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Continuing our random Pintastic videos from the past as we count down to Pintastic NE 2023 we have Jersey Jack of Jersey Jack Pinball talking about his game Dialed In
If you go to the Jersey Jack web site you’ll find most of the games made by them are sold out. That’s how good their stuff is.
Today is the feast day of the passion of St. John the Baptist.
As a rule the Catholic Church celebrates the feast day of saints on the day they die. John the Baptist is the only saint where this is not the case, like Mary and Christ himself both his birth day and the day of his death (or in Mary’s case the Feast of the Assumption) are feast days of the Church. We celebrate St. John the Baptist’s birth in June and his death today.
It’s very fitting to ponder the feast of the beheading of John the Baptist because he was slaughtered for the same crime that many in America are now being punished for: Telling the truth.
You see John called out Herod for marrying his brother’s wife while he was still alive. This was a pretty good deal for Herodias as it gave her power and position and she never forgave John for publicly calling Herod out. Meanwhile even though Herod imprisoned John he not only didn’t kill him, but would go to the dungeons and listen to him. He didn’t have the courage to release him, nor did he have the courage to repent and give up his elicit marriage but he understood John was right.
So when Herod in front of his entire court made a injudicious promise to give Herodias’ daughter anything she the daughter at her mother’s prompting demanded on a platter the head of John the Baptist and Herod knowing it was wrong but not having the wisdom of Abe Lincoln who said: “Bad promises are better broken than kept.”, promptly had him executed and the head delivered to the girl who gave it to her mother.
Put simply John was executed for publicly saying aloud the truth that threatened the power of Herodias and Herod went along because he feared for his public reputation more than he honored truth.
This is America today.
We have not reach the “promptly executed” point in the US but if things don’t change it’s only a matter of time.
You see when we say basic truths like:
We find an army of woke Herodias’ outraged not because those statements are false but because those statements challenge their delusions or their profits or their power bases and that army of woke Herodians put pressure on an army of Herod who they have granted their political, financial or even in some cases sexual favors to in their quest to get what they want.
Thus many institutions or pols, or business knowing that those making those statements are right but fearful of the wrath of the army of woke Herodians buckle. but not all.
There are still some who either because they still retain some backbone or fear the masses of the people more than the army of woke Herodians (who are actually much smaller then they appear) decide to reject them and side with the people and each time they it strikes fear in the hearts of the woke Herodians because they know their power is dependent on the fear of their Herods and the indifference of the masses.
There are John the Baptists out there. Tucker Carlson who faced the wrath of the woke Herodians but thrived despite it, Riley Gaines who refuses to bend the knee to Transgender Inc. Joe Rogan who talked openly about ivermectin to be used in Covid cases, Ron DeSantis who didn’t give in to either the COVID hysteria or the Disney/woke crowd on sexualizing children and yes Donald Trump as well who refused to bend the knee even as he is treated like an enemy of the state for being an enemy of dishonest elections.
I’m sure when the tyranny falls as all eventually do, first slowly and then all at once, millions will suddenly declare that they were with us just as many Frenchmen declared they were with the resistance as soon as the Germans were gone but till then who do you wish emulate? John the Baptist who spoke truth aloud and is remembered by two feasts of the church or Herodians who would with Herod would eventually die in exile?
Choose wisely.
Update: Tucker Carlson nails it:
Pintastic NE is only 10 days away and since there are no longer 993 Youtube subscribers (funny how they cancelled me just before I qualified to monetize my 14+ years of work wasn’t it) to see the nearly 10 years of video I shot from the very 1st pintastic over the next 10 days I’ll be putting up random videos from previous pintastic events.
Here is Gabe D’Annunzio the man who makes the event possible. I traditionally end each Pintastic interviewing him. Here is my closing interview from Pintastic NE 2017
fyi my entire youtube library (with 970 subscribers) is available on rumble, consider subscribing
By Christopher Harper
If you want to know what’s wrong with America’s elites, read on.
The New York Times asked 17 elite writers to opine on “one piece of culture [that] captures the spirit of our country.”
The answers are startlingly cynical. Maureen Dowd thinks Americans are ‘highly susceptible.” Her suggestion for the piece of culture that captures today’s America is the 1956 motion picture, “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” in which aliens take over the bodies of ordinary people to march in lockstep with the country’s leaders. I always thought the film showed how a few people could fight the majority.
Like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Great Gatsby,” Ross Douthat argues that Americans are “on the make.” I never really was a Fitzgerald fan during my college days when I majored in English literature. I was more of a John Milton man.
Farhad Manjoo writes that we are “gleefully nihilist” and cites the cartoon “South Park” as representative of today’s America. Fortunately, I’ve never watched the show.
Nicholas Kristoff complains about “the lie of individual responsibility,” where people can pull themselves up by their bootstraps. As Kristoff puts it: “Why is the United States one of very few wealthy countries to lack mandatory paid family leave, universal health care, child allowances and national pre-K and child care? Why do we tolerate a failed foster care system?” Methinks Nick favors socialism!
Jamelle Bouie describes a country “living with existential fear.” He argues that “the United States is in the midst of a second Gilded Age. For millions of Americans and for many young people in particular, the 2020s have been — thus far — a time of anxiety and dread, marked by social disruption, failing institutions, and a deepening sense of urgency over the ability of humans to survive on this planet without destroying its environment.” Does he really think we are in that bad a shape? I’d put him on suicide watch if he does.
My favorite is Zeynep Tufekci, who was born in Turkey and came to this country for her education. She calls the United States “painfully exception,” meaning, in her words, exceptional in its lack of “universal health care, lots of guns, a violent drug trade, voluminous drug overdose deaths, and middle-class jobs that allow skating by, as long as people don’t get sick.” To her, “Breaking Bad” symbolizes a cultural event that captures America. I would suggest that Ms. Tufekci spend time evaluating her home country.
I have had the opportunity to visit and live in more than 70 countries worldwide, seeing the historical landmarks of the Silk Road of China to the pyramids of Egypt and from the poverty of India to the wealth of Denmark. I’ve reported on celebrations and wars in the Middle East. I’ve even lived near the place where, in 1835, French author Alexis de Tocqueville described “the exceptionalism of the United States.”
I still believe that our country is exceptional–as do many people in the countries I’ve lived in and visited. What’s most likely to change that exceptionalism is the cynicism of our elites.
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