TRADEX 2016

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INTO THE DREAMTIME

 Drag Racing At Mission Raceway Park

 

Paul Yates is not a photographer. He is an artist. His photographs transport me back to the era of my youth.

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MY CUSTOMISED 2002 F150 "BOSS" 5.8 PICK UP

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I designed every aspect of this truck and had Marty over at Rags To Riches custom shop (Port Kells, BC) carry out the work. Marty liked the truck so much that, when I put the truck up for sale, he bought it.

From Tradex 2017

 

  

           

EXPLAINING MY NO GOOD VERY BAD DAY TO JESUS

 

by Michael X.

Me (explaining to Jesus): It was a very bad day to start with. A week before the day in question, I received a call from my son Ricky, who lived in Ontario,  informing me that he was dying of cancer and had only a few weeks to live. My wife and I knew immediately that we had go out to to see and comfort him one last time. So it was with a heavy heart that I got up that morning, May 11, 2020, to embark on the 9,000+ km round trip. 

I found myself walking around in a daze. To make matters worse, I was constipated. The first thing I did when I woke up was to take several stool softeners and a double dose of a laxative. However, just as I was about to leave and because of my absent mindedness, I mistakenly took another dose of the same medication. 

Jesus: Wow! That would have had consequences.

Me: Hey, tell me about it. We got to about Hedley BC when my insides started to feel like they were going to explode. I could not avail myself of any public washrooms along the way. All of them were locked because of the Covid business. I was hoping that I might come upon a gas station but no luck.

Finally, I had to stop and attend to business before I pooped my pants. I grabbed a roll of paper towels and leaped from the car. However, I had picked an unfortunate location. I found myself at the top of a steep rocky embankment. I climbed down the embankment just enough to be out of sight. I dropped my pants with only seconds to spare.

Jesus: That must have been a relief.

Me: Not so much, as it turned out. I thought I had fully relieved my bowels but my stomach was still rumbling. In my haste to squat I found myself in an awkward posture so I leaned forward to adjust my position. Big mistake! I had misjudged how far off perpendicular I already was and my slight adjustment caused me to fall face forward down the rocky embankment. I fell about 15 feet. 

Jesus: Ewww, that would have been painful.

Me: You don't know the half of it. The slope was covered in rip-rap: rocks whose size was between 6" and 12" in diameter with sharp edges and were covered with vines that had very sharp spines - like raspberry bushes. So I found myself face down on the rocks with a face full of sharp thorns. My pants were down around my ankles so my legs were also full of these prickly spines and so, too, my arms. To make matters worse, my feet were higher than my head so that when I tried to get up I didn't have the strength to do so. If you were looking down at me you would also have noticed that my bare bum - how shall I say this - was in an un-wiped state. I was in complete despair and I think I remember calling out to you to help me.

Jesus: I do remember you calling out to me and I do remember looking down at you - from the cross - and thinking, "Jeez, and I thought I was having a bad day!"

Me: But, in spite of your tribulations, you helped me out and I was grateful. I am grateful. But the next morning, when I woke, I looked and felt like I had gone 12 rounds with Mike Tyson.

We both laughed. 

Jesus: Sorry about your boy but his time had come. There was nothing I could do about it - but he was taken in the night. He did not suffer.

Me: Again, I am grateful. I hope that I am granted the same mercy when my time comes.

Jesus: Maybe you will - if you behave yourself.

Me: Fat chance of that.

And we laughed again.

TEARS IN THE RAIN

 

by Michael X.

In the movie Blade Runner, one of the characters is Roy Batty, a bio-engineered replicant or artificial human. Replicants are virtually identical to adult humans except that they have superior speed, strength, and intelligence. And they can learn. Roy Batty not only had all of these abilities but was also a special model designed for combat.

The early models were designed to have a limited life span of four years. This limited life span was incorporated into their design to prevent them from becoming too smart and start thinking and acting for themselves. In short, they would become unpredictable and uncontrollable.

