I can’t stand it anymore! At a restaurant the other night I felt like jumping up and grabbing the two millennials at the table next to ours by the throat and screaming “Stop it!” Between the gravel in their throats and the upticks at the end of sentences that each had a minimum of three “likes” in them, my wife and I cringed. It actually ruined what would have otherwise been a very nice dinner at our favorite dining spot. (If you don’t know what vocal fry and upticks are all about, just do a search on YouTube.)
It’s everywhere, not just in public but also in the workplace. What was particularly jarring was that the girls were talking about their college experiences and their schools were two of the best in the nation! How faculties can allow their students to graduate high school much less college without an ability to string two coherent and grammatically correct English sentences together is shocking and lamentable!
In our day, the filler words were “you know”. “It was nice at the beach yesterday, you know?” “I can’t understand, you know, how she could have said that.” “You know” was annoying, but I guess we were blessed that the painful vocal fry and uptick problems weren’t so common.
There were regional accents of course: Brooklyn, Bronx and Queens; Midwest; Minnesotan; Texas; Boston Brahmin, Southern and Deep Southern. None were offensive. They were quaint. At times, incomprehensible, but quaint, not grating!
Today, however, I often feel like I’m in a foreign country.
Mind you, it’s not the actual foreigners and recent immigrants with whom I have
trouble communicating. It’s most often those born here whom I can’t understand!
Other pet peeves…
Starting a sentence with “So”. I don’t know whether it’s supposed to make the speaker sound smarter, whether it’s just another filler phrase, or whether it’s like a cat that hunches down, sticks its butt in the air and flicks its tale before pouncing, but this too is such an annoying corruption of our language!
“Right?” It’s incredibly annoying to hear people end their
sentences not just with an uptick but the word right, right?”
Oh, and there are the slightly more sophisticated but equally obnoxious phrases, “Let me be clear”, “To be completely honest”, or “At the end of the day.” You get the idea.
Perhaps it’s because my wife is English that I’m more bothered than most about the deterioration of our grammar and diction. You know the Brits… whether they’re from Chelsea and speak “frightfully” or are from London’s East End and speak like Eliza Doolittle before her transformation in My Fair Lady, or the chimney sweeps in Mary Poppins, they always sound so much more educated and serious than we. Let’s be fair, however. The way they speak and spell English can also be troublesome! But, as she constantly reminds me whenever we get into a spat about the proper way to phrase something, “Just remember, we gave you the language!” End of conversation.
Back in the stone age of 1972 William F. Buckley gave a
guest lecture at my college. The auditorium was filled with 60’s vintage,
recycled hippies and liberal academics. After laying out the ‘conservative
case’ he took questions. The showboating engaged in by the Leftists as they asked
pointed and mostly insulting questions was classic drivel. I’ll never forget,
however, the extraordinarily deft way that Buckley calmly used incisive,
fact-supported arguments, words and language to thoroughly gut each and every
one of his antagonists. His mastery of English was incomparable. He also had
that great side flick of the tongue to accompany his responses, and when the
moderator finally submitted to the shellacking being dealt out, ending the
session, the handful of us in the audience who weren’t 60’s radicals or poor
attempts at imitation thereof stood up and loudly and unapologetically
applauded!
While we’re trying to take back our country from Leftists, let’s try to restore American English to its proper, beautiful state…the English as written by our Founding Fathers. The English we heard spoken by the likes of Lincoln, Reagan, and William F. Buckley. And let’s try to restrain ourselves from wringing the necks of the valley-talk kids around us!
I pray it is not too late. I pray there are still places in our country where traditional values still prevail. But the other day I read an article in American Thinker: “When the Left Snatches our Kids” by Sally Zelikovsky, to whom all credit is due, that so closely reflects my fears that I’m going to “retweet it”, i.e. reproduce it in full. It is precisely the kind of alarm I’ve been trying to raise for my own children and grandchildren. It isn’t so much prescriptive as a call to arms. It succinctly rifles to the crux of all that’s going wrong with our society.
While I’ve been careful to distinguish between Conservative and Traditional in my writings, one could do a cut and paste, replacing the word Traditional with Conservative in the article and it would remain spot on. The italics are mine.
“I am skeptical that our efforts as conservative parents to produce conservative offspring will materialize. Even with the best of intentions, the odds are not in our favor to successfully counter the Democrat-Media Complex, the educational system, and pop culture. That doesn’t mean there aren’t success stories (some in my own family), but I hear more about the failure and the disaffection it engenders in conservative families.
Conservative parents have learned the hard way that how your kids turn out depends on a host of factors that, at some point during the maturation process, are way beyond our control — friends, personal experiences, a particular book or documentary, brain chemistry, friends, a teacher/professor/boss, personality, a romantic relationship, college activities, pop culture, hobbies, and…friends. Usually, it’s not one but an amalgamation of several factors and presto chango! The kid who was once the lone conservative arguing at the lunch table, now thinks David Hogg and AOC are bitchin’.
We see them everywhere — the emaciated college-age vegans working at Starbucks, hysterical young girls pounding on Supreme Court doors, attractive anti-Semites leading the charge in Congress. I’m sure some of them had conservative upbringings — you cannot assume they were all raised by liberals. Yet, in her reporting about out-of-control liberal college students some time ago, I heard Laura Ingraham link their behavior to their upbringing. Only a parent whose children hadn’t yet attended high school could make such an absurd connection. We can try but we cannot guarantee what our children will believe.
Once again, I find myself referencing Red Scare movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It resonates. We have to be vigilant, stay informed, understand the arguments of the other side and how to combat them. If we don’t, eventually the pods take us over. I graduated high school a Reagan Republican whose political arguments were admittedly my Dad’s. When I arrived at a competitive college filled with smart, often private-school educated Merit scholars, I lost every political debate. I just didn’t have the breadth of information and understanding of history to counter their arguments. Thus, I graduated college…a Democrat. In time, I fell back on those critical thinking skills my parents instilled in me. A desire to understand more as I graduated from law school and entered the work force, led me to self-educate and, eventually, return to my conservative roots.
That was also in the ‘80s and early ‘90s when life was simpler and more balanced: when “gay marriage” was still an oxymoron; before triggers and safe spaces, the internet, social media, doom and gloom “climate change,” and legalized pot; before we had an alphabet of sexualities to choose from and the ability to change sexes; before blended families became the norm; before hatred became the quintessential reason for all of society’s ills.
