Month: September 2020

Guest Contributor – Charlemagne Really – Addressing the Current Situation

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With the plethora of recent, pressing subjects to write about, it’s difficult to choose just one. How does one sum up the current heated political landscape in a simple letter. How does one convey compassion and concern with the Corona, COVID-19, Wuhan or whatever it’s called outbreak and its lingering consequences?

I do not know exactly, being the mere mortal that I am. However, as Admiral David Farragut famously cried out “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead”.

Let’s start with the political landscape. Some have said this season’s election cycle is the most divisive ever. I am not sure about that claim as I haven’t been around forever. What I do know, is that politics by its own nature is divisive. It’s supposed to be. So, politics it’s not necessarily bad as some have insinuated.

Americans are witnessing a planned well financed all-out attack on its core values, principles and imperfect history upon which it stands. One of which is, “one Nation under God”. This very phrase being omitted from the oration of the Pledge of Allegiance, not once but twice, in error (sure) at the recent Democrat Convention. Perhaps it was an honest omission but I seriously doubt it. More likely, it’s an insight into their vision of the United States. A vision devoid of God and replaced with the tyranny of the state. So perhaps the new pledge will be One Nation under US (the state, their state). A frightening prospect at best.

Speaking of the DNC and Democrats….

The violence in the mostly Democrat controlled cities, large and small, continues under the guise of Social Justice protests. Nothing about the violence and rioters is about justice. Mind you, I am not talking about the protest and protesters. As long as the protests remain peaceful and are conducted in daylight, they remain legitimate. However once darkness falls it’s been painfully obvious that the peaceful protests turn into violent riots. One doesn’t participate in a peaceful protest armed to the teeth with bats, bricks, hammers, crowbars, face shields and professional grade gas masks. No, this equipment is for one reason and one reason only. To engage in violence and riot. It’s not about social justice, nor anyone who has been a victim of injustice. The weapon wielding rioters are using the excuse of social justice for BLM as an excuse to burn down, loot and plunder. And the BLM organization is more than happy to have these ill-informed and ill-intentioned rioters unleash anarchy on the streets of America.

As with most people, Black lives matter to me. I too have Black friends and co-workers. However, it is necessary to point out that the BLM organization doesn’t represent most Black lives. How do I know. Go to their web site and read. Research their founders, their history and their current ideology. Look at Chicago and the number of Black lives lost due to the murderous gangs. All one gets from the BLM organization is complete silence. They don’t care about Chicago, Portland and most recently Kenosha. They simply don’t give a hoot about any community suffering under gangs in Black neighborhoods. It doesn’t fit their agenda. Those thousands of Black lives do not matter to them. So, what does matter to them?

For one thing, it’s power. More specifically it’s political power. They are using the social justice mantra as a cover to cause division, incite violence and perpetrate a coordinated assault on America, its institutions and its people (you and me).

They masquerade as a benevolent and worthy cause while they continue to implement the downfall of this country.

I will continue to care and support my Black friends, co-workers and fellow citizens. However, I will not offer the same for an Organization which is Marxist (Socialist/Communist) and anti-freedom at its very dark sinister core.

I pray that the violence will end. And end just as quickly as it began. I pray for and will support real social justice. I pray people will see through the charade of the Organization that supposedly champions social justice. I pray for all Americans, no matter what their skin color, to live peacefully while they pursue their dreams and live their lives.

So, let us be adults and act as adults. Caring, kind, compassionate, ready to defend one another from the evils that sometimes ensnare us.

A man far better and immeasurably superior to me, said “Blessed are the peace makers for they will be called the children of God”.

What will you do?

Guest Contributor – War Pig – War, Civil War and the American Temperament

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I have said that I do not want to see an actual civil war, because Americans are insensate fighters when aroused. Ever since the mightiest, best-trained and disciplined army and navy on earth, bolstered by thousands of German mercenaries, got their asses handed to them by a pack of libertarian farmers and fishermen with outdated hunting equipment, nobody has really had the mastery of the Americans. Something in our mongrel ancestry, perhaps. But whatever the reason, nobody cares to go toe to toe with America. People may count Vietnam as a loss but it was a political loss. The military won all the battles and could have easily defeated North Vietnam, paved it, painted it and given it to China as a parking lot. All that stopped us was political will. Politics is our great weakness. But toss out politics, cry havoc and lose the dogs of war and Americans are a terrible foe.

Our worst war for casualties was when we fought ourselves. It would be again. I admit it would be a rather short war unless the US military somehow was convinced to step in, then it would take longer but the outcome would be the same. If the left wants death, they can have it. But it will be theirs.

