Swift&silent
Active member
Posted this. I thought it was a nice piece and I figure I would share it with you all
I've had a bellyful.
Not all that many years ago, when we considered ourselves to be one nation, whether under God or not, we all talked, argued, and voted for whatever candidates (plural, it's more than just a president) that we liked, and after the election, whether we voted for the winner or not, we all went back to being one country. While we may have disagreed with official policy and grumbled about it, we were one country; U.S. citizens first, everything else second. The President was Mr. President, or President So & So, not that f****** idiot. The "Loyal Opposition" may have been considered misguided by their opponents, but weren't automatically classified as, and publicly called, morons and fools. And whichever party lost, both they and their fans ALL accepted the first tenet of either a republic (which we are) or a democracy (which we are not), that whether you like the results of any given election, you honored the results of the majority opinion, accepted the "will of the people", and moved on with your lives, until the NEXT election gave you the opportunity to present YOUR views again. And if you had something to complain about, you'd darn well better have something substantial to back it up. And unless you wanted condemnation from BOTH sides, it had better be presented logically and respectfully.
Not so today. Today Hollywood bigmouths threaten to move to another country if their favorite candidate doesn't win. (None of them do. Empty threats from empty headed overaged children throwing temper tantrums.) Losers in the election, instead of trying to unite the country and move on, promise 4 more years of tantrums and screaming, in a misguided belief that loud makes right, and if they just scream loud and long enough, the fools, idiots, and morons on the other side will all come to see things THEIR way. The ONLY way. Democrats are always complaining of intolerance, and accusing Republicans, or ANY form of conservatives, of being intolerant. Yet most (not all; no large group is homogenous) conservatives play by the rules. When & where they lose, they accept it and go about their business. They don't threaten to move to Ireland or Canada, they don't scrape up absurd lies and distortions and scream about them, and they don't plan a long term rebellion, such as is common in banana republics around the world. The level of the debate seldom rises above the level of a bunch of third graders squabbling at recess.
When I was born, Harry Truman was president. Another plain-spoken commoner, with no pedigree and no impressive resume. He had been a hat salesman in Missouri. He inherited the position when Roosevelt died during WWII. Ridiculed by the snobs, he turned out to be a fairly good president, and was re-elected on his own merit. Our system is DESIGNED to not depend on any one man, even the man in the Oval Office. I've lived through 11 presidents, some good, some bad, two wars that cost us over 50,000 dead, EACH, the Cuban Missile Crisis which brought us closer to complete world annihilation and fimbulwinter than anything we're likely to see today, and a bunch of smaller skirmishes. And NONE of that threatened our country the way our own divisiveness is doing today. Great powers are generally not conquered from outside, they rot from within. And we're rotting.
We have a cultural war going on here at home. Everything that made us what we ARE today is under fire. The principles and values that made us what we are today are being ridiculed and sneered at by a bunch of crybabies that have very little foundation in reality, and no understanding of history. Our own, or anybody else's. The further we stray from those principles, the weaker we become, the less civilized we become, and the more we tear at each other, the less respect we have abroad. While you're gleefully telling us that our president is a moron, you're also telling that to both our supposed allies in Europe and elsewhere, and you're telling that to our enemies. Gives them great hope that if they hit us hard enough, long enough, we'll simply fall apart and go home. That plan worked in Viet Nam. The leading North Vietnamese general that fought us over there, in his autobiography, stated that they were losing the war, badly, and would have admitted defeat and gone home, except for the unrest here at home, and their hopes and efforts to sap our WILL. It worked. We pulled out, and the Communist "allies" of Jane Fonda and John Kerry rolled into Saigon and wallowed in a bloodbath that killed 2.5 million people over there. Our press and current historians try hard to ignore that little episode. And they ignore the very real likelihood of a similar bloody result if we abandon Iraq early, without getting rid of the real threats that THEY face.
So thank you, left-wing loudmouths. Your leaders solemnly tell us we've got to remember the lessons of Viet Nam, implying that we'll get bogged down and beaten. They don't have a CLUE what the real lessons are from Viet Nam. The real lesson is that an enemy can cozy up with the clueless disgruntled narcissist Left, get them to act as a fifth column and undermine our efforts, and win it HERE, since they're not strong enough to win it directly. They didn't learn the lessons from the first Raid over Tokyo, Normandy, or Guadalcanal, or the Inchon Reservoir either. They were too busy studying world culture, and creating "angry white men" in place of the brilliant thinkers that shaped our country, and how the rest of the world did things to pay attention to what WORKED.
No world power lasts forever. When, not if, ours comes apart, it won't be from outside forces. It will be from the rot and the squabbling within. From the loss of a moral compass, the loss of our history and our heritage, and the loss of respect for each other. I had some, although not much, hope that after this election, with a clear majority, few beefs about "stealing the election", since it was watched much more closely than any in our history, that we'd make some effort to return to trying to work together. Fat chance. Squabble on, fifth column.
