photo credit – Victor Davis Hanson – Zerohedge – Tyler Durden

Excerpt from an article by Victor Davis Hanson June 11, 2021

Victor Davis Hanson: This Isn’t Your   Father’s Left-Wing Revolution

Sixties protestors mainlined divorce, abortion on demand, promiscuity, drug use and one-parent homes. But by the late 1970s and the 1980s, most veteran cultural revolutionaries had gotten married, were raising a family, bought a house, got a job and made money.

This time around, their offspring’s left-wing assault is different — and far more ominous.

The woke grandchildren of the former outsiders are now more ruthless systematic insiders. The woke and wired new establishment knows how to use money and power to rebirth America as something the founders and most current Americans never envisioned.

Name one mainline institution that the woke left does not now control — and warp. The media? The campus? Silicon Valley? Professional sports? The corporate boardroom? Foundations? The K-12 educational establishment? The military hierarchy? The government deep state? The FBI top echelon?

The left absorbed them all. But this time around, members of the left really believe that “by any means necessary” is no mere slogan. Instead, it is a model of how to disrupt or destroy American customs, traditions and values.

end of excerpt – full article available on line

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In a world where I can’t turn on a TV, look at a newspaper or hear a conversation without being confronted with “Wokeness”, Black Lives Matter and  Critical Race Theory, I have begun re-examining my own views on “Critical” issues in life.  In the process I have developed what I will call “Critical Bob Theory”.  My own theory is based on observations and facts and not on heated hyperbole. 

Critical Bob Theory

It seems that as a culture and nation we seem to be losing our grasp on established boundaries on cultural values, acceptable behavior, equal justice and expectations. Things that we can depend on being true, every time, all the time. 

Many sports are played on a field with boundaries and specific rules that must be complied with by contestants on both sides of the ball.  If those boundaries are not respected and rules not equally applied, chaos is the only possible outcome.

Nature has rules that are constant and predictable.  Gravity is one.  Fall or jump from an airplane several thousand feet in the air above the ground without a parachute or other flotation device and you will fall to earth. Not once in a while but every single time you do it. 

If we defy the laws of nature we will lose every time.  Natures laws are like basic mathematics, not negotiable.  2+2 is always 4.  

Civilization needs constants and as citizens we need reliable boundaries.  If our civilization loses it’s predictable constants and boundaries, we will lose our way and end up in a “through the looking glass” world where up is down and down is up, nothing makes sense, lacking direction in our lives and ending up confused and troubled.  I see much of this happening now.  Look at too many of our major cities that have become infested with unpunished crime, drugs and homeless encampments filled with misery and filth.

Most people of faith (I am Christian) have a set of laws set down by God to live by and to follow.  Honor your Father and your Mother,  Thou shall not murder, thou shall not steal, etc.  These were Commandments, not suggestions. They are constants.  They don’t change and if  we stray from those constants we find ourselves in trouble, morally and in many cases legally. 

At one time most of us thought Government was a constant, ruled and kept in check by the Constitution, Bill of Rights and those Amendments like guaranteeing Freedom of Speech,  Right to Bear Arms, etc.

A constant.  with Laws and Rights that apply to everyone equally, no fudging. 

But, government is not applying laws evenly and appears on a path to shred much of the original Constitution, Bill of Rights and those Amendments. 

If you join a group for a peaceful, unarmed, noisy protest at the Nations Capitol you can be labeled a Domestic Terrorist, locked up, without bail, indefinitely without trial.  However, if you engage in violent protests, destroying the private property of innocent citizens, looting and burning large areas of a major city under a false flag of “Racial Injustice” there are no legal consequences.  If arrested you will be released without bail and any record of arrest will be expunged by a corrupt legal system. 

Government no longer fills important positions on a merit based system.  Decisions are being made based on gender, gender identification, political affiliation and skin color.  

Government is no longer a reliable constant, it has become a purely political entity that seeks its own agenda and power for those in charge.  It also wants to force feed this divisive and destructive Woke Culture and Critical Race Theory propaganda to the most vulnerable of our population, our children.  

Nature is constant and has certain immutable laws.  Violate them at your own peril.  In the womb and at birth we are all either male or female.  Government may tell us that we can choose any of a long list of genders to live our lives as, it may even declare there are no longer any gender differences, surgeons can alter, many would say mutilate, physical biological differences,  but in the end they are not able to change genetics.  Too often these efforts only create pain, confusion and some measure of personal and social chaos.

I believe boundaries are an essential element of any successful culture and civilization.  Without them civilizations crumble and fall into the dustbin of failed civilizations in history.

If you agree with much of what is written here, please share this article with family, friends and neighbors.

