The Last Fourth

We remember important first events - the first time you met the person who will become your significant other, the first words and first steps of your growing child. We also remember important last events - the last time you visited your alma mater, the last time you spoke with a dying parent.

Some events, though, are taken for granted - we didn't correctly identify the importance of an event until after it happened - so we remember neither the first nor the last time they occurred.

For example, my ex significant other and I always used to drive at least an hour to some random small town just to have pizza for dinner. The particular town or restaurant didn't matter - all small towns have good local Italian restaurants. What mattered is that we did this together, and that we enjoyed it. It was such a simple thing, and neither of us at the time realized how important those weekly outings were. For that reason, I cannot tell you the name of the town or restaurant we first ate at. I thought these road trips would go on forever, and now that he and I are separated, I can't remember the last place we went to. All I know is that there was a first town and restaurant and a last town and restaurant, and that there will be no more such road trips.

The same goes with holidays, Independence Day in particular. I have a childhood memory of my first fireworks show: the symmetry of the explosions, the three-dimensionality of the trails of sparks, how the bursts looked like flowers, only loud! At the time I didn't know why there were fireworks on that day, the Fourth of July, but I knew that that day must be important.

Years and years later, I also recall the last fireworks show I attended, which was in 2010. In the time between the first fireworks show and that last one, I became extremely averse to their sounds as well as to crowds. This may sound stupid, but there it is.

In an attempt to cure myself of this, I attended the 2010 Fourth of July celebration at a beach town in Maryland. I arrived very early, found a place on the beach as close as possible to the fireworks launcher, laid back on my towel, stretched my arms out, and watched. By the end, I was tired from the conscious effort needed not to move, and my hands were sore from grabbing the sand and towel for dear life! As I returned to my car, several strangers on the boardwalk asked if I was OK. I wasn't, but it didn't matter, for I made it through the whole thing.

This brings us to the Fourth of July 2020. Most large fireworks displays were cancelled because of the China Flu. Even if they weren't canceled, the meaning of Independence Day has changed for some Americans. Instead of being a time to celebrate our freedom, for them it has become an occasion to disparage our country.

There are three groups of people doing this.

First, there are the gay rights activists. They claim that homophobia exists, but to justify this they must add letters to what used to be only LGB. By doing so, they drop the idea that what makes a gay person gay is who he or she is attracted to, and replace it with an "assigned gender preference." They elevate fetishes to the status of sexual orientation. They also make a lack of self-awareness into an orientation, calling such people "transgender," "non-binary," "questioning," "pansexual," or "gender fluid". Further, some of them are attempting to normalize pedophilia, saying that the adult participants in this are "minor-attracted people" and trying to add a second "P" to the ever-growing initialism of non-cis-heterosexual "orientations".

Instead of "LGBTTQQIAAP," activists should save time and letters just by using "ABS" - anybody but straight.

With each letter added to "LGB" and each color added to the rainbow flag, someone claims a victory. But victories are meaningless when the opposition is negligible and the cost of losing is nonexistent.

If they want a true victory, these so-called activists should attempt to end the lawful execution of gays in Muslim countries. But they won't even try, since they are convinced that all cultures must be respected.

Then there is the Black Lives Matter movement, which is composed either of guilty white liberals or people looking for any opportunity to loot and burn. Black lives matter to them as long as it is a black man who was killed by a white cop, or if the black in question votes for the Democrats.

Of course there was slavery, but we fought a war to end it. The people who claim racism still exists are the same ones rewriting the history of the Civil War and destroying monuments describing that war. BLM continues to fight a war that ended in 1865 while completely ignoring the fact that slavery is still common in Africa and that there is an active slave trade in the Arab world.

Finally, there are the socialists calling themselves Antifa. They despise capitalism while living off their parents' trust funds and organizing their permanent revolution by using capitalist-made computers, all while enjoying overpriced coffee at Starbucks.

These modern-day Trotskyites operate in a logical and historical vacuum, ignoring the mass genocides that occurred in the countries governed by the very leaders that Antifa idolizes, all while favorably comparing themselves to American D-Day troops.

The commonality to these groups is that their members don't know how good they have it, and they have to invent nonexistent enemies to aggrandize their otherwise unremarkable lives. They are fueled by a vacuous education system, encouraged by their over-indulgent parents, enabled by left-wing politicians and judges, and operate unopposed by spineless cuckservastives.

The people doing this denigration are either ignorant of our history or were taught a straw-man version of history. We're the country that built the Transcontinental Railroad in only six years. We conquered the Axis Powers in under six years. We landed men on the Moon nine years after Kennedy set the direction. We've cured diseases, invented technologies, raised the standard of living for everybody. We're the ones who coined the term "self-made man," and many of us live that American dream.