I've had a bellyful.
Not all that many years ago, when we considered ourselves to be one nation, whether under God or not, we all talked, argued, and voted for whatever candidates (plural, it's more than just a president) that we liked, and after the election, whether we voted for the winner or not, we all went back to being one country. While we may have disagreed with official policy and grumbled about it, we were one country; U.S. citizens first, everything else second. The President was Mr. President, or President So & So, not that f****** idiot. The "Loyal Opposition" may have been considered misguided by their opponents, but weren't automatically classified as, and publicly called, morons and fools. And whichever party lost, both they and their fans ALL accepted the first tenet of either a republic (which we are) or a democracy (which we are not), that whether you like the results of any given election, you honored the results of the majority opinion, accepted the "will of the people", and moved on with your lives, until the NEXT election gave you the opportunity to present YOUR views again. And if you had something to complain about, you'd darn well better have something substantial to back it up. And unless you wanted condemnation from BOTH sides, it had better be presented logically and respectfully.
Not so today. Today Hollywood bigmouths threaten to move to another country if their favorite candidate doesn't win. (None of them do. Empty threats from empty headed overaged children throwing temper tantrums.) Losers in the election, instead of trying to unite the country and move on, promise 4 more years of tantrums and screaming, in a misguided belief that loud makes right, and if they just scream loud and long enough, the fools, idiots, and morons on the other side will all come to see things THEIR way. The ONLY way. Democrats are always complaining of intolerance, and accusing Republicans, or ANY form of conservatives, of being intolerant. Yet most (not all; no large group is homogenous) conservatives play by the rules. When & where they lose, they accept it and go about their business. They don't threaten to move to Ireland or Canada, they don't scrape up absurd lies and distortions and scream about them, and they don't plan a long term rebellion, such as is common in banana republics around the world. The level of the debate seldom rises above the level of a bunch of third graders squabbling at recess.
When I was born, Harry Truman was president. Another plain-spoken commoner, with no pedigree and no impressive resume. He had been a hat salesman in Missouri. He inherited the position when Roosevelt died during WWII. Ridiculed by the snobs, he turned out to be a fairly good president, and was re-elected on his own merit. Our system is DESIGNED to not depend on any one man, even the man in the Oval Office. I've lived through 11 presidents, some good, some bad, two wars that cost us over 50,000 dead, EACH, the Cuban Missile Crisis which brought us closer to complete world annihilation and fimbulwinter than anything we're likely to see today, and a bunch of smaller skirmishes. And NONE of that threatened our country the way our own divisiveness is doing today. Great powers are generally not conquered from outside, they rot from within. And we're rotting.
We have a cultural war going on here at home. Everything that made us what we ARE today is under fire. The principles and values that made us what we are today are being ridiculed and sneered at by a bunch of crybabies that have very little foundation in reality, and no understanding of history. Our own, or anybody else's. The further we stray from those principles, the weaker we become, the less civilized we become, and the more we tear at each other, the less respect we have abroad. While you're gleefully telling us that our president is a moron, you're also telling that to both our supposed allies in Europe and elsewhere, and you're telling that to our enemies. Gives them great hope that if they hit us hard enough, long enough, we'll simply fall apart and go home. That plan worked in Viet Nam. The leading North Vietnamese general that fought us over there, in his autobiography, stated that they were losing the war, badly, and would have admitted defeat and gone home, except for the unrest here at home, and their hopes and efforts to sap our WILL. It worked. We pulled out, and the Communist "allies" of Jane Fonda and John Kerry rolled into Saigon and wallowed in a bloodbath that killed 2.5 million people over there. Our press and current historians try hard to ignore that little episode. And they ignore the very real likelihood of a similar bloody result if we abandon Iraq early, without getting rid of the real threats that THEY face.
So thank you, left-wing loudmouths. Your leaders solemnly tell us we've got to remember the lessons of Viet Nam, implying that we'll get bogged down and beaten. They don't have a CLUE what the real lessons are from Viet Nam. The real lesson is that an enemy can cozy up with the clueless disgruntled narcissist Left, get them to act as a fifth column and undermine our efforts, and win it HERE, since they're not strong enough to win it directly. They didn't learn the lessons from the first Raid over Tokyo, Normandy, or Guadalcanal, or the Inchon Reservoir either. They were too busy studying world culture, and creating "angry white men" in place of the brilliant thinkers that shaped our country, and how the rest of the world did things to pay attention to what WORKED.
No world power lasts forever. When, not if, ours comes apart, it won't be from outside forces. It will be from the rot and the squabbling within. From the loss of a moral compass, the loss of our history and our heritage, and the loss of respect for each other. I had some, although not much, hope that after this election, with a clear majority, few beefs about "stealing the election", since it was watched much more closely than any in our history, that we'd make some effort to return to trying to work together. Fat chance. Squabble on, fifth column.