Screamers America
A real sizeable portion of the American citizenry and even the American electorate do not understand or even care what the people in the federal government are doing. So many Americans are lethargic about their freedom that they don’t bother to vote, and some of them really say “If it is all taken away from me tomorrow, OK, whatever.”
Of course we all know these same people who are so laissez- faire about their own fates will scream bloody murder when they do in fact lose everything. This is the down side of all the unbelievable material success and wealth that democratic capitalism has spread so far and wide. People are asleep, unaware and uncaring about what is happening to their fate, to their futures. To them, America just keeps chugging along on autopilot. Doesn’t matter who is in Congress, doesn’t matter who is in the Oval Office, doesn’t matter who holds the local magisterial judge position in their township, doesn’t matter how political decisions are made.
A significant portion of our people are stuffing their faces full of processed junk food and living for the moment, absorbed in nonsense like “professional” sports. No country can continue successfully like this, when its people are not watching the road in front of them, but are distracted by shiny crap way off on the side somewhere. And in fact, America is not continuing successfully like this, as we see with high food prices and shortages, high gasoline prices, high mortgage rates, heavy official censorship of undesirable alternative perspectives, etc. And we also see a single political party in partnership with a real portion of the other political party doing everything possible to silence their critics and crush dissent. These political people are taking advantage of the lack of attention the American people are paying to what is being done in the name of the American people. Like how is government power and force being used and badly abused.
Is the IRS unfairly attacking opponents of the Joe Biden crime family? Is the FBI illegally targeting opponents of the Joe Biden crime family and protecting the corrupt Joe Biden crime family? Is the DOJ using official force of arms against innocent Americans to achieve political outcomes that the voters won’t grant them? The answers to these questions are a huge Hell Yes.
And yet I still encounter perfectly smart Americans who actually believe whatever the New York Times writes, whatever the MSNBC and NPR partisan political activists tell them. They are not curious about what is happening around them, what is happening under their feet. When a heavily armed FBI SWAT-type group descends on their neighbor’s home, these incurious people either say “Eh, he must have done something bad.”
Or, even worse, the neighbors say “Oh, he was a religious Republican who peacefully protested in Washington DC on January 6th 2021, so he deserves this heavy treatment.”
A 1995 movie called Screamers captures America’s current cultural landscape perfectly. Unintentionally, mind you. This is an allusion, a comparison, an allegory, intended to paint a picture using actual pictures from a movie so we can better connect dots in people’s heads and help them better understand what is happening to America. Screamers was not so much a political statement as a story about the cost of humans becoming lazy and incurious about what is happening under their feet.
In a way Screamers is probably based on the 1895 HG Wells book The Time Machine, where happy pretty Eloi people dancing in the sunshine with flowers in their hair without a care are occasionally grabbed by the evil Morlocks and dragged underground to a horrible fate. Either one of these stories, Screamers or The Time Machine, fit what is happening right now in America. And what, you ask, is happening in America right now?
America is becoming a violent, lawless police state, and it started right underneath our feet without us knowing it, or seeing it. Oh sure, it started earnestly enough, you know, the federal government staffers fighting foreign terrorism and against evil drug cartels. But then those government employees working so diligently behind the scenes, out of our view, eventually redesigned themselves, redefined their purpose, and they evolved into unrecognizable creatures preying upon us innocent citizens.
FBI, DHS, DOJ, CIA etc employees have become horror creatures drunk on raw, cruel power they derive from controlling what had been hallowed institutions set up to protect the American people. And now these government Morlocks and Screamers are coming for all of us who dare point out that they have become Frankenstein monsters intent on destroying a free America so they can control it. One by one, they pull innocent Americans down into DC dungeons where terrible tortures are happening.
A new movie is out, which I saw, that details exactly how America is becoming a violent, lawless police state run by the worst people. This movie is called … Police State. I highly recommend you see it, not because it will make you feel good, but because you and I definitely need a kick in the ass to get our attention off of the fun and shiny happy things Americans are so used to having endless supplies of. We are not living in the American reality right now, people. We are living in a very scary, dangerous un-reality. If you want to understand how this is happening, go see the movie Police State.
The federal Screamers and the government Morlocks are definitely coming to get you and your kids. Don’t let them succeed.
A pretty face don’t mean a pretty heart. Plenty of federal agents will destroy 100% innocent you just for the pleasure of it
Federal agents coming to help you find your way to a dungeon where they will deprive you of your constitutional AND your human rights
RIP my friend Nevin Mindlin
Nevin Mindlin was probably an annoying precocious kid. He was probably one of those kids in school who at a young age would constantly raise his hand to answer questions posed by the teachers, because he actually knew the correct answer and he also probably knew a great deal more about whatever the subject was. Although I did not know Nevin at the tender age of eight, I am certain this lovingly annoying ability of his was probably becoming pronounced right about then. And it never stopped and it served him well all the way up until his death this morning in south Florida.
I will miss Nevin, for a lot of reasons. A good friend is always tough to find, and human chemistry is always a mystery. Opposites attract is an old saying, and as opposite as Nevin and I were from one another, we always enjoyed one another’s company. Maybe it was because I, too, was the annoying kid in grade school, but without Nevin’s intelligence. Probably I secretly admired him and I also wanted to be like him.
Nevin went to college, not just anywhere, but at Goddard College, a hippie freak school in the 1970s. Which must have been an interesting experience for all involved, because Nevin was a conservative Republican. He got his MBA from Lehigh University. He served in the US Navy and learned to take apart radios and fix complicated things. This ability to deconstruct and reconstruct complex bits of wires and capacitors became one of his annoying habits as an adult, when he would describe whatever public policy we were grappling with as a radio or electronic array. Nevin could diagram a public policy like no one else, and as he drew on the blackboard in his mind he saw electric wires, capacitors, and other radio components. Maybe he was just overthinking stuff, but it was impossible to refute him on his own terms. He would stop explaining and ask for questions, and the people in the room would just sit there staring, unable to conjure the right response. He should have been a salesman.
After working in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives for a long time, where he was the executive director of the House Labor & Industry Committee, Nevin went on to be the policy director at the PA Department of Labor & Industry under Governor Tom Ridge in the 1990s. Of course Nevin was smarter and more experienced than most of the other appointees (except fellow appointee Tom Armstrong, whom he admired), and he always struggled with reconciling his clear headed and deeply held principles with impolite political necessity. This business of trading off principle for necessity would plague Nevin his entire life, and I don’t think he ever felt good about it. Maybe he should have been a philosopher. If he had been a salesman, he probably would not have been a rich one.
