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Signs of the Times
I’ve grown to hate walking through my suburban Atlanta neighborhood. The unease has been building for years, but in the insane year of 2020, the tipping point has been reached. The misguidedness of too many of my neighbors can no longer be tolerated. The only thing that gives me comfort now is the knowledge that very soon I’ll be leaving for “redder” pastures.
Who knew that beneath the leafy, idyllic exterior of my suburban redoubt lurked so many hearts – or rather, minds – of darkness. I won’t say “hearts” because, after all, they mean well.
Down every street, around every corner, are the signs (literally) of the decimation of traditional American values and the precipitous rise of human foolishness. Posted in front yards so all who pass by can see the supposed virtue of the residents, are the signs proclaiming their leftist, if not outright Marxist, viewpoints. Would it be too much to ask for them to just keep it to themselves? Yes, it would! They are fully in line with the zeitgeist of the times and that means putting it in your face whether you like it or not.
So, let’s start with one of the most popular signs of 2020: Black Lives Matter. My neighbors, like millions of other white people, don’t seem to comprehend that they are promoting a Marxist terrorist group that hates them, wants to overthrow the US government, wants to replace capitalism with communism, and wants to get rid of the traditional nuclear family. In other words, BLM wants to totally destroy the way of life of these clueless white suburbanites who are promoting them. But my neighbors apparently think that BLM is simply about racial equality and the ending of “systemic racism,” which in actuality was essentially dismantled decades ago. This all begs a very profound question: How do otherwise intelligent people get this hoodwinked?
The same could be asked of the numerous residents who have signs bearing an artistic portrait of … George Floyd! That’s right, the martyred thug who was used as an excuse to unleash violent anarchy in almost every major city in the country. Remember that? The burning buildings, the looting, the assault, the murder, the chaos, the nihilism? Because of the death of this career thug, the most colossally insane and self-destructive idea ever hatched by sentient human beings became a thing: abolish – or at the very least, defund – the police. That’ll show those racist cops! But will virtue-signaling white suburbanites still be down with that when the perpetually aggrieved hordes come to pillage and burn their neighborhoods and there’s no police to stop it?
Since long before the madness of 2020, there has been a particularly obnoxious sign dotting the neighborhood that catalogs the secular beliefs of the residents. There are numerous variations, but they’re always something like this:
IN THIS HOUSE WE BELIEVE
BLACK LIVES MATTER
SCIENCE IS REAL
NO HUMAN IS ILLEGAL
LOVE IS LOVE
This sign, in all its vapid variations, is what a half-century or more of leftist brainwashing and dismantling of Judeo-Christian values has done to our people. Rendered incapable of rational analysis, too many people are now just spiritually empty bundles of emotions and impulses that are then assuaged with leftist tropes and childish gibberish.
We’ve covered Black Lives Matter. Let’s move on to “science is real.” Volumes could be written on this, but just to put it in a nutshell: that realness only applies when it coincides with leftist ideology. Otherwise, it is utterly ignored, if not demonized. For instance, there’s this science called “biology” and it doesn’t square with the current transgender mania. Biology says that male and female are not interchangeable, but are hardwired and immutable. But anyone who dares say that in public will be censored by Big Tech and branded a transphobic bigot.
And then there’s Covid. Just follow the science, they tell us, because “science is real.” Problem is, until the science got infected with leftist tyranny, it had never proclaimed that civilization had to be shut down over a virus. Problem is, the science isn’t exactly “settled.” Back in March, Fauci told us that wearing masks is pointless. Soon thereafter, they practically became mandatory. Many months ago it was “two weeks to flatten the curve.” Now, we all may be wearing masks and enduring various degrees of shutdown through 2021, if not forever.
“Science is real,” huh? Like the science of climate change. You can’t count on your local weather forecast for the day after tomorrow, but the science of climate change is “settled,” nothing left to debate, case closed. Therefore, the entire planet has to undergo a fundamental transformation of its energy use, economy, and governance, which will leave us all in poverty (and maybe in the dark). Yep, science doesn’t get much more real than that.
