I am not a religious person but to me it is very hard not to see that perhaps the biggest problem facing our country and indeed the world is a deep spiritual rot. People without any faith or belief in a purpose greater than themselves seek out all sorts of remedies to fill the gaping holes in their souls. With no belief in objective truth, they believe that a boy can be a girl and vice versa merely by wishing it so, they believe that they can recapture their lost youth with injections and surgeries that turn their faces into grotesque masks. These seem to me all signs of a culture teetering on the edge of collapse.
Perhaps the most important indicator of a society in deep trouble is the decline in life expectancy in the past few years. COVID has played a part in the decline, but we have also witnessed large increases in overdose deaths and deaths related to alcohol abuse, in other words deaths of despair. I never thought I would see this in my lifetime.
So much has gone wrong in the last few years politically and economically but at least with those issues, I can at least imagine a solution even though it seems very far away. I don't know what it takes for a culture to get its moral compass back once it has been lost.
I think this essay is timely, accurate, relevant, clear and compelling. Thank-you for courageously sharing your talent. Reminds me of No Country For Old Men; good people are going to suffer for being kind and caring; and the outcome of the battle is in doubt. Lucky for me I’m Catholic and this world is just an el stop to the final destination.
This: "You know it’s a cult when they try to separate children from parents, which is exactly what much of the Left is doing now."
As far as the whole gender fluidity thing: It's a free country - adults can call themselves what they want. But you know what else? It's a free country - I don't have to play along. Or at least I shouldn't, and when the government starts attempting to force unbelievers to profess the new faith, we have a huge problem.
I was waiting for a piece after the "Grammy's" and you didn't disappoint. Trans: going to take a hard line here - If you are in support of transitioning a minor I think you should be in jail as you neglected to tell them the truth and then didn't mentor them. If you are an adult and want to mutilate yourself, have at it as long as my tax dollars aren't a part of it.
Madonna: In the 90's Heather Locklear was on that show with Michael J Fox and, in her mid forties, was still one of the most breathtakingly beautiful women around, precisely because of her 'it' or personality. And then she mutilated herself into her own silo. Madonna would have 'weathered the storm' very well too and then mutilated herself as well. My wife of 29 years is still quite beautiful at 52; her friends are botoxing themselves and it is making them look older. Don't do it, ladies, just be your wonderful selves.
"Give me four years to teach your children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted." Vladimir Lenin. Communist.
My husband and I had pizza tonight at a neighborhood pizza joint. Among the songs we heard: Gimme Shelter, RESPECT, Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door. My husband said, “We sure did win with our music”. So glad to have grown up with the music of the 60’s and 70’s as the soundtrack of my life. Haven’t paid any attention to the Grammy’s in years. That's not real music. Although we do like Adele.
The thing about the satanic performance that offended the most was it’s complete lack of any semblance of talent. The lyrics are crappy and predicable, Sam Smith sounds like garbage and the choreography consisted of a bunch of devilish imps rubbing their asses against the devil.
I was offended by the fact the only point of the performance was to make a spectacle of themselves.
I'm gay and I find the term "hetero-normative" to be be one of the most patently offensive and sanctimonious slurs in the vast opus of the woke catechism. FFS, gays are something like 2 - 2.5 percent of the population -- of course hetero is "normal". That doesn't have to mean that gay is wrong.
You've now officially become my favorite Substack. What a great piece. I have nothing at all against the LGBTQ-WKRP-KFC crowd. Just don't make me twist into a pretzel and play every new silly game you come up with. Every new outrage you manufacture to show us how much better you are then we are and every chapter of recent history that ends with you being dead wrong and having lied and played with the facts without a shred of remorse comes closer and closer to the moment I truly stop caring, needing, or wanting your approval, consent, business, or even kindness. Just let's all agree that the next time they try and lock us down, or change the way we vote or make us believe up is down and North is South we're gonna just fart in their faces which is what they do to us now,
I had to go find the video of "Unholy." Doesn't anyone understand how "transphobic" it is? We're told day in and day out that "trans women" just want to be treated like women. They want to be indistinguishable from "cis" women. And the moment Sam Smith and whoever handles him gets a chance to do something featuring "trans women" and "drag," he gives into every ugly stereotype about both that there is. They are a highly sexualized sideshow act, a freak show. They're not mainstream. They don't want to be women. They want to be men posing as strippers and street walkers, and bad versions at that, that depend on us understanding that they are in fact men. Babylon Bee couldn't have made a satire video any more disparaging of "trans women" and "drag queens" than Sam Smith did.
