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August 31st, 2026

What makes a good podcast

Podcasts are such a hot thing right now, and have been since the 2020 covid plandemic, that even people employed in the mainstream media are trying their hand at it. Part of the draw is cache, like la la I have a podcast, as though it confers personal specialiness and high intelligence, and the other part of it has to do with simple reach and monetary remuneration.

Everyone who thinks they are someone, or who wants to be a someone, “has” a podcast.

Podcasts are a big net benefit to the world, to humans, to public policy debates, to the spread of ideas (good and bad), information (good and bad). Podcasts have democratized the spread and flow of opinions (artful and bluntly foolish), and have drawn a lot of disenfranchised people, people dejected by the low quality of ubiquitous legacy mainstream media, back into the public marketplace of ideas and news information.

American culture and politics are arguably now informed more by podcasts than by corporate establishment outlets.

Since 2020, when the world was largely locked down and stuck inside, podcasts became the latest and greatest information outlet. Doctors sitting in their living rooms, describing in detail how their hospital administration had politicized their treatment of covid patients, covid survivors, parents finally seeing for the first time the utter slop being served up as “public education” by the politicized teachers’ unions, you name it, podcasts became the end-run around the censorship-industrial machine weaponized against We, The People by the legacy media, Big Tech, and the installed Big Brother Biden Admin.

The dam had to break, the river had to find its level, and the podcast world was the most creative way for people with information that countered the brazen lies of Doctor Mengele Fauci to feel heard. And so it was with people sick and tired of the establishment lies and narrative about covid, which was more about controlling people than it was about public health.

And now that a bazillion people have jumped into podcasting since 2020, a Jurassic-level leveling is taking place. No, no metaphoric meteor is streaking towards Podcast World, ready to hit the Yucatan square on its nose and re-assemble all podcast life on our planet. But simple market forces are beginning to play out. Some people, who had made a big name for themselves during the covid plandemic and the Biden years, are now struggling to find their place in podcasting. Others took a few Tucker Carlson punches to the head and fell down, only to climb back up and give Tucker a few in the kisser himself, and now he is fallen.

Point being that actual marketplace dynamics are determining the success or failure of the podcast world. Supply and demand, risk and reward, appear to be the main arbiters of a podcaster’s success.

Unlike the legacy mainstream media, which has long been propped up by one political party and its constellation of funders and, really, political donors. Market forces only lately seem to have become a factor in the staying power and eyeball presence of partisan mainstream media outlets like CNN, CBS, NPR, the Washington Post, the New York Times. Slowly, the water falls into the cracks, freezes, expands, and widens the cracks over at the MSM. But the cracks are becoming more apparent.

So what makes a good podcast? Here are some of my filters, or requirements, that keep me returning to a podcast:

  1. Knowledgeable and experienced hosts. Twenty-something-year-old podcasters may be cute, they may be smart, but honestly, these people have no real life experience that I can look to in order to trust and value their opinions. Alternatively, highly experienced adults who have maybe failed here or there in their adult career, now these people intrigue me the most. They are grounded in reality, and nothing trains like pain. I will spend my precious time listening to someone who has learned some tough life lessons, and is sharing them. Alternatively, I cannot spend my precious time listening to or watching someone who merely represents my own methodology or values. This is where political/ religious/ cultural ideology is least important.
  2. Smart, incisive, witty commentary is a must. Simply reciting a litany of complaints or critiques should be insufficient for every prospective listener who values their own time. Humor goes a long way with this listener.
  3. Understandable, measured cadence in delivery. One famous podcaster is smart and knowledgable, sometimes witty, but he speaks so damned fast I cannot understand what he says half the time. It is almost physically impossible to listen to such a person.
  4. Creative and able to link the mundane to the big picture. A great deal of podcasting is simply evaluating and relating news events through the eye of the podcast host, and their simple blunt reactions / analysis are not (or should not) suffice to get your attention. Looking for the meta-link between small facts on the ground and bigger body politic ripple effect is the sign of a true analyst. Someone who adds real value to our understanding of current events.

