Tagged: Writing
U-valde, U-krain(silent e), U-s Fools
No one is interested in living with perfect consistency or perfect coherency. Not even me. That feels robotic or mechanized, or simply inhuman.
My titular pairing of Uvalde and Ukraine is not about advocating consistency or coherency or that those should be aimed for in the gun control talk. I do not find it troubling that someone could want to arm Ukraine and also disarm school shooters.
Instead, my argument is: “Don’t be led astray from the obvious.”
Is that an argument? Maybe not.
So my advice, then, is “Don’t be led astray from the obvious.”
Guns are for killing people. Maybe not every gun is equally designed for killing people, maybe some guns are purposely designed for other uses, but in the sense that, “These boots are made for walking”, “T-Rex doesn’t want to be fed”, “Jesus saves”, and “The Navy needs Maverick”, guns are for killing people.
If you can’t imagine ever wanting to kill people, then don’t buy a gun.
If you can imagine wanting to kill people, then buy a gun.
Guns are for killing people.
Guns are not made to encourage honest dialogue. Guns are not made for laws. Guns are not made to save lives. Don’t be led astray, folks.
Furthermore, it is my belief that the content in this post can be agreed upon by all humanity. What do you think? Do you agree?
PS – Lastly, if you want my actual solution to the constitutional debate, here’s the amendment I crafted carefully after Parkland. Amendment XXVIII: In time of peace, Arms shall no longer be secured by the people. (Second Amendment stays.) You can find my other post’s on the topic back around March 30, 2018.
Peak Excitement
Most of you know I have been working my way through many writings and volumes of the 60 volume Great Books of the Western World set, via the 10 volume Great Ideas Program guided readings. Most readings so far have tended to be political essays, and so when I saw that the next volume, Volume 3, is Foundations of Science and Mathematics, well, you can imagine my thrill.
I am nearly finished with JS Mill’s On Liberty, meaning tonight may be the night. Queue DeVito’s serenade to Arnold in Twins, “Tonight, is your night bro!”
I have never considered myself a math guy and I hated physics and chemistry in high school. Chemistry was actually the class that ruined my chance to get a motorcycle in high school. Straight A’s? See ya!
But as I attended seminary, I dug into epistemology and all the reasons folks don’t believe in Christianity and the resurrection etc. and have ended up finding myself intrigued to always have a leg up on the ability to intelligently and succinctly speak to the origins and limitations of science and mathematics.
Have I said that tonight could be the night? It could be. Queue Tony and Maria, “Tonight, tonight…”
Usually Tuesday’s are when my wife joins her friends in prayer for hours and I get a movie night to myself. But I don’t think so for tonight. Tonight I get the chance, no, the privilege to open new doors of mind-space.
I ask you, faithful reader, does it get any better than these moments?
[SPOILER] A Pilot Weeping, A Review of Top Gun: Maverick
As the Memorial Day themed church service began this morning, I just knew I was going to be in the right mood to cry during the movie in the afternoon. Some days ya’ just know.
The opening sequence confirmed what I suspected—but the dam held.
Oceans, forests, hills, deserts, mountains, jungles, and, oh yes, skies are the appropriate natural descriptors for how much emotional size was packed into each and every scene. Skies and skies of feeling, packed onto a smaller and smaller IMAX screen.
Still, squinted eyes were able to hold back the waters.
Somewhere in the training sequences I consciously decided that I was going to just let it happen, no matter who might look over and see.
When Phoenix has the birdstrike, her quick identification of the malfunction and even quicker reaction to save the aircraft struck a chord and finally a few tears came out. It felt amazing.
Then when Maverick surprisingly appears to run the course in 2:15, there was no holding back. No sobbing, mind you. But definitely communication from my soul in the form of slow building tear bombs dropping down my cheeks.
I wanted Maverick to succeed. He’d been talking like a boss the whole movie, and finally he was going to show the world that he could back up his words with action.
****
My life looks very, very different than it did leading up to and during my time in US Air Force pilot training. It’s astonishing to me to even consider who I was then and who I am today. But more astonishing is how this movie affected me. It brought to the surface something long buried deep within.
That something is the following fact: Pilot training was the last time in my life where I wasn’t embarrassed to do my best.
We all did our best.
Not anymore. That’s not allowed.
