H/T to the Conservative Treehouse – Neil Oliver’s Latest

Mr. Oliver starts out discussing the UK’s latest on-line censorship bill and says what he thinks about all this mind control.  But he ends with a declaration that it’s time we take control of our own lives and start living in the real world and work with like minded individuals to make our own lives what we want them to be.  Neil Oliver is an eloquent and a persuasive speaker but in this example the simple common sense of what he is saying rises above his eloquence and speaks directly to me.  He is echoing something I have been feeling lately.  It’s time for us to live our lives and avoid as best we can the occupied territory of the enemy and work around them.  That way we don’t waste our lives on purposefully useless and aggravating nonsense.

Bravo Mr. Oliver.

Reclaiming the Family – Part 8 – The Future Belongs to the Active

Average Americans have been passive participants in the troubling events that have surrounded them for decades.  We have watched in silent horror as all the bedrock axioms of normal life have been upended and crazy people have been encouraged by those in authority to destroy the fabric of our lives.   And it’s accelerating.  Previously, various forms of degeneracy were the innovations that the powers that be were foisting on us.  But now crime and chaos have been added to the list of activities that are being sanctioned by the governing powers in charge of our society.  The George Floyd riots are the signal that functional civil society has been abandoned by, at least, the Blue State establishment.

During the decades that this devolution has been progressing there have been attempts by the saner members of our leadership to resist this madness.  I guess the Reagan presidency was a reaction against it.  The Trump election in 2016 was also a reaction to it.  These were attempts to claw back control of the country as a whole from the progressives who have slowly but surely taken control of almost all the levers of power in the United States.  There may be another breakthrough in 2024.  If the Republicans can keep the Congress and capture the presidency there is some hope that they can at least temporarily reverse the damage being done in this country by the forces of chaos that are intent on tearing the whole thing down.

But I don’t think it’s wise to depend on some hypothetical permanent victory of the Right over the Left.  Even if it does happen at some point, it may be too late to benefit you or even your descendants.  I think it’s incumbent on each of us to look at what services and benefits are no longer available form our government or communities and find substitutes and work arounds on our own.

I think the most important service we have to address is educating our children.  The public schools are worse than useless.  They are in fact a detriment to the education and socialization of children.  I won’t go through the litany of failings and problems with public schools.  Suffice it to say that outside of a few communities the education children get in public schools is worse than useless.  It’s poison.   It is the responsibility of parents to provide for the future of their children as best they can.  Providing them with the chance to thrive in society is crucial and not only is the public-school environment failing to provide them with the rudiments of education but all of the schools from pre-K through graduate schools indoctrinate young people with propaganda that is wildly anti-survival.  Students are fed anti-human lies that encourage them to reject normal goals such as business success and family formation because of nonsense about “saving the planet” and developing their individuality.  What they need is basic survival skills like math and language skills followed by practical training in a profession or a trade.  That is what parents should be selecting for in a school.  And you’re going to have to pay for it.

The next service that we all have to be selecting for is public safety.  Living in an American city is now a very risky proposition.  There may be some large cities that are reasonably safe.  But finding them will require careful research.  Even suburbs and towns may be afflicted with the scourge of organized and disorganized criminality.  What we have to do is evaluate the areas we are considering as long-term homes and determine if our families will be safe and free from constant anxiety while moving around their extended circle of destinations.  Crime statistics are one research tool.  Another will be the political support both major parties get in the area.  Look very carefully at where you decide to live.  Moving is expensive and painful.

Employment is another important area where an active approach is very important.  If your profession is already established then you are to a large extent tied into the locations that you can set up a home base.  Of course, lately remote work has taken hold in a number of companies and professions.  But for others this isn’t a practical choice.  For many professions, American industry has severely limited the opportunities for employment inside the country.  Whole industries have been transplanted to Asia leaving careers in engineering and management severely reduced in the numbers of positions available.  For some people becoming an ex-patriot employee is an important option.

