Category → Family
Shen Yun thumbs up review
Somewhere in the time frame of 1971 to 1974, a troupe of Chinese acrobats and dancers put on an incredible performance at Penn State University’s Recreation Hall. Despite having been a wee lad up in the bleachers that evening, I can still now recall moments of their performance with shocking clarity, such were the amazing skill and feats of strength they brought to the American public.
Lots of male and especially female displays of traditional weapons mastery – spears, swords, knives – whose choreography defies even an aged and highly skeptical intellect decades later, as well as incredible and frankly unbelievable balancing + acrobatic + martial arts acts with tea cups and people, bending iron bars that the audience members were invited to try etc etc.
And now looking back, I realize that those early 1970s Chinese performers must have been the last of their kind, or maybe they were exiles, such was the crushing tyranny of Mao’s “Cultural Revolution” aimed at stamping out through murder, torture, and literal destruction of every single thing that had made China China for the past five thousand years. In any event, in Rec Hall that night I had witnessed history.
Well, fast forward about fifty years, and into the intervening gap steps Shen Yun, a modern show about “China Before Communism.” That is, before all that Mao Cultural Revolution communist crap that has destroyed one of the world’s great nations and culture. Begun in 2006, Shen Yun performances have been evolving and growing for the past sixteen years, and now boasts eight geographically dispersed troupes regularly impressing audiences around America. The Princess of Patience and I saw one such troupe in Pittsburgh, PA, this past Sunday, at the historic and beautiful Benedum Theater.
Looky here, I am no theater or musical show kind of guy. So don’t go on reading further here and expecting to encounter the usual aphorisms and adjectives “professional” art and theater critics regularly provide through their Pez dispensers.
What you are about to read is my own unvarnished layman perspective, as told from the guy who almost always falls asleep as soon as the lights go out and the curtain rises, and who is then awakened either by the sharp elbows of the theater goer to my left or by the Princess of Patience to my right. Apparently I think I am not snoring when I sleep in a theater, but in fact I do snore.
Apparently one play was stopped mid-scene while an actor asked someone to stop me from snoring, such was the distraction. What can I say, few theater performances are memorable to me. Men singing…bad. Men dancing in tights and playing dress-up…really bad. Theater and especially musicals and most especially opera are all a refined form of torture. If a play is any good, it will become a movie, which I might see and during which I probably will not fall asleep. My highly educated and experienced opinion here.
But, such is my love for the Princess of Patience, that I bought tickets and took her to see this updated version of whatever it was I had been mesmerized by fifty years ago.
To its credit, Shen Yun kept me awake. We can joke, but that is actually an achievement.
Shen Yun’s scenes or performances are relatively brief, each probably five to seven minutes long, and also varied. That constant change helps keep the audience’s attention focused. The subjects are about traditional Chinese culture, love, war, good vs. evil, history, spirituality, chivalry, family, and the performers wear culturally appropriate dress in each scene. They also have an act about forced organ harvesting, the current real-time inhumane insane crazy can’t believe this is happening actual action of murdering political prisoners and transferring their healthy organs to the unhealthy bodies of Chinese citizens who are “more equal”* than the 99.99% of the Chinese socioeconomically beneath them.
*(George Orwell, author of dystopian novel and a foreshadowing message about the present political situation in both China and America 1984, coined this phrase more equal than others in his other dystopian novel Animal Farm, where the political leader pigs betray the farm animals’ revolution against the humans and go on to corrupt the original commandment that all animals are equal in order to keep their pig selves in unintended, constant, never-ending more equal than others tyrannical mastery over all the other animals)
Something I had not seen before is Shen Yun’s use of a digital screen as the stage backdrop, instead of the traditional painted screen that would form the background for the stage in each scene. Shen Yun uses different digital backdrops, often several different ones, in each scene. They are crisp, clear, and bright. They also allow for cartoon versions of the actors to soar through the air or run away over the horizon. Maybe this is old technology, but it is a first encounter for me, and I liked it.
Things I liked about Shen Yun: The amazing dance, ballet, tumbling, and acrobatic abilities of the professional actors, the incredibly tight and perfectly executed choreography, the superior talent of the live orchestra members, and the bright and flowing costumes that must be a real b#tch to move around in. I liked all the subject matters. The simpler weapons handling wasn’t intended to be anything like the old days, but it adds a nice change to each story and act. The pleasant combining of traditional Chinese music with a modern European/ Western orchestra is very cool.
Things I did not like about Shen Yun: About a third of the acts are repetitious, despite using different costumes and some different choreography, with the same sweeping “windmill” arm motions of the actors in each one. Consider that the one act that brought the loudest applause was about a traditional Tibetan dance, complete with very different moves and costumes. Another thing that irked me was how MC/Announcer Perry’s suit crotch was obviously rumpled. Probably because I am not a regular suit wearer, my eye was immediately drawn to this unprofessional and uncomfortable anomaly. Come on, Perry, your suit must be cleaned and pressed before each performance. Even a knuckle dragging lug like me knows this.
