Special Opinion to the Mirror by Andy Zahn
It’s not the right to protest, and it is not Civil Rights.
What the NFL players are doing has nothing to do with sports. It’s anarchy.
Trump is right to call them out for what they are.
These followers who agree with them are dupes. They are part of the 5th column and don’t know it.
When we were kids in grade school and sang all the good American songs and all the verses of the Anthem, we respected the flag and knew its history about Betsy Ross, the colors, the 13 stripes and then the 48 stars. We knew the history of the Anthem and about Francis Scott Key. We have the most beautiful flag and Anthem in the world and they bring pride and tears to patriots.
These 22 percent malcontents are out to destroy our history, our statues and heroes in order to wipe out civilized society and American capitalism. Most are unemployed, uneducated idiots and have no idea
about Capitalism or what they really want–Socialism. They have no idea what they are protesting or where or what Wall Street really is or does.
They are not aware of rewards being THE motivator and in early grades a STAR meaning so much or a toy from Mom or Dad and later a pay check, a promotion, a pat on the back. Capitalism is why we make products and why millions have good jobs. Ordinary people can buy stocks and be part owners and millions are.
In all the “Utopias” laziness takes over and everyone quits working.
If these malcontents have their way, who would hand out the welfare checks, the food stamps, etc?
Years ago there was such a thing as class or “good taste”. Even though you had a right to do or say something you held back because it was not in good taste. Now they just say or do anything they want. We as a county lack the manners of the old days and words we were taught like Ma’am, Sir, Please, Thank You, Excuse me or even My mistake. What has happened to this country?
Larry says
Well said Andy.
Paul Plante says
What has happened to this country?
A good question, Andy Zahn, for which there are no answers.
And it goes back to the fact that there never really was a “country” to begin with, just a set of ideas and beliefs that never became universal.
Go right back to the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, when a lady asked Dr. Benjamin Franklin, “Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy,” and he replied “A republic, if you can keep it.”
Well, long story made short, we didn’t keep it.
Yes, there are some dinosaurs like us still around who might remember that, but we are dinosaurs, far, far out of the main stream in America, which in a reply to another thread in here I surmised now has a collective IQ hovering between 18 and 20.
People have been made dog-stupid in this country by a so-called “education” system that doesn’t educate people at all.
Consider the Washington Post story “Alleged driver of car that plowed into Charlottesville crowd was a Nazi sympathizer, former teacher says” by T. Rees Shapiro, Alice Crites, Laura Vozzella and John Woodrow Cox on 8/14/2017, where we were informed as follows:
CHARLOTTESVILLE — A man accused of plowing a car into a crowd of activists here — killing one person and injuring 19 — long sympathized with Nazi views and had stood with a group of white supremacists hours before Saturday’s bloody crash.
The alleged driver, James Alex Fields Jr., a 20-year-old who traveled to Virginia from Ohio, had espoused extremist ideals at least since high school, according to Derek Weimer, a history teacher.
Weimer said he taught Fields during his junior and senior years at Randall K. Cooper High School in Kentucky.
For a class called “America’s Modern Wars,” Fields wrote a deeply researched paper about the Nazi military during World War II, Weimer recalled.
“It was obvious that he had this fascination with Nazism and a big idolatry of Adolf Hitler,” the teacher said.
“He had white supremacist views.”
“He really believed in that stuff.”
Fields’s research project into the Nazi military was well written, Weimer said, but it appeared to be a “big lovefest for the German military and the Waffen-SS.”
As a teacher, he said, he highlighted historical facts and used academic reasoning in an attempt to steer Fields away from his infatuation with the Nazis.
“This was something that was growing in him,” Weimer said.
“I admit I failed.”
“I tried my best.”
end quotes
“I admit I failed!”
Yes, he did, and I bet he is still drawing a good salary at the high school.
The question is HOW did this loser of a teacher fail.
