Posts Tagged → values
Speaker Johnson’s religious behavior
Speaker of the US House of Representatives Mike Johnson is being widely criticized in the mainstream media for kneeling in prayer while on the job the other day. I watched one mainstream media TV personality take Rep. Johnson to task in an interview, about minding the supposed “separation of church and state,” and “keeping prayer in private,” and not letting it out into the public sphere.
Pretty curious approach, given that across America and Europe hordes of bloodthirsty primitives have also recently knelt in prayer in public spaces, promoting baby butchery, baby baking, and gang rape with a huge helping of subsequent mutilation and torture on Israelis, to the great joy of mainstream media. Why all these sincere people, just look at them, bless their hearts. Get them some brown shirts and night sticks.
The Left’s love affair with radical Islam is no secret, and it is just and fair to say this love affair exists because both the Left and radical Islam seek absolute destruction of Western Civilization with a resulting dominion over everyone and every thing on Planet Earth. The Left and radical Islam have a common cause, and whatever differences they have will be settled between one another once people like Rep. Johnson and his religion are out of the way. Keep this foremost in your mind as the drumbeat about Rep. Johnson’s Christian practice goes on.
Couple of things about this Mr. Smith Goes To Washington’s religiosity.
First, Christianity is the founding belief system of America, albeit that was a nascent and broad minded Protestantism that immediately resulted in the anti-slavery abolitionist movement. America’s pilgrims and Founders also identified strongly with the Jews’ quest for freedom from evil tyrant Pharoah, and with the Torah’s value-laden story of that quest. And so thousands of towns and locales across America are named after Biblical places like Hebron, Shiloh, Judah, Bethany, and Zion. Christianity’s sacred Judaic touchstone places, and their inherent unspoken values, are interwoven into the cultural fabric of America from our very beginning.
Second, Christianity is still the main and largest repository of morality and right action in America. This is a cold numeric fact, not a defense of or advocacy for Christian theology. As sad and deflated as American Christianity is right now, it is nonetheless still the biggest single force for all things good and for learning about good values in our nation.
You oppose Christian theology? OK, so what is your suggested substitute in its absence here in America? Atheism? Well, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot, and Stalin are all great advocates for atheism and horrible, unjust places to live. Judaism? You think 200,000,000 Americans are going to convert to orthodox Judaism? Never! There would be an immediate and everlasting shortage of pickled herring, and so the rabbis would never allow it. Radical Islam will cut your throat, cut off your head, or throw you off a roof, sometimes all three, so nah, hard pass on that, right?
So, I say an occasional annoying knock on the door by some nice church ladies is a small price to pay for living happily in the most successful nation in the history of humanity.
The Left’s attacks on Christianity are strategic. If they can brow beat, shame, drown, flood, and eliminate Christianity, they will eliminate America’s renewable, sustainable, organic cultural source of opposition to the Left’s tyranny, immorality, and evil.
The Left has gotten really creative about their attack on Christianity, and they have only succeeded to date because of the long flaccid acquiescence of American traditionalists and Christians, and by the Left’s official enablers, the GOPe. By accusing Christians of establishing religion when they merely practice it, a la Rep. Johnson, the Left has appealed to the First Amendment’s clear prohibition against establishing a formal state religion for America. And yet, the truth is Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Muslims all are merely expressing their First Amendment rights when they pray in private or in public. None of their public prayer behavior establishes any of these religions as the de facto state religion of America.
What the Left really objects to is anyone actually seeing the Christian religion practiced in public. Their message is it’s a dirty practice that people ought to keep to themselves behind closed doors.
Rep. Johnson’s public prayer on the US House of Representatives floor is an in-your-face to the tyrants and cultural Marxists in the mainstream media. And of course history is on the side of Rep. Johnson, because the US House of Representatives opened with public prayer for I don’t know how long, but for the vast majority of the chamber’s existence. And when inaugurated in 1789 as America’s first president in Manhattan, New York, George Washington led a grand procession to Trinity Church on Wall Street, where he led an hours-long prayer service.
It is only when America now finds itself in the throes of hypercoagulative materialism that its own long and deep religious roots, and religion’s fruit-bearing shading branches, become anathema. So what a breath of fresh air is this Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, this cherubic Rep. Johnson.
Don’t stop, Rep. Johnson, for all our sakes, I pray you, do not stop and do not back down, and may you shine as a beacon light to Christians everywhere, and may that rallying light shine and defeat the cruel darkness that is swallowing my civilization. I may not agree with you on the particulars, but by God I will defend your right and our collective necessity to have you pray in the US House of Representatives.
Either Christianity will save America as a free constitutional republic, or America and western civilization will die.
May God bless you, Rep. Johnson.
