☕️ OTTO VON POOPY-HEAD ☙ Friday, April 17, 2026 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

In which the nation claims a favorite field marshall and a Supreme Court justice declares war on the left with rhetorical spikes and bayonets. And more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Friday! Today’s post is slightly truncated, since I woke up with an inflamed right eye that, in medical terminology, felt like a wasp trying to make babies with my cornea. That, in turn, led to an exhaustive early-morning solo search for palliative eyedrops, since I was too chicken to wake Michelle up at 4:15am to help me find them. Anyway, today’s post might be on the shorter side, but it made the sarcasm splendidly concentrated. Enjoy. I’m going to CVS.

⛑️ C&C ARMY BRIEFING — IRAN WAR UPDATE ⛑️

Late yesterday, the New York Times reported, “Trump says he might go to Pakistan if an Iran deal is signed there.” Yesterday afternoon, a reporter asked President Trump outside the White House if he would visit Pakistan this weekend to “seal the deal yourself.” He said, “I might go. They want me.” He’s only left the country for one other peace deal— last October’s historic Gaza ceasefire.

President Trump said the next in-person negotiations with Iran could occur over the weekend, warning that fighting would resume if no deal emerged. The openness to traveling to Pakistan —which, let’s be honest, isn’t on anyone’s travel bucket list— was a significant signal, a tease. If they can get the deal done this weekend, the President might come. In person. Live.

American presidents have historically traveled to Pakistan under two circumstances: (a) never, and (b) maybe once, briefly, with the motorcade running, to pick up a carpet order.

Pakistan has played a remarkable role in the peace talks. The country’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir —who Trump called “my favorite field marshal”— has been in Tehran for several days trying to coordinate a new round of talks this weekend before the cease-fire expires on the 21st. (I suppose Munir’s my favorite field marshal, too. He’s basically the only one I know of.)

“The Pakistanis have been incredible mediators,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. “The president feels it’s important to continue to streamline this communication through the Pakistanis.”

The President also criticized experts who’d counseled against the war. They said, “‘Sir, if you do this, fuel is going to go to $300 a barrel. The Depression is going to happen.’” But President Trump disagreed and went to war anyway.

Oil is currently trading at less than a third of the experts’ prediction. With classic humility, Trump noted that he, not the experts, was right: “A Depression can’t happen, because we just hit a brand new all-time high.” As of going to press, no Depression is in view.

Experts. Ugh. Just wait till you hear about the thrashing Justice Thomas gave them, along with the entire progressive movement.

🌍🇺🇸 ESSENTIAL NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🇺🇸🌍

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On Wednesday, Justice Thomas, age 77 and apparently immune to biographers, marched into the University of Austin and declared independence from the administrative state on its behalf. ABC reported, “Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas blasts progressivism as threat to America.” Blasts is accurate. But bazooka’d might be the mot juste. He called progressivism “an existential threat” to America, compared it to totalitarianism and slaveholding, and explicitly called for resistance comparable to the original American Revolution. Fix bayonets! It was a declaration of war.

Thomas, 77, delivered his incendiary remarks at the University of Austin Law School’s special 250th anniversary event on Wednesday. They were broadcast live on CSPAN to the entire world.

“As we meet today, it is unclear whether our Constitutional principles will endure,” the Justice began, warming to his theme. “At the beginning of the 20th century, a new set of first principles of government was introduced into the American mainstream … called progressivism.” It must be rooted out. “Progressivism has made many inroads in our system of government and our way of life,” he said. “It has coexisted uneasily with the principles of the Declaration. Because it is opposed to those principles, it is not possible for the two to coexist forever.”

In a single sentence, he ripped progressivism and the most annoying bumper sticker ever made.

He described the tentacled ideology as a European concept, a foreign import, landed on our shores by President Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921). “Progressivism was not native to America. President Wilson and the progressives candidly admitted that they took it from Otto von Bismarck’s Germany, whose state-centric society they admired” so that we could “catch up with the more ‘advanced and sophisticated’ people of Europe.”

(Note for Portlanders: Otto Von Bismarck was a 19th-century German chancellor famous for three things: (1) inventing the modern administrative state, (2) sporting eyebrows the size and shape of above-average marmosets, and (3) wearing a helmet with a spike on top. The administrative state still enjoys an unkillable zombie-like existence, but you rarely see spiked helmets in politics anymore. Although I bet Bernie Sanders could pull it off.)

Progressivism flips the board on the Founders’ original intent. “Progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence, and hence our form of government,” Thomas explained. “It holds that our rights and our dignities come not from God, but from the government,” and “requires of the people a subservience and weakness incompatible with the Constitution.”

He called progressivism a murderous ideology. “Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao all were intertwined with the rise of progressivism, and all were opposed to the natural rights on which our Declaration was based,” he said. “Many progressives expressed admiration for each of them shortly before their governments killed tens of millions of people.”

Residents of several neighboring states could hear the collective gasp from the faculty lounge at Harvard. It was the Supreme Court equivalent of dropping a live badger into a crowded elevator at a Democratic Socialists convention. He continued, going further, correctly noting that U.S. progressives embraced eugenics, racial segregation, forced sterilization, fascism (national socialism), and the grotesque notion that oats and nuts can somehow be “ethically milked” —whatever that is— if you squeeze them hard enough.

