Author: JD Pendry

I ruined her life. At least that is what she told me. It had nothing to do with me ripping her from the arms of her teary eyed mother and dragging her half way around the world. It was much worse than that. Suzie-Q and I have been together for 45 years and married for 44 of them. Since she is typically cheerful and often tells me how handsome I am, (love is most assuredly blind) I surmised that she meant I disrupted her long established daily routine. For all of those married years, I went to work every day. Often the days were long and too often a day at work turned into a month or two. During that time she worked some outside the home but mostly she was and still is, thankfully, a homebody looking after important things including our son.

This summer past, I retired for the second time. You old Soldiers know that being a two time no-go is a bad thing so I am intent on not becoming one. I fully intend to survive and succeed at retirement this time. It is hopeful that Suzie-Q can also survive my retirement. We took a month’s time traveling. With vacation over, it slowly began to set in that I was unemployed. Then Suzie-Q had a rotator cuff repaired. I am about out of house projects, but before I can move forward into my final career (it is a secret and has nothing to do with the rumors about me being considered for a job on the Trump cabinet), I have to get her through her physical therapy and have her ready to move back into the starting rotation by spring. So, I have been hanging out – probably too much – and helping out with the house chores. Occasionally, my work passes the scrutiny of Household 6 (HH6). For the non-initiated, HH6 is the call sign for the household commander. It is the well-deserved term of endearment for the anchor of any military family. As I am sure my son would agree, most certainly the anchor of ours. My retirement has disrupted her routine for a time, but probably falls just short of ruining her life. She is a career Army wife. She will improvise, adapt and overcome. Or she will restrict me to the garage until I learn how to act.

Quite some time ago, I bought an Internet radio. Actually we are on our second one. I have pre-set a number of radio stations. Being of the hippie generation, my first choice was a 60’s rock and roll channel. Because now that I am retired, “time is on my side, yes it is.” This is the channel where Suzie-Q first heard here favorite 60’s tune. Can you guess it? Suzie-Q by CCR and that is why I call Mrs. Chom Su, Suzie-Q. After that a 70’s and 80’s channel, prime country, outlaw country, southern gospel and some talk radio.

Problem is I never hung out much in the kitchen. I was either working in an office 50 miles away or in the bunker. For the past 2 years, I worked from home. Down in the bunker, I listened to whatever I wanted while working. Working in total silence is not good for me. I need background noise to dissipate the tinnitus, sometimes it is music from the media player and often it is talk radio.

If you were a fly on the wall in our kitchen, Suzie-Q would chase you down and you would meet a fate similar to Larry the Lizard’s. What I meant to say was that if you were a fly on the wall in our kitchen, you would see Suzie-Q sipping her morning coffee and contemplating life with 60’s rock “groovin’ on a Sunday afternoon” playing in the background. Not long after, you would see her pop an exercise DVD into the player and imitate a herd of horses running around just above the bunker – not the sort of background noise I prefer. Later, when she is chopping up something or other or doing something at the sink her body moves to the music – all of the time. There is something disconcerting about a woman dancing around a pile of future salad vegetables with a butcher’s knife in her hand. But a word of caution, this is not the time to sneak up and goose her. Experience has taught me that most times are not good for that, but certainly a bad idea when she is holding a large sharp knife.

Being an old Soldier, time and circumstances permitting, I am accustomed to heading for the chow hall around noon. One such day, Suzie-Q was be-bopping around to her background music while putting some lunch together for us. Looking up at the wall clock I saw that it was just after noon. I switched the radio channel. She stopped moving and asked, “What is that awful music?” “That is the Rush Limbaugh theme song”, I replied. “Is he a new DJ? I never heard of him.” “No he’s not a DJ…” just as Mr. Limbaugh belted out, “Greetings, conversationalists across the fruited plain,”, and then I got the look. After 45 years, a lot can be communicated with a look. I gave here that smile she pretends to love so much and we went back to barefootin’ with Archie Bell. As usual, lunch was great. I thanked my Suzie-Q and slid my chair back right about the time the Animals were belting out “we gotta get out of this place…” so it was back to work in the bunker and listening to Rush. We are going to make this work, “if it’s the last thing we ever do, cause girl there’s a better life for me and you.”