In conclusion, I spoke with half a dozen members of the audience both inside and outside the theater, and everyone liked it. Some appreciated the simple artistic expression, despite not synching with the political, religious, or cultural messages. Others really liked the occasional blips of overt religious messaging, which if I had to guess is some sort of Bhuddist messianism that most Christians can relate to in one way or another. One audience member I spoke with said that she is politically liberal, but that she was not bothered at all by the political or religious aspects of Shen Yun: “I don’t have to agree with it to enjoy it. This is just their own artistic expression and I am here to see it and enjoy it as it is,” she said to me.
Amen.
Benedum Theater is worth visiting just to see the beautiful interior
Benedum Theater ceiling
Benedum Theater interior
If I had a big social function, I would have it at the Benedum Theater. Tons of cozy little nooks like this
If I can’t get front and center seats, I won’t go see an event that has a stage.
Shen Yun audience had everyone old, young, in between, Asian, black, white, purple…
Some parts of Pittsburgh have not been successful. Around the block from this ancient bar and hotel we encountered what had been a recently built very attractive state of the art Martin Luther King, Jr cultural resource center abandoned in an overgrown lot
Pittsburgh smartly employs vehicles powered by clean burning propane
The entire city of Pittsburgh is stunningly beautiful. This one column is representative of the beautiful hand carved stone buildings from the Victorian Age to the 1940s. Thanks to industrialists like the Mellons, Carnegies, Olivers, and Benedums, Pittsburgh is a world hub for architecture and science
It’s Farm Show 2023! You should be here
“Man does not live on bread alone. Occasionally there must be a beverage.” Similarly, a blog wholly devoted to politics these days is just going to be no fun at all, to write or to read. Far too much drama afoot. So here is the beverage… Pennsylvania Farm Show 2023.
Pennsylvania’s Farm Show at the enormous humungous gigantic Farm Show Complex in Harrisburg has been a mainstay since the 1800s. Pennsylvania is still a rural and agricultural state, and so 4H is still active, and so there tons of really cute little kids leading equally young and cute goats, sheep, miniature horses, heifers, rabbits, ducks, chickens, roosters, pigs, and so on either to or from some showing. If you catch the kids and their critters coming from a competitive showing, you will often see the award ribbons prominently displayed on the animals’ heads, like on ears or mane. The little kids walk along with their pets like total bosses, many of them wearing grown up cowboy boots and western style clothing.
If there is a crisis among American youth because they are spoiled, lazy, lacking direction etc, it is not to be found among the 4H kids. Many of them have been getting up at 4:30AM daily since they were seven or eight years old, to feed and water their prize critter, before going to school. By the time 4H kids reach their teens, they have developed the maturity of a responsible parent with a professional job. And it is evident in their faces and the confident way they carry themselves.
Want your kid to be wholesome and normal some day? Make them work on a farm.
While the show opens Saturday, Sunday is probably the biggest day. Parking was a 30 minute long slow crawl into the main lot. Once inside, I neglected to take a picture of the food court, which was jam packed from end to end with long lines of people for the fresh milkshakes, especially. Other fresh and wholesome foods are also available, and it is clear that showgoers really enjoy the large selection of good tasting home style food. And they are willing to stand in line a bloody long time for it.
As one might imagine, the Farm Show has a lot of farming related stuff, including Pennsylvania made maple syrup and hickory syrup, Herlocher’s mustard, Utz’s pretzels, a zillion types of canned and smoked meats and cheeses, pickles, vegetables, and of course the grand butter sculpture. And of course farm animals and the wagons they pull.
Tractors old and new, recreational vehicles, 1800s style wagons, clothing, knives, hats, boots, belts…. I myself bought two new bridle leather belts. One says “Country Boy” and the other says “John Deere” and has a picture of a tractor. How embarrassing to admit that the belt proprietor asked me to fit the belts around my waist, so he could measure how much to cut off the end, and in my case, nothing needed to be cut off.
We also purchased another five CutCo knives, to add to the six we already own. On the one hand, we are really happy with the quality of the CutCo knives we already have, and as a custom knife fiend myself, I admire high quality knives. CutCo knives are definitely very high quality. On the other hand, I feel kind of silly buying something from a sales rep at a show. It just seems like super high retail idiot. But it’s the way to buy these particular products.
We also purchased alpaca wool dryer balls and knitting wool yarn for a favorite family member who enjoys knitting, or crocheting, or whatever the hell annoying thing it is people do with wool yarn. The farmer lady selling the wool gets it from brushing her pet alpacas, adding up the wool, washing it, carding it, and using a spinning wheel to turn the raw wool into yarn. She also dyes the wool before spinning it into yarn. Or maybe she dyes the entire alpaca before brushing the hair off of it.
