Just about every day now that I wake up, fire up the computer and begin reading, I am left in a state of mild depression after wading through the litany of bad news, disaster, corporate and political malfeasance which features on blogs, aggregator blogs and the established news sites. Public schools appear to be open hunting grounds for pervs and freaks, places where the intellectual development of children, tweens and teens must be cut down to the lowest common denominator, so that the lazy and disinterested must not be made to feel discomforted over being lazy and disinterested. The volunteer military demoralized and all but non-functional, our major and Democrat party ruled cities all but drowning in crime while the homeless routinely crap in the streets and stagger around while high on substances which our government has allowed to pour through an unsecured border. A former president has apparently been railroaded on ginned-up charges by a nakedly partisan effort. Our shining republic on a hill, the two hundred-year-plus long grand experiment of engaged citizens actually ruling themselves looks to have degenerated into the worst of a banana republic, where the inner coterie reserves privilege and riches unto themselves and brings criminal charges against any who dare protest … oh, and all the while a tame and sycophant national media licks the boots of the ruling class, and slavishly obeys every command issued by that ruling class, orders to play up some stories, play down and/or denigrate others. Mostly because a lot of the media class are married to or are the spawn of the ruling class … funny how that all works out.
Remember; I was part of a local urban Tea Party early on, and I cannot and will not forget how the Tea Party as decent, engaged and well-educated a body of local concerned citizens was denigrated by the national news media as a bunch of racist reactionary yahoos. Why yes, I do recall very well how contemptuously we were treated, and now rejoice at CNN/NPR/NYT and all the rest of the unholy national media cabal going down, with regard to credibility and economics. Grudge-holding? Yeah, you think memories and grudges after the defeat of the Confederacy were held long in the South? Welcome to the new civil war, where one side remembers well what it was like to belong and to operate in a high-trust, egalitarian and meritorious society. And on the other side, those entitled bastards pissed away a relatively well-functioning and successful country, in whoring after personal material wealth and power. I hope that they do enjoy the horrible world that their mismanagement has created alas, the rest of us are going to be pulled in after them, into a dysfunctional, violent (state-authorized violence, or violence committed by their chosen pets, as retaliatory/defensive violence by the rest of us committed in self-defence will be punished by full force of the law) and grotesque banana republic. The ruling class and their wanna-bes might live securely for a while in privately protected enclaves, but the rest of us …
Anyway, it’s a positive relief to turn away from the computer and go out into the slightly wider world where I live. Walk the dogs, talk to friendly neighbors, look at the blue sky and the trees all coming out in rich green, see that some neighbors are landscaping their yards, or improving their own personal patch of paradise, more or less in perfect security. Which is nice to see, after some hours on the internet. There is happiness and contentment in my own part of the world, still in spite of all the madness going on. The various grocery stores where we shop are full enough, and Costco is jammed on most days. Prices are a little bit higher or sometimes eye-poppingly higher but the clerks are as friendly as ever, and make much of Wee Jamie, the Wonder Grandson. The stupid Plexiglas shields have even come down, at the local HEB outlets. There is a Folkfest planned for the weekend at mid-month in New Braunfels, on the grounds of the Heritage Society’s campus displays of crafts, reenactors and a children’s costume parade, which has been a part of New Braunfels since the founding days, a hundred and seventy years ago. The city where I live is still functional, although there are some notable examples of criminal behavior and very third-world driving noted on my local Next Door. On the surface, life in my personal Shire goes on, much as it has from day to day. Life remains normal, more or less … for now.
Do those of us who are news junkies notice the societal dysfunction in certain places and feel it more deeply, while for most everyone else, life flows blithely by? Discuss as you wish.
As a footnote, I add a Bible verse that brings me comfort, when I have scanned the daily disasters. This verse was noted in a pop historical novel about the American Revolution, and I used it for my own purposes in my book about the Civil War in the Texas Hill Country. Take it as a talisman, yourselves.
Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him. 1 Kings 19:18
I live in Chicago. THANK YOU for that scripture.
