This is a 13 minute excerpt from the June 5th episode of Life, Liberty and Levin. I highly recommend it for those buying the drivel coming out of the White House and Media about gun control. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA19oQCjjAA&t=703s. Cut and paste the link or press “Continue”>> below for easy access to the excerpt.
I often repeat Rush Limbaugh’s argument that the battle raging in America is not between Conservatives and Liberals, not between Republicans and Democrats, but between Traditionalists and Secular Progressives. In my writings I’ve simplified this position as The Battle Between the Right and Left, or, frankly The Battle Between Good and Evil. Today, I’m adding to that label. The battle raging now is between Authoritarianism and Freedom.
didn’t used to think it would come to this. After all, true liberalism is supposed to be about liberty. Democrat party Liberals, however, have shed any semblance of liberty in their approach to the future of our country. Rather, they are hell bent to generate and cement every shred of power they can before the American people revolt. Whether that revolt comes during the 2022 and 2024 elections or whether it happens violently, it is coming.
We are already repulsed by the condescension the Left manifests toward us. They are counting on their cheerleaders and lapdogs in the media and Hollywood, bankrolled by arrogant, hyper-rich oligarch-prophets, to brainwash a gullible, dumbed- down half of America into believing their absurd and empty promises. Knowing that eventually Americans will see through their bs, they’re trying to import hundreds of thousands of highly dependent illegal aliens and place them in Republican strongholds, trying to turn them into reliable Democrat voters.
Hypocrites come in many forms and varying degrees, but the so-called leadership of the Democrat Party truly win the hypocrisy contest. Do you really think Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Biden and Harris or any of the other hyporcitical leftist politicians would allow dependent, homeless people to camp out on THEIR doorsteps? They want us to think they’re Mother Teresa when in fact they’re Caligula, Stalin, Hitler, Pinochet, Pol Pot, Castro and Maduro rolled into one. Their skill at twisting and turning facts, at creatively misrepresenting truth, at spinning and outright lying to our faces is what’s making so many of us very very angry.
Our anger is justified. We’re seeing our country being destroyed by domestic enemies which, contrary to what the media would have you believe, are not right-wing skinhead white male chauvinist misogynists, but by Leftist demagogues spouting the most outrageous nonsense with the expectation that enough stupid people will believe and follow them to utopia.
Because we on the Right believe in the principles that the Left so often touts but habitually flaunt, principles such as individual liberty, free speech, tolerance and acceptance, we are far more restrained and deliberate in our opposition to what’s going on. When rolls have been reversed, the Left has done the most despicable things. When the Right are the opposition, we still try to be gentlemanly about how we protest.
They’re counting on that. By the time the 2022 election rolls around, the Democrats will have honed and burgeoned their election cheating mechanisms, will have manufactured (you heard it from me first) crisis after crisis to solidify the mail-in voting, illegal vote harvesting, buried-in-code and internet protocol vote counting scams so that, lo and behold, they will eke out victories in the mid-terms and keep their majorities.
People are mighty pissed off, and the more the Left attempts to shove their authoritarian rules, regulations and tyranny down our throats the more coiled the backlash spring becomes. There is a tipping point where the Left will learn the true meaning of insurrection.
I’ll leave it at that.
Just a short note to comment that the reason the Left is so effective at pushing their agenda is that despite their differences, they have a binding precept around which they always coalesce: POWER. Like all collectivists and lemmings, they mass together in one body to vote, cheat, steal, report, bludgeon, infect everything they touch. They put on a good show about being “for the people” and wanting nothing more than to do what’s right for America, but anyone with half a brain, paying attention, knows their evil intent is political domination so they can impose their utopian nonsense on us all.
We used to watch them at the podium self-righteously blather about how everything they do is intended to help the underdogs, the victims of white male racism and privilege, those who are so oppressed they can’t help themselves. Now they don’t even make a pretense of that. They just spit their disgusting Leftist bile out with impunity. They know the media will amplify their vitriol and demagoguery and suppress the truth or any view that departs from the orthodoxy.
These people on the Left are the worst kind of hypocrites, the worst kind of infection and pandemic that befalls mankind. Throughout history the losers and have-nots of the world, the indolent and feckless, the weak-minded and gullible, led by the arrogant and condescending, enticing and demagogic, have demanded to be taken care of, have screamed of their oppression, of inequality, of racism, despite constant opportunities to rise on hard work and merit.
And we on the Right continue to act like ladies and gentlemen, couching our rhetoric in diplomatic terms, in conciliatory tones, in compromising language. We always seek to take the high road because we’re told if we don’t “we’ll be just as bad as they are.”
