Why The Narrative Failed

Guest Post by Hardscrabble Farmer

We live on the southern flank of a mountain. Over the course of time, you lose track of that fact because you can’t actually see it from where we are. When I drive over to my neighbor’s place on the other side of Andrew’s Brook and look back towards the farm it is impossible to miss, rising like a dark animal from the forest of hardwoods that spread around its base. You can catch glimpses of it from various angles as you move around the valley but it always catches me be surprise, knowing that we live right up on it without ever being aware of just how close it is to our lives.

The reality of our day to day life is tied so closely the place where our story unfolds that it is almost impossible to separate the two. And so we farm our side of the mountain in the way that fish swim through water, immersed completely in our place without having to consider it consciously. It takes perspective to understand where you’ve come from and to see where it is you are heading.

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When I arrived at my permanent duty station at Fort Bragg I was assigned to a unit within a few days along with three other men my age. New soldiers coming in from a replacement detachment are the closest thing you will ever experience to being a human widget. No one cares about your dreams or aspirations, no one calls you by name. You are simply a cog in a machine, a head to fit a helmet, a body to fill the ranks. Until you have jumped with the battalion or participated in an exercise you were just another cherry waiting to get popped.

Within days we were called out to suppress a riot at Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania that had been used to house the Marielitos, Cuban refugees expelled by Castro in order to clean out his prisons and mental wards in the Spring of that year. We were marched down to Green Ramp for a briefing and issued aluminum shields and black painted wooden batons, our squad leaders were given shotguns and boxes of shells and we clambered aboard C-130’s headed north. It was mid-Summer and the story was that the men confined to the WWII style barracks had grown tired of the same chow and bunks that we had come to appreciate on post.

They’d begun by attacking their guards and were in a full-blown revolt, threatening to escape the confines of that facility unless we were able to control the situation. When we disembarked we were driven to the camp in open bed deuce and half trucks, each of us alone in our thoughts, visors raised and our faces turned to the breeze. From a distance, you could see pillars of smoke rising from the camp and you could smell it on the wind. It was a hot day and we wore battle fatigues and jump boots, LBE’s and fanny packs. When we were formed into companies our platoon sergeant barked out a few orders, gave a quick demonstration of how to engage the crowd with our batons, expressly warned the NCO’s only to fire when ordered and then he fell back in with the rest of the company and we moved out.

Our shields were lowered, visors turned down and we marched with a slow and steady cadence; left foot stamping down, right foot dragging at a 90-degree angle behind, a stomp, drag, stomp, drag that magnified by 120 other soldiers gave us the sound of something formidable, an organic machine filled with ominous intent. With each step we took, we would rap the back of our shields with the tip of the baton in unison, a sharp crack to emphasize each step forward. You could hear the crowd before you could see it, that rumbling babble of males in groups, like a crowd at a game, punctuated by higher pitched commands and yells in a language that was not our own. The MP’s from the base had set up a jeep with speakers mounted on top and a young officer in khakis was speaking in Spanish to the mob just out of sight.

The only words I recognized were “paracaidista” and “ochenta y dos”. The 82nd Airborne had a reputation that set itself apart from the Army in general and the officer hoped it was universal. Called America’s Guard of Honor and referred to as “The All-Americans” they had distinguished themselves again and again in both combat actions and peacetime operations around the globe. Not everyone got in- it was strictly a volunteer unit that maintained a requirement that all members be on active status and jump periodically regardless of rank or job description. It was not unusual to for a private be seated next to a Two Star General on a jump and both were treated with equal deference by other units in the military.

Despite my status as a FNG I was still a part of a well-oiled machine with a specific purpose and the entire unit marched forward deliberately with a singular purpose. When the first elements of the mob spun around the far end of the barracks they were jumping and screaming, some of them holding weapons fashioned from broken bunk beds and ruined buildings. I can still remember how much fear I felt at that moment; these were not teenagers after the big game, they were angry, grown men, former inmates in communist prisons, mental patients with deep issues that had never been addressed and they were at a fever pitch under the hot Sun.

But at the same time that we saw them, they saw us. In that instant, all the sounds, the acrid sting of burning mattresses, the steady vibration of 200 boot shod feet hitting the ground at precisely the same second, the heat, the sweat, the rolling clouds in the blue sky above us all came into such clear focus that the World simply stopped in its tracks. I was a part of something much larger than myself, we were our own animal a unified, terrible wall of men in a formation more than two thousand years old and we were formidable.

