Never give up on something that you can’t go a day without thinking about.
Winston Churchill
Month: April 2019
The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 20 – Showdown with Rance McGrew
Rance McGrew is the star of a cowboy show on TV. He makes the rest of the crew and cast miserable with his pettiness and his overbearing and selfish behavior. During one particular scene of the production, the actor playing Jesse James is supposed to attempt to shoot McGrew in the back. The actor objects saying that the real Jesse James would never have stooped to a cowardly act like shooting a man in the back. McGrew flies into a rage and belittles Jesse James compared to himself.
Suddenly the saloon that McGrew is standing in becomes a real Old Western saloon and McGrew shouts out that the whiskey he was drinking really is whiskey instead of ginger ale. A man runs into the saloon and tells McGrew that Jesse James is coming into town. Rance thinks that it’s the scene they’ve been practicing. But when Jesse James shows up, he is a large powerful and intimidating man and he isn’t acting. He tells Rance that in the afterlife the outlaws that McGrew is regularly running down and representing as cowards are very unhappy with him and have sent Jesse James to teach him a lesson.
Now Jesse drags McGrew out onto the street and tells him they are going to have a shoot out. Rance hides but eventually he is cornered and when Jesse outdraws him McGrew begs the outlaw to spare him. Jesse says he’ll do it on the condition that Rance will change his ways and respect the honor of the Old West legends he’s been besmirching. When he agrees, he suddenly finds himself back on the television production set and preparing for the Jesse James scene. But just before it’s shot an extra comes in and tells Rance that his agent is outside and needs to talk to him. Of course, it’s Jesse James dressed as a Hollywood agent. He tells Rance that instead of shooting Jesse, the outlaw will escape by throwing Rance through the saloon window and instead of a stunt double it will be McGrew himself. And reluctantly Rance accepts the inevitable and comes flying through the window. And Jesse and Rance go driving off in his Cadillac convertible into a sunset of historical western accuracy. We’re left assuming this is the beginning of a beautiful but painful friendship for Rance.
Well, not too bad. B-
27APR2019 – Photo of the Day
27APR2019 – Quote of the Day
You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.
Winston Churchill
Tyler Over at the Portly Politico Has Added His Two Cents on Dissident Right and the Civic Nationalists
Tyler has a lot of good things to say about the topics we’ve both been seeing on the political stage. Plus he says some good things about me, so how can I resist.
The State of the Right, Part II: Dissident Right and Civic Nationalists
26APR2019 – Quote of the Day
If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may be even a worse fate, you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.
Winston Churchill
26APR2019 – Photo of the Day
Identity Politics and Civic Nationalism – Part 1
One of the most troubling aspects of the America we now live in is the racial animosity exhibited almost universally across the whole spectrum of political ideologies. Of course, the Marxists and their descendants, the Progressives, have perfected it into a weapon that they use to inflame hatred against Americans of European Descent or as we used to call them Americans. But the fallout of this multi-generational strategy is that their opponents, especially on the very farthest edges of the Right Wing are learning to use this same tactic in reverse. A whole generation of Alt-Right and Dissident Right ideologues are focusing on racial identity politics and the tactics of racial polarization to the exclusion of almost anything else. In fact, this idea that racial identity will trump all other ways of uniting and dividing people has actually made headway among formerly “color-blind” conservatives. My read on this is that rather than any effective proselytizing by the Dissident Right, the real catalyst for this transformation was the racial animus and partisanship demonstrated by the Obama Administration during the Black Lives Matter and other teachable moments that our “Dear Leader” talked down to us about.
In that sense I somewhat understand the depth of the hatred that has developed along the racial divide. The behavior by the Justice Department in fueling these fake police incidents was outrageous and did enormous harm by throwing fuel on the already hot flashpoints that exist in the crime ridden ghettos where the police are just about all that stands between poor people and the law of the jungle.
But what it has turned into on the Dissident Right is a conviction that civic life and law and order cannot transcend differences between people of different races and ethnicities. The more thoughtful voices in that community do not contend that we are headed for some kind of civil war or balkanization of the United States. They talk more about individual states ignoring laws that they do not agree with and going their own way on these things. In fact, this is not that different from what California and some other places have already done on immigration law with their so-called sanctuary cities.
What this all amounts to is the Dissident Right declaring that the Progressives have outmaneuvered the Right by increasing legal and illegal immigration to the point that they will have a permanent dominance over electoral power and will use it to create a permanent grievance machine to disenfranchise Americans of European Descent by punitive means such as affirmative action and other discriminatory policies.
Are they right?
