Authenticity

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

I sure did catch it when I dissed Family Ties as leftist propaganda. Which it was, of course. Perhaps more so than most of us realize.

And yet, not only did a lot of you in the comments note that it gave you the first glimpse of being conservative, but I got emails. Ooooh, boy. I got all the emails.

Apparently Alex P. Keaton was a great part of the reason why my generation didn’t fall in line with the self-critique sessions and the lefty “protests”, cut our hair (or got a nice perm, depending on sex.) dressed in suits and went to work.

I spent some time trying to figure this one out. Because Alex P. Keaton was a cardboard cut out of a conservative, enamored of that Statist, Nixon.

And then I realized what it was. The problem is that the left hadn’t perfected the fine art of cardboard conservatives, where they made their opposition into sort of rampaging Nazis with no contact with reality.

Back then, they were still spitting out things that they’d heard conservatives say, even though mixed up with things conservatives had never said. So while Alex P. Keaton talked about what a great guy Nixon was, etc, he also ….

Well, there were a lot of things that came through in the character. Like, you know, he wanted to succeed, do well, be rich. It is probably lost on younger kids, but this was anathema. Wearing a suit, let alone a suit and tie was anathema. It was totally uncool, old, “straight” (back when that referred to the opposite of being a hippie.)

In fact, Alex P. Keaton, cardboard and all might have been responsible for making it hip to be square.

Not counting the things that slipped through that the left thought were horrifying like “women might be happier staying at home and raising kids.” These were of course supposed to be for laughs because the narrative was women would take over the work world and push men to the side by being SO MUCH better. (When that failed, we started hearing about institutional patriarchy. Such nonsense.) But the fact is that while after the kids are grown in the practically second-life-time modern medicine grants us, women might very well start caring about careers as much as men, but we do have different biological drives, and– well, they throw a spanner into the works of the “ersatz corporate man.”

Anyway, those comments apparently were true, and found fertile ground in a lot of minds.

This got me to thinking. The narrative was so thick, so absolute. You people who grew up with the internet might not understand how absolute it was. Everything echoed each other: from a casual spread in a fashion magazine, to the latest work of ‘art’ at a gallery. From a causal line in a news report, to the latest book that “will be on everyone who’s anyone’s bedside this fall.”

And the lines that came through them were the left’s. They might have been a little more veiled than they are now, but the crazy was all there, even back then. From “people cannot control their sexual urges at any time and kids are sexual creatures” to “women should be just like men, only the worst of men” to “the poor need more government.” And anyone and everyone opposing the coming of big government everything was, bizarrely, a fascist, and hated women and minorities.

There was no logic, but there was a barrage of sound and fury, and everything worked in concert with the big lie.

Which considering their system didn’t work at all, and the only thing big government is good at is collecting taxes and oppressing its own citizens was not amazing. They needed that barrage to make it seem like their “truths” were unassailable.

But their truths were patently not truths. They weren’t authentic. They found no resonance with people. People went along with them, because they were afraid to stand out, but meanwhile, each of them individually thought they were freaks of nature.

I had a little more resistance because events I’d seen close up and personal were otherwise in history books. But for most people the weight of the lies was almost impossible to throw off.

And yet the least bit of “support” from the official channels, even when it was meant to discourage dissent could tear a big swathe off consent and show the picture beneath.

And the picture was true, so of course it had a big impact. Because of course young men want to dress well and be successful. In what world does it make any kind of sense that they WOULDN’T?

You see what I mean? The narrative, because it’s counter-reality needs to be absolute and relentless.

Truth only needs to break in now and then to completely destroy it.

Like, you know, America was over and done with in the late seventies. It was all downhill now. We were over, and deserved to be over, and the USSR was going to win, because it was not only more efficient but more “just”.

And then Reagan came. And the narrative crumbled. Because it was all lies, and each person individually knew they were lies, and only the relentless weight of the narrative, endlessly repeated could make people think everyone else thought the lie.

Same with Trump. HUGE hole in the narrative. And heaven knows neither of the men were prefect. But they had reality at their side.

Now the lies are crumbling, because while relentless they can’t be ubiquitous anymore. And they can only survive when truth never appears.

When truth appears, no matter in how little an amount, the lies melt like spun sugar in water.

Do not collaborate with the lies. Use exactly whatever degree of subtlety you need to pierce them. As we see above, anything, from pretending to be mocking the truth to pretending to not quite “get’ it while telling the truth will destroy the lies. Fast or slow.

(For homework, I assign you reading Comrade Don Camillo. If you need ideas.)

Go and melt away the lies that never worked. We have a future to build. And the future must rest on truth.

231 thoughts on “Authenticity”

  1. I went to school with Alex P. Keaton. You know what I see when I see him? Privileged pretty boys who never do the work and try to BS their way through class without admitting it. Guys who spent outrageous sums on rock-and-roll tour jackets so they could cop a little reflected glory from someone else’s stardom. Virtue signallers. People concerned more with status than accomplishment. The very opposite of conservative.

    1. At my school it was a girl who was “Alex P. Keaton.” Same deal, although Life later dealt her a bad hand that she managed to handle with grace and maturity. I was impressed, to an extent.

    2. I went to school with one gentleman who wore a tie to school and wrote a reply to an editorial that argued NHS was for conformists.

      He also introduced me to Suicidal Tendencies and not through “Institutionalized”. Nope, his favorite song from that first album was “I Saw Your Mommy”.

      I think what your Alex was depended highly on your school. While we had the golf course country club kids, most were the children of career military, so E-7/O-5 or 6 for the most part. The country club kids weren’t the tie-wearing hard-working kids. They were the party kids.

      But Jack…not sure what his dad did, but they lived in my neighborhood so engineer or similar professional. Approaching our 40-year reunion, he’s about the only person I wish I’d kept track of.

    3. Lots of guys in college who managed to get jackets, or bowties, or even regular ties. Quite a few preppies in my junior high and high school. They were pretty good kids, for the most part.

      Everybody’s parents made roughly around the same amount of money, and computers or cars were the real status symbols. So kids in school mostly dressed to suit their personality or clique.

  2. Same with Archie Bunker. He was meant to be mocked, someone who would make it “obvious ” how “stupid bigots are.” But to be funny required Archie have some good lines. And they were still interested in being funny.
    So a lot of people saw someone on TV who could give as good as he got, and who was expressing their opinions. And once the show became a hit, the writer/producers couldn’t change.

    1. Actually All in the Family was more insidious to leftism than just Archie. What I noticed watching the show as a kid was the conservatives, like Archie, were authentic and hard-working. Not always perfect, and sometimes wrong, but someone who did his best. The leftists on the show (like Michael) were mooches living off the conservatives. Mocking those who gave them shelter, always convinced they were right, even when they were not, lazy, and well, deadbeats.

