It was an astonishing revelation when Michelle Obama admitted that she was a bad parent prior to gaining access to the White House and receiving the vast resources available to government workers who become president. She stated:
“Before coming to the White House, I struggled, as a working parent with a traveling, busy husband, to figure out how to feed my kids healthy, and I didn’t get it right,” she explained, sharing a story about her children’s doctor who pulled her aside to talk about her family diet.
“I thought to myself, if a Princeton and Harvard-educated professional woman doesn’t know how to adequately feed her kids, then what are other parents going through who don’t have access to the information I have?”
That explains a lot and sounds like most of the levy supporters in my neighborhood—the kind of people I’ve termed as “latté-sipping prostitutes”—as they lack common sense, are overly dependent on government services, and spend much of their spare time sipping lattes and complaining about their spouses. These are a new breed of people invented by the big government socialist policies born of the Great Depression—and the result is these parents unwise about child rearing and deeply insecure about their roles as parents. Government services have made them lazy and dependent not feeling qualified to even make decisions about what their children should eat—let along much more complex social issues. These are not the days of Leave it to Beaver where the parents were wise and had all the answers a child could possibly need to ask. These are the days of Oprah where parents were taught to ask a professional and surrender their children’s sovereignty to the care of public schools. Michelle Obama represents this new age parent who can’t even answer simple questions without professional assistance in whatever topic is in question.
So it comes as no wonder that Michelle Obama thinks that the rest of America is as dim-witted as she has been, and needs vast government services to support their lives, and robust cabooses. I often term these types of people as latte sipping prostitutes because they tend to be drastically out-of-touch regarding world affairs primarily getting their news, and ultimately their philosophy from day time television. There is nothing against places like Starbuck’s, but often their dinning rooms are filled with these types of people, the kind of people who Michelle Obama is—social climbing neurotic, dependent personalities. When I refer to them as prostitutes it is because often these types of parents put their careers before their children and somehow expect everything to come out wonderfully in their families. Prostitutes often are willing to do anything for money. They most of the time sell various degrees of sexual interaction with male clients, but usually their obligation is not sexually related at all—only on the surface. Men who use the services of prostitutes are often looking for company—someone to spend time with. So the prostitute must be ready to sell her body for sex, or just for company—which isn’t any different from most jobs in most careers where time is sold in exchange for money. The only real difference is that time is sold instead of a physical body.
Michelle Obama complained that she was in a relationship with a man who traveled a lot, and she was an attorney with a Harvard law degree who made a decision to serve others by selling her time instead of giving that time to her children. Thus, it was her conclusion that she needed help feeding her children correctly—because she didn’t have time or knowledge to perform the task. But it was her decisions in life that prevented her from obtaining that knowledge—she chose instead to whore herself out to a legal profession full of radical social advocates—such as Bernadine Dorn from the Weather Underground and similar reformers instead of pouring that same energy into learning what foods are good for her children, or what they should be doing and thinking about. Typical school levy supporters are of the same type—they whore themselves to occupations with the sole intention of making money—and wonder why their children are faulty—lacking parental input. It’s not always the case, but generally you can easily tell children who have a full-time parent in the home and children who are raised through baby sitters, public schools, and empty homes owned by parents too busy with careers to care for them. The parents are doing essentially the same thing that prostitutes are doing—selling their time for money and what gets deprived are the children who need that sold away time.
This is the heart of why Michelle Obama was lost on how to feed her children. She was raised to be a prostitute. Instead of selling her body, she has sold her time to a law firm and legal career. Her mind was not on raising children; it was on the concerns of the Weather Underground as she worked at the same Chicago law firm that the former American terrorist worked at. Before her husband became a big time public looter, she worked the streets sipping lattés at lunch while looking over legal briefs for judges interpreting the law of corrupt politicians whose only productive enterprise was creating more paperwork. And she felt sophisticated, and accomplished as most progressives established value. Michelle Obama by her own admission was so deficient as a parent that she didn’t even know how or what to feed her children without professional input. That was because she was too busy whoring herself to society that she didn’t have anything left for her children—that is why she is a latté sipping prostitute.
When I called the levy supporters in my home district of Lakota schools latté sipping prostitutes, they wanted to assume that the statement was derogatory toward women—again as progressives have defined the value. But it wasn’t meant toward women—but at their neglectful behavior as parents who were too busy raising future attention starved children instead of productive members of society—which becomes my business when they become hapless adults like Michelle Obama—unable to even know how to feed themselves without professional help. They expect to cover up their mistakes with increased tax money to wave a magic wand and “puff” make their children scholars and successful adults—and that wand is waved in public education classrooms. But the results are often as accurate as newspaper horoscopes and just as factually based. They are a destructive species who are pretentious and corrosive to the human race—and it starts in lunch time cafes among cackling, unhappy parents who attempt to justify the guilt they feel in selling their time for money while others do the jobs of raising their children. That is why they are latté sipping prostitutes.
Occasionally, these whores strike it rich. They marry someone who could sell the pants off a priest, lying their way from one social circle to another until they are in the White House. When they arrive at such a place, they are still unequipped to be parents, because their background as whores has not prepared them for such things—but they can now command vast resources supplied by the tax payers to attempt to cover their deficiencies. In this way, Michelle Obama is no different from a typical school levy supporter. But the fault is not common to everyone, only to people like the Obama family—who have sold themselves for years to everyone in trade for power, money, and political power. Yet, that power can’t even help them feed their children on their own—they still have to hire help to cover their ignorance. And that is the fault and fate of every latté sipping prostitute in existence—which means that their children will tragically suffer under their care.
The other intent of this blog, which again was addressed from the very beginning, was that it promised to take readers down the “rabbit hole” of knowledge so to unlock the reasons for many of the events occurring in the world. Of course the reference is to the novel Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll brought to immortal life by the Walt Disney film of the same name. I knew that those reading here would find themselves at some point in a world they never knew existed, but perilously aware that the mechanisms emitting from deep down the Rabbit Hole would explain the type of insanity seen in the nightly news. Such a tragedy is similar to a child watching a puppet show and believing that what they see on stage is real, only to discover as their eyes become more sophisticated that there are strings on the marionettes which extend off stage somewhere. So the inquiring mind gets out of their seat and climbs onto the stage to follow the strings up above the stage where it is discovered that the real manipulators of movement reside. In this way, the “rabbit hole” is anything and everything which helps support the puppet show away from the stage. The stage where the puppets act is the reality witnessed, but anything away from the stage would be considered Rabbit Hole material.
But the rabbit hole of our real life can be much more tragic than a child realizing that the puppets in a show are not real, and are manipulated by talented actors off stage. The realization that from deep down the Rabbit Hole of existence are the mechanisms which affect our daily life from news stories like the ISIS invading Iraq to the countless scandals involving President Obama, the IRS claiming to have lost two years of emails, or the real intentions of the legalization of drugs in America. On this site I also deal with the origin of the human race pointing to religion often as simply a puppet show to mask that true reality—but there is danger in going down such Rabbit Holes. I often give hints to games I endorse, or literary achievements which can help preserve the mind not from the fantasy of escapism, but the linking of a mind back to the accepted reality of the true dream world. Sports are a good mutual bonding agent between life in the Rabbit Hole and the world the rest of the society lives in. I often reference these types of things to keep sanity a close ally when the images of the Rabbit Hole threaten to shatter consciousness. For some people, it is too much to know what is really happening off the stages of life and they do fall into insanity. My goal with this blog is to show people what happens in the Rabbit Hole without destroying the minds of the inquiring minds who want to know more. So not only do I help lead people down the Rabbit Hole, I also provide mechanisms for dealing with the crisis of learning the truth once there.
To me the Rabbit Hole is a way of understanding the world of quantum mechanics and the world of macro and nano technology which is evolving at a rapid rate. From this realm it might be denoted that a ultraterrestrial species lives in conjunction with the human race and injects its influence upon us—and certainly stirs the pot so to speak. So dealing with this species is a conflict which goes well beyond the world of commerce, politics, or acknowledged philosophy—and can really only be discovered through advanced mathematics. Ironically, the author of Alice in Wonderland was a mathematician, and seemed over a century ago—well before anyone at the time had an inclination—whether through tragedy, sexual crises, or just a mind folding over on itself with the realization that all was not what it seemed and lacking a philosophy to deal with it—Lewis Carroll wrote a novel from inside the Rabbit Hole. So for those who thought they understood Alice in Wonderland as a beloved children’s story and classic Disney animated cartoon with images inescapable at Disney World, it is time to reveal what many of the metaphors mean. To make that the easiest transition as possible, I have shown the Cliff Notes below, along with video explaining the meanings of the classic novel. A link to the Cliff Notes origin article is provided below after a rather robust gathering of explanations on Alice in Wonderland and the life of Lewis Carroll are provided.
The novel is composed of twelve brief chapters; it can be read in an afternoon. Each of the brief chapters, furthermore, is divided into small, individual, almost isolated episodes. And the story begins with Alice and her sister sitting on the bank of a river reading a book which has no pictures or dialogue in it. ” . . . and what is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversations?” Thus, we find many pictures and read much dialogue (although very little of it makes sense) in this novel.
After introducing us to one of the creatures in Wonderland, the Gryphon, for instance, the narrator tells us, “If you don’t know what a Gryphon is, look at the picture.” As noted earlier, Wonderland is filled with strange animals, and Alice’s encounters with these creatures, all of whom engage her in conversations, confuse her even more whenever she meets yet another inhabitant of this strange country.
Slowly losing interest in her sister’s book, Alice catches sight of a white rabbit. However, he is not merely a rabbit; he will be the “White Rabbit,” a major character in the novel. In this first paragraph, then, we learn about the protagonist, Alice, her age, her temperament, and the setting and the mood of the story. In a dream, Alice has escaped from the dull and boring and prosaic world of adulthood — a world of dull prose and pictureless experiences; she has entered what seems to be a confusing, but perpetual springtime of physical, if often terrifying, immediacy.
The White Rabbit wears a waistcoat, walks upright, speaks English, and is worrying over the time on his pocket watch. Alice follows him simply because she is very curious about him. And very soon she finds herself falling down a deep tunnel. For a few minutes, she is frightened; the experience of falling disorients her. Soon, however, she realizes that she is not falling fast; instead, she is falling in a slow, almost floating descent. As she falls, she notices that the tunnel walls are lined with cupboards, bookshelves, maps, and paintings. She takes a jar of orange marmalade off a shelf. But finding the jar empty, she replaces it on a lower shelf, as though she were trying to maintain a sense of some propriety — especially in this situation of absolute uncertainty. As she reflects on the marmalade jar, she says that had she dropped the jar, she might have killed someone below. Alice is clearly a self-reflective young girl — and she’s also relatively calm; her thinking reveals a curiously mature mind at times. But like an ordinary little girl, she feels homesick for her cat, Dinah. In that respect, she is in sharp contrast with conventional child heroines of the time. Although Alice may be curious and sometimes bewildered, she is never too nice or too naughty. But she is always aware of her class-status as a “lady.” At one point, she even fears that some of Wonderland’s creatures have confused her for a servant, as when the White Rabbit thinks that she is his housekeeper, Mary Ann, and orders Alice to fetch his gloves and fan.
