Why Pop Music Is So Bad These Days

 

Today’s pop music is designed to sell, not inspire. Today’s pop artist is often more concerned with producing something familiar to mass audience, increasing the likelihood of commercial success. With less timbral variety, and the same combination of keyboard, drum machine, and computer software, and with only two songwriters writing much of what we hear, is it any wonder that most pop music sounds the same?

Throughout grade school and high school, I was fortunate to participate in quality music programs. Our high school had a top Illinois state jazz band; I also participated in symphonic band, which gave me a greater appreciation for classical music. It wasn’t enough to just read music. You would need to sight read, meaning you are given a difficult composition to play cold, without any prior practice. Sight reading would quickly reveal how fine-tuned playing “chops” really were. In college I continued in a jazz band and also took a music theory class. The experience gave me the ability to visualize music (If you play by ear only, you will never have that same depth of understanding music construct.)

Both jazz and classical art forms require not only music literacy, but for the musician to be at the top of their game in technical proficiency, tonal quality and creativity in the case of the jazz idiom. Jazz masters like John Coltrane would practice six to nine hours a day, often cutting his practice only because his inner lower lip would be bleeding from the friction caused by his mouth piece against his gums and teeth. His ability to compose and create new styles and directions for jazz was legendary. With few exceptions such as Wes Montgomery or Chet Baker, if you couldn’t read music, you couldn’t play jazz. In the case of classical music, if you can’t read music you can’t play in an orchestra or symphonic band. Over the last 20 years, musical foundations like reading and composing music are disappearing with the percentage of people that can read music notation proficiently down to 11 percent, according to some surveys.

Two primary sources for learning to read music are school programs and at home piano lessons. Public school music programs have been in decline since the 1980’s, often with school administrations blaming budget cuts or needing to spend money on competing extracurricular programs. Prior to the 1980’s, it was common for homes to have a piano with children taking piano lessons. Even home architecture incorporated what was referred to as a “piano window” in the living room which was positioned above an upright piano to help illuminate the music. Stores dedicated to selling pianos are dwindling across the country as fewer people take up the instrument. In 1909, piano sales were at their peak when more than 364,500 were sold, but sales have plunged to between 30,000 and 40,000 annually in the US. Demand for youth sports competes with music studies, but also, fewer parents are requiring youngsters to take lessons as part of their upbringing.

Besides the decline of music literacy and participation, there has also been a decline in the quality of music which has been proven scientifically by Joan Serra, a postdoctoral scholar at the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute of the Spanish National Research Council in Barcelona. Joan and his colleagues looked at 500,000 pieces of music between 1955-2010, running songs through a complex set of algorithms examining three aspects of those songs:

1. Timbre- sound color, texture and tone quality

2. Pitch- harmonic content of the piece, including its chords, melody, and tonal arrangements

3. Loudness- volume variance adding richness and depth

The results of the study revealed that timbral variety went down over time, meaning songs are becoming more homogeneous. Translation: most pop music now sounds the same. Timbral quality peaked in the 60’s and has since dropped steadily with less diversity of instruments and recording techniques. Today’s pop music is largely the same with a combination of keyboard, drum machine and computer software greatly diminishing the creativity and originality. Pitch has also decreased, with the number of chords and different melodies declining. Pitch content has also decreased, with the number of chords and different melodies declining as musicians today are less adventurous in moving from one chord or note to another, opting for well-trod paths by their predecessors. Loudness was found to have increased by about one decibel every eight years. Music loudness has been manipulated by the use of compression. Compression boosts the volume of the quietest parts of the song so they match the loudest parts, reducing dynamic range. With everything now loud, it gives music a muddled sound, as everything has less punch and vibrancy due to compression.

In an interview, Billy Joel was asked what has made him a standout. He responded his ability to read and compose music made him unique in the music industry, which as he explained, was troubling for the industry when being musically literate makes you stand out. An astonishing amount of today’s popular music is written by two people: Lukasz Gottwald of the United States and Max Martin from Sweden, who are both responsible for dozens of songs in the top 100 charts. You can credit Max and Dr. Luke for most the hits of these stars:

Katy Perry, Britney Spears, Kelly Clarkson, Taylor Swift, Jessie J., KE$HA, Miley Cyrus, Avril Lavigne, Maroon 5, Taio Cruz, Ellie Goulding, NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, Ariana Grande, Justin Timberlake, Nick Minaj, Celine Dion, Bon Jovi, Usher, Adam Lambert, Justin Bieber, Domino, Pink, Pitbull, One Direction, Flo Rida, Paris Hilton, The Veronicas, R. Kelly, Zebrahead

With only two people writing much of what we hear, is it any wonder music sounds the same, using the same hooks, riffs and electric drum effects?