So, yeah, I thought we were done with the podcast thing a few days ago, but it is such a big and timely subject that this part of the discussion had to be addressed. Because Google / YouTube so aggressively censored political and cultural ideas that its far left staff did not like, Rumble became the go-to place for intellectual refugees. Give it a shot.

 

By Josh • Posted in Fruit of Contemplation • No Comment
August 19th, 2026

Why I do not have a podcast, and won’t

Couple years ago, a longtime older friend, financially successful and politically active, asked me why I do not have a podcast.

“I see all these podcasts online, and I think, Wow, Josh would be great at that You should do it.”

And to me, even though I am not going to be a podcaster or have a podcast, what a great and appreciated compliment that is, for several reasons.

The most important being that discerning thinkers — people who more carefully consider the information they consume —  are increasingly tied into podcasts. Both Left and Right, and a lot of Americans in the middle, are hungry for information that breaks from the worn out, politically partisan, and openly fraudulent mainstream legacy media outlets like the New York Times, ABC-CBS-NBC-CNN-NPR-BBC, Washington Post, LA Times, etc.

These mainstream legacy media organizations are not fair-minded arbiters of accurate information. Rather, they are highly tuned political activism outlets. And it is no “conspiracy theory” to say this; they proudly flaunt their partisanship every single day. At this point, there is no material, substantive difference between the New York Times and Mother Jones magazine, other than the NYT is living off the fumes of its once great reputation and the closed circuit dopamine high that leftists live in (“I only read information sources that align with my values” said an old friend to me several years ago, deliberately not self-aware about how self-defeating such a non-diverse, mono-syllabic approach to information is to those people, especially, who pretend to consume only the very best and purest of information).

The NYT masquerades as a serious place, whereas Mother Jones has been a gleeful juvenile bomb thrower for decades. Both are far-left America-hating Marxist activism proponents who abuse their masochistic audiences.

And yes, I have the hands-on experience with both of these outfits to speak authoritatively about them. Suffice it to say that we all have a family…

And so, in this general vacuum/absence of accurate news i.e.  mainstream media’s deliberate misinformation fake news, podcasts have opened up huge opportunities for people genuinely interested in learning the actual factual truth. And market demand has been met by market supply; podcasts are now such a thing that plenty of Americans run for office or commit public displays of strangeness, just to get enough of a following to launch a podcast.

Today, there are an awful lot of podcasts available. It seems like every would-have-been college professor and wingnut and ex-CIA officer and ex-combat veteran with loads of ink on his arms has started a podcast. A podcast is what serious would-be “influencers” do. The actual “influencers” just seem to post brief TikTok videos of themselves in various stages of undress, or eating messy sandwiches in an expensive car while wearing expensive clothes.

I would say most of the podcasters on the right are pretty careful thinkers, not all, but most. People who kind of defined conservative podcastistan for a long time (long by podcast terms), like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Alex Jones, have largely discredited themselves by abandoning facts and rigorous thinking for nonsense only slightly better packaged than the trash at the New York Times or Mother Jones.

This is the beauty of the podcast world today: Dip your toe in the water and check it out. Jump in for a swim and lap up all the many flavors of individual opinions you like. It is a much richer, more diverse, more interesting, more informative place than all of the monosyllabic legacy media outlets put together.

So given my positive view of podcasts in general, why did I not start a podcast of my own? Several simple reasons: I do not have the time to do it; I am not narcissistic enough; though I am a very strong public speaker, I enjoy writing much more than talking; and I do not know how to do the necessary selfie videos, which feel socially awkward to me.

Too many podcasters really scramble to stay on top of the wave, every day, which can lead to some humorously foolish, or sophomorically high schoolean, dis-believable grasping at straws. Publicly. Which I am old enough and old school enough to feel self-conscious about. So, no thanks. This blog is a satisfying enough outlet for me. And I am not in the information “business” or in this for money, i.e. note the absence of advertising on this website.

I write because I feel compelled to write. It is an undeniable energy that wells up inside me all the time, and it is part of the reason I had at one time aspired to be an academic. If you do a search of “Josh First Harrisburg” outside of Google (which is not an honest broker about accurate information, but rather has made itself highly politicized with inaccurate search results), you will find dozens and dozens of essays and articles I have written over the past 25 years, as well as news reports and interviews on my various land projects and on some of the political races I have run in.

