@koolidge

Communicator. Former: congressional cand., syndicated radio host🎙️, Army OIF1 vet 🇺🇸, airborne. Bylines: @FDRLST @dcexaminer @RCPolitics et al. Pizza snob 🍕

Illinois, USA
Joined July 2008
Former Army personnel officer here, 6 years active duty, one in a combat zone. Processed many medals. Some insights on the Walz stolen valor controversy. A thread…
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Had an over-4 hour reunion with my first cousin last night who I hadn't seen in person in over 20 years. Our final topic was discussing our mutual love of @UrgeOverkill, and whether Saturation or Enter The Dragon was a better album. Not on my bingo card of topics I thought we'd cover 🎸
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Mike Koolidge retweeted
Most nations, historically, would have annihilated Gaza after 10/7 - slaughtered every fighting man, destroyed every base of support for them, and pointed the broken survivors west to try to find mercy in Egypt. Today, we are expected to take media from the literal terror state which launched the war at face value, and blame the VICTIMS for a response which killed 2% of the aggressor's population. It almost cannot be over-stated how absurd this is. Prey morality, socialism, and similar philosophies are cancers based upon the exploitation of empathy - which spread through society like gray-green mold through bread, and occasionally must be cut out in the same way.
OCTOBER 7, 2023: SHE KNEW SHE WAS GOING TO DIE. Libi Cohen-Meguri, a 22-year-old infantry officer, went to the Nova music festival. She was shot while fleeing the party. At 8:11 a.m., she called her parents and said: “I’ve been shot in the stomach, I’ve been shot in the arm, I’m losing blood. I’m going to die.” Calmly, quietly, she understood; these were the last minutes of her life. She asked her parents to call Tomer, her twin brother, and Maya, her little sister, and said: “I’m going to die. I just want you to listen to me. I love you, Yariv. You’re the best father I could have asked for. Mom, stop screaming. Just listen to me. You are the best mother we could have ever had. Don’t forget to be a good mother to Tomer and Maya after I die. Tomer, how lucky we were to live this life together. I love you. My Maya, never forget—you are the treasure of my life.” When she finished speaking, her parents told her to get out of the car, lie down on the road, and pretend to be dead. With her last bit of strength, she got out of the car and laid down on the road. “Mom, they’re coming to shoot me again,” Libi said after lying down. While her mother listened on the phone, shouts in Arabic could be heard, and then a barrage of gunfire. It didn’t stop. It kept going, until the call was disconnected. And that’s how Libi died—with demonic beasts from the pit of hell standing over her and emptying a full magazine into her body. Libi died with LOVE on her lips: love for life, love for her family, and love for her people. Her memory will forever be a blessing. NEVER FORGET. NEVER FORGIVE. NEVER AGAIN IS NOW. Israel is hunting down every single Palestinian and Hamas terrorist who participated in the October 7th Massacre—to kill them all. They’re living on “borrowed time,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. Sooner or later, every one of these monsters will be found and eliminated.
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Mike Koolidge retweeted
USAID sounds nice. US AID. As in the US is aiding the poor in need. That’s not what USAID was. It was the US Agency for International Development. Which funded regime changes and far Left causes. It spread Communism. It wasn’t about feeding the poor. It created the poor.
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East of Eden on @Netflix is fantastic. Pleasantly surprised at how faithful to the book it is. Acting is superb, and no dumb “modern” casting choices. Other than song choice at end of Ep. 3 (way too on the nose) dare I say it’s just about perfect. And still have 2 episodes to go. Bring it home, Pugh & Company… #EastofEden
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Friends, read this. There’s a reason it has 57 MILLION views. (And I recall having Derrida shoved down my throat in college—and finding it all preposterous).
