History Comes Alive, with Jeff Nichols

03/04/2023

Changing a great author’s words to make them “less offensive” didn’t start with Roald Dahl. It happened to Ray Bradbury decades ago.

01/02/2023

McCarthy has offered extraordinary concessions, including allowing members to easily fire him at any time, to secure the votes for speaker.

12/29/2022

Let me ask you this, If you could collect a nice compensation package regardless of performance, how hard would you work?

12/29/2022

If George Santos is supposed to step down for lying about his education, career and religious/family heritage, should Joe Biden?
How about Elizabeth Warren?

Where were these loud protestors when their scandals hit? Don’t be fooled. They are, largely, tools and hacks.

If you don’t think so you’re a tool. A useful idiot.

Santos is just the latest public figure that is helping to undergird the current trend in America of public figures that lie without consequence.

The “what aboutisms” arguments and moral superiority arguments have worn themselves out.

I am not defending Santos. IMHO he should go. Bye Falicia!

But a whole lot should be forced out by those same standards.

Regardless of what your political affiliation is, if you WILL NOT or CANNOT apply equal expectations, YOU are the problem. You are an enabler.

Politicians do not fear a divided public.

They would fear a public that expects and demands integrity and the solving of societal problems. Not excuses, resolution.

Tell me what part of society where the misery index has not exploded…

Problems are not being solved. They will not be solved until the people demand better…

Let me ask you this, If you could collect a nice compensation package regardless of performance, how hard would you work?

12/09/2022

Love John Stossel!

12/09/2022

We have become a society who professes to favor freedom yet depreciates agitation (from the right)…
We accept unlawful and untenable policy, Not because we agree but because a host of the majority are unwilling to speak or step up. (In my opinion) we are ceding our heritage and future…
If you KNOW better and remain silent, your the problem…
Gloat all you want in the sanctimonious tower of “being above it all” but you are helping to usher in another dark age. You are helping to close the door on Western Civilization.
Like it or not, name another society that gave more to the individual…

10/15/2022

08/24/2022

Political philosopher Hannah Arendt
once said that the lies of an authoritarian were designed not to persuade people, but to organize them into a mass movement. Followers would ‘believe everything and nothing,' "Arendt wrote, "think that everything was possible and that nothing was true.""The ideal subject" for such a dictator, Arendt wrote, was not those who were committed to an ideology, but rather “people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction…and the distinction between true and false...no longer exist."

08/24/2022

Every time I hear a political speech or I read those of our leaders, I am horrified at having, for years, heard nothing which sounded human. It is always the same words telling the same lies. And the fact that men accept this, that the people’s anger has not destroyed these hollow clowns, strikes me as proof that men attribute no importance to the way they are governed; that they gamble – yes, gamble – with a whole part of their life and their so called 'vital interests'. ~Albert Camus

(Book: Notebooks 1935-1942 https://amzn.to/3PFQkHC)

08/10/2022

Exiled whistleblower Edward Snowden has come through with yet another confession regarding the classified actions of US officials.

07/24/2022

I borrowed this from another post, I apologize I forget where…

That said, Orwell, as I understand, was a Democratic Socialist who hated the Totalitarianism in his day…he recognized the danger of Stalin and Trotsky in a time when a lot of Western Europeans did not. The N***s were the threat. The Soviets were pretty popular.

Animal Farm, in part, highlighted their animosity toward one another…it also ends with very few of the farm animals remembering much of anything before the pigs took over…
Anyway, being that his political leanings were what they were, from the vantage of his time and place in history, I wonder what his politics would be today…
Would he still be a Democratic Socialist? Has enough time elapsed, and enough analysis to have changed his view? Nuanced it? Flat out rejected it? How does Democratic Socialism work with Free Market Capitalism? How does it stifle it? Are these two systems organically compatible?

What I mean is, if he was alive and writing today, would we (ok, I) still appreciate his insight? Would he be perceived as an ally or antagonist?

I think I am going to put an episode, or maybe a whole series, contrasting Orwell and Huxley, primarily 1984 and Brave New World (although both men produced so much more content), and how we appear to have gone a good way down the road toward both scenarios simultaneously…

Thoughts?

07/24/2022

Borrowed, but more relevant now than ever…

06/17/2022

Here’s whimsical post for the salient, concerned, critical thinker…Pithy and polemic? Yes. Like good comedy, this is the type of narrative that can infuriate those addicted to outrage and challenge those that actually work through a situation with a critical thought process…
I’ve heard this story other ways (I’m sure most have) but this is better.
One caveat is that I’d change the word “liberal” for “progressive”.
True Liberals, historically, did not trust the government. They did not March lockstep with their agenda. They did not trust big pharma. They pushed for freedom of speech. They did not trust the media. Those guys are gone…
If you grew up claiming to be a liberal and are in support of the current political atmosphere pushed by the current administration YOU are a progressive. Just to be clear, their policies never work and they always cause division…those are not even arguable points. If you disagree, you simply are admitting (or showcasing) your ignorance of history.
Every historic institution in our society is being deconstructed. If your glad because you’ve had the privilege of living in the US and don’t have any tangible comparisons, then ask yourself why are we the number one destination for the world’s most impoverished and abused…your spoiled…if you think things are going well your delusional…if you don’t understand the current crisis are a direct result of current policy you are ignorant at best…I feel pretty confident writing that since the current administration’s approval ratings are getting worse, as more and more people can no longer, in good conscience, ignore the obvious, and the multiple crisis we are enduring are not even being remotely reversed through policy changes…baby formula, tampons, energy, food, fertilizer, grand standing about guns and ignoring the real problem areas, as well as verifiable solutions, education, the open agenda with letter people and our children, bla, bla, bla…people are intimidated and scared…
We are in serious trouble right now…I fear many of those applauding the loudest will soon be suffering the most…that’s not only predictable, it’s sad to me…
That said, enjoy! 😜
Take courage my friends…these are the troubling times we were warned about…

05/06/2022

04/01/2022

"I salute the man who is going through life always helpful, knowing no fear, and to whom aggressiveness and resentment are alien."

Albert Einstein
Photograph - A lone man refusing to do the N**i salute, 1936