These are the times…

| November 3, 2019

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Poetrooper sends us an article by Retired Command Sergeant Major J.D. Pendry. If the name sounds familiar, it should. J.D. hails from the Southern West Virginia coal field communities. In 1971, while living in Chicago, he enlisted into the United States Army, retiring September 30, 1999, as the Garrison Command Sergeant Major for the Fort Myer Military Community Following Army service, he worked for the Veteran’s Benefits Administration where he served as a Decision Review Officer until retiring June 2016. In April 1999, his book, The Three-Meter Zone, was released by Presidio Press. He has published articles in professional military journals and other websites and continues writing for J. D. Pendry’s American Journal.

These are the times that try men’s souls

OCTOBER 26, 2019
By J. D. Pendry

In a painful way, it’s interesting phenomena. Sometimes infuriating. Sometimes laughable. Sometimes saddening. Always dangerous. Watching it unfold. Watching freedom swirl around the drain while politicians, the media, and the ignorant cheer. The legislative branch of our government could not be more broken or morally bankrupt than now. Devoid of leadership. Standing back and watching. Waiting to jump ship and side up with whoever looks the winner. Side up to whoever puts the plug back in the swamp’s drain. Letting life in Babylon on the Potomac return to its normal back scratching existence. As Thomas Paine described the beginnings of the American Revolution in The Crisis, December 23, 1776, “These are the times that try men’s souls.”

Washington’s swamp life, cheerleaders and strap hangers hate President Donald Trump. It’s not a question. It’s a declaration. By extension, they also hate me. Truthfully, they mostly hate me. The forgotten American that put Mr. Trump in the Whitehouse. A commoner hanging on for dear life to what remains of the middle rung of America’s backbone. The middle class. Decades of neglect thinned our ranks. They’ve tried to turn us into a tribal culture of multiple identities then pit us against one another. Or pit all of us against some non-existent straw dog. One they can beat on daily keeping the unclean masses angry and in perpetual despair. It’s a dangerous game Washington plays. Only then to ride in adorned in shining armor declaring in utopian fashion there is only one United States of America.
That didn’t work out so well now did it? E Pluribus Unum is a quaint concept these days. The more we declare we are one, the more they try to make us many. Being a red, white, and blue loving American is offensive. Getting on your knees, disrespect, hate. That’s the new way. Summer Soldiers and Sunshine Patriots. Unable to see how blessed they were to be born American. In his day, President Trump used some bad words. Who among you haven’t? He said some uncouth things about women. How many of you haven’t, men? And the beat goes on. Had a fling with a porn star – or wanted to? Gave nick names to your rivals? Yeah, you did it. You just weren’t important or famous enough to have someone record it. Cast the first stone puritan.

The President doesn’t speak the language of the chattering classes. Condescending intellectualism using lots of uhs and ums or let me be clears. He talks in language not familiar to them or the Washington ruling classes. It’s plain language rather than political double talk. Common. It’s how we talk out here in Washington’s would be serfdom. He tells us and the world that the Washington establishment is a corrupt collection of scoundrels who’ve nearly destroyed our country. And us commoners say hell yes! That’s what we’ve seen and lived with for decades. Dual legal standards. No legal standards. One step forward and two backward with every whim of Washington’s nattering political class. OK at naming post offices, not much good for anything else unless you consider cut throat politics and thievery.
He’s not Presidential according to you. You forget that we’ve suffered many years of who you consider presidential material no matter their political nomenclature. Out here, presidential brings up visions of the egomaniacal. Self-centered. Pampered Princes. Mitt Romney.

Donald Trump does not subordinate himself, or Americans, to foreign leaders. He vowed to drain the Washington swamp. There’s is not a swampier swamp on planet earth. He has the courage to take on the Military Industrial Complex (MIC). Washington’s center of gravity of power and money. In Washington, that’s the only thing more sacred than wasting the Social Security fund. Love it or hate it, it’s the prime reason American politicians cannot end a war. The prime reason for endless wars, lost lives and treasure. The MIC is an economic system. There must be a need for the tools of war. Profits flow into political coffers which makes it easier to convince them of the need to invade the middle east and plant democracy. Then stay there for decades of nation building and dying. Needing more weapons. Spending more tax Dollars. Creating another generation of service men and women. Middle class men and women quickly forgotten when there’s peace across the land. Except as a cliché in the next political campaign. President Trump has taken on the globalists, the new world order and their transformational climate change tool. When I was a child, another President looked to expose the freedom stealing new world order. President John F. Kennedy. They killed him.