When the protesters tried a march in our small city (the county seat and about 15,000 people). They behaved. First, the police would not kneel to them when asked. Second, openly armed citizens (including me) kept an eye on the parade and protesters. They could see our pistols and ARs. The armed citizens provoked nothing. We were there to answer any trouble, not cause it. When the second protest was scheduled, they asked the police to restrain people from openly carrying arms. The police declined and the march was cancelled.

I would regret seeing an open civil war breaking out. Americans on Americans is not a nice scenario. All other armies who thought we’d be pushovers found out quickly that was not so. The Japanese found out in WWII that American Marines were more than a match for them, either one-on-one or as a unit. The Germans found out the same when facing Patton. The Chinese found out when we fought them back to the 38th parallel. The VC and North Vietnamese never won a battle against US forces. Saddam’s 4th largest army on earth found out when the US military went through them, twice, like a .50 caliber bullet through tin foil. Every time the Taliban and Al Qaeda attack US forces in Afghanistan they come off on the worst end of the fight. The casualty count is estimated to be well over 1,000 to 1 in our favor. Islamic fighters were told that if they rushed the Americans and made it a close quarters battle where our technology was moot, they could force the Americans to retreat. As a result, a lot of Islamics are standing in hell right now wondering what happened. Americans are as ferocious in close quarters battle as we are lobbing ammo at you from afar.

My first battle, in Tet in 1968 at Hue, Captured Vietnamese enemy were also told that Americans have no guts for close in fighting. My company took 50% casualties, but we and the rest of 2nd battalion /5th Marines took back Hue. Most of my company was under 21. I had just turned nineteen. We lost 216 Marines and a bit over a thousand non-lethal casualties. But we killed over 5,000 PAVN soldiers and likely wounded three times that many. That is why I do not want to see Americans fighting Americans if it can be helped. We are far too fierce as a people to turn upon ourselves. Our one experience of it should teach us a lesson.

The Office Space Election

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Back in 2016 Michael Anton wrote the essay called “The Flight 93 Election” that characterized electing Donald Trump as a last-ditch effort to save the country from the globalists.  In 2020 Anton and everyone else is saying that once again this is the most critical election of all time.  So that got me thinking.

If you’ve ever seen the movie “Office Space” you might remember the scene where the protagonist, Peter Gibbons, is talking to a hypnotist about his problems.  He explains that every day at his office the boss ratchets up the misery a little more.  So, every day is worse than the one before and that guarantees that every day is the worst day of Peter’s life.

In the same way, because in each and every year for decades now, the political and social situation in America has gotten worse, the next election is by definition the most important election in your lifetime.  And so, it’s important to do all we can do to get good men in office and push for the changes that we need, to make this a free country again.

But guess what?  Elections and politics are not the most important things in our lives and we should be thinking about these other things even more than we do about the politics.  In fact, the worse the politics get the more we have to spend time figuring out ways to live happily despite them.

And here the analogy with the movie continues.  The hypnotist provides a hypnotic suggestion to Peter that he will no longer worry about his job.  But before he has time to restore Peter to normal the hypnotist has a heart attack and dies.  So now Peter is completely unconcerned about being fired and goes through his day in a relaxed manner ignoring anything his boss says that he doesn’t like and speaking absolute truth about what he thinks about his job.  Of course, eventually everything comes crashing down, but his new found composure gives him the chance to re-evaluate his life and escape from the career and personal entrapments that had made his life a living hell.

For us, the liberating situation is finding out that both parties are a rigged game against us.  Knowing this makes it possible for us to try and navigate around all the various entrapments that have been built into the system.  We can consciously make choices to minimize the impact of these traps.  We can develop work arounds and we can form alliances with others like ourselves who have stopped drinking the Kool Aid.  And amongst ourselves we can speak openly of the truths that the establishment papered over.  We can openly say that illegal immigration must be stopped and that the corporations are outsourcing all our jobs and that a man in a sun dress is not a woman.  Spreading the word that the Democrats and the Republicans have been gaslighting us for decades and working against our interests makes it possible to see clearly who is on our side and who isn’t.  The system is still rigged against us but at least we’re no longer flying blind.

And the final analogy with the movie is the ending.  One of the other victims of the oppression at the Office is a crazy guy named Milton.  The boss tortures Milton by moving his cube into worse and worse spaces.  Finally, Milton ends up in the basement and is told to spray for roaches on his way in and out.  But as a last straw the boss takes Milton’s beloved Swingline stapler.  So, he snaps and burns the company to the ground.  In this analogy I’d say the crazy guy would be the fringe right who may finally get so fed up with being bullied by Antifa and BLM that they go toe to toe with them and essentially blow the whole thing up.

