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Riverdance 25th Anniversary Show A+

Last night the Princess of Patience and I drove to Reading, PA, to watch the 25th anniversary show of the much celebrated Riverdance show that took western countries by storm 25 years ago. We enjoyed the show very much, especially the tap dancing part, which is the height of dancing talent.

The venue was the historic “Rajah” theater, now the Santander Performing Arts Center, in downtown Reading, Pennsylvania. The theater’s interior is nicely artistic and harkens to an earlier time in American history, when design and materials were stone, stained glass, crafted metalwork, and did not include ubiquitous bright neon and loads of plastic. Parking was abundant, whether on the street or in lots or in nearby parking garages.

Comfortably parking my fat butt in one of the old seats was another matter, and I tried to joke with the tall lady to my right whose elbow kept bumping into my arm. Or maybe my arm kept bumping into her elbow, with the result that each of us watched the show with one arm stretched across our chest to avoid discomfiting the other person. Point being that these are smaller seats and could use a few inches added to either side to comfortably accommodate larger, wider, broader bodied people. If you are pint-sized like the Princess of Patience, then you will be more than just fine. The venue was clean, tidy, well maintained, and had no weird old smells.*

Riverdance is fundamentally about Irish tapdance, or at least it was 25 years ago. Back then people commented that this kind of tap dancing was not really culturally Irish per se, but the fact is that it is its own thing and the people doing it and promoting it are mostly Irish dancing to lots of Irish music. So I call it Irish tap dance, and it is a lot of fun to watch. Beyond the outstanding tap dancing abilities of the individual performers, the audience is also entertained by the choreography and the perfectly executed timing of the performers as a troupe. Add in some Celtic-themed music, with Irish musical instruments like the Uillean pipes and drums, some traditional Irish style clothing, some songs sung in Gaelic, and you have the entire package. Excellent light show and dry ice fog for effect.

My favorite performance was the eight men executing some sort of intensely high energy quasi military exercise, with yelled commands from one to another. It was so perfectly timed and crisply done that the audience roared when they finished. Wow. Impressive!

My least favorite (as there is bound to be in almost every kind of theatrical performance) scenes are the singing. Because of the sound system, I can never tell if this is piped in and mouthed by the performers, or is, in fact, their own world class singing voices. I have my suspicions. The sole acoustical instrument scene was outstanding, but again, like the singing, sometimes it is hard to believe that the world-class fiddling is being done by the leaping nymph in front of me, and that it is not being piped in. No question that the percussion guy is incredibly talented. One request: Someone at some point in the show should wear some woad on his face, like Michael Flatley occasionally did. Show some true Celtic pride.

Probably the most entertaining dance routine was near the end of the show, when the backdrop (digital screen, as is standard now on stages almost everywhere) switched from the Emerald Isle countryside to a Downtown-to-Brooklyn B Train station and Manhattan cityscape, with a Hispanic guy and a black guy each doing their own ethnic styles of tap dance. Then the Irish guys enter in a mock-up of the old West Side Story confrontation, and the two groups have a series of dance-offs against each other using their different styles. And then of course they dance together. Lots of performer humor and mugging for the audience, as well as amazing dance, and the audience enjoyed it a lot.

I counted about thirty dancing performers and six musicians last night, and both the Princess of Patience and I felt like we had experienced a full evening of high talent entertainment. During intermission a bunch of little girls who had come to watch the show did their best Irish tap dance in one of the aisles, to lots of praise and cheering by the audience. And naturally, the entire audience was a sea of shades of green and various family green plaids and the famous Black Watch plaid, including tartan caps, shirts, coats, a kilt and sporran, and more than a few shilleileighs.

Riverdance 25th Anniversary Show is an A+ fun and impressive night out for anyone and any family. You will leave feeling energized and positive. When we first saw Riverdance decades ago, it was a kind of “If you weren’t Irish when you showed up, you will feel Irish when you leave at the end” experience. The updated version is truly a representation of America 2023, with plenty of Ireland’s best along with “culturally updated” themes that are fun.

*A note about the Santander Performing Arts Center: Like almost every other performing arts center I can think of, Santander Performing Arts Center does not allow its patrons to carry any defensive weapons on its premises. This means that patrons must disarm before entering the building, and then we exit into downtown Reading at night unarmed and vulnerable. Downtown Reading, PA, is not a safe place. The streets are dirty, trash is blowing around everywhere, and there are aimless or homeless people walking around, standing around, everywhere. When we entered this venue, we had to go through metal detectors carrying our keys and cell phones with our hands held high as if we were being detained by law enforcement. It is a humiliating experience. When I broached the idea to a security guard at the entrance of having lock boxes available inside the foyer to concealed carry people, he responded “That is an excellent suggestion, but it is never going to happen. With the current management never, it will never happen, I am sorry to say.” Which raises the questions of why these performing arts venues do this, and what responsibility do they have if you are mugged or beaten while approaching their building or after exiting it. Do they really have our safety at heart, if they disarm us and then turn us loose vulnerable on the city streets at night? I do not like being disarmed, especially when I do not see realistic alternatives being provided by the hosting venues.

