I watched High Plains Drifter as one of the very first movies I saw when I was newly moved out of my parent’s house. I rented it because of the cover art on the VHS tape, Clint Eastwood holding a gun and a bullwhip. I had seen at that time most of Eastwood’s movies, so I wanted to see them all and this one was on the list. I didn’t expect much, but was very surprised to see that the film was a masterpiece—a sheer work of unapologetic authenticity. It may very well be my favorite western of all time and is the summation of a span of westerns by Clint Eastwood starting with A Fistful of Dollars and ending with Pale Rider that defined the genre forever. Eastwood’s westerns were Ayn Rand tales set on the frontier of America and were very much a part of my childhood. I loved westerns, all westerns, but Clint Eastwood westerns were uniquely special to me. I could identify with them immensely. At the time that I first saw High Plains Drifter I was living a very similar life and I didn’t feel a bit of guilt about it. The established order of things said that I should. Until I saw that director Clint Eastwood understood my vantage point in High Plains Drifter, I had nothing but gut instinct to tell me I was on the right path.
I will never forget the Friday before I saw High Plains Drifter. I drove my friends to Miami University for a bit of ruckus activity which ended up in a bar and a fight with the first stringers of the football team. The fight evolved into the back alley where I and one other friend literally took on the football team until the police came and arrested everyone—but me. The reason the police left me alone was strange. I was so mad at the time that I would have punched anybody who came near me, and they seemed to understand that. Instead of feeding their aggression, they backed off and arrested everyone else starting with the outside of the pile working inward. When it was just me and the rest of the police left with blood and pieces of clothing all over the place, I spoke calmly to them realizing and feeling quite satisfied that I had just done something that seemed impossible. My friends were arrested and carted off to jail and I had to find a way to get them out. But otherwise, I was the last one standing even though I was one of the first in the fray. It was a good feeling.
I managed to work things out with the police which ended up at the jail eventually and I had my friends released. I spoke to everyone in charge intelligently, which gained respect and leverage allowing me to get my friends out without a court appearance, which I didn’t think would be possible. My friends were baffled as to how I walked away from the incident without being arrested, and how I managed to get them out of jail. I didn’t know how to explain it myself. But on the next evening we decided to stay home and rent a movie, and that movie was High Plains Drifter. I had my answer at the start of the third act when a woman who Clint Eastwood had just slept with told him to be careful because he was a man who made other people afraid. From that Eastwood explained, “People are only afraid of what they know about themselves inside.” I knew somewhere in that exchange of dialogue was an answer that I would carry with me for the rest of my life. And the woman was right. Confident people—excessively confident people—scare the meager types like those who were in the fictional western town of Lago—from the film. And those meager types were easy to control once you looked them in the eye. That is what many of Eastwood’s westerns from that period were about—but specifically High Plains Drifter.
After watching that movie I felt like a much more focused person. I understood much more about myself—which might be troubling if not for the fact that Clint Eastwood was playing a ghost of some kind in the film—a vengeful spirit from Hell set to cast justice on the small mining town and all the guilty people within it. I thought Clint Eastwood was the greatest director on earth for capturing all the controversial topics he explored in that story with such effortless mastery. High Plains Drifter was a 1973 American supernatural western film produced by Robert Daley for Malpaso Company and Universal Studios, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood, and written by Ernest Tidyman (who also wrote the novelization). Eastwood plays an enigmatic wraith, who metes out justice in a corrupt frontier mining town, where he arrives as a stranger.[3] The film was influenced by the work of Eastwood’s two major collaborators, film directors Sergio Leone and Don Siegel.[4]
The film was shot on location on the shores of Mono Lake, California. Dee Barton wrote the eerie film score. The film was critically acclaimed at the time of its initial release and remains popular today, holding a score of 96% at the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes.
As I have been thinking about the significance of American gunfighters of late, this film keeps returning to me in a revelatory way. It is important, and specific to the American experience. I didn’t know it when I first watched it, but it is clearly in hindsight a masterpiece. It has within it an element that Ayn Rand brought out in her novels—an overman quality that is so needed. There was an evolution of human thinking that was occurring in that movie that as inescapable. There was honesty to the type of independence specific to American culture that Eastwood had tapped in to.
John Wayne was not a fan of High Plains Drifter. His westerns were about honor, sacrifice, loyalty and courage. While those are appealing attributes, High Plains Drifter was about something else. And I decided that I would commit my life to that something else. I had a taste of it at that campus fight. I had touched on it many times, but Clint Eastwood had fleshed it out and put it on the screen for all to see. His gunfighter character in the film was more than just a man—literally. But that made it even that much more appealing to me. High Plains Drifter is an American movie classic that is in a category all by itself. It is a western—the best of its kind. But it’s more than that, its philosophy—a thinking which is fresh and unique to the individual experience with an unequivocal desire for justice. Justice at every level possible, one that started with the gun, but ultimately enacted with a superior mind and unshakable confidence changed philosophic perspective for the better. It is good to keep the mind on the high plains of life and to face those tribulations alone. For that is the path toward something new, and specific to America. And freedom rides in its wake.
I was visiting a whip maker friend of mine in Middletown, Ohio who is working on a special project for me. It was Sunday around lunch time and we were early. So my wife and I elected to stop by the local Cracker Barrel for a late breakfast. Many people find it humorous that I often refer to Cracker Barrel as fine dinning, because for me it is. Now I have dined in many great restaurants, but I prefer Cracker Barrel, especially on a long trip because of the country setting and general store. The food and service to my experience has always been great and I love the “old west” feel of them when I step inside.
My very first exposure to a Cracker Barrel was in Northern Kentucky. My grandfather who was the son of an active moonshiner from the sticks of coal country invited me as a very young boy to go shooting with the men in the family at his childhood home. His father at the time had long been dead, but as a boy he ran the hills from the law smuggling moonshine during prohibition. Their home was about the size of a modern bedroom and it was back in a valley about 30 miles northwest of Buckhorn Lake—a pretty remote location, especially when I was a kid. Back then there wasn’t much development between Lexington and Cincinnati, so if you didn’t gas up in Northern Kentucky, you might run out of fuel before Lexington. It was winter and I rode in the back of a pickup truck with some older cousins, some of whom were already men. I was by far the youngest. It was the day after Christmas and all the men were going shooting. It was my first time firing powerful weapons like a .38 special and a 30-30 rifle.
Cracker Barrel had one of their very first national stores in Northern Kentucky and it looked a lot like they do now. It was 6 AM, the sun wouldn’t be up for at least another hour and it was cold. We were all dressed in gun holsters, long hunting knives and day packs when we stepped inside to have some breakfast next to a roaring fireplace. It set in my mind for life a love for the place. It was the nearest thing I’d ever get to an authentic cowboy experience, wandering in off the open range, armed to the teeth to stop into a saloon/general store for some grub. It was a testosterone driven occurrence that shaped me for life. The waitress and manager could have turned us away at the door because we looked like we were there to rob a bank. I have worn a cowboy hat since I was in the fourth grade, so I had mine on feeling like a western drifter—and I loved the feeling as snow rushed in behind us as we stepped inside. They could have told us to leave the guns and packs in our car, but instead they asked if we wanted coffee next to a roaring fire. Years later when I saw the Clint Eastwood western The Unforgiven, the first saloon scene reminded me explicitly of that moment in my time—and it stayed with me forever. That was America. Cracker Barrel for me would always represent the best that America had to offer.