Bob Bandy – June 2021

John Carpenters

Escape from New York (1981) IMDb

photo: Google

I am reprinting the following article because what it has to say is important.  Like many others I believe there are those who would take us down a path to destruction as a nation.  One that we have grown up in and many have fought and died to sustain.  These folks may be well meaning but they are engineering a national, and perhaps international disaster.  What follows is excerpted from the beginning of the article.

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The Following is Reprinted from:

Converge Media

WOKEISM – THE NEW RELIGION OF THE WEST

There is a new religion. It is moving like a tidal wave through every facet of western culture, shaping and redefining society as it goes. This religion masquerades under the guise of compassion and justice, but underneath is an evil ideology that is incompatible with western values and incongruent with the Christian worldview. This movement did not start in Minneapolis on May 25th, when George Floyd was murdered. That event acted as a watershed moment for an ideology that has been growing for decades. If left unchecked, this new religion could lead to a complete unravelling of western culture.

There are many names for what we currently find ourselves in; wokeness, political correctness, and cancel culture are some of them, but these only encapsulate a portion of the phenomenon. Cultural Marxism, neo-marxism, social justice, identity politics, and Critical Theory are broader descriptors. We would like to use a term that adequately captures the religiosity of the movement: wokeism.

Wokeism is a religion. Although it has not been organized into any formal religious structure, it has all the functions of religious doctrine. It has a unique epistemology (theory of knowledge), an evaluation of the human condition, and a redemption narrative. But from where did it come?

Critical Theory

In the early 20th century, a German school of philosophy called the Frankfurt School developed a social philosophy called Critical Theory. In a nutshell, Critical Theory critiques culture and challenges the underlying power structures of society. It is a movement to “liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them,” reinterpreting western culture as a story of the oppressor vs. oppressed. In Critical Theory, the only things that exist are hierarchies of power, and those hierarchies must be torn down. The goal of this movement, whether stated or not, is nothing less than the complete dismantling and rebuilding of western culture from the ground up.

Critical Theory started to become prominent among western academics in the 90s and eventually infiltrated almost every university in the western world. In recent years, the ideology has left the university and has made the jump to media and corporate culture, establishing itself as the primary moral culture within western societies. Currently, the main lines of separation between oppressors and oppressed are race, sex and gender identity.

This is not just a political or social movement within the framework of traditional enlightenment values. Concepts such as logic, science, and reason are viewed as tools of the oppressive white patriarchy. Values like individualism, hard work, punctuality and delayed gratification would be understood as perpetuating white supremacy. Critical Theory has become much more than a social philosophy and is the primary philosophical driving force behind the new civil religion of wokeism.

The goal of this movement, whether stated or not, is nothing less than the complete dismantling and rebuilding of western culture from the ground up.

The New Religion

Why call wokeism a new religion? The fact is that the rise of secular humanism over the past 70 years created a religion-shaped hole in our culture. Secularism, for all of its cultural dominance, failed to offer a robust philosophy of meaning and purpose, nor did it provide any moral framework for how to act within the world besides “be a good person because the alternative is undesirable for everyone.” Alternatively, wokeism has developed its view of reality with its own set of values and narratives. From the ashes of secular humanism, a new civil religion rises.

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To read the article in its entirety just google:

Wokeism the New Religion of the West

Bob Bandy – April 2021

No Adults….No Rules….No Mercy

Lord of the Flies – William Golding 1954

For so many years I have been a current events and political “junkie”.

As I reflect on the fact that statistically I am in my “late” years I have come more and more to ponder on what I really want to do with what time is left to me.

Recently I have become more and more troubled by the obvious “Lord of the Flies” game going on in our nations Capitol.  No Adults….No Rules….No Mercy

In so many ways our government has become no more than a poorly run criminal enterprise.  Don’t you think if you had the ability to steal (by way of taxation) at every level from every person in the country you could at least figure out a way to “break even”.  This bunch can’t even do that.  Our children and grandchildren are inheriting a 27 Trillion Dollars (and growing) debt.  A debt that eventually can only be paid off through massive and crushing inflation and misery.  Hello Venezuela.

If the above is not enough to bring one to apoplexy, I live in California, a state lying in financial ruins due to mismanagement, fraud, waste and corruption.  The latest example being that California has recently discovered that it paid out 31 Billion (or more) dollars in fraudulent unemployment claims to prisoners and other criminals.  The money is gone, “poof”.  Money that could have provided homes for the states exploding homeless population or paving for its statewide crumbling highways or….?  Instead California is going “hat in hand” to a “bankrupt” Federal Government to bail the state out.

Many days I have become so angry at what is happening that I have let it steal the happiness and joys that remain to me.

One day my beloved daughter challenged me to just not listen to or watch the media news for a week.  She said all it does is make you mad and you can’t “fix it”. I took her up on the challenge and found myself in a better mood and frame of mind.  Now as I work at my computer (or whatever) I listen to the music I love instead of the 24/7 news cycle.

