The Poor Soldier

My wife likes dogs. When we were first married, I bought her one; the pet shop was next to the White Coffee Pot restaurant where I ate breakfasts. I love breakfast, good coffee, cheap, nourishing food. These places don’t exist now. There are other restaurants, with other names, the food is good, but the service is terrible.

I ate breakfast at Holsum’s, in Coral Gables, dead now, a Mall. There was the smell of baking bread in the air. I always ordered two poached eggs on toast, hash browns and sausage; it was $.50, and I left a quarter tip. Five years after I graduated, I was in Miami and sat down, at the same counter and the same waitress came up, looked at me, and said, “the usual.”

That’s the difference, the people. I can go into a restaurant one week and the next week all the servers are different. In those years it was waitress, they made a living serving regulars well, with a word and a smile.

You would think these high paid, masters of a parchment, would figure it out. Equity doesn’t work.

My daughter worked as the waitress and a good-natured, hard-working bartender that remembered people. When in college, in the summer, in Park City, UT, in 1998, she would make $350.00 a night in tips. When she left, they closed the restaurant. In Punta Gorda, FL, she made a living, did 80% of the work and received half her tips because they were shared equally with the lard ass glamour pusses.

They have computers that break down sales per person.

Equity means… no incentive. Schwab made Bethlehem Steel, a small specialty steel company when he bought it, the equal of US Steel by incentive, produce more, earn more. He was CEO of US Steel when JP Morgan bought it from Carnegie. He had no college education, and he helped win WW2.

That’s about the time American industry was financialized and con-glamorized. Now, it barely exists.

Not only did the finance boys get hold of industry and sell it, but the government also regulated hiring practices and payment structure. They destroyed incentives, made everyone equal. That’s the main reason American industry moved to Asian countries.

My kids, in high school, worked at K Mart. I wanted to teach them enterprise. I taught them work and courtesy. My poor son would be called to do every dirty job, like cleaning up vomit and peoples’ bowl accidents. It was because he was easy, never complained, worked hard. They would ring up twice as many sales, on the register, while other teenagers were in the parking lot smoking. At the end of the week, everyone received the same pay.

Didn’t the manager have any sense? He just conformed to the mandatory guidelines. Mandatory guidelines can destroy a nation. During the Covid pandemic, they destroyed lives.

K Mart is dead. There has been a succession of big retailers that have died. The big one that still exists, Walmart, and the loonies are always complaining about it. They hate Amazon too; and the pay and benefits are never enough at Starbucks.

I marveled at what Walt Disney created… one man. Successive managers have added little in the way of “Imagination.” They are a failing conglomerate. Their values are not my values. I am not spending my money on any Disney enterprise. They have made a cartoon of Star Wars.

They have been infiltrated by suspect people.

The Catholic Church was infiltrated by pedophiles, and they destroyed a legacy built by successive waves of destitute immigrants. All the old parishes, the few that exist, are NGO way stations for plundering illegals. Bishops profit from selling other people’s birthright. How can they be a moral guide, a preacher of the word of Christ? “Woe unto you who lead these little ones astray.”

Everything, the entire government, has been infiltrated by suspect people. A small group of people, like the Bolsheviks, have infiltrated everything. They are not builders, they are destroyers, not good but evil.

It’s our fault; we have allowed it. In most cases we cheer it. It’s because we have no values, no guiding light. America is no beacon on a hill; God is the only beacon of light that leads true North, to the Land of Unlimited Possibilities, the land where truth reigns.

“In this world, you will always have trouble.” Life is hard, especially for those that pamper themselves. The poet says, “Choose the road least crowded,” the difficult road.

This is a time when the two roads diverge, emphatically. “There are only two masters, God or Mammon, if you choose one, you will hate the other.”

Who do you serve? Serving God is serving your neighbor, it leads to pleasant plenty. Serving yourself destroys everything. Most Congressional leaders serve whoever doles out the most money. It’s not dissimilar to most Americans. The dollar is God! The American government does not serve the American people.

Our government is a war machine; it inflicts pain on innocent people. We fight war after war, all against countries that have no technological weapons. We choose our opponents wisely, with a despicable cunning, people easy to beat. Yet, despite mountains of debt, millions dead and thousands of crippled soldiers, mental and physical, we carry on, heralding the noble effort while losing every war. The “Best and Brightest” earn their living writing fanciful theories and disseminating lies.

We lap it up.

We outfoxed ourselves with Iran.

What, IS…since we the people have power, we approve of. America is a financial disaster, and it all can be laid at the feet of The Military, Industrial, Educational, Congressional, Medical, Spy Complex. Its head is the CIA. They killed Kennedy. Obama was their stooge. They appointed, Biden, deposed Biden, and appointed Kamala. They denied Kennedy jr. access to the primaries.

Where is the democratic process?

They rigged the 2020 election, created a January 6, insurrection. Probably, tried to kill Trump. They control the entire communications network; any disagreement is a conspiracy. Dissent and free speech are outlawed.

The Trump derangement syndrome, the outsider, the wild card, has made all these secret manipulations blatantly clear.

Yet, over half of Americans take no notice, they believe the blatant swill.

Whatever is in store for Americans, they allowed it, they deserve the outcome.

The chickens are coming home to roost.

My wife and I watched a movie last night, “Meagan Leavey.” I hope she got her dog fix, and it lasts a long time. Maybe, from time to time she can watch old Lassie and Rin Tin Tin movies.

This movie was about a girl, a lost girl, not unlike many young Americans, that joined the Marines. After almost failing she found motivation in the goal of becoming the handler of a bomb sniffing dog. She loved that dog and sniffed out many bombs, saving lives.

They said she was a hero. Like many heroes she came back with mental issues, supposedly because of separation from her dog.

There were many scenes about Iraq.

Last week there were articles about lieutenant Calley, the murderer at My Lie, he died.

Two movies from the Vietnam era stand out: “Apocalypse Now” and “Platoon.” The first was like a metaphor. I thought it was crazy. It was crazy; that was the point. Vietnam drove soldiers crazy; the character of Marlon Brandon stands out.

“Platoon was graphic, it depicted reality. You didn’t know who the enemy was, it could be anyone, they all looked the same and sometimes women and children killed your buddies. You were skittish, distrusted every one that was Asian, blew them away before they could do that to you. It was terror on all sides. You could even get medals for body count. If you made it past your year and worry over its approach made your trigger finger nervous, you came home processing some gruesome personal experiences.

All these insurgent wars are the same. You don’t know who the enemy is, no matter how innocent they look. At the very least, you come home with trust issues. You treat people like an Israeli soldier treats a Palestinian and that began 70 years before October 2023.

It’s unconscionable to keep putting American Soldiers in these situations; we do it over and over.

There is some benefit in it, for our masters of parchments, but not for average Americans.

Nothing benefits the average American. Main Street is as dead as John Wayne.