Posts Tagged → america
Musical “1776” Two Thumbs Up
Please do not tell anyone, but I saw a musical play the other day, and I liked it. Humiliating to admit, yes, but our three readers come here for honesty, if nothing else. Today you get five doses of honesty: The musical “1776” was excellent, timely, accurate, entertaining, and all the other positive stuff that my movie and theater critic mentors Siskel & Ebert would say about it.
We saw it at the historic Walnut Street Theater in Philadelphia, America’s oldest longest-continuously running theater. Because the venue has a sane policy on weapons (have your carry permit available if anyone asks to see it), I was strapped. I was strapped because it is downtown Philly, where the Wild West can descend upon one in the blink of an eye.
The docents, volunteers, and paid staff were all nice and helpful. Before the show started, we could have raised Lazarus more readily than actually reaching a human being during operating hours. Weak spot, but probably a weak spot in all theaters. No one there answers the phones or the emails until after you have come and gone.
Look here, theater is not for me. Watching adults play dress-up and make-believe is usually overwhelmingly annoying for me. These are not mature people, and many of them have gratingly annoying personalities. It is impossible to take actors seriously, on stage or off. Now that TDS is ravaging Hollywood, I am reminded daily about how much I dislike actors. It seems that the kind of people drawn to acting all fall into the “Big Jerk” category of life.
One exception in my world exists for those live stage performances that are about meaningful, inspirational, true stories. Biblical stuff ranks “acceptable.” Political theater is almost always heavily slopped to the falling overboard-left, preachy, inaccurate, dumb, communist, and, thus, annoying. Best bets are on movies, where the nonsense and forgotten lines moments have been left on the editing room floor.
“1776” is about the writing of the Declaration of Independence over a one month period, however, and is, therefore, a ten out of ten in my book, any day. It involves the story of the delegates from 13 colonies, debating the break-up with Britain, in Independence Hall, in Philadelphia, in June and early July, 1776. The widely documented personal performances of Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and our own (local to PA) John Dickinson are performed admirably by the capable actors. Thank you!
Real focus is put onto the debate about slavery, which did occur in the actual Continental Congress, and how that hot issue was taken out of Jefferson’s first version of the Declaration of Independence. Depicting this on stage is especially important these days, as it is bizarrely considered “cool” by some to incorrectly badmouth America about slavery.
Fact: In 1794 America just about had a civil war over slavery. We also almost had a full civil war over whisky and taxes, then, too. But abolishing slavery was an early goal in our nation’s founding, and white people were ready to fight and die to end it, even as slavery was a full blown enterprise in the rest of the world. Eventually American whites got around to that fighting and dying thing, in 1861, when the insurrectionist Democrat Party declared separation from the rest of America, over keeping their slaves.
By 1865, the Republicans took away the Democrats’ slaves, and as we see even today, the Democrats never forgave them for it.
I digress.
That this was a musical without much singing was God’s way of showing me that beauty can occasionally exist in the darnedest places, including on a stage full of … feh… actors. That most of the singing that did occur was bawdy or silly really took the sting out of the musical part.
The actors said their lines well, performed very well, and entertained us audience people well, about an important subject. The Walnut Street Theater was clean, had no stray odors, and was a pleasure to visit. All the audience members upon whom I threw myself were friendly and gracious.
In another couple of months America, us, our nation, will celebrate its 250th anniversary since our founding. It is a really big deal. This play was timed to synch with our national celebration, and it fits well. If you find yourself going anywhere near Philly in the coming weeks or months, go see “1776.”
And go strapped, because the venue has a Constitutionally-minded policy on 2A concealed carry. God bless ’em. That was the only reason I set foot inside the theater…they actually believe in FREEDOM.
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America’s 250th Anniversary approaches… how many people care?
America’s 250th anniversary arrives this July 4th Independence Day. A huge milestone, an enormous achievement, a remarkable record, two hundred and fifty years protecting indivdiual rights as a constitutional republic.
I am excited about this event. But is anyone else?
When I drive around, anywhere, do I see extra American flags, extra examples of patriotism or excitement? Nope. Nothing.