Wow, this really speaks to me. I feel a lot of the same thing. Things go on locally, but nationally we’re *F’ed* and likely to stay that way.
But there’s no reason not to enjoy the serenity of a spring coming to the mountains (in California)
We here in Wisconsin took a torpedo Tuesday, with Janet Protoceiwitz getting elected to the Supreme Court. She ran on promises to vote against any restriction on abortion, and ending election reforms, and that, along with being a Democrat from Milwaukee, was all she needed.
We are in a lot of trouble now, and I fear for my beloved Badger State.
You should fear your fellow citizen more. They have heaped this upon you. Democracy! (we’re supposed to be a Republic)
Thank you for your post. While we work to reclaim our country at a national level, we must shore up the functional parts of this country and build (relatively) safe havens against the coming storm. While our federal system is still honored, we must fight to save our villages, towns, cities, counties, and states wherever we can.
Unplug every now and then from the internet and media, lest you be paralyzed by depression at what’s going on in the worse parts of the country and renew your soul in the best this country still has to offer. Then return to the fight. As those in the military know, R&R is critical to maintaining an effective fighting force. That’s as true in our fight for the soul of the nation as it is in actual kinetic warfare.
The link to your book about the Civil War in the Texas Hill Country did not link. Please—a do-over :)
Dear Sgt. Mom,
The link to your book about the Civil War in the Texas Hill Country did not work. Would you please do it again? Thank you, DKHH
the litany of bad news
There is a LOT of strength built into the nation our Founders helped create. The vitality of Western (Christian) Civilization will not easily give up.
in whoring after personal material wealth and power
That’s only part of it, and those people exist no matter the society. Where a lot of this is coming from is the Progressive religion, and their drive for a ‘reason’-centered world, where the human mind can make anything it desires (even oneself) and hedonism – pleasure without consequence – rules the day. If it were just grifters and power-hungry moguls, defeating it would be easy. But it’s the Progressive poison injected into our society in so many points, corrupting the soul of the nation.
the trees all coming out in rich green
The mf-ing pole pines can all die in a fire, the d***ed breeders. Spewing their fluorescent pollen all over the place. F ’em.
Yes, the totalitarian-progressives have damaged America.
But we let them.
Bit by bit, RINO concession by concession. Bribed with our own money.
Americans are still the majority against soros-bought-soy-boys and deluded-urbanites.
Stand up straight, sergeant.
They only win if we won’t stop them.
Remember it’s not the timid pacifist. Nor the brave soldier who faces danger in battle.
To beat the left, it takes Dirty Harry, willing to risk his very soul in the grey zone.
Ready?
Breaking news
https://twitter.com/julie_kelly2/status/1643941971298271232
Conservatives made a mistake and didn’t keep our eye on the ball when it came to education in the US. Bill Ayers played the long game and is winning. How do we turn the tide?
How do we turn the tide?
You volunteer in your schools. This assumes that where you are they are not beyond redemption which sadly could be the case. But we build from what viable foundations still exist.
I’ve been volunteering for 24 years locally. Robotics programming, cryptography, various other things all focused on getting kids (this is middle and hs level) to actually think. Often I suspect for the first time in any given school day.
Never give up. Never surrender.
I am very pessimistic about the future. Here in Arizona, the governor’s election seems fraudulent. My sister lives in Chicago and is very upset about that election. She is convinced many people where she lives, on the southwest side, were overconfident and did not vote. Wisconsin was flooded with outside money. I understand that Leonardo DeCaprio, under oath, described millions in illegal donations from foreign sources.
“It was a significant sum, something to the tune of $20-30 million,” DiCaprio testified in court. “I said, ‘Wow that’s a lot of money!’”
Additional witnesses testified that they were wired money from Low and asked to forward it to the Obama campaign.
Of course we know how his campaign in 2008 turned off credit card verification to allow illegal donations. Maybe Joe Biden learned from this.
