Cucks, Shills, and Trolls - Oh My!

If you have been on social media for any length of time, you will inevitably run into those individuals who don't know you from the man in the moon, yet they will take offense at what you say for some reason.  Or, it may be someone you have known a while, maybe for years, who all of a sudden gets their feelings hurt over something you said that didn't have that intention.   That happened on several occasions to me personally, and recently in the past couple of weeks, a long-time "friend" actually blew up at me, blocked me on social media, and just got nasty over a post I had made fun of the liberal Democrat Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  Oddly, the person who was "offended" has never really been in touch with me since we worked together at the same office years ago, but now all of a sudden they felt it necessary to "call me out" because of something stupid like satirizing a public figure who actually deserved what she got.  Before moving on, let me just give a brief lesson as to what these types of people are, as several terms are used for them, and that needs to be clarified.

There are three common terms used for people who get "triggered" by others on social media, and they are as follows:

1. Cuck - The dictionary definition of a cuck is "a weak or servile individual," whom the Google definition notes is given this name for "having moderate or progressive political views."  In other words, it is someone who swallows the party line, and even doggedly defends it when too spineless to formulate their own opinions based on their own research.

2. Shill - Similar to a cuck, a shill is defined as being one of those people who "pretend to give an impartial endorsement to something in which they themselves have an interest."  In other words, an "impartial partisan," which is a contradiction in terms.

3. Troll - Defined as a person who deliberately makes an offensive and/or provocative online post about something just to stir up crap.  If someone gives into it, it is called "feeding the trolls." 

Notice, a person can be all three at the same time, and many are.  Also, in the sense of the third, sometimes "trolling" can be to our advantage, especially when we can tell off the no-good career politicians in Congress on their Twitter feeds, which I do as a guilty indulgence.  So, to a degree, many of us can be trolls in a sense, and that is fine.  Depends, however, on the purpose of trolling.

That all being established, let me tell the story of my recent engagement with one of these individuals.  Some years back, I worked in the title industry as an administrative assistant, and although I worked with the title company directly, we had satellite offices that were provided by the development firm we were working with on their projects, and at one of the satellite offices the development company had a leasing agent who I got to know somewhat well at the time.  The guy was of Russian heritage, and we struck up a conversation about it given I am a blood descendant of St. Vladimir.  He was also one of these young entrepreneurial types too - he engaged in a number of business pursuits outside the office (legitimate ones of course) as did a lot of these young guys at the time.  He also seemed like an easy-going sort.  Over the years, although I was "friends" with him on social media, I didn't interact much with him although he was active on many platforms.  We both were simply too busy and had our own lives to live and therefore didn't have the time to stay in touch.  That was all well and good though, as it means little one way or another; often, many people we are "friends" on social media with don't chat every day anyway, but we know we are all out there somewhere, which is the point - it is neither good nor bad actually.  A couple of weeks ago though, that all changed.

In posting a meme on my personal page sort of making fun of what a dimwit AOC is (and she really is too), this guy all of a sudden gets "triggered" and posts some drivel about how "she is the only one to get stuff done," and about "how evil the Republicans are," and also that she is to be admired as "a woman of color" who made it (seriously?  I can think of many other stellar examples than her!).  When I reminded this guy that his own relatives were killed in the Gulag due to ideology similar to hers, he went ballistic on me, used the F-bomb a lot, and then proceeded to "unfriend" and block me on that particular social media site.  That now leads me to a few observations about this individual, as he is representative of a lot of this nonsense going around these days.