Thomas traced the murderous movement straight to elitist arrogance and scorn for ordinary American values. “President Wilson described the American people as ‘selfish, ignorant, timid, stubborn’ and ‘foolish,’” he continued. (Though, to be fair, if you’ve ever driven on I-95 in South Florida, you’ll admit Wilson at least had a talking point.) Worse, the justice explained, “Wilson lamented that we do too much by vote and too little by expert rule.”

“Progressivism,” Thomas declared, “is retrogressive.”

He spoke carefully, as one of the nation’s top legal minds would. But it was nothing less than a call for revolution. “In my view,” he dramatically concluded, “we must find in ourselves that same level of courage that the signers of the Declaration had, so that we can do for our future what they did for theirs.”

Then came the call to action: “It’s our country. It’s governed by our consent. Let us act like that and take ownership of it.” Stab them in the face. (After a fair trial, of course.)

🔥 In Austin, Justice Thomas stopped treating progressivism as a mere policy preference and openly described it as a rival regime. Progressivism is a wacky, spike-helmeted Bismarckian project that “seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence, and hence our form of government.”

It denies that rights are God‑given, and insists they flow from an all‑powerful administrative state. Because progressivism is “opposed to those principles,” Thomas explained, “it is not possible for the two to coexist forever,” a line that sounds less like standard conservative rhetoric and more like a formal declaration of war, easily comparable to the most inflammatory language found in the Declaration of Independence itself. (Democrats treat the Declaration of Independence the same way you treat a smoke alarm— by removing the battery to make it stop beeping.)

🔥 Critics on the academic left understood what Thomas was really up to. Progressive historian Tad Stoermer argued that the justice “is not doing what his critics will say he is doing,” meaning just a generic MAGA broadside, but “something considerably more precise, and considerably more dangerous.” In Stoermer’s view, Thomas is trying to reclaim the “sacred ground” of the Declaration for conservatives while banishing progressivism into the “profane” category— beyond the Pale of America’s civic religion altogether.

Stoermer wasn’t wrong.

Democrats furiously attacked the messenger —Thomas’s motives, his ethics, and his “extremism”— but gingerly avoided his central premise: that progressivism rejects the Declaration’s God‑given natural rights and aims to replace them. In short, they’re not saying he’s wrong. It’s like if the doctor tells you that you have a tapeworm occupying your small intestine, and you respond by criticizing the doctor’s leprechaun tie. You still have the tapeworm, but at least you didn’t have to talk about it anymore.

Their ad hominem reaction all but conceded the justice’s point. On cable news and in friendly write‑ups, Democrats denounced Thomas for “blasting” progressivism, accused him of endangering democracy, and recycled the usual ethics grievances— but none of them would touch his underlying claim that modern progressivism treats rights as government favors rather than gifts from God.

For instance, they didn’t argue that the Declaration’s language about being “endowed by their Creator” is wrong, or even that it’s compatible with Wilson’s idea of rights doled out by administrators; they just changed the subject. Their studied silence on the first principles is a kind of quiet confirmation that Thomas correctly identified the fault line— and Democrats decided not to fight him on that unfavorable ground.

Thomas essentially told them their political religion is a cheap German knockoff that leads to tyranny, and they responded by accusing him of using the salad fork to eat the crusted venison. Plus, he came in the wrong RV.

All that is well and good. But here’s the thing. Justice Thomas is not exactly a wallflower. When he speaks, he says exactly what he thinks, and always has. But he’s never gone this far before. He’s never declared war on progressivism as an “existential threat,” and declared, with all the majesty and force of his high office and at the peak of his rhetorical skill, that only one form of government can ultimately survive.

Does this new boldness mirror something happening behind the scenes in SCOTUS’s private chambers? Was it intended to frame a pending decision that could cause a political earthquake, like birthright citizenship, perhaps? Is this post-pandemic expert fatigue, and now even Supreme Court justices feel free to say out loud that the ideology of expertise itself is perverse and incompatible with popular self‑government?

Or does Thomas’s 9-minute manifesto mark a brand-new cultural inflection point?

We know one thing for sure: the conservative counter‑revolution has been winning. It gained ground during the excesses of the Biden administration and the pandemic, when the right fought a mostly defensive war against mandates, censorship, and rule-by-bureaucracy. It shifted into offensive gear after Trump’s re‑election, scoring visible victories against DEI, trans‑ideology, open borders, and a long string of similar cultural outposts.

And now, with Justice Thomas standing up in Austin to boldly announce that progressivism “seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration, and hence our form of government” and “cannot coexist forever” with it, the counter‑revolution looks remarkably like an army that has seized the high ground and is preparing to march onto the final battlefield.

We only need to get Justice Thomas a helmet with a spike on top, and then we’ll be fully prepared for the final boss battle— progressivism itself.

Have a fantastic Friday! I’ll return tomorrow, hopefully clear-eyed, and deliver another rousing and irreverent does of essential news and commentary.

Don’t race off! We cannot do it alone. Consider joining up with C&C to help move the nation’s needle and change minds. I could sure use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can: ☕ Learn How to Get Involved 🦠

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