Blade Runners were employed to hunt down and retire (kill) non-compliant replicants and Roy Batty was definitely non-compliant (in fact, he was a leader of a rebellious faction of replicants) and, therefore, a threat to the established order i.e. the company that produced them.

If the Blade Runner movie were to be adapted to contemporary political circumstances, Roy Batty would be an old, Anglo-Saxon Christian (and, co-incidently, that is exactly what Rutger Hauer was). Those descriptors pretty much describe me and my fellow travellers. They used to call us W.A.S.P.s. The politically correct establishment would like us to get lost. Not us personally, you understand, but us as a disagreeable archetype.

We old Anglo-Saxons have also seen things - things you would find hard to believe. We were witnesses, or were the direct descendants of witnesses, to the bloodiest conflict in human history propagated by an ideology that is remarkably similar to what we see today in some quarters. We have viewed the world before the modern era. We think we are clear-eyed about the current political culture and we do not agree that what is being peddled as social progress is progress at all. In fact, we view the lack of understanding of the lessons of recent history might actually lead us back to barbarism.

As mentioned before, the political establishment would like to dispose of us. They feel that we stand in the way of progress. They are waiting us out since we are, generally speaking, quite old.

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In the above clip we see Rutger Hauer, as Roy Batty, give his Tears in the Rain monologue. He knows he is about to die and all of the memories he has accumulated are about to disappear forever. He is sad but is reconciled to his fate

Soon, I and my old friends will pass on and if we have said or written anything of consequence that, too, will be made to disappear - like tears in the rain.

HE MEANT WELL

 This was written a while back but, in view of the Afghanistan snafu, it seems timely.

by Michael X.

Post 9/11, a shorthand version of the immediate aftermath looked like this: American popular opinion demanded a response; somebody's nose had to be bloodied; Saddam looked like a good target; the Bush Administration went for regime change; they accomplished it; they walked away. Having achieved victory, they were confident that what they did to Iraq will serve as a deterrent to anyone who may be contemplating attacking the U.S. in the future.

But there is something wrong with this story, isn't there? The Bush Administration didn't quite walk away. And there are some today, myself included, who would argue that they, in fact, didn't even accomplish the mission.

Back on May 1, 2003, President George W. Bush addressed the nation while aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. You may also remember a sign on the USS Abraham Lincoln that said "Mission Accomplished." It is important to note that the sign was put up by the crew of the ship with the tacit approval of the officers. I inferred from this that the military sure thought the mission was accomplished and, by extension, that the war was over. Bush even said at the time that this marked the end of major combat operations in Iraq. The nation was relieved and applauded. Too bad Bush didn't ask The Wolf, a character from movie Pulp Fiction, for his opinion. The Wolf might have told the Bush war cabinet:  "Let's not suck each other's dick quite yet." Soon, to the chagrin of conservatives, Americans were to find out that the U.S. was about to embark upon a great Neo-Con Wilsonian inspired adventure in nation building.

Woodrow Wilson was a Democrat. He thought of himself as a Progressive and a reformer. Wilsonian foreign policy's objective was to foster "world peace" (he wanted to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony). Wilson formulated a 14 point plan to achieve world peace and thought that the U.S. should actively participate in the spread of democracy around the world, by military intervention if necessary.

In the 1960s, a group of leading liberal intellectuals left the liberal establishment and decided to call themselves "conservatives." This was the birth of the neo-cons. The neo-cons may have distanced themselves from the leftward movement by the Democrats but they remained Wilsonian on foreign policy. Who are these neo-cons? Go to the Weekly Standard or, I regret to say, the National Review and you will find out soon enough.

Fast forward to 2003. Influential people convinced Bush that the democratization of Iraq was a desirable and doable objective. From what I can ascertain, this new mission came as a surprise to the military. They had not planned for it. Had they known, they might have secured Iraq in a different fashion.

