summer patriot, winter soldier

the last word on pigeons and chumps ..... i promise .....

throughout history pigeons and chumps have tended to "flip flop" with one group gaining ascendency over former rulers.  and, on occasion societies have been smart enough to allow persons of merit arise from the lower classes/castes into the ruling elites.   just about as often a ruling elite will attempt to make their rule permanent, by instilling institutional structures that tend to favor one group over another: you may view "royalty" as such a device.  (god knows that prince charles benefits from this, having displayed no other talent other than fortuitous birth.)

this is the struggle presently going on in the "west," as leftist progressivism seems to regard its rule as a matter of right, and seeks to instill institutional patterns such as will assure its "reign" in perpetuity.  (nancy pelosi does, in fact, take it as a personal and ideological affront when she is not speaker of the house,...., she regards it as right, privilege & duty owed her to hold the position.)

such is not guaranteed by history, event or dynamic.  on the equator, in ecuador, sits an empty building built by leftist progressives when it appeared that the left would rule the entirety of the southern americas, with leftists and communists running the most largest and most prosperous of the south american countries.  but, the leftists did what most leftists do, and they spend and mismanage their way into oblivion by driving their countries to financial ruin.  chazez in venezuela was the most prominent, but the pattern was  followed all over south america.

this should be a lesson to all who apprehend the mechanism at work.  and, that is, if you would rule, you must figure a way to pay for it.   and, this applies doubly to the progressive left, because they are hostile to the structures and economies which might otherwise secure their source of funding for years:  yet, here in the good old u.s. of a. we see progressives spewing the same old tired bullshit against "capital," when it is nothing else but "capital" that pays the bills.

and, they come due, sooner or later.

if the leftists are to secure their rule, they are going to have to find a way to keep people working, earning money, and having enough money left over to pay their taxes, willingly.  a permanently enforced peasantry simply will not support the revenue needs of persons who eschew wealth (except for themselves, of course,...., witness my favorite whipping boy these days, ms. osario-cortez, who comes from wealth and knows nothing of work, which created the wealth she has inherited.   she'll squander it soon enough, having nothing but disdain for it, except to dress well.)

if the right is to secure its role in things, it is going to have to find a way to keep capital vital, and people working, creating wealth and securing it to the future.   this is vital, to keep the country vital and vigorous, and making money.  environmentalists and tree huggers are vital for aesthetic reasons, but, in economic terms, nothing cripples a vital economy like too many artists, poets and aesthetes, who understand nothing about economy.

if a country is to survive and prosper it must have a reasonable balance of these countervailing tendencies.  a society without poets and artists is a dreary dead existence.   a society with too damned many of the dolts is, inevitably, a society beset by hunger, discord and disharmony.  it is one thing to question, it is another thing to question so much as to throw the shared values needed into a community into fractious groups.

we need the chamber of commerce and the rotary.   we need the visionaries, the rhymers, and the critics.   not just too damned many of them at one time, otherwise they are poison to the productivity that pays for all.

lefties and righties need to understand this.   they don't need to agree on it, necessarily, (and that is what keeps things interesting, ain't it....every family, royal or otherwise, needs some princess annes, and fewer prince charlies, ... , at every level), but they need to understand it.

this society needs to go into the universities and the government bureaucracies, and weed out the lefties who are hostile to the very things that keep us vital and vigorous.   and, fewer idiots in hollywood would be a nice touch....they are not harmless, and should not be tolerated as such. 

but, not entirely.

john jay @ 01.15.2019

the last law of pigeons .....

every system, or system of law if you will, has its own internal dynamic, its own demands, and suffers its own internal consequences.  a last statement of the system.  and, so it is with the law of pigeons.

the last law of pigeons is that sooner or later the pigeon feed gets scarcer, comes to want, and then the pigeon feed runs out.  this is the inevitable consequence of more pigeons eating more pigeon feed, and fewer chumps making it.  even the most industrious chump can only produce so much, and, sooner or later, the pigeons's demand for food overwhelms the the remaining chumps's ability to grow/produce it.