Lyric Intelligence was also studied by Joan Serra over the last 10 years using several metrics such as “Flesch Kincaid Readability Index,” which reflects how difficult a piece of text is to understand and the quality of the writing. Results showed lyric intelligence has dropped by a full grade with lyrics getting shorter, tending to repeat the same words more often. Artists that write the entirety of their own songs are very rare today. When artists like Taylor Swift claim they write their own music, it is partially true, insofar as she writes her own lyrics about her latest boyfriend breakup, but she cannot read music and lacks the ability to compose what she plays. (Don’t attack me Tay-Tay Fans!)

Music electronics are another aspect of musical decline as the many untalented people we hear on the radio can’t live without autotune. Autotune artificially stretches or slurs sounds in order to get it closer to center pitch. Many of today’s pop musicians and rappers could not survive without autotune, which has become a sort of musical training wheels. But unlike a five-year-old riding a bike, they never take the training wheels off to mature into a better musician. Dare I even bring up the subject of U2’s guitarist “The Edge” who has popularized rhythmic digital delays synchronized to the tempo of the music? You could easily argue he’s more an accomplished sound engineer than a talented guitarist.

Today’s music is designed to sell, not inspire. Today’s artist is often more concerned with producing something familiar to mass audience, increasing the likelihood of commercial success (this is encouraged by music industry execs, who are notoriously risk-averse).

In the mid-1970’s, most American high schools had a choir, orchestra, symphonic band, jazz band, and music appreciation classes. Many of today’s schools limit you to a music appreciation class because it is the cheapest option. D.A. Russell wrote in the Huffington Post in an article titled, “Cancelling High School Elective, Arts and Music—So Many Reasons—So Many Lies” that music, arts and electives teachers have to face the constant threat of eliminating their courses entirely. The worst part is knowing that cancellation is almost always based on two deliberate falsehoods peddled by school administrators: 1) Cancellation is a funding issue (the big lie); 2) music and the arts are too expensive (the little lie).

The truth: Elective class periods have been usurped by standardized test prep. Administrators focus primarily on protecting their positions and the school’s status by concentrating curricula on passing the tests, rather than by helping teachers be freed up from micromanaging mandates so those same teachers can teach again in their classrooms, making test prep classes unnecessary.

What can be done? First, musical literacy should be taught in our nation’s school systems. In addition, parents should encourage their children to play an instrument because it has been proven to help in brain synapse connections, learning discipline, work ethic, and working within a team. While contact sports like football are proven brain damagers, music participation is a brain enhancer.

Middle-Earth Goes to the Movies

 

If J.R.R. Tolkien were still in his grave, it is likely that he would be turning in it. The cause of his consternation would be the gollumizing of Middle-earth by the forthcoming TV series bearing the name of The Lord of the Rings. This new “adaptation”, produced by one of the Tech Tyrants which are the dark lords of our globalized world, will reflect our own disfigured and gollumized zeitgeist, mirroring the death-culture and the dictatorship of relativism and proving Tolkien correct in his assertion that fairy-stories hold up a mirror to man. This new version will be a perversion and an inversion of the moral vision of Tolkien’s epic but will be a faithful reflection of the ugliness of the perversion itself and of those who have carried out the textual abuse.

Were we to seek an inkling of what Tolkien might have thought of this perverting of his work, we can find it in his response to three American businessmen, Forrest J. Ackerman, Morton Grady Zimmerman and Al Brodax, who showed him drawings for a proposed animated motion picture of The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien was impressed by the “really astonishingly good pictures”, which he was relieved to discover were “Rackham rather than Disney”, but he was appalled with the storyline. “People gallop about on Eagles at the least provocation,” he complained to his publisher, “Lorien becomes a fairy-castle with ‘delicate minarets’, and all that sort of thing.” Worst of all was the description of lembas, the elvish waybread which has been associated allegorically with the Eucharist, as a “food concentrate”. Needless to say, Tolkien discontinued negotiations with the film moguls, seeking to preserve and protect his epic creation from the assault of such banality and crassness.

