So. The US is heading towards a cliff. And where's our focus? The PR firm of Taylor and Travis.

Let me say at the outset that I care about... and for... celebrities'... precisely as much as they care about and for me.

And the reader knows that none of them give damn one about me.

In the Bread and Circuses world we've become, almost the entirety of this country's attention is glued to Taylor and Travis. Those who have their attention elsewhere and , like me, suggest that out time is better spent outside of that well-panned and media-fostered black hole are accused of "attacking" (mostly) Taylor Swift for one reason and one reason only: She is a she.

We're told to shut up if we don't go along with this cleverly managed flavor of the week who has been elevated to the level of "God's Gift To Entertainment." As a male, I'm frequently attacked for my views concerning women's issues. Speaking your mind results in efforts to be silenced, ridiculed, misinterpreted and, at least on one occasion, local media's efforts to cancel me.

Well, I'm reminded of two of the hallmarks of this particular blog that I try to live by. They're on the right of this screen but they're also imprinted on my heart:

“In a time of universal deceit – telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

George Orwell, author of 1984

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

Dr. Martin Luther King

Our total inability to focus on things that matter, regardless of how unpleasant those things may be, results in this country being manipulated, being lied to and being put at risk.

The major issues confronting us are ignored. No one is ever held accountable for the damage inflicted and the deaths caused. Criminals are allowed to roam free. Homelessness is the worst it's ever been. Drug importation and use has literally wound up costing the deaths of 10's of thousands of lives. Crime rates continue to explode and murder rates set records. Public schools are a slow motion train wreck with mainly utterly horrific academic outcomes while schools focus on inculcating children with leftist tropes while they do all they can to mainstream the permanent sterilization, butchering and mutilation of children who can't get tattoos, can't enter in to contracts, can't own property and in many cases, can't even drive a car.

I refuse to respond to celebrity. I refuse to do anything because someone I've seen on a TV or movie screen tells me to do so.

Because here's the reality.

Americans do not WANT to think.

As a country, the people here are TOLD what and how to think and God Help those wise enough to throw off the shackles of societal expectations and political correctness to think for themselves.

Celebrities have an inordinate amount of power in forming/shaping opinion in this country, power I simply do not understand.

When a celebrity speaks? The entire world is required to listen.

How many times, for example, have we seen media on Bill Gates?

No so much for what he's done or doing, but instead for what he's saying?

I grant Gates' expertise in the field of computing. I freely acknowledge, unlike either Taylor or Travis, that Gates' company has built, perhaps, the single most impactful product the world has ever known: the Personal Computer.

But what knowledge or expertise is he imbued with beyond that?

How does that make him, or any other celebrity, an expert on anything?

I've frequently stated that my Spaniel knows more about politics than he does, yet, because of WHO HE IS, lack of qualifications or experience aside, we're expected to listen to him.

Or LeBron who knows how to play game but who knows nothing about the mechanics of government, or foreign policy, or law, or any number of things that make up the fabric of this country.

But because he's a celebrity, what he says frequently gets more attention than the president.

Who he hates, what he thinks, what he eats or drinks... all of those things are SUPPOSED to be important.

Why?

Meanwhile, as the title says, this country is beginning to sprint towards the edge of the cliff.

A $34 trillion debt. (Estimates are we'll be paying $700 billion in interest alone this year) All of the issues previously mentioned. A great many countries who seriously want us destroyed. A divide of leftist hate. A border that can't even really be called a border any more since it bears little resemblance to such a thing.

Our troops are getting killed. Countries around the world successfully play us for suckers. Terrorist supporters infest Congress. The dual tier of something called "justice" is screaming, Corruption at almost every level runs rampant. 

Post attack photo of of the Army post in Jordan

And where's the focus?

On a singer and a football player.

A few days ago after the attack on our forces in Jordan that killed 3 and maimed 40, I pointed out that neither of these people know the names of or care about any of them.

Our 3 soldiers killed in Jordan - Sgt William Jerome Rivers, 46, of Carrollton, Georgia; Spc Kennedy Ladon Sanders, 24, of Waycross, Georgia, and Spc Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, 23, of Savannah, Georgia.

Neither of these people, Taylor or Travis, know the names of nor care about any of the men and women slaughtered in Kabul towards the end of the horrific and ignominious (and cowardly) withdrawal from Afghanistan.