What is it about George Bush that allowed himself to be persuaded to embark upon the democratization of Iraq? I would begin the answer by echoing the words of WFB when he was asked to describe Bush Sr.'s politics. He said (I'm para-phrasing), "George Bush may be conservative but he is not a conservative." 

And the apple did not fall far from the tree.

Bush Jr. certainly had some conservative views but he held them without the benefit of thoughtful consideration. That is to say: To the extent that Bush is a conservative, he is by temperament rather than conviction. He really is a "compassionate" conservative. And what is a "compassionate" conservative? To be a compassionate conservative in politics means one governs or legislates by emotion rather than thought. In other words: Bush is a conservative "do-gooder." Let us remind ourselves here of what that term "do-gooder" means: an earnest, naive, often impractical reformer or humanitarian. Evidence: the democratization of Iraq (misguided reform) and open-borders immigration (misguided humanitarianism).

The war to install democracy in Iraq never succeeded. And even if it did, the central question would remain: Iraq might be better off - but would America? Did Bush really think democracy in Iraq would be contagious to the rest of the Middle East? And what did Bush think Iraq would do with its democracy? Democracy is only a means to an end. If the ends are against America's best interests, who cares about the means? Did Bush and the Washington brain-trust think that Iraqis and others in the middle east would commit cultural suicide just because they had democratically elected leaders?

Our political elites, and all too many others, don't realise that self determination is a privilege that comes with moral maturity. Middle Eastern societies may be ancient but they have been in a state of arrested development for centuries. They have not become morally fit for democracy. Homes and schools are not democracies precisely because we can't trust the morally immature mind to do the right thing. The people in the middle east don't enjoy an enlightened morality. Their societies, for whatever reason, have not evolved.

Now, here we are, over ten years later, still trying to convince Muslim societies about the benefits of emulating western civilisation's way of life - the futility of which has been pointed out by numerous commenters. And then there's the money. It costs about 4 trillion dollars a year to operate the American federal government with about a trillion of that being borrowed. There is not a nickel available to civilise the middle east. Sooner or later, America's enemies will realise that they should be encouraging the U.S. in its middle east democratization project. It, along with another misguided Bush/Obama project: massive open-border immigration will eventually bring America to its knees.

On immigration, Bush got positively mushy. Promoting massive immigration, both legal and illegal, was just another example of Wilsonian Progressivism. In Wilsonian Progressivism, benevolence trumps self-interest. In fact, Wilsonians go further and say, without a trace of irony, that ignoring our self-interest temporarily, is really in our own best interest. Always in the long term, of course. Success for social dreamers always occurs in "the long term." So, for Bush, massive immigration, legal or illegal, while temporarily bad for the U.S. would be, in the long run, good for America. Furthermore, it was the right thing to do.

Like all other do-gooders, Bush wants to look in the mirror and say to himself, "I am a good man." Because he sees himself as a "good man" without ulterior motives, it does not occur to Bush that his feelings about illegal immigration are just narcissistic indulgences and that this same narcissism makes him oblivious to how destructive to America his policy on this matter really was.

During his tenure as president George Bush was more than just sympatico to Mexicans. In his heart, he felt he was Mexican - and this goes for the entire Bush family. Bush, speaks forcefully and confidently and, dare I say it, with joy in his heart, when speaking his version of Mexican-Spanish. Bush was, and is, a "bleeding heart." But for whom does he bleed? Did he bleed for Americans? Did he bleed for Mexican illegals? Or did he bleed for his own unsatisfied desire to be considered a humanitarian? No wonder he hated those who opposed his amnesty bill. God help you if you thwart do-gooders while they are lusting after virtue.

Bush thought that protecting Americans was protecting them from physical harm. While I do not deny the importance of that, Bush failed to appreciate that protecting America is really about protecting its values and culture. His mind was structurally blind to the damage that this massive illegal immigration was causing. The importation of Mexican culture on such a large scale cannot help but dilute American culture. Bush, in his own way, was undermining American culture as much as Blair had undermined British culture. Blair considered British culture unenlightened and wanted to bring it under the wider "progressive" European Union. Bush was similarly minded at least to the degree that he favoured a North American Union.