the pigeons grumble and grump when this entire circumstance is perceived, and comprehended.   they squabble, there is conflict, perhaps open conflict.   fighting over available food, and where to get it, and scarcity and rising price competition and then open competition to acquire it.

the pigeons find that all pigeons are equal, but that some pigeons are more equal than others in this situation.  this, too, gives rise to grump & grumble & conflict.

none of this goes on in a vacuum.  for, you see, pigeons are not entirely without resource.  in order to perpetuate the coup, in order to persuade the chumps and lesser pigeons to fall into the order of things, the pigeons develop several rationales to convince all that the coup is a preferred order of existence, and, moreover, a right and just order of existence, and not just a random happenstance or habit.  the pigeons develop a raison d'etre to explain the workings of the coup.

and, (much like hegel's phenomenology of mind and spirit), it concludes that the coup is righteous, deserves to exist, and is the perfection of pigeon existence.   and, that it is right and just to exist, perhaps even at the expense of other, (and mark this, just as with hegel), less deserving and inferior social organizations.

it never occurs to the pigeon's to work, or produce their own food.

they are simply too good for that.  such menial things as tilling the soil, grubbing for food and existence, is beneath the way they have come to view themselves, through the development of their systems of thought.  they, because they are pigeons, deserve their subsistence, their pigeon food.   it is, after all, a matter of right, just as their perceived superiority, is a matter of right and justness.

the pigeons look outside the boundaries of the coup for food.   and, while they are at it, they decide that a bigger more expansive coup would be nice, as well.    they look to their neighbors.   as the demands for more food increase (it always expands, just as the population of pigeons always expands, and the need for alpha pigeons to organize things always demands expansion and growth), the pigeons look for new realms to run.

by conquest if necessary.   and, it must not be forgotten, that conquest has many desirable aspects, if successful.

lebensraum, and the concomitant right to expand and acquire a bigger coup, becomes as a matter of necessity part of the raison d'etre of the coup.  the pigeons must eat, they deserve to eat, and they deserve to eat of the productivity of the labor of others because they are superior pigeons, demands that they have the right to exist by expansion.  (you may substitute "conquest" for expansion, if you choose.  it is up to you.)

(if you doubt the way i parse this out, well, i pity you.  and, suggest that you set aside a nice winter to read hegel and nietzsche for an explanation of how the raison d'etre moves along, and spend a week or so with schopenhauer to explain how the mental gymnastics of the whole dynamic is thoroughly in conformity with human nature and the rationals behind the rights of entitlement.   or, you can trust me.   i would suggest, however, that you read and think.  it is refreshing in its own little way.)

you protest, it doesn't happen this way.  it cannot.  people and pigeons are too good, nowadays.

i suggest that you ask the poles.  you know, the polish poles.   those guys.

now, for the "stretch."  guys like me are always looking for the stretch.  but, i would suggest to you, that you take a longer look at the osario-cortez types which seem to be running amok among the younger dimmees.  and, think about it, for the implications, of what it means when they ask for more pigeon food for the oppressed and put upon, and suggest that you work harder to produce it for them.  and, to provide them with the "necessities" they deserve, through your labor, of course.

and, while you are at it, give some thought to josef goebbels, and others, who insisted that they spoke to truth.  and, for justice.

john jay @ 01.14.2019

p.s.  and, pay attention, and watch for the raison d'etat.  that will launch a new age.   i suggest you look at the bottom of the shiny new bowl in which it is offered, for evidence of any historical rust suggesting that it has been trotted out, many times before.

 

open letter to the soon-to-be-ex mrs. jeff bezos ..... i am available ..... attributes listed below .....

friends tell me that you are soon to be divorced from mr. bezos, the richest man in the whole world, and that you are reputed to become the richest woman in the whole world.

by this post please be informed that i am available.  i am divorced from previous wives.

candor requires that i disclose i am in no wise remotely as good looking as tom selleck, nor as physically imposing, though mr. bezos's appearance suggests that this is not important to you.  i am far better looking than mickie rourke, for what that is worth, but, then again, so are 60% of the other men in this world, alive and recently dead.   (hard to tell the difference w/ mickie, ain't it.)

other disclosures.--

--i am 70 years of age, and still more or less potty broken.  (a wonderfully descriptive phrase, i am finding, as i age.  at least i am still aging.)

