The Left Doesn’t Build – They Only Destroy

I just read an article by Dennis Prager entitled “A Brief Guide to Leftist Destruction“. It makes the point that the Left never produces anything of value. It only destroys things and has done so since the first evil-doer walked the earth. It’s the age old conflict between the givers and the takers, of the producers and the indolent, of the haves and have nots. The Left are takers, indolent, have nots and all their whining and complaining is a product of their own making and choosing. Why work, why strive, why achieve when they can just take from those who DO produce, work hard and thus ‘have’.

I reproduce Prager’s article in full. It lists all the Left’s destructive results brilliantly.

To understand the modern world, perhaps the most important rule one needs to know is this: Everything the Left touches it ruins.

This first became clear to me years ago during my radio show. I was talking about the Left’s war on the Boy Scouts (for not accepting announced gay people). It was becoming clear that this would ultimately lead to the decline of the Boy Scouts, which led me to ask: “Will the left replace the Boy Scouts with a left-wing Boy Scouts?”

Then I answered my own question: Of course not. Because the Left only destroys; it doesn’t build anything (other than government).

In support of that observation, here is a list of many of the things the Left ruins and often destroys.

No. 1: Art. The Left long ago conquered the art world. Consequently, since the 20th century, most modern art has been ugly, meaningless and nihilistic — the opposite of what Western art had always been.

No. 2: Music. What the Left did to the eyes in art, it did to the ears in music. As a part-time conductor, I can say with some knowledge that since the invention of atonal music (an oxymoron if there ever was one), most contemporary classical music is also ugly, meaningless and uninspiring. The people who like such music are almost all music critics and, of course, music professors. Most lovers of classical music never listen to the stuff.

No. 3: Journalism. Journalists were once highly respected. Unless a piece was listed as “opinion,” people generally believed they were getting, to the best of a journalist’s ability, as truthful a report as possible — “just the facts.” Today, on virtually any controversial issue, they are getting opinion, not truth. The purpose of nearly every major newspaper and other “news” outlet is the same purpose Pravda had in the Soviet Union: to transmit the party line.

No. 4: Colleges and universities. The Left has destroyed universities as places of learning devoted to seeking truth and therefore welcoming, even cultivating, diverse opinions. Virtually every left-wing idea was born at a university.

No. 5: High schools and elementary schools. Most schools in America — private as much as public — teach children that America is systemically racist and that they are not born male or female, but at a later age will choose whether to be one or the other — or neither. And increasingly, American educational institutions deny objective truth exists, even in mathematics.

No. 6: Happiness. You can meet happy and unhappy liberals and happy and unhappy conservatives, but you are unlikely to ever meet a happy leftist. The only question is whether the unhappy gravitate to leftism or whether leftism makes people unhappy. Both are probably true.

No. 7: The family. People on the Left increasingly choose not to get married and not to have children — in other words, not to make families. And their welfare policies serve to disincentivize the creation of families.

No. 8: Women. The rates of depression among young people, especially young women, are higher than ever recorded in American history. One reason is that for half a century, women have been told, as one famous feminist saw put it, “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.” But the fact is that the vast majority of (heterosexual) women need a man to be fulfilled, just as the vast majority of (heterosexual) men need a woman to be fulfilled.

No. 9: Childhood. One reason young people on the Left don’t want children is that the Left doesn’t particularly like children. The teachers unions’ adamant refusal to open schools for over a year has opened many Americans’ eyes to this fact. So has the war on children’s innocence – like prematurely talking to them about sex and having schools introduce them to drag queens from the age of five.

No. 10: Black life. Like the Democratic Party historically, the left is racist. And it is so in precisely the way the word was always used — the Left believes in black inferiority. That is why leftists advocate lowering standards for blacks. That is why they advocate policies that always result in more blacks dying at the hands of other blacks. That is why they believe the state must take care of blacks more than any other group. That is why left-wing policies, from the Great Society to today, have destroyed so much of black life, especially its family life — and they don’t care.

No. 11: Black-white relations. According to polls and according to just about every American who remembers life from about a decade ago, black-white relations were far superior then and both groups were optimistic about relations continuing to improve. The Left shattered that with its anti-white, “America is systemically racist” propaganda shouted from almost every major media and relentlessly pushed in almost every school and big business. The Left knows that when blacks and whites feel good about one another, the Left loses its appeal and loses elections.

No. 12: The military. As the military gets more and more woke — recall the testimony of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff testifying before Congress about the need to teach the military about white racism — soldier morale declines. Add to this the utterly gratuitous and cruel mandate that every member of the military get vaccinated or be discharged and you understand why military morale is in steep decline.

No. 13: Late-night television. Americans who remember the titans of late-night comedy — Johnny Carson and Jay Leno — remember how their sole aim was to bring some smiles and laughter to Americans before they went to sleep. Few people had any inkling of the political views of either host. That is now history. The Left has destroyed late-night comedy. It now consists of little more than angry rants against conservatives.

No. 14: Superman. Superman was an iconic American hero. Thanks to the Left, he is no more. About a decade ago, Superman stood in front of the United Nations to announce he was renouncing his American citizenship to become a “citizen of the world.” And the Left has now changed his motto from “Truth, Justice, and the American way” to “Truth, Justice, and a Better Tomorrow.”

