The Unitarian Universalists (“UUs”) exist as the consequence of a heresy — the rejection of the Trinity — that originated in Eastern Europe and eventually found a permanent home in New England, where Henry Ware made it the quasi-official religion at Harvard in the early 1800s. Many years ago, one of my neo-Confederate friends cited the conversion of Harvard to Unitarianism as the actual cause of the Civil War, and I haven’t researched the issue enough to confirm that theory, but the general apostasy of New England is remarkable enough, even without that connection to world-historic events. When the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, they were the most militant Christians on the planet, adherents of the teaching of John Calvin, seeking to escape religious corruption and oppression (as they viewed it) in the England of James I.
The Mayflower Compact‘s description of their purpose as “the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith,” and John Winthrop’s subsequent conception of New England as a “city upon a hill,” are sufficient testimony to the profound religious belief that inspired those early settlers. This was not some generic Christianity, but a very specific Calvinist faith, and these settlers were in the vanguard of its most sincere adherents. When, after more than a century in New England, it seemed that the colonial faithful had lapsed from the zeal of their forefathers, Jonathan Edwards inspired a revival with his famous 1741 sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” which I would recommend to the reading of anyone who desires a true understanding of the Gospel.
From the faith of the Pilgrims emerged what came to be known as the Congregational denomination. The Second Congregational Meeting House Society of Nantucket dates to 1809 — the “South Church,” to distinguish it from the First Congregational “North Church.” In 1837, the South Church congregation adopted Unitarianism in the form of the Harvard Covenant, and in 1961, the Unitarians merged with the Universalists to form the UUs, who are so far away from the Calvinism of John Winthrop and Jonathan Edwards that they’re practically in a separate universe. The South Church has made news:
A liberal church on swanky vacation island Nantucket nixed its Fourth of July readings for the first time in 25 years in “political protest” over the Supreme Court’s voting rights ruling — and its congregants’ “whiteness.”
The Nantucket Unitarian Universalists has read the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights inside its church every Fourth of July for the last 25 years.
This year, the church’s board of trustees and presiding Rev. Erin Splaine published a letter announcing the cancelation of the readings just one month before America’s 250th birthday.
The church blamed the revision on the Supreme Court’s “gutting” of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and “an on-going process within the congregation to better understand our own whiteness,” according to the letter.
The self-proclaimed “liberal and free faith” leaders claimed that white people know the rights laid out in the America’s foundational texts “have, for centuries, been tragically, often violently, and unequally applied” against non-white citizens.
What would Jonathan Edwards have to say to the Rev. Erin Splaine? “Erin, her wife, Michelle and their very cute dog Charlie are thrilled to be part of the Nantucket UU and larger community,” we are informed, and I’m pretty sure the Pilgrims would not approve. The assertion that the Supreme Court’s decision in Callais amounted to “gutting” the Voting Rights Act was repudiated by Justice Clarence Thomas:
This Court should never have interpreted [Section 2] of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to effectively give racial groups “an entitlement to roughly proportional representation.” … By doing so, the Court led legislatures and courts to “systematically divid[e] the country into electoral districts along racial lines.” Holder v. Hall, 512 U. S. 874, 905 (1994) (THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment). “Blacks [we]re drawn into ‘black districts’ and given ‘black representatives’; Hispanics [were] drawn into Hispanic districts and given ‘Hispanic representatives’; and so on.” Ibid. That interpretation rendered [Section 2] “repugnant to any nation that strives for the ideal of a color-blind Constitution.” Id., at 905–906. Today’s decision should largely put an end to this “disastrous misadventure” in voting-rights jurisprudence. Id., at 893.
As I explained more than 30 years ago, I would go further and hold that [Section 2] of the Voting Rights Act does not regulate districting at all. See id., at 922–923. The relevant text prohibits States from imposing or applying a “voting qualification,” “prerequisite to voting,” or “standard, practice, or procedure,” in a manner that results in a denial or abridgement of the right to vote based on race. … How States draw district lines does not fall within any of those three categories. Holder, 512 U. S., at 922–923 (opinion of THOMAS, J.); Allen v. Milligan, 599 U. S. 1, 46 (2023) (THOMAS, J., dissenting). The words in [Section 2] instead “reach only ‘enactments that regulate citizens’ access to the ballot or the processes for counting a ballot’; they ‘do not include a State’s . . . choice of one districting scheme over another.’” Ibid. (quoting Holder, 512 U. S., at 945 (opinion of THOMAS, J.)). Therefore, no [Section 2] challenge to districting should ever succeed.
