Jan
7
2026

It Kinda Looks Like a Creepy SF Book Cover

That's what came to my mind, anyway. Jeff Maurer had a similar reaction: It’s Getting Hard to Take the Fifa Peace Prize Seriously.

These days, it’s easy to feel unmoored. Everything in the digital age seems up for debate, and few things are permanent. In such a fast-changing world, I increasingly find value in the touchstones that give this mad world some grounding.

For me — like so many people — one of those touchstones has long been the FIFA Peace Prize. Founded in the mid-2020s and presented by FIFA — the soccer governing body whose name is synonymous with integrity — this august award recognizes outstanding achievement in the field of soccer peace. Past winners include Donald Trump. The award recognizes leaders who inspire us, those who embody the better angels of our nature and give hope that the human spirit might soar to lofty new heights. It also features a trophy in which several ghoulish, severed hands are dragging the world to hell:

But recently, President Trump — in my opinion the most distinguished recipient of the award — has acted in ways that could tarnish the good name of the FIFA Peace Prize. After ordering a military operation that toppled the president of Venezuela, Trump issued a series of threats against countries including Columbia, Mexico, and Iran. He threatened further military action against Venezuela if they “don’t behave”, and has generally acted more like Machiavelli than Mandela.

I think Jeff wrote this before Trump mentioned his ongoing Greenland obsession:

During our call, Trump, who had just arrived at his golf club in West Palm Beach, was in evident good spirits, and reaffirmed to me that Venezuela may not be the last country subject to American intervention. “We do need Greenland, absolutely,” he said, describing the island—a part of Denmark, a NATO ally—as “surrounded by Russian and Chinese ships.”

Rand Simberg embeds this perspective-jarring tweet, as he pleads Stop Using Mercator Projection:

I got nothin' more to say about that.

Also of note:

  • Pursued by a pheasant? Kevin D. Williamson notes a recent stage direction, perhaps as imagined by Chuck Jones: Exit Fudd. (archive.today link)

    Republicans are easily gobsmacked by celebrities—no matter how minor, from Ted Nugent to Scott Baio—but Democrats, perhaps more disturbingly, are easily ensorceled by another kind of exotic specimen: a white man with a gun. 

    The Minnesota governor who (you may have forgotten) was on the 2024 ballot as Kamala Harris’s vice presidential pick excited Democrats because he was a pheasant hunter. A party run by people dumb and insular enough to nominate Kamala Harris is also a party dumb and insular enough to mistakenly believe that the way to connect with the rural voters who have rallied to the banner of Donald Trump is to push out an older dad type in a blaze orange vest and have him point a 12-gauge at some tasty birds.

    Walz was an evolution of the type: In 2004, when Democrats were trying to make an everyman of Sen. John Kerry, the haughtiest New England snoot ever to mount a sailboard, they put a gun in his hands and stuffed him into a camouflage jacket. When observers noted that the aristocratic senator apparently was too good to carry his own bird, he protested that his mind was elsewhere, thinking about some regular-guy stuff: “I’m still giddy over the Red Sox,” he said. “It was hard to focus.” Rep. Jake Auchincloss, a Democrat and veteran who represents the Boston suburbs, talks about constantly having a rifle in his hand as a Marine and recently declared: “Selling AR-15s at Walmart to teenagers is not just dangerous, it also undermines the military ethic.” Rep. Auchincloss might be happy to know that, here in the real world, Walmart does not sell AR-15s to teenagers—or to anybody else—and hasn’t for more than a decade. Democrats can never get this stuff quite right.

    For fun, imagine Governor Walz at some future press conference: "Shhh. Be vewy, vewy quiet, I'm hunting fwauds!"

  • What's "rugged" about it anyway? Jonah Goldberg has thoughts: About That ‘Rugged Individualism’ …. (archive.today link) Inspired by Mayor Mamdani's inaugural promise: “We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.”

    The term “rugged individualism” was coined by President Hoover in 1928. But we have Democrats to thank for its immortality because Democrats—and democratic socialists—have been running against it, and against Hoover, ever since. FDR campaigned in 1932 by denouncing Hoover’s “doctrine of American individualism” and never really stopped suggesting that Hoover and his party were fanatically anti-government, favoring “devil take the hindmost” capitalism.

    The attacks on Hoover and conservatives generally as libertarian zealots remain ingrained in the popular, journalistic, and academic imagination to this day. And they were unfair from the start. A progressive Republican who’d served in the Wilson administration, Hoover was never the heartless advocate of do-nothing austerity his opponents painted. Indeed, government spending during Hoover’s four years in office nearly doubled in real terms (and, yes, Republicans controlled Congress).

    Jonah's plea, guaranteed to fall on deaf ears, is for political rhetoric to avoid easy caricature of opponents, and deal with the country as-is.

  • Speaking of reality-based, I've been waiting for Andrew C. McCarthy to weigh in. And, sorry Nicolás, he has bad news for you: Legal Questions over the Maduro Extraction Won’t Help Him in Court. (NR gifted link)

    There are significant legal questions about the legitimacy vel non of the dictator Nicolás Maduro’s forcible extraction by U.S. armed forces, working in tandem with American intelligence and law enforcement agencies. It is unlikely, however, that the federal criminal case against him in Manhattan’s Southern District of New York (SDNY) will be an effective forum for pressing any objections.

    As a matter of American law, unadorned by any treaty obligations, Maduro really hasn’t a leg to stand on. Even if illegality has attended the arrest of an accused, including any unlawful search of his person or premises, that would not vitiate the charges in an indictment. It would, at most, give the accused grounds to challenge the admissibility of any statements he may have made, or any evidence seized, at the time of arrest.

    Andrew also has a probing query for the Donald: What’s the Plan in Venezuela? (archive.today link) His bottom line:

    What’s the president’s plan? It’s not obvious that he has one. I don’t see how you restore deterrence by taking apparent ownership of (by leaving in place) the anti-American Marxist regime that was the supposed rationale for removing Maduro, while simultaneously encouraging China and Russia to believe they may be able to invade their neighbors with impunity.

    President Trump with a plan? To quote Hemingway one more time: "Isn't it pretty to think so?"

  • We're not sending our best. The WSJ editorialists are not impressed with the bouts further down on the card: The Kelly-Hegseth Grudge Match Helps No One. (WSJ gifted link)

    Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says the Pentagon is looking to punish retired Navy captain and now Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly. His offense: appearing in a partisan social-media video warning troops not to obey illegal orders. This episode reflects well on nobody, and it will further poison the chances of a national defense consensus the country needs.

    Mr. Kelly isn’t an innocent here. He and five other Democratic lawmakers with military and intelligence backgrounds last year produced a video montage speaking “directly to members of the military.” The “threats to our Constitution aren’t just coming from abroad,” the lawmakers said, “but from right here at home.” Sen. Kelly says specifically: “Our laws are clear, you can refuse illegal orders.”

    Another quote from the past: "It's a pity they can't both lose." Instead, it's us.