Musical Interlude

(For politics, please scroll down)

One of my favorite movie themes, albeit a lesser-known one, by film composer Michael Gore and from the poignant, award-winning 1983 film Terms of Endearment: 

Get It Off Your Chest, 07/29/22

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Politicized Justice In America

Tucker Carlson, regardless of what you think of him, makes very important points in the video below. Watch and consider: 

How can our republic be united and survive survive such a tainted justice system? "Equality under the law" is dead!

Beyond Orwellian.

Kafka-esque.

Depressing.

Charity & Empathy

Silverfiddle Rant!

Charity and empathy have been drained from national dialog, as have candor, goodwill, and attempting to understand an opponent's point of view in the most favorable light possible.  Anti-Trumpers, mostly on the left, made an attempt to understand Trump voters after his victory, but the project was soon abandoned when it was clear there was no hay (or money) to be made helping Americans understand one another.

Now comes Bret Stephens of the New York Times with a sincere apology to Trump voters.  He is still adamantly anti-Trump, but he apologizes for smearing and insulting those who voted for El Donaldo.

I belonged to a social class that my friend Peggy Noonan called “the protected.” My family lived in a safe and pleasant neighborhood. Our kids went to an excellent public school. I was well paid, fully insured, insulated against life’s harsh edges.

Trump’s appeal, according to Noonan, was largely to people she called “the unprotected.” Their neighborhoods weren’t so safe and pleasant. Their schools weren’t so excellent. Their livelihoods weren’t so secure. Their experience of America was often one of cultural and economic decline, sometimes felt in the most personal of ways.

It was an experience compounded by the insult of being treated as losers and racists —clinging, in Obama’s notorious 2008 phrase, to “guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them.” No wonder they were angry.

He also blames progressives for abandoning persuasion and instead high-handedly cramming their (however noble) culture wars down our throats:

It’s one thing for social mores to evolve over time, aided by respect for differences of opinion. It’s another for them to be abruptly imposed by one side on another, with little democratic input but a great deal of moral bullying.

Please go read the entire essay.  We can all learn from articles like this, if we allow ourselves some self-reflection, and perhaps try to take a more charitable view of those we disagree with.  

Musical Interlude

(For politics, please scroll down)

Music to fit my mood lately (the 2021 political and social scenarios — and a major flare up of my ongoing-since-2016 neuropathic pain, aka "the suicide disease"): 

[about Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt]

Get it Off Your Chest 7/22/22

 

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 By Warren  

Tales from the Classroom

On Fridays, via Zoom, I teach a small English class of rising Ninth Graders who are in the Gifted and Talented Program in Fairfax County Public Schools. Yes, they truly are advanced students! 

I soon discovered, however, that these students are remedial when it comes to their study of classical literature — even the study of American Classical Literature, which is, comparatively speaking, easy to read and understand. 

We have in our literature book Of Places, an Abeka Book that I chose for these private classes, a selection titled "Adapted from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving, the Father of the American Short Story.  When I made that assignment, I discovered that my students knew absolutely nothing about Washington Irving and his works.  Indeed, they had never even heard of Rip Van Winkle!

Recently, during class time, I introduced my students to the video below of an abridged version of "Rip Van Winkle."  All of the students loved it!

Public schools are making a grave mistake in neglecting to have students study classical works. A deliberate neglect? Yes! After all, classics of literature often teach valuable moral lessons — such as the moral lessons stated at the end of the above video.

Musical Interlude

(For politics, please scroll down)

Enjoy "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun," a tone poem composed by Claude Debussy (1862-1918):

[about this piece, a turning point in history of Western art music]

Get it Off Your Chest 7/15/22

Open Comments 

Comments from trolls and rants against administrators will still be deleted.

 By Warren  

Expertendammerung

Silverfiddle Rant!

We are in an age of extreme cowardice and maximum mendacity.  Pale imposters stand on the rotting foundations of our institutions wearing the skins of their slaughtered predecessors, angered they cannot command the same respect and prestige.

Ben Shapiro: The center is gone, and it's the elites' fault

The destruction of that institutional trust has been well earned: It represents the natural result of policy elites lying to those they supposedly serve.

In short, our institutional elites rely on the power of civilizational foundations that long predate them — free markets, religious values, military strength — to prop up failing ideas that undermine those foundations. The result is failure.

Henry Kissinger: "'painful' need for better leaders"

"Once again, it is a tale first of exuberant confidence generating overextension and then of overextension giving birth to debilitating self-doubt," he wrote in the book. "Once again, in almost every region of the world, the United States confronts major interlocking challenges to both its strategies and its value." 