Her dryer balls are about the same price as the best available in big box stores and high end special order websites. Having used her balls two times since Sunday, I can report back that they bounce hard. You may read into this whatever you wish, but I am telling you only the truth. Her clothes dryer balls really work, and I suppose it’s a brave new world we occupy that has this phenomenon.
Go visit the Pennsylvania Farm Show. If you have never been to it, you should go full bore tourist and come to Harrisburg and see it. You can spend about two days here and see about as much of farm life without actually having to wash the cow crap off your boots as you would normally want to see. In truth, if you spend any time around the many farm animals present, especially in the later days of the show, and especially especially if you hang out in the (for real) Goat Snuggling Corner, then you will inevitably step in a big pile of horse, goat, or cow crap. But then you will have gone and done something real and tangible with your life, and learned something new.
So come to Harrisburg and step in a pile of horse crap and drink a delicious fresh milkshake and watch farmers do their farm thing. You will have a hell of a lot of fun, guaranteed. Best and most wholesome fun your family will have in a very long time.
Even if America’s useless politicians are not patriotic, most American citizens still are, and flags sell well
Yes, it is true, you can snuggle the cutest baby goats at the Steinmetz Family Farm nook at the Farm Show. And a photographer could make a living just taking pictures of happy little goats nestled in the cradling arms of really happy kids. It is quite wonderful
What farm show anywhere would be caught dead without some antique John Deere tractors? I myself drive a “Green Machine.” The old ones are works of art.
Beth Lutz of Painted Spring Farm in York County, PA, explains her weaving loom to the Princess of Patience at the 2023 PA Farm Show
Dyed alpaca wool and clothes dryer wool balls from Painted Spring Farm in York County, PA
Pennsylvania has capitalized on traditional “Dutch” quilt styles that you can still find for sale along many rural roads in the summer. These styles are also prominently displayed on barns across Pennsylvania.
Jen Boltz runs a wagon for some friends in a competition. There is a whole subeconomy of these traditional 1800s wagons and the huge gentle draft horses that pull them.
Happy 2023, friends
May all of us enjoy a 2023 far better than what we saw in 2022: Record inflation led by unnecessarily high energy costs caused by anti America policies in Washington DC, a federal bureaucracy out of control and at war with and not answering to the citizens who own it, and a cracking and fracturing of our unique American culture under the nonstop assault of anti America woke PC politics.
Twitter Files revealed an enormous and illegal government censorship of citizens that has violated the First Amendment of our Constitution.
May 2023 be the year the American citizen reclaims his government and borders. God bless America and God bless our citizens. Have a happy, healthy and prosperous 2023, friends.
Merry X-Mas to all Americans
Today is Christmas, the national holiday of America and most Western nations. Its origin is easy enough to decipher from the English name we use today, which is a conjunction of two words, Christ and Mass, or Christ’s-Mass, Christ being the Anglicized version of the Greek Chrystos, which means anointed.
Why does any of this matter? Because people best do things they agree with and understand, and in order to understand a thing, a person must understand the entire thing, especially its genesis.
Holding a Christian Mass -or Christmas- in honor of the Jewish man Joshua the Nazirite (or Joshua of Nazareth) whom orthodox Christians believe fulfills anointed messianic prophecy as interpreted from the Hebrew Scriptures (TANACH, or Torah (The Old Testament), Nevi’im (the Prophets), and Ketuvim (the Writings), is a way of celebrating the person at the center of the Christian faith. At least as the faith has been understood after the First Nycean Council (held in Nyceae Greece, now Iznik Turkey, in the year CE 325), when the first 275 years of Christianity was then greatly reformed and shaped, and out of which a religious orthodoxy emerged that both Protestants and Catholics today follow.
Apparently observed mostly as an austere holiday devoid of outward joy or expressions of happiness for most of its 1,500 year history, and conveniently set for the 25th day of December to match up with Hanuka’s 25th day of the Hebrew month of Kislev, Christmas as we now know it in America was created by a Briton, a 19th century writer named Charles Dickens.
Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, something almost all Americans are familiar with. Starring one Ebenezer Scrooge and Tiny Tim and a cast of other characters designed to tug at our heart strings and elicit our deepest sympathies and emotions, A Christmas Carol aggressively addresses what Dickens saw as a dearth of happiness and Christian charity. Especially at that time, when the modern industrial revolution had pulled people off the rural farms and pooled them into teeming urban slums, creating a huge strata of direly poor people in need of everything and unable to provide for themselves as they had back on the farms.
(note that Karl Marx wrote his Communist Manifesto at the same time in response to the same industrial revolution socioeconomic dynamics playing out in Germany and Europe, but instead of trying to encourage Christian faith to rise to the occasion, like Dickens, Marx sought to supplant Judaism and Christianity with his own new religion…)
Dickens believed that those who had benefited most from the industrial revolution and its cheap labor had a Christian duty to share their success in the form of charity with those living in the urban slums. And so Dickens’ A Christmas Carol story is both a huge guilt trip and emotional plea that was immediately and wildly successful when it debuted and continues to shape our own Christmas experiences to this day.
