California teaches America a lot of lessons
Southern California is on fire, and why it is still on fire one week, at least fifteen lives lost, endless misery, and $150 Billion in losses later reads like a graduate course in Bad Government 101.
California has been the drug addict child of the United States for a long time, but especially in recent years. Californians can’t ever get too much woke politically correct crazy, and so they keep voting for more of it and for the drunk sailor spending that enables it. No one there knows where the money is coming from, no one cares, they just keep throwing money around for empty virtue signaling.
And no money for saving water for a bad day and cleaning up old brush around residential areas. No, these two activities were generously funded, but not implemented. They both contributed to the annual Santa Ana Winds-fueled wildfires now leveling entire neighborhoods in the Los Angeless area, as reservoirs were dry, hydrants had no water, and years of unaddressed dry brush resulted in uncontrollable fires.
For many years already, California has suffered at the hands of criminal homeless and illegal aliens. Suffered unnecessarily in the name of some vague understanding of some sad people somewhere. But these fires may have taught the citizen voters there that there are limits, hard breaks, up against the best of intentions fail.
Lessons taught, maybe not necessarily learned:
a) Repeat voting for a single political party that continuously places homeless and illegal immigrants ahead of taxpaying citizens is unsustainable and will end up destroying your society.
b) Repeat voting for a single political party that makes DEI and ESG and other foolish woke virtue signaling a central point and purpose of government will end up destroying your society. The pathetic and avoidable failures of state and local government across the Los Angeles area are all attributable to race and gender ideology hiring choices, incompetent people, not hiring practices based on merit and individual capabilities, resulting in competent people who have fire hydrants with water in them in case of a fire happening in a fire-prone ecosystem.
c) Making silly, emotional, childish public policy choices, instead of responsible adult-level decisions is no way to run any level of government. These bad choices will always come back to haunt those who are subject to them. Eventually you must pay the piper. California is now paying for Gavin Newsom’s childish ideas and bad policies.
In sum, California voters now see that they have a real choice to make. They can move forward and select leaders who make responsible decisions that protect the citizenry, or they can continue to select leaders who blame human-caused wildfires on supposed “climate change,” and continue to fail.
My own takeaway from California’s fiery carnage is that no one is more racist than a white liberal Democrat. No one. The amount of destruction they wreak on people of color everywhere is unimaginable. Chicago, Philly, New York, you name an American city and you will almost always find failure and black people suffering there, for decades, and it all goes back to people like California governor Gavin Newsom and his fellow white liberals. They just can’t not hurt people, especially people of color. It has to be purposeful.
Here it is, right in front of you, urban Americans. You can learn from this lesson in California, or you can ignore it and continue to suffer. It is your vote. Just don’t continue to vote for the Gavin Newsoms of America and then put out your hand and demand American tax dollars to fix your bad policy decisions.
Nope we Americans have now learned that lesson.
Want to feel good? Go to the PA Farm Show!
The Pennsylvania Farm Show in Harrisburg, PA, has been an annual event for something like 160 years. Over that time the Farm Show building complex has grown and grown and grown. The large, beautiful, evocative Art Deco facade remains visible on most of the buildings seen from Maclay and Cameron Streets, while the buildings themselves have multiplied in size and number, especially over the past 25 years.
While the Farm Show itself is ever so slowly evolving with time, mostly from technology changes, its direct connection to agriculture and farm life remains. Agricultural organizations like 4H and FFA remain front and center in much of the activities, including the kids’ bull riding rodeo and horse barrel vaulting competitions we watched last Saturday night. Hands-on activities include all kinds of food, fiber, and animals like sheep, goats (the baby goat snuggling place returned this year and it was overwhelmed with people wanting to snuggle with adorable baby goats), cows, horses of all size, chickens and chicks, ducks, rabbits, pigs etc. are all available for close-up viewing and or holding and petting.