Aside from every phobic and ist you could dredge up, you claimed he was a justice-obstructing treasonous Russian stooge. For two years and millions of dollars, a hand-picked battalion of Democrat Trump hating lawyers couldn’t find evidence of that. Now, Democrats lock themselves in the Capitol basement to hold an inquisition. In secret. The method? Draw a conclusion of guilt. Then set out to manufacture evidence to support the previous drawn conclusion. You know. Like the Mueller gang. Where no one can cross examine the witnesses nor read the transcripts. No Republicans or legal representatives of the President. No one. This is a communist tactic. One party. No defense. You’re guilty. Due process, liberty, the United States Constitution tossed into the Potomac. And you’re OK with that? Apparently, you are. Certainly, you must also know that house Democrats are in a race with the DOJ investigation likely to put some of them in prison. Mark this down. When the indictments come, all you’ll hear is Trump used the Department of Justice to go after political enemies. From stem to stern, exactly what the democrats and deep state actors actually did. Truthfully, the Attorney General smelled snakes in the woodpile. There may be a reckoning.

As far as it’s known: Donald Trump has never raped or has been accused of raping a woman. But Gloria Allred can probably produce one. He’s never had a sexual encounter with an intern, a cigar, or anyone else in the oval office. He’s never perjured himself or obstructed justice. A Democrat did all of that and you raised him up to near God status. Character faults and all, he’s still a Democrat idle who liked to ride the Lolita Express to Epstein’s Island. Trump never ran guns into Mexico and it appears Syria as well. He never abandoned Americans in Benghazi and repeatedly lied about why it happened. He never promised a health care plan that would reduce annual cost per family by $2500.00, but rather increased costs twice that much or more. And what was the cool whip on top? If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor. He never sold 20% of our Uranium to Russia who could then sell it to Iran who could then make weapons to threaten Americans and our allies. The Russians and Saudis never contributed millions of dollars to his foundation. He never put billions of dollars in cash on pallets and flew it to a hostile foreign government who could then use it to sponsor terrorism and build weapons programs. And with nary a peep out of Washington or the media. He never sent the IRS after political opposition. He never told you to put on a sweater and turn down the thermostat. Instead he said let’s be energy independent. Now we are. Finally met a promise made following the 1970s Arab oil embargo. He never told America’s blue-collar working class that their manufacturing jobs lost to NAFTA and other broken policies were never coming back. He never told the coal industry he’d bankrupt them. Instead, he brought jobs back home. He reopened coal mines. He reduced unemployment for all categories of Americans to historical lows. Using that magic wand someone said he must have.
Donald Trump was not mentored through adolescence by a communist pedophile. His Mother and Grandparents were not communists. His closest assistant is not a communist. His political advisors are not communists. His political career did not begin in the living room of a domestic terrorist and self-avowed communist. He did not have a Muslim upbringing. He did not place communists and the Muslim Brotherhood in key positions in our government.

On election night 2016, there was weeping and gnashing of teeth. An unindicted felon, a most corrupt and vulgar woman whose associates have a propensity toward suicide was rejected by the American people. Just in the past day or so she had the audacity at a funeral service no less, to refer to the President and First Lady as Ahab and Jezebel. Could be worse I suppose. She could have called them Bill and Hillary.
These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated. Thomas Paine, The Crisis, December 23, 1776.

From the beginning, the deep staters and anarchists in the streets supported by many of wealth and fame have called themselves the resistance. Resisting what? Freedom? President Donald Trump? He’s leading the real revolution. Most often it appears, standing alone. The only one willing to stand between common Americans and the people who are literally destroying our government and our value system.
My humble advice to Democrats, Republican never-Trumpers, deep state assets and the American Pravda. You cannot impeach a revolution.
God Bless the United States of America.
© 2019 J. D. Pendry, J. D. Pendry’s American Journal, All Rights Reserved

Tip of the hat to Poe, and of course CSM Pendry.