This is not Satanism. This is an absolutely loss of humanity. I don't want to cancel it, or outlaw it. I want people to see it for what it is, a destruction of beauty and creativity and shared experience in exchange for self-degradation and extreme selfishness. We can't survive as a society like this.
Over the past few years I have repeated the phrase, “The Emperor has No Clothes,” too many damn times. To quote Lizzo, “It’s About Damn Time,” someone told him he is N A K E D!!
There remain many independent music voices out there, despite the increasingly ugly Corporate ‘Product’ the Grammy’s continue to try and sell us.
If you have 18 min, this Nina Blackwood (MTV VJ original) 1984 interview of Frank Zappa is quite prophetic of the Sam Smith, Styles and Swifts we had then, and have today
I celebrated the Grammy’s by watching a new 4K drop of the classic 1983 ‘Stop Making Sense’. I give you the great David Byrne and Tina Weymouth with no commercial breaks!
I’m not anti-trans either. But yeah, the wedges resulting from their addition to the LGB movement isn’t something I can bring myself to celebrate. Recently I became a little miffed when the 3 trans individuals in my daughters HS choir made a somewhat big stink at start of year, wanting all choir members to ditch the dress and everyone must instead wear tuxes to all events. Dresses won out for those that wanted, but this is bit of the cultural creep on that front, on my slice of mainstreet.
I am not a religious person but to me it is very hard not to see that perhaps the biggest problem facing our country and indeed the world is a deep spiritual rot. People without any faith or belief in a purpose greater than themselves seek out all sorts of remedies to fill the gaping holes in their souls. With no belief in objective truth, they believe that a boy can be a girl and vice versa merely by wishing it so, they believe that they can recapture their lost youth with injections and surgeries that turn their faces into grotesque masks. These seem to me all signs of a culture teetering on the edge of collapse.
Perhaps the most important indicator of a society in deep trouble is the decline in life expectancy in the past few years. COVID has played a part in the decline, but we have also witnessed large increases in overdose deaths and deaths related to alcohol abuse, in other words deaths of despair. I never thought I would see this in my lifetime.
So much has gone wrong in the last few years politically and economically but at least with those issues, I can at least imagine a solution even though it seems very far away. I don't know what it takes for a culture to get its moral compass back once it has been lost.
I think this essay is timely, accurate, relevant, clear and compelling. Thank-you for courageously sharing your talent. Reminds me of No Country For Old Men; good people are going to suffer for being kind and caring; and the outcome of the battle is in doubt. Lucky for me I’m Catholic and this world is just an el stop to the final destination.
This: "You know it’s a cult when they try to separate children from parents, which is exactly what much of the Left is doing now."
As far as the whole gender fluidity thing: It's a free country - adults can call themselves what they want. But you know what else? It's a free country - I don't have to play along. Or at least I shouldn't, and when the government starts attempting to force unbelievers to profess the new faith, we have a huge problem.
I was waiting for a piece after the "Grammy's" and you didn't disappoint. Trans: going to take a hard line here - If you are in support of transitioning a minor I think you should be in jail as you neglected to tell them the truth and then didn't mentor them. If you are an adult and want to mutilate yourself, have at it as long as my tax dollars aren't a part of it.
Madonna: In the 90's Heather Locklear was on that show with Michael J Fox and, in her mid forties, was still one of the most breathtakingly beautiful women around, precisely because of her 'it' or personality. And then she mutilated herself into her own silo. Madonna would have 'weathered the storm' very well too and then mutilated herself as well. My wife of 29 years is still quite beautiful at 52; her friends are botoxing themselves and it is making them look older. Don't do it, ladies, just be your wonderful selves.
"Give me four years to teach your children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted." Vladimir Lenin. Communist.