The silence is deafening.
It seems that very few Americans are excited enough about our nation’s 250th anniversary to do much about it, to show their extra enthusiasm, or appreciation. Don’t you think this is odd? I do.
It may be that Americans do not know how to celebrate the 25oth. I mean, will we set off more fireworks than ususal? Wave more flags and banners and patriotic bunting than ususal? Hang flags from our vehicles? Drink more, war whoop more, or shoot tracers into the night sky more than usual?
One thing for sure, most Americans seem to take America for granted, as if we are too big to fail. So, they think, why celebrate something that we take for granted, that we already believe is due and kind of boring and unremarkable…
This is how cultures and nations end.
When a nation’s citizens cease being excited about their nation, and about its longevity in a world hostile to individual freedom and liberty, they cease valuing that nation. And when they cease valuing it, they cease protecting it, safeguarding it. They give it away, like give its citizenship and taxpapyer money to illegal border jumpers; they throw it away, engage in all kinds of self-destructive virtue signaling, like calling America bad names and unfairly criticizing her for ridiculous things.
America is not too big to fail, folks. And while there are a lot of folks trying to make America fail, like Barack Hussein Obama, we do not see a commensurate backlash against them.
Mad Magazine’s longtime cover was Alfred E. Newman, saying “What me worry.” Because he was an idiot. Because only idiots do not worry about the future, and stability, and the strength of national currency, etc. Has America become populated by a bunch of Alfred E. Newmans?
The lack of American flags and patriotic fervor about our 250th sure seem to indicate it.
Is this the American citizen on the eve of America’s 250th birthday? Really?!
Sometimes no deal is good enough
President Donald Trump, the best president of my lifetime and the modern day savior of American democracy, believes in capitalism. He believes in “The Art of The Deal.” He believes that most humans, given good choices to select from, will almost always if not always choose logical, reasonable, rational options.
It is with this earnest mindest that President Trump has approached the Middle East. And in some ways, his view on human choices and preferences has, in fact, borne out with the wealthy Gulf states (Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait). These sparsely populated countries are exceptionally rich, and everything they do is centered on money. Money is the language that President Trump speaks most and best, because he is a capitalist. And it is piles of money that keep the rulers of the Gulf states in power.
So, money brings together some of President Trump’s foreign policy goals into alignment, or slight overlap, with the oil producing Arab Gulf states.
Where this money-and-comfort mindset and worldview fails is in the face of apocalyptic, genocidal supremacists like Adolf Hitler back then, or the jihadi Iranian Shia mullahs in the present. These people did not and do not speak the language of money or human comfort and happiness, other than to use these thoughts to move themselves forward on the chess board in the short term. Their currency is raw power and sheer domination and control of everyone in front of them, by any means necessary.
They are ruthless, whereas President Trump believes in choices and opportunities.
The jihadi/ Hitlerian supremacist view is contrary to President Trump’s view. The totally rational “Mutually Assured Destruction” doctrine that kept Soviet Russia and America from nuking one another in the Cold War does not apply in Iran, nor with any other Islamist country. There, money is only a means, not a goal. Lots of jihadis are happy to live in poverty, if it helps them achieve their measure of wealth in power and human subjugation.
Trump believes in kindness and human choices, free people making their own choices and reaching “deals” for mutual benefit. On the other hand, Jihadis believe in you, me, and Trump all on our knees (which is why the American and European Left share common cause with the Jihadis).
America was founded on individual freedom and choice, which are completely the opposite of Islam, and especially the jihadis within Islam. These two world views are incompatible; they do not overlap in a Venn diagram. To date, leaders like President Trump have managed to find points of contact between Western values and Islam where friction is least, but he has been unable to really find significantly overlapping areas of interest. The Abraham Accords came very close to bringing the Sunni Arab countries into a shared Venn diagram space with Israel and America, but those accords are pretty shaky. As soon as jihadis somewhere start their la-la-la-la yodeling thing, the Gulf states reflexively go into retreat. Culture is powerful.