Doesn’t he know that Hitler was a rug-shewing idiot who ate a bullet in a bunker in Germany because in the end, he was a loser?
Didn’t this loser of a teacher who probably has tenure let this other loser he produced know that Hitler lost?
Didn’t this loser of a teacher, and I do not give a tinker’s damn if I am making him feel bad about himself, instead of celebrating him like the so-called liberals in this country want us to do, let this loser he produced who was infatuated with the Nazis and SS, know that as good as they might have been, they were not good enough?
Don’t they have any WWII combat vets down there in Kentucky that this hand wringer of a teacher could have called upon to let this other loser know who won that war, and how?
“I admit I failed!”
You’re *** damn right you did, and people like you do not belong teaching in any kind of school, including a dog obedience school.
And yet, the Washington Post raised not a single question in that article about how and why this loser of a teacher failed, because the Washington Post itself accepts failure as the norm in this country.
As to these pampered, overpaid louts on the professional football teams who are raking in the big bucks for going out on a field in a stadium subsidized by taxpayer dollars and pushing at each other and grunting a lot while acting like a pack of monkeys trying to fornicate with a football, what is it exactly they are “protesting?”
Their Escalades aren’t big enough?
They don’t have enough gold jewelry dripping off of them?
Their swimming pools aren’t big enough, or heated enough?
Their mansions don’t have enough bathrooms?
What is it that the pampered idiots are so unhappy about, that they are not man enough to be able to stand like everyone else in this country, including children, when the Star Spangled Banner is played?
When someone finds out that answer, please let us know.
Stuart Bell says
The Ghetto-Dance that is performed after making a goal is all you need to see to know the mentality of players today. How sweet it would be if they picked up the ball and went and handed it to the referee. They should act like they have been there before. I took a good look at the picture of the Raven’s players in England. They look like street thugs that you would see locked up in Jessup. They looked like hoodlums. I have never watched grown men in tights playing with balls and I am happy to see the NFL dissolve into the Liberal Progressive movement. It will end with them playing flag football like kids.
Freedom is not free,
but the U.S. Marine Corps
will pay most of your share.
Paul Plante says
Maybe that is the problem, Stuart Bell, the Marine Corps paying far too much of the share while these overpaid, pampered, ignorant louts on these pro football teams who insult us as a nation and as a people by not standing for the Star Spangled Banner pay nothing at all, while insulting all the military veterans who have given them their freedom to play their stupid game.
I was in the United States Army myself, and at page 2 of THE SOLDIER’S HANDBOOK for the U.S. Army circa 1968 which was issued to me as a U.S. soldier on entering basic training that year, this is what it said:
Each individual in this nation has THE DUTY duty to contribute as much as he can TO THE WELL-BEING of the nation and its people.
Military service is one form of such a contribution.
end quote
What are these overpaid, pampered louts on these professional football teams who insult us by kneeling for the Star Spangled Banner doing for the well-being of the country, one must wonder?
How does insulting the country that gives these ignorant louts the privilege of playing a foolish game for big bucks contribute in any way to the well-being of the nation and its people, of whom I happen to be one, along with a whole lot of other disabled veterans populating our VA hospitals, missing arms, legs and what-have-you to keep these crybabies free to play their stupid game?
Or does being a pro football player grant them an exemption from all of that because they are special?
How many of these big, whining crybabies on these professional football teams who kneel for the Star Spangled Banner while American children who know better stand for it got the FREE RIDE through college on a full athletic scholarship to play football while ordinary Americans had to scrimp and save and go into debt to get their education?
Was that their due, their entitlement, to get the FREE RIDE through college so they could then play pro football?
A poster should be made for each one of them who kneels detailing not only their salary as a pro football player, but also all of the money and benefits in terms of scholarships and such they received while in college so ordinary people who work for a living and who do stand for the Star Spangled Banner can see just how very special these louts who insult them by not standing for the Star Spangled Banner really are.