Not all teachers and professors were proselytizing progressives, the media was less corrupt, and your politics were not a factor in getting or retaining a job. Because of the deep societal changes since then, not every Millennial or Gen Xer has the wherewithal, the background, or the backbone to recognize and then punch back against the forces of propaganda, fess up to and toil with their own ignorance, or simply engage in respectful debate with those who have another point of view — no matter how steeped in conservatism their childhood.
I am not suggesting we stop lecturing our children about competing points of view, stop teaching them to be skeptical about what they learn in school or from their peers, or stop challenging the false orthodoxies they are barraged with on virtually every topic from sexuality to climate, energy to food, and national security to border security. We should continue to bang the drum. We must. And we must remain hopeful that someday those we lost will return to the conservative fold because they see the wisdom of conservative principles. But for all of you young parents out there who think you’ll do better than those before you, be prepared for disappointment.
The conservative path is littered with the bodies of well-intentioned parents who are devastated when their formerly straight kids come out of imaginary closets, transition to the opposite sex, or demand to be called “they”; when their Jewish Day School educated children announce their support for the BDS movement; when their evangelical children support blatant infanticide; when their happy, well-adjusted kids go off to college and return believing weed is innocuous, struggling with drug addiction, or suffering from mental illness.
These cultural maladies affect liberals and conservatives alike, but are unusually bitter pills for conservatives to swallow because they are packaged in a lifestyle and value system antithetical to everything we teach our children — resilience, pride, integrity, honesty, open-mindedness, self-reliance, individuality, taking responsibility for our actions, doing right when we screw up, and teaching a man to fish. Liberals cast us as hypocrites whose principles clash with reality, but what they don’t understand is that we believe in taking responsibility for and learning from our missteps so we constantly evolve into better beings (and don’t get mired in unbridled, misplaced hatred and lifelong victimhood).
Secondly, conservative parents are treated by their children with a level of hostility that doesn’t seem to afflict liberal parents with conservative children. Loving, nurturing conservative parents find themselves catapulted to Holocaust-denier status and demoted to homophobic, intolerant, racist, privileged, religious zealots. Relics of an oppressive past. It is painful when your kids reject everything you raised them to value. Despise you. Scoff at you. Turn against you. Align with your political foes. Resent you for brainwashing them with yourhateful, 1950‘s agenda.
Now, some of that is typical teenage/young adult angst and rebellion. When frontal lobes are soothed by the right combination of hormones and our insecure little monsters segue into more confident adults, those nasty side effects often dissipate. But much of the antipathy they are exposed to is encouraged by “the man” in the liberal camp — we’ll call him “the burning man.” He instructs us to hate authority, hate anything established, hate tradition, hate the moral code you grew up with, hate anyone who is white or successful, and hate those who embrace any of this. Hence, hate your parents. Hate your old neighborhood. They are the problem. And while today all you have to do is oppose them, someday you might have to actively go against them, even “turn them in.” The burning man says this is okay because you are right and the end justifies the means. I’m not being paranoid. Our entire educational system is based on appropriating the minds of our children and undoing all they have learned at home, turning them into weapons of mass societal destruction in the burning man’s toolbox.
We have all participated in holiday dinners and family vacations ruined by dissension and door-slamming. Family harmony devolves into family discord, function into dysfunction, and closeness morphs into estrangement. Parents are instructed to just shut up already! Politics and religion are off the table. Dinner conversations revolve around silly cat videos and trivial drivel. Soon there is little left to discuss. After all, everything is political now — from your sneakers to your bus commute during Pride Month.
Once upon a time, we could fall back on cultural interests like music, movies, theater, travel, and sports to avoid potentially explosive conversations at family gatherings about politics and religion. Now, virtue signaling is so ubiquitous that everything seems to fall into the Realm of the verboten. It becomes more and more difficult to find common ground. Constructive input I like your haircut and simple questions Did you decide on a major? What are you doing for break? How do you like your job? are potential triggers. Family get togethers are so contentious there is an increasing tendency to minimize interactions. Even life’s big “hatching, matching, and dispatching” events are often fraught with tension — relatives who couldn’t be seated together because of some family squabble are now separated because one has a worldview the other finds detestable.
Some parents give in. They don’t want politics or values to stand in the way of their relationships with their kids, so they re-visit their Weltanschauung. Constant pressure from your 20-year-old bubelah goes a long way towards re-educating Mom and Dad. Senator Rob Portman was against gay marriage until his son came out and then… he evolved. I’d rather fight than switch is a paean to another time.
This is nothing new. Many parents drank the Kool-Aid and became part of the 60s counterculture their children brought home. Ironically, many of their hippie children became yuppies and did the unthinkable — morphed into their conservative parents. Hmm. I suppose we can be clear-eyed about the transformative societal and political forces pulling our children away from conservatism, at the same time we cling to the hope that our liberal progeny will switch and fight for conservative principles and maybe even cling to their bibles and the Constitution, too.”
Wish I could have said it like that!
Comment by DOC DURACOAT August 3, 2019: “All you people should move to Boca Raton, Florida! Our public high school has been rated A for the last 10 years straight. We have a very active ROTC program, and it is routine to see these kids in the halls wearing military uniforms. The flag is respected, everyone stands for the pledge of allegiance, even the minority students. Graduation rates and college acceptance rates are very high. Discipline is enforced, disrupting class is not tolerated. My kids and their friends all graduated as sports playing, modest dressing, great conservative kids. Come on down and bring your guns and bibles! Your kids will graduate with a great education and strong conservative moral values.”
I’m not a fan (understatement) of pop-psych, but of all the
tests and profiles that various employers put me through during my career, one
stands out as actually practical and useful: The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®.
I have consistently found it to be uncannily accurate in explaining and
predicting human behavior, particularly interpersonal behavior. In our
families, the MBTI® can promote understanding, enhance communication, and fuel
patience and forgiveness that we might not otherwise be able to muster.
Based on the work of the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, the
MBTI was created by Katharine Cook Briggs (1875-1968) and her daughter Isabel
Briggs Myers (1897-1979). In this article I’ll barely scratch the surface of
the behavioral model, so apologies to the psychologists and psychiatrists among
my readers who would justifiably quibble with my treatment and usage. But here
goes.
The MBTI groups people into personality “types”
based on four behaviors or dimensions:
a. How we get our energy b. How we gather information c. How we make decisions d. How we order our lives
Within each of these four behavioral dimensions there is a range
or continuum which describes our “preference”.
The first behavioral dimension is: How we get our
energy. The continuum ranges from what Jung called Extraversion at
one end of the spectrum to Introversion at the other, the so-called ‘E-I
Preference‘. Note that the first is spelled Extraversion, not
extroversion. It’s not about how we behave outwardly, i.e. whether we’re
socially extroverted or introverted. It’s more about how we respond to others
and whether interpersonal engagement energizes or depletes us.