Most of the people on that shooting trip with me are dead now. Some died of old age, some from not meeting high expectations in life, some by personal destructive behavior. I could see much of it back then on that shooting trip. In the back of that truck where it was so cold ice formed on our noses, the older men passed around a whiskey flask. They offered it to me even though I was way too young to drink it. I turned it down. And if you traced their lives with mine and noticed how far apart they are now, you could trace it back to those types of decisions on a shooting trip on a cold December morning. They looked down at me a bit for not wanting to share the whisky, but my grandfather thought it took guts, which is all I really cared about. Once we started shooting, nobody thought anything about who drank what, or who said a curse word. Guns made all men equal and respect was derived by that realization. When I showed I could fire the 30-30 without being knocked down due to my small stature there was respect, and I would carry that lesson with me for life. The whole experience started with a Cracker Barrel.
My wife had never been to such a place as a Cracker Barrel before meeting me. But we went to one just north of Knoxville on our honeymoon as we traveled back from Gatlinburg. For her it summed up everything we had experienced on our first days together as a married couple and she fell in love with it for life. For years we would take our children there while vacationing and make a big deal about each visit, no matter where we were. One time we were on our way to a Star Wars convention in Indianapolis and my kids were dressed up as Jedi. We stopped at one about 45 minutes outside of Indianapolis. My kids had the experience I had as a young man, stepping in dressed as warriors. They had some unique looks, but everyone was friendly and it was a fun experience. They never forgot it. Then there was a time while traveling by motorcycle to a film festival in northern Ohio. My oldest daughter had never ridden a motorcycle before and this was her first experience—on a long road trip up north. Cracker Barrel just north of Columbus on an early summer morning in the middle of the week was an oasis of pleasure—a cozy place that always said “home” as you step into its doors.
One thing about Cracker Barrels is that they are almost always busy, especially in the noon time hours. People are often willing to wait for 30 minutes to get something they could get at McDonald’s in a fraction of the time. The reason is that most people have a special relationship to Cracker Barrel similar to mine. The restaurant chain has built their brand around American tradition for decades and people respect it enough to wait. That was the situation my wife and I found ourselves in on a Sunday afternoon in late August, 2015, before we met on business with our whip making friend David Crain for a “special project.”
I have been thinking about guns a lot these days. The Obama administration has caused great unrest and unsettled the most rational by unleashing the insane, corrupt, and perpetually dependent to collect what the president promised during his campaigns, redistributed wealth in trade for a vote. And the results have been menacing. Police are being executed all around the country. Border violence is disturbingly common. And religious fanatics are going on holy wars against infidels with the apparent support of the American media. Long gone are the days of the Saturday morning westerns, and heroes of tradition. Those wonderful attributes are missing during our nightly news, but they are quite alive and flourishing at Cracker Barrel’s across the country, and that is what my wife and I were seeking.
As I waited for my breakfast I looked around the room at all the unique paraphernalia that they customarily have lining the walls. Most of it looked like the kind of items you might find at garage sales, but typically they speak of traditional American items, old Coke signs, early gas station markers, looms, spindles, scrubbing boards. However on this particular visit, I noted how many guns were displayed on the wall. Above my head was a Winchester lever-action and around the dining room where several musket style weapons from what looked like the pre-Civil War period. Then my attention was pulled toward an advertisement from perhaps the 50s from a drink called NEHI. It said, “What’s getting into kids these days.” Around the picture of a girl drinking what looked to be a healthy beverage alternative were kids playing. Of note was one kid dressed as a frontiersman another as a cowboy complete with a six-gun. Then another picture was of an Indian. It reminded me of the days when kids actually played cowboys and Indians and it wasn’t considered an act of insanity requiring counseling at school for wanting to play with weapons. I realized looking at that picture that the magic of Cracker Barrel was essentially represented in that picture. The family restaurant was a timeless portrayal of the type of America that many in the core of the country still love, and desire desperately to behold. That’s why many of the customers on a Sunday afternoon after church were willing to wait up to an hour to have some eggs and bacon—something they could easily get at home. But what they couldn’t get was the essence of Americana that Cracker Barrel truly is—and will always remain.
The meeting with the whip maker David Crain went well. He is very crafty and during our business dealing he showed me a little side project he was working on. He had been using his wood lathe to make some really marvelous wooden ink pens, the kind of items you might find at Kenwood Mall for $55. He sells them for $20 dollars, which I think is too cheap, but it’s his business. So I picked one up, since that kind of thing is sometimes important to me. If anybody else wants some, let me know and I’ll put you in touch with him. It’s a really good deal. Meeting with David reminds me of the kind of Americans we used to be. Behind his house David has a wood shop, and in it he makes lots of really neat crafts—the kind of things that will probably someday be on the wall of a Cracker Barrel. But with David, we are living tradition in the present, and that made that particular Sunday one that I will not long forget. It was a reminder of what we fight for and why. Much of it can be summed up in the advertisement by NEHL from a time long forgotten–except on the wall of a Cracker Barrel in Middletown, Ohio looming over eggs, bacon, and good memories.
For those who think that Donald Trump is a policy swapping former Democrat, the below clip from 1988 is rather telling, and astonishing. Trump was critical of the Reagan administration because of its policy on exports—for not being conservative enough. This is Trump as a young man shortly after writing The Art of the Deal on the newly created Oprah Show extremely confident and riding on top of the world. What is even more astonishing is that Trump has stayed on top of the world really his whole life. Aside from a few marriages, he’s been remarkably successful for a long period of time without any kind of emotional meltdowns along the way and it’s due to his extraordinary confidence. This is the Donald Trump that I grew up with, and he is the reason I think he would be a great president. What’s really interesting is the very political answer he gave while talking about the field of candidates in the 1988 presidential election, from Bush to Jesse Jackson. I think many people hold his non-committal political positions against him because they don’t understand business. For successful people, one very key ingredient is that you have to know how to navigate around people who might get in your way. Trump showed that he was hedging his bets no matter who won the nomination because as a business man, he knew the consequences of a government aligned against him. And he wanted to continue to be successful. Watch for yourself.
Being in business is very dangerous. Politicians are always looking for a contribution and you have to be careful who you say no to. If you give to the wrong guy and the other person wins, that person might come after you legislatively. It happens all the time. Regulations are used to extort vast billions of dollars a year from business people. A lot of the reason that business people use the Chamber of Commerce and other community organizations to keep orthodox politicians in their seats of power is to protect their businesses from activist government regimes. Market fluctuations and political fall-out are two of the most troublesome elements for a business person’s career. Those who have not had to deal with a zoning board, they don’t understand how difficult political tides can work against you. In Donald Trump’s case, New York is notoriously progressive. It has been for years, so there has always been a lot of liberalism associated with those city government positions. If a rich businessman like Trump gives money to both parties, the zoning issues get resolved quickly. If he only gave to Democrats or Republicans then there would be trouble during subsequent administrations. That’s a ridiculous fact of life in the world of commerce.
Government should not have that kind of power over commerce. But it does and will for quite some time to come. It’s a game all business people have to play. If you don’t play it, you will lose your business. What’s remarkable with Trump is that he has survived for so long with so many parasitic politicians always looking to soak up every last dime that they could extract from him. People have to understand the nature of a politician, and for those who are not rich, or even wealthy and in business, they likely believe that politicians do good things on their behalf with each election. They don’t. All they want is to get elected. Their primary function is to raise money for more elections and they owe the people who give them money constant legislative favors. The vote occurs with donations, not the voting booth. Business people do not give money for any other reason but to protect themselves from intrusive government. Sometimes money is given for more government interference so to perhaps destroy a rival. But the money given is always about getting something. It’s not given for fun.