There is no way of knowing what Tolkien would have thought of Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings but there’s no doubt that Jackson went to great pains to evoke the epic sweep of the original work and to avoid provoking the ire of the Tolkien fanbase worldwide. In fact, part of the marketing strategy for the film was to win the hearts of Tolkien fandom with assurances that the aim was to be faithful to the books. Those who had been expecting the worst, the present author included, were pleasantly surprised, for the most part, by the fidelity of the films to Tolkien’s text, obvious and sometimes egregious exceptions notwithstanding.

The same could not be said of Jackson’s woefully bad adaptation of The Hobbit. Clearly hoping to cash in on the success of The Lord of the Rings movies and suffering from the avaricious dragon-sickness, which is the very root of all evil in The Hobbit, Jackson took outrageous liberties, transforming Tolkien’s succinctly sublime children’s story into a techno-addicted and computer-generated travesty and farce.

Let’s conclude by considering a little more deeply the spirit which is likely to pervade the new Tech Tyrant production of The Lord of the Rings. There has been talk of adding a little libidinous spice to the stories with the introduction of sex scenes and we have been promised that the Shire will conform to the dictatorship of relativism’s insistence on what it calls “multiculturalism”. The former will remove the veil of chastity which clothes Tolkien’s work, stripping away the self-sacrificial love which animates Tolkien’s Middle-earth with the animus of self-absorbed and self-indulgent lust. It will transform the viewer into a voyeur, disfiguring him with the power of the Ring that binds all in darkness instead of transfiguring him with the power which rides above all shadows.

As for making the Shire “multiculturally” acceptable, the Tech Tyrant production of The Lord of the Rings will merely impose upon the authentic culture of the Shire the globalist monoculture which the cultural imperialism of the Tech Tyranny is seeking to impose upon the world. The Middle-earth which Tolkien conceived is authentically multi-cultural. The culture of the hobbits is their own; it is the grassroots culture, rooted in the people themselves, passed down from generation to generation. Similarly, the culture of Rivendell and Lothlorien is authentically elvish, passed down through immemorial millennia. The culture of Rohan and Gondor, the culture of men, is itself authentic and distinct from the cultures of hobbits and elves, as they are distinct from each other. And then there is the enemy of this healthy cultural diversity, Mordor’s culture of death, which despises the cultural diversity of the peoples of Middle-earth, seeking to impose its own global brand or orcish ignobility, marked with the Eye of Sauron, on all people.

The death-culture of Mordor, like the death-culture of the Tech Tyranny, seeks to wipe out genuine cultural diversity, the multifarious fruits of the folk cultures of the free peoples of the world, each in their own hobbit-sized shires, in order to replace it with a one-size-fits-all “multicultural” monoculture in which nobody sings their own songs but everyone listens to globally marketed “world” music. This “multiculturalism” which the Tech Tyrant is imposing upon the Shire in Middle-earth and the shires of the world is nothing but the cultural imperialism of the globalist plutocracy. It ploughs down all the beautiful and multifarious flowers of authentic local and national culture, replacing it with one brand of bland monochromatic monoculture. It is the replacement of the spectrum of colours with fifty shades of grey.

It should go without saying that those with a modicum of freedom-loving sanity and wisdom will steer clear of this new “adaptation” of The Lord of the Rings, which might be likened to one of the palantír stones, the so-called seeing stones which allow the Dark Lord to feed his propaganda to anyone stupid enough to peer into them. Denethor spent so much time staring into one of these stones that he believed the Dark Lord’s victory to be inevitable, committing suicide in an act of abject despair. It is no coincidence that the word palantír means “far-seeing” and can be translated as television, which was surely Tolkien’s intention. Choosing to watch the Tech Tyrant’s palantír version of The Lord of the Rings is playing with fire. It is taking the Denethor option. It would be much better to make a silent protest against this latest desecration of Middle-earth by picking up a copy of Tolkien’s classic and reading or re-reading it. Doing so will not only shame the devil and his globalist servants, it will lead us closer to the God to whom Tolkien points in what he described as his “fundamentally religious and Catholic work”.