What emerges from that resulting morass of printer’s ink, I think, is the clear image of a guy who has strong opinions about a lot of subjects, who enjoys public speaking and writing, and who has several feet in several different worlds simultaneously.

And I am most happy limiting that all to writing one or two essays a week in my blog here, which fits in with my busy work schedule. No podcast necessary. No podcast desired.

But I will give credit to the conservative podcastistanians, whose overall grand number, high volume, interesting topics, and really wide intellectual diversity shows us just how important the First Amendment is, even as the legacy media try to hog that all to themselves, and to discredit and take it away from anyone who does not march in lockstep with their leftist narrative.

I recommend that anyone with an ounce of interest in starting a podcast do so. Explore it. Be your best self. And if you fail, that is OK. At least you will have checked it off your list. Take comfort from knowing that I will not be able to do that, because I am just too lazy.

 

 

 

By Josh • Posted in Fruit of Contemplation • No Comment
April 14th, 2026

Best colleges are the ones you never heard of

The best colleges are the ones you have probably never heard of, including community colleges. The supposedly “elite” Ivy League schools are actually the very worst, because unless you study hard science, a student there is not getting educated, but stupider.

This is a subject of discussion because “higher education” (especially the biggest name schools) a) is proving itself to be a useless enterprise that rarely provides students with useful, valuable skills, abilities, or knowledge, b) is collapsing under the weight of its own political indoctrination, c) abandoned merit and critical thinking decades ago for pet political narratives with no practical application in a student’s life or career, and d) is unfathomably corrupt, a violation of the entire founding idea of the academy, which was supposed to be a place of truth, honest debate, and accountability.

Colleges are the very last place on this planet where you are likely to encounter the free speech or freedom of assocation rights needed for the academy to attain its purported goals. More likely, today’s college students experience a Stalinesque gulag lacking only those Siberian snows in its icy rigidity and mortal danger to the brain, soul, and, if you are white, Asian, or Jewish, to your body.

Colleges are now where American kids go to die intellectually, and where they are carefully trained to remain in perpetual spoiled childhood status. These ever-child beings have been created by colleges for the sole purpose of being ever-present street activists, loud cannon fodder for the political Left’s non-stop war against a constitutional America, capitalism, meritocracy, equal opportunity, societal order etc.

No thought was given by college administrators to how exactly these perpetually angry spoiled little brats were going to eventually support themselves through gainful employment. No one, not even the Ford Foundation and its fellow underwriters of chaos and destruction, has any use for a confused and angry 22-year-old who cannot think itself out of a wet paper bag. So imagine the actual work places available to “woke” college grads: Mean adults who expect 9 to 5 productivity from the college grads they are paying.

These two things, college grads and productive work places, do not belong together. To wit:

Unfortunately, in my line of work I must occasionally employ attorneys skilled at litigation. And in this process, I have learned over and over that the best litigation attorneys are the ones from the no-name schools. Third-tier law schools that no one ever heard of now produce, in my experience, the hungriest, most assertive, most zealously-represent-the-interests-of-your-client kind of lawyers out of all. These small schools have the least amount of time for woke DEI crap, and their mostly blue collar students have the least amount of interest or money to spend on that crap.

So, for most of those young Americans contemplating post-high school education, may I recommend the following:

  • Tech degrees in surveying (big shortage of young surveyors), medical equipment, welding, diesel engine mechanics, and machinery operation from schools like Penn Tech in Williamsport, PA.
  • Directly applicable degrees in finance, marketing, math, science, economics from community colleges (like Harrisburg Area Community College, or HACC) and small regional no-name colleges that never got into DEI, much less just got out of it like so many schools are now doing.
  • Assiduously avoid any kind of “degrees” in environmental anything, history, English, French, German, women’s studies, gender or race studies. These 100% subjective and micron-deep fields are completely useless, are based on various theories of cultural Marxism, have zero practical application in the real world where the work must get done every day for whatever the particular business is to succeed, they will rot your brain and fill your head with toxic poison of no interest to anyone trying to make a living and feed themselves on this planet, and they will saddle you and your parents with huge student debt that bought you nothing but a diploma worth less than the piece of paper it is printed on.