Summertime harvests & roadside wisdom with strangers
Presently we are enjoying the height of the summer fruit and vegetable season. Berries wild and cultivated can be picked whenever you have time, often right along the road, and many are for sale at small roadside kiosks and shacks. Same goes for honey, sweet corn, and a host of vegetables. Most of which are organic and have not been sprayed with synthetic chemicals. It is really a wonderful time of year to both eat well, and participate in the natural gathering of food as humans have done since God completed our evolution a hundred thousand years ago.
One of the aspects of summer time food gathering that I enjoy is the natural gathering of people around the sources of these fruits and vegetables. Like roadside stands, selling fruits and vegetables picked that morning by the landowner, standing there wiping their hands on their apron, sweat beading on their forehead, and stuffing cash into their pockets or running off to make change.
The people who shop at roadside stands and kiosks are a pretty interesting group, and most of them are willing to strike up a discussion with the strangers around them with little more incentive than a good joke about the weather or an offering of just-purchased cherries from the stand down the road. At the stand where I bought our annual supply of sweet corn, the discussion centered on whither America given that so many young Americans do not want to work, can’t work, don’t know how to work. Everyone present shared their growing up story about how they learned to work hard, and to enjoy it, and where that strong work ethic took them in their life. This is real rural wisdom that keeps the wheels on America and turning.
As if on cue, a ragged bunch of older teenagers went braying by on Route 147, their dirt bikes drowning out the already damaged hearing of their elders gathered at the sweet corn stand.
“See?” said the proprietress.
“I told the neighbors they can’t ride on our farm without helmets because they are so foolish and are going to get hurt. They still ride through our crops anyhow,” she said with her hands on her hips and a furrowed brow darkening her attractive face.
I see it everywhere I go. Doesn’t matter the skin color: White, black, brown, yellow…today’s young Americans are seemingly all huffing endless free sh*t from their families like a recreational drug, and that lack of responsibility has led to a lack of focus, a lack of real goals, no work ethic, a lack of seriousness about life, etc. And yes, America will undoubtedly fail if these kids don’t grow up, wake up, and get serious about their lives and about their nation. Somewhere I saw headlines about half of the young people think “mis-gendering” someone should be a crime punishable by jail. Obviously these are not serious people, they are are adult-aged children stuck in perpetual childhood and whining about every damned little ridiculous nonsense thing.
It felt nice to have my own observations reinforced by the other elders standing around the corn stand. Anyone like me with a blog and strong opinions is bound to eventually live inside my own head. Getting out into the public and hearing from strangers that I am not alone in my worries about the upcoming generations of Americans is reassuring. No, I am not overly critical and demanding, I am just old fashioned because I believe that a strong work ethic makes you a better person, a more civic minded person, a better citizen, a more productive adult.
Some say that America could not be started over and built again today, with the toxic soup of all of the ridiculous and picayune regulations, rules, ordinances, etc surrounding us. But more than anything the challenge to America seems to be the lack of desire among our young people to want to achieve anything of substance, and their willing subservience to freedom-crushing government bureaucrats.
I wonder if these kids can learn to speak Chinese. At least “Please don’t shoot me” in Chinese ought to be a phrase they are taught, as the willing and easy victims they are building themselves up to be will need some memorable last words before their country is taken by force from them.
Enjoy your summer harvest, friends. I do, and I enjoy the old memories, too. When I was a kid, my mother would send me and a sibling out on hot summer days to pick gallons of blackberries, black raspberries, red raspberries, and blueberries that grew naturally on our property and on adjoining farms. We would return hours later red faced, dirty, scratched up, and with buckets fulled up, and unbeknownst to us, our can-do spirit filled up and stronger, too. We eventually ate what we picked; we earned what we ate. From the fruits of our labors Mom made jams, jellies, pies, and sauces, the Mason jars ever more lining up in the pantry nice and neat for us to eat throughout the coming year.
It is a shame that today’s young Americans are not learning such a simple life lesson.
Where are their parents? Where are the Americans?
Roadside sweet corn stand along Rt 147
As fast as the corn is brought up from the field it is stuffed by buyers into bags and spirited off to kitchens across the area
Rural America is full of iconic and inspiring scenic views like this looking at the Susquehanna River water gap
Quaint though they may be, the old-time country mouse values and principles of rural America trump the shallow arrogance of city mice every single time
Our fresh sweet corn was eaten a bit with butter and salt, but mostly stripped off the cob and put into ziploc freezer bags for eating throughout the year. Chicken corn chowder is a popular winter soup
While waiting for my daughter to finish getting her nails done for her wedding, I picked a hatful of red raspberries in the weed patch next to the parking lot. Unbelievably, a woman approached me and asked me for money to buy food. When I offered her my berries she became irate and yelled at me. Our family ate this delicious wild growing roadside fruit over three days.