Je veux présenter mes excuses, au nom des Français, pour avoir enfanté la French Theory (qui a enfanté la pire des merdes idéologiques : le wokisme). Nous avons donné au monde Descartes, Pascal, Tocqueville. Et puis, dans les ruines intellectuelles de l'après-68, nous avons donné Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze. Trois hommes brillants qui ont fabriqué, dans l'élégance de notre langue, l'arme idéologique qui paralyse aujourd'hui l'Occident. Il faut comprendre ce qu'ils ont fait. Foucault a enseigné que la vérité n'existe pas, qu'il n'y a que des rapports de pouvoir déguisés en savoir. Que la science, la raison, la justice, l'institution médicale, l'école, la prison, la sexualité, tout n'est qu'une mise en scène de la domination. Derrida a enseigné que les textes n'ont pas de sens stable, que tout signifiant glisse, que toute lecture est une trahison, que l'auteur est mort et que le lecteur règne. Deleuze a enseigné qu'il fallait préférer le rhizome à l'arbre, le nomade au sédentaire, le désir à la loi, le devenir à l'être, la différence à l'identité. Pris isolément, ce sont des thèses discutables. Combinées, exportées, vulgarisées, elles forment un système. Et ce système est un poison. Car voici ce qui s'est passé. Ces textes, illisibles en France, ont traversé l'Atlantique. Les départements de Yale, de Berkeley, de Columbia les ont absorbés dans les années 80. Ils y ont trouvé un terreau qui n'existait pas chez nous : le puritanisme américain, sa culpabilité raciale, son obsession identitaire. La French Theory s'est mariée à ce substrat, et l'enfant de ce mariage s'appelle le wokisme. Judith Butler lit Foucault et invente le genre performatif. Edward Said lit Foucault et invente le post-colonialisme académique. Kimberlé Crenshaw hérite du cadre et invente l'intersectionnalité. À chaque étape, la matrice est française : il n'y a pas de vérité, il n'y a que du pouvoir, donc toute hiérarchie est suspecte, toute institution est oppressive, toute norme est violence, toute identité est construite donc négociable, toute majorité est coupable. Voilà comment trois philosophes parisiens, qui n'ont probablement jamais imaginé leurs conséquences pratiques, ont fourni le logiciel d'exploitation à une génération entière d'activistes, de bureaucrates universitaires, de DRH, de journalistes, de législateurs. Voilà comment on a obtenu une civilisation qui ne sait plus dire si une femme est une femme, si sa propre histoire mérite d'être défendue, si le mérite existe, si la vérité se distingue de l'opinion. C'est de la merde pour une raison simple, et il faut la dire calmement. Une civilisation se tient debout sur trois piliers : la croyance qu'il existe une vérité accessible à la raison, la croyance qu'il existe un bien distinct du mal, la croyance qu'il existe un héritage à transmettre. La French Theory a entrepris de dynamiter les trois. Pas par méchanceté. Par jeu intellectuel, par fascination du soupçon, par haine de la bourgeoisie qui les avait nourris. Mais le résultat est là. Une génération entière a appris à déconstruire et n'a jamais appris à construire. Une génération entière sait soupçonner et ne sait plus admirer. Une génération entière voit le pouvoir partout et la beauté nulle part. Je m'excuse parce que nous, Français, avons une responsabilité particulière. C'est notre langue, nos universités, nos éditeurs, notre prestige qui ont donné à ce nihilisme son emballage chic. Sans la légitimité de la Sorbonne et de Vincennes, ces idées n'auraient jamais traversé l'océan. Nous avons exporté le doute comme d'autres exportent des armes. Ce qui se construit maintenant, en silicon valley, dans les labos d'IA, dans les startups, dans les ateliers, dans tous les lieux où des gens fabriquent encore des choses au lieu de les déconstruire, c'est la réponse. Une civilisation se reconstruit par les bâtisseurs, pas par les commentateurs. Par ceux qui croient que la vérité existe et qu'elle vaut qu'on s'y consacre. Par ceux qui assument une hiérarchie du beau, du vrai, du bon, et qui n'ont pas honte de la transmettre. Alors pardon. Et au travail.
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Mike Koolidge retweeted
Power selects for a specific personality type, and it is not yours. F.A. Hayek spelled this out in 1944. In a centrally planned system, the people who rise are not the most competent or the most honest. They are the most willing to exercise force against strangers, the most comfortable with contradiction, and the most skilled at coalition-building through favors rather than merit. Government filters for the bad ones from the start. The mechanism is straightforward. Political power means controlling resources you did not earn. Capturing that control requires outcompeting rivals who have no ethical constraints. A principled candidate refuses to promise contradictory things to different voter blocs. An unprincipled one does it without blinking. The unprincipled one wins. Repeat this selection pressure across hundreds of electoral cycles and you get the U.S. Congress in 2026: a body where the average member has held office for over a decade, raised millions from interested parties, and delivered almost nothing measurable to the people who voted for them. Bureaucracy compounds the problem. Once entrenched, state agencies attract people who want authority without accountability. You cannot fire most of them. The FDA, the TSA, the Federal Reserve all function this way, staffed by individuals whose career advancement depends on expanding the agency's reach, never on serving you efficiently.