These same people who deprecate this country have the whole world in their pockets, literally, either in iPhone or Android format. Yet the best they can do is defecate in their own kitchens.

Given all this, one must wonder if the July Fourth that ended a few hours ago is indeed the last Independence Day we'll see that hasn't been eviscerated of content and celebrated only out of habit.

While all the local fireworks shows were cancelled, some individuals at nearby apartment complexes decided to have their own shows. This is America at its best - private individuals taking up the slack left by our spineless representatives. I went to one of these apartment complex shows; while the crowds weren't very big, the noises were still nerve wracking. For if this is to be the last real Fourth of July, I want to experience it, and I want it to hurt.

Gillette So Woke

Gillette's new commercial opens with a montage of real-life and on-line bullying, men cat-calling, a row of men standing behind a row of barbecue grills chanting "boys will be boys." It continues with scenes of "mansplaining", "toxic masculinity", and a news announcer decrying sexual harassment, thus making tie-ins with the #MeToo movement. Throughout the ad, the sanctimonious narrator asks "Is this the best a man can get? Is it?", thereby mocking Gillette's 30-year-old motto "the best a man can get." Near the end it shows men standing up to sexual harassment and stopping bullies. The commercial finishes with the obligatory link to a .org website.

This advertisement was made by Grey Advertising and was directed by Kim Gehrig, who produced last year's "Viva La Vulva" commercial that featured singing sock puppet vaginas.

Grey Advertising may or may not subscribe to P.T. Barnum's maxim that "there is no such thing as bad publicity," but they certainly advocate the older version of that phase: "success through scandal" ("succès de scandale"). But success for whom: for Gillette or for the advertising company?

Commercials are supposed to maintain a customer base and encourage others to use their product. Does the new Gillette commercial do either? It does - especially if you use one of Gillette's competitors.

Commercials are supposed to sell a product, not to proselytize. The act of shaving is just that: shaving. If you do it in the morning, you do it to look it to look professional, not to virtue signal.

Commercials are supposed to generate profits. Does this advertisement do so? It's too early to tell for Gillette and parent company Proctor and Gamble, though they did promise to pay $1 million per year for three years to "worthy nonprofits." So profits were generated for somebody besides Grey Advertising.

Here's the real problem with Gillette's ad: it is condescending AF. It portrays men acting as gentlemen and interfering with bullies as something new and hip and edgy, not as ordinary chivalry that was commonplace before the rise of the soy boy and the culture of victimhood.

Further, imagine if the ad decried the bad habits of Muslims, blacks, gays, etc — there would be an uproar! Instead, the ad is about the bad habits of men, so not only does it get a pass, the commercial is lauded by AdWeek for "flipping the narrative" and Gillette is celebrated for being "woke."

Finally, if there is any honest substance to the #MeToo movement, doesn't Gillette's new commercial trivialize that substance? Indeed it does, for the ad is basically saying: "I wake up in the morning feeling guilty for having a penis and balls. I'm not yet ready for gender reassignment surgery, so whatever should I do? I know, I'll shave with a Gillette razor, thereby symbolically castrating myself!"

Am I "triggered" by that ad, like certain news outlets claim I should be? Nope. Am I tired of companies committing suicide by becoming politicized in general, and by shilling for the left in particular? Yup. Right now, I'm laughing as I order razors from the Dollar Shave Club. And Grey Advertising is laughing all the way to the bank.

#WalkAway from Identity Politics

There were three outstanding themes experienced by attendees of last month's #WalkAway March. There was the sense of freedom that comes from escaping the Democrat’s plantation. There was the excitement of meeting new people and making new friends. But there was also an element of sadness over the family and friends lost due to the issues that riven our country.

One man I met there was a U.S. Army veteran of the Vietnam War. He became estranged from his two sisters, the only family he has, partially over Trump and the whole Kavanaugh media circus.

There’s also a friend (who wasn’t at the march) that became alienated from a person she knew for 30 years. They met while in high school, and he was her first gay friend. She walked away, he didn’t. Something similar happened with her mother’s cousin, who knew her since birth, who “changed her diapers” as she put it. Because of various family events, they had to remain in contact, but their interactions became infrequent, their conversations became terse. A mutual friend told me about how much grief she was experiencing over this. The description reminded me of the AIDS crisis writ small.

These same stories are repeated all across America.

Why is this happening?

This is partially due to the changing definition of friendship. We all have online friends, most of whom we’ll never meet. What is the basis of these friendships? It’s not two good people who share similar virtues and who wish each other well, but rather two people clicking the “like” button – not the same thing!

