Glenn Beck Rally, Washington, DC, 8/28/10

Yesterday 8/28/2010, I attended the Glenn Beck Restoring America Rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. It was very well attended. I am not an expert at determining crowd size, but my best guesstimate was that the attendance was about 250,000 to 300,000. Some reports claim that there were up to 700,000 attendees, and one news source claimed 87,000. I’ll stick with my original estimate.

This was not a political rally. It was about celebrating the greatness of this country, and a cry to return us to the principles that made this country great. Another purpose of the rally was to raise money for the Special Operations Warrior Foundation. The event raised over $5 million dollars for this noble cause. The mission statement of the Special Operations Warrior Foundation states: "The Special Operations Warrior Foundation provides full scholarship grants and educational and family counseling to the surviving children of special operations personnel who die in operational or training missions and immediate financial assistance to severely wounded special operations personnel and their families."

It was a very emotional event for a lot of people. Many of those in attendance had lost family members who were serving their country in the US Military. I’d say that about 3/4 of the people that I talked to either had served in the military, or had a family member that either served or currently serves their country. As I was walking around, I came upon a group of ladies sitting together in the shade under a tree. Some appeared to be in their late 30s or early 40s, and some appeared to be in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. They all had one thing in common. They all wore a rectangular pin that had a red border, cream background, and right in the middle, a gold star. They were members of the Gold Star Mothers, an organization of women who have lost sons or daughters in action.

There was many a tear shed as the various speakers gave accounts of how members of their families had been killed in action, and how the SOWF had helped them by making sure that their children or grandchildren had enough money to earn a college degree. Recipients receive scholarship grants, not student loans. Radio and television personality, Glenn Beck, hosted the event. Other notable speakers included former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin, who was there speaking as a mother of a son serving overseas in a combat position, not as a politician. Dr. Alveda King, the niece of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., also was a featured speaker. It was hot, crowded, and rewarding.

The only drawback that I saw was the lack of attendance of minorities. Others noticed that too, and expressed their regret. Every single person I talked to, and there were many, showed absolutely no racist tendencies at all. All of us would have loved having a large contingency of Black Americans and Hispanic Americans joining us. There were some, but not a whole lot. I have no idea why. Maybe they were told not to attend. Maybe they thought that they wouldn’t be welcome. If that was the case, they were 100% wrong.

I did not attend the counter rally sponsored by the Reverend Al Sharpton, who bitterly complained that Beck’s rally, on the 47th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s "I Have A Dream" event on the same Lincoln Memorial steps, was a denigration of Dr. King’s legacy. I have news for Reverend Sharpton. There was no denigration at all. In fact, Dr. King’s legacy and greatness was addressed by speakers and approvingly recognized by the mostly white participants. From what I saw, those so insultingly called by the Liberal Elites and their minions, the "little people," the ones that out of "desperation cling to their guns and religion" at this gathering, showed not signs, covert or overt, of racism, if there was any at all in the first place. Have Reverend Sharpton and his followers? How much money did the grievance industry make this year? What was your cut of the action Reverend Sharpton?

I felt good about what I saw. I came away with a sense of hope and rejuvenation. Does this mean that I’m going to become a religious fanatic or something of the sort? No. I’m going to still go through life as a relatively spiritual person who, even though I was raised Roman Catholic and still loves the rituals of the traditional church, does not really practice a religion at this time in my life.

I will say this. If people attending this rally were but a microcosm of a much larger group of similar minded folks, we have a great future ahead of us…provided that people like this can become the dynamic majority force leading this country again. I think that the "Silent Majority" has been asleep at the switch for too long. This and the Tea Party movement may be the waking of the sleeping giant. I hope so.

Comeuppance

One thing that I’ve noticed over the years that I’ve been a musician. When you play in a club in the city, your audience is primarily made up of college educated professionals. They may have a wide range of income brackets. They share, however, one common trait: They despise those that they consider inferior, and for the most part those that they consider inferior, happen to be working class and lower middle class whites, and anyone who happens to be a Conservative. These Leftist spoiled brats, many of whom have a gold plated Ivy League college education and then some thanks to Daddy’s money, feel it is their birthright to be America’s ruling class. They also know deep inside that the only way that they will become America’s nobility, with a chance of rising up from there to America’s monarchy, is if they can orchestrate the destruction of the American Capitalist system, and replace it with a Socialist dictatorship. Despite what these cretins claim, it’s not about "fairness." It’s about Totalitarian control over the masses for the "common good."