Nevin retired a bunch of years ago and ran for mayor of Harrisburg. As a candidate, he was very popular, especially among the Black population, even as a conservative Republican, and he scared the pants off the political establishment. I was in the courtroom when a now departed county judge held that Nevin’s reliance upon the official opinion of the county elections department was Nevin’s mistake, and not the mistake of the paid professionals who advised him, and thus was he disqualified from running for mayor at the last minute. It was a disgraceful moment in the history of human self-rule. Even the judge found his moment of political necessity distasteful, and his shame at having to remove this pure hearted, well meaning, popular man from the ballot and from threatening the political establishment was written all over his own unhappy face. I will never forget it.
Nevin served the Harrisburg Jewish community in a number of roles, including president of the Silver Academy Yeshiva. He never stopped dabbling in local politics, until he moved to southwest Florida a few years ago and said “What the hell, I think I’ll just go fishing from now on.” I always felt proud of having taught Nevin to fish, because it brought him great pleasure. We used to fish the Susquehanna River here in Harrisburg, back in the early 2000s, when a guy could catch 100-150 smallmouth bass in a day, and have a real shot at the huge muskellunge we had back then. Those were real good times together. He also enjoyed splitting wood with me, and fishing Pine Creek.
One Fall night on our way up Pine Creek Valley, probably twenty years ago, we encountered a wrecked SUV sideways in the road, the driver injured and hanging out her window. An enormous buck lay alive panting on the other side of the road. Despite having all four of its legs cleanly removed from its body due to the collision with the front of the SUV, and despite being hardly able to move more than a couple of feet at a time on its bloody stumps, the buck was full of fierce fight and aggressive lunges toward anyone who approached him. I was trying to maneuver into a safe angle where I could dispatch the suffering animal when the driver’s husband showed up. He barely noticed his wife in the driver’s seat of the steaming, crumpled SUV, and walked over to the buck. The man clearly admired the buck’s huge rack (I’m guessing it was in the 140s-150s) and tried to get ahold of it to twist and break the animal’s neck. That was a mistake, as the buck quickly lunged and speared the guy squarely in the gut with its long tines, drawing blood. The man was filled with rage, and I handed him my 9mm pistol that I had been prepared to dispatch the animal with. He damn near emptied that entire clip into the buck before he handed the gun back to me.
We left the dark wreck scene with its gory buck, steaming disabled vehicle, and the injured woman with her uninterested husband running his hands over the deceased buck’s rack, and Nevin said “You deer hunters are a really weird bunch of people.” He really should have been a philosopher.
Nevin was married twice. First to Gail, who gave him three great sons he was crazy about, Joshua, Avi, and Hillel, and then to Jean, who was with him when he died today. Nevin leaves a legacy of clear headed public policy, of absolutely beautiful principles based on America’s founding documents and the Torah, which he tried to follow, and memories among his friends of his explosive, joyous, easy laugh and always happy demeanor. I will miss my friend Nevin so very much. Godspeed, old friend. I hope you get to fish on your journey.
He will be buried this Sunday in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he grew up.
Nevin Mindlin fishing in south Florida, looking like an Amishman who had taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque and ended up in Heaven
As goes Israel, so goes America
Lots of my fellow conservatives are poo-poohing Israel’s war for survival, because “that’s over there, and we are doing just fine way over here, so why should we either care or get involved?”
I am an America-first guy. No ifs ands or buts, America comes first in all things. Behind this commitment is a simple calculus: If America falls, every other cool place will also fall. And when we say fall, we mean the end of individual freedom across the planet. America is the last bastion of individual freedom; there is no other place for freedom loving people to go. And no one else will bail us out if America does fail. So, America first means an absolute commitment to preserving the highest and best freedom on Planet Earth. It is here that I make my stand. I hope you do, too.
Years ago a reader of this blog asked me to write about Agenda 21, the United Nations targeting of individual freedom under the guise of better health and better environment and so on. Agenda 21 is the usual Marxist pablum of do-gooders without a thought for its inevitable negatives. The gist is that whatever the UN wanted to achieve with Agenda 21 was good, and no one was ever asking about the down sides, the costs, the consequences. The reason I neglected to address Agenda 21 until right now is that a literal hailstorm of attacks on America from top to bottom was well under way, and still is, and I believed then that while Agenda 21 might appear to be a big part of the problems the USA was experiencing at the time, the truth was that a lot of other hidden efforts were much more dangerous.
Well, fast forward almost ten years and here we are, a constitutional America literally under siege from every angle, from every corner, even from within our own government. Agenda 21 might be interesting, but there is a lot of other evil crap that will be fatal to the American republic literally right in front of our faces. Turns out that Agenda 21 alone is kind of quaint policy debate stuff. Fact is, America is under attack by much more, much worse crap that doesn’t even have a catchy name.
Three weeks ago, a lot of conservatives might have had truly mixed feelings and mixed thoughts about Israel. Most conservatives like that Israel is a democracy, that it is a Western nation with the rule of law, that the people there speak great English, and that Israel has always been a close and important military ally of America. On the other hand, a lot of conservatives are mistrustful of the tangled web of official relationships between Israel’s government and our own. And many resent their tax money going there for whatever (about 90% of the American taxpayer money that goes to Israel pays for Israel to buy American-made weaponry).
However, since the bloody October 7th Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, conservatives have had another growing concern: Will this latest war become yet another place for young Americans to fight and die, pursuing vague goals and intangible results…all while the war machine cha-chings up the bucks.
Here’s the thing, folks. All of the above is true, and it is also possible for America to support Israel without sending any troops, and really just being more of a cheerleader as Israel cleans up the trash. But don’t think that what is happening in Israel can’t or won’t happen here in America. Don’t think you can simply close your eyes and ignore what is happening “over there” because it is not happening “over here.”
Because the same kind of people trying to destroy Israel also live right here in America. And they want to destroy America for the same reason they want to destroy Israel.