Other types of friendships, like those based on utility or pleasure – are by definition transitory. That’s all that online friends are – friendships based on utility or pleasure. Yet we equate them with real friendships, in their importance and in their permanence.

All types of friendships require time and effort and real-world interaction to cultivate and maintain. Given the number of social media “friends” that people have, it is simply not possible to maintain them all! Once the “friendship” has outlived its usefulness, or is lost in quantity, we either allow it to fade or we terminate it in the most brutal way possible - online interactions allow people to be rude to each other without any real-world consequences.

This somewhat explains the plight of the Vietnam veteran mentioned earlier: he lives in Buffalo, New York, while one sister lives in Florida, and the other is in Arizona. They maintained contact only via social media. There was no real-world interaction, so the friendships withered.

This does not explain the other person mentioned above. In her case, and I think most cases, the dissolution of friendships was solely over ideological differences. The ideology in play is identity politics.

Here’s how it works:

• People belong to identity groups, either by birth or choice or assignment. These identities are artificial, and two members of the same group frequently have nothing in common except for that identity – yet there is an expectation of solidarity.
• Membership in an identity group is not the same as a gym membership. Membership defines and determines their whole existence, and to doubt this is blasphemy.
• Current and historical events are seen by members of any class through the lens of their identity. Doubting the identity or the veracity of its history is an offense to the very core of their being, and to do so makes you ableist, misogynistic, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, racist.
• Each group has its own cultural norms. These norms must be respected by other groups, because it is taken on faith that all cultures are equal. They are skeptical of some religions, yet they accept items like this on faith. They are true believers.
• People are encouraged to interact only with other members of their identity. They exist in a bubble yet claim that they are living rich and full lives. They do not go outside their comfort zone, yet they consider themselves brave.
• People are to be loyal to their identity class. They are expected to favor their own, yet they wonder why the world is suddenly so racist.
• People are expected (in most cases) to be proud of their identity.
• To shore up this pride, each identity has its own history. Events that do not fit with a particular group’s history can be safely ignored, or revised, or destroyed. This results in an ever-shifting narrative.
• There is one group that acts as an oppressor, and that group is the white male (either heterosexual or homosexual). Their culture is not to be respected, and pride in that identity is considered to be the very height of racism.
• The degree that an individual is oppressed depends on the number of intersections that this person belongs to. For example, a black disabled lesbian crossdresser is more oppressed than your average lesbian. It’s sort of like a food pyramid of victimhood.
• Those who aren’t oppressors are victims. But not only are they victims, they are helpless, since self-defense is considered wrong.
• Being helpless victims, they are subject to fear, uncertainty, and doubt inflicted by anyone who wishes to manipulate them.
• Since they live in a bubble, they are in no position to verify that they should really be afraid of any particular current event, or whether they are just being manipulated.

Identity politics provides a convenient excuse to prune one’s real-world friends list. And when people indeed end a friendship over identity politics, instead of being angry or upset, they have the warm glow of smugness that comes with virtue signaling. From their standpoint, the friendship was based on a mistaken identity – you fooled them, until they became “woke”.

Identity politics is designed to divide and conquer. It is working.

What can be done? We must begin with a dose of reality.

First, realize that “Hallmark moments” almost never happen in the real world, and it is not possible to hold one’s breath until they do happen. If you doubt this, ask any draft resister or gay man who has been estranged from his family.

Next, look at the pretense under which the friendship was ended: one side believes that the other is a heretic who engages in wrongthink. Ask yourself: why hold on to people who aren’t adult enough to understand that individuals can have different opinions or principles?

Believing in identity politics requires that one suspends their sense of reality. Anybody with an ounce of integrity would reject the theory rather than reject the facts. Ask yourself: do you really want to be friends with a person who trusts their identity group’s agitprop over their own lying eyes? Can you trust someone who outsources their sense of judgement?

Look at the extent the other side is willing to go to purge wrongthink: they are willing to fire you from your employment, to deny you ways of earning money via online activities, to destroy your career. Ask yourself: in good conscience, would you be able to do this?

Finally, ask yourself: is the person who terminated your friendship over identity politics experiencing the same sense of loss?

The situation appears even more intractable when you realize that social justice is a kind of cult, and people who advocate identity politics are not just fervent believers, but the fundamentalists of this cult.

Again, what can be done?

It is tempting to retreat, hole up, and wait for this to pass. It won’t pass. In fact, retreating makes things worse, since everybody will then ask themselves: why not take whole what others propose to divide?