No. 15: Free speech. Never before has freedom of speech been threatened as it is today. As has been true since the communist revolution in Russia, everywhere the Left has gained power — from Russia in 1917 to the university and social media today — it has suppressed free speech. There is no exception.

No. 16: Sports. Until last year, sport was a great American unifier. It was one place Americans could go and, leaving politics behind, Left and Right, Democrat and Republican could root for the same team. No longer. The Left has ruined it by radically politicizing baseball, football and basketball.

The great American tragedy is just about every liberal knows the above is true, but nearly every one will still vote for the Left.”

Couln’t have said it better myself.

Thanksgiving

Ah, turkey day 2021. I am thankful to have my family around the table with me today, 16 of us, and thankful that this tradition hasn’t yet been cancelled. I’m grateful to have a roof over my head, clothes on my back, an abundance of food on our table. I’m reminded that today we celebrate and mark the day when those who sacrificed so much and came precariously close to perishing thanked almighty God for a successful harvest and the preservation of their very lives so that we could have what we have today.

I am also thoughtful, however, of the forces that would destroy Thanksgiving, our history, our traditions, fundamentally transform our nation and society in a way that can only be described as evil. As they pursue their authoritarian, one world order nightmare, the writhing hydra of the Left is engaged in a Banzai Charge. I pray the result will be similar – the defeat and surrender of the human wave of hellhounds who maniacally rush to overwhelm the Right, the just and the good.

I wish I had a magic wand and could instantaneously make everyone as comfortable, happy and content as I. But no-one can, not the least a bunch of arrogant, megalomaniacal Leftists who think if they have all the power in the world that they can create a utopian society. THAT concept, is, in my opinion, inherently evil.

The war is engaged. The BS flag has been thrown down on the field. The Silent Majority is increasingly less silent as the blood from a thousand cuts, the heat from the flame underneath the frog in the pot have both reached the tipping point where we’ve had enough. In talking with people around the country and observing the countenance and behavior of the blue-state sheep surrounding me, I’m convinced that more and more people have now awakened to the reality of what is happening to us. More importantly, in more organized ways, the rugged, self-reliant and mind-my-own-business individualists of which we on the Right are made, have been united and begun to speak up in places like school board and town meetings. And now that the Left’s election lies, deceit and fraud have been fully exposed, we will see, thankfully, more of what occurred in Virginia and elsewhere during the elections earlier this month.

As the Leftist mob faces opposition for the first time, they, squealing and reluctantly, are starting to back off and stand down. Yes, there are still huge swaths of swamp yet to be cleared of infestation, and in the absence of an outside shock such as a World War III, it may take a couple of generations, but I sense a turning of the tide. It is slow, almost imperceptible, but it is turning.

And for that I am thankful.

I had a “heavy” conversation with one of my apolitical, extraordinarily busy, focused-on-fundamentals family members recently who, though aware of what’s happening, has the attitude that there is little any of us can do about it, that it’s the next generation’s world now and they’ll have to deal with it, that they have enough to worry about. Her implication was that no such principles exist, that change is inevitable and it is for each generation to decide for themselves what principles will or will not guide their lives.

I, on the other hand, believe that mankind is best served, and the greatest happiness, prosperity and peace has been in the past and will in the future be achieved by adherence to certain inalienable truths. MY attitude has always been, even when I was working 24/7/365 with my hair on fire, that it is my obligation, my duty, and my fundamental purpose now in my twilight years to do what I can to impart traditional values and teach those inalienable truths that persist and endure through all generations of time to my family and community.

What are these Inalienable Truth/Principles?

Let’s start with the Ten Commandments. I’m going to restate some of them in my own words.

There IS a God, and only One.

Don’t worship material things in lieu of God.

Don’t blaspheme.

Set Sunday apart as a day when you don’t work.

Honor your father and your mother.

Do not murder.

Do not commit adultery.

Do not steal.

Do not lie.

Do not be jealous of what others have. Be grateful for what you DO have.

There are many inalienable principles but the last one in the Ten Commandments goes straight to the heart of what Thanksgiving is all about.

Today, I’m grateful to be reminded of it.

Remember November 3, 2020 – Comments on Mollie Hemingway’s New Book, “Rigged”

I’ve just completed reading Mollie Hemingway’s book, “Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections” which I have now placed at the top of my list of exposés documenting the fraud, deceit and slimy shenanigans in the pursuit of power and control perpetrated by the Democrats not just in 2020, but over the last forty or fifty years, and that now threatens a virtual Leftist takeover of our society. It is a tale of frogs sitting in lukewarm water with a flame underneath. It is the story of a death by a thousand cuts. It is an account of how manipulating perception can change reality such that we now face consequences most would never have thought possible even a few years ago.

One of human nature’s truisms is that time changes things. I don’t mean that things change over time. I mean time itself changes things. Perception is reality, and the impact of time on our memories changes our perceptions, thus reality. I know that’s a bit heavy, but time allows the Left to lie repeatedly such that the lie becomes ingrained in the collective psyche, and as time passes, the lie becomes history, with the truth being swept under the rug.

We have spoken among ourselves of all the outrageous things that have transpired just in the last year, as well as over the last ten or fifteen years, and continue to be appalled at what is happening now, right before our eyes. Yet time has a way of softening outrage, causing our minds to forget what angered us as it happened, and forcing us to pay attention to the present, leaving the past behind. Time erases both truths and falsehoods. Perceptions rather than reality are what remain.