You could actually feel it thrum between your shoulders, an electrical charge of energy that fed each one of us individually and fed all of us collectively. The sound of our boots on the street, the crack of maple against metal the unified chuff of each breath that you could hear as if it were your own suddenly became the only presence in my thoughts and in that instant, you could see it move like a lightwave out and away from us, traveling tsunami-like towards the Marielitos.

And that was it.

They dropped whatever they were carrying, they broke and ran, hundreds of them turning from a raging mob into a scattering of individuals who no longer had any common purpose, only the singular desire to save themselves. The local MP’s were able to mop up the mess without further trouble, the worst of the offenders handcuffed and removed, the fires put out and order restored. Not one shot was fired, not one man was so much as tapped with a baton.

We were back in garrison before chow, everyone pumped so full of excess testosterone and adrenaline that you could have wired us to a lamp and blown out the bulb. There was an excitement and fraternity that hummed across the parade field and the four of us who had arrived as cherries just days before were now referred to by name and were smiled upon as if we had always been there. We were the Recon Platoon of the Combat Support Company, 2nd Battalion of the White Falcon Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division of the United States Army. We were All-Americans.

I did not realize for many years what had happened that day, having witnessed the power of a unified narrative on the actions and psyches of much smaller number of men up against a mass of individuals without much by way of shared purpose. Boredom and restlessness are not sufficient alone to prompt men to conflict beyond the limits of simple mayhem. It is one thing to smash a few windows because you are angry or to set a fire in a trash can because everyone else is doing it and quite another to walk one step after another face first into a seething mob of violent men without missing a beat.

One of the most important lessons I have learned living up against the side of this mountain is that we are just another piece of the puzzle. Humans are no more unique or important than the stately oaks or the flocks of robins that populate our small holding. We are simply another species trying to make itself at home in the environment and while our lives are lived as individuals and families, the bigger part of everything we have ever achieved has been done on a level we barely understand. We behave like a herd even if we don’t perceive ourselves in that way because that’s just how our species survived.

Most of our actions aren’t done on the personal level even if that is how we see it. What we’re doing at any given moment is connected to something much bigger than any of us and we follow along, the same paths, the same forms, the same beliefs and thoughts as everyone else around us, a part of an organism that lives its life on the sacrifices of the many. It has its own story, its own needs and its future and if we choose wisely we are allowed to stand in its ranks and share that destiny ourselves. Each of us needs their own particular story to make it through life and we repeat it daily; I am a hard worker, a good father, a loving husband.

These simple descriptions and the actions that follow from believing in them help us to form the character that serves us throughout our lives. If we fail at these, over and over, again and again then we become something else and no amount of reassurance can ever repair the damage. What we tell ourselves we are we must be or else we fail. It is no different for our collective consciousness. You can scold Americans all day long that “that’s not who we are” but if that is how we behave, then that is who we are and our Narrative must reflect it or else we fail as a Nation.

America is in the midst of a great division. That there are two sides, irreconcilable and filled with hatred towards one another is no longer deniable, but a fact of life. The USA has come to an existential crisis that hasn’t been seen for over a hundred and fifty years and it will not heal itself, cannot be compromised nor abated and will only grow in the coming months and years. The problem is not so much with the character of the people, not even the politics or the ideologies, but in the deep and profound divorce between The Narrative and The Reality. Our history can only be written after its passing, but our future is shaped by the story we tell ourselves today.

What we see in our day to day lives must align closely with The Narrative or things go bad and when they do The Narrative must change. Just like a child who discovers that Santa Claus is really Mom and Dad there is no reversion to that earlier time simply by repeating the tale when it is no longer believed. It is this passing from one reality to another that is at the root of our discontent and our societal implosion. On the one side, it is clear that The American Dream, that anyone can be whatever they want to be is simply not true, that the divisions between the ultra-wealthy and the impoverished are not surmountable simply by pluck and grit but are heritable conditions for all but a few.

On the other side, the well-worn trope that “Diversity is our greatest strength” is a fabulist dream built from the same material that the Cargo Cult uses to construct its bird gods. We have moved down different paths and the old stories we have told ourselves about who we are have changed as completely as the demographic make-up of our nation. We are not united and this is no longer the home of the free and the brave. We cling to these well-worn tales because they used to be true, but they are fake news today. Just as the MSM will never again reclaim its reputation and integrity any more than a whore could once more be a virgin if only people would believe in it, our collective truths must be aligned with reality rather than wishful thinking and platitudes. We are past the point of trying to keep up the charade and it is past the time that we admit to ourselves, if for no other reason than for those who will follow, The Narrative has failed.

All human societies have a story that is unique to them. Each one tells not only of their history but their trajectory as well and it works until it no longer reflects the truth. Pax Romana was believed until such time as Tacitus quipped: “Where they make a wasteland, they call it peace.” This tale that we tell ourselves is The Narrative and the closer it lies to the reality of our lives, the more effective it is in the way we follow our destinies. America has had more than one Narrative and as it’s shape and composition has altered, so too has its story.

Liberty! was followed by Manifest Destiny and in turn by Westward, Ho! At times our narratives diverged, Union Forever and its twin brother States Rights were as real to each portion of this country as anything that came before and in many ways as enduring as anything that has followed and perhaps lies ahead. The Melting Pot has become a seething cauldron that threatens to boil over. And while we cannot escape our time, we can prepare for a future that is inevitable and calls to us as a clarion bell through the cacophony.

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SteveW
SteveW

Outstanding. Thank you!

TPC
TPC

Another article well done Mr. HSF.

The country does seem split down the middle: the dreamers, who refuse to believe the government* can do any wrong, and the realists, who are sick of being trampled for the sake of a few heart feelings.

I don’t want to face a war within this country, but life rarely hands me what I want, so bitching about it does little good. Prepare mentally, prepare physically, and do what I can for my family. I guess thats all you really can do at this point.

*Socialist/Democrat only of course. Republicans, libertarians, fiscal conservatives, or Trump supporters have all been labeled as Nazis, and by the law of transitive properties are not a lawful government in the left’s eyes.

pyrrhus
pyrrhus

Excellent, particularly the description of the 82d Airborne at the riot.

Suzanna
Suzanna

I stand in awe of the power of men.
Testosterone and adrenaline = an unbeatable combo.
Such fantastic writing = brains and the combo = excellent.

Socratic Dog
Socratic Dog

Testosterone plus adrenaline unbeatable? Both sides had it there. But one side had organization, shared purpose, even historical awareness (the 2,000+ year history of the phalanx), which can be summarized as BRAINS.
Testosterone plus adrenaline plus brains, please.

BTW, an awesome article. I enjoyed reading it as much as anything I’ve seen for a long time.

Francis Marion

HSF – I think one-day people will read the blogs that have sprung up during this turning and wonder if were able to see so clearly what was happening, why were we not able to stop it? Hopefully, this piece and others like them will help them to understand. Great job.

Chowderhead
Chowderhead

A hundred years from now ,This might be required reading for high school literature.
Very clear thought!

Uncola

Just as a divided kingdom cannot stand, neither can mutually exclusive narratives be sold to one nation. In other words, “without a vision, the people perish”.

In the mountain villages, there is a desire for global unity, mutual dependence, social equality, uniformity of outcomes and human secularism.

UNITY IS OUR STRENGTH. CONFORMITY IS PROGRESS. YOU MUST ASSIMILATE. RESISTANCE IS FUTILE.

Whereas those located upon the mountainous steppes and plateaus, long to uphold the traditions of Judeo-Christian law, liberty, social morality, equality of opportunities (via inalienable rights bestowed by divine decree), self-reliance and American exceptionalism.

A SHINING CITY ON A HILL. A CANDLE IN A DARK WORLD. WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS AS SELF-EVIDENT. LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.

The crack in our bell causing such a discordant toll on our freedoms may not be due to a lost narrative, per se, but perhaps, because we have too many.

Like oil and water. Then fire and ice. Soon, this mountain will break apart and fall into the sea.

Not Sure

Although I was in the military (Air Force) I never had to face a belligerent foe as you wrote about in your article; my responsibility was to babysit an ICBM and hope launch orders were never issued. I appreciated your on the ground description of the events and thank you for your service.

I’m trying to get my head around what I am standing for in this fomenting civil war, I am clearly on the less government side of the aisle, but share in your analysis that the better days of America are behind us. So, although I am not fighting for the “American Dream”, I am fighting for the freedom of my family to just be left alone. If I can just stand for this, maybe in a generation or two there may be the hope of a republic, functioning as it was originally intended.

sionnach liath
sionnach liath

But I don’t think it is possible to be “fighting for the freedom of my family to be just left alone”. We are a community and the community must fight – not to protect and preserve the values we have already lost, but to establish new values and purposes based on the old principles we cherished. We must move forward, but do not realize that our vision of forward is really the turning of a cycle which will return us to discovering that the principles which made us a great society and culture did have value and are worthy of being re-established . No one can do that individually. It will take a hard fought community effort.

Not Sure

Good on ya’ mate! From other blogs, I have been encouraged to note the useful members of my community that I can trust and build from there. I’m just not ready to jump on any community bandwagons just yet, as the leaders you choose to align yourself to, may be tomorrow’s turncoats that may end up being the enemy you were fighting against.

Socratic Dog
Socratic Dog

Unfortunately, fallen empires don’t seem to resurrect. I suspect we only get one shot at greatness, and unfortunately we (or our descendants) always ultimately screw it up.
Our time is past. Now we see only the flailings of a fallen giant.

Robert Gore

HSF,
To me, it looks like the crack-up of the one remaining True Faith: faith in government and its coercive power. It pits those who produce against those who take from them and redistribute for their own purposes. The economy has hit stall speed and will soon crash (no, Trump can’t change that; we’re too far gone), and the battle will be joined. That is the inevitable future of which you speak.

hardscrabble farmer

You would be shocked- perhaps you wouldn’t, but many would- by the number of people I am acquainted with who are positively atheistic in their lack of faith in government. If it could be classified as a religion, we’d be the regional equivalent of Torquemada’s court.

I don’t know if I was able to articulate my premise as well as I would have liked, but a people without a narrative based on reality is like a balloon without air. It is simply an empty vessel awaiting fulfillment and that is precisely where we are today. I found the entire Milo episode to be a perfect example of how no one on either side of this divide believes their own rhetoric any longer. The one uses the antithesis of what they stand for as a spokesman and the other disqualifies the dictionary definition of their highest rated special interest group because he/she/it/xe/xer does not follow the fake script they no longer believe in.

It’s almost biblical in nature.

As I have said elsewhere, it is no longer in the hands of men, but in the unfolding of the Nature of Mankind. I never imagined I’d live in such times.

Robert Gore

Great article, by the way.

Westcoaster
Westcoaster

It IS biblical in nature and yes our entire society is based on fantasy and lies. Has been since before WWII.
Great piece, HSF. Keep writing.

Paul
Paul

It is, in fact, Biblical. With that in mind, while hope for America remains dim, in my mind, fulfillment of Biblical prophecy gives me great hope… even for America and Americans, who choose good over evil, truth over lies and right over wrong. The Bible clearly rebukes with a serious WOE to those who call good evil and evil good. Prophecy fulfilled in our day. I, for one, am excited to live in such a time as this, and have my eyes opened by the Spirit of Truth. If you can’t find belief in America, find hope in the Providence which guided the hands of our founding fathers! And that was a great article. Thank you.

Norman Franklin

This was outstanding private HSF. Brought back wonderful memories of my time as a FNG in the 1st of the 325th airborne infantry regiment. Not to long after you, 86/87. I still member the thrill and the terror of the whole sequence, stand up, hook up, shuffle to the door. Jumping out into the pitch black from 1200 feet, being wildly elated every time I looked up to see a fully inflated canopy. I still keep in contact with three of my old running dogs. We get together on a regular basis as one lives an hour away and the other two are three, and five hours from here. It amazes us at how we all came from different parts of the country, different backgrounds, yet we ended at this place and time. All trying to make sense of this fourth turning, hoping it would pass us by, yet more and more convinced it won’t.

OutLookingIn
OutLookingIn

“that’s not who we are”…

If history be a guide, then “who we are” tells and foretells the trail of where and how we are.
Historical fact:
The whiskey making business flourished until 1791, when the federal government decided to tax it to pay the debt for the revolutionary war.
The people revolted against this government measure, often turning away the excise collectors by armed force. Local legislators seen this federal government move as usurping state rights. By 1794 George Washington called out the militia to put down the rebellion. He called out more troops to put down the whiskey rebellion, then he used to defeat the British!
Ironically, George Washington started making his own whiskey at Mount Vernon and by 1799 when he died, was the largest whiskey producer in the United States. After the hated “whiskey tax” had all but destroyed the grass roots whiskey manufacture, with the exception of the moonshiner’s.
There are no co-incidences in politics. The concentration of wealth and power among a small elite has polarized society and brought about the destruction of the middle class. As it has been in the past, so it will be in the future. Only the players change. The “game” remains the same.

Botclan

Brought that point up with the curators at Washington’s distillery a few years ago. Might of, kind of said old George was looking out for his own interests and maybe there was some impropriety. If looks could kill. They probably voted for hillary.

Anon
Anon

I had never heard of the riots at Indian Town Gap. I was with the 2d Ranger Bn, and we had done the exact same thing for a riot in Cuban camps in Panama along the canal in fall of ’94 (though, it was at first light and they didn’t initially realize what they were up against). Incidentally, years later, I ran in to an MP who patrolled the camps and he reveled in telling me what they used to do to the “campers”–they had good reason to protest.

hardscrabble farmer

I googled it and couldn’t find any references except this one-

May 29, 1980
Fort Indiantown Gap is filled to capacity (18,311 persons)

And this-

The Marielitos, as they came to be called in this country, caused disturbances at the camps where they were initially held, at Fort Chaffee, Ark., Fort Indiantown Gap, Pa., and Fort McCoy, Wis.

Nothing else. The memory hole, she is deep.

EL Coyote
EL Coyote

The Perez Family and Scarface present two sides of this event. It gives even more depth to an already profound topic you have touched upon. Perez Family shows a man who was a real political prisoner while Scarface shows a madman who claimed to be a political prisoner. Each movie develops the story of these men and the almost pre-destined outcome due their character. One gains everything he always wanted and destroys it all in trying to hold on to it. The other loses everything he always wanted and gains much more by accepting his loss.

Both movies are impressive for the lessons they impart. America is indeed the land of opportunity, but it exacts a heavy price. Unfortunately, black kids miss that message and take the movie Scarface as a primer on how to get rich the easy way.

Besides the fact it has a young Marissa Tomei, (she has to let go of her illusions of the new country, he has to let go of his illusions of the old country) Perez Family demonstrates something I learned the hard way, letting go is the only way to be free of harmful shit; it’s just so damn hard to let go. But that’s a different movie – Jacob’s Ladder.

EL Coyote
EL Coyote

This article is the companion piece to The Confluence. Here’s the money shot: “It takes perspective to understand where you’ve come from and to see where it is you are heading.” The Aztecs had been living independently and ruling over many other tribes in Pre-Hispanic Mexico that they were surprised when it all came to an end at the hands of Cortez. The whole conquest gave them a unique perspective for the things they lost almost overnight.

I like the similarity of attitude in both pieces as they follow along the same paths of American history and conclude that we are not aware of the mountain until we travel around to look at the other side. I’m reminded of the old joke where a younger person marvels that an older person was lucky to have lived during the 60’s. The oldster replies that he didn’t know it was the 60’s.

Time is but a march of history heading to an inexorable resolution. “What we’re doing at any given moment is connected to something much bigger than any of us and we follow along, the same paths, the same forms, the same beliefs and thoughts as everyone else around us, a part of an organism that lives its life on the sacrifices of the many.”

Perhaps we are merely sentient lemmings and at any given moment the universe will activate a communal primal urge to commit mass suicide and march in lock-step to the sea.

EL Coyote
EL Coyote

HF, I must admit that your Farmer’s bucket tale left me perplexed. The narrative failed, I guess. All your other pieces give me the same feeling that the young man expressed when he said to Biggie Smalls, you paint pictures in my brain.

The narrative is easy to follow but it takes a bit of digestion. Like a good meal, it sticks to your ribs. It even provoked in my mind the recollection of a couple of movies I had not thought about for some time and hadn’t compared the way I did above, something just clicked about them and then about your article vis-vis the other article.

I appreciate your ruminating on these things, unlike a facile Patrick Buchanan piece with his clever wording, your articles leave a reader with the same sense of “an electrical charge of energy that fed each one of us individually and fed all of us collectively”. Maybe not as high a voltage as you felt then but certainly more than a Buchanan low current epistle.

hardscrabble farmer

Was the Confluence piece something I wrote? I don’t recall that title (although I like it) and it doesn’t ring any bells.

If you see this please let me know so I can go back and read for comparison.

TIA

EL Coyote
EL Coyote

The Confluence

Guest Post by The Zman

Everyone likes to think they live in interesting times, but it is really hard to know as you can only really know your age.

“And so we farm our side of the mountain in the way that fish swim through water, immersed completely in our place without having to consider it consciously.” – HF

SaamiJim
SaamiJim

Thank you for this essay.
As an aside, I wanted to say thanks for a maple syrup essay you wrote a while back, in it you mentioned using pine to fire your evaporater. This past year I was able to obtain a couple large pine trees that had blown down on my elderly neighbors land. This past weekend I fired that pine mixed with my readily available hardwood in my evaporator, and was quite pleased with the results. Had a much hotter fire than in recent years, and improved my boil time. I would have never tried the pine if not for your essay, but will be on the lookout for pine always in the future.

mangledman
mangledman

I haven’t been back here too long, to me I feel it was one of the best yet. The anxiety of the enemy before us is negated by the comrades beside us, and the cause behind us. Superb, doesn’t quite seem good enough. We face a daunting path ahead. We are all brothers and sisters in this land, and desire the things like liberty and freedom. Destiny cannot be avoided. People will be caught unaware and will flock to the people that have knowledge of why these things are happening, and insight on coming up with another meal. Swords sharp powder dry
Once again Most Excellent!!!

B Lever
B Lever

HF- Masterfully written and boldly descriptive account of that day, thank you. We are a seething cauldron as we have been many times in the past. I’m looking forward to that glorious renaissance.

Edit: I would like to add that IMO this is your best piece yet, bravo!

MuckAbout

Ol’Muck is glad he’s into his 8th decade. War and fighting is a young man’s game – an activity for those who still think of themselves as immortal. Ol’Muck is about as conscious of how very fragile and limited life is as anyone walking today.

And yes, I also won the badge as a young immortal by getting shot at in the Red Sea, the Suez canal and on shore parties evacuating Americans from Lebanon way back then. Nothing has changed twixt then and now, only then we called them all “sand niggers” and they weren’t organized enough to have figured out a name for themselves that they could all spell.

I remember one incident in Lebanon when we were evacuating an apartment building, taking intermittent small arms fire. I was lifting an older woman through a blown out window into an alley when we took some rounds from the roof across the alleyway. When I got her out of the window, she merely collapsed, having taken a round right in left eye, blowing out the back of her head and I hadn’t even realized it. I gently laid her down, covered her face and threw up in the gutter then went from yuck to tears and I was crying so hard my squad mates covered my butt and led me out of there. That’s not the only dead person I’ve seen over life’s journey but it was surely the most personal way I’ve experienced it.

Hopefully, I won’t get knocked off by an 18 year old modern liberatti wielding a wheel barrow of useless paper money with which he intends to suffocate me.

By the way, HSF, another great post..

B LEVER
B LEVER

Muck- That should have been embellished and written into a life’s experience piece. You could still do that some day. That would have been hard for anyone.

EL Coyote
EL Coyote

He already did that and it is a great piece. I don’t have the reference but it’s here to click on.

Botclan

Another thought provoking article that will need to be read again and share with others, especially my Sons.

David
David

Ben Hunt at Salient writes about the narrative and what happens when it fails.

Oh, and excellent writing as always.

RiNS

This is why TBP is great. It is an Iowa Writers’ Shop that is somehow teaching this rank amateur much about prose. You have managed once again to tell a story without being preachy. A hard thing to do and to which I must tip my hat. As I said on another occasion, this place is a boot camp of bits and bytes. I am doing my best to try and absorb the differing writing styles here to hopefully someday come up with a Labradoodle of sorts to put to words my own narrative.

comment image

You touched on a lot of things in this piece but will focus on just a few.

You wrote

….

What we see in our day to day lives must align closely with The Narrative or things go bad and when they do The Narrative must change.

….

The question I keep asking is what is the true narrative.
Why can’t there be more than two.

For some reason I can’t make the leap into this world of absolutes.

You used the mountain as juxtaposition.
The north and south.
The dark and the light.
And by implication, I suppose, good and bad.

I should be able to agree wholeheartedly with this view as my life should inform and confirm that bias. But for some reason I cannot make that leap.

So far anyways.

comment image

At the age of eight I was drawn into the series World at War. That Black and White television should have told a story of Good and Bad. Yet what I saw instead were shades in gray. Could it have been a reflection of the times. Maybe!

Things certainly have changed in the 40 or so intervening years. The clouds appear much increasingly ominous now as you so wonderfully outlined in piece. The rumblings of the coming storm more and more real with each passing day. Yet I can’t help but ask why this has to be the case. There is sadness in the inevitability that the world needs to devolve to turn.

Should it have to be this way?

EL Coyote
EL Coyote

Rob, are you planning on dressing your labradoodle in outrageous getups?

RiNS

Might be wise to shield.
From the bitter winds.
Frost bite from street.
Coat and boots for paws.
Still need to pick colour.
Red, Blue or maybe
something in between.

comment image

starfcker
starfcker

You guys

RiNS

Yeah

I know star. This place is getting to be a real downer. So thought I might as well have a laugh at my own expense. The costume on that dog isn’t what I find funny. It is the look on the dog’s face. Embarassed to have to live under same roof as his owner.

Gryffyn
Gryffyn

RiNS,
I hear what you are saying about the down side of the “identity politics and bashing” here. This place is like a rowdy pub with two guys at one end of the bar spouting crap at each other, people trying to have a serious conversation and others hanging around to watch the show, have a good time and toss in a few zingers. It helps to focus on the good stuff and skip the repetitious ain’t life awful drama.
Good dogs are a treasure because they love you no matter what. My buddy is half Aussie, one quarter wolf and the rest is a mystery. He is always ready to jump in the truck and go wherever I take him, even when it means sitting and waiting while I am shopping or running time consuming errands. Of course he knows that we will usually stop somewhere just for fun, be it a romp on the fairgrounds, a swim in the river or a walk in the woods.