For the young who don’t currently have a profession or for those willing to change professions choosing a trade or profession that allows you to work outside of the “woke” corporations is an attractive feature.  Self-employment as a craftsman or small business owner provides flexibility and protection against being brow-beaten and even fired for not displaying the requisite amount of social justice fervor on the job.  It has to be admitted that the choice of avoiding the corporate hierarchy means you will probably never be a multi-millionaire or travel in the corporate Lear jet to Davos to hobnob with Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos.  But that may be one of the advantages too.  You’ll still have some self-respect and time to spend with your family.  Look at the areas of the country you want to live in and see what are the best opportunities for employment that fit your skill set.  You may have to be a little flexible with what you do for a living to live where you want to live.

The other thing you will want to be active about is participating in local government.  Find out who runs your town.  Go to town meetings.  Find out who the local Republicans are and find out if they’re useful or useless.  You might even have to run for dogcatcher just to get something useful done in your area.  Find out about your local police department.  Find out if your town is embarking on any kind of radical “affordable” housing project.  Often that is code for bringing in deadbeats and illegal aliens into the suburbs.

It’s your job to shape your environment.  It’s what humans have done from time immemorial.  As Americans we had a century of living under the umbrella of a powerful, mostly competent government that improved the lives of its citizens.  That time is over.  We live under a rapacious oligarchy that is trying to hold onto the shrinking resources of a declining global empire.  Finding pockets of prosperity and sanity in the crumbling American Empire will be a challenge for those who don’t want to just give up.  That’s your challenge.  And if by some miracle we, the people, manage to wrest control of America away from the oligarchs and reestablish this country as a sane and prosperous nation, you’ll be ahead of the curve if you’ve already set yourself up by being an active agent of your own happiness.

Rockefeller, Musk, photog?

In the last week or so I’ve taken the first halting steps toward setting up an on-line business.  In reality it’s sort of several businesses.  One is a self-publishing account on Amazon.  Another is a creator’s account with a photo products sales site.  And finally, there is an account with a custom photobook seller.

But of course, it’s an enormous amount of bother.  One place requires a PayPal account and I had let my account lapse this year so now I have to open a new one.  Then I have to figure out how to pay my taxes on time and whether I should incorporate and whether I should do that myself or pay a lawyer.  I also have to figure out how to advertise my products.  Of course, Orion’s Cold Fire will be central to my marketing plan.  I’ll add links to the store fronts and shamelessly hawk my wares whenever an unsuspecting reader comes looking for political commentary or brilliant movie and book reviews.

What I’ve discovered is that all this business stuff is frightfully distracting from the stuff I like to do, namely take pictures and write stuff.  But what is also true is that participating in some kind of business of your own is very exciting.  What it requires is disciplining yourself; becoming your own boss.  And for someone like me that is extremely challenging.  I have always been the worst employee anywhere I worked.  I find it extremely difficult to work in a manner that doesn’t seem logical to me.  So, if a company tried to get the engineers to perform regulatory clerical functions (that is, validation) my eyes would glaze over and my output would slowdown to a crawl.  Eventually they would be forced to provide me with an assistant who could perform the requisite paperwork handwaving to satisfy the FDA that we didn’t add Ebola virus to the batch by using the equipment I had designed, purchased and installed using good engineering practices, which I saw as my proper function.

So now it will be necessary for me to convince … me(!) that I should perform all the clerical and bookkeeping and sales and marketing handwaving that is necessary to make money in a business.  I have to confess that I’ve already had a few discouraging moments as I realized how many hoops I’ll have to jump through to coordinate all the various requirements needed to transact business in a businesslike manner.  I would much prefer just winging it and paying for my mistakes as I go along but hard experience has shown me that that can be awfully expensive.  The IRS really has no sense of humor at all.

As I embark on this journey of discovery, I find myself full of unbridled enthusiasm and unwarranted optimism.  I’m sure reality will quickly rein in my naïve ebullience and after being knocked around by cruel fate I will reach the correct mind set of all proper businessmen, callous cynicism and calculated misanthropy.

