No movie review this week, dear readers. While I have quite a few posts scheduled, I was a bit short on time and haven’t watched anything worth reviewing lately, so I figured I’d do something a bit different today.
I was visiting Dr. Girlfriend this weekend, and for some reason, I started to tell her excitedly about the video that got me into history in a major way, Sid Meier’s Colonization.
We’re just five days away from President/President-Elect Trump’s inauguration, and I’m as giddy as a schoolboy at the candy shop. There is much to be excited about in a second Trump administration, but lately I’ve been whooping like a silver-backed gorilla (at the candy shop, presumably) over the prospect of purchasing Greenland from Denmark—and taking back the Panama Canal.
The coverage of President-Elect Trump’s desire to take Greenland features a mix of bemusement and alarm, which is pretty on-brand for Trump’s pronouncements. There is a lot of chest-thumping from the European Union and the Danes, who both vow that the United States will never have Greenland. President Trump, for his part, seems to be having fun trolling the stuffed shirts in Europe and the hostile American press, especially with his talk of annexing Canada (which is trolling; I think Trump is just having fun at Justin Trudeau’s expense).
What I like about all this annexation talk is that it hearkens back to the presidency of James K. Polk. It was under Polk that the United States expanded to (mostly) its present borders, at least in the contiguous, lower forty-eight States. Polk similarly struck an aggressively expansionist tone, proclaiming “Fifty-Four Forty or Fight” in reference to the upper border of the Oregon Territory.
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This past Wednesday marked another observation of 9-11, the events of 11 September 2001. While there were the usual tributes to the fallen, the observation seemed quite muted.
Perhaps we can chalk it up to the anniversary falling a Wednesday, the day of the week least-suited to hosting holidays both celebratory and reflective. I suspect, however, that there is more to our forgetful ennui than the inconvenience of Wednesdays.
Consider that President Trump narrowly survived an assassination attempt earlier this summer. Has anything really changed since then? Has the Left and its media toned down its murderous rhetoric?
Instead, they’ve ludicrously claimed that he brought it upon himself—or that his team coordinated a fake assassination attempt. Given the totally lax and inexperienced Secret Service detail, as well as the peeling away of President Trump’s most accomplished agents to cover some asinine speech from “Dr.” Jill Biden, these excuses smack of lame psychological projection.
Regardless of the hypocrisy of the Left—which isn’t going to change no matter how much we point it out—it’s clear that modern Americans have a woefully short memory about major events. If we’ve already moved on from the failed assassination attempt against a President and presidential candidate, how can we be bothered to remember a series of devastating terrorist attacks from twenty-three years ago?
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Somehow, yours portly ended up following the WordPress-powered website for the Buxton Museum and Art Gallery in Buxton, United Kingdom. Apparently, the cool little museum is closed temporarily due to some structural damage to the build that houses their enigmatic collection, but it still maintains a fairly active blog, with posts about Death’s Heads Hawk Moths and their summer programs (featuring an artist called “Creeping Toad“).
They recently posted a fascinating little piece about The Beatles performing in Buxton twice in 1963, featuring black-and-white photographs from the Buxton Advertiser. Attendees apparently sat on the floor, and girls who fainted were dragged to a changing room recuperate. According to the piece, “This was one of the last small gigs they played before playing to over 50,000 people in Shea Stadium in 1965.”
Yours portly is slightly strapped for time after a raucous Labor Day weekend, so I’m assigning my readers some homework.
I’ve been kicking around the idea of a post comparing Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to the Gracchi Brothers of the Roman Republic. The Gracchi were members of the elite who realized that the common people were struggling mightily under the republic’s economic system, which blatantly favored wealthy Roman Senators and other patricians at the expense of the people. The Gracchi proposed land reforms and modest redistribution, which would have eased tensions between patricians and plebeians, giving the plebeians a chance at living modest, fulfilling lives.
After the usual will-they-won’t-they of the vice presidential selection drama, President Trump delivered yet again, picking Ohio Senator and Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance as his running mate.
The Vance pick is symbolic on a number of levels. As a US Senator, he has focused on improving the lives of the forgotten men and women that President Trump champions. He has rejected the siren song of the Establishment Uniparty. He is very clearly the conservative populist in the Senate.
I receive an e-mail newsletter from The New York Times each morning at my work e-mail. I am not fan of The New York Times, but I likely signed up for it because I needed to access some article for my students. Regardless, the Tuesday, 16 July edition of The Morning newsletter makes a claim with which I agree: in picking Vance, Trump was, essentially, picking his successor.
Today the United States celebrates its 248th birthday. Things seem to be looking up from a year ago. The Usurper Biden short-circuited during last week’s presidential debate, while President Trump came across as a restrained but effective pugilist. As I told my neighbor, one of the two came across as presidential; it’s pretty clear which one.
Tucker Carlson’s ouster from Fox News has been a Godsend for open discourse and dialogue. Not only did he interview Vladimir Putin—perhaps the most important interview of the century—he’s hosted dozens of guests from all across the political spectrum and from all over the world, many of whom would have been too spicy for Fox News to touch.
Across the pond, Nigel Farage is shaking up an otherwise dull parliamentary election with his revitalized Reform Party.
History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. It’s starting to feel a lot like 2016 again—and a lot like 1776.
With that, here is 6 July 2023’s “TBT^65,536: Happy Birthday, America!“:
I’m on my way back from a much-needed trip to the mountains, and I’m phoning this one in, folks. It’s MLK Day here in the United States, which is like getting a bonus day of Christmas Break right after being off for however long it is. It honestly feels a bit frivolous so soon after Christmas and New Year’s, but I’m sure it’s what the Reverend Doctor would have wanted. He was, after all, a notorious libertine.
What would MLK have become had he lived? My suspicion—a sad, jaded one—is that he would have gone the way of race hustlers since. I do not think he was a race hustler, but I think he was starting to trend in that direction with his view on poverty, and for a man who clearly took advantage of his power to engage in some truly heinous sexual escapades, it’s not a big leap to assume he’d go full on Creflo Dollar eventually—or, more likely, full on Al Sharpton. Yikes!
Regardless, his “dream” of a nation based on judgment of character and not skin color has not exactly come to fruition. I mean, it did for about thirty years. Ever heard of Lando Calrissian? It seems like we had a good run from roughly 1980 until about 2010. Now we’ve gone from trying to treat everyone as equals to privileging certain races over others. Isn’t that what all those 1960s radicals fought so hard against? Yet they’re the very ones celebrating the new apartheid.
Well, whatever. I’m just a honkey enjoying a weekend in the mountains.
With that, here is January 2020’s “MLK Day 2020“:
A very Happy Birthday to our dedicated senior correspondent, Audre Myers. Have a great day, Audre!
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It’s been three years since the New Epiphany Rising (the original Epiphany Rising was in 1400), when Americans protested the outcome of the 2020 election. We’re now staring down another presidential election in just ten months. Where are we now?
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Yours portly has been run ragged lately. It’s a bad sign when I’m unable to get Lazy Sunday posts written two weeks in a row. We’re getting into the busy season for events at school, and setting up lighting and sound equipment with a broken ankle does not make it any easier (although I must note that I have had tons more help than usual with these tasks, and I have been blown away with the outpouring of charitable good cheer from my colleagues, administration, and fellow students).
I slept around twelve hours Friday night into Saturday morning, and apparently, it was exactly what I needed. That doesn’t make for keeping up with a writing schedule, but it sure helped with my overall health.
But today’s post isn’t about yours portly. It’s about remembering those who have served our nation in our armed forces. Each year I reblog a Veterans Day post from 2018. It might be one of the best public addresses I’ve ever given.
Here are all of the Veterans Day posts going back to 2018:
There you have it, folks. Thanks to everyone who has served, and a huge thanks for those who have given their lives in the line of duty. No mere blog post can do justice to the depth of your devotion.
Happy Sunday!
—TPP
Other Lazy Sunday Installments:
