Archive for the ‘culture’ Category

Christmas musings from an alienated “bah humbug” conservative in a Blue State

Posted: December 25, 2022 by John Ruberry in Blame Trump, blogs, culture, doctor who, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics, Uncomfortable Truths
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Blogger on the right with a friend near Augusta, Georgia in 2021

By John Ruberry

Last week my wife was invited to a party hosted by one of my daughter’s friends. 

Who wasn’t? Me.

There was some-and-forth, but my daughter explained that the host, who has been to my home and whose mother I’ve known for years through an old job, didn’t think I’d be “comfortable” there. After some probing, it became clear that it was my conservative political views that were the problem for them. 

I pressed my daughter, “What kind of ogre do they think I am?” Well, I muscled my way into an invite–after all, I’ve lived all of my life in the Chicago area, so I know all about muscling–and do you know what? I showed up to the party. The guests found me whimsical and charming. In other words–I was lovable myself. 

Over on Facebook I’ve been unfriended by many old friends–now unfriends–and at least one relative over my posts there. 

In addition to my Sunday blog entries on this site I have my own blog, Marathon Pundit. The rollicking comment threads on my Facebook page–or more accurately, argument threads–bring traffic to my blog, and sometimes, here at Da Tech Guy. Friends–in the flesh ones that is–as well as co-workers, look forward to the next tiff on my Facebook page. I’m reminded of that constantly. And as I am now in my sixth decade, my real career, parts of which involve writing, is winding down. Moreso than ever, as William Shakespeare said to the Tenth Doctor in Doctor Who, “Words are my trade.” Well, maybe not completely, but I do earn money blogging and I hope to earn more. 

Hey, I gotta eat.

And I absolutely do believe in what I write. And I voted for Donald J. Trump four times–twice in the Illinois Republican Primary and twice in the general election. I’m proud of those votes and I’m still 80/20 in regard to the former president. 

About those old friends: Many of them are carrying on without me. Sadly, but I suspect they see me as someone who has transformed himself into an SNL caricature of a conservative, a cross between the Muppets’ Sam Eagle and Archie Bunker, but sans the bigotry on the last one. 

I have long ears–and because of the blog–a long tongue. Oh, I stole that last line from Lawrence of Arabia. 

The invitations to get-togethers have stopped coming from most of them. I’ve been cancelled.

Bah humbug.

Oh, please don’t worry about me. I have a wife a daughter who love me. And many new friends. And I’m still in touch with some of those old friends. During my most recent vacations, in Alaska and Georgia, I re-connected with two of them–and I met a third friend in Texas, who I met through my blogging. That’s me up there on the right last year, with a high school friend who lives near Augusta, Georgia, who I hadn’t seen since we graduated so many years ago. That moment is my favorite of the current decade. 

A new friend–we met through Twitter–invited me for coffee when he visited Illinois this spring.

Even if I was really even partially Sam Eagle/Archie Bunker, your humble blogger is so much more. I work in an industry, automotive, that utterly fascinates people and I have numerous tips in regard to buying a car–without being ripped off. Your Marathon Pundit, currently nursing an injured hip, is really a runner. I’ve run 33 marathons. In addition to the blogging, I have another side hustle, stock photography. On the job, my real one, I’ve showed clients my portfolio, a couple of them are now selling pics online too.

I’m not a one trick eagle. 

Yet it is only Sam Eagle/Archie Bunker the liberals only see. Perhaps that is all they want to see. Such is life as a conservative in Deep Blue Illinois. 

Maybe I am the bad guy. On the flipside, I don’t believe so. According to a couple of polls, one here and another one here, it is the denizens of the left who are more likely to unfriend someone on social media than conservatives over politics. Oh yeah, liberals. The ones who so often have “Coexist” bumper stickers on their cars and “Hate Has No Home Here” signs on their lawn. 

Everyone is welcome in their world. Except for folks who don’t share their political beliefs. As for myself, I’ve never unfriended anyone on social media because of their political views.

Well, this is not the Christmas message you are accustomed to, but please let me reiterate, I am fine–please don’t tell Mrs. Marathon Pundit to hide the sharp objects. 

Christmas is a time for welcoming others. In Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Scrooge’s nephew always invited the miser to his home for Christmas dinner. 

Next Sunday is New Year’s Day. As Robert Burns wrote, “Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never thought upon.”

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. 

And God bless us, everyone.

Never forget.

