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 history tale–remembering and forgetting..or is that ignoring

(Roger Viollet / Getty Images)

Every once in a while, the BBC offers a story from the past.
Long forgotten stories from the past.
But not a too distant past.

Stories about the War and the tales of individuals that have been long forgotten.
Private, yet many daring, tales of heroism, of being brave, of humanitarianism,
of kindness—tales of what it means to be human.

In war, what it means to be human is most often forgotten…very quickly.
A first casualty so to speak.

Some of these long-forgotten tales have happy endings, some do not.

However, either way even today lessons remain in all these stories that are still relevant
for both you and me–despite their having taken place nearly 80 years ago.

The other day, I read a post offered by our friend Citizen Tom about the state
of our National Fabric—he offered it on his personal blog as well as
the Prince William and Manassas Family Alliance blog for which he also writes
posts.

(https://citizentom.com/2019/12/31/the-state-of-our-nations-social-fabric-in-2019-part-3/

https://familyallianceonline.org/2019/12/31/the-state-of-our-nations-social-fabric-in-2019-part-3/)

It seems that there is an analytical study out there about how
society and human nature are basically a mostly cyclical affair.

It’s known as Strauss–Howe generational theory (en.wikipedia.org) and according to Tom and his reading
Strauss and Howe believed that we begin a new cycle of human history about every four generations.
Since a generation lasts about 20 years, we begin a new cycle about every 80 – 90 years.

What characterizes the beginning and end of a cycle?
A time of crisis. Society slowly unravels until there is a crisis.
Then the people fight among themselves to resolve the crisis until some group
becomes dominant and “wins”. Then, a recovery of some sort begins

Tom muses aloud as to whether this Strauss-Howe theory is truly accurate or not
as he eventually concludes that there is most likely some validity to it all.

And so I concur…as I too believe we are indeed a cyclical people.

And I find it interesting that there are these long-forgotten, mostly
obscure, even hidden, stories dating back nearly 80 years that are just now
being unearthed, coming back as if to remind us and even warn us.
They are being uncovered just when we need to remember.

This particular story offered by the BBC, written by Rosie Whitehouse,
takes place in 1943, in a remote ski resort village high in the French Alps.
The story involves a local doctor and two Jewish girls on the run…
one of whom had a severely broken leg.

It is a tale of risk, fear, faith, hope and eventually a tale forgotten.
And now it appears that perhaps it is a tale that is reluctant to be recalled.

The doctor was Frédéric Pétri and the girls, Huguette (15) and Marion (23) Müller,
two sisters originally from Berlin.
When the Nazis had come to power in 1933, the Müller family had fled from their
native Germany to France.

The girl’s mother had labored to obtain false papers for Huguette, the youngest—
going so far as to changing her name and having her baptized–
all in hopes of trying to hide any Jewish lineage.

Eventually, their parents were discovered, arrested and sent to Auschwitz but the
girls managed to flee.

Fleeing to a small Alpine ski village.

(PÉTRI Family archives)

(Marion, her young son Tim and Hugeutte following the war)

It was in the tiny mountain village of Val d’Isere, in 1943 that three lives would collide together.
And yet it wouldn’t be until 2020 until that the collision of lives would be shared
with a larger audience.

Marion passed away in 2010 and now, at age 92, Huguette has decided she wants their story told.

Please click the link below to read the fascinating story of survival and the odd
response from today’s villagers.

Val d’Isere: The doctor who hid a Jewish girl – and the resort that wants to forget

https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-50828696