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A tale of two fallen icons

Two icons have fallen today, one human and one a statue of a human. One event is good, the other is bad, and both represent the radical and opposing political forces pulling America apart.

Let’s start with the human icon, that being Wayne LaPierre, the now former executive vice president of the National Rifle Association (NRA). LaPierre became a human icon by his own hand, because for many years he placed pictures of himself everywhere he could in NRA literature, publications, TV programs etc. LaPierre did everything he could as the NRA’s senior executive to make his face and name synonymous with the NRA, and in many ways, superior to the NRA name and logo.

LaPierre did not rise to icon status by virtue of his own great skill and the resulting earned adulation by NRA membership and leaders. Rather, LaPierre artificially nurtured an almost Communist Party image of “Our Great Leader” by simply shoving his own face into everything he could that the NRA put out from 1991 until last month.

This high-visibility self-promotion activity picked up after LaPierre had ousted longtime NRA-ILA lobbyist Jim Baker in 1998, then brought him back in 2011, only to oust him again in 2012, and then it picked up more after LaPierre ousted longtime NRA-ILA lobbyist Chris Cox, and then the self promotion pretty much had maxed out when LaPierre ousted short-time NRA-ILA lobbyist Jason Ouimet, and installed a grandpa used car salesman-looking guy named Randy Kozuch in 2023. Kozuch looks like Father Time and has a fixed and perpetually unnerving entre nous wink. LaPierre’s truth is crazier than any fiction we could write; you can’t make this stuff up.

In other words, LaPierre has been in a constant power struggle and self-promotion mode since becoming executive vice president, with an iron fist that served his own personal power and not the NRA membership. Not only did LaPierre spend millions of NRA members dollars on himself, his family, his wardrobe, and other trappings of a self-indulgent communist party ranking official, he plastered his likeness everywhere he could to such laughably grotesque levels in recent years that no online hunting or gun-related chatboard was free of ridicule for LaPierre.

That emperor may have been dressed in the most expensive suits, but to NRA members he had no clothes. LaPierre may have long ruled the NRA headquarters like a cruel and petty tyrant, but a lot of his own members hated his guts. LaPierre represented everything wrong in Washington DC politics. So when LaPierre announced that he was stepping down yesterday in the face of a lawsuit over his illegally spendy habit, it came as a great sense of relief to those who have the most riding on the NRA – its members and donors.

The crashing of this (false) icon to the floor and shattering into pieces is a good thing.

Pivot to the City of Brotherly Love, the cradle of American freedom, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the National Park Service is removing the statue of William Penn from a riverfront park (ironically called Welcome Park) owned by the citizens of America and managed by the NPS. The removal of this iconic statue of the most tolerant and accepting man of the 1600s-1700s, William Penn, is destructive.

William Penn was not just some European guy, he penned the Penn Charter, which outlined many of the open minded individual rights and government duties that we find a hundred years later in America’s founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. William Penn was a broad minded, open minded, tolerant, kind, generous person. He sought to financially compensate the native Indians who lived and hunted in Pennsylvania, rather than use violent force to oust them and outright take their lands.

The reason why Pennsylvania had only one Indian reservation (which was eventually violently stolen from the Cornplanter Senecas by the US Army Corps of Engineers so the agency could make a new recreational impoundment lake for happy white people to drive their motorboats in the 1960s), was that most of Pennsylvania’s Indians were bought out and firmly moved westward as the frontier moved westward. Pacifist Quaker William Penn wanted to live in harmony with the Indians in his new colony, as much as he could, and his actions showed a humane approach that was unique in that period.

So removing the iconic William Penn statue from its position at Penn’s own home is a rejection of a tangible and meaningful symbol of peaceful coexistence and reconciliation. By people who claim to be all tolerant and peaceful. It is a bad thing.

(Thankfully, it was announced late today that the NPS had “prematurely” stated that it was going to remove the William Penn statue, which is going to stay in place for the foreseeable future. Apparently public resentment about this racist decision overwhelmed the NPS and the PA state government.)

As we can see, icons come in all shapes and sizes. Some are good, some are bad, some deserve a wrecking ball and others deserve flower garlands. One thing is certain about icons, as these two icons discussed here show, they bring out tremendous political and cultural passions because of what they represent. This is why they become such useful political tools, to the detriment of The People.