Thus, in Chapter I, Carroll prepares us for Alice’s first major confrontation with absolute chaos. And note that Alice’s literal-minded reaction to the impossible is always considered absurd here in Wonderland; it is laughable, yet it is her only way of coping. As she falls through the rabbit-hole, for instance, she wonders what latitude or longitude she has arrived at. This is humorous and ridiculous because such measurements — if one stops to think about it — are meaningless words to a seven-year-old girl, and they are certainly meaningless measurements of anything underground.
In Chapter II, Alice finds herself still in the long passageway, and the White Rabbit appears and goes off into a long, low hall full of locked doors. Behind one very small door, Alice remembers that there is “the loveliest garden you ever saw” (remember, she saw this in Chapter I), but now she has drunk a liquid that has made her too large to squeeze even her head through the doorway of the garden. She wishes that she could fold herself up like a telescope and enter. This wish becomes possible when she finds a shrinking potion and a key to the door. The potion reduces her to ten inches high, but she forgets to take the key with her (!) before shrinking, and now the table is too high for her to reach the key. To any young child, this is silly and something to be laughed at, but on another level, there’s an element of fear; for children, the predictable proportions of things are important matters of survival. Yet here in Wonderland, things change — for no known reason — thus, logic has lost all its validity.
Then Alice eats a cake that she finds, and her neck shoots up until it resembles a giraffe’s. Suddenly, she is a distorted nine feet tall! Clearly, her ability to change size has been a mixed blessing. In despair, she asks, “Who in the world am I?” This is a key question.
Meanwhile, the rapid, haphazard nature of Alice’s physical and emotional changes has created a dangerous pool of tears that almost causes her to drown when she shrinks again. Why has she shrunk? She realizes that she has been holding the White Rabbit’s lost white gloves and fan — therefore, it must be the magic of the fan that is causing her to shrink to almost nothingness. She saves herself by instantly dropping the fan. But now she is desperate; in vain, she searches her mind for something to make sense out of all this illogical chaos, something like arithmetic and geography, subjects that are solid, lasting, and rational. But even they seem to be confused because no matter how much she recites their rules, nothing helps. At the close of this chapter, she is swimming desperately in a pool of her own tears, alongside a mouse and other chattering creatures that have suddenly, somehow, appeared.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is full of parody and satire. And in Chapter III, Victorian history is Carroll’s target. The mouse offers to dry the other creatures and Alice by telling them a very dry history of England. Then, Carroll attacks politics: the Dodo organizes a Caucus-race, a special race in which every participant wins a prize. Alice then learns the mouse’s sad tale as Carroll’s editor narrates it on the page in the shape of a mouse’s very narrow, S-shaped tail. The assembled, unearthly creatures cannot accept ordinary language, and so Alice experiences, again, absolute bafflement; this is linguistic and semantic disaster. Indeed, much of the humor of this chapter is based on Alice’s reactions to the collapse of three above-ground assumptions: predictable growth, an absolute distinction between animals and humans, and an identity that remains constant. We might also add to the concept of a constancy of identity a conformity of word usage. But in Wonderland, Alice’s previous identity and the very concept of a permanent identity has repeatedly been destroyed, just as the principles of above-ground are contradicted everywhere; here in Wonderland, such things as space, size, and even arithmetic are shown to have no consistent laws.
In Chapter IV, the confusion of identity continues. The White Rabbit insists that Alice fetch him his gloves and his fan. Somehow, he thinks that Alice is his servant, and Alice, instead of objecting to his confusion, passively accepts her new role, just as she would obey an adult ordering her about above-ground. On this day when everything has gone wrong, she feels absolutely defeated.
In the rabbit’s house, Alice finds and drinks another growth potion. This time, however, she becomes so enormous that she fills up the room so entirely that she can’t get out. These continuing changes in size illustrate her confused, rapid identity crisis and her continuous perplexity. After repulsing the rabbit’s manservant, young Bill, a Lizard (who is trying to evict her), Alice notices that pebbles that are being thrown at her through a window are turning into cakes. Upon eating one of them, she shrinks until she is small enough to escape the rabbit’s house and hide in a thick wood.
In Chapter V, “Advice From a Caterpillar,” Alice meets a rude Caterpillar; pompously and dogmatically, he states that she must keep her temper — which is even more confusing to her for she is a little irritable because she simply cannot make any sense in this world of Wonderland. Alice then becomes more polite, but the Caterpillar only sharpens his already very short, brusque replies. In Wonderland, there are obviously no conventional rules of etiquette. Thus, Alice’s attempt at politeness and the observance of social niceties are still frustrated attempts of hers to react as well as she can to very unconventional behavior—at least, it’s certainly unconventional according to the rules that she learned above-ground.
Later, Alice suffers another bout of “giraffe’s neck” from nibbling one side of the mushroom that the Caterpillar was sitting on. The effect of this spurt upward causes her to be mistaken for an egg-eating serpent by an angry, vicious pigeon.
In Chapters VI and VII, Alice meets the foul-tempered Duchess, a baby that slowly changes into a pig, the famous, grinning Cheshire-Cat, the March Hare, the Mad Hatter, and the very, very sleepy Dormouse. The latter three are literally trapped (although they don’t know it) in a time-warp — trapped in a perpetualtime when tea is being forever served. Life is one long tea-party, and this episode is Carroll’s assault on the notion of time. At the tea-party, it is always teatime; the Mad Hatter’s watch tells the day of the year, but not the time since it is always six o’clock. At this point, it is important that you notice a key aspect of Wonderland; here, all these creatures treat Alice (and her reactions) as though she is insane — and as though they are sane! In addition, when they are not condescending to her or severely criticizing her, the creatures continually contradict her. And Alice passively presumes the fault to be hers — in almost every case — because all of the creatures act as though their madness is normal and not at all unusual. It is the logical Alice who is the queer one. The chapter ends with Alice at last entering the garden by eating more of the mushroom that the Caterpillar was sitting on. Alice is now about a foot tall.
Chapters VIII to X introduce Alice to the most grimly evil and most irrational people (and actions) in the novel. Alice meets the sovereigns of Wonderland, who display a perversely hilarious rudeness not matched by anyone except possibly by the old screaming Duchess. The garden is inhabited by playing cards (with arms and legs and heads),who are ruled over by the barbarous Queen of Hearts. The Queen’s constant refrain and response to seemingly all situations is: “Off with their heads!” This beautiful garden, Alice discovers, is the Queen’s private croquet ground, and the Queen matter-of-factly orders Alice to play croquet. Alice’s confusion now turns to fear. Then she meets the ugly Duchess again, as well as the White Rabbit, the Cheshire-Cat, and a Gryphon introduces her to a Mock Turtle, who sings her a sad tale of his mock (empty) education; then the Mock Turtle teaches her and the Gryphon a dance called the ‘Lobster-Quadrille.” Chapters XI and XII concern the trial of the Knave of Hearts. Here, Alice plays a heroic role at the trial, and she emerges from Wonderland and awakens to reality. The last two chapters represent the overthrow of Wonderland and Alice’s triumphant rebellion against the mayhem and madness that she experienced while she was lost, for a while, in the strange world of Wonderland.
This story is characterized, first of all, by Alice’s unthinking, irrational, and heedless jumping down the rabbit-hole, an act which is at once superhuman and beyond human experience — but Alice does it. And once we accept this premise, we are ready for the rest of the absurdities of Wonderland and Alice’s attempts to understand it and, finally, to escape from it. Confusion begins almost immediately because Alice tries to use her world of knowledge from the adult world above-ground in order to understand this new world. Wonderland, however, is a lawless world of deepest, bizarre dream unconsciousness, and Alice’s journey through it is a metaphorical search for experience. What she discovers in her dream, though, is a more meaningful and terrifying world than most conscious acts of intelligence would ever lead her to. Hence, “Who in the world am I?” is Alice’s constant, confused refrain, one which people “above-ground” ask themselves many, many times throughout their lifetimes.
Throughout the story, Alice is confronted with the problem of shifting identity, as well as being confronted with the anarchy and by the cruelty of Wonderland. When Alice physically shrinks in size, she is never really small enough to hide from the disagreeable creatures that she meets; yet when she grows to adult or to even larger size, she is still not large enough to command authority. “There are things in Alice,” writes critic William Empson, “that would give Freud the creeps.” Often we find poor Alice (and she is often described as being either “poor” or “curious”) in tears over something that the adult reader finds comic. And “poor Alice” is on the verge of tears most of the time. When she rarely prepares to laugh, she is usually checked by the morbid, humorless types of creatures whom she encounters in Wonderland. Not even the smiling Cheshire-Cat is kind to her. Such a hostile breakdown of the ordinary world is never funny to the child, however comic it might appear to adults. But then Wonderland would not be so amusing to us except in terms of its sheer, unabated madness.
One of the central concerns of Alice is the subject of growing up — the anxieties and the mysteries of personal identity as one matures. When Alice finds her neck elongated, everything, in her words, becomes “queer”; again, she is uncertain who she is. As is the case with most children, Alice’s identity depends upon her control of her body. Until now, Alice’s life has been very structured; now her life shifts; it becomes fragmented until it ends with a nightmarish awakening. Throughout the novel, Alice is filled with unconscious feelings of morbidity, physical disgrace, unfairness, and bizarre feelings about bodily functions. Everywhere there is the absurd, unexplainable notion of death and the absolute meaninglessness of death and life.
Alice’s final triumph occurs when she outgrows nonsense. In response to the Queen’s cry at the Knave’s trial: “sentence first — verdict afterward,” Alice responds: “Stuff and nonsense! Who cares for you? You’re nothing but a pack of cards!” At last, Alice takes control of her life and her growth toward maturity by shattering and scattering the absurdity of the playing cards and the silly little creatures who are less rational than she is. In waking from her nightmare, she realizes that reason can oppose nonsense, and that it can — and did — win. And now that the dream of chaos is over, she can say, from her distance above-ground, “It was a curious dream,” but then she skips off thinking that — for a strange moment — what a wonderful dream it was.
Of all Lewis Carroll’s major works, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has a unique standing in the category of whimsical, nonsense literature. Much has been written about how this novel contrasts with the vast amount of strict, extremely moralistic children’s literature. This is true; Alice is quite different from all other Victorian children’s literature. Yet, as odd as this story appears in relation to the other Victorian children’s stories, this short novel is odder still because it was written by an extremely upright, ultra-conservative man — in short, a quintessential Victorian gentleman.
