Some links may be affiliate links. I may earn money if you buy something or take an action after clicking one of these links on this site.
Rob Knowlan is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
The Heat Is On
🎼 Tell me, can you feel it? 🎶 Okay, yeah, I’m feeling a bit nostalgic today.
Glenn Frey – The Heat Is On (From “Beverly Hills Cop” Soundtrack)
Optimism
Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘Nice doggie‘ until you can find a rock. ~Will Rogers
Back in my day…
The big existential threat was East ☭ vs West 🇺🇸, Communism ☭ vs Freedom 🇺🇸, Them ☭ vs Us 🇺🇸. In the end, Us 🇺🇸 won.
The Berlin Wall fell.
The Iron Curtain fell.
The Evil Empire fell.
We thought that was absolutely awesome and the world could finally take a deep breath and move the hell on with life.
Unfortunately, not all of Us 🇺🇸 thought that was so awesome.
Some of Us 🇺🇸 were actually Them ☭ or possibly Them 🇨🇳.
Suddenly, some of Us 🇺🇸 decided we were going to turn on Them 🇷🇺 for betraying the Revolution and begin a little ☭ revolution of our own. They ☭ have been infiltrating institutions of education, information, entertainment and even the government since before I was born.
It was a long con and they’ve been biding their time. I think they were expecting the Soviets to win and were poised to capitulate when things seemed sufficiently grim. Unfortunately for them, the Soviets lost and they had to jump to Plan B.
Indoctrinating a couple of generations of otherwise decent people to believe that Socialism is a good thing took a few decades to accomplish while they distracted us with wars in the ever-turbulent Middle East.
For some reason, they decided to accelerate the process recently. No longer content to wait for the assumption that everything would simply slide into “Scandinavian-style Socialism”, they figured they could simply rerun the Cultural Revolution that swept Mao to power in the People’s Republic of China 🇨🇳.
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative. ~Oscar Wilde
There are a couple of serious flaws to this approach.
They seem to think that because it worked before, that the outcome is somehow inevitable. Nothing could be farther from the truth. When you realize you’re watching a rerun, you have the choice to change the channel. I mean, it’s not even a variation on the theme. They are literally trying to replay Mao’s Cultural Revolution step by step.
Thing is, since we know how that turned out we can elect not to participate in it. We can retcon the Cultural Revolution and turn it on its head entirely, but we need to be willing to actually take action. That’s where the problem lies today. People are afraid to take action because the revolutionaries are so incredibly violent and they swarm over scattered opposition like a plague of rats.
As such, we need to have a determined and organized opposition rather than smatterings of individuals trying to defend tiny parcels of personal autonomy in a rampaging riot. Individual store owners are being beaten and even killed in the streets simply trying to defend their businesses from raving mobs.
Where the hell are the police? They’re hamstrung by the despicable mayors of these chaotic cities.
Where the hell are the National Guard? They’re not being called out by the despicable governors of these Blue states.
Where the hell is law and order? It’s being undermined by Them ☭ at every level of government as well as in the mass media and on social media.
If you don’t stand for virulent racism disguised as “social justice”,
you’re a bigot and you’ll be doxed for special attention by your own personal mob of property-damaging, life-threatening loony goons.
If you don’t stand for chaos disguised as “That’s how they choose to live. 10th Amendment, dude!“,
you’re a reactionary and you’ll be dismissed as a throwback.
If you don’t stand for social engineering disguised as “science”,
you’re a threat to your fellow man and you’ll be ostracized and possibly fined or jailed.
Frankly, I don’t go for that…
Americans are some of the most decent, fair-minded people on the face of the planet. We all want to mind our own business and get on with our lives.
We have no idea who these human cockroaches are who are flooding our streets, toppling our monuments and burning our businesses. That’s not the America we know. Who the hell are these malcontents and why can’t someone take decisive action to put them back in their wretched hives?
We don’t always get along. There’s road rage and cyberbullying. There’s always some kind of friction between special interest groups. That’s just human nature.
By and large, Americans get along just fine.
So, why the chaos?
Because it benefits the people who had planned to sell us out to the Soviets prior to the demise of that endeavor. People believe they are profiting from the misery of others. It was a big part of Soviet leadership.
George Orwell hit on this when he had the pigs of Animal Farm declare that “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” We’ve been suffering a two-tiered justice system for decades already. Politicians and their cronies seem to get away with the worst sort of crimes on a regular basis.
Now we have these raving lunatics flooding the streets with absolutely no repercussions to their misdeeds. When the hell will it end?
Honestly, a lot of us think it will end after Election Day.
We can all see it’s a jaded and ridiculous game for the privileged assholes who have enjoyed qualified immunity for decades. They’ve got their little shock troops out torching everything and causing a ruckus. If they win, the loons will declare victory and society will go down the tubes like Venezuela. If they lose, the loons will double down and cause even more of a ruckus until society goes down the tubes like Yugoslavia in the 90s.
Either way, we lose.
