Stupid and Proud

Random Stuff..

Sleepy Hollow, Behind the Scenes..

Our events here are so seasonal, and so varied, that they are governed by very long “check lists.”  Sleepy Hollow, for example, would include..

Pumpkins for Jack O’Lanterns..  ✓
Sunflower Seeds for Seed Spitting contest ✓
Apples and twine for bobbing ✓
Straw bales for hayride ✓
Event Programs ✓  (HP toner issues this time..)
Headless Horseman Costume __

Several hours before the first performance, no one could find the Headless Horseman’s cloak.  The entire farm was ransacked, and we were thinking, “can we create this in a few hours?”   (It’s pretty involved and requires football shoulder pads and custom shoulder straps.)  As some of our folks were beginning to work on a replacement, there it appeared in a white, unmarked plastic trash bag.

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The Storm “Out There..”

Our social media news feed is full of some very ugly stuff – doctors who get all “gender Frankenstein” with children, airline passenger-psychos who have to be restrained by other flyers, social justice warriors who engage in the “approved racism,” (hatred of white people) – but our REAL LIVES are pretty pleasant, aren’t they?  In practice, if I take my car in for servicing or order my favorite fajitas or show people where the Royal Gala apples are planted, it’s nothing but smiles and bliss.  It’s how Louis Armstrong described “shaking hands” and “how do you do.  (They’re really saying ‘I love you.’)”  Among the people I see, I don’t sense any simmering political anger, because 95% of the people you meet really are “live and let live.”  They don’t care about either Elizabeth Warren or Donald Trump.  They are paying the rent and making memories with their kids.

I know a couple in the hospitality industry who are very successful.  They entertain and feed people five days a week, and they have NO news feed of any sort in their lives.  That would just be buzz-kill for them; they have an investment in being happy hosts.  If you ask them whether they heard about the fake-meat scare, they tell you “no” and serve up one of their gourmet Polpettines, made from grass fed cattle.  It’s how they crowd the pain out of their universe.

I understand this because – caring as much as I do about politics and culture – I wouldn’t make it without the sincere investment our guests have in celebration, but I do have this warning to sound:  if you don’t keep an eye on a colony of cockroaches, they multiply.  The sort of people so dumb they think your child needs to be told to CHOOSE their gender are so passionate about their psychosis, they will impose it on you without any regrets.   The sort of people who think the world will end if we don’t start consuming lab-grown meat, are “true believers,” worse than any Spanish inquisitor.   The number of people proposing government-owned grocery stores are so passionate about their cause, you will see the grocery store shelves empty faster than you can say, “Karl Marx.”

So.. be happy.  Celebrate all the normal, loving people in your life, but fix your eyes on the horizon and keep your powder dry.   Evil can prevail with just a few, passionate weirdoes insisting on their cause.

Bitter Minutia

There’s a sad reality that has taken me, and others, prey on several occasions: you agree with someone on almost everything, but there is one small point of contention that burns like some persistent ember in the fire.  The dialogue gets more and more passionate, as both sides come to believe this disagreement proceeds from some spiritual or intellectual flaw in their opponent.  People who would otherwise be brothers in arms wind up hating each other more than their common enemy.  As their formerly common crowd gravitates to one pole or the other, and particularly if this leaves someone stranded and without support, the division can lead to political or spiritual apostacy.

It’s the David French syndrome.  “They don’t agree with me on EVERYTHING, so I will abandon all of our former common ground.”

Pride is a beastly thing.

College: How to Sneer

Two of my sons are heavily involved in the abortion abolition movement.  (Abolitionists Rising,  Golden State Abolitionists)  Along with their colleagues in the cause, they utterly destroy the pro-abort position they encounter on college campuses.  The ease with which they destroy the baby-killing position is fun to watch, even if it reduces the drama a bit.  It’s like watching a lion step on a ladybug.  It’s over before it starts, and usually the frustrated, post-abortive college coed walks off, with nothing but vulgarities to shreak into the void.

At one point, college may have encouraged critical thinking, but that’s pretty much over with now — everywhere.  I was a member of one of the last classes at Stanford to be welcomed into the academy by a faculty that embraced the importance of western civilization, but still I didn’t really learn how to think for myself until I left college.  The Overton window on campus is something like a pinhole that moves ever leftward, in a nuttier and nuttier direction.

What college does accomplish?  It turns most kids into insufferable little snots, who actually believe they are smarter than the crowd, because their prize-for-participating academic record allowed them to schlep into college.  The abolitionists, after all, are Bible-believing rubes who have the audacity to argue for protecting babies, even though they don’t have a vagina.  “College kids” haven’t been given an education worth bragging about, but the tuition buys them club membership.  “We’re in the club, and you’re not.”  They can’t make an argument.  They are PROUD of not making an argument.  The believe “reason is a tool of the patriarchy,” so their displayed ignorance is actually a point of pride with them. I actually watched one college administrator ask the abolitionists to repair to the “Dalton Trumbo Fountain,” their “free-speech zone.”  Ponder the irony there, and understand that most of the kids on campus won’t be able to.

Stupid and proud.  That about sums it all up.

Categorised in: Culture, Farm Journal

This post was written by Jim Riley