We cannot forget what is at stake: our country, our home. They demand that we relinquish our sovereignty as individuals and as a country. All these are too important to abandon for the social justice warriors’ obvious and vulgar games.

We also cannot forget that we hold the upper hand. The funding of their universities, their affirmative action programs, and their welfare state, depends on us. We can live without them, but not vise versa. Further, we have the element of stability that their narrative du jour precludes - and they know it.

The solution lies in more engagement, not less. It requires that we break down the bubbles which identity politics requires people to inhabit. Even then it will not be easy, since it is far harder to make a believer into a skeptic than to make a skeptic into a believer.

#WalkAway

Introduction
Brandon Straka started the #WalkAway movement in response to the Democratic Party’s abandonment of Enlightenment ideals and the values exposited by classical liberalism. He began the campaign with an extremely compelling video and encouraged others to make and share their own videos.

Having never been a Democrat, walking away is not possible for me. The best I can do is explain how my distrust and scorn of liberalism has changed to absolute contempt.

Here we go…

Walk Away, From What?
All of the values of John Locke, Voltaire, Adam Smith, Jefferson, Madison, and the other minds that gave us the Age of Enlightenment and the American Revolution have been either betrayed or forsaken by the modern left and the Democratic Party. For them:

• Science has been replaced by dogma
• Rationality has been replaced by intimidation
• Speech is no longer free
• There is no longer a presumption of innocence, and guilt is not something that needs to be proven; mob justice is the norm
• Rugged independence has been replaced by conformity to the herd
• Individuality has been replaced by racism
• Forget equality – all people are equal, but some are more equal than others
• Self-determination has been coopted by dependence on government
• Government is to be omnipotent
• Finally, freedom of thought is no longer seen as an absolute – you are free to think anything you want, as long as it fits the narrative du jour.

The contemporary Democratic Party is simply not your father’s party.

I distrust and scoff at liberalism and the Democratic Party for all of this, but two events completely soured my opinion of liberalism: the Pulse Nightclub terrorist attack, and the protests over Trump's travel ban.

I didn't learn of the Pulse Nightclub attack until the next afternoon. I was meeting with the state commander of the militia I'm in (yea, more as we go along), and he informed me of it.

CDR: "You better watch out, Klepper, they're coming for you!"
Me: "I didn't spend all this time and money on training for nothing."
CDR: "They're fucking with the wrong homosexual!"

The following Monday, I approached the LGBT employee group at Comcast (I worked there at the time) and offered to teach them firearm safety and usage. The result was... crickets.

While the LGBT group as a whole ignored my offer, some members approached me in private for a trip to the gun range. They did so furtively: they were afraid, but not of an attacker. They knew that at a liberal big tech company, coming out as conservative entails higher risks than coming out as gay.

Pink Pistols, a LGBT gun rights organization, had a large uptick in membership after the attack, as is well known.

What is not well known are the number of gun enthusiasts that made the same offer to their friends as I made to Comcast. One hundred percent of the people I know who have the skills and the means offered to teach LGBTs how to defend themselves. One NRA-certified instructor "came out" to me. Another one, the NRA instructor who first taught me handgun usage and safety, told me that his son is gay, and it was clear that he was genuinely proud of him.

Absolutely none of this made it into the mainstream media. The left and the MSM stereotypes gun owners in one way, and they stereotype LGBTs in another way, and these stereotypes are designed to put us in conflict. Anything that shatters that narrative is verboten.

The Democrats' response was to blame the terrorist attack on gun owners in general and the NRA in particular; the attacker’s religious motivation was ignored. Two months after the event, Hillary Clinton invited the Pulse terrorist's father to stand behind her during a campaign speech.

The second event that fueled my contempt of the left was the manufactured outrage over Trump's travel ban. The airport protesters were told to hate the travel ban - they didn't reach their own conclusions. Indeed, the protesters didn't even take the time to read the executive order. After all, Orange Man Bad.

Had the protesters read the order, they would have found that one of the reasons for implementing the ban was to protect women, minorities, and LGBT people from those who condone and are willing to repeat the Pulse Nightclub massacre. This was explicitly stated in the order:

“The United States should not admit those who engage in acts of bigotry or hatred (including "honor" killings, other forms of violence against women, or the persecution of those who practice religions different from their own) or those who would oppress Americans of any race, gender, or sexual orientation.”

Here then are the consequences of liberalism for Americans in general and LGBTs in particular: you have no right to protect yourself or that which you value. Further, Democrats will happily import people that will murder you and other gays. All cultures are equal and must be respected, right?

To advocate this is criminal. To practice it is suicidal.