First, as I mentioned, this is the last person I would have imagined promoting and supporting Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as she stands in direct opposition to a lot of things this guy actually represents as a person.  My former friend, for instance, is an entrepreneur - he is involved in many business endeavors that have benefitted him economically quite well, and he embodies the young up-and-coming executive types we see in Corporate America these days.  Ironically, people like him are the ones AOC and her ilk want to punish - for these Socialist ding-dongs like AOC, this guy represents the ultimate evil; the self-made wealthy exec who has an affluent lifestyle.   So, why would a guy like this defend her, especially when she is ultimately out to get people like him?  Also, I mentioned his Russian roots - this guy had parents who survived the Soviets, and he may have even had ancestors or distant relatives who were killed by Stalin and the other Marxists, people that AOC seem to admire as role models.  It is utterly inconceivable why someone who had family killed by an oppressive regime could turn around and support that same sort of oppression in this country - I would bet he has relatives turning in their graves over that.   My former friend, in that regard, puts me in mind of people like Ana Kasparian, the co-host on the liberal shill-fest called "The Young Turks," a show ironically named after a regime that was responsible for killing 1.5 million of her ancestors' people (Ana is Armenian, and her co-host, the fat, potty-mouthed demagogue known as Cenk Uygur, is a Turk who denies the Armenian Genocide ever happened - talk about paradoxes!).  He also puts me in mind of the billionaire puppet-master George Soros, who despite having Jewish heritage himself was a Nazi collaborator during WWII and is still virulently anti-Semitic today.  It is odd that even those who come from people who were persecuted often forget what their forebears went through, and it does a great disservice to their own legacy.  It is the same with many Blacks in the US cuddling up to Islam for some reason - Islam is, in reality, the very thing that made the slave trade possible, and for the segment of the Black population that is hollering for "reparations," why don't they sue Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Mali, or some of those other predominantly Islamic countries that enslaved their ancestors in the first place?  Again, this is the classic definition of a shill mentality - those who were the most affected and oppressed become the shills of their oppressors rather than being honest enough to call them out on it.  Getting back to the Black community, if I were a Black person, I would be pressing for legislation, for instance, to shut down Planned Parenthood for good, as it was founded to commit genocide against the Black community primarily - Margaret Sanger was a racist, and her eugenics program she pushed sought to eliminate what she called "human weeds,"  which included Blacks, Catholic immigrants, and certain poor American regional populations such as my home state of WV (which, ironically, is echoed by so-called "Conservative Christian" Pat Robertson). Yet, I don't hear Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and the other race-baiters getting fired up about that - if I were Black, I would be incensed when I learned that.  And, I don't hear my friend coming to terms that the Marxist diatribe that AOC and her kind spout on a daily basis is the same ideology that eventually led to some unfortunate things that happened to his own people.   As the philosopher George Santayana (whom I don't agree with for the most part) once said, "Those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat it."  This should serve as a warning to many of us that ignorance can be deadly in some important circumstances.  Yet, my friend gets offended at me for pointing this out.  Ridiculous yet ironic, isn't it?

This guy is not the first, nor will he be the last, person that I have had incidents like this with.  Most of the time, my friends with differing views are respectful and refrain from comment on something they may disagree with, and I respect them the same way.  There should be a level of social media etiquette that establishes that what a person posts on their own page is their view, and they have the freedom to post it - if someone disagrees with what is said, they have every right to hide it from news feeds and email notifications so they don't have to see it, and thus everyone can remain friends while respectfully disagreeing on some things.  If that were to be really practiced as it should, then people who should know each other better would not be "unfriending" each other over a bubblehead like AOC.  Thanks for letting me share, and see you next time.

On Free Speech and Censorship

I was not planning on posting much this week about anything, but then I got news a couple of days ago that certain high-profile personalities - namely Alex Jones, Louis Farrakhan, Laura Loomer, Milo Yiannopolous, and Paul Joseph Watson - were banned from Facebook because of their classification by the elitists who control Facebook as being "dangerous persons."  In a related incident, I heard about today, an openly-gay Pennsylvania legislator named Brian Sims was the topic of conversation because he was harassing old ladies and teenagers who were peacefully praying outside of Planned Parenthood abortion mills.  While perhaps what I am about to say would be more appropriate for my Sacramental Present Truths blog, I am actually writing here because we are talking about a fundamental right called free speech, and the ability of all to speak their convictions is one reason why I have these articles in the first place is something that personally affects me.  I want to examine the issue here in more detail and then add some "soapboxing."

Of the many high-profile individuals who were banned from Facebook, many of them are people I don't agree with on everything - Farrakhan, for instance, is a racist bastard and just a nasty individual all the way around, and while Alex Jones makes some good points on some things, he does get a little carried away at times with conspiracies.  But, despite how I or others may dislike or disagree with certain people, they also have the freedom (as I do) to speak their minds.  It may be disgusting, it may be fundamentally wrong, or it may be emotionally-charged, but it is still their right to have opinions and also the freedom to speak those opinions.  It also seems as if many of these "dangerous individuals" that Facebook and Twitter are trying to censor have behind that censorship a cadre of major media outlets (CNN, Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, and others) who are notably very liberal in their stands on things - Jim Acosta's shenanigans last year at the White House, for instance, as well as the whiney eunuch-man Brian Stelter on CNN (who resembles the sum of a romantic fling between George Costanza of Seinfeld with Minnie Mouse) or the overly-butch Rachel "Madcow" Maddow on MSNBC, demonstrate this well.  These corporate "news" entities are wanting to control the flow of information that Americans receive, and they cringe at the thought that independent venues such as Infowars, Daily Wire, or Mark Dice get more attention on social media than they do, and they perceive this as a threat.  In essence, Zuckerberg and the big mainstream media companies are no better than Josef Goebbels was during the evil regime of Hitler's Third Reich, as they utilize the same tactics and objectives honestly.  However, it seems that they don't appreciate the fact that equal treatment is a reality they cannot escape, and let me now elaborate on that.

