Culture Is Politics and Vice Versa
Andrew Breitbart once famously said, “Politics is downstream from culture.”
What Andrew was conveying is the idea that changes manifested in the culture will likely produce parallel changes in politics.
I myself contend that the country has changed so dramatically, the culture is now inseparable from politics and politics is inseparable from the culture. In other words, culture is politics and politics is culture.
There is no place in which the culture has been kept sequestered from the political, and likewise there is no place in which the political has been kept at arm’s length from the culture. In a very real sense it has taken on an eerily seamless quality.
An additional aspect that has affected the political-cultural relationship is the social media. In its advent, social media literally took the nation by storm. People, though, were too busy living through an immersion experience for the records to fully realize the unprecedented phenomenon it truly was.
Then there is the whole notion of search engines. These are the vehicles that enable us to gain access to the storehouses of information contained on the internet.
We all know that the use of digital devices has exploded. To millions of people, it feels as though these mini-computers are extensions of our bodies. If denied them for any length of time, the psyche may operate as though a piece is somehow missing and experience digital deprivation anxiety in the process.
And so it is that we find ourselves racing headlong into a confluence of digital forces. How were we to know that the power to control digital life itself would ultimately be concentrated in the hands of a few select individuals who run the Big Tech companies?
This year COVID lockdowns and woke content altered the way in which Americans consumed their digital amusement. Some eye-opening ratings help to tell the tale.
Recently, The New York Times took a hiatus from attacking the president long enough to notice that a watershed moment was taking place in the viewing habits of a central medium of our age—television.
While under COVID house arrest, the prime-time viewing audience preferred to watch one network over all of the others. The network of choice was none other than the oft-maligned Fox News.
This constituted a major shift of the culture, so much so that even the Times felt compelled to report it.
It is not surprising that Fox News would be on top when compared to other cable news outlets such as CNN and MSNBC. Fox has dominated this space for 18 years running.
But for Fox News to become the preferred prime-time destination over the increasingly woke broadcast and cable entertainment offerings? This was unexpected and turned out to be downright scary for the left.
“In June and July, Fox News was the highest-rated television channel in the prime-time hours of 8 to 11 p.m. Not just on cable. Not just among news networks. All of television. The average live Fox News viewership in those hours outstripped cable rivals like CNN, MSNBC and ESPN, as well as the broadcast networks ABC, CBS and NBC, according to Nielsen,” the Times reported.
“That three-hour slot is a narrow but significant slice of TV real estate, and it is exceedingly rare for a basic-cable channel to outrank the Big Three broadcasters, which are available in more households and offer a wider variety of programming,” the Times added.
“Even the return of live sports did little to stop the momentum: The Fox News programs hosted by Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity drew more live viewers than competing baseball and basketball games, including a Yankees-Nationals matchup on Opening Day,” the Times said.
Fox News is a place where folks can uniquely experience a pushback against virtually all of the other media outlets. They also get treated to a healthy dose of American exceptionalism.
In the past, the formation of American culture, even when dominated by the left, was still occurring in a free market environment. This is what we know as the American model, the one that allows more innovation and creativity than any other governmental approach ever has.
But now we see signs that our nation is moving towards a new model, one that embraces authoritarianism and seeks to implement a political agenda.
It is an emerging totalitarian model in which elected leaders impose selective lockdowns and arbitrary mandates using public health as a pretext. A model in which the same elected leaders allow, facilitate, and even cheer on criminal, insurrectionist, and terrorist acts. A model that encourages the erasure of national history, heritage, and identity in order to fit a far-left narrative.
Most tragically, it is an emerging totalitarian model that looks more like the Chinese communist system of governance than anything previously associated with the United States of America.
Chief Justice Roberts’s Rogue Ruling Pattern
As the final arbiter on the rule of law, The Supreme Court has always been a part of presidential campaigns to some extent. But this time around the issue has been catapulted to front and center.
For the last eight years one individual has played a pivotal role in some of the most significant societal-altering decisions that have come down from the High Court. That lone figure is Chief Justice John Roberts.
The past term is one in which Justice Roberts seems to have shed any trace of conservative jurisprudence. But for a while now he has regularly sided with leftists members of the High Court. Evidently, Vice President Mike Pence felt the need to speak out on the subject.
“Look, we have great respect for the institution of the Supreme Court of the United States,” the vice president recently told David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network. He then had the guts to say something out loud that a whole lot of people had been feeling.
“… Chief Justice John Roberts has been a disappointment to conservatives — whether it be the Obamacare decision, or whether it be a spate of recent decisions all the way through Calvary Chapel,” Vice President Pence said.
