A Bit of History...

I'm an inveterate student of history, as you may well know.

You're subjected to that fact almost every time you read one of my blog postings, as there's almost always a bit of history-based irony or karma or a raised eyebrow or two or three thrown in, just for drill.  Just to make the point, doncha' know.  

I enjoy looking back, as we're told that only by so doing may we better prepare for the future.  Remember what the guy said:  "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."  And I enjoy comparing where we were to where we are.  And to draw mental trendlines as to where we just might wind up if we continue on our present course.  

Like now for instance.   I recall just a year ago when we were still relatively free.  And I say "relatively," as anyone with a lick of sense knows, as we've been losing our freedoms a bit at a time for decades.  

Remember when we were asked for "15 Days to Slow the Spread?"  Which magically turned into 15 months?  Remember?

I also remember when the State of California voted a decade or so back to limit my discretionary purchase of firearms to one per month.  Now they're trying to eliminate such purchases altogether.  Yeah, see what I mean?

But anyway, I'm mostly talking about when we could still speak our minds without fear of retribution.  When there had yet to develop a full-blown "cancel culture."  When we could write an op-ed in the local paper and it spark lively debate instead of a fist-fight.  Or cause a bunch of trolls in a basement somewhere in Cinnncinnnattti to foment a "doxing."  Which then turns into a mob of crazed White Marxists attempting to burn down my house.  And me having to shoot my way out, and then being charged with assault.

When "Kevins" and "Karens" weren't screaming at each other in mall parking lots about the wearing of face masks.  When folks were issuing hosannas and throwing flowers at the feet of passing cops and fire-folks for being "first responders."  Just before they began hurling bricks at those self-same police officers and firefighters just a few weeks later...

Don't remember that?  Remember when the NYC cops were getting pelted with fruit and water bottles in April, 2020?  Yeah, well that's when it all started.  Way back then.  And then May happened... 

And oh yeah, when being White didn't automatically make you a racist.  But only to those, I'd offer, who spew the propaganda on those "fake news" cable channels, and those who are stupid enough, or ignorant enough, to listen to it.  And then believe it. 

Of course, I'm so old that I can remember back when there were about 90% fewer laws than we have now, and about 90% fewer violators.  When you could ride around in the back of a pickup truck all day and the cops would just wave.  When you could ride a motorcycle without a helmet and fish without a license and drink out of a fire hose and profit in a business venture without being made to feel bad.  

When LBJ was proudly inaugurating his "Great Society Program" to lift up Black people.  I remember that, do you?  And he began to throw bushel baskets of taxpayer money at helping...or hoping to help...their inner city crime and poverty and homelessness and destitution.  He believed that money could resolve the problem.

Almost $9 Trillion Dollars thrown has been thrown at it so far.  Has it helped?

When Black folks got 5 extra points on their Civil Service exams to help produce some of that self-same "equity" that some dweebs are striving so desperately to implement once again.  5 extra points to help assuage the guilt of slavery.

When there was no "social media."  No Facebook.  No Twitter.  No Instagram.  And no chance that we'd be subjected to a picture of your lunch, or your  traffic ticket, or your supposed abuse at the hands of the local cops.  Or some racial epithet you uttered while in a drunken stupor back in college that would come back to haunt you two decades later.  And no picture of you in blackface to help ruin your chances at promotion.

And no chance every single person in America would become his or her (or its) own Media Star, snapping everyone's privacy away, a click at a time.  Without the benefit of an editor, by the way, to help keep them from making fools of themselves. 

Or winding up "cancelled." 

Or a cell phone which has magically become an appendage of the sallow, sunken, gaunt bodies of millions of basement-dwelling dweebs (I love alliteration, don't you?).  

Oh yeah, and the peace and quiet and solitude we've so desperately lost since the commies in Silicon Valley invented our privacy away...

I yearn for the simpler days of yesteryear.  I yearn for 30 minutes of evening news with Walter Cronkite.  He would always end it with, "And that's the way it is..."  30 minutes.  That's all the time there was for the news, for that's all the news there was...

Damn!  Were those the Good Old Days, or what?

We never learned, for instance, that FDR was a cripple.  Or that JFK was a womanizing pill addict with a serious neurological ailment called Addison's Disease.  Did you know that?  Or that Bill Clinton's "Arkansas Mafia" highway patrol detail would routinely bring him young starlets so he could show off his "Peroni's Disease" (look it up).  

In so many ways we've lost our innocence.  Our luster.  Our flinty gleam of brawn and bluster and youth.  The "Right Stuff" that helped us lift ourselves up by our bootstraps and prevail!  We're an aging "democracy."  One long in the tooth.  One destined for near future failure, I'm afraid.  Our most recent election proves it.  We chose via our votes to give ourselves some of what our neighbors have, instead of the chance to go out and create it for ourselves.  While China and Russia plot our demise.  We've already outlasted Rome, the first major and previously the record-holder for long-lasting democracies.  We've grown paunchy, and soft.  Can you imagine us winning the Second World War were we to be faced with such a challenge today?  

Today our new leaders argue not for a strong national defense, but for strong racial equity.  Not for the equality of outcome, but of equity.  The very definition of Marxism.  Those ignorant fools.  

The Good News is I won't live to see it.  The Bad News is...you likely will.

Goodbye, America.  It was fun while it lasted...