The Elephant Unseen...

 This post is a comment on an article published by TheAtlantic The Problem Is Gun Culture, Not SCOTUS;

"To the town of Aqua Fria rode a stranger one fine day… Didn't talk to folks around him… Didn't have to much to say…"  Most definitely on my list of any era any genre  favorite music. Not to mention a totally fine way to open an essay on the subject of guns.  It is rare that I totally agree with something published by The Atlantic, but this is one of those times.  The author's (Tom Nichols) thesis sentence, with which I couldn't agree more, is found as paragraph four of the offering.

"The problem is not the Court’s decision. The problem is an adolescent, drama-laden gun culture, a romance with weapons that became extreme only in the past quarter century."

Beyond an absolute truth well spoke that sentence contains an assertion in its' closing words that implies Tom has noticed something that I have also noted.  In the last quarter century?  From the mid-90's till now? I agree, he's right, but why that period of time?  What happened in the mid-90's to start such a transformation?  What enabled it? It had to be something. What was it?

As a contra-social philosopher and GM-CT I have never investigated that obvious question as fully I should have. Mea culpa, my bad.  His assertion sparked a thought, the thought a question, and what was found looking for an answer to that question is a possible explanation for not only this conundrum but several others equally problematic that have radically escalated across the same period.

Are they related by something unrecognized?  Maybe.  This potential is in the realms of Social Psychology and I've never heard a whisper of it anywhere. Not to say it hasn't been noticed, or spoken of, just that I've never heard of such a thought being examined. It's new to me.  Gentle reader, allow me to share that thought with you.  Perhaps it might strike a chord in your contemplations as it has in mine.

Social evolution, cultural evolution, is absolutely horrible about conflating and equating things which really have little or nothing to do with each other in absolute fact.  These things are rarely seen at the surface of thought, they are often simply stored in the same register of thoughts as it were, and yet by that simple proximity across the run of history they can become very powerful influencers in shaping what will become an individual's deepest expectations.  Since expectations, particularly those never fully understood, have direct access to shape the structures of emotional responses the sum of such conflated expectations can easily be a totally concealed motive to empower any number of things into reality.

There is one HUGE point that broached the surface for most people in the mid-90's that I am certain was so heavily conflated with several other cultural elements as to become an almost a ubiquitous driver in the opening days of the new century (important point… the new century as accounted by the Gregorian calendar in current service). 

The subject of Tom's essay was the change in attitudes concerning weapons, guns in particular.  A fact of life: Fear, and the consequences of fear, are the constant companion of any weapon of any sort.  As my thoughts evolve I'm ever more convinced the now comical and seldom mentioned  Y2K thing… the fear of electricity going down, the fear of all the computers suddenly turning into economic assassins… was simply a thin veneer of irrational ridiculousity concealing a much deeper set of fears of such scale as to secretly echo decades into the future as motivation for a great many things.

How could a set of numbers rolling over on a calendar create an irrational fascination and romance with lethal weaponry?  How could that change mandate a desperate effort by half of society to reshape society into a totally ovine collectivist herd mentality and destroy the individual?  How could it demand a return to a feudalistic religious fundamentalism in the other half, the half most commonly in  love with the weapons? 

What has dawned on me is there is a point that when combined, emotionally conflated, with the totally public onset of not only a new century but a new millennia would be of sufficient power to set such a cycle in motion to become self sustaining beneath the surface of a society.

The United States of America evolved, and in large degree still is, a Christian society. In the structures of Christendom is the solid belief that at a time of his choosing known only to him Jesus will return to the mortal realms of Planet Earth.  A very, very powerful and very old belief. Judgment day, as it is known to the faithful.  Judgment day, to accompany what the prophet John detailed elegantly and gruesomely… and apparently ever more accurately…  in the book of Revelation. 

I know for a fact that for a great many Christians that series of prophesied events was firmly expected sometime immediately after the onset of the Gregorian new millennia (which was in close and convenient proximity to an astrological event of equally epic proportions… a grand conjunction of the planets marking a new age of the earth to the Pagan folk) and I equally know that regardless of the true depth and degree of faith, or secret lack thereof, from one perspective or the other there is no greater a terror for a Christian than the consequences of that day come to reality!

  Enough fear that a total fascination with guns makes sense in that environment.  Pick the fight, load the guns, shoot all the bullets.  Only the survivors will have to face judgment day, those who died in the fighting will have died before Jesus made it back, they'll have died without KNOWING and are therefore forgiven pursuant to Jesus' sacrifice… right.  No wonder Ragnarok looks better to a lot of them than what Armageddon implies.

Look at what is known to every shrink and every good parent, look at what happens when a deep expectation fails to materialize in reality! Fear. Secret fear, the authority (be it parental or societal) has failed its' charter and we do not know where we stand.  And a lot of very public resentment.  Said authority betrayed what our culture led us to believe was a promise. Time for a good temper tantrum and pout, if nothing else.

Folks, are we looking at a case of a self fulfilling prophecy?  To speculate further would be to further abuse your patience (thank you!), but think about it.  Looks to me like there is good potential for a solid and fully concealed connection between this thought and every major factor that is now dividing America. 