Lewis Carroll was born Charles Lutwidge Dodgson on January 27, 1832, in the parsonage of Daresbury, Cheshire, England, the third child and eldest son of eleven children of Reverend Charles Dodgson and his wife, Francis Jane Lutwidge. The parents were descended from two ancient and distinguished North Country families. From the Dodgsons, the son inherited a very old tradition of service to the Church and a tradition that he belonged to one of the most respected lineages in England — for example, family legend has it that King James I actually “knighted” either a loin of beef or mutton at the table of Sir Richard Houghton, one of Carroll’s ancestors. This incident has been thought by some critics to have inspired the introductory lines in Through the Looking Glass, the sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, when the Red Queen introduces the leg of mutton to Alice: “Alice — Mutton: Mutton — Alice.”
For the sake of those who are curious about pen names and how authors choose one over another, “Lewis Carroll” is an interesting example. While teaching at Christ Church, Oxford, Charles Dodgson (Carroll) wrote comic literature and parodies for a humorous paper, The Train. The first of the several pieces submitted to The Train was signed “B. B.” It was so popular that the editor asked Dodgson to use a proper nom de plume; at first, Dodgson proposed “Dares,” after his birthplace, Daresbury. The editor thought that the name was too journalistic, so after struggling over a number of choices, Dodgson wrote to his editor and suggested a number of variations and anagrams, based on the letters of his actual name. “Lewis Carroll” was finally decided on, derived from a rearrangement of most of the letters in the name “Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.” Clearly, Carroll was fascinated with anagrams, and he will use them throughout Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; his interest in anagrams also explains much about the writings in his later life, and his mathematical works. Concerning Carroll, one cannot safely exclude any influence, least of all hereditary ones, but a good case can be made for the formative effect of Carroll’s father on him. Those who knew Reverend Dodgson said that he was a pious and gloomy man, almost devoid of any sense of humor. Yet from his letters to his son, there is recorded evidence of a remarkablesense of fun. For example, in one letter to his son, he speaks of screaming in the middle of a street:
Iron-mongers-Iron-mongers — Six hundred men will rush out of their shops in a moment — fly, fly, in all screwdriver, & a ring, & if they are not brought directly, in forty seconds I will leave nothing but one small cat alive in the whole town of Leeds, & I shall only leave that because I shall not have time to kill it.
To a boy of eight, such correspondence from his father must have greatly heightened his later love for literary exaggeration; indeed, such fanciful letters may have been the genesis for Carroll’s so-called nonsense books.
As we noted, Reverend Dodgson was said to be an austere, puritanical, and authoritarian Victorian man; Lewis Carroll’s mother, however, was the essence of the Victorian “gentlewoman.” As described by her son, she was “one of the sweetest and gentlest women that had ever lived, whom to know was to love.” The childhood of Lewis Carroll was relatively pleasant, full of ideas and hobbies that contributed to his future creative works. His life at Daresbury was secluded, though, and his playmates were mostly his brothers and sisters. Class distinctions did not permit much socializing between children of the parsonage and the “lesser” parish children. Curiously, a number of the Dodgson children, including Carroll, stammered severely. More than one author has suggested that, at least in Carroll’s case, his stammer may have arisen from his parents’ attempts to correct his left-handedness. Isa Bowman, a childhood friend of Carroll’s, has said that whenever adults approached them on their walks, Carroll’s speech became extremely difficult to understand. Apparently, he panicked; his shyness and stammering always seemed worse when he was in the world of adults. This stammering made him into a bit of a “loner” and explains, somewhat, Carroll’s longtime fascination with puzzles and anagrams, solitary games to amuse himself. It was as though the long suppressed, left-handed self endured in the fanciful, literary adult Carroll — in contrast to the very stern adult librarian, mathematics lecturer, deacon, dormitory master, and curator of the dining hall. Carroll was, seemingly, the archetype of the left-handed man in a right-handed world, like his own White Knight in Through the Looking Glass (the sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland).
And now if ever by chance I put My fingers into glue Or madly squeeze a right-hand foot Into a left-hand shoe . . .
Carroll’s fondness for games, language puzzles, and the world of the bizarre is further demonstrated in his flair for amusing his brothers and sisters — especially his sisters, which explains, perhaps, his lifelong attraction for little girls. In fact, a great deal of Carroll’s childhood was spent taking care of his little sisters. At home, it was he who was in charge of these seven sisters, and his imagination was constantly being exercised in order to entertain them. In one of his fanciful story games that he invented, he imagined a sort of “railway game,” and as one of the rules of the game, at least three trains had to run over the passengers in order for the passengers to be attended to by physicians. Fortunately, though, rarely were Carroll’s amusements cruel, and when the family moved to the Croft Rectory, Yorkshire, where Carroll’s father assumed the Archdeaconry, Carroll wrote, directed, and performed light, gay plays, and he also manipulated puppets and marionettes for his family and friends.
In addition to the plays that Carroll wrote and the scripts that he composed for his puppet theater, he also wrote poems, stories, and humorous sketches for his own “magazines.” In his “Useful and Instructive Poetry” magazine, for example, a volume that was composed for a younger brother and a sister, he satirized a copybook of stern, dogmatic maxims (a typical Victorian children’s book), and in this poem, he alluded to his own handicap:
Learn well your grammar And never stammer.
Eat bread with butter; Once more, don’t stutter.
Other poems in the volume focus on the theme of fairy tales, an interest which played a large part in the creation of Alice. An early poem of Carroll’s, for instance, “My Fairy,” suggests the contrariness of the creatures that Alice will meet in Wonderland:
I have a fairy by my side Which cried; it said, “You must not weep. “If, full of mirth, I smile and grin, It says, “You must not laugh.” When once I wished to drink some gin, It said, “You must not quaff.”
Similarly, in another early poem, “A Tale of a Tail,” there is a drawing of a dog’s very long tail, suggestive of the very slender, increasingly smaller mouse’s tail in Alice, which coils across a single page in a sort of S-shape. Also, an early poem about someone falling off a wall anticipates Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass, and a “Morals” essay reminds one of the ridiculous conversations between the ugly Duchess and the evil Queen in Alice. It is difficult to ignore the writings of Carroll as a child in any analysis of his works, for in his childhood productions, we find conclusive evidence of early imitations, hints, allusions, suggestions, and actual elements of imaginary creatures, dreams, and visions that will appear in his later works.
Education
All his life, Carroll was a scholar; when he was not a student, he was a teacher, and until two years before his death, he was firmly imbedded in the life of Oxford University. Quite honestly, though, nothing very exciting ever happened in Carroll’s life, apart from a trip to the Continent, including Russia. His vacations were all local ones, to his sister’s home in Guildford, his aunt’s home in Hastings, and to Eastbourne, the Lake Country, and Wales. He did not begin his formal schooling until the age of twelve, when he enrolled in Richmond Grammar School, ten miles from the Croft Rectory, but he had already received a thorough background in literature from the family library. Yet it was mathematics — and not English literature — that interested Carroll most. When he was very young, for example, Carroll implored his father to explain logarithms to him, presumably because he had already mastered arithmetic, algebra, and even most of Euclidian geometry.
Carroll entered Rugby in 1846, but the sensitive young child found the all-boys environment highly unpleasant; the bullying abuse, the flogging, and the caning was a daily part of school life. Nonetheless, Carroll was, despite his three years of unhappiness there, an exceedingly studious boy, and he won many prizes for academic excellence.
Carroll matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1851, and remained there for forty-seven years. But, two days after entering Oxford, he received word of his mother’s death, something which deeply distressed him and seemed to have worsened his stammering. By all accounts, Carroll was not an outgoing student; with little money, and because of his stammer, his circle of friends always remained small. Yet in his academic work, he applied himself with the same energy and devotion that characterized his career at Rugby. He won scholarship prizes, honors in Classical exams, and also won a First Prize in Mathematics. His scholastic efforts were rewarded by a lifetime fellowship and a residency at Christ Church, so long as he remained unmarried and proceeded to take Holy Orders.
In 1854, the year Carroll took his B.A. degree, he began publishing poetry in the student magazines and in The Whitby Gazette. Carroll’s writings had already established him as both a superb raconteur and humorist at Oxford, and in 1854, he began to seriously teach himself how to express his thoughts in proper literary form; it was at that time that his writings began to show some of the whimsy and fantasy that are contained in the Alice books.
In 1857, Carroll took his M.A. degree and was made “Master of the House.” During those years, he immersed himself in literature, mathematics, and also in the London theater. He produced freelance humorous prose pieces and verses for various periodicals, explored theories of dual identities, wrote satires, published mathematical and symbolic logic texts, invented word games and puzzles, and took up photography, a hobby that would make him famous as one of the best Victorian photographers. In short, Carroll became a sort of lesser English equivalent of Leonardo da Vinci. He invented the Nyctograph, a device for writing in the dark, and he also invented a method of remote control self-photography. Helmut Gernshein, the author of Lewis Carroll: Photographer, calls Carroll’s photographic achievements “astonishing”; in his estimation, Carroll “must not only rank as a pioneer of British amateur photography, but I would also unhesitatingly acclaim him as the most outstanding photographer of children in the nineteenth century.”
Carroll’s Interest in Little Girls
In every study of Carroll’s life, one finds that Carroll had only the most formal encounters with mature women. There was seemingly no romantic interest in adult women. Some biographers have attributed this asexual interest to Carroll’s stammering and his self-conscious shyness about it. On the other hand, Carroll’s diaries and contemporary accounts about him are full of his encounters with children, nearly always with little girls. He obviously delighted in the company of little girls twelve years old and younger, and his diary records in great detail the aesthetic pleasure that he took in viewing “nice little children.” Carroll’s attractions for little girls were honorable and above reproach — at least we have, almost a century later, absolutely no evidence to the contrary.
Carroll’s interest in discovering new little girls for his photographic studio seems to have amounted to his discovering hundreds, perhaps thousands, of girls in his lifetime. And in nearly every recorded case, Carroll produced a masterpiece of character study. His photographs are filled with unusually sensitive and candid “personalities” of the subjects. They caught the essence of human beings; they were not merely stiff, embalmed-like “objects.” Occasionally, there is an extraordinary sense of straightforward eroticism — but it is straightforward; it is not murky or perverted. And in nearly every recorded case, Carroll had the full approbation of the child’s parents, and invariably his work was chaperoned, at least indirectly. Had there been any intimacies between Carroll and his young female subjects, it would long ago have been ferreted out by the multitude of Freudian-oriented literary critics.
Today, we can understand why, occasionally, certain people thought Carroll’s photographs to be erotic. Most people now, however, wouldn’t consider them to be. His photographs are alluring; they look as if they almost could speak. They all have a provocative quality about them. But, they are “safe,” and as we view them, they help us to understand Carroll’s interest in seeing children as his own personal, private, peculiar escape from mature sex.
