Hi there, readers.
This weekend’s SubscribeStar Saturday post will be delayed as I’m out of town. Indeed—improbably!—I’m back at Universal Studios for the third time this year.
Looks like we’re hitting up Universal City today, which is where all of my favorite rides are—like E.T. and The Mummy.
More details to come!
Happy Saturday!
—TPP
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This school year I began transitioning from teaching a blend of history and music classes towards focusing almost entirely on music. While I still teach a couple of sections of American History, my teaching duties these days consist primarily music classes.
One of the real joys of teaching music—besides the fact that it’s just plain fun—is to see students inspired to create their own music. I have been blessed over the years to witness the musical development of many students, and to hear some of their creations.
During our remote learning rehearsal day earlier this week, I pulled out some old concert footage to show my HS Music Ensemble class, a course that is entirely performance based. That class does not port well to a fully online format, especially to a livestreamed one, as latency is so intense that it makes ensemble performance impossible. Indeed, if that class goes to a fully online format, we’ll have to focus more on solo work and and music theory, which is what we did during distance learning earlier in the spring.
In watching that old concert footage, I was reminded of some wonderful moments in my school’s unorthodox music program’s history. It also reminded me of the power of teaching music to inspire the creation of new works.
To hear my own musical works, visit https://tjcookmusic.bandcamp.com/ or www.tjcookmusic.com.
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The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg eight days ago has opened up another power struggle in D.C. Democrats have spent decades perverting the function of the courts from that of constitutional referee into that of constitution interpreter, a role that places the Supreme Court above Congress and the presidency.
The result is rule by nine unelected officials who serve for life. Congress has gleefully passed the difficulty of legislative activity and the push and pull of debate onto the Supreme Court, trusting it to clarify anything Congress may have forgotten to write into law. Presidents have passively executed Supreme Court verdicts, and even signed legislation they believed to be unconstitutional, on the premise that the Supreme Court would make the ultimate decision.
Thus, the Court has emerged as the dominant force in American politics—and morality. Not only does the Court tell us what the Constitution really says—even if the Constitution doesn’t say it at all—it also tells us the moral judgments of the Constitution (thanks to Z Man for that insight). Thus, every cat lady and box wine auntie in America bemoans the death of RBG, their symbolic stand-in, who endorsed free and easy abortions and gay rights.
Now President Trump has the opportunity to shift the balance of the Supreme Court for a generation. But will it be enough to reverse judicial supremacy and restore constitutional order?
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This weekend’s SubscribeStar Saturday will be a bit delayed. I’m up in the mountains celebrating my older brother’s fortieth birthday.
The big news is that the Notorious RBG has kicked the bucket. All the more reason to vote for Trump in November.
I’ll have the post up as soon as possible.
Happy Saturday!
—TPP
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Yesterday I launched Five Dollar Friday, a series of 2020 election series posts for $5 a month and higher subscribers. Just another perk for my subscribers.
Nineteen years ago yesterday, Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four passenger airliners, crashing them into the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and—thanks to the bravery of Americans aboard Flight 93—a field in Pennsylvania. 2977 Americans lost their lives that day, with another 25,000 injured in the aftermath.
I was a junior in high school when the attacks occurred. My classmates and I first heard about it during trigonometry class with our ancient math teacher, one of those public school double-dippers who was pulling a pension but still teaching (to her credit, she was a good math teacher). The psychology teacher from across the hall—a large, red-faced woman—burst into the room, blubbering, “They’ve attacked the Pentagon!”
To my shame, the class erupted in laughter. We weren’t laughing because we thought it was good news—like those Muslims partying on rooftops and those public school kids in New York cheering at the destruction. We laughed because it was so absurd (it didn’t help that a very rotund, hysterical woman shouted it hysterically). America, attacked? Who would do something so foolish? It was so beyond our comprehension, we couldn’t believe it.
As the day wore on, we realized pretty quickly that something terrible had happened. I don’t remember if we watched news footage during the day, but we were not sent home early. Indeed, we had marching band practice that afternoon. But there were real fears: would terrorists attempt an attack on the Savannah River Site, where we used to process tritium for nuclear weapons?
My dad was in Pennsylvania at the time at a work conference. Of course, Flight 93 went down in Pennsylvania, and all air travel was shut down (my German teacher commented on how it was probably the first time since the rise of commercial aviation that no aircraft were in the skies). Fortunately, he was safe, and road the rails back to South Carolina. My grandparents were out in the Southwest, and rented a Toyota Camry to drive cross-country (they went on to purchase the vehicle).
In the coming days, we came to find out it was the work of radical Islamic terrorists. I recall a conversation with friends in which I suggested we ban any travel and immigration from any countries with a majority Muslim population until we got this terrorism threat worked out. It wasn’t long after that President Bush started in with the “Islam is a religion of peace” nonsense, but there was a brief, albeit very mild, nativist flare-up (when the French refused to join us in the Iraq War, restaurants changed French fries to “freedom fries” on their menus).
It felt like our Pearl Harbor.
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Last Saturday I argued that “The Future is Rural.” With the rise in urban violence (that seems to turn up every presidential election year) and unsustainable living costs, coupled with the spread of telecommuting and improved Internet access, I predict that more and more Americans will flee to the countryside.
Even with the tide turning in favor of rural and small town life, local and county governments can take some proactive steps to attract residents. If the goal is to attract working families consisting of committed parents, localities need to get creative.
The usual approach to building up revenue in small towns is to spend lavishly on parks and sports fields. Large cities famously subsidize the NFL with billions in stadium construction, but small towns routinely fall into these construction boondoggles. The premise is that new softball fields will bring in summer travel leagues, generating local tourism dollars, which is always how new ball fields are sold to the public. Of course, the maintenance of these facilities are added into a locality’s annual budget, becoming recurring expenses, on top of the initial cost of production, which is often debt-financed.