With the Supreme Court firmly on the electoral radar, it seems as though it is 2016 all over again. But now it appears as if there’s even more at stake for the country.
In June of 2020, President Donald Trump pledged to unveil a new list of potential justices ahead of November’s general election.
“He did that [an unveiling] in 2016. He kept his word,” Vice President Pence said of President Trump’s list. “He’s going to do that in the fall of 2020, and in the next four years, he’ll keep his word and appoint more principled conservatives to our courts.”
It goes without saying that the vice president’s criticism of the chief justice is completely warranted. All anyone has to do is look at the series of appalling rulings that have piled up at the feet of Justice Roberts. Over and over again he has chosen to side with left-leaning Democrat appointees to the High Court.
Curiously, Justice Roberts’s rogue tendencies began to surface in 2012. He facilitated the High Court’s upholding of Obamacare when, as the swing vote and writer for the majority, he penned an opinion using a contorted rationale that was almost totally devoid of legal reasoning.
He framed the clearly unconstitutional individual mandate as a “tax” even though the Obama administration had never even argued that the mandate was a tax.
In 2019 Justice Roberts voted with the far-left justices to reject a restriction on the overly powerful federal bureaucracy. This enabled federal agencies to continue to interpret their own regulations.
In another case, for no apparent legal reason Justice Roberts again joined with liberal justices, this time to invalidate a 2020 census citizenship question.
In the most recent term, Justice Roberts appears to have put the pedal to the metal in his judicial activism. He voted with left-leaning justices in adding the terms “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s workforce protections.
The chief justice also went renegade when he struck down President Trump’s executive order that canceled a previous Obama administration executive order that was illegal. This ended up allowing the program called the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA) to continue.
Justice Roberts also joined the leftist justices in preventing the citizens of Louisiana from implementing a duly passed law that would have required physicians performing abortions to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. He claimed that he really didn’t want to vote with the liberals on this one. His excuse, in effect, was that precedent made him do it.
Four years ago Justice Roberts dissented from the majority ruling in a case that had similar facts. In his current concurring opinion, he writes, “I joined the dissent in Whole Woman’s Health and continue to believe that the case was wrongly decided.”
In a case that may come to haunt Justice Roberts in the future, he joined with the far-left justices in rejecting a Nevada church’s request to block the state’s COVID cap on church attendees. The disregard that was on display with respect to the Constitution was obvious to legal scholars as well as everyday folks.
Justice Neil Gorsuch was able to refute the legal gymnastics of the majority with a single paragraph dissent.
“…the First Amendment prohibits such obvious discrimination against the exercise of religion. The world we inhabit today, with a pandemic upon us, poses unusual challenges. But there is no world in which the Constitution permits Nevada to favor Caesars Palace over Calvary Chapel,” Justice Gorsuch wrote.
Reacting to the decision, Texas Senator Ted Cruz tweeted, “John Roberts has abandoned his oath. But, on the upside, maybe Nevada churches should set up craps tables? Then they could open?”
Many court watchers have speculated about what could be motivating Justice Roberts to move so far leftward.
The truth is it doesn’t really matter.
With the track record that he has laid down, it is clear that he is willing to play the role of unelected legislator for cases that have a huge impact on society, cases involving the power of the administrative state, the right to life, and the right of free religious expression.
As the vice president stated, these shameful extrajudicial decisions “are a reminder of just how important this [November 2020] election is for the future of the Supreme Court.”
This is especially true since Justice Roberts can’t be voted out of office. The only practical way his now-established rogue ruling pattern can be offset is to elect a president who will appoint justices that revere the Constitution and adhere to it.
That would be President Donald J.Trump.
Tables Turn as Bibles Burn
Good folks all over the place are so tired of being told that what’s been going on in cities like Portland and Seattle are peaceful protests.
Instead of trying to understand the wobbly language that’s being bandied about, the better route is to take a long hard look at what’s actually happening.
For more than two months street thugs armed with rifles, lasers, bombs, flame throwers, swords, spears, and an assorted array of sick weaponry have terrorized to the hilt average everyday people.
Meanwhile Democratic Party hacks and their media toadies give attaboys to the perpetrators. They insist that there’s no violence going on anywhere. They while away their leisure lockdown hours plotting ways in which they can torment their political enemies. And cruelest of all, they turn a deaf ear to folks who cry in the dark for help that never comes.
Here’s a little animal tale to ponder.