Donald Trump represents a different kind of politician. I would vote for him just because he managed to build the Trump Tower in Manhattan where it overshadows Macy’s. The politics involved in that deal would have been enormously difficult. For Trump to purchase the air rights next to his proposed tower design was extremely creative. Without question Trump made decisions on where to purchase concrete from, what anchor stores would be inside the tower and how it would fit into New York politics based on his strategic intentions. He really is a master strategist, which is showing in the presidential race.
As a president, you really can’t afford to paint out half the country the way Obama has. Republicans have been happy to limit themselves to those limits much to their own detriment. Trump is uniquely positioned to recruit voters who might otherwise vote for Democrats as he has knowledge of the entertainment industry that is very unique for a presidential candidate. He may have shown various sides of himself over the years, but at his core, he is the person who appeared on Oprah in 1988 and knows how to get things done. He telegraphed it way back then, he said he’d run for president if he felt the country was too screwed up for anyone else to solve the problems. Well, that’s where we are, and he’s positioned to do the job—best positioned. The world is a mess and internal politics is a disaster. Nobody else has what it takes to get the job done. So why not? If Jesus Christ were running for president, I wouldn’t vote for him. We don’t need someone who will sacrifice themselves to the cross and turn the other cheek declaring love for all. We need someone who knows how to win, any way possible. And that’s what Trump is an expert at doing. That might sound harsh to people who don’t think about life in competitive terms, but for people who are used to winning, they understand what it takes, and how important victors are—even when others don’t see the value as quickly as they can. Those people just enjoy the benefits of someone like Trump and his towers along with the wealth they build for the American economy.
Consider that I am from Ohio and that President Mckinley was from that state, I will always think of Mt. McKinley in Alaska as the name it was before Obama and his progressive activists sought to change it to Denali. I don’t really care that since 1975 radical tree hugging hippies and pot smoking losers wanted to rename the highest mountain peak in North America after some “Great One” known by “native” language. If Obama wants to get technical, the Indians of the pre-Columbian era were just as guilty of migration as the European settlers—as the original story of the “Native American” are still being pieced together. Likely it was primarily the Chinese who were the real “Native Americans.” That story does not match the premise of the modern progressive who wants to use Indians as a springboard against American colonialism—and indirectly—capitalism. Here’s how the story was reported by USA Today:
WASHINGTON — President Obama’s three-day trip to Alaska this week will literally change the map of the nation’s 49th state.
Mount McKinley — the 20,237-foot mountain and the tallest in North America — has been renamed Denali, as it was originally known by Alaska Natives before it was renamed to honor President William McKinley.
The mountain, which sits in the 6 million-acre Denali national park, has been known as Denali in Alaska since 1975. Under an order signed by Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, the Denali name will also take effect for all federal usage and, therefore, on all official maps.
The order was signed Friday, but the White House asked that it be announced Monday as part of Obama’s trip to Alaska to highlight the effects of climate change in the Arctic. The White House said the name change “recognizes the sacred status of Denali to generations of Alaska Natives.”
I have been to the top of peaks a third of that. I understand the cold and loss of oxygen at those altitudes, but as a statement of natural achievement, I’m not that impressed. I could climb to the top of McKinley right now, in my current health without any conditioning, so I’m not impressed with it. Sure it’s pretty to look at, but I wouldn’t be crying to reach the summit like some climbers do. McKinley has been conquered many times, and it’s no longer a big deal. And from space, it doesn’t look like much. However, to a bunch of primitives wearing animal skins in the hard winter months, climbing to the top of Mount McKinley was an ominous task, not really feasible to them. So from their perspective, it was a “great one.” But to a culture that routinely sends satellites into earth orbit and has settlers on the International Space Station all days of the year looking down from space—and has airplanes that travel at twice that altitude on routine flights across the country, McKinley is no longer a “Great One.”
The reason for the name change now is to incite among the American people a love for nature and a reversion back from the gains made through capitalism back to the primitive focus of indigenous people who function best from tribes always in need of a leader. That is why progressives are trying so hard to make a religion out of the “green movement” and why they think of the Indian as something of our national sacred history.
In 1896, a gold prospector named the mountain McKinley as political support for then-presidential candidate William McKinley, who became president the following year. The United States formally recognized the name Mount McKinley after President Wilson signed the Mount McKinley National Park Act of February 26, 1917.[22] The Alaska Board of Geographic Names changed the name of the mountain to Denali, which is how it is referred to locally. However, a 1975 request by the Alaska state legislature to the United States Board on Geographic Names to do the same was blocked by Ohio congressman Ralph Regula, whose district included McKinley’s hometown of Canton.[23]
To progressives like Obama, money and the creation of it is a bad thing. Money represents value and progressives hate value, or any identification of it. So of course Obama and his greenie weenies are against gold prospecting and everything that the Old West stood for regarding westward expansion. Alaska and the settling of it by the United States to him are all about oil and gold at the exploitation of Eskimos. But without the development of capitalism, Alaska today would be nearly as useless of a terrain as Siberia is right across the Bering Straight. Without gold prospecting or oil drilling Alaska would just be more earthly land not being applied to any productive task. To conservationists who are against human invention and development, that is a grand crusade worthy of sacrificing many to the gods of Mother Earth. But to capitalists who use free enterprise to improve the conditions of human existence, the gold from Alaska, and the wealth discovered through westward expansion set up the United States as an economic powerhouse throughout the world during the Twentieth Century. Of course Obama wants to erase that history—which he has been trying to undo through his economic policies, his EPA activism, and his desires to openly revert North America back to the times of the primitive.
Denali is the name of a primitive group of people who held the mountain in high regard due to their perspective victimization witnessed from their village huts. There’s nothing miraculous about pointing to a big rock on the horizon and declaring that it’s so large that man cannot climb it. But the wealth extracted from Alaska gold mining and oil drilling have created an economy that took mankind well off planet earth to look down on that small rock from space and point out Mount McKinley—a Republican that didn’t last long in office, but was reminiscent of a time when wealth was built and mankind stepped out of the shadows of their village huts. Mount McKinley isn’t a “great one.” It’s just a rock in the middle of Alaska, a state defined by its economic wealth and individualism. That extracted wealth is what sets Alaska apart from Siberia and makes all the difference between a great one and a mere rock on the horizon. And that’s what Obama and his gang of lost tribes are really desiring, a regression back to the time of the village living under the shadows of “Denali.” What they fail to understand is that mankind has overtaken the mountain and their limited perspective. And there is no going back now.
For many years I have worked nearly exclusively with bullwhips to be one of those few handfuls in the world who can be considered an expert. It has always been my thing and I will always enjoy it. However, much of that has been out of necessity. Even further back I was part of a martial art school that was a rather vicious enterprise. The owner was corrupt and he instructed his students to be bad people. He was essentially like the bad school owner in the film Karate Kid. He stole money, ran around with young women, and taught his students to be killers so he could win more trophies in tournaments—and thus, sell more classes for his enterprise. I never liked the guy, and he never liked me. One thing I learned from that experience was how to use nunchucks and other melee weapons. To this very day, there may be people out there as fast as me with nunchucks, but I haven’t met them. If I really get loosened up, I can swing them around the way Bruce Lee did in Fists of Fury.