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Trump completely changed the culture of the DC administrative state. For the first time in my career, I’ve heard government employees say things like “we work for the American people” and “we need to create value for our country” with sincerity instead of sarcasm and snark. The 47 transition team brought in a bunch of private-equity dealmakers and corporate executives at the cabinet deputy/under-secretary levels, and they’ve been cleaning house. These are people who are used to working long hours, being responsive to their stakeholders, and holding their teams accountable. People who care more about results and value creation than they do about years of tenure or where your MPA degree is from. People for whom the words “fiduciary duty” actually mean something. Almost overnight, they transformed the way work is done in DC. If you view a federal job as a way to just coast through a career and collect a pension (with an occasional pit stop at Booz Allen Hamilton or Accenture to top up your 401k), you’re not going to make it. If you want to just clock in 9-5 via Microsoft Teams and get paid as a GS-14, the American people no longer require your services. If you treat government funds as an infinite reservoir of Monopoly money, rather than as a finite pool of capital funded by hard-working taxpayers who deserve a return on their investment, you’re out. The difference has been night and day. As an investor, as a taxpayer, and—most importantly—as a citizen, I couldn’t be more excited or more grateful. Patriots really are in control 🇺🇸
Today we’re launching America.gov, a single front door to the federal government. Instead of opening a bunch of tabs across different agency sites and trying to figure out which information actually matters to you, you can ask America a question and get the relevant answer from across 29,000+ official government websites, with the source and what to do next.
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Mike Koolidge retweeted
"I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don't know. They're outside my ken. But sometimes when I'm in a theater I can feel them." Pauline Kael Same difference. Same elitism. Same disdain. A coded basket of deplorables
What Some Folks Really Mean When They Claim to Have Never Heard ‘Choosin’ Texas’ Proclaiming you're unfamiliar with Ella Langley's record-setting song has a lot in common with saying "I listen to anything but country." rollingstone.com/music/music…
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Mike Koolidge retweeted
The reason this is so important and so necessary is that of all the Executive Branch departments, the State Department BY FAR has the worst form of a cultural illness where its employees lose sight of the fact that they serve the American people and they instead believe they serve whatever nation or cause their diplomacy is focused on. If you ever served downrange in the U.S. military and had to work closely with State Department employees, you know I speak truth. Bravo, Mr. President and Secretary Rubio. This change is wholly necessary. Symbolism matters. And if you are a State Department employee and don't like this? Then quit, and good riddance.
The US State Department lobby used to display the flags of the roughly 200 countries with which the US maintains diplomatic relations. Now, it displays 200 American flags, to remind State Department employees who they work for.
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Hypnotic
Some music simply refuses to grow old. This is the kind of timeless brilliance that still hits just as hard today. ✨🎶
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“God is the third rail of rock and roll.” Reflecting on faith, honesty, and choosing to talk openly about God in music. Full conversation on The Magnificent Others with this week’s guest Michael Sweet of Stryper.
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Watch this.
holy shit i asked claude to make a video on western civiization
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Mike Koolidge retweeted
Ah yes, Illinois… a famous Republican stronghold. We’ve had 4 years of a Republican governorship since 2003 and even he had Democratic supermajorities in the House and Senate. Illinois is world famous for terrible Democratic governance. This is a truly absurd comment.
Democrats always clean up Republican messes. Ten years ago, the Republican governor of Illinois made this state a national punchline. Since then, we've balanced the budget every year, earned 12 credit upgrades, and raised the minimum wage to give 1.4 million Illinoisans a raise.
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Mike Koolidge retweeted
I have many thoughts on the Nikole Hannah-Jones story, especially having attended the kind of schools she sent her daughter to, but if we're looking for takeaways, here's a simple one. When an expert in education so thoroughly demonstrates a jarring and near complete lack of expertise in the act of getting an education for her own daughter, we should stop taking advice from her on curriculum, instruction, and all other fads disguised as wisdom she offers. That seems like the least we could do. Her daughter's personal struggle, which is indeed sympathetic, wasn't much of a teachable moment for her, as she doesn't seem to have updated any of her priors (and actually fudges funding facts, so as not to disrupt the narrative of under-resourced schools). But it should be a teachable moment for us, about the outsized influence of a scholar who claims to know better than anyone what her daughter would be up against in the school to which she chose to send her, but was inexplicably surprised and left her daughter completely unprepared for it.
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Mike Koolidge retweeted
Astonishing
Here's a look back at how some of the self-proclaimed "news organizations" covered VP candidate JD Vance versus how they covered VP candidate Tim Walz. See if you can spot the difference.
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Watching this should make your blood boil. These are not journalists. They are paid propagandists with teleprompters. They lied to your face. For years. About everything that mattered. They did it because they despise this country and they want to gut the life you built, the kids you raised, and the flag you still stand for. They deserve nothing but contempt.
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Good interview this morning on @AM560TheAnswer
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Mike Koolidge retweeted
Looking forward to talking Illinois Politics with Mike @koolidge, filling in for @DanProft on Chicago's Morning Answer this morning in about 5 minutes. 560theanswer.com/listenlive
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