Are you a roadie, a dead head, a parrot head or simply part of the cult?

“Men spend their time in following a ball or a hare; it is the pleasure even of kings.”
Blaise Pascal, Pensées

(image of a roadie loading band equipment /Arts hub Australia)

I can remember back in the day…back in the early 70’s when, as a teenager,
I began going, with friends and dates, to concerts.

A typical teenager, I loved music.
It often spoke to my young angst-ridden self.
So when Atlanta finally built her very first enclosed sports venue,
I was excited. This meant that not only did the arena become home to both basketball
and hockey teams, it also became a much larger home for concerts—beating out the
usual little intimate and smaller local theaters, bars, and civic center.

This meant more kids were now able to go to concerts.
And the whole idea of living a “band” life was reborn into a new generation
of daydreaming teens and young people.

Previous musicians and singers had already had their fair share of tagalongs
and groupies…but in the early ’70s, the idea seemed to boom alongside
a now booming music industry.

Dreams of being discovered sprung forth from many a garage and basement band.

The idea of following in the shadow of a band or singer seemed glamorous and even romantic…
for both girls and guys.
How awesome would it be to travel and see the world with one’s favorite band?

Think one generation wanting to run away with the circus while a later generation
wanted to run away with a band.

Young teenagers were finding the idea of being a roadie and or groupie
both fun and exciting.

But first, let’s back up a minute…
we need to stop and think about this groupie thing.

We need to stop and think about cult followings.

Mindless and dangerous worship from afar…all in hopes of entering the inner circle.
Why does Charles Manson now come to mind…

So think of those who actually quit life in order to become ‘Dead Heads’ following
the Grateful Dead from city to city
Or Mr. ‘Cheeseburger in Paradise’ and his own following flock known at
Parrot heads.

Folks who follow/ed Jimmy Buffet from city to city…living the
half drunk beach life all over the country.
Sounds nice but…

And so I got to thinking about this whole notion of groupies, roadies and cult followings.
which in turn got me thinking about how these types of folks seem to mirror the various
groups of folks we are seeing today.

Think traveling troublemakers.

Think Antifa.
Think, yes, even Black Lives Matter…
groups who prefer fights, agitation and violence versus a level headed protest
movement.

Trouble makers, provocateurs, anarchists all traveling from venue to venue,
aka city to city, in order not to entertain or to be entertained,
but rather to wreak havoc while causing catastrophic harm.

Riding the bandwagon of pandemonium.

There are the die-hard cult members.
And there are the die-hard cult leaders.

Those card-carrying types.

The ones who hop in cars to travel halfway across the country hoping to insert their own
signature of hate within a city or town.

And then there are those who are the wannabes.
The ones who secretly hop on the hate train just for the momentary rush of angst.

Think of a Clark Kent antithesis— that mild-mannered reporter by trade and superhero at heart…
mirrored by folks we’re seeing in these riots who are probably mild-mannered without their masks
yet turn into super hate-thug adversary once the masks go on and the lights go out.

See this photo?

It’s a photo a friend of my son’s sent him from downtown Charleston of an incident
which took place near his office this past week.

Whereas I hate to ever see any American burn their own flag,
it wasn’t so much the flag burner that caught my attention.

See this close up of the guy in the back left on the sidewalk…?
See the sign he’s holding?

It’s a poster with a hammer and sickle along with the word solidarity.
A communist hopeful watching a comrade burn the flag.
Gotta love a secret anarchist at heart.

Does this young man, who is white, care about George Floyd or does he care more about
dismantling the nation with a communist manifesto?

I wonder.

And so when I was reading Citizen Tom’s latest posting on the Prince William-Manassas Family Alliance
regarding Parental Rights being in the Crosshairs…I thought, oh boy, here we go.

We already have the masses of minions to the madness…
those who I wonder about their roots of upbringing.
And now we hear government leadership wanting to make becoming a minion much easier
by officially taking away the right of parents to parent.

No mentoring, no nurturing, no guidance, no discipline.

I think we already know that the nuclear family is in crisis…in jeopardy of being
destroyed…and we, in turn, are watching a society implode upon itself.

Tom offers the following observation:

We’re in a war that is very serious and dangerous.
We must protect our freedom, we must practice our freedom NOW or our neglect will seize
it from us.
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing” (Edmund Burke).

When good men do nothing, the opposition has opportunity to move in and steal.
We cannot afford to let down our guard!
I was taught, perhaps you were taught, that there is a separation of church and state,
and Christians ought not be involved in politics.
WRONG!