I fear that nothing short of an economic collapse will dislodge the Democrat criminals from power. I don’t say that all Democrats (including two of my kids) are all criminals but the party is run by criminal types. A lot of Republicans are no better.
Link to the book broken.
I may be wrong but Celia’s, ‘Adelsverein: The Sowing’ (https://www.amazon.com/Adelsverein-Sowing-Celia-Hayes-ebook/dp/B001Q3KU9G) may be it.
If not, well worth reading anyway.
Info for you. The reason the entire world is moving away from America, the Saudis spring to mind, is that America, abusing its position as currency of record and being the centre of that, stole $680 billion from Russia. Everyone with money under American control went WTF just happened. We should do something about this.
Perhaps the stupidest thing America has ever done.
Delete this heresy. ;)
Jeff,
What can we do? I have been re-reading John Marini’s “Unmasking the Administrative State” so I’m a bit riled up. Let me set the table first.
First thing is to recognize that we are in a revolutionary age. The elements that we see of the revolution – post-modernism, Wokeism, transgender – are merely particulars of a much larger phenomena that C.S. Lewis identified back in the 1930s. We really are living in Nietzsche’s world where God is dead and the spirit of the age, History in the sense of Hegel, is that we are able to reshape nature and ourselves to our will and that this will represents the progress of History. One can see why this is so intoxicating to people – “We are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For”
In a practical sense it means we are going to be dealing this for a very long time. As you stated Ayres understood from the Leftist side that this is a long march, a generational process. People will point to something in the news and say “we hit peak woke” and that the tide has turned, something like a lawsuit against doctors performing transgender surgeries on minors.. Don’t believe them. There is too much momentum built across too much time with too many people with a stake in this revolution to be stopped in the short-term
Second, we need to recognize what the revolutionary enemy is, a coalition of various groups, a “Popular Front” if you will. It’s not all freaks but rather groupings of people who wish to overturn society and while able to work together are really allies of convenience, think right before the February Revolution in Russia. with the anti-Czar opposition. The multi-colored, multi-pierced campus dwellers, AntiFa types are the shock troops; they open the holes, pull the Overton windows open for the those “more reasonable types” with the NPR voices who run the media/academic/government (and now big corporate) powerplex who know the “correct solution.” We focus on the Libs of Tik Tok K-12 teacher because that person provides the great visual, but the dangerous one are the DEI/HR types, the ones running the curriculum committees who all just look like your normal bureaucrats. A large part of the opposing team isn’t the radical as much as those who wish to dispose of constitutional republicanism in favor of the administrative state Think of an offensive unit in football working as a team, the radical freaks create the holes which the radical normals use to run for daylight.
Third, as revolutionaries the radical Left have their own information warfare strategy with its own language and tactics. It’s always to analyze what language because not only does it predict their moves but allows us to understand how they view the world. Language such as “Christian Nationalism”, “White Supremacy “Multiracial Democracy” has two purposes; first it allows the Left to define the enemy as simply those which do not fully accept the ideology (creating the other). Second the language itself preys on the imperfections of America’s history and demoralizes the rest of society. Accepting multiracial democracy and fighting white supremacy isn’t about fighting Jim Crow or the KKK but rather accepting that America and all of its values are racist to the core and must be replaced. To the average American. Christian nationalism invokes images of those red cloaked women from the “Handmaid’s Tale” but really it’s a two-pronged assault on the whole idea of an American nation structured around non-positivist values (God-given rights)
The other part of the Left’s demoralization strategy was evident this past week with Woke postmodern agenda invading core aspects of red America with last week’s CMT drag show and transgender posterboy Dylan Mulvaney being a brand spokesman for Bud Light. Both these and other events not not present such behavior as normal (Mulvaney as the brand descendant of Spuds McKenzie) but demoralize the rest of us. You can also deal wit the redefining of feminine beauty with plus-size models and Meg Rapione as a Victoria Secrets model. We know what they are doing is lie, they know it’s a lie and that we know that, but they are telling us there is nothing we can do about it. See my works and weep. Very 1960s Soviet Union.
So what to do?