The Poisoned Apple: Disney’s Fundamentally Flawed Kingdom

 

While outraged families are right to cut off Disney from their children’s imaginative formation, they should have been doing this a long time ago. The now-blatant sexual agenda of the corporation is only the final manifestation of a distorted and perverse view of reality that has pervaded the “Disney” brand for a long time.

The recent disclosures of the overt sexualization of Disney cartoons have outraged many American families. Disney executives have openly stated that they have increasingly injected LGBT content, characters, and themes into their films and that they do, in fact, have a “gay agenda.” They have spent millions to promote left-leaning political causes against the interests of their main customers.

While upset families are right to cut off Disney from their children’s imaginative formation, they should have been doing this a long time ago. The now-blatant sexual agenda of the corporation is only the final manifestation of a distorted and perverse view of reality that has pervaded the “Disney” brand for quite a long time—even from the earliest of its feature-film cartoons. While the original films may not have presented a dysfunctional view of human sexuality, they did present a distorted view of the world and of the family. Most never were what we might call “age-appropriate.”

Step back a moment and consider the original Disney feature-films for children, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Fantasia, and Pinocchio, and then ask yourself: Is this the imaginative world of an innocent child or of a wounded adult? Do these films introduce nightmare images to a child’s mind, or do they offer a way out of nightmares inherent to the child’s mind?

J.R.R. Tolkien’s excellent essay, “On Fairy Stories,” addresses the very problem that Disney had from its inception: the notion that fairy stories are exclusively children’s stories. They are not. They are stories allowing adults to examine the world from a new perspective to find a better way to live. Tolkien asserts that people connect “the minds of children and fairy- stories,” but “this is an error; at best an error of false sentiment, and one that is therefore most often made by those who, for whatever private reason (such as childlessness), tend to think of children as a special kind of creature, almost a different race, rather than as normal, if immature, members of a particular family, and of the human family at large.”

The Brothers Grimm collection of fairy stories are not meant for bedtime reading to young children. Yet Walt Disney and his original production team chose a Grimm story, Snow White, as their first feature film in 1937 for families with young children. Most readers will recall the basic plot of the story, so let me briefly analyze the problems in this film as I argue that it does not properly form a child’s moral imagination.

First, Disney combines nightmarish images with buffoonery. Once her life has been spared, Snow White runs screaming into a chaotic forest whose darkness is cut by stabs of light illuminating demonic faces and silhouettes—an intense, unsettling scene of garish light and noise. She (along with the four-year old audience member!) passes out from fear but then awakens to a gentle scene filled with loving animals who lead her to the house of the bumbling seven dwarves. The scene radically shifts from its preceding one, and the viewer sees now only Snow White’s peaceful life with goofy, bumbling, appropriately-named dwarves. A flash of fury interrupts these pastoral scenes when the evil queen realizes Snow White still lives. The “fairest of them all” then radically shape-changes into a frightening-looking beggar woman who finds Snow White’s forest home and interjects her ugly face into the window, breaking the beauty and harmony of the refuge.

This shifting of the sands of safety undermines a keen sense of what is real. Is the nightmare-state reality? Is the pastoral? The two cannot be blended but must be determined clearly in the mind first of the adult and then the child. To present the nightmare in such serious terms and the pastoral realm with such buffoonery suggests that the more “real” of the two is the first, the nightmare. This is a significant problem if you want your child to have a firm foundation in the powerful assurance of the true, good, and beautiful. If this triad becomes associated with the farcical, the absurd, and the humorous but ultimately impotent world of the seven dwarves, then the child loses the power and majesty of these three realities. The peaceful world of nature is ineffectual as a guard against the serious presentation of evil’s invasion.

This leads to the second major problem that Disney films often repeat: the depiction of men, if they are present at all, as infantile fools who need a “woman’s touch.” Snow White becomes the mother figure to these older men who, despite their years, are grossly immature compared to the much younger woman. The scenes of her caring for the dwarves are amusing, even winsome and tender, but they are also demeaning to men, stereotyping them as dopey, lazy, grumpy, dirty figures. Further, they are useless as protectors when most needed. They act as adults only once Snow White has already bitten the poisoned apple. They chase the witch to her death and then place the sleeping body of Snow White in a glass coffin. The only other male figure in the story is the prince who initially appears as a love-interest to Snow White and then only reappears to kiss her and marry her at the tale’s conclusion. The story does not manifest many masculine virtues because its focus is female: the mother-daughter relationship.