--i have 4 by-passes, and 5 stents in place, but, i go up hills and stairs.

--i have two bad knees, which are becoming arthritic.

--teeth aren't much.

--i like our president, mr. trump, and am amazed at the good job he is doing.  (i really don't have to attend the cocktail parties, if you don't want me to, and i will not feel even remotely put off by that request.  hint:  i don't take orders very well.)

now, for my good features.

--some consider me moderately pleasurable to look at.

--in spite of the recitation above, i am pretty fit, and slender by contemporary standards.   given my experience reading autopsies most pathologists would say "fit, but not excessively nourished."   that's not too bad, they, as most, tend not to be effusive describing dead bodies.    once, descending a stair case naked from the shower, a wife described me as "... [her] adonis."   she seemed relatively serious.  you know how wives are, you were one for quite a while.   and, probably chatted with others.

--i am reasonable intelligent. 

--i brush my teeth on a regular basis.   i bathe, and i attend to my nethers with soap and water.  i change my undies regularly.

--i am an easy keeper, favoring blue jeans, penny's t-shirts (all cotton crew necks), and pendleton wool shirts.   i am already in possession of a life's supply of pendleton's, though due for some new t-shirts.  at $39.50 for a package of three, you can be sure that i will not buy as many as in years past.  (in good supply of whitey tighteys, so no financial worries there.

--from a previous life's employment, i do not require any more wool tweed sports coats, mine will last me out.  i have a letter sweater from high school that is 54 years old, and it is still going along quite strong.  i wear it often in the chill weather this time of year in the northwest.

--i used to be sort of a wastrel, spending what i had.  i am not so much that way anymore, age taking care of that.   for example, this day my brother and i celebrated my oldest brother's birthday at shari's, and i had a cheese sandwich, some summer squash soup and a piece of pie, with a strawberry bellini on the side.  i finished the soup, didn't drink all the bellini.   (when was the last time you went to a shari's restaurant, eh?   laughing.)

--no need for complex negotiations on a pre-nupt.  i am not even remotely interested in getting rich.....i got this far without being rich, and from what i've seen of rich people, no thank you very much.   comfy, i wouldn't mind.   i suppose i could get by on a few hundred grand a month, and i suppose i could get by on quite a bit less, so long as the wind didn't blow through my quarters and i slept warm at night.  and, no rain in the bedroom, i have given up life in elk camp.  i do, moreover, draw the line at washing dishes....i washed dishes my whole life, and i am not suiting the soon-to-be-world's-richest woman just so i can wash the damned dishes.   nosirreee robert!!!

--for whatever it is worth, i'll put the damned toilet seat down.   myself, i have never found it onerous to lift one open when found closed, so i have a hard time understanding how it is a big deal with women.   who knows?   who knew?

--i will continue to be a member of the n.r.a.    hey, what use are principles if you don't live by them.

--mrs. bezos, i will learn your first name, and your middle name, and will come up with my own pet name in good time.  even if you insist on mrs. jay.   i am just that sort of guy.

yours truly, in genuine love and affection,

john jay @ 01.11.2019

p.s.   ftw, i took a selfie, but could not figure out how to transfer it to this lap top.   silly-assed thing.   i'll work at it.   if you call, i might not pick it up, because i won't hear it over the guitar.***   and, i won't hear it anyways, quite likely, even if i am not sawing at the guitar.   but, if you text, or if you email, i will check both accounts before i go to bed, unless i forget.  (never make a promise you cannot keep.)

still learning, eh?  senility may be lurking, but, it will have to fight its way through both fists and a stick before it gets to me.   my kids will understand, if you have to put me away....hell, every time i threaten to cut them out of my will, they not-so gently remind me who will be choosing the "facility" i go into, or, if i do.  (the apples didn't fall too far from the tree.)