Josh and Wayne LaPierre of the NRA in 2016 at the Great American Outdoor Show. See? Wayne even showed up to argue about his tenure with me eight years ago.

 

Merry Christmas, America

Christmas is America’s national holiday. Regardless of your religion or level of religiosity, wishing your fellow Americans “Merry Christmas” is a big statement of unity and shared vision for our shared future together. It’s not a statement of theology. Rather it is a statement that we belong to and are committed to this Western nation with its own history, laws, freedoms, culture, and commonly held ideals. One of the ideals of this season, this time of year, is a universal peace, a sense of personal peacefulness. A communal peacefulness. Peace through kindness, charity, less judgmentalism and more forgiveness. Peace through a sense of satisfaction for having the simple things, for enjoying the simple things. For sharing in the simple things.

People who are shouting at children singing holiday songs, shouting at people who are putting up communal holiday trees, shouting at people who are attempting to enjoy this brief period of communal peacefulness, do not belong here. They have no inherent right to be here. The people who are disrupting holiday celebrations with demands of “look at me, me me” need to leave this place. They don’t fit here, America is not a good fit for them. There is no good reason why we should give up our little moment of annual peaceful respite out of the entire year for these selfish grinches. Who do they think they are? Who and what do they think we are?

I’ll be charitable and say that these people are frustrating.

It is best that we be honest with them and tell them “This American culture here is not your culture, we see it and that is OK, and so we understand that you need to go back to the place where your shouting and violence and mean spirited behavior is a good fit. We don’t want it here. We are happy with what we have here. We will be happier when you leave America and don’t come back.”

Whoever’s path you happen to cross, wish them Merry Christmas.

And that is my honest Merry Christmas message. I wish you and all of us peace and peacefulness. Hopefully we get snow, too, which really enhances the sense of being settled cozy inside, together.

Merry Christmas, America.

Russia & Ukraine & the West a year later

A year later after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a few realties emerge.

1) Massive scale wars with massive landscape-scale complete smoking rubble destruction and muddy trenches did not end after World War One (“The War to End All Wars“), or World War Two. Now, our entire beautiful blue and green planet appears to be on the edge of World War Three, and the carnage in Ukraine that right now seems so unimaginable is just the beginning.

2) Russia may harbor grievances against Germany for two back-to-back invasions in the past hundred years, but there is no avoiding the fact now that Russia is the aggressor here with Ukraine. No one likes a bully, and Russia cannot reasonably claim to be any sort of a victim while behaving this badly. No, sorry, few people in Europe or America accept the silly notion that Russia is entitled to invade and subdue and rule with an iron fist every nation near it. It is not right and it should not continue.

3)  As rotten as Russian dictator Vladimir Putin may be, there is no denying that he loves Russia and he believes in basic European/ Western values. Yes, it is easy to lose sight of the value of these facts in the face of so much Putin-led barbarism and destruction. But very few European/ Western leaders love their own countries; in fact most of them seem to be at war with their own countries and with their own countrymen, and the West is collapsing as a result. Isn’t it an oddity that of all places on Earth, Russia actually looks like one of the more stable places to live and raise a family?

4) Ukraine became America’s corrupt whore during the Obama administration, and Ukraine was being run by the Biden family when someone named Donald Trump came along in 2017 and shined a bright light on the disgusting mess. Hence all of the stops being pulled out by the corporate media and their Democrat Party masters to stop Trump at any cost, even the price of stealing the 2020 election and turning the American federal government against the American people. All of the fake Russiagate hoax, the Ukraine phone call hoax, the two fake impeachments, were to keep President Trump from digging into the really bad and illegal American corruption farming operation in Ukraine. And now, corrupt Joe Biden is dumping hundreds of billions of dollars into Ukraine to prop it up to keep his corrupt operation from being fully exposed.

5) Ukraine isn’t really about defending a small, innocent country from a big bully neighbor. It is mostly about American politicians hiding and protecting their political and financial equivalent of a “black ops” country from further scrutiny. At least this war did not start out this way. Like all wars, this war is becoming about other things now.