For those high school grads who want to make money, buy a house, have nice things, raise a family, may I suggest starting a small business or two in a garage, and see where that takes you. No college experience anywhere is a substitute for your own hard work and enterprising spirit. America has a million untested markets available, each one just waiting for some young person to test it and see what the prospective buyers want to spend in it.

This is one area the college experience will not prepare you for, and in fact will dumb you down: Free markets.

By Josh • Posted in Family • No Comment
February 8th, 2026

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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By Josh • Posted in Family, Immigration • No Comment
January 21st, 2026

What the hell do you write on a blog these days?

What the hell does a guy like me write on his blog these days, with the insurrection crap in Minnesota and California, people hurting ICE agents, foreigners coming here to aggressively defraud us taxpayers of billions of dollars?

This is all both painful and infuriating, and I am just tired, worn out from all of the disputatious fighting and broken government. I cannot believe America is undergoing this again, after the 2020 “Summer of Love” leftist + BLM wave of destruction that killed innocent people and cost billions in damage. Once the weather improves, America probably will go through that again.

What I WANT to write about is our outdoors lifestyle, Biblical insights, my friends, business, anything but more political violence. I am scared and angry about this stuff. Especially because neither political party seems willing to do anything about it. Not the enabling Democrats nor the cowering Republicans.

Welp, gotta go pull an oak splinter outta my paw. Got it pulling in firewood, because we are burning a ton of wood daily. The wash room pipes are frozen, and who knows what else is in store with the coming wave of deep freeze. Sitting next to a hot fire on a cold winter evening is a satisfying and reassuring thing to do. No, I do not suck my thumb.

But I sure as hell am tempted to…

By Josh • Posted in Fruit of Contemplation • No Comment
January 4th, 2026

Confused…Real Damned Confused

If you are a person who lives your life by simple logic, by a set of basic logical values and related actions that result in your life achieving its maximal happiness or success, then you are joining me in being real. damned. confused. right now.

America has been in nonstop turmoil since 2015, because one group of people who live here, dare we call them Americans, are so desperate for all-controlling power, that they will do anything, say anything, contradict themselves a hundred times, just to sow chaos and conflict, if only to prevent someone else from exercising their power and decision making.

Over the past year we have seen our president stop the outrageous illegal invasion of America by tens of millions of economic vagrants, by sealing our borders. Our president has justifiably and most legally confronted the nonstop flow of illegal killer drugs, like fentanyl, into our nation, by giving the killers a dose of their own medicine. Our president’s new administration has uncovered many, many billions of dollars of brazen government fraud, which is stealing from taxpayers like me and you.

And in response, a group of people, so-called Americans, have every single time taken the side of the illegal border crossers, taken the side of the the drug dealers, taken the side of the dealers in child prostitution, taken the side of the economic migrants committing massive taxpayer fraud within months of arriving here in America.

Back in the Fall, I read a letter-to-the-editor by a candidate for office, which was representative of this bizarre approach to being an American. The letter whines about the supposed lack of “due process” for violent criminals illegally here in America, as they are captured and deported. Grave concern was also expressed by the author for the alleged “due process rights” of the dangerous drug runner terrorists being sunk at sea in their “fishing boats” that are laughably not fishing boats.

Nowhere in this letter does the author, then a candidate for elected office in America, express one molecule of concern for the due process rights (i.e. the implementation of the existing laws to protect Americans from illegal invaders and sadistic drug runners) of her fellow American citizens. American citizens have laws we passed to keep illegal invaders and drug runners from illegally entering America and committing illegal crimes here. That due process should be foremost in the mind of every American, you would expect. But it isn’t, strangely.

And now, now that our president has captured a lawless, election-stealing international drug dealer posing as a head of state who has been on an international WANTED list for years and who has the deaths of hundreds of thousands of young Americans on his hands, now that same confusing group of people, including that former candidate mentioned above, living right here in America, are angry about that. Never mind that many of these same “outraged” people have many times called for the ouster and capture of this same Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela.