Pink Floyd: A Monolog

The music of Pink Floyd carries the disillusionment of a generation, the sadness and the secret hope. As that generation, my generation, passes into the portion of life where its numbers begin to dwindle, when the physician is called for more often than the vintner, when each winter is indeed a little colder, now is when the music of Pink Floyd is in fullest bouquet.

Intoxicated with the strength of youth we sipped a vintage forty years older than ourselves, and only now with the scars of age upon us can we fully appreciate why the melancholy sounds of Pink Floyd touched us as they did. For all the intervening years we have carried the warning Floyd wrapped in sound seductive, no matter how we might have publicly reviled the loathed and solemn wisdom therein.

For the most part we were the children of the wars, conceived by survivors honoring the ancient tradition of replacing a dead enemy with living children, baby boomers raised by rote in the shadow of our parents secret struggle to restore an innocence sacrificed in the cause of freedom. They, whose gallantry bought freedom for the world, they themselves were not to be free. I saw this in my father's face, in my mother's eyes, in the fear driven structures of their thoughts and beliefs. Long before Floyd put a voice and a tonality to my perception I knew. Death, frustrated by fortune or fate in his first attempt on my fathers life stalked him still, and this my father knew as well.

Perhaps he, a child of an older time when death knew fewer restrictions, perhaps he knew even before the kamikaze and submarines brought the point to acute focus. But we, we did not know. In the silence which surrounded such subjects we could only guess without knowledge. And so when we first heard Atom Heart Mother or Dark Side of the Moon there was a commonality between those exotic sounds and the feelings which seemed to somehow seep or flow or explode around our parents as they struggled to reconcile having survived that which claimed so very many others.

Pink Floyd is the music of the inevitable rendered into comfort rather than terror. It is the music of a final understanding to bridge the incarnations, a proceeding comprehension of life as a fleeting set of fantasies resolved to little more than tiny footnotes. It is a music which emulates the shift in perspective produced from introspection taken to the point of hallucination. Dime bag or Batman, Floyd is the anthem of realizing, soon enough or far too late, that we are  all as mortal as our parents.

Clean Feet are a good thing...

Or... all hail the Gods of Rotory abrasion! Mighty angle grinders and the magnificent little Dremel tool are the heroes of the day.  The villian?  A little widget of a piece of plastic in the shower faucet that had cracked.  The mercenary? One of those obnoxious spring clips Ford is infamous for putting on vacuum lines.  The operation?  Grind the ears off the clip until it is true round, nothing poking out, and then get the spring clip around the broken shaft to hold the crack closed and reinforce old plastic that is the part that actually turns the valve stem and then, delicately, so very delicately, clearance the inside diameter of the next plastic widget that holds the whole mess centered with the handle.  It was almost big enough, almost, I needed maybe 30, 35 thousandths to let everything turn like it should, I had about 120 thousandths of plastic to work with. Enough, just be careful...

Forty five minutes of gentle persuasion and YES, I now have clean feet! And... not only that, I just saved 40 bucks and week or ten days of having the vise grips hanging off the valve stem waiting for the widget to arrive as part of a kit full of other parts I don't need.  Victory is sweet.

The Romance of it all...

=== originally published June 2014 ===

hear what follows in an ever thickening brogue, the speaker a smaller man, gnarled and bent, calloused, gray and grizzled with piercing blue eyes and a salt air a’ the sea about him, a man who wandered the world under sail a century and more before any of us were born

Now, most folks say romance and they be thinkin’ of a man and a woman, some affair a’ the flesh becomin’ an affair a’ love, and aye, there be romance there, there is, the romance of that test and temperin’ a’ love what leaves two hearts honed a keen edge fit to set the future a fair green field with a crop on the land, and aye, there’s a romance there, there is. But there be romance in other things as well, for romance is life on the very edge a’ livin' when ye' can't help but know life is a worth the livin’... them times when livin’ on beyond is no sure thing... I’ve known a few of those times.  Times, times come and times go and these times, these doldrum times are so slow so give me no more rum, nay, give me back the witch, bring her to me as she was in the glory of her youth, show her to me as she were on that day when the sun beat brilliant on a blue green sea a’ runnin’ high and shadow of her sails painted the deck like veils floatin’ across your lovers back, bring her to me as she were that day when the sky behind was black as pitch and the wind, ah, the wind was nigh on a full gale thirty, forty knots just off the stern and she was a runnin’ down the wind a runnin’ from the devil's own storm a boilin’ up chasin’ from behind... I was there, I was and there were no man jack aboard didn’t know the Cap’n was a pushin her, pushin her so hard, to hard, heart breakin' hard, him a’ standin’ there like a statue by the mizzen mast with his hand on her, standin’ there a makin’ love with the witch while the white foam was a flyin’ over the bow... half the hour, an hour, hour after hour in the riggin’ standin’ ready and listenin’ to her cryin' with the strain, feelin’ her beat her breast again’ the sea and every time the sea give way feelin’ her shake until all aboard knew ‘twas nothin’ but the love between ‘em holdin’ her spar to mast, keel to rib... aye, and when the storm fell behind, fell and faded and the wind become a breeze it were the climax of her ecstasy we all felt in the riggin' when the Cap’n himself fell to his knees and leaned down to the very deck to kiss his witch... that were a day to remember I tell you, for that?  That were a day of romance it was, deep romance... there be so few of those days now.