The final problem is the most serious, and one which Disney storylines repeat: the entrance of evil into the home and the destruction of fundamental security. In Snow White, we see this from the beginning – both parents are absent: her mother has died, her father remarries and then also dies. She relies on the stepmother as her mother-figure. This relationship is immediately severed, however, as soon as Snow White reaches her teenage years and becomes more beautiful than her stepmother. Jealousy arises on the part of the queen who hates her stepdaughter so much that she orders her killed in the grisliest of ways – her heart cut out. Thus, from the outset Snow White has suffered what most children deeply fear – the loss of their parents, which itself represents psychically the loss of safety, security, and community. Not only does the film depict this most universal and subliminal fear, it goes on to suggest that the mother-daughter relationship necessarily ends in rivalry and hatred. Nature severs the biological relationship and sin severs the adopted one. Where is the foundation of trust and love in this story? It does not exist and that is what makes it so corruptive of a child’s imagination.

Snow White sets a pattern in 1937 that Disney invariably follows in subsequent films with only a few exceptions. Fundamental reality is unclear. Men are comic, immature, unreliable figures. The protective power of the family falters before the destructive forces of evil: Parents die, trusted adults betray, children are left to fend for themselves.

Tolkien strongly disliked Disney productions, writing in 1938 that he had a “heartfelt loathing” for the stories, and holding still to that view in 1964: “I recognize his talent, but it has always seemed to me hopelessly corrupted. Though in most of the ‘pictures’ proceeding from his studios there are admirable or charming passages, the effect of all of them to me is disgusting. Some have given me nausea.”

Almost all Disney films present a story from the perspective of an adult grappling with mature problems or issues. Because they are cartoons with silly songs, goofy characters, and plenty of bodily-humor jokes, we assume they are for children. Implicit in this is the assumption that they are “safe” for children and form well their imaginative and moral senses. Yet consider how many Disney films have a plot that is more suitable for an adult than a child. For instance, Cars 3’s plotline is one that only an aging man or woman could sympathize with or comprehend. It is the story of life’s waning rather than waxing: the middle-aged man who struggles against the passage of time and the weakening of his physical strengths. This is no story for a child who is on the cusp of life’s strength and glory! A child’s world is of the sunrise not sunset.

In our family, we looked forward to watching Toy Story 3 because the series had been a good one, with few problematic areas. However, like Cars 3, the plot line was adult. The cowboy doll, Woody, is past his prime and no longer useful to the now-college age boy, Andy, who decides to throw away all his once beloved toy-friends. From the outset, this is already dark and disturbing imagery for a child. We watched it despite the increasingly troubling themes of the film, such as the rage of the abandoned toys and the prison scenes of the daycare dolls. That was a mistake. We shut it off when our children ended up screaming as the beloved toy characters were on the conveyor belt to the incinerator. Speaking from my own moral sense and imaginative experience, I had kept saying to them, “Don’t worry, they’ll be saved. Lotso (the Care-Bear style character) is going to have a change of heart. They saved him and he’ll save them. Just wait.” But the film betrayed my confidence. Instead, Lotso has the chance to save the figures by stopping the conveyor belt but does not. In fact, he deliberately restarts it and limps away from the doomed toys.

What is the image that a child takes from this episode? A character is given mercy but does not return it. His actions speak volumes: “I am in hell and you can burn there, too.” The image of the incinerator’s fire reinforces that lesson. In adult life, we sometimes encounter such bitter souls who want everyone to suffer as they have suffered. Some even desire their own damnation. But children ought not to grapple yet with that truth of a fallen world. A darker, more depressing film than Toy Story 3 I myself have not seen in the world of R-rated films. We did not make the mistake of watching the 4^th installment of the series and inflicting those images on our children’s minds.

The Toy Story 3 incident caused us to stop watching Disney and its once-worthy Pixar counterpart. We increasingly came to realize their films undermine the family and present corrupt images that have nothing to do with the current sexual agenda but which remain dangerous. In discussing with our children why we cancelled our Disney+ account, one said something quite astute: “It’s like inviting someone into your house to babysit your children and while she’s there, she tries to turn the hearts of the children away from their parents.”