Such is the case with what happened last November 3rd. As time passes there is acceptance of the lie that Biden fairly won the election. It is reinforced when even conservative news outlets slip phrases like “Trump’s unfounded accusations of fraud,” or “The debunked elections steal” into their retrospectives of what got us to this awful place where Leftist dogma is rapidly destroying our country. The truth almost always comes out, but often many years after the fact. Amity Shlaes’ history “The Forgotten Man”, for example, revealed the real truth about what the New Deal did to our society; the truth about the burden born by the forgotten who, head down, kept this country afloat while government increasingly and permanently began to take over our lives.

I am sickened by how quickly we have moved on: “nothing to see here”, “old news”, “that was debunked, discredited, etc.” Yet one of the most consequential periods and some of the most impactful events in history have occurred in our recent lifetimes, culminating in what occurred with the 2020 election. We are now facing the consequences of years and years of razor cuts, of an imperceptibly slow turning up of the flame beneath us.

Fortunately, there are those of us who, despite criticism, ostracization, ridicule and condescension, believe letting the truth wait twenty or more years to emerge is wrong. I continue to study the analyses of how the Left rigged, or stole – take your pick, the November 3, 2020 election and rail against the wrong that the Left so desperately want us to believe didn’t happen – that they want time to erase. And I will continue to speak out about this pivotal moment in our nation’s history and its caustic effects on our people.

In my opinion, this forgetting of even recent history is one of the greatest problems a society, a nation, civilization itself can face. I often speak of slides down the slippery slope, and I’ve often talked about how every great civilization, at its height, tipped over the top and rapidly declined due to what I flippantly refer to as getting “fat and happy.” When survival is displaced by comfort, meaningful things in life get replaced by less serious things that we use to occupy the free time those comforts afford us. What’s important gets lost in what feels good. A large part of life that had been previously devoted to survival is displaced by the constant search for other forms of gratification and self-actualization. Think Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. At the bottom of the pyramid are physiological needs, then safety, then belongingness, then esteem then self-actualization. Today way too many of us are focused on the higher levels while ignoring the more basic ones at the bottom, the provision of which we have left to the government.

History proves that leisure breeds indolence, narcissism, destructive ends-justify-the-means competitiveness, resentment against the “establishment”, pleasure at all costs habits, and ultimately, revisionist history, delusional utopian fantasies and an evil thirst for power and influence on the part of some who are wired to dominate and control. Think Egypt, Athens, Rome, Western Europe and now the United States. Meanwhile, third world nations are dozens of years behind us. Russia already faced their turning point with the collapse of the Soviet system. China is still rising but I predict will ultimately face a civil war as its middle class rebels against totalitarianism, just as other societies revolted against monarchies and dictatorships. Their rise continues while our civilization declines.

Reading Hemingway’s book, I’m grateful for her sober, well-documented and definitive, in my judgement, account of how it is that the ‘nice guy’, hyper-corrupt, professional politician Biden is now sitting at the Resolute Desk surrounded by Rasputins and marionette masters. The Left will no doubt have a glib or carefully crafted response for every assertion in the book, but they have already won and don’t really care whether the truth exposed in it influences anyone. Elections have consequences, and as the book documents and spells out to anyone with an objective mind and a modicum of critical thinking skills, the theft of the 2020 elections (I use the plural noun because the same cheating in Fulton Country Georgia put the Senate in the Democrats’ hands) consequently gave the Left the power, albeit barely, to forcibly enact their destructive and megalomaniacal agenda and ideology.

The Leftist abuse continues. Mark my words, another crisis will unfold before the ’22 election and the Democrats will exploit it to the fullest. Last Tuesday may have put a chink in their armor, but the cancer of which they’re composed is so metastatic at this point there are only two ways to rid ourselves of it: playing whack-a-mole in every corner where we find it or administering radiation and chemotherapy, which risks killing the patient. We should all prefer the former approach, starting with school boards. The latter may make a good movie plot, but it really could lead to a bloody revolution, not something anyone should desire.

Time has changed things. But we should never forget what happened on November 3, 2020.

A Skirmish, Not A Battle, Not The War

Our election system is still broken. Even though I like the outcomes in Virginia and many other locations last Tuesday, I have only slightly more confidence that the GOP wins were free and fair than that the outcome in New Jersey was honest. I continue to be astounded that ANY thinking American could vote for the likes of McAuliffe or Murphy. Thus, my suspicion is that Youngkin won by substantially more than he did, and Ciattarelli probably won in New Jersey, but shenanigans in both races continued as they had in 2020.

Until we figure out how to ensure one citizen, one vote in this country, “they who count the votes” will bias the results in their favor using all of the shady-at-best, outright-illegal and fraudulent-at-worst, techniques. Politicians in general, and Democrats in particular, have been gaming the rules and the system for so long in this country, I have very little confidence in ANY outcome.

Auditing the results doesn’t help. The ability to obscure things like chain-of-custody, endlessly litigate broken laws and regulations, data manipulation… all ensure elections do NOT have integrity. Mis directional audits (ones that confirm the manual count is the same as the machine count but completely ignore the question of whether each vote was LEGAL!) simply won’t solve the problem. The attention span of America is so short that once the declarations of results are nominally announced, accurate or not, free-of-fraud or not, we tend to move on.

