Advice for young men
Following a lot of recent discussions about the generally sorry state of America’s young people, it is necessary for this elder to chime in. Go ahead and say it: “OK Boomer,” it just proves the point here.
Because I am a man, and grew up in a time when Americans knew who they were and what a woman was, and what a man was not, this advice is aimed at America’s young men. If you think you are young, then this is for you. And if you are starting over a little later in your life, then these thoughts might also be for you.
First, be a gentleman in all ways, and dress like one, if you can. Be articulate, thoughtful, reflective, a listener, and respectful, even of people or opinions you do not yet understand or with which you disagree. This will set you up for receiving the same, which we all enjoy. Dressing nicely will really make you stand out, and be received well.
Second, be chivalrous at every opportunity. Men my age were taught to open doors for women, which made women feel special and made men feel better than average. Today I open doors for women, and men, every opportunity possible. Sadly, many older women evince surprise at this kind act, and I always say “If I did not hold this door open for you, my mother will jump out from behind that bush over there and she will kick my ass.”
The older women know exactly what I am talking about, and smile, or laugh, because they remember. They enjoy being treated nicely and because discipline was once an important part of child rearing and creating a healthy, well adjusted, functioning adult. Some women will even laugh or confirm my fear that Mom is indeed right over there, just waiting for me to screw up. Fear of Mom is not always a bad thing. It built functioning human civilizations for thousands of years until recently, when moms decided they had to be their children’s best friends, or worse, their enablers.
Third, learn how to fight. Fist fighting was a way of life when and where I grew up, and almost all of the boys I had fist fights with ended up becoming close friends. We ended up hunting, fishing, camping out together, riding dirt bikes, etc. Some of us are still in touch. It shaped us, it did not ruin us, though some kids liked fighing too much, and they ended up being the older guy you know who goes to jail.
A lot of those youthful fights were more a test of a guy’s measure than an act of hostility. Guys sizing each other up. Today, hostility is in the air, and danger lurks around every suburban street corner, because crime goes unpunished and the wheels of our society are falling off. A man worth being called an American should know how to at least defend himself, if not make an attacker regret his choice.
Recently at a wedding, I encountered a young man whose last appearance in my life was as a scrawny, nerdy, bookish, bespectacled, sweet natured teenager. Today, he is a fine, confident, and muscular specimen of a young American man, complete with a concealed carry pistol and weekly boxing lessons. No designated victim he, unlike so many American men.
You do not need to be a black belt in anything, some of which are actually a liability and not an asset (overconfidence kills the cat); you just need to know when to run away, which is almost always, and lacking the possibility of retreat, how to make a good showing for yourself and your future health. Boxing and various other forms of fighting can be learned almost everywhere across America.
Simple lessons teach the basics of stance, timing, blocking, parrying, and striking. Eons ago, I tried a few styles of Karate, and settled on the old version of Tang Soo Do, Korean street fighting. That was replete with throat rips, eye gouges, and finger breaking. Today, such training is considered a legal liability, and Tang Soo Do is no different than the version of the point system Thai Quan Do taught in most dojos.
Whatever fighting style or practice you learn is good. Again, learning to defend one’s self is not about becoming the bully of your block or being a nationally recognized expert in arm locks and spinning back kicks, or ripping your shirt off at parties and demonstrating your moves. You are not taking classes in self defense so you can do somersaults that end in hand choppng pine boards. Rather, every American man should have enough confidence and will power to stand toe to toe with an assailant, if the need arises. This is the American spirit.
A man’s spirit.
TBC
Spoiled brat Republican kids, wth
Next installment of cane-shaking at spoiled American kids, this time directly at the so-called conservatives and Republican young people.
Why are you young people, with so much promise, so much potential, so much energy, so many options, also so negative and living the flip-side of the grievance culture that the Left has used to nearly destroy America?
You will say that America is ganging up on us, which is true, and that much of the ground rules, that your parents made you live by while you were growing up, are not being followed by anyone else, which is also true.