If the current outrage at the now-overt, omni-sexual agenda of Disney is awakening parents to the importance of forming well their children’s imagination, then very good. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. Do not let the corrupt vision of the modern storyteller rock your child’s cradle. Take custody of the world you allow your child to inhabit through films and stories. They are not inconsequential dabblings of entertainment. A blurred-out lesbian kiss or an openly-gay character will do less damage to a child’s imagination than a clearly corrupt and infernal story line.

‘The Simpsons’ Rails Against Capitalism

 

Fox’s cartoon “The Simpsons” just concluded Season 33 on May 22 with a rip-roaring attack on capitalism and how the middle class has been shredded. It starred a singing janitor played by actor Hugh Jackman and a professorial cameo by socialist Robert Reich, who was once Bill Clinton’s secretary of labor.

Before we get into details, let’s just mock the pose they’re striking. Everyone associated with “The Simpsons” all these years is wealthy. Back in 2015, the show’s main voice actors were making $300,000 an episode. The show’s creator, Matt Groening, is even wealthier.

It’s just like Seth MacFarlane, who has made a mint off perverted episodes of “Family Guy,” etc. on Fox and backed socialist Bernie Sanders for president. Let’s guess MacFarlane would move all his money to the Cayman Islands if his leftist dreams were to ever come true.

Fox Entertainment, now owned by Disney, has never acted like a Murdoch megaphone. Their cartoons have repeatedly ripped Fox News and conservatives. A few years ago, “The Simpsons” compared former President Donald Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway to Joseph Goebbels (which makes Trump Hitler, ha ha ha).

The latest show was titled “Poorhouse Rock.” It was touted by the website “Den of Geek” as “the most punk episode ‘The Simpsons’ has offered in a long time. It’s like having Johnny Rotten narratively croon a ‘Schoolhouse Rock’ with the ultimate lesson: There’s no future for you.” They correctly explain this series “began as an equal opportunity offender of political sensitivities” but now “has firmly committed itself to progressive parody.”

Before they even got to capitalism, they mocked Christianity. At church, the Simpsons and their community sing a hymn: “Lord, you are truly great / We are wretched but devout / Your hair looks really awesome / And have you been working out?” Lisa Simpson suggested God was “thirsty” for praise.

Bart Simpson mocked his dad Homer at church, so Homer took him to work for a day at the nuclear plant. Just as Bart began to imagine himself getting his dad’s job when he grew up, Jackman the janitor interrupted him with some musical economics.

He sang: “Your dad and his buddies had it swell / But gradually it all went to hell / Factories closed, unemployment would spike / Here to explain it is Robert B. Reich!”

Reich lectured over jaunty music: “The decline of unions, rampant corporate greed, Wall Street malfeasance and the rise of shortsighted politics all contributed to increased economic inequality, widespread real unemployment, wage stagnation and a lower standard of living for millions of Americans.”

Then Jackman and Reich teamed up to claim: “Tax breaks went to CEOs, never trickling down to average Joes.” We never had a tax cut? Ever? Then Jackman sang, “And so it came to pass,” and Reich rapped, “Greedy rich men kicked our a–.”

They did? Google suggests Reich has a net worth of $4 million. Back in 2014, Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute noted Reich was teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, at a salary of $242,000 — and he only taught one class in the fall semester that met for two hours, once a week. That works out to a wage of about $2,500 per hour of teaching. On top of that, Reich was commanding a $40,000 fee for a one-hour lecture on the public speaking circuit.

So, who is the greedy rich man kicking the middle class?

It’s no joke: this cartoon was a terrible (and shamelessly hypocritical) attack on America’s economy. No “fact-checkers” will evaluate it, since it’s not politically incorrect, like The Babylon Bee.

If Republicans Collaborate with Dems to Betray Us on the 2A, They Will Lose the Midterms

 

Not one inch.

The GOP better not give up one single inch on gun freedom.

The Democrats are giddy. They were hoping that SCOTUS putting the kibosh on kid killing was going to save them from annihilation in November. That did not work – Americans were less interested in preserving a non-existent right to snuff out a life two minutes from crowning than in $6 gas. But this scumbag’s murder rampage in Texas has given them new hope, they think. All the GOP has to do is be spineless and stupid.

So, they’re feeling pretty confident.

We could discuss the facts, like how the real issue is mentally ill kids (lib COVID lockdowns were no help) and lax security at schools where some cretin can wander in with a rifle and hang out unchallenged. We can also point out the obvious – that disarming law-abiding citizens only empower the criminals Democrats excuse and the tyrants they want to be. But facts and evidence will not stiffen the spines of the noodle caucus that thinks that the regime media will let up if they only “DO SOMETHING” even though the doings the Democrats demand are acts of political onanism.

