Category → Fruit of Contemplation
The word “tactical” – overused, kind of
By Josh First
Have you seen the word “tactical” used lately?
The word appears everywhere, and is growing in prominence across the retail world.
Although “tactical” is a word that denotes, or really connotes military tactics, and was once reserved to the sole use of the United States Military combat units or the dangerously armed forces they faced, this word now imputes some special meaning, martial ability, and toughness to anything that wears it on the label.
There are tactical knives, vests, rifles, pistols, and the many accoutrements that go with these items. There seem to be tactical diapers, tactical coffee mugs, and tactical pens. OK, there are to my knowledge no tactical diapers or coffee mugs, but it is true that someone will or already is onto these items. Actually, there are tactical pens meant for self defense, but whether or not they have actual value for military tactics is a questionable claim.
For another true example of the oddly named, there are tactical shirts. No lie, there are “tactical shirts” dedicated to more easily accessing one’s concealed pistol.
Is it really so difficult to just wear a regular old LL Bean button down short sleeve Pima cotton Oxford? Is a shirt with confusing numbers of magnum zipper pulls in sensitive places really, truly a better shirt than the LL Bean? Does it really make you a tougher guy or gal? Do our combat forces wear these shirts? No?
As if it isn’t odd enough to call a shirt or a vest “tactical,” we now have tactical airguns, I kid you not. The Crosman TR77 looks like a Star Trek photon shooter that makes bad guys vaporize painlessly, but it is claimed by its maker to have some sort of tactical application.
As if!
Air guns pack all the wallop of a good slap to the head, albeit with more concentrated force. Certainly some shoot pellets that can penetrate your flesh, and perhaps even your temple. But if I were a law enforcement officer engaged in a really deadly standoff with a violent, dangerous bad guy, a freakin airgun is the last thing I’d want in my hands. My tactic in that situation would be to run away, fast.
So obviously the word “tactical” is being, ummm, stretched in meaning a bit these days.
But for whatever reason, this word increasingly resonates with the American public, and it may be a result of the hyper-militarization of our local police forces. Plenty has been written in recent months about how the legendary bumbling Officer Barney Fife became the sinister looking, crewcut-and-armor-wearing badass kicking down grandma’s door in East Succotash, America. SWAT teams in East Succotash, America, are not necessary, and it is a serious issue, because Americans have a natural aversion to government force applied to them.
No doubt about it, America’s local police are in an arms race with…hmmmm… either themselves, far-off international military forces, or possibly, probably, you.
That’s right, there is plenty of evidence indicating that the massive investment in military grade hardware and hard attitude at the local police level is translating into a natural citizen reaction, apparently in preparation for inevitable urban combat with the very people once sworn to protect us. And so we have an increasing “if-they-have-it, we-need-it, too,” civilian reach for all things tactical. Tactical now seems to mean “I am ready for combat,” an American attitude that is both refreshing and alarming.
Alarming indeed. Why are we afraid of our own local police forces? When did that happen? And, come to think of it, why did the local Harrisburg cop try to stare me down last year, on my own street, when I cheerfully said hello to him while walking on our sidewalk with my small son in hand? Was he employing some anti-citizen ‘tactic’? Sure felt that way to me, the law-abiding taxpayer underwriting that guy’s paycheck and tough guy attitude.
However, instead of meeting fire with fire, and buying a black bulletproof vest with webbing and the ubiquitous variation of a skull-and-crossbones trademark label, I think I will for now reach for my ‘tactical pen’ and write about my uncomfortable encounter, thereby defeating that officer’s ungainly attempt to bring implied force into what should have been a friendly exchange between equals.
The personal cost of political correctness
Political correctness is a political and social orthodoxy whose adherents behave like caricatures of religious zombies.
Having captured government schools, academia, and the mainstream media, PC constantly reinforces a seamless far-Left brainwashing from most Americans’ earliest memories through their college education and into adulthood. Constantly told that they are correct on the laundry list of PC issues, questioning, even contemplating an alternative, is impossible.
Rigid, inflexible, out of the mainstream, followers of political correctness can inflict tremendous damage not just through failed laws and policies, like ObamaCare, the “War on Coal,” and “global warming,” but also through an inability to communicate with people who don’t share the same beliefs.
Unable or unwilling to share ideas, to have what philosopher Martin Buber called the I-Thou cross pollination and consideration of ideas, PC people have become both political Brown Shirts and personal martyrs.
Because the PC cause is so just, in its totality, no deviation is acceptable. Because no deviation is acceptable, no friendliness with other humans who are deviating from PC is acceptable. This has deeply personal consequences for old friends and families alike. PC is like old religion: Step out of line, burn at the stake. End of friendship, painfully strained relationships, hard feelings, rejection, loss of meaning and special value. Not good.
But because PC followers are “tolerant,” ha-ha, their intolerance is justified.