We encourage and celebrate debate. We think differences of opinion among us are healthy. Both true, and both self-destructive. So long as we allow ourselves to be led by the ladies and gentlemen of the Right, we will see our country continue down the self-destructive path we are on.
The Left loves it. They are guerillas on one hand, and lemmings on the other. They burst out of the underbrush to hurl invectives and ad hominem attacks on the Right, and then when the times are ripe to push their ideology over the goal line, they coalesce and with one voice do the will of their pied piper leaders. So long as the money and ego-food keeps coming, they’re happy not to tug too hard on the strings manipulating them.
The Left is effective in exercising their power, as noted many times, because a complicit tech oligarchy and Leftist main stream media amplify their drivel.
The Right is attempting to counter the tech monopoly/oligarchy. BUT WE ARE FAILING BECAUSE WE’RE TOO FRAGMENTED. We have no unifying leader, no meme or quip or slogan that brings us all together like Newt did with the Contract With America in 1994 which swept the GOP into power for the first time in 40 years.
There are dozens if not hundreds of websites, organizations, movements and efforts dedicated to exposing the truth and the destructiveness of the Biden/Schumer/Pelosi administration. New “platforms” for free speech emerge almost weekly. There are a multitude of “voices” on alternative (i.e. non MSM) media that are heralding the mess we’re in and many offer solutions. The problem is, there are just too many! The conservative think tanks, the right-wing tabloids, the new social media platforms encouraging conservative thought and speech…they’re all great, but the messages that bind us are muddled, unclear, and lack the Hollywood production values the Left so effectively utilize.
Trump is a unifying force in one sense. What he showed America during his four years in office is just how masochistic and destructive the Obama/Leftist “fundamental transformation” movement really was. Inarticulate, self-aggrandizing, politically inept and boorish as he was, all he had to do was reverse the crap Obama laid on us to awaken the country and put us on the path to peace and prosperity. Frankly, anyone with traditional values, basic leadership and communications skills could have done that, but only bombastic Trump had the audacity and chutzpah to beat the Clinton/Leftist machine. And, “Make America Great Again” was the kind of slogan that rallied the Silent Majority to overcome the Leftist cheating/fraud in the 2016 election, much to the surprise and amazement of the American people, the world, and above all, the Clinton Left.
But like any reality tv series, Trump’s arc and the MAGA slogan is in decline. Yes, he still brings out tens of thousands at rallies and there are “just like the good ‘ole days” variations on the MAGA theme.
But only once we are able to rally behind a leader who has the principles of Trump, the stamina, durability and energy of Trump but the attractiveness, inspirational, universally persuasive… perhaps the best all-encompassing word is “righteous” attributes that Trump lacks will we be able to come together, vote and demand fairness, transparency and integrity in voting and politics, and beat back the Leftist cancer that is rapidly killing us.
I don’t see that leader among us. The firebrands and flamethrowers who make us stand up and cheer won’t play well. The erudite old hands will just bend over to be spanked and say “yes sir, may I have more?”. The “rising stars” aren’t going to last through the next disastrous three years.
I think the only one who could fit the bill is a renovated, more polished and inspiring Trump. He still has time to develop a different kind of attractiveness to the full spectrum of our population. He can learn to string two sentences together without repeating himself five times. He can convey what he needs to convey with quips and quotes and barbs and jabs and encouragements that are less caustic to half the population.
In short, if he can reflect between golf greens on becoming a statesmen and leave behind his New York real estate thug past, and this time around be even more bold at fighting the swamp and the media but in more clever, perhaps more measured ways, we just might have in him that leader around which to consolidate our righteous indignation, our effort, our resources, our voice. Then, perhaps, for our children and grandchildren and perhaps a few more generations beyond them, we may be able to destroy the forces of evil embodied by today’s Left.
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!)
It would be laughable if it weren’t so tragic. The Leftist Cabal pulled it off. The metastasis has progressed (.sic) to Stage 4. No more chemo or radiation therapy against the metastatic cancer, we now will have to rely on Faith, wet cloths on our foreheads, a drastic shotgun approach of therapies and adrenalin to fight it. How do we do that without killing the patient – our cherished constitutional republic – the United States of America?
We need power, money, organization, coordination, leadership.
Power and money are, regrettably, linked. Money buys media and our population lives in a reality informed by the media, true or false. Obviously, false or “fake” news can overpower truth. And now, with Big Tech suppressing, cancelling, banishing truth, it will take immense amounts of money to build and expand on alternative media facilities and channels to build a bigger megaphone for it.
Organization exists somewhat in the Republican Party, so long as the professional hacks are purged. The lists, the communication and fundraising systems can be exploited.