No, the GOP caucus in Congress needs to understand if good policy and a respect for the Second Amendment are not reason enough for them to derail the runaway freight train of bullSchiff exploitation legislation the Dems are pushing then our vengeance at the ballot box will be.

Stop fearing mean tweets from blue-checked Kaden O’Geebo of Politico and start fearing your voters.

We saw the effect of weakness in response to the death of that fentanyl and pregnant lady-threatening enthusiast that preceded 2020s summer of rioting. It helped hamstring the response to the violent chaos. And it showed us that only we can protect ourselves – with guns. Gun sales are setting records, and it’s not because the American people think the government is going to do a competent job and not ever try to treat us like peasants as they do to the Aussies who obediently turned in their rifles and ended up locked in COVID camps.

Guns are not a luxury. They are essential to what it means to be citizen as opposed to a subject. I write about the importance of an armed populace.

“Americans own more guns than there are Americans, and that is an unalloyed good thing. Citizens should own guns, and lots of them – the possession of cold steel that shoots hot lead distinguishes citizens from lower forms of life, like ‘subjects,’ ‘serfs,’ and ‘gulag residents.’ In a nation meant to be by and for the People, it is important that the People never cede to the State, which is their tool and not their master, a monopoly on violence. Having guns in the hands of citizens is the ultimate veto over tyranny.”

So, guns aren’t just fun toys. They are not optional. They are critical to our identity as citizens. Taking them turns us from the rulers into the ruled. And that’s exactly why the Democrats want us disarmed, demoralized, and disenfranchised.

So, we GOP voters are all one-issue voters on gun rights and you best be on the right side of that one issue. Republicans, understand that if you betray us – by which we mean pass any item off the garbage Trojan Horse gun-grabbing laundry list the Democrats had been holding ready to spring the next time some worm decided to shoot up a school – then we will abandon you and you will lose the midterms.

You are on the verge of an astonishing and historical victory. The Democrats know they are toast. There is only one way for you to blow it, and that is to choose to sell out your base.

They are hoping you do.

They want you to do it.

They are praying that you do to their false weather goddess, the angry one who demand you sacrifice your truck and pork ribs to her so she turns down the global thermostat.

All you have to do is…not do it.

Do not embrace a stupid policy that does not address the real issue.

Do not go along with defacing to the Constitution.

Do not sell out your own voters.

Do not imagine that if you only obey the regime media they will stop hating you. Look at Mitt, who is just aching to submit to them like he did to Candy Crowley. Do they even hide their contempt for him? 

Look at Adam Kinzinger. He debased himself more thoroughly than a CW teen star convict trying to buy some protection for himself in Pelican Bay, yet his Democrat pals still gleefully gerrymandered him out of Congress and into some gig at a think tank with a name like “The Center for Sensible Conservatism that Fails Respectably.” 

It’s a loser’s game, and you should be insulted that the Democrats are convinced you will play it.

Don’t be a loser. 

It’s tempting. The mayhem was horrible. There are crying people on the TV. Reporters are asking why you want to kill children by not turning law-abiding citizens into felons. But this is the time to be strong.

Your policies did not create the mayhem or the crying people, and your policies did not kill children. That’s all lies.

If you think there are things to be done, let them wait until January when we’re in charge. After all, the Democrats won’t do anything about criminals except turn your voters into them. The Democrats reject any real solution to these problems – they’ll spend $40 billion to fortify Kiev but not a cent to fortify schools. That’s because they do not care. Look at Beto. He didn’t care – he wanted a political moment. Are you going to reward that?

Not if you want our votes.

Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, you are not dumb people. You know this rush of political adrenaline will fade, but our memory of a political Benedict Arnold move will not. You each want to rule your respective legislative body, and you will – if you keep the weasels, sissies, and weakhearts in your coalition in check.

No compromise on our rights. None. 

And if you do, you will lose us and the midterms.

Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are hoping you Republicans will be weak and stupid, blending cowardice with bad policy to make those Twitter blue checks be nice to you until the next time – which will be about five minutes after you sell us out.

Don’t.

Don’t even think it.

If you wobble, you lose the midterms. Choose wisely.