Is it any wonder that citizens in the U.S. and Western Europe are increasingly viewing their political leaders with disdain and are seeking to oust them? Is it any wonder that Americans now focused on the nature of the threats, question the outdated international organizations in which our country carries the burden for a passel of freeloading impotent Western Europe (NATO) leaders and anti-Western tyrants (UN)?

As various sites in Belgium were the scenes of civilian and infrastructure devastation, Americans saw our president and his entourage posing before Cuba’s dreaded Ministry of Interior, which is decorated with a huge sculpture honoring the racist, homophobic butcher Che Guevara. We learned the names and biographies of the dead and missing as he tangoed in Buenos Aires, to which he took two Air Force planes to facilitate sightseeing for the first family and their large entourage. (Burning up large amount of carbon fuels is the new status symbol of the rich and powerful. The best-known climate change advocates are known for their conspicuous consumption of fossil fuels on themselves.)

If that weren’t enough to reveal his belief that terrorism is not a big deal and that his heart is not with the West, he made a very brief (seconds long) acknowledgement of the Brussels attacks and then poked his countrymen in the eye with his overseas pronouncements: ‪

Speaking to reporters in Havana Monday, President Barack Obama said that, “hopefully,” the United States can learn a thing or two from Cuba’s record on improving basic, human rights.

“Our starting point is that we have two different systems,” Obama explained. “What I have said to President Castro, is that we are moving forward and not looking backwards.”

“President Castro, I think, has pointed out that it, in his view making sure that everybody is getting a decent education or health care, has basic security in old age, that those things are human rights as well.”

“The goal of the human rights dialogue is not for the United States to dictate to Cuba how to govern themselves,” the president continued. “Hopefully, we can learn from each other.”

Revealing her far left blinders hadn’t slipped, we got this from his chief adviser Valerie Jarrett:

Valerie Jarrett

вњ”

‎@vj44"Cuba has an extraordinary resource –- a system of education which values every boy and every girl"

Get used to losing seems to be Obama’s message to us as Wretchard observes:

In a Tweet responding to the Brussels attacks Obama said, "the whole premise of terrorism is to try to disrupt people's ordinary lives. And one of my most powerful memories and one of my proudest moments was watching Boston respond after the marathon... THAT IS THE KIND OF RESILIENCE AND THE KIND OF STRENGTH THAT WE HAVE TO CONTINUALLY SHOW IN THE FACE OF THESE TERRORISTS". (Emphasis his).

In that view all that is necessary to defeat Islamic terror is to stoically bear its hurts. To get up with your own leg blown away and hop to the finish line like it happened every day. And just maybe -- it will. In other words, it's the new normal; exactly what he said the Paris bombing would never herald. Maybe that's political progress. To the concept of "leading from behind" one can add "winning by getting used to losing".

Canada’s leader is just as nutty:

Justin Trudeau: “If you kill your enemies, they win.”

In Europe, maybe they too are catching on to the incompetence of their leaders and the internal threats those leaders have enabled. You might have to go to the foreign press if you want to get details. There you will learn things like this: three Brussels suicide bombers were flagged by Turkish authorities and left to commit mass murder in Europe. In fact, the details the incompetent Belgian authorities seem to have been given were very specific:

Belgian intelligence services received specific warnings ahead of Tuesday's attack but failed to properly investigate them, Haaretz has uncovered.

The intelligence centers in Brussels, as well as in other Western countries, knew that terrorists would strike the Zaventem airport and, probably, the city's railway in the near future. However, they did not properly appreciate the imminent threat and the limited follow-up investigation was insufficient to avoid the tragedy.

It is now believed that the attack was planned in al-Raqqa, ISIS's capital in northeastern Syria. The terrorists who carried out the Brussels attack were closely connected with those responsible for the Paris attack in November.

In the national press here you’ll get pictures of memorial candles, flowers, teddy bears, and hashtags. These maudlin displays are getting a lot of people even angrier -- but not the enemy who understandably views these as signs of weakness. Already jihadi sites are asking what color will they light up the Eiffel Tower next.

The great Iowahawk captures my feelings:

 

 

David Burge

‏‪@iowahawkblog

Taste our hot tears of abstract cartoon sadness, genocidal lunatics

Retweeted David Burge (@iowahawkblog):

If only Twitter were around 75 years ago, we could've prevented WWII with poignant cartoons of crying pineapples. ‪#‎JeSuisPearlHarbor

Behind the scenes, the Belgian and French authorities began finally doing their job -- rounding up suspects, patrolling known trouble spots, and otherwise responding with more than greeting-card gestures.

