Busy weeks appear to be the only kind I have anymore, so I’ll try to refrain from that description in future. But this one was a doozy.
I completed my two weeks of City & Guilds training plumbing, passing my assessment ‘with distinction,’ after chewing through an ungodly amount of copper pipe to get my bending and soldering skills to a standard. I know, I know, – ‘you sailors are all experienced benders,’ and other such witticisms spring forth with the relentless obviousness of a burst water main. But I don’t care. I’m really pleased with my new skill. I’ve already repaired a toilet in my house that hasn’t been right since we moved in, and I’m going to save about £10-15K any time I want to improve a bathroom for the rest of my life now. So at the very least, my £1000 investment in the qualification has done that for me.
It’s also a virtually unregulated industry, so long as you stay away from the gas boilers and the water mains, and that is an appealing level of freedom.
It was tough to fit in all of the necessary work during my 3 week period of leave ashore. It took a lot of discipline and support from my amazing wife to achieve. A sacrifice we both willingly made, to increase our future prosperity, and hedge our bets in these uncertain times.
‘Regulatory Uncertainty’ is no longer a lofty abstract concept discussed by C-Suite professionals with a bent toward the dismal science, but a real and devastating force to be reckoned with in the day-to-day lives of ordinary citizens.
This brings me to the second milestone of the week. I took a day off from training and spent it at the US Consulate in Edinburgh. We successfully obtained US citizenship for my two youngest children who were born in Scotland and renewed the US passport of my eldest daughter who was born in Charleston, South Carolina.
Now, any sensible, impartial observer might take a look at the political situation in the US and wonder, ‘why on earth would you ever want your children to live in the US’? Particularly if you caught Joe Biden’s Man in the High Castle speech this week?
I discussed in a previous article how the colours of yellow and black are universally reminiscent of the danger of bee stings to human beings, across cultures, due to our common ancestry. That is why those colours are used to instil a sense of stress and caution around hazardous objects, or people in military uniform.
Another set of universal warnings signals were present in Joe Biden’s recent speech. The blood red lighting that engulfed the building behind him communicates hunting, death, pain, negativity, communism, and revolutionary fervour. The colour is universally utilised on national flags to immortalise the blood spilled in violent struggle.
The building immersed in Biden’s hellish glow was Independence Hall. The birthplace of the most free republic in human history. In his constituent state of Philadelphia, Joe – Dunder Mifflin – Biden Made a speech that said that America no longer stands for individualism, equality before the law or inalienable rights. His America now stands for the use of force against citizens who do not agree with his executive edicts, to produce an internationalist, socialist utopia – at the expense of whomever the out-group of the moment happens to be.
He stood flanked by twin pillars in the form of US Marines. Uniformed, and subversive of the traditionally contrasting, more balanced pillar symbols of Boaz, Jachin, or the Tao. His words were literally backed by uniform, faceless, military force.
His fists raised, clenched, revealing the corruption of humanity that has been insisted-upon these last two years. Biden has been consistently promoting the violent, communistic, ‘fist-bump’ greeting gesture, over the highly trust-filled, post-chivalric, Judeo-Christian handshake. A clear effort to return to the classical idea of the hero as the warrior, and not the principled martyr.
Rampant inflation. National-socialist ranting. Turbulent speeches, designed to cause prejudice between citizens and parties. Obvious, unscrupulous, and self-interested oration from a leader who continually exceeds his legal authority. A demagogic leadership and gargantuan bureaucracy that supported the criminal BLM riots that resulted in two dozen murders and millions in property damage, during a supposedly serious pandemic.
These actions are designed to break the bonds among people that create a nation, as well as erase the philosophy that gave birth to it.
Surely, bad things are coming to America? Why on earth would I want anything to do with a country so polarised and politically volatile as that? What kind of madman would want his children associated with this ageing warmonger of a dying empire?
The third good thing that happened this week will add some insight to my reasoning, but essentially, I don’t think America will be defeated by Sleepy Joe and his ilk.
My cousin got married to a lovely French lady this weekend, and we were delighted to attend yet another covid-postponed match in the beautifully rural setting at Myres castle, in the Kingdom of Fife.
We watched as the ceilidh band dutifully and carefully explained the Gay Gordons, the Dashing White Sergeant and the Canadian Barn Dance to the French delegation. Shortly afterward, our tarsal bones discovered the failings of the Gallic interpretation of said instructions. Regardless, the Auld Alliance did not crumble, despite this and several other matters of ecumenical debate.
Despite hailing from the country of the revolution of resentment, and the land of a political regime that retains many Napoleonic powers of dictatorship, politics does not define a people.
The same is true of Americans.
When I look at the horror that was National Socialism, I do not blame the Nationalism.
When God spoke in Exodus, he addressed a Nation all at once. That nation held no historic territory, had no fine buildings or monuments, and did not command the respect of other nations. It was a recently freed collection of slaves.
A nation is a people. Perhaps diasporic from the beginning, the Exodus story gives us the model for a nation. One that is not loyal to a political ruler, but to universal rules. To navigation by unchanging moral landmarks, rather than the impermanence of moral fads.