Passover & Easter messages of Freedom
Freedom has been the goal of human beings forever.
Freedom to be your own unique self as God created you, freedom to think your own thoughts, freedom to travel where you wish, freedom to worship God in your own way, freedom to speak your mind without fear of reprisal or punishment, freedom to pursue the work you like, freedom to read the books you want and etc.
And yet, despite all of the deepest yearnings humans have had for individual and communal freedom for tens of thousands of years, freedom has nonetheless been really tough to achieve or gain for any meaningful amount of time. Here in America, the concept of freedom as Americans know it today was achieved on the frontier, where European settlers, run-away and freed blacks, and American Indians lived in a sometimes mostly peaceful communal free-for-all, and most of the time in an ebb-and-flow of painful tumult and settlement. It was on the American frontier that Europeans finally broke the chains of feudal serfdom, because they were finally out of the reach of feudal overlords.
They lived as they wanted to live.
Along the American east coast British and Dutch militaries enforced iron laws that funneled money, goods, and loyalty to far distant monarchs in Europe. But within the American interior, what we call the frontier, a new kind of human was developing. European ideals of hard work and self sacrifice blended with American Indian ideas of self-reliance and communal reliance, free of overbearing overlords imposing their own selfish demands. And what resulted was pure freedom, now enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.
While early in our nation’s history the American Indians were still largely nomadic, or at least seasonal travelers across wide landscapes, the European Americans brought a focus on permanent settlement. They also brought values and hopes from the Torah (Old Testament) and the Gospel (New Testament), what today we accurately describe as a uniquely synthesized Judeo-Christian ethic for daily life and expectations from our government.
Both Judaism and Christianity celebrate freedom, and in this week of Passover (tonight) and Easter (coming Sunday), and in this American time of great peril for individual freedom, it is important to note how both these faiths mark freedom and value it as the highest form of human expression.
Why is American freedom in great peril? Because bad people who crave control and dominion over everyone and everything have seized control of the American government. Like the early Americans did in their battle with Britain, we must think of these bad people as the Pharoahs in the story of Exodus, and think of the American citizen – you and me – as the ancient Israelites, escaping harsh bondage.
These bad people constantly demand that We, The People behave one way, while they conspicuously behave the opposite. They wear their double standard hypocrisy like a badge of honor. To them, it demonstrates their authoritarian power over everyone else, their ability to behave contrary to the way they demand everyone else behave. Behaving publicly in a hypocritical manner is a demonstration of their power over everyone else. I know this is sick and anti-democratic, but the Left is completely drunk on power and is anti-democratic. They think they know what is best for everyone, and that we must all live according to their supposedly brilliant ideas (that have already failed in so many other places like the Soviet Union, China, Venezuela, Cuba etc), so no freedom for us regular “little people.”
With the holiday of Passover, Judaism teaches about the centrality of physical freedom. Freedom from slavery, freedom from political overlords who control everything we eat, think, say, and do. While Jews always celebrate Passover, there are many Christians who also observe a “Last Supper” tonight among friends and family.
With the holiday of Easter, Christians celebrate the concept of spiritual freedom; freedom from earthly limits and earthly/ physical chains. One of the first steps any authoritarian government does is to break the link between humans and one another and between humans and God. The state must become God for the state to become all-powerful, and so spiritual freedom is a powerful antidote to evil people running government badly.
Both of these separate celebrations this week, Passover and Easter, are critical to Americans and to any human being anywhere who wants to remain free or attain freedom. America has a unique blend of individual freedom and individual opportunity that no other country has. It is why everyone in the world wants to move to America.
But if we Americans are going to hold onto the Constitutional Republic that so many men have died to create and hold onto, then we must make public our celebration of freedom and our demand for freedom. We must embolden one another and embrace one another and stand side by side with one another, because right now We, The People are facing a truly tyrannical and evil government that seeks to take away the freedom that we all have. All of it. Forever.
Only standing all together can we withstand their attack on us.
Freedom. Celebrate it, mark it, identify it, value it, cherish it, and never ever relinquish it. Whatever freedom the government people can take away from you they will never ever give back to you.
Happy Passover and Happy Easter freedom to all of my fellow Americans. Celebrate freedom as you will, but celebrate it by God and never ever stand down.
Paddling with Hollywood
Cheerfully our little crew paddled down the river, enjoying small Class II splashy whitewater rapids here and there, swift enough currents everywhere else that we need not really paddle much, if at all.
Turning aft, I squawked captain-like from my otherwise supine perch in the bow “Hard to the oars, ye pack o’ worthless lazy bones!”
