ENCHANTÉ – THE FIREWORKS
ALIEN IN RESIDENCE
As an Alien and honorable guest in U.S. residence, the fireworks stunned me more than “The Speech.” Boy, “TRUMP 2020” exploded in a hail of splashing flashlights right behind the Washington Monument. The ubiquitous obelisk shone brightly in the night. What a difference with the Democrat party convention hulled in darkness and fear! One has to admit, foe, or fan, the Republican Convention was a better show.
The many real-life people of the American scene who spoke struck me as well. These everyday people made convincing speeches about how the Trump administration had altered their lives for the good and given them extraordinary support.
I am a conservative economist and have always been. I like my numbers to fit. I must feel safe outside in the evening and not be screamed at violently in public by people who disagree with me. I don’t mind other people’s opinions, but throwing fistfights, spitting on me, annoying me in restaurants, or kicking me out of rage is not my cup of tea. That seems to be the new normal of the Democrat-run states, cities and even suburbs now. And I fear it announces the new normal of the U.S. when the turning point is crossed, if it has not already. How can Washington D.C. allow Republican Senator Paul Rand and his wife to be accosted the way they were when leaving the White House on foot to their hotel after the RNC Convention closed? What type of Democrat mayor do we have here? Could they not have foreseen this and have the necessary police forces on guard? Who pays those anarchist criminals anyway? Why can’t the Trump Administration put a definite stop to their insane behavior?
I came here as a guest because my employer, The World Bank, has its headquarters in Washington, D.C. I arrived in 1972, a few years after the burning King riots in 1968. I considered it an aberration. Helas! It was not, as I saw on TV several times after that. It began to shape my first doubts about U.S. society.
When I stopped working seven years ago, in 2013, my wife (from the Caribbean) and I were offered U.S. residency with a green card (on the condition we transferred a handsome fee for the honor), with the option of applying for the American nationality after five years. The scene at the Republican Convention, showing five people receiving citizenship, impressed me. From Syria, Sudan, to India, Ghana, and Lebanon. The last three countries I visited several times. Lebanon remained a mystery to me, so many religious factions living together in almost continuous tension, undermined by neighboring Iran’s nefarious interference, and plagued with corruption and terrorist activity, all depressing the country’s economy. I can imagine why Lebanese or Syrians want to come to the U.S. for security and a better life.
Should I do the same? Our kids and grandkids are American. As a proud Dutchman, I felt that I could only change my citizenship if I fully shared what my new home would embrace. Holland has changed a lot since I left for Switzerland in 1969, but as a small country, it remains tolerable (except for the weather). And we don’t walk around with guns. But the U.S. has changed substantially from the time it liberated me from the Nazis. After Kennedy, it has adopted more and more liberal ideologies that are not mine. The Reagan years were a notable exception. The Bushes were passable, and I shared the attack on Iraq, but only to the extent that it would stop Sadam from hauling his scuds into Israel. I altogether dissented from the Bush plan to establish democracy in Iraq. On what historical basis did they come to that ill-timed idea?
(See my blog https://www.johnschwartzauthor.com/?s=Iraq+From+Western+Dream)
The unnecessary invasion proved a disaster and only facilitated Iran to take hold in Iraq, precisely what the insufferable Sadam was preventing.
But I found the Clinton crowd unpalatable, and when Obama entered the scene with Saul Alinsky in his wake, I began to feel most uncomfortable. After him, another Clinton presidency would have turned me off for good. I could not abide by their unbridled socialist, statist philosophies (and racist!-remember Trayvon Martin, the Ferguson riots, the Baltimore riots, etc., pandering to Marxist Black Lives Matter), playing money games for power while getting away with murder, and subverting the election process of the opposing political party and its rightfully elected leader.
My wife woke me up with champagne in the early morning hours when Trump was elected. What a relief. From the outset, the iconoclastic Trump made us feel comfortable again. Finally, someone who called a spade a spade, understood money, and adhered to sound economics. Despite all the democrat shenanigans, he produced what he promised, and then some. He is not the regular sweet-talking sweet-smiling political type, which many – including never Trumpers – prefer, because it is so familiar and convenient and keeps the status quo. But he will be reelected, no doubt about that. The leftist democrats (oh, boy, has that party changed!) and their Media lackeys will try to undermine his election again, but the Democrat- tolerated riots and anarchy may prove the Albatros hanging around Biden’s neck.
“The Speech” contained much of what I stand for. It was a bit too long for my taste and less vivid as Trump’s off the cuff rallies, but the essence was right on the money. Given the occasion, he had to read most of the teleprompter, and that often sounds flat.
The fireworks said it all: that’s what election-day will be. Not just for the U.S. but the whole world, looking on in anxiety.
So, some readers asked, if you had a vote, who would you vote for? Our answer is obvious: The Republican ticket. To save America. We would not like to live in “Biden’s America” either.
