Greetings and welcome to this 81st edition of the Carnival of Fools! It’s understandable why some might feel a bit subdued after three whole weeks of suffering through the privations of life during wartime. Why, it feels as grim and gray around here as London during the Blitz, what with watching from my couch as all these bombs fall. Whatever happened to all the jestergooning in the world? In February we were proudly frame-mogging the moids to chadmaxx the foids. In March the joy has been forgotten, and the mainstream media are falling all over themselves to prematurely declare defeat in a fight where victory conditions have never been properly defined. (Per Trump, Steve Witkoff is currently headed to Iran to negotiate with “top men,” whoever they are and whatever that means.) But I remember the good times, before the war. Where have all the flowers gone?
They went to Cuba, that’s where.
National Leftism’s Cuban Vacation
Ladies and gentlemen, joy is back again. While the rest of America was nervously eyeing shipping reports from the Strait of Hormuz, some of the worst people you know decided the time was right to draw the media world’s attention to the one target on Marco Rubio’s (s)hit list the United States hasn’t used military force against yet: Cuba. And what fantastic timing they have chosen.
No doubt concluding that it’s too late for Venezuela or Iran, the infamous communist “anti-war” group Code Pink has decided it is time to raise awareness about the looming imperialist threat posed by the United States to its humble authoritarian neighbor. (The United States has choked off Cuba’s oil supply in recent months via tariff threats.) To that end, it gathered together the West’s most annoying young leftists — among the American subset Hasan Piker, Isra Hirsi (daughter of Ilhan Omar), and the sartorially obnoxious editor of Current Affairs, Nathan J. Robinson — for a big junket to Havana. They were going there to raise the consciousness of the online masses, to see just how oppressed this beautiful nation is by Uncle Sam, and presumably to also engage in some light third-worldist cosplay.
The “Nuestra America Convoy” was also theoretically supposed to bring humanitarian supplies and food along with it — a page ripped from the Gaza Flotilla playbook, in other words. But its real purpose — as far as the participants were concerned, at least — was to give hundreds of well-connected and compensated influencers access to the creature comforts the Cuban regime historically doles out to its privileged guests: being carted around to restaurants, concerts, and VIP meetups, put up in Havana’s Gran Hotel (the city’s lone five-star lodging), and given carefully guided tours. Why, the brave convoy members were even given a special performance by “anti-colonialist” Northern Irish rap-rock act Kneecap! (I had to double-check here to make sure this wasn’t a case of the communist regime momentarily reverting to its natural preference for torture.)
And because these “influencers” are, to the last of them, obnoxious self-promoting narcissists, the story of the visit is no longer about the Cuban regime or an oil embargo. It’s about the hilariously oblivious poverty tourism of the leftist influencer class. Witness pampered pink-haired ladies as they snap photos of unemployed Cubans from the comfort of their air-conditioned tour bus! Witness Hasan Piker, off to visit the barrios of Havana while dressed in a $690 short-sleeved beach shirt!
Things got even more gloriously ironic when power went out across almost the entire island of Cuba on Saturday — except for the one hotel in Havana that Nuestra America Convoy VIPs were staying at. The Castroite regime called forth security reinforcements to guard the safety of its foreign guests, should rampaging protesters have decided to converge upon the one place in the entire city left with internet, air-conditioning, and electric light. And Hasan Piker, podcasting with flawless internet from one of the few functioning hotspots on the entire island, understood whom to blame: America. “The [U.S.] government makes it illegal for us to stay where we want in Cuba. We have to stay in five-star hotels.”
Current Affairs mayordomo Nathan J. Robinson, always the refined aesthete, found the proper framing as he adjusted his cravat: “The blackout here in Cuba is eerie and disturbing. Whole streets with zero light, every window dark, and then you see shapes moving in the darkness and realize people are trying to live their lives. I cannot believe how cruel this US policy is. We could stop this.”
I have an alternative proposal, Nathan: First you leave your luxury hotel, and then the Cuban regime can end censorship, empty its jails of political prisoners, and hold free and fair elections. But of course accepting that deal would defeat the point for leftists of supporting Cuba, which has never been about helping the Cuban people as actual people — about improving their measurable quality of life — but rather about the victory of Marxist protagonists against capitalist antagonists.
Until then, I hope the power stays on for all those lefty influencers on their Cuba junket, even as it unavoidably fails for the actual citizens of the country they’re touring. It feels like orthodox Marxism to me: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” May their podcasts all stream seamlessly: These people will only humiliate themselves further if given the opportunity. But they should remember why they are allowed to speak while all around them are forced into silence. Not just because God is a punishing comedian who specializes in gallows humor, but because they are being paid to perpetuate a fraud whose widespread suffering they are perfectly capable of seeing.
Do I Have to Talk about Joe Kent?
No, I don’t. You know the story already. Last week Joe Kent resigned as director of the National Counterterrorism Center. (Bet you didn’t know it even existed — but that’s a gripe for another day.) My editor in chief has already spoken eloquently enough for me in the above link. So I’m moving on, on the grounds of “Obvious Troll Is Obvious” if nothing else.