While there is always food available in abundance, I was pleased to see a revamped and larger PA maple syrup stand, with more products. Hate to admit it, but I am a big fan of real maple syrup. When I am not making it myself in my own maple stand, I buy between four and six gallons a year. While 99% of maple syrup is made through the reverse osmosis process now, with no cooking or maybe a very brief flash heat at its end, it is still a unique flavor that I crave all year long.
I make my own maple syrup the old-fashioned way: Collect sap from my own maple stands with old fashioned spiles and buckets, wood or propane fire under a large stainless steel evaporation pan with a spigot, constant stirring, regular addition of maple sap until the syrup reaches an almost-done consistency. Then I tap it off the evaporation pan and finish it off in pots and pans inside the house on the stove top. Takes me about 16-20 hours to boil down sixty gallons of sap. Fact: Nothing commercially available tastes anything like my own home-made, deep brown, super rich maple syrup. I think the heat really augments the maple flavor. Anyhow, I am digressing.
Old tractors, new tractors, out-buildings, clothing, boots, hats, you name it, all kinds of neat stuff is available. The only cost is parking, and that amount depends on where you park.
If you are looking to feel good, because Lord knows we all have burned out on politics and everyone is looking for opportunities to shake off the misery, go visit the PA Farm Show. It runs until this Saturday night. You will not regret it. If nothing else, you will be reminded that the food we all eat does not in fact grow in styrofoam containers in the grocery store. Rather, our food is grown on farms, and then through an elaborate and energy-intensive route it ends up on our dinner plate. Unless you grow your own food, this is how you eat. That lesson alone is a worthy reason to take kids to the PA Farm Show.
Nina got a new Stetson at the Farm Show
January 6th is the modern July 4th
January 6th is traditionally the date upon which the previous national election is certified in the US Congress, in Washington, DC, barring any discrepancies or challenges.
Certification implies a process, and any process implies steps and checks and balances. An election cannot possibly be automatically certified. What the hell would that rubber stamp prove? Certification in its fullest meaning means that all of the questions have been answered, any outstanding challenges have been resolved, and everyone or most of everyone involved is on board.
Certifiying an election means that it is a kosher product, unadulterated and without question legitimate.
And so while tomorrow Congress is supposed to stick around DC to certify President Donald Trump’s electoral success last November, it appears an imminent snow storm has sent most congresscritters squawking for shelter. Which leaves us with the opportunity to reflect upon just what meaning January 6th has taken on since the January 6th of 2021.
I participated in a peaceful protest in Washington, DC, on January 6th 2021. Originally gathering at the Washington Monument, around 1:40PM we eventually started walking down Constitution Avenue to the US Capitol, where we were supposed to peacefully show our displeasure at the obvious rubber stamping of a blatantly stolen 2020 election.
At this point, my memory of exactly where we ended up standing out in front of the Capitol is lost to the haze of time and age. However, I recall standing on a large stone plaza with a lot of other American patriots, many of whom waved American flags and other types of flags (Gadsden, many Trump themes, gay, Vietnamese) while peacefully milling around. We were facing the Capitol and about forty feet away was a line of metal barricades.
Out of the blue an unexpected and unearned rain of flashbangs and other explosive munitions were launched into our midst, while I personally watched peaceful protestors standing in front of the barricades get shot directly in their faces with explosives by the police officers who we thought were there to protect us from Antifa thugs (I saw several protestors with destroyed faces stumbling away from the barricades). I also watch police officers lean across the barricades and spray chemical irritants into the faces of peaceful protestors, as well as smash people in the head with their batons. I myself was shot many times with rubber bullets by a single determined police officer, who seemed to be trying to hit my face, but who instead hit my chest and shoulders (a picture of some of them below that I brought back with me).
Like many other peaceful protestors gathered around me, I was also gassed several times by pepper and tear gas munitions fired by the police out over the barricades and into our peaceful gathering. Being gassed is an awful experience. Mind you, none of us were doing anything but singing the national anthem and other patriotc songs, as well as breaking out into spontaneous chants of USA! USA! USA! We were standing exactly where we were supposed to be standing. We did not deserve to be shot, gassed, bludgeoned, or blown up by the police who were sworn to protect us.