      1. It’s funny that in the Follow-Up series, Archie’s Place (IIRC) the writers brought back Archie’s daughter with her baby.

        Instead of killing-off “Meathead”, they had “Meathead” desert his wife (she divorced him) so they portrayed the Liberal foil to Archie as a Major Jerk. 😈

        1. Wasn’t that where they’d adopted a Jewish girl and he joined a synagogue so she would have a religious home?

            1. I remember the episode (God, I’m old). He bought her a Mogen David (6 pointed star necklace) and told her only someone who loved her would buy it for her. He was a redneck, but a good heart.

              1. I’m pretty sure you mean Star of David.

                Mogen David is a wine. Giving your little adopted daught wine and telling her only someone who loves her would do that seems more like a Biden move.

                1. “Mogen David is the Yiddish pronunciation of the Hebrew Magen David, which literally means “shield of David”, but is used metaphorically to refer to the six-pointed Star of David.

                  The star is a protective emblem, and thus a shield.

                    2. oh. so that’s what the bastardization is….. (It’s pronounced as Selsalomao sometimes. I used to think it was Salsalimao (parsley and lemon) as a kid, and couldn’t figure out WHY)

      2. As a little kid, I didn’t care for Archie Bunker. As an adult, I can relate to it much more, and not only is it funny, it is rather quietly insurrectionist against the narrative. Meathead was so annoying as a character that all I could do was root against everything he did. Turns out, Rob Reiner was just playing himself in that role rather than a character.

  4. What’s Family Ties?

    J/K though I never watched sitcoms they make me squirm. Such a high stupid quotient is hard on my weasand plus it is sooooo boring! And predictable. The people who write this stuff mush have to eat Brain Drain on a daily basis just so the network bosses can understand what they’ve written

    1. They annoy me, but all TV annoys me unless I’m actually doing something else and it’s background. It’s more I’m not visual.
      BUT think of it as being what visual people do instead of reading something really obvious or silly. (For me I do either fanfic or DISNEY comics, when the brain is gone.)

      1. Scrooge McDuck would be better at economic policy than the jokers of the Biden* Reich.

    2. I suspect the best, and perhaps only Really Good sitcom was perhaps the original of the type… The Jack Benny Program.. and even that is hit & miss.

      1. C and I are fond of the original Addams Family. Gomez and Morticia have one of the healthiest marriages ever seen on television . . .

  5. They got a little better with Tim Allen’s character in his latest show, but not much. Still a cardboard character and the women always had the “right” side of the issues, or the younger women when the conflict generational…

    1. Yeah, wasn’t one of the men’s name like Ted Bundy or something? Always the same BS men are stupid, women and children are the actual actors that drive everything. I have better uses for my time, like watching paint dry.

        1. What’s the difference?
          If the brain be slain,
          Should not the body be sent to dust?
          Let’s ask Terry Schiavo’s husband. Surely he could clear that up.

        2. And even Married With Children was a bit subversive. As screwed up as the Bundy clan was, they did stick together and woe unto anyone crossing one of them for they crossed all and a ‘magnetically aligned’ Bundy clan going vengeance-beam was a potent weapon indeed.

      2. I’ve got to speak up in favor of “Married with Children” and Al Bundy. Al wasn’t the stupid buffoon all the time, or even most of the time, if anything most of the time he was the one with sense when he clashed with feminists or the PC proto-woke of his time. When he was in the wrong, it was usually because he got carried away with his own ego, or by greed when a get-rich-quick scheme backfired on him.

        If anything, it was his wife’s and kids’ screw-ups that got him in trouble, and his wife doesn’t come off well at all: she was a gold-digger who found a pyrite mine (or possibly ruined the gold herself) she thought she was getting a step up when she got herself pregnant by the football star (and maybe it was a step-up from where she started), but he went downhill from there. At least he made enough money for her to mooch off.

        A lot of people say the show was anti-marriage and anti-family, but I always thought it was more about not marrying the wrong person.

        And the handful of episodes where Al ‘wins’ always had me cheering.

          1. Perhaps they really were made for each other.

            But I still say Al was more often in the right than Peg, so the show wasn’t the typical ‘men always bad’

            And in answer to the PC slogans, I’ll wear my “No Maam” T-shirt

        3. What I liked about the show is that when push came to shove, they did stick up for each other, and underneath it all you see there was love in that home. Oh an Al was maybe a “loser” by conventional measures, but he was a breadwinner, and stayed married, and the kids didn’t end up on drugs or with babies out of wedlock.So it had an edge about marriage often being annoying AF, but it doesn’t read as subversive as it was probably intended to be.

      3. Yet, as the very religious gentleman I knew on my last boat put it, they were the most functional family on TV because when the chips were down they pulled together as a unit and put each other ahead of the rest of the world.

        Even if it was Al and Bud beating up the guy who ditched Kelly for the school bicycle as part of a family outing at the movies.

    2. Tim Allen is far enough right (think he is more libertarian, but . . .) and big enough to not do anything like they’d prefer, so they have to cater to him enough to keep his star power. Conversely, he has to moderate things to keep working in TV. I think he produces much of his own stuff now. But there is a limit to the B.S. an excon who worked their way to stardom the hard way is going to put up with. What’s the worst they can do to him? He was there once already.

        1. Some of Allen Rickman’s finest work too.

          “By Grabthar’s hammer I shall avenge you!”

      2. …things I learned today, Tim Allen was arrested for smuggling coke before he got famous.
        (Not that I knew he’d been arrested before now, but a star smuggling coke before they’re famous is odd)

        1. That he came out with when he started getting famous for Standup and as he was starting to get tv and movie offers, so he wanted that out there so no one would be blindsided

          1. Back when Allen’s main gig was standup in the comedy clubs his act was on the “blue” side meaning of an adult content as far as language went. (Funny how words change: blue, gay, etc.)
            In an interview he expressed his shock the first time a bunch of families showed up at a club with their kids after the show became a hit. He had to rewrite his whole act on the fly once he realized the audience had many tender ears in it.

            1. Yeah, and for a while later, he was still often blue if it was a late show and he knew there were no young’uns. But he morphed the act to hide the blueness where the whole thing could about have run on late night tv. Much like Cosby’s “For Adults Only” show. Asshole was the only blue word, granted talking about cocaine “It intensifies your personality.”
              Bill- “What if you’re an asshole?”

    3. Now, “Last Man Standing” wasn’t bad. At least the first two (maybe three?) seasons. The conflict generational many times did end up with them being “right” – at first. Follow their character arcs, though, and they learn that “maybe Dad was right more often than not.”