Category: 2020 Election, Guest Post, Media, Politics

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5th/77th FA

AAAA phuqueing MEN!!!!!!

Standing Applause.

Too damn bad this can’t be read on every National newscast and be on the front page of every newspaper throughout the Land.

You been reading my mind for awhile now, haven’t you CSM Pendry?

2banana

No. But it sure can start one.

“My humble advice to Democrats, Republican never-Trumpers, deep state assets and the American Pravda. You cannot impeach a revolution.”

SFC D

Problem is, those people think THEY are the revolution. I smell change in the air, and it ain’t the climate.

LC

I’d say it’s pretty clear there’s one on both sides – the 2018 midterms showed that, even if the Democrats are still in disarray in terms of party leadership.

I just hope the American public can separate out their hatred of the other side’s ideas from their hatred of the other side’s people.

SFC D

There’s a big difference in the two sides. The right hates the left’s ideas. The left hates the right’s very existence.

Fyrfighter

Very true. Sadly, my siblings are perfect examples of this…

Slow Joe

LC, why are always minimizing the hatred the Left has for conservative Americans?

Why are you still supporting their policies?

The Left are low-rung thinkers living in a perpetual echo chamber.

I don’t understand you, really. Your posts seem to be well reasoned and balanced, yet you still swallow the propaganda lines in the media and fail to see the Left for the totalitarian collectivists that they are.

Is it party loyalism? Is there an specific point in the Left’s agenda that it is so important to you that makes you ignore all the other monstrosities they do?

What is it? Would you share with us?

I am asking you this because I have a couple of friends, Jews like me, that still support the Democrat party this late in the game, and it is because of a single little tiny ideological issue, that is not even true, but they are emotionally invested and cannot get out of the mental trap. Serfs of their own minds. Don’t be like that.

LC

My friends and family are pretty evenly distributed across the political spectrum, and so while I can definitely point to one or two people I know who are on the Left and hate conservatives… that’s simply not true for the vast majority. Similarly, I know someone on the Right who shares a similar hate for liberals. But definitely not all my Right-leaning friends do. I’m considered a liberal here, even though I’d dispute that – but in your estimation, do I give or receive more hate? I’m inclined to say I get a lot more hate than I give. This place is conservative, I’m not conservative, ergo I’m part of the problem. Yet I have no hate for conservatives. More to the point, in any gathering of a particular slant -and this one, by and large, is conservative- they’re going to look at the extreme examples from the other side, and have that characterize their view of them. It’s a corollary to the old wisdom of how we judge ourselves by our intentions, and others by their actions. Except in this case, it’s we judge our party by its principles, and the other party by the most reprehensible actions of those whom we identify with it. The Republican party has some great principles, and look at all the horrible things some liberals do! So of course conservatives who don’t interact with actual liberals much think the Left has an abject hatred for them. You hear news, like the current story at the top of the Antifa asshole going to jail, and absent any other frame of reference, that becomes your view of what a liberal is. And I’m not picking on conservatives here; the liberals do the same. If you go over to Democratic Underground, you’ll see regular stories about conservatives attacking innocent people. And for someone who is 20-years old, surrounded by other liberals, and is told that their very lives are in danger by scary, gun-toting conservatives who want to shoot gays, Mexicans, whatever.. it all adds up to an image that’s at odds with the every day… Read more »

Poetrooper

“I lean liberal on some things, conservative on others, but I try to understand that the average person, not the extremes on either side, is just trying to do their best by themselves, their family and their country, and differing opinions and ways of life are fine.”

I can’t argue with that sentiment as I’d say that’s pretty much true of most Americans, including most of those who sign in here at TAH routinely. Military service has taught most of us the necessity and reality of learning to live with people of different beliefs, political, religious, racial, whatever.