Isn’t Justice Thomas more qualified to interpret the law and the Constitution than the Rev. Splaine and her “very cute dog Charlie”?
Justice Thomas has talked about how, after a racial protest in Boston that turned violent in 1970, he went to the chapel at Holy Cross University and prayed: “I just asked God to take hate out of my heart, and I just vowed that if he did I would never hate again.” He has been commendably faithful to his vow, and I wonder what the Rev. Splaine thinks she will accomplish by her political stunt in a Nantucket church that long ago abandoned its claim to Christianity?
Shelby Steele’s 2006 book White Guilt analyzes the pathology expressed by the Rev. Splaine’s self-flagellating call to “better understand our own whiteness.” White guilt has become a religion for liberals, and they don’t understand why the rest of us aren’t heeding the altar call.
Since the Hamas terror attack on Israel in October 2023, the left wing of the Democratic Party has made “Palestine” its all-or-nothing issue, more important than anything else soi-disant “progressives” claim to care about. Some of us suspect that money from Qatar, Iran and other Muslim governments has been subsidizing pro-Hamas activism in the United States and other Western countries, especially in terms of podcasts and other online “influencer” propaganda (e.g., Nick Fuentes).
Susan Collins's latest financial report just came out.
A staggering one-third of her money raised this quarter came directly from AIPAC.
Senator Collins is bought and paid for by Benjamin Netanyahu, and she votes accordingly.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) June 1, 2026
First of all, as Emily Zanotti and others have pointed out, Platner flunks math — Susan Collins has raised about $10 million in contributions for her reelection campaign, of which some $350,000 are from AIPAC, which is certainly not a “staggering one-third of her money.” But really, when Democrats are backing a candidate with a Totenkopf tattoo, why would anyone blame Jews for supporting his opponent?
AIPAC is American citizens who happen to be Jewish.
The man with the SS tattoo on his body has the audacity to say that Jewish Americans are not allowed to donate money to the candidate is their choice?
Every single dollar from AIPAC comes from American citizens.
What’s…
— Insurrection Barbie (@DefiyantlyFree) June 1, 2026
Lying about the nature of AIPAC, lying about the amount of money, lying about Collins, wanting to exclude American Jews from public life, just what I would expect from a serial cheating Nazi creep!
Obviously, I’m not someone who spends time listening for “dog whistles” of racism, and I’m perfectly willing to call out Jews whose behavior deserves condemnation (e.g., Jamie Raskin, “the Leading Cause of Antisemitism in America”). But it is obvious to me that Democrats are willing to exploit the Left’s “Palestine” obsession in ways that reek of 1930s Germany. Anytime a Democrat wants to juice up the “progressive” grassroots, scapegoating AIPAC is now the go-to tactic.
You probably never heard of Saikat Chakrabarti, but he’s a Harvard-educated Silicon Valley tech bro who made a fortune after getting in on the ground floor at Stripe. Chakrabarti reportedly spent $10 million of his own money on a congressional campaign in California’s 11th District, for the seat vacated by Nancy Pelosi’s retirement. He finished third in Tuesday night’s primary, and guess who got the blame?
It’s becoming clearer and clearer that AIPAC is doing everything they can to keep me out of the top two & secure a win for Scott Wiener in November. First we heard reports that an AIPAC affiliated group is dumping $475k into this race at the last minute to keep me out of the… pic.twitter.com/gz1ls3bi0c
— Saikat Chakrabarti for Congress (@saikatc) June 1, 2026
Scott Wiener is a disgusting scumbag who might some day challenge Jamie Raskin for the “Leading Cause of Antisemitism in America” title, but why scapegoat AIPAC? Did those cunning Jews talk Saikat Chakrabarti into wasting $10 million for a third-place finish?
Expect to see more of this kind of rhetoric from Democrats between now and the November midterms, and if somehow Republicans manage to keep control of Congress, Democrats will blame THE JOOZ!
When I wrote about Trump Derangement Syndrome over the weekend, it was while following the discourse over the latest scandalous Graham Platner revelations. These are certainly not the first such revelations, nor will they be the last, as GOP operatives reportedly have a vast pile of opposition research on Mr. Nazi Tattoo they’re waiting to unload when the time is right. But the reaction from liberals to what came out over the weekend was to double-down, to dig their entrenchments deeper, to rationalize the necessity of defending Platner at all costs, no matter what.
