Archive → August, 2017
I am crying over spilt milk
Whether FakeBook causes, accelerates, or encourages the split-up of long standing friendships and friendly acquaintance-type relationships is a subject of endless discussion.
People who for many years, even decades, shared affection for and cheerful enjoyment of one another’s company and personality are now not talking, communicating, or sharing. Instead, one party has abruptly broken off entirely, leaving the other party bemused, hurt, and or frustrated. The drama can be plain silly, because we are talking about adults here who post histrionic things like “If you voted for ________, then just un-friend me, now, please, I beg of you.”
Or it can be more subtle, with people hitting the “ignore” button on a relationship, pretty much tossing the friendship away without the pain of actually breaking off.
This one-sided dynamic plays out most visibly on FakeBook because “likes,” comments, and the number of “friends” are actual numeric measures of a relationship’s quality. And when you start seeing a numeric down-trend in one area, you often see the actual end coming quicker and quicker.
And what is the primary cause of these fractured friendships?
Why political differences, naturally.
Do you recall the poll done about eight or ten months ago (Pew, Gallup? I don’t recall which firm did it, but it was a real polling firm and the results are believable), which showed 39% of self-identified liberals can and will live with a conservative, versus nearly double that for conservatives willing to live with liberals?
That poll showed what many of us have observed personally for some time, and increasingly over the past year: Political correctness has destroyed liberals’ ability to live up to the qualities they claim ownership of, like being tolerant, open-minded, and accepting of differences.
PC has become so intense that now simply belonging to the wrong political party, driving the wrong vehicle, or EVEN HAVING THE WRONG SKIN COLOR is grounds for heaps of burning hatred and criticism. Nothing about this behavior is open-minded. It is not tolerant. And watching people walk around with a burden of hate for all kinds of classes of people makes them look and feel a lot like the other side, the KKK or neo-Nazi side, who are ALSO intolerant and violently hateful.
While the few decades-long friends I and others I know have lost through FakeBook were not violent people, their visceral hatred still burned bright.
Where someone’s burning hate becomes physical violence is a subject for philosophy books, because gut instinct tells you that one naturally follows the other. Seemingly uncharacteristic behavior for the loving and gentle relationship we had enjoyed lo these many years, even decades, suddenly there was the hatred, the intolerance, the violent words, and then the break.
Not one conservative I know of has broken off with the liberals in their lives (because they are liberals), via FakeBook or any other way, but the number of liberals who have broken off with people who are not liberals is legion and legendary.
These liberals’ behavior is the very definition of intolerance.
Do you ever wonder why there is no ‘world peace’?
I do wonder now, and I always have wondered since I was a kid, when the Vietnam War was going strong.
Well, part of the answer to why there is no world peace is that those people who most assiduously claim ownership of being peaceful are those who in personal practice are the least peaceful.
During the Vietnam War, being pro-peace meant being against American war-making in Asia; but those same anti-war people were not against Asians making war against other Asians, or against America. So they were not really, truly pro peace. They were simply anti-America, despite living in and enjoying America.
One test of being peaceful is your ability and willingness to accept differences between one’s self and other people without getting angry, hateful, judgmental, accusatory, or violent. When that inability to accept others turns to intolerance, why then…there is an absence of peace. And you are not a peaceful person. And it is self-evident to those around you.
And no, demanding that people adopt your way of thinking is not being tolerant. Humans have been doing things a few certain ways for thousands of years, and if you want to deviate from that, then asking for tolerance is fair. Demanding acceptance, acquiescence etc at the cost of breaking off (a form of coercion and violence) is unreasonable.
I am crying over all this spilt milk, because to not cry is to lie to myself, and to make pretend that certain unhealthy dynamics are not happening.
I am sad at the lost friendships, whether mine or those of friends of mine, for sure. I am also sad about an America that has everything, certainly more than any other country, and yet is being torn apart by violence and hate in the name of “peace” and “tolerance.”
The relationships between fellow Americans are being torn apart, over what?