Except with respect to the 2020 election, the shenanigans during which were so egregious that only history will accept, perhaps three generations from now, that it was the most blatant rigging and theft of any election in our nation’s history.

I’m not in favor of federalizing elections, but I AM in favor of the Supreme Court growing a pair and insisting that State laws be adhered to. I’m also in favor of overwhelming and saturating the airwaves from this point forth with exposés of Leftist propaganda (a.k.a. BS) that flow like diarrhea from the mouths of their acolytes, media mouthpieces and henchmen (henchpersons?).

I don’t believe the numbers from either Virginia or New Jersey any more than I believe that Brandon received 81 million legitimate votes in November 2020. I’m glad we posted lawyers at key precincts to minimize “the steal” this time around. But the steal mechanism, I have no doubt, was still in place, which is why the results were so close. And in New Jersey, I’m now surprised that at 1:30 AM on November 4th Murphy mysteriously received 40,000 votes that put him over the top. It stinks. It just stinks.

Would an audit prove that Ciattarelli won? Probably, but an audit merely produces EVIDENCE, and only if an unbiased court HEARS that evidence and the allegation of fraud is thus PROVEN, will anything change.

In 2020, there was TONS of evidence of fraud. People forget that sworn affidavits, sworn under penalty of perjury, ARE EVIDENCE! That evidence doesn’t constitute PROOF, however, until a court judges its veracity, it validity and comes to a determination.

Were Ciattarelli to challenge the New Jersey results, chances are there would be enough evidence to establish a case that the Democrats fraudulently manufactured the Murphy win. However, by the time the matter wound its way through the judicial system, Murphy’s second administration would be over!

That’s what the Democrats count on. They have established a critical mass of blind, sometimes stupid, uninformed vote-counting pawns, at best, to hopelessly corrupt judges unwilling to hear evidence at worst, such that any attempt to reform the election process and ensure vote integrity will be stymied.

So what happened this time? What happened, as it did in 2016, is that so lopsided was the vote against the Democrats and for the Republican candidates even the Dems’ best laid cheating plans didn’t work. In Virginia’s case, if the truth were revealed, my hunch is that Youngkin won by 1-2% points MORE than he did. In New Jersey’s case, if the truth were revealed, Ciattarelli would/will have won by a similar margin.

So, while Tuesday’s election was indeed a throwing of the BS flag on the Leftist/Democrat agenda, a repudiation of Uncle Brandon and all the idiocy that comes with him and his party, it wasn’t anywhere near as close as the hyper-ventilating media would have us believe.

We won a skirmish on Tuesday. It wasn’t even a battle. The battle for the truth behind November 2020 still rages, for example. And the War against authoritarianism, freedom, traditional values that made this country great and a shining beacon for the world, also continues.

Fight on Americans, fight on against the sycophants, panderers and brainwashed idiots of the Left who would “fundamentally transform” our country. Don’t let up. Let’s exploit their weakness: their infighting, their foolish policies and agenda, while we have the microphone and the tide on our side.

Our skirmish victory won’t last long.

Act Now Or Forever Hold Your Peace

Some of my readers have asked recently why my posts come in bursts and why they seem to have tapered off in recent months. The answer is simple. Actions speak louder than words. I have markedly stepped up my activities that, for lack of a simpler description, consist of championing the “Let’s Go Brandon” movement. And if you don’t know what that slogan means, you have your head in the sand and should pull it out and look it up. It’s not just an anti-administration motivation that drives me. It’s the recognition that despite my reservations, despite the impingement on my time and energy, I must actually DO something, not just talk about it.

So I have. I have worked to expand my network of like-minded people also disgusted by what they see transpiring before their eyes. We meet regularly and discuss the atrocities of the day and what our extended networks are telling us about leftist overreach and right-minded push back. We talk about contingency plans. We speak in public settings (e.g. in bars, restaurants, at the grocery store) openly and unabashedly about the toxic drivel coming out of the Biden administration, the lies, deceit, misinformation of the main stream media, and we openly applaud those who sport patriotic tee shirts and hats.

And here’s something I’ve learned. As angry as I am about the Democrat daily atrocities, I’ve found that the Democrats who surround me respond better to subtle encouragement rather than overt condemnation. As much as I’d like to grab them by the neck and rub their noses in the excrement they’ve left all over the ground, I’ve found a better formula, one that doesn’t corner and confront them, but that gives them an escape route.

For example, the other day I was deployed as a member of our community emergency response team and as we worked on setting up our equipment I overheard one of the members say something about attending a Democrat meeting of one sort or another. As the conversation ended and the Democrat and I came in close proximity to one another, I said to him, “Wow Bob, I would have never pegged you for a Democrat.” His expression was priceless. It was clear he was embarrassed to have been outed!

My statement was, of course, both a compliment as well as a dig. I acknowledged he was a good guy, with smarts and skills and organizational ability, while also pointing out my surprise that anyone possessing these attributes could be a Democrat!

I’m encouraged by the fact that there are more and more traditionalist/conservative blogs, videos and other forms of media published every day. As I’ve often stated, there are many who’s ability to articulate the outrage we all feel far surpasses my own, and it’s clear, reading or viewing their work, that we all have similar sentiments. Thus, I’ve frequently begun a post only to find that someone has already covered what I want to say, and far better than I could.