I was wrong in calling you a “fucking weasel” the other day, and for that I apologize. But I still find myself very wary of you as you too often seem to be either blindly defending the left and/or throwing up the disingenuous “Both sides do it,” attempt at dissuasion.

Inasmuch as you appear to lean liberal more often than conservative, I can foresee that we will remain, for the most part, in ongoing disagreement, but you’re welcome to maintain your philosophical balancing act on this forum as far as Poe’s vote counts for anything.

Club Manager, USA ret.

I’ll be damned, a CSM who makes lucid sense when I am sober. Well said CSM.

Inbred Redneck

The man speaks for plenty of us out here. I’m still proud to be a common American.

Slowest Joe

Is there a short version for E-4 and below?

Mason

Trump good. America good. Swamp bad. Fuck off swamp.

Anonymous

‘Murica! Trump 2020!

Perry Gaskill

If memory serves, this is the first J.D. Pendry commentary since Jonn passed. My own view, and I say this with respect for Pendry’s opinion, is that the times Paine was living in were not the same as times today. The circumstances of history do not usually repeat themselves closely enough to act as a useful current roadmap. Fighting the corruption of the MIC swamp is not the same as getting rid of George III. We somehow broke the system of government handed to us, and we’re the only ones who are going to be able to fix it. It’s been my experience that those who are often worst at leading people are also those who are most aggressive at the pursuit of power at any cost. Ambition becomes blind and hubris self-destructive, both for themselves and those around them. Good leaders, on the other hand, tend to be pushed to the front because of natural talent. They tend to do the right thing based on an instinctive moral compass. It might be pointed out that when Bill Clinton was going through the Lewinsky scandal, there were those who said Hillary Clinton should have filed for divorce, and moved on with her integrity intact. But that’s not what happened, and a compliant national news media, far from hearing any alarm bells, let it slide with the result that she eventually ran for President. Fecklessness apparently being its own reward. And it doesn’t stop. If Elizabeth Warren or Joe Biden were told tomorrow that they would get an additional 20 million primary votes on the condition they had to spend a week wearing Donald Trumps underpants on their head, they would probably do it. In Thomas Paine’s time this would likely have been clear evidence of insanity. Today it might be seen as just a bump on the road to power, if not a new fashion statement. To quote the late Hunter Thompson, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” What’s also different from Paine’s time is that the news media then was politically biased but didn’t deny it.… Read more »

Poetrooper

“If memory serves, this is the first J.D. Pendry commentary since Jonn passed.”

You’re correct, Perry, and that’s partially my fault. Even knowing that Jonn was not fond of sergeants major (had a bad experience I presume), I introduced him to JD’s work a few years ago, suggesting that he should post some it, and Jonn agreed. Since he passed and I’ve had my own health problems, it was a matter of “Out of sight, out of mind,” until Boomer emailed me this latest essay last week.

Hopefully we’re reconnected now.

Ret_25X

actually, the circumstances today are very similar to the 1770s.

A corrupt regime surrounding pandering politicians.

Financial ruin and fiduciary fraud at all levels.

a “deep state” of peers and testicular leeches looting the nation and steering decision to their own ends.

Military adventurism globally

Idiotic policies domestically based on the concept of “you work, I eat”

and a class of “elites” based solely on political alignment or university degrees.

The reason for our current situation is that the tories were not firmly dealt with post revolution and those ideas are back.

socialism is nothing more than the new name for the old fashioned concept of the rights of kings or so called divine right to rule. Different today only in the nature of the monarchy.

No, nothing has actually changed and the cure to the problem has not changed either.

And there is the problem. The cure is unacceptable in human terms to anyone actually interested in liberty and freedom.

To improve, the leeches, looters, and power brokers have to be rooted out ruthlessly and callously. But they will only be replaced by new looters, leeches, and power brokers. So it will ever be.

Machiavelli was correct in analyzing the problem, and Pareto was correct in his application of the problem to modern governance.

All governments, everywhere have a “deep state” of elites, academics, and cultural voices that both support it and destroy all opposition knowing that those who benefit directly will always support them.

Nope, nothing has changed in the human terrain.

11B-Mailclerk

Exactly so.

