the Hyacinth Girl

On Memorial Day weekend, our president gave a flowery, superficially presidential speech about sacrifice and expressed his concern that our soldiers weren’t fully appreciated by the public at large, and yet, in the days previous, he and his defense secretary made sure to remind everyone that our servicemen and women are really nothing more than a government-funded group of sex offenders. Perhaps I’m just paying more attention to it than I was before, but I’ve been hearing a lot about the sexual integrity of the military in the last four or five months.

Oh, and there’s this.

I’m not maintaining that our current military doesn’t have its problems. Hardly. Sex scandals are always tres magnifique, and military sex scandals seem to capture our imagination a bit more, with the power and corruption running deeper and for higher stakes in a somewhat mysterious branch of the governmental bureaucracy. Should it be cleaned up? Yeah. Should we encourage our servicemen and women to practice restraint and decorum, holding them to a higher standard than the undisciplined idiots who are out here, not even living their lives but just bumping into things in the civilian world? Absolutely.

But is a commencement speech at the Naval Academy on Memorial Day weekend the appropriate place to lecture on the subject? It seems… insulting. And inappropriate. And in line with this administration’s ongoing attempt to diminish the reputation of the military in the mind of the civilian. Why respect an organization that apparently sanctions rape and harassment and general nastiness? It should be no secret that this president does not hold our fighting men and women in high regard, even while he is their commander in chief. Chipping away at the respect we civilians have for our soldiers is essential for his ongoing assault against the military. Civilians won’t protest the shrinking of a military they despise and distrust, will they?

Our president is a part of an academic community that sees our military superiority — and by extension, the military itself — as something shameful, something that must be completely done away with. Each and every reminder of its failures, faults and scandals will be used to accomplish this.

We must in turn remember that though there are assholes aplenty in the military, there are thousands of men and women of integrity who do this country proud. There are men and women who live up to and surpass the standards set for them by their predecessors and make this country’s military one of the most decent, restrained, disciplined and humane in history. Of the soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen that I know personally, I can name more than a handful of exemplary human beings. People who impress me with their strength of character and faith. Painting these people with the broad brush of sexual predator would be neither fair nor accurate.

It’s coming.
This is Lee Rigby, the soldier run down and hacked to death in Woolwich by savage beasts masquerading as people. He had a wife and son, and a family that loved him. Remember his name, his face.

The West cannot be defeated by military might, so the enemy adapts. They know our weakness — our investment in denial stemming from our cultural relativism — and they are betting we will break under a prolonged assault of truly asymmetrical proportions. We will either change our response to terrorism or we will perish. It’s as simple as that. PM Cameron sounded strong and resolute yesterday in his response to the atrocity. Contrast that with our own president in the wake of Bengazi and the murder of his personal representative in Libya. From a foreign policy standpoint, everything out of Obama’s mouth is a sickening display of weakness and provincialism. It’s embarrassing. It’s depressing.

I think we’re on our own.

As an aside, I thought it particularly relevant that the only people to confront those animals in Woolwich were women. I’m proud of my sex. I’m wondering where the men were, however, and why they would let a soldier die in the street and let their women approach them. It’s troubling.

So as the days and nights since the marathon bombings have worn on, I’ve thought more and more about hudna, the strategic truce employed by the jihad in order to regroup and lull the enemy into complacency. In the age of political correctness, it is so easy to deny reality. And in the age of the 24 hour news cycle, it is easy to forget what happened 2 days ago.

Truth is often uncomfortable.

I pray this is not the beginning of something larger and more sustained than we’ve ever seen, for I’m not sure I trust the West as a whole to face a threat like that dealt with daily by the Israelis. We are soft and spoiled, and tend to give up easily.

In the local news, an “expert” was claiming that the marathon bombers were nothing more than the “Dylan Klebolds” of Chechnya, and not actual terrorists. On KFI, the LA station we get down here in San Diego, the late night hosts were coming to the conclusion that the youngest bomber was nothing but a follower trying to impress his big brother, and should maybe be looked at in a more lenient light. Or something.

Do we have so much invested in the fantasy of the end of Islamist terrorism that we will so readily dismiss reality? Our stupidity will get us killed. We will “coexist” all the way to the grave. Our society, already decaying, is ripe for collapse if we refuse to look at all the options, even the politically incorrect ones.

I wish I were tired, but I am not at the moment. So I’ll just lay here, waiting. For what? The end?

Maybe.

First of all, wtf people? My previous post was rife with typos. You had almost a month to mock me for them, you know.

Secondly, if you believe your government is capable of 9/11 and Boston, why the hell are you still here? Don’t get me wrong; governments are awful things, but if ours is killing its own to push political agendas, we’ve got to end it. That’s armed revolt time, not time to smoke a bowl and watch the Daily Show. Our decline is steep, but we have not reached that point yet.

Not yet.

Though we don’t know who is responsible as of yet, ask Israel how it feels to have carnage visit even the most mundane of activities on a regular basis. Everything is a target, and we will never be able to lock down a country of this size. We may very well be looking at our future.

None of which eases the pain, shock and horror being experienced by those at the marathon. Martin Richard, the same age as my child, waiting for his dad at the finish line, was doing nothing to merit the fate meted out to him by unknown actors. His sister lost her leg. His mother has undergone brain surgery and his father is left to pick up the pieces. Martin’s has been the most visible face, but we’re all victims. Not because we may be inconvenienced by increased “security” measures, but because as death becomes more commonplace in our daily lives, we lose parts of ourselves and become more like shell-shocked survivors of an endless war.