Martial arts to me was always an oriental practice, and I was always distinctly American. I never wanted to be a samurai, a ninja, or a black belt martial artist. But I did want to be a gunfighter. But the problem was ammunition was expensive and I had no way to really practice it. But I was able to practice with a bullwhip and carry a lot of my melee martial arts training directly over into that western art to a point where I felt I could use it in any combat situation with great precision to the point of invincibility. For the last three decades that’s what I’ve done and it worked out well. I have lived in neighborhoods where practicing with firearms was just out of the question, but practicing with bullwhips was doable. So my love of western arts evolved along those lines.
But times change and always in the back of my mind was the desire to be a real gunslinger. I have done pretty much everything I ever wanted to do with bullwhips. There are several of us around the world who are very good with bullwhips and on a good day we can all beat each other at the various competitions, but you get to a certain point where you either level off, or you take another step. For me, that evolution will be toward a gunfighter.
I share obviously with Howard Darby a specific love of the Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns. They are American martial art films that are significant, and they hold up to time quite effectively. It has not been lost to me that modern society has been distinctly anti-gun which is an insult to American culture, because guns are very much an important part of the United States. Criticizing guns is like insulting an oriental of the merits of martial arts. Don’t tell a Japanese person that their Samurai culture is stupid, because they will be insulted. So why is it that in the United States when someone of authority wants to criticize an action, they make derogatory references to the “Wild West.” The reason is that they want to change the United States into something else—so they attack the art forms that define it.
I’m at a point in my life where guns aren’t so expensive, and I can certainly afford the timing equipment, the holsters, and I have time to practice. Up until a few years ago I worked 16 to 18 hour days so I didn’t have time to pick up on a new skill. But now I do, and I can’t think of a better one for me than that of a gunfighter. I have spent considerable time defending traditional America. I have friends in high places and if I wanted to, I could immediately be a part of any political insider movement and work at a high-profile position. But I don’t want to. I’d rather be a gunfighter.
Each year as I’ve said I use the Annie Oakley event in Darke County, Ohio as a kind of reference point for re-centering my moral compass. At our annual dinner it has been increasingly apparent that the world is hungry for western arts, but people feel guilty for wanting it. In our group we haven’t done much with guns, really due to the stigma behind them—but since our Western Arts Showcase has moved from the fairgrounds to the York Woods area, the regulations have loosened up quite a lot leading me to consider livening things up a bit with actual gun fire. But it takes a lot of practice, and money to get even remotely close to where Howard Darby is. But like a lot of good people in the western arts professions, Darby is promoting his sport so that people like me will enter the field and push things forward. Just like in the whip world, there really aren’t that many people who still perform as gunfighters. It’s been a dying art form. Most who do are older people and that needs to change.
Meanwhile everyone wants to be a black belt in martial arts because there are fewer stigmas in the effort. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are common loves for young people whereas all the old cowboy heroes of days long gone are considered fringe worthy, and that is just appalling. I see Fast Draw as a sport that most adequately promotes the Second Amendment and that makes people like Howard Darby important ambassadors to Constitutional preservation—and I’d like to expand that considerably in the years to come. I think it’s about time that America stop apologizing for being so good, and that all things categorized as Western Arts lose the stigma given by progressive society as outdated, Indian hating, unintelligent, traditionalists. American westerns built our nation into something unique and are much more influential and powerful than martial arts—and I think it would be best if Fast Draw was as common in the future as fishing is today.
With the tools available today, there should be more people like Howard Darby. With Cabela’s superstores two or three hundred miles apart all over the nation, there are plenty of resources for modern shooters to enjoy. It’s not like it used to be, there are plenty of ways to get access to equipment and supplies. That’s another aspect to this desire to become a gunfighter that is so appealing to me now as opposed to several years ago. Back when I was doing some gunsmithing work and had a FFL, Brownells was about the only place you could get really good supplies for such a sport. But these days, Bass Pro and Cabela’s has most of what you need right off the shelf. And it’s a great excuse to shop at those places more often—which represents the best that America has to offer.
It is time to stop apologizing for the gun culture that we have in America. I have no desire to be more like Europe and I certainly don’t want to be more like the mystics of the orient. The American Gunfighter is an art that is rooted in capitalism and honor. It is unique to a free society. And its time that we defend it properly instead of relegating it to western events like the Annie Oakley Days in Greenville, Ohio once a year. I think its time to open things up a bit and let people know that practicing with guns isn’t a shameful experience. Its part of our heritage and that is something we should all cherish. Because it’s ours and nobody else’s.
Over the weekend Donald Trump gave speeches in South Carolina, Massachusetts and then to Nashville, all to big crowds. Out of all the nearly 20 presidential candidates from both sides of the political spectrum, nobody came close to out working Trump. Additionally the billionaire from New York gave a wonderful interview to Sarah Palin and announced that he was going to team up with two other presidential candidates, Ben Carson, and Ted Cruz for a major policy protest regarding the Iranian deal recently signed by the president. Trump indulged many of the topics I would typically cover here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom leaving me for the first time in years time to begin working on a new hobby of mine, Western Fast Draw. The guy in the videos below is Howard Darby, and he has worked really hard to become as proficient as he is. I spent some time during this year’s Annie Oakley events in Greeneville, Ohio watching the guys at the Ohio Fast Draw Association International compete between my own bullwhip events. And I decided this year that I’d start developing that new skill for my own pleasure. It will take a while to get to the level of Darby but it sure will be fun practicing. And I’m thankful to Trump for doing what he’s doing, because for the first time in about 15 years, I actually think there is someone better positioned than me to bring up all these topics—which gives me time to do other things. Here are some video clips of Darby. I love this guy.
Under a Trump presidency I can actually see a day where John Wayne will be more celebrated as an American icon once again than Lady GaGa. The slow decline that we are seeing from the music industry by artists like Miley Cyrus may very well turn around into something much more positive because Trump as divisive as the media accuses him of being is bringing people out of every known crack to capture their interest in this upcoming election. If Trump sticks with it he may very well eliminate the entire field of Republican candidates and I really don’t think there is a Democrat who can run against him on the horizon—unless a liberal celebrity steps forward. The political hacks that have been in the system for such a long time just don’t have the work ethic, the strategic implementation, the nimbleness, or funding to do what Trump is doing.
Trump’s open embrace of Ben Carson and Ted Cruz is really a brilliant move. Those two guys would never have a chance at breaking through the establishment barriers without Trump plowing the way. For all the Ted Cruz supporters, without Trump there is no where for the Texas senator to go for support. The media will not give him a seat at the table of political discourse because he’s too smart, too holier than thou, and certainly not part of the Beltway culture. Cruz is clearly a Tea Party politician and everyone hates him for it. Trump smartly is setting not only a stage for the 2016 elections, but the 2024 field. These are young men relatively speaking, and in Trump’s wake, they are succeeding where they wouldn’t otherwise. It’s a classic game of good cop bad cop, and Trump clearly knows what he’s doing and what his role in it is.
A lot of people forget that Trump is a Tea Party guy. He has been for a long time. For a celebrity he’s the only one that I remember—besides myself and a handful of others, who refused to concede that there was something really wrong with the president’s birth certificate. Everyone ran away from the media designation of Obama “birthers” except for Trump. Back in 2011 and 2012 Donald Trump attended Tea Party events and flirted with a presidential run back then. If not for Trump, Obama would have never released his birth certificate even though Sheriff Arpaio put together a team which showed the document to be a fake—generated by modern computers because of the layered software that was not available in the 1960s, when the president was actually born. Arpaio is one of those John Wayne traditionalists who made America what it is today, but at over 83, as of this writing, there aren’t many behind him to take the baton. That is something I am always personally concerned about. Each time someone tries to emerge, the media class clearly following the strategies of The Naked Communist shut down proper coverage of such good people leaving us a field of candidates to choose from who are just terrible.