The kids would laugh a bit at my best captain o’ the high seas bit, tepidly dip their paddles in the water like they were thinking about trying to paddle, and then go back to chattering amongst themselves about school, fellow students in school, classes, interpersonal politics and Politics with a capital P in school. Overall it was what had been hoped for when I made reservations with the outfitter the week before. Time with my kids and their friends, in nature, floating down a river, watching bald eagles, osprey, mergansers, wood ducks, migratory songbirds, deer, and on the lookout for bear.
Pausing to listen for and then spot white waterfalls cascading steeply out of the high canyon walls, I, the lookout, would occasionally point out where the crew could perhaps look up to if but briefly admire these little moments of grandeur passing by us. They did look the first half dozen times, and then tired of being bothered to do anything. I ended up dragging my hands in the cold foamy water, hoping to create some drag that would necessitate some serious paddling. When my hands turned red and then a purplish blue and stopped responding to commands to open or close, I gave up on influencing the kids in any way and just quietly admired the ride.
About two and a half hours into the drift, the kids started to sing. At first these were summer camp songs, and then theme songs from movies complete with beat-box noises from my daughter, and then songs from movies, mostly being rap-like. Their voices were sweet, and they would constantly run over each other, and then good-naturedly correct someone, and then try to get back on track in harmonic unison. Being of free and easy spirit, the kids were into having fun, and they would individually or together abruptly break out into a song-ending editorialization about the singer, the performer, the musician, or the movie the particular song came from.
The Earth Day environmental song, apparently popular now, was a big hit on our boat. They sang it over and over and over.
“And the zebra, I like how he says ‘I’m a zebra, I am striped, and I don’t know if I am black or if I am white’,” said the girl of this apparently surprising revelation, unaware that Dennis Prager, Rush Limbaugh, Larry Elder, and a slew of other radio talk show hosts and conservative politicians have been preaching an equal opportunity color-blind society for many decades.
And after about half an hour of back and forth chatter about this environmental planet cartoon movie and its song, it dawned on me that these kids are deeply enthralled by Hollywood and its entertainment business. They and their young impressionable minds are completely captured by images and made-up voices from highly paid songwriters and movie scripters, whose lines become memorized as moral guide posts along their young lives.
Many adults over the past ten or twenty years have bemoaned the advent of and then exponential increase in realistic at-home video games, the prevalence of handheld devices, and the trance-like state our children have grown up in glued to and Matrix-like plugged into these things. Well, I saw that we have transitioned beyond the gluing-in-and-tuning-out stage where we had to scream two inches from our kids’ face to ask them what they wanted for dinner. Now we see the fruits of others’ indoctrination labors playing out over a decade or more: Our kids are wholly owned little robots of the entertainment industry, which is vacuous, morally bankrupt, materialistic, shallow, value-less, corrosive, and meaningless. No wonder our kids parrot all kinds of silly nonsense that emanate from movies and popular music; they are constantly bathing their brains in it.
And people like me thought the fight for America’s soul was a political one in Washington, DC!
Nope.
I learned on that day-long raft trip through spectacular natural beauty that the fight for a solid America is still at home, where we thought we had some influence, and we still might, and on college campus, where our parenting has been outsourced to welcoming Marxist professors eager to turn our kids inside out.
Yes, on this trip I had been paddling along with my kids and their friends, enjoying their happy company, but really I had been secretly and unknowingly paddling with Hollywood that whole way, and did not realize it until the very end, when I could say nothing.
The sea captain and his crew taking a break in a wondrous, magical waterfall in the middle of nowhere, on the run from Hollywood and pop culture
How to properly pronounce “Lancaster” and why it matters, here
“Lan—Cas–Ter.”
When I heard the radio ad with that unnatural, long, drawn out pronunciation of the county and city just south of me, the endless chasm between the syllables felt years apart, so unnatural that my internal warning system flashed “outsider alert, outsider alert.”
This ear-grating goofball advertisement played for two days before being pulled and replaced with the same voice, but subsequently correctly saying “Lancaster” as almost one long syllable.
How many calls and emails did the radio station get about this? Evidently enough to make an impression on the people in charge of advertising. Running a radio advertisement that annoys the audience is counterproductive, and you’d have to hear from a large enough segment or sample of that audience to get the message that your message was not just falling flat, but actually bothering your target audience. People cared enough to contact the radio station and voice their opinion.
Why do Central Pennsylvanians care about how their locations are pronounced?
Probably for the same reason that Perry County has communities like Newport and Duncannon and New Bloomfield housing most of the county’s 30,000 citizens, and yet those same people will tell you they are from Perry County. Not from Newport, New Bloomfield, or Duncannon. This is because the identity of the locals in Perry County, and elsewhere around the Central Pennsylvania region, is one of community, togetherness, joined together in common interests and identity. Not separated from one another, as in most other places. The larger community, like the county, is the defining characteristic for the residents. We all belong here and we belong to each other, in common and shared purpose.