Alice Liddell
In 1846, Carroll met Alice Liddell, the four-year-old daughter of Dean Henry George Liddell of Christ Church. Carroll had already established himself as a close friend of Alice’s elder sister and cousin. But it is Alice who figures most prominently in Carroll’s most famous creation, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
On July 4, 1852, Carroll and a friend, Rev. Robinson Duckworth, took the Liddell children, Lorina (13), Alice (10), and Edith (8) on a boat ride (a row boat) up the Isis River (the local name for the Thames River). As they made their way upstream, Carroll began telling a story about the underground adventures of a little girl named Alice. According to Duckworth, the story “was actually composed and spoken over my shoulder for the benefit of Alice Liddell, who was acting as ‘cox’ of our gig. I remember turning around and saying, ‘Dodgson, is this an extempore romance of yours?’ And he replied, ‘Yes, I’m inventing as we go along.'”
Upon disembarking, Alice asked Carroll to write out Alice’s adventures for her, and Carroll promised to do so by the following Christmas, but the work was not completed until February 10, 1863. By that time, Alice was eleven, and Carroll was no longer seeing her with the regularity that he used to. Now he had made a new friend, the famous ingénue Ellen Terry, who was nearly seventeen. His interest in Ellen Terry is the closest relationship that Carroll had with an adult woman, apart from his family, of course.
From an initial length of 18,000 words, Carroll’s manuscript expanded to 35,000 words, and the famous English illustrator John Tenniel read it and consented to draw illustrations for it. As Carroll searched for a publisher, he gave anxious thoughts to a perfect title. Various ones came to him: Alice’s Golden Hour, Alice’s Hour in Elf-land, Alice Among the Elves, Alice’s Doings in Elf-land, and Alice’s Adventures Under Ground. Finally, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was chosen, and Macmillan, the publishers for Oxford University, agreed to publish the book on a commission basis.
Alice was an immediate critical success when it appeared in 1865. The Reader magazine called it “a glorious artistic treasure . . . a book to put on one’s shelf as an antidote to a fit of the blues.” The Pall Mall Gazette wrote that “this delightful little book is a children’s feast and a triumph of nonsense.” About 180,000 copies of Alice in various editions were sold in England during Carroll’s lifetime; by 1911, there were almost 700,000 copies in print. Since then, with the expiration of the original copyright in 1907, the book has been translated into every major language, and now it has become a perennial bestseller, ranking with the works of Shakespeare and the Bible in popular demand. In the words of the critic Derek Hudson: “The most remarkable thing about Alice is that, though it springs from the very heart of the Victorian period, it is timeless in its appeal. This is a characteristic that it shares with other classics — a small band — that have similarly conquered the world.”
I consider Alice in Wonderland to be a real treasure of literature—and relevant in a metaphorical way to Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce, which is a favorite of mine—just for the puzzles and allusion to another dream-like existence. Finnegan’s Wake is far more complicated than Alice in Wonderland nearly to the point of being completely useless to the average person. Disney saved Alice in Wonderland by making it relevant as a cartoon—which would have been the only way to preserve such a story as the age of media has cheapened the mind of man by providing information so easily that few wish to think deeply about things any longer—being less prone to exploring the Rabbit Holes of existence—rather than the other way around. The question of the day—philosophically, which reality is the dream in our lives and which is the true reality—and this is my primary concern with this blog.
Most people accept that the words they hear coming from President Obama at a press conference, or a school board announcement for more tax money, or the tragedies on the nightly news reflect the reality of the living world—but I contend that it is far from the case. What we see are only marionettes to a stage play without a title anybody understands, and to learn the plot, title, and actual cast members you have to follow the strings down the Rabbit Hole to where reality actually exists. In this way most of society is already Alice—they are in the land of the Mad Hatter, the Queen of Hearts, or the Cheshire-Cat and the way to understand the bizarre behavior of Wonderland—the stage play we are all witnessing in “reality,” is to go down the Rabbit Hole to where quantum mechanics will reveal who holds the strings and ultimately the fate of mankind hidden behind the deceptions of reality.
But beware while traveling down that hole—it is a superhuman journey that requires courage, and a sane mind. While it may seem easy to get up out of your chair while watching a puppet show and gaze up at the puppeteers above the stage with their hands on the strings of the stage actors—it is not. It is one thing to notice that the strings extend beyond the reality of a stage play—it is another to confront those puppeteers on their terms and deal with them directly. For that—it will require every bit of cleverness, and intellectual aptitude that can be gathered—and for that—I have prepared a road map to guide the weary traveler inclined through the curiosity of Alice, to jump down the Rabbit Hole to the truth and to meet the horrors found there squarely, and with valor.
When traveling down this Rabbit Hole, be sure to stay sane, stay grounded, and maintain a relationship to those still stuck in the dream so not to get lost along the way—otherwise—you will never be able to help them down the Rabbit Hole when they are ready to travel. Because it’s only a matter of time before they will. Talk to them about sports, movies, books and other nonsensical trivia because all those things are part of the dream. And most of all beware of ultraterrestrials, they are devious creatures who are more a part of your life than you might wish to acknowledge. To learn more about them, read the Mothman Prophesies by John Keel. The strings of the puppet show extend into their hands—and they are not friends—but rival foes in a fight for the same resources in the long drama known as the human race. Ultraterrestrials have formed religions to serve their needs in a plot they wish to sell to their four-dimensional rivals—us—and they are withholding much of the truth to serve their own ends.
In the context of my lifelong interest in global mythology and comparative religion, I see all the news coming out about Star Wars as infinitely good in so many ways. When Harrison Ford was injured recently filming the new Star Wars Episode 7 movie, the world stopped as he was airlifted to the hospital in England. With all the news going on globally, terrorists taking over Iraq, Obama’s parade of scandals, election impact of new blood in the Republican Party, it was Harrison Ford’s injury which captured the headlines of virtually every news source. Some of that is deliberate misdirection, but a lot of it is genuine interest, and concern for a mythology which touches the heart of so many people. On the same day as this terrible news about Harrison Ford, who will bounce back from such things as he always does—came the latest news from Fantasy Flight Games popular X-Wing Miniatures game. For Father’s Day my wife hosted a big party for our family, which was wonderful. But much of the best parts of it were the weekend of playing X-Wing Miniatures with the people who came.
Every time I turn around starting about a year ago, Fantasy Flight Games has been improving their product line. What they are doing with X-Wing Miniatures is cutting edge stuff that is launching tabletop gaming into a whole new dimension. I’ve never seen anything like it. There have been for years great games like Warhammer, Dungeons and Dragons, and Magic the Gathering, but this effort with X-Wing Miniatures is game changing. As the new films hit the marketplace and return to the mind of society in general as part of their daily dialogue—which is already happening, this Fantasy Flight Games production of X-Wing Miniatures is about to explode. Mythologically speaking, I think FFG’s relatively new game is the best vehicle to express and maintain new mythological trends that exist. It is more powerful than novels, more relevant than the films themselves, and more participatory than video games. Playing the game does essentially what some of the highest minds in the world do at Esalan at the Mythological Roundtable sponsored by the Joseph Campbell Foundation. X-Wing Miniatures recreates myth and allows players to directly participate actively, as opposed to passively. They take control of their own mythology, which is what I think is the key to the success of the Fantasy Flight Games venture.
During Father’s Day my family played the game extensively, and as we played we talked heavily about the new ships coming out in Wave 4, in just a few weeks, and we discussed the very exciting news about Wave 5 set to hit the marketplace later this year—2014. The most exciting news of that announcement is the YT-2400 from the old video game Shadows of the Empire from Nintendo 64. That particular ship will go well with my Millennium Falcon to cause all kinds of trouble in a game that has become a mild obsession. Here is the press release from Fantasy Flight Games published as news poured out to the world the Harrison Ford would quickly recover from his injury.
Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce the upcoming release of two new starships for X-Wing™!
In this, the game’s fifth wave, two large starships arrive ready for the heat of battle: the Rebellion’s YT-2400 and the Imperial’s VT-49 Decimator.
In addition to their starships, each of which is sculpted faithfully at the game’s standard 1/270 scale, the YT-2400 Freighter Expansion Pack and VT-49 Decimator Expansion Pack introduce a host of new upgrades and terrain pieces that allow you to explore a wide range of new tactics in your space battles.
You’ll also find a large cast of characters drawn from the expanded Star Wars universe, the first Imperial turret weapon, and upgrade cards designed by the game’s first two World Champions.
YT-2400 Freighter Expansion Pack
A fast and resilient light freighter, the YT-2400 features no fewer than thirteen weapon emplacement points, making it an attractive vessel for smugglers, mercenaries, and other individuals looking for a heavily armed “transport.” Although a stock YT-2400 light freighter has plenty of space for cargo, much of that space is often annexed to support modified weapon systems and oversized engines.
The YT-2400 Freighter Expansion Pack brings this formidable light freighter to your table as a Rebel starship with two attack, two agility, five hull, and five shields.
The highlight of the YT-2400 Freighter Expansion Pack is its detailed miniature starship, which is enhanced by one new mission, three debris cloud tokens, a maneuver dial, all requisite tokens, and four ship cards, including one for the famed smuggler Dash Rendar.
VT-49 Decimator Expansion Pack
To be granted command of a VT-49 Decimator is seen as a significant promotion for a middling officer of the Imperial Navy. A heavily armed transport, the VT-49 Decimator is one of the Empire’s most feared warships, often used to provide long-range reconnaissance or to deploy raiding parties past enemy forces.
The VT-49 Decimator Expansion Pack brings this intimidating Imperial gunboat to X-Wing as the game’s largest ship yet designed for Standard Play. Even at the game’s signature 1/270 scale, the expansion pack’s detailed miniature towers over its base and smaller starfighters.
In addition to its imposing, pre-painted miniature, the VT-49 Decimator Expansion Pack introduces four ship cards, three debris cloud tokens, a new mission, a maneuver dial, and all the tokens you need to fly your Decimator into the thick of combat. Finally, you’ll find thirteen upgrade cards, which introduce a variety of crew members like Mara Jade and Fleet Officer designed to help you fill out the Decimator’s three crew member slots.
X-Wing Miniatures as it stands today is one of the coolest games on the market. I have never seen something like it which has united my family the way it has—from young to old and all economic groups. Everyone who plays the game loves the game—even if they aren’t very good at it. I would say that is because of the strength of the mythological nature of it—it pulls players into a story which they control, and that is what separates it away from novels, movies, and video games. In those forums, participants simply unlock what someone else created, but with X-Wing Miniatures, Fantasy Flight Games simply provides the tool box–the players use the tools for their own stories.
In my personal story arc, I’m a YT guy in every way possible—and to get my hands on a YT-2400 that barrel rolls and has a turret that can equip a secondary weapon is extremely powerful. This will be the build that replaces the twin Falcons and with the meta game moving away from TIE swarms and toward the devastating aspects of Whisper who flies the upcoming Phantom Wave 4 ship shooting with 4 dice. The game is getting faster and more maneuverable. Rebel ships can’t just sit around with no agility waiting to get picked off. They will also have to be able to shoot every turn just to survive the weapons the Imperial players are throwing at them—and that is where the fun begins. Figuring out those types of problems and letting the mythology play out based on the thought of the players.