I grew up in a different time than these cosmopolitans. My parents were from the so called, "Greatest Generation." My late father was born in 1917, and served in the Army Air Corps during WWII. My mother, still alive today, was born in 1920. Both of them grew up during the Great Depression, and the sacrifices they had to endure, put an indelible stamp on their personas. I was not given a "Progressive" upbringing like most of these current spoiled urban professional types. I was not brought up believing that I was special. Self-esteem was something that had to be earned. I think my generation was the last generation that was taught that there are winners and losers, and sometimes you are going to be the loser. Suck it up, and get on with your life. However, starting in the early 1960s there was a change in focus in our public education system. The education system’s policies slowly morphed from strict discipline (teachers could still spank you in front of the whole class), and tough academic standards, to a more value based education system that emphasized self-esteem over difficult subject matter. It was a process that was put into place to make sure that a small group of individuals would receive a quality education with lots of ego boosts, and that the rest of society would be "dumbed down" into a servant class.

These twenty-something, thirty-something, and forty-something egotists think they are special, because their entire life they have been told that they are special. Here they are with their advanced college degrees seething at the fact that they are not yet the plantation owners—and like lemmings falling off of a cliff, they all spout the same broken record rhetoric: It’s all George Bush’s and the Republicans fault. While they won’t admit it, they are jealous of anyone else’s success. They can’t stand the fact that some vulgar low class businessman, who makes several million dollars per year owning three or four McDonald’s franchises, makes more money than they do working for some non-profit, foundation, or in the education indoctrination industry. They want a Socialist command and control economy where no one with less education than they do will become more successful than they are. They are, after all, entitled to that success, simply do to the fact that they breathe air. Capitalism allows those that work hard and are innovative the chance to become wealthy. This aggravates the Elite Left to no end. It’s contrary to their egocentric worldview.

Karl Marx called for a rising up of the Proletariat to overthrow the Capitalist class Bourgeoisie. However, the Proletariat accepted, and joined the Capitalist class in order to get their own piece of the pie. After that, the game plan was to advance Communism through a long march through the culture institutions and a subsequent collateral brainwashing through the education system. What has transpired is a new Bourgeoisie of information age professionals, educators, public policy wonks, unionized public sector employees, etc. They have a problem however, the Proletariat, the working class and lower middle class who are sick and tired of being pandered to and insulted, have finally said enough is enough. There is going to be a huge backlash against the Progressives/Communists/Socialists (PCS)…whatever you want to call them in November. If the PCS manage to commit enough election fraud to squelch the will of the majority of the American Proletariat, I’m afraid that things could get real ugly. Marx may get his wish. There very well could be a rising up of the Proletariat to overthrow the Bourgeoisie. I’m not condoning this, but it is a distinct possibility if the "little people" have had enough. We’ll see what happens…

This November

Let’s face it. It doesn’t matter how much anger the American people can muster between now and the November election. It’s going to be impossible to completely reverse the damage to this country that the Obama administration has fostered on us. OK hippies, I’ll give you one. George W. Bush and his "compassionate conservatism" bullshit didn’t help either. I’ll give you another one. Bill Clinton, for the most part except for his management of the military, actually did a decent job as president. But let’s get back to the subject at hand. Even if the Republicans achieve veto proof control of the House, it’s going to be meaningless unless they get veto proof control of the Senate as well. That is impossible. Only one third of the Senate is up for election in November. There is no way that the Republicans can get a two thirds majority in the Senate, even if they win every single seat that is up for election. The numbers are not there. So what can be done? Here are a few things that the American people can do in order to bring this country back slowly from the Socialist abyss that it is spiraling into at record speed:

Number one, Never, never, never, never again, vote another George W. Bush into office as President of the United States. If you want a RINO or a Liberal Republican, look for a classic New England Republican or a Rockefeller Republican. There is a big difference in mindset between a New England or Rockefeller Republican and a George W. Bush Liberal Republican. First of all, the NE or RR Republican takes a strong conservative approach to fiscal matters, and basically considers most social issues, like abortion and gay marriage, as being between a person and their conscience. George W. Bush was more interested in social issues than he was about fiscal responsibility, because he felt that he was beholden to the Religious Right. However as a side note, I will give him credit for this: The US economy didn’t collapse after the attack on 9-11, and it could have very easily. Putting it in perspective, it’s the difference between Episcopalians and Southern Baptists. I am not criticizing either religion. I’m just pointing out a difference in ideology. If you are going to bring the younger voters over to the Republican camp, you are going to have to downplay the social issues. People under forty-five today, are not living in the prude era of the 1950s. They weren’t raised that way. You can debate all you want about the benefits and problems caused by the cultural revolution of the 1960s, but the results are here to stay.