I’m tempted, and may in fact act on this, to add a curation feature to GrumpsReport. Curation, by the way, is one of those terms, usually applied to the selection of displays in a museum, that the tech world has co-opted and abused. But its apt. What I’m suggesting is the establishment of a section with links to specific articles, videos, tweets, etc. that are particularly intriguing, thought-provoking or bile-inducing. Thus, my readers will have a sense of what I’m made up of.  As we all know, “we are what we consume”, and that goes for what we read, watch and listen to as well.

In the meantime, please understand that the fewer hours I spend writing the more I spend actually doing something about the stuff I’m so pissed off about!

I hope you’ll join me in DOING SOMETHING. Speak up, act out, join with, and by all means, help the unfortunate (I’m being extremely generous) Democrats and independents who think that everything’s just swell to wake up, open their eyes, filter out the bs they’re consuming and start thinking with their heads instead of other parts of their anatomies.

Prepping at the Tipping Point

I’m not a fan of what I call “Prepper Porn”.  That’s the content of thousands of books, websites, articles, etc. predicting the Apocalypse and what everyone must do to survive scenes like those depicted in “The Walking Dead.” On the other hand, I was a Boy Scout in the old days when the BSA was the character and skills training ground for young men. The slogan was “Be Prepared.”

While it’s impossible to be prepared for everything: TEOTWAWKI (The End of the World as We Know it), SHTF (‘Stuff’ Hit the Fan), Armageddon, a nuclear holocaust, reversal of the Earth’s geomagnetic poles, a direct hit from an asteroid, EMP (Electro Magnetic Pulse), CME (Coronal Mass Ejection), a Zombie Invasion…common sense suggests that being prepared as much and as realistically as possible for life’s emergencies is a hell of a lot better than being unprepared!

Once upon a time I had two 55 gallon drums of water in my garage, several buckets of raw wheat and a few other items that amounted to “preparation.” The fact that I never used them didn’t discount their value, but even if a catastrophe had occurred, they wouldn’t have done me or my family much good.

As I look back on the emergencies that befell us during various times and in various living locations, I’m nevertheless grateful for the preparedness mindset that my Scout days imprinted on me. While the worst hasn’t happened yet, our family was subjected to a lot of natural and man-made problems: hurricanes, tornadoes, thunderstorms, high winds, bad snowstorms, localized floods, heat waves and other harmful natural events; relatively sudden general and personal economic downturns; supply disruptions of food, gasoline and staples; strikes; prolonged power outages; mass transit failures; accidents; pest infestation; injuries; illness; and of course, 9-11 and the Pandemic. Each was a wake-up call.

Yet each time, once the emergency had passed, we retreated into complacency and a sub-conscious attitude that “we weathered it and we’ll do so again when and if it happens.”

Does any of this sound or feel familiar?

Some of the emergencies were man-made, some were natural. We survived them all, and our pain ranged from mild inconvenience to some downright difficult times where we thought our lives were ruined and we thought we’d have to completely change them.

The vicissitudes of life are such that it’s likely we’ll be faced with emergencies, mini and moderate disasters and other trying times in the future.

However, TODAY, the risk of man-made hazards is greater than I’ve ever seen in my lifetime!

If you have any doubt about this, just open your eyes and look around. If you still think everything’s either just fine, or will work itself out as it always has, don’t bother reading any further.

On the other hand, if like so many millions of our fellow Americans you clearly see what’s happening “right here in River City”, right before eyes, and are not just alarmed but pessimistic that for the first time in many generations we won’t be able to give our children and grandchildren better lives than we had; if you sense the threats to our freedom, peace and prosperity are mounting as each day goes by; if you see our very civilization being systematically destroyed (“fundamentally transformed”) then friends, “Be Prepared” needs to become your slogan as well!

If you’ve spent any time thinking about Emergency Preparedness, however, you know how long the lists of considerations, questions and answers are.

There are literally thousands of resources available. I’ve spent countless hours researching the available literature, videos, websites to get answers. The array of products, services and printed/published information dedicated to “prepping” is vast. It’s available from government and commercial sources, some of it general, some of it very specific, some of it good, some of it bad, some of it useful and, in my opinion, some of it useless or even harmful.

The fundamental problem with most of these sources is that they don’t address the individual needs, preferences and budgets of families living in diverse locations, with different circumstances.

So concerned am I about the future of our country and the impact the Leftist juggernaut is having on the lives of my immediate and extended family, however, that I’ve solicited help in making sense of the matter. I have become a practitioner of the principles espoused by a new organization: Suburban Readiness Institute (SRI). One of their key tenets is secrecy – it stands to reason that the more people know about your preparedness, the less secure your family will be if things get bad. All communications and interaction with them have been and will remain discreet. Thus, I won’t be describing their means, methods, etc.

But I urge my readers to visit their website (https://suburbanreadiness.com) for a general overview of what they’re about.

And whether or not you engage with them or some other organization to assist you with your planning and preparation, I can’t overemphasize the importance, AT THIS PIVOTAL TIPPING POINT IN OUR COUNTRY’S HISTORY, of thinking seriously about and systematically, methodically, pragmatically and resolvedly preparing for what may lie ahead.

Once an emergency happens or is about to happen, with or without warning, the time for preparation is past.

