Declination

We have met the enemy, and he is us.

Pogo

By Dr. Jim Ferguson

I've never been a fan of newspaper comic strips. As a kid, Looney Tunes cartoons were my Saturday morning entertainment and subliminal teacher. Heckle & Jeckle, Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny, with their antics, introduced me to historical references as well as classical and operatic music. I feel sorry for kids today without such inspiration, trying to grow up in the decline of a once great nation.

You may be surprised to learn that there are different types of history. Some historians like Homer and Herodotus extolled the virtues of their Greek culture. Thucydides, in his history of the Peloponnesian War, questioned Greek virtue. Later, Sallust and then Livy would write of the rise and the fall of Rome in their histories of declination.

You may not be interested in history or its arcane aspects. However, our Founders were. They studied the lessons of history so as not to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Some years ago, I read a thought-provoking declination history by Cullen Murphy entitled, "Are We Rome, The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America."

Despite the artistic licenses of Hollywood, sometimes a movie is an impactful way to experience history. You may recall "Gladiator." The movie opens with Roman legions battling German barbarians at the border of the Roman Empire. The movie depicted Emperor Marcus Aurelius on a campaign protecting Rome's integrity. Aurelius actually died in the area of current-day Vienna. His son Commodus became emperor, although he did not murder his father, per Hollywood spin. However, Commodus imagined himself a gladiator, and historians speculate he may have been illegitimately sired by a gladiator.

Marcus Aurelius understood that if you have no borders, you have no country. Biden is too far gone to comprehend this reality. Make no mistake, Biden's handlers understand that the elimination of America's borders will end our country. It is willful, deliberate and treasonous. Even the loathsome Gavin Newsom, ABC and many Washington quislings no longer deny that the unvetted millions streaming across the border are destroying the country. The drug cartels of the Mexican narco-state now control the remnants of our southern border. Human trafficking is rampant. Fentanyl is everywhere, killing 100,000 Americans this year. Even traffic stops threaten police with fentanyl exposure.

But the declination continues in all sectors of America. "The personal wealth of Americans has declined seven trillion dollars this year." The government continues to spend money we don't have driving up inflation. Our deficit last month was $249 billion! I am no economist, but I have some common sense. The only way for the government to continue profligate spending is to print money. When you do so there are more dollars chasing the same or fewer products, and inflation results. Unfortunately, the productivity of American workers is also in decline. I don't care what iPOTUS reads on the prompter or the note cards they make for him. He's nothing but a dishonest shill anyway.

Moving on. I don't care what consenting adults do in their own bedrooms. I do care that elected Democrats, the media and Biden are gaslighting Americans in their attempts to affirm the sexualization of children with drag queen shows, school miseducation programs and misrepresenting LGBTQ persons as supportive of pedophilia. Pedophilia is not "minor attracted adults." Pedophilia is a sick perversion.

I'm sorry, Alexander, to co-opt the title of your book, but I'm having a "terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day," as I consider the incompetent POTUS, his inept cabinet and the vacuous White House parrot, Karine Jean-Pierre. And I'm sickened by his freak show hire of luggage thief Sam Brinton and the conflicted Rachel Levine. I will not be gaslighted into affirming incompetence, perversion or the denial of science and genetics.

And it goes on. A friend sent me a meme showing a woman in the ocean, wearing a beach hat and a facemask. The caption read, "Biden voter?" I laughed, but we've all seen it; people riding bikes or alone in their cars wearing a face mask. There are of course exceptions. People who are sick should be at home, but if they have to be out, wearing a mask might help protect others. Also, people receiving chemotherapy or with immune system dysfunction might justify wearing a N95 mask. However, wearing an N95 properly is difficult and uncomfortable. And a cloth mask or multiple masks don't protect the wearer and are worthless for children.

A shibboleth is a word, custom or language distinctive of a group. Southerners identify themselves with a drawl that becomes more prominent the further south you go. The word derives from the book of Judges describing a war between the men of Gilead and Ephraimites. When Ephraimites were challenged to say "shibboleth" they could only say "sibboleth" which identified them as the enemy. I wonder if the routine wearing of a mask identifies one's political bent?

Every day brings new revelations of collusion between Twitter and governmental officials. If you were running a social media platform you'd need software engineers, accountants, business experts, etc. Would you need or hire ex-intelligence agents? And yet the Twitter Files show dozens of high-level personnel from intelligence agencies. Perhaps President Trump's "mean tweets" were just a ruse to remove him from Twitter and other platforms. Perhaps the president was sabotaged by former deep state operatives who had been relocated to Twitterdom. I suspect the collusion between the government and Big Tech to influence our elections goes far beyond Twitter.

In 2017 the Washington Post adopted the slogan, "Democracy dies in the dark." The phrase was once attributed to Watergate Bob Woodward who says that he heard it elsewhere. It came from a US 6th Court of Appeal judge, Damon J. Keith. How ironic that Techlord Jeff Bezos, who owns the Post, adopted a phrase that makes a mockery of truth and democracy.

I wish I could say I feel better after ventilating, but I don't. I'm too angry. The only thing that will help is to get my country back from leftists and to put the criminals in the back of the jail with Bubba.

Cartoon character Pogo was right. We elected leftists and criminals. It is up to us to correct the mistakes.

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