Tag: Lamar

TBT: Deluge

The Portly Politico3 Comments

Hurricane Dorian is roaring its way up the eastern seaboard today, and the Pee Dee region of South Carolina, where I live, is due to get several inches of rain and some high, heavy winds.  I’m praying that the storm passes through quickly and as easterly as possible, so as to minimize damage from the winds and flooding.  If the storm stalls, two or three inches of rain in Darlington County, South Carolina could become substantially more.

I’m no stranger to flooding.  Back when Hurricane Matthew hit in 2016, my old place flooded about eight inches up the walls, destroying many of my worldly possessions, and afflicting my clothes and other belongings with a faint mildewy stench that never really went away.

Two years later, my old apartment—“a Handi House in two rednecks’ backyard,” as my younger brother put it—was flooded again in a torrential downpour—a pop-up rainstorm that dumped around ten inches of water onto Florence, South Carolina in the span of an hour.

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TPP Review: First Half of 2019

The Portly Politico1 Comment

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 , 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

Saturday Morning Politicking

The Portly Politico1 Comment

A bit of a late post today.  There’s no good excuse—after a productive Friday afternoon of grading and errands, I indulged in a decadent, three- or four-hour gaming session with the new Civilization VI expansion, Gathering Storm.  The verdict so far:  dynamic weather events are fun, and the World Congress is interesting, but it doesn’t seem like $40 worth of new material.  I am, however, enjoying colonizing Australia as Phoenicia.

But I digress.  This morning the Florence County (SC) GOP held its county convention, an event that occurs every two years.  I’ve moved out of the county, so this convention marked a transition for me:  the end of my formal involvement with the group as Secretary and an executive committeeman.

It was a great convention, with none of the squabbling or jockeying or tedious proceduralism of the first FCGOP County Convention I attended six years ago, in 2013.  It was a different world back then in many ways, what with the different factions of the Right trying to come to terms with another bitter presidential loss, each little group blaming the other.

There were the “professional” pols, what we might call the “Establishment” Republicans, who dominated the writing and amending of by-laws; these were the folks that used by-laws like a bludgeon, catching people in procedural traps and using every trick in the book to achieve their agenda.  On the other hand, you had an active T.E.A. Party contingent, the upstarts trying to get a slice of the county pie.  And then you had folks like me, coming in fresh and confused, just trying to get involved.

Indeed, it was at that county convention in 2013 that I was elected Third Vice Chair of the FCGOP, a position responsible for youth outreach and development.  If you’ll indulge me, there’s a mildly interesting story about how that came about.

I’d attended precinct reorganization a few weeks prior to the convention.  That’s a major process that every county party in the United States goes through every two years, in which the party reorganizes as many precincts as possible, thereby reconstituting its executive committee  It’s a process that’s not well understood if you’re not in the GOP, but it’s fairly simple:  you show up and organize your precinct, which means electing a president (who, in theory, organizes volunteers to campaign in the neighborhood) and an executive committeeman (who serves as part of a kind of “board of directors” for the county’s party).

Anyway, the weekend before the convention, the sole candidate for the 3VC position backed out, apparently because of withering comments that he was too young to do the role justice (the fact that he backed out for that reason demonstrating they may, in fact, have been correct).  As such, there was no one running going into the convention.

Upon arriving at the convention, I floated the idea to a friend of mine (who would go on to become the Party Chairman a few short years later, and, as of today’s convention, the State Executive Committeeman for Florence County) of running to fill the position.  I’m a teacher and enjoy working with young people, and if there was no one to fill the role, why not give it a shot?

He agreed to second my nomination if I could find someone to make the initial nomination.  In the meantime, one of the “professional” types in the Party approached me, saying he’d heard I was interesting in running for the position.  He then said that “they” had a candidate picked out, and not to worry about it; that, instead, I could get involved in the fall in some other capacity.

The way he approached me—and the fact that some shadowy group had their own pony they were trying to set up to win—made this dark horse all the more determined.  What started out as “I want to serve” became, quite quickly, “Now I have to run out of principle.”  Even if I lost, I didn’t want heir-apparent waltzing into the position.

So, I made a beeline for the one other person I knew, an elderly man I’d met at precinct reorg a few weeks earlier (I was from the 12th precinct, he from the 11th).  He happily agreed to nominate me (he would later be expelled from the GOP for publicly endorsing a Democrat in a local election).

It came time for nominations, and my folks came through for me (albeit in reverse:  my elderly friend seconded the nomination, and my destined-for-greatness buddy ended up nominating me, as I recall).  Then, there were other nominations—for the young man who’d pulled out of the race!  The third candidate—the one “they” had picked—was never nominated (I found out later that he pulled his name from consideration once he realized he’d have to run against someone).

With a competitive race, we had to give speeches.  Recall, I’d come into this convention blind, not even sure if I was going to run.  I had to craft a compelling, quick speech on the fly (as this blog attests, brevity is not my strength).  I introduced myself to the convention, mentioned my experience teaching, and said that my opponent was far more knowledgeable of the Party’s mechanics than I was, and would do well.

When it came time for him to give his speech, he simply said, “I decline the nomination.”  I was actually quite disappointed here.  I was hoping he’d give it a shot, and we’d have a fair vote.  But that statement cemented that, indeed, he was probably not ready for a leadership position (as I recall, he was quite young).  There was also a whiff of loafer-lightened melodrama to his withdrawal, but I can’t say for sure.

Fortunately, there were no such behind-the-scenes shenanigans.  Every officer was nominated and elected unanimously, with a strong slate of leadership to continue the FCGOP’s impressive growth.

After that, I headed to the Darlington County GOP’s precinct reorganization, so my little precinct in Lamar is now organized.  I met a few folks and starting making some connections.  I met a lady who taught at the school where I currently work years ago, before her children were born; I also talked to a Convention of States guy about that concept (a topic for a future post, perhaps).  All in all, I met several nice people, with whom I look forward to building up the DCGOP.

That’s pretty much all politics is:  talking to people, building relationships, and getting those folks to vote.

101 Postmatians – 101st Consecutive Daily Post!

The Portly Politico8 Comments

Perhaps it’s a bit odd to celebrate grinding diligence, but I’m proud of myself.  Yesterday’s post on model bills (a bit of a snoozer of a topic, I’ll admit) marked the 100th consecutive daily post on this blog.

I realized in late December 2018/early January 2019 that WordPress tracks streaks once you hit three consecutive days of posting, so I decided to see how long I could keep the momentum going.  Initially, I was just going to try to get through January.  It’s a slow month in the academic year, a rare moment when I have a sliver of extra time to devote to extracurricular hobbies, like music.

Of course, the more I wrote, the easier it became to churn out posts on any number of topics.  Pretty soon, I’d gotten to fifty posts.  Despite Internet outages (within weeks of each other, both times because a Frontier technician incorrectly disconnected my line), I was able to get some posts up (even if they weren’t of the best quality).

So, to celebrate, I thought I’d take today “off” with a classic retrospective (which I already do once or twice a week with “TBT Thursdays” and “Lazy Sundays“)—a written “clip show,” if you will, of The Streak ’19’s Top Five Posts (so far).

The following are the five posts with the most views as of the time of this writing, presented in descending order (most views to fewest):

1.) “Hump Day Hoax” – it seems these local stories do well (my piece on the fight at the Lamar Egg Scramble has turned up in quite a few searches; I’m still trying to find more details about it).  This piece was about the Mayor of Lamar’s claim that her car was vandalized in a racially-motivated attack, and she expressed relief that the vandal didn’t try to kill her and her husband.  When the Darlington County Sheriff’s deputy came out to investigate, he discovered the mysterious yellow substance was pollen!  That didn’t prevent it from making national news, getting a mention in Newsweek.

At first, I thought our mayor was just trying to get some cheap PR and sympathy for herself, but after discussing it with some other folks, the consensus seems to be that she suffered from stupidity, filtered through a conspiratorial, black victim mentality.  Rather than see the sticky substance for what it was—the ubiquitous pollen that covers our fair Dixie—the mayor’s first thought was a racist attack.