Like overindulgent parents of feckless spendthrift children, we have to consider tough love as the next step to their redemption. We have subsidized NATO by hundreds of billions of dollars to protect it from external dangers which at the moment seem insignificant.

They in turn have spent their money on social welfare programs instead of defense and tried to make up the burgeoning cost of those programs and a demographic disaster by welcoming in and not assimilating millions of people determined to kill them off.

To those of us in the US, the presidential campaign now unfolding has particular significance.

Which of the candidates is best suited to deal with this? Jeffrey Varasano on Facebook argues that it is Trump:

Trump is on the right side, against a lot of pressure. If the west is inviting enemy troops across the front and inviting them in for lunch so they can kill grandma before tea, what is Trump supposed to do about it?

Here's the deal. This is not about Leadership, the way that Cruz means. Cruz means engaging in the old political realm -- offering military aid, intelligence, moral support.

But what we know is that the old political realm is dead, or at least it's determined to commit suicide. So if you want to help "the people", you have to support a new politics and form a new allegiance with new leaders. For example, consider PEGIDA. Merkel would love to say, "listen, America is rejecting Xenophobia by electing Sanders or Hillary or Jeb. The whole civilized world is against PEGIDA." That rhetoric works to stifle PEGIDA's recruiting and marginalize them. In contrast, if Trump pulls ahead, PEGIDA can say the opposite - "Look, even America gets it. If they can do it, so can we. We are not alone. We are right."

These seem like minor effects, BUT THEY AREN'T. Minority parties need to be able to point to some success or support, in order to recruit. It's ALL about justifications. This is why you see domino effects, where revolutions in one country spark more in other countries.

Again, like with most issues, this is about recruiting a team and not about policy. Our side, wrapped up WITHIN the system debating policy, doesn't understand revolutions and wars fought OUTSIDE the system and that determine the very existence of the system.

For example, many conservatives bash both "Hope and Change" and "Make America Great Again" as empty slogans. I hate to tell them but the fate of whole nations have risen and fallen on slogans. Thus they aren't empty. Are they devoid of bureaucratic policy? Yes. Do they start wars and flip governments, shaping the world? Oh, yes, that. Give me Liberty or Give me Death. Liberté, égalité, fraternité. How many Cambodians died because of "Make Love not War".

Bucking PC, which Trump does, is nothing more than "Speaking Truth to Power". That's a first step in recruiting for any war. Thus Trump does more to embolden the Invasion Resistance than any candidate. Trump IS Leading. By Inspiring replacement forces.

What does Cruz do? Will he inspire? Cause he can't really DO much as president. He can't invade Europe. What can he do? He has to recruit people on the ground towards a new allegiance that resists. Will he? Can he? Trump does."

As if to underscore his point, Slovenians marched in the streets this week against the EU’s immigration policies, shouting “Trump! Trump!” So preposterous have the Europeans become that multiculturalism and political correctness have tied the hands of any sane moves to prevent these attacks. The EU has forced countries to admit immigrants and then denied them the right to resettle them in ways that will minimize creation of enclaves of unassimilated, dangerous immigrants.

How do you stop ghettos like Molenbeek from forming, and what do you do about them once they have formed?

[snip]

[Y]ou force the residents to live elsewhere. Conceptually easy. In practice, difficult. The European Court of Human Rights recently ruled against Germany, which sought to do exactly that. Having accepted a million Syrian refugees and immigrants, the Germans wanted to prevent the development of Muslim ghettos by dispersing these immigrants throughout the country. The Court ruled that this was against their fundamental human rights, among which is the right to form several -- or many -- Molenbeeks.

I find it impossible to disagree with Robert Spencer’s view:

"The political and media elites have failed Europe and the free world, and put Europe on a course toward civil war and bloodshed unseen on the continent since the days of Hitler."

It is time to sweep them out. All of them: the multiculturalists, the cultural relativists, the internationalists, the levellers, the elites who have brought this death and destruction upon Brussels today, and Paris yesterday, and the rest of Europe tomorrow.

Europe, if it is to survive as a home of free people, must turn out its entire political and media establishment."

It’s not just the political and media elites in Europe. Our own need to be swept bare. Had you any doubts at all, consider the most ridiculous editorial of the year -- in the Washington Post, which obviously under the misimpression that Trump was the president, not Havana Obama, argued that 'The horror in Brussels is a rebuke to Trump’s foreign policy.' 

The horror in Brussels, to the contrary, is a rebuke to the muddled thinking of people like the editors of the Washington Post.