July 2018 – The Goddamn Bacon

The Fuckery Never Ends, Part 2: How Attacking Bacon Exposes Propaganda

“A Lie can travel around the world before the Truth can get it’s pants on.” -Mark Twain

Thank you to both Gary & Dino and the Men’s Room for tipping me off to this: I had an entirely different topic to talk about this week, but 1. This needs to be addressed, as there are some important lessons in propaganda here, and 2. It’ll be easy, since I already covered a lot of this in other articles.

So if you remember a few years ago, there was this big story about the WHO declaring processed red meats in the same carcinogenic class as cigarettes, meaning they had the same risk factors for cancers. I won’t go into it too much here, but long story short: Not exactly the case, as even the WHO themselves said cured meats (such as bacon) had nowhere near the same carcinogenic effects (if any are to be found) as cigarettes, but of course everyone that hates anything that tastes good jumped on the “You might as well roll your bacon up and smoke it!” bandwagon.

The new one, from last week at the time of this writing, is that “Bacon causes mania/mental illness.” In short, the nitrates/nitrites generally used as preservatives in meats such as bacon, ham, salami, and jerky make you 3 times more likely times likely to express manic symptoms. we’ll dive into the language later, but short answer: No. To recap: the reason the nitrates issue usually comes up is because it can be transformed into a compound called nitrosamines, which is carcinogenic; nitrates themselves, as well as the other compound it turns into in the body is nitric oxide, are harmless at the worst. I’ll get into this in a second, but here’s one example, which I’ll give them credit for giving more of a larger picture on the matter:

https://www.sciencealert.com/nitrates-processed-meats-linked-manic-symptoms-bipolar

To be clear, you can run the risk of getting nitrosamine compounds from cured meats, particularly if you overcook them (don’t burn your bacon!), but otherwise they’re a non issue for the reason that most reputable purveyors of cured meats add vitamin C, both as it’s own preservative qualities, but also to nullify nitrate’s ability to turn into nitrosamine. Furthermore, the most common source for nitrates used in cured meats is celery; the primary, if not only source of dietary nitrates are vegetables, particularly your healthy leafy green varieties. Keep this in mind; it will be very important later. Here’s the article that previously covered this:

Link: TheGoddaamnBacon.com/Bacon-Does-Not-Cause-Cancer (had to capitalize to make this formatable)

In this case, they’re saying that nitrates themselves, not the cancer causing compound, has effects in your intestinal system; particularly it affects your gut flora, which has been linked to some mental issues, as your gut flora does have many effects on the body, a lot of which are still not understood to this day. So if it were true that nitrates themselves were to blame, and you got them from cured meats, the logic would pan out. The problem, of course, is that nitrates generally only make up about 2% of whatever meat was cured at the most; remember that veggies are the biggest source, so if you’re going to go nuts and die of cancer, you’re far more likely to get it from the veggies on the kabob you burned on the grill, not the delicious meats you actually want to eat. (Side note: I do enjoy the recurring theme of this kind of thing focusing on the smallest issue rather than the largest; hallmark of a lazy activist.) With that in mind, let’s have a look at the study itself, brought to you from the fine folks at John Hopkin’s Medicine:

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/beef_jerky_and_other_processed_meats_associated_with_manic_episodes

What I’ll be focusing on here will be the language, and I do encourage you to read the article above to follow along. So let’s have a look into what they’re saying, shall we! Here’s how they started the article (all highlights using parentheses are mine):

“An analysis of more than 1,000 people with and without psychiatric disorders has shown that nitrates—chemicals used to cure meats such as beef jerky, salami, hot dogs and other processed meat snacks—”may” contribute to mania, “an abnormal mood state”. Mania is “characterized by hyperactivity, euphoria and insomnia”.”

I’ll leave alone (for now) the fact that bacon wasn’t even mentioned, and the first meat product that every headline ran with; that is goddamn hilarious. back on topic: the first thing that stands out is the word “may”, a very subjective term right off the bat. Science, at least the kind that follows the scientific method, seeks to universalize cutting out as much subjectivity as possible given the available evidence, we’re already off to a bad start. Right there with it is the word “mania”, described as “an abnormal mood state”: they go into a definition for mania later in the article, but I find their leading one interesting, as you’d be hard pressed to define what counts for an abnormal mood state; does laughing at a funeral or being angry because you stubbed your toe count? The characterizations are worth noting here, as what counts as hyperactive, or euphoric; does the situation matter, such as if you were having hot sex in the back seat of someone’s car, or playing an active sport? While you’re working on those mental images, let’s continue:

“The findings of the Johns Hopkins Medicine study,”which was not designed to determine cause and effect”, were published July 18 in Molecular Psychiatry. Specifically, it found that people hospitalized for an episode of mania had more than three times the odds of “having ever eaten” nitrate-cured meats than people without a history of a serious psychiatric disorder.”

