Posts Tagged → values
Paddling with Hollywood
Cheerfully our little crew paddled down the river, enjoying small Class II splashy whitewater rapids here and there, swift enough currents everywhere else that we need not really paddle much, if at all.
Turning aft, I squawked captain-like from my otherwise supine perch in the bow “Hard to the oars, ye pack o’ worthless lazy bones!”
The kids would laugh a bit at my best captain o’ the high seas bit, tepidly dip their paddles in the water like they were thinking about trying to paddle, and then go back to chattering amongst themselves about school, fellow students in school, classes, interpersonal politics and Politics with a capital P in school. Overall it was what had been hoped for when I made reservations with the outfitter the week before. Time with my kids and their friends, in nature, floating down a river, watching bald eagles, osprey, mergansers, wood ducks, migratory songbirds, deer, and on the lookout for bear.
Pausing to listen for and then spot white waterfalls cascading steeply out of the high canyon walls, I, the lookout, would occasionally point out where the crew could perhaps look up to if but briefly admire these little moments of grandeur passing by us. They did look the first half dozen times, and then tired of being bothered to do anything. I ended up dragging my hands in the cold foamy water, hoping to create some drag that would necessitate some serious paddling. When my hands turned red and then a purplish blue and stopped responding to commands to open or close, I gave up on influencing the kids in any way and just quietly admired the ride.
About two and a half hours into the drift, the kids started to sing. At first these were summer camp songs, and then theme songs from movies complete with beat-box noises from my daughter, and then songs from movies, mostly being rap-like. Their voices were sweet, and they would constantly run over each other, and then good-naturedly correct someone, and then try to get back on track in harmonic unison. Being of free and easy spirit, the kids were into having fun, and they would individually or together abruptly break out into a song-ending editorialization about the singer, the performer, the musician, or the movie the particular song came from.
The Earth Day environmental song, apparently popular now, was a big hit on our boat. They sang it over and over and over.
“And the zebra, I like how he says ‘I’m a zebra, I am striped, and I don’t know if I am black or if I am white’,” said the girl of this apparently surprising revelation, unaware that Dennis Prager, Rush Limbaugh, Larry Elder, and a slew of other radio talk show hosts and conservative politicians have been preaching an equal opportunity color-blind society for many decades.
And after about half an hour of back and forth chatter about this environmental planet cartoon movie and its song, it dawned on me that these kids are deeply enthralled by Hollywood and its entertainment business. They and their young impressionable minds are completely captured by images and made-up voices from highly paid songwriters and movie scripters, whose lines become memorized as moral guide posts along their young lives.
Many adults over the past ten or twenty years have bemoaned the advent of and then exponential increase in realistic at-home video games, the prevalence of handheld devices, and the trance-like state our children have grown up in glued to and Matrix-like plugged into these things. Well, I saw that we have transitioned beyond the gluing-in-and-tuning-out stage where we had to scream two inches from our kids’ face to ask them what they wanted for dinner. Now we see the fruits of others’ indoctrination labors playing out over a decade or more: Our kids are wholly owned little robots of the entertainment industry, which is vacuous, morally bankrupt, materialistic, shallow, value-less, corrosive, and meaningless. No wonder our kids parrot all kinds of silly nonsense that emanate from movies and popular music; they are constantly bathing their brains in it.
And people like me thought the fight for America’s soul was a political one in Washington, DC!
Nope.
I learned on that day-long raft trip through spectacular natural beauty that the fight for a solid America is still at home, where we thought we had some influence, and we still might, and on college campus, where our parenting has been outsourced to welcoming Marxist professors eager to turn our kids inside out.
Yes, on this trip I had been paddling along with my kids and their friends, enjoying their happy company, but really I had been secretly and unknowingly paddling with Hollywood that whole way, and did not realize it until the very end, when I could say nothing.
The sea captain and his crew taking a break in a wondrous, magical waterfall in the middle of nowhere, on the run from Hollywood and pop culture
How to properly pronounce “Lancaster” and why it matters, here
“Lan—Cas–Ter.”
When I heard the radio ad with that unnatural, long, drawn out pronunciation of the county and city just south of me, the endless chasm between the syllables felt years apart, so unnatural that my internal warning system flashed “outsider alert, outsider alert.”