I think this game X-Wing Miniatures will replace Monopoly as the newest, hottest selling game that brings families to the kitchen table to play—because as the new films hit the market over the next 6 years, and the new Rebels television show on Disney XD gains in popularity, the innovation created by Fantasy Flight Games will have hit critical mass and the general population will find themselves every bit as addicted to the sheer joy that the game brings—only for them the learning curve will be steep. What started as a simple game with just a few ships has turned into a very complex web of tactical entertainment with a seemingly infinite combination of strategic options which can keep a mind occupied for years. But beyond that—there is a story to this game which has more power than Chess, all the ambition of a novel, and more edge of the seat excitement than a year’s worth of video games—and the new additions never stop coming—the most exciting for me yet is the YT-2400.
In regard to this movement of changing the name of the Washington Redskins NFL football team, the intention of the parties involved is not reverence of a conquered people, but an emphasis on progressive politics and all the garbage that comes with it. Native American guilt is used in the same way that other Civil Rights violations are exploited to advance social gains by progressive political advocates. Most of the time, the argument is a full proof slam–nobody would dare criticize a socially abused minority group—especially if the critic is in the majority—such as a “white male.” This leaves arguments one-sided and defenseless, which is the nature of the push to change the name of the Redskins to something else. The goal of the endeavor is not respect of the Indians who supposedly lived in North America happily and in accordance with nature before the “white men” came and destroyed their way of life. The goal is power over NFL owners and the public in general. This is a power attempted at the expense of the Native American Indian.
But for those who wish to propel the myth that the Native American had all the answers, they don’t know the history of those people. They don’t know that outside St. Louis was a gigantic “Indian” city of over 30,000 people who likely traded with the Mayans down the Mississippi, across the Gulf of Mexico and straight into Chichen Itza and their culture of human sacrifice. They don’t know that it is highly likely that many of the American Indian tribes—especially the Shawnee who settled Ohio out of Florida where always at war. The Shawnee couldn’t settle just north of Florida because the Cherokee fought them away driving them further. Once in Ohio, they settled just west of the Five Nations of the Iroquois and lived for a few hundred years in the manner that many believe was the way of life for all Indians since the start of time. But in all reality, it was a short time in human history and the Shawnee were long at war with their neighbors much the way the Mayans were constantly at war with neighboring factions. They were not a society living in peace. They were warriors.
Their culture of collectivism was not compatible with the settlers fleeing European statism so war ensued and the Indians lost. They were beaten and dominated by a culture inventing capitalism. They were fighting on equal terms of social evolution, and the Native Americans—who were largely stranded Chinese from various trading missions around the world by gigantic Junk ships circumnavigating the globe far before Christopher Columbus—were beaten by minds further developed creatively, financially, and socially. Indians were not superior to the American Frontiersman. They did not hold the key secrets to the universe, or have a special relationship to Mother Nature. They were hunters, gathers, and fighters, and they lost their fight against the “White Man.”
Even with the help of American culture to get financially on their feet, the Indian nations still resort to their collectivist tendencies, and are economically—poor for the most part. They still are happy to live in villages and avoid using their brains to create new industry, or even create great works of art—because they have allowed themselves to be conquered, even when their conquerors tried to help them. They like many of the poor living in the inner cities of America cannot shake their psychological tendency to live in village huts waiting to act under the direction of some chief. The reason the Indians lost to the American Frontiersman was because they rose and fell as a society based on collective effort as the Americans were individually motivated—and could not be conquered. If one group of frontiersman were scalped, raped and tied to trees as warnings to all who might follow with their innards used as ropes, more American settlers came behind them fearless and in pursuit of freedom. There was not tribal chief in America who decided not to be at war with the Shawnee, the Cherokee, the Iroquois or any other tribe so “White Men” never stopped coming forcing the Indians to yield, and yield and yield until they were all but destroyed.
To their credit, the Americans felt sorry for their conquered rivals and they named their schools and sports teams after the brave antics the Indians showed on the battlefield. If Americans were truly bad, they would have bragged about their conquests of a superior culture over an inferior one–over one culture who yielded to nature and one who sought to overcome it with the power of imagination. But they didn’t, they gave them reservations to live on because in a world dominated by private property ownership, the Indians did not have any money to own any land. So they were given reservations—just to be fair to them.
Over time, the American western tried to incorporate the Indian into American culture through mythological endeavor. And tensions eased between the former frontiersman and the Native American and if the progressives kept their noses out of the situation and did not attempt to exploit them, the American Indian might be more integrated into American society. They may invent new technology, new cars, or even new philosophy—but they haven’t. Instead, they have allowed their name to be exploited by progressives looking for political capital to attack all tenets of capitalism.
The reason for exploiting Indians, specifically in the case of the Washington Redskins is to force a name change of an NFL team and start a chain reaction of appeasement toward progressive causes. The plight of the Indian is the unfairness of American ownership of private property to supplant the open community nature of the Indians. The Indian is valued as superior by progressives because they did not understand the concept of private property, and revered nature with the highest regard—which of course is a dog whistle to liberals and their support of the Green Movement. But the Indian that progressives hold in such high regard, are fictional characters in that they were part of a Utopia in America that was destroyed by the self-greedy Frontiersman. That Utopia never existed, and the Native American Indian was war mongers and deeply in love with battle, which is why an NFL football team wanted their name to begin with. Nobody wants a football team to be named, the “Washington Pacifists,” or the “Liberals.” Nobody wants to play on a football team named after losers, lowlifes or characters of low valor. The NFL has done the memory of the Indian a favor by naming a team after their battlefield antics—instead of the progressive pacifism which ultimately allowed them to be conquered utterly, and completely.
If the Washington Redskins change their name and cave in to the progressive activists advocating such a thing, it will not stop there—but will unleash a floodgate of demands affecting nearly every college and high school in the country. And it won’t have anything to do with the Indian. Their time has come and gone in a flash. They were not Native American in the way that people think they were—instead they were a mix of many cultures—some nomads who crossed the Bering Straight, some where Chinese stranded in North America when giant ships traveled the world well before recorded history has acknowledged the ability, and some where immigrants from Central Mexico who traveled into North America up the Mississippi River and traded with Cahokia and broke away to start their Indian tribes. But they were not Native Americans living in North America from the start of existence with established cultures who owned the New World with a deep history. The American Indian was no more Native American than George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, or Simon Kenton. Daniel Boone had every right to settle the land of Kentucky into Illinois as Tecumseh did. In fact, Blue Jacket was a “White Man” who took up the Shawnee war against the frontiersman. The Indians were a mishmash of cultures that lost philosophically and technologically to a superior culture. Any attempt to highlight otherwise is an attempt to destroy that superior culture with guilt, and lackluster performance to stop the spread of capitalism throughout the world in favor of socialism—which is the standard of the progressive.
I am aware of the controversial nature of these assertions, yet history can confirm it. All anyone who wishes to dispute what I’ve written here need do is study Native American history prior to 1550 AD and they will see that the cultures that resided in North America were no better than any nomadic culture anywhere in the world and were just as primitive. They lost their war with the American Frontiersman fairly and have been remembered through the folklore of a capitalist culture. If not for football teams like the Washington Redskins, who would remember anything of the Indians—even if they were a failure? The NFL has made such memories household names which would otherwise never happen—which is an honor to a society that was a flash in the history of the world. But the Indian was never what the progressives paint them as—a Utopian society that should be followed, and honored with mimicry. That attempt is a falsehood and just another example of how progressives exploit minorities as a way to advance their agenda—even if it means they conduct themselves as complete liars.
As dire as things may seem socio-economically, politically, and philosophically, there are a number of truly wonderful developments which are taking mankind on a marvelous journey. My enthusiasm for the Star Wars space vessel, The Millennium Falcon is well chronicled, and one of the most obvious reasons for it is shown during the development of a brand new computer game called Space Engineers. A very clever player in that game during its development phase—as the game is not yet completed–has done in that computer realm what I have long thought will actually happen in the not so distant future. Space vehicles will no longer resemble the old shapes of the past created by stuffy German engineers from the World War II generation, but the ambitious children who grew up on the popular movie series Star Wars. For many years I have thought that the most practical ship design to carry travelers from some space port in Florida, or New York to say a Hilton on the Moon, then to a series of exotic space stations circling the Earth as luxurious resorts was a real Millennium Falcon. Once antigravity technology is mastered, there really isn’t any reason that such a design could not be implemented for such journeys. This is essentially what a player of the new game did; they built a Millennium Falcon in the game and actually made it so it could fly practically with a series of reactors and gyroscopes. The surface propulsion units are distributed the way they actually would be in order to fly through space—and actually solves some of the initial design concerns for future space travel. Have a look.
The new game is exciting to me because it is a prequel to what is coming for the human race. Once human minds behold such concepts, real life implementation is not far behind. Chris Lee is already building a full-sized Millennium Falcon in Nashville, Tennessee and private investors are moving into independent space travel presently eclipsing the efforts of governments over the years. It is not so outlandish any longer to behold that a real Millennium Falcon could be built and flown about in space. The new game Space Engineers allows for such things. It looks to be the new Minecraft, a game so popular that school teachers are often playing it during their class time in school from their laptops. Minecraft is not popular because the graphics are so pristine, but because the creativity the game allows encourages thought, and human beings in spite of the trends in the other direction which are mostly self-imposed destruction—love to think. In Space Engineers one of the most dominant early designs of ships which can fly are those from Star Wars. The mechanics in Space Engineers are like Lego blocks, only in a computer environment. This allows human beings to build virtually anything and everything they desire—much the way children do. Adults have the same yearnings, and it is not an accident that one of the first ships built-in Space Engineers is a Millennium Falcon, one that can be walked around in, and flown from one point to another. Other ships built have been some of the large capital ships fully rendered in scale which can actually be piloted.
From the game designer’s website a space engineer is a professional practitioner who uses scientific knowledge, mathematics, physics, astronomy, propulsion technology, materials science, structural analysis, manufacturing and ingenuity to solve practical problems in space.
Space engineers design materials, structures and systems while considering the limitations imposed by practicality, regulation, safety, ethicality and cost. Space engineers are grounded in applied sciences and their work in research and development is distinct from the basic research focus of space scientists.
Practical solutions:
engineering, construction and maintenance of space works: open-space stations, asteroid stations, space crafts of all sizes and utilization (civil and military), remote sensing technology, artificial gravity generators
asteroid mining (mostly near a construction site)
maintaining lines of transport and communications
industrial and scientific research, development and exploration
In war times, space engineering involves military engineering as well. Such tasks typically include construction and demolition tasks under combat conditions. Military engineers use practices and techniques of camouflage, reconnaissance, communication methods and enhancement of survival by other troops. They are also responsible for construction rigging, the use of explosives and carrying out demolitions, camouflage erection, battleship construction and design, field fortification construction, artillery outpost construction, obstacle clearance, obstacle construction, assault of fortifications, the use of assault ships in obstacle crossings, expedient space station construction, general construction, route reconnaissance, and communication installations. They are also responsible for logistics behind military tactics.
