Ahhhhh

 

And it's nice to be near the grandkids, too

Hunt AAR

 A couple weeks ago I posted What deer rifle for an old hunter?  Many of you left comments and I'm happy to say that Tim emails saying that the hunt was a success and he got his deer.  He has a nice After Action Report posted.

I agree with him that the local deer populations seem to be pretty strong.  I used to see them regularly in Maryland and Wolfgang would chase 'em if he got a chance.  He never got close, of course, but if you're a deer in a subdivision then neighborhood dogs will be an occasional encounter.

When America's Elite actually were elite

The Queen Of The World spotted this on Facebook.  I reproduce it here without any commentary because it needs none.

Months after winning his 1941 Academy Award for best actor in “The Philadelphia Story,” Jimmy Stewart, one of the best-known actors of the day, left Hollywood and joined the US Army. He was the first big-name movie star to enlist in World War II.

An accomplished private pilot, the 33-year-old Hollywood icon became a US Army Air Force aviator, earning his 2nd Lieutenant commission in early 1942. With his celebrity status and huge popularity with the American public, he was assigned to starring in recruiting films, attending rallies, and training younger pilots.

Stewart, however, wasn’t satisfied. He wanted to fly combat missions in Europe, not spend time in a stateside training command. By 1944, frustrated and feeling the war was passing him by, he asked his commanding officer to transfer him to a unit deploying to Europe. His request was reluctantly granted.

Stewart, now a Captain, was sent to England, where he spent the next 18 months flying B-24 Liberator bombers over Germany. Throughout his time overseas, the US Army Air Corps' top brass had tried to keep the popular movie star from flying over enemy territory. But Stewart would hear nothing of it.

Determined to lead by example, he bucked the system, assigning himself to every combat mission he could. By the end of the war he was one of the most respected and decorated pilots in his unit.

But his wartime service came at a high personal price.

In the final months of WWII he was grounded for being “flak happy,” today called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

When he returned to the US in August 1945, Stewart was a changed man. He had lost so much weight that he looked sickly. He rarely slept, and when he did he had nightmares of planes exploding and men falling through the air screaming (in one mission alone his unit had lost 13 planes and 130 men, most of whom he knew personally).

He was depressed, couldn’t focus, and refused to talk to anyone about his war experiences. His acting career was all but over.

As one of Stewart's biographers put it, "Every decision he made [during the war] was going to preserve life or cost lives. He took back to Hollywood all the stress that he had built up.”

In 1946 he got his break. He took the role of George Bailey, the suicidal father in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” The rest is history.

Actors and crew of the set realized that in many of the disturbing scenes of George Bailey unraveling in front of his family, Stewart wasn’t acting. His PTSD was being captured on film for potentially millions to see.

But despite Stewart's inner turmoil, making the movie was therapeutic for the combat veteran. He would go on to become one of the most accomplished and loved actors in American history.

When asked in 1941 why he wanted to leave his acting career to fly combat missions over Nazi Germany, he said, "This country's conscience is bigger than all the studios in Hollywood put together, and the time will come when we'll have to fight.”

This holiday season, as many of us watch the classic Christmas film, “It’s A Wonderful Life,” it’s also a fitting time to remember the sacrifices of Jimmy Stewart and all the men who gave up so much to serve their country during wartime. We will always remember you!

Postscript:

While fighting in Europe, Stewart's Oscar statue was proudly displayed in his father’s Pennsylvania hardware store. Throughout his life, the beloved actor always said his father, a World War I veteran, was the person who had made the biggest impact on him.

Jimmy Stewart remained in the USAF Reserve following the war, retiring as a Brigadier General in 1968. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1985 and died in 1997 at the age of 89.

-- Ned Forney, Writer, Saluting America's Veterans

Actually, since this is Borepatch, you know that I can't just shut up and so will tell a personal anecdote about Jimmy Stewart.  On a family vacation to Los Angeles to see grandparents (this would have been probably in 1972, but may have been 1967) we went on one of those Trolly Tours to see the houses of the stars.  They would drive slowly past each of the houses while the tour guide gave a description of the roles and awards each star had.  But at Jimmy Stewart's house the trolly stopped.  The tour guide explained that if Mr. Stewart was home he would typically come to the window and wave.  He did this because everything he had in life came from his fans, and the least he could do is thank them.