Just Sayin’

Those of you who follow this blog know one of my key tenets is: “Go Where They Ain’t”. It’s not that I’m a non-conformist, although that turns out to be true. It’s rather that crowds and the herd are generally things to avoid not just in a crisis but also in non-threatening times as well. Similarly, I tend to go where they ain’t when collecting information. And with respect to my views on everything from local to world affairs, I ask “why?” when wisdom becomes “conventional”.

So, for example, the conventional wisdom is, “We are not nation-builders.” Nation-building, by the way, means the idea of invading and occupying a land afflicted by dictatorship or civil war and turning it into a democracy. That line is dogma for conservatives and in general, I don’t believe we should be nation builders, however, when I ask “why?” I have to also think that in the absence of us “exporting freedom and democracy”, what takes place? Turns out despotic adversaries like China and Russia move in for hegemonic reasons. That’s not good.

Another bit of conventional wisdom is, “America can’t be the world’s police force.” On this matter I have to ask, “What happens when we abandon that role?” Again, China and Russia move in. Is that what’s good for society and the world at large?

“We must withdraw from Afghanistan!” I have to ask, “why?” While we maintained a presence there, as we have in South Korea, Japan, Europe and other places around the world where we’ve acted as policemen, the country wasn’t great, but look at what we have now! And I don’t think a “prudent withdrawal” would have created a different outcome from the Taliban taking over.

No, I submit we ought to think about whether we SHOULD maintain an active military presence in places like Afghanistan and Iraq and Syria and other locales where we’ve spent blood and treasure both eliminating evil and also setting up self-determination (aka democracy). Walk away and we might think we’re doing ourselves a service, but every time we’ve done so, it’s cost us more in the long run!

It boils down to this. Either we believe that freedom and democracy are good and dictatorships and terrorist-led theocracies like the Taliban are evil, or we don’t. If we believe in freedom, doesn’t it become our DUTY to export it and ensure it around the world? Or do we pull in our horns, think we can create a bulwark against it with walls and prosperity here at home, and allow other nations whose ideologies and societal norms we believe to be evil, take over?

I grew up in Europe, an American kid going to an American school, surrounded by Americans, but with local foreign friends as well. They envied us. They worshipped the United States because of the freedoms and wealth that we enjoyed. Were we to leave our bases in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, they would be terrified! Our troops provide a deterrent that keeps bad actors from taking over. Had we troops in the Ukraine, or better, in Crimea, do you think Russia would have annexed it as they have?

If we stop patrolling the Taiwan Strait (and now, weak as we appear to be, even if we KEEP patrolling the Taiwan Strait), or the South China Sea, how quickly do you think the Chinese will take them over? They’re already establishing military bases in the disputed Spratly Islands and we’re just letting them get away with it. THAT’s what happens when we adopt the position, “We can’t be the world’s police force.”

Yes we can, and yes we should. It ain’t cheap, and it ain’t easy. But if we’re going to restore our nation as the Light Upon the Hill, I think we need to reconsider our foreign policy, our influence and Sole Superpower status.

Just sayin’

PSYOP

A Psychological Operation or PSYOP is one which conveys information and indicators that are intended to influence audiences (enemies in military parlance) in one way or another. The information may be true, selectively true, deliberately false, surreptitiously false, deliberately vague or misleading, intended to incite behavior of one sort or another…you get the idea. We’ve all seen enough movies that involve PSYOPs in the plot to understand what it is. Applying the term to what the Left does may seem inflammatory, but perfectly describes what they’re doing.

I’ve referred previously to the term “production values” as the elements of a message that when skillfully put together evoke strong emotions: heart string pulls, angry reactions, deer-in-the-headlights behavior, etc. Those elements include everything from powerful rhetoric and diction to mood music, visual effects, other “special effects” coupled with the gazillion-watt amplification of social and main-street media, and the allure of money and power that unfortunately drives so much of human behavior.

Production values are a key component of PSYOP. And it works on both sides of the ideological aisle. Go ahead, click on msnbc.com I just did and this is what comes up, among other things:

Now, click on Beitbart and this is what you get:

I place both these sites in the category of what I call “PSYOPs for Money”. These are profit-seeking entities both using PSYOPS to stir their readers/audiences to frequent and patronize their sites so they can maximize advertising dollars.

But what about the PSYOPS that are NOT seeking profit but are intended to mislead even the most plugged in, most savvy investigators, not to mention the public at large. Remember that graphic we saw last November depicting data flowing around the world, supposedly proving that Hammer and Scorecard were used to steal the election?

This and the accompanying data was a fundamental element of Mike Lindell’s exposé “Absolute Proof”.

Turns out, the analysis was provided by a huckster with a checkered past named Dennis Montgomery. (For a full explanation of this whole affair, read the reporting by Gateway Pundit here and here.) Among other skullduggeries Montgomery swindled more than $100k out of Sheriff Joe Arpaio. We still haven’t found out who paid (if anyone) Montgomery to create this narrative, but some day maybe we will.

I am of the firm belief that both Mike Lindell and Joe Arpaio (and Sydney Powell, Michael Flynn, Tom McInerny and others) are among many ardent patriots who were and are trying to get to the bottom of what happened last November 6th. No sane, critical thinking, reasonably objective person believes that Basement/Addled Joe legitimately won 81 million votes.  But my point is that there is so much PSYOP produced information and misinformation out there that we still have not been able to prove without a doubt, or at least prove sufficiently such that it would stand up in court, all of the fraud and shenanigans we rationally believe stole the election for Biden.