Remarkably in Nashville, Trump went out of his way to promote the Tea Party as a political movement. Of course this stunned the political establishment who has been trying to shut down the movement for years. I have seen this first hand in my own community. Political insiders from the Republican party infiltrated the Tea Party and slowly took the edge off until that silent majority became frustrated and went back to sleep. I still do what I do, but the meeting places slid away into oblivion, and many of the original Tea Party members stop going to meetings and turned back to God on Sunday for some sign of improvement. Meanwhile progressive society marched on unmolested showing itself to be seemingly unstoppable.
Of course I am used to being in the extreme minority through my support of western arts. My decision to start learning fast draw after thirty years of whip work essentially came from the fact that I am now a grandfather and I see the hungry light from behind the eyes of those young children and it reminds me of the old-fashioned America that I love so much—which Donald Trump is dusting off—an America that is good for all races and nationalities. One that black Americans can get excited about and cause Frederick Douglas Republicans to emerge once again. Many blacks do not know these days that the baseball great Jackie Robinson was a Republican as was Martin Luther King. Robinson actually endorsed Richard Nixon for president over John F. Kennedy. Today it is assumed that a person with dark skin will automatically vote for a Democrat leaving Republican politicians looking to join the socialist’s efforts of the Democratic party by throwing benefits to minorities to win their votes. Nothing could be further from the truth. People of all walks of life want to respect themselves in a way that traditional America established. They want self-reliance; they’d rather have a job than to suck off welfare, unless they are essentially lazy people. But most people aren’t. They want government off their back and they want to keep what they work for. Those are essentially Tea Party values which central committee political hacks sought so aggressively to shut down.
When I was in charge of getting signatures for a right-to-work movement in Ohio, which Governor Kasich was against in 2012 it stunned me how many Tea Party leaders locally followed the mantra precisely to Kasich’s political desires. Kasich ran as a Tea Party governor to get the votes and after a major defeat from the public sector unions, he decided that he didn’t want to take on the unions, and had lost his will to fight. It was then that Patti Alderson, the local socialite put me on her radar list and came after me personally—which was a huge mistake. As a Wild West supporter I’m used to being the only one in the room doing what I do, so I didn’t care when Patti’s people stopped sending me emails. I get an average of 150 emails a day now, back then it was nearly 400 and I didn’t have time to read them all. I still don’t, but I did notice the attempt to paint me off the stage. It wasn’t just me, it was everyone associated with Tea Party activity as the Republican Party hell or high water was going to unite the party back to the values of progressives. But Trump is ruining those plans and I’m very happy about it.
For the first time I can actually see a day that America might be proud of itself once again. During this fight even Glenn Beck lost the will to keep swinging leaving much of his audience left to a three-hour daily radio show that sounds more like church than a Tea Party meeting. But some of us love fighting. I do, the more people against me, the more fun I have because it gives me more people to fight. And Trump is certainly that kind of person. Beck obviously isn’t. He wants to be the next Martin Luther King or Gandhi. I just want to be a gun fighter out of a spaghetti western. Beck is happy if people show up and pray with him at some public event. I am happy to see that the modern Star Wars movies are putting a modern spin on the classic Spaghetti Western. But because of Donald Trump, I can actually start thinking of the things I want to do, because what he’s doing every day is what I have been committed to on a smaller scale for a long time, and its nice to see someone more positioned for effectiveness doing the good work of decimating the old political order that never was for representing the old John Wayne America. But for me, that is the only kind of America—a time where westerns were the key inspiration for young kids, black leaders were Republicans, and families stayed together and had money in their bank accounts. Donald Trump looks to be committed to not only bringing that America back to life, but he’s setting the political stage for the next two decades and he really doesn’t have any competition. And that allows people like me to do the kinds of things I really enjoy, which is a very good thing.
The only person I have met who works as hard if not harder than myself, and is doing precisely what I said over four years ago that Republicans should do to re-capture the hearts of America, is Donald Trump which is why these days I write about him it seems every day. He is a relief to me to see someone take the national stage and say the kinds of things I have written about with millions and millions of words. Trump is taking things to a completely new political level. I have watched really smart people over the last five years get eaten completely by the political machines, and watched really stupid people declare that the status quo would once again rule the day. That is until June of 2015 when Donald Trump announced he was running for president. And over the last couple of months before Labor Day even arrived, Trump had molded himself into a really good political candidate. Watch his South Carolina speech from the last week of August.
We are watching history being made and things are being said that until Trump were only said as boisterously here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom. Trump’s never back down approach is so refreshing. And nearly every day he has found a way to make news. I know how difficult it is because I have been asked often how I found enough topics to write about every day—and how I can write so much. Trump is going to the next level, every day he finds some injustice to challenge and he seamlessly weaves it into his speeches with no Teleprompters, political handlers, or caution of any kind. His platform is undeniably conservative, strong borders, pro second amendment, pro business, pro military, against Common Core, etc,. but unlike other candidates, he actually gives the impression that he can do something about any of those topics. He’s a doer, not just a talker, and that is the reason for his dominance in the political arena.
Until Trump, I was one of the few people who called people like Anthony Weiner names like “sleazebag” and “perv” based on his behavior. A lot of people thought about it, or danced around the subject jokingly, but only a person who does not live in a glass house can afford to throw rocks, so most people don’t. After all, as the Ashley Madison incident recently exposed, there are millions of men looking to cheat on their wives discreetly and only a few women, who were likely professional prostitutes. So a lot of people were shamed into stepping off any high horse that they may have fantasized of having to formulate an opinion, and they let Anthony Weiner off the hook. Trump being a man free of drugs, alcohol, or financial concern can rampage through a jungle of political hacks because he knows that he can throw rocks and nobody can toss them back because as public as he is, he does not live in a glass house. He can afford to be holier than thou, which is exactly what I have always said is the type of person who should be president.
Even I was a little surprised that Trump went after Huma Abedin, who is married to Anthony Weiner in a speech in Massachusetts. Abedin as it turns out is part of the Hillary Clinton email scandal so it was a topic that Trump had a right to expose—and he did it in a grand fashion that sounded just like something I’d write. And there it was on the front page of USA Today stated in a way that sounded like one of my articles. It was very refreshing because Trump continues to show that he isn’t afraid of any demons from his past coming out to expose him as a hypocrite, which is why he can call out so much bad behavior.
What a lot of people don’t understand about moral capital is that there is a good tactical reason not to get drunk or show other people in friendly settings your weaknesses. It came up with me while talking to a friend recently why I know so many people yet don’t maintain very many close personal relationships. The reason is that I don’t want to get too close. You don’t want to hesitate if you have to go after someone aggressively. You don’t want to not do something that’s right because you shared a sin with them at some point in the past. Getting drunk with someone or worse yet, getting stoned, dancing, and extrapolating sexual impositions all might make you hesitate later when you discover that you have to go after someone’s jugular for the sake of doing the right thing. I don’t have that burden, I don’t do bad things, I don’t open myself to weakness and share them with others so to make them not feel so bad about themselves. I often purposely use a ‘holier than thou’ moral position to get what I want from people who do live in glass houses and it gives perpetual leverage for attack if there comes a time where such things are needed. I always liked Donald Trump but I assumed that he lived a life where occasional drunkenness was shared with others and that he had a bit of a playboy lifestyle. As it turns out, he didn’t, and doesn’t. He’s just an overachiever who never has a motor that turns off, which I can relate to. But it also makes him free to go after true evils and to extrapolate from those perpetrators what he needs.