Coordination goes hand in hand with leadership. We need one voice to inspire. And in my opinion, that voice is NOT Trump. He simply doesn’t have the rhetorical skills, personal restraint, consensus building and coaching abilities needed to lead the New War on Terror, which is what I will henceforth call it.
For the Democrats are terrorists, racists, globalists, anarchists, druids, elitists…all the things they have so cleverly tried to accuse the GOP of. They are arrogant, megalomaniacal beyond measure, petty and puerile, insolent, impetuous, dysfunctional, childish, vindictive and fundamentally dishonest.
On top of these, do you recall the harshest label of condemnation Jesus Christ ever applied to the Pharisees and Sadducees? “HYPOCRITES”!
While it is human nature to exhibit hypocrisy from time to time, above all, the Democrats have inculcated it into their very character!
We just learned that Trump will not sponsor a third party but will seek to purge the GOP from within through the mid-term elections. Necessary, but insufficient. The political process is broken beyond repair unless state legislatures are willing to tackle the reform of their election systems. This is a tall order. Even then, the judiciary is now so corrupted by Leftists that justice is no longer available. Period. So taking back the country from within the existing judicial and legislative systems may be a pipe dream.
What is needed to combat the cancer is an antidote to Big Tech and Fake News. What Trump CAN do, and I’m hopeful he will, is build an alternative megaphone that is louder than anything the Left has every built or could ever counter. In its embryonic form, consisting of news outlets like Newsmax, One America News and the many conservative websites and platforms that exist, this alternative megaphone might be dubbed, “New Tech“.
As an aside, the globalist/collectivist agenda of the Left can be used against them. The movement in tech of “open source”, developed largely by libertarian and left-leaning techies with an eye to “bringing everyone together” can be utilized to create an unassailable environment that cannot be controlled by oligarchs! (More on this in a future post!)
Trump has the contacts, familiarity with media, chutzpah and seed capital to build New Tech.
But he needs to remove his name and his ego from the process. He must turn the execution of the build over to others, putting new, attractive faces out front. More than 50% of the country can and will rally to New Tech if it can provide the same convenience benefits as Big Tech: alternatives to Amazon, Google, Social Media, Hollywood, to the Main Stream Media.
The underlying themes of New Tech will be FREEDOM, self-reliance, self-determination, self-respect and adherence to traditional values. Somehow, despite tremendous temptation to do the opposite, New Tech has to be built as an open tent. As much as I personally would like to shout down and stamp out Leftist societal perversions like transgenderism, abortion on demand, racism (remember, it’s the Democrats who are racist), same-sex marriage, etc., what we need to do is Make it Cool to be Good Again. Instead of trying to crush the perversion we need to set a candle on the hill where all can see that Good, Truth and Right lead to happiness and prosperity. We need to feel sorry for the perverted and though we might feel revulsion, we need to treat them as we would lepers…not shunning them but recognizing that leprosy is only mildly contagious and can be treated with compassion and effective protocols.
Can you imagine what could happen to our future if Wokeness referred to the awakening of brain-addled Leftist lemmings to the principles that made our nation great and our people the most prosperous the world has ever known? What if Wokies became synonymous with Traditionalists? Think how magnificent our country could become again!
We must reform what we can but build anew that which we must.
That may even require building a new internet backbone. Right now it’s fairly pluralistic but not entirely beyond the reach of the handful of Big Tech oligarchs who own and manage the servers. We need to sponsor and create truly “open source” internet channels that can’t be controlled by the Cabal.
Lots to think about. Lots to do. We can’t wait for two years…and by the way, the 2022 elections are already less than two years away! No, we must strategize while communicating deliberately to execute tactics that can prosecute the New War on Terror.
Right about now the resolve of a whole lot of people who voted for Trump and GOP down- ballot candidates is waning. The propaganda bombardment to the effect that “Biden won” is starting to take its toll. Even pro Trump websites, pundits and journals are repeating the “President Elect” phrase albeit some with the caveat “if that’s how it turns out”. Repeating it at all, I submit, nonetheless contributes to the saturation. As far as I’m concerned, the title “Corrupt, Professional Politician Candidate with no Achievement, Cognitive Decline and Plainly Visible Marionette Attachment Points” is a more apt title. DON’T LET THE BASTARDS GET YOU DOWN!
What will be will be.
If, as we hope, Trump emerges victorious and we’re able to further expose the Leftist cabal and agenda and what it tried to do in this election and over the last four years, then let’s “trust but verify” everything and everyone who claims to be on the Rght side and let’s not take off our “No More Mister Nice Guy” and MAGAA hats. Let’s continue to clean out the Swamp. Let’s advance the America First, patriotic, capitalist agenda and continue our slog up the slippery slope we’ve been headed down on for the past 50 years!
