Month: July 2019

Lazy Sunday XIX: Music

The Portly Politico59 Comments

While I’m all about politics here at The Portly Politico, I also possess the tender heart of a sensitive warrior-poet.  Music is a major part of my personal and professional lives (if you want to learn more, check out my website, or listen to and buy some tracks on my Bandcamp page), so it’s not surprising that I’ve written about it from time to time on this blog.

In that spirit, here are some scribblings about music:

  • “The Bull on the Roof” –  I wrote this piece on my phone while watching my nearly-four-year old niece play.  It was about a charming symphonic composition I heard while driving to visit family.  The titular work is from a French composer, but draws from popular Brazilian music of the early twentieth century.
  • “Ocarina of Time Soundtrack Review” – The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is a classic entry in the storied video game franchise.  But no LoZ game is complete without a signature soundtrack from famed Nintendo composer Koji Kondo.  This piece is really a review of a review about the game and its legendary soundtrack.
  • “Right-Wing Rockers” – This post was inspired by some reading into the right-wing-ish politics of some major rockers from the classic rock era—and, no, not just Motor City Madman Ted Nugent.  It even includes a recording of an Iggy Pop song about being a conservative!
  • “TBT: Music is for Everyone” – This post dates back to the TPP 2.0 era of 2016.  I posted about President Trump’s amazing entrance to the strains of Queen’s “We Are the Champions” at the Republican National Convention, and a “bitter progressive” snarkily posted in response about how it was ironic that Trump was entering to a song sung by a gay man.  Yeesh.  Trump has never been against same-sex marriage, for one thing; more importantly, you can appreciate music and other forms of art even if you don’t endorse every lifestyle choice of the artist.  That should go without saying, but this is the world we live in now.
  • “TBT: Conservatives and Country Music” – I really like classic rock; I’m not a big fan of country.  This post goes all the way back to the TPP 1.0 era of 2009, so it’s an interesting look at what I thought about these topics a decade ago.  The piece was an early look at the cultural divide to come:  how even genres of music have become implicitly politicized to signal support for or against one ideology or another.  I bemoaned the fact that progressives got rock ‘n’ roll, and we got stuck with country.

Happy Sunday!

–TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

SubscribeStar Saturday: Controlling Spending

The Portly Politico5 Comments

Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

It’s been a crazy week, with President Trump successfully maneuvering the ultra-progressive “Squad” of Congresswomen Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley as the faces of the entire Democratic Party.

Lost in the shuffle—indeed, what seems to be an afterthought for most politicians and Americans now—is excessive government spending.  Virtually all of the major Democratic candidates for president in 2020 endorse policies like Medicare for All that would balloon an already-engorged federal deficit (around $22 trillion, I believe).  President Trump, for all of his successes with deregulation and trimming bureaucratic fat, has not done much to cut the budget substantially—indeed, he didn’t even campaign on cutting entitlement spending.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

Don’t Let Anymore In

The Portly Politico6 Comments

The world has been on fire this week because—in the absence of any real news—President Trump said something on Twitter that’s funny.

The hand-wringing over President Trump’s tweet about “‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen” returning to their home countries to fix them up has had the Left and the Right scurrying to condemn the president.  Ben Shapiro, whose podcast I quite enjoy, dedicated an entire hour to excoriating the president over the Tweet, and another hour to analyze it further.

Shapiro is wrong on this one, and more than a tad disingenuous, which is unusual for him.  He claims that President Trump tweeted that these women should be “sent back” to their countries of origin—which, as far as I can tell, he never said or wrote!  When a crowd at a rally in North Carolina began chanting “Send Her Back!” after the president ran down a litany of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s anti-American, anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist, pro-Islamist statements, that seemed to exacerbate things, the president quickly stated that he did not like or agree with the chant.

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TBT: 101 Postmatians – 101st Consecutive Daily Post!

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Today’s post marks the 200th day of daily posts on the blog.  I never intended to make the blog a daily deal, but once I realized that WordPress tracks consecutive daily posts, I challenged myself to try for a month, the month of January 2019.

From there, it just kept going—as I explain below.  It hasn’t always been easy, and lately I think I’ve been stretching a bit for material, especially as we’ve hit the summer news slump.  Ironically, I’ve had less time to write this summer than I had during the school year, which seems impossible to me.  Go figure.

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Rudyard Kipling’s “The Mother Hive”

The Portly Politico11 Comments

To start yesterday’s History of Conservative Thought class, I had students skim through Rudyard Kipling’s 1908 short story “The Mother Hive.”  I stumbled upon the reading in our class text, Russell Kirk’s The Portable Conservative Reader.

It is a grim little fable that warns about the perils of progressivism infiltrating a proud but weakened nation.  In the story, a deadly wax-moth sneaks into a large but bedraggled beehive during a moment of confusion.  She quickly steals away to the cell of the youngest bees, who have yet to take their first flight.  There, she fills their impressionable heads with gentle words and promises of a glorious future, all while covertly laying her eggs.

One young bee, Melissa, who has just returned from her first flight, is suspicious of the beautiful stranger’s soothing words, but the wax-moth plays the victim and insists that she’s only spreading her “principles,” not the eggs of her hungry future children.