I’m up to fifty pushups five times during the walks with my toddler, these days. Right out in public. Fifty. Cars driving by. Same spots. Neighbors able to see. Fifty. All the way down and up. Fifty. I’m forty years old and struggle to do fifty pushups, but I also know that not one person who may happen to see the struggle can do more than me.
That’s the closest event (maybe these blogs when I’m in the mood) I can consider as one in which I give my best anymore. Even my best friend from college doesn’t want to play when I really put effort in.
But my pilot training class of ‘05? We did our best.
What’s changed? Now that’s a weeping good question.
The End of Dreams Is Bittersweet
Showtime is 5pm. I’ve dreamed of seeing Top Gun: Maverick for probably 32 years. As the hours count down, I’m not sure that I want to wake up anymore.
I saw Top Gun for the first time at a friend’s house in 3rd grade, shortly after moving to a new city. It would’ve been early 1990. Soon after, I then sat in a tv/video store in the mall where they had a laser disc of Top Gun playing just the first half, basically until Goose died on repeat. My mom was off shopping and was perfectly content to leave me perfectly content as she did. Then, somewhere along the way I got the soundtrack on cassette tape and listened endlessly.
That opening. It’s like the reason surround sound was invented for home theaters. A laser disc copy was at another friend’s house and we fired it up too, mostly for the bass of the opening scene.
Top Gun. It has been the movie that never was going to have a sequel, and yet was so beloved that everyone wanted a sequel—assuming it could be done right.
I told the squadron commander at my first unit post-pilot training, “I am the guy who saw Top Gun and said, ‘I have to at least try to do that.’ That’s about all I know.”
He respected my honesty, even as he probably wished I knew a little bit more about what I had gotten myself into.
So many memories of that movie are woven into the memories of my actual life. There’s no separating the two. Art influencing life, life influencing art.
It all ends in a few hours. Above all, one dream has been searchingly saturating my life for three decades: Top Gun 2.
When the credits roll, I will still be a pilot. But when the credits roll, there will not be a boy’s dream of becoming a pilot; there will not be a boy’s dream of Top Gun 3.
So this is it.
The end of dreams is bittersweet.
I Thought I Caused the Formula Shortage…
It’s true. I have been feeling guilty. I thought I caused the formula shortage.
I remember the date, the same as you do. February 25th. It was the day after Russia attacked an area of Russia held by a people called Ukrainians for the past 30+ years.
Can you blame me? I had a baby due in a week or two and, in a moment of weakness, thought, “I remember the toilet paper run of ‘20. I’m not gonna be caught without formula when the results of last night formally play out in six months.”
So I rushed to Walmart and purchased $500 of diapers and formula.
Essentially walk-lunging down the main vein aisle between groceries and large women’s lingerie, I finally made it to the diaper section. I was sweating, not from the exercise, but from fright, as I realized I’d need a cart for six or so huge diaper boxes, sizes ranging from 1-4, and didn’t know whether I could trust leaving them alone whilst I went back to find one.
Cart in hand, diaper boxes crashing to the floor with a volume that drew far too much attention to the supposed clandestine operation, I then thought, “And formula. My wife’s production slowed around the 6 month point with A- and so I should grab some formula.”
When I saw the $50 a can price, I balked and said, “I know what I’ll do. I’ll grab two today and then just casually pick up another each time I visit. Wouldn’t want to do anything crazy.”
Making my way back to the front, I over-waved to the Somalis who looked at me as I struggled to keep the items balanced in the cart. “Hi. Yes. That’s right. Keep your heads covered, ladies. Faces, too. Nothing to see there, just like nothing to see here. I just realized I have a baby coming! Stupid American dad is all! Haha!” I jested.
All the while I knew that, supplies in hand—bird in the bush, you know—my child would be a veritable uberman to their already disadvantaged offspring.
Credit card passed the chip detector test, and I was out the door.
Only one time did a box fall off the cart on the bumpy trip to the car, a fact which none of the passing meth heads seemed to notice, and I eventually made it.
My tiny, but fuel efficient, Nissan Versa Note could barely hold all the goodies. The backseat was certainly employed for the proud duty of transporting size 2 & 3.
