Month: July 2019

This Spot is America

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The 1930s movie Treasure Island was on TCM this weekend.  I’ve seen it a hundred times before and own a copy so I don’t have to watch it just because it’s on tv.  So, of course, I watched it.

Usually I just enjoy the story as a whole without dissecting it.  The characters and the plot devices I find enormously enjoyable.  But one scene got me thinking about our present situation.

The scene is at the point when Captain Smollett has escaped the ship Hispaniola with the remaining loyal crew on a long boat to Treasure Island and has reached the blockhouse inside the stockade.  They are badly outnumbered, hopelessly outgunned by the ship’s cannons and almost out of food.

Captain Smollett is raising the English flag on a makeshift flagpole over the blockhouse.  He looks up at the flag and gives it a formal salute.  Just then a cannon ball overshoots the blockhouse and knocks down a palm tree.

Captain Smollett – Shoot away me lads, that’s the way to waste powder.

Dr. Livesey – The flag evidently spots the house for them.  Hadn’t we better lower it?

Captain Smollett – Lower the flag?  Strike my colors?  Not I, sir!  We’ve little provisions but plenty of powder and ball.  And by heaven sir, this spot is England!

As the scene ends, we see the English flag flying in the sky.  The scene shifts then to the ship Hispaniola where the pirates are lofting the Jolly Roger (pirate skull and cross bones flag) on the main mast.

Other than the relevance to Smollett’s personality as a veteran English naval officer I never thought about what that line “this spot is England!” could mean to me.

Maybe it was the whole Nike/Kaepernick/Betsy Ross Flag insult.  The idea that Leftists are making a point of methodically attacking all the traditional and familiar symbols and characters from the past and trying to eliminate them from the public square.  Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, even a popular entertainer like Kate Smith was attacked and the cowardly sports franchises like the Philadelphia Flyers and the New York Yankees caved into ginned up outrage from social justice warriors who don’t even like sports and banned her version of “God Bless America.”

What this tells me is that we need somewhere or some thing where we can say “this spot is America.”  We need somewhere that we can go with our children and grandchildren and talk to them about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and even Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson and say this is the history of your country.  We need books and movies and art that talk about who we are and how we got here.  And it needs to be written by people who actually love this country not by those who hate it or at best are ashamed of it.

Now, by all rights, the whole territory of the United States should be that place.  But just like in Treasure Island the pirates have occupied much of what should be America.  Whole areas of the country like the Northeast and the West Coast are firmly under the control of people who hate America with a passion.  In those areas there is no public place or even private venue where it’s safe to be an American.  In fact, in some places like California and Oregon the local government will allow antifa thugs to assault anyone who espouses a patriotic sentiment publicly.

For that reason, on-line venues can be very useful to satisfy the desire to socialize with other Americans on home ground.  That is why I have this website.  That is why I say the things I do.  That is why I read the various sites and news sources. It gives us a public square where we can talk and share information and try to reach a consensus.

But it’s not enough.  Not by a long shot.  We need to get our government to stop helping the enemy.  President Trump is helping in several ways but we’re not even close to turning things around.  The recent decision about the citizenship question on the census form shows that we’re still battling against the fake conservatives on the Supreme Court.  President Trump gave us two votes for our side but with Roberts’ awful decision it’s plain to see that the Bushes’ endless shadow of bad decisions is still coming back to haunt us.

We need the Federal, State and local governments to be forced to respect the First and Second Amendments and stop persecuting Americans who exercise these rights.

And we have to recognize that many public and private institutions (schools, social organizations, social media, financial institutions and corporations) are hopelessly biased against conservatives and hostile to the normal America that we knew.  As has been said a million times before we will need to build and support replacement institutions that won’t make us feel like strangers in our own land.

So just as Captain Smollett said in his stockade “this spot is England!” here at Orion’s Cold Fire I can say to you my friends “this spot is America!”  Celebrate the good things that we grew up with and share the stories and experiences that reflect its worth without worrying about getting someone’s pronouns wrong or triggering someone by describing some old Indian fighter as brave.  And spread any good news or information that will help us to sustain the old ways that we value and share the fun things that make life interesting.  I write about science fiction and photography but music, art, other literature, science and more are all things that interest me and I welcome anyone that wants to post articles in the comments that others might find interesting.  And I will link to anything that seems worthwhile and interesting.  And review any books, movies or art that belongs in our America.

Strike my colors?  Not I, sir!