And those posters should be placed on the ground so ordinary Americans can then walk on the faces of these pro football players who feel they are too good to stand with the rest of the American people when the Star Spangled Banner is played.
And maybe some should be put on trees at ground level, as well, so good American dogs can pee on them, as they deserve.
Mike Kuzma, Jr. says
Then we have the so called ‘educated’ who engage in 9/11 conspiracy fantasies. How will America overcome their cancerous influence?
Paul Plante says
People continue to pray for you, Mike, and they hope that one day, you will finally find some peace from all these wild 9-11 conspiracy theories that are consuming you and demonizing you.
As to “cancerous influences,” the nation has some far more serious ones to overcome than some tin-hat conspiracy theories about 9-11, which is long since over, or hadn’t you heard about another American whack-job, this one a gambler, gunning down all those people out in Las Vegas?
Leave off with all the conspiracy theories about 9-11, and focus on the fact that you, Mike Kuzma, Jr., are living in a nation populated by a lot of sick twists, all running free out there, committing the acts of anarchy Andy Zahn is talking about above here.
Focus on the present, Mike, and get you mind off the past, it will be to your benefit, I can assure you.
Mike Kuzma, Jr. says
Are you serious Paul? You slandered a fine man with YOUR 9/11 horsecrap.
Get help.
Paul Plante says
I slandered no one, Mike.
I asked you a question and you never answered it.
You said your friend was the co-pilot of a plane that crashed into a big building in New York City.
I asked you why.
All you did was rant and screech and moan and holler in reply.
So I don’t need any help, Mike.
I am not obsessed with 9-11, which is sixteen years ago now.
But you obviously are, and you can’t get over why your dear friend would be on a plane that flew into a big building.
Hopefully, before you totally destroy what mental stability you have left, you will come to grips with the fact that your friend is dead.
We will continue to pray that that happens soon, Mike, for your own well-being.
In the meantime, you are flogging a dead horse here with all your wild 9-11 conspiracy theories, and I for one am past being tired of hearing you rant on and on about something that is no concern of mine.
I know nothing of your friend, or why he was on that plane, or why it crashed into that building, and truthfully, I don’t care to.
But if it helps you out, Mike, I do feel sorry about your loss, just as I might feel sorry about the loss of you when your blood pressure causes the top of your head to blow off and you are gone.
Can you finally comprehend what I am saying here, Mike?
It’s 2017, going on 2018, and we have a lot m0re serious issues to contend with in this sick and mentally ill nation than your friend who died in a plane crash 16 years ago.
Leave loose of it, Mike, before it destroys you..
Paul Plante says
With respect to the anarchy and anything goes that we see swirling around us in this sick and very troubled nation we live in today, Andy Zahn, where mass murder and violence are becoming the commonplace as mobs rant and howl, in Federalist 10, Virginian James Madison, known as the “Father of the Constitution,” said this:
“Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”
“Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would at the same time be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.”
end quotes
That is why Madison was dead set against democracy in this country at the time he wrote the Constitution, and that is why we, in Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution, were guaranteed a REPUBLICAN form of government, as opposed to “democracy,” to wit: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.”
And a Republican form of government has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the Republican party, nor does the Republican party have anything whatsoever to do with a Republican form of government, and in fact, they do not even acknowledge that we are supposed to have one, because to the Republican party and the Democrat party, both of which promote and stoke the anarchy of democracy, because it benefits both of them to do so, that clause of our Constitution has been rendered a dead letter a long time ago, as has much of the Constitution, which might as well be printed on a doily, for all the gaping holes that are now in its supposed protections.
Unlike people today in this country, who aren’t educated at all, despite high school diplomas and college degrees attesting otherwise, James Madison had what was called a classical education, and as such, he was familiar with the writings of the Greek Philosopher Plate, specifically, Plato’s Republic and a passage therein where Socrates and his friends are talking about the nature of different political systems, how they change over time, and how one can slowly evolve into another, and therein, Socrates stated that “tyranny is probably established out of no other regime than democracy.”