So, consider this your fair warning.  When links appear to lure you to my commercial products don’t be fooled into thinking they represent anything other than what they are; crass commercialism and the single-minded pursuit of the almighty dollar.  Come to think of it, after the fiasco with Russia, it’s not so almighty anymore.  But you get the picture.  Caveat emptor!

18MAR2022 – OCF Update

So today Camera Girl’s getting taken out for her birthday.  I’ll tag along for the free food so I’ll be negligent on the site until later on.  Seems like a slow news day but I’ll think of something to rant about later.

The photo of the day will be pictures that I took at that auto show last Sunday.  I’ve got about a hundred shots so I may have to mix in other things so as not to bore non-auto-enthusiasts.

Today we’ll hit 70 degrees and there’ll be sun so it’s a pretty good day to be out in the world.  I hope everyone who’s footloose and fancy free today gets out and gets some air.

Talk to you soon.

Funniest Headline of Week – Chris Cuomo Accuses CNN of Smearing His Journalistic Integrity

How is it possible for CNN to smear Chris “Fredo” Cuomo’s journalistic integrity?  Think of the list of absurdities.  Cuomo is not a journalist.  Neither Cuomo nor CNN have any kind of integrity.  CNN never hired Fredo to commit journalism on their network.  It could never happen on that cable channel except by accident and in passing.

Fredo wants $125 million dollars from CNN for this “smear.”  I think the judge should just broker a deal where CNN gives custody of Don Lemon to Fredo and calls it a wash.

We live in the age of miracles and wonder.  And the wonder is how we can keep going with people this stupid in charge.

17MAR2022 – Camera Girl’s Birthday

Today is St. Patrick’s Day and Camera Girl’s birthday.  Usually we celebrate with corned beef and cabbage and I bring out my bag pipes and kilt and parade through the grounds of the Compound at 6am, noon and 6pm.  Well maybe I ,made that last part up.

Camera Girl hates when anyone mentions her birthday, so I make a fuss about it just to annoy her.  It’s one of the joys of marriage, irritating your spouse.

Back in the old days New York City had a very important St. Patrick Day’s parade that involved tens of thousands of Irish policemen and firemen dressed in kilts and playing bagpipes.  On WPIX, Channel 11 they would have a televised broadcast of the parade usually hosted by “Captain” Jack McCarthy.  Captain Jack was the television host of the kids television shows that played Popeye the Sailor Man cartoons.  I think at one time he used to host the Three Stooges show but that got handed off to the other Irish tv host Officer Joe Bolton who wore a police officer’s uniform and twirled a billy club.

Irish culture in New York City back in the late ’50’s and early ’60’s was extremely stereotyped apparently.

One time Officer Joe Bolton showed up at the parish carnival to sign autographs and he dragged along Moe Howard of Stooges fame.  Moe looked awful.  Apparently the Stooge lifestyle was running down at that point.  I didn’t try to get Moe’s autograph.  But I listened to Officer Joe playing a medley of songs on his banjo.

So all that being said, I wonder if St. Patrick’s Day still means anything to the Irish in America.  Sure, it’s been turned into an excuse to get drunk like Cinco de Mayo and Super Bowl Sunday but do Irish Americans still celebrate it?  I wonder.

Well anyway, it’s Camera Girl’s birthday and that’s a big deal in this house.  We’ll have our traditional dinner and I’ll put on the Quiet Man as a tribute to Irish American cultural history.  That’ll have to do.

A Multipolar World Might be the Answer to Cancel Culture

If an American film maker or author said that effeminate men were a disgraceful role model to show children in books or movies he would be finished overnight.  His movies or books would be burned in a bonfire at every university and Silicon Valley campus.  He would be banned on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.  He’d never work in Hollywood or have another book published and he might even have his credit cards and bank accounts shut down.