© 2016 J. D. Pendry

Running around in my mind is a burning question. It is for the people protesting the outcome of the general election. What sort of government is it that you believe you want? Clearly you do not accept our constitutionally guided Representative Republic. If you did, you would marvel at the peaceful transference of executive power that is a prominent model for Western Civilization and the envy of the un-free. The history of the world is not one of freedom or democracy. The percentage of people who can be called free by the standard of the United States of America is miniscule when compared to the remainder of the globe. Not one nation among them can declare that the basis for their government is individual liberty. That is what makes us the exceptional nation, but I am sure you learned that in elementary school.

So again, what sort of government is that you believe you want? I really do want to know what better system you have in mind. Tell me, I will listen but have little tolerance for platitudes. You must first convince me you understand anything about our government and our history. I presume many of you are somewhat educated unless you are among the thugs paid to go to what might otherwise be peaceful protests and cause trouble.

I grew up in the hippie generation and collectively we were about as propagandized and ill-informed as I believe you are – by the same media actually and in our day there was no alternative. Many of us were draft dodgers and war protestors. The free love, flowers in your hair, and psychedelic drugs generation. The well-connected among us got draft deferments or choice positions in the military reserve units that were bursting at the seams. Others ran off to Canada. The remainder did what we thought were supposed to do. These were your grandparents. Many of them moved into academia where they shared with your parents and ultimately you a fantasized worldview about a place they wished existed, a utopia, but it does not exist and it is all because evil America will not allow it to.

I raised a son along with parents who were children of the hippie generation. Even growing up in a military community it was difficult to teach him that in real life there are winners and losers. It was also hard to teach him that you gain little in life by sitting on the sidelines waiting for someone to give you something for nothing. We had our share of parents and program directors that believed every child needed a trophy, every child had to play in the game, and everyone was a winner. I think I have a reasonable understanding of your generation. From me to you, life is not a game without consequences, a game where there are only winners.

I lost track of the stories this past week of distraught college students. Crying circles at Ivy league schools. People fearing they are going to be trotted off to internment camps for what they believe. Sorry, but you have us confused with North Korea, the greater Middle East, Communist China, et al. I heard one young lady declare this is a war and there are going to be casualties, “people have to die.” When you do not even comprehend the full meaning of words that are coming out of your mouth, you cannot possibly survive alone in the real world. Some sage advice once given to me, “Before putting your mouth into operation, ensure to first engage your brain.”

Life is not all daisies and rainbows. Beyond the locked doors of your home, there are no safe zones – and not even there if you are connected to the Internet. Unless you were born with the proverbial silver spoon, life is a place where you must earn your way. There is no president that can give you all you want. Your participation trophy is a paycheck for work done. Life does not run on emotion, which differs greatly from passion. Yours may run high or they may be low, but it is reality that drives life. Nothing else does. Most people are respectful of others and their beliefs, but they too have beliefs and no obligation to embrace yours.

So, your candidate lost. Protests and vandalism will not change that. Maybe you should look at why you lost. Many people do not like being called deplorable. People do not like “protestors” destroying property and the businesses that support their communities. Maybe you were led down the primrose pathway by a media that amounted to little more than pure propaganda. One that convinced you there was no way you could lose. Four years from now you will have had time to educate yourselves. Maybe this dose of reality will be good for you.

© 2016 J. D. Pendry

I believe the people who truly make this world go around, the battered American Middle Class, are as uncertain today as am I. We deserve better than we have. Or maybe we do not deserve better. One thing I do know, most of us have spent a lot of time chasing the American dream without checking on the political class and the media elite snob class who through corruption and collusion are putting the dream farther from reach with every corrupt deal and every item of unreported news. The other thing I know for certain is sometime tonight, Election Day 2016, our country will either experience a rebirth or it will die. Countries simply do not return from Progressivism/Communism and now add Globalism. Ask the Cubans and Chinese. Ask the open border Europeans.

