Programming note: Tomorrow, Wednesday, I hope to be here for our midweek Clubland Q&A taking questions from Mark Steyn Club members live around the planet at 3pm North American Eastern - which is 8pm British Summer Time/9pm Central European. Hope you can swing by.
~Aside from anything else, I wonder if the western world is not simply too bonkers to survive. The picture above turned up in my inbox yesterday and I assumed it was just Mark Carney welcoming Keir Starmer to the G7 summit. But apparently it was the PM marching a couple of days ago in the Vancouver Pride Parade, and greeting the Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia in this season's court dress. If you thought "Didn't Pride Month end a couple of weeks ago?", well, Canada doesn't observe Pride Month - that's just some mealy-mouthed, totally homophobic Yank thing: Canada has Pride Season, which runs from June to September, which contemptibly grudging concession will have to do until Pride Year comes along. So Mr Carney still has many dimpled cheeks to look forward to in the weeks ahead. As he told the nation, Pride is "the essence of Canada". Which is probably true.
On social media, several naïve Tweeters and the like wondered if the image was not achieved with the help of AI. Obviously not or it would have been Carney in the pink thong. But, even if it was, so what? Yesterday, CNN's former Chief White House Correspondent, Jim Acosta, offered his viewers an exclusive interview. It's exclusive because his interviewee is, in what we used to call reality, stone cold dead:
A show you don't want to miss at 4p ET / 1p PT. I'll be having a one of a kind interview with Joaquin Oliver. He died in the Parkland school shooting in 2018. But his parents have created an AI version of their son to deliver a powerful message on gun violence. Plus Texas State... pic.twitter.com/mbdM2WxwUR
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) August 4, 2025
I presumed the picture on the right was of the real kid back in high school, before he was AI-aged for The Jim Acosta Show. But no, it's a real-life Texas State Rep, who was also on the show, even though he was playing second banana to a deep-fake. It's like Margot Robbie going on The Tonight Show and having to kick her heels while Jimmy Fallon wraps up his exclusive interview with a blow-up doll of Betty Grable. Jim Acosta's Twitter page boasts that "I believe in #realnews". But, in Mr Acosta's hands, #realnews has achieved the same grim state as the music business, in which living persons are reduced to celebrity-duets albums warbling along with Elvis or Bing. On tomorrow's Q&A, I'll talk exclusively to Neville Chamberlain about evolving foreign-policy challenges.
However, here's our Thought for the Day: Is an AI-generated human any less plausible than what passes for reality in today's world? This morning, at the Multnomah County Courthouse in Portland, Oregon, the trial begins of Isabel Rosa Araujo, a most mellifluous name for just another plug-ugly psycho-tranny rampaging around the streets:
Extremely violent Portland Trantifa militant "Isabel Rosa Araujo," formerly Phillip Haskins-Delici, is currently on trial for assault and unlawful use of mace for violently attacking Arab-American activist Sorbeah "Ara" Al-Mosa @ArasUniverse in March 2024.
The Trantifa member... pic.twitter.com/bpKwstlUyc
— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) August 4, 2025
Señorita Araujo identifies as trans, Latinx and, more recently, Muslima. That seems an awful lot of identities for someone whose principal occupation is roaming the town looking for someone to beat the crap out of. There's a lot of that about - especially among the trans end of the LGBTQWERTY community. Gee, it's almost like incentivising mass trannification is metastasising mental illness.
So, in today's court case, the delightful Isabel Rosa is on trial for assaulting Ara American, the nom de guerre of an Arab-American who goes around burning Korans, as is (for the moment) her right, and highlighting some of the news stories that #realnews doesn't have room for - like American immigrants shouting "Death to America!" on the streets of America; or learned imams explaining why you shouldn't let the Devil wander around the maternity ward:
The devil will place his index finger into the anus of a newborn boy making him a homesexual and into the vagina of a newborn female making her a whore.
This is what shiite muslims believe the devil does to babies who aren't born as shiites.
— Team Ara American (@ArasUniverse) July 30, 2025
"The devil will place his index finger into the anus of a newborn boy making him a homesexual and into the vagina of a newborn female making her a whore." pic.twitter.com/lGuEgpXN4Y
Is that really so nutty? On the streets of Vancouver during the leisurely months of Pride Season, the Devil InCarneyate could be hugging a random bare-bottomed lovely and slip his index finger under the pink thong thereby rendering the poor chap a homosexual. It makes as much sense as any other theory of the fin de civilisation west.
It is easy for us to laugh at their nuttiness, just as it is easy for them to laugh at our nuttiness. At the risk of over-generalising perhaps, one can't but observe that their nuttiness seems considerably less suicidal than ours:
There's a sickness rotting the Western mind: the belief that surrender is a form of virtue. That if we chant loud enough about "compassion" and "inclusion," the people we import will somehow forget they loathe everything we are. This isn't morality. It's cowardice dressed up as... pic.twitter.com/ud8DEfjFJw
— Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧🇮🇱 (@JChimirie66677) August 4, 2025
The above young lady was protesting on the streets of England over the weekend. If she feels safer with "refugees" at a time when street rapes are now a daily occurrence, it's because she looks to be a good ten-to-fifteen years too old for their tastes.
By the way, Mark Carney's warm embrace of his underdressed citizenry isn't the nuttiest thing he's done. Here he is welcoming attendees to the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow:
Mark Carney, Canada's new PM: "We have an enormous opportunity to bring climate change into the heart of every financial decision."
"We can deliver the net zero world that you've demanded, and that our future generations deserve." 🤡 pic.twitter.com/lbzL7P3Vjd
— Wide Awake Media (@wideawake_media) August 4, 2025
Did you get that?
To reach Net Zero every country, every company, every bank, every investor, every pension fund around the world will need to make some big changes.
Well, in that case it's dead in the water, isn't it? Because China, Russia, India et al have already decided they want no part of it - which is why they were no-shows in Glasgow. One might also note that they don't worship mass Third World immigration and mass trannification of the natives. They think as conventional ethnostates pursuing their national interests - which the west hasn't done for three generations now.
Indeed, it's almost as if Peking & Co have a strategy: Let Christendom carry on chanting "Diversity is our strength!" even as it degenerates into fractious, incoherent polities of Islam and LGBTQWERTY, with minimal overlap save for the corpulent Muslima tranny suddenly charging from round the corner at you for filming the Antifa rally because Jim Acosta doesn't want to. The migrants will win that one, after which the most advanced societies in history will decay into the same bleepholes the "Latinx" and Mohammedan types originally came from. After which, China and its allies and vassals will inherit the earth.
Sounds like a plan.
Ah, but that's just nutty talk, right?
~Thank you to all those new members of The Mark Steyn Club in this our ninth year, and thank you to those old members who've signed up a chum for a SteynOnline Gift Certificate or a Steyn Club Gift Membership. Steyn Clubbers span the globe, from London, Ontario to London, England to London, Kiribati. We hope to welcome many more new members in the years ahead.