Is it because too many of us have believed the lie that our nation is being usurped from us.
No longer!!
We are rising up to take control of our freedom!
NOW!
Visit the Parental Rights web site and get involved.
NOW!
(https://familyallianceonline.org/2020/06/03/your-parental-rights-are-in-the-cross-hairs/)

And so when we lose the ability to parent…
When we lose the authority within the family…
When Christianity is deemed irrelevant…
When lawlessness becomes the norm…
When the masses cry to abolish law enforcement…
When children are left to “govern” themselves…
a vast and dangerous void opens up… and that void must be filled.

Disrespect.
Selfishness.
Violence.
Hate.
Thuggery.
Cultism.

The death of the nuclear family will be the death of a nation.
There will be no roadies, dead heads or parrot heads, but there will be a myriad of
cult followers.

There’s not much time remaining.

a teachable moment of respect

“Above all, don’t lie to yourself.
The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that
he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him,
and so loses all respect for himself and for others.
And having no respect he ceases to love.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.”
Leo Tolstoy

(Liberty Leading the People /Eugène Delacroix /1830 / The Louvre)

I try as best as I can to bite my tongue when it comes to the leaders of other nations.

There are some world leaders that I don’t care for…for a laundry list of reasons.
Some who disapoint me by their lack of decent leadership or simply because they make
the US some sort of target of their attacks…be they actual or merely verbal.

If they are in some sort of idiotic tit for tat with us, causing waves for
us here in the US, that is when I will let my “Irish” show.

But as I say, I try not to make that much of a focus here…

I try to always be respectful of their positions while acknowledging that they are not my
sitting “leader” but rather they are leading another nation whose people either dutifully
elected them or sadly inherited them.

Not my problem, not my fight…

But like I say, if there is a serious issue cast our way because of them,
then it’s usually gloves off and Katie bar the door.

And as both a retired educator, parent and now grandparent, I totally understand the
importance of what is known as a teachable moment.

Those instances in life that often veer from the subject or issue at hand yet
moments that allow themselves to be presented as a life lesson…
and it is usually a very important life lesson.

One that, more often then not, trumps whatever it is happening at the current instance.

Take this recent clip of France’s president Emmanuel Macron greeting the crowd…
a crowd that happens to be made up of mostly young teens.

I am rather indifferent to Macron as France is his and he has been, for the most part,
respectful of the US as we are in turn to France.

However recently having viewed a short video clip of Mr. Macron working a crowd,
I have become most impressed with this young vibrant president.

So imagine if you will a crowd of youthful school kids getting the opportunity to see their
equally youthful and dynamic President up close, shaking his hand,
even posing for a selfie…all of which is a really big deal to a kid.

But it was not as big of a deal compared to what the President of France does durning this moment.
President Macron stops what he’s doing in order to give one of those teachable moments
himself to one of those impressionable kids…..

It seems that there was one particular teen in the crowd who decided to show out by
addressing the President by a nickname, ‘Manu’…a shortened nickname for Emmanuel.

A name I suspect this kid has heard from the French press, his family, friends and others…
yet a name reserved to be shared privately between the people and not one to be used
when meeting the President, face to face, for the very first time.

And not the sort of name a 13 or so aged kid should use when addressing an adult of
whom he does not personally know…particularly out in public.

It’s with a bit of swagger this cheeky kid leans over the rope and asks “how’s it going Manu..”
At which the President quickly stops and dresses down this young man.

He tells the kid, and I’m paraphrasing, ‘No, no, no…this is not the time nor
the place to call me that or to act the fool. Today is a day of respect for past partisians.
Here it is to be either Sir or Mr. President or President Macron.”

President Macron then begins to continue moving down the crowd but actually steps back toward
this now cowtide and somewhat embarrassed apologetic young man.

He tells the kid, “if you want to start a revolution, good, but first, you must earn a degree,
you must make money to feed yourself…ok?”

Obviously, I hope this makes an impression on this young man.
I hope that he has learned a fast and hard lesson regarding respect…
respect firstly for an adult, and then secondly for a leading official of his nation.

There was a time when such a moment would not have made such an impression on me across
this great dividing pond as such an incident would not have been filmed nor recorded.
It would be just a blip on the lives of just those present.

But thanks to modern technology, this kid will never be able to forget or hide from the
fact that he acted disrespectful to the President of France.
And that the President then reprimanded him.

President Macron could have ignored the boy and kept working the crowd, but thankfully he didn’t.
He stopped to offer this young man an important life lesson.

I only pray more adults would stop to take the time to “teach” our youth the importance of
place, time and that of respect.

Train up a child in the way he should go,
And when he is old he will not depart from it.
Proverbs22:6