6) The other thing that the Ukraine war is becoming is a firmer and much more organized alliance between Russia, China, and Iran as they seek to destroy the West. For those of us who love America, freedom, lots of delicious food and beer and easy weekends and endless entertainment and fun fun fun after a hard work week, this emerging alliance aimed at our throat is a really big problem. But as much as the Russia-China-Iran challenge to the West is more visible and threatening, a huge proportion of Americans ignore it and still take America and their safety for granted, still have their heads in the sand, and still want to keep voting for people who are aggressively undermining America from within. A weak America is how Americans will suddenly lose everything they enjoy and take for granted right now.

This war in Ukraine and how Americans understand it is how empires and cultures end. No, America is not too big to fail. But our own nation’s failure is beginning to happen right in Ukraine.

And isn’t it strange that the American Left, which spent 100 years undermining the American military and our national security in the name of “peace” is now hell bent on starting World War Three?

Another past war in an obscure European nation, and more dead beautiful young men with grieving parents. The yellow caption on this is incorrect. See the more accurate description below. It is heart breaking.

I dug around the Internet to find this bit of obscure history to help our own generation understand what is happening now in Ukraine. The parallels between 1912 Serbia (which became Yugoslavia) (does anyone today even remember that country?), the resulting World War I, and the current war in Ukraine are eerie as hell. History often repeats itself, but it doesn’t have to…

Veteran’s Day speech 2050

“Today is Veteran’s Day, in the year 2050, and I would like to acknowledge and thank our armed services veterans for their dedication and selfless loyalty.

This year of 2050 marks the thirtieth anniversary of our party’s glorious revolution against the old racist and capitalist United States of America. Our beautiful revolution that began with the party’s righteous overthrow of the corrupt old election system in 2020 could only have been made sure by the joining of the American military with the party. As I said, it is the military veterans of our many difficult but ultimately successful campaigns against domestic terrorists to rid America of racist capitalist oppression who made the party dominant and who brought peace and equity to our shores.

Without our glorious veterans today, we could never have re-made America into what it was meant to be: A unified, centralized, single party nation that serves all people equally. The antiquated and racist so-called Constitution of the old republic was made irrelevant by the dominant forcefulness and sacrifice of our party’s military forces and the many veterans of the several branches who gave their all to ensure that the party became the supreme source of all that is good in America today.

So I want to acknowledge and thank from the bottom of my heart on this Veteran’s Day all of you who have served the party and America so well.

Hakeem Jeffries, Secretary of Peace, Socialist Nation of America”

If we want to avoid some semblance of this speech from becoming actuality, then we Americans ALL must join together as the founders of America joined together in 1776 to fight the tyranny that daily threatens to dismantle America’s foundation. Witness the Biden DOJ and FBI committing an unconstitutional pre-dawn raid this week against journalist James O’Keefe’s home, where his personal computers and phones were stolen and whose contents were illegally downloaded. Nothing in them had anything to do with any crimes. In fact, just like the January 6th political prisoners rotting in DC jails solitary confinement who have not been officially charged, O’Keefe has not been charged with anything. This is just a political fishing expedition to uncover what O’Keefe knows about powerful people.

Apparently O’Keefe’s Project Veritas is so successful at outing Marxist hypocrisy and domestic threats to America that the full coercive weight of the federal government had to be brought down on him, illegally.

The DOJ and the FBI are now so crystal clearly just arms of the Democrat Party. A political party that is seeking sole dominance by any means necessary. By crushing all dissent that has always been constitutionally protected. But the Constitution is only a piece of paper, and if one party no longer respects it or agrees to abide by it….then it becomes meaningless.

America is in for a real fight to stay as a free nation. A fight against the Biden federal government. Thank you to all the real military veterans who have served, fought, been wounded, or died over the last 240 years, while in the pursuit of keeping the Constitution alive and our freedoms real.

My childhood friend John S. broke out and dusted off his service medals today. It is people like John who created the military deterrent to invasion of America. And it is veterans like John who Americans will probably need to call upon again to create a deterrent to the domestic terrorists and enemies now in control of the federal government. Thank you for your service, Johnny. You make us proud.

America is beautiful, Vote for Trump

America is beautiful. It is a Garden of Eden.