This is a very important part: “which was not designed to determine cause and effect”. In other words, it’s not science: determining cause and effect is a core tenet of problem solving, let alone the scientific method;. So we’re two paragraphs in, and they’re already admitting this is an opinion piece based on observational evidence at best. Also very telling is the measurement of the nitrate-cured meats: “having ever eaten”. So if you ever snapped into a Slim Jim, you count according to them. With that in mind, let’s get back to the term Mania:

“Mania, “a state of elevated mood, arousal and energy” that lasts weeks to months, is generally seen in people with bipolar disorder, but can also occur in those with schizoaffective disorder. Manic states “can lead to dangerous risk-taking behavior and can include delusional thinking”, and most of those affected experience multiple hospitalizations in the course of their psychiatric illness.”

So, ” A state off elevated mood, arousal and energy.” This is why I brought up fucking your way through some chick’s diaphragm in her back seat, since this describes that situation pretty well too. Have you ever had a state where you were aroused, had an elevated mood, or extra energy after chomping on some jerky 55 years ago? If so, congratulations: You’re the victim of nitrate induced mania! Sam goes for “risk-taking behavior”, which can include riveting girders at 100 stories for $500 an hour, and “delusional thinking” can include central planning and government programs, so on that point I think we can find common ground.

There’s more to tthis, but I’m not making this a 15,000 word article. Of note: They did run these experiments on rats in a fairly controlled environment. That’s usually a sign of a clinical study, and to be clear, they did a fair analysis. Only problem I can see here is that, looking at the normal rodent’s diet including rats: they’re omnivores when necessary, but their main diet is grains and berries. Feeding them beef jerky for weeks, and not expecting a different result in doing so, is lunacy, and even if you added nitrates to the normal rat chow and got a different result, you have to ignore,once again, that you get far more nitrates from veggies rather than from bacon, in order to demonize bacon and not kale, which leads into my next point:

Religion:Not just restrained to deities! Dietetics plays an important role is anyone’s everyday life, and therefore is important to any movement; you cannot fight well on an empty stomach. Did John Hopkin’s put this out in order to give misinformation that will lead to the malnourishment of your children? Doesn’t look like it: as it was stated before, they said upfront they didn’t intend for this to show a cause or effect of anything. But the people that are hell bent on destroying what gives life worth living have, and they have in the way of saying “BACON CAUSES MANIA!!!!!1!!ONE!!!”, when bacon was never even mentioned in the original article. You want a good look at what propaganda looks like? Look at how this study was covered.

And that’s the important part of this discussion, which is how to see what lying for a narrative looks like. Bacon was demonized because of a study that didn’t mention it even once, on scientific data that has been debunked several times over, a few of which were by yours truly, and then the study was bastardized and then read as such by Miles Montgomery and Gary Zebransky off of other websites. Which means they aren’t relying on you to be rational viewers of this narrative, rather irrational beings that need a viewpoint to look for, along with an enemy to attack. Let me be very clear: I don’t really care what you eat, or if you like bacon or not. But, if you do, and given the evidence, is this something you’re really willing to give up?

Picture Credit: https://www.123rf.com/photo_15704385_vector-illustration-of-a-fist-holding-bacon-in-the-style-of-russian-constructivist-propaganda-poster.html

Miles of Bullshit: Explaining Fad Diets

There’s a reason I focus a lot on nutrition here. One reason is that it’s a big part of my background, and as far as how issues affect people, one of the most important ones. The other, which pertains to a lot of what I put out here, is that I hate misinformation with a passion, since unlike most charity and government groups, I actually care about helping people. With that in mind, I though it would help if I pointed out some of the fraudulent diets out there today; that’s more coming out faster than they can be debunked, but there’s a trend here to pay attention to, so keep an eye out!