So many of my friends and acquaintances have experienced corrosive and destructive PC both in their professional and personal lives that I cannot keep count. But if I can’t keep count, I can keep a general running tab. The body count is getting higher, the PC Brown Shirts commit cruelty after cruelty, and then they turn around and claim martyrdom when they are challenged or when they hurt someone.
While it is tempting to brush aside this PC excess, it has a cost that demands a response. Commitment to the PC cause must meet limits. Or else, political and familial divides will appear increasingly like those seen leading up to the Civil War.
Please be friendly, be understanding, listen, and reflect when talking, writing, or debating. The lack of reflection and contemplation among PC believers is a challenge we all must be up to helping with, and each small firm kindness extended to a PC believer may contribute to their eventual awakening.
Our nation cannot afford PC, and we must be patient in turning it back.
Appeasement is evil, because it allows evil to triumph, and other reflections of the past week
This has been both a rewarding and tough week for me.
Like many, I believe more in ideas than party allegiance. America stands for something, and the ideas at its foundation are a form of religious belief for me and many others; no surprise there, as America’s Judeo-Christian Biblical roots are well established. So, my loyalties lie with people who stand for something good, and I am opposed to people in public office who either stand for money alone, or for fluff. An elected official who will not roll up his sleeves and fight like a demon for my beliefs, for traditional American values, is not someone who is going to get my support.
The Eric Cantor self-destruction story in Virginia is all about this same thinking. It is what permeates the “Tea Party” movement. It is a basic gut-check of what is simply right, and what is obviously wrong. Politicians like Cantor do not have that same gut-check ability, or they long ago lost it. They then lost me and a lot of others, too. As painful as Cantor’s loss is, it is also very rewarding: The American People are not asleep, and David Brat’s win is hopefully the beginning of a grass-roots effort to establish control over American borders.
Obama has clearly abandoned border protection, and he is using fake, officially invited refugees to make the case for open borders, the dilution and end of American democracy, and the end of American capitalism. No elected Republicans seem capable of standing up to him.
On the foreign front, Appeasing evil people is aiding and abetting evil people. Thus, appeasement is evil.
Failing to confront evil, especially an evil that has its eye on you, is either due to mental disability, or to a self-hypnosis masquerading as superiority. Self-sacrifice trumps survival to appeasers, who casually disregard that many other people are then taken over the cliff, too.
Contemplating what drives Obama and his supporters has been dishearteneing, because I cannot fathom it, despite growing up surrounded by far-left liberals. His supporters are not asleep, and they also cannot explain to me what about him and his actions they like, on balance with those they dislike. When we discuss issues, liberals immediately fly into a rage, have fits, and if it is a Facebook debate, they “unfriend” someone they’ve known for thirty five years, a phenomenon I hear repeated by others. This is not a good sign.
For example, ObamaCare is overwhelmingly unpopular to Americans and it is failing across the board, but that hasn’t stopped his supporters from promoting it.
The Veterans Affairs scandal is an incredible indictment of the administration, but his supporters cannot concede on it.
The Benghazi cover-up is just a “political charade.” But Americans were abandoned to violently die there, while their cell phones and radio pleas for help were listened to by indifferent administration officials. In any nation this is either criminal or incompetent, and yet…no concessions.
The world is on fire, with Syria, Iraq, Russia, Ukraine, and large parts of Africa falling apart after huge, decades-long Western and American investments of money and dead. Or, in the alternative, these places are now re-assembling into sources of evil that we will eventually have to confront once again, under circumstances that at that time are disadvantageous and more costly to us.
Obama’s foreign policy, his “re-set,” is so obviously a catastrophe, that it makes one wonder if he really secretly wants this destruction. After all, the boundaries of the modern Middle Eastern and African nations were established by European powers, and we know how much hate Obama has for those Western democracies aka “colonial powers.”
Obama seems to be at war with America and Western civilization, and his supporters are either under some odd messianic spell, or they are in cognitive agreement with him.
Is America headed for a civil war over these differences? The current state of debate is not encouraging, where liberals espousing an all-controlling, all-knowing, all-seeing Big Brother Orwellian society seem to relish IRS and NSA abuses against fellow citizens. They do not realize or accept that to most Americans, this is a form of slavery, and no, they will not live under slavery.
I think I am going to go have a nice cold beer and work in the garden. In the rain. The David Brat win / Cantor loss is going to have to buoy my spirits for the coming days. Have a great weekend!
Veterans’ memorials are often the most beautiful workmanship
–Josh First
Some societies place plain wooden markers to mark their dead.
Most American Indian groups built death platforms lifting the deceased closer to Heaven. After a couple of years, they collapsed, their wooden skeletal remains reminiscent of the human skeletal remains once upon them. Such visual starkness says ‘Hallowed Ground’ more powerfully than most grave sites.