Early in June while on a walk through the park some Portland police came across a pig that had fallen asleep on the ground. The officers took to Twitter to see if the pig’s owner could be located. A photo of the little guy was displayed on the official police page along with a phone number and message that encouraged a happy reunion.
The presence of the animal in the park would be an eerie foreshadowing of something insidious that would take place about a month and a half later.
Last week rioters sent yet another symbolic message of the appalling kind. They set a pig’s head on fire. Atop the animal’s head was a police hat. An American flag completed the smoldering scene.
As if an incinerated pig’s head in police attire and a torched American flag didn’t assault the psyche enough, footage of another ugly event was posted on the internet. It showed participants, who were wielding Black Lives Matter signs and being cheered on by bystanders, happily hurling stacks of Bibles onto a blazing bonfire.
Providentially, Twitter user Ian Miles Cheong would catch the whole thing on tape.
Burning books is very much a specialty of fascists. The Nazis did it in the 1930s. But burning the Holy Bible? Even in fallen away corners this is not going to sit well.
Guess it should have been apparent though, considering the recent comments made by BLM activist Shaun King, who used a series of Twitter posts to urge the destruction of images and statues of Jesus Christ, his Blessed Mother Mary, and other figures from scripture.
“Yes I think the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down. They are a form of white supremacy,” King tweeted.
King also posted that “white Jesus is a lie” and is a “tool of white supremacy,” which in King’s words was created to help white people use Christianity as a “tool of oppression.”
King then wrote that all of the Christian imagery should be taken down, including “murals and stained glass windows of white Jesus, and his European mother, and their white friends.”
It was inevitable, being the Marxist-based global organizations they are, that BLM, Antifa, and like-minded radicals would attempt to defile, denigrate, and destroy the biblical message and its mystical messengers. After all, Judeo-Christian scriptures hold within them the very ideas upon which America in particular, and the whole of Western civilization in general, are built.
The Bible has often been viewed by the left with contempt, and for good reason. A government based on the Rule of Law, which sprang forth from laws transcribed by Moses and enshrined in the Ten Commandments, frequently prompts negative reactions on the part of those who are threatened by absolutes.
Donald Trump Jr. used his Twitter account to comment on the recent Bible burning.
“Now we move to the book burning phase. I’m pretty sure ANTIFA doesn’t actually stand for what they say it stands for. Maybe just remove the anti part of [its] name and it’s perfect,” Trump Jr. posted.
Organizations lurking behind the aforementioned street thugs are hell-bent on destruction.
Like all of the committed Marxists before them, the “utopian” world they seek can only exist when freedom dies.
The Bible is Truth. Truth will set you free. Freedom is forever.
The Day Baseball Died
Sports used to be America’s favorite escape hatch from the hard realities of life.
For a few hours, whether alone or with a bunch of your relatives and/or friends, you could just kick back and relax, munch on snacks that were no good for you, and get in major spats where everyone knew you would still be on speaking terms when it was all over.
More than merely symbolic, there was a kind of almost reverent moment that occurred at the top of each game. It was when the national anthem rang out.
The whole country would pause, and in those few seconds we would all be of one heart.
Seems so long ago and far away now.
For those of us who are into baseball, the past few months of lockdown purgatory have relegated us to watching reruns of old little league games as we looked forward to the opening of the season.
In no way could we have ever been prepared for what we were about to witness on that surreal July 2020 start date.
Pre-game ceremonies force-fed us a political menu. The emotionally charged images included a video featuring the voice of famed Hollywood actor Morgan Freeman, which popped up on our TV screens to deliver a social justice message.
With what must have been a collective look of shock and awe on our faces, at that solemn moment when the notes of the national anthem wafted through the air, players all over the place did the unthinkable—they took a knee.
If that wasn’t bad enough, here’s a short list of things that twisted America’s favorite pastime into a major league pretzel:
– Cardboard cutout fans watch as compliant players appear with masks over their faces.
– A fake soundtrack is a stand-in for real crowd noise.
– Social distancing rules the dugout.
– Fenway Park treats folks to a 250-foot BLM billboard.
– Oakland enlists the voice of actor Tom Hanks to peddle peanuts.
Adding to the weird opening day was the choice of Dr. Anthony Fauci to throw out the traditional first pitch. It was the game between the New York Yankees and Washington Nationals. The infectious disease expert boldly took his place at the pitcher’s mound.
In what looked like a metaphor of his failed public health predictions and flawed computer models, Dr. Fauci threw out a pitch that was off target to the point of ridiculousness.