I wish I'd painted this one, but I didn't... it belongs to some other artist far better than I to whom I offer my thanks for the beauty of his work... CDM

Every now and then my imagination just takes the bit in its’ teeth and runs with me.  I usually don’t contest it very much, unless I’m involved in something where I have to keep focus on the real.  Most of the time I just let it run and think around the outer edges even if I have no earthly idea what triggered the whole episode.  Today the word “romance” took center stage.  Why?  No clue, not really.  There’s the movie “Romancing the Stone” and there’s thousands of “romance” novels, and none of those have crossed my thought in a long, long time.  But for some reason it seemed a good word to wander in since somehow I don’t think very many people realize just what romance really is..

Car of Four Doors, or...

 ...it could only happen to me. Folks, I'm a shade tree mechanic. Didn't have much choice in the matter, being a poor boy it was learn to mechanic or walk. Just kind of a cultural fact of life where I come from. I've argued with some stubborn problems over the last fifty some years, but what the little Jeep threw at me over the last couple of weeks had me scratching my head and wondering if I'd somehow gotten on the bad side of the Witch of Wrench. You know the Witch of Wrench, she goes to the same church as the infamous Murphy whose name is tagged to the laws of misfortune.

First, the rack and pinion spit out a seal. Check the oil, top the gas, and fill 'er up with power steering fluid. Drat and damn. Big parts on the bottom of the car. Not cheap parts on the bottom of the car. But, a straight forward job. New rack and pinion, new power steering pump (the old one took some serious abuse, kind of sounded like four or five hyperactive kids with castanets) so a new one of those, and what the whale, those tie rod ends had been under there a long time and they had to come off anyway so why not, change them before they failed. All well and good. 

And then the real fun started. Hydraulics and hoses and O rings and lions and tigers and bears and oh my why is it just pouring out oil and all the O rings keep coming back out looking like a tiny bagel sliced for breakfast? Why is it I torque the fitting to factory spec and by the time I get back to it it's finger loose in the hole? (this was where I began to seriously suspect the Witch of Wrench in the game). Well, O rings don't last very long at all when there's a tiny crack in the steel right under where they go, a couple of thousand psi of oil pressure through a tiny crack pretty well cuts like a razor knife, and when it's a re-manufactured pump and the last guy who worked on it over tightened the fitting to the point the threads were deformed they just don't tend to stay tight.  Three freakin' gallons of power steering fluid later all the parts and pieces fell into place: a new hose you install by popping off the grill and pulling out the headlight of all things and courtesy of O'Rielly AutoParts most excellent warranty policy another pump and YEA! power steering with no leaks and no noise. 

Of course, when you mess with the rack and pinion you're messing with the steering column, that metal rod that begins at the steering wheel and dives down to the bottom of the car. You have to kind of wiggle it to get it off the old rack and onto the new one, and of course the other end of that rod runs through a couple of switches and what nots, and you guessed it: wiggling the rod pissed off the doodaddy that hooks all the switches on the steering wheel to the rest of the wiring. It just sort of went kablooey. No horn, no cruise control, and a lovely warning light with chime advertising the out of commission airbag. 

Folks, they are VERY proud of that little widget (officially called the "clock spring connector") being as how it is part of the airbag circuit and all. Oh, joy. Off with the steering wheel, swap out the the spinny thing. Not a bad job, certainly not worth the six hundred bucks the dealerships commonly quote. Eh, go figure. Standard is to double the price if Suzy the Safety Slut had any dealings in the matter.  They do go bad and that one lasted eighteen years. Ok, coincidence maybe. All of these things were, are, just what you get into when you keep an old one running. But... the last one was a true one in ten million, you couldn't make it do that again if you tried.  

Some months ago the window lift on a back door blew out. You know that awful grinding sound and the window quits moving and if you're lucky it doesn't try and fall into the door where you have to duck tape it up until you've got the time to mess with it. A pretty common problem, one I've dealt with more than once. What was not common was when the little motor finished it's death agony the door was jammed solid shut. No getting it open at all. Well, being as how I was fighting with the machinations of machinery anyway I decided I was tired of having a three door Jeep and tore into the situation to see what had happened.   

Luck was with me, on my model you can get the inner panel off the door with the door closed. Didn't even break any plastic. Belly down across the back seat I stared at the situation for a good hour, and in the end decided my repertoire of creative obscenities, educated and evolved as it is by five decades of fixing things, just could not quite describe what I was looking at.  The drive cable that goes from the motor to the little screw jack that holds the window had broken off the screw jack leaving behind a good six, eight inches of casing. Of course, without the casing the cable is just on very long set of threads flopping around inside the door. It fell down to the back of the door, caught traction on the door latch and promptly tied itself in a knot around the latch while screwing itself  INTO the latch mechanism by way of the child safety lock slot! Solid steel knot holding the door firmly closed with maybe one inch of room to work. Normally I don't hold with using brute force, but... they'd left me no option. It took an angle grinder, two cold chisels and two pair of vise grips to resolve the issue and get the door to open. And the truly amazing thing?  Once open, and a couple of tiny bends tapped back close to straight? The damn door latch works just fine right down to the power lock solenoid. 

