Posts Tagged → Vietnam
Trump is the Resistance
When I was a very young person, I was exposed to a shocking bumper sticker in bright red letters on a white background, on the rear fender of a rusty rattletrap vehicle in front of us: “QUESTION AUTHORITY“.
How I hate to admit that much of my adult political philosophy was shaped by that one dumb, but true and fortuitously placed bumper sticker, at such a young age. Guessing around 1972-1973.
Well do I recall asking my dad (who was driving our car) what that bumper sticker statement up ahead meant, and how the young hippie gave me his explanation. Recall that this encounter and resulting discussion was during the very end of the Vietnam War. It was a time of great change in America, with young people like my hippie parents finding their own interests and cultural comfort zones, and questioning assumptions and everything they had grown up with.
To my dad, QUESTION AUTHORITY meant to question what the government was doing, as it was the ultimate authority, and could cause great damage if left to itself without citizen oversight. He also told me it meant to question what people with authority and power and self-interest anywhere are doing, including teachers and policemen, to ask what corporations are doing, what drug companies and pesticide companies are doing, and so on. To my dad, and then to me, the bumper sticker (which I can still see now in my mind’s eye as clear as the day I first saw it) was the original fact check, an encouragement to think for myself.
It was the original statement of resistance against “The Man.”
“The Man” being the euphemistic hierarchichal boss overseeing all aspects of American (or any other country) government, industry, and culture.
Well, well, well, how times have changed.
Now, those once-young hippies run the government, the teacher’s unions, the drug and pesticide companies. They are The Man, they are in control, they do not want to let go, and brother they tolerate zero questioning of their authority. Their political orthodoxy is absolute and stifling. They tolerate no dissent. It seems once they had achieved power and control over all of the institutions and levers of power and decisionmaking, the once-young hippies settled into cruelly enforcing their views. The same views that once encouraged people to question authority.
But don’t you dare question their authority!
Yes, this irony seems lost on the hippies, but what is most curious is how few young Americans today want to question authority, to think for themselves. Instead, I see a huge proportion of American young people as mass produced, cookie cutter stamped young authoritarians coming out of the very industrialized education system. They do not question authority, rather they aspire to be the authority, the unquestioned, the duly obeyed.
Against the enormous array of completely corrupted and highly organized power and authority – the media, academia, entertainment, government schools, corporate America, Silicon Valley, the United Nations, both political parties in Washington DC, etc. stands One Man, who is questioning authority.
Against this incredible array of raw power and exploitative money stands Donald Trump, Our Man, the very image of resistance against The Man, of the American citizen standing against corrupt power.
The fact that so many young Americans do not identify with the underdog resistance the way the hippies did in 1972, the way healthy young people normally do, but rather so many desire to bully the underdog, to crush the resistance, to blot it out, to sadistically damage, cancel, hurt and destroy the underdog resistance, so that their own authority shall not be questioned, is a very bad sign. These are sick children.
To all the un-sick young Americans out there: Donald Trump is the resistance. He is the symbol of The People’s rebellion against the evil empire in Washington, DC. He is the underdog representing all of the forgotten little people in America, the forgotten workers and forgotten taxpayers, questioning the authority of terrible people, and he is battling against terrible forces of great evil and destruction. He deserves your support.
If you want to fight against the evil empire, join forces with Donald Trump. He needs you. America needs you. We have just a week remaining to save the galaxy, your galaxy, your future.
Did Liberals become Lawless by Nature? Or Habit?
Part of the 1960s counter-culture and protest fuel was a strong sense that ossified American culture and morality were “just, because.” To counter-culture activists, the war in Vietnam was perhaps the best example of this inconsiderate mindlessness. It became a galvanizing centerpiece in the display of Everything That Is Wrong With America.
So both bras and draft cards alike were burned as acts of moral or legal defiance became part and parcel of the movement.
Fast forward fifty years, and the liberal culture is deeply rooted in brazen acts of defiance and protest. Sit-ins, occupations of offices, “die-ins,” stormy public protests are all regular scenes as liberals make their point public.
Somewhere underlying the actions is that old sense that ‘because these things I oppose are immoral, I can engage in immoral and illegal acts of protest’.
Or said another way, ‘I vote the right way, so my actions are infallible’.