Moving on from science, “no human is illegal.” You know, like an “illegal” alien? This is just an idiotic slogan designed to condone the illegal overrunning of our country by limitless hordes from the failed states of Latin America. And only because they are deemed “people of color.” If they were white, nobody – at least on the left – would want them.
Ah, here’s a sweet one: “love is love.” Is that like saying, “It doesn’t matter who you love?” So there are no natural boundaries? No such thing as sexual perversions? No taboos? Anything goes? Anybody or anything can “love” anybody or anything else? Just let your freak flag fly and follow any impulse that happens to tickle your fancy? It’s all so tolerant and liberating – and just look at how much better off we are after a half-century of this!
Well, that was a brief tour of the worldview and belief system of most of my neighbors as reflected by their yard signs. It seems pretty obvious that the “long march through the institutions” has been terrifyingly successful, both in this neighborhood and in the country at large. That “long march” was a cultural Marxist strategy first proposed by Italian communist Antonio Gramsci. The purpose of cultural Marxism was to overthrow Western countries that are based on Judeo-Christian values and capitalism, not through violent revolution, but through what amounts to the subversion of their institutions, which then trickles down through everything else. My own subverted neighborhood, as well as so many others, now lies in spiritual and intellectual ruins.
What I wouldn’t give to see yard signs with the following:
IN THIS HOUSE WE BELIEVE
IN THE JUDEO-CHRISTIAN GOD
IN THE U.S. CONSTITUTION
LIFE BEGINS AT CONCEPTION
SCIENCE IS A TOOL, NOT SOMETHING TO “BELIEVE IN”
BORDERS MATTER
But that won’t be happening around here anytime soon. Over many decades my neighborhood has devolved from traditional, common-sense American values into a la-la-land of vapid leftist tropes which, if seriously followed, can only eventually end in self-destruction. So I’m gettin’ the hell outta Dodge, and soon.
Where am I going? Without being specific, I’ll relate something said by a relative in a conversation we had months ago about the ongoing George Floyd riots: “If they come here, they’ll be taking gunfire from every house.”
That’s where I’m going. To a place where I’ll be surrounded by people like that, rather than the useful idiots in this neighborhood who would be rolling out the red carpet for those who would actually destroy them.
Published in General
Outstanding post.
Here’s a sign:
Science!
Please don’t leave until you vote in the Senate run-off election.
Who the heck walks in any suburban neighbourhood? The suburbs are made for driving!
;-)
I’m about where you are, but, being the eternal pessimist, I’m assuming that, once I end up somewhere else, all of the blue people fleeing blue states will end up there too.
With respect to “illegal aliens,” that’s what the Supreme Court calls them.
One time, a leftist told me no people are illegal. I responded by saying how about we call them people who are present in this country in violation of our laws, and asked how thta was. Toi which she had no response.
The only “sign” in my yard is the brand new American Flag I purchased a week before the election along with a set of ultra-bright LED lights…that seems to cover the agenda above and it is impossible not to see it as you drive down the street.
I can name that place in 11 words: Parker County, Texas.
I am thinking of making my own yard sign.
How’s this?
All Human Lives Matter
Because Souls are on Loan from G-d
Science is a Tool
Not a Belief System
The US Constitution
Deserves our Loyalty
Let’s start printing up lawn signs.
I think we have to stop retreating and standing our ground. Unless we can amass enough people that the Blue States lose representation in Congress.
Oh, man. This felt good to read. Because that’s what it’s all about, right? Feelings. Nothing else matters.
. . .
As for signs, I want one of these:
Conservative bumper stickers don’t work as well as leftist ones…
I very much like the post, Greg. Great job.
I wouldn’t use Judeo-Christian. I’ve been trending away from the philo-Semitism into which I was indoctrinated as a child. Sadly, as a group, American Jews may be the single most troubling demographic in our country. They are a very tiny group (about 2% of less), but unusually capable and accomplished (probably due to an average IQ in the 110-115 range).
The IQ point is “controversial,” apparently. In this context, I think that “controversial” means something like “a fact that makes Leftists angry but is strongly supported by reliable empirical evidence.”
However, as a group, American Jews are wildly Left-wing. I may need to do a separate post on this. The Pew Religious Landscape survey, conducted in 2014, found the following:
I realize that not all Jews share these beliefs.