This is spilt milk, and I prefer to cry over this now and have a positive, healing, peaceful conversation with someone about this, rather than later cry over something else being spilt as a result of no attempts at healing having been made and the logical outcome of hate and intolerance come to fruition.
Did GOP Senator Toomey Really Flush the First Amendment and Side with the Anti-Free Speech Movement?
We have all watched the Charlottesville debacle and its pathetic aftermath.
In sum, the city administration unilaterally decided to remove a neat old statue of some guy named Robert E. Lee, whom no one today can remember.
So a bunch of protestors decided to peaceably assemble and petition the government with their grievance, specifically that the statue no longer means today what it might have meant when it was erected a hundred years ago, and that it is a work of art, and that it is part of American history, and it should stay.
Then other protestors began to rally around this symbol, and these other protestors are a bunch of racist goofs holding up the most embarrassing signs (and hats, so let me ask you, what is worse, a stupid pointy white hood or a vagina hat…your opinion is as good as any, because they are all really embarrassingly stupid hats) America has seen since the Sore Losers March Against Democracy after Trump was sworn in as President.
In America, even racist goofs (including the racist goofs at Black Lives Matter) have a Constitutional right to free speech, and a right to peaceably assemble to protest, and so these racist goofs did that, along with the history buffs, the art buffs, the southern pride buffs, et al. to protest the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue.
Naturally the media and its local affiliate, the mayor of Charlottesville, whipped up this small event into a frenzy, casting it as something it wasn’t, so they could make it into a national event and try to pin it on who else, but President Trump.
After the violent fracas, purposefully created by the mayor and implemented by racist goofs carrying African National Congress flags and using bats to attack Caucasians around them, Trump was repeatedly attacked for not having condemned just the white skinned racist goofs, but for having condemned ALL of the racist goofs at Charlottesville, including the violent leftists and their willing partners the violent white supremacists.
Nothing Trump said was good enough for the Democrat Party and their communications arm, the mainstream media. Everything Trump said was claimed to be insufficient, insincere, etc., though this was obviously just political grandstanding by his political opponents.
But guess who is a political opponent of President Trump, and who also jumped on the grandstanding bandwagon?
Why, Pennsylvania’s own US Senator Patrick Toomey.
In the recent past, Senator Toomey’s weak behavior begged for a primary opponent, and the only reason he did not get one was that he was facing someone even farther to the left than he, Katie McGinty in the 2016 election. And so we are stuck with this sniveling, whining, weak, spineless tepid little man Toomey for another six years.
Senator Toomey refused to condemn the violent leftists and racists who initiated the attacks on the goofball white supremacists, AS WELL AS ATTACKS ON OTHER PROTESTORS AND EVEN PASSERSBY.
Senator Toomey refused to condemn the Charlottesville mayor who manipulated the confrontation by changing the protest venue at the last minute, thereby ensuring physical contact between the opposing sides and also barring his city police officers from making arrests, except in the most egregious circumstances.
Senator Toomey refused to support the US president’s call for calm and a cessation of violence by everyone committing violence there.
Senator Toomey refused to support the US Constitution’s guarantee of peaceable assembly and petition of government, and in fact his own words spell out his hostility to free assembly and free speech.
Rather, Senator Toomey joined in on the leftist attack on Trump, equating equal condemnation of all racists, white and black, with supporting white racism.
Talk about moral equivalence, this sad excuse for an American Pat Toomey is full of moral equivalence himself, as well as full of political opportunism and spineless jellyfish wobbly-kneed “action.”
Earth to Spineless Weakling Pat Toomey: Bigotry is bigotry, and bigoted violence is bigoted violence, no matter who does it, and it all must be condemned. There are no sacred cows in America, so why are you helping create one?
America’s problems are not going to get resolved by weak, fake ‘leaders’ like Pat Toomey, who make common cause with violent rent-a-mob thugs bent on ending the free speech rights of people they disagree with. In fact, Toomey makes our problems worse.