I guess I should take that for a good omen and take it on down the road. For all of our misadventures in maintenance the little Jeep has been a truly noble soldier, and he has one MASSIVE advantage: he's been paid off for fifteen years now.

Capitalism and the Fate of Kings

===originally published 11/2012===

Allow me to illuminate for you the failure point of Capitalism. I am convinced that when Capitalism's greatest advocate Ayn Rand realized this conundrum it destroyed even her, she self destructed in drink and bitterness and despair. A shame, really, she came closer to getting it right than any other, she almost had it, and the final point to be resolved is not at all impossible. It simply requires thinking a bit outside tradition for society to implement a correction that keeps all of capitalism's benefits and dissolves the problem.

Consider if you will that ultimately a society lives or dies on the degree of ethics in the morality practiced within that society. I give you that from an ethical perspective these two events are identical: the year is 1795 and a man goes to Savannah to buy himself a slave to work his farm; and, the year is 2005 when his direct descendent goes to his stock broker to buy 1/10,000th of a ten thousand man corporation. What both men have purchased is the surplus productivity of another human, the ultimately unethical ownership of another man's accomplishments. Both men have imbibed exactly the same poison. The mechanism of the poison they imbibed is the covert evil of slavery, the evil that has in fact been responsible for destroying every slave holding society known to history.

But please note from history, and mark this point well: the society does not fail and fall because it is the slave who becomes weaker, degenerate and debauched, it is the masters who suffer those reductions generation after generation until inevitably the society collapses. Most who hear this argument miss my point, in compassion they focus on the total and complete injustice endured by the slaves even though it is not the slave I'm speaking of. The slave is a man defrauded, his life of no value, his existence reduced to a commodity somewhere between cattle and horsepower. When considering a society as a integral unit any slaves (be it bondage by force of arms or the golden handcuffs of modern capitalism) are of no consequence in and of themselves, they're slaves, they don't decide anything of consequence. A fact of life. Not an ethical state of affairs, but a fact.

No, what I am speaking of is the hidden evil of slavery whose existence is universally denied, the multi-generational miscarriage of the logic upon which capitalism is founded. This evil impacts not on the slave but on the master side of the equation, the masters who do decide things of consequence. This evil is intimated, implied, in the classic saying "poor little rich kid."

But what happens when the poor little rich kid grows up to inherit command of something larger than he is? What happens when the poor little rich kid is called on to make judgments impacting many lives, many fortunes, judgment calls beyond the temper of his experience, beyond the depth of his wisdom? What of the poor little rich kids children? What measure of human will they be, compared to the parents or grandparents whose proven competence compelled such potentials for evil onto his life and the life of his descendents? The fortunes of the wealthy include their slaves, be those slaves literal or the slave-by-proxy of common stock, and those fortunes are inherited even as were the crowns of kingdoms. What kind of track record do the Royals have at maintaining true greatness to sit the throne of a land? One king in three? One in five?

Those who put the poor little rich kid in this unforgiving situation were proven successful and competent people, able to acquire on their own merits matched against all others competing, able to endure the covert evil of slavery without their personality, their ethics and their judgment degrading and failing beneath the burden. They after all were formed, evolved, as a great people before the evil entered their life. Their competence provided to the common man a better life than he could have had without them, their wealth was earned and deserved in the surpluses it provided to all. The grandfather is the man Ayn Rand wrote of, the Hank Rearden's and the Eli Wyatt's. But when the building of the land is a century deep in history it is not the greats who built it who are running it, it is their children and grandchildren where entropy takes its' toll.

I think this is what Ayn Rand realized, that the laws of inheritance would subject Capitalism to the same fate as plagued the kingdoms of old, that soon enough the laws of inheritance and human nature would cause Capitalism, now empowered with the wealth of the world, to deliver humanity back into the same state it had known in the days of the feudal kingdoms. She saw how the example the grandchildren would portray to those not born to such wealth and power would play out, how it would effect the perspective held by the common man: that wealth is not a matter of personal competence (since anyone with eyes and a mind would be able to see the grandchild wasn't that much of a much, just born lucky), but rather that wealth is to own a larger share of your fellow man's abilities than the next guy. She saw how should that attitude became the opinion of the majority the result would be that competence would no longer be measured in terms of productivity and wisdom but rather by parasitic prowess violently demanding to be provided with slaves by whatever name they might be known, exactly as it had been in the days when ignorant brutes ruled by the edge of a sword rather than by wisdom.

