The more I move, the stronger I am. The stronger I am, the better I feel. It’s the simplest of formulas, yet not always easily applied.
I remember visiting my father years ago, after he retired to Virginia, and I asked him how he was doing health-wise. Though never one to complain, he responded with two words.
“Everything hurts.”
When I — in my late 30s at the time and healthy — questioned how it could be that “everything” hurt, he explained that when he woke up in the morning, he felt like he’d gone 12 rounds with Marciano and lost. He’d been dealing with it every day since his mid-60s.
“Just you wait,” he assured me.
He was right about that, including the timing of onset. But there was one piece of advice he didn’t offer me.
Keep moving.
He didn’t have to say it because, as always, he set an example. He kept moving until he no longer could.
And so will I.
Wednesday morning, my commitment to remaining in motion took the form of cutting back overgrowth along the driveway. Trying to keep it all knocked down all summer long would be futile, so I picked my battle.
This day’s objective was to whack weeds on the path traveled by my truck, plus create ample room to walk Smudge and otherwise move about without wading into prime tick-and-chigger habitat.
I left areas over the septic tank and around the camper to grow wild the rest of the season.
That’ll do for now. I finished the chore with perfect timing, too — trimmer line ran out just as the sun reached the driveway.
“Distrust isn’t a substitute for proof.”
David Manney, writing for PJ Media
The right-leaning website PJ Media doesn’t get nearly enough love, in my opinion, for its range of voices and the quality of its content. I follow the site via the PJ Media Facebook page, and I encourage you to give it a look.
A column appearing there yesterday caught my attention: “Why Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson Took the Strange Road.“ Regular columnist David Manney gives us his take on these exiles’ recent behavior.
I’ll confess that Candace Owens never appealed to me to begin with. I found her neither intellectually sound nor articulate enough to hold my attention. To be perfectly honest, I judged her popularity to be the result of conservatives’ tendency to over-amplify black (e.g.) voices on the Right, whether they deserve the spotlight or not.
Tucker Carlson is a different story. I followed him beginning in the mid-’90s, when he made regular appearances on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS, then through his stint at Fox News and into the inde realm. I’ve invoked his name and quoted him on this blog numerous times because, quite frankly, I admired his work, especially his fearlessness.
A year or so after the 2024 election, Carlson flipped some sort of switch. His blunt delivery was intact, but he became shrill and damned near unwatchable. His content suddenly lacked the thoughtful, reasoned character I’d come to appreciate.
I lost interest. After 30 years, I simply stopped paying attention to Tucker Carlson.
My decision, by the way, had nothing to do with him disavowing Trump or opposing Israel. I don’t always agree with this President myself, nor am I bound doctrinally or ideologically to the state of Israel.
David Manney’s perspective on Carlson and Owens is far sharper and more fundamental than my personal experience. In particular, he examines the intoxicating effect of being “independent.”
Here’s an excerpt from his PJ Media commentary:
“A network boss once imposed limits, sometimes for cowardly reasons and sometimes for sane ones.
“Independent platforms replace those limits with direct audience hunger; the audience clicks harder when the host says the forbidden thing, invites the banned guest, or hints that the real villains are hidden behind the curtain. Each escalation trains the next one.
“Carlson and Owens both found that the loudest part of the audience doesn’t reward caution. It rewards the feeling of having penetrated the lie. In that world, ‘I don’t know’ sounds weak. ‘They don’t want you to know’ sounds brave.
“The former is often more truthful, while the latter pays better.”
What he’s talking about is, in the vernacular, “clickbait.” He’s saying that Carlson and Owens have made the conscious choice to exploit human nature and target an audience not known for thinking critically.
That’s us — you and me, I mean. Even if we’re not necessarily wed to Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson or myriad other clickbait merchants, we’re still being courted.
Trained.
Relentlessly.
Look again at these lines from the column:
“…the audience clicks harder when the host says the forbidden thing, invites the banned guest, or hints that the real villains are hidden behind the curtain. Each escalation trains the next one.”
“…’I don’t know’ sounds weak. ‘They don’t want you to know’ sounds brave.”
Manney also said this:
“Distrust isn’t a substitute for proof. Once a person decides every institution is corrupt, the next temptation is to believe any story the institution denies. That’s how skepticism curdles; the old gatekeepers failed, so the new crowd builds a bonfire and calls every spark illumination.”
So while we’re quick to drop blame on Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and the like, this is about us.
Dammit, People, stop buying the snake oil. Insist on facts. Look for logic. Demand evidence. Think critically.
Hucksters prey on the weak-minded.
(Your homework assignment — next time you see something that claims to reveal “what ‘they’ don’t want you to know,” ignore it. Keep scrolling. Walk away.)
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable