It’s been a busy week for yours portly as I’ve been on uncle duty. The little ones are back to their folks, and TPP is wiping away the baby spittle and Cheerios dust—and, hopefully, getting back on schedule.
This Monday, July 1 will kick off #MAGAWeek2019, which will be a SubscribeStar exclusive. Just subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more to get access to these posts about the men, women, and ideas that made America great [again]! And don’t forget tomorrow is SubscribeStar Saturday, the day of the week subscribers get a post just for them.
July 1 will also mark the halfway point of this year, so I thought I’d use tonight’s post to do a little looking back. This post will be the 180th consecutive post, which means I have an entire secondary school academic year’s worth of posts in 2019. I might should start compiling those into a book—the Portly Manifesto, perhaps?
Regardless, here are the five most viewed posts of 2019 up to this point. Enjoy!
5.) “Nehemiah and National Renewal” – Not only is this post about Nehemiah, the great leader of the Israelites who coordinated the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s dilapidated walls in the face of overwhelming opposition, a reader favorite; it’s one of my favorites as well. Nehemiah trusted in God, and when God commanded him to rebuild the walls, Nehemiah did so faithfully. The parallels with the Trumpean program of building a wall and seeking national renewal are hard to miss. I also wrote a fairly popular follow-up to this post, which explores the spiritual aspects of Nehemiah more thoroughly.
4.) “Hump Day Hoax” – This post garnered a great deal of attention because I linked to it in the “comments” section of GOPUSA, a conservative news and opinion website. The site featured a piece on my adopted home town’s mayor, who claimed that the heavy pollen on her car was part of a deliberate hate crime. You can’t make this stuff up. In the wake of the Jussie Smollett hoax, it seemed at the time like Her Dishonor the Mayor was grasping for some race-based discrimination fame of her own. I’m pretty sure my mayor reported the story to Newsweek herself, even though county and State law enforcement confirmed that the mystery substance was, indeed, pollen. Gesundheit!
3.) “Secession Saturday” – This post explored the totalitarian nature of Leftism, particularly the idea that, should our cold cultural civil war ever turn hot, the Left would never allow for a peaceful separation. Even though they hate us, part of that hate is due to their unwillingness to let us live our lives as we see fit. As such, there would never be an amicable parting of ways, because progressives can’t stand for people to disagree with them.
2.) “Gay Totalitarianism” – This piece pulled from—as all of my best posts do—the excellent American Greatness website. It explored a couple of hoaxes involving gays or lesbians concocting incidents of violence to garner media attention and fawning support, all in the service of pushing an increasingly unhinged queer agenda. Jussie Smollett’s ability to stage a ridiculously clumsy “hate crime” against himself, then to walk scot-free, shows how being gay, black, and famous serves as a talisman against even criminal prosecution.
1.) “The Desperate Search for Meaning” – The most popular post of this year owes its popularity to clicks from Dalrock’s blog. I posted the link to it in a comment on one of his pieces, and his superior content and traffic spilled over to this piece, which focused on the antics of a New Age charlatan and her female acolytes. The posts discusses how people (and, in this context, specifically women) are desperately searching for something deeper than empty materialism, to the point that they will endure abuse and slave-like work conditions for the chance to be close to someone offering spiritual fulfillment, even if it’s counterfeit.
So, there you have it. I hope you’ve enjoyed the blog this year. Here’s hoping I can keep the momentum going.
Happy Fourth of July!
–TPP