      1. I didn’t see the show until it transferred to Fox, and I thought it was OK at least. The uber-leftie weed seller SIL was a pain, but even he got exposed to reality (occasionally) without bursting into flame. I rather liked the younger SIL and Bill Engvall as ministers (in-training for SIL). I’ve dealt with far worse in real life.

        FWIW, it’s the last comedy we’ve watched on TV. We bailed on How I Met Your Mother as it got steadily creepier, but LMS was fun and not insulting. We watched the More Power shows on History (sounds like they might have been on A&E earlier), and the allusions to earlier shows is amusing. “Binford” tools abound in Tim’s shop.!

  6. In fiction, I’m finding myself in need of creating better lies. Because they have to have internal consistence, or reader trance breaks. I have some ideas, though.

    The lies of the left and the establishment right (but I repeat myself) only really work to the extent they can when they had control of everything. And to do that, they need to convince you that you are isolated, crazy and wrong.

    Isolated, because when we talk to each other we tend to refine our ideas. Just what is so good about Capitalism? Republican (classical) governmental structure? Traditional faith and family values? Hard word and keeping your word? Sure we all have our own ideas about those things. But talking to others gives us broader experience of them. We can appreciate and understand them more through such study.

    Crazy, because of course you have to be to think there are only two genders. And that women, by and large, want to be married and have children, care for and raise them to be strong and good and proper civilized adults. Or that men want to be married, too, have children and all that, and above all protect and provide for that family unto death.

    You’d have to be crazy to think what you build and what you earn is yours, and you should only give a small portion of that to defend your country (if not under arms yourself), and do the very few things that are the role of governments, not the individual. You would have to be nuts to think that the true and proper role of said government is to protect the rights and property of the individual, not the position and pension of petty bureaucrats and political figures. Or so they greatly desire you to think.

    Wrong, because they want you to repent all those things. They want you to feel sorrow over your “privilege,” your sex, your skin color, your very sanity, health, and safety. And they want you to pay for these dire transgressions. You. Not them, the ones who hold the actual privileges of wealth, high education, the same sex and skin color, and high position in the cult of leftism.

    If they can’t control everything, they’re losing. And if they do control everything, or most of, they’re losing because they are crazy. Ironically, the best thing that could happen to the Democrats is Republicans taking back power, fixing the economy and making it grow a little, so they can take it back and spend their way to wealth and power as they ruin things again for everyone else.

    After all, bandits do not prosper much when the cities are starving.

    But they cannot stop the lies now. They’ve grown too big. They’re beyond anyone’s control. And as the lies get ever nuttier, more and more people get left behind. They’re still raping the economy and tightening the legislative screws as much as they think they can get away with.

    But the masks are falling nigh as fast as they are put up. What cannot go on…

    1. They’re terrified. Dry mouth, peed pants, wide eyed stare terrified, None of this is working and everything is falling around about them. The best thing is they are so tied up in their little bubbles that they cannot crake changes and they lack all imagination and so can’t see any other alternative to their preferred narrative and will continue shooting the selves in the foot.

      Sic Semper Tyrannis

    2. You’d have to be crazy to think what you build and what you earn is yours,

      Gee, “They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work.” happened under what set of rules or “value system”?

      1. We have confiscated the culture-history of the wreckers and the counter-revolutionaries for use of the overculture. Any supposed similarity to something that has been erased by the Grand Authority could get you reported to the censor, comrade. Pray think of your family and your pretty little dog before you consider going against the Party like that.

      2. The same one whose subjects also had the saying “There is no Pravda in Izvestiya and there is no Izvestiya in Pravda”; “There is no Truth in News and there is no News in Truth.”, something, if you think about it, that the NYT and WAPo have fully internalized as policy…

  7. Keaton, in a way, is kind of like the disastrous Soviet attempts to paint the West as poor and cruel.

    “Comrade, here’s a picture of poor American factory workers. See how the American rich mistreat the prolateriat?”

    Then the Soviet citizens noticed that the “poor American factory workers were better off than the majority of Soviet citizens.

    “Comrade, Americans mistreat their poor and elderly so much that many elderly people are forced to eat cat food just to keep from starving!”

    Then the Soviet citizens marvel at a society that is so well-off that it can have a special food product just for cats.

    Alex Keaton is similar. “Look, here’s the greedy jerk male teenager who believes those silly conservative things!”

    And members of the audience note that some of the stuff Alex Keaton is saying makes more sense than pretty much everything the rest of his family spouts.

    As I noted last time, Alex might not have fully explained the conservatism thing. But he likely tilled a lot of fertile soil that Rush Limbaugh was subsequently able to sow.

    1. A doctor escaping North Korea hid in a shed and found a bowl of rice with bits of meat on the floor. Thus did she learn that Chinese dogs ate better than North Korean doctors.

      1. There was a commercial for a canned dog food featuring Steve Landesberg (Sgt. Deitrick from Barney Miller). One of his lines, on providing it to the dog was “This looks better than what I had for dinner last night.”

        And, in fact, it did look pretty good, as good as the beef tips in gravy I’ve been served in some pretty upscale restaurants.

        1. Our church sponsored a Romanian refugee family back before that legendary Christmas.

          They did not speak a word of English when they got here. My mother was tasked with the lessons and I helped her. They arrived at our town to be settled in a small fully stocked house with full refrigerator and cupboards. Their first trip to the grocery store was quite an experience for them.

          Some months later when enough English was learned the father wrote a small essay about their thoughts upon coming here.

          They thought the house they were given was a high level party member’s home who had fallen into disfavor and they were given all the things to humiliate him in front of the community.
          When they saw all the food at the store and no lines and full carts they thought they had gone to heaven. But when they got to the isle with all the foods made from cats, dogs and other animals they realized it wasn’t quite as good in the US as rumor had it and there was propaganda on Radio Free America too.

          He was stunned when mother told him it was food for pets not MADE of pets and that all the things in their house had been donated by people who were giving away extra stuff they had.

          1. That’s the beauty of even a badly damaged free market: The FAILURE MODE is SURPLUS.

            To get (widespread, multi-product) shortages, one must be incompetent almost beyond belief, or just plain EVIL.

            Hang on.

            Huh.

            Uh… Let’s Go Brandon! ?

          2. Reminds me of an old Alexi Smirnoff joke.

            Smirnoff relates what he saw when he went to the supermarket for the first time. He went down one aisle, and he saw milk powder. Just add water, and you get milk. And he thought, “America! What a country! What a country!”

            Then he went down another aisle, and he saw orange juice powder. You take the powder, add water, and get orange juice. And he thought, “America! What a country! What a country!”

            Finally, he went down a third aisle, and saw baby powder! And he thought, “America! What a country!”

