City On A Hill

I know you’re not going to sit through a 36 minute video, I didn’t think I could but when you realize you’re watching your country dissolve it’s pretty compelling.  The video shows a Blue Lives Matter rally being overrun by an organized, well funded and violent street mob. The violence starts around the 28 minute mark but it was what came before that I found so familiar and telling.

Michelle Malkin is walking to a park in Denver on an overcast summer day.  When she arrives at the rally site she is greeted by fawning admirers and event organizers including at least one of the fearsome Bikers For Trump.  It’s all so sweet as the old white people (and one black guy!) come up and talk to Michelle and her camera about current events and their love of their country.  I am not trying to belittle these people but they are a small band of aging patriots that have no clue about… the war they’ve stumbled into.

It all kicks off with Country music and Antifa shows up at 22:40 when Michelle excitedly proclaims “Looks like Antifa wants a FIGHT!”  minutes later she’ll be spat upon, beaten and lamenting her lost shoe and mussed up hair. The key moment for me was listening to her alternatively taunt the leftists and trying to fire up her side and cheer on the dozen or so officers charged with protecting their rally.  At this point I was reminded of Larry Linderman’s observation that “All conflict comes down to positional dominance.”  At this point I realized the left has won. They might not win this election cycle but they will eventually and when they do, they know just what they want, how to accomplish it, who stands in their way and how to deal with all that.

They have won because they have done the hard, disciplined work of building an organization and actually having an agenda.  Unlike the right who are perfectly represented here by the C-List, self promoting media personality and Grandma and Grandpa Greenwood who undoubtedly have half a dozen AR-15s. At home. In a safe.

At the 25:00 there’s a frantic flag salute that sounded more like an exorcist’s incantation, a prayer and then the whole thing goes to shit   while the band tries to kick off Johnny Cash’s Folsom Prison Blues. Michelle makes it out safe thanks to her private  security detail. We have no clue how the nice people she was talking to minutes before fared. But I look just like those people and know if I was there, I would have got my ass kicked.

Meat Futures

“Pork processing is labor intensive and conducted in a close-quarter environment that doesn’t afford much personal space. The virus has infected 890 of the 2,200 people in the Logansport plant in less than a week.”

Glad I bought the 3 lb. box of bacon.

In Dreams

Neil McCauley : [about dreams] I have one where I’m drowning. And I gotta wake myself up and start breathing or I’ll die in my sleep.
Vincent Hanna : You know what that’s about?
Neil McCauley : Yeah. Having enough time.
Vincent Hanna : Enough time? To do what you wanna do?
Neil McCauley : That’s right.
Vincent Hanna : You doin’ it now?
Neil McCauley : No, not yet.

Me :  Hey guys… I have one where I’m driving and there’s something wrong with the steering, it’s sloppy and slow. I’m driving down a crowded city street and the car is wandering all over the road out of control.  Other times it’s not the steering it’s me. I’m really tired and just don’t have the energy to step on the brakes.

 

Totem Proles

I remember something Jack Clemons said awhile back. Something about how Americans shouldn’t be worrying about who their President will be after the next election but rather who will be their regional Warlord? This morning, I’m watching coverage of the protests in Michigan and I wonder if I’m really going to have to choose between these assholes and my local antifa affiliate?

Why is it so hard to organize local, level headed Conservatives? And why is it so easy to get a bunch of… apparently grown-ass men to prance about with their AR-15s like a bunch of apes getting ready to fling poo?

Two For Thursday

You know there’s something in the air besides the virus when two videos come to your attention within minutes. Two videos about two Presidents by two musicians that I absolutely love and respect.

First up is my boy Chuck Prophet! I won’t say that Mr Prophet was was born to sing this song but he is uniquely positioned to give Nixon and Nixonland all the love, fear and loathing they both so richly deserve. I’m talking about love people. Authentic, intimate knowledge. Maybe that’s why the song manages to transcend politics and kick all kinds of musical ass… which is something musicians would do well to keep in mind when they get the itch to hit that virtue signal switch.

Next up is Buddy and Julie Miller. Stay tuned for a future blog post on just how much I love Buddy and Julie Miller OK? For now, let me just say Buddy Miller is the last guy I would pick to engage in cheap shot virtue signaling but they veer pretty darn close here. At least there’s Julie’s playful sense of humor and it certainly doesn’t suck musically, adhering to that form of preachy folksong/nursery rhyme so beloved by hairy legged, septuagenarian lesbians cat ladies.

Look For The Helpers

To say I haven’t blogged in awhile doesn’t even qualify as an understatement. My life took a dramatic turn back in 2012 when I lost my job and I realized I was smack dab in an honest-to-God midlife crisis. The following seven years were 13 months of unemployment followed by couch surfing and odd jobs up to the point that we’ve finally got ourselves back in our own place and making the kind of income we’d become accustomed to. Through all that, things like blogging and making music seemed pretty darned superfluous.

Then this virus situation hits and… I felt like “oh here we go again”. But this time my employer put me on the short list of keepers and I’ve just kept going about my day to day… trying to keep my household healthy and comfortable. It’s weird, I drive around alternating between a sort of survivor’s guilt and feeling like I should be getting hazard pay when in all actuality my job is easier nowadays. Restraining Orders are like shooting fish in a barrel, almost everybody is home the very first try. Parking? Even the free spots right next to the Courthouse are wide open! Downtown Fresno is eerily still in the middle of the day.

Alot of other people are day drinking telecommuting and generally trying to stay out of trouble and contribute something positive and that is making for some cool web content. Which brings me to the helpers, you know the people Mr. Rogers and Hunter S. Thompson told us to look for when the going gets weird.

For instance, masks. Remember when our betters were telling us they were useless, unhealthy even? Well unless you were an essential medical professional then they were pretty damn useful and pretty soon masks joined toilet paper, Clorox wipes and hand sanitizer on the Endangered Species list. Now I am well aware that most masks are useless for keeping you Covid free but in the time of Rona, they are like a placebo for the people and places you go. They’re a friendly smile that signifies you are an intelligent, considerate citizen.

Enter the helpers. Like my sister-in-law’s friend who is sewing up masks for essential workers, (she’s donating them!) and she was kind enough to donate one to me. A few, days later I was driving out on Whitesbridge Ave. I drove by a roadside Taco Truck/fruit stands that appear out of nowhere out there and damned if those enterprising mexicans* weren’t doing a brisk business selling masks. Really well made, washable ones, so now I have three good quality masks.

Enterprising Capitalistas? Suburban soccer moms with sewing machine and big hearts? It all makes me feel optimistically American at the exact time our expert and political class doesn’t.

*I use the word mexicans here as an adjective describing any Latin American because I honestly can’t tell Mexicans from Salvadorans and Guatemalans. Rest, assured, I use the term with much respect and affection much like my father always did. I refuse to adopt Latinx and other such nonsense much like I’m sure my father would.

Instant Karma

The other day I saw a hysterical woman on my TV angrily proclaiming “I don’t want thoughts and prayers I want gun control!”

I didn’t blame her for being hysterical but I do blame her for using her son’s death to dutifully promote the gun grabber’s new favorite talking point in a state that already has severe (nigh on draconian) gun control.

So imagine my schadenfreude when the very same day, her town bursts into flames and now a day later, my fellow fickle, narcissistic  Californios are begging for prayers (and attention) even going so far as creating a special hashtag for it.