But the cure for this is not so very hard, not really. It is actually rather simple, and it draws from another old and well known folk saying, to wit "A fool and his money are soon parted." The solution is to change the laws of inheritance to where the child or the grandchild will inherit the cash value of any stock on the day it's owner passes away, but is prohibited from inheriting the stock itself or reinvesting the cash back into the same industry for one full generation. Let the money test the man, make it law that by court order and under court supervision the inheritor and only the inheritor may invest the inheritance into any other industry of their choosing, but not pass control of the money to a professional investment firm or banker to be handled for them. Let the money test the man.

If they have built themselves into the same caliber human as the source of the money the result will be that the money will be invested with good judgment into several diverse industries that it might continue to grow where opportunity presents, they will continue to prosper as will the health of the economy. But if they are weak or foolish, if they allow themselves to be swayed and manipulated by the predatory and the parasitic then they will be the only ones impacted by their poor judgment, their poor judgment will not have the ability to impact the successful industries from which the wealth was acquired, the most basic properties and characteristics of the parasitic will cause that money to evaporate back into the society by other channels. Likely less savory channels, likely causing damage to the lives it passes through, but still and all it will be just money and will only impact a few lives. It will not have the power to influence the overall health of the economy and the lives of the innocent and the honorable as it did when it was in the form of the slaves-by-proxy which is common stock. Let the money test the man, do not let the money set one human lower than another human who has not proven themselves the superior in fair and open competition. Problem solved.

Three letters...

 Which three letters?  The word "bus" typed into a search block on a computer. You wouldn't think much of it, not at all, not unless you knew those three letters were the first written communication deliberately initiated by an 11 year old boy who at one time was a totally non-responsive autistic.  Proof positive that words, symbols that have meaning, are now part of his reality. The walls are falling...

The Truth Liberal Academia knows, and Can Not Admit...

Recon run... in, and back out

 Yup, it has been a bit since I posted anything new, and yes, the celebratory tales some tell of my demise were definitely premature.

I've been filling this covid extended sabbatical pulling a recon run in the cause of being a genuine patriot who much prefers the idea and ideal of using a keyboard rather than a rifle in the defense of freeeom. I've been haunting the offerings of a high end liberal propaganda page.  Like all good propaganda offerings they offer a lot of good and true things to put a foundation of trust beneath some whopper grade nonsense running down to full out lies.  That's to be expected, I did say it was a propaganda page.

What made that page of particular interest is that they represent the political aspirations of the academic community, one of several public voices of Empire Academia.  The Empire of Academia is, as you might expect by the name,  comprised of different Kingdoms internally, those being the various departments and disciplines within a University.  

As it usually goes with Empires some kingdoms are more powerful than others.  In the case of Empire Academia the kingdom most represented by that propaganda page was the Kingdom of Psychology. Not a surprising thing, the Kingdom of Psychology has effectively taken over the humanities, it is the Kingdom of Psychology which is home to the Empire's socio-political aspiration to displace and replace that category of thought called 'Religion" and assume the power "the Church" once enjoyed as the unchallenged provider of social certification of acceptably moral behavior. 

The U.S. edition of the Australian publication "The Conversation" is quite often home to articles which give solid evidence of what Empire Academia's Kingdom of Psychology (EAKP, for brevity) has for their goals and intentions. Of even more interest, quite often by what they deny it is possible to discern what tactics and techniques, developed to give assistane to the troubled, they've bastardized into weapons of mass manipulation and sold indiscriminantly on the open market to those who also attempt to manipulate the public mindset in ways the public is not intended to perceive or understand.

Long words cut short? If there's one thing this recon has shown it is that they desire to be the power behind any and every throne.

EAKP is without a doubt the largest single weapons merchant in the Covert Cultural Warfare raging for control of America's psyche and soul.  They have their own agenda in play, in exhange for politial clout and favoritism they provide the ways and means by which the other power players (did I say the Liberal elements of America's political scene? No? wheww... a close one) attempt to advance their covert agendas. They need watching, and they need watching with a most critical scrutiny.  We don't need anymore Donald Trumps in office, and we damn sure don't need his Liberal equal and opposite to  have such power.  

That's where I've been, an intellectual combat recon in the cause of Freedom. In days to come, when can and as it might apply, I'm going to be posting links to The Conversation's more... revealing... articles along with my take and opinion on the subject. As a Patriot that's the least I can do for my country. 

Does not happen often...

But today, yea, today I'll indulge in a bit of fan fiction. Just because there were a few loose ends, and loose ends just beg you to tie them off....

As the Hobbits would see her

The Hobbits came to know of her, she appeared several times to Sam Gamgee. Lord Aragorn perceived her and greeted her by name although none would ever recall the word he pronounced as he bowed his head to her, she a younger daughter of an older world.

Some said she was Tom Bombadil's woman Goldberry, but she was not, although Goldberry's will was laid deep upon her fate.

She was the daughter of a powerful king. In time the power consumed her father, destroyed the man she loved. Her mortal life passed away, for two ages of the sun her soul lingered bound to the spells of malice her father had cast against the north kingdom of men. With her father's final demise before the walls of Minas Tirith the spells that bound her to the world were released, she awoke in Goldberry's arms to see a different age of the sun. Her grief for the evil worked by her father was beyond consoling, her spirit now bound to the circles of the world not by his spells but rather by grief and shame.