The fallout from January 6th 2021 has only begun.
January 6th was nothing like the fake presentations done by the corrupt US House January 6th Committee, which dubbed in riot sounds over the silent CCTV footage they carefully cobbled together. Nothing like the ridiculous narrative told by the mainstream media. The vast majority of protestors on January 6th were peaceful, if ultimately shocked by the illegal brutality rained down upon them by uniformed police officers.
We expect a great deal of investigation to be done this year, into the official lawlessness and criminal police brutality we protestors experienced. Only a small handful of people were in or near the Capitol or its doorways, and only a handful engaged in real violence against the police. The rest of us deserve justice, and especially those political prisoners who have been languishing away without receiving a speedy trial, often in solitary confinement, since their violent arrests in 2021.
If American citizens receive huge pay-outs for minor injuries incurred from violent police officers, then what are people like me entitled to? My right eye still has a purple clot in it that I got from the gas or pepper spray on January 6th. I still carry emotional trauma from that violent experience, not to mention the several subsequent visits I received from FBI agents, who told me up front that I had committed no crimes on January 6th, but that they “just wanted to talk with me.” Like mafia goons. Their lawlessness is breathtaking.
Other Americans were seriously injured and permanently disabled by the police on that terrible day. The January 6th political prisoners have undergone years of torture and beatings in prison. All of these people deserve just compensation, and I really hope we will get it.
If nothing else, January 6th 2021 was the modern day Kent State or even the new July 4th (recall that on January 6th four protestors were killed by police, and zero police – none, nada – were killed by the protestors). We, The People stood up to the lawless thieves and power-hungry tyrants of our time, challenged their phony election certification, declared our ownership of the government they hijacked and our independence from their tyranny.
With the 2024 election of freedom-fighter Donald John Trump, we have ultimately prevailed, despite the legacy media constantly lying about us and about what really happened on January 6th, 2021.
I stood in the vicinity of the red scratch mark on the plaza
Rubber bullets that hit Josh 1/6/21
2024 in Review
Year 2024 was huge. So many changes for good have been achieved this past year. And despite big obstacles remaining for regular American citizens to overcome the Media-Military-Uniparty-Industrial Complex, I think we can see light at the end of the tunnel.
Back in 2008, the Tea Party started, right here in Central Pennsylvania, in response to then US senator Arlen Specter’s clear lack of principle. A town hall Specter was hosting erupted into widespread shouting and wide open frustration after just one person – Katy Abrams – stood up and denounced Specter’s loyalty to politics and self over the elementary interests of his PA constituents. It was the beginning of a grassroots voter rebellion against both the Republican Party establishment, and against the GOPe Uniparty.
That fight has taken on different names and wider meaning since 2008, including Tea Party Patriots, and then just Patriots, and Constitutional Patriots. By 2016 it was the Make America Great Again movement. Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign motto grew into the bipartisan/ nonpartisan “MAGA” take-your-government-back movement. MAGA includes a large portion of black and Hispanic voters, as well as frustrated whites of all income brackets, almost all rural voters, and growing numbers of disillusioned urbanites who bear a big burden living directly under failed Democrat Party policies.
This “populist” bottom-up political evolution-revolution has always been by and of We, The People, despite the Media-Military-Uniparty-Industrial Complex’s efforts to falsely brand it as “racist” or “homophobic” or whatever the silly name is du jour. Plenty of groups and organizations popped up to use, re-direct, or take advantage of our intense populist energy, like Americans For Prosperity. AFP was an early ally, then it merged with industry, and industry then went for open borders, and We, The People saw them as sellouts.
I ran for US Congress in 2009-2010, then state senate in 2012, and again in 2015 before dropping out from a bad hunting injury. Being part of this movement has been fascinating, frustrating, exhilirating, energizing, as well as draining tens of thousands of dollars from my own pockets. I always put my money where my mouth was, and believe now it was all well spent.
As a candidate, my political principles were those of America’s founding: Small, responsive, accountable government, and big citizen.