If, heaven forbid, we ascertain that Biden legitimately won, Trump concedes and Biden DOES become the President elect, let’s think about what an honest resistance looks and sounds like. The amount of damage Biden will do with Executive Orders, the reversal of so many good things instituted by the Trump administration, and the ceding of control to a truly radical, dangerous and anti-american element in his party will cause many of us to flirt with the concept of armed rebellion! (For the record, I’m NOT advocating this!) But we have to resist descending into the muck where bottom feeders like Pelosi, Schumer, Schiff, Nadler and the like, and idiot-fools like Harris, Ocasio-Cortez, Warren, and Sanders dwell, and we have to mount a counteroffensive to the cancer wrought by Big Tech and social media. We need to actively purge our educational system of the Leftist rot polluting our children’s minds…we’re seeing it now as we look over their shoulders on their school tablets.
It’s apparent to me that many of those who voted for Biden have the attention span of a gnat, are influenced not by facts and rational thinking but by sound bites and memes and heart-string pulls, appropriate music background and carefully selected, photo-shopped and edited visual aids. They are almost without exception gullible, indolent, self-absorbed, myopic and delusional people without patience and with selective memory. Or, they’re flat out arrogant, hyper-hypocritical, megalomaniacal, power-hungry totalitarians to whom the rules don’t apply and who are largely unaffected by what goes on in Washington or the halls of their state capitols.
PLEASE RESIST THE LEFTIST PROPAGANDA TSUNAMI !
PLEASE RESIST HANGING ON EVERY WORD AND MESSAGE THAT EMANATES EITHER FROM YOUR PHONE OR THE TELEVISION SCREEN !
ESCHEW BOTH EUPHORIA AND DESPAIR ! STAY FROSTY AS THIS THING PLAYS OUT !
BY ALL MEANS, SUPPRESS ANY SPIRITUAL MALAISE YOU MAY BE FEELING AS THE DAYS AND WEEKS DRAG ON WITHOUT ANY “BOMBSHELLS” OR “SILVER BULLETS” !
REMAIN STEADFAST !
Is any one else as disgusted by the virtue-signalling lawn signs that pollute my neighborhood as I am? The self-righteousness that drips off these eyesores actually angers me. It makes me want to rub the noses of these bleeding-heart hypocrites into these signs like a puppy dog’s into the mess on the living room rug!
Sometimes others say it so well that it’s just best to bring their writing to the attention of our readers giving them full credit and applause. Such is the case with this topic and the work of Christopher Skeet, whose September 8th article in American Thinker entitled “Ascent of the Yard Sign Prophets” is spot on.
Here are, however, some choice excerpts:
“Shortly after Trump was elected president, “HATE HAS NO HOME HERE” (HHNHH) yard signs began adorning the minority-manicured lawns of white-collar, white-skinned liberals. You’ve seen the sign. Its message is translated into multiple languages, which is meant to broadcast a globalist diversity of sorts by those who speak not only just English, but that sniffy dialect molded within the narrow confines of a university pedigree loftier than junior college but conspicuously short of Ivy League. You can all but hear them finish their Starbucks order with that irritating raised inflection on the last syllable.”
“The underlying message of the HHNHH yard sign is two-fold. First, it’s virtue signaling in its most tawdry form. Yard signs announcing “POVERTY IS BAD” and “I SUPPORT CURING CANCER” would ring just as hollow. Sorry, but you don’t get a cookie for broadcasting to the world that you oppose hate. Most people do, and their daily actions are sufficient proof thereof. A lion doesn’t need to convince people it’s a lion.”
“Second, the HHNHH yard sign alludes that a home which opposes President Trump is axiomatically hate-free, and, by deductive logic, a home which supports President Trump categorically welcomes hate with open arms. The sign smugly implies, “I’m a good person, and it’s a shame that you’re not.” This insinuation might not rise to the level of hate, but it certainly sinks to the level of arrogance, condescension, and sweeping judgment.”
“But over time the HHNHH yard signs faded along with the “I’m With Her” bumper stickers. The yard sign prophets needed something new, something snarkier, with which to impress their woke comrades and irritate the handyman who lives on the street’s only single story home. So a new yard sign was handed out that reads like a manifesto.”
“They really upped the ante, didn’t they? The first thought conservatives have looking at this sign is that they agree with every statement on it. But the purpose of the sign is not to find common ground across the political spectrum, but to further drive a wedge. The purpose of the sign is to insist that these statements are true only within the narrow ideological limits of the sign owner’s worldview. If you disagree with the yard sign prophets on any policy point, then, in their minds, you disagree with the statements themselves.”