Alkaline Diet: Simply put, it’s the idea that having your body be more acidic is detrimental to your health, and being more alkaline (basic, caustic, etc) is healthier. Specifically, it advocates a diet more in favor of alkaline rich foods (bananas, green veggies, other plants), vs foods that can be more acidic (basically, and animal based foods). The major flaw is that, when it comes to what they measure, it’s usually urine, which WILL change through diet. The reason being that the kidneys are a major factor in regulating blood pH; that is tightly regulated by the body, around 7.4 pH, which very bad things happen if it falls out of that range. In short: your diet may make your pee different, along with your breath (your lungs are also part of that regulatory system), but not anything else; your diet has no effect on your body’s pH levels, which means you wasted your money on that Alkaline water. This is a very brief overview: for more, go here; Joe Leech has a very god breakdown of this: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/the-alkaline-diet-myth

Low Fat: Oh, the original B.S. diet that was promoted, one I’d argue did the most damage to mankind as far as diets go, with millions of bodies in the ground because of it (covered in the War On Fats article written previously). Simply put, it demonized dietary fats, saturated fats specifically, in favor of other food groups such as refined carbs and added sugar, neither of which are healthy in just about any respect; in fact being the opposite in most cases. The most glaring reason this is a bad diet is that it doesn’t go with the history of our diet as a species; for hundreds of thousands of years, we’ve eaten food sources with high fat content, and it wasn’t until the past 40 years we had the problems we have today. Of note: We also didn’t have an excess of added sugar nor refined carbs along that same time period (or the cheap veggie oils now that I think of it). This isn’t exactly a randomized controlled double-blind trial here, but just look at the correlation here; it’s not that hard to figure out.

Vegan: This really isn’t that hard, it’s more of an IQ test really. The diet, if you haven’t had like a thousand vegans tell you what it is when asking for your coffee at your local Starbucks, basically excludes any animal products in favor of subsisting solely on plant based foods. The moral case could be made, as many vegans do as far as animal products go, on how plants suffer too; vegetables want to live too, but in order for you to live, something has to die. Moral argument aside, it’s frankly stupid to eschew one entire kingdom of food in favor or another (Don’t worry, I’m taking down both sides of this 😉 . In this case, veganism means cutting out the most nutrition and effective form of food for the human body, period, in terms of protein, trace vitamins and minerals, the basic building blocks of your body. Your body isn’t made of green beans, it’s made out of longpig; you repair it with what is the best material to do so. That does not mean go the other way and eschew veggie either, which leads me to…

Keto: I have to be honest with my opinion here: if I had to pick between Veganism and the Keto crowd, I’d pick the Keto crowd. That said, they have a lot of their own B.S. in their own movement, which is a very important thing to notice in that they are starting to act a lot like their vegan opponents, in that it is now being practiced akin to a religion. As far as B.S. goes, the first thing that comes to mind is the Bulletproof Coffee fad, where you basically add butter to your coffee. Now if you really need to be on ketosis, this may help, but to your average person, this is damaging, as excess butter, unlike other forms of fat, increases LDL choesterol, if I remember correctly (I’m doing this blind right now). The other problem with the Keto crowd I cna see is demonizing all carbs, not just the unhealthy ones. In their defense, my diet alone advocates eating mostly fats and protein as a base, and increasing amounts of carbs the more activity I get into. That said, many foods that are highly nutritious, not to mention delicious, are also carb heavy, without being bad for you; potatoes being chief among them. It’s not just the carbs you eat, but what you do with them that matters.

Raw Diet: Basically, eating things that haven’t been cooked or processed. Again, this is another IQ test: there’s a reason humans learned to cook and process food, mainly that it made the nutrients in whatever you were eating far more accessible to your body afterward. I do get that some things are better eaten raw than processed, especially when you take the Western version of adding lots of unhealthy yet cheap ingredients into an otherwise healthy dish, like a hamburger or pizza. Nuts, for example, or berries, are fantastic eaten raw. It doesn’t mean cooking your food is a bad thing, and in fact some things you don’t cook before eating (like red beans) are toxic if uncooked. Furthermore, most plant foods have compounds called lectins, phytonutrients, and other compounds that act as anti-nutrients; eaten with other foods might offset this problem so much this wouldn’t make much of a difference, but just eating raw veggies would mean they might actually take nutrients out of your body moreso than they would add to it. That’s right: the raw diet is very much an antinutrient diet!

One more to pick on, any Cleansing Diet: Not even going to bother getting into any specific ones, because they pretty much follow the same path: your body has toxins, and this diet will help get rid of them. Here’s the problem: your body has organs specifically to get rid of excess nutrients and minerals in your body, let alone toxins; that’s what your liver and kidneys are there for. To be clear, there are foods and compounds that help your body dietarily, such as turmeric. But any diet that promises to cleanse you is likely bullshit.