This ear-grating goofball advertisement played for two days before being pulled and replaced with the same voice, but subsequently correctly saying “Lancaster” as almost one long syllable.
How many calls and emails did the radio station get about this? Evidently enough to make an impression on the people in charge of advertising. Running a radio advertisement that annoys the audience is counterproductive, and you’d have to hear from a large enough segment or sample of that audience to get the message that your message was not just falling flat, but actually bothering your target audience. People cared enough to contact the radio station and voice their opinion.
Why do Central Pennsylvanians care about how their locations are pronounced?
Probably for the same reason that Perry County has communities like Newport and Duncannon and New Bloomfield housing most of the county’s 30,000 citizens, and yet those same people will tell you they are from Perry County. Not from Newport, New Bloomfield, or Duncannon. This is because the identity of the locals in Perry County, and elsewhere around the Central Pennsylvania region, is one of community, togetherness, joined together in common interests and identity. Not separated from one another, as in most other places. The larger community, like the county, is the defining characteristic for the residents. We all belong here and we belong to each other, in common and shared purpose.
I recall reading a linguistics study of Central Pennsylvania years ago, and how the authors traced the unique accent here to Swiss and German immigrants in the 1700s. And in fact, if you talk to older old order Amish and some older old order Mennonites, you will indeed hear that very distinct English spoken with some sort of heavily foreign accent. Like all languages, including British English, Southern drawl American, Ebonics in the ‘hood, and so on, this common sound is the sound shared by a commonly identifying group of people. When they hear the familiar pronunciation of their own language, they know they are communicating with someone who is “one of us.”
One of the defining characteristics of Central Pennsylvania is its pretty resilient regional identity, including political views and political engagement, religiousness, and so on. Outside forces may be at work here, altering our beautiful landscape with criminally ugly warehouses and temporarily bombarding our ears with Flatlander-foolish pronunciations of our local places, but through it all, we still hold on to our common identity, our common purpose, our common interests.
Central Pennsylvania is still one big community with common identity. This is one of the reasons that the Obama Administration targeted Lancaster County (and rural Minnesota) for simply air-drop dumping huge numbers of fresh foreign immigrants, most of whom could neither speak nor read English, but who had been carefully instructed how to vote for the “(D)” on the ballot. Politicized efforts to disrupt traditional American sense of community and togetherness, and common purposes and commonly held interests and values, are increasing, as one political party in particular attempts to destroy and re-make America into an identity-less, gender-less, Constitution-less, all-powerful big government global nerve center for everyone on the planet and every cockamamie idea that will destroy “evil” capitalism etc.
And this is why people here so strenuously resist the improper pronunciation of “Lancaster.”
This mispronunciation concretely represents the outside evil forces arrayed against our traditional identity and lifestyle. When we reject that pronunciation, we are asserting our identity and rejecting outsiders, carpetbaggers who attempt to sell us snake oil without even taking the littlest amount of time to understand our closest held thoughts and beliefs. And they fail to do that because they simply don’t care about us or our religious redneck identity; and, in fact, they look down on us.
For all you outsiders, for the record, here in Central Pennsylvania we pronounce Lancaster as one long, fast, single syllable, Lancaster. Not like actor Burt Lan-cas-ter, who, as a Hollywood actor engaged in silly dress-up and fanciful make-believe his whole life, was the ultimate alien to our deal-in-real, natural, down-home, farming and mountain dweller environment here.
So say it again, quickly, Lancaster.
No time or spaces between what your head tells you are syllables. Say it again, fast, one quick word, Lancaster.
There, you said it, and we like you already. See? You fit right in, you hillbilly, you. Here’s a gun, and a Bible. Display them prominently in your home.
Are conservative voters really gullible naifs?
Yesterday I had the wonderful experience of spending most of my day with central Pennsylvanians in a remote corner of our rural region. These are salt-of-the-earth people. Hard working, religious, family-oriented, earnest. The best. My kind of people. We were conducting business together, and of course we naturally discussed current events and related subjects.
One of the things emerging from my day with these genuine people weighed on my mind as I drove home in the rain.