 

the final law of pigeons, and the art of tending pigeons.

"tending pigeons is just fine until eventually you run out of the chumps money."   margaret "iron butt" thatcher, prime minister of coup england.

the final law of tending pigeons, the art of raising money.

real world application.  as noted in the first law of pigeons, the more you feed the pigeons the more pigeons you got.  the more pigeons you got, the more you have to feed them.  the more you feed them, the more it costs to feed them.   and, as a necessary corollary consequence, the more pigeons you got, and the more it costs to feed them, the greater the burden on the chumps to make the money to buy the pigeon feed, and to clean up the pigeon poop.

it happens, usually sooner than later, in every polity that has ever instituted the pigeon coup system.   the coup goes broke.

this eventuality is quite foreseeable, to almost anyone who takes his eye off the fog strike and looks down the road.   needless to say, when this eventually occurs, it is a source of some consternation to the chumps who are running out of money to pay the alpha pigeons running the coup, and the cause of a good bit of hysteria to the pigeons, who have gotten quite used to a life of comfy "three hots and a cot."

this is a day the alpha pigeons deem it prudent to put off, as long as possible.

the art of tending the pigeons, so that life is nice and orderly and placid and so that tranquility reigns in the coup, is not necessarily avoiding the final inevitability of insolvency, but of so successfully avoiding the appearance and perception of the same that no one notices it approach.

this art is not so difficult as it may appear, because if pigeon and chump share any quality at all, it is the ability of confusing illusion with reality, and of having personality and belief systems that are quite comfortable with shared delusion.

every coup must needs central bankers, in whom people deposit faith.  and, gullibility.  they rearrange the deck chairs as the chill waters lap further and further up the deck.

john jay @ 01.08.2019

the law, and only law, of chump.

not all persons in a polity are pigeons.  some are chumps.

you may understand the chumps to be those who buy the pigeon food for the pigeons.   chumps do not get to eat the pigeon food provided to the pigeons, they have to scare up their own victuals by other means, usually via a mechanism described as work.  nor do they determine how and to whom the pigeon food is distributed....this is worked out by the alpha pigeons and the rest of the pigeon flock.

chumps clean up the pigeon shit, as they clean up most of the messes of the polity.  they do this because "work" usually trains them to do it.

they do not get to vote to determine the nature and scope of the work they do, that being left to other mechanisms roughly comprehended as effort and discipline.  they do not get to vote to determine whether or not they will clean up the pigeon poop.

pigeons do not worry much over this.  and, neither do the chumps worry over it very much, oddly enough, so long as they can go to car races and watch football on the television.  (they do not get to vote w/ regard to what they watch on the television, that being determined by judy woodruff and similar pigeons with adequate sensibilities to do this.   as long as the television is in color, and has ladies with very big breasts and little rear ends, the chumps don't worry overt his very much, either.  newscasters are persons "with very little brains," as winnie the pooh noted.  it was about newscasters, was it not?)

john jay @ 01.08.2019

the third law of pigeons.

the law of pigeons.

..............................................

3.)  the pigeons never figured out who pays for the pigeon feed they are fed.  nor do they ever figure out where the pigeon poop comes from.

real world application.  as hillary clinton once so astutely noted, her fellow democrats were always so easily gulled, and so easily led.   just feed them a little pigeon feed.   and, as is so easily predicted about the coming sun rise, stupid is as will be stupid done, and followed.

john jay @ 01.07.2019

 

note:  we who are so smug as to see and understand these laws, also appear able to do so very little about their application.

some small observations in the next several days.

the second law of pigeons.

the law of pigeons.

................................