Call me confused, because I am. I am really confused about an entire political party that is devoted to identifying with and helping illegal alien fraudsters and child dealers and drug dealers and foreign nations who are America’s sworn enemies. It makes no sense to live here in America, benefit from all of the incredible blessings that we enjoy here in America, and also simultaneously try to destroy America, hurt America, damage America. Especially when one occupies an elected position in government, at any level.

“Domestic enemies” is the term used by America’s founding documents to describe people like this, because clearly they are enemies of America. And a political party that engages in this most confoundingly illogical approach to participating in American politics as official business is a political party that looks a super lot like the same political party (of the same name) that lead an insurrection and secession in 1860 that resulted in our Civil War.

Basic logic dictates that we humans learn from history, and avoid the mistakes and bad things that happened in the human past. No one who is sane and logical should want to live in chaos and confrontation and violence. And yet, America has this, a whole group of people and a whole political party devoted to exactly this kind of chaotic mess.

It was bad enough when they tried to defend the taxpayer fraud committed through USAID programs, uncovered by DOGE. It was bad enough when they tried to defend violent illegal aliens, and treat them as victims when in fact they were repeat rapists, murderers, robbers, burglars. It was bad enough when they provided illegal aliens, who can neither read nor speak English, with commercial driver’s licenses, with the kind of resulting death and mayhem a logical person will expect to see. It was bad enough and super confusing when they objected to illegal drug runner boats, piloted by some of the most cruel, heavily armed, and violent people on our planet, being blown up on their way to America.

And now, all but a very small handful of elected Democrats are strenuously objecting to the capture and trial of Venezuela dictator Nicolas Maduro and the return of huge oil company assets that his predecessor dictator, Hugo Chavez, illegally seized from Americans.

This all seems terribly confusing to me. Especially because many of the most vociferous have previously supported the capture and trial of Maduro, and the return of American assets to their rightful owners. It is as if just raising hell and creating chaos is their way of running America. Which any sane and logical American rejects, because the entire purpose of living in America is to enjoy the stability and benefits of our shared nation.

Once upon a time, I was a registered Democrat Party member. I did not leave them, they left me. Today, I cannot understand how any American can still affiliate or identify with this lawless group of destructive people. Please feel free to explain yourself; I am all ears, and just real. damned. confused.

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By Josh • Posted in Government Of the People..., Immigration • No Comment
November 4th, 2025

Election Day confession

Confession: I am a political junkie, addict, hound, nerd. Have been so since age fifteen. Don’t know why, but I really enjoy being involved in political everything. Today I yet again donated much of my time to being a poll greeter. You know, one of those annoying, pushy people promoting candidates and certain policy positions to voters walking up to the polling place.

My shtick is to make people smile, hopefully laugh. Especially the ever-crabby Liberals. Self-deprecating humor works. At least with older Americans.

Most of my time today, at a poll in West Hanover Township, was spent handing out “palm cards” promoting Jim Zugay and Fran Chardo, candidates for county judge. Fran is Dauphin County’s current District Attorney, and Jim is our current Recorder of Deeds. Both have been practicing attorneys for decades, and are highly qualified. Unlike their opponents, one of whom has been a lawyer in private practice for less than ten years.

I enjoyed talking policy etc with several interesting Democrats, who were up to it. Civil discourse is awesome. One said I had persuaded her to vote for Jim Zugay, who she said she had heard good things about. The one Democrat poll greeter, Sarah, was very nice and easy to chat with. She stayed until about 6:15 tonight, right after I left.

Yours truly on site, reporting live

Two military veterans discuss their combat experiences, and how those shaped their political views. Fascinating to listen in

A bad moon rising on Election Day? We shall find out momentarily

People are cool. I collect people. This windshield message accompanied a (I think) Democrat voter today

I confess to not understanding how Liberals think. But I enjoyed talking with some today, as we all engaged in the most important thing Americans can do: Vote.