And this is what the Left cleverly and evilly want – they can’t prove the election was legitimate so they’re aim is to delegitimize any honest inquiry concerning its illegitimacy by creating CHAOS. THAT, I submit, is exquisitely executed PSYOP.

Unfortunately, as a result of the Left’s success at creating chaos no justice will prevail concerning the 2020 elections for president and the two Georgia senate seats. Admonitions that “the Truth will prevail” represent wishful thinking. It may, but not likely in our lifetimes. Historians will someday, I pray, look back on this episode with conviction that the elections of 2020 were the most corrupt in U.S. history. But the chaos has been so effective that “truth” has gone the way of moral relativism. It doesn’t really exist at all in the minds of many!

So where does this leave us?

1.            The old maxim, “You can’t believe everything you read or see on television” still holds true.

2.            We must stop echoing what we “wish” to believe. Even if true, the general public, including persuadable independents and democrats with brains, don’t want to listen to chest-pounding and angry epitaphs from the Right. It just turns them off.

3.            The Left won’t listen to facts or reason, of course, but at this point that other old maxim, this one from Napolean is also wise: “Never interrupt the enemy when he is making a mistake.” I believe the Left has, characteristically, overplayed their hand and are starting to make complete fools of themselves. Let ’em do it.

4.            Finally, we MUST, on the other hand, selectively throw the BS flag on what the Left is spouting. Be careful not to expose just how pissed off you are about what they’re doing. Rather, let the Leftist you’re talking to think you’re either a Leftist yourself or independent and simply ask questions. Scratch your head and ask, for example, “What do you think the implications are of letting in all these illegals through the Southern Border?” Resist the temptation to rip your debate opponent’s head off, but firmly call out their nonsense. And when they devolve into calling you a racist (as they will inevitably do) just express concern and sympathy that your antagonist is suffering from the psychological disorder called Projection. It will both belittle him or her, although I hasten to point out that Leftists are impossible to shame because as collectivists their hive-minds deflect any sense of it, but pointing out their illness will make you feel better as you walk away. Alternatively, you can play the “I know you are but what am I?” children’s game. Either will probably enrage them and at that point, you can also feel good about having kept your own cool and having won the debate.

As an aside, I want to refer my readers to a couple of articles that I found helpful and instructive. The first, How to Fight the Left Effectively, discusses in so many words how PSYOPS have prepared the battlefield for the conflict we’re engaged in, and how not to get conned. The other, The Six Steps To Dealing With Liberal Friends And Family written back in 2008, ( a decidedly different time ) deals with how to walk softly when dealing with Leftist friends and family.

Finally, as I have been preaching since the Spring, don’t be lulled into thinking that the Truth Cavalry is coming or that people will be going to jail for the treason they’ve committed against the country, or that you and your buddies are going to “suit up” for a REAL insurrection. Rather, keep your powder dry, your heads in the game and on a swivel and continue to educate yourselves, using critical thinking to see through the PSYOPs. That, and GET INVOLVED locally. Don’t just stand there and gripe. DO SOMETHING to push the pendulum back the other way like those courageous parents are doing at school board meetings in Loudon County, or Tatiana Ibrahim in Carmel, NY (if you haven’t seen this, you MUST, it’s truly inspiring!)

In Memory Of Those Who Died Serving Our Country

This Memorial Day Weekend as I helped plant flags at the graves of veterans I once again reflected on the extremely high price of Freedom. As I pushed a long screwdriver into the soil next to each veteran headstone so as to make the hole into which I placed a fresh, bright flag, I wondered how many had actually died in battle. Some, of course, died after their military service. Some never saw combat, never put their lives directly on the line. Nonetheless, all died having served, and all are worthy of honor and remembrance. I paused and slowly read the name of each next to whom I planted a flag and silently thanked them.

Pondering the question I asked myself about the number of veterans who died in battle, I later found the following infographic which I share as it provides a definitive answer:

As I drove home after participating in the solemn and dignified activity, I thought to myself that there have been many civilians as well, deserving of the honor I had accorded the veterans in that cemetery.

I recalled, for example, my visits over the years to C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, VA. On the north wall of the lobby in the “original” headquarters building are the memorial and iconic stars of those Agency employees who died in the line of service. My understanding is that most were members of the paramilitary arm of the Special Activities Division of the operations directorate (now the National Clandestine Service). When I first visited the Agency in the early 1970’s there were a handful of stars on the wall. Over the years the number kept growing. When I last visited, a couple of years ago, there were over 130. It seemed to me that they too should be listed among the veterans who either died in battle or at a minimum, among those who died while in the service of our country. They too, most certainly, are deserving of the honor and respect we accord to deceased veterans.

And this made me think of the countless other civilians who have taken the oath to defend the Constitution: law enforcement officers, first responders and volunteers of all kinds, and, I regret to have to add, even politicians for whom I have an almost universal disdain.

I wish I could say that ALL who have taken the oath are worthy of the honor we accord veterans on Memorial Day. Many are, but I’m afraid that today there is evidence in plain sight of many who have violated their oath and in my opinion, are guilty of treason. And there are some, never having either served or taken the oath who are worthy not of praise but of the most emphatic scorn. You know who they are.