Being a slow learner it has taken some time but I have come to realize that I am much happier when I focus on the really important “stuff” in my life.  Faith, Family (my beautiful wife and daughter) and Friends;  all are the things that really matter to me.

There is an old story about a wise old Native American talking to his grandson.  He tells him that each of us have two wolves at war inside of us trying to devour us.  One wolf is named Hate and one wolf is named Love.  When his grandson asks him which wolf wins, the old man tells the boy simply….  “The one you feed”.

I must say that I am still saddened by what is being done to the country I love and grew up in because of the antics of the Clowns, Criminals and Lunatics that seem hell bent on destroying our values and bankrupting the country in the process.  But, the reality is that I can’t fix it, no matter how much I truly want to.  Even the sacred ballot box seems to have been terminally corrupted.

I have reached a crossroads where I can either spend the rest of my life p*ss*d off most of the time or try to spread a little goodwill, assistance, love and cheer wherever I can.

Like I said, I am a slow learner.  God give me the wisdom to focus my efforts where I might still do some good.

Bob Bandy  February 2021

Regular Readers of my columns know that I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican.  Many think I am a Libertarian and there is much that I share with the Libertarian view but I do not identify with them either.

I am old enough that I can say I was a Kennedy Democrat though in truth I don’t think John F. Kennedy would recognize the Democratic Party of today.

Later I became disenchanted with the Democratic Party and became a Reagan Republican for a number of years.

Still later I became disappointed with the spinelessness of most of the Republican Party and became “not affiliated” with any party.

Both Political Parties have their share of a small number of “good” people who sincerely want what is best (in their minds) for the country and a much larger number who only seek power, wealth and some form of immortality in the footnotes of history.

I have many good friends in both parties that I respect and like even though we may strongly disagree on important issues.  This article is not about them.

Within the Republican Party there are many whom I consider politically and morally “Bi-Polar” in that they can’t adhere to their supposed value system if it will make them unpopular with the media or interferes with their personal goals of wealth and power.

Within the Democratic Party there has come to be a more sinister element that seems to have wedded itself to the “Dark Side of the Force” with an agenda of destruction of what this country was originally founded on.

If one looks at any of the Red/Blue Political Maps of the country it seems apparent that the so-called “Red” zones are in area much larger, more sparsely populated with those parts of the country in general more responsibly governed fiscally and contributing a greater share in productivity of goods and services producing a solid foundation of taxes.  For purposes of this essay I will call them “Tax Cows”.

The “Blue” zones are much more focused in large urban areas.  Many, many of these corrupt, inefficient, large, densely populated urban areas are run by so called “Liberal” politicians and have become infested with consumers of what the “Tax Cows” produce.  Often they are overly populated by “non-producers”, either receivers of government handouts or overpaid bureaucrats whose main job is doling out other peoples tax money to non-productive citizens, by which I mean those who could, but do not work at something productive.  Sometimes referred to as those who feed at the government trough.

This “Dark Side” of the so-called Democratic Party has one agenda.  That is to “milk” the “Tax Cows” and ship that “Tax Milk” from the more sparsely voter populated  countryside where it is produced to more heavily voter populated non productive inner cities where much of the Tax Dollars are wasted on sound good, feel good programs that only make the citizens more addicted to the public dole and less able to care for themselves.  The receivers of this “free money” largess seem to believe the lie that the Democratic Party is somehow the “Mama Milk Tax Cow” and vote for the Democrats in misguided loyalty.  If one tries to point out that the tax dollars are not producing the desired result, one is labeled as “not caring”, “heartless” or any number of other punitive adjectives and told that “we” just have not spent enough but with ever more “Tax Milk” it will all work out.  This is how a city like Seattle can spend a “Billion Tax Milk Dollars” on homelessness and only make the problem worse.

At some point this “Tax Milk” transfer produces social collapse with collateral crime, drugs and hopelessness.  The city lies in ruins with lots of finger pointing and no solutions.  Whatever few producers/tax payers are left that have the ability to leave “Beat feet for the tall grass” and look for peace, order and fiscal discipline elsewhere.  As an example this is why California and New York are hemorrhaging citizens relocating to states like Florida and Texas.   The city then ends up with increasing filth and debris as well as sickness and death.  If you doubt me, visit some of the cities this is happening to right now.  New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, Baltimore etc. etc. etc.

Those in charge on the “Dark Side” don’t really care because they are part of the ruling class and protected from the chaos and misery they have helped create.

George Soros and other American haters win and you end up with a “Banana Republic” led by corruption, lies, waste and greed.

Sad to say, the warnings of many of our nations founders seem to have gone unheeded and are coming to pass.

Bob Bandy – January 2021