I don't recall that he was home that day but the contrast between him and the rest of the Hollywood bunch stuck with me all these years. 

The end of the American Empire

Every person has two educations, one which he receives from others, and one, more important, which he gives to himself.

― Edward Gibbon

This is a long, long post that you probably need to spend some time on (especially watching the embedded videos).  This post is in particular for the folks that think that the end of America will be a cakewalk/simple/glorious.  I don't argue with the Desired End State; I'm not at all sure of what will be left when it's all done.  You know, this glorious future:

I've written before about the fall of Empire, and how fast and hard it falls:

This is Monte Testaccio in Rome.  It is a hill made entirely of broken pottery, and it dates to the first and second centuries AD.  It's over 100 feet high, around a kilometer around, and historians think that it used to be much larger but has eroded over the last two millennia.  The Roman "bread and circuses" was a huge welfare project that fed much of the city's population, and which required huge imports of not just grain but also olive oil - over a million gallons of oil each year, every year, for hundreds of years.  The oil was shipped in big clay pots, but what do you do with the pots when you've distributed the oil?  The Romans were the best engineers until at least the eighteenth century, and so they came up with an engineering solution: they made a mountain out of broken up pots.

And then it all fell, and fell so far and hard that it was forgotten.  The Roman Forum itself - the political center of the Ancient World for four centuries or more - became a cow field, the Campo Vaccino.

The Testaccio-monte is being excavated today, and is a treasure trove of ancient Roman economic knowledge that had long since fallen into a barbarian black hole.  You can skip this video if you don't care about how hard Rome fell; but if you think that the end of the American Empire will be comfortable you really should watch it all.

The Roman Empire was unique until the 1700s, in that large amounts of bulk goods were shipped all over their Empire.  Back In The Day, you could eat off of dishes made in North Africa and drink wine from Greece even if you lived in England.  But then it fell.  And it fell so hard that it took a millennium to recover.

Kenneth Clarke's outstanding series Civilization confronted this head on in a way that looks to get him canceled in today's "everybody gets a trophy" world.  Clarke really gets to the heart of the matter about what caused a great civilization to fall between about 7:30 and 10 minutes into his first episode.  I recommend you watch all of them ( all 13 episodes), all the way through which will make you better educated than 90% of anyone you will ever run into.

And in answer to the inevitable questions, yes I did watch this series when it was shown on PBS in the early 1970s.  Dad was a history professor and Mom was a librarian - of course they made me stay up and watch this.  And so if you have a problem with posts about events with historical interests - posts of Borepatchian length - I blame my parents.

Except they never played this, which circles back to those who think that it's time to hoist the Black Flag:

Man, Freddy Mercury and Queen were a talent for the ages, although I'd also love to hear the music that was composed by Nero.  Presumably he was also a talent for ages, but we will have to be satisfied with his final words: What a talent dies with me.  Probably he was no Freddy Mercury.

None of this is to say it's not worth fighting for the America that we knew and grew up with.  It's just to recognize that like Monte Testaccio, that may already be lost in the past.  But we should also realize that the fight - if fought - will be brutal beyond our imagination.  When Civilization falls, it falls hard and takes a long, long time to recover.  The 1200 year recovery is shown well here between 2:30 and 5:00 into the video, although (as with all of the videos here) I encourage you to watch them all.  Think of it as Borepatch University:

And so to the fall of Civilization: there have always been winners and losers, down through history:

Rome's Intelligentsia had been failing from the mid- Second Century, say around 140 A.D. The Dark Ages arrived by the Fourth Century. Certainly it seemed that way to the bulk of the population. Those who were not chattel slaves were bound to the soil as serfs by 330 A.D., by an act of Constantine. Sharecropping the huge latifundia estates, they neither knew nor cared who was running the show. An ever smaller elite, relying on a fabulously expensive bloated bureaucracy, held on by hiring barbarian mercenaries until the barbarians finally realized they were running the show in all but name. It was then but a short step, and sic transit gloria mundi.