Combined with Scandinavian traditions of Santa Claus and reindeer, evergreen trees decorated with festive lights, and German gift giving, Dickens’ vision of a friendly, happy, merry, relaxed Christmas is how Americans celebrate, observe, or simply enjoy the holiday today.
So today is Christmas in America. Whether or not one is an orthodox Christian, an orthodox Jew, a Hindu, a Buddhist, or any other religious or nonreligious faith or identity, this day is yours to make of it what you will. Religious or secular. Even the secular version has the best of human traits.
Why not make the most and best of it? Wishing some stranger in the shopping center a Merry Christmas can have as much theological meaning as you want it to have, or it can simply be your best of heartfelt personal well wishes to a fellow American citizen. It is yours to choose what you mean by saying Merry Christmas, but the point is that saying it neither detracts from your own faith, nor does it add to anyone else’s faith if you simply wish them a Merry Christmas.
Some places like Dearborn, Michigan, and Borough Park, Brooklyn, have such an absence of Christians that it would not make sense to wish anyone one encounters there a Merry Christmas.
But to everyone else in America, I wish you a very Merry Christmas, with only the best of hopes for you today and in the year 2023 ahead.
The real Hanuka needs to stand up
Hanuka is represented today as the “Jewish Christmas,” and why not, right? Why not have more fun, more celebration, more love, more gifts. And everyone enjoys a lighter moment instead of things being so heavy and deep.
Problem is, Hanuka suffers from the same dumbing-down that has also made a mockery of Christmas and turned it too into an orgy of materialism. Religious observers in both faith groups need to reclaim what is theirs, because at the core both Hanuka and Christmas are about core values. And if there is one thing that America has lost is its core values, resulting in our culture terrifyingly spiraling down the drain. Religious holidays used to serve the purpose of instilling religious values, may we all return to that soon.
Historically Hanuka was not about silver and blue tinsel or a disarmingly childish sounding “festival of lights” that evokes fairies twirling in tutus with flashy lights sparkling all around. Rather, in reality Hanuka is precisely the opposite image, because it marked a turning point in a bloody civil war between Jews in Israel. For three generations, two Jewish groups representing divergent philosophies were locked in a brutal civil war for control of the Temple and the religious customs and practices that Jews would follow.
On the one hand were liberal secularists, Hellenists, who represented a light Jewish identity dominated by Greek culture and behavior, including unbridled sexuality. They were enabled by Greeks descended from Alexander the Great’s conquering of the region. Opposing them were the “Maccabees,” named after an orthodox Jewish family patriarch who defiantly confronted, and killed, a whole bunch of Hellenist soldiers for control of Israel and the Temple Mount. His sons carried on the tradition of fighting and killing Hellenists for several generations before the matter was settled.
The “festival of the lights” miracle stuff results from the story of the Maccabees finding one sealed pitcher of kosher olive oil for lighting the giant gold menorah in the Temple, and having it last more than the one or two days that it should have lasted, given its limited volume. Read into that fact what one will, this has become a conveniently plain vanilla and non-threatening focus of the holiday, which at one time celebrated the “decisive winning of the righteous and pure over the evil and impure.”
The bottom line is that Hanuka commemorates a Jewish civil war for control of the Jewish future, either as a feel-good universalist ethnic identity destined for dead-end assimilation, or as a daily living Biblical (Torah) truth identity. Both Jews and Christians exist today because the orthodox Jews (Hasmoneans) who inaugurated Hanuka gave rise to the religiously observant Jews who later begot Joshua Of Nazareth (or the Nazirite) and today’s Orthodox Jews. Had the Maccabees lost their civil war with the Hellenists, there would have been no Hanuka, no surviving Judaism, no Joshua Of Nazareth, and no Christianity.
Without Christianity there is no Western Civilization, and without Western Civilization there is no light in this world and all of the Enlightenment science that makes our lives so comfy today. God only knows where the world would be now, had the Maccabees not won their war against the liberal Jews of their time. Which raises two questions. First, why don’t today’s Christians celebrate Hanuka? They should. Christmas is set for the 25th of December, which closely matches the Hebrew calendar’s 25 of Kislev for the start of Hanuka, and I don’t see any contradiction in it. Second question is when do we all begin to push back against today’s destructive Hellenists, who like their predecessors in Israel 2,200 years ago are playing an outsize role in the destruction of the American and Western Civilizations?
Happy Hanuka, everyone!
Slippers from My Pillow two thumbs up
My Pillow slippers are conventional looking, but unbelievably comfortable to wear
For my birthday I received a pair of slippers from My Pillow, a brand known for high quality. Because my gigantic duck feet are so large and wide, and because My Pillow specializes in serving customers, even the outlandishly sized or shaped, My Pillow actually had a pair of size 14 wide for me.
