"The land of the free/ Where the less you know/The better off you'll be . . . "

Apologies to the late Warren Zevon for stealing lyrics from his "Disorder in the House." 

They strike me as an appropriate anthem for the times in which we live. The woke ones in charge of our troubled nation certainly what us to be "happy" by not knowing what's going on. 

Before we get to all that, I will rail against old age. 

I don't like it. 

One day, I was 25 years old, and, then, suddenly, I wasn't. Don't like it all. Don't mind the greater "wisdom" but not at the cost of aches and pains, doctor visits, and a smorgasbord of medications for this and that. As a young man, if something hurt, I knew why. Now . . . I just wake up and it hurts. No further explanation given. I have grown tired of the well-meaning young medical types labelling such-and-such malady as "age appropriate." 

So, I retreat to the man cave with my dogs, and spend money on an ever-growing gun collection to which I have added, in the past few weeks, a beautiful, but expensive, 19th century Afghan Jezail black powder musket. As a poor young diplomat in Pakistan decades ago, I could have picked one up for next to nothing, but the Diplowife insisted on our saving money for a house. Sigh. I hate priorities when they get in the way of having fun . . . I also have acquired a 1942 M1 Garand rifle in magnificent shape (CMP muzzle rating of 1.0/throat rating of 1.5). A beautiful beast of a gun, and certified in excellent firing condition, as long as I don't shoot overly powerful rounds. I will have to read the warnings more carefully. In the end, I probably will not shoot it; I will put it on the wall next to (I hope) a Japanese Arisaka rifle on which I am bidding in an auction. 

I already have a 1871 Mauser with bayonet on the wall along with a splendid 19th century British-made Martini-Henry, and a 1930s Argentine Mauser, also with bayonet. Lots of old pistols--French, American, Spanish--and swords--German, French, Spanish. It's a race among wall space, bank account, and time left to me . . . which will win?

OK, fun stuff out of the way.

The political-social-economic scene remains dismal. 

The woke attack continues unabated. 

Let me provide, as the wokesters say, an example from "my life experience." The other day at the local gym while on the cross trainer machine--mask mandate gone!--head-set on, listening to Chuck Berry and Tom Petty, I looked up and saw that on the gym's twelve giant TV screens, NOT ONE hetero white male appeared. One would think, to judge, from the commercials and presenters, that we live in a matriarchal African nation. The occasional white guy who appears almost inevitably comes across as an effeminate, quasi-gay buffoon who suffers diarrhea or another physical or moral flaw, and needs straightening out by a wise woman doctor, lawyer, scientist, financial advisor, etc. It's getting a bit much, more than a bit much. 

This wokeness has even infected historical period films in which we, for example, now see ancient England with black aristocrats. Right. OK. So, if that's even remotely true, how can the wokesters argue that Europe and America have been historically and systematically racist? Makes no sense. As a friend of mine said, "Like you, I never have cared about race before, but now I think I have had it." 

The wokesters create the racism and the anti-semitism they claim to deride. They, of course, do this on purpose to create conflict requiring intervention by the woke authorities. The racism and the anti-semitism need manufacturing, just like veggie fake "beef," an artificial commodity for which there exists little natural demand.

In the end, however, we are all tribal. You can push us, insult us, and try to erase us for only so long before, even among the most tolerant of us, the tribal blood rises and the tribe strikes back. 

On that, Diploson3 had an interesting observation in slight disagreement with me. I told him I was getting guns before they banned them. He argued the wokesters won't bother with that. They will let us keep our guns, and obsess about keeping them, while they do away with all the other rights and protections. The law enforcement, judicial, and military institutions are joining the education and the media establishments as tools of the prog-woke machine. The "cancel" effort grows stronger and bolder. Non-woke positions become harder and harder to hold and express; you do so at the risk of losing your job, among other things. The censorship grows and grows, making communication of "unpopular" ideas ever tougher. The woke even have established that the government, under a flimsy pretext, can keep us locked in our homes, jobless, dependent on hand-outs, unable to gather with friends and organize with like-minded individuals; our electoral process, as you all know, is a cruel joke from top to bottom. 

They, therefore, my son argued, don't need to take our guns, at least not for now.

I hope the lad is wrong, and our tribal survival instincts will kick in so we can break the corrupt woke machine before it achieves its 1984 nirvana.