“Are religious conservatives really clueless and naive about politics?,” I wondered.
These are decent people, good people, and the idea that someone would seek to destroy the character of someone they simply disagree with is totally foreign to them. They seem so completely unable to grasp just how evil and conniving their political opponents are.
Once someone says something negative about someone else in their world, why then, they think there might be a smidgeon of truth. It is enough to impeach the person’s credibility. Because of a naive belief that someone would only make such an accusation if it were possibly true.
In politics this naivete results in just enough votes lost or time delayed to get the Left a win.
It is this naivete among America’s best people that Leftists play upon and exploit.
As with last year’s impossible US senate defeat of Judge Roy Moore in conservative Alabama, by a far-left Democrat, today we face a typical fake leftist attack on Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination to the US supreme court.
Despite being a good man with an old-time (and odd) interest in younger women (not illegally-aged girls), Moore was defeated in a swarm of obviously false accusations designed to destroy his character. Just enough doubt about him as a good person was cast upon him that he lost just enough votes among good people to lose the race in a state he should have won overwhelmingly.
Despite sharing Moore’s values and policy views, a narrow majority of religious, conservative Alabamians were fooled into voting for the communist Democrat who will do everything possible to undermine those same voters and their values.
Today we have an obviously lying lady who has the most bizarre, dis-believable, 11th hour claim against Judge Kavanaugh. This discredited professor lady is already every kind of long-time kook-Left activist possible. She has a long public history of outlandish claims and bizarre behavior. Her students write that she is psychologically unbalanced, and “scary.”
Zero evidence backs up her accusation, which flies in the face of every other piece of evidence and testimony about Kavanaugh.
If at all remotely true, her accusation against Kavanaugh would be decades old, having nothing to do with his judicial views. But we know she is lying, and that her last-minute accusation is false, and that it is simply designed to derail the confirmation of a judge the Left disagrees with. This lady is simply the sacrificial goat used to achieve that goal.
Her attack on Kavanaugh is just one more attempted character assassination on someone the Left does not like because of his Constitutional views.
And all these false attacks are enabled by good Americans who think “Well, no one would really deliberately lie like this. No one would really be that indecent, that corrupt. There might be some shred of truth to it…” and so good people like Moore and Kavanaugh get damaged, and the Left advances its anti-democratic agenda to control government the voters would not ever cede to it.
Folks, if you are a religious person, a kind person, a good person, a decent, law-abiding, honest and fair-minded person, then that is great. You are my kind of person. You are all-American, and I hope you never change your values. But do not make the mistake of assuming that everyone else is like you. Do not make the mistake of listening to the lies of Big Media. The media is not news, or truth; it is the propaganda arm of one political party, and not the political party you would usually vote for.
Don’t be naive. Don’t be gullible. Don’t let yourself be manipulated by your political enemies so that your vote or your voice are wasted. Stay strong, be skeptical, and stay focused on what you know is good for your community and your country.
The Wonder of Elvis
Elvis Presley was a wonder in so many ways.
Youthful cutting-edge song writer and musician, he combined mountain folk music with country, blues, and gospel, with substantive themes and meaningful words, creating his own powerful sound with bi-racial bands that captivated people around the world. Come to think of it, in some ways like Ray Charles, a similar creative genius who also went on to make his own unique blues and jazz sound (also drawing upon sacred music) during the same time.
Both men created, captured, and represented certain turning points in American culture in their music.
But Elvis was more than a musician of meaningful songs. He also wrote, directed, and starred in dozens of movies, for which he wrote or performed some or all of the sound tracks. Like his music, Elvis movies are about simple life themes, like love, relationships, community, commitment, family, patriotism, public service, and God. Gosh his movies are corny, with clunky acting, but they carry important and positive messages Americans could sure use a dose of today.
In the 1950s, when Elvis was debuting, American women were married to the scarred men who had returned from the battlefields or the military training grounds of World War II. A lot of these men were tough, hardened either from the Great Depression or from their military experiences, or both. Romantic thoughts or gestures, tender touches, gentle words with their women were pretty scarce then.
