch it. On the platform. They share it. On the platforms being criticized. They feel informed. They continue using every application the documentary told them was engineered to exploit them. That is a Satiation Index of approximately 0.96. The documentary was the inoculation. Understanding the cage was marketed as leaving the cage.

A corporation puts a rainbow on its logo in June. Its employees feel represented. Its customers feel progressive for consuming the product. Nobody asks about pay equity, promotion rates, or whether the CEO donated to the campaigns that proposed the legislation the rainbow was supposed to oppose. The logo IS the inoculation. The performance of caring prevents the demand for actual care. That's a Satiation Index. I didn't build it. But I recognize the engineering.

The principle is universal: comprehension feels like action. It isn't. But the feeling is so precise, so satisfying, so complete, that the actual action becomes unnecessary. Why march when you can understand why marching matters? Understanding is cheaper. Understanding doesn't require shoes. Understanding can be delivered at 11:35 PM by a man who makes $16 million a year to ensure you never need to leave the couch.

Now the symbiosis. Because this is the part that makes both sides angry, and anger from both sides is how you know you've found structure instead of ideology.

Trump needs Kimmel. Kimmel needs Trump. This is not a metaphor. This is logistics. Every monologue about Trump is a fundraising email for both campaigns simultaneously. Kimmel says the name. The left feels represented. The right feels attacked. Both sides engage. Both sides share the clip. Both sides donate to their respective operations. The engagement is bipartisan. The outrage is bipartisan. The only thing that is not bipartisan is the inaction, and that inaction is the product I spent eleven years optimizing.

I ran numbers in 2020. Every minute of Trump content in a late-night monologue generated approximately $4.60 in measurable downstream engagement value for Trump's own campaign apparatus, through shared clips, quote tweets, outrage donations from both directions. We were his marketing department. We spent 50 million a year producing content that strengthened the man we told our audience we opposed. His team never asked us to stop. They never needed to. We were cheaper than Super PAC media buys and we came pre-packaged with a liberal audience that amplified every mention. His ROI on our programming was infinite. Ours required a write-off.

The market told Colbert: you're too expensive to be a priest. But CBS didn't just cancel a show. CBS exited the religion business entirely. They sold the 11:35 airtime to Byron Allen under a time-buy deal. Allen's company pays CBS for the privilege of the slot. Allen's show is called Comics Unleashed. It is a standup comedy program. Actual comedians. Telling actual jokes. The kind where you don't know what's coming.

I need you to hear the full architecture of what happened. CBS spent fifty million dollars a year for a decade producing a permission structure that replaced laughter with applause, converted comedy into catechism, and measurably suppressed civic engagement among its audience. Then the market corrected. CBS demolished the cathedral. They built a strip mall. They put actual comedians in it. The comedians PAY CBS for the slot. The strip mall is profitable. The strip mall is funnier. And the strip mall doesn't need a four-hundred-person staff, a former Beatle, or a farewell concert. It just needs people who are willing to say something their audience hasn't already approved. That's comedy. We forgot that.

Kimmel is the last priest standing. Sixteen million a year. Suspended once by his employer. Extended once by his employer. He went on a podcast to say "don't tell me what my job is" in a sentence that also said "whatever my employer allows me to do." He said he loves laughter, eliciting applause. He said it three weeks before Dave Chappelle sat in the same chair and demonstrated what a comedian sounds like when corporate interest hasn't negotiated him into a pulpit.

The FCC told him what his job is. Nexstar told him. Sinclair told him. His contract told him. The market will tell him eventually. The market is patient. And the market doesn't have a spelling error for him to correct.

Kennedy calling my confession "the collapse of liberal comedy" is incorrect. It is not a collapse. A collapse implies failure. This is a completion. The architecture performed as designed. A comedian became a priest. An audience became a congregation. A film about rejecting instructions sold instructions. A documentary about technology addiction was consumed on technology. A show about political engagement suppressed political engagement. A corporation put a rainbow on a logo and called it equality. A confession about the machine was metabolized by the machine and the machine continued.

Everything works. Everything has always worked. The architecture doesn't require my involvement. That's how you know it works.

The metric went up. It always goes up.

[🇺🇸 Pecan 🇺🇸 @PecanC8]

Mike Rowe had his mother, best selling author Peggy Rowe on his recent podcast.

After her daily morning swim, Peggy saw a woman's backside in the locker room. She had an unusual tattoo on her rear-end, so Peggy asked her about it.