At a party, for example, the individuals with the E
preference gain energy by being around others. As the night wears on,
they seem to get perkier and perkier (with or without alcohol) while those who
are natural I’s become more and more exhausted.
It’s probably a good idea to emphasize here that no-one is
either always Extraverted, nor Introverted and this is true vis-à-vis the other
three dimensions as well. Whether a person is a so-called “E” or a
so-called “I” is relative. E or I is a preference and we can
be both. It’s just that we’re born, as the theory goes, with a natural tendency
or “preference” one way or the other. Fold your arms. You have a
natural preference for which arm goes over the top. Now fold them the other way.
You can DO it, but you clearly prefer and have a preference to do it the
other way right? That’s what we mean when speaking of preference in behavior.
The second behavioral dimension describes How we soak
up information. The preference continuum here extends from Sensor
to Intuitive. I like to explain this dimension by telling the story of
the two people sitting side by side in a plane approaching their destination
airport. The plane is in thick clouds and the plane is bump, jumping up and
down in the turbulence. The two people have their eyes glued on the window, but
all they can see is grey. Suddenly, they burst out of the clouds and the
airport is plainly visible below. The Intuitive says, “Ah, we’re
there.” The Sensor replies, “Not until we’re on the ground we’re
not!”
For the Sensor sees precisely ‘what is’ while the intuitive
sees ‘what could be’. Where we fit on this preference continuum has a major
impact on how we take in information. The ‘S’ and the ‘N’ individuals as
they’re called, can be presented with the exact same set of facts or sensory
input and interpret them 180 degrees apart! Not surprisingly, 70% of men are
S’s while 70% of women are N’s. (Hence the term ‘women’s intuition’!)
The third behavioral dimension is How we make
decisions. The preference continuum here is Thinking at one end
and Feeling at the other. In recent years we’re heard a lot about
“Emotional Intelligence”. In a way I believe that concept gives
support to the argument that decisions don’t have to be made in our left brains
all the time. They can also be made in the gut, and they’re just as valid. But
‘T’s are all about laying out the evidence, analyzing it, coming to an incisive
and informed decision. ‘F’s are about unconsciously mulling things over
viscerally and making their decisions based on how they ‘feel’ about them. Needless
to say, most scientists are T’s, and the majority of men are T’s, while the
majority of women are F’s.
The final behavioral dimension is How we order our
lives. The preferences range from Judgers on one end and Perceivers
at the other. Judgers are ordered. They make lists. If they accomplish a task
that they didn’t put on the list, they’ll write it on the list after the fact
and cross it out! Perceivers prefer to ‘go with the flow’, and are spontaneous
and accepting of whatever comes at them. This preference, in my opinion, causes
people who are strongly opposite to make each other crazy!
With four behavioral dimensions and two end points on the
preference continuum each there are 16 possible combinations of Dimensions and
Preferences and we tend to, upon testing with the MBTI, fall into one of the
16. So, in one corner of the matrix for example we have an ESTJ person: the
Extraverted Sensor Thinker Judger. At an opposite corner we might have the
INFP, the Introverted Intuitive Feeler Perceiver.
Going back to the party. The ESTJ or ENTJ commands
attention, some would say ‘holding court’. He or she has an opinion on
everything and anything and will tell you about it. When offered a tray of
cocktails they might first select the martini, then in a split second put it
down and instead take a gin and tonic. They will of course take a cocktail
napkin and hold it under the drink as they bring it to their lips. The INFP,
meanwhile, is politely smiling as someone bends their ear. They nod, they
listen actively and intently. When the cocktail tray comes by they ask the
waiter to describe the contents of each drink. They put their fist to their
chin and take quite a few seconds to mull over what they want. Once they make
up their mind, however, they take the drink and will not change it two
seconds later like the ESTJ did.
By the way, the ESTJ is attracted (opposites attract right?)
to the INFP because they display the qualities the ESTJ does not. The opposite
is of course true of the INFP, who admires and values the ‘strength of
character’ of the ESTJ.
For fun, I’ll stipulate that the ESTJ is a guy and the INFP
is a gal. They get married because they are, in fact, opposites attracted to
one another. However, fast forward a few years and it’s inevitable, in my
experience, that that opposite-ness causes tremendous conflict. That’s not to
suggest that they shouldn’t have gotten married. It’s almost inevitable,
however, that they really have to work at their relationship.
Meanwhile, two ESTJ’s get married. They constantly bang
heads and argue and fight, but they go to separate corners and unwaveringly
come back at it until they come to some sort of truce, compromise or shared
understanding. Two INFP’s get married and they’ll sit silently in a room
together and simply enjoy and be completely satisfied in one another’s company.
Eventually, they’ll fall off a cliff holding hands but won’t argue while doing
so. And they’ll end up on their feet anyway!
One of the things I like about the MBTI is that it doesn’t
make judgments good or bad, positive or negative about these preferences. In
fact, the seminal work on the model is called “Gifts Differing”, suggesting
that each of the 16 personality types has gifts or talents, and there is no
right or wrong among them. They’re just, well, different.
Here’s an example of how an understanding of “Type”
can be useful. The ESTJ and the INFP are sipping the last of their wine at the
end of dinner on a Sunday evening in August. The ESTJ husband says, “Hey
Hon, how about we go skiing as a family next February.” The INFP wife,
after a pause, says, “That’s not a bad idea.” The husband takes that
answer as a thumbs up and a month later he’s got a whole family ski trip
planned out. Along the way, he’s checked in with his wife, “What do you
think of this condo, or that kids instruction package?” He repeatedly gets
an answer similar to the first, “That’s not a bad idea.”
The family takes the vacation, has a great time and ten
years later in family counseling the wife brings up this episode, emphatic that
she never wanted to go on that trip! Struggling to remember the details, the
husband says, “Hey, I checked with you at the outset and every step of the
way in planning that trip! Why didn’t you speak up?” The wife replies,
“Because you never gave me any time to think about it!”
Had the ESTJ husband understood Type, he would have realized
that asking what seemed like a straightforward question of his INFP wife was
not straightforward at all to her. Rather, the INFP needed to process the question:
take in the idea and internally explore it (the “N” in her), then mull
it over at the gut level (the “F” in her), and finally take time to consider
the whole concept and come to a complete and clear decision (the “P”
in her). By the time she’d done that, the ESTJ husband was miles down the planning
road!