I think it is just a matter of time before America is attacked in a hundred different locations by a hundred different attackers, all driven by Islamic supremacism. I am not alone in saying this, because you don’t have to have a great analytical mind to know that the hundreds of Iranians, Syrians, Lebanese, and Chinese literally walking over America’s southern border all pose a huge threat to our people. They are not here to hookem horns party hearty and watch a football game. They are here to hurt us, to kill us, to destroy our civilization, to strip us of our rights, and to make us submit and to force convert us all to some other belief system.
So, Israel is the canary in the coal mine for America. If Israel falls, then whoa, America, you are really on your own, and we had better be on our guard. The same forces that could destroy Israel could destroy America. Don’t get complacent and say to yourself “Eh, that’s happening way over there, it doesn’t involve me, and it can’t happen over here.”
Not only can it happen here, there are hundreds of Iranians and Syrians and others from known terrorist countries living here right now. They will blow us up for the same reason Hamas is trying to blow up Israel. There is no separating America from Israel in this regard; both countries are hated by primitive, evil savages for the same reason. Interestingly, while some of the $85 billion worth of American weapons summarily abandoned in Afghanistan by the Biden Administration are showing up in Gaza, used against Israelis, one can’t help but wonder if they will also show up back here in America, but this time in the hands of our enemies.
When I was a kid and got into fistfights, and someone’s older brother jumped in to help his jerk little brother kick my ass, and I found myself outnumbered, I always appreciated having someone unexpected jump in on my side to help even the odds. Teams have a way of reinforcing each other, increasing their chances of survival. Israel right now is doing OK and doesn’t need America to jump in militarily. America doesn’t have to necessarily fully jump in on Israel’s side right now, but we had better be watching closely what happens there and what is happening here at home. Because as Israel goes, so goes us, so goes America.
Democratic self-rule is not supposed to be easy
Up until Congressman Mike Johnson was unanimously elected as the next Speaker of the US House of Representatives last week, political watchers, news reporters, and insiders were in a state of panic, panic I tell ya.
The Epoch Times described the US House of Representatives scrum for selecting a Speaker, after China-owned RINO Kevin McCarthy was ejected by hero Congressman Matt Gaetz, as a time of “paralysis.”
The unreliable and constantly discredited New York Times called the blessed time without a Speaker of the House as “weeks of chaos.”
Conservative talk radio was filled up to puke-on-your-feet levels of “Gaetz should have had a plan,” and “You only remove the Speaker when you have a plan,” and similar Conservative Inc. mistrust of the essential democratic process and worshiping of the unnaturally smooth “normal” process that just has to be corrupt. Sean Hannity, Clay and Buck, Glenn Beck, and the rest of you radio guys, you know who you are.
The rest of the press/media/ political outlets, both establishment/legacy and new alike, were of a common mind: Washington works best when it works perfectly smoothly, efficiently, and there are no hiccups, apparently. And thus we conclude that apparently democratic processes of debating and voting and disagreeing are uncomfortable to political insiders. Isn’t that reassuring?
Thankfully, when Speaker Mike Johnson was eventually coronated, we had the Babylon Bee in the room to shed the most accurate light on the situation: Their headline “Smoke Rises Over Capitol Indicating Congress Has Resumed Setting Taxpayers’ Money On Fire” wasn’t really funny, because the truth is painful.
That Babylon Bee humor was an updated version of Mark Twain’s observations of Congress: “Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”
And his “There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.”
But wait, there’s more of how Americans then and now really feel about Congress when it is working properly:
“This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when a baby gets hold of a hammer.” (Will Rogers)
“The taxpayers are sending congressmen on expensive trips abroad. It might be worth it except they keep coming back.” (Will Rogers)
“I love to go to Washington, if only to be near my money.” (Bob Hope)
“Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.” (Ronald Reagan)
“Members of Congress should be compelled to wear uniforms like NASCAR drivers, so we could identify their corporate sponsors.” (Caroline Baum)
The truth is that self-rule by a group of citizens, by way of their elected representatives, is not supposed to be easy, or smooth, or efficient, or painless, or without occasional hiccups. To expect nothing but easy, smooth sailing when power and money are being fought over would be a childish fantasy. Or an evil wish.
Think about some of the total brawls we have witnessed in recent years from South Korea’s parliament, or Japan’s parliament. Chairs flying, punches thrown, martial arts kicks landing on unhappy faces! Likewise in a few European parliamentary democracies in recent years, where policy disagreements were settled with fist fights. Vive le human passion for truth, I say.
Well do I recall first seeing 18th and 19th century drawings and political cartoons of fisticuffs, cudglings, and canings in the US Congress, as well as accurate pictures of fatal duels among elected officials. These old drawings showed the true inner workings of representative government – members beating the snot out of each other. The other good side of these bloodlettings and drawn-out disputes is that when responsible people feel strongly about freedom vs tyranny, about slavery vs abolition, about fair taxation vs taxation without representation (which Americans are living under right now), they have strong disagreements. Government commensurately slows down and waits for the disagreements to get resolved. Good, this is natural and healthy.
You know what scares me in politics? Bipartisanship. Yep, that old let’s–reach-across-the-aisle crap means only one thing: Both political parties have reached agreement on mutually beneficial ways of wasting and pocketing our hard-earned tax money that the government coerced out of our pockets at gunpoint.
I was glad to see Rep. Kevin McCarthy ejected from the Speaker’s seat. Smoooooth McCarthy was an embarrassment in so many ways (not the least of which his evil role in covertly delaying and unnecessarily drawing out the selection process in the hopes of being re-installed as Speaker), and he smells of corruption.
I was glad to see Rep. Matt Gaetz and others (where was my US Congressman Scott Perry in all this?) demand that McCarthy be held accountable for breaking the promises he made to attain the Speaker’s seat. I was glad to see Rep. Gaetz eventually widely recognized and appreciated for having toppled the DC Swamp’s man in Congress and replacing him with Rep. Mike Johnson, who appears to be a decent person from East Succotash America and not yet familiar with greasy handshakes.
Overall, the shut down and gridlock in Congress during the struggle for the Speakership was a big gain for the US citizenry, and I would like to know what Mark Twain would have said about it. Whatever Mark Twain would have said about those glorious weeks of Congressional inaction, we just know he would have hit the nail on the head.
a “Day of Rage” can cut lots of ways
So Hamas leadership has called for a “Muslim Day of Rage” today against Israel, Christians, Jews, gays, and Hindus around the entire world. Their spokesmen have made it explicitly clear that the entire planet and everyone on it is their target, today and the rest of the tomorrows.