 

By Josh • Posted in Government Of the People... • No Comment
September 22nd, 2025

Two different American peoples, two different languages

Conservatives are treated to a daily barrage of “Can You Believe This Person” reports about awful responses to Charlie Kirk’s assassination. These reports emphasize the worst of the worst, which is always a statistical outlier, in order to get more clicks and keep the audience whipped up. I do admit to being surprised at how much open mockery and sneering has been done towards Charlie Kirk, his wife, his friends and followers, as well as the steady flow of outright lies and hate.

These are not appropriate or responsible responses to a political murder. Especially of someone so young and so gentle.

This makes me curious, because in my innocent naivete I cannot imagine so many big-hearted Americans deliberately lying about or hating someone they do not know. The very same people who openly pride themselves on being open minded, kind, nice, tolerant, factually correct… right? Their professed qualities seem to be starkly contrasted and at odds with their lousy behavior in this instance.

Made me wonder How are American liberals experiencing Charlie Kirk’s murder?

Since Kirk’s 9/10/25 assassination, I have spent a fair amount of time with liberals in two locations. Generally, they are either unfazed or not thinking about the murder. It does not appear to be foremost in their minds one way or another, unlike conservatives, who are understandably talking about it 24/7. Liberals are not socially talking about the murder in any way that I can see. If the subject is raised, it catches them by surprise, and the moment is uncomfortable.

One half day was spent with a gathering of people from around south central PA, the day after Charlie’s murder; the other was three days with liberals from all around the country in southwest PA last week.

These people did not watch Charlie as fans, or listen to him out of curiosity, as far as I can tell. If they did, their response was negative and they filed it away with the “not this guy” stuff. No one I encountered said anything like “Yeah, I have watched some of his videos and I like his style but disagree with his policies” or anything like this.

My impression, and that is all I am reporting here, is that the opinions of liberals I was around run the gamut from Charlie Kirk earned his murder because he said things Leftists strongly disagree with, to something like There are bad apples and violent radicals everywhere and on both sides; today it was Charlie Kirk, tomorrow it will be a liberal leader who gets whacked.

Again, my impression only, but liberals are experiencing this political assassination very differently than conservatives. This is obvious to anyone who reads the news at any site, but I had to see it for myself to believe it.

More broadly, it looks like there are two different languages being spoken in America, one language spoken by one political side and the other language by the other political side. It’s why firing late night TV host Jimmy Kimmel was important to both sides: The Left needs these big sources of partisan disinformation like Kimmel to hold onto their inaccurate political narrative, and the Right wants to break the Left’s stranglehold on disinformation flow, so that Leftists are forced to seek out new sources and, hopefully, encounter new information.

But the Left seems to be like crack addicts over this information sourcing thing. They really really do not like to give up what they like, nor do they want to hear anything different than what they are comfortable with. Thus, they are mad as hell about Kimmel being fired for what he said, but they are not all that upset about Charlie Kirk being murdered for what he said.

One thing I saw (again, it is the same as I have observed over my past lifetime) past two weeks was liberals get their information second hand. Happily. A newspaper or tv channel they trust or like tells them something, and they accept it.

Alternatively, dueling podcasts and websites are huge on the political right. The political Right’s information ecosystem is wildly diverse and raucous. Because there is so much source competition and diversity on the right, so much hands-on/ eyes-on/ street-level reporting, so much direct fact checking or argumentation, the political Right thinks it has better answers to political questions. There is real dynamic debate on the right, and it attracts people comfortable with debate.

On the other hand, leftists seem allergic to debate or questioning their narrative. “Fact checking” by legacy media only started when the truth started coming out from new media sources, like Breitbart and The Gateway Pundit, and the legacy media needed a symbolic way of stopping it. Legacy media fact checks are just as ridiculous and innaccurate as the original spin-narrative they put out in the first place.

Liberals formed BlueSky as an alternative to Twitter/X, not because they were being censored on Twitter/X, but because conservatives were not being censored there. Liberals fled from inconvenient truths and uncomfortable facts on that platform, and have done all they can to suppress, censor, and chase off different points of view on every other platform, too. Is it any wonder, then, that they seem generally unaffected by Charlie Kirk’s assassination?