These are the most comfortable slippers I have ever worn. The secret appears to be a really generous layer of highly durable foam cushion between the shearling that touches the foot and the rubber sole. My LL Bean slippers were marketed as being “highest quality,” and yet they don’t come close to the amazing comfort and durability of these My Pillow slippers.
In contrast, my go-to slippers for the past ten years have been a pair by Carl Dyer. Bison leather outer, lined with soft elk leather, and sporting all kinds of adjustable braided leather toggles and fancy bronze buttons, the Carl Dyer moccasins are comfortable but really the opposite of the My Pillow ones. They are meant to be worn with heavy socks in cold weather, and are stylish to those discerning enough to appreciate hand made things of uncommon natural materials.
Both of these house slippers work wonderfully, but I imagine the My Pillow slippers are more appealing to the vast majority of Americans. I highly recommend them. If you are looking for a last minute holiday gift for Dad, these slippers are an excellent choice. Dad will put them on and only reluctantly take them off.
President Trump, a black guy, a Hispanic guy, and a Jewish guy go into a bar
Two weeks ago, if someone had posted a “news” headline that involved President Trump, a black guy, a Hispanic guy, and a Jewish guy having dinner, it would have sounded like one of the old time ethnic jokes that were once so refreshingly popular among Americans of different ethnic backgrounds.
One of the old strengths of America back when it was America were both its diverse workers and their enjoyment at laughing at themselves and their own peculiar ethnic foibles. They did not take themselves so seriously that someone could not make fun of them, so long as they could give it right back in equal measure. This form of humor was a great cultural leveler and communal uniter of universal American identity among people from all over the world.
Well, this headline really did happen, and the real joke is what a ridiculous outcome it has spawned. It is the Russia collusion hoax, Alexander Vindman Ukraine call hoax, serial liar Adam Schiff hoax all rolled into one brief dinner.
Yes, it is true that President Trump recently had dinner at his Mar-A-Lago FBI resort and spa with entertainer Kanye West and some guy named Fuentes, who tagged along unannounced with West. I still have not bothered to research this Fuentes (Nick Fuentes?) guy, but people in the mainstream media claim he is a “white supremacist,” while he replies that he is an American Christian, or a Christian American.
While I do not know Fuentes, I do know the mainstream media, and I know that they lie constantly, and so I am going to discount what they say about Fuentes. He is probably just a right wing guy who loves a constitutional America, and right there the mainstream media begin to boo and hiss. We will address Fuentes later, but for now, he is a tag-along uninvited dinner guest whom President Trump is too gracious to eject at his doorway, simply because he does not know the guy.
Let us get a couple life rules re-established here:
a) Americans of all backgrounds should be having dinner with each other and talking about whatever regularly, even if they disagree on some things or most things or all things. Talking, arguing, even…debating…are at the core of being an American. There are no sacred cows here. But somehow Americans have become allergic to debate. They would rather just push the little buttons on their smart phones and fire barrages of digital nuclear missiles at other people, which is weak bullshit. Talk it out, people, in person.
b) Americans should remember what it was like to have old friends drop by and bring along an uninvited cousin or buddy at dinner time. This is an American tradition as old as dirt, and yet, I don’t think Americans actually have dinner any more, certainly not together as a family around a table, and not at 6pm dinner time, and certainly not with unannounced guests and strangers. Nope, Americans are now too shielded from the outside world, and too busy looking inward and handward to have dinner or discourses in person any longer. Fakebook and Twitter and whatever else other vacuous social media nonsense has taken up all the space in our lives, including our family dinner time. For shame for shame for shame.
So, President Trump lives by the old American culture rules of having dinner with someone who asks to come over, and who then brings his awkward buddy along. Good for President Trump, a confident gentleman and a thinker. Just his willingness to have dinner with Kanye West reinvigorates my respect for my president, Donald J. Trump. Especially because West was in the process of being socially canceled, and President Trump could have easily just rejected him like the social plague he carried.
But again, President Trump is way too much of an awesome all-American guy to just reject people he has known for a long time, and especially someone who had supported him politically. Trump is no typical fair weather friend politician, and he let Kanye West in the door to have dinner, along with Kanye’s unknown pal.
So why is Kanye West suddenly now such a no-no canceled non-person, after being THE person who embodied modern American culture for so many years? Uh oh, yup, you know he did it: Kanye said BOO BOO WORDS! Yes, it is true, West was dumb enough…or vexed enough… to post publicly on social media his mixed admiration combined with envy and frustrated disbelief at the material success of so many American Jews…and a lot of frustration at the negative effect so many liberal American Jews seem to be having on everything around them, politics and culture.