That tyranny established out of the regime of our democracy, which is in its late stages, as it explodes towards total anarchy, is very much on display in the San Francisco Chronicle article “Masked anarchists violently rout right-wing demonstrators in Berkeley” by Lizzie Johnson, Erin Allday, Michael Cabanatuan and Nanette Asimov dated 28 August 2017, as follows:
An army of anarchists in black clothing and masks routed a small group of right-wing demonstrators who had gathered in a Berkeley park Sunday to rail against the city’s famed progressive politics, driving them out – sometimes violently — while overwhelming a huge contingent of police officers.
The anarchists chased away the right-wingers, and in one case four or five pummeled a man with fists and sticks before a radio host for Reveal, Al Letson, jumped in to shield the victim.
Anarchists also attacked reporters who documented their actions.
The swamping of right-wing political ideas by left-wing demonstrators has become a recurring theme in Berkeley and other California cities.
In Berkeley on Sunday, some observers derived satisfaction from watching far-left protesters beat up and chase off a young man at the rally in apparent support of Trump.
“It’s a good time,” said Tom Martell, 70, of Crockett, who stood in Civic Center Park with his girlfriend, Lisa Argento, 53.
“They’ve got to be chased out,” Argento said.
“I moved to the Bay Area and pay good money to live here.”
“I don’t want these people here.”
“They need to leave us the f— alone.”
end quotes
Anarchy overwhelming law and order right before our eyes, which is what Jemmy Madison was talking about when he said in Federalist 10 that “Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”
We are getting to see first hand today what Jemmy Madison was saying back in 1787, and there is nothing we can do to stop the death spiral.
Going back to Plato, democracy for him was a political system of maximal freedom and equality, where every lifestyle is allowed and deference to any sort of authority would wither; tolerance of any kind of inequality would come under intense threat; and multiculturalism and sexual freedom would create a city or a country like “a many-colored cloak decorated in all hues,” and family hierarchies are inverted: “A father habituates himself to be like his child and fear his sons, and a son habituates himself to be like his father and to have no shame before or fear of his parents,” while in classrooms, “as the teacher … is frightened of the pupils and fawns on them, so the students make light of their teachers.”
That actually is what happened with the Cultural Revolution and the Red Guards in Chairman Mao’s Communist China, and now it is happening here.
A writer named Andrew Sullivan picks up that theme in a Daily Intelligencer article from May 1, 2016, entitled “America Has Never Been So Ripe for Tyranny,” as follows:
Part of American democracy’s stability is owed to the fact that the Founding Fathers had read their Plato.
To guard our democracy from the tyranny of the majority and the passions of the mob, they constructed large, hefty barriers between the popular will and the exercise of power.
Voting rights were tightly circumscribed.
The president and vice-president were not to be popularly elected but selected by an Electoral College, whose representatives were selected by the various states, often through state legislatures.
The Senate’s structure (with two members from every state) was designed to temper the power of the more populous states, and its term of office (six years, compared with two for the House) was designed to cool and restrain temporary populist passions.
The Supreme Court, picked by the president and confirmed by the Senate, was the final bulwark against any democratic furies that might percolate up from the House and threaten the Constitution.
This separation of powers was designed precisely to create sturdy firewalls against democratic wildfires.
Over the centuries, however, many of these undemocratic rules have been weakened or abolished.
end quotes
In other words, the death of our Republic, which was never anything more than an experiment, an idea, the original “American Dream.” and the beginning to the death spiral of democracy that we are witnessing in this country right now, today, where mob rule, including these football protests, is becoming the norm.
