Starvin Larry

The Chateau letterbox received this heartfelt appreciation from a reader and artist named Daniele Vek.

Good morning,

I am an avid reader of your blog Goodbye America and I wanted to extend my thanks to you and your work. I am convinced that it’s impact is much broader and deeper than you can imagine. I wanted to thank you, as I knew one day I would, for a particular entry dated July 26th, 2014, titled “Crosshairs on America“. I was still a very young child during the turbulent early 90’s and witnessed the tension of the Rodney King incident and the subsequent LA riots. Though I was comfortable in my suburban bliss, as a child the horror was not lost on me.

As the years went by incidents of domestic terror and social strain heightened and one such was that of the incident at Ruby Ridge. Although I…

The Deep State is nearly in complete control.

You won’t like it when they have achieved their goal.

It’s a measure of a man’s sanity when attacked to take up the sword while still wishing for the plow. Those who become obstinately wedded to either tool probably don’t need to buy any green bananas. For my own purposes, I’d just as soon write a blog about travel, health, or hydrangeas. But I have children and prefer to not see them simmering in a pot. So I do what little this is.

In a similar vein, I’d prefer to live in a society where people can express their opinions and still maintain their livelihood—even simultaneously. The politics of a left-loon coworker don’t natively interest me. My concern is his professionalism and productivity on the job. His Internet posturing is between him and his God, Tennessee Coates. But that’s just me yearning for the plow during an infantry assault.

The fact is we live in a cultural age of the…

Yesterday’s load

While on one of my weekend “walks” (ruck walk) yesterday I was reminded of the importance of finding the positive in everything you do, and how much that mindset can make a difference in your ability, physically, to get where you are going. Yesterday was a “light” day, so all I carried was 60 lbs. of load bearing gear, my “Shorty .30”, and a light ruck instead of my usual 60 to 80 pounder, so it should have been easier, right?

Wrong! For whatever reason, my initial step off was just miserable. I was having trouble getting my pace and breathing rhythm in sync, My gear was rubbing in all the wrong places, and it just seamed like things were not workin’ out the way they normally do (but I did take the last two weekends off, due to “Life”, so…..). Like I said, it should have been…

Thanks to SiGB for this sad news:

RIP Matt “Guitar” Murphy

Another cat to sit in with that Heckuva Band in Eternity.

Are we destined for the same fate as that other empire?

At the end of World War II, the US enjoyed geopolitical supremacy unmatched since the Roman empire. Friends and foes had been devastated by the war: millions dead, thousands of towns and cities destroyed, commercial and industrial infrastructure decimated. The only conflict on US soil was Pearl Harbor. Total war casualties were comparatively light. The US had the atomic bomb. American industry was intact, could quickly be retooled for production of civilian goods, and would face limited competition in global markets.

Power corrupts in direct relation to the degree of power; absolute power corrupts absolutely. That leaves only one direction for the occupant of a summit: down. That would be the proper starting point for some future Edward Gibbon, writing a magnum opus on the decline and fall of the American Empire.

The New Deal was a motley menagerie…