RiNS

Thanks for writing that Griffyn.

I like how you sketched the scene. And yes driving to town with a dog is as you say a great way to spend a day.

EL Coyote
EL Coyote

Let’s not get too down in the dumps. This place can seem like a real-life whack a mole party and other times a battlefield. Whether your low on ammo, if you only have a pillow, fight with that.

Old Phil said that if things are tasting like shit, you may have to flip the girl over. I learned to smell the articles (and Uninvited) first, I avoid certain articles because they will only piss me off.

TBP has so many sections and points of view that you can accidentally walk into a queerfest and not know it until you get lubed. We have another guy here germinating a Stormfront knockoff. Admin made of short list of the variety of commentators here; truckdrivers, trannies, Native Americans, niggers, lesbians, libtards, country bumpkins, city slickers, cucks, Canucks, Mexicans, Marielitos and miscegenationists.

This is a modern-day Noah’s ark of literary predispositions.

starfcker
starfcker

EC, Rob, Gryffyn, thumbs up. I like to walk on the sunny side of the street as much as I can, hate to see a guy like Llpoh get disgusted and bolt. I’m no fan of the white supremecist types, but all you have to do is look at the DNC election today to know they aren’t totally wrong. How it morphs into the nazi worship thing, I have no clue. That all said, dog posts are always good, and big props to Bea for taking it in stride. We gotta laugh, right? Can’t be doom 24/7.

RiNS

I am not too bummed out no worries EC.

That is why I like this place as there is diverse spectrum of opinions. So I am glad to have a seat at this table on arc. I have thought a lot over weekend about the flare up on that other thread.

I have concluded that while conversations like that might make some folks want to turn away it is really important I think that it is done. I have to respect Admin for making a space for it to happen. It is too bad that Lloph wants to vacate. But I get it. But better if he didn’t go.

This might surprise some but I feel that thread worthwhile. A couple weeks back in another post, similar in context, I stepped in ring. Did some flinging. But made a mistake in tactics.

So this time I put to use some of what I have learned regarding persuasion and bias from Scott Adams.

The first question I asked myself was
Why is this important to author.
On what ground should debate be fought.

Going first was my appeal for compromise.
My second post tried to draw parallels.

There was much shit flinging, hyperbole on all sides and many thumbs down for me but I was still able to get my antagonist to negotiate a “middle ground”.

I felt it was a success.

B LEVER
B LEVER

Star- Thanks, but I am here to do battle…that’s what I do. I almost enjoy the downers while old Stuck gets his feewings hurt. RiNs, should thicken up his skin and let out a blood curddling war cry and scare the shit out of whoever hurt HIS wittle feewings. Sheesh….

Your pal….B

RiNS

No feelings hurt here Bea but maybe you are right about one thing. Need to work on war cry. As for toughening up it is too nice a day.

fear & loathing
fear & loathing

as usual wonderfully written. could not help but think of the roman legions. my only similar story was guarding nerve gas that the concrete containers beginning to be unsafe. my memory is not sharp yet i think our entire battalion was sent to guard the perimeter of anniston army depot. stretched so thin never knew how far away the nearest trooper was. calling for big trouble from the hippies. that would have been a brain dead move, nerve gas is bad stuff, the odorless colorless death in 9 seconds i was told. one time i remember standing at parade rest along train loaded, and mike rather holding a mic in front of me. we had a lot of pissed off door gunners from nam just filling in time before ets. could have been a riot within the ranks. anyway i suppose it made its destination off coast of NC.

Gryffyn
Gryffyn

HSF,
I backed away from this site for a while to think a bit and deal with life changing issues. However, this piece brought me back and I have to say thanks. Your description of the event at Fort Indiantowntown Gap is as good as anything in my favorite Hemingway book “Islands in the Stream”.
And again, your writing requires more than one read through, the mark of truly good stuff.
I liked your aside that you think things through before you post, as you go about your daily life on your hillside farm in the land whose license plates read “Live free or Die”. As one who looks for humor to get through the day, I must pass on this bit from my favorite off the wall comedic group, “The Firesign Theater”…”Give me Immortality or Give Me Death!”.
I hope you are having a super sap flow and keep on keepin’on.
Gryffyn

EL Coyote
EL Coyote

Gryff, then we might truly ask, o death, where is thy Sting?

Chuck
Chuck

Nice!

Hershel
Hershel

A lot of great parallels in this proverb. That the inmates confronted by the determined and disciplined paratroopers were from insane asylums is very fitting.