Because government exists solely for the benefit of We, The People, we are now heading into a direct head-on clash between the citizens who own the government – basically the Frankenstein federal bureaucracy, and the posh individual taxpayer-funded Marxist denizens of that Frankenstein bureaucratic behemoth.
Trump is our We, The People champion. Because Trump has suffered a martyr’s mistreatment as he seeks to return power, rights, and decision making to We, The People, he has taken on almost a god-like stature among so many people. The blatantly stolen 2020 election cemented what many Americans already knew in their gut, that we are in a deadly serious combat over raw power.
Despite intense censorship by government and corporations entangled together, new media outlets formed and grew wildly in response to the overtly corrupt establishment media. Americans are hungry for truth or at least an honest opinion. Now the alternative/ new media ecosystem is unbelievably rich, varied, diverse, and useful, while the useless old mainstream media is dying from its own self-inflicted wounds.
Looking back on 2024, it was a year of miracles, a year of difficult trials and tribulations, of intense fear and frustration, of growth and clarity. The difficultues made us Americans stronger. Despite facing immense odds in 2024, the good guys prevailed; hopefully, they are successful in 2025. Recall that some 65 million Americans voted for communism in 2024, so we clearly have real work to do. It remains to be seen if President Trump is as wise and willing to fight as we think he is. God knows, We, The People cannot afford to lose our combat with the Uniparty or its Frankenstein bureaucracy.
Only one of us can emerge victorious, and I hope it is the American citizenry and our Constitution.
[thanks to Ron Boltz for helping me remember a couple facts here]
[ps horrendous human being former failed US president James Carter became deceased in 2024, a net positive for America]
Without Chanuka there is no Christmas
Decades ago in graduate school, I was friends with a lovely classmate named Christine. Christine was from Kenya, studying graduate economics at Vanderbilt, with the expectation of returning to her country and taking up an important post in the Kenyan government. Smart, beautiful, articulate, kindly, Christine was the embodiment of what the rest of the world would like Africa to become, and what its leaders had hoped it could be.
One thing about Christine that surprised me was that, as religious a Methodist as she was (yes, Africa has more true blue religious Methodists than America, where Mainline Protestantism has become a Socialist anti-Christianity movement), she knew nothing of the Old Testament AKA the Torah. Christine thought that Christianity simply appeared to the world, and had its own kind of virgin birth, if you will. No connection to anything else, no roots in any other religion, or place.
One can easily blame the simple minded missionaries who taught Christine’s grandparents a Christianity devoid of its own history. As for Christine, you don’t know what you don’t know, correct? However, everyone has a responsibility for their beliefs, and now in our modern Internet age, where all questions can be answered to some degree of accuracy within a few seconds, and to a much higher degree of surety within a couple minutes, every one of us simply has to maintain some level of curiosity about the world around us, to stay informed. We must stay informed.
Christine taught me something that bears telling again today: Christmas owes its existence to the Orthodox Jews who successfully fought and won a brutal civil war against the Leftwing Democrats of their day, 2300 years ago.
Known as “Apikorsim”, Hellenists, Hedonists, whatever, the in-essence Democrat Party socialist Jews of 2300 years ago tried to impose a Godless paganism on the religious (Orthodox) Jews of Israel/Judea.
And the Orthodox Jews fought back.
Their leaders were known as the Maccabees/ Hasmoneans, largely drawn from the Jewish priests, and they prevailed against a much larger, better organized, better armed force by utilizing guerilla warfare. The Maccabees slowly whittled down the liberal Jews and their Greek allies through hit-and-run tactics and merciless head-long frontal attacks by highly motivated, battle-hardened warriors.
And so, when the Orthodox Jews prevailed on the battlefield, recaptured Jerusalem, re-dedicated the Temple there, and restarted the holy service in the Temple, Torah Judaism was saved. And because Torah Judaism was saved, a certain religiously observant Jew named Yeshua was born about 250 years later. And because that Jew went on to become a religious ascetic (a Nazirite like Samson), he became an outspoken critic of the religious ways or failings of his fellow Jews, and the occupying Romans, as he saw them.