Eleven million illegal immigrants are in America and they are continuing to come across the border by the thousands every day. They all want Social Security and access to schools, hospitals, and welfare. And then there's the cost of building new infrastructure to accommodate them.

In the next election, Americans need to watch out for any candidate who shows the slightest inclination toward neo-con Wilsonian adventurism in foreign policy and/or progressive immigration (read: open borders) in domestic policy. The staggering costs of military adventurism and illegal immigration are a potent one-two punch that could cripple the U.S. economy. The cultural consequences of large scale immigration, legal or not, could be lethal to the American dream of freedom and prosperity.

Without a wholesale regime change to  dramatically change the American political culture, the path ahead for the U.S. and, indeed, western civilisation itself, will find itself on a perilous road.

PROGRESSIVE SOPHISTRY

by Michael X.

To progressives, everything is a matter of semantics. By using the right words to present evidence they hope to control the nature and meaning of truth and the resulting thoughts of the individual. Their high priests - the professoriate - earn a lot of money persuading the children of the wealthy that their stream of consciousness thoughts are as accurate as objective truth.

The progressive's arch-enemy, Socrates, is a study in contrast. He sought to convince his students to seek the truth and not hide from its consequences. Unlike the Progressive professoriate, he respected his students. His successors, Plato and Aristotle, deepened these concepts that are the basis of western knowledge. Over the centuries, philosophers and the sophists have always clashed, and is reflected in the cultural customs of each age.

 

Progressives fancy themselves to be the true keepers of civilisation's intellectual flame. In truth, they are devious and manipulative.  As opportunists, they always sought to take advantage of other people's virtues and assets for personal gain, or achieve success without effort. Progressives claim to eschew religion but, really, they believe in a constellation of  beliefs, words, and practices that can only be described as mystical. All of this aimed at a human transformation which, in their eyes, will bring into existence a Utopia. They claim to embrace science but if hard science (reality) causes them to feel insecure or "uncomfortable" they will reject hard science and invent an alternate version of reality that brings them comfort and they will present this false data as fact - without any shame. They can do this because their conscience is not at all troubled. They are "true believers." To doubt would be a sin.

That said, the progressive's interest in "science" extends mostly to those scientific poseurs: the ideologically driven social sciences, which, of course, are the backbone of  progressive sophistry. The progressive's world view is the subjective world of ideas. For  progressives, these high-minded ideas are the highest state of being.

Rationalizing is the antithesis of intellectualism. Progressives are rationalizers masquerading as intellectuals. Psychologically, progressives are weak. They know their rationales will not stand scrutiny. Progressives do what all psychologically weak people do, they project their faults on to their opponents. So, they accuse non- progressives of being anti-science, anti-intellectual, racists, and homophobes, etc.

The church of progressivism strictly enforces it's dogma and that they view minority groups as pawns to further their agenda. And what happens to any member of a minority group that strays from the flock? They will be shunned and humiliated by any means necessary and the most intimate details of their private lives will be revealed. Violence and intimidation are no strangers to the progressives in their quest for domination of the culture.

 

The search for the truth led to the development of science and on to the development of technology which allowed goods of all kinds to be produced fast and efficiently. These developments were based on the Socratic principles of commitment to the truth and the search for universal concepts. Sophists, on the other hand, have no commitment to the truth. They are only concerned with rationales which are emotionally satisfying to both the speaker and the listener.

 

The sophists have taken over the university. Relative truths and values have supplanted the search for absolute truths and values. This is reflected in the culture and has corrupted our schools, our politics, our judicial system, the arts, our religion, and even the most casual public discourse. We live in a decadent culture and there will be a price to be paid. That price will be the fall of Western Civilisation.