Does anyone know why were they in the US and what happened to them?

EL Coyote
EL Coyote

Castro ejected them. They flooded Miami. The genteel Cubans of the earlier wave despised them as trash and referred to them in the diminutive ‘Marielitos’.

from Wikipedia: The Mariel boatlift was a mass emigration of Cubans, who traveled from Cuba’s Mariel Harbor to the United States between 15 April and 31 October 1980. The term “Marielito” (plural “Marielitos”) is used to refer to these refugees in both Spanish and English. The boatlift was precipitated by a sharp downturn in the Cuban economy.

After approximately 10,000 Cubans tried to gain asylum by taking refuge on the grounds of the Peruvian embassy, the Cuban government announced that anyone who wanted to leave could do so. The ensuing mass migration was organized by Cuban-Americans with the agreement of Cuban president Fidel Castro. The arrival of the refugees in the U.S. created political problems for U.S. president Jimmy Carter, first when his administration struggled to develop a consistent response to the immigrants and then when it was discovered that a number of the refugees had been released from Cuban jails and mental health facilities. The Mariel boatlift was ended by mutual agreement between the two governments in late October 1980, after as many as 125,000 Cubans had reached Florida.

Unforgettable
Unforgettable

And among them was one named Tony; with a scar on his face, a dream in his heart, and penchants for violence and mammon.

Sagebrush
Sagebrush

Great writing and message Farmer…you always give a generous serving of food for thought.

From my perspective your ‘narrative’ is also understood by many in the business world as the enterprise’s Vision. Typically the Vision is enhanced by communicating the Mission and Guiding Principles, which allow the enterprise leadership to communicate to all employees, customers, investors and other stakeholders, the business, direction and values of the organization. A Vision is futuristic by it’s nature and communicates where a company wants to go…a Mission Statement on the other hand is current. Many organizations today, thanks to Total Quality and Six Sigma management methodologies that swept the US in the 80’s and 90’s, in part due to President Regan’s direction to all federal agencies at the time to implement this efficient and effective management system…are formal and routinely updated as a way to manage the business. Other companies go through this process informally but do it non the less.

Once an organization has a Vision of where they want to go…it is further broken down into the elements of Goals, Objectives and individual tasks that once completed lead directly to accomplishing that Vision.

Seems to me there are two clear Visions for America communicated to American by the leadership of the opposing parties as you have very well articulated but only one…”Make America Great Again” has been developed and communicated directly and unabridged to the American people via Tweets from the leader with not only the Guiding Principles i.e., the time tested moral values conservatives hold near and dear but with clear delineation of the areas that collectively will accomplish that vision….rebuild the military, keep terrorist and drugs from freely entering across unsecured boarders, get Americans back to work etc. Intuitively I along with the millions who voted for President Trump’s conservative vision of ‘a Great America’ know that it is the best vision and the necessary steps for America to take to get us there.

The other vision is poorly defined by design and mysterious, which serves their purpose and is communicated through the traditional filters and spinners of the information who are aligned with their agenda of maintaining power and control at all cost. That desire has progressed to the point where they will say and do anything and spent (and lose)vast wealth to retain their power and control. It is my suggestion there are two groups in support of their vision…the one’s who lead and the followers who have only listened to the traditional filters and spinners and are unwitting supporters of and have been led down the path by leaders who have the very same lack of moral values as do their followers. Moral values which change with the wind…and agenda to retain power…control.

Stucky

********* A STUCKY NOTE OF ABSENCE **********

Cuz I don’t want ya to worry about the old Austrian.

Ms. Freud’s son is coming to help us move into our new abode tomorrow.

Verizon will be doing a planned shutdown of our phone/cable/internet sometime tomorrow.

Not sure how long until I have internet at the new place. Even so, I/we have all our stuff to unpack … plus, I’m cleaning that place from ceiling to floor and every nook in between.

Might not be back for a week, or even two.

I’ll miss ya’ll. BOO HOO HOO!!!!

hardscrabble farmer

Have you notified the Chatham PD?

Chatham PD
Chatham PD

We’re already aware. Thank you for your concern.

EL Coyote
EL Coyote

I miss you already.

Huck Finn
Huck Finn

This was a truly outstanding post.

flash
flash

HSF, I was told by an old supply Sargent that black soldiers loading supplies bound for Europe in WWII were causing a lot of grief in the supply chain due the shear amount of goods they were stealing. The solution was to call Airborne in to tighten the supply chain.I don’t remember the details, but according to him, after a few batons met skulls, the problem fixed itself.
Moral of this story. Might makes right….but that was a another time, you see. Things are different now.

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