Popularity is over-rated!
For a change of pace, Blaska thought he’d write about something he actually knows: the virtues of being unliked. On that subject, Blaska is an expert!
He’s the kind of guy who would get booed at a baptism. (And write about himself in the third person!) Several high school classmates refused to sign his yearbook! There were pick-up softball games where Blaska wasn’t just picked last, he wasn’t picked at all!
Your irascible scrivener shares some turf with Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Only 39% of Americans polled by CNN approve of Trump. Biden does worse. (“Quite an achievement!” the Wall Street Journal marvels.) Uncle Joe (movin’ kinda slow at the Junction — Petticoat Junction!) scores a 37. Barring a miracle along the lines of loaves and fishes, these two bums are our once and future Presidents!
According to the RealClear averages, all of Washington is underwater! Measuring the gap between approve and not, Kamala sucks by 17 points (see what we did there?), DeSantis by 14, Nikki by 3.2, Mitch by 39 (!!!), Chuck by 15.4, and both U.S. House leaders. As Casey Stengel said of his amazin’ Mets, “Can’t anybody here play this game?”
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Find out what it means to me! Our leaders may well be that incompetent, clueless, and tone deaf. Or maybe we, the people, are just out of sorts. Our privilege and right. The Head Groundskeeper hereabouts would rather lose an election in order to do the right thing. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger are our reigning profiles in courage. Where is their Democrat equivalents to tell Joe he’s too old and too crooked?
Henry Clay in 1840 said he’d rather be right than president. The issue was slavery — he was agin’ it. He got his wish.
Harry Truman was eligible to run for a second elected term but by 1952 he was so underwater James Cameron could not have found him. Yet historians now rank his presidency the 6th greatest, behind only Abe, George, FDR, Teddy, and Ike. The man recognized Israel; created the CIA, NATO, and the Joint Chiefs; racially integrated the military, saved Europe from Communism through the Marshall Plan, defied the Soviets with the Berlin airlift, rebuilt the White House, defied the pundits, broke a couple labor strikes, and dropped the bomb.
Here in Wisconsin, Scott McCallum could have harvested millions in campaign cash from the Indian tribes but would not bend his principles to expand gambling. Jim Doyle got the millions instead and took the governorship.
We remember a manager in state government (a great guy!) who so wanted to be liked that he refused to knock heads together of two bureau directors who refused to be in the same room together. Like the apocryphal little man who kept trying to keep up with the mob during the French Revolution. “I have to, I’m their leader!”
Lou Grant hated spunk. We hate obsequiousness.
Blaska senses a certain amount of respect from hard-line progressives, if only because he refuses to kowtow. (But he does pick up after himself.) We like to think we’ll be proven right someday on something. Might it be his precept that teaching self-discipline is the greatest lesson in life, regardless of circumstance?
Blaska’s Bottom Line: The WI State Journal refused to endorse our 2019 opponent for Madison WI school board but couldn’t bring themselves to endorse Blaska either. “He goes out of his way to provoke Madison liberals.”
Maybe they need to be provoked?
14 responses to “We do not sing to the choir”
[…] This post originally appeared at https://davidblaska.com/2023/11/11/we-do-not-sing-to-the-choir/ […]
I would pick you for my team. I respect people who are willing to stand up for what they believe in (even if they are wrong sometimes). Madison needs more David Blaska’s in government instead of the “go along to get along” gang that are allowing the mayor and the school administrators to run the show.
“Maybe they need to be provoked?”
Maybe? MASTERFULLY understated!
The Gotch
How does one “go out of their way to provoke Madison Liberals?” I thought just the mere existence of those who are not part of the collective group think did that automatically.
How to provoke a liberal? Let’s see. Start banning books. Shoot up a school, church, bowling alley, a concert,, etc etc. Attack their gay friends. Sent drug laced letters to election workers. Fake electors. Spend millions of dollars in court every time you lose an election. Take away a womans right to choose. Attack the capital. Get the picture?
Does that banning books bit include “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “To Kill a Mockingbird”? Because if so, liberals started earlier and have been vastly more successful in getting those two magnificent ANTI-racist novels removed from school programs and school libraries than anything the right has tried to do to books teaching six-year-olds how to ________ (fill in your favorites).
Want to provoke a Lefty?
Deny ‘nadless, flaccidly enfeebled Beta Male (?)/SoyBoy/Incels the taxpayer-funded FDA-approved ANAL CONDOMS they desire so that they may indulge their…um…passion regularly.
Think the Soy-Boy/Beta Male/Incel…er…request is too far fetched? Consider THE ALTERNATIVE, am I right?
Anywho, just don’t refuse to acknowledge they can menstruate, get pregnant, lactate, and use little girls’ rooms…..and Allah forbid you mis-gender them!
The Gotch
Someday some future Stanley will hack his way through the jungle and brush to the deepest darkest Dane County heartland known to the sane world as Mad Town. He will come upon you and say “David Blaska, I presume.” You will be saved and brought back into the light. Until then you must labor heroically, almost entirely alone, to bring that light to the darkness that surrounds you. But be assured, some of us will never allow your name to sink out of sight.
Timely Stanley reference; yesterday was the 152nd anniversary of Livingston being found on Lake Tanganyika.
The Gotch
It looks like the Air Raid and the Red Wave have a lot in common.
Provoke a liberal by massing in the streets calling for the murder of Jews… oopsies, wrong group!
Provoke a liberal by telling them a man(male) have XY chromosome and women(female) have XX chromosome. No surgery or drugs will change that. Hearing protection needed for the screaming .
In every school I went to, the only “partners” I got were partners who didn’t have a partner. If girls and boys could’ve been partners (I’m pre-historic) and you were in my school, we might’ve met. LOL. It was great, because it threw those of us together who belonged to each other. “Picking for teams”….opted out of most of that. I even had a problem wearing a band shirt in the over 50s bands…just too uniform-y for me. Oh Blaska, if just enough of MadTown denizens had been able to give you a seat in virtually any position, the fireworks would’ve been better than July’s. Dang! (Had to chuckle at the Petticoat Junction reference….gawd yer old! …or were you too wearing footie pajamas and up past your bedtime on a Saturday night?).
westsidesue: Petticoat Junction? That’s nuthin’. Hell, I’m so old I can remember listening to Eddie Cantor, The Lone Ranger, and The Shadow ON THE RADIO! These shows were classic Americana. Likewise Petticoat Junction.