Perry Gaskill

You could probably also add the old Mandarin system of administration in China to the list of deep state examples. At this point, I have no thoughts one way or the other on the inevitability of some kind of deep state arising over a long sweep of history. Still, I don’t agree that the events in the 1770s were the same in the sense of circumstances, context, and triggers. A key distinction, at least it seems to me, is that at the time of the Revolutionary War, Americans had come to identify themselves as American instead of as British subjects with few of the same rights as those of a British citizen in England. Therefore, Britain was seen as an external threat with the result being a revolution instead of a civil war. We didn’t want to change the British form of government; we wanted them gone. It was no coincidence that Benjamin Franklin had spent time in Ireland prior to 1776. He saw what British policy had done to the Irish economy, and wanted no part of it. What our own deep state, or MIC, is doing with the current impeachment process seems also to amount to an extended coup d’état. First there was Mueller, now there’s Ukraine, next week it will be something else. And whether the public’s business takes place in public or not seems to no longer matter. And it’s all because Hillary lost. What’s also been mostly left unsaid is that her post-election behavior, at least so far, should tell anybody with any common sense just about exactly why she shouldn’t hold high office. Still another dog not barking is that if you look at the record of what the current 116th Congress has been able to accomplish, it’s a pretty pathetic effort. Eventually, all the congressional drama queens, male and female, are going to have to return to their own districts and explain why they spent all that time and money trying to get rid of a duly-elected Trump. When voters hear the answer, it’s also going to be no surprise if those same… Read more »

Slow Joe

Perry Gaskill, excellent points.

But, George III wasn’t an absolutist king in the French manner. The House of Lords in the British Parliament was holding the reins of power, therefore the American Revolution was a revolution against the British Parliament, and the power of the British aristocracy in specific.

It was a revolution against a foreign aristocracy.

Which makes the prohibition in the Constitution to grant nobility titles that much relevant.

just lurkin

We “somehow broke the system of government handed to us”, because far too many of us were eager for the promised wealth that would flow to us so long as we would give more power to D.C.

Social Security is the perfect example; it was always dependent on specific demographic trends, and once those went away it was doomed to spiral towards bankruptcy (which is where we are headed).

You need some government to maintain order and to act as the ultimate arbiter in certain disputes. But government is all too often a giant machine for creating unintended consequences and perverse incentives.

I’ll say this as well-big government conservatism is a contradiction in terms. Conservatism ought to look to other social institutions, like the family or religion or the market, to deal with most social problems.

“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.” That’s how we have come to the difficulty we now face. There are always imperfections in any human society and it is too easy for politicians to point to those as issues that the power of government can resolve. But the problem with empowering institutions with dealing with specific issues is that those issues become an enduring interest for those who make their living from them. “No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth!”

And so we have the entrenched deep state, who see the first serious challenge to their privilege and position in the person of Donald Trump, an outsider who they don’t know how to deal with and who just might mean what he says. It doesn’t really much matter if he does or not, they can’t let the tax cattle think that they can present any threat to the entrenched “elite”, and so he must be brought down, by whatever means they can find.

Thunderstixx

And out in berzerkely one libturd clown reads it and literally shits hisself…
I didn’t know that SGM knew any other vocabulary other than “Get the fuck off my grass”…..
Very well written and true beyond most anything else I have read in many months….
Thanks for posting it.

Anonymous

Outstanding!

A Proud Infidel®™

VERY well said! CHock full of acts enough to make any liberal Drama Queen’s head explode while they put their fingers in their ears and yell “Orange Man Bad, Orange Man Bad…”!

Andy

CSM, you have just said what we have been thinking for years.

rgr769

He absolutely nailed it in spades. Most wise and thoughtful CSM in the land.

JMK

I spent 21 years in the Army myself. I appreciate anyone who takes the risk to say something political online. Even so, I can’t say I agree or disagree with you since you didn’t state anything factual. Trump did get elected by saying he would, “drain the swamp”. But he hasn’t done anything but make the “swamp” bigger. I don’t believe anyone we elect will ever solve our problems. We need to abolish Congress and start over. Until Americans start to suffer there will never be real change.