Kurt Silverfiddle now blogs at Freedom Conspiracy – "Hell is other people" (freedom-conspiracy.org)

No Hard Feelings

No Hard Feelings...

Feelin' Good Again

Robert Earl Keen's Feelin' Good Again, sung by Evan Felker of the Turnpike Troubadours - Steamboat Late Night

The Parting Glass

We've had a good long run here at Western Hero so let's end this on a high note: 

Hillary Clinton is not the President of These United States

It's been fun but frankly it's been getting too much like work, work I'm not getting paid for.  So for now, when I come home from work I'm going to kick back, put my feet up, and relax while not thinking about politics. I told Silverfiddle I'd stick around until the inauguration...

So raise to me the parting glass,

Goodnight and Joy be with you All.

Adios, my Friends!

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. (President Abraham Lincoln, 2nd Inaugural Address)

We are not emerging from a civil war. Sadly, the cultural and political wars are far from over. Still, the quote is apt.

When I started blogging, I was a flag-waving rabid rightwinger, flaring with righteous anger at the Godless communists in our midst who dared call themselves Americans and who not only stubbornly refused to deport themselves to Cuba or North Korea where they belonged, but had the temerity to vote for an unqualified, Muslim-named street activist from the corrupt Democrat-dominated political sewers of Crook County Chicago.

Obama's election shattered my view of my nation and my fellow Americans, so I lashed out, flaming and blasting domestic enemies everywhere I found them. I was determined to smoke 'em out, chase 'em down, and blast their backsides as they ran like the cowardly poltroons they are. We would Change It Back, Take It Back, Restore America...

... and along the way, I developed a growing distaste for rightwing activism and the "religious right." The media-hogging activists and spokesmouths were ugly, mean, vindictive. Smug, sanctimonious pricks who would rather delight in trash-talking and demeaning than convert one soul. They unyoked Mercy and Justice, thundering the latter while selfishly hording the former for themselves. I could detect no Christian charity (love) there, so I rejected them.

I also gained a more-informed disgust for the putrid left (while gaining a new respect and appreciation for genuine old-fashioned liberalism), so I belong in neither camp.

So, like Frank Zappa, although I conduct my life in a conservative manner, I do not call myself a conservative. I became a libertarian, but still, over ten years of on-line arguing over politics has gotten me nowhere. It turned me bitter, and it corroded my soul. 😩

I also gained respect for opposing points of view and for those who state them with sincerity. I have enjoyed our discussions, I will miss them, but I am burned out on blogging. It takes up too much of my time and occupies too much of my head space.  I hate politics and I'm through discussing it.

God has blessed me with a rich, joyful life.  I still have all my teeth (despite quite a few fights), I'm on no meds, my family still loves me despite all I've done, it's a big, beautiful world out there and I enjoy living in it. On-line activities distract from all that so I'm leaving Right Blogistan behind.

In the end, putting aside all the philosophy, religion, governments and society, it all comes down to what Blondie says to Tuco at the end of that Sergio Leone classic, The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly:

"You see, in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig."

So, with Donald J. Trump now the 45th President of the United States, Kurt Silverfiddle is riding off into the sunset. I'm off to Uruguay, el Paraíso de Mahoma, where I can have multiple wives, smoke pot to kill the back pain, and play guitar and sing to support myself.

With apologies to Ambrose Bierce...

"Good-bye — if you hear of my being stood up against a concrete wall somewhere in South America and shot to rags please know that I think that a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease, or falling down the cellar stars. To be a Gringo in Latin America — ah, that is euthanasia!"

Viva La Reconquista!

* - Finntann gets the final word on Friday, so stay tuned...

Buried Treasure

What are your favorite Western Hero memories? Best donnybrooks?

Here are the top 5 Western Hero posts by number of page hits.

Nietzsche is Dead, Jesus Lives - 33,325 (yes, thirty-three thousand page hits!)

This is not a Blog Post - 14,183

Caught Between Libertarianism and Conservatism - 11,798

Porn Nation: Raquel Welch Edition - 11,687

You can't negotiate with rabid dogs - 5,369


Here's Johnny Flynn singing the theme song (that he wrote) to the charming British series, The Detectorists...