Suzie-Q and I voted early this morning. Our polling place opened at 6:30 AM. We arrived there at about 6:45 and there was hardly a place to park. We have voted every election at that polling place for the 17 years we have lived here. Never have I seen so many people out to vote. As we were returning home, a great big orange, red sun was just up in the morning sky. The first thing that popped into my mind was the Regan ad, “It’s morning in America again.” Listening to that ad, it was so painfully obvious that the incumbent political party could offer nothing even remotely similar. All we have seen from the most corrupt politician to ever seek the office was personal attacks on her opponent. When you are void of ideas that is what you do. I never heard anything remotely approaching it because every policy over the past 7 plus years has been a spectacular failure. Everything from Middle East disasters, to Obama care to, Benghazi to, nearly 95 million Americans out of the workforce to, every federal agency being used as a weapon against Americans. And all the incumbent party and its establishment cronies in Congress and the media can offer is more of the same.

I saw where Mrs. Clinton canceled the fireworks display she had scheduled for her election night celebration. I do not interpret that to mean anything, but if members of her campaign staff start booking flights to countries without extradition treaties I will believe something is up.

We hear it every single election. “This is the most important election of a lifetime.” Well, this one truly is. Go vote and God Bless America.

Or in the words of the late great Harry Caray, “Holy Cow! Cubs Win! Cubs Win! Cubs Win!”

In 1965, I was transplanted into Chicago from Southern West Virginia. It was quite a shock to my system, but as youngsters are prone to do I latched on to something familiar. Baseball. On most summer afternoons, if I was at home, there was a Cubs game on WGN. There were no lights at Wrigley Field so every game was an afternoon game. I went to my first professional baseball game at Wrigley and was there some late spring days when I should have been in school. Wrigley was then and even now with modernization, America’s best ball park. All it takes is one visit to fall in love with the place. From a fan perspective, there are no bad seats. In my day, the center field bleacher bums wore yellow batting helmets or construction helmets and throwing back opposing team homerun balls became a tradition that is not optional. Not adhering to that bit of Wrigley lore could end up bad for you. I always compare Wrigley that to the game I took my son to at Atlanta’s old Fulton County Stadium. Sitting there way up in the nosebleed seats, it was tough to keep up with the little tiny people playing the game. There simply was no comparison to Wrigley’s “friendly confines.”

I was watching the game on television when Ernie Banks hit home run number 500. Just as plain as ever I still recall Cub’s announcer Jack Brickhouse and his trademark “Back! Back! Hey-Hey!” as the ball left the park. I remember Ron Santo running across the outfield clicking his heels together every time the Cubs won. I remember Leo Durocher showing the umpire the shoe polish on a baseball to prove a player was hit by the pitch and that was certainly one of his more congenial umpire visits. This was the days of leather cleats and chewing tobacco and no play reviews. I remember the players in the Cubs dugout throwing a ball attached to a string on top of the dugout and pulling it back just before one of the kids could grab it. I remember the team recording a song, “Hey Hey holy mackerel the Chicago Cubs are on the way,” Just before “Tom Terrific” Seaver and the “Miracle Mets” wiped out a 13 game Cub’s lead to go on and win the pennant and the World Series.

I have been a Cubs fan ever since. Since 1969, I have also hated the Mets. Following last season’s National League Championship Series (NLCS), I wondered which I hated most the doggonned goat or the Mets. It is the Mets.

Throughout the NLCS and the World Series, I mostly heard about the greatness of the opposing pitchers. Joe Buck, one of my favorite sports announcers by the way, clearly had a man crush on Dodger’s pitcher Kershaw which he transferred to Cleveland’s Kubler and Miller. It was obvious, whenever a game tightened, that the announcers and the pre-game crew were on the verge of declaring same old see you next year Cubs. The announcers were not rooting for the other teams, but you could sense what they thought. Or it was likely just my own insecurity and the doubt I kept beating back except that Buck certainly did have that man crush. The Cubs just proved that great pitchers simply cannot dominate great hitting on their second or third visit.