With Iran, there is no compromise. Not because America does not want to, but because Iran’s apocalyptic, genocidal, fanatic jihadis do not accept any point of contact between themselves and anyone else that is not resolved 100% on their terms. And they will fight to the very end, even if they have to drag down their enemies with them into the abyss, to seek that end result.
President Trump is both a patient and loving man. That is clear. But he is also having trouble computing that anyone can be so different from him and from America’s hope and promise as are the Iranian jihadis. And so he keeps on trying to “make a deal.”
Mister President, a lot of us Americans, who are still squarely and absolutely in your corner, think you have tried more than is possible or than is even smart. You have done all that is possible to avert an absolute showdown with the Iranian jihadis, and they have been unable to meet you halfway. You must now accept that they are incapable of thinking like you, thinking in terms of mutual benefit. They do not think like that, or like you.
If the Iranian jihadis are allowed to stay in power in any way, shape, or form, they will return to their field of battle with America on their own terms. They will have learned from their mistakes since 2025, and they will adapt. Iran will find a way to destroy or damage America, one way or another, if they are allowed to remain in power.
You must finish the Iranian jihadi job, Mister President. If you love America as much as we all think you do, then you must make the unpleasant decision to wipe out the Iranian jihadis. It is us or them, and we elected you to protect Us.
We know that this is a difficult time for you, President Trump, and we stand firmly with you, at your side. Absolutely no one else in American politics has the strength of character that you have, and if you do not save America from jihadi Iran now, then we will end being apocalyptically victimized by them in the future. There is no art of the deal that you or anyone else can pull off that will avoid this; only military success right now will protect America.
Spoiled brat Republican kids, wth
Next installment of cane-shaking at spoiled American kids, this time directly at the so-called conservatives and Republican young people.
Why are you young people, with so much promise, so much potential, so much energy, so many options, also so negative and living the flip-side of the grievance culture that the Left has used to nearly destroy America?
You will say that America is ganging up on us, which is true, and that much of the ground rules, that your parents made you live by while you were growing up, are not being followed by anyone else, which is also true.
True, all of it, but irrelevant. Let me ask you a question:
When our forefathers founded America, what kind of conditions did they face? Not very good, right? Bad, right? Overwhelming odds, right?
Were the British fighting fair, while trying to stop the young republic from gaining independence and succeeding as a new nation run by its people, instead of its nobility and aristocracy? No, the British did not fight fair. In fact, they very often took no prisoners on the battlefield, and “dispatched” with bloody bayonet anyone who was wounded, and then executed by firing squad anyone left standing.
And yet, General George Washington and his brave troops fought, and fought, and fought. They were undeterred. They bled and fought, day after day. Yes, it was tough, but what option did they have? To lose was to lose everything, and become slaves.
You young conservative Americans are not weak, and you are not pathetic, and you are not sad losers, so STOP ACTING LIKE THAT.
My advice, or rather my request, is that you look within yourself/ yourselves and find and use that same strength and ingenuity that our Founding Fathers had to draw upon to survive and create the great country we live in. It is in you.
And yes, America is in survival mode right now, no arguing about that. Our beloved America is in terrible shape because of anti-Western ideology on the Left and complacent cowardice on the Right. The Democrat Party is crazy and the Republican Party is lazy, and the crazies are winning.
So do not mimic the Left and begin whining and bitching about how unfair things are. Do not do that. Rather, band together and pursue positive goals. Like: Recruit American Blacks, Hispanics, and Asian Indians into the Republican Party, and make the Republican Party a truly conservative institution that promotes the basic principles of America’s founding, like meritocracy and equal opportunity for everyone.
And like: Create your own institutions, if the current ones are corrupted.
Years ago, my son was one year away from being an Eagle Scout, and he dropped out of Boy Scouts because of the massive assault on the institution. The demand to include girls in his troop was one problem, because he could no longer hang out with just boys and talk about Boy things in a safe environment. And then came the gay thing, where everyone had to talk about being gay, and acting gay, with older gay men hanging around, in what had been a non-sexual environment where talking about sex anything was generally frowned upon. It was this new form of sexual harassment that drove my son out of the Boy Scouts, and broke his will as a Boy.
