What is the most heartbreaking thing you have seen in the United States?

By Jacob Taylor, former petty officer in the United States Navy

I had just gotten back from a year long deployment. One year of experiencing the armpits of the world: the poverty, lack of education, fear, crimes against humanity, and the drastic lack of basic human necessities.

Right when I got back from deployment I had finished my military contract and enrolled in school. This was around the same time as the presidential inauguration.

BEFORE I GO ANY FURTHER, it's worth saying that I was unable to vote due to where I was at on deployment. Because of this fact, I am unable to bitch.

After appreciating the fact that I got to wake up in my own bed, had clean water to drink in the morning, and some fresh eggs for breakfast, I went to class. After my classes were over I went outside to go catch the train and the streets were f*cking flooded with people screaming, yelling, and arguing about the president. This isn't what was heart breaking.

I tried to walk past these people unnoticed because people in Seattle are not kind to veterans- when I noticed some people with a stack of “F*ck Trump” fliers throw more than 2,000 pieces of paper in the air.

This is a f*cking society and a community. This is where I live. This is the place I love and I thought of every day while I was gone and I'll be God damned to see it littered by worthless pieces of f*cking shit who want to “make a positive difference”, when what they're actually doing is making this country worse. They provide no use to society and I wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire.

So, I began walking around and picking up the trash that they created. A group of them came up to me while I was throwing my first load in the recycling bin and said, “What the f*ck are you doing?! Are you a Trump supporter?!”

I said, “I'm just picking up the trash that you made.”

One of them fired back, “Are you saying this movement is trash? Donald Trump is a criminal!”

At which point I decided to stop talking to them and to continue cleaning up the street.

Two of them began to shove me and shout about how I was the problem and how I wasn't welcome.

…..I wasn't welcome in my own home after defending it.

I turned around and left, with a huge group of people at my back shouting about how much of a piece of shit I was, and how they should kick my f*cking ass. I sat on the train, went home, had a clean glass of water, ate fresh food, and went to sleep in my own bed.

That was the most heartbreaking thing I've seen in the United States.

SOURCE

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Nixon's Revenge: The Fall of the Adversary Press

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Saturday's White House Correspondents Association dinner exposed anew how far from Middle America our elite media reside.

At the dinner, the electricity was gone, the glamor and glitz were gone. Neither the president nor his White House staff came. Even Press Secretary Sean Spicer begged off.

The idea of a convivial evening together of our media and political establishments is probably dead for the duration of the Trump presidency.

Until Jan. 20, 2021, it appears, we are an us-vs.-them country.

As for the Washington Hilton's version of Hollywood's red carpet, C-SPAN elected to cover instead Trump's rollicking rally in a distant and different capital, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Before thousands of those Middle Pennsylvanians Barack Obama dismissed as clinging to their Bibles, bigotries and guns, Donald Trump, to cheers, hoots and happy howls, mocked the media he had stiffed:

"A large group of Hollywood actors and Washington media are consoling each other in a hotel ballroom ... I could not possibly be more thrilled than to be more than 100 miles away from Washington's swamp ... with a much, much larger crowd and much better people."

Back at the Hilton, all pretense at press neutrality was gone. Said WHCA president Jeff Mason in scripted remarks: "We are not fake news. We are not failing news organizations. We are not the enemy of the American people."

A standing ovation followed. The First Amendment guarantee of freedom of the press was repeatedly invoked and defiantly applauded, as though the president were a clear and present danger to it.

For behaving like a Bernie Sanders' rally, the national press confirmed Steve Bannon's insight — they are the real "opposition party."

And so the war between an adversary press and a president it despises and is determined to take down is re-engaged.

As related in my book, "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever," out May 9, that war first broke out in November of 1969.

With the media establishment of that day cheering on the anti-war protests designed to break his presidency, President Nixon sought to rally the nation behind him with his "Silent Majority" speech.

His prime-time address was a smashing success — 70 percent of the country backed Nixon. But the post-speech TV analysis trashed him.

Nixon was livid. Two-thirds of the nation depended on the three networks as their primary source of national and world news. ABC, CBS and NBC not only controlled Nixon's access to the American people but were the filter, the lens, through which the country would see him and his presidency for four years. And all three were full of Nixon-haters.

Nixon approved a counterattack on the networks by Vice President Spiro Agnew. And as he finished his edits of the Agnew speech, Nixon muttered, "This'll tear the scab off those b———s!"

It certainly did.

Amazingly, the networks had rushed to carry the speech live, giving Agnew an audience of scores of millions for his blistering indictment of the networks' anti-Nixon bias and abuse of their power over U.S. public opinion.