I have known many Muslims during my adult life. Some were real friends to me, and they stood firm against the evil call of Islamic imperialism and Islamic supremacy. Probably because they had been westernized by growing up in a pluralistic America. Their vision for themselves was as an equal citizen along with everyone else around them, all of us watching out for each other because none of us were superior to the other. Our equal standing as different individuals before the American law binds us different people, yes, but in a true brotherhood. We need these and other brave Muslims to once again stand up and say to Hamas “You do not speak for me.”
The problem with the silence from pro-equality American and British Muslims is that people living around them then infer that they do support Hamas and genocide. Fear is a toxic poison, and if people become afraid, then they, too, can lash out at those they believe are their enemies. This “Day of Rage” thing can cut a lot of different ways, and the Hamas messaging can stir up a lot of equal or greater reactions in response. If you rub the genie bottle, and the genie comes out, you don’t always get your wishes met. Instead, the genie very often plays tricks on you and turns your wishes upside down.
You are a person who wants a global violent jihad against innocent people? Careful what you wish for, because it could turn and bite you, instead.
It would be really nice to see Western Muslims standing publicly against Hamas and Islamic supremacism and imperialism, and standing for and with those billions of humans who have been declared unclean infidels and had a target painted on them by Hamas and their terroristic brethren. If you tell me that you ask for salaam every day, then this is salaam, and today is the day to show you mean it.
Jews are the original “indigenous people”
Harvard University is now universally known as the place where capable young minds go to die. Literally only a few hours after the Hamas massacre of roughly a thousand Israeli civilians, and while the beheaded babies and raped women’s corpses were still warm, something like forty (40… 4-0 count ’em) student groups at Harvard University publicly announced their “solidarity” with Hamas and its broadly broadcast images of butchery.
Included among this Harvard University gathering of aspiring young sadists and Stalinists we also saw the Black Lives Matter students raising their fists against their imaginary foes, colonization and imperialism. Somehow, somewhere on the Harvard University campus, which to be fair is not anywhere near alone among so-called universities in this epic mis-educational failure, these students had been incorrectly taught that Muslim Arabs are the sad victims of a colonizing and imperialistic state of Israel. Probably more propagandists than we care to think of masquerading as serious university professors at Harvard University have been unchecked in stating lies as facts to the “young heads full of mush.” Not just about Arabs, Jews, and Israel, but a whole host of subjects.
So wackily radicalized and so failed has the universal university “educational” experience become (check out Miss Irony Of The Year award recipient and terribly mis-educated black NYU student Ryna Workman in her full on racist mode) that the political orthodoxy enabling the propagandists-faux-educators prevents college campuses from even hosting guest speakers who speak something different. Never mind that the different topics usually involve the actual, factual truth…
The factual truth about Israel and Jews and Arabs and Muslims, as evidenced by several hundred years of archaeology in Israel that jibes hand-in-glove with the Torah/ Bible, as well as well documented history of the Near East/Middle East region, is that the Jews are the only indigenous people in Israel, and likely in a good bit of the surrounding region.
But aren’t Arabs and Muslims the majority there? Weren’t they oppressed by the World War I and World War II European governments? Were Arabs and Muslims not moved, re-settled, dislocated, and treated badly?
- Everyone in Europe and the Near East was mistreated, re-located, dislocated, displaced, and treated badly in Word War One and World War Two. Literally every single ethnic and religious and linguistic group suffered greatly at some point beginning about 1912 and ending never. Germans started both wars, inflicted unbelievable suffering on their neighbors during the two wars, and then suffered very badly at the end of both wars. Everyone around Germany suffered. The suffering was shared and meted out liberally by the Turkish Empire, ally to the Germans.
- Yes, about 500,000 Muslim Arabs were dislocated about ten to twenty miles by the 1948 civil war they started in Israel, and also about 1,000,000 (one million) Jews were similarly displaced from across North Africa to Iran, in the same time period. If anyone is a sad refugee in this situation, it is the Jews.
- Arabs are -historically speaking- and -factually speaking- from Arabia, which is known today as the Saudi Peninsula or Saudi Arabia. Islam (Muslims) began in Arabia and spread throughout the region due to the violent colonizing of Arabs and the imperialistic success of Muslims.
- Arabia is not Israel or Judea or Samaria or the Golan or the Galilee. For people to leave Arabia and then lay claim to Israel and Judea and Samaria and the Galilee and the Golan (all areas with unbroken Jewish communities for the past 4,000 years) they would have to be really aggressively practicing both colonialism and imperialism.
- Sick irony of moronic ironies, the word Palestine is now used to fakely name an artificially new place that never historically existed with this name…except when the ultimate colonizers and imperialist ROMANS used it.
- Again, are you the reader not amazed at the weirdness of people who right now lay claim to the ultimate symbol of Roman colonization and imperialism as their evidence of being “indigenous” to the land they occupy? There was no Palestine, there never was a Palestine, and the only time there was any historic referral to the name Palestine was by the Romans, who fought the Jews in a long and brutal civil war, and who then tried to de-Jewishize Israel and Judea by renaming the area. And this is why modern day colonist Arabs and imperialist Muslims seek once again to re-name and de-name Israel into something else.
If you are truly bothered by colonization and imperialism, then you have to question how the heck there came to be more Arabs and more Muslims in downtown Cairo than there are Jews in the entire world. Islamic imperialism and Arab colonialism are responsible for the spread of Arab Islam and Islamic Arabs across a huge swath of the planet.
The question of whether or not these Muslim Arabs today across North Africa and the Near East and the Middle East are entitled to claim all of the area they came to dominate through terror and violence and ethnic cleansing is a discussion the world ought to have. I mean this. Neither Arabs nor Muslims are indigenous to any place except the Arabian Peninsula. I am not advocating that they all go back there right now, but to the more educated and clear-thinking readers here, I am asking you to weigh out the actual history of the region and the causes of the problems that the region now faces.
We must have an authentic discussion about this, which I recognize is something today’s university student has probably not experienced.
Israel and its indigenous people – Jews – right now face a genocidal force that is unhappy about not controlling every corner of the earth, including lusting after Spain and Austria and Israel to begin with. We gotta address this problem, people, or the problem is going to continue.