The rest is history, if you know anything about the Second Temple period of Judaism or the early years of Christianity.
Point being, because Orthodox Jews fought the Leftist Jews of their time, Christianity was eventually born and eventually Christmas was created (observed the 25th day of December, just as Chanuka is always the 25th day of the Hebrew month of Kislev on a lunar calendar, which means Kislev 25th always floats around relative to the Gregorian calendar we use in America and Europe).
Tonight marks the beginning of Chanuka and the end of Christmas Day. Without Chanuka, there would be no Christmas. It is important for everyone to remember history, and to know how we all got here to where we stand today. I wish that Christine would have known history, or had been educated to want to know history, because that sensitivity or intellectual curiosity would have saved her life…a story for another day.
Happy Chanuka, America and world.
Judah Maccabee, the kind of unintentional but direct father of Christmas
Have a wonderful Xmas+ season, friends
Whatever your nationality, nation of origin, religion of origin or religious practice or faith, if you live in America, it is Christmas time. For orthodox Christians this time of the year has a special meaning, and for everyone else it absolutely must be just barely a notch below how orthodox Christians feel.
No Grinches allowed, only happiness and goodwill towards our fellow human being. You do not have to be Christian to enjoy Christmas, to go with the cheerful, happy flow, to give your annoying neighbor or co-worker a bit of leeway, to give someone the go-ahead at the opposite stop sign. Do it, it will feel good.
Wish people “Merry Christmas!” and see how happy they are to hear the earnest expression of our national holiday, two words that were almost obliterated from the American lexicon for fear of “offending” someone.
Hey, if you are actually offended by hearing Merry Christmas here in America, for a grand total of two weeks, then America is probably not for you. Take your unhappiness and lack of appreciation for our solid, stable society to someplace else.
Having just returned from some much-needed beach time and saltwater fishing, I am having to move fast into the snow, ice, and wood fire mode. Trapping season is upon me (I always wait for rifle season to end, so there are fewer people in the woods, and I also wait for bobcat and fisher seasons to start, so I don’t have to release those two prize species before their seasons start), as well as the late flintlock season.
Some fruit trees need major pruning, and a couple need a copper sulfate spray before spring arrives.
Good luck to everyone who is headed to the outdoors for more, whether it is skiing, hunting, ice skating, snow shoeing. Eat it up, drink it up, relish it, because in a few weeks it will all be over, and we will then be looking at Freezing February and then the glimmers of Spring in March.
Until then, Merry Christmas, everyone!
and you don’t have to be Christian to like Christmas
As much as I favor wintertime over all other seasons, there is no substitute for having morning coffee on a patio under a tropical sky, while everything back home is frozen solid
Everglades City Museum Xmas tree made of crab traps and trap buoys. This is folk art!
A limit of sea trout fed us well for several days
Even manatees can get into the holiday spirit
Rum and Coke time is never as good as when one is watching a tropical sunset over an ocean somewhere
Is sitting in a box actually hunting?
Hunting season is cold, and getting outside to seek deer or bear or really any other wild game animal requires a person to put up with some level of discomfort. You can put a lot of effort into hunting, and still come up empty handed. So to up the odds of escaping the attention of deer and bear, some hunters created hunting blinds up in trees. The least difficult ones were railroad sikes driven into a tree to be used as a ladder, and we would hoist ourselves up onto a stout lower limb, and there wait for a shot at a passing deer.
The truly old tree blinds from the 1930s and 1940s were ridiculously frail, made of random assortments of surplus lumber; practically death traps as soon as they were nailed up to living trees. The better old fashioned tree stands would usually be put on what we called an “Indian tree,” where someone a long time ago had deliberately bent over and caused a tree to grow parallel with the ground.
When the horizontal bent limb was at least a foot in diameter, enterprising hunters would find creative ways to attach a stable platform, usually reached by a dangerous rickety wooden ladder made out of woods trash and nails. Platforms ranged from plywood to rough cut boards, some with railings and tattered old olive drab canvas and maybe a stool. Deluxe versions had some sort of roof or covering to keep rain, snow, and sunshine off of the hunter. These elevated hunting blinds were usually eight to ten feet up off the ground, and if the rickety blind did not fall down and kill you, the hunter, then you could usually use it to kill a deer. Despite requiring skill just to stay in them, these blinds were always in demand, and elders got first dibs.