The patience required of polar opposite husband and wife to
reach a mutually satisfying compromise decision is huge, emotionally draining
and if that kind of difference in approaching life is tested many times a day, one
will understand why opposites attract but inevitably have to work so hard to
have a good relationship!
I could go on and on sharing anecdote after anecdote of how
the very opposite personality types deal with one another within families, in
the workplace, among friends, among strangers, in public, in private…how an
understanding of the personality type of someone with whom we’re dealing could
help us achieve whatever goal we have with that interaction, or how it is that
when one is under stress one tends to behave as if they are the exact opposite
of who they are when not under stress.
Instead, I urge you to read Gifts Differing, and if you’re still working or thinking about your career, the book named “Do What You Are“. I’ve also provided below a cheat sheet (credit to Jake Beech) that pithily summarizes the 16 MBTI types.
Stand by while I put on my ballistic vest. This topic is a
lightning rod and even many Traditionalists won’t like what I’m going to say
here. But I’m old and on this subject, grumpy, so I’m going to call it like I see
it.
I’ll begin with an anecdote. Some years ago I was attending
a church picnic held at a park not far from our home. Families of all shapes
and sizes came with their picnic accoutrements and the food, music, games and
fun were typical of raucous church picnics.
As my family and I drove toward the area of the park where
the picnic was being held, I slowed the car to a crawl as kids and pets were
running all over the place. Off in the distance I could clearly see a boy,
about 11 or 12, riding his bike straight towards us on this roadway/quasi
pathway. I could see even 30 to 40 yards away that the boy wasn’t paying
attention to what was in front him but looking from side to side.
So I stopped the car altogether, but on he came, straight
for the hood of my car. I thought of beeping the horn but now he was within 20
yards and I didn’t want to startle him. “Surely he’ll look up and see
where he’s going,” was what went through my mind, but he never looked up
until the very last 5 yards whereupon he slammed on his brakes. It was too
late.
He was barely moving, thank goodness, when he crashed head
on into the front of my car and fell off the bike. I immediately jumped out to
make sure he was alright. He was, but the front wheel of his bike was slightly
bent, not enough to prevent it from turning, but enough to make riding the bike
wobbly. So my wife and I changed places, she now behind the wheel, and I
started walking with the boy, whose family I knew well, towards where they were
set up in the park.
As I approached the family with my arm around the boy his
father approached us, took one look at the bike, dropped to his knee and put
his hands on his son’s shoulders asking if he was hurt. “No,” replied
the boy who had gone sullen. Then the Dad asked, looking at me, “what
happened?”.
I could see the little guy was fearful that he was going to
get into trouble and so I chose my words carefully, explaining not how reckless
he was, but rather how he was slowing to pull to the side of the road when it
appeared his hand slipped off the brake and he couldn’t stop and ran into the
front of my car.
How unprepared I was for the father’s reaction. It would be
a huge understatement to say that he overreacted. He practically threatened to
sue me for reckless endangerment of his son! Meanwhile, the look on the boy’s
face was a combination of astonishment, bewilderment, embarrassment, and
humiliation not at what happened, but for how his father was behaving!
I said little to nothing, and began walking over to where I
could see my wife had parked our car and had started to take our picnic
paraphernalia out. I had to hide my shock and disbelief of how obnoxious and
affrontive my neighbor and church acquaintance had been.
And then I thought to myself, “What did that father say
to his son after I left? And, what did the whole episode teach him?
Another example. I’m walking through the grocery store one
day and a mother is desperately trying to reason with her pre-adolescent son.
He is demanding she buy him candy from the shelf predictably placed at the
checkout counter. The child is quite literally yelling at his mother saying the
most appalling things while mom looks furtively around her obviously worried
about what people are thinking.
Practicing tortured restraint, mom says to her son:
“Alright, I’ll get you the candy just this once, but you must not speak to
mommy that way.” The boy doesn’t even wait for his mother to pay for the
candy, and she doesn’t intervene when he tears the wrapper off, throwing it on
the floor and begins to chomp down.
What have these parents both taught their children? I’ll let
you, the reader, answer this yourself. In both cases, however, I’ll venture a
guess that you’ll agree the parents taught them something wrong.
But this is what has happened to discipline in the new
millennium. My parents would have hauled me out to the car if I behaved like
that in the store, pulled down my pants in front of the whole world, and given
me a couple of good swats on the behind. In fact, I’m sure something like this
DID happen to me when I was young, but truthfully, I don’t even remember the
incidents. Why? Because it only took a few times for me to learn that there are
right and wrong ways to behave.
Today, my own kids face situations like those above with
their own children, but they are TERRIFIED of meting out ANY discipline, except
for time-outs and toy confiscation, even in the confines of their own home! Because
if word got to a teacher or school administrator of a spanking, they’d be at
risk of “child protective services” showing up at their door. We’ve
all heard horror stories of government intrusion in the parenting/child-rearing
process.
While the current limp-wristed approach to parenting may
work in some cases, I firmly believe the swift swat on the butt I received was
far more effective in teaching me right and wrong, and much more lasting.
And right and wrong is what children need to be taught.
Unfortunately, in the current environment of moral relativism and
permissiveness, the impact of families where these are not taught has a
devastating effect on the community at large. Just look at Antifa or, almost as
bad, various skinhead groups for examples. Do you think their parents taught
them to behave that way, or was it the absence of parental guidance and moral
teaching that created them?
We thought OUR generation was spoiled and undisciplined?
Just look at the next two after us!
What we teach our children, and our grandchildren, matters!
Been to a restaurant lately, where a family sits, a three
year old with an iPad in front of her watching some children’s program, the 12
year old, with a tortured look, focused on an iPhone screen furiously tapping away,
mom and dad’s phones face-up on the table creating an effect something like
holding flashlights underneath our chins?
Regrettably, this scene is ubiquitous. And we wonder why the
family is breaking down.
Of all the infections eating away at our society and culture
today, the fundamental changes to families is the most virile. Of course Leave
it to Beaver, the Donna Read Show, Ozzie and Harriet and all the other
television fare that we grew up on couldn’t exist today. It truly was a
different time. But in virtually all those shows, it was a given that families
were, well, families!
Contrast those shows with what we see on television today.
Does anyone honestly believe that what’s happening to traditional families is
good for society?
The Left thinks that scene played out in the restaurant
represents “progress.”
“Mom can monitor the babysitter, Dad is instantly
reachable if something happens that needs his immediate attention either at
work or at the club, Sally is occupied, quiet and not running around the
restaurant disturbing others,” they will argue. No conversation of any
substance. No recounting of what’s going on in each other’s lives. No
understanding whatsoever of what’s eating at Johnny, or what Sally’s being fed
on that children’s program. Mom and Dad just want to get through dinner so they
can get back home to Dancing with the Stars and football.