Here is the email he sent out last week; you judge for yourself:
“This past week our nation was rocked by tragedy in Charlottesville, VA. The acts we saw were a horrifying reminder that there are still those who seek only to divide us.
The racism, hatred, and violence seen in Charlottesville were vile and unacceptable. I am disgusted by white nationalists, white supremacists, and neo-Nazis and believe the racism and hate spewed by these groups have no place in our society.
Furthermore, there can be no moral equivalency between neo-Nazis, bigots, white supremacists, and those who oppose them. Our country has no room for corrupt ideology or violent acts.
I hope that what occurred in Charlottesville will be an isolated incident. Moving forward, I pray that members of Congress will put politics aside, unequivocally condemn hate and bigotry, and find ways to work together to protect our shared American values of equality and justice for all.”
Yay, it’s county fair season
No matter where you live, it is county fair season.
County fairs everywhere are celebrations of community, family, simple pleasures, and simple, easy fun. That fun usually includes eating really naughty, high-fat, high-carb, high sugar food you would never, ever eat any other time of the year, like funnel cakes.
Yum!
If you get the powdered sugar on your funnel cake, don’t take it on a ride until you’ve eaten it, or you will have a white powder imprint of the funnel cake on your face or shirt. Guarantee it. The small-town carnival machines populating county fairs everywhere specialize in jerky motions to entertain the riders, and those jerky motions always catch people unaware, shoving their food right back into their face or chest.
The fresh smell of farm animals there for show mingles with the smells of the fried food, and it is an acquired taste of a smell, I must say.
Last night I was at the Perry County Fair, which I have gone to for years, out near Newport.
Volunteering at the Duncannon Sportsmen booth is a lot of fun, because I get to interact with the happy public, as they good-naturedly try their hands at small games of chance for a non-profit, educational purpose (the club). Such as, when a little kid lines up the little plastic crossbow loaded with the plastic dart, getting them to shoot it at one of the club members’ hat, instead of the deer target that will win them a soft (“plush”) toy. Laughs all around, as the club members good-naturedly take the abuse. The kid gets the toy anyhow.
One thing we are missing is a dunking pool. I’ll work on that for next year, because there are several guys I just really want to see get wet, in public. And no doubt, we could raise a lot of money with a dunking pool. The Duncannon Sportsmen money goes right back into Perry County, like local 4-H, Boy Scouts troops, volunteer fire and ambulance crews, etc. As my folks would say, the money is just making the rounds, going from one hand to another to another and eventually it finds its way right back to where it started. That right there is the essence of community, ‘all in this together’.
And that is probably my biggest enjoyment of local county fairs, including the Gratz Fair in northern Dauphin County, where I live: The sense of community, the ties that bind us all together. In a time of really fractious political rancor, pushed by the establishment media more than anyone (I mean gosh, have you noticed how all the mainstream media outlets have the same exact message, which is 97% hyperventilating and aggressively negative about President Trump, all the time?), isn’t it nice to get a breath of fresh air and hang out with your fellow citizens in an environment of fun and relaxation, away from all that noise?
County fairs are like a big family picnic, where long-lost cousins show up once a year. Friendly people you wouldn’t otherwise see or interact with, but now you do, and you enjoy it, because people are neat. And at county fairs, everyone just wants to have a fun time.
I like that.
Historic American Art vs. NAZI ISIS People
In the 1930s, the German NAZI party identified “degenerate” art that was supposedly representative of “degenerate” culture, officially unfit for Germans.
Paintings, sculptures, drawings, pottery, books, poetry, you name it, if it had any artistic value, the NAZIs scrutinized it carefully. And if that art did not match the NAZI’s new standards, then it was forbiddden, burned, destroyed, or looted and hidden away, to be ransomed and sold off to future buyers outside of the ‘culturally supreme’ Deutchland.
Entire museum collections and privately owned collections throughout NAZI-occupied Europe were looted, damaged, and or destroyed, because the art did not comport with the new standard these Ultra Germans had created. Priceless artifacts were lost forever, at best melted down for their precious metal value.
