Tag: fighting the good fight

Moderation is a Myth

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Today’s commentary was full of essays telling us that we’re not really so divided (1) (2).  It’s the fringes of both sides who stir up the trouble.  Both sides really want the same thing.  Move to the middle.  Blah, blah, blah.

Probably some of these arguments are well-intentioned.  After all polarization has recently turned to violence among the least stable characters inhabiting the nation.  That mad man who ran over an eighteen-year-old because he had a political argument is a good example.

But the arguments that both sides are the problem is stupid.  The reality is that one side, the progressives, is waging a scorched earth campaign against normalcy with the explicit and coordinated aid of almost every power center in the country.  You would have to be an amnesiac to have already forgotten the George Floyd riots, the resultant breakdown of law and order in the cities, the COVID lockdowns, the sabotage of the energy sector, the transgender assault on children and the anti-white campaign called Critical Race Theory or DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion).

Our side is just trying to survive.  We find ourselves under assault from all directions by the richest and most powerful individuals and organizations.  To claim that this is all some sort of misunderstanding amongst otherwise like-minded citizens is ludicrous and frankly, a lie.  It will take a herculean effort to turn around the situation on the ground in the United States to even barely survive the extinction level damage that has been done to this country.  To tell people that they are overreacting to what we see on our streets is beyond delusional.  It’s either idiocy or dishonesty.

So, my answer to these people trying to have a kumbaya moment is shut up.  What you’re saying isn’t true.  People don’t need to be soothed back to sleep.  They need to be awakened.  If you wake up in the middle of the night and your house is on fire you shouldn’t try to go back to sleep.  Sure, maybe you’re already groggy from the smoke and carbon monoxide but losing consciousness isn’t going to save your life and the lives of your family.  Wake up!  Do what needs to be done to save what’s left of your world.  Don’t listen to the voice of weakness that tells you to avoid the pain of resisting, that tells you that loss is inevitable.  Wake up and do something!

I have respect for those who are trying to organize a resistance and those who are actually doing something.  It’s not necessary for everyone to storm the barricades.  But it is important to reject those weak-hearted or foolish voices that tell us that maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle and all we have to do is reach across the aisle for a compromise.  Reaching across the aisle is what got us here.  We’ve been sliding down the slippery slope so long that we’ve reached terminal velocity.  At this point compromise is defeat.

So don’t tell me that the Mid-Terms aren’t a battle between good and evil.  They definitely aren’t a decisive battle but when you’re down by twenty runs in the bottom of the ninth with two outs and two strikes against you every pitch is a battle.  If you’re selling the story that the Left isn’t the devil, you’re selling a lie.

05JAN2021 – A Good Omen

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So today I went on an odyssey of rediscovery.  I ventured out of the compound to get the oil changed on the older car.  I had a free oil change pass that I earned when the service station botched some expensive repairs and felt that I should be assuaged to a small degree.  So, I drove out, full of excitement, as I headed into the big city, well the, slightly larger town anyway.  And because I am twenty minutes from nowhere, I arrived in about a half hour.

I dutifully handed in my business card with the words “free oil change” and a scribbled signature on the back that was as good as gold at this locale.  And after signing here, here and initialing there I walked into the waiting room and memorized the free Wi-Fi password and sat down to see what was going on in the outside world.  And then my whole world came crashing down.  No Wi-Fi service.  Oh, the pain, the pain.

So, I started writing a screed on my laptop about fake elections and their consequences.  I began to warm to the task at hand and I invoked Chicago’s Richard Daley and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and I was just getting ready to start summoning the peasants with torches and pitchforks to begin the reckoning when another customer showed up in the waiting room.

When he walked in, we both gave the polite head nod of acknowledgement.  I began writing again but I could tell he was fidgeting about.  He announced that he was going to order the $5 car wash to go along with his other service.  I averred that it sounded like a good deal.  And off he went.  But when he returned, I could tell he had some conversation in him and after thinking for a second I thought why the hell not?  Being locked away for the last nine months how many random conversations had I had in that time?  Why the hell not?

My auto mechanic’s waiting room fellow inmate was an older fellow.  He couldn’t have been younger than seventy-five and for all I know he could be ninety.  I’d guess he was a healthy eighty-year-old.  Without much in the way of introductory remarks we began to discuss a wide range of topics, self-learning artificial intelligence, ivermectin as a treatment and prophylaxis for COVID, the security and surveillance state we live in and the appalling state of physical fitness among Americans.  I found out that my friend lived in my town and in fact lived on the same street as my daughter’s family.  I learned that he is a medical doctor interested in starting a hydroponic farm to supplement the food he currently serves at a restaurant that he owns in the area.  In addition to this I learned that like me he was born in New York City and was of Italian extraction.  And finally, after a few guarded questions we discovered that we were both of the conservative political persuasion.

Now we commiserated about the fate of conservatives living in New England and the general degradation of the American polity and we probably would still be there talking except that before we knew it my car was ready for me.  We parted on friendly terms and I promised to check out his restaurant sometime soon.  And all the way home I thought about the odds of a chance meeting on the first day out of captivity in weeks in ultra-blue southern New England being someone so obviously aligned with my world view.  The odds are very remote.  Or maybe they’re not that remote.  Maybe even in a place like this there are tons of good people left out there who are not crazy and who are working to make this world sane.