Rather than spend public money on baseball diamonds and—even worse—soccer fields, small towns hoping to attract working families should use that money for something far more precious: children.
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In case you missed it, The Portly Politico is now theportlypolitico.com! Thanks to subscriber support (and a 50% off flash sale), TPP is now a premium WordPress site. If you want to help advance strong conservative commentary on politics, culture, history, religion, and art, consider a $1 or $5 a month subscription—or more!
The roiling waves of urban riots this summer could be the death knell of urban living. Even smaller cities are falling victim to progressive insanity and destruction. It was one thing when Seattle and Portland were ablaze, and Americans wrote off Detroit years ago. But now Kenosha, Wisconsin is the hotbed of disorder and chaos?
The story of “white flight” from urban centers is a Leftist favorite, and—of course—progressives blame the plight of inner city blacks on the fact that white people took their tax dollars and fled tot he suburbs. Never mind that riots in the 1960s destroyed white- and black-owned businesses, and that the current wave of riots destroys millions of dollars in black-owned property. The Leftist narrative also implies that blacks aren’t capable of succeeding without substantial financial and institutional support from whites, a clear example of progressivism’s bigotry of low expectations.
As is often the case with Leftist canards, there is a kernel of Truth among the popcorn ball of misleading disinformation: people did flee urban centers in the 1960s, precisely because they were so dangerous. As the respectable, middle-class civil rights movement gave way to the militant black nationalism of SNCC and the Nation of Islam, sane people ran for the suburban hills.
Now we’re in a similar moment, in which progressive grievance-mongering and racial malfeasance gin up BLM and Antifa criminals, eager to fight imaginary “Nazis” in the streets. While these riots are a tragedy for our nation and for the rule of law, there is a silver lining: it could prove to be a boon for rural America.
The rest of today’s post might be a tad delayed; I am proctoring the SAT this morning, and then am hitting the road for a family celebration. My apologies in advance.
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We’re continuing our dive into the B-sides and deep cuts of the TPP oeuvre. For this Lazy Sunday, I decided to check out September 2019.
Whoa! What a gold mine of hidden gems and nuggets, forgotten in the tide of events. I didn’t realize how many good posts I generate during that first full month of the 2019-2020 school year. There’s enough for a couple of weeks, but here are three forgotten posts to tide you over until next Sunday:
That’s it for this Sunday! We’ll continue our exploration for at least another week, as there are some more goodies from September 2019 to explore.
Happy Sunday!
—TPP
Other Lazy Sunday Installments:
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A couple of days before the start of the school year, my school underwent a round of indoctrination professional development: the dreaded diversity, equity, and inclusion training ($5 subs got a sneak peek of my handwritten notes earlier this week, which I uploaded as a digitized PDF). As these things go, it wasn’t terrible, but there was plenty of social justice buzz words, and a subtle, implied anti-white bias to it. Really, it was an anti-Truth and objectivity bias.
This Saturday, permit me to be your guide through the harrowing world of corporate-style diversity training in the Year of Our Wokeness Two-Thousand and Twenty C.E. (because “A.D.” is discriminatory against non-Christians, even though the B.C.E./C.E. dating system is still based on the Birth of Jesus Christ!).
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As I’ve written elsewhere, it’s been a tough year for musicians. Fortunately, things are looking up on that end, at least for yours portly. With school starting back this week, I’m hoping some of my old students will be comfortable with resuming one-on-one lessons, especially after sitting in class all day with other students (and with our new sanitation and safety protocols). Still, 2020 will be a down year for lessons revenue, and especially for gigs.
In brighter news, The Portly Politico has more followers and subscribers than ever. Currently, my SubscribeStar page has seven subscribers, three of whom are subscribed at the $5 tier. Thanks to their support, the blog is bringing in $15.38 a month after SubscribeStar takes its cut. That may seem like small potatoes, but that support means more than the dollar figure suggests.
If you haven’t already, I’d encourage you to subscribe. $1 a month is an easy lift, and considering the back catalog of posts is growing every week, the value of that investment continues to grow. If you’re already a $1 a month sub, you may want to consider upgrading to a $5 a month subscription.
I’m also introducing more perks for $5 a month subs. So far, the $5 tier has been the same as the $1 tier, just with Sunday Doodles tossed in. Last week, I included some bonus doodles. I’ll be doing that more frequently—not necessarily weekly, but often enough to make it a fun surprise. I’m also going to be uploading more music, especially material that can’t currently be found on my Bandcamp page.
During distance learning, I amassed a treasure trove of history and government lectures. I’ll be uploading some of those for $5 subs, probably starting with the Second World War lectures.
Finally, select Fridays this fall will be “Five Dollar Fridays,” posts that will be largely dedicated to 2020 election coverage and analysis. As the name suggests, those posts will be exclusive to $5 and up subscribers.
Naturally, I’ll continue to offer free weekly content Sunday through Thursday, and some Fridays. We’re closing in on 600 days of posts, and two years is about 134 posts away. Of course, if you’re not subscribed, you’re missing out on 116 posts (as of this writing)! That’s a ton of content (and doodles).
If you’re interested in a subscription, sign up here or here. If you know of someone who might be interested in paying a small fee for quality content, please forward this blog post them, or send them here.
One final pot-sweetener: if we hit 10 subscribers—at any level—by the end of August 2020, I’ll upload some special, surprise content for all subscribers.
Thanks again for your support—and your patience with yet another sales pitch. It is truly appreciated.
God Bless,
TPP
The Portly Politico 