Here I am talking about the American Northeast, and Pennsylvania, specifically. Not about India, where the elevated machan gave hunters of dangerous game not only an opportunity to shoot before being detected by tigers and leopards, but a chance to get in at least one more shot or even a stabbing blow with a spear before the claws and fangs were at your throat.
Fast forward fifty years, and now elevated blinds are everywhere. But they are not like the old rickety kinds jimmied onto trees with long spikes us older guys fondly recall. Witness the rise of the elevated box blinds, which are light years ahead of the rickety wooden tree stands in use when I was a kid. These new ones look like Martian landers, and are sold along the side of RT. 15 from Duncannon to Williamsport, as well as anywhere farm machinery and grains are sold, or even in Amish farm yards.
These modern elevated hunting blinds are airtight, have windows that open and close, and safe ladders or steps made of treated lumber of metal. They are downright sophisticated, and one farm lease I know of has propane heaters in all of their elevated “huts” where guys literally cook their breakfast while waiting for a deer to show up out one of the sliding windows. Some of them are big enough to hold a whole family, and indeed these are like little remote hunting cabin outposts, where everyone from Pap to the youngest kids can comfortably take a poke at a deer from a steady rest with plenty of quiet encouragement around them.
The question is, Is this elevated box blind business actually hunting?
My four-plus-inch-thick 1987 Random House Dictionary (the resilient if lonely, unknown cornerstone of our written culture) says Hunt: To chase or search for game or other wild animals for the purpose of catching or killing.
How much chasing or searching do you see going on from the ubiquitous elevated box blinds?
Not a lot. Well, none. Shouldn’t hunting involve actual pursuit and physical exertion? Don’t we need to earn our kills?
Go on YouTube or Rumble, and you can watch hundreds of “hunting” videos of hunters sitting in elevated box blinds, overlooking crop fields and power lines. These hunters usually have a long period of self-discussion to their camera about what they are looking for, any shots taken and misses they have had, etc. They have tripods and bipods, heaters, shelves with food, windows, and are generally protected from the punishing elements that mark hunting season.
The most dispiriting of this video genre has little kids holding forth, as if experienced adults, about the relative merits of various bucks caught on cell camera trail cams that very morning, and whether or not any of them are good enough for our young camerman.
And so I think we have to ask if this elevated box blind is not really hunting, then is it good for hunting? If maintained as a hunting method after their first one or two confidence building kills, the little kids are for sure being ruined by this stuff. Because it is not reality.
People who think that hunting season solely involves sitting in one spot all day, especially an enclosed and elevated spot, and then stiffly climbing down to either bitch about the lack of deer or worse, to boast about one’s prowess whacking “the big one“, are not hunters. They are shooters. If they have at all practiced target shooting before season, and they have some huge Hubble Telescope mounted on their Million Magnum Blastem Rifle, then surely they can make that three hundred yard shot on some unsuspecting deer eating dinner in a crop field.
Sorry to be negative about this, but we are losing our souls to these elevated blinds. Yes, they make hunting season more comfortable, and they make ambushing and surprising our quarry easier, but they are really dumbing down and whittling off our hunting instincts and skills, our woodcraft that separates us from the flatlander slobs who have no self reliance abilities. Hunting is not supposed to be easy, or comfortable, it is supposed to test us and make us earn the trophies we kill.
In Europe and Asia, hunting was used until the 1800s by warriors to hone their combat skills. Nothing like dismounting your horse to face off at ground level with a mean 4,000 pound Gaur or a ferocious 1,000 pound wild boar, armed with a stout spear in hand and a short sword at your hip. Back then, hunters were tough. As were our own American Longhunters on our frontier.
