The Major Point

Deron on Amazon says this about my book A Subtle Armageddon:

The title itself carries a powerful message, suggesting that destruction does not always arrive suddenly or dramatically. Sometimes the greatest changes happen quietly, gradually transforming everything people once considered normal. This idea creates an atmosphere of mystery and anticipation while raising questions about awareness, survival, and the future. What makes the book's premise particularly interesting is its potential to combine suspense with deeper philosophical questions. Rather than focusing solely on catastrophe, the concept invites readers to consider how easily stability can be disrupted and how important it is to recognize the warning signs of change.

I like his take. The fact is that changes in attitude rarely happen immediately. We slowly develop, as C. S. Lewis opines within The Screwtape Letters, and generally through forces outside of us (though we must strive hard to think for ourselves), into whatever people or peoples we finally become. To be sure, sudden, dramatic change can occur. The villain occasionally transforms into a hero within an instant. Yet we tend to be products of an extended process, both as nations and individuals.

Do you think not? A Subtle Armageddon may change your mind, and dramatically, perhaps.

Screams and Sobs

You don't see compilation videos of right-wingers screaming and sobbing after election losses: we understand there's something bigger than politics. My friends are my friends regardless of politics, especially as "little guys": in that regard, we are pawns of the system, but that's why it's far more important to focus on the bigger things in life: friends, family, faith.

Empires will come and go. Sometimes they'll be great, sometimes they'll decay. Eternity is much bigger. 

To this comment I say, Amen.

I remarked yesterday we should not make nor expect our politicians to be heroes or saviors. Those who do, well, they tend to shriek and moan when elections do not go their way. Their heroes are slain. There can be nothing save lament.

Me son Charlie, who is the author of the above quote, explains succinctly why the left are hyperbolic after elections (or certain government actions) while the right are relatively calm. Yes, yes, yes. I know, I know, I know. There are exceptions. Please don't be tedious. Because if we are honest, the screaming liberal trope is much more prominent than anything out of the right for a very obvious reason.

It's because the left take politics far too seriously. They fail to understand human frailty and thus don't see the long game. They expect the government to solve all ills. We on the right know, and I mean know, it will not and cannot. Folks do not become smarter, more reflective, more considerate and insightful, or more objective simply by having the title Senator precede their name. They're cut of the same cloth as we, those senators and representatives and presidents. And we know how we are, don't we?

That's why conservatives tend to simply go about their business the day after an election. Are elections important? Yes, very. Important enough to wrap our minds and lives around them? Emphatically not. We do not make better people by casting a ballot, neither of the electors or elected. We make better people by focusing on the bigger issues. Issues to which politics can hold neither candle nor hope.

The Day After

I'm writing this blog during Election Day 2026 even as I don't intend to publish it until the day after. Why? Because no one will listen to it as we vote. Likely as not neither will they afterwards, but such is life.

The key mistake we make in politics is in making our politicians heroes. They are not, nor can they be. At least, not the great many of them. In my life I would count only Ronald Reagan in that category at a national level, though I am also fond of Margaret Thatcher. I do like Javier Milei in Argentina based on what he's done so far. Yet it's too early in history to foist a crown upon him. Sorry, Trump supporters. I've been happy overall with him, yes, but he carries a lot, an incredible amount indeed, of baggage. It is a challenge enough to support him let alone think the man heroic.

To the point. Our politicians are human beings besieged by hundreds of others in their milieu. Can we expect heroism? Should we? Every candidate asserts in one way or another that they will make our lives better. Will circumstances let them? And why should we believe they're so damn much better for us than the folks we meet in our everyday lives anyway? 

The people I meet day in and day out treat me better than any politician ever will. I offer the grocer money and he gives me food. I pull up to a gas pump and get fuel without a hitch. Conversely, customers give me money, and I give them a chance to make a living. So begins a tremendously long list if I should choose to write it all out. But the point is this. We do not need the government for it to happen. We simply need people free to pursue their interests.

Government cannot provide that. Yet it can provide for a society in which it may happen. It can get the hell out of our way. No one I saw on the ballot seemed particularly interested in that, although I will be vaguely partisan and argue that the Republicans are generally better in at least talking the talk. But not by much. Not enough to get excited about it, anyway. Talk, as always, is cheap. That's why it's the primary currency of the politician.

But, whatever. Reagan is right, and Mamdani in New York emphatically wrong. Government is not the solution. It is the problem. Until we start voting with that thought paramount, we get what we deserve.

Young At Heart

I was talking with a young man yesterday and the subject turned to music. I'm not much on rap, but he liked it. That wasn't unexpected, considering our age difference.

What turned my head when he began talking about older rappers. He remarked, "Eminem was very popular, I know, but he was before my time."

That didn't make me feel old. Not at all. Why should I feel my age when a thirty-year-old man opines that an entertainer who my kids listened to in high school was before his time?  There's no reason for it. None at all.

And I will keep telling myself that. With a smile, as I stare into the distance in blissful ignorance.

Sound Falling

The answer to the question is: yes.

When a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear, it makes a sound. 

Sound is the waves which are caused by the fall. 

Our ears are only the receptors of sound, not the sound itself.

Annnnd go. I've stirred the pot. Let the debate begin!

Plastic Saw

Young kids, especially around 4 or 5 years old, can be very literal. It makes sense. They aren't old enough to appreciate nuances such as jokes.

As I sat on the bottom step of my porch handing out candy this past Halloween, a small boy in a serial killer costume approached. He was holding a clearly plastic chainsaw. "I'll give you candy if you please don't hurt me with your saw," I teased.

He stopped and pulled his mask onto the top of his head. "I won't hurt you," he told me with complete sincerity. Holding the chainsaw up for me to examine he continued, "See? It’s just a toy."

"Ahhh," I responded, trying to sound like I was comfortably reassured. It might have been the cutest thing I heard all night.

People Being People

Wednesday, I received a text asking whether I had four-foot-long drain snake cable sections. Responding yes, I was asked if they could be picked up Friday (yesterday) and at what time? I answered that Friday was fine and added that I was available from 10-3. I'm open longer than that, but have learned you have to corral folks. Availability can always be 'expanded' if and as necessary.

You will notice that I told the man 10 until 3. That information in the text I sent is time stamped 11:14 AM this past Wednesday.

Would you believe the guy texted me at 2:59 Friday afternoon asking when he could pick up those cables? I am not kidding, and I am not adding such detail to sensationalize the story. The text is time stamped 2:59 PM, Friday October 30. "Can you be here in one minute?" I wanted ask. Because, correct me if I'm wrong, being available from 10 till 3 means I am not available before 10 AM nor after 3 PM on a specifically given day.

Instead, I gritted my teeth and replied I could meet at 4. He answered in turn good, that his GPS said he was 42 minutes away. I said fine. He immediately returned, 'I'm not sure when I can be there though'. Then why in the hell were asking me to begin with?

Honestly, starting a text thread sixty seconds ahead of a deadline which I had given you two days before, being offered another time as you requested, then adding you really did not know when you could make it anyway? What. The. Hell. If it were me, I wouldn't have even bothered texting that late myself to begin with, knowing what he theoretically knew, and I'm not that much smarter than a trousered ape. But he still figured it was okay to ask, and at that not actually knowing his own availability.

In what universe can that possibly make sense? Or did Trick or Treat come early, and I'm being pranked?