If you want to see the long-term impacts of this intolerant approach to art, use www.duckduckgo.com to search the phrase “nazi looted art,” and marvel at the sad results. Real Western culture took a huge hit from the neanderthal NAZIs, and the ill effects are still felt today.
Fast forward six decades to ISIS, the puritanical Muslim movement that uses extreme violence and sadistic cruelty to achieve political domination. A lot like the NAZIs, come to think of it.
ISIS has a thing against most art and even historic artifacts, if they do not fit neatly into the Sharia law that ISIS followers believe in.
Ancient Buddhist cliff carvings, imposing and inspiring…detonated into rubble, by ISIS.
Ancient Assyrian cities, buildings, from the beginning of recorded human history….bulldozed and detonated into shards of broken rock, by ISIS.
Important archaeological digs providing useful history, bulldozed by ISIS.
Entire churches looted of anything of immediate value, then burned down, by ISIS.
Entire museum collections either destroyed, or looted and re-sold on the international black market, by ISIS.
Fast forward just a few years to ANTIFA, Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, etc., and now we have priceless American artifacts that belong to the public being outright destroyed by mobs from these groups.
Irreplaceable and beautiful bronze statues of long-dead generals and soldiers are being removed and destroyed either by street thugs enabled by big city mayors, or by the big city mayors themselves.
This is a war on history and art no different than the NAZIs or ISIS.
At the very best, this is simply the mistake of applying new understandings to old history.
Oh sure, the neanderthals claim that these statues are memorials to bad ideas, and sad times, and to some extent there may be some vague shred of truth in that. But to keep these cultural artifacts, these works of high art, is no endorsement of what they may have once captured long, long ago.
Rather, these statues are mute testimonials to our nation’s history, its struggles, and its triumphs. The fact that the Confederacy did not win, due to the intervention and huge sacrifice by hundreds of thousands of Caucasian men from the north, is the real story of these old monuments.
Today we have one American political party that is increasingly at open war with every basic value and idea that undergirds America, as it was founded. These public square symbols are caught up in that party’s war.
That political party has more and more officials doing cheap political stunts, like seizing old bronze statues in the public square, and declaring them “Cherem” (unfit, like ISIS does to the churches it burns), and culturally unfit, like the NAZIs did.
Frankly, there is zero difference between these mayors, and Virginia governor Terry McCauliffe, and the other totalitarian movements that preceded them, like the NAZIs, ISIS, and the Soviets (who tore down beautiful old Russian statues and replaced them with boring, utilitarian statues of Lenin and Stalin meant to project an intimidating political message).
Whether these mayors and governors act unilaterally and use publicly owned machines to take them down, or if they allow their allied street thugs from ANTIFA and BLM to tear them down, while the city police are ordered to make no arrests, it makes no difference.
In the end, these mayors and their violent street soldiers are no different than the worst people in history. But if they win, you can bet they will erect statues of themselves, glorifying their total transformation of America to…God knows what.
Now they are talking about destroying the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC. No lie.
I say we make a stand like a stone wall to protect this historic American art, and stop this insanity, stop this assault on America, by these modern day NAZIs and ISIS thugs.
Help! My bank account self-identifies as a billionaire
Although I had put only twelve hundred bucks in it, my bank account recently decided to start self-identifying as a billionaire.
It is true that there were not billions of dollars in the account, but that didn’t stop it from saying that there should be, and, even more important, it didn’t stop it from SPENDING like it had a billion dollars.
We had a talk, the bank account and I.
We spoke about responsibility, restraint, honesty, objectivity, working for what we want, embracing life as it is and not as we wish it would be, and so on.
I mean, come on, Bank Account, I am not a billionaire and I cannot place a billion dollars in you to cover your personal feelings and desires and all the costs associated with satiating them.
Unfortunately, the bank account then went on a wild spending spree, which I ended up being on the hook for, and which I had no money to pay for.
Our next talk turned to angry accusations.
