Highlanders to Hypersonics
March 4, 2026 7:39am
In anguish, the people ask, “where is the God to whom we can pray.” Unbearable awareness; the vision into the future. Decline, dismay, weakness, confusion – these our inheritance while the universe slowly spins around us – watching, watching, uninterested and uncaring.
Friday, we were at Moore’s Creek Bridge for the 250th anniversary of a battle that saw the last time Scottish Highlanders charged with broadswords. Patriot militia shot down these Loyalists and that marked the end of the Broadsword in battle. The old adage is true, “don’t bring a knife to a flintlock fight.”
While the Highlanders prayed for victory, no one came to their aid and weapons and rationality ruled the battle. Today, we see the same futile request for intercession in our futile wars.
Proof! While we watched the hapless Highlanders, another battle unfolded in the middle east, Israel and the US bombed Iran in the latest confrontation between these perennial foes. The US again proxy for the Zionists….at some point you must ask, what would the middle east look like today if Israel had never been reconstituted in 1948?
Two-thousand five hundred years after the start of the diaspora, Zionists began the push for a Jewish homeland in the middle east. The Balfour Declaration – a short, private letter from Lord Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community – proclaiming British support for a Jewish homeland, was propaganda designed to garner Jewish financial support for the Allied war effort which had slowed to stalemate in 1917. After the war, Jews began returning to Palestine in greater numbers and finally, in 1948, declared Israel an independent nation. An event prophesied in Isaiah 66:8?
Many subsequent wars between Arabs and Jews have followed – right up to the present hour when live news coverage shows missiles falling all over the middle east and six Kentuckians from Ft. Knox are among the dead.
What is the total number of killed and wounded in all conflicts between Israel and its enemies? ChatGPT reports maybe 200, 000 dead and 350,000 wounded. This doesn’t include 10,000 immediate/long term deaths from 9/11 and tens of thousands of wounded.
Does our support of Israel make sense in an American-first era – or do our leaders have some eschatological obsession with the “chosen”?
The Foggy Dew
March 9, 2026 9:45am
St. Patrick’s Day approaches and American service men and women are again dying in the Middle East so I thought it appropriate to include “The Foggy Dew” in today’s musical selection. While I missed Vietnam by a few years and did not serve, I have always loved “The Foggy Dew” because of the camaraderie expressed in the last verse. When I reached that verse and the line about kneeling a praying, I was suddenly overcome with emotion and had to put down the guitar while totally losing my shit thinking about the six Kentucky soldiers we just lost and the untold thousands upon thousands who sacrificed all in every previous war.
Here’s the last verse:
Back through the glen I rode again and my heart with grief was sore
For I parted then with valiant men who I never shall see no more
But to and fro in my dreams I go, and I kneel and pray for you
For slavery fled, O glorious dead when you fell in the foggy dew.
The Foggy Dew | Ireland’s Favourite Folk Song | RTÉ One
Cycles and Psychology
March 16, 2025 9:08am
World events lend support to the speculation that the long-term cycles are converging to form a rogue wave of epic proportions. Perhaps you believe all these cycles are conspiracy theory but many point to the present as a time of great change. The fourth turning, the 19-year stock market cycle, Turchin’s 50 -year cycle, bond yields, Kondratieff, etc. – combined with the unintended consequences of the Iranian attack and the possibility of China blockading Taiwan all lead to one conclusion – rough times ahead. Even if we emerge from this without WWIII or a global depression….one thing is clear, the world will know that the US is an empire in decline.
Recently, I watched a couple of documentaries that made me even more concerned about our future. One was about the state of masculinity in the US. The men interviewed were all about money and sex. These “influencers” have millions of followers who idolize them and believe life to be the acquisition of money and women with no moderating commitment to philosophy, religion, or intellect. Where does this lead?
The other documentary was about the US marines. In one interview, a young marine said that violence is the only thing that gives life meaning. Now, there’s a good chance that this young man grew up on a steady diet of pornography and video games while following influencers like those described. Let’s give this marine weapons, training, and a love of violence and place him in a world of instability, divisive politics, financial uncertainty, and global conflicts and let’s see what happens.
One top of this, I watched (again) physicist Brian Cox talking about the Fermi paradox and concluding that one answer is that developing civilizations destroy themselves before they reach the technological advancement required for interstellar travel. We do indeed live in interesting times.
Too much doom? Let’s hope it does not go that way.
1 of 100 Billion
March 28, 2026 8:43am
You awake and follow 100 billion before you. Treading the same worn path to the same destination. A few take a step or two off the trail but blaze no new route. You lie there grasping the futility of it all. The inner angst, the confusion, the violence of the great horde walking in lockstep toward an oblivion both individual and group. And this mass of humanity with limited self-awareness, limited grasp of the influences controlling it, proceeds oblivious to the machinations of the system into which we are thrust. But then, what is the alternative? There is no escape because the system is all.