Space engineers are in a high demand, especially since the Second Space Race of 2029. They take pride in their ability to get the job done right—no matter how big, how complex or how remote.
The word “engineer” derives from the Latin root ingeniare (“to contrive, devise”) and ingenium (“cleverness”).
FEATURES
Game modes
– Creative – unlimited resources, instant building, no death – Survival – realistic management of resources and inventory capacity; manual building; death/respawn
Single-player – you are the sole space engineer
Multiplayer
– Creative and survival mode with your friends
– Cooperative and competitive
– Privacy customization: offline, private, friends only, public
– Max 16 players (this may increase in the future)
– Weapons on/off
– Copy-paste on/off
Scenarios
– Easy Start 1 – start on an asteroid platform with one large ship and two small ships
– Easy Start 2 – start in a green asteroid station with several large and small ships (large scene!)
– Lone Survivor – start on an abandoned asteroid platform with no ships
– Crashed Red Ship – your mother ship just crashed…
– Two Platforms – competitive two-team multi-player world
– Asteroids – start in a rescue ship with very limited resources
– Empty World – no asteroids, no ships; suitable for creative mode
Dedicated servers – allow players to connect to a third-party host, rather than using a player-host, in a peer-to-peer set-up. The result is a faster connection and a more fluent multiplayer performance with less lag
Ships (small and large) – build and pilot them
Space stations
First-person & Third-person
Drilling / harvesting
Manual building in survival mode – use welder to assemble blocks from components; use grinder to disassemble and reuse components
Deformable and destructible objects – real proportions, mass, storage capacity, integrity
Building blocks – light armor (cube, slope, corner), heavy armor, interior wall, interior light, small cockpit, large cockpit, cargo container(s), drill, ore detector, gravity generator, nuclear reactor, thruster, gyroscope, assembler, medical room, magnetic landing gears, spotlight, catwalk, cover wall, stairs, ramp, window(s), pillar, decoy, wheels, automated turrets, weapons, artificial mass, conveyor, collector, connector, merge block
Magnetic landing gears – attach your ship to a surface (another ship or asteroid)
Electricity – all blocks in a grid are wired in an electrical and computer network; electricity is generated by nuclear reactors
Gravity – produced by gravity generators
Rotors – create rotating objects
Refinery – process harvested ore to ingots
Assembler – manufacture components from ingots
Symmetry/Mirroring – useful in creative mode when building structures that require symmetry
Weapons – automatic rifle, small and large explosive warheads, small ship gatling gun, small ship missile launcher
Large weapons – missile launcher (for large ships)
Solar panels – produce energy depending on the amount of light that they catch from the sun
World management – generate new worlds, “save as” to multiple copies, auto-save every 5 minutes (can be turned on/off), edit world settings
32-bit & 64-bit – 64-bit version expands the amount of objects, ships and asteroids (almost unlimited)
Steam Workshop – share your creations with the Community (upload and download worlds)
Modding – world files, shaders, textures, 3D models
Custom colors for blocks – Customize your creations by using any color you like
Cargo ships – auto-piloted vessels (miners, freighters and military) that carry ore, ingots, constructions components and other materials from sector to sector. They can be looted but beware, they often contain booby traps!
Environmental hazards – protect your character and your creations from meteor storms (Safe, Normal, Cataclysm, Armageddon)
Conveyor, Collector, Connector (IMPORTANT: this is a first work-in-progress version and a realistic version will be added later) – Conveyors move items from inventory to inventory. Collectors can collect small objects (ore, ingots, components, tools) into inventory. Connectors can throw items from inventory to space (in future update could be used to connect two ships/stations and transfer items). Gameplay note: Explanation of pull & push principles in conveyor system
Artificial mass – can be used to add gravity-affected mass to ships, useful in machine ships or cars
Wheels – use them with rotors and artificial mass to build vehicles
Automated turrets – gatling, missile and interior. Turrets are used mostly as defense mechanism rather than shooting other players. They aim on decoys (automatically by default), meteorites, missiles or all moving objects (eg. small/large ships) – targeting can be changed in the control panel
Large/small ship grinder and welder – assemble and disassemble blocks faster and in larger amount
Now, what can be better than all of that! What’s best is the game is designed to be step over between the science past and the science future. It is a new generation of massive online gaming that is intelligently based, and it is certain that current players will be tomorrow’s actual Space Engineers—who will realistically design these kinds of things in the next couple of decades. It would not surprise me to find that in the not too distant future, I will be able to build a real Millennium Falcon and actually fly it around from colonies on Mars, to the Moon and anywhere else human beings settle in space within the next 100 years.
Imagination is taking us to that space destination. Education systems have not kept up and have outdated themselves to inventions like this latest remarkable game. Humans are naturally inclined to the kind of creativity they can experience in these types of games, and are quickly outgrowing the terrestrial limits of earth and its small-minded politics. Seeing The Millennium Falcon flying around in Space Engineers is the first indication of what the future will look like as today’s game players invent a reality to play out the images painted across their minds born of creativity. The origin of much of this creativity will be the familiar Millennium Falcon as millions share with me the desire to actually walk around and fly the real thing first introduced to their imaginations in the Star Wars saga. Space Engineers is an exciting game, and is a step into a future that is much more ambitious than anyone previously thought. It is a window into a future that will not be rooted in the limitations of oppression driven by ignorance, but the unknowable extension of the human imagination and what it can build if restrictions are removed.
A comment I received recently by a frequent reader regarding the latest threat by the Mason Education Association deserves its own mention—because it cuts to the heart of the issue regarding modern public education. I can’t say that it was always this bad—there was a time when public education was something to be proud of—but the government has ruined it utterly and unequivocally. It is a disgrace to everything that is American—ruined by labor unions and their greedy love of European culture. What the MEA and the public relation hounds whoring themselves for the swine threatening to strike in Mason during a summer off from any concern of work are simply attempting to put lipstick on a pig. No matter how anyone ties to shine up the labor union greed and sheer audacity uttered by the sloths of liberal thinking—that is modern education—it is still a big rolling in its own feces attempting to live off the efforts of our children toward ends born in the mind of the destitute poverty-stricken fool—Karl Marx.
There is nothing righteous about the lack of valor taught in public schools. There is nothing beneficial in teaching children the communist notion of sharing when it robs them of ambition. There is nothing wonderful in teaching sex education when it robs children of the value of romance. There is nothing good whatsoever in teaching children math if they can’t apply it to balancing their check book. There is nothing good about teaching history if the lessons are ignored and picked apart only to feed a liberal agenda. Yet this is what we as tax payers are paying for. This is what the Mason teachers of southern Ohio are threatening to take away with their work stoppage while their fat, pretentious asses sit on a couch and rot as people like pumpkins left on a porch 90 days after Halloween—forgotten by the owners, neglected in favor of Christmas and the harsh cold of cleaning up the mess outside the warmth of their homes preventing action. Nobody cares about them, nobody wants them, and nobody likes them—except the same lard-assed despots who support school levies hoping to save 50% on their child care services. It costs levy supporters far less to pay $6000 per year in taxes than a baby sitter or private caretaker will charge to watch their children while they build their lives around their careers. What it ultimately comes down to is that the typical levy supporter, and the members of the MEA, and every education association under the Ohio Education Association are too lazy and thoughtless to actually teach anything useful—yet they want to be paid a king’s ransom to instruct American youth to be soft minded slugs and useless caretakers of tomorrow’s problems.
Every labor union—especially those connected to government—like the teaching profession is—are simply lipstick on a pig born in Germany where the concept of socialism was created and exported to the rest of the world. Every labor union is connected to the “Worker’s Movement” as conceived by Karl Marx himself and cares not anything for the minds of children, but is strategically positioning themselves to attack the concept of private property in all capitalist countries. Once the lipstick is wiped off the swine what one finds underneath is a feces covered pig trying to disguise itself as something more worthy of life than a trip to the slaughterhouse.
The labor union confiscation of the American education industry is the single most direct attack on America that there is. It pales the attack on Pearl Harbor, or the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11. It is not Islamic driven terrorism, home-grown government dissidents, or crazed lunatics driven by political hatred that most threaten America. it is the deliberate destruction of our children through public education by radical zealots of socialism and liberalism in general who wish to undermine everything The United States was built upon by corrupting the youth off extracted taxation from its property values killing two birds with one stone. Public education is not free—it’s only free for those who own no property. And the value of it is useless because what the teachers of the MEA are instructing are the wrong kinds of things kids should be learning. Public education needs to be completely reinvented because its current form is utterly useless to a capitalist society.
The nightly news likes pigs in lipstick because they think it’s cute—the way a little girl might dress up a dog, or put a dress on an animal meant to be dinner. It’s a game to them that fills air time—but they ignore the impact that the game places on American youth. Most adults who enjoy the experience of public education think back to their proms, to the football games, to the social events born of public education and they mindlessly support the whole endeavor because of a few fun experiences. They do so out of reverence for the show conducted by the pigs in lipstick. They ignore the slop house where the pigs reside or the contemplation of their inevitable futures ground into bacon to be served for breakfast—they just enjoy the show of pigs in lipstick dancing on a stage of their design.
But it’s not funny or cute when the minds of young people are robed, and the economy of America is attacked, and political leaders ride the back of this social mechanism to stay in power—write more laws, and do even more damage—all at the expense of children’s futures. Public education is the single most dangerous attribute of modern society—it is far more dangerous than any notion of global warming, or international terror, of domestic school shootings, of any civil rights issue—because public schools touch the lives of virtually every human being in a country—especially America. Their children are legally obligated to attend public school, and property owners pay the bill off an inflated value driven by a dollar value propped up by quantitative easing. The property values for homes is not high because of their intrinsic value, but because for the taxes to be extracted there has to be value provided and that value must be artificially inflated so that the expectations of increased costs can be met. The end game is financial collapse and the minds who must deal with that financial collapse are being taught in the public schools that two men kissing each other has more value than balancing a check book, or learning how to weld two sheets of metal together. Kids are taught useless progressive propaganda and left unarmed to deal with the real problems caused by the pigs in lipstick.
There is no way to save public education so long as labor unions are involved. They are the pigs in lipstick using makeup to cover up their ugly swine-like tendencies. Public education for a time, before labor unions came into power was a noble ideal, and it worked alright during the early stages of labor union control until the Department of Education centralized education in league through the Department of Labor with the labor union desire to expand the government work force through tax backed employment rooted in communism. To protect itself from critical analysis, labor unions and their supporters dress in lipstick hoping to seduce away scrutiny of their real intentions which are anti-capitalist and anti-economic strength. The very concept is rooted in failure and cannot be saved because the illusion is only makeup skin deep. What is at the core of public education is rotten and devastating to any culture implementing it—and must be abandoned if there is any hope of saving one child, let alone millions.
This is why the teachers of the MEA are pigs in lipstick and all their supporters enemies of the our nation. Where is that GM parts plant now from the strike in 2o07? Gone, just like public education is headed funded off tax money and liberal instruction.