America remains the best nation in the entire world by every single measure, as its immigration pattern shows: The entire world wants to move here, to live in this peaceful Garden of Eden, and no one leaves. Whatever your skin color, religion, language, clothing, you can move here, become part of our peaceful culture, work hard, and live many times better than you were living in your nation of birth.

America is not “systemically racist” or any of the other ridiculous accusations its enemies and native spoiled children say. America is the opposite of racist. America presents more opportunity to more people than any other place on the planet.

Only Donald J. Trump is able to preserve the American union that is the Eden so many people aspire to move to from around the globe. The man is a font of positivity, happiness, and old fashioned American humor and vigor.

I understand that some people do not agree with Trump’s policy preferences, and that could be the only reason to vote against him. Because no intelligent person believes the dishonest caricatures of Trump portrayed by CBS, NBC, NPR, PBS, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, Reuters, Associated Press, the Washington Post, New York Times and a bunch of other partisan political “news” outlets. And even if you disagree with Trump on some policies, think about what is most important to you: A few policies, balanced against a lifetime of stable, successful America. That is what the choice is tomorrow.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris represent only negativity, unhappiness, conflict, catastrophe, lies, and failure for all Americans, especially Blacks.

If you love America, if you love her peacefulness, her beauty, liberty and harmony, and her long time equal application of the rule of law to everyone who preserves that peace, then you can only vote for Donald J. Trump. He is who I am voting for tomorrow, and you should, too. Help God bless America by keeping America peaceful.

Because America is still beautiful and worth keeping beautiful.

President Trump Earns the Nobel Peace Prize

Right now I am watching the peace agreement signing event between Israel, Bahrain and United Arab Emirates, put together by President Donald Trump.

This is a majorly historic moment on Planet Earth. Because for seventy years at least, the simple ability to sit down and talk things out eluded the Muslim Arab population, regardless of country, regardless of age, regardless of religious observance, regardless of educational level or political office. The simple fact is that Muslim Arab culture simply had no room for free Jews. No room in their hearts, no room in their ears, no room in their heads.

Even in Egypt, which signed an agreement with Israel during the President Carter administration, the notion that peace had been achieved was never taken seriously. Egypt was worn down from repeatedly losing huge military campaigns to tiny Israel, and America offered enough financial incentive for Egypt to move into a different approach to existence. It wasn’t love for Egyptians or Israelis that led Sadat to sign the treaty with Israel. It was his yearning for political stability.

After seventy years of one-sided conflict  brought on Israel by the Muslim Arab inability to think broadly or modernly, only President Donald Trump was able to step outside the standard lines that had been drawn up among the combatants. Just as only President Trump has been able to step outside the artificial lines drawn up by Washington DC elites, to finally and uniquely advance the material interests of all Americans.

So if President Barack Hussein Obama was entitled to get the Nobel Peace Prize for merely getting elected, and for having achieved nothing that promoted peace, then how much more does today’s true peace agreement entitle President Trump to also receive the Nobel Peace Prize!

And while we are on the subject, how could Israel’s prime minister Bibi Netanyahu also not deserve the same award?

Signing ceremony broadcast live just moments ago, posted as a screen shot from my computer, complete with a dummy “Press ESC to exit” for those Jews who love a seditious political party more than they love peace

Peace

Peace  Peace  Peace  Peace  Peace  Peace  Peace

Peace

 On Earth

I am crying over spilt milk

Whether FakeBook causes, accelerates, or encourages the split-up of long standing friendships and friendly acquaintance-type relationships is a subject of endless discussion.

People who for many years, even decades, shared affection for and cheerful enjoyment of one another’s company and personality are now not talking, communicating, or sharing. Instead, one party has abruptly broken off entirely, leaving the other party bemused, hurt, and or frustrated. The drama can be plain silly, because we are talking about adults here who post histrionic things like “If you voted for ________, then just un-friend me, now, please, I beg of you.”

Or it can be more subtle, with people hitting the “ignore” button on a relationship, pretty much tossing the friendship away without the pain of actually breaking off.

This one-sided dynamic plays out most visibly on FakeBook because “likes,” comments, and the number of “friends” are actual numeric measures of a relationship’s quality. And when you start seeing a numeric down-trend in one area, you often see the actual end coming quicker and quicker.

And what is the primary cause of these fractured friendships?

Why political differences, naturally.