Certainly the elites were horrified at the change. For them, it was the beginning of a Dark Age, as the skills they had carefully nurtured suddenly were seen to be worthless by the new Overlords. It's said that history is written by the winners; the history of the fall of Rome was written by the losers.

The current Intellectual Elite sound eerily similar to those ancient scribblers. A world view has run out of gas, and is looking like it will be replaced, and those at the top of Fortuna's Wheel fear that the wheel will keep spinning, and the only direction for them to go is down. The Progressive Agenda has had a 160 year run, but has not produced a truly first rate intellect since John Kenneth Galbraith, or possibly Pat Moynihan. The last 30 years have been a desert, where the interesting intellectual action has all been on the other side.

And so back to the original topic of the post, those who think that the end of America will be a cakewalk/simple/glorious.  I don't argue with the Desired End State; I'm not at all sure of what will be left when things are done. It think it might be a lot like this (although I can't understand the language, but things get particularly spicy around the 5:00 mark). [Embedding is disabled, but I strongly encourage your to watch this]

Like I said, I don't argue with the Desired End State; I'm just not at all sure of what will be left when things are done. But I do have a feeling, like one written down in the 11th Century and put to music in the 20th.  O Fortuna:

O Fortune,
like the moon
you are changeable,
ever waxing
and waning;
hateful life
first oppresses
and then soothes
as fancy takes it;
poverty
and power
it melts them like ice.

Fate – monstrous
and empty,
you whirling wheel,
you are malevolent,
well-being is vain
and always fades to nothing,
shadowed
and veiled
you plague me too;
now through the game
I bring my bare back
to your villainy.

Fate is against me
in health
and virtue,
driven on
and weighted down,
always enslaved.
So at this hour
without delay
pluck the vibrating strings;
since Fate
strikes down the strong man,
everyone weep with me!

Fortuna's Wheel has winners and losers.  We shall all of us have to choose when we think we have more to win from another spin of the wheel.  Just understand that while you might win, others might lose.  Your calculus should consider who they are and whether fate should pluck their vibrating string.

Because when Civilization collapses, it falls hard.  I posted before about the Fayum Mummy Portraits from the Roman Empire and how portrait painting was a thriving (and stunningly competent) part of their civilization.  Then that civilization fell and it took a millennium to recover.

My opinion is that this was the greatest portrait (that we know of) for 1500 years, faded by 1900 years.  It dates from around the reign of Emperor Claudius, or possibly Nero.

And then it was gone, as if it had never been.

In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:—
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
"The wonders of my hand."— The City's gone,—
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.

We wonder,—and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

- Horace Smith, "Ozymandias"

May God Bless this Republic.  We will need it.

The looting of the Middle Class

The Pandemic has been particularly useful to the Powers That Be:

This is what the COVID hysteria is all about. Without this, we would all be allowed to know that COVID is a mild respiratory disease that is only dangerous to the very old and the very sick. This is why we are being lied to and locked up:

Amazon: profit up 100%
Walmart: profit up 80%
Target: profit up 80%
Lowe’s: profit up 74%
Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, Google: stock at record high

Wealth increase in the pandemic for founder/CEOs of
Amazon: $91 billion
Walmart: $38B
Google: $37B
Microsoft: $33B
Facebook: $28B
Nike: $8B
Apple: $8B

Small businesses: collectively lost over $200 billion

We’re witnessing a record wealth transfer

https://twitter.com/DanPriceSeattle/status/1329277596685709315?s=19

(via)

Ten years ago I wrote that the Tea Party is a Marxian response to the looting of the Middle Class:

The deal that Progressives made in the 1930s - the economy would provide a surplus that the government would use to buy social peace - is shattered, as the government finds that it has consumed the entire surplus, and is still hungry for more. The median family is worse off now then they were ten years ago, because they pay more taxes and make about the same. Government at all levels is squeezing the majority of the population at an increasing rate, taking a higher share of National Income, with no end in sight.