“Like its HHNHH predecessor, the WE BELIEVE yard sign isn’t an argument, an ideology, or a philosophy. It isn’t a set of principles or tenets of a faith. It has no depth, no complexity, and no animation. It’s a regurgitation of drive-by gotcha-isms, dutifully parroted with overconfident arrogance and unearned righteousness by those who haven’t thought to the next sentence.”
“The WE BELIEVE statements are easily dissectible, and should never be allowed to fester unchallenged for the sake of avoiding unpleasant conversation. The yard sign is designed to elicit shame in its opponents, but there is nothing shameful and everything noble in resisting what Solzhenitsyn called “the mechanical propaganda of dead ideas”. You won’t make a dent, but they should know that neither did they.”
Thank you Mr. Skeet…could not have said it better myself!
With credit and apologies to Martin Luther King, I have my own dream of what could be. In a sense, what follows is MY version of a Utopian society…not the Dystopian society the Left is pushing.
I dream of an America that stands together, (including for our National Anthem!) as it once did during the Second World War. People from all walks of life, from every background, color, creed, faith, national origin are ALL proud to be American, grateful for the opportunity and freedom we have, bonded together through citizenship in a democratic republic we all believe in and cherish, and where educated, grammatically proper and syntactically correct American English is the national language.
I watched the movie “Miracle” the other night, the story of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team’s beating of the unbeatable Russian hockey team and our gold medal win. The period leading up to that triumph was a time of great trouble: the winding up of the Vietnam War, Watergate, the Iranian hostage crisis, the welfare state was growing like gangbusters, the rapid breakdown of traditional families and a continuation of what occurred in the 60’s – a growing fracture between Left and Right.
At that moment, in that hockey rink in Lake Placid, NY, all of America was united irrespective of where we stood on the ideological, political, or societal spectra. Oh that we could bottle and distribute that patriotism and pride today! The same pride we all felt as we heard the words, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
I dream of an America with leaders who uplift, who inspire, who seek the betterment of all our citizens and who assert with dignity and nobility America’s rightful role in the world as the “beacon on the hill”. In my lifetime, I’ve watched and listened to a slew of presidents, political, religious, academic, military and business “leaders” pontificate and (with apologies now to Shakespeare) “strut and fret their hour upon the stage” telling tales like idiots, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Sometimes the rhetoric resonated with enough people that it became, (to use a modern term), a “meme”, and our nation’s course was altered accordingly. Sometimes it just drifted away on the wind and was “heard no more.” Today our politics is more than ever gutter politics. Both the Left and the Right are talking down and at one another rather than with one another. The public, at least those who bother, are watching this “s-show” and shaking their heads, rolling their eyes and asking themselves, “can’t we do better than this?” I hasten to add, as I often do, however, that while both sides participate in these deplorable political antics, you’d have to be willfully blind or just plain stupid to not see that the Left has deepened and putrefied the gutter beyond anything the Right or any grade-school educated person could ever have imagined!
I dream of an America where children are once again taught about its greatness, about its Judeo-Christian roots and underpinnings, about the sacrifices and struggles of those who, imperfect though they were, united together to build this nation and establish it as the greatest engine of freedom, peace and prosperity the world has ever known. Those lessons we learned in grade school about the founding and early history of America, about 2+2 being 4, not 5 (“but Johnny, that was a good try and I’m so glad you feel empowered to give that answer”), those trophies that we received because we WON, not because we showed up, are not QUAINT! They’re an accounting of what made America great (.sic) not to be trampled upon with New Math, 1619 projects, multicultural and globalist, anti-national revisions to history, and poisonous, Leftist, “nobody should have any more than anyone else”, dystopian idiocy.
I dream of an America where traditional views of right and wrong are once again firmly established in our practices, laws, regulations and politics, where principles of equal opportunity rather than equal outcomes are engendered and manifest, where we don’t compromise, alter or eliminate these principles and harm and offend the vast majority of our people because some minority professes to be victimized by their application. One can argue that there is no black and white, but the Leftists would have you believe that there are no standards…that each and every one of us ought to be the arbiter of what is good, what is evil, what is right and what is wrong. Peaceful marches and protests (ones that don’t disrupt commerce, travel and the lives of those who are not involved) are RIGHT. Riots, looting, assault, battery, disturbance of the peace even… are WRONG. The taking of responsibility, restraint and continence are RIGHT. Infanticide and abortion as contraception is WRONG! Practicing and exhibiting manners is RIGHT. Anything goes is WRONG.