Now it’s time for me to get dressed in my finest and head over to my sister’s home for a Christmas feast.

A special thanks goes to that friend in Georgia for permission to use the above photograph for this blog entry.

John Ruberry regularly blogs from the Chicago area at Marathon Pundit.

Behold Cerberus, the three-headed beast who wants to rule all of us

Posted: December 11, 2022 by John Ruberry in covid, culture, internet/free speech, media, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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Cerberus and Heracles. Etching by Antonio Tempesta (Italy, Florence, 1555–1630). The Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Graphic courtesy of Wikipedia.

By John Ruberry

A theme coming out of Elon Musk’s release of the Twitter Files is that there is a three headed beast that seeks to be an overlord of us all, who I am dubbing Cerberus. 

Why that name? According to Greek mythology, he was a vicious three-headed dog who guarded the underworld, the realm of the dead. Sometimes he was called the Hound of Hades. “Heads of snakes grew from his back, and he had a serpent’s tail,” Encyclopedia Brittanica tells us about Cerberus. If you are thinking of the hosts of The View now, then we are kindred spirits. 

There is a nexus between the federal government, most ominously the FBI, the mainstream media, and Big Tech. Information is of course power, and the Modern Cerberus used that power to suppress and censor the Hunter Biden laptop story, as well as dissenting opinions on the COVID-19 pandemic. And probably many more topics.

In regard to second one, I regularly see CDC public service TV ads that tells us that COVID is a serious health threat if you suffer from other ailments, not so much everyone else. Earlier this year, self-appointed COVID expert Bill Gates said of the virus, “We didn’t understand that it’s a fairly low fatality rate and that it’s a disease mainly in the elderly, kind of like flu is, although a bit different than that.” Expressing such opinions on Twitter of Facebook would lead those social media giants to suspend or ban users from their platforms in 2020 and 2021. 

The mythological Cerberus would devour and dead souls who tried to escape Hades. Let me rephrase it for our troubled times: the beast permanently banned them with no hope of appeal.

Moving from a prominent top federal government job to the media, and sometimes back again, is an old phenomenon, but it has accelerated lately–cable news is the culprit, and most of the participants in this transfer portal are Democrats. Jen Psaki comes to mind, as she has gone from working in the Barack Obama White House, to being a CNN contributor, then back to government as the White House press secretary under Joe Biden, then back to the media as an MSNBC contributor. 

As for Big Tech, Andy Stone, the communications director at Meta, the parent of Facebook, declared on Twitter in 2020 that FB, in regard to New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story, would be “reducing its distribution on our platform” until it was fact-checked. I call that suppression. Prior to joining Meta, Stone was a longtime congressional staffer, working exclusively for Democrats.

Last week Musk fired Twitter’s deputy general counsel, Jim Baker, who may have withheld damaging details involving the FBI and its alleged role in suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop reports. Baker, when he was an FBI attorney, played a part in the Donald Trump-Russiagate collusion red herring. Before he joined, Twitter, Baker was a CNN analyst. 

Benjamin Weingarten has more on what he calls the “revolving door between Democrat Deep State and Big Tech.”

Stifling the free flow of information is the stuff of totalitarian states. My wife was raised in the Soviet Union, she emigrated to the USA in 1991. An extreme example yes, but I was the one who told her that not only did the United States send men to the moon and safely return them to Earth–but did so six times. 

There was an incarnation of Cerberus in the USSR.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Five Assorted Thoughts Under the Fedora: Post Christian Old Twitter, Peer Pressure at FW Parker, Griner’s perspective, Sinema’s feint, Oil bills and Ben Franklin

Posted: December 9, 2022 by datechguy in culture, education, politics, tech, Uncomfortable Truths, under the fedora
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The 2nd batch of Twitter files dropped showing that the folks at Twitter pre-musk were lying though their teeth concerning shadow-banning and manipulating trends.

To conservatives this is no surprise, to the left now that denial is no longer an option have started calling it “Old News” but I suspect the endgame it what I predicted a while back deciding to say it’s justified and celebrate it.

This is what happens when you throw out the whole “Thou shalt not bear false witness” business.

Yesterday I speculated concerning the reaction of parents at the Francis W. Parker school over the Project Veritas revelations:

Now in fairness this is Chicago land of the left so it is possible that the school administration and the parents while wanting to avoid the drugs, guns and the lack of an actual education in the public schools, might pine for the indoctrination to the liberal/gay agenda that they kids are missing so it is very possible that they might be all on board with this kind of thing.

