Skip to main content

#26 - LION STEW - AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM


 LION STEW
Rupert Murdoch bought National Geographic and laid off 10% of staff the very first day including, and it almost goes without saying, fact checkers. It has been reported that the next issue will feature recipes for slow-cooking lion meat, an article entitled Survey: Amazon Tribes Prefer Ben Carson Over Bernie Sanders Two to One, and a photo-essay featuring the Kardashian family on a naked safari searching for intelligent life in Culver City.





AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM
There are Americans who hate Obama so much that they swore that if he was elected, and then if he was reelected, they would leave the country. But they've decided to stick around, haven't they? And if Hillary is elected, or if Bernie's elected, my guess is that they'll stick around too. Same goes for Progressives if Rubio or one of the other clowns in the Republican car find their way into the White House for any reason other than a public tour.

Why do you think that is?

Those who follow my ramblings - and God bless you, each and every one - know that Cathey and I have moved permanently from the United States to the south of France. We have explained at every opportunity that our decision was not based on any animosity towards the land of our birth. In fact, we point out with pride that it's mainly due our being American that middle-class folks of relatively modest means like us have the kinds of opportunities that have been afforded to us. That's why we cannot abide the current political climate in the United States.

Politicians have become breathtaking in their rejection of all that is good about America.

I'm not Little Mary Sunshine. We have much work to do to maintain the best of us and regain what's slipped back. But hundreds, thousands of people are literally dying every day to get to America and a pitiful few are in a hurry to leave. We'll have to fight the very forces that clamor that we are in decline to continue our national pursuit of excellence, the very forces that have sold their souls for power, that have forgotten that our combined efforts through a government characterized by serious adult leadership took us to those heights that are still within our grasp, a government that the rich and powerful were happy to fund because the common good was good for all, for the rich and the poor alike.

It's not a time to starve the beast. It's time to feed the beast, to embrace it, to embrace what good governance can accomplish. To give ourselves the strength to rebuild the roads and the railroads, to harness the power of the sun and the wind and the tides, to reach out and touch the stars.

It can be done.

It must be done.

It will be done.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

RESTAURANT TEN, UZES: RESTAURANT REVIEW

Ten sits just off the market square in Uzes, one of the prettiest villages in southern France. The newly renovated space is airy and comfortable with tables of sufficient size and sufficiently spaced to provide for a pleasant dining experience. Service was cheerful, fully bilingual, and attentive without being overbearing. The food presented well to both eye and tongue. And the rate of approximately 30 € per person for a party of five included starters, mains, a dessert or two, two bottles of local wine, and coffees at the finish. Reasonable if not cheap eats.  So why am I hesitant to give an unqualified thumbs up?  It took me a while to figure it out. Uzes is a quintessentially French village in a quintessentially French region of southern France. There are those who will say that the Languedoc is just as beautiful but less crowded and less expensive than its eastern neighbors. I know. I'm one of those people. But the fact remains that for many people, villages like Uzes are t
Post a Comment
Read more

Kreuz Market vs. Smitty’s Market: Texas Barbecue in Lockhart

I was born and raised in New Jersey. I didn’t taste Texas barbecue until I was twenty-two years old. What the hell do I know about barbecue? And what could I add to the millions of words that have been written on the subject? Well, I know a bit about food. I’ve managed to check out a few of the finer joints in Texas – Sonny Bryan’s Smokehouse in Dallas, Joe Cotton’s in Robstown before the fire, the dear departed Williams Smokehouse in Houston, and the incomparable New Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Huntsville . So I can speak from a reasonably wide experience. This will not be a comprehensive discussion of the relative merits of Texas barbecue as opposed to the fare available in places like Memphis or the Carolinas. It’s simply a take on our recent visits to Lockhart and the relative merits of Smitty’s versus Kreuz from our point of view. I’ll get all over academic in a later post. On our way out to the ranch in Crystal City, we stopped at Smitty’s. You have to look
2 comments
Read more

LE CHAT QUI PECHE (THE CAT THAT FISHES), ARGELIERS: RESTAURANT REVIEW

You would think that after over five years of searching for restaurants serving good food at reasonable prices, I would have made my way to Le Chat Qui Peche before now. After all, it's only about ten minutes from our house, in a beautiful spot along the Canal du Midi. But it took a friend to suggest that we would like the place. So we went. And we did. Port-Argeliers isn't much a port, just a spot along the Canal du Midi that boats use as a stopping place. Like a town that might be described as just a wide spot in the road, there hardly seems to be a reason for it to exist other than the fact that it does. So Le Chat Qui Peche, at the foot of a narrow but driveable bridge over the canal, commands a view of the canal that can't reasonably be described as bustling and scenery that might best be described as bucolic. We were among the first to arrive on a lazy summer day, breezy so we chose an outdoor table with less of a view but sheltered. Our server practiced his
Post a Comment
Read more