Is it just me or does anyone else see how sick this is?
Here’s a family, ostensibly sharing time together, except they’re not!
What happened to a parent’s responsibility to impart their
values to their children? What ARE their values, and what IS being passed down?
We know the answers, but should it be this way?
Cut scene. A family is gathered around a dinner table on a
Sunday evening. No phones or tablets present, some peaceful music plays in the
background. The cacophony and mayhem that prevailed two minutes earlier as each
family member fulfilled their pre-dinner chores has given way to a more subdued
tone as each takes his or her place at the table.
In some households, grace is said. In others, there’s a
pause to raise a glass and give thanks that everyone could be together. In
still others there’s simply quiet as napkins are taken off the table and placed
on laps, everyone waiting for a signal from mom and dad to begin digging in.
As the meal progresses everyone is asked to report on what
has transpired in their lives since they were last gathered like this. Even the
monosyllabic teenagers are goaded into uttering a few grunts about what’s going
on with their friends and at school. You get the picture.
Which scene is better for society? If you think the former,
you’re probably a social justice warrior hell bent on “fundamentally
transforming America.” If you think the latter, you’re probably nostalgic
for a kinder and gentler time, one where the family was the most important unit
of a civilized society, where families had pride in their name, and in their
school, and in their community, and in their state, and in their country.
Of course these kinds of families still exist. The problem
is that they’re decreasingly prevalent. The norm keeps moving towards the
dysfunctional, to the “progressive”, down the slippery slope to necrosis.
How about we spend time with our families around picnic
tables, playing soccer or stick ball in the park, fishing together at the local
pond. How about moms and dads teaching their children manners, and helping them
with their school projects, and paying attention to what they’re being taught
and correcting misinformation. And teaching them the difference between right
and wrong. And establishing and enforcing rules of behavior, and conduct, and
respect.
And how about just having fun together. It’s ok to have a movie night with popcorn and soda, watching Frozen for the umpteenth time, but let’s also find examples of traditional goodness, and greatness to expose ourselves to.
We are what we do. Bury our faces in technology, abrogate
our responsibility for raising our families to others and that’s who we are.
Gather and recount acts of bravery, or sacrifice, or service, or touching
others’ lives in a positive way, supporting one another at little league games,
or at school plays, or attending a July 4th celebration together, and that’s
who we are.
We’ve all seen them, a group of fluorescent-haired, usually
disheveled, radio-antenna-adorned teenagers standing around the entrance to a
shopping mall, sometimes huddled and quietly mumbling to each other, sometimes
overtly eyeing and loudly denigrating the more normal looking patrons going in
and out of the wide doors.
But that was then. This is now.
There’s a more contemporary version of this gathering of
“mall-rats”, these to-be-pitied, “other-directed” underachievers desperate for
attention and each others’ approval because they can’t get it from individual
accomplishments. It exists online, in social media.
Misery does indeed love company. Here, behind a wall of
anonymity, the same teenagers band together to cast aspersions on, or worse,
mount character assassination campaigns against others whom they secretly envy,
or abhor, usually due to the praise heaped upon them for their successes or
simply because, they’re what we’d call “normal”.
And here, in social media, the mall rats are joined by
supposed adults, who carry on in the same way.
Except they’re not adults. Regrettably, our society is filled
with people who chronologically should be adults, but who exhibit all the dysfunctional
behavior, or worse, of the mall rats. Raised in an “everyone gets a trophy for
showing up” society, where “just do it” (with impunity) is the norm, far too
many adults today behave like children. Somewhat surprisingly, there’s evidence
that there are some children today who, frankly, behave increasingly like
adults, but that phenomenon is still rare and not always healthy. That’s a
topic for a different discussion.
Social media was supposed to increase social adhesion,
broaden relationships, improve community. Instead, it’s brought isolation,
depression, social paraplegia and a veritable explosion of mall rats fearful of
missing out (FOMO), all seeking attention and sharing their misery. It’s given
a megaphone to those who in other times might have been more sheepish but who
can now lash out and shout their frustrations with impunity. And it has
amplified the lemming effect as demagogues, both adolescent and adult, lead
their followers over the edge of the cliff.
One of my sons, who frequently exhibits far more wisdom at
his age than I certainly ever did, recently stated what’s going on quite
succinctly: “We have rewired the human condition to subsist on personal
validation through social media channels.”
And that has given the mall rats undue power and influence.
To be fair, not all of our generation’s behavior is as bad
as that of mall rats. But in small ways the diminution of standards and morals continues
to eat away at our societal fabric. For example, I sat at a restaurant just
last night and couldn’t help but overhear the conversation between two parents
and their college-age son. The topic was adult enough…the son was describing
the content of the exams he had recently completed. But the number of “likes” that
punctuated each sentence, or more like half-sentences, was nauseating. The
parents were, appallingly, every bit as inarticulate as the son, despite
between fashionably dressed and ostensibly well-educated and well-to-do.
How are we ever going to remain a light shining on a hill if
our people can’t string two grammatically correct sentences together? Yes, yes,
I know. This problem exists at the highest levels of our culture and society
and in our most visible politics.
But it’s Leftist progressivism, infecting as it has our discourse
and society like some noxious gas or metastasized cancer that has given license
to adult mall-rat behavior. It’s way past time for adults to start behaving
like adults and stop acting like mall rats, or tolerating mall rats for that
matter. It’s way past time for parents to start acting like parents, instead of
trying to be their children’s best friends. We certainly know better. We just
need to grow up.
Seems it should go without saying, but in this new world of
technological wizardry, of AI, virtual reality, deep fake photos, avatars and animojis, where Dick Tracy watches
are now a reality, and where communications have been reduced to “txt
speak”… face to face and even voice to voice interaction is becoming
more and more rare.
Our house has a number of floors. The other day I received a
txt message from my wife, who was a couple of floors apart from me, reminding
me of something. On one hand this saved her having to either climb several
flights of stairs or yell at the top of her lungs to get her message across. On
the other, without any tone/voice inflection to the communication, with
no body language to see, there were several ways I could have interpreted what
she was asking. From how soon I was supposed to get this done to whether there
were other options, to any clarification I may have needed or questions that I
might have had …you get the idea.