So let’s find the bastards responsible for this and string ‘em up. And let’s string up ever subsequent piece of excrement that decides that their mission is to arbitrarily end the lives of innocents. No public trials for enemy combatants, and if you want to make this country your battlefield, bring it.

Of course, I’m not optimistic that our country has the stomach to endure a prolonged confrontation on our soil, (not that I want it!). If it inhibits their watching of Dancing With the Stars — I know I pick on DWTS incessantly, but it’s so damn stupid — then it is nothing but an inconvenience.

En masse, Americans disappoint me. Fortunately, life has prepared me for disappointment.

I have exactly no time for pundits — conservative or otherwise — talking popular culture today. What with Rush misinterpreting Beyoncé and Hannity talking Honey Boo Boo,  I feel fit to stroke out. I know, I know — Rush maintains that he was merely repeating a misinterpretation of Beyoncé’s stupid new song as part of his “low information voter outreach” or whatever, but it was so incredibly stupid and annoying, I turned the radio off. I listen to Rush almost everyday, and as much sentimental affinity as I have for him, his pop culture commentary is like listening to your dad attempting to remain culturally relevant. I don’t have to do that, because my dad isn’t worried about appearing “cool,” but you know what I mean.

Why do we do this to ourselves? The only pop culture commentary I can handle from right or left is Mark Steyn’s, and do you know what his secret is? He wears sous and pocket squares and spontaneously breaks or into show tunes and doesn’t give a f*ck if you think he’s cool. But he’s relevant because he pays attention to the undercurrents of culture, not the surface trappings. He knows what it all means without getting bogged down in the pointless particulars. And I’m not trying to turn this into some Steyn asskissing festival, because that ship has sailed; I’m just trying to put into words that nebulous knack for getting pop culture commentary right. Remaining “relevant” isn’t the goal. Interpreting the smoke signals should be.

Now, Rush doesn’t seem to think he’s trying to remain relevant, and perhaps everyone is reading it wrong. I’m not even concerned worth that. It’s the overarching belief on the right in general that we can somehow regain pop culture when we never entered the fight. Winning the culture war was never about making concessions to relativism, it was about standing diem against it, while still exhibiting grace and acceptance, something neither show has done. Multiculturalism and moral relativism are two of the most intolerant, intellectually lazy and oppressive mindsets foisted onto Western culture as a whole. And we have done nothing on the right to counter that. And now that it seems apparent that we have lost the culture war, the right scrambles to water down the core message of conservatism or make fart jokes and talk about Beyoncé, who seems to be a little worried about remaining relevant herself.

It’s not a younger tone or fave we need. Honestly, I’m not sure what we need. I’m of the mind that we have lost, and that we should attempt to make our decline as uncomfortable as possible for its architects. I know that’s an awful place to be, but what hope can you have in a country that elected Obama twice? I mean, Carter only got one term. I think that by opting or of the culture war, conservatism allowed this country to become a place where 35 year olds are still in college, living off the government, having kids occasionally and patting themselves on the back for being so much more tolerant than those racist, homophobic, sexist, anti-intellectual flat earthers on the right. Sadly — almost comically, really — my peers can’t see that they are but the latest standard bearers for a centuries-old philosophy that has brought nothing but death and decline everywhere it has been implemented.

But we — conservatives — gave up on entertainment, art, music, and literature, abandoning the things that historically shape culture without much of a fight. And then we complain about it and offer up feeble,  “Christian rock” caliber alternatives when it becomes apparent that the game is lost.

You don’t regain that kind of ground by “articulating your message” more clearly. We’ve got 40 or 50 years of decline, of the  infantilization of successive generations of potential adults to deal with. Telling them that they’re going to have to start paying for their own condoms and taking responsibility for themselves isn’t going to cut it.

Do you know what to do? Yeah, me either. I’m just planning on holding the architects accountable and making this decline as uncomfortable as possible. That’s really all I know how to do.

Writers are terrifically competitive and narcissistic creatures. Don’t ever mistake mutual admiration for friendship. I made that mistake once and won’t do it again. No hard feelings; I’m a writer too.

I don’t know about the wisdom in marketing a dentist with the claim that, “if it can be done in your mouth, [doctor's name] can do it and has been doing it for the last 25 years.” When I listen to this commercial, I don’t want to go to that dentist. I want to go to TJ’s dental corridor before I go to that guy. I don’t really want him doing anything in my mouth.

So I’m listening to AM radio, obviously. I don’t like this guy I’m listening to, but he annoys me the least of the programming that’s on at this time. The topic is CPAC, of course, and however much this guy annoys me, I’m down with his anti-Jeb Bush rant.

All these talking heads are saying what I’ve been saying for a long time now, which is not to build myself up into something I’m not, but to do a print version of the “I told you so” dance. The GOP establishment has conceded the argument to the Left for so long, and so completely, I’m not sure they can accept that Republicans outside of the Beltway are anything but inbred rubes that believe the earth is flat and Obama is the antichrist. They accepted the Left’s caricature because people like Jeb and apparently the editorial staff of National Review have believed it all along. How can you expect NRO to think differently when you need to have a college degree to be a receptionist? A degree means you’re smart, correct? There’s no way anyone could know how to answer phones or take messages or organize office supplies without their Art History degree. (I am referring to a job paying the HQ had posted a few years ago. Apparently, people like me who ain’t got no money cain’t be trusted with them fancy phones off theirs. Or near the talent.)

I again reiterate my disgust with any and all “establishments,” those lazy, decadent, self-important boobs that seem to cropup at the end of a civilization. I’m not anti-intellectual, I’m anti-establishment. I’m anti-reductionist however subtle my betters think they are being.

But ultimately, I’m against wasting my time spring into the void, which is essentially what I am doing at this point.