America is getting to, or perhaps has passed, the "what's-the-point" stage

"Is Europe kaput? Washington says this is Europe’s last chance to choose".

The Trump administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy dropped last week, and if you are in Brussels or Berlin, you might want to pour yourself a stiff drink before reading it. This is not the usual diplomatic pablum about “shared values” and “transatlantic partnership.” This is an ultimatum dressed up as strategy, but will Europe listen?

The diagnosis is brutal but accurate: Continental Europe’s share of global GDP has collapsed from 25 per cent in 1990 to 14 per cent today. Cratering birthrates, migration-driven social fragmentation, and what the document calls “the real and more stark prospect of civilisational erasure” threaten to make the continent “unrecognisable in 20 years or less.” Washington’s message is simple: America will help defend a Europe that believes in itself, but not a civilisational hospice.

Europe is engaging in cultural suicide, and the EU is greasing the skids. It is, indeed, getting more difficult to see where America has a genuine interest in preserving some secular version of the late Holy Roman Empire. 

H/T: Friend and commenter JeffS

No brainer

I'd rather walk than take the Charlotte Light Rail: "President Trump Responds After Previously Deported Illegal Alien Stabs Man on Charlotte Light Rail".

This is the same public transportation system on which a racist maniac murdered Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska back in August. Since Ms. Zarutska's murder, security supposedly has been beefed up in Charlotte's various public transportation systems, including Light Rail, but it looks like there might still be a few holes in coverage (as well as in innocent passengers).

I always disliked Charlotte, having lived there once for a few months when I was about five years old, and decades later when I worked there for First Union National Bank (but commuted from my rural hometown two counties over). It has always been a relatively dangerous place, and it has gotten to be many times more so as the woke left has entrenched itself in government. I was appalled at the number of proto-wokesters back in the 1990s who worked for First Union, and I saw the way things were going. I left to go to graduate school in Arizona, and that turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made. 

Charlotte wants to be Atlanta, but another ten years of Democrat governance will probably turn it into Memphis.

Classical corner

Niccolò Paganini's Caprice No. 5 (The Devil's Violinist).

Firearm fail

The Rogak P-18. If you see this on a table at a gun show, just keep moving.

One does grow weary of enduring papal ignorance of not only distant history but current events

"Pope Leo Claims Fear of Islam in Europe is Bigotry and Says Lebanon is a Model for Europe".

Fortunately, these are merely pastoral, as opposed to dogmatic, statements, and, as such, do not represent any binding obligations on Catholics with respect to belief. I have noticed - and this may be divine providence - that even the most politically and socially naive of popes typically do not attempt to mess with dogma.

Sunday funnies

 

Op-Ed: What’s The Use Of Having A 2nd Amendment If I’m Not Allowed To Drive Around The Neighborhood Gunning Down Christmas Inflatables?

Why editing is so important.

Finessing your lunch order.

Going to the store just isn't the same as it used to be.

Liquor store burglary suspect caught.

Types of naps (I have experienced them all).

When random Jews meet. 

Honesty is (usually) the best policy.

Suspect arrested; hilarity ensues.

From Power Line's The Week in Pictures.

The J6 bomber

This story appears to be quite the rabbit hole.