Kyndall Freer, social media editor for Yahoo Sports, quipped in a tweet that “Dr. Fauci’s first pitch was just trying to social distance from home plate.”
Freer was being kind.
But here’s something that was even worse than Dr. Fauci’s wild pitch. It was the image of him in the bleachers, yukking it up with friends who were fully masked when he wasn’t. His mask had been yanked down to chin level, and he had failed in social distancing to boot.
After critics assailed him, he apparently felt the need to speak out. In an interview with Fox News, Dr. Fauci sounded unmistakably defensive.
“I had my mask around my chin. I had taken it down. I was totally dehydrated and I was drinking water, trying to rehydrate myself,” Dr. Fauci said.
His explanation isn’t flying. There was no water in sight and his lack of social distancing speaks for itself.
Hanks once delivered a line in the 1992 movie “A League of Their Own” that has stuck with a lot of people over the years.
“There’s no crying in baseball!” Hanks’s character Jimmy Dugan says.
Sorry to have to tell you but there is today, Jimmy.
Because in the end, baseball fans young and old are now left wondering if the Boys of Summer can ever be resurrected again.
Actor Antonio Sabato Jr. Launches a Conservative Movie Studio
Antonio Sabato Jr. came to America from Italy when he was just a young boy. He didn’t speak the language of the new country that he now called home, but he was determined to learn.
In a foreshadowing of sorts, Sabato would teach himself to speak America’s dominant language the Hollywood way. He would become fluent in English by watching movies. Later he would break into the world of modeling and move on to working as an actor in television and film.
Most people are aware that the political pendulum in Hollywood has gone through quite a dramatic swing over the years. What began as a top down system, with studio bosses in control, slowly transformed into a quasi bottom up system, which was heavily influenced by agents, lawyers, and enormously overpaid talent.
As I documented in my books and writings over the past couple of decades, when it comes to diversity of political thought, there has been very little permission granted to folks who are working in the entertainment industry to be anything but liberal. Still, nothing could have prepared Tinseltown conservatives for what was about to happen.
In 2016 Donald J. Trump won the presidency. He took his place in the Oval Office, and it seems as though for Hollywood leftists everywhere, in one fell swoop the gates of Hades blew wide open.
After a few initial days of shell-shock and tears over the election results, Hollywood residents snapped into action. Arm and arm with the Democratic Party, celebrity leftists signed on to the coup, swarmed the media, and worked harder than they ever had to get rid of the president.
Pre-2016 the hatred in Hollywood against those who held contrary political positions was at a steady simmer. Post-2016 it would flat-out boil over, blistering every facet of the business. Direct aim would be taken against any individual who would dare to express even the slightest bit of openness to an opposing viewpoint.
The McCarthy Era would have nothing on the New Hollywood Trump Era. One after another Hollywood conservatives in Tinseltown would be shown the door.
Enter stage right. Sabato’s political views were routinely unacceptable in Hollywood, but now they would be deadly to his career. Except for the fact that he’s a Hollywood conservative who was in no way going to take it lying down.
He came to the conclusion that conservative creatives needed an alternative place to make the kind of movies and other entertainment product that are now banned by uber-woke Hollywood.
In a recent post on his Twitter account, Sabato revealed his plans for an alternative entertainment company.
“We are putting together a plan to create a conservative movie studio for all patriots to do projects that Hollywood would never do,” Sabato wrote. “No more blacklisting and no more injustice from the socialist elites.”
A follow-up tweet indicated that Sabato’s studio offered an oasis for conservative filmmakers to join in with the studio’s new film and mission.
“To all conservative producers who want to make a change this is the time, get in touch with me, and be part of our team,” the post read. “Right now we are in pre-production with Trail Blazers [Sabato’s upcoming film project] our first in line for many more & first to start our studio.”
IMDB describes “Trail Blazers” as a Western drama and indicates an expected release next year.
The film stars fellow conservatives Kristy Swanson and Stacey Dash, along with legendary film icon Robert Wagner. The cast of “Trail Blazers” also has a host of familiar right-of-center actors in Hollywood, including Kevin Sorbo, Scott Baio, Dean Cain, and Lorenzo Lamas.
Sabato is directing the film, which he co-wrote with actress and producer Deborah Twiss, and he will act in the project as well.
It is no longer a secret that Hollywood has no tolerance for anyone who doesn’t capitulate to the “woke” litany of approved beliefs. Artists trying to make it in the rough and tumble business of entertainment have known that they have to stay in what legendary actor Charlton Heston referred to as the “conservative closet.”
