Reflections from the Heart of the Empire: New Year's Eve, 2023

All good things...

I try to end the year on good notes. 2023 is a challenge, but here’s a list of some things I think are good that happened this year, global, national, and closer to or in my own home.

• A pod of orcas cruised around Europe attacking yachts and other rich people boats, thereby proving that if there is any inherently proletarian intelligent species on this planet, it is the cetaceans.

  

• Ohio voters enshrined reproductive freedom into the State Constitution. Abortion as an issue is dead, dead, DEAD in this state. Everybody was sick of it. Hallelujah.

• President Joe Biden entertained the world with his amazing acrobatic skills.

  

• The Detroit Lions won their first division title in 30 years.

• State after state banned transgender “therapy” for minors, putting it in the same legal adult category as the ability to sign contracts, purchase firearms, volunteer for the military, or purchase alcohol. Not to mention making it OK for young women to fairly compete in sports again.

• Tom Brady announced he was finally retiring from football.

• Elon Musk’s Space X displayed its pyrotechnical prowess when one of its brand new and much heralded rockets exploded, delighting thousands of fireworks fans.

  

• The Tories lost the last illusion of credibility in England. Labour had already lost theirs. The ghosts of Chartists and Levellers past and future haunt an establishment formally headed by a king who Quebec and Australia refuse to recognize as even symbolic sovereign. Sorry, Charlie Three.

• A few stubborn Republicans proved that Jimmy Dore and #Forcethevote were correct by dumping their House Speaker, irrevocably exposing the Squad and their whingy You Tube supporters as creatures with no redeeming social value whatsoever.

• The greening of the Earth continued, as increased CO2 in the atmosphere led to more plants covering more land and producing more oxygen. Gaia declined to comment on whether She was helping or hurting humanity with this new and dastardly move that climate alarmists never saw coming but say must be bad because if they don’t they will lose their grants from the green grift industrial complex. (image courtesy NASA)

  

• The UAW, led by a West Virginia electrician, outmaneuvered the Big Three in a rolling strike that shut down key factories, forcing management to shutter other plants and let those employees go on unemployment compensation rather than depleting the union’s strike fund and keeping them off balance. He demanded far more than he was willing to settle for, and got a 25% pay raise over 4 years, 11% immediately, and the abolition of the two-tier system.

• This and a wave of other strikes and successful unionization efforts demonstrate that working class consciousness is growing at a faster rate now than any time since the 1930s.

• The classic American ruling class response, culture war to divide and rule, completely collapsed as the Empire lost its proxy war in Ukraine at great expense, and Israel’s actions illuminated just how small and petty those culture war issues truly are.

• Joe Flacco returned from the Land of Misfit Toys and led the Cleveland Browns to a playoff birth.

  

• Ohioans voted to legalize recreational marijuana. The Ohio Clown Show Legislature, thanks to ridicule unexpectedly being heaped upon them by Governor Mike DeWine in what had to be a Christmas Miracle, will be starting on necessary regulatory legislation next month. Thar be tax revenue in them thar buds!

  

• I got a Hu Band T-shirt! Long live Mongolian heavy metal!

  

• Burkina Faso and Niger successfully expelled French imperialism from their countries.

• After over half a century of waiting, I can finally say Henry Kissinger is dead and I’m alive and I LIKE it that way.

• Jimmy Dore and

  Due Dissidence
  discovered each other and both shows got better, IMHO.

• In a stunning rebuke to all the woke garbage Marvel, DC Comics, and Disney have been turning out, the old-school good story, low special effect, no culture war message movie Godzilla blew their socks off at the box office. Thank you, Japan!

  

• The Twitter Files once again showed tens of millions of Americans the unconstitutional authoritarian measures the Democrats are taking in a determined assault on our rights of free speech and expression, in spite of their best efforts to smear, intimidate and silence journalists like

  Matt Taibbi
  .

• The shock & outrage expressed by Democrats and their media hacks at the pushback from the people, and some of the states and federal courts, was even better.

• So far, there have been no indications that even imbeciles like Jake Sullivan and Lloyd Austin are willing to send aircraft carriers anywhere near Yemen or Lebanon. There’s a reason for that. It’s the same reason that the Saudis refuse to participate in Operation Pompous Prosperity Guardian. This is what the Houthis can do to warships(this one was Saudi a couple of years ago). Hezbollah has better weapons and more of them.

  

• My first cousin’s son is on the USS Gerald R. Ford, so that’s a great thing for my own family, and over ten thousand other families.

• After years of lockdown-originating neglect, we were finally able to get some plumbing and drywall repairs done, and got a washing machine!

• A group of woke McCarthyite writers came onto Substack, looked around, saw Nazis everywhere just like John Birchers used to see Commies behind every bush, demanded the Substack leadership censor whoever they deemed a threat to oligarchy democracy, reaped a whirlwind of protest from Substack writers of every ideology that is not a cult, were told to bugger off by the management on free speech grounds…

  

• My own small contribution to the clamor definitely helped push my little site up to more than 350 subscribers. You damn betcha I think that’s a good thing, and thank you!

• Finally, I have met all sorts of intelligent, interesting, tolerant, curious and open-minded people here on Substack, many of whom have challenged me and made me think. Thank you all, and keep on speaking out. Happy New Year! And good luck.