I recall reading a linguistics study of Central Pennsylvania years ago, and how the authors traced the unique accent here to Swiss and German immigrants in the 1700s. And in fact, if you talk to older old order Amish and some older old order Mennonites, you will indeed hear that very distinct English spoken with some sort of heavily foreign accent. Like all languages, including British English, Southern drawl American, Ebonics in the ‘hood, and so on, this common sound is the sound shared by a commonly identifying group of people. When they hear the familiar pronunciation of their own language, they know they are communicating with someone who is “one of us.”
One of the defining characteristics of Central Pennsylvania is its pretty resilient regional identity, including political views and political engagement, religiousness, and so on. Outside forces may be at work here, altering our beautiful landscape with criminally ugly warehouses and temporarily bombarding our ears with Flatlander-foolish pronunciations of our local places, but through it all, we still hold on to our common identity, our common purpose, our common interests.
Central Pennsylvania is still one big community with common identity. This is one of the reasons that the Obama Administration targeted Lancaster County (and rural Minnesota) for simply air-drop dumping huge numbers of fresh foreign immigrants, most of whom could neither speak nor read English, but who had been carefully instructed how to vote for the “(D)” on the ballot. Politicized efforts to disrupt traditional American sense of community and togetherness, and common purposes and commonly held interests and values, are increasing, as one political party in particular attempts to destroy and re-make America into an identity-less, gender-less, Constitution-less, all-powerful big government global nerve center for everyone on the planet and every cockamamie idea that will destroy “evil” capitalism etc.
And this is why people here so strenuously resist the improper pronunciation of “Lancaster.”
This mispronunciation concretely represents the outside evil forces arrayed against our traditional identity and lifestyle. When we reject that pronunciation, we are asserting our identity and rejecting outsiders, carpetbaggers who attempt to sell us snake oil without even taking the littlest amount of time to understand our closest held thoughts and beliefs. And they fail to do that because they simply don’t care about us or our religious redneck identity; and, in fact, they look down on us.
For all you outsiders, for the record, here in Central Pennsylvania we pronounce Lancaster as one long, fast, single syllable, Lancaster. Not like actor Burt Lan-cas-ter, who, as a Hollywood actor engaged in silly dress-up and fanciful make-believe his whole life, was the ultimate alien to our deal-in-real, natural, down-home, farming and mountain dweller environment here.
So say it again, quickly, Lancaster.
No time or spaces between what your head tells you are syllables. Say it again, fast, one quick word, Lancaster.
There, you said it, and we like you already. See? You fit right in, you hillbilly, you. Here’s a gun, and a Bible. Display them prominently in your home.
Are conservative voters really gullible naifs?
Yesterday I had the wonderful experience of spending most of my day with central Pennsylvanians in a remote corner of our rural region. These are salt-of-the-earth people. Hard working, religious, family-oriented, earnest. The best. My kind of people. We were conducting business together, and of course we naturally discussed current events and related subjects.
One of the things emerging from my day with these genuine people weighed on my mind as I drove home in the rain.
“Are religious conservatives really clueless and naive about politics?,” I wondered.
These are decent people, good people, and the idea that someone would seek to destroy the character of someone they simply disagree with is totally foreign to them. They seem so completely unable to grasp just how evil and conniving their political opponents are.
Once someone says something negative about someone else in their world, why then, they think there might be a smidgeon of truth. It is enough to impeach the person’s credibility. Because of a naive belief that someone would only make such an accusation if it were possibly true.
In politics this naivete results in just enough votes lost or time delayed to get the Left a win.
It is this naivete among America’s best people that Leftists play upon and exploit.
As with last year’s impossible US senate defeat of Judge Roy Moore in conservative Alabama, by a far-left Democrat, today we face a typical fake leftist attack on Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination to the US supreme court.
Despite being a good man with an old-time (and odd) interest in younger women (not illegally-aged girls), Moore was defeated in a swarm of obviously false accusations designed to destroy his character. Just enough doubt about him as a good person was cast upon him that he lost just enough votes among good people to lose the race in a state he should have won overwhelmingly.
Despite sharing Moore’s values and policy views, a narrow majority of religious, conservative Alabamians were fooled into voting for the communist Democrat who will do everything possible to undermine those same voters and their values.
Today we have an obviously lying lady who has the most bizarre, dis-believable, 11th hour claim against Judge Kavanaugh. This discredited professor lady is already every kind of long-time kook-Left activist possible. She has a long public history of outlandish claims and bizarre behavior. Her students write that she is psychologically unbalanced, and “scary.”