You want to actually hunt? Go do a deer drive like the BNB Outdoors kids, or with The Hunting Public guys. Or take a quiet, slow still hunt woods walk like John does at Leatherwood Outdoors. These hunts take skill and effort, which is the heart and soul of the chase. Everything else is just a hands-on video game at this point. No thanks.
A deer taken while still hunting two weeks ago, with open sights. Don’t look too closely, it was hit between the eyes.
Checking nearby cell cameras to see where the deer are while sitting in a blind…
Not picking on anyone here, but you boys can do better than this
Calling Elon Musk, we have landed on Mars
The sneaky New Jersey drones
Drones are being reported all around New Jersey. Not the little plastic drones we can buy online, nor are they the expensive Mavic drones used by professional surveyors, real estate people, security personnel, etc. No, these things are reportedly six feet across, which is a small plane, by definition only of military origin and purpose.
These rogue drones are showing up everywhere in New Jersey there is important infrastructure, like power plants, dams, military installations, government buildings. During daylight. Whoever is operating them is not shy, nor are they trying to hide their information gathering operation. This is being done out in the open.
Lots of speculation about who owns these drones, and why are they operating them, and why are they operating them now. Federal and state government spokespeople in the past day have said that either they do not know what these drones are about, or that they are definitively not from some speculated Iranian “mother ship” supposedly far enough offshore to avoid detection but close enough to operate the aircraft.
None of these responses ring true, and they smell like the federal government knows exactly what the drones are, and they also do not want to tell us.
The American People are in a bad sitaution here. Because either our government doesn’t know what is going on with a blatant violation of our national security, or our government does know and does not want to tell us. Both situations are unacceptable, because both are dangerous. We civilians are supposed to own and run our governments, not the other way around. If someone hostile is flying drones around America, spying on us, then that is a declaration of war. It is very dangerous, especially if our government refuses to respond appropriately.
Here is what I think is the only real explanation for these rogue military drones: China is blatantly scooping up as much critical infrastructure information as they can get while their pet Joe Biden is still in office. Recall that Joe Bribem, who has accepted millions of dollars in Chinese bribes, allowed a Chinese spy balloon to glide unmolested over all of America two years ago, gathering intelligence on all kinds of sensitive nuclear missile sites and other military/national defense facilities.
Recall, Americans were slack-jawed incredulous while our federal government went about its daily business as if nothing was wrong while the blatant Chinese spy balloon slowly spied on America, from coast to coast. China would not stand for such an invasion of its sovereign soil or airspace for one second, and no self-respecting national government elsewhere on this planet would either.
But America does not have self-respecting or America-respecting leaders right now. Rather, our entire federal government is a swarm of traitors, all loyal to China. China has spent decades buying politicians, buying businesses, buying business leaders, buying philanthropic leaders, and buying real estate around sensitive American homeland installations. The wide-open American border is exploited most by China.
Those federal bureaucrats who were not purchased outright by China are already Marxists, committed to seeing the downfall of the American government, from inside their government offices. And it’s not just faceless bureaucrat people at the FAA who are our enemies, it is high ranking officers at the Pentagon. Lots of them.
Treason and traitors in official positions are everywhere right now, and these drones are a symbol of how badly our federal government has been gutted, captured, and at the very least turned into a torpid possum sleeping in the back of my woodshed in the middle of December (you could pick that thing up by its tail and swing it around your head, and it will remain fast asleep and non-threatening).
Such are most of the local, state, and federal bureaucrats in America. It is like the “go to sleeeeeep” line we used to say on midnight big game fishing boats anchored off the Atlantic coast, where big thrashing fish can do a lot of damage. Before boating them we would stick them in the head with a large knife or even a small harpoon, and whisper “Go to sleeeep” as their life force ebbed away and their danger to boat and crew drew down. Thus is America asleep while the Chinese are sucking away our life force, rendering us into harmless children.
The Chinese know full well that a government run by President Donald Trump will both shoot down these drones and also follow them back to where they are coming from, and then exact the full penalty for invading America. And so they are getting away with everything they can get away with while they can. New Jersey is a hub of electrical distribution for the whole east coast, and if something were to happen to a key power plant or distribution line…a lot of America would be sitting in the dark.