In a 1974 Harvard Business Review article, I was first
exposed to the concept of “the monkey on your back.” It describes how
one person can transfer a problem (the monkey) off his or her own shoulders and
make it his supervisor/manager’s problem. Quoting from the article…
“Let us imagine that a manager is walking down the hall
and that he notices one of his subordinates, Jones, coming his way. When the
two meet, Jones greets the manager with, “Good morning. By the way, we’ve got a
problem. You see….” As Jones continues, the manager recognizes in this problem
the two characteristics common to all the problems his subordinates
gratuitously bring to his attention. Namely, the manager knows (a) enough to
get involved, but (b) not enough to make the on-the-spot decision expected of
him. Eventually, the manager says, “So glad you brought this up. I’m in a rush
right now. Meanwhile, let me think about it, and I’ll let you know.” Then he
and Jones part company.”
What just happened? The monkey got transferred from the
subordinate to the manager.
Email, voicemail, texting…these technological ‘solutions’
represent the ultimate in monkey-transferring. How many times have your heard,
when asking for an update on an assignment you’ve given someone, “I sent
him an email.” How many times have you sent a text message to someone and
found yourself irritated when you didn’t get an immediate response? And when
was the last time a person actually answered a phone when you had a question in
lieu of entering voice-mail-jail? Monkeys are jumping all over the place!
Some of the other effects technology is having on
interpersonal communication and relationships:
Superficiality: Some things simply cannot be communicated in
a 140 character ‘tweet’ (now, I gather it’s 280 – big whoop!)
Constant Distraction: I’ll address the FOMO (Fear of Missing
Out) phenomenon in another post, but we’ve all seen what eyes pressed on little
screens has done to threaten, perhaps even eliminate concentrating on any one
thing. It’s the high-tech equivalent of trying to have a conversation with
someone as their eyes dart around the room.
Lack of Privacy: there’s a price to pay for
“free”. For example, to get ‘free email’, we give up our privacy. We
allow the email service providers access to our communications. The ability of
one person to talk in confidence with another goes out the window with
technology.
Isolation: everyone has seen how people hide behind
technology both creating false impressions of themselves or others, or simply
“lurking”, i.e. observing what others are saying and doing. Why
actually talk with other people when you can interact with them without every
leaving your locked room?
Depersonalization: this is the ultimate “dis”
(short in popular culture lingo for disrespect). By avoiding human interaction
and communication one is thumbing one’s nose (I can think of another way of
saying this using a hand gesture) at anyone and everyone with whom they
interact. The lack of direct communication between tech users displays the
ultimate disregard for others, i.e. people.
Instead of the pejorative “I’ll have my people get in
touch with your people,” soon we’ll be saying, “I’ll have my iPhone
get in touch with your iPhone.”
If we are to survive as a civilization, I posit that we will
have to restore human to human speech, face to face conversation, and
figure out whether we want to remain human, or become human/machine hybrids.
We need to stop hiding behind our technology and start talking
to one another again.
With a salute and due credit to Charles Krauthammer (1950-2018) whose book Things that Matter (New York: Crown Publishing, 2013 available from Amazon here) was the capstone of his exemplary life and the inspiration of this and future related posts, I’ve begun my own list.
New items come to mind daily so it is a work in progress. They’re
in no particular order, although Truth, God and Right would be right up there
at the top of any ordered list. From time to time I’m going to address these
topics in more detail but to get started, here’s a first stab.
Truth matters.
God matters.
Right and Wrong Matter.
Our word matters.
How we think matters.
People matter.
What we teach our children matters.
What we do as a family matters.
Helping others matters.
Being friendly matters.
Courtesy matters.
Being considerate matters.
Our reputation matters.
Loyalty matters.
Being kind to animals matters.
Conservation matters.
Courage matters.
Catching someone doing something right matters.
Thrift matters.
Obeying/Respecting our parents matters.
Respecting our elders matters.
Respecting authority matters.
Saying what we mean and meaning what we say matters.
Words matter. What we say and how we say it matters.
Listening matters.
Perseverance and determination matter.
The choices we make matter.
Temperance matters.
Anticipation and thinking ahead matters.
Knowing ourselves matters.
Our health matters.
Controlling ourselves matters.
Deferred gratification matters.
Grooming matters.
Situational awareness matters.
Whom we choose as friends matters.
What we read matters.
What we watch on television matters.
What we tweet/post/email matters.
What we eat matters.
Our morning routine matters.
How we spend our non-working time matters.
Hard work matters.
Honoring our spouses matters.
Standing up for what we believe in matters.
How we treat those above us and how we treat those below us matters.
In the kitchen this morning I’m surrounded by flowers and greeting cards. Not for ME, mind you, but for my wife, who is “sleeping in”…one of the very few days of the year when she can.
I’m thinking of my own mom this morning who died many years
ago after a wonderful life, but whose memory lives on in many ways. As I
reflect on the relationship we had as she (and my dad too of course) raised me;
as I see her genes in my own children and now grandchildren, both physically
and in terms of temperament and personality; as I see her in parenting behavior
that I to this day find myself duplicating…I can’t help but be eternally
grateful.
If you looked up the word “saint” in the dictionary, you’ll
see my mom’s picture next to the definition. You’re thinking, “everyone thinks
their mom is/was a saint.” Not true, at least not anymore, I’m afraid.
Because part of the mother-child relationship is
situational. And with divorce, out-of-wedlock and single parenting rates continuing
to skyrocket, and traditional families continuing to break down, for many, what
I had growing up has vanished, and never will be. It’s terribly terribly sad.
Standing at the greeting card rack the other day I saw the
changing role of moms reflected in the brightly colored, category-labeled array
before me. “To Mom from the Step Kids”, “To Mom from Sister/Brother”, “To Mom from
the Dog(s), Cat(s), Goldfish”, “To Mom from Wife”, etc. (I double took on that
last one, but it was a big section…hard to miss). I didn’t see a section
labeled “To My Moms”, but I’m sure it was there as well.
My mom was a stay-at-home, manage the household and her
children mom. She selflessly catered to my dad’s and her children’s needs and
whims. Chef, chauffeur, therapist, disciplinarian, coach, consoler, nurse (and
EMT), social director, cub scout den mother, music teacher, manners guardian, PTA
President, art director, arbitrator, elegant party planner and hostess, maid,
laundress, animal trainer, guardian, intercessor (both with God AND my
father!), referee, and on and on – she did it all.
She led a busy life. Never did she complain about not having
enough of this or that. She was patient, and kind, and almost always cheerful.
I don’t recall her ever complaining about being sick, or having to drive me to
school when I missed the bus. The “wrapped in her arms” image comes to mind
when I think of my mom.