So why is this a problem? Simple: the cost of time. There’s a saying that goes something like this: “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” There’s a lot of truth in that, in so far as that you only make progress taking steps in the right direction. And it can be very rewarding: continuing on that path diligently, and looking back and seeing all of the progress you’ve made. Now imagine, starting the journey of progress with the first step, going several miles in that direction, only to find out you’ve been going south when you should’ve been going north. Now not only do you have to go in the right direction, but you also have to recross the course you’ve already crossed, with the sheer mental disappointment of having to do so. This, underlining every other problem with any fad diet, is what I see as the true danger of these kinds of diets, in that they send you in the wrong direction while convincing you that you’re doing everything right, often wreaking havoc on your body in the progress.

So a couple of things to look out for in avoiding fad diets:

1. If it demonizes foods humans have been consuming throughout history, or entire groups of macronutrients, chances are it’s a fad diet, whether it’s that one weird old tip that says bananas are evil, or it’s an extreme one like veganism or ketogenic.

2. It forces you to follow a strict regimen or consume certain foods. This can be helpful if you’re training for something specific, like a triathalon or a bodybuilding competition. Following it as a lifestyle, however, is nearly impossible for the average person, even the above average ones.

3. It costs money to follow it. Yes, you have to spend money on food. And yes, some personal trainers do offer meal programs that can be helpful. Jenny Craig is not one of them.

There’s a lot more to cover here that’s not coming to mind at the time of this writing, but the word count is already getting up there. Not to worry, there’s plenty of articles coming on this subject; don’t you have enough to chew on?

Picture Credit: https://www.askideas.com/65-most-funny-nom-nom-nom-pictures-that-will-make-you-laugh/

www.athleticform.us/blog/2018/05/07/fad-diets/

Metabolic Syndrome Explained: The Reality of the Modern Fast Food Lifestyle

“The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison.” –Ann Wigmore

I wanted to write this under the term “The Fast Food Diet”, but funnily enough, there’s a lady that actually made a diet with that name, and I want to respect her by not hijacking the name. Fortunately, I think I’ve found a better name for the problem plaguing the West today, and so I will dub this the Fast Food Lifestyle! This is the article covering not only the Western Diet, but what makes it possible and how it affects your body. Strap in; it’s a wild ride!

What is Fast Food?

Simply put: It is food you can get very quickly, and what your body can process quickly. As far as the mainstream definition of fast food goes, you can get thousands of calories, not to mention hundreds of grams of sugar and veggie fats from them. Just focusing on the McDonalds’ version of fast food, You’d get more calories from just one Big Mac Value meal (just checked: including the fries and coke, it’s over 1,3000 calories in one meal!) than you would getting, say, a good steak and frites, which not only is far more fulfilling and satisfying in the long run, but with far far less added sugar, refined wheat and veggie oils added, which will kill you! (for more on this, go to my article on the 3 ingredients that ruined fast food). There are many good options for getting at least decent healthy options at a fast food place, but the vast majority of people that go to fast food restaurants tend to not only not know much about nutrition (or worse, educated about the opposite of nutrition, as most people are), but are also in a hurry to get to their place of employment, or home to take care of the kids, etc. In short: they’re not likely to be the people that will weigh the best options that bests impacts their health, but rather their budget and their time. It’s been 40 years now, and we can literally see the results at your local Walmart. Speaking of….

Packaged Foods: for the purposes of this article, this refers to anything you can buy that’s precooked, that you can eat behind the wheel or at your desk at work, because you unfortunately have a desk job. In my world, that comes in the form of jerky, but for your average westerner, that not only means candy bars and popsicles, but also packaged foods that resemble what you’d get at a fast food place or your own kitchen, like hamburgers. We know now how dangerous a pack of Skittles are, but might not think of what’s in a packaged burger, which not only is mostly bun that’s refined wheat and veggie oil, but the meat itself is half soy. You can find packaged food that is fairly healthy for you, but again, for the average westerner, it’s going to lean towards the more economical, and therefore unhealthy side of things.

Cooked food at home: Side story: I do remember my dear late grandmother’s recipes, some of which I helped her with and that live on through me to this day. She made a lot of meals from scratch, with whole ingredients. Unfortunately, most westerners (am I seeing a pattern here?) end up using things like Hamburger Helper, or Uncle Bens, or Stouffers, to save time on the meals for their families because both parents work and can’t take time to do it right. Nothing wrong with pre-packaged meals to help, but they also aren’t the healthiest options. Why is that? Well, to answer why the above 3 points are unhealthy, look below…..