What Trump said about Anthony Weiner’s marriage to Huma Abedin has the Beltway terrified because it’s the first hint they have had at what a Trump in the White House would be like. If Trump wants a bill passed he’ll know who slept with whose wife, who solicited a prostitute on the previous Friday, who in congress is attending swinger parties, and who woke up on a Sunday morning in a park without their pants—and he’ll use that leverage to garner cooperation. He can, because he will make sure he always has the high moral ground over his rivals, and that makes him a very dangerous potential president. At the heart of inaction between Barack Obama and John Boehner is that they both love cigarettes—so they share that little sin together for the detriment of our country. As soon as Boehner won the speaker’s seat, Obama exposed that shared sin to his advantage and it has persisted to this day. Boehner lost his leverage on Capital Hill before he ever got started with the public knowledge of just a few sins that people want to keep buried in a closet.
Jessica Estepa who wrote the USA Today article about Trump and Weiner during the lonely hours of early August 29, 2015 was noticeably distraught by exposing Abedin in the way that the presidential candidate had in Massachusetts. After all, how many women in the world were just like Abedin, who were in bad marriages where their husbands were perpetual horn dogs cheating on them like there is no tomorrow. But they are too insecure with themselves to leave such bad men for better opportunities. So they take progressive political positions to justify their weaknesses. They might even walk on the wild side every now and then like getting drunk at a club and gang molested by strange people captured on hundreds of cell phones for all time to remember. They might cozy up with a lesbian politician who wants to be president herself and find solace as an abused woman with an older woman who has an equally slimy husband. Trump knows that secrets were shared, because that’s what people do, and he is using the situation to create leverage. That’s what you want out of a president. In a world of sin, which the Beltway is full of; put a man in the White House who refuses to commit sin so that he can maintain leverage over them for the good of strategic positioning and wonderful things can happen.
Trump’s candidacy is a dream come true for me for all those reasons and more. I can forgive issues from his past where he politically wavered just because I understand the importance of leverage in a society of evil and how valuable it is to club opponents over the head with their own misconduct to achieve strategic necessities. I don’t go “out with the guys” ever, for any reason. I go home to my wife every day and live my life cleanly on my terms. I don’t share friendships with people for the benefit of the mutual keeping of secrets. And other than myself, I have never seen anyone similar such as Trump, let alone able to conduct himself on such a large national stage. I simply love it, because I know how powerful of a tool that behavior can be, and he will be able to use it, and appears extremely ready to perform the task in a way that has never been done before by anybody in a high office—in history. So I become more excited about a possible Trump presidency day by day—a run that will expose the buried bodies and illicit acts of corrupt politics for the betterment of our nation. And that is truly something to get excited about.
So a gay, black man, built intellectually by a progressive society to believe he had been victimized—and oppressed by the dialogue of the day, committed an ultimately heinous crime. This is how MSN reported the incident which occurred during the day on 8/26 2015.
MONETA, Va. — The fatal shooting of a reporter and cameraman unfolded on live TV during the early morning show, as tens of thousands of viewers watched a horrified anchor struggle to comprehend what had happened.
Within hours, the carefully scripted carnage carried out by a disgruntled former colleague spread to millions of viewers gripped by what had transformed into a social media storm. The governor initially described a car chase on his weekly radio show, with police on the shooter’s tail on an interstate highway.
Then, social media posts referencing the slain TV pair surfaced on an account under an on-air pseudonym used by the gunman — culminating with a first-person video of the ambush filmed by the shooter.
The 56-second clip shows Vester Lee Flanagan II quietly approach WDBJ reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward, gun in hand, as they conduct an interview. But Ward’s camera was aimed at the mini-golf course nearby instead of the reporter. So the shooter waited, cursing Parker under his breath, for 20 seconds until the live television picture was back on the reporter. Then he fired eight shots without saying a word.
The attack seemed carefully planned. Flanagan was captured in a rental car he reserved at some point before the shootings; his own Mustang was found abandoned at the local airport, Franklin County Sheriff Bill Overton said. The interview was done at a shopping center not yet open for the day at a remote lake in Moneta, some 25 miles away from WDBJ’s studios in Roanoke. The station promoted where the reporter would be, including a plug on Twitter just a half hour before the shooting.
The shooting was an act of pure hatred and took viewers on a journey they were not quite ready for. It’s not often such evil is so obvious, and immediate. Flanagan had been told that the world would give him special privileges because of his skin color, and his sexual preference and at mid-life he finally discovered that people didn’t like him because he was just an asshole. It had nothing to do with who his parents were or where he likes to park his phallic intentions. He was a difficult personality who used race and sexuality to justify his vile hatred—and society allowed him to hide that anger behind a mask of progressivism. Society allowed him to not be accountable as an individual giving him a collective focus on social victimization, instead of forcing him to look at himself as a way to be better as a human being.
Immediately after the attack progressives of all shapes and sizes immediately called for more gun control with the same lunacy that they declare that black lives matter while also supporting Planned Parenthood abortions. The same society that would think it was marvelous to discover a single strain of bacteria on Mars as evidence of life, is the same that looks at the selling of aborted fetuses to research companies as hacked up body parts and declares that life begins at birth. Progressives just can’t take responsibility for anything. They created the murderer Vester Lee Flanagan II through policy and the first thing they want to legislate regarding his behavior is guns. What a shameful misdirection of responsibility.
Guns were illegal in France but that didn’t stop a radical Muslim extremist from trying to take over a train in Belgium all in the name of Allah. The only thing that stopped him was four brave passengers who overtook the threat with good ol’ fashioned bravado, something that isn’t being taught anymore to young people. France had already taken the steps of making guns illegal. All of Europe in fact is pretty much gun free where even the mere mention of a firearm is taboo, like saying a curse word in church. It’s just not something they do in progressive riddled Europe, yet a gunman still had a gun and was on a train ready to take lives until the unexpected happened. Four heroes stopped him with personal initiative.
Alison Parker’s father shouldn’t have been on camera talking so soon after his little girl had been shot dead by a cold-blooded killer. He shouldn’t have been talking to the governor, or the press. Yet he did, he was on with Megan Kelly that very night on Fox News speaking about more gun control! Amazing. I felt sorry for him, but then wondered how he was even able to talk about his daughter on such a public stage after such a grotesque murder. It was reckless to put him on the air—anywhere—and even worse for him to speak from a grieving heart. Yet the progressives were happy to use him to advance their gun grabbing agenda—immediately.
But the gun argument is just a diversion from the real problem—and that is the type of utopian society progressives have tried to build. Their values, such as the White House’s hiring of the first transgender employee, or the media obsession with Bruce Jenner’s freakish foray into womanhood—progressives advocate freakish behavior then wonder why the product of their philosophy explodes under the pressure of reality—which flies in the face of their decisions most of the time. One fine example is the progressive support of radical Islam while those same lunatics routinely abuse women and kill gays—just because they believe a book of religion told them they could commit those crimes. Progressives support evil in every form then feel they can preach to the rest of us how we should live and think. Embarrassingly, we are supposed to believe from them that gun control would help in some way when it clearly hasn’t worked in Chicago, or France. Bad guys still kill people. The only difference is that they knew that nobody would shoot back.