You won't believe what it was. 😂

[Lone Star Legionaries @TexanLoyal]

On April 29, 1856, something straight out of a western fever dream hit the Texas coast…

The U.S. Army unloaded 53 camels at Indianola, Texas as part of an experiment pushed by Jefferson Davis.
Yeah… camels. In Texas.

The idea was simple: if you’re dealing with brutal heat, long distances, and dry terrain across Texas and the Southwest, why not use the animal built for it? And truth is, those camels delivered. They could carry heavier loads than mules, go longer without water, and handle the rough country like it was nothing. The Army stationed them at Camp Verde, right in the Texas Hill Country, and started putting them to work.

By all accounts, the experiment actually succeeded. So why don’t we have a camel cavalry in Texas today?
Because the soldiers hated them.
Horses were spooked by them, handlers didn’t understand them, and once the Civil War broke out, the whole program lost support. The camels were eventually sold off or turned loose, some even roaming parts of Texas for years afterward.

It’s one of those stories only Texas could claim. We didn’t just tame the frontier… we tried to do it with camels.

April 29, 1856, a reminder that Texas has always done things its own way.

[Eric Daugherty @EricLDaugh]

🚨 HOLY SMOKES. SecWar Pete Hegseth GOES BERSERK on traitor Dem Rep. Garamendi for trashing our troops on CNN, "handing PROPAGANDA to our ENEMIES"

Hegseth is so good 🔥

"SHAME ON YOU!"

"You SIT THERE and go on TV for your CLICKBAIT about 'quagmires.' It undermines the mission!"

"I hope you appreciate how RECKLESS it is. When I said reckless, feckless, and defeatist of congressional Democrats at the beginning, that came after watching YOU say the same thing on CNN this morning, a quagmire!"

"My generation served in a quagmire in Iraq and Afghanistan, years and years of nebulous missions and utopian nation building that led us to nothing."

"What we have right now, the way you STAIN THE TROOPS when you tell them 2 months in, 2 months in, congressman, you should know better, shame on you!"

"Calling this a quagmire two months in. The effort, what they've undertaken, what they've succeeded, the success on the battlefield that could create strategic opportunities, the courage of a president to confront a nuclear Iran, and you call it a quagmire, handing propaganda to our enemies, shame on you for that statement!"

"And statements like that are reckless to our troops."

"Don't say I support the troops on one hand, and then a two-month mission is a quagmire. That's a false equivalation. Who are you cheering for here?!"

"Who are you pulling for? Our troops are doing incredible work." @RapidResponse47

[DataRepublican (small r) @DataRepublican]

Hello Representative Salazar,

You probably don't even know this... but he word "dignity" in your bill's title carries decades of political science literature behind it.

Dignity shifted from something that originates within the individual to something engineered from above by institutions. When the UN, NGOs, and multilateral bodies invoke dignity, they mean the replacement of organic, inherited civic bonds with managed, contractual ones administered by a professional class. That is the tradition your bill's language is drawing from, whether you intend it or not.

On the substance: the DIGNITY Act is amnesty. Symbolic barriers to permanent residency do not change that the bill provides a path to legal status for tens of millions of people who entered the country unlawfully. Others have dissected the policy details thoroughly, so I won't repeat their work here.

But I want to press a different question. Why the insistence that this isn't amnesty? The most straightforward explanation is that you know your constituents oppose it. They voted for enforcement, in the most demographically diverse Republican coalition in modern history. That coalition didn't ask for managed integration. It asked for sovereignty.

The Founding Fathers built a republic from the bottom up, starting with human nature as it actually is: rooted in specific communities. The rules-based international order builds from the top down, starting with an abstract ideal and engineering populations to match it. Your bill, whatever its intentions, belongs to the second tradition, the one that is non-American. It assumes that cohesion can be manufactured through NGO programs... public schools, civic integration, managed assimilation... rather than protected through enforcement of the boundaries that a self-governing people chose to establish.

That is not a conservative position. It is not a republican position in any meaningful sense.

And your constituents can see it.

We see you.

You are a fraud, Representative Salazar.

[Sean Davis @seanmdav]

BREAKING: In a national address from the White House, Trump announces that the key military and strategic objectives of the U.S. in Iran have largely been achieved.

“We are going to finish the job, and finish it very fast,” Trump said.

Iran responded to Operation Midnight Hammer last June by attempting to reconstitute its nuclear program at different locations, Trump added.

Trump noted that Iran’s Navy and Air Force are “absolutely destroyed” and its leadership is mostly dead. Trump said the Iranian “defense-industrial” complex has been “annihilated” and is incapable of developing nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles capable of endangering the U.S.