      2. Early 90’s during one of those periods of Glasnost the Russians shipped some of their rocket engines to Huntsville for testing. Came on a big a$$ heavy lifter. Crew had to lay over for a day or two and were allowed to explore the town under light escort, Huntsville normally being one of our restricted cities. As I recall they somehow acquired some American money and wanted to go shopping. And the two items highest on their lists were blue jeans and hypodermic needles. Once back home they could sell the jeans for a huge markup and Russian doctors were desperate for needles they didn’t have to sterilize and reuse.

        1. “Comrade Detective”, the faux Romanian Communist-era detective series on Prime, has Romanian women rioting over the opportunity to get Jordache jeans. Given that the show was written by Romanians who were probably alive during the ’80s, when the show is set, I suspect that the actions are only slightly exaggerated.

          The police detectives, on the other hand, don’t even know what denim jeans are.

    2. The only store lines are those pre-opening for Black Friday? Or newest iPhone release. Or newest: Star Trek, Raider’s, Star Wars, opening week?

    3. I’ve read that one of the propaganda bits relied on a cultural difference that the average Soviet worker wasn’t aware of. The propaganda showed American construction workers eating lunch – sitting on an I-beam with their lunch boxes, eating sandwiches. Apparently in Russia, lunch is the big meal of the day, so seeing Americans eating so little for lunch implied that their other meals were even worse. Of course, Americans see supper as the large meal of the day, so that cultural disconnect made the Soviet propaganda more effective.

  8. So our host titled this: “AUTHENTICITY” and has presented some very intriguing points and the initial comments are also interesting. Her tag line at the end about melting the lies is a good way to describe what should be done and is happening as well. Sometimes the mass media presentations – such as Alex – are meant to be untruthful but still contain a grain of ‘real’ beyond the lie being presented and that is what we latch onto thus making the ‘lie’ not work or at least derailing the intention.

    I now also understand more fully about the fish showing up often here as well – and while stumbling about the web ran across this: https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p0crynq5/why-is-cod-so-popular-in-portugal- I now have, in a very tiny way, a better understanding of our host and appreciate more fully the observations presented. I like to feel it is more authentic to me now with my better understanding. Maybe team heads on pikes can have a cod on the banner too??

    1. There is the pike regiment, whose banner has the mounted heads. The carp (with carpapult) is on the artillery regiment banner.

      Cod and carp, by the way, are not the same critters.

      1. Also that domumentary is by the BBC, which is to say BS. At one point suburbanshee in the comments explained WHY cod. It has to do with lent.
        Also for the record, most cod is fished, and sold by independent boats. My brother dated the daughter of a cod-fishing boat captain. He was away from home months at a time, fishing the coasts of Norway.
        Since the same cod is in Ireland Italy and Greece, I assume it’s something predating the formation of Portugal.

        1. Pacific Cod is also a big fishery in the Bering Sea, and there are quite a few independent fishing boots, including the crabbers, who fish cod. That was actually an important fishery last fall because they were not allowed to fish for Red King Crab last fall.

        2. Cod was common, cheap, and dried/salted well. I ate an awful lot of it because we kept the Friday fast and my da liked cod. That said, the Irish ate a lot of cod but they probably ate more herring and we ate a lot of mackerel because it was cheap. All these fish were easily preserved .
          They managed to damage the Grand Banks, idiots, so cod is expensive now.

            1. Cod, mackerel and growing up in the Northern Mid-Atlantic/Northeast, flounder, because that was cheap as well.

              1. And in olden days lobster was so plentiful, could almost be picked up off the New England beaches, that there are stories told that some contracts under which servants were indentured it was specifically stated how often it could be fed to the masters’ servants.

                1. I’ve heard that Lobster was food for the poor, indentured servants.

                  Now imagine a modern time traveler forced back into past. Considered rich foreigner (doesn’t matter how). Joining in on the eating of lobster with staff. Response to rich friends? “What? Where I come from I can’t afford Lobster!” 😉

    2. I misread this comment. I was thinking Call of Duty when you wrote cod and was very confused as why that would be a popular video game in Portugal.

  9. Sarah, completely off topic. In various posts you have mentioned ‘interesting times’ growing up in Portugal. Have you considered an autobiography?

    1. LOL. My traditional publishers recommended one. What I really would write would shock heck out of them.
      BUT here’s the thing: most of the things it involves are NOT mine to tell, and my memory is fuzzy (I was too young. I routinely confuse dates, for instance.)
      AND worse, some of the things are mine to tell, but I would never be that stupid.

      1. Eh. Might be better to do tall tales, just-so stories, and Don Camillo-esque subversive yarns. And sci-fi. Because the more entertaining it is, the more people will want to read it and be entertained.

        Always a plus when you can sneak a few little nuggets of wisdom in there. That’s not the point… But that’s also how I got interested in learning Latin from German Asterix and Obelix comics. And from there history of ancient Rome, and then on to old Europe.

        Just got to nab that interest first.

        I wish I could write YA. Good YA, not the crappy dumbed down stuff that you see so often these days. Something that rewards curiosity, instead of ruthlessly punishing it. As good sci-fi did for me, back when I was young.

        1. I don’t think you can find better YA than Heinlein’s juveniles (many of which aren’t really “juvenile”, at least not today). And in other venues, Altsheler’s Civil War series is, IMHO, one of the best of YA historical fiction. Study how they wrote enjoyable, understandable stories without “talking down”, and implement that, and you should do well.

          1. Your life is the American Dream. A story worth telling. What happened in Portugal is a story worth telling, if only to your own family. You are the best of us (US?).

            1. Maybe it could be a fictional account that’s based on what would be an autobiography?

                1. Now that would make a fabulous read, finding out just where and when you showed up. IMO anyhow!

          2. You can’t be Obama because you didn’t transfer 33 million documents, including classified documents, to your vanity museum in Chicago denying access by the national archives and limiting access only to allies, toadies, and barking seals. I’m also pretty sure your’re not a malignant narcissist. On the other hand, you are married to a man so there’s that in common 😜

            What do we want, equal treatment under the law, when do we want it, now!

            1. “…you are married to a man so there’s that in common”. Oooh, that’s harsh! Indubitably true, but still… 😉 😉 😉

          3. Of course not like Obama.

            Maybe more like Little House on the Prairie, only in Portugal.

            I think that would be fascinating.

              1. My childhood has nothing of that, and I wouldn’t that do that to my family on a bet.
                Seriously.
                I do eventually intend to write ersatz versions of what I remember of grandma’s stories.

  10. I’m kind of feeling like we’re reaching a boiling point. Crime and social disorder is up, and I think there’s more to it then then “Refund the Police!”/Soros DAs having an obvious effect on crime rates. People are angry and more prone to lash out.