With the wisdom of compassion Goldberry set her spirit to dwell in the northern waters of the Shire, set her to a work of protection and redemption that in time she might know peace and pass beyond the circles of the world to rejoin the fate of her people. For many centuries her spirit inhabited those waters, no wraith of her father's creation would pass where she dwelt. Behind her protection the Shire thrived. Only when the last of the wraiths had surrendered the circles of the world did she at long last allow herself to be greeted as a true Queen of the Northmen in the halls of waiting.

Blood on the trail...

See it in your minds eye... John Wayne, a young John Wayne soot smudged and filthy, rifle in his hands, terror and terrible determination in his eye... five stripes on his sleeve... behind him a man with brass on his collar and blood running down his chest, dying... "take 'em through Sarge, get 'em home..." a groan, and dead. See the battle, the smoke and the carnage, see the line circling the besieged unit, see the canvas on the Conestoga's, the teamsters firing over the top of the soldiers. Hear the scout scream "NOW!!! GO NOW!!!", hear the defiant bugle signal the charge as the wagons and the cavalry break to escape the trap... and... yea......dead men and blood on the trail, but the wagons made it through.

I went to the grocery store, and damn. They actually had ten, fifteen thirty packs of buttwipe still on the shelf at four pm. Sometimes, sometimes my imagination just totally takes over. I can't help it.

Me and BillyRay: Concerning Clutches

Authors Note:  most of this story is true, from oh say three different events from back when I lived loose on the land and enjoyed life, kind of stewed in the same pot as BillyRay would say, but still true enough.  This is the America I remember, the America before America lived in fear of itself, the one I hope to see again before it's my time to go home.

Bumped to the top because a lot of folks are gonna be stuck in the house, maybe a few of 'em might like a story to fill some time.

***   ***   ***

The first time BillyRay and me got into Texas it ended up we didn't stay long. We got across the border, and that's a pretty good piece down the road from Ponca City, but that's as far as we got. We was tired, the truck was tired, we figured we'd just pull off the interstate and rest a bit.

It was a good old truck my daddy left me, he took real good care of it and so did I. Every time something needed fixing on it daddy put back the very best thing he could find, so by the time it got to me it was stouter than when it was built. But still, it was built for workin' on the farm not running down the road, was about all it could do to keep up on an interstate. Going south outa Oklahoma into Texas you just about got to get on an interstate to cross the river, so we did, and by the time we got into Texas the truck was tired, you could smell it. By then it was dark, the truck was tired, we was tired, we pulled off the big road and found a place where all three of us could take a good nap.

Well, wouldn't you know, about that time mother nature got right in the big middle of our life. Lookin' back on it I won't swear God didn't have some intentions in that direction as well, but it was mother nature doin' the down and dirty work.

Me and BillyRay - Long hair and Ladies

            Well anyhow, after we left Abuela's house we went on where we was headed, and that almost didn't turn out so good.  It was a different company, they checked, said we was to young to work there. The old lady was nice, said they'd hire us right away if we come back when we was eighteen.  She was kind of crusty but she was kind about it, it weren't nothing personal.  Said she hated to turn us down being as how we wanted to work what with all the long haired hippies around wouldn't do a days work to save their life.  I didn't say nothing to that, neither did BillyRay.  Long haired hippies was a kind of people we'd only seen on television in them days, we didn't know anything to say.

It would have all been for nothing if it hadn't been for the old Indian man working at the gate.  You remember I said how about the only good luck we had was meeting some of God’s secret agents?  He just might have been one of ‘em allowing for what happened because of him.

History ala Mode

What is History ala Mode? History ala Mode is a slice of History, with a good size scoop of Psychology… best served warm, with coffee.

==bumped to the top in response to the exploitation of the Corona Virus panic==


Let's start at the end of World War Two, take a look at the world as it was then at the dawn of the atomic age. What are we looking at? Well, the Allies won the war, everyone knows that, but what was really going on back then? What was left once the fighting was over?

The only major industrial nation not physically beat to a pulp was the United States. Germany and Japan were all but destroyed, Great Britain hammered hard, for the second time in fifty years France and Belgium and the Scandinavian countries had had a war run right over the top of them, they weren't in very good shape, the western end of Russia looked worse than Germany. Still though, Russia is a huge country, eleven hours wide, and the war had only gotten to the edges of Moscow so where they'd suffered heavy harm in the west they still had strength left in the east. Pretty much the story as it was, for the industrial nations that had fought in that war, at least if all you're looking at are physical resources.

But history is a great deal more than just the physical things, history is the people of a time, their attitudes, their outlook on life, the things they dream of, the things they fear. The physical is just the terrain, it is those attitudes that write the history.

When you look at the people involved in those times several very important differences are to be seen.

History ala Mode: The Chef's Tale

I am an American, born and bred. I am a patriot, I'm proud of my country, I'm proud of the many good and righteous things my country has done. I am patriot enough to be objective about my country, to look at it honestly and see where it might have done better, because I want my country to do better each time it takes an action, takes a stand for the cause of good and right. To do that you must be objective. So now I'm going to do my best to look at my country the way world did and now does, from time to time I'm going to play their hand for them, move their pieces for them so I can make it obvious how they were thinking, what was planned and maneuvered to bring those plans into reality.