Hugely sad for our family, who had all cheered on our son in his many years as a Boy Scout.
And I experienced something similar while in graduate school, back in 1990, when I was matter-of-factly told that White men had a bleak future in academia. My dream of being a college professor was blown up, because I had the wrong skin color. I felt sold out, and betrayed by the institutions I wanted to be a part of.
And in fact, when I went to work in the Federal government in Washington DC, instead of finishing my Phd and becoming a college professor, I discovered that the federal workforce was only a few years behind the racial and anti-man gender assault well under way in academia. My career turned into a white guy running like hell, trying to stay out ahead of the pack of dogs chasing us down (how ironic that the people running those packs of hunting dogs were and still are all White Liberals, who long ago destroyed the American Black family).
So I know of what I speak, and of what you feel. Your groups, organizations, institutions have almost all been corrupted, and you find yourself overwhelmed and surrounded by attackers. All of this is factually true, it is not just a feeling. But do not live by your feelings, live by your intelligent brains.
Be like George Washington when he fought the British, and retreat and re-form and re-organize in safety, again and again as much as you must, in order to fight effectively another day.
But fight you must, as men, as American men, as George Washington men, because if you little bastards sit around sucking your thumbs and bitching about how unfair life is, you will indeed lose this fight and lose America and all of its beautiful promise, and your adult lives will be a horrendous leftwing Marxist hellscape of slavery and oppression. And tough guys like me will either be dead or too old to fight for you.
So fight, dammit, fight smart and out-flank the enemy. Out-organize it, and defeat it. And once you have your enemy defeated on the battlefield…do not leave it alive to come back and attack you again later on. Make Marxism and treason absolutely illegal in America… by making it terribly punishable.
So Job #1: Form a stronger, better, harder, more popular, leaner, less elitist Republican Party, and go out and win elections with a majority of the country supporting you. You can do it, if you but will it.
Last observations on Iran
Jihadi Iran is being corralled the only way that genocidal fanatics can be defended against, with overwhelming force. Someone had to do it, or the world risked losing the Middle East oil fields to Iran and its evil partner China in the short term.
Trump-run America and Israel stepped in to correct an unacceptably dangerous situation, and as a result we have been subject to “gaslighting” by people like Qatari-owned Tucker Carlson and plain vanilla Jew haters and not-careful thinkers who believe that America is too big to fail, too big to be taken over, too big to be blown up, etc. Just ridiculous nonsense.
For 47 years, Iran has threatened to destroy America and all of Western Civilization. They said so loud and proud every week, while frenzily developing nuclear bombs and the intercontinental ballistic missiles to carry them around the globe. Iran’s theocrats also developed all kinds of conventional weapons and missiles that can quickly destroy civilian populations and their civilized living centers. Pretty much mass terror. The Iranian mullahs believe in mass death, mass martyrdom, as a necessity of bringing their messiah to life.
To say that such people as Iran’s mullahs should be just left alone to do their own thing was either laziness, evil, or way out of touch thinking with such a harsh reality unfolding before us for decades. Every American city was increasingly at risk of being blown up in a huge mushroom cloud, or irradiated by a dirty nuke and made uninhabitable. You might be OK with these things happening to Tel Aviv, or even Madrid or Paris, but if it could happen in those places, it was eventually going to happen here in America, too.
Yes, there are some Americans who hate Israel so much that they are willing to sacrifice America if they can see Israel destroyed. I am not one of those people. If you are one of those people, then there is something wrong with your psychology, your physical brain, your hormone levels, your morality, or your loyalty to America. Please get yourself fixed up or get the hell out of America, and take some anarchists with you on your way out.
Shia Iran, as run since the 1979 US Embassy hostages were taken, has been a growing menace, a rabid dog threatening the entire planet. Only the most goofball isolationists believe that they should have been left to themselves. I am a man with plenty of vivid fantasies to my credit, and not even I can conjure up that big of a fantasy, where America survives a nuclear-armed Iran.