As good as this Cubs team has been all year, I cannot say honestly that Russell to Baez to Rizzo is any better than Kessinger to Beckert to Hickman. I do not think that Bryant is a better at third than Santo. I do not believe Lester or Arietta are any better than Fergie Jenkins, who could also hit homeruns, or Milt Pappas and as steady as is Hendricks, he ain’t no Greg Maddox – yet. And today’s Cubs have no better long ball hitter than Ernie Banks – at least not yet. But I can tell you what I do know. Ron Santo was clicking his heels running toward center field last night and Ernie Banks with that big ol’ friendly smile is saying, “Let’s play three today.”

I believe I am going to go order my World Series Champions cap, and probably a sweat shirt or two. Probably drag out my Son’s twenty thousand or so baseball cards and day dream some today. Maybe I will ponder the world for a bit and remind myself there is nothing more American that baseball, nothing more exciting than a seven game World Series, and there is still a place where we can all come together and forget our problems for awhile.

Thank you Cubs. I took you 50 years from when I first became a fan, but it was worth the wait.

© 2016 J. D. Pendry

I have tried to withdraw from the politics that are sucking the life from America. Yes CG, I truly have. Sideline sitting is difficult and leaving unsaid what needs to be said is even more trying. When you catch a glimpse of what Americans are hearing every day, it is disheartening and distasteful. Even when turning to the local news you are bombarded with the “national” segment extolling the virtues of one and the evilness of the other. But mostly the evilness of the other. Unfounded or not. This is certainly not an election where the candidates are appealing to the intellectual side of the electorate. Nor is it one where the media reports and compares policy positions. Maybe it is time we had a fight at this level so America can take a deeper look into her mirror. Maybe learn about our true deep divide. The real one that exists not between colors of Americans but between the political and media elitists and the everyman. It is the makings of a “French Revolution.” Pray it never comes to that.

Thinking through the self-inflicted political and cultural mess in which we find ourselves and writing about it is therapeutic. So allow me this indulgence.

Freedom once was, along with the quixotic “truth, justice and the American way”, the heartbeat of our country, but now it is politics. The absence of truth and justice is the new American way. Everything is politicized and idealized. There is no place to where one might retreat to escape it. Withdrawal into a cocoon is an option – a self-imposed safe zone. But, tuning out our shared reality so as to calm our troubled souls and shield our feelings is dereliction of our civic duty.

In our country, a war is on. It is political, ideological and cultural. It is a battle of Biblical proportions being fought for the soul of a nation and for the souls of her people. One world globalist vultures are aligned to pick clean the American carcass and consolidate her wealth amongst them. Open the borders and the millions who rush into the Promised Land will find naught but misery and slavery to their new global masters. Their hope ending right back in the ghettos, slums, poverty, and crime that drove them away from their lands to begin with. They will find the hope they placed in fallible utopians offering grandiose promises has also departed. Promises they held no intention of fulfilling. Could not possibly fulfill. Utopia is not for the masses. It is only for those shielded by wealth and power from the daily difficulties of the everyman – no matter where he resides. Geographically, there will be an America, but the shining beacon of freedom to the unfree world will be gone however, replaced by darkness. In the darkness, evil thrives. With the promised fundamental transformation completed, gone will be the uniquely American ideal of individual liberty and freedom first Exceptionalism – likely never to know a peaceful rebirth. Shockingly, some likely view that as success. After all, have we not been told that America is no more exceptional than any other nation?

These days, ideology preempts facts. Honest debate is stifled by mockery, name calling, gutter crawling and character assassination. Movements are built on falsehood, towns are burned, people are dead, police officers are vilified, attacked and murdered, the military is gutted and slighted, and the everyman is left standing without much hope amidst all of that and run down and dilapidated cities that were once great manufacturing centers and the envy of the world.