The objective? I'm going to assume the original objective was to neutralize the impact of the United States of America as a dominating power player on the global economic stage, and equally reduce the impact of the United States of America on the world's cultural evolution to be no larger than their percentage of the world's population. For all that the United States has held a dominant position in global politics it really isn't that big in terms of population, some 330 million out of a global population estimated at 6.5 billion. Quick arithmetic: 3.3E8/6.5E9 = .0507, call it five percent for easy numbers, the population of the planet is growing faster than the population of the United States.

Those were the original objectives, of that I'm rather sure. But, and this is a most critical but, the attitudes of the world are not a static thing, no more there than in the United States. Before all was said and done I'm afraid the campaign to back the Americans off, to make them stop being a bully, I'm afraid what the world set in motion to that objective backfired in a manner never seen before, something truly new and acutely dangerous to all nations, a thing that is now working to the endangerment of everyone. But more on that later, for now let's return to the situation as it began unfolding in the '70s.

God Save the Queen...

==pulled forward from 6/16 since it's back in the news==

I haven't changed my mind...Well done, England. Well done indeed.

I'd say... early MkV... still three bladed prop, three port exhaust,
 but upgraded to the 20mm for a little extra punch... this would
be the machine that replaced the MKII's lost in the
Battle of Britian, the last time the Brit's had to seriously
defend their country...

With the Brexit vote the United Kingdom has struck a heavy blow against the Corporate Neo-Fascist seeking to homogenize humanity that it be able to enslave humanity within a single tyranny.

Make no mistake here, the attempts to homogenize the cultures of the world to the greed driven motives of elitist corporate entities are just as big a threat to freedom as Adolf Hitler and his crew of crazies ever were, worse in some ways.

Spelunking...

No matter how strange they seem, no matter what you see or hear or feel, a dream is only the reflection of your own inner mind. For those who go soul spelunking a dream is where your subconscious will come to threaten, to plead, to negotiate. To walk of your own will through a dream is to challenge those parts of yourself that rare to never see the light of day. It is to say to your deepest self "here I am. Now just what is it you want to say to me?" When some element of a dream speaks in return it is wise to listen, and meditate on what was said. After all, you were talking to yourself in the one place you know you simply cannot tell a lie.

Of Mouse and Eagle...

( this little ditty from a few years back, a tasty tidbit overlooked in the archives)

It was a favorite poster of my childhood, the hopelessly overmatched little mouse flipping off the bird of prey about to make a meal of him.  And the title was, of course, defiance. 

A few years later came a second edition, also dear to my heart.  Again the bird of prey with talons outstretched, and again the little mouse with his middle finger extended.  But this time the mouse's other hand is concealed behind his back holding a chrome automag, the pistol of all pistols.  Never mind such a weapon would outweigh the little mouse a hundred to one, or that the recoil would convert the tiny hero to strawberry jam… setting all this aside our mouse among mice has determined to stand his ground and with his final act make sure that damnable bird doesn't make it home either.  Defiance, second generation.

It has been many years since I have seen my mousy heroes.  But I see their philosophical offspring every day in the news, and I wonder what manner of mouse is preparing to take the field next in defense of a few crumbs and seeds for his offspring.  It is a pressing subject as I watch fate thrust so many back into the role of struggling for simple survival in a world dominated by the eagle's arrogant mass consumption.   

Mice do not eat meat, but they become meat to those who do. What hope has the mouse, forever certain of his place in a food chain where he is always the provider?  And those who eat meat consider this proper, and why should they not?  They were raised from hatchlings to know they are the elite, predators, the highest order of existence.  Just ask them.  The eagle knows no fear, no want.  There has never been a shortage of mice and rabbits and doves for it to eat.  But for the mouse there is never a shortage of threats:  the cat, the eagle, the snake, they are all about, silent, deadly, harboring an implacable and unexplained hatred for all creatures who do no belong to their kind.  The mouse suffers and survives only by stealth and procreation, litter after litter enduring poverty and fear hoping two from every litter of ten will live long enough to breed and continue the species. It is a rough world for the mouse.

The callous dismiss this as the balance of nature, and turn away.  They do not, they dare not, they cannot tolerate what emerges when these symbols are applied to the societies of the world… the results are terrifying beyond their courage to face.

It is, of course, the mouse with the pistol of whom I speak.  He was institution raised on dreams of dignity, he has struggled all his life to become smarter and stronger (for a mouse) in the hope of winning that prize of prizes.  For him it is such a shattering revelation to realize what he dreamed served no purpose beyond inducing him to become a tastier meal for the eagles of his world.  It is his despair that has driven the mouse to take arms, causes him to ignore the fact his weapon will be just as lethal to he himself.  C'mon, who ever heard of a mouse who could defend himself, wield any pistol, much less a magnum?  Ridiculous. 