So, President Trump is doing the hard lifting that everyone before him was too weak or too evil to do. Some people, like both of the Presidents Bush, were just weak. Others, like Barack Hussein Obama, were just evil, and sought to empower the Shia mullahs as a way to damage America. AutoPen Biden had an illegitimate administration full of Obama staffers who tried to help Iran, again. And against all of this, President Trump has stood like a rock.
Thank you, President Trump, for having the incredible strength to make the tough decision that no other Western leader could or would make.
Are there unknowns, costs, and risks with removing Iran’s mullahs? Yes, of course there are. But life is full of risks every day, and dealing with big risks is what responsible world leaders do, or should do. That is your job.
The bitching and whining coming from all but a few Democrat Party officials is terribly disheartening to behold. What the hell happened to the Democrat Party of my youth? They were patriots, America lovers, freedom lovers. Not these people today, these serial accusers who contribute nothing to resolving the Iran problem, but nonetheless find fault with every solution that President Trump has (and still have said nothing about AutoPen Biden’s $83 Billion disastrous retreat from Afghanistan that cost 13 American servicemen lives).
The cost of a rabid dog Iran running amok with nuclear missiles was far greater than any money America spends to disarm said Iran. Ditto the risks.
And the unknowns a temporarily headless Iran will face are part and parcel of reality and the responsibility of taking big boy steps toward restoring world-wide sanity. Plan A is to remove the rabid dog head. Plan B is to see what can be done with Iran’s body politic afterwards, and whether it can be resurrected whole, or Frankenstein-stitched-and-bolted into a self-run democracy, a parliamentary monarchy, or a kindlier, more avuncular, gentler theocracy run by new people who believe that God loves all humans, period.
For all the anti-Trump naysayers out there, please grow the hell up. You guys have made a large industry out of complaining about President Trump, about Israel, about Jews, about a free America, about “Zionists” and about everything else except subjects that are really important to humanity. Please move on to some other salient subject where your massed brain power will help solve an important question or problem, like curing cancer. You are otherwise just wasting your life force on ridiculous nonsense, and everyone who cares about America can see it.
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Trump Saves the World
President Trump has just saved the world by defeating the most dangerous source of evil and villainy, the jihadi-run Republic of Iran. To call Iran’s theocratic authoritarian government a “republic” is the joke of the century. Nothing about Iran’s current government is anything like a republic. America is a republic, and while American governance and elections may have their challenges here and there, we are without a question a democratic nation that is run by The People.
For 47 years, Iran’s islamofascist government has been the poster child for cruelty. Women, especially, who stepped out of line and violated subjective rules of modesty, were at the least beaten. Thousands of beautiful, independent minded women were tortured and raped to death by enforcers. Just to send a message. In the name of Islam and Allah and all that. Next level or three levels higher crimes against humanity stuff. Nightmare stuff. Sadistic crazy person stuff. Official government stuff. Totally freakin’ evil stuff.
Now my Sunni friends will definitely criticize the Shia Iranian regime, mostly on theological grounds, but they will also admit that some of these same standards and problems are found in Sunni nations, too, like Pakistan. In Pakistan, Hindu and Christian men and women are routinely beaten to death, burned to death, drowned, stoned, etc in public, because someone says that they said something negative about Mohammed or whatever.
All it takes to get a good ol’ public stoning in these places, like Pakistan, is for someone Sunni to accuse a minority, someone Hindu or Christian, of some unprovable offense, and we are off to the races. Yes, there is a real problem with Islamic culture, but Iran beat them all by a mile.
Since 1979, Iran has been the main funder, sponsor, supplier, and trainer of violent terrorist groups all around the world. Religious focus, yes, but also just an all-out assault on Western Civilization. So many innocent people have been hurt, killed, maimed, damaged by Iranian-backed violence that it is probably impossible to count them all (and if you are curious about what this most religious Iran does to its own people, look up “Iran Hangings” in a browser with the safe function off).
What most Americans do not realize is how much increased cost has gone into our clothing, food, and gasoline just because of threats from Iranian-supported terrorists. The costs of having to move stuff around and past these bad people are passed on to American consumers. By now, these added costs are pro forma, but they should never have existed in the first place.