Your Body On Fast Food: Most of the above foods are usually the highly processed kind, designed to to not only be cheap to make, but also easy for your body to break down. For example: processes American cheese is far easier for your body to break down than a slice of sharp cheddar, to say nothing of cheez whiz. This is relatively new for our bodies to deal with in regards to evolution: for the last hundred thousand years, the food we got, if we got it, was fairly hard to process and get nutrients from. You had to get a significant amount of mass, not to mention a significantly nutrient dense form, in the best way for your body to get what it needs; this is why human brainpower, which is about a third of your bodies’ energy expenditure, was able to grow and thrive, because we learned to cook both veggies and, particularly, meat, which is the closest full meal for your body that you can get. Calories were very hard to get, in short, in the olden days. These days, as you can now see, they’re almost impossible to avoid; not only are the fast food meals you get far more calorie loaded, but those calories are far easier for your body to process and store as fat or, concerning fructose, stuck in your liver, giving you the same effects as drinking a handle of vodka without the fun blackouts, and none of the other mitigating effects you can get that helps with ethanol but not fructose (another article). In other words: the foods listed above are almost specifically designed to make you have all of the modern medical problems you see today, explained by metabolic syndrome.

Metabolic Syndrome: Basically speaking, it’s the underlying issue to the majority of the medical issues facing the West today, particularly the U.S. It stems from, to put it very simply, chronic inflammation throughout the body, and contributes to lovely diseases such as type 2 Diabetes, Chronic Heart Disease, Cardiovascular Disease, Stroke, Fatty Liver Disease (both kinds) and others I’m not thinking of at this time, likely the ones that are considered mental illnesses. There are certainly other causes, none of which are worth mentioning here due to their ineffectiveness. Most of the causes of metabolic syndrome are dietetic in origin, with the other cause being a sedentary lifestyle. That said, learning a good diet will help mitigate, if not avoid, getting metabolic syndrome.

Availability: The short reason a lot of this is happening is because calories got cheaper. In particular, alongside of the demonization of saturated fats and the replacement of it with Crisco and veggie oils, corn syrup came along. Short story: corn syrup isn’t all that much more dangerous than regular table sugar. The difference between the two is that corn syrup is far cheaper, and therefore much easier to add into any product, let alone any mass produced ones. This, amongst a few other reasons highlighted here, is why the calorie count of your average food has gone up, and why your body retains more of them. Same deal with refined carbs, particularly modern wheat; your body processes it quickly, much like sugar. Finally, as mentioned above, veggie oils (corn, canola, peanut, shortening, etc.) have far more damaging effects than even what your average vegan will tell you butter does. This is roughly explained here: http://thegoddamnbacon.com/the-3-ingredients-that-ruined-fast-food

Short story: I grew up on more or less this diet, and for a while during my personal trainer days, I advocated for some of what I am now preaching against. Nowadays, I obviously know a lot more about nutrition and fitness, and am working towards building a better body for myself, mainly so I can be happy with myself, live a long nice life (if I don’t get myself shot before then), and I can stay attractive… well, even more so. However, as I said before in another article, despite my own physical abilities, I don’t know if I will ever be able to look like a body builder. Part of that is because the stipulation is to not give up on the lifestyle of having cheesecake every once in a while and having delicious beer and wine; the other reason, the one I think is the most likely, is that the diet choices I had during my childhood and early adulthood have had permanent effects on me; it’s likely I will never get the body I want, even though, small as it is, it’s right below the layer of fat I still wear to this day.

It is my hope, dear reader, that you will avoid the fate I am cursed with. The good news is that most of the “diseases” afflicted upon people today is one they brought upon themselves; you don’t have to be one of them. I have caught my diet in time to stop most of these issues, so while I won’t look like my instructor anytime soon, I’ll be O.K. healthwise. Hopefully you will as well. What’s wrong; did you want to live forever?

Picture Credit: https://www.memecenter.com/fun/244126/american-fat-ass

Following Rome’s Footsteps: The Reality of America’s Freedom

Well it’s about that time, folks: It’s that time that we celebrate events that happened around the North American continent around the 4th of this random summer month. It involved some group that moved here from some of the European continents, who wished to escape monarchy rule and taxes, often risking their lives to do so. It’s funny, living in this (once)great country myself, that literally billions want to move to, I have to write the following, about the demise of the freedom of the U.S. as it stands today.