America is blissfully (and deliberately, as it turns out) quite unaware of the world around them.

And the people of this country wouldn't have it any other way.

After all, there's celebrities to worship. And we can't let anything interfere with that, can we?

Taylor Swift. Travis Kelce. Politics and the lost perspective.

When it comes to politics, leftists excel at 2 things: labeling... and blaming.

Whenever something is going on, or something happens they don’t like, the leftist auto-response is immediate regardless of the issue. If they, themselves, cannot dominate the issue, then they have to find someone responsible for it that gives them an advantage in whatever the outcome may be.

Historically, examples abound. Mass shootings? Blame the NRA and/or “white supremacists.” Biden’s open border policies? Blame Trump and/or the GOP House for failing to bend over to their formalized open-border bills. Foreign policy debacles? Blame Trump. Out of control inflation? Trump.

I bring this up because as fast as a leftist will get involved in tearing down a Founding Father’s statue, they’re beginning to detect massive push-back against the unutterably overhyped and over exposed Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce duo,

Swift, leftists claim, is God’s Gift not only to entertainment, but to the world generally.

Therefore we, rhetorically speaking, have no choice but to bow down to the feet of this woman… sort of an extension of America’s inexplicable love affair with the billion dollar plus celebrity industry.

The unending media efforts to force us all into acceptance and support of the latest flavor of the week never cease. It’s a form of peer pressure that’s likened to being caught in a vice.

If you’re not a rabid fan of Swift, something, obviously, is wrong with you and you need to be castigated and then culled from the “cool kids” herd, left to drift alone as an outcast who doesn’t get it.

There is no doubt that leftists would, rhetorically, sell their own children to protect one of their icons. And because of America’s inexplicable desire to be told what to do by celebrities who are no more qualified, experienced or capable of ordering us about than my next door neighbor’s dog, the left’s calculous is that Swift is some sort of modern day super hero.

Therefore, she must be protected at all costs and those who don’t agree?

Well, they must be “punished.”

Here’s the reality: Swift is the highest profile leftist alive today. I believe that people around the world are far more concerned about her, her love life, what she’s wearing, what she’s eating, what brand of toilet paper she uses, and naturally, the millions of dollars’ worth of earned media she gets with every Kansas City Chief football game, than they are about our economy, our horrific public school system, our out of control borders and the impending blow up of a world war in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, I don't buy into the TS/TK hype. I wonder if she’s as remotely powerful in ordering her followers to support/vote for a clueless leftist numbskull bent on America’s destruction or not: after all, Swift got totally involved in the 2018 elections, throwing her weight behind Democrat former Tennessee governor Phil Bredesen over then Rep. Marsha Blackburn.

And how'd that work out? I ask that question to remind people of the result of her effort last time: the outcomes of the Senate race she was so public about?  Blackburn won by 10 points.

Leftist media is positively giddy about what they believe she can do to keep the clueless one in office in this year’s election, and maintain control of the Senate while getting the House back. (Of course, in the first two years of the Biden nightmare, democrats controlled all three Houses as well, and we’re still suffering as a result.)

I, on the other hand, suggest a more sober view: leftist reliance on Swift as their savoir should be sobered by her experience in the field. Her support of Bredesen resulted in a US Senator by the name of Blackburn.

Even now, we’re greeted with headlines that are essentially meaningless as the left attempts to portray Swift as a political demi-god.

USA Today, for example, bleated “more than 35000 register to vote after Taylor Swifts Instagram post.” That abysmal response notwithstanding, which means millions ignored her.

Swift, for her part, has, depending on what source you read, 272, or 274 or 275 million followers on Instagram, where told her followers to get out there and register to vote.

Leftist media literally peed their pants because, to hear them tell it, 35,000 did just that.

That’s right. 35,000. Out of 27Xmillion.

Well, presuming the 275 million follower figure is correct, that’s a compliance rate of 0.000127272727273, or 12 10000ths of 1% of her followers.

But like everything Swift does, the press releases were totally orchestrated to give the leftist media the incentive to provided her with additional millions of dollars’ worth of “earned media,” for free, claiming that their Second Coming of a political god was some sort of shaker and/or mover.