Sabato declared his support for President Trump at the 2016 Republican National Convention, and since then his career suffered. He recently shared via media interviews what happened to him after his name was firmly engraved on Hollywood’s new blacklist.
“I was the first celebrity to come out and talk about the president, and he had my vote from day one,” he told Variety. “I had to sell everything, I had to pay all my debts, I was blacklisted. All my representatives left me, from agents to managers to commercial agents. I literally had to move, find a new job to survive and take care of my kids.”
During a recent appearance on Fox Business, Sabato explained to host Maria Bartiromo that your future is in jeopardy if Hollywood has disdain for your political point of view or your religious belief system.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” he told Bartiromo. “I never expected to see it here in Hollywood where you have this liberal world dictating the future of everybody in the business who disagrees with them politically.” He explained that it can be seriously problematic if you bring up God or express your faith by wearing a cross.
He also indicated that there are other Trump supporters in the entertainment industry who are too afraid to reveal their political views for fear they will lose opportunities to work in the highly competitive industry.
Sabato is not completely alone in speaking out about the treatment of conservatives in Hollywood. Tim Allen and James Woods have let it be known their careers were hurt by having the “wrong” political beliefs in Hollywood. And Tinseltown’s bias turned super extreme when comedic actress Roseanne Barr received particularly harsh treatment over a single tweet. She lost her ABC show and her career in part because she was known to be a Trump supporter.
“The amount of people being blacklisted in Hollywood is astounding. I have never received so much support and so much love and also wanting to be a part of my new venture with our new studio. Incredible times and we will do it together!” Sabato recently posted.
Everyone knows you can’t keep a good conservative down. Something tells me a grateful public is in Sabato’s corner.
Time to Make Up Your Mind — It’s One or the Other
When it comes to picking a president this time around, there’s no middle of the road, no complaining about the choices available, and no leaving blank spots on ballots.
Each and every voter has a decision to make that involves a critical choice between two rival political parties, two 2020 presidential candidates, and two polar opposite futures for America.
Below is a summary of the two options that each and every voter has to ponder, pray about, and in the end, pick one or the other.
Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden
In an apparent attempt to unify his party, Biden is using a document created by a task force that he set up along with Socialist U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders. The document addresses six policy issue categories that include so-called climate change, health care, and immigration.
Biden refers to these issue areas as comprising a “bold, transformative platform.”
“Transformative” is the cryptic word here. Among other things, his proposed agenda includes the following:
–The repeal of travel bans currently imposed on dangerous terrorist countries, the opening of the borders to any foreigner who claims asylum, amnesty for those who are in the country illegally, and a 100-day moratorium on all deportations.
–Federal funding to create a “civilian corps” of unarmed first responders, which will include social workers. This will evidently go hand-in-hand with the Democrats expressed desire to de-fund or even abolish the police.
–The establishment of what is described as a “public option plan” of government health care; additionally, there is a proposed extension of coverage to illegal immigrants.
–With regard to the life issue, Biden recently commented on a Supreme Court decision concerning state restrictions on abortion. He described the right to end the life of a baby in the womb as a “constitutional right to choice under any circumstance.”
Presumptive Republican nominee President Donald Trump
Trump recently made an inspiring speech at Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota. In his speech, he presented a platform of his own. Among other things, his dreams for America encompass the following:
–The recognition of “the solemn right and moral duty of every nation to secure its borders” and the obligation of our country to “care for its own citizens first.”
–The importance of safeguarding the First Amendment and encouraging a healthy exchange of ideas and an ongoing “free and open debate.”
–The need to “support the courageous men and women of law enforcement” and strengthen our commitment to “never abolish our police or our great Second Amendment.”
–The rekindling of the American spirit that encourages us to “teach our children to know that they live in a land of legends, that nothing can stop them, and that no one can hold them down.”
–The instilling of the confidence to believe that we “can do anything,” “be anything,” and that working with one another “we can achieve anything.”
–With regard to the life issue, Trump said, “Every child, of every color, born and unborn, is made in the holy image of God.”
During the imposed “lockdown” of our country, the Democrats gave us a preview of what the future will look like if they are in charge, unrestrained and able to fully implement their socialist wish list.
The contrast between the two choices presented above is clear as can be.
But here’s the most important thing for each and every voter to consider—the candidates’ visions for the future.
Ask yourself, What is my own personal vision for my children, my grandchildren, and for America?
And then ask yourself, Which candidate is going to help make my own personal vision become a reality?
Choose like it really matters, because it really does.
James Hirsen 
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