This is the most powerful anthem that I’ve heard about what has happened to our country and our world and our future. This man was nobody a week ago, and now he has 14 of the top 30 iTunes, beating Taylor Swift. 7 million views in 4 days on this one song alone. Every second, a new comment. This is spreading like wildfire across the world, with folks from Ireland, Brazil, and Germany commenting about the corruption of the elites. It hits especially hard in Canada, now that Meta (Facebook and Instagram) has started blocking news articles on its social networking services in Canada. My friend visited Canada this weekend and tried to check on our Austin news page, and it was blocked.
Rich Men North of Richmond is not about any one political party, though the media will surely spin it; it’s about greed and control and the anguish on all of our hearts across the world as we watch our liberties being stolen. I pray it is an anthem for an uprising.
It’s July of 1936 on Boston’s Revere Beach, populated with exuberant young people of presumably many different ethnicities and many immigrant groups. It should make you smile to see such joy. “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn” (Romans 12:15). However, with today’s skewed lens, it might immediately trigger folks who see too much white, lumping all of these faces into one category. Diversity is present in many ways. Retrain your brain to stop being offended. Stop being triggered. I thought judging by skin color was what we were trying not to do 60 years ago. I seem to recall a “content of their character” speech by an inspiring orator who would have been horrified by the present agenda, and how HARD IT IS TRYING to create more and more division. MLK wanted us to focus less on skin color, while today’s leadership wants us to focus 24/7 on skin color. Pedophiles, adulterers, rapists, terrorists? Turn the other way. But too little melanin? You’re the problem.
Frankly, I can’t believe this beach is even still called Revere Beach, since I’m pretty sure Paul Revere was white. His father was a French Huguenot, and that is precisely the kind of European white that you are not allowed to be. Perhaps one will soon be able to reassign or reidentify their ancestry, in essence, lie or pretend. You can imagine how hard this is on me, able only to celebrate my Cuban half, because being hispanic is celebratable, but not my Scotch-Irish half, because poor Irish folks were pink and clearly oppressors.
First off, the sins of your fathers are not your sins. Secondly, most of your fathers are being blamed for sins they never even committed, by folks who aren’t super clear on what a sin actually is. Thirdly, a father is different than a mother and has different roles to play because men and women are inherently different and balance each other out. No gender is better (out of the two that exist), and no race is superior out of the myriad that exist.
You can also imagine how hard this 2021 brainwashing is on me, knowing my love for Coke, oft-chronicled on this blog, while not endorsing their recent “be less white” training. It seems inconsistent in this world of, “You do you and let your freak flag fly,” but the truth is–only some of you can do you. And God help you if you’re a white man (I shudder to even type it) because you are exactly everything that was wrong with the former Mr. Potato Head. Maleness is shameful, and the neutering is going exactly as planned, Mein Führer. If penises are offensive now, which was only the implication of Mr. Starch Head, not the physical manifestation, then how long until the Berenstain Bears go the way of poor Dr. Seuss? After all, they DO DECLARE the reality of two genders.
At least they are brown and not polar white, like the Coke beast, which is polar-izing. Guess what, kids? Not everyone gets to be a mother, and not everyone gets to be a father, no matter how much you mutilate your body. Chromosomes tell the truth. Do we want to be authentic, or do we want to make up stories about ourselves and create “personal narratives”? Lies. How long before the cancel culture agenda takes out icons like Mr. Rogers and Bob Ross and Steve Irwin? Oh, it won’t be long, folks. History is being retold. So I’ll keep sharing these pics from the past with the reality of the circumstances before it is deleted or altered to fit the current PC agenda.
This is a picture of happy beach-goers smack dab in the middle of the Depression, trying their damnedest to enjoy life despite awful circumstances, kind of like what we’ve been doing for the last year. Most of them rented their swimsuits from the city, who laundered more than 100,000 suits that Sunday. Most of them descended from hardworking immigrants who came to this country, searching for freedom from socialist or communist or oppressive countries that devalued them. Actually, just posing for this shot was a new freedom, because even visiting the beach on a Sunday was, at one point, a crime. So just to be clear, this was not a white supremacist rally. It was not a group of Italians gathering to decide how to destroy their Polish neighbors. It was not insurrectionists storming the lifeguard’s chair. It was not a picture full of hate because most Americans do not carry hate in their hearts. Sorry to upset you, media, but we don’t. We don’t use hate speech and we don’t hate any skin color and we base our judgments on whether people are kind or whether they are jerks. Don’t fall for the pathetic attempts to divide. Don’t hate yourself for the way God knit you in your mother’s womb. He knew what He was doing when He made you, and that is nothing for which to apologize.
Welcome to an “old-fashioned wool-working exhibit” on the Common in Boston, where these contestants competed to win the knitting trophy. Originating in 1634, it is the oldest city park in the United States. The squares of 200 women (and the one lone fellow shown above) were pinned on a board to form the Stars and Stripes. In just one day, they created this woolen flag.
Bolatbek, Eagle Hunter, Mongolia, 2017 by Oliver Klink
Okay, yes, that Mongolian is an eagle hunter. But he’s not eating the eagle; he’s using it to hunt. Deer hunters hunt and eat deer, but eagle hunters use the eagle prowess in a self-serving manner and consequently keep the eagle alive. They train the eagles to catch small animals such as foxes and hares, whose furry coats eagles can easily spot in the snow. Then the trainer eats them. You see? It’s all about the hierarchy of which animals we like. Is it okay to kill tuna to eat sandwiches? Absolutely. Is it okay if we accidentally kill a dolphin while we’re in the middle of murdering tuna? No way, Jose. It’s about which animals matter.
Obviously, in America, eagles are emblematic of our country. We do not train them, and instead use hawks in falconry. We do not touch them, or their nests, or their eggs, as this is prohibited in the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. Though the bald eagle was removed from the endangered species list in 2007, we continue to protect them as the symbol of our country. And we are certainly not alone in loving eagles. Mexico has a golden eagle on its flag, with a serpent in its talons, mid-murder. If that’s not badass, I don’t know what is.
Anley flag
And lest you think the mere association with eagles is not powerful, remember that The Eagles hold both the #1 and #3 spots of best-selling albums of all time (per http://www.mentalfloss.com). And that’s why we don’t stab eagles with steely knives.
A member of the Finnish Red Cross hands Helsinki housewife Sirkka Michelsson a package, including a sweater knit by the Nashville American Red Cross chapter, pajamas for her children from Connecticut, a dress, and more. Michelsson, weeping tears of gratitude, was one of thousands of people helped by American generosity in the post-WWII years.
I used these images in a post from several years ago, but they are still powerful on this 15th anniversary of 9/11. For the rest of the pics, click here.
Today I share the last letter in this series, from a teen soldier who recounts his memories when he was in high school only the year prior, visiting wounded soldiers before he became one himself.
After marching in the War Chest Parade, the Jefferson High School Lassos proudly watched the rising figures on the War Chest thermometer at the United States Postal Office.
The theme of the 1945 Monticello yearbook was “The Jefferson At War” edition. Current students exchanged letters with former active-duty students to get a glimpse of what a soldier’s life was like overseas. At time of publication, they had no idea the war would be over in a matter of months, though they wrote of “complete victory certain and, perhaps, very near.”
Soldier Bob wrote to his former high school from Luzon Island in the Philippines.
I Don't Get It 