      1. I really hope not. I’m old but I don’t want my kids and grandkids to have to go through this.

      2. I think in general society there is a huge issue with people just going violently berserk. Pretty much every day now you see a story about a major fight in the stands at major league baseball games, even in places where crowds used to be friendly. I think there is a culture of intolerance, division and hatred that the left has stoked and it, just like their Mao’s Cultural Revolution Redux, has filtered into broader society.

          1. Yes, and the lack of consequences for running amok is also a contributor. If people can trash a restaurant or beat a shop-owner, and the only ones actually prosecuted are the people defending themselves from such crime, you quickly go right into Clockwork Orange territory.

        2. Stories might be usual rate, but reported more frequently as disinformation.

          okay, my models do predict more crazy, and more personal explosions of violence.

          but they also predict that liars lie

    2. Here in Indiana, we had a police officer shot and badly injured by a career criminal who had been facing a long sentence for some serious crimes, when the charges were inexplicably dropped. The local news anchor who was covering it came right out and said that, if the man had been in jail, this would never have happened. So yes, people are getting fed up with this increasing lawlessness.

      1. Unfortunately the police officer died, young 20’s gorgeous young man. The police chief described him as the force’s little brother. Murdered by a career criminal who had earlier rapped about killing the police. Makes one wish he/she/ze had the guts for direct justice.

    3. Don’t know, even in my lifetimes murders have been worse. Chicago was almost 800 last year but in the early 90’s it was regularly 900+. NYC had ~500 last year, but in the late ’80s and 90s it regularly topped 2000 a year. The darn shame is that even the blue cities had this WAY more under control until they decided policing and bail was racist and bad. And theft seems to be insane in lots of areas partially because the darn DA’s aren’t stopping the recidivists (or the first time folks for that matter, but the career criminals make more of an issue) California californicated themselves with the stupid act of making thefts under $1000 a misdemeanor. Hell a parking ticket or a moving violation in San Francisco probably costs 3-4 times as much as theft once you factor in the insurance jumps.

    4. It hasn’t hurt that a lot of LEOs, from locals enforcing the lockdowns but looking the other way at riots while acting as impromptu tax collectors to the FBI (’nuff said), have ruined the public trust in professional policing.

      The viral videos of people defending themselves against criminals reflect on a loss of trust in the police.

      1. Wait until someone lectures you for telling him/her to “Have a good day.”

        It’s gonna happen. That person will let loose all their issues on you. Your job is not to pick them up.

        I work at a store across from a hospital, soooo… yeah, mostly people appreciate me being cheerful and chirpy, but not always. And there’s no way to pick up on every signal from everyone.

        Sometimes you just have to be like a doctor seeing patients. You give each one your full individual attention, and then you mentally go on, to the next one. Because the next person in line also deserves your full attention.

    1. ZZ can dress any way they like! That kind of money, and that kind of happy spirit gets a pass from me. But yes, I prefer the sharp dressed man. 🙂

        2. A good suit needs to be properly tailored to fit well. Off the rack just doesn’t cut it, at least not for me. The shirt should be white, the tie should be dark, no clip on crap, no padded shoulders on the jacket (it’s obvious and rather odious), cuff links optional, and button your freaking top button gentlemen!

          Pants should be tailored well enough that you can move at faster than a shuffle without ripping the seams, properly creased, and be neither too long or too short. Shoes shined, of course.

          A good suit is an investment. It should serve for weddings, funerals, and formal occasions with aplomb, and when the man’s body within changes as he ages, it should be altered or replaced.

          The profession of tailoring will never die so long as man is possessed of the good sense to know that there will be times he shall find himself in want a good suit, should he not have procured one ahead of time.

          1. I am a near-perfect 42R, so my Brooks Brothers suit only needed a little bit of adjustment at the top of the center back seam. That one’s for Occasions.

            I’ve also learned to lay out a suit pattern from measurements and do the whole complicated process of tailored construction. I’ve done it from commercial patterns before but it’s not quite the same. This last spring I did all the test versions of a custom jacket pattern, got that to fit, and then modified it into a 1950-pattern Ike jacket in blackest wool for this year’s Vampire Masquerade Ball.

            So I hope to be able to turn out specialty sport coats with some facility in the future. I’m no professional tailor, but I’m good enough for the kind of things I want. I think I need an off-white linen suit for summer events like garden parties and picnics, and then I need a heavy wool blazer with a detachable lining for a winter coat, and so on.

            (Why, no, I don’t understand the phrase “Seattle casual”. Why do you ask?)

  12. Interesting post! So I went on the internet (where else) and saw that Family Ties ran from 1982 to 1989. I never saw a single episode, never heard of the show till this morning. And that is further proof that ‘Somebody up there likes me.’ I’m not sure how many of my fellow Americans are ‘woke,’ that is, to the great reset, the great fake that we’ve lived under for so long. I want to believe that soon we will be able to start removing the Fascists and sexual perverts who have taken over the world and America. But, speaking of woke, I have taken in a relative who needed a place to go after his divorce. He’s a democrat and sees everything in reverse to what’s coming through my eyeballs. We’ve gotten into some good shouting matches, so since we have to share the same space for a while, we don’t ‘go there.’ But the void between us is filled with hot gases and could blow anytime.

    Thanks for this bit of hopeful reporting. May you be right and may our long slog through the liberal shit swamp be soon to end.

    1. “Ironically enough, the page is notable for missing the point”

      I saw that! Furthermore, I’ll blame my post taking place 11 minutes after yours on my being distracted by reading several of the entries in the “Live-Action TV” section of that trope. 😛

    2. I know. They had AFGM as “In jail for being gay” — well, no. If you read the story it’s far more complex than that. Perhaps “In jail for being cloned off the wrong guy”

  15. I never watched “Family Ties”. I was in my 20s when the show ran, and even then I had no stomach for leftist messaging masquerading as comedy. But from what I have read about it, it had the same problem that “All in the Family” had in the 70s, which is a bad case of the trope “Strawman has a Point”. Even then Hollywood was far to the left of the average American, and what Hollywood saw as a silly caricature of a conservative the average American saw as a representative of themselves.

    That’s a large reason why a lot of the entertainment media that I now consume comes from Japan, in the form of manga, anime, and light novels. Sure, they sometimes have messaging in them, but because of cultural differences it can be hard to spot the messaging, and their focus is still on entertainment first and foremost.

  16. I spent some time trying to figure this one out. Because Alex P. Keaton was a cardboard cut out of a conservative, enamored of that Statist, Nixon.

    It didn’t hurt he was the most consistently liable character in the show. As it went on it became much more about his rites of passage into adulthood. Then Michael J. Fox starred in “Alex P. Keaton Graduates and Learns to Succeed in Business” essentially playing the same character.