Now I'm sure that I could do a better job with the numbers (say, another 15% accuracy), but the trajectory is unmistakable, and is one that Marx clearly understood:

Within the capitalist Progressive State system all methods for raising the social productivity of labour taxes are put into effect at the cost of the individual worker [...] All means for the development of production raising of tax revenue undergo a dialectical inversion so that they become a means of domination and exploitation of the producers; they distort the worker into a fragment of a man, they degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, they destroy the actual content of his labour by turning it into a torment, they alienate from him the intellectual potentialities of the labour process [...], they transform his life into working-time, and his wife and child beneath the wheels of the juggernaut of capital The State. [...] It follows therefore that in proportion as capital accumulates, the situation of the worker, be his payment high or low, must grow worse.

- Karl Marx, Das Kapital

My changes are highlighted.

The only thing to add is that Donald Trump was a symptom, not a cause.  Accelerating the immiseration of the Proletariat using Covid hysteria will lead to a very clear outcome, historically speaking.  It will come faster with the collapse of legitimacy we are seeing in the Organs of the State.

I would think that a bunch of Marxist Intellectuals would understand this, but maybe they're too busy looting their political opponents to notice.

Kenny Chesney - All I Want for Christmas Is a Real Good Tan

It still feels a little odd for the days to be sunny and in the 70s in the Christmas season.  This song captures that feeling.

And the tree in the yard is a little untraditional for Christmas lights.  But it's still fun.

The Queen Of The World wanted a "Corona Light Christmas Palm Tree".  It came out pretty good.

Canned Heat - Christmas Blues

Who knew they had a Christmas album?

 

The dog that hasn't barked

With all the discussion of free and fair elections (or lack of same), I find it odd that one particular quote has not been seen lately.  It is from Judge Alex Kozinski, in his dissent to the denial to hear Siveria v. Lockyer en banc: 

The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed - where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.

With credible accusations of widespread fraud - more than enough to change the outcome of an election, and with the Courts seemingly unwilling to step in to guarantee a public and transparent audit and investigation, this seems to me to be more pertinent than ever.

Michael Buble and Thalia - Feliz Navidad

This is just fun.

Color film of the Day of Infamy

TSG Harold Oberg was stationed at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.  He had an 8mm movie camera with color film loaded when the Japanese attacked.  He got color on-the-spot film of the day.

I must say that color film gives a completely different feel to the day. 

Me too, Bacon

 

Stolen from Chris Lynch.

Pentatonix - That’s Christmas To Me

I guess I'm officially an old fart.  Pentatonix is a very talented young group who specialize in a cappella music - in my opinion the least forgiving type of music you can perform.  With a backup band there's something playing that can ground you in tune; when it's a cappella it's just you and the audience.  Like I said, this is a seriously talented young group of singers.

And yet I don't get the fashion sense of these youngsters.  I guess that's OK - I'm certainly as old as their dads, and perhaps not too far behind some of their granddads.

Ah, well, this is very nice music, and the home Christmas videos of when they were small children is very well done indeed.

Oof

Down here in Florida we have a neighbor, Joe.  Joe (like me) is from Maine.  Unlike me, Joe is a 20+ year Marine Corps veteran.  Also unlike me, Joe is in his 80s and is getting a little fragile, although he won't ever admit it.

Well last week I was chatting with him in front of his house.  I remarked that the bottom step of his stairs was looking a little worse for wear.  He insisted it was fine, but a closer inspection showed that the stair tread was rotting.  After all, it was 20 something years old.  I told Joe that I'd fix it over the weekend.

And so yesterday I went to Big Box Hardware Store to get 2x12 and assorted stuff.  I cut it to length and painted it (didn't want to put an outdoor stair down unpainted on the underneath, even if it was out of sight.  Especially if it was out of sight ...).  Then I pulled up the old plank.

Damn if the whole thing wasn't rotten, especially the support planks.  Back to Big Box Hardware Store, and lots of cutting of 2x4.  And painting.  And clearing out the old stuff, down to (yay!) concrete.  Then building the support box, then putting the tread on.  Rock solid; yay, me!