True, all of it, but irrelevant. Let me ask you a question:
When our forefathers founded America, what kind of conditions did they face? Not very good, right? Bad, right? Overwhelming odds, right?
Were the British fighting fair, while trying to stop the young republic from gaining independence and succeeding as a new nation run by its people, instead of its nobility and aristocracy? No, the British did not fight fair. In fact, they very often took no prisoners on the battlefield, and “dispatched” with bloody bayonet anyone who was wounded, and then executed by firing squad anyone left standing.
And yet, General George Washington and his brave troops fought, and fought, and fought. They were undeterred. They bled and fought, day after day. Yes, it was tough, but what option did they have? To lose was to lose everything, and become slaves.
You young conservative Americans are not weak, and you are not pathetic, and you are not sad losers, so STOP ACTING LIKE THAT.
My advice, or rather my request, is that you look within yourself/ yourselves and find and use that same strength and ingenuity that our Founding Fathers had to draw upon to survive and create the great country we live in. It is in you.
And yes, America is in survival mode right now, no arguing about that. Our beloved America is in terrible shape because of anti-Western ideology on the Left and complacent cowardice on the Right. The Democrat Party is crazy and the Republican Party is lazy, and the crazies are winning.
So do not mimic the Left and begin whining and bitching about how unfair things are. Do not do that. Rather, band together and pursue positive goals. Like: Recruit American Blacks, Hispanics, and Asian Indians into the Republican Party, and make the Republican Party a truly conservative institution that promotes the basic principles of America’s founding, like meritocracy and equal opportunity for everyone.
And like: Create your own institutions, if the current ones are corrupted.
Years ago, my son was one year away from being an Eagle Scout, and he dropped out of Boy Scouts because of the massive assault on the institution. The demand to include girls in his troop was one problem, because he could no longer hang out with just boys and talk about Boy things in a safe environment. And then came the gay thing, where everyone had to talk about being gay, and acting gay, with older gay men hanging around, in what had been a non-sexual environment where talking about sex anything was generally frowned upon. It was this new form of sexual harassment that drove my son out of the Boy Scouts, and broke his will as a Boy.
Hugely sad for our family, who had all cheered on our son in his many years as a Boy Scout.
And I experienced something similar while in graduate school, back in 1990, when I was matter-of-factly told that White men had a bleak future in academia. My dream of being a college professor was blown up, because I had the wrong skin color. I felt sold out, and betrayed by the institutions I wanted to be a part of.
And in fact, when I went to work in the Federal government in Washington DC, instead of finishing my Phd and becoming a college professor, I discovered that the federal workforce was only a few years behind the racial and anti-man gender assault well under way in academia. My career turned into a white guy running like hell, trying to stay out ahead of the pack of dogs chasing us down (how ironic that the people running those packs of hunting dogs were and still are all White Liberals, who long ago destroyed the American Black family).
So I know of what I speak, and of what you feel. Your groups, organizations, institutions have almost all been corrupted, and you find yourself overwhelmed and surrounded by attackers. All of this is factually true, it is not just a feeling. But do not live by your feelings, live by your intelligent brains.
Be like George Washington when he fought the British, and retreat and re-form and re-organize in safety, again and again as much as you must, in order to fight effectively another day.
But fight you must, as men, as American men, as George Washington men, because if you little bastards sit around sucking your thumbs and bitching about how unfair life is, you will indeed lose this fight and lose America and all of its beautiful promise, and your adult lives will be a horrendous leftwing Marxist hellscape of slavery and oppression. And tough guys like me will either be dead or too old to fight for you.
So fight, dammit, fight smart and out-flank the enemy. Out-organize it, and defeat it. And once you have your enemy defeated on the battlefield…do not leave it alive to come back and attack you again later on. Make Marxism and treason absolutely illegal in America… by making it terribly punishable.
So Job #1: Form a stronger, better, harder, more popular, leaner, less elitist Republican Party, and go out and win elections with a majority of the country supporting you. You can do it, if you but will it.