So, Charlie’s murder is not on the Democrat leftist radar except as a distant, cold data point. Not an emotional thing. He did not speak to them or for them. He scared them.

Said a friend to me, “Which is why even those Liberals who know not to comment about Charlie’s murder really dont care about it. Most have been completely lied to about him, and the far leftists who are the ones lying about him are happy. Godless people dont care about this type of thing.”

That is one way of describing it. I don’t disagree, and I also believe these leftist people have been heavily programmed for a very long time. They think they are godly. To them, God is pacifism, appeasement, open borders and endless spending on the government credit card. They believe that Americans who do not share their policy views are mean, heartless, unkind, un-Christian, etc.

Two really different languages are being spoken, and neither side understands the other. And while the political right has had to learn the language of the left over the past fifty years (due to not controlling the means of information production), the left has never had to learn the language of the right.

Obviously the left is resistant to hearing our point of view. They do all possible to censor, suppress, punish, and stamp out ideas contrary to their own. They do not want to think about this huge political assassination, except in ways that are strategic. Like, how can they beat it, and defeat it, so they don’t lose more power.

America, you are in big trouble.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Josh • Posted in Family, Government Of the People... • No Comment
September 21st, 2025

A Tale of Two Men, Two Peoples

We have in the past couple weeks been able to observe the best and worst of human behavior in America. Since Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the outpouring of grief and love on the one side, and the mockery, cruelty and evil on the other, has stratified Americans like few other events.

Even the George Floyd response (before the resulting burning, looting, and murdering riots) had some basis in widespread earnest initial belief that Floyd had been unfairly killed by a policeman, which crossed all political and ideological boundaries.

Not the Charlie Kirk assassination.

Starting the day of his assassination until just a few days ago, I have spent a good deal of time with mainstream liberal Americans at different events, and I can tell you there is no sensitivity there, that I can detect. No sorrow, and no open animosity, either. Indifference mostly, as far as I can tell. Unless we scratch the surface…

Last week, at a mostly liberal soiree in a special place, a nice looking older woman approached me and chatted with me. Her name tag said she was from New Jersey, so I made some humorous quip about the unfavorable Pennsylvania view of New Jersey’s polluted environment and its erratic drivers.

“Oh no, I live in the center of the state, near Princeton,” the nice lady replied. “Though I have to admit I also live near HIS golf course, if you know what I mean. The TRUMP golf course.”

Her eyebrows arched up and down with implied meaning. Apparently rotten-to-the-core Princeton is just fine, but a pretty golf course has all sorts of problems for her.

Said I, using one of my standard golf-related quips, “I do not play golf, I hunt. Because there is not a golf course anywhere on this planet with sufficient liability insurance to allow me to pick up a club. I am safer to be around with a shotgun chasing after geese in the water hazards than swinging at a ball.”

She smiled wanly, un-used to meeting anyone at a posh soiree who does not at least pretend to like golf. When our pregnant quiet moment was at its ripest, I followed up with “Besides, I am a huge Trump fan. And I don’t think we should all be shooting at each other over these differences, because we are all Americans and can work out our differences with our words.”

What she said surprised the hell out of me: “No, we shouldn’t.” And then she was gone, a scowl on her attractive visage. As if anyone on the Trump side of things has been shooting anyone, anywhere. Or maybe she meant that we shouldn’t be using our words…?

There are two different peoples here right now, inhabiting our country. Each one orbiting two different men, Christian activist Charlie Kirk, on the one hand, and once-humorist pagan Hollywooder Jimmy Kimmel, now fired and late of late night TV, on the other hand.

While some Americans oppose Charlie Kirk’s policy preferences on intellectual grounds, I guess, a lot of them also seem to be seething with hatred or animosity about him and anyone associated with him. This is strange to me, because Charlie Kirk never hurt anyone. He was a gentle person, civil, generous, a listener, he asked questions. He did politics the right way: He talked. What on earth about him would make people filled with hate?

Yes, he had some strong opinions based on his Biblical values, the same values that founded America. And….guess what? His political opponents also have strong views, based on God only knows what, because I do not know. Does having strong opinions simply make a person a bad person? If so, then the hate should flow both ways. But it does not.