In the meantime, Am Israel Chai – the Jewish People Yet Live, a battle cry, slogan, a rejection of foreign colonialism and imperialism, whatever you want to call it, that has persisted from the throats of Jews standing on the dirt of Israel for thousands of years, until this very day. Like right now today, as Jews in their homeland of Israel fight back against foreign imperialism and colonization as presently embodied by Hamas and their evil supporters.
Are Israelis being tricked into another Roman Occupation?
Disclaimer: We don’t go down any rabbit holes here. This blog is filled with well-argued opinions and occasionally those of people who I believe need to be heard. My opinions are always backed by facts and Founding Principles, and if I can’t find facts to back up my particular opinion, then I fall back on principle (e.g. America is supposed to be a small government run by Constitutionally obedient and publicly responsive public servants). If no Founding Principle is at stake, then I usually don’t take a stand. Today, if you read further, you are joining me on my first ever rabbit hole exploration. But I am doing it out of commitment to truth, and I am asking questions that are the only questions that make sense to me.
Historically, about 2100 years ago, Israel/Judea became increasingly occupied by the expanding Roman Empire, because some Jews invited the Romans in to provide some protection from the invading Parthian Empire and to give some political stability among a divided Jewish populace. The rest is history, as it is said, as over the following decades the Romans increasingly asserted their own form of political control to the point where they ended up in a civil war with the entire Jewish population. The Romans destroyed the Great Temple in Jerusalem, as well as much of Jerusalem itself, enslaved and deported about half of the Jewish population, etc.
In their destructive romp across Judea and historic Israel, the Romans also unwittingly created two new powerful religions that would go on to shape the entire Western world, Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity, but this is a subject for another time. The key here is that the Jews invited in the Romans for their promised political stability, and ended up getting destroyed by them.
Is the same process now repeating itself in modern day Israel? Is America the new Rome about to politically occupy Israel? I ask because the same historic dynamics are playing out.
Consider the following facts:
- Hamas launched a massive and massively barbaric suicide raid on southern Israel that was destined to fail itself and destined to bring huge destruction down on Hamas and Gaza in response. It is self-defeating. Makes no sense.
- Neither Hizbullah nor Syria have opened up additional fronts, though they logically should
- Israeli security along the Gaza border was essentially a Ring Doorbell camera every hundred yards? Really?
- Contrary to Military Operations 101 since organized militaries began operating about five thousand years ago, no sentries, no sentinels, no guards, no watchmen were posted along any of the Israeli outposts along the Gaza border. Not one. As a result, the few IDF soldiers posted there were literally caught asleep in their underwear and gunned down as they scrambled out of their beds.
- Apparently, reportedly, Hamas has spent the past two years practicing their invasion and giddy child murders on a large mockup Israeli village. No one in Israel noticed this? No one in Israel thought this was strange, or a precursor or a warning?
- The Biden Administration just released Six Billion Dollars to Iran, for no good or logical reason, and to America’s serious detriment, which freed up Iran to spend their existing money on things like nuclear weapons aimed at America and arming Hamas and Hizbullah terrorists killing women and children in Israel (and probably coming to America soon through Joe Biden’s wide open southern border).
- Israel’s supposed “security failure” looks and smells and walks like an inside job by the security and military elites, who oppose Prime Minister Netanyahu’s popularism (just as the American elites and their pet security agencies like the CIA, FBI, DHS etc oppose President Donald Trump’s power-to-the-people popularism). Every day this supposed “failure” at Gaza appears more and more like an inside set-up of PM Netanyahu to blame him and turn the voters against him.
- Israel’s “security failure” at Gaza makes no sense on its face nor in hindsight. Israel can and usually does walk and chew gum at the same time. The IDF has always covered all three bases and Home Base simultaneously. Way way too many important parts of the Gaza security system failed all at the same time to be a mere coincidence. There has been no explanation for this failure, and indeed other than a deliberate act of self-sabotage and self sacrifice by Israel’s military and security elites (because of their power struggle with PM Netanyahu), there is no logical explanation.
- None of the senior officials responsible for Israel’s national security or for Gaza’s border have taken responsibility and resigned, as they normally would when committing such a monstrous failure in any other time. Hmmmmm, right?
- The defeat of Netanyahu and the elevation of America in Israel’s domestic politics would essentially place Barack Hussein Obama in charge of Israel’s next government.
- If in fact Hamas was allowed to go into southern Israel by Israel’s professional watchdogs, who are almost all Leftists loyal to the leftist elites, for basic domestic political purposes, it would be in keeping with the American Left’s practice of burning America to the ground in order to get and keep control of America. Examples of such treason in America include the 2020 “Summer of Love” Democrat Party violence, looting, burning, destruction of American cities, the allowed release of covid into the American populace by American health officials (Dr. Mengele Fauci) supposedly guarding us against such viruses, the deliberate destruction of law and order in many Democrat-controlled cities which has resulted in political and societal chaos in these same places, the suspension of electoral laws in 2020 that resulted in massive and brazen vote fraud in the most important swing states like PA, MI, AZ, GA, the continuing fraudulent and even illegal lawfare against President Donald Trump by the administrative state and Democrat politicians. I could go on, but we are on a time budget here. Looks like Israel just experienced her own “Summer of Love“.
So into this situation of Hamas possibly being goaded and sacrificed by Iran into its suicidal homicide attack sails the American navy. Into the Mediterranean Sea now comes a flotilla of American ships meant to buoy Israeli spirits and signal to American Jews that not only can the Democrat Party be occasionally trusted to help Israel, but today to actually save it. Recall that just weeks ago Joe Biden’s illogical payment of Six Billion Dollars to Iran signaled that the Democrat Party hates Israel and Jews and America because it is empowering their worst enemy, a nuclear powered Iran. Lots of “how the hell can any American Jew be a registered Democrat” arguments were resounding across American synagogues.
But now? We are shown that the Democrats actually looove Israel, and the actual savior of a democratic and secure Israel, PM Netanyahu, is cast as the bad guy who failed in Gaza.
Tell me this is not the beginning of the Roman Occupation of Israel Part Two. Nothing else makes sense to me.
And tell me this isn’t just too convenient of a relationship between the Biden Administration, which has spent the past three years destroying America, and a nuclear powered Iran, which was designated by Barack Hussein Obama to be the ultimate destroyer of America.
Americans, are you paying attention?