Fast forward several weeks, through me declaring we are in WW3, pivoting to the realization that “Ukraine is not a country”, and suddenly, after seeing celebrity gossip unseat war and rumors of war, I began to hear there was a infant formula shortage.
Imagine my guilt.
Scratch that. Imagine my first gasp of guilt.
“Huo! Did I do that?”
Then some more time went by. Nights were filled with either heavy, short-lived sleep or EMS flights toting around ailing patients. (I might point out for your edification that one was a “mums the word” victim of a stabbing in only his underwear, which I took as a friendly reminder to “Be nice to yo’ wife, Pete…”)
But today the headlines got me again. So I googled it. What is causing the shortage, I wondered? Me?
The answer? Trump.
Lol. Or that’s what The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson had to say. (Babylon Bee too.)
Whatever.
The important thing is—still perfect.
I have yet to make a mistake.
Review of the Hype Surrounding “Top Gun: Maverick“
The hype is real. The hype is palpable. The hype is fantastic.
It’s the kind of hype that inspires. It’s of a sort which begs the question, “Is it possible he actually made the perfect movie?”
I’ll say this: the just released official music video for Lady Gaga’s “Hold My Hand” is the perfect music video for a film soundtrack’s main song.
I’m officially applying for pilot training.
WW3 Diary Entry 8 – Final Entry
Focus. We need to focus in order to “stay the course”. Without focus, there is no “course”.
Why are we here? What is the problem?
A while back, when Russia first invaded Ukraine, I posted a map as part of the six-step problem solving process I learned in the Air Force, and in which I still believe. In that post, I claimed we were on Step 2 “Gather the Data”. (Step 1 being “Recognize the Problem”.)
The problem, I said, was unclarity.
In gathering the data, clarity has begun to emerge.
(I love this.)
This is going to hurt some of you, so be ready. But it’s important to be able to speak simply.
Despite that map, Ukraine is not a country.
Ukraine is not a country. As for evidence, Look around. Their not being in NATO is one, probably the second largest, piece of evidence of this. The largest piece being the fact that no country’s military, including ours, is at war with Russia.
Remember, we’re defining the problem—by definition “defining the problem” is not jumping to conclusions. So calm down. Just because Ukraine is not a country, does not necessarily mean we skip the next five steps and “implement the solution”.
I don’t believe, and you don’t believe, that Ukraine is a country. Fact.
Ukraine is not a country.
So what does this mean? It means that we’re yet again merely providing weapons to the enemy of our enemy. Like we do in the Middle East, like we do everywhere else that isn’t yet civilized.
Kuwait: country. Ukraine, not a country.
New question: Does this mean that it’s not World War 3 anymore? Have I changed my tune?
I have. As the title of this post indicates, I am changing my tune for now.
Here’s why.
Citizens of one country are not able to will another country into existence. We don’t put a border on a map and “ta da”—a country! It just doesn’t happen that way. Ukraine must assert itself, must manifest itself. Think gang initiation or all the scenes in movies where the friend group intentionally leaves a newbie to himself during a fight to prove that he is a man. Is the newbie proving himself to his friends or to himself? Both.
Ukraine, in essence, is the newbie. It has been since the Soviet Union broke up. And Ukraine is not yet a country.
Our actions, our help, are actually keeping Ukraine from becoming a country.
Settle down. I’m not suggesting we stop. Who knows whether Ukraine should become a country or not? Not me. And not you. Only Ukraine does.
So what does this mean for the concept of World War? And how has this focus helped us? What is our course?
World War, meaningfully, can only take place between countries. We were, I was, wrong to suggest this was a conventional war. That confession is the result of my “gathering of data.” As stated, it’s got to be an attack on a NATO member country. Let’s not kid ourselves. You don’t give a rat’s arse about the Ethiopian Civil War, or any tragedies in the other parts of Africa. Me, neither. Same thing here.
War has to be between countries. Either NATO on NATO, or some non-NATO country (almost a paradox—almost) on a NATO country.
The political question, then, is, “Does our support of Russia’s enemies increase Russia’s desire to attack a country?” The answer is, “Time will tell.”
What’s our course? Our course is no different than my course. The course is life. Abundant life. America lives on. If we begin taking actions that put America’s sovereignty in question, that’s a problem.
Does helping our enemy’s enemy put America in danger? I have to believe it does at some point. But if there’s anything we also now know, it’s that our enemy, Russia, is not as strong as some supposed.