Vester Lee Flanagan II cursed Alison Parker’s name under his breath just moments before the shooting, it is a good bet he didn’t think any of the three people standing at the interview scene would have a gun to return fire. So his plan could be hatched without being foiled—much to his liking. In all reality, all three people should have been armed and ready to shoot back the instant there was an indication of violence. People in the vicinity should have also been armed. When they heard shots, they should have been ready to discover the trouble and had the weapons to put an end to it. But Vester was allowed to believe through his homosexual temperament and race baiting past that he’d be able to commit evil without ramification—so violence occurred on live television shocking the world—and the fault rests completely on progressive society.
The reason that progressives blame the gun is because the gun doesn’t look back at them in the mirror each day. It’s much harder to look at the real problem, and for progressives, it’s the society they have built for themselves. When they realize they can’t have the world they imagined they have nowhere to turn. Most of them turn toward drugs and alcohol hoping to numb the reality. But in extreme cases, such as with Vester Lee Flanagan II they intend to hurt those who won’t allow them to be parasitic victims of vile filth and debauchery. That’s when they lash out. And by that measure if insanity is a measurable criteria for Second Amendment participation, then gun control of the type Alison Parker’s father is proposing should be established based on whether or not a person is gay or a Democrat—and if they happen to be both, they should be on a watch list for the safety of us all. That is how you get to the heart of the problem.
Glenn Beck makes some good points in the following video regarding Trump’s position against Ford Motor Company building a plant in Mexico. Beck brings up that Ronald Reagan promoted free trade and that Trump is wrong to suggest beating Ford into submission with tariffs for taking American jobs out of the country. Beck is speaking on behalf of free market capitalism and if Mexico has the best offerings and lowest wages, then they should get the manufacturing plant. It is essentially the same argument that I made in favor of Boeing moving one of their large manufacturing facilities from Washington State to South Carolina—to a right to work region so that they can hedge against work stoppages from labor strikes every couple of years. The Mexican people have a reputation for hard work so I can’t blame Ford for wanting to avoid the dope smoking line workers they have in Detroit for the hard-working Mexicans for half the cost. There are a lot of factors at play, and under the basic premise of Beck’s argument, Ford should have the free ability to move wherever they want—because it is currently too expensive to do business in America.
Trump reminds me a lot of Teddy Roosevelt—which is dangerous, because it was basically a beef with the Republican Party that pushed Teddy to start the Progressive movement, which ended up being detrimental to global politics. Progressivism and the hatred of wealth and capitalism has made it too expensive to do business in the United States so to make it beneficial for international corporations to move their plants to destinations like Mexico and China. The policies that make business in America expensive by progressives are purposeful attacks against capitalism and wealth to redistribute those assets to countries that don’t have them. So for Beck’s premise to be correct, you’d have to remove all progressives from the federal government and start with an even playing field. That’s where Trump comes in.
In spite of the current thinking, Trump is not a big government guy, but he is a top down implementation boss. As a president he will take charge and twist arms to get what he wants, and that will likely make the Teddy Roosevelt presidency look like seven years of mediocrity. Trump will go on a war path, and from my perspective it’s the only way to put out the fires of D.C. politics. Sometimes when a raging fire is ablaze, water is not enough. The best thing to do is to cut off the fuel, but in this case the fire is propelled by stolen tax payer resources, so there is no way to stop the inferno that way. That leaves an explosion so violent that everything gets decimated putting out the fire and destroying the fuel that fans the flames at the same time. That’s what Trump brings to the table not as a Republican or a Democrat, but as a “Trumpian.” Roosevelt was not really a hard-core Republican. His great weakness was that he didn’t really understand money, and he picked on the wealthy with a populist anti-trust crusade which really formed the foundations of progressivism. As much as I liked Roosevelt as a Rough Rider and as a cowboy president, he stepped all over the Constitution with an A type personality that resonated throughout the country for an entire century. He did a lot more bad in the long run than he did good. Trump has the potential to eclipse Roosevelt’s activism. But is that really a bad thing?
If things are left the way they are now, we’ll lose everything in America. Playing nice will not get the job done. And the two-party systems are so far divided that it’s impossible to bring 50% of the country to the table to on anything. It’s just not possible. The party system is so bad that reform of any kind is just not possible. It’s as big as a stalemate as the education system is under union prevention. Nothing can happen in education to make it better because of the labor unions. And nothing can happen in national politics to make it better so long as the party machines run it under collective influence. Case in point, the collectivism that protects John Boehner from challengers in Butler County, Ohio is the central committee—in this case a lady name Judy Shelton. She essentially knocks down challengers to Boehner before there are primaries and protects his seat from any viable challenge. Recently Lindsey Graham challenged Trump to come to South Carolina where he has full control of the committee chairs in his home district and proclaimed that he’d “kick his ass.” Tough talk for a progressive moderate Republican, Lindsey trusts that his political machine can withstand his protective mechanisms from a challenge and that despite what the polls suggest, Graham could fend off any challenge, even if it comes from what he thinks is only 25% of a radical right angry mob. Boehner doesn’t worry about his seat in Butler County because Shelton and her political machine protect him from challenges.
Roosevelt knew what was against him. The party bosses didn’t want him as a prominent Republican. They tried to give him silly little roles and even tried to appease him with a vice presidential role—really just to keep a gag on his mouth. Roosevelt knew it and much of his war against the rich as an anti-trust buster was derived from his hatred for the Republican Party machine. When McKinley died in office, Roosevelt much to the horror of the Republican Party at the time went on a rampage of revenge against the party bosses and nobody ever forgot it. Roosevelt did some really good things like the Panama Canal and some really destructive things—especially along the lines of anti-trust and over the years become more and more liberal until he eventually launched the Progressive Party. That was created out of a war with his former friend, William Howard Taft finally severing his ties to Republicans for the rest of his life. Much of the evil that resulted in all that activity came out of party politics as opposed to the will of the people, or free market opinion. The system was corrupt from the very start. Roosevelt fought against it the way he thought was best. The Constitution was the biggest victim of his presidency which was overlooked because much of what Roosevelt did had lasting, and meaningful impacts on the world in a very good way. That doesn’t make what he did right, but much of what he did do was good. That would have never happened without someone like Roosevelt who would break all the rules which inadvertently propelled society forward.
Trump is of the same type of mind, only he does understand money. He knows that the first thing he needs to do with Ford and other companies thinking of leaving America for some NAFTA refuge saving massive amounts of money from The Department of Labor lawsuits, and ridiculous wage expectations from a society that demands a minimum wage of $15 dollars an hour, is to re-make the American brand into something that has value again. By making citizenship a valued option and making the American flag mean something on products shipped to other countries representing respect, Trump is looking to create a brand similar to what he’s done with his own name, and that would benefit every single human being on earth indirectly. That danger is that Trump wouldn’t know when to stop once he gets going, and America could end up with another dictator on its hands.
However, I believe Trump is smarter than Teddy Roosevelt. I’ve read his books, grown up with him and feel I know the guy pretty well. He does a lot of things in his life that I wouldn’t do. But he doesn’t believe in drugs or alcohol, sets high standards for his family, and is a generally good person. He’s an authentically strong person whereas Teddy Roosevelt because of illnesses he had when he was younger always felt he had to overcome his personal demons. I don’t think Trump actually has any demons. So could he be trusted as a strong manager of American resources to blow up party politics for the next century, for the good of everyone? I think so. We live in a very screwed up world and it will take someone like a Donald Trump to get things in order again with mass destruction of party politics on both sides.