Zero evidence backs up her accusation, which flies in the face of every other piece of evidence and testimony about Kavanaugh.
If at all remotely true, her accusation against Kavanaugh would be decades old, having nothing to do with his judicial views. But we know she is lying, and that her last-minute accusation is false, and that it is simply designed to derail the confirmation of a judge the Left disagrees with. This lady is simply the sacrificial goat used to achieve that goal.
Her attack on Kavanaugh is just one more attempted character assassination on someone the Left does not like because of his Constitutional views.
And all these false attacks are enabled by good Americans who think “Well, no one would really deliberately lie like this. No one would really be that indecent, that corrupt. There might be some shred of truth to it…” and so good people like Moore and Kavanaugh get damaged, and the Left advances its anti-democratic agenda to control government the voters would not ever cede to it.
Folks, if you are a religious person, a kind person, a good person, a decent, law-abiding, honest and fair-minded person, then that is great. You are my kind of person. You are all-American, and I hope you never change your values. But do not make the mistake of assuming that everyone else is like you. Do not make the mistake of listening to the lies of Big Media. The media is not news, or truth; it is the propaganda arm of one political party, and not the political party you would usually vote for.
Don’t be naive. Don’t be gullible. Don’t let yourself be manipulated by your political enemies so that your vote or your voice are wasted. Stay strong, be skeptical, and stay focused on what you know is good for your community and your country.
The Wonder of Elvis
Elvis Presley was a wonder in so many ways.
Youthful cutting-edge song writer and musician, he combined mountain folk music with country, blues, and gospel, with substantive themes and meaningful words, creating his own powerful sound with bi-racial bands that captivated people around the world. Come to think of it, in some ways like Ray Charles, a similar creative genius who also went on to make his own unique blues and jazz sound (also drawing upon sacred music) during the same time.
Both men created, captured, and represented certain turning points in American culture in their music.
But Elvis was more than a musician of meaningful songs. He also wrote, directed, and starred in dozens of movies, for which he wrote or performed some or all of the sound tracks. Like his music, Elvis movies are about simple life themes, like love, relationships, community, commitment, family, patriotism, public service, and God. Gosh his movies are corny, with clunky acting, but they carry important and positive messages Americans could sure use a dose of today.
In the 1950s, when Elvis was debuting, American women were married to the scarred men who had returned from the battlefields or the military training grounds of World War II. A lot of these men were tough, hardened either from the Great Depression or from their military experiences, or both. Romantic thoughts or gestures, tender touches, gentle words with their women were pretty scarce then.
Along came Elvis, singing to these women about loving and relationships they could only dream of, representing a model man they could only hope for. In his way, Elvis taught men of his generation how to respect and treat women right, mostly by singing about the kinds of feelings women had and how men could aspire to satisfy them.
Women screamed and swooned, and men wanted to be his friend.
Meanwhile, other entertainers were singing about banging in the back of a car, and most popular music hasn’t moved too far forward since. OK, it is true that later on Elvis developed that hip thrust, but he let it stand on its own without any words to back it up.
He was a good soldier, literally, volunteering for the US Army at a time when most of the people being drafted to serve in combat were less privileged young men without access to lawyers or school deferments. His military service was mostly symbolic, but inspiring. Asked by a reporter in 1971 what he thought about the anti-war protestors, he responded that he was just an entertainer and would rather keep his opinions to himself.
In private Elvis was no Lothario. Reportedly chaste and deeply religious, his child was born exactly nine months to the day after his marriage to Priscilla. No fooling around or cutting corners.
After developing his own sequined and bejeweled stage look, Elvis wore a freakin cape, and yet still commanded the adoration or respect of everyone around him, be it president of the United States or hard bitten businessmen. He was authentic, real. A humble, simple country boy. With a big shiny gold belt under his coat!
He was relatable, because he was real.
“Before Elvis there was nothing,” said John Lennon of the Beatles.
“When I heard Heartbreak Hotel, I was transported,” said crusty Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, no pushover or soppy romantic.
Elvis’ impact on the development of music was unequaled.
Embodying so many unique, separate, divergent, and ultimately convergent strands of American identity, Elvis was a wonder no matter how you analyze him. He represented the best of America, the best of its values.
Elvis is still be the King of Rock and Roll, four decades after prematurely reaching the Promised Land. His generous spirit lives on, albeit appreciated by fewer and fewer. No one since has attained his heights or impact on popular culture.
America could use a pop culture figure like Elvis today. Someone to bridge the gaps between us, to help inspire and unify us, to sing to us about our best qualities, about love and gentleness.
We need and miss you, Elvis.