That’s a sad way to live.  As I wrote in this piece, the mayor is a sweet lady, and I think she really wants to do her best to help our little town.  That said, this kind of ignorant hysteria doesn’t help anyone or anything, much less race relations.

2.) “Secession Saturday” – boy, this post generated some views.  The focus of this post was a piece from American Greatness, “The Left Won’t Allow a Peaceful Separation,” by Christopher Roach.  It explores whether or not some kind of peaceful parting of ways between America’s two cultures—traditionalists and progressives—is desirable, and revisits questions the American Civil War resolved—at least for a time—with force of arms (“do States have the right to secede?,” for example).

A panicked former student texted me in anguish, worrying about a Civil War II, after seeing this post on Facebook.  I tried to allay her fears.  But the real point of my commentary was on the idea that the Left is fundamentally totalitarian, and will broach no disagreements.  That’s a key insight Roach and others make, and it’s why I reference back to his piece so frequently.

Of course, it also helped that I linked to this guy in the comments of a more successful blog.

3.-4.) “Nehemiah and National Renewal” & “Nehemiah Follow-Up” – these two posts came amid a week in which I found myself immersed in the Book of Nehemiah (one of my favorites in the Old Testament, as he builds a wall to renew his nation).  The initial post sparked some great feedback from Ms. Bette Cox, a fellow blogger (who, incidentally, preceded me in my soon-to-be-vacated position as the Florence County [SC] GOP Secretary).  She astutely pointed out that my first post missed a key point:  in Nehemiah 1, the prophet falls to his knees and asks for God’s Will.

5.) “Tucker Carlson’s Diagnosis” – one of the posts from the early days of The Streak ’19, it was also a rare video post from me.  I’ll occasionally embed YouTube videos in my posts, but I tend to avoid writing posts that say, “hey, watch this lengthy video.”

Nothing bugs me more than when I’m out somewhere, having a conversation, and someone thrusts a phone in my face with a YouTube video.  I’ve actually told my friends that if they do this, I will refuse to watch it.  It’s not that I don’t want to share the joke with you; it’s that you’re making me watch a video on a cellphone!  C’mon.  I can barely hear the dialogue (or song, or whatever) on your tinny, bass-less phone speaker.  Furthermore, can’t we have a conversation without resorting to SNL clips?

But I digress.  I made an exception for Tucker Carlson’s powerful monologue about our frigid, uncaring elites.  I’ve definitely jumped on the Carlson populist-nationalist train, and I think he makes a compelling case for preserving—or, at least not actively destroying—small towns and the families they nurture.

So, there you have it—a lengthier-than-planned reheating of my posts during The Streak ’19.

Thanks for all of your love and support.  Here’s to another 100 posts!

–TPP

Egg Scramble Scrambled

The Portly Politico15 Comments

This weekend my adopted hometown of Lamar, South Carolina (home of that great, racist, yellow peril, pollen) hosted the annual Egg Scramble Jamboree. It’s a festival that attracts around 7000 people to the town, increasing its population by about 700% for a day or two.

The festival is an opportunity to celebrate spring—it includes a lawn judging competition, which is the most American, Hank Hillian kind of small town contest—and to generate some tourism dollars.

It’s unfortunate, then, that the Scramble cracked up last night due to a fight.

I was out of town for the Egg Scramble, but I wanted to see if there was any news about it this morning. That was not the headline I was expecting.

Perhaps I’m indulging in a bit of mountain-from-mole-hill building, but it seems like more and more disruptive outbursts are occurring in the public square these days. According to the news item linked above, this fight marks the first time law enforcement had to shut down the festival since its inception in 1983.

What led up to that fight? Was there a general atmosphere of mob-ishness that led Darlington County sheriff’s deputies busting up the festivities? Was the “fight” a general brawl? How did an isolated kerfuffle lead to the drastic decision to shut down the entire event?

In our current age of litigiousness and excessive concern for safety, it would make sense to send festival-goers home: avoid any lawsuits from personal injury vampires. It seems, too, that authorities would be concerned about a donnybrook devolving into an all-out brawl.