First we need to recognize that the radical Left is not 10-feet tall, they have their weaknesses even in their time of triumphant glory. First their coalition is built not on what it is for, but on what it is against. They need Trump, the need the Deplorables, they need to consider us crass, cross-burning, cousin-banging neanderthals because not only it unites them against a common enemy but reflects their postmodern notion of the world that all of society, all of truth is merely a reflection of power relations. They rail against the cisgender, white supremacy, and oppressive power but really they follow Lenin’s notion of the state is merely a tool of oppression except for them it just needs to be the right people doing the oppressing. That can be exploited if only because at some point the Popular Front collapses and the allies of convenience enter the October, 1917 phase of revolution.
Second, it’s just good tactics that the best way to halt a breakthrough is not to confront it directly as that plays into its strength but rather to crimp it from the sides in order to slow the momentum. The Left feels it’s on the right side of History and if that belief is dissipated their coalition begins to fall apart. I have witnessed the march of the postmodern Left since grad school and the reason it succeeds it has co-opted the more traditional leftist, more “respectable” elements as part of its Hegelian march through History. Destroy that sense of the inevitable and we create our own possibilities. The Left across all of its instances (government, business, academia, media) uses a defensive box formation akin to B-17s over Europe providing interlocking fields of fire, each part helping to protect the other. Dent that box
Apply this to education.
We cannot enact our own Long March for 2 reasons. First the Left is wise to that strategy, having just executed it themselves, and will block us from entering K-12 and higher ed. through HR and DEI. Second we cannot wait the decades it would take to enact such a strategy as we are losing this generation of students to leftist indoctrination and the longer we wait the more students we will lose. Instead I think we don’t try to reform K-12 and higher ed, but instead burn it down and replace it.
We saw last year in Arizona and this year in other states laws passed that fund students, not schools. In Arizona parents can apply to the state and withdraw their children from the public and charter school system and in turn receive the equivalent of state aid ($7,000) in the form of a scholarship to be used at a private or parochial school or barring that simply to fund homeschooling. In other words Arizona and other states have a voucher program that has greased the skids for mass exit from the existing K-12 system and creating a market for those who wish to cater to them. It will not take long to start creating financial imbalances within existing K-12 districts (as long as states don’t hold those districts financially harmless from losing students) and nothing is as disruptive to the public sector like budget cuts. Get them to eat their own, split their coalition while at the same time providing ways, immediate and today, to save our children.
Woke, post-modernism is a revolutionary moment that thrives on the perception of inevitability, of its power. Use K-12 to break that perception.. Then use that model elsewhere because the Left is totalitarian and cannot abide those which are different.
One final note, I have believed that one of the ultimate ways to assure adeherence to societal norms is not reciprocity so much as the threat of massive retaliation. I had thought of Sean Connery’s liine from the Untoucnables regarding the Chicago Way ”He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue! That’s the Chicago way: I see Michael Walsh has also picked up on the theme https://the-pipeline.org/the-column-the-untouchables/. When Joe Biden made his “Jim Crow” remark regarding Georgia’s voting laws he was not only proven wrong, but he got away with it because he wasn’t made to pay price for such lies. No more. If you are the average K-12 superintendent, CEO, or what not and you need to decide whether to let Woke in the door, you need to know that we will not fight you, we will instead level your organization to the ground and make an example of you.
The way ahead is not a job for the Mitt Romney, National Review types who bewail the direction of the country but do nothing to change it. It’s time for everyone to make hard decisions, in other words it’s a good time to be alive
That’s how we turn the tide
btw I agree with Pengun’s post. I don’t really ever do so but when the extraordinary happens, I will admit to it.
well that wasn’t the smartest move, but if you wanted to destroy a country, you would weaken the currency, you would kneecap oil production that would hobble economic growth, you would prove mass subsidies for boondoggles, that makes the grid more frail, you would try to demoralize the populace, with toxic media, aimed at undermining traditional values, who benefits in this scenario
Mike, I agree with what you wrote about how things have been done by the progressive left and at least some of how to fight back. Would you mind if I copied your comment and shared it with some of my friends?
