Patton and Zeihan: A Quick Hit

History and Recent History on my big return.

Matt Jordan

Oct 06, 2025

Transcript

Support my Daddy's podcast!

A crazy month

You may have noticed a dearth of content coming from the P4B, and fewer Free Zones. I’ve been distracted. I had a string of Doctor visits for various glitches in my otherwise perfect male body.

The biggee was three visits to the Dermatologist. This culminated in the word cancer. But don’t send heart-felt messages yet. I am 99% sure this a localized thing. You won’t see #cancersurvivor in my posts any time soon. But the future hassle of getting my back carved up every few months is less then optimal. For now, it’s just topical chemo cream. That has its own set of joys to provide.

Along with this, I have been on a month-long quest to find the cause of “CLUNK”. My truck starts inconsistently. I often get a clunk when the voltage hits the starter. Two starters and a starter relay later and I get “CLUNK”. I’ll spare you the ridiculous discussions I’ve had with mechanics and tell you the problem is a wiring problem or (now you can send heart-felt messages) the range sensor, which in my case, is not mounted outside the tranny, but INSIDE it. Instead of heart-felt messages, perhaps you can start a gofundme page to pay for that whopper.

At any rate, I’m back and better-looking than ever.

Po River Supports the P4B!

Listing image 1 — For the smart ass grill master.

A third bite at the WWII history apple.

Our visit with Professor Michael Stroud triggered weeks of discussion here, analyzing small historical events and examining their consequences. One of the periods I hit twice was the time from before Operation Market Garden through the Battle of the Bulge (17 Sep 1944 thru 25 Jan 1945).

I was extremely critical of General Sir Bernard Law Montgomery for his performance during this period. I often express frustration at his lack of action and constant self-promotion. And almost as often, I wonder if I am being too critical. Monty has his considerable apologists who try to make the case that he did the best a man might have done, given the situation.

Whenever I waver and I’m close to giving in to such gibberish, someone comes through to reestablish my distaste for Monty. In the present case, it was none other than Patton, who pulled me up short for a few chapters anyway. I am reading George Patton’s WWII diary, War as I Knew It. A few points have leapt out at me.

One is Patton’s failure to treat Market Garden for the failure and folly it was. He never missed an opportunity to zing Monty. And yet the episode barely gets mention by Patton. I am assuming there are two reasons for this. At the time the diary entries regarding Sep 44 are put to paper, I suspect Patton along with every other general in theater were grateful just to have Monty off his ass and in the war. He had spend months dickin’ the dog over Caen and Antwerp, while the rest of the Western Allies were tearing through France and liberating Paris. Further, those other active units were often hamstrung so supplies could be given to Monty and hoarded. So, if Monty’s forces finally got in the game, as crappy as his plan was, that was seen as a net plus.

Also, by the time Patton’s diary went to print, it is possible all parties were still too close to the events in question to realize the historical significance of the failure of one or another operation.

The point Patton did report floored me and truly cemented my opinion of Montgomery in perpetuity.

In mid-December ‘44 after the Germans pushed into Belgium, Ike and Bradley called together all key theater commanders to discuss what to do in response. Patton said he’d pull the bulk of 3rd Army out of action, turn his forces 90 degrees, and march north to crash the new salient. In fact plans to just that, with three options for attack, were already drawn up before the Germans stepped off on 16 December. He figured he’d engage in about 2 days.

This was seen as an ambitious commitment. Some generals, including Montgomery were critical of Patton. Meanwhile, Monty said he would not be able to launch a counter attack for “at least three months”.

Three Months?!?!?! How was he not fired on the spot? Had Patton been so timid, the wider effects would have been devastating. How many more V2s and jet fighters might have been brought into action? How would we have recovered from the loss of northern Europe, as surely we would have? See mention of a second “Dunkirk” here.

Between redeployment, new logistics and strategy, by the time we could regroup in southern France we’d have seen a resurgent Germany, or the Soviets on the Rhine river, OR we be on the nuke option again.

So, here’s my new assessment of Monty. He was the beneficiary of vastly superior intelligence in North Africa. He faced a dying enemy who was being hammered from the rear as well. Montgomery got an over-bloated sense of himself. Having handed Churchill his first major victory of the war, Winston got a similar sense of Monty.

Two years later, only two things can be said for the man. The kindest is he couldn’t find his own ass with both hands. A better man would have taken Caen and Antwerp much more efficiently and would have strangled the Bulge with all the men and material at hand, without hesitation.

A less kind, but forgivable conclusion one might draw was that Monty saw war as good employment and an ego trip. He was almost the Monty Python caricature of the British Sergeant Major yelling at his charges about “marching up and down the square.” Only Monty was likely to see men killed by his playing at military leadership.

The case for capitalism and kids

I picked up another Zeihan video on YouTube recently. He was his usual Cheerful Charlie self talking about demographic collapse, cultural destruction, etc. Most of what he said tracks with reason. Much of what he predicts will occur no matter what we do. Germany is all but lost. England doesn’t have to be, but they are actively committing cultural suicide as we speak. China is imploding. Even the US will have some butt hurt coming.

But, as usual Peter leaves little grains of agenda lying around to cause us to second guess him anyway.

In the case of this video he spoke of all economic systems going down because they ALL depend on constant growth to survive. He listed Communism, Fascism and Capitalism as having this problem. And this is agenda-driven for the following reasons: While communism, where it survives, does depend on growth which is not coming, Zeihan’s claim is true so far. Fascism is presently NOT a major driver in the world economy right now. It’s inclusion was a subtle nod toward a popular Lefty trope and keeps Peter’s TDS bubbling just below the surface. The agenda is to say that since Trump is a fascist (he is anything but) and his economy will fail accordingly. That’s the ONLY reason Peter mentioned fascism as if it were viable at the moment. We’ll deal with the capitalism separately. His inclusion in the list with the other two is ridiculous for a few reasons. Perhaps he was trying to look balanced.

First, let’s define our terms. The “capitalism” we practice in the United States is mostly crony capitalism. We have the free flow of most goods and the government is constantly putting it’s fat thumb on the scale to favor winners of its choosing. The government is also competing against private citizens for every dollar of available credit. It’s created it’s own bank the biggest ever, to facilitate that and jiggers interest rates to make payment of GOVERNMENT debt easier. And help that provides us is far less helpful and incidental to propping up the government. But it’s NOT CAPITALISM - NOT ADAM SMITH CAPITALISM. It’s far from a pure free market.

And there’s the final rub in what Zeihan is saying. Yes, to sustain our perverted imitation of capitalism, we need constant growth. In order to keep the cronies afloat and protect them from competition AND make loans to the federal government easier to pay every year, we need predictable growth, real or contrived, and a steady contrived state of inflation.

So what system doesn’t give a shit if we have constant growth or not? What system doesn’t care if you are on top today, but might not be tomorrow? What system doesn’t check to see if you cousin is a Senate aid or a governor? That’s right! The FREE MARKET, CAPITALIST SYSTEM! This system works whether the economy is growing or shrinking. It survives because you need something and I am selling it. I need something and YOU are selling it.

Inflation is not planned. It’s not created and maintained by the government. It is based on what is available and what is not. Not all things are on the same cycle.