By December 1969, Nixon, the president most reviled by the press before Trump, was at 68 percent approval, and Agnew was the third-most admired man in America, after Nixon and Billy Graham.

Nixon went on to roll up a 49-state landslide three years later.

Before Watergate brought him down, he had shown that the vaunted "adversary press" was not only isolated from Middle America, it could be routed by a resolute White House in the battle for public opinion.

So where is this Trump-media war headed?

As of today, it looks as though it could end like the European wars of the last century, where victorious Brits and French were bled as badly and brought as low as defeated Germans.

Whatever happens to Trump, the respect and regard the mainstream media once enjoyed are gone. Public opinion of the national press puts them down beside the politicians they cover — and for good reason.

The people have concluded that the media really belong to the political class and merely masquerade as objective and conscientious observers. Like everyone else, they, too, have ideologies and agendas.

Moreover, unlike in the Nixon era, the adversary press today has its own adversary press: Fox News, talk radio, and media-monitoring websites to challenge their character, veracity, competence, and honor, even as they challenge the truthfulness of politicians.

Trump is being hammered as no other president before him, except perhaps Nixon during Watergate. It is hard to reach any other conclusion than that the mainstream media loathe him and intend to oust him, as they relished in helping to oust Nixon.

If this war ends well for Trump, it ends badly for his enemies in the press. If Trump goes down, the media will feel for a long time the hostility and hatred of those tens of millions who put their faith and placed their hopes in Trump.

SOURCE

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Trump's "honored" comment about Kim sounded foolish, but it was meant to flatter

In an interview on Monday with Bloomberg News, Donald Trump said something that left many shaking their heads in disbelief or rolling their eyes over yet another instance of his verbal incontinence. Shocking, we know. Trump mused, "If it would be appropriate for me to meet with [North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un], I would absolutely. I would be honored to do it." He continued, "If it's under ... the right circumstances. But I would do that."

When it comes to ad-lib remarks in interviews, much like his unrefined use of Twitter (which thankfully is now subject to some moderation), Trump still is prone to forget that every word he says will be trumpeted around the world. At issue specifically was Trump's use of the word "honored" in his reference to North Korea's ruthless dictator. Once again, many pounced on Trump's words as further evidence of his supposed admiration of strong men. Coming on the heels of his promise to invite murderous Philippine dictator Rodrigo Duterte and Turkey's budding tyrant Tayyip Erdogan to the White House, this is understandable. But that's also an overly simplistic assessment that misses the purpose behind Trump's statement. Listen for what he means not what he says.

Clearly, Trump is aiming to defuse an increasingly tense situation. His offer of a conditional olive branch toward Kim — and make no mistake, any meeting is absolutely conditional on North Korea's behavior — coupled with his flatting reference to Kim as a "smart cookie," are designed to lay ground work for a potential diplomatic solution. And while Trump's words may have little impact on Kim, it plays well with China, the most important player in helping the U.S. clamp down on the despot John McCain more accurately labeled the "crazy fat kid."

Showing honor, especially to those in positions of authority, is of great importance to the cultures of the Far East. Trump's statements play to the Eastern ear as a serious and respectful expression for seeking a diplomatic solution. And while Westerners justifiably hear Trump's words as foolish, the desired aim of de-escalating the growing conflict is not so careless. It's also important to note that Trump's statements were made at the same time as the U.S. military announced that the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) Missile Shield in South Korea is now operational. That is no coincidence.

Finally, in the highly unlikely event that the Kim regime actually capitulates to the U.S. and the rest of the world's demand of nuclear disarmament, a bilateral meeting between the U.S. and North Korea would be a significant change in longstanding U.S. policy. That may end up being far more consequential than Trump's verbal blunder.

SOURCE

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Happy Loyalty Day

The radical Left was out in force Monday. It was marching in Washington, DC, in major cities across the country and around the world in May Day or International Workers Day protests. But the day has another meaning here in America.

In 1921, America tried to resist the socialist/communist fervor surrounding May Day events by proclaiming May 1st “Americanization Day.” Eventually it became known as “Loyalty Day” and every president since Eisenhower in 1955 has issued “Loyalty Day” proclamations.

Below is an excerpt of President Trump’s Loyalty Day proclamation:

On Loyalty Day, we recognize and reaffirm our allegiance to the principles upon which our Nation is built. We pledge our dedication to the United States of America and honor its unique heritage, reminding ourselves that we are one Nation, under God, made possible by those who have sacrificed to defend our liberty. We honor our Republic and acknowledge the great responsibility that self-governance demands of each of us.

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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