I dream of an America where our legal system is purged of distortion and justice is meted out with equanimity and without political bias, where laws are respected, and people understand and expect to abide by them not from fear of judgement and penalty, but because they’re just and benefit all of us. We were taught as kids to respect police officers, firemen, heck, even “our elders”! Today the Left wishes to destroy respect for just about anything! Weaponized law, weaponized politics, weaponized regulations…all these were started and have been fomented by the “it’s all about me” Leftists who were the hippies of the 60’s, the losers who sought to “tune in, turn on and drop out” and who now form the core of what is known as “the Deep State”. How could the Left use the law to persecute (some might say destroy the lives of) its opponents while allowing its own scandalous, obvious and disgusting violations of law go unpunished?
I dream of an America:
Where the rights and thoughtful, not shrill views of all are tolerated but where unlawful and aberrant behavior is not!
Where ALL lives matter!
Where faith is restored in FAITH!
Where we can earn an honest day’s wage for an honest day’s work.
Where government isn’t the source of philanthropy but individuals, families and communities look after one another.
Where technology, systems and artificial intelligence don’t substitute for people communicating directly with one another, where human beings answer the customer service 800 number, speak English and are empowered to solve problems rather than belch canned scripts like “I’m sorry you’re having a problem with…I’m here to help with that.” And where REAL intelligence in REAL humans deliver REAL results, and where parents “just say no” to 10 year olds demanding their own iPhones.
Where drugs, alcohol, pornography, social media and other addictions are dealt with head-on, not excused, tolerated and talked about endlessly.
Where the real racism and bias inherent in the hypocritical Left’s actions are exposed and expunged so that real fairness of opportunity can prevail.
Where men can once again be men and are not automatically accused of being misogynists; where women don’t feel they have to act like men (and behave like misandrists!) and where it’s ok for traditional roles of bread-winning and child-rearing to prevail again.
Where shame is felt for shameful behavior.
Where government no longer tries to engineer social justice through housing mandates, but allows communities to form freely and the pick-winners-and-losers-robin-hood-taking-from-Peter-to-buy-the-vote-of-Paul no longer takes place.
Where the rights of those who seek to obey the laws, focus on caring for themselves and their families, and work hard to be contributing members of society are not permitted to be trampled by the obnoxious, repugnant behavior or those who break the laws and seek to impinge on or take from others what is not rightfully theirs, and who do so with impunity.
Where honest capitalism is not denigrated but celebrated, but where crony capitalism is rooted out, exposed and eliminated.
Where limousine liberals and people who have no idea of what real suffering is remove their hypocritical, self-righteous, virtue-signaling signs from their lawns and instead, take a weed whacker to the overgrown grass and mess by the side of the road.
Where our schools teach kids reading, writing and arithmetic again instead of indoctrinating them in multicultural, gender-confused, anti-American drivel.
Where the term “marriage” is returned to its religious definition, but where the ability of same-sex partners to enjoy the same legal rights as married couples is codified in our laws and where LGBTQ militants no longer try to shove their preferences and ideology down others’ throats.
Where our military and law enforcement, as well as all other public service occupations are purged of incompetents and bad apples, our churches and the Boy Scouts are purged of pedophiles, our colleges are purged of socialists and marxists.
Where we can calm down, lower the speed and decibel level of our lives, aspire to be good and do good, do what is right, and actually “all get along”.
If you’re not familiar with the concept of the three types of people: sheep, wolves and sheep dogs, I strongly urge you to read about it in Lt. Col Dave Grossman’s book, “On Combat”. Sometimes it’s not easy to tell which category a person falls into until circumstances or events make it plainly obvious. One of the things the COVID-19 situation has done is make the distinctions more transparent.
Very briefly, and quoting from the book…
“If you have no capacity for violence then you are a healthy productive citizen: a sheep. If you have a capacity for violence and no empathy for your fellow citizens, then you have defined an aggressive sociopath–a wolf. But what if you have a capacity for violence, and a deep love for your fellow citizens? Then you are a sheepdog, a warrior, someone who is walking the hero’s path. Someone who can walk into the heart of darkness, into the universal human phobia, and walk out unscathed.”
The vast majority of people are sheep. This isn’t a pejorative term, unless of course we’re referring to “sheeple”. Sheeple are docile, fearful, easily-led, easily-manipulated, often ego-centric, gullible and seek the approval of others, particularly “expert authorities” and some kind of outside validation for their actions.
The truly evil sociopaths are of course wolves, but we can characterize scammers, demagogues, fearmongers, ‘hypercrits’ (.sic), ‘patronizers’, ‘condescenders’, megalomaniacs, holier-than-thou types, petty bureaucrats and of course, the majority of politicians as wolves too!