I probably think of General Patton at least once every day of my life since I saw the movie about him when I was a very little boy. In the film when Patton was under strife by aircraft instead of taking cover like everyone else, he ran out into the street and poured his revolver into the planes as they flew by staring down the bullets as they hit around his feet without flinching an iota. Later, during 90’s while watching the historically accurate Young Indiana Jones Chronicles on ABC television I learned of a much younger Patton who was hunting down Pancho Villa on the Mexican border and challenged some of his men there to an old-fashioned duel. That clip is seen below. In the 80’s I was working at the restaurant ran by the Chinese mob out of Chicago and froze when I saw on the bar television the broadcast movie called The Last Days of Patton done once again by George C. Scott. I clocked out and the owner let me sit down at the bar next to two former Bengal players—Isaac Curtis and Gary Burly to watch the show—which floored me, because it seemed like such a bad end to such a glorious life that George Patton had. I never forgot it—in many ways Patton shaped my view of politics, military life in general, and the role mankind plays in the fate of its own history. I promised myself never to be stuck in the same situations that Patton found himself in—so have approached my own life much differently. But there is not a day where I don’t think of George Patton at least once.
Much to my delight the History Channel put on a miniseries after Memorial Day 2014 which captured the back story of the most important men from World War II and how World War I shaped their lives—and of course Patton was heavily featured which is why I watched the show. Much of the history shown in the program I already knew, but it was so wonderfully done that the context to the presentation was quite extraordinary. It was a stunning series done excessively well by The History Channel. And while I enjoyed the fresh perspective on George Patton, the rise of Adolf Hitler, the context of Mussolini—the newspaper man who wanted to rule the world—the wisdom of Churchill it was the sequences about Lenin and Stalin which hit me the hardest. Here is the press release material on the program. If you get a chance to catch the show—do so.
An assassination in Sarajevo sparks a global war. For the next 30 years, deadly fighting rages across Europe, Africa, China and the Pacific.
Hitler. Churchill. De Gaulle. MacArthur. Patton. Stalin. Mussolini. We know them as legends. But they first learn what it will take to rise to greatness as young soldiers, fighting for their lives on the frontlines.
This is the story of a generation of men who come of age in the trenches of World War I, only to become the leaders of World War II. The lessons they learn on the frontlines shape them as they rise to power—and haunt them as the deadly fighting breaks out again. Some become heroes, forged in courage under fire. Others emerge as the most infamous villains the world has ever seen.
Theirs is one story—the story of a 30-year global struggle. A fight that will either save the world—or destroy it.
Narrated by two-time Oscar nominee Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker, The Town), this three-night event series featured gripping dramatic scenes, stunning CGI visuals and interviews with contemporary leaders, including John McCain, Colin Powell, John Major and David Miliband, along with noted historians from around the world. The World Wars is a mini-series event that takes viewers on an epic and groundbreaking ride through the bloodiest century in history.
I knew that Lenin was in exile from Russia in Germany and that he had returned to Petrograd to ignite the Communist Revolution—but I didn’t have the context of the role the German government played in the expansion of that diabolical scheme which still haunts the world as the most devastating aspect of the 20th Century. The Germans sent Lenin back to Russia on a train with $10 million dollars and the philosophy of Karl Marx not to spread communism to the rest of the world for the benefits of mankind—but to destroy Russia so that Germany would not have to fight the war on two fronts. It worked—obviously The Communist Revolution in Petrograd has been covered by me extensively on these pages—but what I learned from the new History Channel documentary is that Germany intended to use Marxism to destroy Russia—not help it.
Later when Hitler would rise to power as well, it was socialism—a softer version of communism that he used to advance his position against the Allied powers which had crippled the German government into poverty after the Treaty of Versailles which has also been covered by me extensively. I have so many articles on this topic I wouldn’t even know which one to link to properly. What the History Channel documentary did so well was pull back far enough on the characters without emotion and tell their story correctly—and clearly in the early stages of Hitler’s rise—was a combination of two German philosophers, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Nietzsche. One of them I despise, one of them I love—and Hitler got them both wrong just bad enough to nearly destroy the world. It quickly became quite clear that the Germans were vastly responsible for the creation of communism and played a major role on the defamation of the human race which persists to this day.
I am of German decent. Cincinnati was built essentially by Germans. The beer which established Cincinnati as a city came straight from Munich and was adored all over the nation. Yet some of the worst clashes I have had—business wise—have been against old German money in Cincinnati where my reverence for good ol’ Patton takes precedence over my German heritage. The Germans make great engineers, great philosophers, and a great productive society—but they are essentially collectivists whom I have grown to despise—first from my business experience—then from my knowledge of their history. And it gives me great satisfaction to know that Patton overwhelmed the German troops and caused the acquisition of Berlin ending both World Wars.
So many bad things have come out of Germany, specifically communism. For that alone, they deserve responsibility for one of history’s greatest follies. It is the modern Germans who still function under socialism and carry the rest of the European Union financially. It is because the Germans as so good at technical feats that they have managed to have a robust economy as socialists playing around in small ways with capitalism in the manner only collectivists can do. It is because of their collectivist nature that Hitler rose to power, and that Russia was destroyed as a rival in World War I. But in the end, Patton beat them twice—with a little help—but with the same gusto shown on a dusty street at the border with Mexico hunting down Pancho Villa. It is the Americans who function from bravery and the rest of the world through collective effort—and the two are radically different and can never be reconciled. These differences are on full display on the History Channel’s miniseries The World Wars. Watch it if you have not already.
What wins is Patton. What loses is Germany. It is better to face down a bullet than to hide from it, and when it comes to communism—it has to be stared down and dealt with directly. Not hidden from behind a barricade of cardboard capitalism. It has to be met the way Patton met things—head on, and with bravery—which is why I love that guy so incredibly much to this very day.
Make no mistake about it; the Mason Education Association is after money and nothing else in their threats to strike. Their public relations stunt against a district trying to at least look like they are trying to manage their budget is purely to get under the skin of the superintendent during an intense negotiation over their upcoming contract which is the usual tricks of thuggish enterprise shown by labor unions. The teachers are after pay increases when reality states that they are already overpaid, and want benefits that are unrealistically good provided by the Mason taxpayer to essentially be babysitters for children the parents are too busy for. The MEA hopes that the multiple scandals at Mason are over, the sex parties with the teachers that brought national focus to the affluent Ohio community and were dramatically embarrassing, have subsided. The MEA after three years of trying finally has the media back on their leash including Scott Sloan at 700 WLW who used to be a critic—but has now through his real estate selling wife been effectively muzzled. So the Mason teacher’s union is making their move to strike—so to impose on tax payers their radicalized demands—and it looks like the school board is about to collapse under the pressure.
MASON, Ohio —Mason Schools’ teachers will be meeting with their union discussing their contract. The teachers have been negotiating with the school district since April over more pay and better benefits.
“Up to this point, our focus has been exclusively on the children we teach every day. However, now that the school year has concluded, Mason teachers believe the community must know: we are greatly troubled by the direction that Superintendent Gail Kist-Kline is taking the district,” Mason Education Association President Karrie Strickland said in a news release
To properly understand how education labor unions think in these Mason type cases the movie Won’t Back Down should be watched. In that film released in 2012 and currently shown on HBO features the “parent trigger” law which is a legal maneuver through which parents can change the administration of a poorly performing public school into essentially a charter school. The film shows how things work in public education on both sides of the argument—it explores the teacher union point of view fairly, and the parents. However, in Mason, there will never be such an invocation of the law, because the vast majority of the parents at affluent schools like Mason, and its neighbor Lakota expect a babysitting service that takes the pressure of instruction away from them. So the teachers at Mason and Lakota don’t have to worry about parents leaning over them to demand better teaching because the parents really aren’t engaged in their children—for the most part—and won’t be attempting any recitation of the “parent trigger” law.
Recently, the other school mentioned, Lakota managed to pass a tax increase and immediately threw that money at their teachers just a few months later—as I predicted they would. I presented charts showing the exact behavior of the Lakota teachers, and everything happened on time. Lakota had managed to win over enough support from the opposition through a “niceness” campaign to put them over the top during a 2013 election. They had to counter my comments about them being thugs, fat assed despots, and diabolical menaces with a public relations campaign promoting them in the opposite way. Through their maneuvers and help from a patsy media, they put people back to sleep and kept the opposition at bay just enough to pass a levy and throw that money at the teachers to keep them appeased for a few more years.
Over in Mason, they had the added complication of the Stacy Schuler sex case and several other district embarrassments which made national news, so the MEA stayed low and avoided asking for more tax increases until enough time had passed. After watching the results of the May primary elections where a majority of Ohio school levies passed due to record low turnout—the MEA figures it’s time to make their move for more money—and are now returning to the old radicalized tactics of work stoppage which is mostly theatrical due to the fact that it is currently summer—and the teachers are out of school anyway—and the parents are not thinking about Mason schools—but summer vacation plans. Mason parents won’t become engaged again in Mason schools until August, so this is plenty of time for the Mason teachers to stage an attack against the tax payers.
But on the opposition front, Sharon Poe and her anti-tax activists still have a very strong resistance—and they attend the school board meetings—which is nearly an equivalent threat to the school board as the labor union. Sharon has stayed plugged into the happenings with the administration for many years now and is as close to an immovable spot as there is. But it won’t matter in the end. The administration will cave under the union pressure—they will give their employees the raises they are demanding and will be forced to go to voters with another levy against property values. The Mason school board won’t allow school to resume in August without teachers there teaching—and they don’t have the legal ability—or will to fire the striking teachers and replace them with new ones. The teachers know it, and are taking advantage. So the result is a radicalized class of imbeciles’ baby sitting children for busy parents who want more money with an outrageously high benefits package sitting around off work anyway watching daytime television and threatening not to work during the upcoming fall.
As usual, the antics of the MEA display what a scam public education is, and how stacked against the tax payers it really is. Ohio tax payers don’t stand a chance against such forces because politicians, administrators, and parents for the most part do not have the stomach to deal with the thugs on the true ground of their positions. The teachers only want money for a babysitting service no different from a teenage girl who wants more on the hour to watch the kids of parents who just want to go out for the evening. For the baby sitter, she won’t work any harder with the raise, but will spend her time playing on Facebook and talking to her boyfriend—same as she would if she were paid at the lower dollar amount. The parents however want to believe they are hiring professionals to teach their children—so they will accept the illusion and either not vote one way or the other, or they’ll grudgingly support a future tax on their homes hoping that they too will get a raise down the road to pay for the tax increase. After all, it costs less to pay the tax than to hire professional baby sitters to watch their kids as they work to build their careers. This leaves the Mason school board with no support and surrounded by radicalized anger they are not equipped to handle—and in the end, they will back down and give the union everything they are demanding. And my friend Sharon Poe will find herself fighting another school levy. Then, once the teachers get their money, the sex scandals and similar bad behavior will resume—because it has been killing them to be on such good behavior. For the teachers—it is now or never—because it’s only a matter of time before another member of their incompetent ranks screws up again returning public opinion against them once more.