This was the sort of lunatic result Trump was destined to provoke from the moment he forced a GOP Senate to confirm Joe Kent, who despite his service record always came across as Alex Jones with a more chiseled jaw and less mature hairline. Put bluntly, the only reason Trump ever supported this guy is because he “looked the part” and was running in 2022 to primary a Republican (Jaime Herrera Beutler) who had voted to impeach him in 2020. That didn’t work out well, either in Washington State’s third congressional district or in Washington, D.C.’s bloated post-9/11 alphabet soup counterterrorism octopus. Now it’s up to Tucker Carlson to reap the poisoned fruits of promoting a madman to nominal public responsibility, and the Trump administration to regret sowing its seeds in the first place.
I will only point out that every aspect of Joe Kent’s political career has been predictable from start to finish (and now, afterlife). It is a tale of serial failure — fumbling away a Republican congressional district (twice!) due to crankishness, scoring an administration gig as an act of pity/patronage, resigning in a public huff once better options surface — and Kent has naturally cultivated the sorts of “outsider” media relationships to match. (See: the entirely predictable circle of podcast appearances Kent is now making.)
That’s it, that’s all. Well, that and this: I’d also bet a shiny nickel that Joe Kent has, since the day he was confirmed in July 2025, been leaking like a sieve to the same sorts of people whose shows he is now appearing on. Trump always hires the best.
Chuck Norris Is Dead. Now Death’s in Trouble
Legendary movie tough guy Chuck Norris passed away over the weekend at the age of 86, and though it’s a sad moment, the news inspired me with a great idea for a Chuck Norris film: God and Satan are idly bickering — you know, one of those lazy Sunday, “Book of Job” shoot-the-breeze moments. Satan gets too far out over his skis and proudly boasts that “I know of no mortal man who can fight his way out of hell!” God smiles knowingly and then responds: “I do.”
And that’s pretty much who Chuck Norris was for ’80s and ’90s kids like me: the guy whom the “space marine” in DOOM was really based on. The no-nonsense, indestructible action hero who could be counted on to fight for good and win; meat-and-potatoes heroism of the sort we once laughingly dismissed but now yearn nostalgically for.
Norris was never what you would call an expressive actor, but he was a reassuring one. Leave the tormented dramatic pretensions to Stallone; leave the puns to Schwarzenegger; Chuck was always bluntly and uncomplicatedly on the side of the good guys. (His original reputation was established in the ’80s; the amiably schlocky Walker: Texas Ranger cemented the image in the ’90s for a slightly younger generation, though only because too few remember gems like Top Dog.)
When Chuck was in charge, the good guys were always going to save the day. What made his glory years so fun for kids my age is that when he “saved the day,” that meant we were in for an utterly gratuitous amount of firepower (sometimes ordnance), a series of rapid-fire kicks to the solar plexus, and maybe a few well-placed punches to the face and groin as well. His films might have been workmanlike and formulaic at times, but it was a satisfying formula, especially when you’re 10–12 years old and still a year away from your first real fight with a schoolyard bully: A healthy diet of “rock, flag, and eagle” is good for any growing kid.
Although Norris began his professional life as a martial artist — he trained Hollywood stars until being encouraged by his student Steve McQueen to give acting a shot — by the mid-’80s he was cranking out one B-movie Cannon “classic” after another. Missing in Action, Delta Force, Code of Silence: These were among the beloved daytime cable classics of my misspent youth, and none more so than the peerless Invasion U.S.A. (1985), where Chuck drives a GMC truck through a crowded south Florida shopping mall before bursting forth from the driver’s seat to mow down an entire platoon of Cuban, Russian, and East German irregulars with a submachine gun. How could you not love it as a kid? It was Red Dawn without the downer ending.
Norris happened to be a God-fearing Christian and conservative Republican — it was, in fact, Norris’s celebrity endorsement of then-Governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas that launched Huckabee’s upstart 2008 presidential campaign — and while it’s always nice to learn that the occasional pocket of sanity still exists in the entertainment biz, I’m not sure whether it’s even worth mentioning in an obituary. It has no bearing on Norris’s strengths as an action hero, or his (admitted) limitations as a dramatic actor. And it has no bearing on what Chuck Norris’s stolid good-guy heroics meant to me as a kid, long before I had any inkling of politics. I just liked the guy who always fought for Team America.
But maybe there is something to celebrate about how his values informed his career. Norris knew exactly what kind of character he wanted to play in Hollywood: the serious man of action, the dogged fighter riding over the horizon to relieve the siege in time and save the day. And that’s how we’ll always remember him. In an age when male heroes are written as reluctant, conflicted, and morally flawed, perhaps it’s no surprise that we look longingly back to the quiet (and unrealistically silly) confidence of guys like Chuck Norris, who may have played many “roles” throughout his life but really played only one: the Guy You Can Trust.
Thus does the man become the actor as the actor becomes the man, and the legend. I’ll never forget that moment you bazooka-blasted Richard Lynch out a window, Chuck — there’s a direct connection between that and the writer I am today — so thanks for everything. R.I.P.
Until next week.