These invasive foreign drones looking for ways to attack America are the cost of having had our federal government bought and paid for like a sack of potatoes.
Choices: Principles vs Institutions
Humans create institutions to institutionalize our values, religious practices, hopes and aspirations, cultural identity, etc. Our institutions are created in order to make permanent and carry our values forward, a sort of vehicle. Schools, libraries, government agencies, religious institutions, family foundations, charitable foundations, unions, associations, etc, every single one created with a mission to implement certain principles.
Over time people naturally identify with a particular institution, become a champion of it, and a stakeholder to it. Again, private schools, public school PTAs, library associations, the National Ukrainian Club, various church and synagogue umbrella groups, Democrat Party, Republican Party, etc, you know those particular institutions in your own life, because they reflect your values.
What happens when the institution no longer represents or reflects the founding principles that breathed life and cause into it?
Examples abound: The United Nations works against the western democracies who founded it and currently pay for it. The Democrat Party has become a wild communist orgy of anti-Americanism; the Republican Party has forsworn its abolitionist roots and has become a bunch of establishment do-nothing fuddy-duddies; the National Rifle Association accretes multiple layers of bureaucracy into everything it does, instead of spending its limited money pursuing individual freedom; school teachers unions become outlets for destructive radical politics, far outside the mainstream of American families; a local church or synagogue is poorly run by a small group of self-reinforcing, self selecting, like-minded establishmentarians who cannot and will not respond to changes in their respective demographics…
The one that got me thinking about this subject is the Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs, a sportsmen’s group I had a long relationship with, which then attempted to take a hard left turn into climate alarmism and gun regulation back in 2020. In one quick weekend of fake votes and heavily manipulated elections, the PFSC leadership torpedoed the institution the leaders said they loved. Their far-left politics alienated their base, and the group has not yet recovered its former standing.
With PFSC, I took a hard and public stand, and while I succeeded in stopping the old group from becoming leftist stooges of the charitable foundation trust fund sector, I also lost a lot of friends. People who were loyal to the PFSC they remembered, and who they wanted it to still be. Some blamed me for damaging PFSC’s public reputation, while I blamed PFSC’s leadership for making unpopular decisions its base rejected. For sure the messenger got shot!
In 2020, PFSC’s leaders jettisoned the principles on which PFSC was originally founded, and a great portion of their natural base stopped believing in the institution.
Recently I stepped back from a formal leadership role in a local house of worship, as the venerable institution begins to crumble onto itself. Leaders there, who fondly remember this house of worship from their childhood, cannot make the tough decisions necessary to keep it alive, and in fact keep making decisions that guarantee few or no young people will join it and keep it going. This particular institution is beginning to greatly deviate from its own founding principles, and its base, its natural adherents and admirers, no longer recognize it.
One last example: The US Environmental Protection Agency was a place I badly wanted to work in while I was in college back in the mid 1980s. When I finally got to work at the USEPA, I realized that a great deal of the basic principle that had undergirded its founding had been long since tossed overboard. In place of the simple principle of a clean environment came a whole regime of anti-capitalism, anti-America regulations. After seven years as a policy staffer at USEPA, I could not wait to get out. I now think the agency needs a whole new name and a very clear mission change.
So should we be loyal to the hollowed out shells of institutions that now exist mostly in facade, gutted of what they once stood for, hopeful that they will somehow regain their former glory, or should we seek to create new institutions that are more representative of the principles that enervated the originals we so dearly loved and identified with?
Change is a constant, evolution is healthy, and institutions that do not change to some degree become stale, immobile, static, and fragile. But those that deviate from their founding principles are destined for a much faster devolution, because most people just simply stop believing in them.
The competitive free market will cause new institutions to spring alive, bringing hope and aspiration anew to old principles, replacing the old institutions as they dry up and wither away. For me, I am of two minds: Stay loyal to the old institution until that is no longer possible, on principle, and then help found a new one, on principle.