NFL – “No F@#*n Loss”
As part of the entertainment industry’s decades-old war on American culture, ESPN and now the NFL have joined the politically correct pile-on.
Hollywood has led the way, surely, with its movies’ power of suggestion.
That Hollywood increasingly excretes unvarnished political activism in the guise of children’s movies as well as rated R adult movies is a thing of pride to that city; no one there even denies it. Hollywood is really just a communication propaganda arm of one political party.
But you cannot discount the increasing effects of ESPN reporters who now openly write that President Trump and his supporters are “white supremacists,” among many other examples of overt daily political activism by ESPN staff.
When I write “effects,” I mean the boomerang effect, which is where the intended results of one’s actions negatively rebound and injure the person who started it. These are ironic consequences, the best, most well-earned.
Perhaps the pinnacle of this boomeranging political activism is the anti-America statements by NFL players. Taking a knee and not standing during the national anthem wasn’t enough. Now some NFL players are making political videos that are shown at the game opening, or at half-time.
Well, removing the ESPN application from my iPhone was easy. There, ESPN, I am done with you. You are out of my life. See ya!
Over the past few years, ignoring the latest crop of poorly acted, poorly scripted, CGI-heavy Hollywood movies was a little more difficult, because Saturday night out at the movies with ice cream afterwards is a regular family thing. Even a lame movie would nonetheless entertain us and provide food for discussion later on. Like, was the movie’s symbolism consistent with its message? Did the message flow, or did acting anomalies and hiccups sidetrack the message? Was the message worthy, or was it muddled, or even negative?
These kinds of conversations with our kids were always stimulating, because as parents we enjoy watching our children grow. Nonetheless, unless a movie is exceptional in every way, we now decline to spend our money on a product from Hollywood, because that city is constantly at war with our values.
Now we have the National Football League, the NFL, getting all poseur-like. The NFL, too, is starting to see a substantial decline in business income. Why?
Illiterate men of the NFL, who have earned tens of millions of dollars in a few brief years’ time simply for running up and down a field, are out complaining about their station in life. You cannot make this stuff up. We indeed have phenomenally successful young men from disadvantaged backgrounds, whose wealth is largely accumulated from admirers of a different skin color, now claiming discrimination. And therefore, they take a knee during the American anthem.
In short, they tell their audiences and fans to go to Hell.
I don’t deny these guys have a right to stage their silly protests. But I have no duty to watch them, or to listen to their nonsense. And I have the right to stop watching their football games altogether, which is what I have now done.
This past January I called the NFL headquarters in Manhattan. Sharing my opinion of the league’s unwillingness to bring the football games back to being just about the games was the goal of the call. But, try as I might, finding a live human being was impossible. The phone menu just kept rotating through, taking me back to the beginning each time.
So I just started punching random numbers in to the phone.
Next thing I know, I was into the voice mail of a young NFL staffer, whose name I do not recall. But you know I took that opportunity to leave a detailed message on his voice mail.
My message to him was simple: Since I was eleven years old, I have looked forward to new NFL seasons. I always enjoyed watching NFL games. But that enjoyment has diminished lately because of all the fake moaning, fake victimhood, fake whining by these anti-America grandstanders on the football teams. And so I kindly asked the league to give players a simple choice: Dear employees, play, or leave, but no more political crap on someone else’s dime.
Unsurprisingly, I did not get a call back from anyone at the NFL. The organization seems to take people like me for granted. At their own peril.
Well, I did not watch one single NFL game last year, and I will not watch one single NFL game this year, either. And I will keep spending my time on other activities until the NFL gets its players to commit to just playing the game, and to stop insulting good people who have not had a racist thought in their lives. Or perhaps the time I free up that I used to spend watching NFL games on TV will become better spent, irrespective of the political landscape.
Yes, I know, it is common now for people to assert that disagreeing with them on policy issues automatically means you or I are “racist.” The contrary facts do not matter to them. As a result, nothing has done more damage to the battle to end discrimination and racism than this constant crying wolf by crybullies and rich crybabies. I am a very good person, I am not a racist, and I am tired of being told I am a bad person because I do not share some silly ideology.
Guys, just play ball. OK?
I have now arrived at a place where the NFL has taken on a new meaning: No F@&#’n Loss to me. I don’t miss it.
My impression of Paul Mango, candidate for PA Guv
Three weeks ago I spent half an hour on the phone with Paul Mango, newly declared candidate for Pennsylvania governor.
We talked about his candidacy, his background, political issues, economics, hopes and challenges, etc. We then followed up with several back and forth emails, each one of his expressing specific appreciation and thanks for how the exchange had benefited him in a certain way. He is a new candidate, new to politics (other than as a very generous donor to Republican candidates), and he is digesting a lot of new information and ideas, new ways of thinking.