Like serial rapist and big Democrat Party donor Harvey “Hollywood” Weinstein, Pedophile In Chief and big Democrat Party donor Jeffrey Epstein (who did not kill himself in jail), and crypto currency Ponzi scheme master and destroyer of Americans’ retirement accounts Huge Democrat Party Donor aka SBF Sam Bankman-Fried (yes his name really is Bankman, go ahead antisemites and rejoice along with the easily humored)…I am sure I have missed a few about whom Kanye is fretting.
Folks, we have to be able to have discussions about politics and culture again. Even about uncomfortable subjects, like why such a small minority of people fields so many wonderfully positive overachievers and so many recent evil supervillians like, oh yeah, Larry Fink at BlackRock. These discussions must happen in the open, around dinner tables, on back patios, at Mar-A-Lago, at hunting camp, among friends and political enemies, between cousins who disagree on politics and between neighbors who see life differently.
Because the alternative to transparent sunshine is that nasty things grow and fester in the dark. And yes, these nasty things are growing and festering. I am seeing it more and more. You cannot ignore it away, and you cannot wish it away, and you cannot cancel it away. The more you try these infantile efforts, the more it grows in the dark. Only sunshine will disinfect it.
The only people who want to socially cancel Kanye West and to illegitimately stigmatize President Trump for having dinner with West (and Fuentes) are people who want to control everything that you and I say and write and think and do, and how we live and what we drive and what is in our bank account and what we eat and what we read. These are not good people; they are bad people. Controlling people are always bad people.
It is a telling hypocrisy that these same people hating West and Trump never tried to cancel or stigmatize their evil messiah, Barak Hussein Obama, for being personally chummy with raving racists and Jew-haters Al Sharpton, Jeremiah Wright, and Louis Farrakhan. That is because they like what Obama says, and does. Trump is a savior of America and the West, while Obama is the evil angel destroyer of America and the free West.
As a result of this Kanye West-Fuentes BS, I now still and ever more strongly stand with my president, President Donald J. Trump. Not because I am blindly loyal to Trump, but simply because he is the only person who stands between a living Western Civilization and the whole thing going over the edge of oblivion, an edge on which we now precariously teeter.
The Kanye West thing is just another ridiculous distraction to what is really at stake.
And do you know who the Jewish guy was at their dinner? All of Trump’s Jewish family members, that’s who. They of his blood and who are always present in President Trump’s heart and mind, and whom he would never forget or sell out. They were at that table, too. Trump brought them to dinner, as well.
We are in a war for our civilization, people. Pick a side and stand firmly on it. I have carefully picked mine. It is the side of personal freedom and liberty, free markets, sunshine, family, open doors, friendship, and America.
And President Trump.
Evil angel Obama chumming it up with racist and Jew hater Louis Farrakhan in 2005. Why aren’t people stigmatizing or canceling Obama?
My body, my….self…?
My sense is that abortion was the issue of this week’s mid-term election. After all, all of the digital online advertising I received about Fetterman, Shapiro, and Mastriano was about that one issue. And Democrat Party poll workers confirmed their own belief that abortion would galvanize their voters. It seems to have worked, and fended off what was touted as a “red wave” of conservative response to failed governance in Washington DC.
My mind wanders back to 1972 or 1973, when I was a young kid, but old enough to become self aware. My hippie parents had the Our Bodies, Our Selves book laying out in the living room. When no adults were around I would look at this book and marvel at the array of hairy women parading their naked bodies in it. At an early age, then, I determined that naked woman was good, hairy was not good. One idea that sticks in my mind (having long ago eradicated the book’s “natural” images from my memory banks) is the novel concept that a person’s body is their own.
I think freedom-loving Americans can emphatically agree on this, that a person’s body is their own and nobody else’s. Where Americans diverge from one another is what is our body? Is it just the living, walking adult body, or does that also include young humans growing inside of it?
Reasonable people can and should debate this subject, and if pro-Life advocates want to make headway politically and culturally, then they have got to do a much better job explaining their perspective on when human life begins, why it is sacred, and how abortion-on-demand is not a my body, my self policy issue, but rather an “our bodies intertwined together” humanity issue. They must do a much better job, as this week’s election results demonstrate (assuming no election fraud occurred, which in some states is once again already obvious and in-your-face to the point of training voters to regularly accept it from one political party).
To be fair to the pro-Life anti-abortion voters, advocates, and candidates like Doug Mastriano, a lot of Americans felt like the two-year Covid1984 plandemic was one gigantic official assault on the idea of Our Bodies, Our Selves. A lot of voters this week showed up to vote against the unconstitutional government overreach, official lies, official illegalities, and government personnel self-enrichment that characterized the past two years of Covid1984. They thought other Americans felt the same.