Not everyone, including myself, would see that as a desirable outcome but it wouldn’t be a shock if it happened.  The provocation from the left has been monumental and the fact that some major blowback hasn’t happened is only because everyone is waiting for the election to happen before settling scores on the street.  But even if the conflagration isn’t an actual explosion but only a political reaction it will happen and it will provide a resolution.  The seething hatred on both sides is palpable and what is left of the moderate middle is being boiled off by the heat of the moment.  It is pretty much impossible at this point to imagine the two sides of the country reconciling.  We just dislike each other too much.  Probably the best case would be a looser federalism that would allow each side to occupy their own territory without trying to impose their values on each other.  But how we get to that best-case scenario is the part I can’t figure out yet.  Can we get there without a real conflagration?  Let’s hope so.

12SEP2020 – Looking Around and Looking Ahead

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Now that Ringling Brothers’ Barnum and Bailey Circus has been forced out of business by PETA, President Trump truly is the Greatest Show on Earth.  There always seems to be another spectacle starting up as the previous act finishes.  From what I understand he has five foreign policy victories to celebrate this week.  Israel is being recognized by:

  • United Arab Emirates
  • Bahrain
  • and Kosovo

Saudi Arabia is now allowing Israeli flights to go through their airspace.  And just to keep things interesting the President brokered a deal between Serbia and Kosovo.  Already two separate nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize for the President have been sponsored by individuals who preface their remarks by declaring that they dislike President Trump but admit that he has already done more for world peace than Obama ever did either before or after his empty win of the Peace Prize was awarded to him.  Joe Biden claims that President Trump is achieving these victories by accident!

The President is crisscrossing the country to attend campaign rallies that draw huge enthusiastic crowds and of course, he is tweeting away on all the most important and even some quite trivial events.  He really does have an energy level that is hard to imagine for a man his age.

Meanwhile even Biden’s strongest advocates admit they haven’t yet figured out how they will make their candidate attractive enough to convince millennials to vote for him.  Well, they did get him out of the basement and all the way to Pennsylvania last week.

As I said it’s an amazing show.  And it should keep even jaded political junkies such as me completely engaged right up to Election Day.  Of course, there are plenty of other side shows to keep us watching.  They’re not as amusing.  The spectacle of unending rioting in Portland is not a pleasant sight but it is important.  A poll of Oregonians shows that 66% disapprove of the riots and 60% think the Mayor of Portland is doing a poor job of ending the protests.  Now if a state as blue as Oregon is unhappy with their unending riots just think what purple states like Colorado and Nevada must be thinking of their “protests.”

The ongoing COVID lockdown in the Northeast remains a good story to remind the country of what shutting down a large portion of your small business community does to economic health.  New York has lost tens of thousands of jobs and when combined with the disruptions caused by the rioting is hardly recognizable as the dynamic business and cultural center it once was.

And the remote teaching model being used in the schools in the Northeast has been a nightmare for working mothers.  Many of them are attempting to re-enter the office environment after six months but have to work around a schedule where their children are home at least three days a week.  Employers say they will accommodate these changes but problems have cropped up on all sides.

Then we have the looming specter of voter fraud through the use of mail in ballots.  The Democrats hope to drag the voting process out for weeks and possibly months.  And they have been talking up the idea that President Trump will be ejected from the White House by troops.  Oh, those Democrats love their drama.

Meanwhile Bill Barr teases us with announcements of rioters and agitators being arrested.  Sure, he arrests some of the worst actors but nothing is done to prosecute Antifa and BLM as organized crime groups using the RICO laws.  And we’re not hearing much about the Durham investigation anymore.  I guess now that his end of summer deadline is blown, we can’t expect anything to come of the effort.  I was glad to see that the feds went after that rat that murdered the Patriot Prayer guy in Portland a week ago.  But I guess it has to be something as egregious as murder on camera to get much of anything from our Justice Department.

Well, that’s a snapshot of the world around us.  It’s a madhouse in every way imaginable but we keep advancing down the road one step at a time.  My advice is don’t be surprised at anything that happens but take every news report with a big grain of salt.  As the President is fond of saying a lot of what you hear is fake news.  And regardless of the outcome in November remember that it’s up to each of us to decide how we will live our lives and who we will spend it with.  There are millions of good people out there and we can achieve an enormous amount if we don’t get discouraged and if we think clearly about what we want to accomplish.  I have spoken with many people out there and we’re learning that we aren’t alone and we aren’t at the mercy of the Woke Left.  It’s a pleasure writing this for anyone who is looking for a bit of news and a positive thought from someone on our side of the fence.  Have a good day.