Glenn Beck has lost his audience to Donald Trump essentially. The same people who went to Beck’s 8/28 rally in Washington during 2010 are those who are now supporting Trump because they wanted to see a fighter. Beck was selling himself as a fighter at the time, and people loved him for it. But then he showed up on stage with a bullet proof vest and starting spouting off about God, he lost those fighters slowly over the next few years. And if you really peel back the layers of what Beck is saying about Trump, you’ll find a Glenn Beck who really still wishes he was like the old Glenn Beck. But now that he’s told the world he’s a better man now than he was back then—he can’t very well backtrack. People see what the problems are and they inheritably know that nothing will happen so long as there are party machines controlling politics. It’s as bad on the right as it is on the left. Trump is offering a way to break that system down. The downside to Trump would be more of the same—an arrogant president who thinks he’s an emperor. We had that with Teddy Roosevelt and we certainly have that in Barack Obama. But if Trump is actually smarter than Roosevelt he may just be successful both as an economically activist president who can pull the country back from the brink and establish once again a republic that is Constitutional in its nature. But that’s a long view plan. On the other hand Trump may become a ruthless dictator who declares himself emperor. That is a risk that if left unchecked, Teddy Roosevelt may have done. But the real trouble is with party politics. If left as it is now, it is destroying America anyway. I see nothing wrong with blowing up the whole system for a fresh start. Just as under the present conditions I see nothing wrong with closing the American borders and giving strong financial incentives to keep American companies within those borders—so that the brand of America can be rebuilt. Without those companies, there isn’t anything to rebuild and the intentions of progressives to destroy the economic engine of free enterprise will be re-distributed to a far away lands. So we will have to fight to keep them here, first with force, then with incentive—but the political mechanisms are already in motion and cannot be stopped—expect with a major explosion that levels everything in the political field. It is of course the last resort for our times.
The White House issued a number of remarkably stupid statements during the week of 8/24 2015 specifically in regard to the China devaluation of their currency and the reaction that global stock markets have had as a result. Dear reader, this has been illustrated for everyone for several years now; I have covered the topic extensively. The sheer stupidity of those within the United Nations created on the heels of World War II to ensure that war would never again occur on an international stage only traded the aggressions of mankind from guns to finance—which effectually is much more dangerous. War with guns are often isolated to the battlefields and involve the killing and maiming of those under the command structure of government armies. Financial wars involve everyone in the world and can be much more dangerous as a slow killing, life depraving enterprise.
Reading and understanding The Art of War from Sun Tzu is extremely important. If we had schools that worked correctly, it would be required reading for every 7th grader. Every member of the house and senate on Capital Hill should be profoundly familiar with the classic book on oriental strategy. West Point does teach The Art of War to their students, and there are some other classes provided with an emphasis in military might from higher education that instructs on the Sun Tzu military philosophy, but it is grossly evident that most of the world is oblivious to the thinking of oriental thought due to the lack of actions to prepare for the knowing insurrection.
The book is established by thirteen chapters and they are as follows.
Detail Assessment and Planning (Chinese: 始計，始计) explores the five fundamental factors (the Way, seasons, terrain, leadership and management) and seven elements that determine the outcomes of military engagements. By thinking, assessing and comparing these points, a commander can calculate his chances of victory. Habitual deviation from these calculations will ensure failure via improper action. The text stresses that war is a very grave matter for the state and must not be commenced without due consideration.
Waging War (Chinese: 作戰，作战) explains how to understand the economy of warfare and how success requires winning decisive engagements quickly. This section advises that successful military campaigns require limiting the cost of competition and conflict.
Strategic Attack (Chinese: 謀攻，谋攻) defines the source of strength as unity, not size, and discusses the five factors that are needed to succeed in any war. In order of importance, these critical factors are: Attack, Strategy, Alliances, Army and Cities.
Disposition of the Army (Chinese: 軍形，军形) explains the importance of defending existing positions until a commander is capable of advancing from those positions in safety. It teaches commanders the importance of recognizing strategic opportunities, and teaches not to create opportunities for the enemy.
Forces (Chinese: 兵勢，兵势) explains the use of creativity and timing in building an army’s momentum.
Weaknesses and Strengths (Chinese: 虛實，虚实) explains how an army’s opportunities come from the openings in the environment caused by the relative weakness of the enemy and how to respond to changes in the fluid battlefield over a given area.
Military Maneuvers (Chinese: 軍爭，军争) explains the dangers of direct conflict and how to win those confrontations when they are forced upon the commander.
Variations and Adaptability (Chinese: 九變，九变) focuses on the need for flexibility in an army’s responses. It explains how to respond to shifting circumstances successfully.
Movement and Development of Troops (Chinese: 行軍，行军) describes the different situations in which an army finds itself as it moves through new enemy territories, and how to respond to these situations. Much of this section focuses on evaluating the intentions of others.
Terrain (Chinese: 地形) looks at the three general areas of resistance (distance, dangers and barriers) and the six types of ground positions that arise from them. Each of these six field positions offers certain advantages and disadvantages.
The Nine Battlegrounds (Chinese: 九地) describes the nine common situations (or stages) in a campaign, from scattering to deadly, and the specific focus that a commander will need in order to successfully navigate them.
Attacking with Fire (Chinese: 火攻) explains the general use of weapons and the specific use of the environment as a weapon. This section examines the five targets for attack, the five types of environmental attack and the appropriate responses to such attacks.
Intelligence and Espionage (Chinese: 用間，用间) focuses on the importance of developing good information sources, and specifies the five types of intelligence sources and how to best manage each of them.
Verses from the book occur in modern daily Chinese idioms and phrases, such as the last verse of Chapter 3:
故曰：知彼知己，百戰不殆；不知彼而知己，一勝一負；不知彼，不知己，每戰必殆。
So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss.
If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose. If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself.
This has been more tersely interpreted and condensed into the Chinese modern proverb:
知己知彼，百戰不殆。 (Zhī jǐ zhī bǐ, bǎi zhàn bù dài.)
If you know both yourself and your enemy, you can win numerous (literally, “a hundred”) battles without jeopardy.
Common examples can also be found in English use, such as verse 18 in Chapter 1:
兵者，詭道也。故能而示之不能，用而示之不用，近而示之遠，遠而示之近
All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.
This has been abbreviated to its most basic form and condensed into the English modern proverb:
In short, the failure of the United Nations has been to assume that all nations of the world, particularly communist countries, would give up their ability to deceive and open themselves to vulnerability to all for a global group hug, which will never happen. Not in a million years—not in ten million years of progressive philosophy. Every academic throughout the world who thought like Woodrow Wilson and his successor Franklin Roosevelt and believed in the ridiculous United Nations practice of global unification failed to understand the nature of those from the orient. The Art of War is their governing philosophy and in the case of China, they use communism to unite the flags of the world behind their centrally planned cause. That is why oriental countries are so prone to communist regimes—because at their heart is The Art of War. It is the most important book available in understanding the current crises in China.
China has been deceiving the United States openly for quite a long time and using a ruse of friendship to lull all capitalist nations to commit themselves into a vast amount of debt out of a mutual relationship of deceptive trust so that they can crush all resistance to them in the future. They are playing a global game inspired by The Art of War. So keep that in mind while the White House continues to pretend that relations with China are good and marching in a positive direction. China is poised to crush the United States through a devalued currency and a trade imbalance, and they don’t care if lots of innocent people are hurt in the process. We are talking about a communist country that openly kills babies when they turn out to be girls—because the state has designated a one child per family policy. China is looking to expand—they have an unnatural imbalance of males within their society and they look to The Art of War as a way to expand their society. And they are doing it right now.
This is not a warning, or a bit of political theater. It is a fact that anybody familiar with The Art of War would easily understand.