Except…
We know what’s going on. We have the ability to turn the channel. We can put an end to this farce and show the players for what they are.
All the rioters need to get severely spanked. They should be fined in proportion to the damage they’ve caused and be sentenced to community service scrubbing the paint off of everything they’ve ruined.
🏆 That’s their goddamned participation trophy! 🏆
All the top-level conspirators need to be charged to the full extent of the law for trying to subvert and overthrow our form of government. That is treason and should be treated as such.
To say I’d like to see a forest of the impaled would be an understatement. Every single member of the legislative, executive and judicial branch who has breached their oath to uphold and defend the Constitution should be mounted on a sharpened pole with a camera of their own so we can watch them suffer and die for their infamy.
Cruel and unusual punishment? Maybe. Fitting and proportional to the crime they’re perpetrating on this country and the world at large? Absolutely.
Life sentences, solitary confinement, executions? Way, way, way too lenient for those who are committing this atrocity. They should die as painfully, slowly and publicly as entirely possible.
Does that seem extreme?
Maybe it is, but it’s actually no worse than what they have in mind for the rest of us. How much more horrible would it be to have the maniacs from BLM or Antifa come to attack you at your house?
Fortunately, I’m not in charge.
☢️ I’d have nuked Portland by now. ☢️
The most important takeaway here is that we know what’s going on. They may be insidious but they’re not particularly original or creative. If you take a look at the stuff that’s been coming out of Hollywood for the last couple of decades, it’s all rehashed nonsense.
They figure that since it worked once, it will work all the time. They’re reasonably justified in believing it. People did go to the movies even if they were basically remakes of other movies or knock-offs of a popular trope. When it’s the only thing on the shelf, people will probably wind up eating it.
In the meantime, there are so very many creators who actually have original ideas. We’ve seen a renaissance of creativity sprouting around the fringes of established entertainment. Once the bad actors are taken out of action, these innovators will have a bigger opportunity to share their genius with the world.
Things look bad. Times look dark, but it’s always darkest before the dawn.
I cannot believe that we will let ourselves get flushed down the hopper of history over a cheap repeat of the Chinese Revolution. That’s not an export we can really afford to bring to market.
I am, by nature, an optimistic person.
I believed that as the Nuclear Clock ticked down to Mutually Assured Destruction in the 80s, we’d be able to stop the clock just like MacGyver always did. I still believe that today.
We know how this story turns out but we’ve got the remote. We can change the channel. We can run up on the stage and put duck tape on the mouths of the actors. We can stop the farce and restore order.
I truly believe that we can and will.
Flowers grow out of dark moments. ~Corita Kent
I certainly know that we had better do so and soon…
The Problem With Superheroes
The Problem With The Flash TV Show | Comics Explained
I can’t say I entirely disagree with his assessment. The superhero genre is somewhat formulaic and the Arrowverse series have been subject to a bit of predictability.
You’ve got the “Big Bad of the Season”. You’ve got dire consequences if (s)he is not thwarted ASAP. Of course, you’ve got a whole season of TV to cover, so ASAP is obviously too soon.
But honestly, how is it that you always wind up with a single big bad? What about a couple of mini-arcs where you take out one big bad and another jumps in to fill the void until that one gets clocked and the first one escapes jail again? You know, like the comics?
It’s okay to have long arcs that span multiple seasons and it’s okay to have mini-arcs that are resolved within the season. Life doesn’t actually go in clean cycles of bad guy, beat, next bad guy, beat, next bad guy… People come and go. They have their little agendas and their big life goals like anyone else.
I found myself falling into this trap while planning my own series.
Michael Finnegan
There was an old man named Michael Finnegan
He had whiskers on his chin-ne-gan
The wind blew them off and blew them on again
Poor old Michael Finnegan, Begin Again ~Children’s Song: Michael Finnegan
To my wife’s horror and my own chagrin, I’ve started The Sentinels again, again, again.
It’s definitely an iterative process, but each pass makes the overall story that much better. I’m struggling with some of the details but not nearly as much as I’m struggling with my personal issues.
OMFG!
I am so tired all the damned time! I can’t concentrate worth a darn and whenever I have a moment of clarity, I’m usually required to go on some extraneous errand.
It’s utterly maddening.
And the pain? Good God! Everything freaking hurts.
So, it’s just not getting done. I’m not being as productive as I need to be and it’s really frustrating.
I’ve had some excellent writing sprints recently, but I’m just not able to be as consistent as I need to be to get the darned thing done. There’s something distracting me at a very deep level. Even beyond the pain, fatigue and societal upheaval, there’s just something really dragging at me that I haven’t gotten a handle on yet.
I need to get it figured out and addressed because it’s really driving me bonkers and it’s utterly killing my chances of publishing this series any time before I croak.
The Wiggles – Michael Finnegan
Well, there are some intemperate thoughts to start your week. You’re welcome. Ours is looking to be a bit of a scorcher but I hope you have a lovely last week of July.