AIR CELEBRATES THE AMERICAN DREAM
Imagine being able to take your children or grandchildren to a Hollywood blockbuster that tells the story of a great American business success, celebrates entrepreneurial values, isn’t woke, and includes only a little profanity.
Air — the story of how underdog shoe company Nike landed Michael Jordan’s revolutionary endorsement of the “Air Jordan” shoe — is exactly that. The Jordan shoe changed fashion and completely realigned how athletes benefit from products they associate with. It’s still one of the most successful consumer products ever.
Hollywood is fresh from observing how Tom Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick broke box-office records a year ago and grossed over $1 billion worldwide. Though it will still produce many woke films, Hollywood may have decided that it has to pay for its frequent box-office losses by producing entertainment that people actually want to shell out money for.
That’s what Hollywood has done with Air, starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. See the Trailer below.
THE NEXT MEDICAL REVOLUTION IS ON THE WAY
Twenty years ago, the idea of putting a live cell in a human, directing it to travel to a specific location, and having it do a specific task would have been considered impossible. Today it’s reality, and hundreds of companies are working on cell-therapy applications.
That’s only the beginning. Advancements arriving at an exponentially increasing rate lie ahead as new discoveries reach the clinic with breathtaking speed. We can now reasonably speculate about therapies that will give us the ability to clean tiny cancers from our bodies as routinely as dentists clean our teeth.
We can look for the possibility of gaining immunity from dozens of viruses with a single vaccine and editing genes to eliminate many birth defects. We can picture growing new organs from patients’ own cells and even slowing the aging process. Here’s why and how.
OUR FRENCH REVOLUTION
The Dying Lion of Lucerne*
We are in a Jacobin Revolution of the sort that in 1793-94 nearly destroyed France. And things are getting scary.
The Democrat Party vanished completely sometime in 2020.
It was absorbed by hard-left ideologues. They were bent on radically altering, or hijacking, existing institutions to force radical, equality-of-result agendas that otherwise do not earn majority support.
What triggered the collective madness and this Jacobin takeover? The catalysts are many.
America now has three potential futures and two are bad.
PUTIN’S BUBBLE
Decision-making in the Kremlin had been so erratic—even before the re-invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022—that the proposition of President Vladimir Putin inhabiting a bubble of servile courtiers and carefully doctored information appeared perfectly plausible.
Early April 2023 has brought even more evidence supporting this assumption of detachment from reality typical for mature autocratic regimes but aggravated by an unhealthy ambition for determining the course of global affairs.
Bubbles, however, are diaphanously short-lived by their nature. Is Putin’s approaching the bursting point?
MAKING FRIENDS IN ANTARCTICA
This is my wife Rebel relaxing with a native of Antarctica while on a visit to the Palmer Science Station there. Getting up close and personal with Antarctic wildlife is so easy as they have no fear of us at all, be they seals, elephant seals, or penguins.
Better not get too close to male elephant seals in domination combat, however, as they can weigh up to 7,000 pounds. And steer clear of full grown leopard seals, which are apex predators weighing over 1,000 pounds. No worries, though, for Rebel with this young fellow. Experiencing Antarctica is always a memorable adventure. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #94 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
INFANTILIZOMANIA
Giant statute of Lenin in Tiraspol, Transnistria
[We’re starting an Archives feature for Mondays in celebration of TTP’s 20th Anniversary – to reprise a TTP article of years ago and to ask what you think how it applies to today on the Forum. “Infantilizomania” was first published on September 23, 2005. The TTP Team is looking forward to your thoughts!]
Yes, I invented this term. You won’t find it in Webster’s, the OED, or Google. At least not now. Hopefully soon you will, as it becomes the accepted term for the neurosis with which all those on the Left are afflicted.
Just as a pyromaniac is driven by a compulsion to set fires, a kleptomaniac by a compulsion to steal, and – everyone’s favorite example – a nymphomaniac by a compulsion to have sex, an infantilizomaniac is driven by a compulsion to treat adult human beings as children.
The compulsion to infantilize people is the neurotic compulsion of liberals.
Liberals of course do not call it infantilizomania. They call it compassion.
WHERE THE SOVIET UNION STILL EXISTS
Welcome to Transnistria, where Lenin still lives. The strangest country in Europe is a narrow sliver of landlocked land along the east side of the Dnieper River sandwiched between Moldova and Ukraine. When both declared independence as the Soviet Union broke apart in 1991, the people here decided they were still part of the USSR even though it had ceased to exist.
The half-million Transnistrians are still pretending their country is a Soviet Socialist Republic. Lenin statues abound, the hammer & sickle is on their flag, the state media broadcasts stories about “glorious Soviet history.” Meanwhile, Transnistria’s economy is doing well thanks to bountiful Kremlin subsidies and as a haven for the Russian mob. In the capital of Tiraspol I saw Beemers, Bentleys, and even a Corvette Sting Ray cruising the streets. Restaurants and bars are packed. Kids are well-dressed. That’s a gaggle of them you see above happily playing on a Russian tank in a park.
Maybe it’s all kind of a funny game to everyone here. As an American I was welcomed with smiles. You will be too if you visit – it’s a truly unique experience! (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #69 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
FLASHBACK FRIDAY – THE POTALA
Lhasa, Tibet, 1986. Built in the mid-1600s, the Potala in Lhasa, Tibet was the home of the Dalai Lama as the incarnation of Avalokiteśvara, the Buddhist deity of compassion, until the Communist Chinese colonized Tibet in 1959.
The Potala is one of the world’s great architectural wonders, thirteen stories high with molten copper poured into the foundation to stabilize it from earthquakes, 1,000 rooms, 10,000 shrines, 200,000 statues. I’ve been here several times since 1986, and it’s always such a powerful experience. Yet to Tibetans, this is a “dead” building as the Dalai Lama is gone. It is my hope that someday, the Dalai Lama will live here in a Free Tibet once again. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #114 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
BEVERAGE PRETENDING TO BE BEER FEATURES MAN PRETENDING TO BE WOMAN
U.S. — In a match made in heaven, a beverage that tries to pass itself as beer has hired as its spokesperson a man trying to pass himself off as a woman.
"For decades, we've been putting carbonated backwash in a beer can and pretending it's beer," said Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth. "Who better to represent our brand than a guy throwing on a dress and pretending he's a woman?"
Long a staple drink of people who hate actual beer, Bud Light felt putting Dylan Mulvaney's face on a can would also attract people who hate actual women.
"As a man acting out the most horrendously offensive stereotypes of women, Mulvaney taps into the soul of people who despise real women," said Mr. Whitworth. "As a company dedicated to serving those who detest real beer, the partnership made perfect sense. The new beer can just shouts, 'Come, enjoy this atrocious substitute for the real thing'."
HALF-FULL REPORT 04/07/23
It’s Good Friday! Welcome to the Easter HFR! And to TTP’s 20th Anniversary (see more about this at the end).
This Sunday, Christians celebrate The Resurrection. As the holiest day of the year, Easter has sacred significance far above Easter eggs and bunnies. As TTP is a political and geopolitical discussion site, what binds TTPers together is the profound significance of the moral foundation of Christendom, or Western Civilization.
What worries, ever terrifies, many of us, is the seeming disintegration of that moral foundation. Dare then, at this Eastertime, we hope for a moral Resurrection of America and Western Civilization? We can always hope, yes, but are there any signs that such a future could actually be on the way?
Let’s talk about one such sign that clearly emerged this week. And a good many others as well.