Yes, I can hear it now: “Iran is someone else’s enemy, not America’s enemy.”
Only two types of people say that: Iranian-aligned jihadis, and their stooges.
For 47 years, Iran’s government has been saying openly its stated goal is the total destruction of America. Only the most spoiled, bratty, out of touch Americans believe that such a threat was empty. There is evidence that Iran’s government was front-and-center involved in the theft of America’s 2020 election, which resulted in the installation of a pro-Iran, anti-America, AutoPen Biden Administration. This is serious stuff, nothing to scoff at.
So now President Trump resorted to force, because diplomacy had not only failed but was being used against the West by the cunning Iranians, Iran is being brought up hard. Its nuclear missile ambitions are being neutered even harder than they were in 2025. No nation, especially America, has to sit back and wait for someone’s stated pledge to destroy you to come to fruition before fighting back.
Iran threatened America about a million times too often, and finally America fought back.
President Trump has done the right thing in erasing Iran’s leadership, its nuclear stockpiles, its missile factories. None of the criticism against him makes sense. Either you are for America or… you are for Iran?!
Sure looks like an entire political party here in America prefers that Iran succeed in bombing America with nuclear missiles, with the exception of my US Senator, John Fetterman. How weird and how sad.
And so many of today’s harsh critics of President Trump never said a thing over the past two months as the mullahs mass murdered an estimated 36,000 non violent Iranian protestors, including public hangings for simply criticizing the ayatollahs. Sorry, your credibility card has been revoked, perennially outraged and protesting Leftist people.
Now that Iran’s nuclear ambitions and its intellectual capital lie in smoking ruins, Western Civilization is saved. For the moment, and from this particular threat. We have other threats, most notably all of the jihadis who live inside Western nations, and who are advocating for anti-Western changes to America and Europe. But the most immediate one is gone.
Thank you, President Trump. Again.
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ICE & Tariffs are acid test of loyalty to America First
Support for secure American borders and controlled (and highly limited) immigration is a basic tenet of loyalty to America. People who want open borders and all of the chaos and cultural destruction that follow are by definition enemies of America, as it was founded and run for the past 250 years. We cannot have open borders and have a nation, especially a nation of laws, and a nation of laws that are applied equally to one and all. When borders are erased, the nation is erased.
That Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) has become the target for de-funding and dissolution by an entire political party says a lot: That political party is once again, like it was in 1860, the main domestic enemy of America. That political party wants to dissolve ICE, and with it, dissolve America.
Please, do not tell us that you are a Democrat, but that you “don’t agree with that.” Like the Democrats who I know personally, and love, and yet do not understand.
If you are a registered Democrat who votes for elected Democrats, who are trying to implement open borders policy, then you are supporting open borders and all that flows from it. So, opposing open borders, and supporting ICE, is one acid test of loyalty to a constitutional American republic, as founded.
A second acid test of loyalty to America is support for tariffs on our trading partners. Tariffs protect American manufacturing businesses, American jobs, many American unions, and often equally match foreign tariffs on American products tit-for-tat. Saying that you are for tariffs tells us straight-up that you want America to be treated equally by its trading partners, and that you do not want American jobs to be shipped overseas to our competitors. Supporting tariffs also says that you want America to enjoy having strategic depth across a universe of business sectors and manufacturing areas. Without strategic depth in domestic production, America is at a great disadvantage against our trading partners and enemies.
A classic example of domestic weakness is the array of critical minerals and metals that America depends upon and which we source from outside America. Most come from unstable regions where child slaves and environmental catastrophes go hand-in-hand with the related mining, or from enemies like China, who can use embargoes to damage American military and communications production. Tariffs correct artificial market inequities, and create financial incentives for domestic production and mining within America.
Yes, conventional modern economics states that tariffs have a negative rebound effect on American consumers, who supposedly end up paying for those tariffs when they buy foreign products imported into America. Without question there is some truth to this, especially in the early stages of tariffs on certain products, especially things like furniture. And yet there is also a ton of evidence to the contrary, where once America met tariffs on us with tariffs on them, our own domestic capacity was once again incentivized to giddyup and go.