The WW II generation spoiled the hell out of the baby boomers, who then neglected Generation X, which then doted, hovered and overprotected the Millennials. This pampered generation is now of voting age, and they consider Socialism to be a good thing. They have been well indoctrinated by our Marxist controlled education system, as were their parents. The Communists started working on their grandparents in the 1960s and early 1970s, and have sowed seeds that need to be uprooted and destroyed once and for all.

Next, the Right needs to grow some balls and start kicking ass and taking names. No more Mr. Nice Guy. The Democrats, who are now nothing but anti-Capitalist Socialists and Marxists, walked all over the Republicans during the 2006 and 2008 elections. The reason for this is the American people perceived the Republicans as a bunch of wimps. We need hard ass candidates like Chris Christie of New Jersey and not wimps that won’t defend themselves like George Bush. That being said, we need to take the Left’s weapons and turn them back on them with no mercy. No more being ladies and gentlemen when we are confronting the Left. We have to expose them for what they are–anti-American Marxists that are hell bent on destroying this great nation for their benefit. Their benefit? Yes. Under Socialism there is always a highly educated ruling class, a nobility have you, that lives quite well off of the "largesse" of the less educated working class and poor while pretending to have compassion for those less fortunate. It’s all a smoke screen. Highly educated Elites, Bobos as New York Times columnist David Brooks calls them, have nothing but scorn and contempt for those that they consider lesser human beings. Have any of the social programs that the Left has advanced worked? Of course not. They were designed to create dependency and to make the Liberals feel good about them selves, while they made money in the process. Liberals need to be shown over and over again as the whores that they truly are.

Finally, it’s time for Conservatives and Republicans to sit down and read the bible of the Left: Saul Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals. They need to use Alinsky’s tactics, which were designed to foster a Left Wing take down of the United States of America. The most important tactic according to Alinsky is ridicule, because it is almost impossible to defend against without looking weak. In another words, throw it back in their face. Remember the smug arrogant Liberal Elites constant attack on George Bush as being stupid? The implication was also that anyone who voted for Bush, or any Republican for that matter, was stupid. So what should the Right do? The Right needs to constantly show the Liberals for the hypocritical, weak, phonies that they are, and constantly rub their noses in their own shit. The more they throw their child-like temper tantrums, the more you rub. No, the Right won’t look like bullies. People are fed up with the Left right now. Exposing them for what they are, and driving them to their therapists en masse will be fun to watch.

It’s going to take time to reverse the course that the Left has taken this country over the past one hundred years, culminating with the election of the first Marxist president, Barack Obama. It’s not going to be easy, and it’s going to involve a lot of confrontation. There are going to be some show downs, and the Right has to make sure that it is in a position to win those show downs by a huge margin of victory.

Thoughts On New Urbanism

I was online today doing some mindless web searching, when I found some information about planned redevelopment in Unionville, CT. This is the second redevelopment of Unionville. The first one happened in the early to middle 1960s. It appears that the plan is to return Unionville back to what it looked like before they redeveloped it the first time. Only this time, Unionville will become a typical high dollar Yuppieville mascarading behind the facade of the old New England factory town that it traditionally was.

Unionville is part of Farmington, CT. Years ago it was the blue collar "other side of the tracks" from old money, highbrow, Farmington proper. Unionville was the factory town with the Charles House Co., which was a felt factory, and Pioneer Steel Ball, which made ball bearings. There were other smaller factories at one time too. I don't remember what they made, but I do remember where they were located.They were still up and running when I was a child. They are no longer there, and the buildings were demolished a long time ago during the redevelopment project in the 1960s. The Charles House and Pioneer buildings are still there, abandoned rotting corpses that they are, and ready for renovation. The plan is to turn them into condos once major environmental clean up concerns are addressed.