UPDATE: Yes, I am suggesting that the Biden/Obama Administration is working closely with Iran to remove PM Netanyahu, so Biden/Obama can install a puppet leader who will follow through on the failed Oslo Accords, implement a two-state “solution” and thereby gut and ultimately erase Israel as a sovereign nation, and certainly as a Jewish nation. Iran appears to be temporarily sacrificing Hamas and Gaza to achieve this goal, but they will certainly expect to get revenge on Israel’s Jews at some point in the future.
We The People 1, Uniparty 0
Overly preened, waxed, effete, phony pretty boy career politician and freaking corrupt as hell now former Speaker of the US House Kevin McCarthy was ousted from his brief Speakership yesterday. First time in American history, the vote on McCarthy represents a slowly turning tide in favor of We, The People as more and more of us American citizens struggle to regain control of our rogue government from an evil bipartisan Uniparty made of both Democrats and establishment Republicans.
McCarthy is the kind of flaccid, spineless, limp-wristed establishment career RINO “Republican” who does everything for his own personal gain, and for his party’s gain, and apparently zero for The American People’s gain.
Despite representing a majority in the US House, since becoming Speaker earlier this year McCarthy gave in on nearly every Democrat Party demand and Big Brother Government funding ploy. There was literally nothing the Democrat Party and the Biden White House demanded that McCarthy did not and would not cave to. An additional 87,000 heavily armed IRS agents? Sure, said McCarthy, why not have an even bigger helping of terrorized American citizens cowering from official jackbooted thugs in their homes.
Like most GOPe pukes, Kevin McCarthy is much more beholden to the politically partisan, far-left, America-hating, American-hating, Constitution hating, freedom hating establishment media like the Washington Post and the New York Times than he is to the US Constitution or even basic principles like individual freedom, small government, less intrusive government, etc. McCarthy is worried about what the partisan establishment media will say about him, and not about what his voters will think of him. His big dollar corporate donors make sure he has plenty of money to repel upstart challengers who might want more decision making put back into the hands of the American citizenry, and less in the hands of corporate lobbyists and their loyal lapdogs like McCarthy.
McCarthy did zero to represent his constituents or the tens of millions of voters who have increasingly voted to stop feeding the Washington DC beast, and apparently it was his secret deal with China Joe Biden to fund Ukraine yet again with billions of US Taxpayer dollars (as our bridges and roads disintegrate) that got him in trouble with his own caucus. Well, some of the Republican caucus, because there are waaaay too many “Republican” congressmen who are perfectly happy with the decisions McCarthy made. These are the congressmen who see themselves as the moderate wing of the Democrat Party, not as an opposition party. Gotta get these traitors out of office, Mister and Missus America!
Anyhow, kudos to Rep. Matt Gaetz for having the balls to take on McCarthy and hold him to the pledges McCarthy had made in order to become Speaker earlier this year. It is telling that McCarthy increasingly broke those pledges and seemed sure that he would not be held accountable. Unlike former speaker Nancy Pelosi, McCarthy had zero interest in unifying and holding his caucus together by giving in here and there to the conservative members by whose grace he ascended the throne (and by whose grace he was removed).
This is a telling fact: McCarthy had no interest in mollifying his conservative patriot wing. He gave them nothing, and gave the communist Democrat Party everything it asked for.
And thus it became apparent that McCarthy (and so many “moderate” “Republicans” like him) has no loyalty to a constitutional America. He blows bullsh*t up everyone’s butt, and then does the opposite. He ran as an R but acted like a loyal D. Hmmmmmmm, no wonder people ask how much secret payoff money McCarthy must have received from China or some other wealthy gift giver somewhere. Anyhow, it was time for McCarthy to be challenged and hopefully removed. Thanks to Rep. Matt Gaetz, We, The People scored 1 against the evil Uniparty.
I am surely not alone in being intrigued that GOPe Republicans and the New York Times alike are horrified, HORRIFIED at the “chaos” supposedly ensuing from McCarthy’s ouster. It is also intriguing that any action that goes against the interest of the bipartisan Uniparty, and which challenges illegal and increasingly un-checked Federal government power over us supposedly free citizens, or which legally challenges blatantly stolen elections, is immediately branded by the Uniparty and its establishment media outlets as an insurrection, chaos, illegal, etc. It is also intriguing that the Uniparty looooves a smoothly running rogue government, and hates anyone who questions it or challenges it.
Kevin McCarthy’s ouster from the Speakership is a really big deal. If nothing else it is a sign that there are at least a handful of patriots in the US House willing to take risks with their political careers for the benefit of We, The People. Turns out there are a few who understand that The Bigger The Government, The Smaller The Citizen. Turns out you and I are not completely alone in our dispute with our rogue federal government.
Some action items for the next Speaker: a) purge the US Capitol Police of lawless rogues who hate America, b) investigate and hold accountable all members of the US Capitol Police who committed unnecessary acts of violence against innocent protestors on January 6th, c) actually release all of the January 6th footage so that Americans can make up their own minds about what really happened, d) begin impeachment proceedings against lawless members of the Biden Administration, including FBI Chris Wray, AG Merrick Garland, DHS Alejandro Mayorkas, and others whose nonstop lying to Congress should land them in jail for the rest of their lives.
Another NFL season? Who cares
According to the aggressive internet advertising I have encountered, and clicked right through, another National Football League season has begun. And unlike my childhood and adulthood up until 2016, I now just don’t care. I won’t be watching any NFL games at home, I won’t be going out to a sports bar to watch a game, and I won’t be going over to a friend’s house to watch a football game.
The fact is, me and the NFL are splits-o, over, finis, done, parted ways, divorced. Oh, I did my part as a fan; it was the NFL that caused our breakup. When the NFL’s strange public policy positions got me mad in 2015, the disrespectful kneeling by spoiled brats in 2016 got me furiously disconnected. I could not then relate to a business that deliberately stuck its finger in my eye and then expected me to overlook it and keep on keepin’ on. Nope. In 2016 I turned off the NFL TV and never looked back.
The situation has not been helped by a woke, racist, anti-America ESPN and fellow sports “media” outlets, in which the NFL continues to appear and participate, as if nothing is wrong. The situation has not been helped by the NFL adopting certain flags, colors, etc as statements about sensitive social issues and political policies that are guaranteed to drive away people who take their business with them. I always wonder what the outcome would be, the response would be, if the NFL jerseys and helmets sported the National Rifle Association logo….we know it would not be positively received by the ESPN et al “sports media” entertainment complex, which is really now just an adjunct of communist anti-America Hollywood.