Passover + Easter = Peaceful freedom
Tonight is the beginning of the week of Passover, the ancient Biblical holiday marking the end of Jewish slavery in Egypt and the beginning of their 40-year trek to Israel, their Biblical homeland.
Passover is the major worldwide holiday dedicated to human freedom. From Passover comes inspirational phrases in American founding documents and coinage, and the Last Supper in the Gospel. This Sunday is Easter, the worldwide holiday about spiritual renewal and peace.
Tonight, while Jews and Christians are at their Seder tables, President Trump will announce the beginning of the end of the war to end Iran’s apocalyptic nuclear holocaust ambition. This Easter Sunday will mark the beginning implementation of that winding down. The symbolism of this timing of events is powerful.
In just one month, President Trump has done what naysayers and spineless apologists had said could never be done – the destruction of a genocidal Islamic tyranny determined to hijack our entire planet. Iran as we knew it a month ago is no more, its 47 years of nonstop militarism now in rubble, its threats to humanity vastly diminished.
Imagine if world leaders had had Trump’s level of foresight and bravery in 1938; if they had had his strength of conviction to confront Adolf Hitler before he gained momentum; there would likely have been no World War II, no mass destruction of Europe by the genocidal German Nazis. President Trump’s principled, decisive nature this past month has saved what is left of Western Civilization, giving it time to save itself in the long run, before it is subsumed under a wave of foreign ground invasion and Iranian nuclear missiles.
Tonight, the world knows peace for the first time in a very long time. If you don’t know this, you should, and if you don’t appreciate this fact, you need to contemplate on it. No more TDS, no more JDS, just give thanks that the America you so easily take for granted has a lot more breathing room. Much thanks to be said this Passover and this Easter for President Trump’s gift of peace and freedom.
And we all hope the Iranian People will take this same opportunity for themselves.
Carpe diem, carpe lifeum, carpe friendum
Carpe diem – Latin for seize the day – was popularized in America by now deceased actor Robin Williams in a wonderful (if moronically anti gun) movie called The Dead Poets Society.
In his characteristic full-throttle mode, hard to tell if he was acting or just being him-so-interesting-self, Robin Williams playing the school teacher, beautifully exhorted his high school students to carpe diem, seize the day, to gather ye rose buds which ye may, to live life fully moment by moment and day by day, to miss nothing, let no opportunity slip by, to live and be their best.
This is an ages-old challenge for all of us, especially Americans, whose lives today are filled with so much clutter and nonsense, especially online (except for this blog, of course), so much material chasing, and ego driving, and so little opportunity for reflective contemplation.
Well have I been reminded of carpe diem in just the past couple days. Another friend gone, before their time, before the years said they should be gone and leave us. A wonderful and interesting person, full of life and cantankerous fist-waving at President Trump and Republicans, who was a pretty conservative rural white Southerner, nonetheless, whose personal views on borders and illegal immigration and public welfare for new immigrants fell deeply into Republican policy territory. Whether this contrary policy place was cognitive dissonance or confusion or misplaced brand loyalty to a political party that had long ago left this person behind, I do not know, nor do I care.
I never cared. It just made them an interesting person, whose chemistry somehow strangely matched with my own.
This old friend was important to me, as are so many old friends from, let’s say, the past fifty years of my ever-shortening life. And yet, not important enough to see in person for many years, despite mutual declarations of intentions and desires to do so. So much to catch up on, the kids, the grandkids, career, friends, family.
Now, this person like a puff of smoke in a gentle breeze – poof – is gone from my life, and from the life of their own children and family, who loved them very much.
As I age, I am seeing more and more friends literally drop dead or get sick and die. People I care about very much, and maybe to whom I have not expressed my appreciation in a long time. Or my apologies for stupid behavior in our youth. Or to share some knee-slapping hilarity over ridiculous and probably dangerous adventures we did together, long ago, when rural American youth did such things with impunity, and without fear of being branded a terrorist.
Yes, I have regrets, now that my friend is dead, before I had a chance to sit down with them one more time. And in this moment of regret, or recurring moments as I move through my day from one errand and activity to another, I am reminded to carpe diem.
