politics

Chris Knight's avatar

At the moment the vice presidential debate between Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Kamala Harris is going on.  I’m sort-of listening to it, and for whatever reason tonight has me thinking back to the “debates” we had as school board candidates when sixteen of us were running for Rockingham County (North Carolina) Board of Education.  Though I did not win a seat, I have always been proud of my campaign and there hasn’t  been a single moment’s regret.  I had way too much fun throughout the entire process than to have been the least bit bitter about not winning.

So that sent me hurtling into the Wayback Machine(tm) of this particular blog.  Every step of the way during that run, I was chronicling it here.  And more than ever it strikes me that maybe this is a resource that others could benefit from.  I mean, there NEEDS to be ...

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Twice in the past week, during the course of conversation with other individuals the situation with Black Lives Matter came up.  There was a lot that I tried – and failed – to convey, for various reasons.

But as it turns out, I really didn’t have to try, because a mind far better than my own accomplished it with more weight and consideration than I could muster.

I have long been an admirer of Dr. Thomas Sowell.  His is an enormous intellect and our culture is more the better because he has chosen to share it with us for quite awhile now.  And it is this time which, I believe, his words are worth considering more than ever before.  A few days ago on his YouTube channel there was a video posted consisting of various clips of Dr. Sowell discussing the Black Lives Matter movement, along with its intellectual ...

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 Something put together during the hour of the wolf: that time between 2 and 3 in the morning when you can’t sleep and your mind is running through a myriad of thoughts all at once…

It goes like this:

America is thrown into turmoil as a result of a
November election that sees no clearly declared winner and in fact is
endemic throughout the country’s state and local elections.

Factor in that the United States is still in the midst of COVID-19 and this does not look to alleviate anytime soon.

China takes advantage of the chaos in America and fully deploys its
naval might in the South China Sea. Taiwan is invaded. American
military along with Japanese and Australian forces engage.

North
Korean hardliners in that country’s army, frustrated with Kim Jong Un for various
reasons, depose their leader and install Un’s sister as the glorious
new leader. North

...
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Some are almost rubbing their hands in glee at coronavirus: holding to the notion that this is an obvious sign of the Second Coming because Pestilence is loosed upon the land. Though adherent that I aspire to be, my eyes cannot but roll in disbelief. Pandemics are almost as reliable as Old Faithful and will remain so until the end of time. The average span between worldwide outbreaks is around a hundred years. And coronavirus is hot on the centennial of the Spanish Influenza.

No, it is not the time for overzealous fervor to grasp rational thought. But with respect to my fellow Christians, coronavirus is at last the “Come to Jesus” meeting that the United States is long overdue for.

Let’s consider what must certainly be the most serious issue about what coronavirus is now teaching us. We have a woeful, immoral and almost criminal over-reliance on China for ...

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As I write this it’s 1:35 a.m. and it’s all over but the cryin’.  Sometime in the next eighteen hours will likely come the final vote on Impeachment 2020 and the end of this mess.  Donald John Trump will remain President of the United States for another year and quite possibly more than that.

I’ve never doubted the outcome.  Trump had this in the bag on a party-line vote alone.  But I never thought that the final days of this fiasco would be such a bewildering demonstration of both brilliance and ignorance.  This impeachment will be studied for generations to come about how not to impeach, as well as how to effectively counter one.

So, admitting that I only took time to watch the trial proceedings itself during the past few days, here are some sundry musings…

1.  “Abuse of power” and “obstruction of Congress” are not impeachable offenses.  I ...

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Just think: a few years later chunks of that wall were being sold at K-Mart. 

Friends, I have a secret to tell.  I’ve waited decades… decades… for the chance to use the word “perestroika” in a written piece.  Not even during college and my senior history thesis – about the Russian space program and how it had tracked with that country’s politics since Nicholas II’s reign – did “perestroika” get to be employed.

I guess “perestroika” on some weird level is for me, what “smock” was to Hobbes:
Credit: the peculiar genius of Bill Watterson
Anyway, the considerate curators of conservative-ish contemplation at American Thinker have published a second article from me in as many days, and I am extremely thankful for that.  “The Fall of the Deep State and 1989’s Fall of Communism” relates some parallels between the events that transpired across Eastern Europe thirty years ago
...
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Hearing the news that Ross Perot had died earlier today was like feeling a punch to the gut of that persistent eighteen-year old in my personal nature.  Maybe it had to do with the memory of working the local Perot campaign headquarters in those heady days of fall 1992.  Located in rented space on a small shopping strip in Eden, North Carolina, at first glance it wasn’t what I was expecting.  There was a shabbiness to the place.  But whatever it lacked in looks, it more than made up for it in frenetic energy.  There was a sense of unstoppable enthusiasm among all those good and wacky characters, and I must have worked at least forty hours there making phone calls on Perot’s behalf, assembling yard signs, picking up bumper stickers to hand out…

I forget how much of a percentage Rockingham County went for Perot, but it was a
...
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It’s a line from a They Might Be Giants song: “Politics bore me”.  And that’s where I’ve found myself lately in life: dulled out of my skull by politics.  Or at least politics as most people buy into.  For quite awhile I’ve noted that I’m more interested in ideas, not “ideologies”.  And one comforting consequence has been that during the past four years I’ve been detached and aloof from just about anything pro or con about President Donald Trump.  To love him or hate him?  I’m not playing that game.  There is more to define a life than which politician a person sides with or against.

That doesn’t mean I’m an uninterested observer of realities.  And in substantial part, I do approve of President Trump’s policies and actions since coming to the White House.  Some still, I do not approve of.  But he’s earned my confidence so far, and much
...
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“Frankenstein’s Body Politic” is about something I’ve been pondering for some time: that the two major parties have each in their own way been self-destructing these past few years. Except in contrast to my prognostication four years ago, the Republicans have avoided that fate (for now), while the Democratic Party is coming apart in drastic fashion.

An excerpt from the article:

Strangely, the bicentennial of the novel Frankenstein is witnessing a practical demonstration of Shelley’s tale of promethean horror. A mishmash assemblage, long on borrowed time, is ripping itself to shreds at the seams. We will never know what agonies might have erupted from the throat of Frankenstein’s creation as it struggled to rise. But of the vaster Democratic Party and its fellow travelers in media and entertainment, the death throes prevail across our screens. Those silicon bindings may not be enough to contain the rising lust for wrath.

I ...

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