But like all stories there is another side.  With the mouse's first and last shot for the first time death invaded the eagles world as it has always been known to the mouse.  He was just picking up a mouse to feed  to the chicks, and bang, he was killed.  Unforgivable.  No eagle should know fear, give second thought to his own safety when he hunts… it is his birthright to harvest without concern.  The eagles numbers are diminished by one, but far worse the innocence of the eagles consummate arrogance has been destroyed.

Does this little parable sound familiar?  It should.  It is how the United States has been behaving ever since the attack of  9/11, acting like eagles who have suddenly learned the hard way even a mouse can now do the mighty eagle mortal harm.  The eagles, of course, take little solace in the fact our mousy gunner was indeed turned into strawberry jam by the recoil, after all, he was only a mouse, and they don't count.

I must challenge you now: look at the news for a week or two and count how many mice are mentioned.  Some are groups, others individuals, some are nations, but all share in the mouse's world.  They all live in fear, and they all feel preyed on by creatures whose very existence is predicated on inflicting the suffering the mouse and his kindred have endured for time beyond memory.  Events say far to many feel a dignified death in battle a better choice than a life without even the hope of dignity in the eyes of the world.

Our world is full of eagles and mice, divided out not by religion or race or gender, no, the dividing line is the self righteous attitude all things are allowed the predator, the bloody heritage of one of histories great lies, the lie that might makes right, that war can make peace… a lie newly found by the mice.

Ours is a much smaller world than it was, and the very things that caused it to shrink have brought weapons capable of terrible destruction within the reach of even the smallest. The forces of science and technology have shifted the balances.  The eagle would do well to learn respect for this fact,  for victory on the field of battle can only assure him famine, the mouse has no such constraint. The eagle would do well to learn compassion as well, for when the competition is in endurance the mouse has the advantage, his culture has been honed by millennium of evolution to the task of surviving massive loss of life and continuing on.

Eagles, beware, for if you do not heed this lesson it will be the vultures who take your place.

Grinch’s Reprieve…

The clock crawled up to midnight, on the stroke of midnight the noise faded from painful to merely loud.  Not that you could hear the noise in the cockpit, the cockpit was soundproof.  Soundproof, and currently lit by more red and yellow telltales than green.  The board actually looked like the Christmas tree it was named after.  The pilot surveyed his world, spoke to his second in a tired voice.

“We got enough left to get this thing back in the barn under it’s own power?”

His second, as weary as he, didn’t need to read his panels to answer.  “Yea, barely, if we cut Hawaii off early.  Three and eight are still at rated nominal, I can coax sixty percent out of two and eleven for a little while.”

The pilot shook his head.  A three month run and they had two and two halves left out of twelve.  What more could they want from this contraption?  “Then I say pull the freaking plug and let’s go home.  Call the barn, tell ‘em we’re on the way.”

“I’m totally down with that idea.” 

He reached up, yanked a large red handle.  Outside the night went almost silent, almost dark, almost peaceful.  Almost.  The only thing disturbing the peace was the hiss of laboring hydraulics as the far end of Madison Avenue lifted three stories into the air, the road beneath settling down six more leaving a gaping hole in the heart of the city.  Two deep clunks resonated and for a long moment the night was startlingly silent. 

After a bit the normal noises of the city returned, a bit after that they were augmented by a long wail of clacking clanging grinding groaning sounds that echoed like the gates of hell being used for some macabre jungle gym.  The sounds traversed the night becoming softer as they went, softer and yet somehow more poignant for those who knew what they heard.  Most of the city dwellers only paid attention to them for a little bit, they’d been heard before.  Shortly afterwards again the hiss was heard and the deep clunks echoed, but everyone ignored those.  It was over.

In the cockpit the pilot took his hands off the control yoke, patted his console in salute.  “Damn, I didn’t think you could do it but you made it home all on your own ya’ old whore,” he said.  He said something similar pretty much once a year.

From behind him his second chuckled.  “Yea, by the skin of our teeth.  Number three locked up twenty seconds ago.”  The pilot shook his head, yanked a lever by the side of his seat.  A pressure hatch swished open, the pilot and engineer rode the drop plate to the concrete four stories below. 

Stepping off the drop plate a shiny flash of light where it didn’t belong attracted the pilots attention.  Four strides later he bent and lifted the tiny talisman, held it up for inspection backlit by the lurid neon fogs settling to the floor from the Mighty Merchandising Machine's greed and jealousy generators as they cooled.

“Sweetheart, how in the world did you end up here of all places?” he said, speaking to the mother and child pressed into the little foil nativity scene.

“Say what?” his second asked, pulling up beside him.

The pilot handed over the trinket, his second inspected it as he had.  “No shit.  This is entirely the wrong place for you guys.  Think I’ll take you home with me, see if I can’t find you a better place to raise your child.”  He slipped the trinket into the breast pocket of his jump suit.

For a moment the two men shared a smile as they shook hands.

“Merry Christmas Bob.”

“Merry Christmas Dan.”

***   ***   ***

Dedicated to WillieBob and DanDaMan... two of the most genuine Christians I've ever had the honor to know.

A Simple Truth...