She is easily the highest-value senator for the right, even if most of their rank and file on this platform are too dimwitted to appreciate that value. If you think she’s an affable centrist and therefore not worth hating, you do not understand how anything works.
“TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP!” The deranged obsession so warps David Klion’s perception that, when challenged on his over-the-top rhetoric, his response is to post a syllogism, the first premise of which is, “Republicans are evil,” and believes that he has thereby vanquished his critics.
The Democratic primary in Maine is June 9, less than two weeks away, and the question now is whether Graham Platner will get shoved under the party’s bus before it’s too late to find another candidate to challenge Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
Hit by scandal after scandal in recent weeks, Platner’s status as “rising star” is now at risk because Democrats have belatedly realized that there might be even more damaging revelations to come — worse than his SS Totenkopf tattoo, which somehow Democrats had convinced themselves wasn’t really a scandal at all. What they’re realizing now is that Republican sources weren’t just bragging when they told Marc Halperin that their opposition research files on Platner were so toxic that he was not only guaranteed to lose to Collins, but “he’ll have to leave the state.” Frantic social-media drama from Democrats in recent days suggests that party insiders have confirmed what those GOP operatives were hinting at — Platner is unelectable; if he is the Democrat on the ballot in November, Collins will win in a landslide. . . .
It’s that time of year when gals in overalls get out there and start getting ploweddoing farming stuff. Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt. –
As y’all probably noticed, we’ve been having some problems here at The Other McCain, what with hackers and such, and without dragging all the dirty laundry out in public (because there isn’t any) suffice it to say that when Stacy gets back from Alaska, he and I and Smitty need to have a talk and decide what we’re going to do with this site. Smitty hasn’t been active much here lately and since he’s got a couple of young ‘uns and a day job, he can’t really be the resident tech guy any more. This is a problem, because I’m not up to speed on PHP and WordPress, and Stacy, well, some of you may remember when I was joking some years back about getting him a Qwerkywriter or a telegraph key so he’d feel more at home with modern computing. Or, as Dr. McCoy might have said on Star Trek if he’d been the Enterprise‘s Information Officer instead of medical officer: “Damn it, Jim, I’m a reporter, not an IT guy!” One way or the other, we’ll figure something out and keep the old blog flying. We’ll let y’all know when it happens. Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.
Yr. Humble Author attempts to deal with hackers and such (2026, colorized & with added imaginary drama)
When you look at that kind of headline, how can you doubt that the pandemic of Trump Derangement Syndrome has become toxic?
A TikToker has lost her job after posting a video that appeared to pray for former Attorney General Pam Bondi to suffer permanently from cancer, prompting outrage across social media.
In the video, the TikToker says, “Dear MAGA Lord Jesus, please let her end up with a hole in her throat that she has to push every time she speaks. Dear God, if there is a MAGA God, please let Pam Bondi’s throat cancer be the worst case of cancer anybody’s ever seen.”
The TikTok, posted by @glitterandcrossbones, which is currently set to private, appeared to have been posted by Caitlyn Aguiar, who had worked as an assistant vice president for the Inbound Contact Center at Jeanne D’Arc Credit Union since January 2024, according to her LinkedIn page, which appears to have been taken down.
Bondi, 60, who was fired from the Department of Justice in early April, has been diagnosed with thyroid cancer and undergone treatment.
In the TikTok, Aguiar continued, “Please let her have to take on the suffering that she’s unleashed upon the thousands, millions, dare I say, of Americans in this country. . . . Please, dear MAGA Lord Jesus…”
She added, “Please let this be the karma that she so justly deserves, MAGA Lord Jesus. Amen.”
Massachusetts Democrat Caitlyn Aguiar, who in a video cheered on Pam Bondi’s cancer diagnosis and said she hopes she dies a painful death, has been fired from her job at Jeanne D’Arc just a day after we made the company aware of her rhetoric. pic.twitter.com/Pan7Y9g1GA
— Right Angle News Network (@Rightanglenews) May 29, 2026
How can it be that someone working as the assistant vice president of a financial institution could think this way? And believe she could post something like that online without consequences?
The problem is not just that a lot of Democrats are insane — although, of course they are — but that so many people, including Republicans, are incapable of thinking outside of the here-and-now of politics, the 24/7 news cycle reinforced by constant immersion in social media noise.
