A nice moment of actual standards. We had to go a very long way to find the wall, but it’s there.
It’s The Thing
If it’s got a steel guitar anyway. Funny story about that. Hawaiian thing. No obvious reason why it became so central.
This one is solid. Boy knows what he’s doing.
A Lost Documentary on the Crossing of the Delaware
"What then is, generally speaking, the truth of history? A fable agreed upon."
-- Napoleon Bonaparte (although he was probably quoting Bernard le Bovier de Fontanelle)
Independence Day, 250th Edition
Dillsboro all out for the veterans' parade.
Some of the local veterans parading.
I was just mentioning the Confederate flag thing and the local pride in heritage; sure enough, a group of them came out to march. Technically, by act of Congress, Confederate soldiers are considered American veterans for certain purposes.
Happy children celebrating in the tremendous heat.
A gingerbread cupcake at the Legion hall.
The Legion gave me a nice challenge coin after the run, too.
It was dangerously hot today, so much so that on the ride back I realized it wasn't safe to continue my ride. Fortunately I was along the beautiful Tuckasegee river, so I climbed down the bank and swam until I was cool enough to resume the ride. I also soaked my shirt so it would help keep me cool for the rest of the ride.
Quite a day. The pork butt came out beautifully thanks to my wife, who took over the smoking so that I could go ride with the Legion. We did a flag replacement ceremony in Robbinsville, the last town before the Dragon. We rode through the Nantahala Gorge to get there, which is a bit out of the way but beautiful. I’d never met these people before, but they put me in the tail gunner position based I guess on the firmness of my handshake. First time I’ve ridden tail for a group ride. I hope I did a good job.
The article on Robbinsville claims that the mean daily maximum temperature in July is 83. That mean was somewhat exceeded today.
Independence Day
Have a happy one, warriors.
UPDATE: I got the pork butt on before dawn. It smells just like old hickory out there.
Freedom Barbecue
I'm going to smoke a pork butt for the Independence Day feast.
I made some Christmas barbecue sauce given the significance of the occasion. This batch was thinned partly with coffee and partly with chicken stock, since I had plenty of chicken stock and not a great deal of coffee. I was also out of molasses, so I added extra dark brown sugar -- which, in commercial sugars, differs from white sugar only by the addition of extra molasses. That's now how it worked historically, but these days they render it all to white sugar and molasses, and then make light or dark brown sugar by putting some molasses back in. Cheaper and easier that way.
I'm also going to smoke some Andouille sausage tomorrow, and a snakeskin hat band I made after Conan's recent run-in. Only a little smoke for the latter, to help preserve and waterproof it.
Yoda: "No, There Is Another."
At the NY Post today, Eric Metaxas declares the American revolution to have been 'the only one in history that worked.'
That's wrong, but his examples aren't the wrong part.
Take the French Revolution, which began just a few years after our own Revolution, and was championed by some of the figures involved in our Revolution — like Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine. They all seemed to think it would be a happy reprisal of what happened here. It was anything but that, ending in a nightmare bloodbath of terror.What went wrong? Just like us, the French decided they didn’t like the idea of monarchy. So they beheaded their king and queen. But the radicals didn’t stop there....Then there are the even worse nightmares of the Bolshevik and Maoist revolutions in Russia and China.
OK, fair as far as it goes. But the American revolution stood on the shoulders of at least two earlier revolutions that had worked: the revolt against King John by the barons who fought him at Runnymede, which produced Magna Carta; and the Scottish Revolution led by William Wallace and Robert the Bruce, which produced a free nation that taught the Pope to accept that men could choose their kings.
Revolution is a risky business, to be sure. Aristotle spends a good part of the Politics explaining how states grow unstable with an eye towards avoiding revolutionary moments. They often end up being destructive.
Not always, though. The one that just occurred in Syria ended a despotic Baathist regime and at least for now seems to have moved in the direction of a better society -- the al Qaeda-linked leader seems to be moderating pretty fast, making deals with the Kurds and the Israelis alike to try to reach a more stable society. The Vietnamese revolution against the French and then us, which we thought would turn them into another Communist hellhole, actually came off all right: the Vietnamese nation is now one of our better friends in the region. The Irish revolt of 1916 produced a nation that is pretty OK, even if they did send condolences on the occasion of Hitler's death. The recent revolt in Northern Ireland's Belfast is healthy, and might help push the whole UK in a better direction eventually.
Sometimes it's the only way to fly. The Declaration sets the terms out clearly: "...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it... Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes... But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security."
Emphasis added, though little needed. Not only a right. Sometimes, a duty.
Georgia Gets a Hard Look
The FBI has made a priority investigation out of the 2020 election there. The article treats it as an open question that might go either way; readers of the Hall know that the matter was settled some time ago, and the remaining question is one of responsibility.
It would be encouraging to see actual consequences for this sort of thing, even for an anarchist. That a political system should be corrupt is no surprise, but watching the powerful gleefully get away with it while the press proclaims that "there is no evidence" of the corruption is -- probably intentionally -- disheartening. For those who believe that government can be a positive good, it is even more important to see consequences for this.
1976 versus 2026
There are many things I really like about 70s culture: Outlaw Country, Shovelhead choppers, proto-Metal and Punk rock, Smokey and the Bandit and its predecessors, The Muppet Show (in spite of its periodic pretenses, which were at least fresh and not so exhausted then).
The above film from 1976 highlights some of the aspects I like a bit less. Still, it does demonstrate a way in which the Carter presidency allowed the left to embrace America in that era that is currently forbidden: if Kamala Harris had won the recent presidential election, I imagine we'd have a version of this today that was being pushed out by official channels. As this one was: this was a product of the US Information Agency. USIA would have been called the propaganda arm of the US government except that the US government formally defines propaganda as "enemy action to..." that the US itself, therefore by definition, can never perform.
Had Harris won, USAID probably would have funded the 2026 version of this instead.
The present administration has no such professionals on its side, and any remaining within the bureaucracy certainly wouldn't contribute to celebrating America as long as it is led by the enemy: indeed, I suppose that producing such a film now would satisfy their definition of 'propaganda.' So we'll have to make do with individual efforts from "X" instead.
Any of you seen any good ones? The day is almost upon us.
The State of Virginia
Today was the day that unconstitutional gun ban was supposed to go into effect in Virginia, except it was slapped with a statewide injunction after a court found that it was likely to be proven unconstitutional in the lawsuit already filed.
Separately, the DOJ has filed suit against Virginia today over these laws.
Also, SCOTUS just announced they will hear two relevant cases about banning AR-15s in October.
Oh. Oh, No.
In a year in which socialist candidates are doing so well, competition for Bad Idea of the Year is fierce! However, we might have a winner already by about the halfway point.
Well, one often learns by making mistakes. Or, you know, someone else may learn from observing the experience.
By the way, the flaw in the plan isn't just the guns. It's the 'crash their system' idea. You are talking about people who are very comfortable operating without a system. When Hurricane Helene came through here, it absolutely crashed the system. Every system. The phones were out, the radios were out, the roads were all cut by fallen trees and washed-away bridges. Nobody waited for 'the system' to get fixed and start making things better. By noon I had a chainsaw militia clearing roads made up of every able-bodied man on the mountain and his chainsaw. Even once we began linking up the volunteer fire department and rescue technicians, guys with tractors were clearing roads the county wouldn't get to for days and the state wouldn't ever.
FEMA? Never heard of her.
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