Saturday Sermon

 

Willie Nelson Fixed This

People in London complain because COVID asset strippers killed off landmarks, like Simpson's on the Strand, the Savoy Tailors Guild and great bank branches like Lloyd's Law Courts and the Aldwych/Strand Barclays, which is now an annoyingly overpriced restaurant. And pubs, the Tipperary on Fleet Street (oldest Irish pub in town?) is now no more. 

How very tragic, and I mean that. Hopefully USD will continue to grow in strength so we can buy and save these places, for posterity and the good of all. You can imagine, there we are on the Strand and the monkey produces a battered $20 bill. Helpful simian, "Thank you, monkey, we shall buy this place."

But seriously, Londoners who think they have it bad should visit this rural Texan haven's town square and take stock.

Gary...

Quackers "ice cream parlor" and burger joint? Shut. Axe Throwing startup in our old Citizen's bank, shut. Antique shops, they tried to reinvent this town as an antique shop, shut x 4. Burger King? Shut. 2 of 4 car dealers? Shut. Gold Nugget Pawn? Shut. And the list goes on, small town mercantile carnage. But don't worry, your kid can get a sex change as zhir goes to a highway strip mall for puberty blockers. What a crock.

There's an issue here and a big one. Why can't we, the wealthiest, most powerful nation on the face of the planet make beautiful, livable cities and towns? And for a fact we mostly don't, we've produced one urban sh*thole after another, see Detroit, Chicago, Gary, Dallas, Fort Worth, Atlanta, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Upstate New York and on, take your pick.

Why? Market forces, greed? Sure, all of that and more besides, but it doesn't have to be this way. We have more than enough power and creativity to build places to live in to uplift heart and mind. To do so, we must change or convert our collective soul.

Acknowledging that such a thing exists would be a good start. And then, just maybe, seeing we were wrong to enthrone secular, temporal power in the heart of our towns, in the courthouse on the square. This would've been a cathedral or collegiate church in a better age. I won't bang on.

Let's fix our cities and towns.

Your Pal,

LSP

We Are Ruled By Mercenaries

Tucker Carlson slams our ruling elite, Republican and Democrat. Here's a snapshot, via Real Clear Politics:

We are ruled by mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to the people they rule. They’re day traders. Substitute teachers. They’re just passing through. They have no skin in this game, and it shows. They can’t solve our problems. They don’t even bother to understand our problems.

And again:

This is negligence on a massive scale. Both parties ignore the crisis in marriage. Our mindless cultural leaders act like it’s still 1961, and the biggest problem American families face is that sexism is preventing millions of housewives from becoming investment bankers or Facebook executives.

He concludes:

What kind of country do you want to live in? A fair country. A decent country. A cohesive country. A country whose leaders don’t accelerate the forces of change purely for their own profit and amusement. A country you might recognize when you’re old. A country that listens to young people who don’t live in Brooklyn. A country where you can make a solid living outside of the big cities. A country where Lewiston, Maine seems almost as important as the west side of Los Angeles. A country where environmentalism means getting outside and picking up the trash. A clean, orderly, stable country that respects itself. And above all, a country where normal people with an average education who grew up no place special can get married, and have happy kids, and repeat unto the generations. A country that actually cares about families, the building block of everything. 

What will it take a get a country like that? Leaders who want it. For now, those leaders will have to be Republicans. There’s no option at this point. But first, Republican leaders will have to acknowledge that market capitalism is not a religion. Market capitalism is a tool, like a staple gun or a toaster. You’d have to be a fool to worship it. Our system was created by human beings for the benefit of human beings. We do not exist to serve markets. Just the opposite. Any economic system that weakens and destroys families isn’t worth having. A system like that is the enemy of a healthy society. 

Internalizing this won’t be easy for Republican leaders. They’ll have to unlearn decades of bumper sticker-talking points and corporate propaganda. They’ll likely lose donors in the process. Libertarians are sure to call any deviation from market fundamentalism a form of socialism. That’s a lie. Socialism is a disaster. It doesn’t work. It’s what we should be working desperately to avoid. But socialism is exactly what we’re going to get, and soon, unless a group of responsible people in our political system reforms the American economy in a way that protects normal people. 

If you want to put America first, you’ve got to put its families first.

I think Carlson's right on target but that's just me, feel free to disagree.

Read the whole thing here or watch the movie.

Cheers,

LSP