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Ocarina of Time Soundtrack Review

The Portly Politico1 Comment

While I was up in New Jersey—I’m mentioning that about as frequently as Ben Shapiro mentioning that his wife is a doctor—my older brother sent me a review of the original soundtrack for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.  I highly recommend you check out both the review and the soundtrack.

Ocarina of Time was the major Legend of Zelda release for the Nintendo 64 (N64), and it was an instant classic.  It’s also a testament to the strength of its soundtrack that I never really appreciated how different composer Koji Kondo‘s pieces were for the game.

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Lazy Sunday XVIII: SubscribeStar Posts

The Portly Politico59 Comments

For the past few weeks I’ve been pushing my SubscribeStar page more regularly, as readers have no-doubt noticed.  I’ve picked up one subscriber; naturally, I hope more will sign up!

Here’s the pitch:  I post a new, original essay exclusively to my SubscribeStar page every Saturday.  I also made #MAGAWeek2019 a SubscribeStar exclusive—that’s four posts about people or ideas that made America great (this year’s list:  John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, President Trump’s Independence Day Speech, and fast food).  For just $1/month, you get access to these essays.

To put that in perspective:  I’ll probably buy a pizza today for $12.  That’s what a one-year subscription to my SubscribeStar page will cost.  That’s at least fifty-two (52) original pieces, not including bonus content and current and future posts.

Even if you can’t read them on the Saturday they’re released, they will always be there!  And with new content every week, your subscription gains value with each post.  Right now there are ten SubscribeStar exclusive posts, including the #MAGAWeek2019 ones, and that number will continue to grow.

I’ll also post additional special content from time-to-time, in the vein of the #MAGAWeek2019 posts.  The long-contemplated Portly Politico Podcast, should it ever launch, will also be exclusive to SubscribeStar.

With all that said, this week’s edition of Lazy Sunday is dedicated to looking at the great SubscribeStar Saturday posts that are already on the site (excluding the #MAGAWeek2019 posts, which were the subject of last week’s Lazy Sunday).

  • “The Portly Politico Summer Reading List 2019” – The long-awaited successor to “The Portly Politico Summer Reading List 2016,” this list of recommended summer reads will give you plenty of conservative brain food to feed your mind and your soul.  I give detailed reviews of my four recommendations.
  • “Asserting Conservatism” – This essay argues for defining conservatism in positive—that is, on its own—terms, rather than as merely against the Left.  Standing athwart history, shouting “STOP” was a necessary step in the Buckleyite days of old-school National Review, when international Communism threatened to infiltrate and topple our institutions.  Culture Marxists have accomplished what Soviet Marxists could not, and it’s time to push back, not merely stem the tide.  Doing so will require a vigorous articulation and defense of conservatism—and a willingness to fight against Leftists.
  • “Christians Protect Other Faiths” – Christianity gets a bad shake, considering it built Western civilization (with an alley-oop from ancient Greece, Rome, and Israel).  The tolerance Christianity teaches is a boon to believers of other faiths, as Christ teaches conversion through persuasion, and the basic dignity of all people, Jew and Gentile.
  • “Immigration and Drugs” – This piece pulls from a couple of posts at VDARE.com, which linked illegal immigration from south of the United States border to the opioid crisis.  One solution from the author:  bomb the poppy fields in Mexico, not just Afghanistan.
  • “Mid-Atlantic Musings” – During #MAGAWeek2019, I was in New Jersey.  This post is a reflection of my visit (spoiler alert:  I very much enjoyed it).  It also details my one-day trip to Coney Island, which is basically Myrtle Beach in Brooklyn.
  • “The Real Color of Environmentalism is Red, Not Green” – Yesterday’s post, in which I compare Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s ludicrous Green New Deal to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s original New Deal.  Both rely on excessive federal and executive power, and the Green will ruin the economy and our nation just the way the original one did.

So, there you have it!  There’s a lot of great material, with more coming every Saturday.  Please consider subscribing to my SubscribeStar page for just $1 (or more!) per month to gain access to these and other essays.

Happy (and Lazy!) Sunday!

–TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

SubscribeStar Saturday: The Real Color of Environmentalism is Red, Not Green

The Portly Politico4 Comments

Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

Environmentalism is an easy target for the Right, but radical environmentalists are dogmatic and effective at advancing their anti-humanity agenda. “Climate change”—and before that, “global warming” and “global cooling”—have been tools for advancing Marxism and statism for over fifty years.

Environmentalism is one of the many gods in the polytheistic pantheon of pagan progressivism. It fits in nicely with some of the other deities in Leftism’s cosmology, such as Abortion and Open Borders: “don’t procreate because babies use up too many resources and there are starving children in Guatemala—bring them in instead!”

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

The Desperate Search for Meaning, Part III: Progressive Power Crystals

The Portly Politico10 Comments

As I watch my niece and nephews grow up, I often think about their practical and spiritual educations.  It’s heartening to hear the older two sing hymns of praise to God.  In an age of progressive indoctrination in public schools, they’re going to need a lot of prayers and Christian parenting to grow up to be men and women of God.  Fortunately, my brother and sister-in-law are no-nonsense Christian conservatives.

Unfortunately, many Americans 40 and under grew up with a great deal of relativistic hogwash, and have imbibed deeply from the solipsistic brew of the “if it feels good, do it” and “I can define my own truth” culture.  Satan comes as a being of light, surrounded by overpriced power crystals.

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