What can I say, I was frustrated. I expected better behavior from the bank account, and I expected reasoning with simple math and logic to work. Dollars and cents. What money goes out must be covered by money coming in.
What the bank account said in response made no sense to me, but I had to accept it.
The bank account called me a bigot, and mean, and hurtful, and disrespectful of its most personal wishes.
This shocked me, and made me question myself. Was I really such a bad person for insisting on the most rudimentary good behavior?
I wasn’t sure where to go with the relationship as the bills were stacking up, and the bank told me that ultimately I was responsible for the behavior of my own bank account, so I would have to pay the bills in the end.
Believe it or not, things got worse.
When I opened the bank account, it was just me spending the money that was in it. After the bank account self-identified as a billionaire it had developed a taste for luxury items.
And then, because of feelings once again, my bank account decided it was against the simple safeguards meant to keep others from spending the money in the account.
Even worse, the bank account developed a taste for financial largess to others that bore no resemblance to the twelve hundred bucks I had originally deposited, much less the billion dollars it pretended to! Before I knew it the bank account was partying hard with all kinds of new friends, and letting them withdraw money that they wanted to spend on themselves.
That kind of generosity with my money made the bank account feel awfully good about itself, and it made others like it more than boring, crabby old me, always whining about balancing expenses with income.
When I went to the bank to complain, I was told that the bank account was in my name, and although it had obviously gone off the deep end, I was going to have to pay all the bills in the end.
So I decided to self-identify as a hermit, and I abandoned the bank account. I just withdrew from the relationship altogether. I couldn’t afford it.
Last I heard, the bank account still self-identified as a billionaire and was still living large, with all kinds of hangers-on and new-new friends, all with expensive tastes, living it up every day and night. The bills are piling up, and I have no idea who is going to pay them.
It’s berry season!
For about 150,000 years we humans have been hunter-gatherers, living a nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyle that follows the migrating animals and the growth of plants our bodies can eat.
Edible plants were a huge component of hunter-gatherer food, easily dried and carried, many of them lasting well into October and November after plants have gone dormant in most places. Unlike meat, dried edible plants do not easily rot, or attract nibbling animals.
Among edible plants, fruits and wild berries reign supreme.
That is because fruits and berries contain an unusual mix of carbohydrates, sugars, minerals, and vitamins, all of which are necessary for survival. Especially vitamin C, a crucial ingredient in a healthy human body (think scurvy).
The fact that wild berries taste especially sweet and supplement other foods with extra flavor is a big draw.
Sweet-tasting foods rarely occur in Nature.
Blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, huckleberries, wineberries, and many others grow abundantly here in Pennsylvania and across the Eastern US.
Plains Indians like the Lakota, Pawnee, and Comanche made a mix of red meat and berries called pemmican. Ripe berries were turned into a big mush and then worked into meat strips. Usually the mixture was dried on wooden racks in the open air and sunlight, and the dried slabs and sticks were then put under the horse saddle to be worked and broken down into what we would call jerky today.
“Jerky” gets its name from the gentle jerking motion of the horse saddle, as horses step forward. The motion slowly breaks down the meat fibers, making them easily chewed and digested.
So here we are, a bunch of sedentary Americans, mostly eating out of cans and bagged frozen foods.
One antidote to this somewhat unhealthy arrangement is to go outside and do stuff.
Hike, walk, sit and read or sit and chat with someone face to face, fish, canoe, grill out, etc., so many easy outdoor activities.
A really easy outdoor activity is berry picking. Sure there are some thorns, but so what. The benefits are fresh, delicious, healthy berries that are not sprayed with chemicals, or bagged in plastic bags, or frozen. The whole family can do it. Go find a field edge, and bring some hard containers, and start picking.
Humans have been berry picking in that Summertime window of opportunity for a really long time. So long that it can be measured in ice ages come and gone, ice sheets advancing and retreating. That is a lot of years.
If we have been doing that activity for that long, you know it is good and natural. That the whole family can do it, and then make pies together afterwards, makes it all the better.
Just watch out for poison ivy!