The people charged as the guardians of one of our most precious and important freedoms – speech and the press – have forfeited that freedom by selling their souls to political ideology and totally abandoning any semblance of objective journalism or news reporting. It is an ideology wholly antithetical to the principles on which our nation was founded. Along with corrupt politicians and their donors they are steering the rest of us toward destruction while not realizing that it is also their end toward which they are speeding. The type of ruling government their ideology perpetuates cannot withstand a free press.

Our children, the future, are ignorant of our history. Worse than that, they have been conditioned to believe that Western civilization and specifically America is to the blame for the world’s problems. More dangerous is their ignorance of the darkness of communism and socialism and the aims of Sharia even when displayed right before their eyes. This is the great failure of our education system, or the great success depending on your worldview. It may as well have been free for what it was worth.

Common decency and respect were thrown out the window long ago. The golden rule? Pull anyone with an opposing view down into the gutter and make it about that. The people? They remain largely ignorant of things important because they are too focused on media created soap operas and massive misinformation. It is a media that prefers to be owned rather than remain truthful, free and independent. With a corrupt media, corrupt Congress, corrupt administrative agencies and a corrupt Department of Justice including the full gamut of federal investigative agencies what possible chance is there for fairness for the everyman? Nil. Despots observing from around the world must marvel at how easy it was to corrupt the most perfect representative republic on the face of the earth and then turn it on the people that it was supposed to serve and protect.

Did you ever ponder how we got here?

© 2016 J. D. Pendry

Currently in recovery from my news junkie and politics addiction… Secure in who I am. Are you?

In July 99, Suzie-Q and I bought an old house. One of the first projects was converting the back porch into a sunroom. It was a concrete slab surrounded by a porch-rail height brick wall. Brick columns supported the roof. The prior owners left porch swing anchor bolts and roll-up shades hanging on the side facing the neighbors. They took the swing. The shades, I expect, were to hide from view of the neighbors otherwise it only blocked the afternoon sun. We threw them out. Not the neighbors, the shades. Although it remains debatable about which was easier on the eyes. These days, a nice lilac bush serves the same function as did the ugly shade.

The neighbor’s dog, the one that would chase a cloud’s shadow across the yard barking like he was possessed, liked to steal our flip flops. The neighbor’s kid always returned them, each time having a few more chew marks. Squirrels also liked the porch. It was their favorite place to gnaw through mounds of acorns that fell from a giant oak that leaned dangerously over the house. The remnants of that potential house crusher produced aromatic smoke from the fire place chimney for a couple of winters. When the leaves began to fall from the small forest that was allowed to grow up too near the house, the porch turned into a catch basket filling to the top of bricked porch rail. Despite the charm of the little porch, it was not user friendly unless you were a no account flip flop chewing hound dog or a squirrel.

We enclosed it with windows all around and a full glass storm door. We ripped out the natty indoor outdoor rug and replaced it with faux wood flooring, and added some wicker furniture. We turned it into our own little Shangri-la where we could sit and enjoy the view of the back yard without concern for the critters, dogs, acorns, leaves, mosquitoes or the neighbors. Or so we thought.

One day a concerned Suzie-Q called me out to the porch and pointed toward what appeared to be a trail of critter poop. Now I am not an expert classifier of critter crap, but I do know that it did not resemble what deer leave in the yard nor did it look like a land mine from the neighbor’s dog. Concerning the neighbor’s dog I can tell you that using a technique I perfected during the cow chip wars of my youth I can scoop his leavings up with my spade and chuck them a good thirty yards effectively airmailing them back to their rightful owner. It is all in the wrist action and achieving the proper arch – according to my 6th grade basketball coach before the sport grew too tall for me.

I was assigned the duty of depoopafying the porch. A couple of days later I was again summoned to the porch to view a new trail. A critter invited him or herself into Shangri-la and then decided it was okay to crap all over it. This newest poop trail was on the window ledge behind the wicker chairs. I moved a chair and there sat one of those little blue tailed lizards that hide around the yard in the rock piles and crevices. When you pursue one of them, he may jettison his wiggling blue tail to distract you while he bolts – if a lizard can indeed bolt.