When Obama was elected president, I considered him an empty suit, elected solely for his race. It is possible I underestimated him. More likely, the real brains of that operation, at least in domestic matter, was Eric Holder. Certainly he was the most radical having been a leader in the takeover of Columbia U when he was a student.
Here is a good description of Holder’s role in the Obama administration,.
The fundamental transformation of America promised to us by then-candidate Barack Obama just days ahead of the 2008 presidential election has come to pass.
President Obama and then-Attorney General Eric Holder intentionally set out to fill the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice with as many liberals as possible. They worked toward this goal deliberately and methodically.
Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, chronicled their actions in a special investigation series written in 2011 called “Every Single One.” He concluded that the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division “was engaging in politicized hiring in the career civil service ranks” and that “it had been unprecedented in scope.”
At the time of Holder’s resignation in September 2014, von Spakovsky wrote:
Holder was responsible for spearheading an unprecedented politicization of the Justice Department.
Holder has continued his radical career by pushing corporations to adopt ESG ideology.
We are living in the country Holder created.
Krauthammer nailed it with two quotes:
1) “To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.”
2) “There is a complimentary social phenomenon that goes with defining deviancy down. As part of the vast social project of moral leveling, it is not enough for the deviant to be normalized, the normal must be found to be deviant.”
Liberals have been “othering” conservatives for decades. All those nasty, vile, vicious slanders of “racist, fascist, sexist,” etc. have been fully absorbed and become truth for Democrats — politicians, bureaucrats, news media and voters.
Fully convinced of their anointed status (see Sowell) by virtue of their superior mental and moral faculties, and convinced that their opponents are well and truly evil, they are now Big Brother and proud of it.
Yes, Obama was and is the marxist revolutionary and radical that he claimed to be in college. I don’t think him capable of being the brains orchestrating the rise of Big Brother. I doubt it is Holder either.
Obama had his path to Harvard Law paved (both academically and financially) by someone else. I can’t remember the name of the old black Dem congressman who spoke about it. I know that his closest advisors were all far, far more radical than the news media let on.
I suspect that Soros and the Democrats’ billionaire club have the greatest control.
I can’t remember the name of the old black Dem congressman who spoke about it.
Emil Jones who said, “I’m going to make me a Senator.” That led me to think Obama was an empty suit. The past ten years have led me to wonder who is pulling the strings.
It looks like Chicago got rid of Lightfoot for someone worse. If only I’d been smart enough to invest in Chicago U-Haul franchises a few years ago.
The next time a Democrat rails on you regarding voter suppression, counter them with Chicago. The only reason any political jurisdiction runs an election in the late Winter/early Spring in an off-year is to suppress turnout. Sure everyone is free to vote, but the powers-that-be cynically pick these dates because they know people won’t come out
We’re around 3 years into the national phenomena of mass mail-in voting and ballot harvesting so would be nice with all the political books being written about how the Orange Man is undermining Democracy, that somebody actually write one on how ballot harvesting has changed elections because it (harvesting) is the evil enabler of mail-in voting. I see stories on how well Johnson executed his ground game which these days seems synonymous with harvesting; keep in mind he had CTU and any anti-cop organization (and my guess gangs https://www.chicagomag.com/chicago-magazine/january-2012/gangs-and-politicians-an-unholy-alliance/) working for him to do it,
Having said all of that and the fact that Chicago has always been a corrupt machine town, this is one is on you Chicago voters. You knew this guy was going to be worse than Lightfoot, in fact he told you so and you either didn’t care enough to vote against him or even show up to vote at all. I guess your city hasn’t hit rock bottom enough, to look like Detroit or west Baltimore, for you to care. Fair enough I have seen enough mass political movements have game-changing movements (Tea Party, Contract with America, MAGA) to know it can be done, I know it’s not just a collective action problem, you just don’t care enough. Just please when you escape Chicago, with that type of attitude, don’t move into my neighborhood.