When people marry across culture, across tribal affiliation, religion, or political boundaries they are performing an act not only of love, but one of verification and assimilation. They are creating unity out of difference. They are creating a bond of love and acceptance that is real, and not legalistic.
Agopic love, is the love that expects nothing in return. This can be the love of a nation, as a people. Or the love of the land that has been built and shaped by the selfless love of our forebears, who made our country habitable for descendants they would never meet.
That love is abundant in American people. The politicking that has infected the minds of the true believers in America, is not the predominant feature of most peoples thinking in that great country. Americans really do believe in the greatest and finest principles that their historical giants have aspired to. They couldn’t produce satire like South Park, if they didn’t, really, truly, totally believe in freedom of speech, surely?
That is the America that will survive Joe Biden, and the immoral and unnatural attempts by the Vanguard Jacobins to subvert human nature and form a one-world -government.
And Scotland will survive as well. At least, the people will. I hold no hope for our current structure of government remaining intact, whether independent or not. Unicameral parliaments tend not to do too well, nor much good.
One thing I loved about the trade school I attended in Edinburgh these last two weeks was the entrepreneurial realism of the guys who were there. These were all adults who’d either been in the trades and were looking to add services to the repertoire they could offer customers, or people like me looking to enter a trade for the first time and profit from it.
Conversations took the form of price comparisons, salesmanship, marketing, and practical techniques. The quality of tools and suppliers. Web design. Market research. They had all either saved or borrowed money to be there. The focus and energy was palpable and encouraging.
The same spirit was something I loved about the working class and middle class people I encountered in America, who were disproportionately self-employed compared to their UK counterparts. They seemed to have business acumen in their national DNA.
Unlike my academic friends, the onus is always on ‘what can you do,’ not ‘what do you know’?
I love that spirit.
It is the relative of the spirit of some of my family members who crossed picket lines to work in their public sector jobs this last week, through a hail of abuse, because they believed in providing services to the people who need them regardless of political stripe. Going on strike is a bit less admirable when you’re asking for a pay rise at the expense of the taxpayer, while reducing services.
The guys at the plumbing school wanted more money as well. Their solution however, was different. They were working hard, at their own expense, to improve and increase the ways in which they could serve others. Not holding their customers’ hostage.
Yes, the currency is kaput. No, $100 oil doesn’t lead to the current price of fuel. Yes, the health services of both the US and UK corrupt- albeit for opposite reasons. And yes, our political institutions have failed to withstand the over-reach of international subversives.
But the Nation will survive the State.
I haven’t checked this, but I don’t think small town South-Carolinians have been quite so quick to jettison the flag of their forefathers, and replace it with a contrived Ukrainian cornfield, or a communist rainbow-banner this year. Something people in the UK should really have thought twice about in my opinion. Another precursor to erode the bonds of nation, before the idea of one world government can be sold.
My hope is that the American spirit will endure the trials of the current regime, and finally extricate the French Revolutionary ideas that have discoloured its American Revolutionary heritage these last seventy years or so. I don’t think the Democrat party has ever been so unpopular as it is now. Biden can’t even be called a populist at his current ratings.
But I remain optimistic for the yanks. For as the French enthusiasm for love, weddings, whisky, and Scottish dancing reminded me this weekend, it is actually not possible to be a post-modern nihilist and still enjoy ‘le bon vivant.’
For that reason alone, it is time we all got serious about finally putting an end to these chameleonic, arbitrary, and tedious ideas trotted out by the truly useless-eaters who ‘govern’ us. They are wrong. We need to become clearer and louder than ever before when we stand firm and tell them exactly and precisely why they are wrong, about every issue.
America still believes in free speech. I think many Scottish people still do as well. My hope is to help my little network in both nations come to a more self-confident and optimistic mindset as we face the serious challenges to freedom that are planned for the next seven years. I hope you’ll continue on that journey with me, dear readers.
I have no doubt that we will end the scourge of nihilism and resentment that infects our society today. Because I am a family man, and I know that kind of love, I have faith in the love that binds us.
It is the love that has built our nations, and the bonds between them, that cannot be broken by politics for very long.
I am a patriotic person, who hates politics with every fibre of my being. There is no modern act of policy that doesn’t sacrifice or scapegoat someone, in our immoral deficit and debt based system.
I am loyal not to our governments, whether red or blue, but to the principles that define the national character of the Scottish and the American people who are my people.
Those principles are Judeo-Christian in origin and are under attack in a serious and organised way. But that is how Christians and Jews have always had to exist. In the shadows. Speaking in symbols, metaphor, and code. Because if people ever widely understood the message of the principles that gave birth to our culture, the wind would spill from the sails of the most powerful people in this world, in a heartbeat.
Like plumbing, it might take you a long time to build something, but seconds to tear it down. The same is true for the latest iteration of luxury digital communism they’re touting as ‘the great reset’.
So, I guess that’s what to aim for.