I made a grab for Larry the lizard or it may have been Laura, but since I am not up on my lizard anatomy I cannot be certain. Larry fled across the porch to the cover of the wicker couch. When I moved the couch, he bolted again. Before I could grab him (you see my intent was to capture Larry and return him to the back yard) he managed to get beneath the edge of the siding. I could not get my fingers under there and every time I touched him he would skitter away. Suzie-Q accused me of being afraid of him. I assured her I was not and that I always wanted to put my hands on a slithering miniature komodo dragon. I finally forced him to leave the safety of his hiding spot. By now, Larry was tired. He was not moving very fast so I knew I had him. As I was lying out like the great second baseman I once was, it turned into a slow motion replay. He was within my reach and destined for a return to the wild. Then faster than Bruce Lee could yell nunchucks, Hiyeaaah Whack! Suzie-Q ninjaed Larry with a flip-flop. His jettisoned blue tail was flip flopping around like it had a purpose, but Larry look stunned. I picked up him and his wiggling blue tail and chucked both into the yard. Either he would recover or become crow food.

Since then, caulking has been squeezed into every crack and crevice that might permit lizard entry into Shangri-La. Later I may add motion sensors, but for now we believe we are secure. Larry and friends are free to roam and eat all the bugs they can find – on the other side of the wall.

The moral of this story is that if you make it into Shangri-la, do not crap all over the place. Suzie-Q does not play.

© 2016 J. D Pendry

Are you going to be The Donald or the President?

The Donald is a cartoon character. I do not want a cartoon character in the Whitehouse or leading America’s Armed Forces.

Instead of spending days in slap fights with the liberal media and Democrat red herring Khizr Khans, spend your days battling our nation’s problems. Continually define Mrs. Clinton. Be clear about why she is Crooked Hillary and never let up. How are you going to bring us back to “greatness” from the eve of destruction caused by her policies? You have made some speeches with substance, but you are singing to the choir. Those who consume liberal media by the bucket load have not heard them or read the transcripts. They have only heard the progressive critique.

I do not wish to massage your ego, but you need to understand that you are quite likely our last chance to save a country headed over the edge. Yep, I know. Scary. We simply cannot wait for the next shot at it. The “we will get it next time wink, wink” strategy the progressive globalists used for the last two elections is, for Americans, clearly a loser. It fails because they pit one progressive against another ensuring the like-minded occupies the Whitehouse, which is always their goal.

Unless you are Captain America (probably a bad analogy since he is a cartoon character too), saving a country is a tremendous load to bear. It is hard for me to tell whether or not you have embraced the full weight of that. The urgency of it. And for clarity’s sake if my choice is between Mrs. Clinton and a steaming pile of dog turds, I am voting for the turds. Not making an equivalency here, just letting you know that for a multitude of reasons – national security, state of our Armed Forces, the Supreme Court, state of our economy, giving a damn about America and Americans… – I believe you are the remaining viable choice to lead our country. I will not willingly cast a vote for a proven felon and pathological liar who is a progressive communist puppet to boot. Nor will I risk the future of my granddaughters by making a protest vote for some unicorn on the ballot with no chance of defeating the corrupt liberal-progressive-communism that is destroying the country – so I can feel good about myself. So you have my vote, but I am not your problem.

Is not there always a but? There are many out there who will also never vote for Mrs. Clinton but, with whom you have not yet sealed the deal. They are unsure if you are serious or are not certain who you are. To many of them, who you are is the only important question and it takes priority over the fate of the nation. No joke. The remainder wonders if you are serious. Is this just another reality show? A game? I have heard all of those questions along with the theory that your goal is to go out there and lose big to the friends you invited to your wedding, the Clintons.

It is time to throw down bubba. Time to convince the undecided. It is time to abandon the insults and comedy – and insults and comedy are all that is making it into the liberal media that most still consume – and put the big boy shoes on and close the deal.