2.)  pigeons vote for those who feed them.

real world application.   by all accounts and any fair estimation, teddy kennedy was a man of prodigious and rapacious appetite: his fat face and glistening skin eloquent testimony to the personality beneath, and to the living of his adult life.  he fairly shrieked,  gimmee more, gimmee more, upon each breath.  (like the glutton in the monty python movie who ate until he exploded....the image that comes to my mind whenever i think of kennedy.)

i don't know if he ever made an honest dime from any sort of labor in his whole life, yet he thrived and prospered his whole life, at the trough of politics and spoils.   money,  acclaim, and in the kennedy fashion, all the women he could bed or fly off bridges into the ocean with.   his for the beckon, at his nod and touch.

a classic alpha pigeon.

and, in the state of massachusetts, all the lesser mortals to whom he could spread the spoils, flocked to the polls, ready and willing to vote for him.  always, because the pigeon feed never stopped flowing.  all upon the distribution of public moneys, or, if you prefer, the spread of pigeon feed.   oh, he left a little pigeon poop behind him to be cleaned from cars and sidewalks and the corridors of public power, but all decorously swept away each morning, before the opening of public business.   just  the way the officials & cops swooped in and cleaned up the mess at chappaquiddick, before the turn styles to the trough opened in the morning. 

move along folks, nothing to see here, and we'll have the pigeon poop cleaned up in a bit.

john jay @ 01.07.2019 

the first law of pigeons .....

laws of pigeons.

1.)  the more you feed the pigeons, the more pigeons you got.

real world application.   all politicians start out looking like alexandria ocasio-cortez, like a bright and shiny penny upon her entrance onto the public stage, as noted by claire mackaskill, upon her rather unceremonious exit from the public spotlight.   one, skinny and bright, the other haggard and rather plump & well padded from her time at the trough, and the continual fight to keep her place in the pecking order.  the one, with a healthy appetite, the other jaded and her appetite never sated.

pigeons both.  one hungry, the other well fed, and still hungry.   always hungry.

all pigeons, all aspiring to their spot at the trough, the trough never shrinking and always expanding, so long as there are pigeons to be fed.   and, the supply of pigeons, always expanding.  all looking to be fed.  always.

john jay @ 01.07.2019 

we tend to analyze some persons as zealots in search of a zeal, especially in the rather malleable & changeling religious enthusiasms. 

i tend to envision my fellow americans, when in a dark mood, as being hysterics in search of an hysteria easily comprehended, serviceable in the short run, but just as easily abandoned for the next best hysteria coming round the corner.   sort of like the panic attack of the week, if you catch my drift.

as of late, the nation's electrical grid seems to spawn the most idiotic fears.  for instance, cnn or fox news or perhaps both has been pimping some study that suggests that if the grid "falls" than 30 million people can be expected to loose their lives in the next year.  (no heart warming solace taken in the observation that most of them will be democrats, in all likelihood ... well, just think about it.  you know, for a change.)

now, only a think tank could come up with such drivel.  it is one of those things were a deep thinker would imagine the havoc of no lights, no t.v. and no video games, not to mention no water and no garbage pickup, and horrors upon compounding horrors, no big macs for an entire east coast.  (even think tank guys would understand that those of us in wyoming, or n.e. oregon, would barely notice any particular change, at least for a while.)

extrapolate this with domestic and political upheaval, and a few malevolent souls spreading discord, and no professional football to absorb our aggression, and you can extrapolate some big numbers out of this.

and, when you remember that americans have the attention spans of gnats and a profound & purposeful ignorance of history, and it becomes an attractive concern.   if you are as dumb as a fucking rock.  and, don't forget the ignorance thing.

the fact is, in times of deprivation, people learn how to get by on less, and how to make do.   and, yes, how to survive.

now, i am not going to bore you with how a country rube will get by.   most of you simply don't care about country rubes, and most of you are urbanites and this hysteria business is marketed to you, and concerns you.  so, the following concerns you.--

in wwii the germans laid siege to stalingrad and leningrad, and they basically did a thorough job of leveling the cities to rubble, and attempting to kill every inhabitant in them, if that is what it took to capture the cities.  the germans did their level best to kill and starve the inhabitants of the cities, and the people in the cities were reduced to a pitiful level, facing starvation and want.

yet they endured under bombing, artillery attack, and constant infantry attack and small arms fire.   the soviets inside the cities did not prosper, and each morning crews would go out and pick up the bodies of those who froze and starved, or were killed, and who simply laid down and died, and froze.