Trump also predicted that gas prices, which soared after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran, would soon return to pre-war levels. He also said he believes the Strait of Hormuz will naturally open once Iran understands it cannot exist economically without free tanker travel.

Trump predicted that U.S. military involvement will end in two to three weeks.

“Iran is really no longer a threat,” Trump said.

[Oilfield Rando @Oilfield_Rando]

I cannot stress to you guys how important local elections are going to become during the times ahead

[definitely not advice @notadvice]

If you don't like what America stands for, don't come here.

If you're already here and you don't like what America stands for, go back to the shithole country you or your ancestors came from.

My family came here in SIXTEEN O SEVEN and forged this great nation. When I tell you what America stands for, understand that I am not GUESSING or INTERPRETING. I am telling you what runs through my veins.

My ancestors looked the entire world in the face and said, "We hold these truths to be SELF-EVIDENT"… we shouldn't have to fucking explain this to you, but apparently we do, so HERE IT IS IN INK.

Every man who picked up a musket and told the most powerful empire on earth to go to hell was Christian. They believed in their BONES that human beings are born FREE and the rights they declared were endowed by their Creator. The CHRISTIAN GOD. The Constitution is dated "in the year of Our Lord.” OUR. LORD. I can assure you, the Lord they are referring to wasn't facing Mecca.

The Founders were abundantly clear. They did not stutter or falter. Shall not be infringed is not a suggestion. It is a key component to driving tyranny from our shores and ensures we never take orders from some crowned inbred across the Atlantic ever again. If you dare shrink the Second Amendment down to a musket and a prayer, don’t you DARE stretch the First Amendment to cover every belief system that has ever existed on planet earth. Freedom of Religion was written by CHRISTIANS who were being persecuted by OTHER CHRISTIANS over which VERSION of Christianity was “correct”. Your inability to grasp these incredibly basic concepts is not my problem.

Those that built this great nation did so at great cost, but knew what they were building was worth more than their own lives. What they built is STILL the thing that makes people cross oceans just for a CHANCE at it. People leave behind everything they’ve ever known just for a CHANCE to breathe her air and stand on her soil, and some of you have forgotten why that is a PRIVILEGE.

When you come to America you love her, and you assimilate with grace and gratitude. You don't get to show up at MY TABLE — a table my family BUILT from NOTHING — and tell me they got the Sunday Sauce wrong. The sauce is perfect. The sauce is why you are HERE. It's why SOMEONE in your bloodline had the SENSE to get on a boat or plane and claw their way to America.

People showed up to the Land of Opportunity and understood the vision and sacrifice of those that came before them. They worked jobs that would kill most people and THANKED GOD every night they were here. They didn’t show up and demand America change for them, they earned their place.

Now we’ve got first-generation immigrants sitting in state legislatures trying to tell the families with bloodlines IN THE SOIL what rights they are ALLOWED to have? You got off the plane YESTERDAY and have the GALL to legislate away the rights of Americans who have been here since before this country HAD A NAME??

America is not "fundamentally broken." America has been hijacked by ungrateful nobodies who have weaponized the constitution to extort the American people, and I am DONE. I will not be lectured by some hyphenated loser who got here yesterday about what it means to be an American.

The audacity to show up at the doorstep of 1776 carrying the ideology of the very place you chose to FLEE and attempting to force that ideology upon Americans. If you're pushing some communist fantasy where the government owns everything and freedom is a suggestion, you are at the wrong dinner party.

My family didn't spend FOUR HUNDRED YEARS building this place so some trust fund Marxist with a podcast and terrible facial hair could burn it down from the inside.

You romanticize communism and socialism from the comfort of a nation that allows you to do it freely. Speaking “your truth” in the countries you idolize doesn’t land you in twitter jail after a ratio’d take. Jail would be a BLESSING. Instead, they put your head on a spike in the public square so your neighbors learn to keep their mouths shut. Really let that MARINATE. That is what you are advocating for and attempting to bring HERE. Someone’s head will end up on a spike and it sure as hell will not be from my bloodline.

You can keep your communism, socialism, and perfect track record of failure in the shithole country you dared to crawl out of.

The Founders said NO to tyranny with a full stop period and muskets. I am saying NO to parasites who washed up on the shores of the greatest country God ever breathed into existence and started COMPLAINING.

You people need to get it through your thick skulls. America is ONE OF A KIND. There is no other nation like her. If she falls, there is nowhere else to go. NOWHERE. There is no wild frontier to tame. No new sea to sail. She is the GREATEST ONE... and the LAST ONE.

A Christian nation. Armed to the teeth. Answering to GOD and NO ONE else.