I was convinced of this long before the recently leaked Soros documents. If elected, Mrs. Clinton will no more be the President of the USA than is Obama. She will be controlled and steered by the George Soros branded and funded progressive globalists whose goal is the eradication of international borders and ending national sovereignty. They will compete with the Muslim Brotherhood that is inside the highest levels of the globalist Democrat party. All of them standing by with pre written legislation and executive orders. Thanks to America the ignorant, (thanks again “journalists” and “educators”) these worms own the Whitehouse and their enablers are progressive establishment Republicans and Democrats, who are helping them systematically dismantle our country. That message needs to run loud and clear across the media spectrum. Unless you are, as are apparently every politician in Washington and every media outlet, owned by Soros the billionaire convicted criminal Nazi collaborator with his messianic complex and one world government ambitions. These are dangerous big boys and they will never play fair and never easily forfeit gains made over the past few years. Body armor up brother and make sure you can trust each member of your security team. And then only those vetted by you.

The President of the United States of America is a world leader. As goes America so goes the world. Just take a look around. Decline for us is chaos elsewhere else. As Mr. Regan (also despised by establishment Washington and communists) so aptly put it, when freedom is gone from the United States of America brother it is gone from everywhere. The light goes out and the world becomes a very dark dangerous place. People are scared about their future, the future of their children, the future of their country and their freedom. I may be wrong, but I believe beneath the persona and showmanship is the serious, contemplative, and generous man described by those who know you well and those with whom you have discussed our country’s problems. If that man, humbled by the idea of leading the greatest nation God ever allowed, truly exists then those not yet sold need to meet him. If you have Christian faith as you proclaimed, then turn your Bible to Micah 6:8 and follow the instructions. Maybe your latest speech is a turn in that direction. You need every last vote to overcome the impending massive voter fraud.

Many in your adopted party, with robust media support, are actively trying to Goldwater you. You have the Mitt Romney globalist establishment doing to you the same as his daddy did to Goldwater. You just may want to study that some. Allied with them by default are the self-proclaimed puritan conservatives searching for their unicorn. I question who among the 16 or so others that you defeated was their unicorn? Ted Cruz? Perhaps, but he had his big bank connections too, supported TPP and fast track before he was against it, some questionable immigration positions, and most damning he lied to us about his commitment to supporting the Republican nominee. Hard to trust a liar, ask Mrs. Clinton.

If these smitten establishment globalists and puritans – sore losers – were concerned with saving our country, or making it great again, or even defeating the progressive globalists they would be trying to influence you and your policies rather than by default electing Mrs. Clinton. Just so they can have a shot at her the “next time.” The same strategy they used against Obama. We will just wait and get them next time. Problem is we are out of next times and do overs. Put these guys in your rear view mirror and keep your eye on the prize. This one is for keeps.

Nowadays people want to place everyone into identity or ideological boxes. That is how we have been conditioned to think about people and especially politicians. The progressives and the establishment Republicans and self-proclaimed puritan conservatives cannot find a box that fits you. You have them flabbergasted. Are you conservative, moderate, a liberal progressive communist, a libertarian, or something as yet undefined? They cannot figure you out because you do not fit neatly into any of their boxes. Could it be that you do not view the world through any well defined ideological prism? The missing box is not a box at all. I believe you have a practical deal making and solutions view of the world that a successful businessman and leader needs. You are not a conservative puritan by any stretch, but if surrounded by the right people I believe you would operate within the parameters of our laws and Constitution. If the objective is truly to “make America great again”, then it is the best ideas and not pure ideology that will win the day. No ideology has cornered the market on good ideas. Besides, you do not get harmony when everyone sings the same note.

That was way too long for internet reading. I am not the only American with a lot to ponder. From here, it is up to you.

© 2016 J. D. Pendry All Rights Reserved

It was in February 1972 that I first saw Uijongbu, South Korea. Since then, I have been back a few times. The only thing unchanged since that first time is the rocky hilltops surrounding the valley, the Uijongbu corridor, which is the traditional invasion route from the north. My month long trip to the Land of the Morning Calm was restful and mind clearing. I long for those days of being a carefree Army private. For me, it was the time when political issues and the state of our country were things that confounded the minds of others. I lived through the hippie era, racial strife in the ranks, drug abuse, and alcoholic senior noncommissioned officers and all of it during the Vietnam drawdown. I was as disconnected from the truth of the political world then as much of America is today. Historically only about half of us vote in general elections and odds are much of that half is politically ignorant.