Along came Elvis, singing to these women about loving and relationships they could only dream of, representing a model man they could only hope for. In his way, Elvis taught men of his generation how to respect and treat women right, mostly by singing about the kinds of feelings women had and how men could aspire to satisfy them.
Women screamed and swooned, and men wanted to be his friend.
Meanwhile, other entertainers were singing about banging in the back of a car, and most popular music hasn’t moved too far forward since. OK, it is true that later on Elvis developed that hip thrust, but he let it stand on its own without any words to back it up.
He was a good soldier, literally, volunteering for the US Army at a time when most of the people being drafted to serve in combat were less privileged young men without access to lawyers or school deferments. His military service was mostly symbolic, but inspiring. Asked by a reporter in 1971 what he thought about the anti-war protestors, he responded that he was just an entertainer and would rather keep his opinions to himself.
In private Elvis was no Lothario. Reportedly chaste and deeply religious, his child was born exactly nine months to the day after his marriage to Priscilla. No fooling around or cutting corners.
After developing his own sequined and bejeweled stage look, Elvis wore a freakin cape, and yet still commanded the adoration or respect of everyone around him, be it president of the United States or hard bitten businessmen. He was authentic, real. A humble, simple country boy. With a big shiny gold belt under his coat!
He was relatable, because he was real.
“Before Elvis there was nothing,” said John Lennon of the Beatles.
“When I heard Heartbreak Hotel, I was transported,” said crusty Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, no pushover or soppy romantic.
Elvis’ impact on the development of music was unequaled.
Embodying so many unique, separate, divergent, and ultimately convergent strands of American identity, Elvis was a wonder no matter how you analyze him. He represented the best of America, the best of its values.
Elvis is still be the King of Rock and Roll, four decades after prematurely reaching the Promised Land. His generous spirit lives on, albeit appreciated by fewer and fewer. No one since has attained his heights or impact on popular culture.
America could use a pop culture figure like Elvis today. Someone to bridge the gaps between us, to help inspire and unify us, to sing to us about our best qualities, about love and gentleness.
We need and miss you, Elvis.
NFL – “No F@#*n Loss”
As part of the entertainment industry’s decades-old war on American culture, ESPN and now the NFL have joined the politically correct pile-on.
Hollywood has led the way, surely, with its movies’ power of suggestion.
That Hollywood increasingly excretes unvarnished political activism in the guise of children’s movies as well as rated R adult movies is a thing of pride to that city; no one there even denies it. Hollywood is really just a communication propaganda arm of one political party.
But you cannot discount the increasing effects of ESPN reporters who now openly write that President Trump and his supporters are “white supremacists,” among many other examples of overt daily political activism by ESPN staff.
When I write “effects,” I mean the boomerang effect, which is where the intended results of one’s actions negatively rebound and injure the person who started it. These are ironic consequences, the best, most well-earned.
Perhaps the pinnacle of this boomeranging political activism is the anti-America statements by NFL players. Taking a knee and not standing during the national anthem wasn’t enough. Now some NFL players are making political videos that are shown at the game opening, or at half-time.
Well, removing the ESPN application from my iPhone was easy. There, ESPN, I am done with you. You are out of my life. See ya!
Over the past few years, ignoring the latest crop of poorly acted, poorly scripted, CGI-heavy Hollywood movies was a little more difficult, because Saturday night out at the movies with ice cream afterwards is a regular family thing. Even a lame movie would nonetheless entertain us and provide food for discussion later on. Like, was the movie’s symbolism consistent with its message? Did the message flow, or did acting anomalies and hiccups sidetrack the message? Was the message worthy, or was it muddled, or even negative?
These kinds of conversations with our kids were always stimulating, because as parents we enjoy watching our children grow. Nonetheless, unless a movie is exceptional in every way, we now decline to spend our money on a product from Hollywood, because that city is constantly at war with our values.
Now we have the National Football League, the NFL, getting all poseur-like. The NFL, too, is starting to see a substantial decline in business income. Why?
Illiterate men of the NFL, who have earned tens of millions of dollars in a few brief years’ time simply for running up and down a field, are out complaining about their station in life. You cannot make this stuff up. We indeed have phenomenally successful young men from disadvantaged backgrounds, whose wealth is largely accumulated from admirers of a different skin color, now claiming discrimination. And therefore, they take a knee during the American anthem.