Do you recall the poll done about eight or ten months ago (Pew, Gallup? I don’t recall which firm did it, but it was a real polling firm and the results are believable), which showed 39% of self-identified liberals can and will live with a conservative, versus nearly double that for conservatives willing to live with liberals?

That poll showed what many of us have observed personally for some time, and increasingly over the past year: Political correctness has destroyed liberals’ ability to live up to the qualities they claim ownership of, like being tolerant, open-minded, and accepting of differences.

PC has become so intense that now simply belonging to the wrong political party, driving the wrong vehicle, or EVEN HAVING THE WRONG SKIN COLOR is grounds for heaps of burning hatred and criticism. Nothing about this behavior is open-minded. It is not tolerant. And watching people walk around with a burden of hate for all kinds of classes of people makes them look and feel a lot like the other side, the KKK or neo-Nazi side, who are ALSO intolerant and violently hateful.

While the few decades-long friends I and others I know have lost through FakeBook were not violent people, their visceral hatred still burned bright.

Where someone’s burning hate becomes physical violence is a subject for philosophy books, because gut instinct tells you that one naturally follows the other. Seemingly uncharacteristic behavior for the loving and gentle relationship we had enjoyed lo these many years, even decades, suddenly there was the hatred, the intolerance, the violent words, and then the break.

Not one conservative I know of has broken off with the liberals in their lives (because they are liberals), via FakeBook or any other way, but the number of liberals who have broken off with people who are not liberals is legion and legendary.

These liberals’ behavior is the very definition of intolerance.

Do you ever wonder why there is no ‘world peace’?

I do wonder now, and I always have wondered since I was a kid, when the Vietnam War was going strong.

Well, part of the answer to why there is no world peace is that those people who most assiduously claim ownership of being peaceful are those who in personal practice are the least peaceful.

During the Vietnam War, being pro-peace meant being against American war-making in Asia; but those same anti-war people were not against Asians making war against other Asians, or against America. So they were not really, truly pro peace. They were simply anti-America, despite living in and enjoying America.

One test of being peaceful is your ability and willingness to accept differences between one’s self and other people without getting angry, hateful, judgmental, accusatory, or violent. When that inability to accept others turns to intolerance, why then…there is an absence of peace. And you are not a peaceful person. And it is self-evident to those around you.

And no, demanding that people adopt your way of thinking is not being tolerant. Humans have been doing things a few certain ways for thousands of years, and if you want to deviate from that, then asking for tolerance is fair. Demanding acceptance, acquiescence etc at the cost of breaking off (a form of coercion and violence) is unreasonable.

I am crying over all this spilt milk, because to not cry is to lie to myself, and to make pretend that certain unhealthy dynamics are not happening.

I am sad at the lost friendships, whether mine or those of friends of mine, for sure. I am also sad about an America that has everything, certainly more than any other country, and yet is being torn apart by violence and hate in the name of “peace” and “tolerance.”

The relationships between fellow Americans are being torn apart, over what?

This is spilt milk, and I prefer to cry over this now and have a positive, healing, peaceful conversation with someone about this, rather than later cry over something else being spilt as a result of no attempts at healing having been made and the logical outcome of hate and intolerance come to fruition.

If most Muslims opposed burning people alive, this would end

Over and over people say Islam is peaceful.

And then we watch Islam’s most faithful and exacting adherents burn a man to death.  It is the most vile, most horrible thing my eyes have seen.

To me, this is official, religiously-based sadism.  All you have to do is read the perpetrators’ analytical thought that went into this, and then you realize that while “only” 25% of Muslims around the world believe this is 100% Islam, that’s a good 400 MILLION jihadi fanatics.

Many of whom happily live right here in America, as we saw with the Boston Bombers and the 9/11 attacks.

Watch this horrific video and ask yourself if you can continue to defend Islam, and ask yourself why this kind of cruelty repeatedly happens across so many Moslem countries if it’s only “a few” people who support it.

If Muslims actually opposed this behavior, there would be world-wide massive street demonstrations by Muslims demanding a reformation of Islam and the Koran.  Instead, we hear and see nothing except a few fake apologists saying this isn’t really Islam, and then they attack anyone who disagrees with them.

Is it time for civil disobedience and ignoring kook judicial holdings?