FInally, there are among us, thankfully, sheepdogs: combat soldiers, intelligence operators, police, firemen, first responders, much of the medical community, community emergency response teams and myriad volunteers who seek to serve others.
Look around you these days and you’ll clearly see who’s who.
What does this mean for our new lives… our during and post-COVID lives?
If you are a sheep. I strongly urge you to seek out, get to know, listen to and if need be, follow one or more sheepdogs whom you can trust and try to help as they seek to protect and serve others.
If you are sheepdog, I strongly urge you to embrace your role and let people know you care about them, will try to look out for their well-being, will defend them (with violence if necessary!) against evil and will lead from the front, not from your behind (.sic).
A few years ago a regional newspaper run by wolves and staffed by sheeple, in a fit of anti-Second Amendment pique, published an online, interactive map of those of us with concealed carry gun permits. Their attempt was to ostracize and shame us. It backfired.
No less than three of my neighbors, after seeing that I (and no-one else within a radius of about five miles) had a carry permit, quietly told me something to the effect of, “If the s— hits the fan, I’m coming to YOUR house.” Besides offering to mentor them on firearms training and permit acquisition (usually met with a “noooo, I could never do that…”) I reassured them they could indeed rely on me to help them in a dire situation, and if necessary, I’d given them on-the-spot training!
If you are a Sheeple, you’re not reading this but if perchance you do I urge you to wake up, shut up, engage your brain and do something useful instead of whining, weeping, wailing and gnashing your teeth!
Finally, if you’re a wolf, you too are probably not reading this. But I would strongly urge all wolves to be mindful of the rapidly increasing number of sheepdogs who are coming out of their doghouses to confront the evil you represent. We’ve thrown the bulls— flag on the field and while we haven’t seen apocalyptic civil unrest at this time, we’re ready to confront you and will not hesitate to defend our families and our friends from everything from petty unrighteous dominion to violent threat.
This crisis has clearly brought out both the best and worst in people. I have no data to support this, but I would not be surprised if the number of sheepdogs reading these words is greater than for most blogs. Why? Because people who would actually take the time to read the reflections and musings of an old, traditional fart like me probably care deeply about their loved ones, their communities and our nation. I expect many of you are courageous in the face of hardship and would, like a sheepdog, step up when called upon (if you’re not already doing so) to defend the flock.
May God bless the Sheepdogs and the Sheep. May He help the Sheeple and may He render the Wolves impotent…
In the coming months there’s going to be a lot of talk about the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms, the NRA and “assault rifles”. The limp-wristed Leftists who think a gun magazine is something you read will stomp their feet and gnash their teeth crying “we have to get guns off the streets” and “Republicans want guns so they can kill our kids” and similar nonsense.
The ignorance on the subject of guns is truly astounding. Hollywood has had much to do with creating false perceptions, and hypocritical, power-hungry politicians, many of whom have armed bodyguards, try to use this to their advantage. It’s a subject that can and will be discussed far beyond this election cycle, and there are so many facets to it, from the constitutional to the economic, to the ethical and moral, to the pragmatic…this article is only a tiny toe-in-the-water attempt to dispel some of the more glaring falsehoods and mis-characterizations of both guns and gun owners that permeate the airwaves.
First of all, guns are only one means to either inflict injury or death. In the hands of a determined killer a gun is actually one of the least efficient ways of carrying out an evil act. A bomb or driving a car into a crowd is far more deadly. Just ask Timothy McVeigh or Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
Similarly, guns are only one means of self-defense, but they’re an equalizer. A trained, 115 pound gun- wielding mom defending her children against a threatening 250 pound home invader has a far better chance of protecting them with a gun than without one. Yes, locks, alarms, pepper spray, a fireplace poker or baseball bat and “retreating to a safe place” are all possible defensive alternatives, but they’re hardly as effective as a gun against a perpetrator intent on harm.
The constant whining about “assault rifles” is sickening to responsible gun owners and enthusiasts. From Colorado Democrat Representative Diana DeGette’s idiotic statement that if there is a ban on magazines eventually the number of bullets would diminish “because the bullets will have been shot and there won’t be any more available,” to Nancy Pelosi’s bill to ban “assault magazines”, I could go on and on but I’ll simply point you to this article entitled “Top Ten Most Idiotic Anti-Gun Quotes from Politicians”.
For those of you who are NOT knowledgeable about guns, a magazine is the part of the gun that holds the bullets or shells, and is continuously re-used, so banning magazines doesn’t ban or reduce the number of bullets! And, by the way, the difference between bullets and shells is the difference between rifles and handguns and shotguns. Shotguns use shells, the others, bullets. Magazines can hold either but each is specific to the precise ammunition used!