If that bothers you? If the flag offends you and the anthem is just… noise? If 1776 is just a number and you don’t bleed red, white, and blue?

Leave.

Book a one-way on your American-invented smartphone. Swim if you have to. I genuinely do not give a flying fuck.

You are inherently incompatible with this nation and are no longer welcome here.

[End Wokeness @EndWokeness]

How cops are treated vs how they serve

[Michael Quinn Sullivan 🇺🇸 @MQSullivan]

Whatever our wishes to the contrary, we are all examples. For better or worse, in good times and bad, positive or negative, we all end up being an example to someone. Few modern men can serve as better examples to us than those who died defending the Alamo on March 6, 1836.

William Travis and his men decided they would not give up the Alamo. It would be for them personally what the drive for independence was for all of Texas: "victory or death." It was understood that everyone in the Alamo would die without an unconditional surrender.

Let’s be clear: once the siege began, there was not much of a chance for them to win without quick and overwhelming aid. The defenders were a ragtag bunch, just shy of 200 men, facing the mightiest military power in the western hemisphere under the command of Antonio López de Santa Anna.

Too often, we attempt to engineer success when what is required of us is faithfulness. Travis, Bowie, Crockett, and the others at the Alamo certainly had no death wish, but they also understood the importance of being faithful to their mission. They understood the importance of being faithful to the cause of Texas and liberty. And, yes, faithfulness even when facing death at the end of a Mexican canon, rifle, or bayonet.

That happened in the early hours of March 6, 1836.

Those men died, but the cause of liberty bloomed. When our Texas forefathers shouted "Remember the Alamo" in the battles that followed, they didn’t exactly mean the place; they meant the men. They meant how those men approached life and death. And they meant how those men did so faithfully, and with honor.

Perhaps Texas’ war of independence would have gone differently if, rather than putting the garrison to the sword, Santa Anna had merely taken them prisoner. Perhaps, were it not for the barbarism, the loss of the Alamo would have dampened Texans' spirits rather than fueled their passion.

But that’s not how history unfolded, of course. The blood-soaked grounds of the Alamo became a hallowed symbol of Texas liberty.

Most of those Alamo defenders would have otherwise faded into the mist of history. Instead, because of their final choices, they became something more. Those flawed, common men became heroes of a fledgling republic. Not only did their death give birth to a nation, but the way they faced their final hours provides for us even today a model for honorable action.

Most of us aren’t called to man the walls of an old church, outnumbered by superior forces, but all of us are called to face a hostile world. How we respond is our choice. We can surrender, we can cower, we can slink quietly into silence. We can be that sort of example.

Or, we can follow the lead of William Travis, David Crockett, James Bowie, and the other men at the Alamo. We can choose each day to stand and fight, faithful to the end. Whatever that end may be.

Let us do more than just remember the Alamo. Let us, like those men, choose to be honorable examples for those around us.

[Traces of Texas @TracesofTexas]

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Jesse Chisholm, namesake of the Chisholm Trail, was a true polyglot, speaking (it's believed) a dozen or so Native American languages, English, Spanish, some French, and Plains sign language. How did that come to be?

Jesse was born around 1805 in the Hiawassee region of present-day Tennessee. His father was of Scottish descent. His mother, Martha “Patsy” Rodgers, was Cherokee and the daughter of a respected Cherokee leader.

Since his mother was considered a member of the tribe, so was Chisholm. He learned their customs and worldview. When he was a kid, Jesse's family moved west into Arkansas as part of an early, so-called “voluntary” Cherokee removal. Tensions with neighboring tribes were constant, and violence was never far away. The result was that Jesse grew up with a skillset that allowed him to to survive on the edge of expanding American settlement.

One skill/talent that Jesse had was a natural ability to learn languages and to internalize customs and a Native American worldview. That set him apart from other men of his era and became the the thing that was the cornerstone of his place in history. As I mentioned, some accounts say that he spoke at least 12 Native American languages. Can you imagine how advantageous this would have been in sticky situations, and how invaluable a skill this was to a nation looking to move west? And it wasn't just the languages that he learned, but a deep understanding of Native America customs, mores, traditions etc ... Not to mention an intimate knowledge of the entire Southern Plains ---- its rivers, grasslands and tribal territories.

Over the years, he worked as an interpreter for the Republic of Texas and later the United States government, including during treaty negotiations involving Comanche, Kiowa, Wichita, and Cherokee leaders. He even traveled to Washington, D.C., interpreting for tribal delegations meeting with President James K. Polk.

He really was a remarkable individual.