but, under these horrible conditions, many lived, and fought to defend their cities.

now, think about it for 10 seconds.  if the grid went down, ... , well, hell, think about the last major collapse of the grid to strike the n.e. seaboard.  new york city went black in an instant.   did 30 million die instantly?   no, they did not.  i suppose a few in critical condition in hospitals may have died, but, generators came on line at least as for as long as their fuel supplies held out.

and, if it collapsed totally (a bit of a far-fetched notion), parts would be restored and put on line.   and, parts of the country best able to respond and function would come to the aid of the country most deeply affected.

there would be a sort of a triage thing applied.  stores of pate foie gras would be sacrificed to preserve jimmie dean breakfast sausage patties, ... , and, like strategic decisions would be made to protect adequate stores of staples.   likewise, we could allow los angeles to be destroyed in order to preserve milton freewater, and other small towns ...  good, solid decision making being made in order to protect the core institutions and values of those who count.

apply some reason, and some common sense, and no way in the world is a brown out, or a black out, gonna cause 30 million deaths in america.   history does not demonstrate this as very likely, and neither does common sense.   

now, if the yellowstone caldera suddenly got wanderlust, and ended up somehow under the los angeles basin .... (now, there is something a person could dream about) .... and it blew, now that could cause some damage and consternation.  unfortunately, no such luck. 

this hysteria shall soon pass, and sheppherd smith or whatever-his-name-is, will have to come up with something else to bravely consider, a new peril, that only journalism 101 will get us through.  he will sheppard us, you see, he and the rest of the noble snowflakes who are always so useful in times of stress, bravely carrying on through their huddled tears.***

john jay @ 01.03.2019

 

***needless to say, but, i am saying it anyway, such brave little souls like our snowflakes did not play much a part in the defense of stalingrad and leningrad during wwii.  or, anywhere else, for that matter.  we just go along without them, somehow.

"old soldiers never die, they just fade away... ."

another old soldier is consigned to the dust bin of history, for the same reason most old soldiers are get there:  you'd think that they would know better.

but, for some reason people who are used to command forget an elemental fact about the chain of command, and that is there is only one person who occupies the top.   old what's-his-name mattis forgot that the job of a secretary of defense is to give advise to his commander, and not to issue edicts about policy and such.  an adviser does not make decisions, he does not issue edicts, and he does not publicly challenge his commander on his decisions.  his is to apply and implement the decision of the president of the united states to the best of his ability, and not to carp about it.  in short, the oath of his office does not say that it is his to piss and moan and carp about his lot in life, ... , but to do his damned job to the best of his ability.

this inability to remember basics i think is nurtured by washington d.c. cocktail parties, where an ego such as mattis's is bolstered by alcohol and large breasted compliant women.  no soldier should ever be allowed to attend such devil spawn occasions: it is where soldiers get too large for their issue breaches.  as dirty harry calahan remarked, "a man should know his limitations," and this applies to generals as much as anybody, perhaps even more appropriately.  it is where decent field commanders turn into pompous twits.

i can only imagine the ass reaming dwight eisenhower would have given mattis had he pulled this stunt under ike's presidency/command: eisenhower, despite his grandfatherly public demeanor, was renowned for his titanic temper, his ire delivered in private and not in public, in very clear terms, and at very close range.  and, his command vitriol was absorbed in private, and not cried over to the press. 

generals, and secretaries of this and that, were made of sterner stuff in the old days, and were not cry babies.   simple as that.

old what's-his-name forgot that his job is to implement policy once the commander issues it.  and, for that, his is the dust heap,  and, to cry over his own cups.   and, good riddance.

in the civil war abraham lincoln did not bask in the historical judgment that surrounds him these days, especially among those who were under his command: off the top of my head, i can remember that george mcclellan, john c. fremont and at least one other general whose name escapes me, ran for president against lincoln in the middle of the civil war. 

can we look forward to a mattis & pelosi ticket in 2020?

lord, god, please spare us.

snow flakes and cry baby generals would be just too much to bear.

john jay @ 12.26.2018