That has led to "renewed potential for catastrophic confrontation," he warned. "The present age is unmoored."

Good leadership can make up for weak or dysfunctional institutions.  Solid, well-run institutions can survive poor leadership.  We have neither.

Please peruse the links below for further evidence.  Most importantly, what say you?

See Also:

Ukraine is Losing

The CDC Is Breaking Trust in Childhood Vaccination

Covid, schools, and the death of the liberal expert class

SF Gate: Mask Mandates Don't Work

COVID Boosters Might Be Less Than 20% Effective After a Few Months

Popular Uprising Against the Elites Has Gone Global

America's Foreign Policy Lost Weekend

Record-Low 38% Extremely Proud to Be American

Why National Pride is Evaporating in America

The Social Engineering Of Our Military

The systematic destruction of our armed forces!

Note the juvenile presentation and the juvenile tone of the video below...

WATCH: The Navy is training its members to create a "safe space" by using proper gender pronouns.

Here's their new instructional video, which is modeled after a children's show:

Via @Kredo0 https://t.co/9lsBXKFMTa pic.twitter.com/t7DbiVCO2J

— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) June 20, 2022

This social engineering is also taking place in the US Army:

West Point cadets taught critical race theory, including addressing 'whiteness,' docs show. 

Madness afoot!

Musical Interlude

(For politics, please scroll down) 

Like the June 26th Musical Interlude, below is another a perfect summertime tune, this one with a dollop of retro, a dollop of nostalgia, and a dollop of American regionalism and local color.  

Found at The Western Journal, in an article titled Everyone Knows the 'Andy Griffith' Theme ... But Can You Sing the Words to This Classic Song?, sung by Andy Griffith, and released in 1961.  Enjoy!

Get it Off Your Chest 7/8/22

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 By Warren  

Biden admin to sell strategic oil reserves to CCP

 

The Liberal World Order

Disbelieve the content of this blog post at your own peril!

Furthermore, please, for your own sake if not for our republic's sake, put aside any of your cognitive biases about the following information or the spokespersons thereof.

CNN: "What do you say to those families that say, 'listen, we can't afford to pay $4.85 a gallon for months, if not years?’"

BIDEN ADVISOR BRIAN DEESE: "This is about the future of the Liberal World Order and we have to stand firm." pic.twitter.com/LWilWSo72S

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) July 1, 2022

Please refrain commenting until after you have viewed the entire video below (about 11 minutes):

A few days ago, an astute former-blogger, whom I personally know yet rarely hear from, sent me important emails containing information that every American should know. 

Most of the body of the first email is below (emphases mine). Please refrain from commenting until you have digested all of the material below:

...It seems that everyone on the right side of the political equation attaches everything that's wrong to Democrat politics or incompetence. 

No one ever considers globalist agendas, even after Deese's recent statement. I have been following much of the narrative delivered at Davos and looking at the Biden Administration's policies and actions since Day 1, then considering the outsourced corruption delivered through Hunter's business activities, and see nothing but globalist agendas on steroids. 

The U.S. is the world's economic powerhouse, between our banking, brokerage and military might, and as such is the main obstacle to a world government. The only way we could be brought to heel so that we could be absorbed into a world government would be if, currency devalued and natural resource recovery denied, we became totally dependent on other countries for our basic needs. 

The only way the American people would go along with the kind of government that would render us subservient to a world order would be if we were made desperate enough for a return to order from economic dismay, squalid quality of life problems and murderous crime that we would cede liberty to the government to make it happen, and everything we've seen under the Biden Administration seems to point in that direction.

Worse, the entire EV and solar energy spectrum revolves around doing business with Communist China, both because they have control over the mineral production needed and because Biden environmental regulations would prevent us from domestically producing our own "green" products. 

What we're actually looking at is the globalist left, who know that America cannot be absorbed into a world government unless our economy is trampled to the extent that we are dependent on other countries for our basic needs and our currency has been devalued to the point that it's no longer the world's reserve currency, are working to achieve their agendas via the Biden Administration and the Democratic Party. 

Our present suffering is no accident.  Rather, it is created by design.

Our present suffering will continue.  Brace yourselves for it.

Remember this...It's not a conspiracy theory if forces really are conspiring against you!

For Independence Day 2022

(For current politics, please scroll down) 

The inimitable Paul Harvey (1918-2009) and worth your time:

Truly, we stand upon the shoulders of giants.  

Oh, the sacrifices those men made for liberty! 

May we be worthy to have received that liberty!

Get It Off Your Chest 07/02/2022

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