I myself have a front row seat on the tariff policy debate. In the world of hardwood timber, logs, and lumber, we are witnessing a one-two punch in the international markets that has caused hardwood products to hold steady in a low area. When China’s domestic demand for American hardwoods dropped several years ago, then our log and lumber prices fell commensurately. We used to cut certain hardwood species and put them right onto shipping containers bound for Asia; not much right now.
Add tariffs to that weak Chinese demand, and we have a suppression of our hardwoods markets. As a result, a lot of Pennsylvania and New York sawmills have gone out of business in the past couple of years. And timber is a poor investment right now. However, as painful and as scary as this situation is, it is the kind of natural market correction America needed. I cannot blame President Trump for this situation, and frankly, I cannot really blame AutoPen Biden for it, either, as these are supply-and-demand forces beyond America’s control. One thing President Trump can and did control, however, was the matching of tariffs on Chinese wood flooring and furniture with American tariffs of our own.
Why not? If you love America, and you want America to survive and thrive, then you want Americans to stop giving away our products, our money, our jobs, our natural resources. Tariffs do that, quite well. Especially when you live in the Number One Trading Partner nation in the world, America.
In conclusion, if you oppose ICE and secure borders and controlled legal immigration, then you are for chaos and the destruction of America. Just like you were an outside enemy seeking our failure. And if you oppose tariffs, or you oppose giving the president the power to tariff trade items, then you really have it in for our American union workers, and you hate our small towns and manufacturing plants. You have then failed two acid tests of your loyalty to America.
And if you are disloyal to America, you should not be surprised when people like me, loyal patriots, view you with great skepticism. But then, if you belong to the political party of 1860 insurrection and slavery, you are already used to that…and it seems you wear that big scarlet “A” as a badge of honor!
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What NFL football game? Halftime halfwit what?
I keep hearing about this NFL something-or-other, and seeing headlines about this football halftime thingybob today. No idea what these people are talking about, what these events are.
See, in 2015 the National Football League began going “woke” and invoking national politics while trying to pose as athletes peforming circus tricks for audiences seeking a time-out from life. Being politically Leftwing while trying to entertain the masses are two mutually exclusive endeavors. Never the twain shall meet. And both shall fail.
It was intriguing that in 2016 the NFL players began kneeling during the National Anthem, as a sign of disrespect to America. The same America that made these halfwit imbeciles multi-millionaires was suddenly no good, they said, and apparently by demonstrating that they rejected America, the NFL players showed how virtuous they were.
None of it made any sense, until we realized that it all had to do with rejecting Donald trump’s Make America Great Again political message and movement, and the capitalist American culture that created the NFL among many other things.
So, since 2016, I have ceased watching football. I refuse to support something and somebody that does not support me. I refuse to embrace and celebrate people who reject and denigrate everything I hold dear and value the highest (America, our flag, our anthem, our 250 year old identity as a constitutional republic etc etc).
So, no NFL game for me today, and no halfwit time-out “entertainment” freak show by a South American man in a woman’s dress who sings about how much he hates America, followed by a Canadian band called Green Gay or Green Bay or something, who also sing about how much they hate America.
None of this makes sense to me, none of it is entertaining to me, but all of it does make me recognize, yet again, just how acidly destructive the political Left is. Because the Left makes every effort to take over every institution it can get ahold of, and then bend that institution to its ideological purpose of promoting Marxist revolution and destroying freedom and capitalism, it will destroy the very things that the people hold dearest. Like football.
At one time football was “America’s sport,” and from PeeWee Football on up to the NFL, young men from every corner of our great nation aspired to qualify to aggressively compete in front of the nation. It was fun, it was an honor, and the NFL was a good income. Now? To quote Rush Limbaugh, watching the NFL games is like watching the Crips versus the Bloods, a gang fight. Very little class, all violent, all selfish and arrogant behavior, and now in 2026, with a huge helping of We Hate America FU poured on top of it.