Intermission time, showing some kids tap dancing in the aisle, and showing some of the theater’s old crafted ornamentation

Ceiling of the old “Rajah” now the Santander Performing Arts Center

When performers ask the audience not to record them, I do as they ask. So the best I can show is the empty stage with the show logo. Several extra rows of chairs up front were added to accommodate the audience.

Democrat Party 100% owns Uvalde school shooting

The mass shooting in yet another school, this time in Uvalde, Texas, is like all the others: It was preventable and is 100% the result of the Democrat Party and its subsidiary, the teacher’s unions, who control government schools with an iron fist.

As we have seen over the past year, the Biden Administration’s DOJ and FBI have been treating justifiably angry parents of school children as “domestic terrorists.” Relying on the First Amendment, these parents formally object through long established democratic processes to the hijacking of their taxpayer-owned schools by anti-America indoctrinators posing as teachers and school administrators.

But because the Democrat Party is using the power of government to try to silence its political critics, and to protect the government school system from being taken back by the taxpayer citizens, they have teamed up with various private anti-America groups like the National School Board Association and the National Education Association to “inform” the DOJ and FBI on who to illegally target. While this behavior is obviously un-democratic and a grotesque misuse of government power and authority, it is in and of itself not the focus of today’s essay.

What the forgoing means is that government-run “public schools” are just another captured outpost of the Democrat Party and its anti-America, bizarro sexual and cultural groomers who must be defended at all costs from the peaceful citizens who actually own the schools and underwrite them via hard-paid taxes out of their pockets. It means that public schools are wholly owned subsidiaries of the Democrat Party and its primary educational arm, the National Education Association teacher’s union and its affiliates. And what this means is that pretty much everything that happens inside public school grounds is either OK’d or enabled by the teacher’s unions and the Democrat Party.

Including school shootings.

Believe me, if the Democrat Party and its teacher’s unions did not want racist Critical Race Theory taught in public schools, it wouldn’t be. If they didn’t want school shootings, there would not be any. Teachers’ unions have an absolute lock on public schools, and so whatever happens in these schools happens because of careful decisions the Democrat Party and the teacher’s unions have made. They own all of these things.

One conscious decision they have made over and over is to leave public schools as purposefully soft targets, easily accessed by murderous criminals who wreak mayhem and bloodshed in school buildings almost at will. In the wake of previous school shootings, Democrats in Congress have voted to prevent armed police from being in schools. Just the other day, Democrat Party US Senator Chuck Schumer blocked legislation that would make public schools a thousand times safer by allowing administrators and teachers to be armed.

Why would there be a constant effort by the Democrat Party to keep public schools as soft targets, their school children, staff and employees disarmed and sitting ducks? Because the Democrat Party is addicted to bloodshed and crises, at any cost. Nothing moves the political ball down the field like a scary crisis with tons of innocent blood spilled, and so the Democrat Party and its teachers’ unions have cultivated the kinds of circumstances that allow these shootings to easily occur. Such is the Left’s desire for full control over America that no sacrifice is too big, there are never enough dead children and blood soaked headlines. Anything to gain control.

The Uvalde massacre shows once again that the Democrat Party is both arsonist and then fireman.

I know this might sound nuts, but given how much official skullduggery we have already seen aimed at illegally expanding the federal surveillance state against law abiding American citizens, I would not be surprised if we learn that some of these school shooters were paid to commit their crimes.

In the Uvalde massacre, the shooter (possibly an illegal alien) Salvador Ramos, 18, posted direct online threats that no one acted on, murdered his grandmother, then drove to the school and easily overcame an armed but untrained School Resource Officer. The police on scene did not enter the school to stop the shooting out of fear for their own safety, and a mother on the scene who did try to enter the school to help was arrested and handcuffed by one of the useless cowards carrying a gun and a badge there.

There are a lot of failures at Uvalde, and not one of them has to do with lawful, law-abiding gun owners anywhere in America. But as we have seen, the Democrat Party and its media establishment is hijacking this latest massacre that they created in order to generate the next crisis that can be leveraged into more anti-constitutional behavior by the federal government, namely gun-grabbing from law-abiding Americans who form the only real bulwark against federal government lawlessness and control. And we see that the Biden Administration is 100% all-out for full control of all of us through online media, controlling our bank accounts, etc.

And so we just have to ask this logical question: If the FBI, DOJ, National Association of School Boards, and the teachers’ unions are willing to repeatedly sacrifice innocent school children on their altar of disarming and completely controlling America, then what do they really have planned for the rest of us after they take our guns?