All the best,
ENCHANTÉ
ENCHANTÉ – THE ILLUSIONIST
VIEWS FROM AN ALIEN
Truth is in the eye of the beholder. And if the beholder is an illusionist, it becomes fantassissimo. Not truth over facts, but invisible truth.
When I watched snippets of the speech, the eyes seemed beholden to the teleprompter. Some good speechwriters had filled it with illusions. They spoke of light versus darkness. Does anybody down on Planet Earth remember George Walker Bush’s 1000 points of lights in 1989? And when the great speaker ended with “For love is more powerful than hate. Hope is more powerful than Fear. Light is more powerful than dark”, did your Canadian friends not immediately say, hey that’s what Jack Layton, Canada’s left leader, said on his death bed in 2011? And did Ronald Reagon not speak of his vision of a “shining city on a hill” in his farewell address in 1989?
Bush lost (thanks to your dapper independent Ross Perot), despite his 1000 points of lights.
And what about the illusionist’s dark? Your California goes dark in wildfires because they apply the proposals of the Green New Deal. Portland and Seatle are burning in the dark because of out of control riots on behalf of a stolen protest about police brutality. All dark places led by democrat leaders who want to kill law and order as you know it. But that’s light for your illusionist.
Does that make you feel good? That seemed to have been the goal of the speechwriters, making you feel good. Mister nice guy opposed to the hate-spraying racist occupant of the White House who has been spreading COVID-19 amidst the innocent Americans.
Since when do speeches decide elections? On Mars, we debate until we see stars and stripes (that’s why you see those meteor showers). But on the US of Planet Earth, your illusionist bets that by making you believe that he is debating while hiding in his basement, you actually see and hear him debating. In front of a muted TV screen showing the occupant talking?
But seriously, what would the situation be if COVID-19 had stayed in China? You had your best times for 3 plus years after eight monotonous humdrum new normal Obama years during which the illusionist managed to do little more than feasting on Ukraine gas with sonny Hunter and ending up participating in corrupting the presidential transition process. Not a good prelude for a successful retaking of the White House. So COVID-19 became the deus ex machina for the democrats. They seem to hope the whole country gets sick and only they stay alive to save you.
And would China not feel good listening to Google’s translation of the speech? We bet they are. No word about China’s corruption of the World Health Organization, leaking COVID-19 worldwide to disrupt Earth’s economy, or Trump putting the breaks on Chinese malfeasance. The illusionist called that racist, reactionary, and xenophobia. He wants to bring China back into the international community of developing nations and offer them tariff-free reentry to the U.S. market so that you all feel good making things together – together in quotes of course.
Here on Mars, we wonder why so many Americans want to do so much bad to their country. What happened to your folks?
We know that NASA has sent its Perseverance Rover to Mars to land in February 2021. That’s fine with us. We will let it scrape the hard soil, but you won’t find us. Mars City is underground, a shiny city full of light. We draw our energy from the sun, but we won’t tell you how. If we did, China would steal it from you when the illusionist becomes president.
All the best,
Mars Man
ENCHANTÉ – DON’T ALL LIVES MATTER?
Mars Man at Mars City TV.
On Mars, all lives matter. Watching Mother Earth from Mars City TV, we see disturbing, disparaging, and worrisome scenes. I noticed a substantial uptick in readers of my blog “Black Lives Matter White Lives Don’t” published five years ago on July 18. 2015:
https://www.johnschwartzauthor.com/black-lives-matter-white-lives-dont/
That blog concerned the insidious murder of Kathryn Steinle in California, a beautiful young caucasian girl shot down by a deranged illegal immigrant who had jumped the border five times before and managed to get back, due to the lax Obama immigration and sanctuary city rules. The idiot was not even charged with murder because the bullet had “ricocheted.” There you go, your leftist rule of “public safety” at work.
Five years later, I am saddened to see America tumbling down further to the reign of neanderthalers. More riots, looting, burning buildings and shops, and wild protesting, overpowering the justified protests about the killing by a policeman, in plain view, of a black man in custody on the street by kneeling on his neck till he died of asphyxiation. Just creeping out of the stronghold of COVED-19, America got thrown into a horrid scene of racial hatred by the stupid act of one white policeman. It was what your cliché calls it: a double whammy.
I had sent my wife Kathryn and our two sons to a Caribbean island with their private teachers to escape the misery of COVED-19. Now I told them to stay put and not to come back to Nebraska, even though that is one of the more sensible states in America, until the country is brought back to its senses. But by whom? I had hoped President Trump would take drastic measures to reign in the increasingly terrifying drive of the growing leftist mobs, but democrat governors don’t have the spine, and at the Federal level a President can only do so much to protect public safety with everybody left yelling and screaming at him. Even artificial mob states were created in Seatle, and the police chased out of what they call euphemistically “autonomous zones.” Where are the Republican leaders in the Senate and the House, to put a stop to this? Are they afraid they won’t be re-elected and lose their coveted lifestyle? Where are the heroes? Is your senator Scott from South Carolina the only one?