And then painting.  And the new step looked so good - and the old steps looked so weathered) that I painted the whole thing again.  Puff, puff, puff.

But Joe's front steps look good now, and I don't worry about his (or Mrs. Joe) stepping onto a rotten board and falling down.  So mission accomplished.  And an ibuprofen cocktail was just what the Doctor ordered.

It's interesting here in Florida.  There are a lot of older folks, and people pitch in to look after each other.  We like it here rather a lot.

John Williams - Somewhere In My Memory (from Home Alone)

I often say that classical music is alive and well, it's just decamped from the symphony hall to the movie theater.  Today's composition from the soundtrack to the 1990 film Home Alone was nominated not only for The Best Original Song Oscar, but also for a Grammy.  John Williams needs no introduction - for those of you who have never heard his music, go watch Star Wars for cryin' out loud.

The Queen Of The World not only suggested doing film scores for the Sunday Classical posts, but suggested this song in particular.  She's not just a pretty face, but wicket smart as well.

Elmo & Patsy - Grandma Got Run over by a Reindeer

This Christmas song is iconic.  Surveys of listeners on which songs they like and which they dislike find this song at the top of both lists.  Leave a comment about whether you love it or hate it.  

This is a staple of the season - Cartoon Network annually runs the animated version of this, and if you're adventurous on Youtube you can find the Irish Rovers cover which is 100% pure distilled awesome.

 Grandma Got Run over by a Reindeer (Songwriter: Randy Brooks)

Grandma got run over by a reindeer
Walking home from our house Christmas eve
You can say there's no such thing as Santa
But as for me and grandpa we believe
She'd been drinking too much eggnog
And we begged her not to go
But she forgot her medication
And she staggered out the door into the snow
When we found her Christmas morning
At the scene of the attack
She had hoof-prints on her forehead
And incriminating Claus marks on her back

Grandma got run over by a reindeer
Walking home from our house Christmas eve
You can say there's no such thing as Santa
But as for me and grandpa we believe

Now we're all so proud of grandpa
He's been taking this so well
See him in there watching football
Drinking beer and playing cards with cousin Mel
It's not Christmas without Grandma
All the family's dressed in black
And we just can't help but wonder
Should we open up her gifts
Or send them back (send them back)

Grandma got run over by a reindeer
Walking home from our house Christmas eve
You can say there's no such thing as Santa
But as for me and grandpa we believe

Now the goose is on the table
And the pudding made of fig
And the blue and silver candles
That would just have matched the hair on grandma's wig
I've warned all my friends and neighbors
Better watch out for yourselves
They should never give a license
To a man who drives a sleigh
And plays with elves

Grandma got run over by a reindeer
Walking home from our house Christmas eve
You can say there's no such thing as Santa
But as for me and grandpa we believe

Grandma got run over by a reindeer
Walking home from our house Christmas eve
You can say there's no such thing as Santa
But as for me and grandpa we believe

Want

 Seen at Glen Filthie's place.  Maybe this is Tim Wolter's new deer rifle?

It needs the Shoulder Thing That Goes Up, though.

Valerie Giscard d'Estang est mort

Dwight has the obit.

He outlived his great rival, Jacques Chirac by 14 months.  The two made an interesting contrast, embodying different aspects of the French character.  Giscard - aristocratic, aloof, and cerebral - took the reins of power from Charles de Gaulle and his successor Georges Pompidou.  Coming hard on the heels of les trentes glorieuses (the 30 years of rapid economic growth), everything looked possible.  Giscard led the EU project, and even wrote a constitution for that organization which looked (in 1990) to become a super-state.  The inability to think oneself into a new world is very French.

Chirac was more modest, in intellectual ambition if nothing less.  Much, much more personable, I wrote this on his death which captures another side of the French character:

This is what I remember, as it captured the essence of the Franco-American relationship at the time.  The playful scoundrel that you can't quite bring yourself to get mad at, and the long suffering friend who at the end of the day doesn't get mad at the scoundrel.

 

Both were allies to American administrations; both drove each of those administrations to distraction.  That, too, is very French.