As a child I can remember the old Unionville. South Main Street was a canyon of two story building along both sides of the street. It was a typical New England blue collar town. There were two banks, three or four small mom and pop grocery stores, a butcher shop, a couple of department stores that sold working class clothing, three barber shops, three pharmacies...two with lunch counters and soda fountains, a cheap hotel, and a bar and grill. The First National supermarket didn't come in until the early 1960s. Soon the butcher shop and a couple of the small grocery stores went out of business. That was the first wave of the redevelopment. Just beyond the downtown area, were residential neighborhoods. Most of the homes in the neighborhoods were small wooden frame homes that had been built in the early 1900s. Along Main Street heading toward Collinsville, there were some large Gothic and Victorian homes. I would guess that these were the homes of Unionville's captains of industry, who owned the various factories during the Industrial Revolution. Many of them had been, and are still divided into multiple residential rental units. Some are professional offices. A few are still large private residences. Also, I remember the ruins of a canal that ran right through the center of the residential sections of town. It had supplied water for the electric power company and the various mills at one time, but was no longer usable. The dam that supplied the canal with water from the Farmington River had been destroyed during the flood of 1955. Over the years it slowly filled in with dirt through erosion, and today all you can see is an indentation behind the homes that at onetime lined that canal. I'm sure many children had used that canal as a mosquito infested swimming hole in times gone by.

On the other side of the tracks and with about 3 miles of farmland comfortably separating the two from the working class masses, Farmington was where the professional money and old money lived. Stately 18th century colonial homes line both Main Street and High Street. There was, and still is, very little shopping there, except for a very high end grocery store, a women's clothing boutique, a bakery and some professional offices. Most Farmingtonites did their shopping in Hartford, West Hartford, or typically had other people do their shopping for them.

Demographically, the contrast between Farmington and Unionville are world's apart too. Many of the residents of Farmington can trace their ancestry back to the time of the Mayflower or earlier and that period of colonization in America. They were not leaving England to escape religious persecution. They were gentry settlers who came to this country to increase their fortunes. Most of Farmington's "old families" are descended from these settlers. They are gentry descended from gentry. By contrast, many of the Unionville families can trace their ancestry back to the early 1900s Eastern European immigrants that came here to work in the factories in order to have a better life than they had in the "old country."

Sometime in the middle 1960s, the town decided to redevelop Unionville. All those old buildings were torn down, and a smattering of one and two story buildings were built. Most of the small businesses left for good. Now 50 years later, the plan is to "New Urbanize" Unionville back to what is was when I was growing up. The only difference is it will now be Yuppie rather than working class. This is a trend that is happening all over America and parts of Western Europe including England. It seems like this is becoming the basic modus operandi: Take something that works, break it, and then rebuild it so it is more expensive, eliminating use or participation except for the favored few and their pets. This is why I'm skeptical about redevelopment plans.

Consequently, I have mixed feelings about New Urbanism. Here's what I like about it: First of all, I tend to have an urban mindset. Being in the country drives me nuts. I like convenience. I like the convenience of not having to drive everywhere. Having shopping and entertainment facilities within walking distance of where you live is wonderful. I'm also not in love with the small single family home in a suburban neighborhood, even though I live in one. That's because I hate yard work of any kind, not because I think that people should be forced to live in high density housing for "sustainability" purposes. I consider my single family home a drum warehouse where I reside. It's easy to load equipment out the front door, and I can practice without disturbing the neighbors. That being said, I would gladly trade where I live for an affordable high density housing living arrangement with no outdoor maintenance as long as there was safe, secure storage for my professional equipment, and I had convenient access to it 24/7. It would also have to be soundproof so that I could practice drums, or even have band practice without disturbing the neighbors.

I enjoy spending time in the New Urbanism planned communities of King Farm, Kentlands, and the recently redeveloped downtown area of Rockville in Montgomery County, Maryland. Kentlands and King Farm are built on former working farms. Rockville was redeveloped from a plain vanilla middle class outer reach Washington, DC suburb, into a upper middle class Yuppieville, with high dollar condos, fancy restaurants, and boutique level shops.

Rockville reminds me of many of the downtown areas of the small European cities that I visited like Trier, Germany and Ipswich, England—but on a much more modern scale. You have streets lined with shops and restaurants at street level, and five or six stories of luxury residential units above them. Parking is available in parking garages, and residents can purchase monthly parking permits and park in special garages just for them. There is ample metered parking for visitors in other garages and on the street. Downtown Rockville is served also by Metro, Metrobus, Ride On Bus, and MARC commuter rail. Eventually, I'm sure these planned communities will be connected by light rail systems, which in turn will connect with other light rail, subway, and commuter rail transit systems. I have no problem with that, being someone who finds driving a necessary inconvenience, necessary because I have to haul band equipment around at all hours of the night. Driving is also a necessary inconvenience, because the public transportation system in the Washington, DC area is not set up to get from suburb to suburb. It's designed to get people from the suburbs into the downtown area during commuting and business hours, and to get people around inside the city during business hours and early entertainment hours at night. I'm hoping that over the next 20 years that will change. Massive subsidies of public transportation projects are fine by me. I don't support public transportation projects out of any love of environmental issues. Most environmental issues are bullshit designed to grease the palms of certain liberals with money either forced out of the masses, or "guilted" out of Useful Idiots.