This is, of course, a mere sampling of what’s going to happen in the run-up to November. They’re going to pee on our legs and tell us it’s raining, a not unusual political ply but this time?

It’s gonna be on steroids.

As a result, leftist media will brook no nonsense when it comes to their political flavor of the week.

And the attacks have started already.

A female reporter for the LA Times asks: Ali - What's behind the right's attack on Swift-Kelce romance? Fear of a powerful woman.

Well, as aware as I and others politically to the right of Mao actually are, I find myself in contradiction to this leftist labeling crap.

To date, nothing Swift has done politically shows her capable of moving the needle politically in any significant way. If she couldn’t do it in the Tennessee Senate race, why on earth do these same people believe she can do it a national level when they offer precisely zero evidence beyond their fantasies that she actually can take over the political thinking for her “followers?”

Nevertheless, the article in question:  wants to assure everyone that “the right” is “attacking” their sainted leftist icon out of “fear of a powerful woman.”

The irony of a reporter for the LA Times, or the NY Times or the Washington Post or almost ANY media outlet, including our own democratian, discussing a “carefully constructed web of deceit” is difficult to overstate, considering these same sources of “news” beating us senseless with the web of deceit of Russian collusion or Hunter Biden’s laptop being Russian disinformation or “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” or any number of other leftist tropes used in an attempt to brutalize the right.

I’m reminded of former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid getting up on the floor of the Senate and lying about then GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, when he knowingly claimed that Romney didn’t pay taxes for the last 10 years.., a lie so obvious and blatant that even the Washington Post admitted it, in an article entitled “Harry Reid lied about Mitt Romney’s taxes. He's still not sorry.”

When he was asked about it after the election, his response?

“Well, it worked, didn’t it?”

Politics, which took up most of my post-military life for some 30 odd years, taught me a great deal. But mainly, it taught me that it’s a brutal, vicious, blood-thirsty business, and while it can, and occasionally does, bring out the best in those involved, it all too often brings out the worst instead.

And this article in the left coast’s version of Pravda Izvestia is just another in the upcoming, and for the left, hopefully deafening, series of drum beats as we begin the process of what is likely to become the most brutal, hateful, despicable campaign the world has yet seen in the US, and this time, with the excuse that those perpetrating it didn’t do it… Artificial intelligence did it.

There is no denying that Taylor Swift is a huge success at what she does, as is her boyfriend of the month. That respect is definitely a testament to capitalism for her. To rise from relatively humble beginnings as a child to what she is now can only be called a _____________ success (Fill in the blank with whatever adjective works fort you) takes talent, drive, savvy and a world view that is difficult to quantify. Her political leanings are likely a result of the generally leftist bubble she lives in, but that’s also her privilege, in spite of the fact that when it suits them, to the left?

She represents everything they hate.

(As a brief aside, I’m reminded of gays protesting for Palestine… as if they wouldn’t be executed on the spot if they ever set foot in the place for being gay.)

But all of that is neither here nor there/

I don’t fear or dislike her personally at all. I don’t know her to do that one way or the other.

But it’s getting old. Real old. And if she was as far right as she is to the left, and if she was as male as Schwarzenegger; first, we wouldn’t be hearing about her and second, even if we did, I’d be saying/feeling the same way I do about any extensively over-hyped celebrity that leftists worship because it’s convenient right now for them to do so.

How many times does anyone want to watch the exact same show? How many times do you want to eat nothing but peanut butter sandwiches?

But I no more care about this woman and who she’s hanging out with than she cares about me. And I fail to see why I SHOULD care. Other than that, I don’t fear her in the least. But my thoughts are drawn to those 3 kids Biden got killed off in Jordan and the 13 dead in Kabul when he screwed Afghanistan with his embarrassing pullout and left tens of billions of dollars’ worth of weapons in the hands of the terrorist state.

I go to Willamette every now and then, and I see the stones of those who put their lives on the line to make Taylor Swift capable of achieving her heights of fame. My brother is one of them and I presume I will be as well at some point.

Their reward was just a stone, a flag, and for those who survived their time in the military for many, a lifetime of pain… until that lifetime quietly ended… for those not taken fighting a war we sent them to fight.

Who has done more? Who has achieved more? Who is more important?

Well, we all know the answer to that, even if we won’t admit it.