But back to the honoring of those who DO live up to the oath they’ve taken. Patriots, lovers of freedom, defenders of liberty, in service to their fellow citizens… there a MILLIONS of American civilians who deserve to be honored for their stalwart support of the Constitution. Some have even tragically given their lives in its defense.

Some who valiantly served may not readily be apparent or ever come to mind. For example, there are bankers (yes, bankers) who served by getting involved in financial transactions to facilitate the development of military hardware and services, and businessmen and women who worked with intelligence agencies to provide information useful to counter terrorism or counter espionage activities. There were business executives who never served in uniform but who led or worked for organizations that developed and supplied material and services that gave us a competitive military edge over our adversaries. While it is tempting to assume that these people were simply performing their duties as employees for a paycheck, I know from firsthand experience that many did so with a conscious effort to support our country’s constitution and its defense.

It is to the civilians who have died in the service of our country in addition to the veterans that I extend my gratitude and offer my respect and admiration this Memorial Day.

May God bless them and their families forever.

And may God bless America.

So, Was the Election Stolen?

As we pass the 100 day milestone of the Puppet Presidency, and our worst fears of the damage the Left would do materialize into an almost daily atrocity, I am saddened to hear and see a level of acceptance on the part of some on the Right that what happened in the November 2020 presidential and January 2021 Georgia Senate runoff elections was NOT due to fraud and cheating. I’m distressed that solidly conservative individuals whom I respect and admire attribute the losses to a multiplicity of factors, among them Donald Trump’s rhetoric and personality, and dismiss election fraud as a determining factor. I find it very unsettling that any suggestion today that fraud caused the outcome is poo-poohed by some smart conservatives as the product of mindless, knuckle-dragger conspiracy nonsense. Even Right-leaning journals and media outlets have adopted this attitude either implicitly or explicitly.

Over the last several months I have read and studied countless articles and watched countless videos on the subject examining both Left and Right arguments. There is no point in trying to rehash the case for fraud here. Others far more articulate and smarter than I have already done so. I want to appeal, however, to my conservative/traditional friends who are willing to let bygones be bygones to revisit their views.

I want to share just one example of what the Left offers as an answer to the question of whether the presidential election was stolen or not. It is a quote from Herman Wallace, former Electrician, Foreman, Gen Foremen, & Superintendent at International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Union:

“Nope, they (the Democrats) took the Presidency the old fashioned way.

They ran a much better candidate.

They worked much harder.

They spoke to the issues that matter to the people.

The Democratic candidate got 7 million more votes.

The Democratic candidate won the Electoral College with 306 votes (A landslide according to Donald Trump).

On the other side of the ledger:

Trump was a remarkably flawed candidate and got worse as the campaign went on.

Besides his frothing-at-the-mouth campaign rallies and throwing red meat to his base; Trump was a lazy candidate.

Trump’s “issues” were the same old lies from his first 3 years.

Trump lost the popular vote by twice as much as before.

The 5th bullet point speaks for itself.

There was something STOLEN in this election, it was the trust, of a segment of the people, in the basic function of their government. Trump not only stole it, he decimated it without cause or remorse.”

Leaves me breathless and fuming…I can’t even begin to respond to such rabid BS.

Yet, there are Republicans, conservatives and Traditionalists who echo many if not all of the same delusions!

Again, this post is an appeal to those who are willing to let the water keep flowing under the bridge and over the dam to ask you to revisit your conclusions about the legitimacy of the elections. I urge you to find sources that YOU believe to be credible. For my part, I rely on thinkers/writers/institutions whose comments on the election are available from the following links like Jonathan Turley, Alan Dershowitz, The Heritage Foundation (see section on Election Integrity).

However, the most sober, thoughtful and objective discussion of voter fraud in the presidential election and by extension the Georgia runoff elections I’ve discovered amidst all my research was that provided by Professor John Eastman, scholar of Constitutional law and Senior Fellow at the Claremont Institute in an interview at the Steamboat Institute on April 10, 2021. The full interview can be found here. It is 53 minutes long, and while my attention span is very limited, I watched all of it with rapt attention. He addresses ALL the things that we’ve heard about from the shrill Left and the angry Right: vote spikes, unilateral changes to the election laws by other than the state legislatures, the rejection by the courts of the many challenges on procedural grounds, the Supreme Court’s unwillingness to intervene, Dominion voting machine issues, etc.

If you my readers after viewing the above-mentioned video have any doubt that the “election was stolen” I have a bridge I’d like to sell you, or some Game Stop stock.

Finally, for those of you who still question whether there is evidence…no, let me rephrase that…SUFFICIENT evidence to challenge the legitimacy of the elections, I call your attention to this reference. One might not be happy with all the citations, nor the impact of bias on the sources, but taken as a whole, in my opinion it DOES provide more than ample documented, empirical evidence of fraud and a stolen election.

Now we have to hope and pray that more honest people will take hold of the levers of power and make the changes necessary before the 2022 election.  If we can take back the House and Senate in November 2022, we just may be able to halt this lurch to the extreme Left and maybe even get rid of some of the cancerous rot perpetrated by this illegitimate and toxic administration.

And for my part, I STILL want to see the forensic audit results of the November 3, 2020 and January 5, 2021 elections! Only then will we have the ammunition required to correct the historical record and judge what happened in 2020 fairly.