No thanks, NFL. You can stick your crappy event and your crappy business up your you-kn0w-what. You lost me. I will be spending my evening reading by the fire, maybe smoking some cherry cavendish in my pipe, maybe a glass of whisky at my elbow. Things here at my home will be peaceful, happy, and all-American, not that you NFL people have any idea what I am talking about.
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Trump-Kennedy Center Vacancies Create Opportunity
Nature abhors a vacuum, goes the tried and true adage. This adage is true because wherever an opening occurs in the natural state of things, like a fallow farm field, or a wildfire’s burned out charred hole in the middle of a woods, some plant or animal will find a way to adapt to that unique opening and move into it, make it home. The newly open space creates a home for those who will move into it the fastest, while many cannot or will not leave the comforts of their present niches.
This dynamic fact of life on this planet is the quintessence of competition and adaptation, two primary forces of nature and, as the main tools of God, the main way that living things evolve and develop here.
And so must this same rule apply to the Trump-Kennedy Center in Washington DC, a place I have sat in many times before. Last time was some years ago, to see “War Horse.” Which was quite good as theater goes, which is a big critical compliment from me. See, my theory on theater is that if a play is any good, it will end up as a box office smash movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Mel Gibson, Charlton Heston, etc. et. al.
Every other kind of play will inevitably cause me to slump in my uncomfortable folding chair, and sleep contentedly among the anonymity of a large audience. And also often earning hard nudges from left and right, because apparently I snore when sleeping in public. Most plays are hardly worth the effort of keeping my eyes open.
Which is to say, I am a professional art and theater critic, because I am very experienced, tough to impress, and quite discerning. And I have the acid tongue to match. And thus, my opinion on the ever longer list of “artist” cancellations at the Trump-Kennedy Center is that we now have a gigantic and rare opportunity. In other words, all of the prissy leftist brats who have recently canceled their appearances at the Trump Kennedy Center have left a hole into which other talent can and should move. And it should be new talent, different talent.
Conservative talent.
Patriotic talent. Non-Woke talent. America First talent. Traditional values kind of talent. Stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and cry at the National Anthem kind of talent.
America has a new and ever larger opportunity at the Trump Kennedy Center to showcase pro-America/ pro democracy/ pro elections/ pro open minds/ pro thinking entertainers, artists, circuses, acrobats and tumblers, drunks, comics, poets, and writers. Hell, throw in some Capitol Hill staff skits, and the place should be rockin’.
Point being, the absence of the traditional self-anointed far Left entertainment industry (complex) people has created a vacuum into which a new tradition should step and grow. I am thinking Lynyrd Skynyrd or Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs a la 2026, whoever that may be. Kid Rock would be a good team leader here, maybe the new facility director or artistic creator or whatever silly high falutin’ name the industry typically uses. Except that whatever it is, we need to mock it into oblivion, like put Kid Rock in a top hat and tails and have him put on dramatically fake airs of superiority and faux seriousness.
America needs new curators of popular culture, which has traditionally been established by our artists, actors, and writers, who like a herd of lemmings in the past fifty years have unsustainably embraced economic and cultural anti-America Marxism. And now we have an opportunity to evolve and build an entire new pro-America genre, housed at the Trump Kennedy Center.
Some nameless, talent-less Washington DC based opera company was among those who ridiculously quit the place in a huff because of the partial name change. Turns out this lame group was only a group because they were based at the Trump Kennedy Center. As in housed there, subsidized there, lionized there, cradled there, simply for being there. May I suggest their replacement? A new group?
We, the new group I am promoting, are named The Kings of Toxic Masculinity, and we may not always sound in tune, or get our lines right all the time, but by God, we will be entertaining as hell for any red blooded American who wants to laugh, cry, celebrate America, and not fall asleep in the usual uncomfortable chair.
Hope to see you there, fellow American!
UPDATE: Days after this essay, President Trump announced the closure of the Trump Kennedy Center to fix the place after decades of deferred maintenance. Smart decision, because there were whole corridors there that smell like mildew, which means physical rot had set in to the building. What a symbol! Nice to know it will be overhauled and fixed up in two years.