Draconian lockdowns to the point of absurdity (lone sea kayakers being surrounded by heavily armed police boats and arrested for violating a “public health code,” sunbathers sitting totally alone on a beach, and married couples sitting alone in their car at scenic overlooks being similarly mistreated by aggressive police officers etc.), pointless and highly damaging school closures, useless mask requirements, and dangerous fake vaccine requirements that are now yielding an enormous number of vaccine-caused injuries and deaths, all and every aspect of the Covid1984 experience was one huge pile of Our Bodies, Our Selves books being symbolically burned by government staffers and leftist political activists in a joyous ceremony to mark the end of the idea that your body is yours and yours alone, and to emphasize that the government, their government, can do to you whatever it wants whenever it wants.
Conservative voters and candidates mistakenly thought that leftists would be consistent in their body sovereignty thinking, that everyone else felt the same (logically consistent) as conservatives about this disaster, and that they would vote accordingly.
And this is the confusing part of this my body, my self as a public policy issue and debate subject. On the one hand we have a lot of Americans who were and still are being severely damaged by the government’s purposefully bad handling of Covid1984, and they are pushing back. (Despite the Biden DOJ’s designation of them as “domestic terrorists” for merely speaking out in official taxpayer-funded venues.)
And on the other hand we have a lot of Americans who think that not only is the government’s brutal and useless Covid1984 overreach into your body and your body choices great public policy, but that the use of crushing government coercive force to implement it and force you to comply or be destroyed was just great, too. And yet a lot of these same people are the pro abortion Our Bodies, Our Selves believers who were animated enough to show up to vote this week.
This is confusing because it is inconsistent. Choice should be choice…right?
If you spend time reading this blog, then you already know I am not enamored of liberal/ leftist thinking, because I cannot make it make sense. And to be fair, most leftists and liberals I speak with about this are quite honest about it: They don’t care about logic, reason, or being consistent. They want their political issues the way they want them, and to hell with your criticisms.
In a democratic nation and in a Western Civilization based on logic, reason, debate, and persuasion, we have a conundrum here. Americans are talking right past each other, and not just about our bodies being sovereign from outside forces. Americans are failing to communicate with each other on a whole array of political and cultural topics. I am firmly on the side of reason, logic, and reasoned debate being at the center of our governance process, and so I stand firmly with the dreaded “conservatives.”
But I will say this to the conservatives, like governor candidate Doug Mastriano: If you are going to make the elimination or regulation of abortion your main public policy goal, then you had damned well better explain it to the public very carefully, frame it in context of the 2020-2022 Covid1984 government assault on Americans’ bodies, and you had better not do any interviews where snippets of your public statements can be used to paint you into a corner. At least half of America is not able or willing to discuss this subject, and to them only the axe-murdering abortion of a helpless and sacred child is their singular and joyous right; what the government does to their bodies the other 99% of the time is the business of the government and none of their own. They are not thinking clearly about this, and candidates must work hard to connect the abortion dot to the Covid1984 dot for future voters. Or don’t work on it, and shut the hell up about it.
And I will also say this to the liberals/ leftists: Your apparent worshiping of abortion as an act, to the point of killing the living, viable child at birth, makes you look like a primitive bloodthirsty death cult. This is not civilized behavior by people who advocate for myriad other intrusive government policies “if it saves just one child.” So long as you inhabit this childish shadowland of disconnected and strongly contrasting public policies, your fellow Americans will understandably deride you as foolish children who actually hate children.
Does this book also apply to the victims of bad government policies on Covid? If not, then there is no body sovereignty for anyone
Voting for Fetterman is voting for child molesters & violent criminals
While it is a cold, sad, but irrefutable fact that voting for senate candidate John Fetterman here in Pennsylvania is a vote for child molesters and violent criminals, and failed schools, it is also a sad fact that voting for just about any if not every Democrat Party candidate these days means the same thing.
So extreme has the Democrat Party become that I cannot think of one single Democrat Party candidate running for office anywhere who has disavowed or will disavow the teachers’ unions violent blitzkrieg attack against American children, against kids’ innocence, against American families, against American parents and their parental rights, and for child molesters and pedophiles.
When we consider that the Democrat Party has universally across America produced candidates like John Fetterman who are also totally pro-violent criminals (Fetterman says that violent criminals are actually victims) and anti-police (instead of recognizing there are a lot of great police who keep us safe and only a handful of bad cops), you have to wonder why the hell would any normal American vote for a single Democrat anywhere?
I ask this question as a former Democrat Party member who was active in many Pennsylvania Democrat Party campaigns to the point of serving as the 1988 Al Gore for President campaign’s central Pennsylvania director. But recall that in 1988 Al Gore was endorsed by the National Rifle Association and various pro-life groups. It is not that I left the Democrat Party but that Al Gore and the Democrat Party left me with their extreme positions. They are now so extreme and destructive that only the incurious and the happily unthinking vote for them.
Do not vote for John Fetterman. If you vote for him, you are also voting for child molesters and violent criminals, both of whom Fetterman believes should be roaming your neighborhood at will, without repercussion. Normal people do not believe these things or vote for these things.
