Tag: ideas

Lazy Sunday XXX: Trump, Part I

The Portly Politico46 Comments

It’s hard to believe we’ve reached thirty Lazy Sundays.  I’ve found these posts are an excellent way to link to multiple posts simultaneously; I’ve written so many now that I occasionally forget that I’ve written some of them, but Lazy Sunday is always there to curate and aggregate those forgotten posts.

Indeed, today’s post marks 280 days of consecutive posting.  That’s forty weeks of at least one post per day.  Noah would be getting off the Ark right about now.

So, to celebrate the thirtieth week of posts—and to honor our amazing, if embattled, President—today’s edition of Lazy Sunday is dedicated to the God-Emperor himself, Donald J. Trump.

  • “Indian Man Worships Trump as a God” – This little piece was a bit of a throwaway novelty, but I still find it amusing:  an Indian gentleman devoted himself to GEOTUS so intensely, his parents moved out of the house.  I was hoping some Twitter-savvy user would get this piece to Trump or Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and President Trump could use it as an opportunity to witness to this well-intentioned-but-misguided man.
  • “Mueller Probe Complete, Trump Vindicated” – The subject of a recent TBT feature, I wrote this piece when the Mueller Report first broke and all indicators were that “Russian collusion” was, at best, way overblown.  Yes, yes—Mueller insisted that Trump wasn’t “exonerated,” but he and the Democrats had to admit sheepishly that the drum they’d been beating for nearly three years was busted (not that they actually did admit that).  Of course, now they’ve just changed from one scary Eastern European country to another with tales of “Ukrainian collusion” to bolster a bogus impeachment inquiry.  Sigh.
  • “Symbolism and Trumpism” – An unfortunate side effect of Protestant efficiency and pragmatism is the lack of attention to symbols, which we tend to view with suspicion—“it might be an idol!”  But symbols matter immensely to uniting a people.  That’s the key insight this piece explores, care of an American Greatness essay about Trump’s ability to understand the need for and use of unifying symbols like the National Anthem, the American Flag, and so on.
  • “Trump’s Economy and 2020” – President Trump can boast a hugely successful economy, almost directly as a result of his tax cuts and regulatory reforms.  After Trump’s election, I could almost physically sense a weight lifting off my shoulders, and those of millions of Americans—and I was doing okay even in President Obama’s moribund economy.  Even in 2016, with things gradually improving from the low-point of the Great Recession in 2009, the job market seemed tight.  By the time Trump was inaugurated in January 2017, phenomenal economic growth was well underway.  Here’s hoping that buoyant economy continues to roar through 2020.
  • “#MAGAWeek2019: President Trump’s Independence Day Speech“:  This post was a Subscribe Star exclusive, so you’ll have to pay a buck to read the full thing, but it’s about how great President Trump’s Independence Day speech was.  After all the hand-wringing from the Left and the noodle-wristed Right about Trump hosting a yuge military display on the Fourth of July (see also:  “Symbolism and Trumpism“), Trump delivered a speech that reminded us of why we can be proud to be a part of this incredible, unprecedented nation.  I didn’t hear the whole “airport at Yorktown” comment, but I’m also not attuned to picking up Trump’s every minor error and calling it treason the way Leftists are.

That’ll do it for this “big league” Lazy Sunday.  Enjoy your day off, and Keep America Great!

God Bless,

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

SubscribeStar Saturday: SATurday

The Portly Politico3 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.

Continuing with a recent theme, today’s SubscribeStar Saturday post is all about what I did this weekend—well, at least this Saturday.

After a long, productive week at school—which saw my team of super nerds win their Quiz Bowl regional competition on Thursday—I woke up before the dawn to head back to school.  I signed up to proctor the SAT, the dreaded standardized test that is part of the grand kabuki theatre of higher education admissions.

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World Space Week Starts Today

The Portly Politico2 Comments

It’s been a long but productive week for yours portly.  Readers will notice that, other than my recent features (yesterday and last Thursday’s posts), I’ve been mostly silent on the impeachment circus.  My general policy in this age of media perfidy is to withhold comment until the real facts have been reported.

The way everything is shaping up, my gut instincts—that there is nothing to claims that President Trump has committed impeachable offenses, defined constitutionally as “high crimes and misdemeanors”—seem validated.  Of course, that won’t stop the Democrats from expending months of energy, treasure, and rhetoric on banging the drum of impeachment.