In short, they tell their audiences and fans to go to Hell.
I don’t deny these guys have a right to stage their silly protests. But I have no duty to watch them, or to listen to their nonsense. And I have the right to stop watching their football games altogether, which is what I have now done.
This past January I called the NFL headquarters in Manhattan. Sharing my opinion of the league’s unwillingness to bring the football games back to being just about the games was the goal of the call. But, try as I might, finding a live human being was impossible. The phone menu just kept rotating through, taking me back to the beginning each time.
So I just started punching random numbers in to the phone.
Next thing I know, I was into the voice mail of a young NFL staffer, whose name I do not recall. But you know I took that opportunity to leave a detailed message on his voice mail.
My message to him was simple: Since I was eleven years old, I have looked forward to new NFL seasons. I always enjoyed watching NFL games. But that enjoyment has diminished lately because of all the fake moaning, fake victimhood, fake whining by these anti-America grandstanders on the football teams. And so I kindly asked the league to give players a simple choice: Dear employees, play, or leave, but no more political crap on someone else’s dime.
Unsurprisingly, I did not get a call back from anyone at the NFL. The organization seems to take people like me for granted. At their own peril.
Well, I did not watch one single NFL game last year, and I will not watch one single NFL game this year, either. And I will keep spending my time on other activities until the NFL gets its players to commit to just playing the game, and to stop insulting good people who have not had a racist thought in their lives. Or perhaps the time I free up that I used to spend watching NFL games on TV will become better spent, irrespective of the political landscape.
Yes, I know, it is common now for people to assert that disagreeing with them on policy issues automatically means you or I are “racist.” The contrary facts do not matter to them. As a result, nothing has done more damage to the battle to end discrimination and racism than this constant crying wolf by crybullies and rich crybabies. I am a very good person, I am not a racist, and I am tired of being told I am a bad person because I do not share some silly ideology.
Guys, just play ball. OK?
I have now arrived at a place where the NFL has taken on a new meaning: No F@&#’n Loss to me. I don’t miss it.
My impression of Paul Mango, candidate for PA Guv
Three weeks ago I spent half an hour on the phone with Paul Mango, newly declared candidate for Pennsylvania governor.
We talked about his candidacy, his background, political issues, economics, hopes and challenges, etc. We then followed up with several back and forth emails, each one of his expressing specific appreciation and thanks for how the exchange had benefited him in a certain way. He is a new candidate, new to politics (other than as a very generous donor to Republican candidates), and he is digesting a lot of new information and ideas, new ways of thinking.
Last week I met Mango at his formal campaign announcement at the Twin Ponds sports and fitness center in Camp Hill\Mechanicsburg.
Twin Ponds previously served as the region’s HQ for primary and general election candidate Donald Trump, who won Pennsylvania’s Electoral College votes by a margin probably accounted for just by the simple dedication of Central PA’s “normal Americans” in both political parties. The big facility is run by a pretty, petite firebrand of a woman, Mrs. Patton aka General Patton.
Here are my impressions of Mango (and yes, I know, he’s just getting started):
He is impressive in several key ways: His family background and values, his education and military service, and his high level professional work experience.
Paul Mango is a very smart, confident, and empathetic man, who comes across as a reserved, reflective, nice person, and a responsive, good listener. He is positive and genuine.
I questioned him in person about how he will compete against candidate Scott Wagner, who has spent years battling in the trenches with a lot of conservative voters and activists, against entrenched establishment political hacks in politics for personal financial gain, and who has thereby built up credibility with many politically active citizens who value bravery and honesty.
When I pointed out that Wagner has also alienated a lot of people (including many of his former supporters) in that process (because Wagner seems selfish, arrogant, and unappreciative), Mango responded that he will not say anything negative because he has never seen valuable leadership succeed except through “inspiring people.”
That is a very high bar to set for one’s self, much less one’s political competitors, but it is worthy because it says Mango has integrity. The Wagner campaign has already criticized Mango for supporting Cruz first, and then Trump later, though I got the impression that is what Scott Wagner did, too, like a lot of us did in last year’s Republican primary. Here we go, the mud is already flying!
Well, to start, if Mango is going to inspire voters, then he needs to increase his positive speaking energy, his intensity, his passion. The other night he came across as a little nervous, and definitely way too deliberative, almost plodding, at his formal announcement. His prepared speech was long and the delivery was very, very slow.
Recall that Abraham Lincoln’s speech at Gettysburg is so hard hitting because it was not long and plodding, but brief and hard hitting.
Despite serving in the 82nd Airborne and actually being a warrior, Mango’s even-keeled demeanor does not seem warrior-like, while his main competitor, Wagner, did not do military service and yet is a proven culture and fiscal political warrior.
Though he wore jeans, work boots, and an Oxford shirt, Mango is the very definition and personification of “corporate,” which will probably look or smell like moderate RINO to the trench warfare grass roots conservatives. Time will tell if that first impression is accurate.
His approach to fixing government is his approach to fixing businesses, about which it is best to just quote my activist friend Ron:
“The problem with these guys [corporate/business/ Chamber of Commerce GOP candidates who compare running government to running business] is they all have plans to fix government by running it like a business. This is not a unique viewpoint and it has never worked. This is politics, not business. Took me a while to accept that. He can have the greatest plan ever but it won’t matter because politicians don’t care [about people, policy, economy etc.]. They care about themselves and getting re-elected.”
It is a fact that careerist politicians in BOTH PARTIES do not act like corporate employees, because there is almost no accountability in politics. The old quip about the only accountability in politics resulting from being “found in bed with a dead girl or a live boy” probably doesn’t even apply today.
Like him or not, candidate Scott Wagner goes right to the key policy battles: Corrupt blood-sucking unions, ridiculous regulations that violate our federal and state constitutions, wasted and stolen taxpayer money.
That is where the rubber meets the road in the culture war for America’s soul and the war for a middle-income economy.
This is the battle front between America as it was founded and as we knew it, and America as a bastion of totalitarian socialism and politically correct thought police, envisioned by the Left.
Candidate Mango will probably arrive here at the same battle front, eventually, because the leftists’ violent street battles across America tell us that nice words alone don’t work, and Trump’s improbable win says it all (JEB! was also the quintessential corporate nice guy, and GOP voters utterly rejected him).
Mango’s steady personality seems to avoid conflict, which though commendable and reassuring in so many other settings, can send the message to some voters that he may be like a zillion other mainstream RINOs who are unwilling to dive into the bar room brawl that needs to happen for America to be set right. These careerist RINOs don’t want to get their hands dirty waging political war, which tells voters that they really just don’t care very much about political or cultural outcomes.
Mango is smart enough to see these facts and voter trends. Whether he arrives at that messy policy battle front sooner or later is the question. If he finds a way to comfortably voice his quiet intensity, his passion, his compassion for working Pennsylvanians, then he will overcome the potential impression that he is another empty GOP suit (I was told that PA GOP kingmaker Bob Asher has NOT supported Mango, which appeals to the conservative, independent-minded base).
I like the guy and I am looking forward to seeing him develop over the next six months, because, again, he is new to politics and just getting started.
“Black Shoes. Basic Blues. No Names. All Game”…. gets me back in the game
Congratulations to the Penn State football team on its defeat of Wisconsin for the Big Ten conference title last night.
How strange that Ohio State is in the running for the national title, when they neither beat Penn State in the regular season (OSU lost to PSU), nor did they win their conference (PSU won it last night).
We are back in the familiar conundrum of old, where PSU got and still gets no respect. How many decades did PSU go winning, winning, and winning, but frequently blocked from playing for the national title?
It is time to stop this unfairness and give to PSU what is their due: A shot at the national title. This requires making the OSU guys feel bad, which is nearly always what happened to PSU in the past. Sorry OSU, enjoy a shot of your own medicine.
After coach Joe Paterno was railroaded and publicly humiliated at PSU by a weak board and a weaker CYA-run administration that made former assistant coach Mike McQueery a wealthy man, my interest in PSU everything pretty much dropped to zero. I stopped watching the games, stopped caring, stopped donating to the university, and basically dropped PSU from my life. The cataclysmic Paterno auto de fe signaled a break from the core values and principles I had grown up with and identified with. I was no longer Penn State Proud.