We have gay pride parades every year, and proud people will not permit themselves to be sacrificed upon any altar, including the altar of diversity. Gays have the same rights as everybody else, and self-protection is the fundamental right. Rights mean little if you cannot defend them, and dead men have no rights.

For these reasons my disdain of liberals escalated to contempt and disgust. The Democrats are worthy of nothing else.

Walk away? No, run if you have to. Run. Like. Hell. Better yet, fight like hell.

Walk Away, Towards What?
What are the alternatives to the Democrats and their collectivism?

The Libertarian Party is irrelevant when it comes to issues besides drug legalization. They have no fundamental principles beyond the fact that they like pot with their milquetoast.

Republican politicians have been rightly called "cuckservatives" and “RINOs” (Republicans in name only), and the GOP has been rightly called the "right wing of the Democratic Party." This is because they were willing to use the exact same tactics as the left. They were indeed almost identical when it comes to "issues" like property rights, privacy rights, etc.

We see this every November. People decry election returns that are incredibly close to 50-50 as proof that America is Balkanized to the point of fragmentation. While the latter is true, the convergence of the Democrats and the RINOs explains the close election returns equally well. In 2012, for example, we had the choice of Obamacare and Romneycare. You might as well flip a coin when you go into a voting booth, for the outcome would be the same: 50-50.

But the contemporary Republican Party is not your father's party, and this goes far beyond Peter Thiel speaking at the 2016 Republican National Convention. It is being transformed, starting with the Tea Party and continuing with Trump’s MAGA platform.

The Republican Party is on its way of becoming an America First party, and we America Firsters love the Constitution! This is the difference between the Demopublicans and America Firsters: for them, the Constitution is an anachronistic document that is selectively applied – it is used only when it suits their agenda and it is ignored when inconvenient; for us, the Constitution is written protection for the smallest minority: the individual. For Demopublicans, rights are government gifts, subject to change. For America Firsters, rights are inherent in us as individuals. The Constitution doesn't grant rights, it recognizes rights and it establishes mechanisms to protect those rights. The Constitution embodies the Enlightenment ideals that the left rejects, and for that reason the Democrats reject the Constitution.

So, when some cuckservative denigrates gays for wanting “special rights,” all you have to do is ask him to show you where their beloved “culture war” issues are found in the Constitution. He will not be able to point to anything, because they are not there.

Should you contemplate leaving the Democratic Party, they would say "but, but, but... Trump is a racist, homophobic, sexist, racist, Islamophobic, raaaacist. He'll put you gays into concentration camps!"

Concentration camps, like the WW2 Japanese internment camps set up by Franklin D. Roosevelt, the darling of the Democratic Party?

The Democrats' alarmism is intended to evoke fear, uncertainty, and doubt, with the goal of instilling guilt and the sense of victimhood necessary to keep people subservient. But it backfires, for if there were a real likelihood that Trump would go full FDR, then that's certainly reason to learn basic firearm usage and to join a neighborhood protection team or other militia. In other words, it is a reason to do the things that the Democrats decry and oppose.

A rifle goes better with your wardrobe than a pink triangle on any day.

While the Republican party is on its way to becoming an America First party, it has miles to go. Some RINOs are still there, and they are willing to resort to their culture war shenanigans – that’s how Milo Yiannopoulos got disinvited from CPAC.

Is the Republican Party the right party? That's the wrong question to ask. A better one is this: do conservative people hold the right principles, and do they live in accordance with those principles?

Individual conservatives want to be treated just like anybody else. If you are walking away from the Democrats, you must eliminate the preconceptions you have of conservatives, and you have to work to disprove the stereotypes they have of you. Even when that has been accomplished, there will be teasing and what people call "ball busting."

Here's something that happened with me and a fellow militiaman named Pete at a training event a few years ago. We were up very late one evening, and as we were walking back to our tents, we decided to wake everybody up.

Pete (yelling): "Oh no, Mike is going to rape me in the ass!"
Me (also yelling): "Don't worry Peetie, I'll be gentle this time!"

This was not harassment. There was no animosity nor malicious intent on either side. It was just (rough) banter, and that comes with the First Amendment. Freedom of speech is not for the thin-skinned or spineless. You have to be willing and able to give back just as hard as you get, for in that way mutual respect is earned and maintained.

What lies beneath this gruffness is a strong moral compass, and the intelligence to realize that bad outcomes are the consequence of bad ideals. No single party has a monopoly on these qualities, but the conservatives have adopted the principles that the Democrats have rejected. If you value those ideals, follow them to where they lead, and do not be afraid to become a modern conservative in the process.