Regardless, it’s a shame how a handful of hooligans can disrupt everyone’s good time. That’s the price of petty crime and social disruption: a major economic stimulus and good, clean fun are destroyed because some people can’t keep their composure at an egg-themed community event.

Frontier Sucks

The Portly Politico8 Comments

A quick phone post: I’m sitting on my front porch, waiting for Frontier, my awful rural Internet service provider, to show up to fix my connection, which has been down slightly over a week.

That’s right: I’ve been without Internet access at home for one week.

I can see Spectrum trucks down the street running high-speed fiber optic lines. I’ll be switching over to them at the earliest opportunity, two-year contract be damned (that’s right: in 2019, there are still ISPs that make you commit to a two-year contract).

It’s not been all bad: I’ve watched some great DVDs, like Evil Dead and Big Trouble in Little China (“China is here”), and I’ve gotten more sleep.

On the other hand, so much of our lives and work are online, and it’s been quite difficult getting everything done during the day. In addition to teaching high school and maintaining this little blog, I also teach classes online. Talk about a conundrum.

So, here I am, desperately using my planning period to wait at home during my four-hour appointment window, which expires in about thirty minutes.

When Frontier installed my Internet—about six weeks after I placed the original order—I burned an entire personal day waiting for their arrival. They simply never showed. After a series of angry phone calls, a nice technician arrived two days later.

They also charge a mandatory modem rental fee of $10/month. ¡Ay caramba!

I don’t have much else to say. This post is pure self-indulgent complaining. But I do have some takeaways:

1.) Life in a rural town, while very pleasant, comes with certain challenges. Everything operates the way it did thirty years ago—for better and for worse.

My mail wasn’t delivered for two weeks because the rural mail carrier wouldn’t stop because I put my mailbox in front of my house—not across the street, like the only other box on the street (most folks still get mail delivered to the local post office). Finally, my neighbor—not anyone I talked to at the post office—told me my carrier wouldn’t stop until I moved the mailbox across the street.

2.) Adults are meant to work in pairs: a breadwinner and a household manager. My “wife” is my job, unfortunately, and she’s an overbearing, possessive bitty. That’s the case for most everybody. Someone needs to be at home, keeping the home fires burning and keeping the place running efficiently.

Hump Day Hoax

The Portly Politico18 Comments

It’s that point in the semester where everything is coming to a head all at once, so today’s post is about 12-14 hours late to the party.  Indeed, it was only about fifteen minutes before writing this post that I stumbled upon an article with a local flavor.

It seems the mayor of my adopted hometown, Lamar, South Carolina, believes that a racial hate crime was committed against her.  Her vehicle was covered in a sticky yellow substance that resembled spray paint, she claimed.

After a brief investigation—it probably involved running a finger across the hood of the car—the Darlington County sheriff’s deputy determined the mystery substance was—GASP!—pollen.

You can read the full story here: http://www.gopusa.com/hate-crime-against-darnell-mcpherson-s-c-mayor-turns-out-to-be-pollen/

I’ve met Lamar’s mayor—my mayor—before, and Mayor McPherson is a pleasant and welcoming lady.  I met her when I went to town hall to setup garbage and sewage service at my home.

Lamar is a very small town—the population, according to the 2010 census, was slightly less than 1000—and it still functions on a timetable that is even slower than the rest of the South.  In true, old-school Southern tradition, local government offices shut down on Wednesday (as do some local businesses, if I’m not mistaken), and many folks get their mail at the Post Office, rather than a mailbox (my mail wasn’t delivered for about two weeks, until a neighbor told me I had to move the box across the street, otherwise our rural route carrier wasn’t going to stop).

Needless to say, it runs on a small staff, so Mayor McPherson was in there with the town’s two administrative assistants, processing water bills and the like.  I appreciated her dedication and friendliness, and she encouraged me to get involved in the community.

As such, it’s disappointing to see this kind of hysteria from her.  From the tone of the article, she sounds like she sincerely believes some misdeed was done against her—although I’m probably being overly generous.  The Jussie Smollett hoax was clearly too ludicrous to be true; maybe the Case of the Hooded Pollinator is the same situation.