It appears that the ever-angry, lying, mis-informing, wildly partisan Jimmy Kimmel is fully representative of the political Left and the Democrat Party partisans right now. When faced with consequences for his poor behavior (mocking the assassination of Kirk and lying about who did it), Kimmel is defiant and petulant. People losing their TV and radio shows in the cancel culture war was fine for Kimmel when they had different opinions than he. However, when the shoe is on his foot, and his words fail in the marketplace, suddenly he is aggrieved, and foot stomping, and like a spoiled child demanding demanding demanding.

Never mind that Kimmel was in essence telling leftists that they could murder their political opponents for disagreeing, and that TV personalities would cover for them. Kimmel was violating the basic conditions on which his employer, ABC, had been granted an FCC public broadcast license decades ago. We can debate whether the FCC should even exist, but it does right now, and if one has a broadcast license from the FCC right now, then one must meet its “public benefit” requirement, or let go of it. Kimmel’s lies placed his employer’s FCC license at risk, and so his employer cut him loose and with him the liability.

When we compare and contrast Kirk vs Kimmel, we see two totally opposite men, and totally opposite ways of conducting one’s self in public and in private. Charlie Kirk’s assassination has brought out a lot of good people, and also a lot of troubled people. We now have a tale of two different men, and the two very different peoples surrounding them.

I hope you, dear reader, choose the gentle one. America needs this, not the hate.

 

By Josh • Posted in Fruit of Contemplation • No Comment
September 10th, 2025

Charlie Kirk

Gentle Christian thought leader Charlie Kirk was assassinated today, in Utah, where he was debating students on a college campus. I will write a lot more about what his murder means, but suffice it to say it is simply about his political opponents censoring him, silencing him, violencing him, because they are incapable of reasoned debate.

Leftists are allergic to reasoned debate, Charlie’s hallmark.

What bothers Charlie’s opponents most was that he skillfully took the national policy debate to college campuses. A place supposedly devoted to learning, teaching, debating, educating, but in reality a place of intolerant ironclad political orthodoxy and Marxist indoctrination. Charlie’s ability to directly challenge that indoctrination in its viper’s nest home enraged leftists.

Looking at online comments and Democrat Party media outlets reveals that his opponents are blaming him, Charlie, first and foremost.

According to these many commenters, Charlie earned being shot in the neck and murdered because his ideas and words were so bad. So, to the Left, “silence is violence” and also “words are violence” simultaneously, but actual bloody violence against conservatives is just the natural consequence of disagreeing with Leftists on politics. So long as Leftists do it, it’s always justified. They say.

No matter what conservatives do or say, or don’t say, the Left justifies using violence against them.

Conservatives can’t speak nor can they also be silent; rather, conservatives must be forcefully compelled to agree and nod along with Leftists. Or else.

Charlie’s opponents are also blaming guns, January 6th, President Trump. Anything but the violence and abundant hateful violent rhetoric coming out of Leftist mouths and printing presses that encourages assassination attempts and street murders. Demonizing and encouraging violence against conservatives is normal, to Leftists, but disagreeing with Leftists is also violence.

Conservatives have no place to exist in the world imagined by the Left. To Leftists, Charlie couldn’t even be allowed to debate students on a college campus. He was un-allowed by the ideological gatekeepers there.

Dunno about the perspective of you, the reader, but when a person or a group of like-minded people constantly call for their political goals to be implemented “by any means necessary,” and they demonize ICE agents and police and concerned school parents and Protestants and Catholics and Jews and conservatives and traditional families and call for violence about everything a president does, we have a serious problem to fix here in America.

America has been here before, back then also dragged debating and talking into solving Democrat Party violence the hard way. Sorry, Charlie, that you had to be martyred. But Americans will not let your murder go unaddressed.

Booth shooting Lincoln

Leftists are disinterested or incapable of self-reflection, they are always a one-way flow of invective. It is the same mindset we have previously seen among Democrats, back in 1860…

Charlie was a husband, a father, represented the best of America’s character

 

By Josh • Posted in Family, Fruit of Contemplation • No Comment
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