Let’s be blunt, just right upfront: the two rights that set the U.S. apart from literally every other country are the first two amendments in the U.S. Constitution. The first, of course, is about Free speech: to explain it in case it goes away, it means you are not subjugated to the use of government force if you say something that other people don’t agree with (for example: you can wear the Stars & Bars here in the U.S. without fear of prosecution; you cannot wear Nazi gear in Germany). The Second is the right to bear arms, and the reason it specifies that is because firearms, when your state has them, is the best way to defend yourself against not just another government attacking your country, but your own government attacking you. Sure, you can use knives or alarms from a drugged out burglar; try using that against a SWAT team; it’s there to keep the government from taking you over without your say so, it is literally the right to defend yourself with what is available.

It is those two rights, in my opinion, that really makes the U.S. the greatest country in the world, even today. It is very unfortunate, then, that those rights are under attack right now.

The hacking down of the Second of course is pretty open, as we are seeing with the outcries of the mass shootings that have happened in this country alone. The one in Parkland, Florida being the biggest example: that horrific murder spree happened, and suddenly people like David Hogg and Emma Gonzales have a voice that causes places like Deerfield, Illonois and Boulder, Colorado to ban an arbitrary class of firearms that aren’t even used in most shooting deaths, let alone total murders. People often liken weapons like, for example, an AR-15, to a sporting and hunting rifle. Of course, a rifle like that, as the Left has rightly portrayed, is very good at dispatching well armed humans, given the usual rounds they use. I’ll leave it to you to figure out who the armed humans I am referring to.

The First, however, is being undone more under the radar, through passing laws about hate speech, and particularly with the internet as it stands today. In case you didn’t know, the ICANN agreement, which basically controls the way you are able to access any website by typing the name into a search bar (like TheGoddamnBacon.com leading you here instead of, say, typing an algorithm that’s hard to remember), has been transferred away from the U.S., which invented the internet and still has some free speech laws, to the E.U., which does not. There’s a fight, right now in the E.U., about a bill called Article 13, which basically introduces hate speech laws into websites and forces them to comply with them, before anything even gets published; in other words, you can be censored before you even say anything online, you will be silenced if you say anything the wrong people don’t like.

So what does this have to do with the U.S., since that was about the E.U.? Because the U.S. has not only given crucial freedoms over to other people, but is now following the same path, as seen up above. And since, as previously stated, those two rights are the most fundamental to making this country free and open to making great things, and therefore the most important tenets that should be upheld today. If these should fall, as the forces that be are pushing for, we shall follow the same path as Rome.

Rome, of course, was one of the biggest and most successful societies on the planet at one time, that started as a small government country that had more freedoms that other countries didn’t have and, as a consequence, were conquered by Rome. Rome also grew it’s government grow to the point that it was insolvent, to the point that the barbarians they hired in place of their own army had to sack it. This is not dissimilar to what the U.S. is headed towards: the U.S. started as the smallest government possible, and now is the biggest the planet has ever seen, with the capacity to destroy us all many times over. And, in my opinion, the only thing holding this back is the First and Second Amendment; lose the ability to use your voice to defend yourself, not to mention losing the ability to defend yourself physically, and there is nothing protecting you from pure evil taking you down.

No, this isn’t something you might want to think about during this holiday of fun. While you’re barbequing today, while you’re drinking light beers during the day, while you’re watching a bunch of fireworks going up and exploding, these aren’t pleasant thought to think about. It also doesn’t make this reality go away. So while you’re enjoying this holiday (Trust me; I will), keep in mind that the freedoms you celebrate today, the hard won rights that so much blood and time and relationships have been broken and spilled for; understand that the rights that made this holiday possible are the very ones being attacked right now, and if you really care about this place you call home and celebrate today, it is the time now to stand up, and fight for what made this country so great. Lose this fight now, or desert it, and we all go down in darkness; Enjoy The Decline, as Aaron Clarey put it, will be a certain reality, and whether you live to see it or not, your children, or the kids you care about, will have to live through the consequences of your inactions.

Celebrate the Fourth of July! Embrace it with open arms! I will, even I have no loyalty to any country, I will have loads of fun today! But understand what exactly gives you that freedom to have that fun, how fleeting that freedom is throughout history, and how easily it can be stripped away from us all in the blink of an eye. You have the ability to celebrate your country, your freedom, for a reason; are you really willing to watch it burn to the ground?

Pic Credit: http://christinprophecy.org/articles/is-it-too-late-for-america/