In general, I’ve been trying to expand the focus of the blog, moving away from strictly writing about politics and politics-adjacent issues to more general interest topics.  My little piece on Saturn from a few weeks ago was enjoyable to write, and seemed to garner some positive feedback.

As such, I was excited to see that today marks the beginning of World Space Week.

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TBT: More Never Trump Treachery

The Portly Politico4 Comments

With all the impeachment talk swirling, I thought it would be worth it to look back at a piece I wrote in May, focusing on squishy Michigan Congressman Justin Amash, the so-called “libertarian Republican,” as an example of the kind of bitter Never Trumpery that is champing at the bit to see President Trump impeached.

At that time, Amash argued that President Trump’s conduct was impeachable—not any actual crimes he committed, just that the way he comports himself is impeachable.  This claim coming from a guy who allegedly supports the Constitution.

Acting like a boor is not an impeachable offense.  It falls well below the bar of “high crimes and misdemeanors” set by the Constitution.  Further, President Trump’s phone calls to the Ukraine and Australia certainly fall well below that bar; I don’t even think he did anything wrong.

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The Future of Barbecue

The Portly Politico5 Comments

The good folks at the Abbeville Institute have a great piece (originally published at The American Conservative) about the most beloved and controversial of Southern foodstuffs:  barbecue.

Barbecue, as author John Shelton Reed points out, is highly localized.  For me—and any true South Carolinian—the One True ‘Cue is mustard-based pulled pork barbecue from South Carolina.  It’s definitely not beef brisket or anything with ketchup.  It should come from a place that’s only open three or four days a week, and is served with hash and rice.

Unfortunately, much like the “old, weird America” whose passing John Derbyshire regularly mourns, traditional barbecue—regardless of the regional variety—is being shoved out by “mass barbecue,” the kind served up in chains that look like the inside of Uncle Moe’s Family Feedbag.

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Why (Online) Scientists are Annoying

The Portly Politico1 Comment

Today’s post won’t exactly reach the commanding heights of culture, but, hey, I wrote nearly a thousand words about a dweeb’s belt yesterday, so let’s keep the low expectations a-rollin’.

Readers know that I’ve been on a bit of a Quora kick lately (see here and here). Quora allows users to submit questions, and for pretty much anyone to provide answers. I can’t remember how I got signed up for it, but I get a daily digest pertaining to areas in which I have expressed an interest.

Usually I get strange questions related to evolution. The first response is always a snarky atheist attacking the questioner’s underlying premise or motives. “Uh, well, actually, there is no evidence against evolution, because we can just shoe-horn every inconsistency into this amorphous, nineteenth-century theory based on the localized observations of one zoologist on a self-contained island ecosystem.”

Those don’t bother me too much, because I just assume anyone who believes in evolution loudly online is an Internet atheist that hates God because his parents got divorced. What bugs me the most are the armchair astronomers.

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Lazy Sunday XXIX: The New Criterion

The Portly Politico47 Comments

Conservatives, especially conservative writers and publishers, tend to get so fixated on policy wonkery and political debates, we sometimes lose sight of culture.  One reason I appreciate blogger buddy photog’s blog, Orion’s Cold Fire, so much is that he makes room for reviews of sci-fi novels, Twilight Zone episodes, and the like.

One publication that makes culture the centerpiece of its mission is The New Criterion, which takes the idea of reviewing the best in art, literature, music, and drama very seriously.  I recently re-subscribed TNC after having a lapsed subscription for a couple of years, and I’m eager to get my first issue in forty-eight weeks.

With that in mind, this week’s Lazy Sunday is dedicated to pieces the writers at The New Criterion inspired:

  • “Civilization is Worth It” – This piece discusses an excellent audio version of a piece about Rousseau’s ideas regarding civilization (that is to say, Rousseau argued civilization was the cause of all of our problems, and we were better of dancing around naked in caves).  It’s definitely worth a listen.
  • “E.T.A. Hoffman & Romanticism” – This very short post covered a charming little essay about E.T.A. Hoffman, arguably the founder of the Romantic movement in literature, as well as a brief discussion of the consequences, both positive and negative, of the Romantic temperament, and the idea of the brooding, troubled artist.
  • “The League of Nations” – Trans- and supranational organizations were all the rage in the twentieth century, and the League of Nations was the first—and the biggest flop—in this do-gooding, globalist trend.  The League of Nations was famously ineffective, which just meant we’d be saddled with an even worse organization, the United Nations, after the League failed to prevent the Second World War.  Now the European Union is creating a tyrannical empire of Belgian bureaucrats in the name of preventing a tyrannical empire of German bureaucrats from trying to conquer Europe again.  Yeesh.
  • “The Good Populism” – The counter to the aforementioned tyrannical transnational organizations is good, healthy populism, the kind of middle-class, conservative revolutions that brought us the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and Donald Trump (among others).  Super historian and classicist Victor Davis Hanson makes the case for the “good populism,” as opposed to Bernie Bro socialistic populism, in this piece, one of the most popular TNC published in 2018.
  • “New Criterion on Principles in Politics” – What’s more important—principles or victory?  That’s not exactly the gist of this piece, but it does examine the tricky debate taking place among the Right currently about how to handle deranged Leftists.  What are the limits of principles?  The David French model of always surrendering—but being polite while doing so—is clearly not an effective way to uphold conservative principles.

That’s it for this Sunday.  Enjoy some erudite cultural criticism!

–TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

SubscribeStar Saturday: Yemassee Shrimp Festival 2019

The Portly Politico8 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.

Last weekend my girlfriend and I kicked off an ad hoc autumnal tour of various festivals around the State of South Carolina with a trip to Yemassee, South Carolina, for the annual Yemassee Shrimp Festival.  Readers will recall our visit to Aiken’s Makin’ in my hometown of Aiken, South Carolina, earlier in the month.  That visit got us thinking about other fall festivals we could attend.

I stumbled upon the Shrimp Festival while researching the Yemasee War (note the single “S” in the tribal name; I’m not sure when the town decided to add the second), a brutal Indian war in which various tribes banded together to wipe out the Carolina colony.  The conflict lasted from 1715-1717, and the tide only turned for the colonists after the Cherokee Indians joined forces with the Carolinians in order to defeat their ancient enemy, the Creeks.

In reading about that unfortunate, disruptive colonial war, I came across the Shrimp Festival.  I love small-town boosterism, and these little festivals bring a good bit of money into rural communities.

More importantly, they’re just plain fun.  Where else can you eat curly fries hand-cut from a gigantic spud and fried fresh to order, or see a chihuahua dressed as a taco, complete with sombrero?  Yes, both of those were just part of the fun at the Yemassee Shrimp Festival.

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The Leftist Pantheon, Part I: Environmentalism

The Portly Politico8 Comments

I’ve written a good bit lately about the spiritual hole in the lives of many Westerners (see “The Desperate Search for Meaning,” as well as Parts II and III). A big part of Marianne Williamson’s appeal, for example, is that she casts political battles in spiritual and moral terms—a point on which she and I agree. I think President Trump, too, intuits that politics is about more than officious wonkery.

Progressivism offers a kind of fleshly faith for its sycophantic, virtue-signalling followers. But it is not a monotheistic religion; rather, it is a polytheistic cult with its own pantheon of gods and (often) goddesses of greater and lesser importance. Progressivism is a means to an end—power and dominion—so it can’t claim one central deity, as it seeks to cobble together multiple believers in a paradoxical pick-and-choose theology—so long as you pick from the approved list.

With all the scuttlebutt about teenage imp Greta Thunberg, the angry Apostle of Mother Gaia, I thought it might be interesting to delve deeper into the Left’s pantheon.

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TBT: Mueller Probe Complete, Trump Vindicated

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Remember when the Mueller probe ended, then Robert Mueller gave bumbling, incoherent testimony to Congress?  For two years the Democrats engaged in major psychological projection, accusing President Trump of malfeasance akin to what Secretary Hillary Clinton actually committed.  The Deep State scrambled to overthrow the duly elected President of the United States.

After a brief reprieve—even Democrats have to take time off from playing Marxists to splash about at Martha’s Vineyard during the summer months—the progressives are at it again with a ginned up impeachment inquiry.  Trump talked to the new Ukrainian president and mentioned Joe Biden’s son.  GASP!  POTUS is colluding with scary Eastern Europeans to get dirt on a political opponent!

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