Both the quasi-hippie CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey and the gawky Howdy Doodie-looking dorkish Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook both assert that their companies are privately-owned entities who have a level of exemption when it comes to the First Amendment.  While this "Billionaire Boy's Club" of Silicon Valley tries to make that assertion, their own radical political worldviews did not want to extend that courtesy to Jack Phillips in Colorado or to the Kleins in Portland, both of whose businesses went belly-up due to their refusal to bake a "gay wedding" cake on religious grounds. In the case of the Kleins, the way they were treated by the creepy lesbians was shameful - they were forced to fork over more than $135,000 in fines to the creepy lesbians, not to mention other costs that caused their business to close and also created a lot of distress on the Kleins as a family.  In the case of Jack Phillips, fortunately, he fared better, as he won his case twice despite the "gay lobby" and their progressive allies bullying him.   Let's look at this big picture though - Zuckerberg claims as a "private company" he has the right to censor conservatives who disagree with his worldview, but for some reason, that same right is not extended to Jack Phillips or the Kleins for refusing to extend a service due to personal convictions??  It is true money does talk, and in this case Zuckerberg is a billionaire while the Kleins are not even close to that level of wealth - so, his wealth secures his freedom to do whatever he wants, while the Kleins, who were struggling small-business owners who were just trying to make a living and pay their bills, were not afforded that privilege.  Welcome to 21st-century America, folks!

Now let's talk about our "friend" Brian Sims, the "lawmaker" from Pennsylvania who takes joy in harassing peaceful tax-paying citizens by calling them "racists," "bigots," and other pejorative names when they stage a peaceful protest in front of a murder-mill (oops, "women's health center") ran by the abortion kingpin Planned Parenthood.  It is fascinating that Sims, who is openly gay incidentally, picks on these poor people while he himself supports one of the biggest racists of the 20th century, Margaret Sanger.  Planned Parenthood is Sanger's creation, and she founded it to kill off people she thought were "inferior," which included Blacks, immigrants, and others.  Sanger also had a very willing fan base in her time in Nazi Germany, where Hitler enthusiastically lauded her eugenics agenda as it mirrored a lot of the atrocities he committed.  Yet, an old woman with a Rosary praying to save Black babies is somehow "racist" - what a world we live in today.  I would almost bet that if a full investigation were done on Sims - similar to the one they are trying to do on President Trump - it would be discovered that he may have illegally gotten a lot of kick-back money from Planned Parenthood, and that leads to a little speculation of my own.   Planned Parenthood is a cash cow for corrupt people like Brian Sims, and the reason they get so violent with people who protest the murder of babies is that it hits their bank accounts - Sims and others stand to lose a lot of Planned Parenthood was defunded of taxpayer dollars and then held accountable for its murderous activities, and the reason is that Sims and others like him are bought and paid for.  Despite polls and the formality of elections, many politicians do tend to buy their offices, and in the end, it is not the average American voter who determines the people who will represent them, but in many cases, it is corporate bigshots like Planned Parenthood, Jack Dorsey, and Mark Zuckerberg, among others.  Does Sims give a damn about women's health or starving kids??  In a word, no - Sims loves him some Sims above all else, and he is an idol unto himself.  This is why he harasses old ladies and teenagers - he doesn't have the fortitude or the integrity to own up to his own faults, so he picks on those who are truly making a stand and tries to belittle them.  It also proves something to us as Catholic Christians too - if Sims is that fired-up about a Rosary, then perhaps it is a more powerful weapon and the demons possessing him to know it.  It entails a lot of sacrifices to stand up for life, especially in this day and age - do you think that old woman was standing out there in the hot sun praying a Rosary purely because she enjoys it??  I highly doubt it - there are other things she maybe could have been doing, granted, but she chose to do this because she is thinking of others, not herself.  Sims cannot say the same thing - he is thinking about how much blood money he will get as a "donation" from Planned Parenthood, that money probably being the result of marketing human body parts for profit.  And, I bet if he were backed into a corner and compelled to speak it, Sims would have to admit it.  One day, judgment is coming, Sims - and I don't want to be you when it does!

That concludes today's rant, although much more can be said.   Perhaps at some point, I will do a follow-up to the issue and then elaborate further my own thoughts.  Until that happens, stay safe, and will see you next time.

A Legend Has Passed

Chuck Cecil (1922-2019)

On April 30th, we lost a legend, at least a legend to those of us who are enthusiasts and collectors of vintage big band recordings.  For years, Chuck Cecil had broadcast a show from a studio in his California home called "The Swingin' Years," and for years I have been a fan of that great program.  I wanted to just honor Chuck's memory a little in my own way, as he was truly a legend of his time, and perhaps one of the last beacons of preservation of this great music to be enjoyed by a larger audience than even he could have imagined.

Although born in Oklahoma, Chuck grew up in and around the Van Nuys area just north of Los Angeles, and in high school his classmates included such famous people as Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe, the latter of which he was able to attend her wedding sometime around 1947.   The show that many of us are familiar with came on the air in the year 1956, and Chuck has broadcast "The Swingin' Years," with the opening theme being a Harry James recording of The Mole, for all those years.  My first encounter with this great show came during a visit to my dad's just before my senior year in high school started in the summer of 1988, when I was introduced to the show on a local station in Brunswick, GA - on that station, Chuck's program aired on Saturday afternoons.  However, I would get to listen to him a lot more in the coming years, as around the year 1989 his show actually replaced Henry Boggan's on Sunday nights on WBT-AM out of Charlotte, NC.  At that point, I had listened to Henry's show for around 8 years almost without interruption, but Chuck's show was actually a better program as it featured exclusively vintage big bands, as opposed to Henry who played a little bit of everything.  With college and everything, I couldn't listen as regularly as I once did, but I tuned in when I could and was still listening to Chuck's show well into the 1990's.  Once I got internet access, I could get it more regularly on stations from around the country, but that didn't happen until the 2000s.  So, to sort of give you an idea of what a listening experience of one of Chuck's programs was like, let me describe it to you.

Chuck was not your average DJ, as throughout the four hours or so he would broadcast he would have these featured segments.  For instance, he would play the best-selling records of a certain day of the year from a certain year, say June 10, 1941.   Or, he would do a "Turning Time Around" segment in which he would take an old song that was originally recorded in the 30's and 40's, and then contrast it with a more contemporary version of the same song by an artist in recent times - one of those I recall was taking a recording a young Molly Ringwald made in the late 1970's of the 1920's flapper song "I Wanna Be Loved By You," and he would then play the Vaughn DeLeath recording from the 1920's or something like that.  Another segment was a 15-minute recording of a live big band remote from a certain year that would have been on radio then.  Yet another feature was his famous interviews - he had a whole slew of interviews he did with big band legends, in which he would play the interview and then intersperse it with notable recordings.  Stuff like that - those themed segments - kept Chuck's show exciting.  Of course, there would also be stretches in which he would play records, and then give you an encyclopedic rundown of the date of the session, who did the solos if a famous big band recording, etc.  In this way, Chuck's program was both entertaining and educational, and you got to learn a lot of neat information about big bands, including some things you may not have known before.  All in all, it was something I looked forward to on Sunday nights, and even today kind of miss.   And, to add to this, Chuck had an extensive library of over 40,000 recordings to make for a lot of broadcasts, and at times he would even play something you never would have thought you got to hear.  It was an experience that would make you appreciate the music even more after a few hours of his radio broadcast.  On occasion too, he would venture from playing big band recordings and throw in something else, such as a 1950's pop record that may have been famous on the same date he broadcast the show - something like Frank Chacksfield's haunting 1953 record of "Ebb Tide" or the like.  The idea, I believe, was that Chuck was not just focusing on the big band aspect of what he called "the swinging years," but rather the comprehensive portrait of the times (which for his show spanned the years between 1935 and 1955).  This even included interjecting some historic trivia, such as historic news headlines of a certain day, etc.  It was a good formula, and his fans (including me) enjoyed it.

Chuck's show touched a lot of people - many were able to relive memories, and younger folks such as myself at that time learned to appreciate good music thanks to his passion for it.  He broadcast the show from his house up until 2016, and he actually did his last broadcast at the age of 94 - that was impressive too!  His total career in radio - which began around 1947 - therefore encompassed 70 years.  That is what makes Chuck a legend. 

A much younger picture of Chuck in his home studio, where he broadcast "The Swingin' Years" for a lot of years

The final broadcast of Chuck's show, as well as his passing from this life three years afterward, meant the end of a great era.  With sub-standard pop music dominating the conventional airwaves now, the loss of Chuck's show is a great one, as it is harder to find good music.  However, as far as I know, his daughter has preserved the recordings of his broadcasts, and I believe she is donating them to a university library or something, which means at some point they may be available to listen to and relive the memories this great show created.  I would love to get some CD's of his complete radio programs, as they would be a welcome addition to my own collection, and perhaps that will happen in the near future.  But, until then, his daughter is pretty strict about not having his recordings widely disseminated, and it is only respectful to honor that, as it also honors Chuck's memory as well.

Chuck's passing, as well as the cancellation of his show three years previous, ends an era of good radio broadcasts and finding good music on the airwaves to listen to, at least on conventional radio stations.  However, thankfully there are internet broadcasts that still feature vintage big bands - of note is that guy Dismuke, who goes way back in time with some rare recordings - so the flame is carried on.  That being said, I now pray Chuck to have rest eternal, and may Light Perpetual shine upon him.  And, may the Holy Spirit comfort his family, in particular his dear widow Edna, in this time of loss.  Thanks again for allowing me to share, and will hopefully have some nuggets of inspiration to share again soon.