Opinion/Editorial

WHERE ARE WE ALL GOING?

 

Menace, as this Veteran’s Day, comes to an end. The republican party continues to lean further right…bordering on a plunge into violent lunacy. But it’s mostly rhetoric at this point. It is so typical, common, predictive, and even entertaining to listen to the bellicose pretenders of courage and honor. The louder they cry out for a blood bath the more they reveal themselves to be the posers they are. They do not fight, these posers. No, they pose.

The real menace comes in quieter tones, in near whispers, that if you don’t receive in time means that you die only one way…by surprise. When some nondescript, middle-aged, and demur-looking guy turns to you, looks unblinkingly into your eyes, and whispers “did you intend to come to my attention in this way?” That’s a quiet question laced with real menace, but only to the experienced in life. To those who’ve been or are predators, to those who’ve faced and may still face predators.

Real predators. The left is quiet. The progressives and liberals are not calling for violence. The left is the movement to watch because that is where the insurgency is likely to come from and no amount of ‘small penis’ pick-up trucks, Harley Davidson motorcycles, or Carhartt-jacketed bodies of anthropoid-seeming humans will be able to stand against it.

If violence comes, having been a student, participant and then master of that state, I can tell you that it will not be something that is directed and controlled. Violence comes like a wildfire, a tornado, or a tsunami. It moves across the land and kills most in its path. Let us all pray these days and nights that the posers do not rile up those who really might well be the worst menace this country has ever faced.

As a badly wounded, and now disabled Marine veteran, I can tell you, simply and right across this ‘counter’ of communication table, that you do not want to be any part of such a coming and unstoppable period of physical violence. You will not be the person who has the wounded warrior dying in his or her arms. You will very likely be the one painfully dying. Let’s all breathe deeply, pray, and thank those who’ve stood in harm’s way for us in the past again that they will come forward to protect us in the future. We must have this cushion of real warrior reality between us and this near-zombie opposition. Replacing all these lead pipes won’t do it. The lead has already done its work.

The mass media continues to support and grow the fame and popularity of those who’ve managed to garner the most attention in our current population.  Sports figures like Aaron Rodgers and so many others, bounce, throw and hand off leather balls but their spoken words are somehow trumpeted out as having deep intellectual meaning.  Movie stars are followed and listened to as if they are graduates of esteemed educational institutions. Alec Baldwin shoots someone, supposedly by accident and his comments about it and other things are trotted out to the whole world.  Kyle Rittenhouse is a family known name when all he did was take an illegal weapon and shoot some other people because he was scared to death.  Yet his words, and those of Rodgers and Baldwin, are those words the public is confronted with on a daily basis.  Meanwhile, the media building the fame of these undeserving characters, claims that the ‘public interest in them continues to grow.

No, the mass media is growing that public interest, just as it is supporting the awfully dangerous idea that the American way of life and democracy needs to be overthrown.  The mass media doesn’t care what might replace the magically special nature of the American experience.  It has grown too temporary (its leaders will be long gone and retired with golden parachutes long before anything really happens) and too jaded to give a damn about what happens to the people it once served.  The mass media no longer serves anyone except its owners.

In order to survive, as the country most of all American’s came to believe was the reality of something very special, the public has to somehow get together and decide that it’s the will of the people that must be respected, obeyed, and then followed.  Thanksgiving is upon us, and Christmas is coming.  These two holidays are all about getting together and giving thanks and gifts to those we all love.  The thanks and gifts this year need to be acceptance, accommodation, and real love.  Screw the media and what others say they think or want people to do.  Do what is in your heart and believe what it is you think is right.  Most people have intrinsic goodness and love that cannot be denied if it will be admitted.  The New Testament says it all.  Read it over the holidays and then follow the wondrous philosophy of helping others, no matter how much it hurts…because that pain in life is the best ‘pain’ life offers.

~~James Strauss

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