Without question I am part of the new focus from the Eric Holder’s Justice Department on an “escalating danger” from “homegrown” terrorists within the United States. A new task force was announced this week to target threats to American safety as perceived by the current criminal class of politicians occupying the modern White House. Every day members of this Justice department likely monitor my every word and movement from one GPS setting to the next. This has been going on for a long time. However, because the administration continues to make mistake after mistake in domestic and foreign policy strategies—the pressure to silence their critics is becoming overwhelming. I’m certainly not alone, they are now watching more intensely than ever thousands of similar voices who find the current administration reprehensible—for fear that some rebellion might be born from the words uttered by such people.
The task force will chiefly comprise leaders from the FBI, the Justice Department’s National Security Division and U.S. Attorneys. Called the Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee, it is a recreation of a task force formed by former Atty. Gen. Janet Reno after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. The task force fell into disuse after 9/11.Holder promised that the government will continue to fight terrorists abroad, but added “we also must concern ourselves with a different type of threat. We face an escalating danger from self-radicalized individuals within our own borders,” he said. “Now — as the nature of the threat we face evolves to include the possibility of individual radicalization via the Internet — it is critical that we return our focus to potential extremists here at home.”
“The threat from al-Qaida is much more diffuse after Sept. 11, and the threats posed by a single horribly misguided citizen or permanent legal resident in the U.S. is in a sense as great as what core al-Qaida posed before Sept. 11,” says Neil MacBride, a former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
In short, “THEY”–meaning the Justice Department–guided by President Obama don’t want people to think or question their reality. They want anonymity from justice and are primarily concerned with maintaining their control over the mainstream media. Yet that same media is under tremendous pressure to compete with the numerous blogs, radio shows, and Tea Party oriented groups still very strong all around the country who no longer accept being spoon feed complete fabrications of reality from the modern political class. So the only thing a criminal who wishes to hide can do to stay hidden from the lights cast upon them is to get rid of them. To that effect, I am at the center of many liberty movements and this site inspires hundreds of leaders all across the nation. Surely, the FBI has the statistical data of the IP addresses which visit every day, so they already know. People like Holder hope to cut off the intellectual maintenance of such movements by stopping the source. That is the reason for their resurrection of the Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee.
However, one might wonder if I am worried. Of course not. Do you know why dear reader? My lack of concern comes from the name itself more specifically the word—“committee.” As I said before, the U.S. Government and a whole room full of Barack Obama types are incapable to perform effectively any management endeavor because committees do not work. They don’t work in business, and they don’t work in politics—yet every institution of higher learning is teaching that they do—which is an extreme folly. I do not worry about those watching me, because they are not able to organize well enough to implement a strategy of any kind. All they can do is provoking suspects through harassment so their targets turn to anger prompting them to break the law which “they” control.
I’m on my second decade of this type of watching. I am now well aware of the white service vans parked down road collecting intelligence on me, listening to everything I do and say hoping to connect the dots of some patterned behavior. I know of the listening devices that no longer have to be physically planted in a home because they are now so sophisticated. I see the lurkers online trying to piece together the IP addresses of my readers and determine a pattern of behavior that they can pin to my name so to stop my online columns. And I could recite word for word the kind of dialogue uttered by Holder and his gang in these “committees.” They are lucky if they can order lunch for 10 people—let alone catch a domestic terrorist. The real terrorists are the ones who look back at them in the mirror as they plot with every breath of their being to destroy the American Constitution. When criminals are in charge of the law, they feel they have the right to define criminal behavior and turn the world of right and wrong on its head—and so long as there is a Constitution—they cannot perform the task.
So worry not about the drones taking pictures of you having sex with your wife in the backyard. If they get an eyeful, it will ultimately serve your strategy—but don’t be fearful. The people watching the images are perverts about as sophisticated as an average ground-hog, and we have a family of seven of them in our yard—who I pay equal mind to. Worry not about what they record, because if you are truly good, they may learn something and collapse under their own guilt. I have seen this happen many times. I have found that such opportunities teach the bad guys how to be good, and they turn against your enemies helping you more than they can hurt you. One thing that is common to most people is that they desire to do right. Often people think they know the definition of good as someone like Holder might define it. But through contention, they learn otherwise and today’s enemy can become tomorrow’s ally once they learn from you how to be good after being assigned to listen and watch all your movements the way a child does to form their basic static patterns of social conduct.
But make no mistake about it, Holder and his gangs of government thugs are looking to suppress opposition to their social philosophy of general Marxism. They are radicals hoping to change the world toward socialism, and will see any threat to their desire as an extremist position—so if you are a Christian, you are likely on the list, if you attend Tea Party activity—you are on the list—if you write blogs, give public speeches against the government, or even write books they would consider you incendiary to their authoritarian position. You can then be assured that they are watching your every move and plotting your demise. But just remember that as they try to figure out your doom—they struggle to order pizza—so keep that in perspective as you think of who is on the other end and how serious a threat Eric Holder is in the grand scheme of things.
( I originally wrote this article a year and a half ago, but after seeing a preview of the film, can confirm that Han Solo does die in The Force Awakens. So read the rest of this knowing that it has happened, and that it will have an impact on the franchise going forward. While Harrison Ford was reluctant to play the part in the past, the death of that character will be difficult for Disney’s expectations in the future. They should have waited, but they did it, and now Star Wars fans will have to deal with it. For me personally, a long time Star Wars fan–so much so that it has been a major part of my family’s life for three decades–I’m out. That did it for me.) December 16th, 2015. I feel like a real sucker waiting three damn years for that shitting revelation. Bad move Disney……..It was good while it lasted.
(I guess I’ll burn my favorite shirt now)
Apparently word from inside the Episode VII Star Wars film has leaked that Han Solo will die in the upcoming trilogy, and while this doesn’t surprise me given that such a plot point gives weight to the plight of the next generation and their tasks during the mythic journey which they are a part of—I can’t say that I will enjoy the films because of it. If not for Han Solo, I would likely not enjoy Star Wars so much. From those films Solo’s prized pirate ship The Millennium Falcon is the symbol of those famous films which have changed pop culture. I have written about this before—actually extensively and I realized just how important The Millennium Falcon and Han Solo was to society when I saw a Falcon shirt at Target of all places the other day. Solo is the glue that holds Star Wars together and without him—and his common sense of “shooting first” the popular space opera is just another movie. So I can’t image Star Wars without Han Solo. I’ll give it a shot, but likely it will be earth shattering for millions of fans when he dies on-screen.
The Falcon is in the news this week because the Internet was on fire regarding news of the full-sized Falcon being built for Episode VII. I have thought for years of doing just what Chris Lee from Nashville is currently doing—and that is building a full-sized Millennium Falcon. I have priced the project at around $15 million dollars to do it the way I want to do it, and Chris is attempting to build one with volunteer help and donations, which can be seen at his website shown at the link below. Chris just spoke at a TED Talks event and is preparing to show parts of his full-sized Falcon build—including the landing gear, the turret, dish, and cockpit at Star Wars Celebration in 2015 in Anaheim, California. Lee’s work is very impressive and is on track to build a full-sized Falcon within a decade at this pace. He still needs funding, but the resurgence of Star Wars should help keep things going—slowly. But no matter what level of love for The Millennium Falcon that there is, all fans loved the pictures seen of the full-sized set being built-in England which can be seen on Lee’s site:
Of late, my relationship to the Falcon has been that I fly one nearly exclusively in the Star Wars Miniatures Game: X-Wing. I flew in my first tournament over the previous weekend and had a tremendous amount of fun. I currently am running a build that allows Han Solo to be the pilot, and for the Falcon to perform barrel rolls, evasion, and engine upgrades based on my experience after the tournament. It is an expensive build for the tabletop role-playing game that is essentially a tactical exercise, but the goal is to make the Falcon as close to the speed and flexibility of a TIE Interceptor, which is actually more appropriate for its role in the movies. The reason it isn’t done more often is because it is hard to fly. One thing that I noticed during the tournament even though I lacked experience at playing at that level, I was able to fly much better than average—so it would be wise to play to that strength.
For that same game I created a build called the “Corellian Massacre” which consists of the speedy and agile YT-1300 along with two escort ships consisting of two HWK-290s, one flown by Kyle Katarn. The two HWK-290s are designed to slow down my opponent long enough for the Falcon to chip away at their ships from outside their firing arcs—with the extra speed and agility for such a large ship. The risk is bouncing off the board or into asteroids, but that is where the pilot skill comes into play. It’s not a build for everyone—but it is one that I love. I have even bigger plans for the Wave 4 ships again capitalizing off the Falcon which has me very excited.
That’s why it would surprise me if Disney allowed Han Solo or the Falcon to be killed off. I think Harrison Ford wants it. I think the writers feel they must do it so to give a proper story context to the crises of the children in the series—the whole mythic atonement with the father issue which drives most mythology. After all, a healthy happy family between Han, Leia and their children does not bring crises to the situation enough to merit a sense of peril. The Empire Strikes Back has long been considered not just the best Star Wars film, but one of the best films of all time—and in it Han Solo was tortured and frozen, so surely the Star Wars team thinks that the series can survive without the character—but I’m not so sure. At least then there was a hope of coming back, and The Millennium Falcon was still the vehicle for all the heroes. If one or both of those elements are missing in the upcoming trilogy it will be a massive loss to the gravitas of the overall fan experience.
There will be stand alone films, Boba Fett is set to get one probably directed by the current Godzilla director and Han Solo will get his own film around 2018 playing a much younger man—obviously not Harrison Ford. Disney is planning to still give fans their Han Solo fix, but it will come after the tragedy that will occur in the upcoming series. Disney is planning their amusement park centered around a Star Wars theme and there will likely be a full-sized Falcon there for fans to tour and walk around which will be fantastic. Hopefully by that time Chris will be nearly complete in his own version of the classic Corellian pirate vessel. There will be a lot of Falcons out there in the world in new spectacular ways that many never thought possible before. But Han Solo’s future adventures will be coming to an end and that is a possibility that will be difficult to overcome thematically. The Jedi are a neat concept, but Star Wars gets it’s teeth through pirates, scoundrels, and rebels, and Han Solo is a bit of all those characters rolled up into one. He is essentially an Ayn Rand character meant to achieve a character arc of sacrifice who took over the series in popularity against the wishes of creator George Lucas. Han Solo was an accident—a good accident because through him millions of people gravitated to Star Wars as a mythology exploring good against evil in the context of gigantic galaxy spanning politics.
For me the love of Star Wars will likely die when Han Solo does and I will still fly the Falcon in X-Wing Miniatures 30 years from now refusing to acknowledge the history of Star Wars after the death of Han Solo. And a certain amount of the magic for me will die with the character as I’m sure it will for millions of similar fans. The question will be–can Star Wars live on without Han Solo? Just look at the Prequels and the answer will tell the story and those results may not be what Disney is looking for.