I’m also concerned that, in the 20th Century, Jews were remarkably prominent among the major Left-wing movements that, in my view, have led our country to its current state of depravity. Your post mentioned Gramsci. Another notable source of our present ills was the Frankfurt School, a group of Marxist or neo-Marxist scholars, and based on my quick review, all of the core Frankfurt School guys were Jews. That’s very strange. (I do need to double-check this information, and have been contemplating a post on the issue.)
Thus, I’ve been troubled by the tendency to use “Judeo-Christian” as an adjective (or “Judaeo-Christian”). As a follower of Jesus, I certainly don’t deny the fact that Christianity emerged out of Judaism, and I study the Old Testament quite intently. The Israelite heroes and judges and kings and prophets are examples to us all, and the revelation that they received was the true word of God, in my belief. But it was incomplete, in my view, and that is a major gulf separating Jews from Christians.
I have been troubled by this trend in my thinking, but I believe that it is accurate. I’m actually semi-convinced that the mid-20th Century pro-Jewish propaganda, in America, was an early instance of the identity politics that I find so objectionable.
Conscientious Objector in the War of All Against All.
Unless you have a really big bumper.
Maybe this is why conservatives drive SUV’s instead of Priuses?
You will find an interesting swing with those statistics broken down by form of Judaism.
It’s about the bubble in which they have always lived.
In other words: don’t use such a broad brush. The differences between Jews are much greater than the differences between members of other so-called groups.
Sure, they do.
kidCoder: Do you have a source for this? I do expect that more observant American Jews would tend more toward the conservative side, but I don’t have a data source for this at the moment.
iWe: I can paint with the brush that I choose. My objection was to the term “Judeo-Christian,” which — I think — was a deliberate political and semantic effort to build an association between American Jews and traditional American Christians. I know that there are American Jews who share many of my traditional views, but the empirical evidence indicates that there are very few of them. And, sadly, the empirical evidence indicates that most American Jews are part of the radical Left in this country.
@kidcoder and I live in it. The Orthodox Jewish world voted overwhelmingly for Trump, for example. Every single orthodox media source I know of, endorsed The Donald.
Judaism is not, in a snapshot, defined by Jews. It is defined by the Torah, what is sustained from generation to generation. Ours is the most conservative religion in history, and those whose grandchildren will still be Jewish are predominantly from the religiously and politically conservative observant Jews today.
We who are Torah Jews are very unhappy about being lumped in with people who know nothing at all about Judaism or the Torah, but are nevertheless loud (and, as you say, invariably liberal).
I have much more in common with Christians than with liberal Jews. A fact which is very clear to me, as I have both liberal Jewish and devoutly Christian relatives.
I would be careful if I were you, in arguing with Ricochet’s Jews. We have quite a few Orthodox Jews, and they lament the sorry condition of their Reform brethren who have rejected the foundations of Judaism in their support of abortion and homosexual “marriage”, among other things. I am not Orthodox, but I am with them here on Ricochet.
I’m curious about this. Why should I be careful? I’m not sure what you mean by this.
Too late, @rushbabe49, Jerry has repeatedly shown his contempt for ALL Jews and his unapologetic wish for our rapid and complete conversion to Christianity (he’s not so fond of Catholics, either). Like many who deny history, he suggests that philo-Semitism in this country began with guilt over the holocaust rather than as one of the founding doctrines of the pilgrims that was expanded and continued through to the founding of this great nation. This is not a Christian country in origin, but very much one built on Judaic principles, as were most of the underlying ethics of Western Civilization. That is why this is considered a Judeo-Christian country. There is very little unique to the New Testament, other than the Jesus claims. The Christian countries–those of Europe–were the ones from which the Pilgrims fled. Those were also the countries that repeatedly, viciously, and murderously oppressed Jews for nearly 2000 years. Genesis 12:3 is not a coincidence, it’s a covenant.
<< GASP >>
This could be the crux of it: what makes you think they’re “otherwise intelligent?”
Can you post a larger version of that, so I can save it?
I can see a few problems with that. For starters, are women after menopause, no longer women?