I don’t think the NFL misses me, either. Occasionally I will be at someone’s home, or out with family, and a football game will be playing on a TV. My eye or ears will catch snippets of the game, and sometimes bits of the advertising during the game. So far the advertising ratio seems to (roughly) be about 25:1 aimed at American blacks over American whites. That disproportionate advertising effort tells us that American blacks are still loyal fans of the NFL, and very much the target audience of NFL games, while American whites have left the stadium, euphemistically and statistically speaking.
Incidentally, my disgust with NFL rubbing my nose in its leftist politics also bridges over into Penn State football. “The house that Joe [Paterno] built” has also left me in the dust, not so much the team or its management with the silly names on the jersey shtick, but Penn State University itself. My alma mater has gone totally woke, adopting policies and political positions completely at odds with my values. And at odds with the university’s own stated values of fairness, dedication to academic excellence, etc.
The way Coach Joe Paterno was mistreated by the PSU board of trustees didn’t help my view of the school. Then there was the unjustified hiding away of the Joe Paterno statue, and unjustified general official abuse of the golden Paterno name. PSU has done nothing of substance to correct its poor behavior. Instead its administrators and trustees and staff just keep on keepin’ on with the leftist nonsense, expecting me to get on board. Every year since 2012 PSU has found some new way to alienate me.
Despite receiving constant emails from Penn State and the PSU Alumni Association begging me to contribute and participate, I have backed away and found other ways to spend my time and money. Not getting back on that PSU train, despite five decades of dedication and personal participation.
So, just like I won’t support an NFL that aggressively adopts political positions that I cannot agree with, I cannot support a Penn State University that has adopted policies and politics that I cannot possibly agree with. The same goes for Major League Baseball, the National Basketball League, the National Hockey League, and a cornuplethora (thanks to John Correia for this funny word) of other now leftist-woke sports-entertainment institutions. All of whom seem to be doing just fine without me, I might add. If they missed me and my business, then they would have been courting me by dialing back the leftist politics junk. And they have not done so, but rather increased their leftist politics activism.
I will bet that if there is ever a need to financially support sports teams and leagues that have deliberately alienated their audiences by adopting leftist politics, and thereby lost a great deal of money, the political establishment will find a way to bail them out with taxpayer money. And we know the GOPe will make it happen.
Meanwhile, with the NFL out of my life I now have a lot more time and money of my own to spend on things that really bring me happiness. Reading on the couch next to my wife, visiting with friends and laughing about our kids, reloading antique black powder cartridges that became obsolete a hundred years ago, but which are still plenty effective for taking wild game at sporting distances, splitting firewood, studying the Bible, writing, there are so many productive uses of the time I used to mis-spend on the NFL.
So long, Screwy, I won’t see ya in Saint Louee, as Bugs Bunny would have said.
A few more thoughts on Alaska gear & public land
Even people who will never hunt in Alaska want to know what kind of gear a guy carried while he was there, and they might even have some opinions about it. Alaska is kind of the go-to place for all imaginary hunts, survivalist prepping, and bush homesteading, and you can go on YouTube and on any related video find endless debate about guns and gear by all kinds of people, 99% of whom have never been to Alaska. After the “Thousand Overnight Tragedies” essay here a week ago, I got some questions about my hunting kit from people who will never do anything more than a luxury cruise to Alaska. I know well that if a couple guys ask, there are more who want to know but didn’t ask. So here goes, my best advice on how to be properly kitted out for Alaska.
First off, before assembling your Alaska kit you have to determine if you are staying out in the Alaskan wilderness. Plenty of people get air dropped into a remote wilderness spot, tent up near the lake or river where the float plane landed to drop them off, and that’s their base camp they hunt out of every day. It is the same place the plane will pick them up from in a week or ten days. If this scenario is how you are heading into Alaska to hunt or fish, then you need all of the survival gear, various fire starting methods, a beacon, etc. kit that you would need while wilderness hunting anywhere else in North America. My Seek Outside tipi tent with the large titanium wood stove has made all of the difference for how I hunt in wilderness (thanks to Ranger Ian for his guidance on this years ago after I reported how I nearly froze to death in his service territory).
Second, the month of year really makes a difference in Alaska. I have been there in July, August, and September. July and August are usually quite comfortable. In September you are beginning to get some chilly nights, and possibly chilly mornings. Maybe a chilly day. Warm clothing you can easily layer on and off, like a Filson wool vest, becomes critical the later it gets after August ends.
Finally, where exactly in Alaska are you going? Central Alaska encompasses most of the state, and it is kind of the rugged classic interior Alaska everyone thinks of when they imagine Alaska. But all of the state’s coastal areas are really different from the interior, especially as you begin to head north or south of Anchorage. Southeastern panhandle Alaska is a temperate rain forest. It rains there even when it is not really technically raining. Something like fifteen to twenty FEET of rain falls there in the southeast. Obviously you have to be prepared for regular rain if you are hunting and fishing in the panhandle.
If you are hunting out of an Alaskan home, say your friend’s or your cousin’s, or from a lodge, and then driving or boating to your destination each day, with plans of returning before dark, then here is the kind of checklist you will appreciate:
- Rubber rain suit, jacket with hood and pants. My 25-year-old Cabela’s blue rubber rain suit worked fine for both repelling the constant light patter and sometimes more steady rain. It also served as my wind breaker with only a tee shirt underneath. Blue is a bad choice for hunting, because many animals see blue like humans see fluorescent orange. When my blue rain suit finally dies, I will get a green one.
- Good rubber boots and also good leather hunting boots. I used both, sometimes on the same day, the rubber ones in the morning and the leather ones later in the day, or vice versa. If you are hunting hard, you need rigid ankle support, and I have not found a better boot for hunting in steep, rugged terrain than the Danner Canadians. I especially relied on the Danners on the SE AK island we hunted for blacktail deer. For this recent trip I finally bought my first “good” pair of rubber boots, the only “hunting style” rubber boots that properly fitted my enormous duck feet, by Irish Setter. These worked great in all wet environments I encountered, many of which were the margins and shallows of salmon streams. A PEET boot dryer is a good thing to have waiting at home at the end of the day.