My husband and I had pizza tonight at a neighborhood pizza joint. Among the songs we heard: Gimme Shelter, RESPECT, Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door. My husband said, “We sure did win with our music”. So glad to have grown up with the music of the 60’s and 70’s as the soundtrack of my life. Haven’t paid any attention to the Grammy’s in years. That's not real music. Although we do like Adele.
The thing about the satanic performance that offended the most was it’s complete lack of any semblance of talent. The lyrics are crappy and predicable, Sam Smith sounds like garbage and the choreography consisted of a bunch of devilish imps rubbing their asses against the devil.
I was offended by the fact the only point of the performance was to make a spectacle of themselves.
I'm gay and I find the term "hetero-normative" to be be one of the most patently offensive and sanctimonious slurs in the vast opus of the woke catechism. FFS, gays are something like 2 - 2.5 percent of the population -- of course hetero is "normal". That doesn't have to mean that gay is wrong.
We're just special, that's all.
I just can’t help feeling that the culture and cult the Grammy’s represented has definitely jumped the shark.
Sam Smith’s performance was banal. It’s been done before. He’s a sad person.
On the positive side a lot more conservatives are against Pfizer.
"Fear of age. Fear of no one caring about you. Fear of being normal. Fear of being ignored. Fear of being old."
Wow; worth reading the rest of your post later ... 😉🙂
Reminds me of:
"No memory of having starred,
Atones for later,
Total disregard ...."
https://www.poetryverse.com/robert-frost-poems/provide-provide
You've now officially become my favorite Substack. What a great piece. I have nothing at all against the LGBTQ-WKRP-KFC crowd. Just don't make me twist into a pretzel and play every new silly game you come up with. Every new outrage you manufacture to show us how much better you are then we are and every chapter of recent history that ends with you being dead wrong and having lied and played with the facts without a shred of remorse comes closer and closer to the moment I truly stop caring, needing, or wanting your approval, consent, business, or even kindness. Just let's all agree that the next time they try and lock us down, or change the way we vote or make us believe up is down and North is South we're gonna just fart in their faces which is what they do to us now,
I had to go find the video of "Unholy." Doesn't anyone understand how "transphobic" it is? We're told day in and day out that "trans women" just want to be treated like women. They want to be indistinguishable from "cis" women. And the moment Sam Smith and whoever handles him gets a chance to do something featuring "trans women" and "drag," he gives into every ugly stereotype about both that there is. They are a highly sexualized sideshow act, a freak show. They're not mainstream. They don't want to be women. They want to be men posing as strippers and street walkers, and bad versions at that, that depend on us understanding that they are in fact men. Babylon Bee couldn't have made a satire video any more disparaging of "trans women" and "drag queens" than Sam Smith did.
This is not Satanism. This is an absolutely loss of humanity. I don't want to cancel it, or outlaw it. I want people to see it for what it is, a destruction of beauty and creativity and shared experience in exchange for self-degradation and extreme selfishness. We can't survive as a society like this.
Over the past few years I have repeated the phrase, “The Emperor has No Clothes,” too many damn times. To quote Lizzo, “It’s About Damn Time,” someone told him he is N A K E D!!
Excellent piece. Thank you!
There remain many independent music voices out there, despite the increasingly ugly Corporate ‘Product’ the Grammy’s continue to try and sell us.
If you have 18 min, this Nina Blackwood (MTV VJ original) 1984 interview of Frank Zappa is quite prophetic of the Sam Smith, Styles and Swifts we had then, and have today
https://youtu.be/Eln3J6BxWN0
I celebrated the Grammy’s by watching a new 4K drop of the classic 1983 ‘Stop Making Sense’. I give you the great David Byrne and Tina Weymouth with no commercial breaks!
https://youtu.be/-oVami1uT7Q
I’m not anti-trans either. But yeah, the wedges resulting from their addition to the LGB movement isn’t something I can bring myself to celebrate. Recently I became a little miffed when the 3 trans individuals in my daughters HS choir made a somewhat big stink at start of year, wanting all choir members to ditch the dress and everyone must instead wear tuxes to all events. Dresses won out for those that wanted, but this is bit of the cultural creep on that front, on my slice of mainstreet.
Be well all