Compare the receptions received by Pres. Trump at a Washington Nationals World Series game in Washington, DC, on Oct. 28, 2019, and the college football national championship game in New Orleans between LSU and Clemson on Jan. 13, 2020, about 10 weeks later. Watch the 2 videos for the night-and-day reactions. He gets booed and is subjected to chants of “lock him up” in DC while he experienced sustained cheers and applause from a mostly Louisiana and South Carolina – hotbeds of Red America – crowd in New Orleans.
Washington, DC, Oct. 28, 2019
New Orleans, La., Jan. 13, 2020
Let’s dispense with the nonsense that there is no severe politico-cultural divide in America. It exists, and boy does it exist! I attribute the phenomena to a resurgence of a semi-violent, bombastic radical left alongside the rise of a provocateur on the right, Trump. Make no mistake about it, though, this unhinged left had been around since the 1960’s and has wormed its way into the corporate boardroom, faculty lounges, all avenues of our media, academia, and is resplendent in the training of our teachers and our kids’ curriculum. Few of our kids’ schools escape its tentacles. The cities and coasts are the nests for this myopic and revolutionary collectivism, and can be dubbed “blue” America.
Outside the blue bubbles of the cities and the coasts resides the vast stretches of Red America. Do our self-anointed cultural betters in their urban blue bubbles know how out-of-step they are in relation to the rest of the country? Red America certainly knows about them since the “blues” control the cultural commanding heights. If the “blues” know about their estrangement, I don’t think that they care.
No, I didn’t get the title wrong. From my observations of the Titans/Ravens showdown yesterday – granted, I’m no expert – it looked like the Titans stole the Ravens identity. They were as physical as the Ray Lewis Ravens of yesteryear. It showed in many ways.
Way #1: 0 for 3 in 4th down conversions (Was it 0-for-3 or 0-for-4?). That stat was a proxy for the Titan “D” line consistently stuffing the run and refusing to be blown off the line. Of course, it’s easier to do if your offense is constantly chewing 7-8 minutes of the clock at a time. Plenty of time for the “D” folks to rest, and the Ravens’ defense to tire from all the Henry pounding.
Way #2: 2nd-and-4 beats 2nd-and-8 anytime. Wow, Derrick Henry is a pure phenom. Cutback blocking, timely cuts, and monster size and speed creates havoc. The Titans forced the Ravens to the line of scrimmage leaving spot throws deep downfield. In that way, a journeyman like the Titans’ Ryan Tannehill would seem like an all-pro.
The Titans’ Derrick Henry as he breaks the line for 60-yard scamper.
Way #3: Don’t rest your scatback quarterback in week 17. Such quarterbacks get off-stride and lose their rhythm and spontaneity after 3 weeks of … not much. In the game, Lamar Jackson was continually off-target. His on-the-cuff decisions were poor and lacked instantaneous recognition. These are essential attributes for an offense defined by all things Jackson.
Way #4: Was it me or did it seem like the Ravens were much more frequently on the ground with injury timeouts? The Titans hit harder and more consistently throughout the game. Mike Vrabel and staff had their guys ready. Indeed, what was to come appeared the week before when they dismantled the Patriots.
Just some passing thoughts on the game. What do you think?
Neil Peart of Rush, July 2010 (Paul Warner/WireImage)Neil Peart posed at his drum kit in the Public Auditorium in Cleveland, Ohio on 17th December 1977. (Photo by Fin Costello/Redferns)
Neil Peart, master drummer for Rush, died of brain cancer earlier this week. May he rest in peace and God’s comfort for his family, friends, and devoted fans.
He was my age, born in 1952. He was 14 days my junior. In many ways, in his early lyrics, he reflected the fascinations of young and preternaturally rebellious teenage boys, alone and bookish and enthralled by individualism. To no surprise, to many teenage boys who were precociously literate in a facile sense, the writings of Ayn Rand would captivate them. Her libertarianism made an impression on them, and maybe myself to a degree during my coming-of-age years. After all, traditions and the standards that derive from traditions can seem like unnecessary and damaging social barnacles to a young and undeveloped mind.
Ayn Rand
It’s easy to drift into atheism or any of the iconoclastic faiths, finding the only one you knew the best, the one you grew up with, as flawed.
Then maturity sets in. Life’s experiences marinate your thoughts and a person might come to realize what G.K. Chesterton noticed a century before when he saw such minds “in the clean and well-lit prison of one idea” (from his book “Orthodoxy”). Traditions and traditional faith, and their moral and social norms, may have a sounder basis than a young and energetic mind can grasp. Peart came to understand this fact when he seemed to reject Randianism and even pure libertarianism when he said in a 2012 Rolling Stone interview:
“So as you go through past, your twenties, your idealism is going to be disappointed many many times. And so, I’ve brought my view and also – I’ve just realized this – Libertarianism as I understood it was very good and pure and we’re all going to be successful and generous to the less fortunate and it was, to me, not dark or cynical. But then I soon saw, of course, the way that it gets twisted by the flaws of humanity. And that’s when I evolve now into . . . a bleeding heart Libertarian. That’ll do.”