That said a lot, because I grew up in the State College area, graduated from PSU, my mother has her PhD from PSU, and I attended PSU home games from the time I was seven until I left for Vanderbilt to pursue my career as an academic. Plenty of our family have graduated from PSU, and watching Penn State football together during the holidays was a family tradition. I went to school with two of the Paterno kids and still maintain contact with one of them, the one I was closest to and spent the most time with. Time spent in the Paterno home listening to Coach Paterno recruit players shaped my own life. He was all about clean living.
Last night’s win over Wisconsin was meaningful to me not because PSU is back in the winning game, but because the fans, the alumni, the board (more on that pathetic, worthless PSU board of trust-less-ees in a moment) and the administration have given Coach Franklin the breathing room to resurrect the destroyed team from the ashes of annihilation at the hands of State Senator Jake Corman, disgraced pedophile Jerry Sandusky, the NCAA, former FBI head Louis Freeh (a great fiction writer), PSU administrators, and the worthless PSU board.
Coach Franklin needed the space and time to breathe new life into a program that always was and always should be top ten quality. He needed the kind of space and patience Paterno had received. Getting the damned names off the jerseys, and getting back to the no-frills basics of Black Shoes, Basic Blues, No Names, All Game. Getting this space marks somewhat of a return to normalcy, where professionals are allowed to be professionals. Professionalism was one of the former hallmarks of PSU football. Staid dedication and loyalty were once a hallmark of PSU administrative culture. The former players’ conservative, humble, and respectful approach to playing football always contrasted with the weak hotdogging that plagues the NFL and most college teams.
Shades of Coach Joe Paterno here. Might we be touching greatness again? I am looking.
So I am now finding myself maybe interested once again in PSU football. But not all football, because I am still boycotting the NFL – not one NFL game watched this season – due to the league’s support of anti-America player Colin Kaepernick. Thank you, PSU folks. This could be rewarding to me, as leaving PSU football was a sad time in my life.
Now, about the PSU Board of Trustees, that worthless aggregation of empty names that supposedly runs Penn State University.
Last week, Harrisburg businessman Alex Hartzler was appointed to the PSU board by Governor Wolf. Alex and I attended PSU together, and we were both active in politics there. We have stayed in touch for the past fifteen years. Alex’s entrance into the snake den is a bright spot, because simply put, Alex don’t give a sh*t about whatever crybaby weak stuff the other members are bringing in as fodder for their continued presence there.
Alex and I differ on almost every policy subject. He is one of the few Democrats I know to ever emerge from Lancaster County, and a farm boy at that. I am a Constitutional conservative who thinks the Republican Party is worthless, and also from Pennsylvania farm country. While Alex has maintained his partisan loyalty to one party, even as it was going over the cliff, he has always displayed a sharp and incisive intellect and tough attitude that brooks no bullcrap. I think Alex Hartzler is exactly the kind of person to help PSU get its act together. Yes, he will want policies on climate change junk science, same-sex bathrooms, and a bunch of other PC issues that I believe are unworthy of consideration let alone debate, but at the end of the day, I expect to see lightning bolts from the moribund board. Thank you, Alex.
Let’s get the PSU show back on the road.
If it smells bad, it’s bad
Donald Trump wasn’t my candidate. Lacking a political or social track record appealing to my values, he was going to be enjoyed for having mixed it up with the corrupt political establishment.
But then Ted Cruz began behaving in ways inconsistent with my values, too, and I began second guessing my loyalty to his campaign.
American voters across the country have increasingly complained about voterless primaries run by insiders. Actual voters, public opinion, have been shunted aside in Colorado, Wyoming, Indiana, and elsewhere.
We are then lectured about “the rules,” and how if people want to win, they need to play by the rules.
Well, in Georgia there were no rules. It was Lord of the Flies, anarchy, where voter sentiment was tossed out and insiders voted themselves into delegate roles inconsistent with the actual vote outcome.
Rules? The rules here are meaningless. They change with the wind. They’re open to interpretation. They apparently don’t mean much at the end of the Election Day, and across America actual voters are complaining that something smells bad. They’re saying they are being disenfranchised.