- A light day-use backpack holding extra clothing, extra ammo, food, water, GPS (I use a Garmin 62s with detailed mini SD card maps) a range finder, binoculars, etc is an absolute necessity. My LL Bean hunting pack has accompanied me on hunting trips from the Scottish Highlands to Alaska and a lot of places in between. It is a fabulous and extremely durable, well thought out piece of kit.
- Binoculars are essential in Alaska, because it is such big country. Doesn’t matter if you are hunting or fishing, you absolutely must be able to see what is happening around you, if for no other reason than Alaska serves up cantankerous grizzly/ brown bears by the minute almost everywhere you go. And occasionally mean moose. Plus binoculars help you see game you are after, or maybe circling marine birds distantly picking off scraps as larger fish feed at the surface, where you can easily catch them. Leupold has been my USA-made go-to binocular maker for a very long time, after using various Nikons for a while. Yes, you can’t go wrong with Swarovskis or Zeiss, but I am brutal on my gear, and I will cry like a baby if all 265 pounds of me face plants on top of the $3,000 binos strapped to my chest. So I use a pair that are almost as good as the $3,000 pair, but which cost about 800% less.
- Range finder. Any modern range finder is useful for hunting in big country like Alaska, except over water. If you are hunting directly over a large body of water, then you need to calibrate your piece, or it will give you whacky results. I use a Nikon Forestry Pro because I work in the forest products and land business, but it has also served me just as well in hunting. I have learned that this model is rugged, because I use mine so much, in so many tough environments.
- Knife. Yes, you need a strong, sharp knife to go hunting correctly. I won’t wade into the whole which steel is better than my grandma’s Old Hickory no-snob high carbon potato peeler knife. And if anyone ever says the word “bushcraft” within arm’s length of me, you’re gonna get a healthy serving of country whoop ass. Because I can’t take it any more. The whole “bushcraft” genre is such urban flatlander weekend warrior nonsense, for God’s sake, let it be, leave it alone, leave it behind. A hunting knife can be almost any shape, size, and steel type that has worked well for you in the past. The Inuit and Inupiat just south and north of the Arctic Circle use Old Timer pocket knives, grandma’s ulu made of whale penis and wrought iron, and occasionally a high quality modern “huntin‘ knife” left behind by an appreciative tourist hunter. And guess what…all of these various shape knives work just fine for the subsistence lifestyle a lot of Inuit and Inupiat live. And they kill, skin, dissect, and eat raw on the spot – with their varied assortment of knives – more critters in one month than you will kill in a lifetime of Lower 48 recreational huntin‘. I happen to use various JRJ knives made by John R Johnson of Perry County, PA, because his ATS-34 steel and overall craftsmanship were as good as any huntin‘ knife available anywhere on the planet. Unfortunately, John has not made a knife in almost ten years. Fortunately, for years I bought armloads of knives that he custom made for me, and I enjoy using every one of them every season.
- Rifle. Yeah, some guys hunt Bigfoot with a souped up .44 Magnum or 454 Casull handgun. So what. A rifle is light years better than a handgun in every way, and I hunt big game only with a rifle, especially in real big country like Alaska. On this recent trip I carried my friend’s Henry 45-70 lever action, loaded with the Federal Premium HammerDown 300 grain rounds. There are hotter, more effective 45-70 rounds available from CorBon and Grizzly, but I was happy with the 3″ 100-yard performance of this round out of my friend’s rifle. And I don’t know how up to snuff the Henry is with the hotter 45-70 loads. The problem with the Alaska panhandle is that the weather there absolutely eats guns. If the saltwater doesn’t kill your gun, the constant rain and moisture will finish the job. A stainless steel gun like the Marlin 45-70 SBL is probably the best possible hunting rifle for Alaska. And this gun can handle the hottest 45-70 loads. One comment about the Henry: Its rear sight was very frail and kind of sad. It moved around all by itself, which can result in a severe mauling or death by Griz, if you happen to not check up on the rear sight and adjust it as needed every ten minutes.
- Backup pistol and bear spray. Bear spray works very well in places without wind or breezes. If you use bear spray in a place with wind or strong breezes, you are likely to incapacitate yourself instead of the bear (insert stupid human hungry bear joke here). I happened to be hunting and fishing in a SE AK place with constant winds and breezes, so I dispensed with the bear spray and kept a .44 Magnum revolver on my hip, loaded with some bear-buster ammo and not the ubiquitous 240 grain JHP that is guaranteed to piss off Griz more than kill him. Speaking of backup, I carried an emergency beacon of unknown make or vintage on most of my hunts.
- Clothing. My old tried-and-true Cabela’s Gore-Tex hunting pants were perfect for the cooler days, and my old tried-and-true Columbia nylon zip-off cargo pants were perfect for the warmer days. A wool hunting shirt in red and black buffalo plaid (of course) with some thermal long underwear is all I needed in the early season. I wore a no-name fluorescent orange fleece hat as well as my 2020 Trump hat. Sometimes together when it was cold. Mid to late September and beyond, you need real cold weather gear.
Good luck if you go DIY hunting in Alaska. DIY solo is my thing, and I think it is the most fun way to wilderness hunt. The challenge with DIY in Alaska is it is so big, and the critters are so big, and the distances are so big, and the civilization is so small and so far away. You really can’t do a DIY hunt by yourself in Alaska. It is not safe, and a thousand things can go wrong after you are successful and kill the animal of your trophy dreams. Go with a friend, go with a guide. And be smart about balancing your kit with practical items you are truly likely to need. Hunting in Alaska is not automatically a survival test or a Bataan Death March. You don’t go to Alaska and automatically plunk yourself down in the woods and start doing a video on (puke) bushcraft. It isn’t all dangerous, nor is Alaska all wilderness. Plenty of good hunting and fishing is available a decently brief drive out of any of the major cities, but it does get better the farther out you go.
Speaking of going further out of civilization, all this amazing hunting and fishing and trapping in Alaska is possible only because of the huge critical mass of public land there. Yes, I agree that federal and state agencies sometimes mis-manage public land. And sometimes those agencies end up “mis-managing” their relationships with the American citizen taxpayers who pay the agency staff and who own the public land the agencies are supposed to steward. But I think that public land is one of the very few things that government does pretty well. And even when government staff screw it up, the public land is still there afterwards.