Giving up on this country is a bad idea.  Organizing the good people is the task at hand.  There are millions of us.  And even where we are not the majority, we are still a mighty force.  And that’s not just numbers.  It’s because we are the good and useful part of society and we can find a way to live the kind of life we want to live.  I’ve got to start getting out there again.  There really is a lot to see.

Political Realities of America – Part 2

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In the first installment of this article I listed the available choices I see for right-wingers in America.  To reiterate what I said in the first part, “I think we have three choices.  Fold, flee or fight.  Surrender to the hive, leave the areas under their control, or fight them.”  I’ve given my thoughts on the first two options.  I will now hold forth on the last option, fight.

Now full disclosure, I’m not former military, law enforcement, a ninja or an itinerant samurai.  I don’t even study military history at the enthusiast level.  I will not be able to discourse on what kind of strategy or tactics are needed to wage any kind of war on our enemies.  And that is fine because I don’t think we need anyone who is qualified in those things for the foreseeable future.  The battles we will be fighting will take place in courts and the court of public opinion.  They will take place in the public square and in the electronic versions of it.  And it will take place in the state legislatures and state houses, the schools and colleges and unions and churches and grocery stores and department stores and book stores and the electronic equivalent (Amazon.com) and it will take place in the homes of Americans.  Or it won’t take place at all.

And I want to tell you a little secret about my original three choices.  They are not really completely separate.  For instance, suppose you live in one of the bluest of blue states and actually serve in the managerial state.  From my original division you are classified as someone who has folded.  You are living under the yoke of the woke state.  But who is to say that you aren’t maintaining a clandestine existence as a right-wing blogger providing support and encouragement to our side?  He may be part of a secret cell that coordinates activities and transfers information back and forth from behind enemy lines.

According to my division, if you leave a blue state and move to a red state then you are a fleeing the field.  But what if you prefer to chose the ground from which to fight?  I’ve always heard that picking the high ground is the only way to win a battle.  I don’t deny that guerilla tactics are effective in some cases.  But trying to lead an insurgency in one of the deep blue states like in New England is almost an impossible prospect.  Finding a red state home to embrace seems like a much better opportunity to be part of the struggle.  The added advantage is that while you’re fighting you can enjoy the benefits of living under a friendly regime.  The laws won’t be stacked against you and your neighbors truly will be like neighbors.  It’s kind of hard to reason against any of that.

Putting all of that aside what does it mean to fight for our side in America?  It means working to change the system and the institutions that we live under.  It means building social networks for people like us.  And it means electing leaders who will have the courage to stand up to the federal government and tell them no.

With respect to this last item, I am waiting for a state legislature and governor to write a law that doesn’t cave into the non-Constitutional decisions that the Supreme Court has decided on some issue, probably on a social issue.  And once the Supreme Court rules against it I am waiting for the governor to say, “I don’t care what the Supreme Court says, that is the law of our sovereign state and we’re not going to back down.”  That is what I’m waiting for.  Even under a democrat president I do not think we’ll be seeing troops on the ground to enforce the Supreme Court’s decision.  If that happens it will be the beginning of something big.  It will be the first crack in the dike.  And hopefully it will be the beginning of the end of leftist tyranny.

What fighting the Leftists means is working against their interests in any and every way we can think of.  Because that is the surest way to further your own interests and the quickest way to gaining freedom for all of us.  Tens of millions of Americans have awakened in the last five years to the realization that the system has been rigged against us all along.  This last election has proven that voting is no longer an option for fixing the system.  We are going to have to forget about compromising with our enemies and we can’t assume that the Constitution is going to protect our rights.  We are going to have to take what we want and only strong leaders are going to be able to help us do that.  All of the weak-willed Republicans who are only interested in maintaining their perks and their place on the government gravy train have to go.  If they aren’t signed up to change the system then they are part of the problem.  Fighting means getting involved in the government and maybe even running for office if you have the skills.  But at the very least you are going to have to get involved in process if you really want anything to change.

And finally, what do I think are the odds that one day it will come down to real fighting?  Based on what I’ve seen of Antifa and BLM I don’t doubt that in blue cities and states the creepy thugs that flock to our enemies will stage riots and attack innocent people.  But you notice that they don’t go outside of blue areas.  That’s because in red areas they’d be shot dead and the local sheriff will say it was justified.  But it could come down to federal law enforcement or even troops being sent into a state to strong arm the state government into complying with some federal law that people hate.  That would be the test of how committed the locals are.  Do I think there could be a shooting war?  Yeah, I do.  I hope I’ll never see it but I’m not dishonest enough to make believe it couldn’t happen.  After that just about anything is possible.  If the resistance is from private citizens then it will be pretty difficult for the feds to investigate it without the cooperation of the locals.  And I can’t see the state law enforcement going out of their way to help the invaders.

But this is stuff way down the road.  First, we have to elect officials who actually believe the same things we do.  Then we have to hold their feet to the fire and force them to take the stands we want.  After that we’ll have something to actually fight about.

07DEC2018 – American Greatness Post of the Day – Don’t Listen to Conservative Quitters

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Reading this article was a guilty pleasure.  Brandon Weichert’s thesis is that as bleak as the fight often seems, the battle is worth the fight and winning is possible.  And going down swinging is the way to go.  He even quotes Horatius at the Bridge.  I mean, that’s catnip for me.  Read it if you need a shot in the arm.

Don’t Listen to Conservative Quitters