    1. In fact, Alex P. Keaton, cardboard and all might have been responsible for making it hip to be square.

      Maybe…but think about him.

      Alex loved blues and jazz, definitely square but darlings of the left a mere decade earlier. Through that, he had his first sexual experience, with an older woman even (Lorraine was 39). The episode ends, after she breaks it off when Alex’s parents have an issue with the age difference, with him hosting a “Sweet Lorraine Athon” on the school radios station. When she calls for a last goodbye he switches to the Sinatra version of “It Was A Very Good Year.”

      What young man growing up wouldn’t want to be that hip, landing an older woman (Alex was 17…at that age it was a big dream for a lot of us).

      There were a lot of episodes like that about Alex. I don’t know if the creators were stealth conservatives or just understood the value of being hip by being anti-establishment and that, at least in the world of the show, the hippies were the Establishment.

      A similar dynamic is what made Dharma & Greg a success. It could easily have been weekly “straights vs. freaks”, but often wasn’t and when it was, the straights generally came off better. While Greg was portrayed as needing to loosen up he and his family got a better overall portrayal as having it together than Dharma’s (see the change in how they planned to raise their second child for the ultimate edition). In fact, Greg’s parents proved to be more adventuresome, especially sexually, than Dharma’s.

      Oddly, if there was stereotypical conflict it was the mothers against the fathers.

      I think this is natural. Successful sitcoms, in the end, will center around conservative and conventional characters. They provide the stability required for the madcap nature of the genre. Even dramadies like Sports Night which is openly leftist have characters who mouth leftism but live conservative lives.

      Kitty finding out Edward’s first marriage was never dissolved and insisting he not fix it so she could be the other woman and Dharma awarding them “The Duck” are prime examples.

      1. Correction, Lorraine was met through the radio station but was not Alex’s first. That was Stephanie, the college girl he delivered groceries to on his first day at Adler’s Groceries.

        Again, “delivery boy gets laid” is the kind of story to make young men sit up and take notice.

      2. Heh.

        I saw only a tiny part of one episode of Darma and Greg. But the tiny bit I saw included the following humorous lines –

        “Experts are trying to figure out which political party he belongs to. He’s having sex, so he can’t be a Republican. But he’s having it with his wife, so he can’t be a Democrat.”

        This was while Clinton was in office, after the news about Lewinsky went public.

        You would never see the the entertainment industry add something like that second line in shows these days.

  17. I’ve been curious as to the strange shift around 2013 when the media’s bias went into overdrive and we started to be inundated with race/gender propaganda everywhere, all at once. Turns out that the Obama administration quietly killed the rules which kept propaganda out of the media.

    No future reforms will mean anything unless the Media Branch of Government is completely dismantled. We need a real free press again, desperately.

  18. For homework, I assign you reading Comrade Don Camillo. If you need ideas

    Do you realize how many times you’ve assigned it 🙂

    1. Like the exasperated but loving husband says to his wife, “How many pairs of shoes does one woman need?”

      “Just one more,” she replies with a smile.

      Don Camillo is a delightful read. Well worth introducing to the newly arrived and the curious.

      2. Honestly, shoes are a necessary evil most of the time, in my mind. I like boots and black sneakers. I need them to be comfortable enough to walk in for 12 -16 hours. I would prefer it if they look cool, but once I’ve got a good pair, I’ll wear them until the bottom falls off.

        My husband will probably be asking about gothic trinkets/fantasy props one day, though. Especially canes. I have three now, not counting the curtain rod that serves much the same purpose, or the umbrella which is about the same length…

        1. My husband will probably be asking about gothic trinkets/fantasy props one day, though. Especially canes. I have three now, not counting the curtain rod that serves much the same purpose, or the umbrella which is about the same length…

          The trick would then be to find one who is goth/goth-adjacent.

          Picking a mate who shares or at least appreciates a hobby enables considerably more indulgence. evil laugh

          1. One of the neat things when Elf and I combined our hoards is how very many pretty knives we had, combined!

            He favored swords and inlayed wall art, I’m more for concealable knives and hair-pins.

                1. True. But the crowds for the pike, the dagger-ax, the bec-de-corbin, and the Bohemian earspoon is just a mite smaller than the ones for, say, the English longbow, longsword, and the like…

    2. I swear I didn’t know that this was an assignments before today. Was it in the syllabus? Will it be on the test? Do you do extensions?

      I ordered it in used hardback from a private seller. Supposed to be here next week.

      It looks like something I will love.

      1. tap, tap, tap. You see the syllabus before you sign up for the course, Missy. No extensions. You have an A in this class. Don’t muck it up.
        (LOL. I did use to teach English comp in college. The look on the students’ faces when I came in and started speaking. I waited to explain the accent till they asked. Sometimes it took them months. :D)

        1. massive sigh

          First time I I’ve heard I still had my A before I woke up from this nightmare.

          My German teacher in high school was also the head of the English department. Man could she diagram a sentence. And put the fear of the Nazis in you if you got your cases wrong.

          Absolutely lovely woman though. Had to graduate to find it out.

      2. I discovered Don Camillo in junior high IIRC, and have had the books since I could navigate the used bookstores.
        You can’t assign them too often.

        I just discovered there were five films about the little priest, made in the 1950s in Europe.
        Who knew?? (Well, some Wikipedia editor did, but still…)

  19. It didn’t hurt any that Michael J. Fox was as cute as all get out. (Nowadays, since he has gone all “I have Parkinson’s, so I deserve medicines made from dead babies”, nor so much.)

    1. Also didn’t Hurt Mr. Fox could actually act comedy. In some ways I think comedy is harder than drama. In drama if you ham it up a little you just look like you’re getting into the part (I’m Looking at You Sir Laurence among others…). In comedy if you ham it up you slide into pure slapstick and get panned other than by slapstick aficionados. Albeit there are folks that love that witnessed by the enduring love for the Three Stooges and the French fondness for Jerry Lewis.

        1. I had run a couple of dozen role-playing campaigns before I dared to try comedy, starting with a Toon campaign.

      2. There are reasons why good/great comic actors have crossed over to dramatic roles very well; Jackie Gleason and Robin Williams come to mind off the top of the head.

        1. Some guy named Willis, too. Most people don’t even remember he started in comedy. But his breakout show was Moonlighting.

          1. Douglas Fairbanks Sr. started out in comedies. His breakout as an action/adventure star was The Mark of Zorro in 1920. Apparently it was not only a career changer for him but also brought action films back into popularity.

          2. Bruce goes back to his roots from time to time; see ‘The Whole Nine Yards’ and ‘The Whole Ten Yards’. 😀
            ———————————
            Frankie: “Barbecue?”
            Jimmy: “Barbecue.”