How about us? Are we strong?
I believe so. And I believe we can be even stronger if we increase our focus.
WW3 Diary Entry 7
“So what, Pete. What would you have me do?”
Good question. Lots of things. I’ll begin with the first two.
During war, the first order of business is getting right with your maker, getting right with your creator.
Now I’m not trying to preach here, but we all know who that is. It ain’t Mohammed, it ain’t his god, and it ain’t more than one god. That leaves Yahweh, the god of the Bible. You can get right with him by, first and foremost, changing your habits. Pray in the name of Jesus. Study the Bible. Go to church. This should sound easy. It ain’t. But without it, there is literally no point to life. So why fight?
(This brings me to a big assumption. I’m assuming that you asked me what to do because you want to live, because you want to win the war. Good. Me too.)
After getting right with your maker, step two is increase your strength—both mentally and physically. We’re not gonna win if you’re weak in either category.
Physical strength is easy to increase. I recommend walking and pushups if you’re coming at this cold. Heck, I just started doing several sets of pushups on my walks with the stroller. Just three weeks ago I stopped about every fifteen minutes and did sets of 30. And now I’m at sets of 45. Three weeks.
Mental strength can be increased by teaching yourself something you’ve read. Somewhere in your house you have a book which has information in it. Pick some one section or chapter in it, and teach it to yourself. Focus is the particular mental skill in this practice. You’re not teaching what you think about the topic, you need to teach what it teaches. You’ll know if you’ve done it right. To kill two birds, I’d pick the Bible or a book which has a universal skill, like cooking or hunting or carpentry etc.
There are many other ways to increase your physical and mental strength. Comment below if you have any to offer or to request others.
We must win. We can win. We will win. But it’s going to take all of us, and it’s going to take strength.
WW3 Diary Entry 6
And another piece of evidence I use to determine and broadcast that we are in the opening stage of WW3 proper, not some preamble to preambles but the real thing that historians of the future will use to date and explain what they mean by “World War Three,” another piece of evidence is this whole “war criminal” talk.
You’re telling me that the country (countries) who is going to hold Putin accountable for War Crimes (justice/alignment) is the same one that doesn’t have the balls to define “boy” and “girl” or to suggest that you’re born that way? Umm, no. That’s like Luke Skywalker popping in to Iron Man’s movie to save the day with “the force” by hopping onto Black Stallion. It just doesn’t happen. There are rules to our universe.
Moral high ground implies “moral,” which in turn implies belief in and enforcement of meaning. And this meaning is manifest by words having definitions. It’s also manifest by rules, by order, by standards.
No gay LGBTQ+ is going to condemn me to hell, get outta here. Gay means anti-consequence; do what-the-eff-ever.
Nope.
Putin won’t be tried for war crimes because no one has the moral high ground.
And this fact, or the current reveal of it, means that we’re at war. This is a component of war. “War is hell.”
And the way he is stopped or held accountable is violence.
Boys sporting girl’s hairstyles and wearing ladies underwear will not simultaneously be running the international courts and trying men for war crimes.
Hahahahahahahaha. That’ll be the day.
WW3 Diary Entry 5
On modern weapons.
As a pilot who grew up dreaming of becoming Maverick (I had the name on my side), I was well aware of what Hollywood thought about missiles. “Our pilots had become dependent on missiles.”
The first actual war story involving missiles that I heard spoken by a fighter pilot in my presence made me question Hollywood, but mostly just the fiery part of the impact. When missiles hit a plane, they cause it to stop working correctly.
Then, while sitting in Iraq, I saw, with my own eyes on what was lovingly called “predator-vision”, an unmanned ariel vehicle launch a “missile” at a man worth launching a missile at. If you’ve seen any modern movies with similar scenes, you’ve seen the same.
Waiting, waiting, waiting and then the tiny object zips in right before a brightness on the monochrome image.
But something not often shown in Hollywood productions is what I then observed that night with interest. I saw the body on the ground. Then we waited. Then it moved a bit. Then it rolled. And rolled again. Then it rolled again. And finally it got on its feet, staggered slightly forward, and then the person took off running.
There is no moral to this story. It is merely what came to mind as I read about the train station missile attack.
Captain’s Log 