It hits me now that the school has publicly defended the Dean in question that even parents who are not onboard on this stuff might find themselves not only keeping silent but leaving their children in the school due to peer pressure, after all as part of the liberal Chicago elites who can afford to spend $40K annually for a private school they are part of an elite club and might get a lot of pushback socially for doing so.

Parents of courage and integrity will willing to pay the price for the sake of their kids, but for those who know this is wrong and stay silent, I say to them I have more respect for those who actually support this monstrosity than for you, at least they are acting according to their warped beliefs that it is right.

Social status or your kids welfare, choose one.

Of course if the funding dries up from Alumni all this will be moot as they’ll drop these folks like a hot iron.

Yesterday with the help of the Saudis and others the Biden Admin managed to get Brittany Griner back from Russia in exchange for a rather dangerous Russian operative.

To say the optics of the trade and the White House spin are bad is an understatement but I won’t begrudge the release of any American being held in a Russian prison for a trivial crime.

What I’m more interested in seeing is how Grimes who has not had a lot of kind words to say about her home country reacts the next time the Anthem is played at a WNBA game she is in.

There is nothing like being in a Russian jail cell to give a person perspective on the relative merits of one’s country vs another. One hopes Griner has gained said perspective through her ordeal but we will see.

There is a lot of fuss being made about Senator Kristin Sinema leaving the Democrat party. There should not be.

As long as Sinema is caucusing with the Democrats it will make no difference in control of the senate nor is it likely to make a difference in how she votes on issues.

The only reason for this change is to eliminate the need for her to run in a Democrat Primary.

What’s really going to be fun is to see her try to pull off a Murkowski but I suspect Charlie Schumer is going to be a lot less forgiving of this renegade incumbent than Mitch McConnell was of his.

After all for the left politics is their religion and they have no mercy for apostates.

Finally my first oil delivery and bill of the season came in. It’s double what it was back in the days of Trump.

A lot of people who happily voted for Biden in the Northeast are going to get an education on the principle that you get the government you deserve over the next few months.

And just wait till they get their local property tax bills because every single city and town is paying more for their oil and gas too and that’s going to be passed on in terms of limited services and higher tax bills.

Of course that’s not much comfort to me as I’m in the same boat despite warning them about it.

As Ben Franklin said: “Experience keeps a dear School, but Fools will learn in no other, and scarce in that” I don’t expect them to learn from this, because that would involve admitting they were wrong. They’d rather pay and buy blankets than face that horror.

Why You Should Put Your Kids into a Catholic School Vs just a Private School in one Video and a Pair of Tweets:

Posted: December 8, 2022 by datechguy in culture, education, News/opinion
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Otto Ludwig Piffl: Is everybody in this world corrupt?

Peripetchikoff: I don’t know everybody.

One Two Three 1961

Project Veritas has done it again exposing the Dean of Chicago’s Francis W. Parker school has some interesting priorities for the students in his charge:

If you wanted the dictionary definition of “Groomer” this guy would be it.

So how does this elite private school react to this, what’s their priority? To warn parents against the evil right wingers!

https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1600705953800024067?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1600705953800024067%7Ctwgr%5E3d617d4a31412b2370c8f312d31fc88d23b70c1c%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitchy.com%2Fsamj-3930%2F2022%2F12%2F08%2Ffrancis-w-parker-schools-response-to-dean-bragging-about-students-playing-with-dildos-is-even-worse%2F

Both they and the dean have since deleted their twitter accounts. Project veritas has replied in their now, thanks to Elon Musk restored twitter account.

All of this is an excellent reminder that while “private school” means an actual education it doesn’t mean you avoid the liberal agenda.

Now in fairness this is Chicago land of the left so it is possible that the school administration and the parents while wanting to avoid the drugs, guns and the lack of an actual education in the public schools, might pine for the indoctrination to the liberal/gay agenda that they kids are missing so it is very possible that they might be all on board with this kind of thing.

But may I suggest that if you are one of those few parents who not only want an actual education for your kids but aren’t all into the left’s groomer agenda, you might want to consider a Catholic primary or high school.

Closing thoughts: I’d be very interested in seeing the letter going to the alumni donors in explanation.

Closing thought 2: While I’m not a facebook person I took the liberty of checking the Wayback machine to see what was happening on their page. The screengrabs from March had all kinds of school stuff but all the grabs from today brought up 302 errors.

How about that!

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