And as Andrew Sullivan writes in his article, the rise of the internet and instant communications through cell phones, i.e. the so-called “flash mobs” we see today destroying the property of others, has changed our politics in ways people like James Madision could never have comprehended in his time, and in his article, he concludes:
“And what mainly fuels this is precisely what the Founders feared about democratic culture: feeling, emotion, and narcissism, rather than reason, empiricism, and public-spiritedness.”
end quotes
As we are seeing today, reason, empiricism, and public-spiritedness are out the window, while feeling, emotion, and narcissism and the howling mobs are becoming omnipresent, fueled in part by these football protests, which are playing not to law and order, but to the howling mob.
As Andrew Sullivan writes, “We have lost authoritative sources for even a common set of facts and without such common empirical ground, the emotional component of politics becomes inflamed and reason retreats even further.”
Try to find reason, today, Andy Zahn, and good luck with your search.
With respect to these co-called “antifas” in the San Francisco Chronicle article I cite above, who are really the “neo-fascists” of our time, as opposed to the lunatics who go around in Nazi costumes and call themselves “Neo-Nazis,” Andrew Sullivan stated as follows on May 1, 2016:
“Neo-fascist movements do not advance gradually by persuasion; they first transform the terms of the debate, create a new movement based on untrammeled emotion, take over existing institutions, and then ruthlessly exploit events.”
end quotes
Here it now is, 4 October 2017, a year and five months later, and we are seeing that process in action.
What happens to civilized society, Andy Zahn, when reason, empiricism, and public-spiritedness go out the window, while feeling, emotion, and narcissism and the howling mobs become omnipresent?
That is the question for our times.
The train has left the station, and lacking brakes, how can it now be stopped?
Have you that answer?
As for me, I am very much reminded of these words to a song back when by Credence Clearwater Revival entitled “Bad Moon On The Rise:”
I see a bad moon a-rising
I see trouble on the way
I see earthquakes and lightnin’
I see bad times today
Don’t go ’round tonight
It’s bound to take your life
There’s a bad moon on the rise
I hear hurricanes a-blowing
I know the end is coming soon
I fear rivers over flowing
I hear the voice of rage and ruin
Don’t go ’round tonight
It’s bound to take your life
There’s a bad moon on the rise
end quotes
Yes, indeed.
Mike Kuzma, Jr. says
You are a vile man, Paul. Obviously Agent Orange did a number on your mind.
Do you not see your rant above as evidence of a sick, conspiracy fouled mind? He was on the plane because he was the co-pilot. And he was killed by [edit] for it.
You are a sick man Paul. You must be so glad for this forum otherwise you’d be forced to scream at the walls of your padded cell.
And Paul? All your cut and paste ranting will not hide your sickness.
Paul Plante says
Mike, let me ask you a question here.
What do you think is going to happen to people like you who spit on veterans and make mock of veterans when the people who do become veterans decide that people like you are no longer worth protecting, and instead opt to leave you to defend yourself from the things that go bump in the night?
What happens to you, then, Mike, when those who become veterans label you as too worthless to waste their time and blood on?
As to Agent Orange, Mike, to help you cure your incredible case of gross ignorance here, it does not affect a person’s mind, other than perhaps because of the pain, as the Agent Orange slowly kills the person by disrupting their body’s molecular structure, just as it is doing to me.
What an insulting ass you are, Mike Kuzma, Jr.
And no, Mike, you arrogant idiot, I am not in a padded cell, nor do I need to be.
You do, however.
As to this forum, you are damn right I am glad it is here, Mike, because it is very unique as far as internet forums go, thanks to Wayne Creed, and I find it an intellectually stimulating place to visit, except when I am forced to have to deal with an ignorant moronic lout such as yourself who hates veterans, perhaps because they reveal to you your own inadequacies and possibly cowardice.
That’s my thoughts for the moment, Mike, so why don’t you take yourself out for a walk around the confines of your own padded cell, and have yourself a glorious day doing so.
andy zahn says
The educational system is the whipping boy. Paul, to keep us from knowing the truth that our entire society has crashed and that many of our youth are in rebellion, the media & the politicians blame the schools & the teachers.
