September 2019
I wonder if the touchy-feely alarmists ought to be treated for the heartbreak of psoriasis. They are so thin-skinned and get itchy about so many things! Freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of cartooning, freedom of the truth, freedom of thought, freedom of feeling, freedom of humor, freedom. The Slap-Happy Lawyers and their suits appear from out-of-nowhere to scarf up even more litigation money to fund even more mayhem to continue the scams of their flagrantly ill-founded myths.
At times, the World looks like a big chess board, with the Big Players moving all the big pieces. We, the common folk, are merely the pawns.
But maybe not.
The world of control freaks is looking more and more out of control for the freaks. So much time, effort, money and energy are devoted toward fomenting the phonied-up pictures of panic, the distorted images of fake emergency and the never-ending end of the world!
It really is the end of the world for many of those control freaks. Their contrived circus-show has become almost boring, at least for me. These clowns won’t fold up their tents anytime soon in their push to force freedom to fold. They will, however, be replaced by newer clowns, more willing stooges, in the hope of making us fold, we, the guardians of truth, honor, justice, and, yup, the American way. Their show must go on! We, however, are not folding.
One of the advantages of being older and wiser is the perspective gained from the years of one’s youth, those days when you didn’t know a lot but were supposed to act as if you did. I did not know a lot, but I also did not act as if I did. I was acutely aware of my ignorance of many things; and I acutely wanted information about the things that I did not know or adequately understand. I was in a hurry to find answers to my questions, honest questions that needed honest answers. And I believed that many of my elders could provide those answers to my insistent questions. When I did not get very satisfying answers from them, in any way, shape, or form, I was quite peeved. Miffed. P—d off. Yes, I was an impatient one in an impatient generation!
It took me many years past my entry into adulthood to realize, understand, and then accept (the third step here is the lengthy one, a process I still undergo at times!) — that the Older Generations included “young folks” who faked “knowing” and did not ever get out of that nasty habit. My response to the trickster was usually one of a sense of betrayal:
Why, you fraud!
I have since become humbled in my hot-tempered indignation regarding phonies. They do not always know they are phonies. Many people act their roles so well that, over the course of a lifetime, they no longer comprehend they have played a role, so often and so well, which does not comport with who they really are.
Whilst translating Chapter 36 of THE DAWN into L’AUBE, I encountered the very real distance that I created between the real person and the person whom my character, Arthur Boucher Carmichael, recast as Artur Boucher, must become in order to fulfill his mission and to, at the very least, survive his first infiltration of Occupied France. I am amazed at times at how well I knew what I was doing, back then, during my writing of THE DAWN from 2008-2011.
It was a time of ordeal for so many people that, looking back, I realize there is so very much to be learned from our very recent history, even as the very distant past continues to be re-shuffled by the charlatans of codifying falsehood as truth. The personal is personal, not political, and it is to be lived one day at a time, not fast-framed through the warped lens of historical blasphemy. It’s a real slap in the face, this rapid-revision of reality to suit socialist lunacy and thereby keep the lawsuits rolling into perpetuity.
There are therefore many lessons to be learned from the rigours of surviving any ordeal. The past can be either a minefield for the person who cannot accept the mistakes of his trials; or it can be a gold mine for the individual who surrenders to the hand of God in preparing the way, warts and all, for a glorious future.
By January 1941, Arthur Boucher Carmichael, whose initials drolly amount to the elementary ABC, has set out on a mission of duty, but also one of personal redemption. He discovers during his first dark but moon-bright night in France, in a moist, wide open field in Forcalquier, the fortitude of the faith of his fathers. He prays for courage and for the nobility of spirit that had been so painfully lacking in so many of the leaders of France, that she had arrived at this miserable fate of Nazi German conquest and occupation.
Artur then recalls the lyrics of the last verse of the song by Julia Ward Howe, “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” The paroles remain in their native tongue because I prefer to retain the original language of the author of poetic beauty, whether it be a song or a poem or a speech or even a prayer.
In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the Sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me,
As He died to make men holy,
Let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
As this big old world spins round and round, assuredly and daily, without the machinations of the hucksters and pontifications of the poseurs, let us join hands in remembering the truth, and join hearts while the truth marches on. Artur would be most pleased that we have followed his lead!
Artur leva les yeux aux étoiles dans le ciel noir. Il chuchota : Sa vérité est en marche.