Another common absurdity spewing from the mouths of Leftists is the suggestion that the AR in AR-15 stands for “Assault Rifle”. In fact, it stands for ArmaLite, the company that has been around since 1954 and that designed all kinds of rifles, each named with the prefix AR.
An assault rifle is a weapon that is capable of ‘select’ or in other words, fully-automatic fire…essentially, a machine gun. That’s what the police and soldiers have hanging from the straps around their necks. The Left would have you believe that ANY gun that looks scary, i.e. one that looks like a military rifle such as the AR-15, or the most widely available gun type in the world…the AK-47 and its variants, is an assault weapon. No! Fully-automatic, true assault rifles are already illegal. The kind of AR-15 or AK-47 that can be bought and used are semi-automatic. The difference is that pressing the trigger of a real assault rifle when in fully-automatic mode will cause it to shoot bullets continuously until the trigger is released. On a semi-automatic rifle such as the kind owned by hundreds of thousands of gun-owners, the trigger must be pressed once for each firing of a bullet. The infamous “bump stock” used by the Las Vegas shooter was a device that allowed a semi-automatic rifle to simulate a fully-automatic one, but such a device could be used on lots of different semi-automatic rifles, including ones that don’t look scary!
Ironically, the M-1 Garand – the principal rifle used by the U.S. military during World War II, seems to be ok with the Left because it doesn’t look like scary but rather more like a classic hunting rifle. However, just ask many a dead German or Japanese soldier whether they considered the M-1 to be an assault weapon!
The justification for owning an AR or AK style rifle should not be, as some pro-gun advocates suggest, for hunting. Sure you can hunt with one, and many do, but for pure hunting purposes, a specific hunting rifle like the Winchester Model 70 with a scope on it will likely fill your freezer with venison more efficiently than an AR-15.
No, the justification for owning an AR or AK “assault-style” weapon is that they are dual-purpose – they are effective both for hunting AND self-defense. As the Winchester Model ’94 (the lever-action saddle “Gun that Won the West” featured in Western movies) was the dual-purpose rifle of the late 1800 and early 1900’s, the AR-15 and AK-47 are the dual-purpose rifles of today. Can any of these be used in a mass shooting incident? Yes, and so can a pressure-cooker bomb!
Under the heading PROPAGANDA, you may have seen a spot on television from the Ad Council where a little boy talks to his dad about the handgun hidden under the sweaters in the father’s closet. The clip is intended to shock the viewer into thinking “Oh my God, the child has access to a handgun and could do so much harm to himself or others! We simply have to ban guns.” What’s so ridiculous about this portrayal is that no responsible gun owner leaves a gun in a place accessible to children! And while there may be some irresponsible gun owners who have an easily accessible loaded gun in the house, they take other precautions, of which there are many, to ensure it doesn’t get into the wrong hands.
But this is but one example of the ignorant bias of such “public service” depictions. The barrage is continuous and serves no-one save the felons who would like nothing more than the assurance that they won’t encounter an armed citizen when they perpetrate their crimes.
I once sat at dinner with a conservative Englishman with whom I agreed on just about every topic except guns. “How could you allow so many guns in America and pass legislation supporting their ownership? That’s absurd”, he said. In reply I calmly pointed out, “Let’s say we were instantaneously able to get all 350 million plus guns in the hands of American residents off the streets on a Monday. How many guns do you think there would be on the streets by Friday, and in whose hands would they be?”
The suggestion that all guns are inherently dangerous is analogous to saying that all cars are dangerous! It is a true statement, irrespective of whether it’s uttered by the NRA or an individual gun-owner, that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. And while rarely publicized, the number of times annually that guns in the hands of responsible gun-owners have stopped crimes dwarfs the number of times guns are actually used in the commission of a crime. What is never reported, because it can’t be, is how many times the presence of a good guy with a gun DETERS a crime, or the times a criminal abandons a crime and flees when confronted with the barrel of a gun in the hands of a good guy.
In summary, it is absolutely true that “guns don’t kill people, people do”. In the U.S. there are far more responsible gun owners than criminals with guns, and that in and of itself deters many more crimes than might otherwise occur.
So demagogue politicians can and will denounce guns, and fracking, and cow farts and whatever else comes along that is the “cause du jour”. Their stupid memes and crusades aren’t going to help anyone but those who live off the grant money and donations of people trying to “feel good” about “doing something”.
There, I feel slightly better now. Someday I’ll tell you how I really feel!