Probably a lot more bloodshed, and all for the Leftist cause.

Today’s slavery

Yes, today’s slavery is the long-going slavery of Africa, where after a thousand years of continuous slaving, both Africans and Arabs still enslave weaker Africans and sell them or use them as slaves. The contraband diamond pits of west Africa are where many African slaves are sent nowadays, even as small children. Worked unceasingly with little food or shelter, people don’t last long in these roles.

This is occasionally reported in the press, mostly in the English media, which has a commendably long history of abolitionist fervor.

Yes, it is also the “white” slavery of Asia, Europe, and America, where every-day people down on their luck disappear from streets, bars, and hotels. Some are already prostitutes, largely separated from their families and friends, and thus already vulnerable to going missing. They are already easy pickings for disappearing and sale abroad. Plenty of white girls from stable middle-income homes are included; “runaways” who are never found.

Many are sold to Asian, Arab, and European oligarchs, who use these slaves for personal pleasure until they are done with their “fun,” and then they discard them like a broken toy. The discard is usually some sadistic and gruesome ending.

Plenty of Chinese and Latin American people are being shipped over into America as slaves, too, as are Russians and Ukrainians. They have specific destinations, usually factories, where they are promised eventual release for working long days. If you think they are eventually released, don’t kid yourself. Once a human being is enslaved, that’s it. Pretty much only escaping is the happy answer to the question of what next.

A very tiny amount of this is reported in any media, and why this is so, remains a mystery. After all, slavery is slavery is slavery. It is all bad. The Chinese human trafficking does seem to get more media attention, probably because Chinese are considered to be a “minority” in America, and therefore some sort of at-risk population. And we know how the US media like a good victim, real or imagined. It is difficult to understand how an Asian slave is more of a victim than a Caucasian slave from the corn fields of Iowa, but this is how multiculturalism warps people’s views. And no one has a more warped view than a person holding a degree in journalism.

And then there is the new slavery, and it is the worst of all because it is done under the guise of “kindness” or “fairness,” and it has the force of government coercion behind it.

We are talking here about big government socialism making a full-out assault on Western democracies, and an assault on the idea of the free individual, under the guise of fairness and equality, everyone being treated the same.

Of course, the fairness and equality of socialism and Marxism are forced on people, by a big government apparatus. You do not have a choice in the matter. And it is always sold as being done with the best of intentions, even when it turns into a disaster, as have all socialist and Marxist governments.

The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen.

The stronger the government, the weaker the citizen.

Although by modern standards and definitions, citizens are supposed to control their governments, western civilization is now succumbing to a Marxist march that was begun a hundred years ago. But it really picked up steam in the 1970s, when colleges began stacking their decks with avowed Marxists who then indoctrinated the young people coming to them for education. Year after year, young people have gone to college to get an education, and instead have emerged with a seething hatred for everything blocking the Marxist takeover of America: Armed citizens, conservatives, Republicans, businesses, the Constitution.

What is now under way is the aggressive attempt to enslave Americans to a form of government completely alien to how America was founded. A tremendous clash is shaping up, not between Democrats and Republicans, but between about 25% of the population that loves freedom and individual liberty on the one side, and about 20% of the population that believes in forcing Marxism on everyone through big government programs and restrictions on the other hand.

The Democrat Party is, as it always was, the party of slavery. It is the Democrat Party that is the official voice and political force for Marxism through big government, and therefore it is the force of slavery in our day.

Sadly, the Republican Party is not the abolitionist party it was in the 1850s and 1950s. No, today the Republican Party has been largely co-opted by Marxism-lite, with most elected Republicans around America being “moderates” who neither stand up for the citizenry nor for America. These are big government Republicans who have made a business of government, turning government operations into a get-rich scheme. They simply delay the day that Marxist slavery arrives, they do not actively, aggressively oppose it. They are too busy trying to get rich off the citizenry.

And if we kind of follow this line of thinking to its logical conclusion, as the politics are likely to play out, then that makes Justice Neil Gorsuch about the most endangered human being on the planet. And that is because he alone is the deciding vote, for now, blocking the anti-Constitution Marxists on the US Supreme Court from implementing their judicial coup d’etat over America’s citizenry (their stated goal of overriding the Second Amendment and forcefully disarming Americans, through, what else, massive, invasive, personal government coercion, exactly what the Second Amendment was designed to prevent).

Frankly speaking, and yes, it saddens me to observe this, with all of the Democrat street violence aimed at conservatives over the past two years, and with all of Obama’s illegal government spying against his political opponents and attempts to frame them and put them in jail, and with this latest DC march to disarm innocent civilians who have done nothing but live by their Constitution, and with all of the media now siding with the big government Marxist slavers, it is surprising that America has not experienced a wave of political assassinations.

I hope and pray that Justice Gorsuch has adequate security.