In many ways, Neil Peart represents a world and a time that I could easily recognize. It was a time of the breezy rejection of the old and the juvenile understanding that nothing exists beyond the self.
The kids from “Stranger Things”.
Such a mindset may make the individual a god, but at least it doesn’t wallow in the Sanders/Warren socialism, the collectivism of same, and the similarly self-identified cliques who are united by nothing more than the victimhood of their self-proclaimed oppression. If Randianism or libertarianism gets a young person to rebuff the nonsense, something good may come of it.
Below are the lyrics and live performance of their song “Anthem”, taken from an Ayn Rand novella, “Anthem”. You’ll need the lyrics to get the point.
Anthem
Know your place in life is where you want to be
Don’t let them tell you that you owe it all to me
Keep on looking forward, no use in looking ’round
Hold your head above the crowd and they won’t bring you down
Anthem of the heart and anthem of the mind
A funeral dirge for eyes gone blind
We marvel after those who sought
The wonders in the world, wonders in the world
Wonders in the world they wrought
Live for yourself
There’s no one else more worth living for
Begging hands and bleeding hearts
Will only cry out for more
Anthem of the heart and anthem of the mind
A funeral dirge for eyes gone blind
We marvel after those who sought
The wonders in the world, wonders in the world
Wonders in the world they wrought
Well, I know they’ve always told you
Selfishness was wrong
Yet it was for me, not you
I came to write this song
Anthem of the heart and anthem of the mind
A funeral dirge for eyes gone blind
We marvel after those who sought
The wonders in the world, wonders in the world
Wonders in the world they wrought, wrought, wrought
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: N PEART / A LIFESON / G LEE
Not to see Clint Eastwood’s latest film “Richard Jewell” is to engage in citizenship malpractice.
The real Richard A. Jewell, 1997. (photo: Greg Gibson/Associated Press, 1997)
Every citizen should see Eastwood’s portrayal of how well-meaning people in powerful government positions, allied to rambunctious reporters, can be so awfully wrong and mature into a malevolent force without even knowing it. It’s how prosecutors can pursue an individual, wrongfully convict the person, pursue harsh sentencing, and resist any effort to set the record straight. It’s how investigations are pursued on the flimsiest of “probable cause” and can morph into other investigations because it is heartily believed that the guy must have committed some crime somewhere, somehow. Does this remind you of the events leading to the current impeachment melee?
A notion gets stuck in the craw of government officials – call it a “profile”, an expectation about the kind of person who commit these sinful acts – and persists until action is taken to the detriment of all. Richard Jewell was slapped by the powers-that-be as symptomatic of the “hero syndrome” (creating a situation or crime to become a hero). The media’s and the FBI’s “rush to judgment” led to Jewell’s public humiliation as the Olympic Park bomber in 1996 – only 7 years later to find the real culprit, Eric Rudolph.
Eric Robert Rudolph being escorted from the Cherokee County Jail for a hearing in federal court in 2003 after being on the run for five years.
False ideas creep into the heads of mighty people in a burgeoning and energetic federal government. And if these people have guns, watch out! It’s how we can have a Ruby Ridge (1992). It’s how we can experience a Waco (assault on David Koresh’s compound, 1993). It’s how we can have serial investigations of a presidential candidate as a “Russian mole”, and later to try to pin something else on him when the first effort failed in the belief that he’s still corrupt to the core.
The Branch Davidian compound, Waco, Tx., Feb.28, 1993.
There’s something in the government ether from the 1990’s to the present that is so insidious. No, it’s not a “deep state”. It’s something endemic – or generic – to government. The Founders’ idea of government as a necessary evil is as true today as it ever was. It’s a lesson we had better repeatedly teach ourselves and our young.
“Speaking truth to power” became a cliché by people wearing fake vaginas on their heads the day after Trump’s inauguration in January 2017. Well, take a look at “speaking truth to power”, the culturally powerful, or the culturally privileged – aka, Hollywood – by Golden Globe host, Ricky Gervais, last night. The line about most of those folks, all prettied up in tuxes and gowns, being less educated than Greta Thunberg rings oh-so-true. Take that Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio.
I was stunned and couldn’t believe my eyes and ears. The whole monologue was great, but the spicy parts occurred in the last couple of minutes. It was far better than the speeches by the cranial vacuum-tubed luminaries. Enjoy.