Primitive hunting techniques are more important than ever
In this day and age of popular stainless steel and plastic hunting rifles and Hubble telescope-sized rifle scopes, primitive hunting techniques and weapons are more important than ever. Something in the bad age of video games and instant gratification happened to the American character in the past thirty years or so, and so many young Americans have become lazy and even a bit heartless, as a result. Hunting culture has suffered from this, too. Really badly. Today’s focus seems to be predominantly on the kill, and much less on the process of the hunt.
Those curious about the distinction here should look up some neat videos from real hunters in the big woods of Vermont, Pennsylvania, and the Adirondacks.
Hunting should never be just about, or mostly about, killing an animal. Especially if the hunter wants to call it a trophy and put it up on his or her wall as a representation of his skill.
People trying to justify 300, 400 yard long range shots (or farther) on unsuspecting animals are not hunting, they are assassinating. Their wood craft often sucks, their field craft is limited to wearing camouflage, and their knowledge of the game animal is negligible. They are not really hunters, but rather shooters. Their high-tech guns, ammo, and rifle scopes are a crutch diminishing their need for good woodcraft, and it also results in a lack of appreciation for an actual hunt, and a lower value placed on the animal.
Culling oversized wild animal populations for the benefit of the environment is one thing, but hunting wild animals for pleasure and clean meat should be accomplished with skill. Age-old skills that everyone can respect. Hard-won wild animals taken with real skill under fair chase conditions are all trophies.
An unsuspecting big game animal assassinated at long range (or worse, inside a high fence, or over bait) requires very little hunting skill, and can never be said to be a trophy that is reflective of the hunter’s skill set. And yet isn’t this why so many hunters want big antlers and broad hides? They see these big animals as a reflection of their hunting prowess, of their manhood, their chest-thumping status within the outdoors community. As a result, America has developed a hunting culture driven by bigger-is-better trophies, at any cost, all too often achieved through long-range assassinations of unsuspecting wildlife, or over bait. Fair chase, which has always been at the heart of hunting, has been tossed away in favor of quick gratification and unfounded ego bragging rights.
The primary reason why primitive hunting weapons are so important today, is that someone has to keep the culture of hunting alive. What is a primitive hunting weapon? Pretty much any legal implement that requires the hunter to work hard to develop unique field craft/ wood craft skills, including the ability to penetrate within a fairly close range of the prey animal’s eyes, ears, and nose: Any bow (compound bow, stick bow, self bow, longbow, or other hand-held vertically limbed bow), spear, atl-atl, open-sighted black powder or centerfire rifle, any large bore handgun with or without a scope, should qualify. Flintlocks, percussion cap black powder muzzleloaders, and traditional bows are especially challenging to master and to harvest wild game with.
All of these primitive weapons require the hunter to actually hunt, to rely upon his woodcraft to carry him quietly and unseen across the landscape, and into a fair and close range of his prey animal. Animals taken with primitive weapons and techniques are earned in every way, and therefore they are fully appreciated.
Few experiences bother me more than watching some internet video of a fourteen year-old hunter running his hands over the antlers of a recently deceased buck, and listening to this inexperienced mere child discuss the finer aspects of this rack, its inches, its points, its relative size, and its (barf on my feet) trail camera name. Usually the child has shot the deer from an elevated box blind that conceals all of the hunter’s scent, sound, and movement. Whoever has taught these kids to hunt this way exclusively, and to then look at deer harvested this way as so many bragging rights, has done a huge disservice to these kids. These kids are going to grow up into poachers and baiters, always trying to prove how great of a “hunter” they are, and how studly and manly they are, at any cost. They will end up doing anything to score the next “record book” animal. These young kids who are being warped right now with this trophy nonsense are the future of America’s hunting culture, and what a crappy culture it will be if it is dominated by big egos and even bigger mouths armed with sniper rifles and no actual hunting skill.
Moms, dads, grandpas and uncles who are beginning to teach kids to hunt right now can do two simple things that will ensure their little student grows up into an ethical, responsible, high quality, law-abiding hunter: Make them use open sights on single-shot firearms and bows.
The skills that young hunters develop from having to rely on open sights and single shots (primitive weapons) will force them to achieve a high level of field craft, wood craft, and fair chase values. Developing skill requires a person to overcome challenges and adversity, often making mistakes along the way. And that results in better character.
Forcing kids to get close to their prey animal, and to take only carefully aimed shots with just open sights, will result in people who become really excellent hunters. Adults can always opt to add a scope to their rifle as their eyes age, but the lessons learned early on in concealment, controlling movement, playing wind direction, and instinctive shooting will keep the respectable art of hunting alive and well.
This Fall, get your little one started on a flintlock or old Fred Bear recurve bow from the get-go, for squirrels and deer, and watch as a true hunter is born.