Half a step away from this thinking is the idea that whatever politically correct issue du jour is up next, illegal and violent acts are a necessity or at least justified. Heck, people even argue they are the cause. Could be the candidacy and then election of Donald Trump “causing” demonstrators to destroy private and public property, assault fellow Americans, bully co-workers, and accuse anyone who disagrees with them of being violent, hateful, etc.
And here is where a lot of Americans are lost and confused, including me.
Protesting is understandable. Violent protests are not (think of the many recent cry-bully protests against displeasing electoral outcomes).
Strongly disagreeing with someone’s politics is understandable. Assaulting someone over it is not (especially when the assailant claims to be “for love” and “against hate”) (think of the mass violence by liberals committed against Trump supporters for the past year).
Writing a letter to the editor, like Bob Quarteroni did a few weeks ago here in the Patriot News is all-American. Go for it. But trespassing, vandalizing and stealing private property, and threatening landowners with physical harm to make a vague political point, as Mr. Quarteroni gleefully admitted to in his letter, is not OK.
Asking a young lady yesterday to please stop at the stop sign in our neighborhood, and not barrel through it as she did, because two small kids play at that intersection, netted my son and I this response: “I did stop at the stop sign”
“No, you did not, we watched you drive right through.”
“I’ll bet you voted for Trump,” said the dashing young lady, who then gave us the finger and marched on in to the Wells Fargo bank to get her money. Apparently Trump made her drive recklessly.
And then there is the sanctuary city thing, a naked play for votes by one political party that seems to always need a permanently angry underclass. Illegal aliens will do for them, never mind that the rest of America wants them to follow the law.
If a bunch of gun owners decided to ignore gun laws in one of these sanctuary cities, because they believe the gun laws are unconstitutional, punitive, unfair, backwards, and causing crime rather than limiting it, you just know what the city fathers would do: Lock ’em up!
It is interesting, isn’t it, that neither Barack Hussein Obama nor Hillary Clinton nor Bernie Sanders asked their rampaging supporters to stop…. The liberal political leaders actually encouraged the illegal and violent behavior. And in fact, in state houses and the US Congress there is one political party whose elected members continue to hold illegal “sit-ins” and other forms of partisan protest in public, taxpayer-owned places.
So what happened here?
When did liberals go from staking out some intellectual or moral high ground, to destructive, illegal, and criminal acts as a matter of daily behavior?
Somewhere, that old sense of just cause got blurred. All of the burned draft cards and other little illegal acts of defiance morphed into a culture of perpetual violence, destruction, and openly flouting the law (when it suits them).
I know a lot of liberals. How could I not, having graduated from America’s flagship Quaker school? Our high school class grew up together and we are like a big family, so we stay in touch. And of course I continue to maintain relationships with as many liberals as will have me as their friend (apparently not easy for PC people, a subject for another essay).
I look at these otherwise great people about whom I care a great deal, and I wonder, did they willingly and consciously allow their nature to become corrupted and lawless? Did they get here by habit?
Are their goals so pure that any means are justified, no matter the unfair high cost, the immorality, the injustice, the personal loss by innocents? That was a Lenin and Stalin thing. Not that American liberals would ever follow in those paths….nahhh.
I cannot answer this question, and I wish liberals would.
Challenging modern sensibilities
Yesterday, the distant father of one of our bear hunters texted his cell phone, urging him to retreat from the cold descending upon central Pennsylvania.
“Too cold! Go home!” read the text, which included several other adjectives supposedly describing hunting conditions.
The dad is not a hunter. He’s a very nice man, a hard worker, a veteran of Vietnam War infantry battles that earned him two Purple Heart medals. He’s no wimp. He is, however, a member of a materially comfortable society that increasingly believes food comes from the market, heat from the switch, and clothes from China.
Luxury is the standard for most Americans. By international standards, our ubiquitous cell phones, big screen televisions, cars, and expensive clothes are unimaginable expenses in days filled with constant quests for food and shelter around the planet.
Hunting for us makes us human, and quintessentially American. Hunting connects us to a human tradition predating anything surrounding Americans today. Cold weather is part and parcel of hunting. It challenges our artificially padded modern sensibilities for a few days, something that everyone needs. Couch potato nation, arise!