And… Carpe Lifeum, Carpe Friendum.
To miss no opportunity to breathe in the richest of life that I can muster, at every moment. Enjoy my friends, my life. Before I, too, suddenly and unexpectedly breathe my last breath on this earth.
Not to sound morbid, but my friend did just unexpectedly die, literally dropped dead, and so let us both turn this sad black rose into a red rose bud that we gather together, and treasure together, while we yet may.
Goodbye, old friend, and Hello, living friends. We need to have a coffee or a beer together, don’t we…
SAVE ICE
The SAVE Act is in its final throes of being brought to a vote in the US Senate. This is the proposed law that will require all voters to prove they are American citizens before they can cast a vote.
Makes sense to me. The only people who would oppose this kind of basic election law are those who oppose election integrity and who want vote cheating.
Way way too many memes contrasting the ridiculous claim that getting ID to vote is racist, because you know how racist it is when we show our IDs to buy booze, get into a venue, pick up a prescription medicine etc etc… there is no good reason why a person would oppose ID for voting. The only people who oppose ID for voting are people who benefit from fraudulent elections.
Which is why funding for ICE ( U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is so important: America must have control of its borders, control of who enters America, and control over what these people are carrying into America.
Controlling who enters America helps us control who is voting in America, because one political party has turned illegal immigrants into a business plan (illegal votes, stolen elections, fraudulent government grants recycled back into that political party).
So, today is SAVE ICE Day. We need the SAVE America Act and we need ICE funding, which are both being held up by just one political party that objects to basic election integrity and national borders integrity.
Also last night, that one political party held a political rally in costume called “The Oscars,” in which personal IDs had to be presented multiple times in order to take a seat behind the very high walls, and in which voting for winners was limited to a very carefully selected and vetted group of people.
Schizophrenia used to be a feared medical condition, but nowadays it is an honorable, even noble calling. By only the wealthiest of self-appointed elites, no less.
I sure hope we are able to SAVE ICE and bypass national schizophrenia surrounding American elections going forward.
Bomb shelter inequity and other Monty Python skits
Today, while texting with someone I love and do not really know, despite our many years of acquaintence, this odd exchange occurred:
Me: “Here is someone in a bomb shelter, in his work clothes on a sunny afternoon, watching the rockets fly overhead.”
Alice in Wonderland: “Those who haven’t a bomb shelter would happily trade places. ;-)”
Turns out, Monty Python has bomb shelter envy because of his bomb shelter inequity. Monty Python picked a fight by dropping bombs on his neighbor, got bombed back, and then cried foul because he lacks a bomb shelter in which to hide from the bombs he invited in response to his own bombs.
Picking fights with the neighboring country, bombing its citizens day after day after day, immediately turns to victimhood the moment that the neighboring country fights back.
You following the illogic here?
The perpetrators are actually the victims, and the true victims are actually entitled richy-rich fancy-pants because they have bomb shelters in which to take cover from their neighbors’ bombs. There is a bomb shelter inequity here, because having a bomb shelter is a privilege, and it is really so damned sad and unfair. There should be proportional bomb shelters, apparently, in addition to proportional bombs. Can’t respond with too many bombs, because that is also inequitable.
How about this for an inequity: There are 2.5 billion Monty Pythons bombing about ten million officially designated victims. This wildly disproportionate attacker-to-victim ratio is so wildly out of kilter, so blatantly unfair; and yet, to some very strange twist of logic and inversion of values, we have ended up with bomb shelter inequity and privilege.
Why, the brazen survivial of those officially designated victims! How dare you!
Monty Python could make one hell of a loony tunes skit about this bomb shelter inequity situation, except that the real Monty Python guys also went down this same rabbit hole. Nothing funny remains, just crazy people with too many bombs and a handful of survivors running for their lives in ever shrinking amounts of real estate.
Only the sadists rejoice.
Go ahead and laugh, sadists of the world, because Alice and Monty Python are coming for you, next. Grinning clowns with butcher knives. It is hysterically funny.