If our voters say it smells bad, then it’s bad.
On Facebook some people I know and respect assert that Trump is “whining” about losing, that he’s disorganized, that he doesn’t care about or want to learn the various state rules. That he doesn’t want to play by the rules.
Problem with this thinking is, Trump is merely giving voice to the hundreds of thousands of fellow citizens feeling shut out from their political process. When our fellow citizens express these concerns, we must listen. When they say they’re being ripped off by insiders playing by rules that are by their nature fast and loose, we should listen.
When voting fails, the fabric of society is tearing.
Real conservatives are principled. First and above all else, conservatives follow our Constitution and the basic, essential principles devolving from it. Like one citizen, one vote as the basis of our republic.
People who say they don’t care about these claims, who say they don’t care about Trump or his supporters, are really saying they just want to win and they don’t care how they do that. And that right there is as unprincipled as it gets.
Cruz’s character is being tested here. In my sad opinion, this candidate I donated to, campaigned for, lined up endorsements for in Pennsylvania, is demonstrating poor character. He should be disavowing the voterless primaries he has “won,” as well as the delegates he has “turned,” despite the will of the voters who created those delegates in the first place.
No question, Cruz better represented my values early on. But now, his actions say that my perception of his values was wrong. And thus, I’m not voting for that, or him. I’m voting for the voters and their voice, their best advocate, Donald Trump.
On Being a Dinosaur
I am a dinosaur.
In so many ways, my beliefs, ideals, values, education, outlook, hobbies, lifestyle, and behavior seem as outdated and as uncommon as the dinosaurs that died out long ago.
Put another way, I am one of the Last of the Mohicans, certainly not THE last, but one of a dwindling group that sees the world differently than the corrosive pop culture fed daily to Americans by Hollywood.
And I am proud to be this way, to be a patriot, to exalt individual citizen rights and liberties above government intervention, to take risks and make sacrifices in a free market capitalist society that rewards hard work and penalizes laziness. American Sniper, Act of Valor, and Lone Survivor are the only movies that moved me in many years because I believe in military heroes, although the Lord of the Rings productions are highly entertaining.
Meanwhile, pop culture would have every American equally unhappy, equally deprived of their rights and liberties, equally planted on a couch eating junk food and watching mindless TV shows that are at war with the underpinnings of Western Civilization.
(A short, hard-hitting article about Hollywood’s destructiveness by one of its most famous writers is here.)
And I am also an old-fashioned “Hook-and-Bullet” conservationist, a hunter, life-long gun owner and fisherman, an NRA member and even more so, a FOAC member who means it when I say “You can have my guns when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.”
But did I mention that conservation is a huge part of my identity? You know, farmland preservation, wildlife habitat protection, forest land acquisition for public ownership, and wilderness areas where I can hunt, fish, camp, and hike without seeing or hearing another human being for as long as I am out there.
And why is it so hard for so many traditionalists to see that traditional American values are directly tied to, and derive from, rural landscapes? And that our remaining rural landscapes are precious fragments of the great American frontier, on which our national identity and Constitution were forged?
So why wouldn’t a conservative want to conserve those rural landscapes that gave birth to his identity and values, that enshrine Constitutional rights and self-reliance?
For some strange reason, an increasing number of gun owners are not hunters, and do not really show that they care about wildlife populations or wildlife habitat, or about land and water conservation. When I attend meetings at different sportsmen’s clubs, like Duncannon Sportsmen, and I hear the Conservationist’s Pledge, my heart wells up and I nearly get as teary-eyed as when I hear the national anthem, or the Pledge of Allegiance. It doesn’t help that most of us in the room are sporting lots of white in our beards and on our heads. The next generation seems to have taken a lot for granted, because all of the battles we fought decades ago bore such abundant fruit.
All this makes me a dinosaur, and although I recognize it, I am not happy about it. I feel like I am watching the greatest nation on Planet Earth disintegrate under my feet, and it scares me, makes me sad, and makes me want to do what I can to try to prevent it from happening.
I do not want traditional American values to go extinct, like the dinosaurs, because although those values may not be in vogue right now, America was founded on them and the nation cannot successfully continue on without them.