Look. I taught 8th grade math for 28 years & I know exactly what goes on. My school was in a great area with wonderful people & very good kids, BUT…many were very uninterested in learning & many had never memorized the addition, times tables or so many other basic skills as decimals & fractions and there are thousands of facts an 8th grader should know.
To get away with failing tests the dummies call the ones who are succeeding names like nerds & dexters. It makes the dummies look bad because their lie is that the teacher doesn’t explain anything & that the work is too hard and the parents buy into this & tell the kid “math was my hardest subject also. Go out & ride your trail bike”.
Funny, I would end the day worn out, my hands covered with chalk dust. Some of mf my 5 classes per day were quite into trying & appreciating math & others didn’t care. Some kids did gewat & went on to become lawyers, teachers, even math teachers, and many other professions & others in the same room became drop-outs.
Most teachers work hard & do their best but my first year I gave up trying to learn for them & understoood my job was to teach & theirs to learn.
I have a way to teach algebra that makes it so simple & some refuse to open their minds. Positive & negative numbers are just common sense in that pos is good & neg bad so adding negatives is hurtful & subracting negatives is good. Memorize a few simple rules.
I was tutoring a kindergarten teacher & there was NO way she would believe that any number times zero equals zero. I gave her hundreds of examples & reasons why the answer had to be zero & she faught me. Her course was taught by a colleague of mine & she had to pass to keep her license. She did barely pass & my “pay” was a case of beer.
L taught summer school, 60 hours to 12 who failed & were beloow grade level. One was my own son. I gave a diagnostic test & found all of each student’s weaknesses & then had each one work in one after another of his problem areas & at the end all were above grade level with an average gain of 3 & a half years in math.
There were three things that led to success. Kids who were realy motivated to learn, a small class for individual instruction & leaving me alone to do “my thing”.
The ills of the welfare state have made a proper school environment in the ghettoes an impossibility. Many who came from there & escaped tell how the children are being taught to be racists & to hate America & that’s what we see in most “protests”.
Paul Plante says
A supposed “educational” system that spawns gross ignorance and promotes disaffection and disloyalty should be the whipping boy, Andy Zahn, and subject to our opprobrium, but instead, seems to be the national standard.
In the mid-1970s, after obtaining my masters of engineering, I taught for a bit at a local community college.
Two incidents impelled me to leave that profession and never look back.
The first occurred when I was selected to be on a presidential task force the school was putting together.
At the first meeting, the college president informed us that the Board of Regents in this state wanted us to teach high school math and reading to students getting out of high school, unable to read and do math, and then getting accepted into colleges, still being unable to read and do math, which made them unsuited to be college students.
I spoke up and said, are you kidding me, here we have the Board of Regents admitting that it is operating a slip shod high school system that simply passes people through, and that is an admission we should be taking to the legislature and governor.
Why are we accepting in college students who can’t read or do math?
And the answer is, Andy Zahn, that the system is a money-making mill in the guise of an educational system, and what is important is the tuition checks.
Needless to say, that was the end of my participation as a task force member, with a promise from the college president that he would try to procure some funding to build me a windmill out on the quad that I could joust with.
The second incident which sealed my fate occurred when somebody in the central office for some reason ran everybody’s marks for all their courses through a computer, and came up with a list of the average number of A’s, B’s. C’s, etc.
Immediately, the scared chickens on the faculty all started getting their heads together to try and figure out what it meant, and what they concluded was that the safest thing to do would be to have everyone mark according to that analysis performed by the central office.
So then, everyone was supposed to apportion marks according to that model, as opposed to what the student actually earned.
I said **** that and marked according to what was earned, which then earned me the enmity of the lily-livered faculty, because I wouldn’t go with their flow.
So I left, because I did not want to be a part of a mill.
And we wonder why we have so many ignorant people in this country, despite them having high school diplomas and college degrees.
Go figure.