 

After you’ve read enough sexbot articles on Drudge maybe switch to something interesting

 

 

07JUL2019 – Quote of the Day

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For a quote about talking too much it is a little long .  

“Philosophy finds talkativeness a disease very difficult and hard to cure. For its remedy, conversation, requires hearers: but talkative people hear nobody, for they are ever prating. And the first evil this inability to keep silence produces is an inability to listen.”

Plutarch

 

After you’ve read enough sexbot articles on Drudge maybe switch to something interesting

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 4 Episode 12 – The New Exhibit

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Martin Senescu is an employee at a wax museum. His job is to care for the five wax figures of mass murderers (Jack the Ripper, Albert W. Hicks, Henri Désiré Landru, William Burke and William Hare) that are under his care. But one day the museum owner, Mr. Ferguson, tells Martin that he’s closing the museum. Rather than see his five exhibits destroyed Martin begs Mr. Ferguson to allow him to take them to his basement and preserve them until a museum wants them. He installs air conditioning to keep them melting in the summer heat and hovers over them while trying to find them a new home.

But his wife Emma is very upset. Her husband is unemployed but instead of finding a job he spends the little money they have left to buy air conditioning for the basement and pay the enormous electric bill caused by running the air conditioning day and night. Also, she can’t use the washing machine and dryer any longer. And finally, she’s frightened to death by the look of these grim wax figures. She goes to speak to her brother Dave and he tells her she should give Martin an ultimatum; either he gets rid of the wax figures or she’ll leave. When she hesitates at the severity of this tactic Dave mentions that maybe instead, the air conditioner could break down and ruin the figures.

That night Emma gives Martin the ultimatum but he assures her that he’ll find a solution if she’ll just have a little patience. After Martin and Emma go to bed, she sneaks down to the basement to shut off the air conditioning but as she passes Jack the Ripper, we seem to see Jack’s knife hand move and Emma screams in terror.

Next morning Martin heads down to the basement looking for Emma and finds her dead at the foot of Jack the Ripper. He sees blood on Jack’s knife and upbraids him for the murder. But you can tell he’s doing it as a friend. Martin buries Emma in the basement and covers her over with fresh cement.

Later on, Emma’s brother Dave shows up and wants to know where Emma is and what has happened to the wax figures. Martin tells her that she’s gone on a trip to visit Martin’s sister and that he has gotten rid of the figures. But Dave hears the air conditioning still running in the basement and doesn’t believe Martin. Dave breaks into the basement from outside and while he’s investigating the fresh cement the figure of Albert W. Hicks appears to attack him with an ax.

The next day Martin finds Dave’s body and once again chastises the other figure for this serious lack of restraint. Martin must then have buried Dave as he did Emma.

At some later date, Mr. Ferguson visits Martin at his home with the amazing news that a famous wax museum in Belgium wants to but the wax figures. But it is obvious from his demeanor that Martin is sad that the figures will be leaving his life. Martin agrees to the idea sadly and while he goes to the kitchen to make tea for them, Mr. Ferguson goes into the basement to measure the figures for shipping arrangements. But when he turns his back, he is garroted by the figure of Henri Désiré Landru.

When Martin comes downstairs to the basement carrying the tea service he is outraged. It’s one thing for wax figures to murder his wife and brother-in-law. It’s a completely different thing to murder a fellow fan of wax museums who was going to find them a good home in Belgium. Martin picks up a crow bar and threatens to destroy all of them for their ingratitude.

But now the figures seem to move toward him and they accuse him of being the actual murderer of all three victims. And the scene ends with Martin cringing at the onslaught of the five figures.

In the next scene we are in Marchand’s Wax Museum in Belgium and we see the five figures on display but then we see a new figure. It is Martin Lombard Senescu, an infamous modern-day addition to the mass murder club.

Now animate wax figures would seem to violate photog’s prime directive against living mannequins, robots, ventriloquist’s dummies and dolls. But a more careful analysis would reveal that this is actually a psychological drama. Martin has allowed his empathy for the figures to allow him to assign his crimes to them. And it’s interesting that Martin is played by Martin Balsam, the actor who played the private detective Milton Arbogast who is killed by Norman Bates, a character who attributes his own murders to an equally inanimate object, namely, his mother’s poorly taxidermized corpse.

Anyway, assuming that Martin is the murderer would seem to remove this episode from the purview of a Twilight Zone episode and therefore force me to give it a failing grade but I am going to make an exception. Martin truly should belong in the Twilight Zone and I’m giving him a B. He’s earned it.