      3. It also didn’t hurt that liberals are a sanctimonious humourless bunch.
        He could yuck it up for laughs but they had to be dreadful scolds so as not to give anyone the idea that his views were in anyway appropriate for the right sort.
        Like people’s view of Trump. His speeches are a hoot but only someone deplorable would put up with that kind of behavior. There are more people who would rather have a good time than be all prim and proper.

  20. People went along with them, because they were afraid to stand out, but meanwhile, each of them individually thought they were freaks of nature.

    …at the time when books about “I am a rare and unusual person” were all the rage….

    :noodles on this:

    1. …at the time when books about “I am a rare and unusual person” were all the rage….

      Confirming in their unconformity.
      Like all of them suddenly wearing purple or green hair.

          1. Well, yes, but nobody else wants the job of being me. And, without proper experience and training, they would likely muck it up even worse than I do. And I don’t want the job of being anybody else. Some parts look easy. Most don’t.

    2. because that was not about BUCKING the consensus, but going further than the consensus. You were not denying that JFK would have created paradise on Earth if he’d lived. You might think that was crazy cakes, but everyone you knew BELIEVED it.

      2. Well, my dad’s side of the family was mostly made of Republicans since the Civil War (which the first Republican in the family fought in, for the Union natch), so JFK was never a great favorite. (Other than his place in the local space program/aviation religion.)

  21. I went through SERE training in the 1970s. I was waterboarded, shoved into a variety of small, uncomfortable boxes, subjected to interminable lectures on why the West was doomed, and learned to mis-use gardening tools to appear useful while wasting time unless under direct observation. I literally wept when, as the class ended, they called us to attention and played the Star Spangled Banner. And that was a fairly short class.

    This training prepared me somewhat to resist University Life in California. And it may have helped me make bad jokes through my cancer struggles. I probably can’t blame all that on the Air Force tho’…

    I’ve lived mostly peacefully for nearly 40 years in Corporate America, too. I am reminded of the faithful servant of one of the “Good Men” whose family were secret USAians.

    Yes, we can coexist “until the break”; but I’m still fearful of what is coming. Not really for me. I deserve far worse than I can receive under any circumstances. I fear for those who haven’t gotten the message that there really are evil people, they really do want us dead, and eventually we will all die anyway. And then The Judgement.

    I remember watching very young children (under 3 years old, I think) being brought into the radiation therapy section of MD Anderson (back by Elevator G if you’re keeping score) in Houston, TX. Terrified, strapped to some board or cradle, screaming, needing to be sedated. The machines were scary but the radiation was painless and potentially life-saving.

    What we believe is to the deluded what that radiation was to the frightened children. But no one can reach most of them. Or so I fear.

    I hope I’m completely wrong about that last point.

    2. Every soul has a different breaking point. And it changes over time, with experience. Some can be reached. Some, the left leaves behind, lost and wondering what happened.

      Others break from the herd when they see something that cannot be unseen. Others simply ask a question. And follow where the evidence leads.

      There have been a lot of reasons not to break orthodoxy when it comes to the cult of leftism. Those reasons are obvious to even dullards. You don’t go running away from everything you ever knew and loved, and that loved you, without a damned good reason.

      Even if all of those things were slowly killing you.

      For some it was the mask masquerade. Others, the corruption of children (pick one. There have been many). Still others the economy crashing. Biden himself has caused any number of uncomfortable questions within the ranks of the cult of leftism. Kamala, too.

      The journey out is not a pleasant one. It is full of pain, suffering, regret, loss, and quite often, dawning horror. It is not a comfortable place to be, realizing that you’ve been lied to all your life. Or that you are complicit in those lies.

      I have great respect for those that make that terrible journey.

    3. [SERE] training prepared me somewhat to resist University Life

      Hmmm… As tempting as it might be, I don’t think that should be mandatory for incoming freshmen.

        1. Everyone needs help resisting indoctrination. And our enemies are masters at turning innocents into traitors in far less than four years. 😦

          1. These days, I’d argue that many are not innocent by that point. By that I mean they have be pre-primed for the indoctrination by earlier schooling, media, and the environment they grew up in. At least for those in more urban areas.

            Rural areas, less so.

  22. What we believe is to the deluded what that radiation was to the frightened children. But no one can reach most of them. Or so I fear.

    I had a similar experience when one of my children was at a neonatal intensive care unit for a month. I had inadvertently stepped into the wrong floor and they were doing a debridement treatment on a very young child. Debridement is where they soak the healing burns in a Clorox solution and then scrape off the scabs so the skin can heal better. It is known to be extremely painful. The child was in terror and pain. I will never get the horror of the suffering of that poor child out of my mind.

    Except. Except. Just before we left the hospital 4 weeks later, I saw the same child in the cafeteria at a party celebrating her going home. Happy, smiling and amazingly scar free.

    Closest thing to an explanation of purgatory I have.

  23. My family studiously avoided soap operas and sitcoms. I never developed a taste for them, either. I always detested laugh tracks when the jokes weren’t all that funny. I saw enough juvenile silliness in other places I didn’t care for it on TV. My dad liked westerns, (except Gunsmoke), when they were a thing, and action and detective shows.after that. So, I’m woefully deficient in my knowledge about how TV portrays conservatives. I grew up around the real thing.

  24. Apparently Democrats issued a bunch of statements denouncing Trump for Salmon Rushdie getting stabbed today, claiming that the violence was due to Trump and Republicans “encouraging violence”. So of course the attacker was a supporter of Iran which still has an open Fatwa for Rushdie’s murder and has promised to reward whoever kills him:

    https://nypost.com/2022/08/12/nj-man-matar-hadi-with-sympathies-toward-iran-arrested-in-stabbing-of-salman-rushdie/

    1. Also, slightly off topic but not, since apparently drumpf is evil and responsible for everything bad:

      The Espionage Act????

      A capital offense.

      Wow feds, go big or go home.

      1. if only Trump had simply had a private email server for his official business at Mar-A-Lago instead…..

    3. Donald Trump is the very debble and his shuffling zombie minions in the Republican Party are root of all weevil. Especially because Salman Rushdie was committing capital blasphemy during the Reagan Administration. Yawn. What else is new?

  25. Alex Keaton may have been a “cardboard cutout” but compared to Archie Bunker of All in the Family he was practically the soul of authenticity. And yet…and yet. A lot of people started seeing Archie making a lot of sense, particularly when contrasted with his on-show daughter and son-in-law (I don’t even know the character’s name, just “Meathead”; and I think a lot of us agreed with tht assessment–which also fits the actor who played him).

    The left can’t even effectively mock the non-left. If they make even the slightest effort to make the character even somewhat plausible, people start finding that character sympathetic.

    Funny how that works.