Like the European Celts and Picts, some Indians built small to incredibly large burial mounds, and we have two small ones on our hunting property. Small or huge, they are still just plain piles of dirt. Seven large mounds in a neat row line a remote hillside on northcentral State Forest Land I hunt, an evocative but peaceful reminder of who hunted there before me. Yes, it is clearly a cemetery, but I feel very comfortable there.
Most European countries, and America, place great emphasis on ornate mausoleums, statuary, and finely detailed headstones marking the deceased. Chiseled of hard granite, these are testimonies to either lots of money or lots of love among those left behind, but a big sign of respect, nonetheless.
In a nod to the less-is-more aesthetic, the United States military places simple marble crosses and Jewish stars on the headstones of fallen warriors. While these appear plain, plain, plain to the careless eye, more scrutiny reveals careful craftsmanship; beveled edges, hollow grinds, stippling, and more. Attention to refined details elevate these markers to the level of real workmanship, but avoiding ostentation.
And that is the fitting and well-thought-out purpose to our military cemeteries: Quiet, humble valor that even in death commands respect and appreciation. Subtle statements that go beyond the initial visual “grab.” In their austerity, reminders of sacrifice and loss, and in their subtle details, the best, most careful workmanship for the best of our citizens.
Memorializing these fallen citizens requires us to do more than salute the Flag, eat a hotdog, or buy a new mattress at a low price, although these days saluting the Flag is a pretty bold statement (surely someone will call you a ‘racist’ for doing it). Instead, go by a public cemetery and find the veterans markers, sit down at one or two head stones, and do an internet search (on your smart phone etc.) of the occupant in front and center of you. See if anything can be learned about this person. Or, if you lack a smart device, have a chat with the inhabitant, and thank them for their service. Without their service, none of us would have the smart phones and hot dogs we now take for granted.
This is truly memorializing someone. That is a worthy Memorial Day.
Charlton Heston – still my president
Watching the Ten Commandments, I’m reminded why Charlton Heston is still my president.
While NRA president, Heston set standards for inspirational leadership. While an actor playing Moses and Ben Hur, he set standards for inspirational acting and portrayal. Heston was a man of faith, inspired by the Master of the Universe, the giver of law and the inspirer of America’s founding fathers.
Because Heston believed in God, he led an exemplary life. He was dedicated to liberty above all else, as he proved by marching with Martin Luther King Jr for black voting rights, and also safeguarding our First Amendment and Second Amendment rights.
Leaders are hard to come by. In this age of empty Obama messianism, people like Heston become reminders of what we should expect, what we deserve.
Natural resource envy
Being a conservationist, I’m on a bunch of email lists about conservation, natural resources, environmental protection.
Why and how groups send emails decrying natural resource companies, while happily using those same resources, like oil, coal, and natural gas, is beyond comprehension.
Oil and gas companies serve a demand by consumers who want their cars to run, their stoves to cook.
Coal powered electricity is ubiquitous. It runs hospitals and schools, as well as your home and place of business.
Somehow, in a twisted way, the companies supplying the power are “bad,” and the consumers are off the hook. As if these companies operate in a vacuum.
Credibility suffers when you’ve got two or more standards for the same behavior. It’s sad because environmental quality is important. My request to conservatives is to not dismissively abandon the field of battle, and don’t let the far left define or frame the issue, either. And don’t let the leftist groups get away with demonization of companies the world depends upon, unless those same groups are willing to generate their own power and transportation fuels.
Oh hush, Rush
Rush Limbaugh is a hero. An outstanding analyst. And he takes clean air and water for granted. This frustrates me, because these two critical resources are not free. They are products of a healthy environment. Forests are lungs. Open land is a water filter. I love ya, Rush, but on this issue you’re just not thinking hard enough.
409
Legendary Penn State football coach Joe Paterno won 409 genuine college games. No one can take that away from him, the players, the team staff, or the proud PSU alumni, like me.
Child molester Jerry Sandusky is a scumbag, but the football program had zero to do with his crimes. But it was the football program the NCAA punished, disproportionately to any other football program in American history. Using Sandusky’s association (not employment) with the PSU football program, and Louis Freeh’s horrendously unprofessional report (analyzed in detail on this site) to support its blitzkrieg assault on Penn State, the NCAA coerced PSU trustees and incompetent, spineless top PSU staff to sign the consent decree that unfairly punished the football program.
Enter the courts, where facts actually can matter. And thus we have courts that are correctly beginning to cast doubts on the entire NCAA punishment of PSU football. This week a court held that further inquiry is necessary to determine if the NCAA not only operated consistent with its own charter, but also consistent with the facts of the Sandusky case vis-a-vis PSU football.
Daylight is seeping in, and I do not believe that the NCAA will survive the exposure, or the application of basic logic and rules of fairness.
Joe Paterno, my hero, had 409 Wins to his credit. Those wins remain, no matter what, but hopefully they will soon be reinstated after basic due process for ALL of the victims of Sandusky’s crimes.