Civil disobedience, non-resistance obstructionism, and peaceful protests against clearly unfair laws and violent government agents is time-honored in America.

Civil disobedience works because it appeals to the higher mind, it appeals to the best, highest conscience in Western Civilization.  You have to have an open mind to have civil disobedience work on your political views so that you vote for change from the status quo.

It won’t work in a Muslim country, where civil disobedience will just get you locked up and tortured, or summarily killed.

It did work for Ghandi in India because the 1940s British empire valued democracy and voting rights, and the public cry at home over images of British soldiers shooting peaceful protestors in Delhi’s public streets threatened to up-end political control at home.

Americans have successfully employed civil disobedience since the 1920s: Segregation laws, no voting rights for women, a lack of equal rights or opportunity across so many sectors of society… the causes were real and political changes were needed for America to live up to its promise.

And ain’t America an amazing place that it is designed to change and heal old wounds, to become a better place?

Because the original use of civil disobedience was so righteous, because so many of the laws being protested in the 1920s through the 1960s were so outrageously unjust, the behavior eventually took on a connotation of being above the law and always justified.  In fact, over time even violence became justified in the name of Marxist versions of “justice,” and pro-violence slogans like “No Justice, No Peace” evolved.

Today, violent, fake civil disobedience has been employed by the “Occupy Wall Street” thugs, and by the violent criminals in Ferguson, Missouri.  These events always start off as a routine, rote, formula civil disobedience act, and then they quickly devolve into destruction, arson, violence, beatings, attacks on bystanders….all in the name of some Marxist version of “justice.”

Inevitably, politically allied elected officials have begun to implement their jobs in a similar fashion.  No matter what the law says, they ignore it, and make a big public deal about subverting the law.  As if they are justified.  They actually take pride in failing to implement the law as they are supposed to.

Examples of elected officials ignoring and subverting the law are a county clerk of courts issuing same-sex marriage licenses, despite Pennsylvania law saying it is illegal.  Or Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane refusing to defend state laws, because she personally disagrees with them.  Or California banning state judges from belonging to the Boy Scouts.  Or the Obama administration willfully failing to implement immigration law.  Or Harrisburg City mayor Eric Papenfuse refusing to rescind city ordinances that are plainly illegal under state preemption law, because Papenfuse holds certain personal views about guns.

This lawlessness by the very people entrusted with safeguarding and implementing the law is dangerous.  These wayward officials stand on quicksand, because the basis of our republican form of democracy is the rule of law – equal application of the law, irrespective of what one personally believes.

If government officials begin ignoring laws they disagree with, and implementing law that was not voted into being by the consent of the voters, then the rule of law is over, it has ended.  The glue that holds America together is corroded, and the whole edifice can come down.

But let’s ask why only one side of the political debate does this.  We know they get away with this because the mainstream media protects them, but the MSM veil has been pierced by the Internet, so the flow of information is no longer completely bottled up by fellow travelers.

Put another way, why don’t other people, say people like American traditionalists, “conservatives,” engage in the same behavior?

Here is an example of what could be done: Last week a federal judge ruled that Arizona must issue drivers licenses to illegal immigrants.  Never mind that these people are in America ILLEGALLY, the claims they make for their applications could be and often are fraudulent, and the cost of these services is unfairly covered by taxpayers.

Why don’t the good officials of Arizona simply ignore that judge’s insane ruling?  That judge has no ability to actually make Arizona issue drivers licenses, and if I worked in Arizona government, or if I still worked in federal government and had something to do with allowing illegal immigrants in, I would simply ignore that judge’s crazy ruling, or the illegal commands of the occupant of the White House.

There, folks, how do you like the taste of that medicine now?

Think of the many kook, nakedly political judicial decisions that are handed down, contrary to law and policy.  Why reward these dictatorial jurists by following their dictates? Why not simply ignore them?  God knows, they are earning it.

Civil disobedience and official lawlessness is a game that everyone can play, and at some point the people who have been acting like adults will recognize they only stand to lose by following the rule of law while their opponents exploit their fidelity, and only by fighting fire with fire will they make it clear that everyone must follow and implement the law, no matter what their personal views are, or everyone loses.

Or, people can do it the old fashioned way, and work to get the law changed one vote at a time.