Last week I met Mango at his formal campaign announcement at the Twin Ponds sports and fitness center in Camp Hill\Mechanicsburg.
Twin Ponds previously served as the region’s HQ for primary and general election candidate Donald Trump, who won Pennsylvania’s Electoral College votes by a margin probably accounted for just by the simple dedication of Central PA’s “normal Americans” in both political parties. The big facility is run by a pretty, petite firebrand of a woman, Mrs. Patton aka General Patton.
Here are my impressions of Mango (and yes, I know, he’s just getting started):
He is impressive in several key ways: His family background and values, his education and military service, and his high level professional work experience.
Paul Mango is a very smart, confident, and empathetic man, who comes across as a reserved, reflective, nice person, and a responsive, good listener. He is positive and genuine.
I questioned him in person about how he will compete against candidate Scott Wagner, who has spent years battling in the trenches with a lot of conservative voters and activists, against entrenched establishment political hacks in politics for personal financial gain, and who has thereby built up credibility with many politically active citizens who value bravery and honesty.
When I pointed out that Wagner has also alienated a lot of people (including many of his former supporters) in that process (because Wagner seems selfish, arrogant, and unappreciative), Mango responded that he will not say anything negative because he has never seen valuable leadership succeed except through “inspiring people.”
That is a very high bar to set for one’s self, much less one’s political competitors, but it is worthy because it says Mango has integrity. The Wagner campaign has already criticized Mango for supporting Cruz first, and then Trump later, though I got the impression that is what Scott Wagner did, too, like a lot of us did in last year’s Republican primary. Here we go, the mud is already flying!
Well, to start, if Mango is going to inspire voters, then he needs to increase his positive speaking energy, his intensity, his passion. The other night he came across as a little nervous, and definitely way too deliberative, almost plodding, at his formal announcement. His prepared speech was long and the delivery was very, very slow.
Recall that Abraham Lincoln’s speech at Gettysburg is so hard hitting because it was not long and plodding, but brief and hard hitting.
Despite serving in the 82nd Airborne and actually being a warrior, Mango’s even-keeled demeanor does not seem warrior-like, while his main competitor, Wagner, did not do military service and yet is a proven culture and fiscal political warrior.
Though he wore jeans, work boots, and an Oxford shirt, Mango is the very definition and personification of “corporate,” which will probably look or smell like moderate RINO to the trench warfare grass roots conservatives. Time will tell if that first impression is accurate.
His approach to fixing government is his approach to fixing businesses, about which it is best to just quote my activist friend Ron:
“The problem with these guys [corporate/business/ Chamber of Commerce GOP candidates who compare running government to running business] is they all have plans to fix government by running it like a business. This is not a unique viewpoint and it has never worked. This is politics, not business. Took me a while to accept that. He can have the greatest plan ever but it won’t matter because politicians don’t care [about people, policy, economy etc.]. They care about themselves and getting re-elected.”
It is a fact that careerist politicians in BOTH PARTIES do not act like corporate employees, because there is almost no accountability in politics. The old quip about the only accountability in politics resulting from being “found in bed with a dead girl or a live boy” probably doesn’t even apply today.
Like him or not, candidate Scott Wagner goes right to the key policy battles: Corrupt blood-sucking unions, ridiculous regulations that violate our federal and state constitutions, wasted and stolen taxpayer money.
That is where the rubber meets the road in the culture war for America’s soul and the war for a middle-income economy.
This is the battle front between America as it was founded and as we knew it, and America as a bastion of totalitarian socialism and politically correct thought police, envisioned by the Left.
Candidate Mango will probably arrive here at the same battle front, eventually, because the leftists’ violent street battles across America tell us that nice words alone don’t work, and Trump’s improbable win says it all (JEB! was also the quintessential corporate nice guy, and GOP voters utterly rejected him).
Mango’s steady personality seems to avoid conflict, which though commendable and reassuring in so many other settings, can send the message to some voters that he may be like a zillion other mainstream RINOs who are unwilling to dive into the bar room brawl that needs to happen for America to be set right. These careerist RINOs don’t want to get their hands dirty waging political war, which tells voters that they really just don’t care very much about political or cultural outcomes.
Mango is smart enough to see these facts and voter trends. Whether he arrives at that messy policy battle front sooner or later is the question. If he finds a way to comfortably voice his quiet intensity, his passion, his compassion for working Pennsylvanians, then he will overcome the potential impression that he is another empty GOP suit (I was told that PA GOP kingmaker Bob Asher has NOT supported Mango, which appeals to the conservative, independent-minded base).
I like the guy and I am looking forward to seeing him develop over the next six months, because, again, he is new to politics and just getting started.