  26. Family Ties wasn’t a show I saw much of, or often. All I remember was the dad was a jerk, and Marty McFly dressed in a suit on it. To be fair, it ended its run while I was still a kid who had just barely started noticing girls, let alone politics.

  27. I was never captured by the Entertainment Complex because I managed not to be exposed to it most of my life.

    As a child, television and movies were restricted. As a teenager and adult I was always busy. Never bought a television because I had no use for it, radio, the library, games, the gym and internet were cheap and useful. Plus spent a decade doing shift work and never caught up with “Must See TV” or “Everybody Loves Friends”.

    Passive screen viewing seem to be a religious experience which downloaded memes in the background. Plus I had a healthy distrust of authority and “normal”.

    So I don’t understand many of the “cultural” references, I don’t get the attraction of Disney or Star Wars
    or comic book false gods* especially for grown-ass adults. I actually pissed off a guest of this site who was willing to violate his own principles just to give Disney some money for another “fix” after he had criticized them for doing something reprehensible.

    1 Corinthians 13:11
    King James Version
    11 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

    (I understand the need for heros in the real world and fiction. I just think that superheros and special effects are a big crutch and diminish the real power of human courage and spirit. And authors…)

    2. “Critics who treat ‘adult’ as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”

      — C.S. Lewis

    3. Fiction, as Aristotle observed, is more philosophical than history. History is full of stuff that can only appear accidental to the mortal eye. You can file off that in fiction.

      Superheroes are useful for filing off some of the muddying effects of realism. Whether for pure adventure or pure philosophy.

  28. I watched Family Ties. The break event with it for me was an episode where college age Alex spent the night out and when he got home mom lit into him.
    Oddly she did not sound like a sad mom or an angry mom. She sounded like an insecure lover who had been waiting for the moment when she would be tossed aside for the New One.
    It hit me then that the writers couldnt write the scene correctly because they had never had a situation where they failed their parents expectations.
    So instead of a complex growth moment for the characters we had a creepy incest vibe.
    Still watched a lot of TV but I noticed there was a lot of inappropriate subtext in a lot of shows.
    The actor who played the cypher father played the cardboard gun nut in Tremors who saved the town. He did all five movies.

    1. Then there was a short-lived TV series, also starring Michael Gross.

      Thing is, everybody considered Bert Gummer paranoid and unhinged — but he almost always turned out to be right. To be prepared for what nobody else would believe.

      Why have a Rigby Double Express elephant gun? Why, just in case. Then a giant underground monster smashed through his basement wall and the Rigby came in reeeeal handy.
      ———————————
      Melvin: “What’s that?”
      Bert: “Cannon fuse.”
      Melvin: “Whaddaya use that for?”
      Bert: “My cannon.”

  29. TV did a lot of damage. My wife when we were dating almost left me because I told her I loved her.
    For long backstory she watched lots and lots of soap operas to explain people to her. Apparently in these as soon as guy says I love you two episodes later he is cheating on her with her best friend.
    I managed to talk her down but I wonder how many lives were wrecked from little things like that.

    1. “…watched lots and lots of soap operas to explain people…”
      That sounds like watching “Survival” to explain camping, or “Happy Feet” as a documentary on penguin mating rituals. Hope you got her detoxed…

  30. By a 15-year-old school kid who got an A+ for this entry (TOTALLY AWESOME)!
    The Lord’s Prayer is not allowed in most U.S. Public schools any more.

    A kid in Minnesota wrote the following NEW School Prayer:
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Now I sit me down in school
    Where praying is against the rule
    For this great nation under God
    Finds mention of Him very odd
    If scripture now the class recites,
    It violates the Bill of Rights.
    And anytime my head I bow
    Becomes a Federal matter now
    Our hair can be purple, orange or green,
    That’s no offense; it’s a freedom scene.
    The law is specific, the law is precise.
    Prayers spoken aloud are a serious vice
    For praying in a public hall
    Might offend someone with no faith at all.
    In silence alone we must meditate,
    God’s name is prohibited by the State.
    We’re allowed to cuss and dress like freaks,
    And pierce our noses, tongues and cheeks.
    They’ve outlawed guns, but FIRST the Bible.
    To quote the Good Book makes me liable.
    We can elect a pregnant Senior Queen,
    And the ‘unwed daddy,’ our Senior King.
    It’s ‘inappropriate’ to teach right from wrong.
    We’re taught that such ‘judgments’ do not belong.
    We can get our condoms and birth controls,
    Study witchcraft, vampires and totem poles.
    But the Ten Commandments are not allowed,
    No word of God must reach this crowd.
    It’s scary here I must confess,
    When chaos reigns, the school’s a mess.
    So, Lord, this silent plea I make:
    Should I be shot; My soul please take!
    Amen

    If you aren’t ashamed to do this, Please pass this on.
    Jesus said, ‘If you are ashamed of me, I will be ashamed of you before my Father!
    ~~~~~~~~~AWESOME~~~~~~~~~~
    Not ashamed. Passing it on !

    FWIW. Biggest crowd I could think of to pass it on to.

    1. A quick check reveals that versions of this prayer have been circulating since at least 1985, attributed to various parties in various places, so I’d call it a bit of urban folklore. Not that it isn’t a pointedly accurate summary of attitudes in the public schools.

      1. The anti-God attitude in schools is “new” in our time-line, which everyone here knows.
        Case in point: my now-age-90 aunt taught elementary school for decades. They had a real problem child in one particular class, and the teachers met in the lounge every morning and prayed for him.
        I don’t know for sure what happened, but I suspect he straightened out eventually.
        They were that kind of teachers.

      2. I figured. Especially given it was passed on via a chain email.

        Posted it as “private only to me”, so I’d have a copy, to my FB timeline. Got the “fact checker” warning. What? That the contents are “false”? How? Doesn’t say “everywhere”, only that each action does happen. That I know for fact. That there is one location that all happen? Again, Who Cares? Or that a 15 year old wrote it? Who cares? That it was written recently? Broken record, Who cares? It is something that put into a song, would be popular, and not “fact checked”. It does have a grain of truth in each stanza, that has grown over the decades.

  33. Quick thought as I am coming off loading up a 20′ box truck and taking it 500 miles and too wired to sleep despite being awake for 30h.

    The Satanists allow a bit of truth to come through to anchor the poison they’re selling.

    Odds and freaks of nature latch on to the true bits. The vast majority of ODC normals* latch on to the whole thing, the same way my sweet doggo noms her cheese-wrapped pills.

    So… Mrs. Hoyt’s instincts on this are sound.

    *Written with love. Normal people are the bulwark of happy communities. Freaks like me do not need to be “normalized”. We need to have our malfunctioning brains acknowledged, and our shared humanity confirmed. Onus on the freaks to be less of a nuisance; on the normies to be charitable.

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