I suppose all of us can look back on a time and long for the days of blissful ignorance. Especially during a time when so much information is coming toward us that we can barely comprehend it and much less determine fact from fabrication and all of it during a time when the fate of the nation relies on our ability to do just that. Our crucial freedom of the press has been abused and forfeited by ideologues. No such freedom exists for them who are steered in thought and action by ideology and the unscrupulous neither of which is the least bit interested in truth – at least not interested in the people knowing the truth. Sadly, they and the many who consume massive quantities of their daily dose of gibberish, would not recognize the truth if it smacked them straight in mouth. Most remain wholly ignorant because of it, although it is not a blissful ignorance. These days it is an anger filled ignorance fueled by lies and many years of brain washing indoctrination. Out of ignorance, they will burn down their own towns and ultimately invite in tyrant saviors who are not ignorant of the truth to control their lives. As wrong and misguided as they are, they remain passionate about what they believe and who they support all of it antithetical to the free representative republic that is the United States of America.

A nation that has wondered so far from the pathway to greatness laid out in our founding documents, desperately needs leaders. Over many years, those elected as guardians of our great nation have failed us. They have failed because they are no longer a government of the people, by the people and for the people. They are the living example that power corrupts. These are men and women who have spent lifetimes in national politics. They love the television cameras, the Washington social scene, their privileged lives, and people willing to steer large amounts of money to them and their families for the right piece of legislation. These under the table legal bribes hardly differ from the in your face hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars donated to bogus charitable foundations or for speeches paid for by banks and foreign countries. No matter their party alignment, all of them prey on the gullible and ignorant. In the foreground and from all sides, they stir up the ignorant with many promises never delivered. In the background they are great buddies sipping bourbon, smoking cigars and working out the next cash deal. Only strong leaders can put our country back on course.

The theory goes society creates the event and the man (man is gender neutral here – not my theory so I will not rename it). If you do not have a great event then you cannot have a great man. Without World War II, would there been an Ike or Patton? Or would both have ended their military time as Colonels? That is the question raised by the great man, great event leadership theory. Leaders are born, not made the theory declares and without a great event they become history’s everyman. Audie Murphy practically begged his way into the Army and once in Europe he had to plead for a combat assignment. He became our most decorated Soldier. But without the event?

I do not know if we have a great leader on the horizon. But, a wholly corrupted national government from Congress, to the Whitehouse, to the Cabinet Secretaries, to the Courts to the top echelons of the military, to an economy teetering on collapse, to big money from corporate lobbyists, to social justice warriors, terminal political correctness and all of it driven by a gigantic propaganda machine (also known as the main stream media) and a populace that largely gets its information from Facebook, Twitter, and that same ideologically driven media, and with the rejection of any moral authority, we certainly have an event. A nation driven dangerously close to its tipping point – a place from which, if not corrected, it will never return.

We have two people battling to be that great man or great woman to either save this nation or complete its fundamental destruction. For clarity, the issue is the fate of our nation and ideology aside there are only two choices. One is a product of this cesspool of corruption. A charter member of the Washington establishment, proven liar, as corrupt as the day is long, of seriously questionable health and mental capacity, and glorified each day by a doting sycophantic media and billed as better than the alternative by much of the like-minded establishment. The other, never held a political office and was never part of the Washington establishment, although it is likely he greased some of their palms along the way as the cost of doing business. In speech he is not politically correct, but with plain language he is touching the everyman. The media and establishment Washington, even to the extent they would prefer the dishonest and corrupt – for them a kindred worldview, hate his guts and try daily to derail his journey to the Presidency.

Each of us must decide who and from here to where.

© 2016 J. D. Pendry All Rights Reserved