I prefer to think that they’re not. My read on this is that the situation has been exacerbated by Republican “leaders” who actually seem to buy into the fairness of minority identity politics out of some kind of ancestral guilt or because they see electoral advantage in joining the progressives. The proof of this can be seen in the success of a civic nationalist like Trump who isn’t guilted into kowtowing to illegal immigration out of fear of being called a racist. Once you disarm the Progressives of that weapon you find out that the majority of Americans, even in Blue States, want immigration laws to be obeyed.
I contend if the Right forcefully advocates for full enforcement of immigration laws and the elimination of reverse discrimination policies by the government and other entities, it will go a long way toward lowering tensions between the various groups living in the United States and will allow people to start thinking of each other as neighbors and not potential enemies.
Am I right? I can’t claim I’m sure. I think the next few years will be indicative of whether the Dissident Right is correct or whether there’s still time to fix the mess we’re in. And believe me, I don’t minimize how bad things have become. On the worst days, I shake my head and look at maps to see where I can move to that will allow me to stave off the worst of it for a little longer.
In the second part of this I’ll look a little more closely at the specifics of the Dissident Right’s logic and compare it to my own way of looking at where we are.
25APR2019 – Quote of the Day
Whenever I feel the need to take some exercise I lie down until the feeling goes away.
Winston Churchill
The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 19 – The Hunt
This is a simple story and easy enough to tell.
An old man named Hyder Simpson and his hound-dog Rip are going on a nighttime coon hunt. His wife Rachel warns him that she’s had premonitions and that he shouldn’t go but he tells her not to fret and heads out after supper.
During the night, Rip trees a coon but the varmint escapes into the creek and even with Hyder warning the dog off, Rip jumps in the creek where he is dragged under by the raccoon. Hyder jumps in to save Rip but neither of them resurfaces even after we see the coon swim away and escape.
The next morning, we see Simpson and Rip sleeping on the bank of the creek. Hyder doesn’t remember much of the night but tells Rip they’re both going to catch hell from Rachel. While heading home they reach two of his neighbors burying a box on Simpson’s property. He questions them about it and even threatens them with his rifle but they seemingly ignore him and talk about the dog they are burying and how he will be missed. Hearing that they are burying a beloved dog he assumes they are overwhelmed with grief and unable to speak to him so he moves on toward home.
When he gets back to his cabin, he finds Rachel in her mourning dress and the local parson trying to comfort her over Hyder’s death. Simpson can’t make them hear him and soon we see the pallbearers removing his coffin from the bedroom and heading out toward the church yard. Hyder follows behind them to find out what is going on. But suddenly he finds himself and Rip separated from the funeral procession by a wooden fence that he’s never seen before. He follows the fence to find a way around it to the churchyard. After following it for a long while he reaches a gateway in the fence with a guard building. He calls out and an attendant approaches and starts asking Hyder some questions. Hyder answers them casually but when the man asks Hyder how he died, they get into a dispute. Simpson tells him that he’s certainly not dead and the man tells him that if he weren’t dead, he couldn’t be where he is now and that this was the gateway to the Elysian Fields. Hyder asks him why he can’t hear the singing and the harp music and the man says that he’ll hear it once he crosses the gateway. Looking in Hyder can see some smoke coming around a curve in the road. The gatekeeper invites him to come in but when Hyder tries to get a reluctant Rip to enter with him the gatekeeper tells him that dogs are not allowed.
Hyder protests and says he won’t go anywhere where Rip isn’t welcome and he questions how they can have coon hunts in heaven without dogs. The gatekeeper says there aren’t any coon hunts in heaven. This settles things and Hyder says that he’s not going in and will continue down the road. The gatekeeper tells him that there is nothing down the infinite road to nowhere. But Hyder moves on.
A way down the road Hyder sits down with Rip and talks about his confusion at their predicament. Coming down the road from the direction they were heading is a young man dressed as a country cousin to Mr. Simpson. He asks for Simpson and Rip by name and explains that he is an angel sent to find him and bring him to the gates of heaven. When Hyder tells him about his recent experience at the gate the angel tells him that wasn’t heaven it was hell. And the reason that they don’t allow dogs is because dogs can smell the brimstone and refuse to enter. “He tells Hyder, “A man will walk into Hell with his eyes open but even the Devil can’t fool a dog.” Heading now to Heaven he asks the angel if they have coon hunts and is told that there will be one that night right after the square dance. When Hyder says he wishes Rachel could attend the angel tells him not to worry, that she would be there soon and that she wouldn’t have any trouble avoiding Hell.
Hyder is played by Arthur Hunnicutt, an Arkansan who made a career in Hollywood playing hillbillies. This is a sentimental fantasy that plays on the heartstrings of anyone who ever had a favorite dog, especially a hound. It’s one of the goofy ones but I’m a sucker for dog stories. B+