Rest in Peace 

The Piano Guys - I saw Three Ships

 To 500,000 (!) musically-synchronized lights ...

You really need to watch this in full screen.

From the notes about how they made it:

This was really filmed in the middle of the night, as you may have guessed.
500,000 Christmas lights “starred” in this display (that’s a half-million, people!!)
4,900 digital channels were utilized to ensure that the entire spectrum of the piano’s keyboard was featured brilliantly.
46,000 watts of juice were pumped to electrify this pizazz!
A camera attached to a drone served as the primary angle to capture the captivating Christmas Spirit of these festive homes.
The piano was actually being played.
The police actually did show up. For real. (We’d like to thank them for their kindness and mercy. 
No pianists were harmed or jailed in the making of this video.

I love this.  Go ahead - turn it up and bother the neighbors!

The Carpenters - (There's No Place Like) Home for the Holidays

Perry Como had perhaps the biggest hit singing this but The Carpenters version is my favorite.  Her death is one of the great tragedies of the music world.

 

The end of Progress

I always find it funny when Liberals shy away from that term, proudly calling themselves "Progressive".  I mean, who is opposed to progress?  Alas, there's a difference between progress and Progress (at least as defined by Progressives).

Expect a new re-branding from them, because Progress has screeched to a halt:

It’s a very familiar landscape of ideas to anyone who knows modern history.  Abolition of private property?  Check.  Constant intrusive surveillance?  Check.  Everyone’s personal lives dependent on the actions of cadres of apparatchiks?  Check.  Fawning propaganda about how wonderful life is in the worker’s paradise?  Check. That is to say, when the World Economic Forum set out to imagine a new, exciting, cutting-edge future as a goal for humanity, the very best that they and their pet Danish politician could do is reinvent the Soviet Union.

That colossal failure of imagination, in turn, marks a historical inflection point of immense importance.

Over the decade and a half since I first started posting essays on the internet, one subject I’ve discussed repeatedly is the civil religion of progress:  the belief system, as passionately held as any more obviously theological faith, that newer always means better and change is always good, that the ideas of the past have been disproved and the practices of the past rendered obsolete by the mere passage of time, and that history follows an inevitable trajectory from the ignorant squalor of the past to a shining gizmocentric future somewhere out there among the stars. That belief is the established religion of our society.  Those who have the indepence of mind to reject it can count on facing the same sort of baffled rage you’ll reliably get by asking true believers hard questions about any other variety of blind faith.

What makes that baffled rage so pervasive these days is that progress hasn’t exactly lived up to its billing in recent decades.

This is a long but very important post by the blogger who used to post as the Archdruid.  Here, he shows just how pathetically out of gas the Left's propaganda is.  Highly, highly recommended.  And his summing up is 100% spot on:

The Great Reset is being marketed by a gallimaufry of politicians, plutocrats, and tame intellectuals:  some of the most cosseted people on earth, sheltered in a cozy bubble of privilege that keeps them safe from any untoward encounter with the harsh realities of life.  Not for them the world the rest of us have to deal with—the bleak and violent urban neighborhoods, the grinding poverty of the countryside, the cracked and crumbling highways and bridges, the stealth inflation of shrinking product sizes and plummeting product quality!  Flitting from gated residential communities or high-end condos to office towers to exclusive vacation resorts, they aren’t the Lenins of today’s world—they’re the Brezhnevs, the Andropovs, and the Chernenkos.  They represent the end of an era, not its beginning.

The broad public reaction to the Great Reset, in turn, is a good measure of just how tone-deaf today’s corporate aristocracy has become. Across the political spectrum from far right to center to far left, people are regarding the prospect of being dependent on the vagaries of a vast and unaccountable corporate technostructure for their next change of underwear and their next day’s meals with the anger and mockery that it so richly deserves.

This brings some perspective to the election that the Left is trying to steal.  It's these same people - the ones who are on the Wrong Side of History, who are trying to reset the propaganda clocks by 100 years - these are the people who think they can ram this down our throats?  It is to laugh.  They may be successful in the short term, but in the long term they will end up on the ash heap of history.

Quite frankly, that's the best case they can hope for.