For me, as a journalist, the tyranny of the news cycle is a danger that I must struggle to resist. It helps that there was no Internet at all when I got started, and that it was only after more than 20 years in the newspaper business that I launched out into the world of blogging and social media. Like, I remember when dial-up modems, Usenet boards and AOL were “the new thing,” and therefore have some perspective on the contemporary madness that spawns TikTok meltdowns.
Lose your job for ranting about Pam Bondi? Of the many Cabinet secretaries I’ve seen come and go in my lifetime, there were certainly quite a few I intensely disliked, but I am certain I never said anything about, e.g., Janet Reno that would even begin to compare with what this woman said about Pam Bondi. And why? What is the “suffering” that Bondi allegedly “unleashed”? Pretty doggone sure she never ordered an attack that incinerated 86 Americans, as was the case at Waco.
Political passions come and go. Today’s headline news will disappear when some new controversy comes along tomorrow, and within 10 or 20 years, almost everything we are currently arguing about will be entirely forgotten. How often do I find myself having to explain to people exactly what happened during the Lewinsky scandal, or how the invasion of Iraq went sideways? These are events that dominated the headlines for months at a time, in recent memory, and yet are just vaguely remembered by most Americans. The people burning down their own lives with toxic TikTok rants are trapped in short-term thinking.
When I was packing for our trip to Alaska, knowing I’d be without an Internet connection for many hours, I brought along the third volume of Winston Churchill’s A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, which I’ve read at least twice before, but enjoy re-reading every so often because it’s fascinating. Here you have world-historical events, involving some of the most eminent figures in British history, and most people nowadays know absolutely nothing about it. Here is the Duke of Marlborough smashing the French at Blenheim — arguably the greatest victory ever won by an English army — and it means nothing to the average American. Blenheim? Never heard of it. Marlborough? Isn’t that a cigarette brand? Even among college-educated Americans, how many of them can even tell you one fact about the War of the Spanish Succession?
Marlborough at Blenheim, 1704
If the entire War of the Spanish Succession can vanish from popular memory, what are the chances that any of our grandchildren will ever hear the name Pam Bondi? How crazy do you have to be to think you’re going to “make a difference” in the world by whipping out your phone to record a TikTok diatribe about the former Attorney General?
One of the most interesting characters of the 1700s was Robert Walpole, the first to be called Prime Minister of England. During the reign of King George I and continuing into the reign of King George II, Walpole did something both commendable and remarkable — he made politics boring. The unchallenged ascendancy of the Whigs, and a policy aimed at peace and prosperity, had the effect of causing the English people to forget all the controversies that had previously divided them. It was only after Walpole left the ministry (he died in 1745) that the course of events began that led ultimately to the American Revolution.
America today could use a Walpole, a president who could usher in an era of quiet competence, resting upon a decisive and durable political majority. If you look back over the past 40 years, you see why our politics have become so toxic. Despite the 12-year White House tenure of Reagan-Bush (1981-93), Republicans never had a majority at the congressional level during those years. After Clinton was elected in 1992, however, the reaction to his first two years in office produced the “Republican Revolution” that led to 12 years of GOP control of the House. Since then, we’ve gone through the Lewinsky scandal (1998), the Bush-vs.-Gore Florida recount 2000), the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and repeated changes of the congressional majority (2006, 2010, 2018, 2022). The balance between the two major parties is so close that it seems impossible for either of them to maintain control for very long, and the result of this fragile balance is a relentless intensification of political conflict, as each side appeals more desperately to the prejudices of its partisan base. Consequently, emotionally vulnerable people are quite literally driven mad by the nonstop bombardment of political messages intended to incite “grassroots energy,” as the consultants call it.
If we are to have an American Walpole, I think, he will have to be Republican, and he will need a majority so strong as to push the Democratic Party into a very long period of political eclipse. The opportunity is there for Marco Rubio (or J.D. Vance, or Ron DeSantis) to do this if (a) Republicans can manage to hold onto both houses of Congress in this November’s midterms, (b) any Republican can win the White House in 2028, and (c) the Trump agenda of strong border enforcement can be continued until (d) the 2030 Census peels enough House seats away from “blue” states to make a Democratic majority a forlorn hope for the next decade. This is a series of hypothetical contingencies, each dependent on the most favorable developments for Republicans, but it is nevertheless possible. All we need is a few breaks, and the next decade could finally bring us a prolonged relief from the tremendous strain we’ve endured since the 1990s.
OVER THE TRANSOM