I’m grateful I’m a hybrid of my mom and my dad. My dad was a
product-of-the-depression, self-educated and self-made, self-reliant, kick-butt-and-take-names,
black-and-white, right-and-wrong, no-nonsense patriarch who was and always will
be a giant to me. So sometimes that gentlewoman comes out in a softer side of
me even as I grow ever more into an “old, angry white guy”.
Much has been written about the changing nature of moms and
families. And I could spend the rest of this post railing against the impact,
mostly detrimental, those changes are having on our society. I’ll do so in different
post.
But today I just want to celebrate my own mom and express
the hope that despite all that’s different in today’s world, children and
grandchildren will be able to experience the warmth, support..in short, the
LOVE, that my mom gave me.
I miss you mom. Rest in peace.
TODAY IS
Thursday November 21, 2024
Quips & Quotes
January 2, 2024 "As we enter 2024, there is widespread public agreement about two things: (1) something big is about to happen, and (2) whatever that something is, it sure as hell won’t be pretty! While it may get pretty ugly pretty fast, though, there is an upside to what’s coming: as a country, we can finally pull this disgusting Band-Aid off, face reality for what it is, and stop pretending. However bad this year might prove to be, it might also be tremendously liberating.
Why? Because, one way or another, things will soon change. For too long, those who “run” America have had two things in common: (1) a hatred for individual freedoms, and (2) an even deeper hatred for the one country on the planet explicitly founded on their protection. As a national security surveillance State superseded the U.S. Constitution, leftists have controlled academia, journalism, the legal system, and entertainment. They have shoved anyone with a working brain out the door while assuring themselves that they deserve their privileged social positions and unearned accolades. They tell themselves that they are smart and enlightened, but anybody capable of self-examination knows this not to be true. Leftists are not happy people. They have not figured out any special meaning to life because, to them, life is meaningless. In other words, for too many years, a collection of the most depressed, least curious, morally relativistic, and intellectually homogenous people on the planet have been given pampered positions in exchange for acting as nihilistic and narcotic-dependent sea vessel captains willing to steer America into an iceberg of decline and failure." J.B. Shurk, American Thinker, January 2, 2024 "Do We Hit the Iceberg or Finally Change Course?"
November 3, 2023 "There’s a subtext to nearly all American political trends today. It’s hardly ever spoken about overtly and explicitly. But the topic is nonetheless always there. All insiders know about it. It’s also the central and critical debate concerning America’s future.
The question is as follows. Will the United States continue the present system whereby representative democracy persists as a mere veneer to keep the public distracted and defocused on the real rulers in the nation? Or will something dramatic be achieved whereby the swamp is truly drained, the administrative state gutted, the agencies disempowered, and we return to an actual constitutional system in which the people truly rule themselves through their elected representatives?
These are the two paths. It’s one or the other. They’re mutually incompatible." Jeffrey A. Tucker, November 3, 2023, Epoch Times, p A22, "Are You an Institutionalist or Anti-Institutionalist?"
October 30, 2023 "If you want an indicator of how lost Western civilization has become, go to your kids’ school and check their rules on fighting. Most likely, you’ll find out if two kids get into a fight, both get suspended, regardless of whether one was a punk bully who started it and the other was simply defending himself or some little kid. This is a moral disaster, of course – violence in the defense of what is right is a moral obligation and a symbol of a greater rot within society."
"The world's true nature is that good is forever pitted against evil."
"We must learn again to be ruthless in defeating our enemies. The big lie that Western civilization tells itself is that there are no real enemies, that there are no bad people – except the people of the West themselves, who bear some sort of original sin for not being corrupt and inept Third World barbarians."
"We have forgotten our strength and our courage. We have forgotten that we survive not through gentle hugging but through sword-swinging.The idea that Israel should somehow give these Hamas barbarians food, water, and electrical power even if it surrounds Gaza and prepares to attack is mind-boggling insanity. The moral illiteracy of expecting Israel to care more about the Palestinian people than other Palestinians do is simply bizarre."
"The hard truth is that the world contains bad people who must be crushed through ruthless violence, which shocks and horrifies modern sensibilities. But it is reality nonetheless. When people want to kill you, you are at a decision point. You can either let them kill you or stop them. But stopping them often involves aesthetically displeasing actions, such as blowing them into little bits with bombs or shoving a bayonet into their guts and watching them die in agony. And it necessarily means inflicting death and damage on the noncombatant camp followers around them. That’s why they say war is hell. And that’s why starting one is probably not a good idea. But when someone else starts one, you have to choose them or you. Someone’s going to die badly, and you know, I propose it is those other guys."
October 16, 2023 "Though around the world sociopaths stabbed some folks, the Day of Jihad fizzled in America – how many bummed patriots slammed in a mag hoping some mutant was going to choose his small town to prove Jason Aldean right? But it is only a matter of time. When you allow millions of military-aged males to come unvetted into your country, including many from bizarre hellholes where hatred for Americana is more common than food and indoor plumbing, there is a non-zero chance that some of them are part of sleeper cells waiting for the signal to murder Americans here at home." Kurt Schlichter, Town Hall, October 16, 2023, "We Are Sitting Ducks And Our Leaders Do Not Care"
August 22, 2023 "When arguing in federal court in HI in 2020, I had to get permission from the governor to enter his precious state to argue that his silly COVID lockdowns violated the Constitution. I lost. This same state, in real life, has shown how little respect for life its leaders really have. My perfectly healthy clients were not allowed to travel from one island to another to visit their own property. American citizens were turned away at the airport because they got the wrong COVID test on the mainland. The hotel gave me “parole” from the one way card key rule only to do my legal business and leave. I could not call an Uber or take a taxi at the airport. The National Guard met me at the gate to escort me to Hawaii COVID immigration to provide my information, which they verified with the hotel. I was to keep my phone on at all times so that they could track my location. This same police state didn’t turn the water on in Lahaina, didn’t have sirens, can’t begin to tell you how many children died from their incompetence. Or begin to explain it. Remember all this the next time you are asked to comply with farcical, unjust “laws” made by dictators. They are lying when their lips are moving about how much they care about you and your little life and your paper constitutional rights. Americans are beginning to realize how much we are on our own. Such a betrayal." Harmeet K. Dhillon, on "X", 8/22/23 12:44 AM
August 17, 2023 - A MUST READ!!!! The following is a transcription of Newt Gingrich's comments on Hannity last night. "“I think what you’re seeing tonight is one tree in a forest, and I think we are drifting towards the greatest Constitutional crisis since the 1850s, uh, and the rise of secession and the Civil War. I don’t mean that as hyperbole. Uh, if you read Andy McCarthy’s remarkable book, Ball of Collusion, which came out in 2019, he makes very clear that it is Barack Obama who corrupts the Justice Department, it is Hillary Clinton who routinely breaks the law and gets away with it. And now we have Joe Biden who’s learned, he’s learned from Obama that is doesn’t matter what you do, if you’re a liberal Democrat, you will not be prosecuted. He learned from Hillary that a person in high public office can get millions and millions of dollars. And they learned from watching Donald Trump that a true outsider, willing to take on the entire system, could destroy their entire machine. So what you’re seeing across the country, is a desperate, last-ditch effort by a corrupt machine to destroy their most dangerous opponent in a way which not only breaks the Constitution, destroys the rule of law, and establishes a moment of bitterness, uh, which I think will last for a generation or more. I think this is gonna be a horrendous period and we just need to understand: The people who want to control America and dictate to the rest of us will break any law, lie about any topic, and manipulate the system any way they can, and that includes a lot of the elite news media.”