Here's what I don't like about the way that New Urbanism is being implemented: First and foremost is the very obvious excludent social engineering. I have yet to find any contemporary New Urbanism planned community that isn't geared exclusively to the high dollar six figure professionals of the Upper Middle Class. You can gate a community with a gate, or you can gate a community with an economic gate. This makes me wonder what these urban planning Socialists have in store for the working classes and lower middle class. This is how I envision the planned communities for the lower middle class, working class, and underclass...Ghetto! After all, those "scum" can't be allowed to stink up the enclaves of the sanctimonious Educated Elites.

Part of the social engineering process is to "dumb down" the working class and lower middle class standard of living, just like the public education system has been "dumbed down" for the masses. The way you do this is through economic "manslaughter." The best way to do this is by tax increases and skyrocketing energy costs, which affect everything else. As the lower classes are forced out of their small single family homes due to unaffordable energy costs and taxes, they will be forced into government subsidised, crowded, utilitarian housing. How much housing you get will be based on your "need," which will be determined by government managers. A single person living alone only needs a room in a group house, or at most, a studio efficiency unit.

There will be very little luxuries in the New Urbanism planned communities for the "little people." Heating and air conditioning will be controlled from a central location at a temperature that is set by government "managers" who know what's better for us than us. Shopping will be limited to what the elites determine that the little people need. Parking will be almost non-existent. I'm sure there will be places to park work trucks, but there is no doubt in my mind that they will be located away from the residential units. You will have to take public transportation, ride a bike, or walk to get to them. People that don't need vehicles for their work will be "strongly discouraged" from owning any form of private transportation, except for a bicycle. The little people can ride the bus or Metro to their job, and then ride it home. This will remove a lot of cars from the road, so that the upper middle class Elites won't have to sit in traffic jams. All this talk about "sustainability" is crap. It's a social engineering tool to establish a feudal society in America of a ruling class, a nobility class of government managers and their equivalents, and a serf class of everyone else.

I would have no problem with New Urbanism if it was designed to integrate all sections of the Middle Class into the same residential areas, with a large variety of shopping, entertainment, and restaurants of all price ranges in the same locations. However, that is not the case. New Urbanism as it is currently being implemented, is designed to socially engineer society into the "haves" and the "have nots." Unfortunately, this wonderful concept at its face value is being utilized as one more tool to turn the United States of America into a Communist nation. That being said, I still find it a pleasure to walk around downtown Rockville, Kentlands, King Farm or the Rio, and envision what it would be like to be able to afford to live in places like that. Once the re-redevelopment of Unionville is complete, it will be interesting to walk down the main drag and see how many nostalgia memories it will evoke. Will there be the reincarnation of Cliff Fontaine standing next to the chair in his dark wood paneled barber shop, full of young men getting "regular boys" haircuts and reading Mad Magazine? Will there be the drug store with the soda fountain next door, with Old Man Flynn the druggist, making every kid and teenager pay for their soda in advance and then throwing them out the door as soon as they were done? Will the South End Market and Kucia's Grocery Store come back to serve the residents of their respected neighborhoods? Will Myrtle Mills Factory Store and Dubow's Department Store return, selling low cost clothing and work clothes? Will Meatown return selling their daily and weekly specials of pork loin, cube steak and hamburger? Or will Whole Foods now replace Stop and Shop? Will some Yuppie fern bar serving $10 imported beers replace the Budweiser and Balantine Ale drafts at the Old Town Grill? Will ethnic and high dollar restaurants replace Reynold's Lunch Counter, George's Pizza and Friendly's? Will Parson's Paint and Hardware be replaced with Restoration Hardware and $100 garden trowels rather than nails and screws sold by the pound?

What about transportation? Currently, bus service into Hartford from Unionville and Farmington has deteriorated to where it is just barely usable during weekday rush hour. Will passenger rail served be restored like it was until the flood of 1955? Will their be a light rail line running from the center of Unionville into Hartford, like the former trolleys along Farmington Avenue connecting Unionville, Farmington, West Hartford, and Hartford? It will be interesting to see what comes out of this urban planning project.