Beethoven's Sonata #7, with a Twist

We spend our time arguing and flaming one another, but we don't really know one another... That's a fact of virtual life out here in the ether... But we're all flesh-and-blood human beings, with biases, loved ones, avocations... We all live real lives.

Our colorfully opinionated friend FreeThinke may have been at odds with many of our music postings, but he is a well-trained, highly competent classical pianist, organist and composer who knows what he is talking about when it comes to music.  He holds three degrees in the subject from our best Music Schools.

I just wanted you to know that FreeThinke is not just an irascible old blowhard with nothing to back up his opinions (which he calculates and calibrates to jar us out of complacent thinking). Whether you are crazy about Beethoven or not, FreeThinke is very good at doing what he loves most. 

Here’s our friend FreeThinke giving a public performance on the piano (Not joking, this is really him giving a performance in a New York City music hall, accompanied by a famed violinist, whom we cannot name in order to preserve anonymity):

* For some reason, it wants to start at the 5:00 minute mark for me, don't know why, I've examined the html... anyway, if you want to give it a listen, be sure it starts for you from the beginning.

Beethoven sonata #7, Opus 30, #2 in C-Minor for piano and violin

The President's Speech

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

What did you think of President Trump's Inauguration speech? Chris Matthews, proudly clutching the last available Godwin's Law trophy (they're on backorder for the next four years, folks), felt a "Hitlerian" chill up his formerly tingling leg.

I'm in camp with the non-hysterical normals, which includes many who were not fans of his and still are not.

With four of his predecessors on the platform with him, President Trump blasted all those responsible for the recent government of the country as self-interested incompetents, compulsive, impotent talkers who had allowed America to decay and to be out-maneuvered by its rivals in the world and to take leave of the interests of the people of modest means and no influence within America.

It was a forceful message, powerfully delivered with a completely disciplined attachment to his prepared text.

Source: Conrad Black: Without the trite sanctimony, Trump invokes a sacred duty to raise up America’s magnificence

Peggy Noonan describes the scene well:

The inaugural address was utterly and uncompromisingly Trumpian. [...] It was plain, unfancy and blunt to the point of blistering. A little humility would have gone a long way, but that’s not the path he took. Nor did he attempt to reassure. It was pow, right in the face. Most important, he did not in any way align himself with the proud Democrats and Republicans arrayed around him. 

It was an unmistakable indictment of almost everyone seated with him on the platform.

She ends her essay by identifying the principle danger to politically-independent President Trump:

Normally a new president has someone backing him up, someone publicly behind him. Mr. Obama had the mainstream media — the big broadcast networks, big newspapers, activists and intellectuals, pundits and columnists of the left — the whole shebang. He had a unified, passionate party.

Mr. Trump in comparison has almost nothing. The mainstream legacy media oppose him, even hate him, and will not let up. The columnists, thinkers and magazines of the right were mostly NeverTrump; some came reluctantly to support him. His party is split or splitting.

The new president has gradations of sympathy, respect or support from exactly one cable news channel, and some websites.

He really has no one but those who voted for him.  Source: Peggy Noonan: President Trump Declares Independence

Trumpled and Scorned

President Trump dispensed with the soaring rhetoric, and his word usage and unpolished phrases suggest he wrote the speech himself, probably with Steve Bannon's help. He used direct, frank language, and to those just getting their bearings after this unthinkable election outcome, it was one more flash-bang grenade blowing out newly-installed windows, and sending the Trumpophobes back into a queasy vertigo relapse. No, it wasn't a nightmare: The Trumpening really is upon us.

It is refreshing and heartening to hear a president say things like this again:

"Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs, will be made to benefit American workers and American families."

The following broadside against the Dem-Repub DC Establishment was my favorite. President Obama's jaw was clenched and working at this point, senators were squirming, and the former First Lady's eyes were spitting daggers:

"We will no longer accept politicians who are all talk and no action – constantly complaining but never doing anything about it. The time for empty talk is over. Now arrives the hour of action."

I liked this line...

"When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice."

What do you think?

Peaceful but vulgarly unhinged Pussy Parade

Byron York: 'It means the return of optimism'

This is Not your Safe Space

Suck it up, Cupcake!