And yet Chinese leaders said that very thing a few months ago.  And Russia’s leaders express the same disdain for America’s LGBTQ fetish.  Hollywood has catered to the Chinese market for the last ten years at least.  They self-censor their movies to prevent offending Chinese sensibilities on politics and social subjects.  But when Hollywood hears Chinese leaders saying such things, they keep quiet.  Cancel culture can’t go after Xi Jinping.  First off because they need his money, secondly because he’s not ruled by Google.  China has control, strict control on its on-line ecosystem.  In America Facebook can cancel the President of the United States.  In China the General Secretary can cancel Facebook, or Twitter or any other tech presence that displeases him.

And moving beyond social media China has its own financial systems that are beginning to emerge out of the shadow of Western banks and the Fed’s dollar infrastructure.  Russia has recently negotiated a trade agreement that will allow it to sell oil and gas using China’s yuan currency instead of the dollar.  And likewise, instead of Visa and Mastercard, China has its own credit card platform (UnionPay) that Russia will be shifting over to.  Perhaps in the not-too-distant future American conservatives might find themselves using that same credit platform after they’ve been bounced out of the American credit systems.  We might have to pay a premium to do it but knowing that your livelihood isn’t at the mercy of social justice warriors would be incredibly liberating.

The next thing to explore is the cultural products of these other cultures.  Maybe the Russians and Chinese have movies and books that are more in line with the tastes of the cancelled conservatives living in the West.  I’d hate to think I’ll have to learn Mandarin and Russian to enjoy a comedy or a drama but technology can come to the rescue on that.  Seamless computer-generated voice and lip dubbing could create English language versions of foreign films in the near future.  It’s been at least twenty years since I could say that the majority of the best picture nominees for the Academy Awards were watchable.  Lately I doubt that even the target audience for these movies are interested in watching these pathetic excuses for entertainment.  I think it’s entirely possible that some non-Western country will rediscover the formulae that Golden Age Hollywood used to entertain the whole world in the 1930’s and -40’s.  We’re all entertained by the story of boy meets girl, not trans-boy meets trans-girl.  We want a crime story where the cops are the good guys, not a story of heroic Antifa burning down Portland.

Sure, the idea that we will have to depend on non-Western countries to provide us with commercial and cultural choices that we can’t find here in the cradle of freedom and land of capital opportunity is a rebuke of our civilization but as a practical consideration it would be the solution we need.  At least until sanity returns to the West.  Now it may turn out that choices will start to appear in America.  I’ve seen that payment processors have appeared that will defy the cancel culture police and cater to the deplorables.  Maybe soon movies will be created in America for normal men and women.  But even these innovations may be driven to some extent by the knowledge that some non-Western nations are immune to the attacks of the cancel culture warriors.  So, death to the global empire and long live cultural diversity, and down with the cancel culture.  At least until I get the whip hand, then we’ll see!

16MAR2022 – OCF Update

I think I’ve said enough about the Ukraine for a while.  That mess is going to stew for weeks and nothing I’ll say will change a damn thing about it.  I hope everyone involved finds a way to exit out of it with the least amount of damage possible even though that seems highly unlikely.  If something of value occurs to me I’ll write it but currently most of what is said is posturing and propaganda.  The results will be written in human misery and boundaries moving on maps.

Walked around the yard yesterday and then took a walk with Camera Girl at the state forest.  Although there is still ice and snow, spring has sprung.  There were frog eggs in a vernal pond and the birds are feeling their oats.  Life is good.  I’m sure there will be another snowstorm and it might be a doozy but that will just be winter’s death throes.  photog is reborn!

I don’t know what I’ll write about today.  I have some podcasts to listen to and some work to do on my book but I’ll check in later with something.  Meanwhile Princess Sack of Potatoes needs the Angry Polar Bear to chase her around the house now so away I go.

 

 

Reality is Starting to Seep into the Ukraine Coverage

For the last three weeks we’ve been hearing that the Ukrainians were winning their fight with Russia.  We heard about thousands of dead Russians and how the Ukraine wouldn’t give into the Russian demands on NATO and neutrality.  Well, that’s over.  Zelensky admits that Ukraine will not be joining NATO.  And according to this  Fox reporter returning from Ukraine, the Russian victory isn’t an if but a when.

And it’s a good thing for the Ukrainian people.  The sooner they come to terms with the Russians the sooner the death and destruction ends.  This is reminiscent of the United States and Mexico in the 19th century.   Smaller countries should keep on the good side of larger neighbors if they can.  I’m not saying it’s just.  It’s just reality.

 

 

Moral Superiority

From my youngest political memories, I was always made acutely aware of the differences between the way of life in the United States versus the rest of the world.  And not just comparing it to the Soviet Union or China or the banana republics in Latin America or the tribal societies of Africa and the Middle East or even the democracies in Europe.  Even Western Europe, even England lacked our freedom of speech, our right to bear arms.  We were the freest people on Earth.  We could say whatever the hell we wanted and the if the President himself didn’t like what we said, well he could go pound sand.

And the system we had held our leaders accountable.  Truman’s phrase, “The buck stops here,” signified that the President was held responsible for the actions of his administration and he was answerable to the American people.  Our leaders knew that the American people were proud of being the freest people on the face of the Earth and any leader who trampled on that freedom would be handed his walking papers at the next election.

And it went without saying that the Russian leaders; Brezhnev, Khrushchev and of course Stalin were lying, murderous thugs that Americans wouldn’t tolerate living under for a minute.  The idea that there could be a moral equivalence between these criminals and even your least favorite American president was absurd.  Our leaders were public servants and honorable men, even the ones from the opposing party.  They obeyed the law and respected the Constitution.

But what about today?  What if I compared Joe Biden with Vladimir Putin?  Would it still be night and day?  Let’s see.

Vladimir Putin is a former KGB colonel and a ruthless despot who would destroy anyone who tried to cross him.  I also think he is a Russian patriot who loves his country and people.  He also seems to be culturally, a traditionalist.  I would be afraid to live in his modern-day Russia.  The country lacks a fair justice system and governmental corruption is systemic.  But one thing that Russia lacks is a woke revolution.  No rainbow flags festoon the fronts of government buildings or schools.  No one talks about their pronouns.  You won’t find any men wearing dresses.  No doctors are sexually mutilating children.  So, in that one dimension, Putin’s Russia is morally superior to Biden’s America.

Now let’s look at Joe Biden.  He is a pathological liar.  He doesn’t just lie when he needs to.  He lies in the same way as everyone else breathes, that is, continuously.  He’s a chronic influence peddler whose “take” has grown to the point where it has reached the billion-dollar range.  And as far as honoring the rights of Americans, Biden’s Justice Department currently has scores of Americans illegally rotting in prison cells for the misdemeanor of trespassing in the Capitol Building on January 6th 2021.  Personally, he’s been accused of sexual assault on the streets of Washington D.C. during daylight hours.  He has a creepy habit of sidling up behind women and girls and holding them by the shoulders while sniffing their hair.  His family is made up of broken people with crack cocaine smoking bagman Hunter as the poster child for parental failure.  And as the COVID crisis proved Biden is more than willing to use an excuse to assume dictatorial control over the lives of Americans.

And even ignoring the men in charge, let’s look at the governments in Russia and the United States.  Russia is a corrupt oligarchic kleptocracy where those in charge use their positions to enrich themselves at the expense of the general population.  It’s obviously true.  And at this point how does that differ from the American oligarchs who run the banks and the financial mega-corporations that dictate the policies of the Federal Reserve so that they always make money even while we’re bankrupted by the swings of the economy?  And finally, unlike Russia, our elite has conjured up the woke revolution that brainwashes our children into hating their ancestors, their families and even their own bodies.  These monsters are reinforcing a cult that has as its endgame the end of normal human life on the planet in favor of sexually depraved, sterile zombies that want no progeny and no future beyond playing videogames and tweeting into empty space.

Putin is no saint.  He’s a megalomaniacal despot.  But as it turns out he is an improvement over what has happened to our country.  Anyone who claims that somehow the West has moral superiority over Russia or China or Iran will have a hard time convincing me.  And we have a long road to get back to where we were when we did.