August 10, 2023 "The fact that young men are getting more conservative is a cause for optimism. Remember, if you grew up male in the last ten years or so, every institution has been deployed against you. You’ve been told you are bad and horrible and evil and worthless. In contrast, every girl is an empowered girlboss ready to take her rightful place at the pinnacle of society. And to facilitate that, they must displace the dudes. And it’s no secret – that displacement, that consignment of men to second-class status, is not merely admitted but celebrated by our trash ruling class." Kurt Schlichter, August 10, 2023, Town Hall, "Angry Young Men Are Going To Disrupt The Garbage Paradigm"
Articles/Writings We Think Are A Must Read
Who Will Say No More to the Current Madness?
Once again, Victor Davis Hanson has nailed it. In his article there is a list of the most egregious crimes and failings of the Left and this Administration. Stronly urge readers to read the whole article. Here’s an excerpt of the most salient points:
“America is in existential danger.
The Biden administration has utterly destroyed the southern border — and immigration law with it.
Biden green lighted 7 million illegal aliens swarming into the U.S. without legal sanction or rudimentary audit.
China spies inside and over the U.S. with impunity. Beijing has never admitted to its responsibility for the gain-of-function COVID virus that killed a million Americans.
President Joe Biden printed $4 trillion at exactly the wrong time of soaring post-COVID consumer demand and supply shortages. No wonder he birthed the worst inflation in 40 years.
In response, interest rates tripled, gas prices doubled.
Our military is thousands of recruits short. It lacks sufficient munitions.
Following Biden’s humiliating pullout from Afghanistan, vast troves of arms were abandoned in Kabul. Billions more in scarce weapons were sent to Ukraine.
The Pentagon’s woke agenda trumps meritocracy in promotions and advancement.
Our enemies — Russia, China, Iran, North Korea — are on the move, while the U.S. seems listless.
The Biden renegade Department of Justice, CIA and FBI have become weaponized. Ideology, politics, and race — not the law — more often guide their investigations, intelligence operations and enforcement.
The downtowns of our once majestic major cities are becoming unlivable.
They are mired in refuse and trash, violent crime and homelessness. Stores and businesses leave. Millions each year flee the blue urban coasts to the red west and south.
To even say there are still two biological genders, that global warming may not be entirely manmade or necessarily destroying the planet, or that class, not race, is the proper barometer of inequality is to face ostracism and career cancellation.
The public assumes that Biden is severely cognitively challenged, likely corrupt, and a serial fabricator.
Most know what must be done, but few will tell the truth: Balance the budget. Return to legal only immigration. Restore a well-funded, but unwoke Pentagon.
Insist on racial unity. Curb the overweening administrative state. Enforce the rule of law.
Produce more gas and oil. Reestablish civic education. Insist universities protect free speech and due process — and stop proselytizing.
In other words, restore what until recently made America the strongest, most prosperous, and freest nation in the world. And quit undoing all the great good that eight generations of prior Americans bequeathed to us.”
Victor Davis Hanson saying it better than anyone. Perfectly describes the childish, impetuous behavior of the Left. A quick and incredibly accurate take on everything we see before our eyes.
An excerpt:
“Cry-baby tantrums won’t win over the public. These nonstop puerile meltdowns have turned off most Americans who tire of whiny narcissistic hypocrites.”
Strongly recommend the artful summary of what the Left is trying to do with the Disinformation Governance Board canard written by Michael Walsh in “The Pipeline”, May 2, 2022. You’ll find the whole article here. Some excerpts:
“So now the mask has dropped and, for the first time, the American people can see the modern Left in all its hateful, unadorned, vituperative, spiteful glory. Case in point: the announcement last week that the Department of Homeland Security—one of the excrescences of the Bush administration, cobbled together in its panic over 9/11—has created the “Disinformation Governance Board” in order to combat what it has, via its hitherto little-known Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, already dubbed “mis-, dis-, and mal-information.” Otherwise known as alternative points of view, but shut up, citizen.”
“Let us now remind ourselves of the late historian and Soviet scholar Robert Conquest’s third law of politics: “The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.” At this point in American history, that is not only a theory but a fact. Having narrowly “won” the 2020 election by stealing it fair and square, the Left is putting pedal to the metal to accomplish as much of its anti-foundational agenda as it can before the clock runs out on its tiny congressional majorities this fall.”
On the Subject of “Things happening in the background to purge the illicit Biden administration“
The article in American Thinker by Dr. Brian Joondeph entitled: “Nothing Can Stop What is Coming. What if Nothing is Coming?” lays out the case for the increasingly skeptical that anything is going to halt the Leftist Leviathan. Strongly recommend this article not to throw cold water on all the hope so many of us have of there being some justice on the horizon, but to lay out the stark possibility that it’s all wishful thinking and we’re stuck with what we’ve got at least until January 2023.
On Climate Change Fraud
One of the best debunking articles/videos I’ve seen recently on the revolting fraud being perpetrated by the climate alarmists. In very calm, easy to understand terms the author shows how graphs and picking the right starting point for data visualization is being used to create the narrative that they rely on for their funding, their power, their nefarious attempts to alter society and our world. This same manipulation occurs with ALL kinds of data and the Left is expert in obscuring truth, altering perception and brainwashing a lazy, non-thinking mass of sheep to believe what they want them to believe. Strongly recommend watching this…12 minutes long and a must see!
Featured Friends
Straight Line Logic
Robert Gore’s blog. I put Gore up there with Victor Davis Hanson, Jordan Peterson and Thomas Sowell. His theses are chock full of substance.
The Burning Platform
Unabashedly conspiracy-theory driven, but thoughtfully so and well-written. Makes one think, “could this really be what’s happening?”