David Dorn – Fox News.com
Rioters killed David Dorn, a retired black police officer, while he was trying to protect a pawn shop in St. Louis. Where were the protesters protesting against this murder? Nowhere. David Dorn was “not black enough” because he probably voted Republican (one of your backward Biden mantras). Many of your policemen and women protecting property and citizens were seriously injured by the mobs. Don’t all lives matter? Is your left interested at all in maintaining public safety?
Clearly, history is full of glaring examples of great powers disappearing due to weakening leadership, internal division, greed, mob rule, and declining values: Athens, the Roman Empire, the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Empire, The British Empire, and soon, the United States of America, once the leader of inventions, the industrial power, launching the technical, internet and digital revolutions, and then: falling in disarray by the decay of values, racial segregation, and social distress smothering it all.
Historians call it the transient character of the human condition and political order. “Sooner or later, all things come to an end…All states and nations, however great, bloom for a season and are replaced.” (Vanished Kingdoms by Norman Davies – 2012, Pinguin Books). Looking at the American scene, it affirms the truism. Protests and riots completely overshadowed its newest advance in space, launching its new manned spacecraft to the international space station and back.
The strange phenomenon of applying double standards in the judgment of facts is another sign of declining values: mob rule is fine, as long as it supports leftist ideals purported by your broad leftist media and your inside-rotting democrat party. The mob does not have to use anti-COVED-19 masks, but a Republican rally must. Historians may say that the transient nature of the human condition in the U.S. follows from its changing demographics due to immigration, and the invasion of leftist teachers at high schools, colleges and universities, some financed by Chinese sources, poisoning the young with their values of government dependency, socialist mantras on free goods, and anti-religious speech.
It depends on how America reassesses itself in the November elections. If the left wins, it’s the end of the U.S. as we knew it. But even if President Trump is re-elected and the Republican Party maintains the Senate, it is only a matter of time until the decline of your nation reaches full speed. “Keep America Great” and “Law and Order” sound pretty hollow at this moment. The current turmoil has dragged down much of America’s greatness in the eyes of the world. At some stage, the so-called Democratic Party will gain full majority and then – rest assured – the transient process to Neanderthal will swallow America. If enough of you don’t want that, rise up, get your acts together, and stop that from happening. If too many of you don’t give a damn:
Good-bye USA.
ENCHANTÉ – ME 2 AT THE HULLAHOO BAR
It’s Friday night and Fred, Frank, Tom, and Ted are drinking beer with their regular friends at the Hullahoo bar, talking about the issues of the Me Too Movement. Cindy sitting across from Frank yells, “Me 2 is taking over boys. It’s role reversal. You better take notice.”
“Scary, Cindy, I did,” Frank says. “I stopped dating for fear of being broadsided or perhaps even castrated.”
“Right,” Ted added. “Broads do that nowadays. What are we going to do about love?”
“You guys are all babes in the woods,” Marlene scoffs. “Me 2 wants real men that do not assault or belittle women like calling us broads.”
“Oh yeah?” howls Frank. “You mean those real men with their naked torsos trunked on romance novels?”
“All written by women, including erotica,” Ted adds. “The three Ls: Love, lust, and lasciviousness. Are they also members of the Me 2 movement?”
“You’re hallucinating,” Marlene’s friend Melissa says. “Me 2 women have their own sense of self-esteem, even if they write erotica.”
“Ha, ha,” laughs Fred. “If I write an erotica novel, I’ll be called a pervert and if you do it, it’s called art. Call that a double standard.”
“When I walk the corridors in my office,” Ted says, “I look straight ahead now and say nothing anymore to the girls passing for fear of being accused of sexual harassment.”
“I won’t open the door for any woman anymore either,” Tom says. “For fear of being told off that she can do that herself. And when I am in the elevator, I won’t even try to let the woman exit first. I rather travel up or down to the next floor. For fear of being told that I’m making inappropriate advances.”
“Me 2 is a serious movement,” Cindy buts in. “You guys shouldn’t make fun of it. It responds to a longtime abuse of women in the workplace or domestic violence, and nobody did a damn thing about it. Thanks to the Me 2 Movement they do now.”
“We’re not denying that, Cindy,” Fred argues. “To the contrary, we agree and I personally am glad that this screwy matter has been put in the limelight. But Me 2 has thrown a wrench into the courting ritual. It’s like lighting a firecracker on the Notre Dame square with all this social media hype. Ever seen male pigeons pursuing female pigeons? Aren’t you guys denying nature’s procreative role?”
“Humans are rational people, animals are not,” Melissa says, raising her voice. “Men have been denying female rights for far too long.”
“You say,” Frank exclaims. “What about those female empresses that sent their lovers to the gallows?”
“Kathryn Dunoova, that French movie star, also said Me 2 had gone too far,” Tom says. “You’re throwing your loverboy away with the bathwater.”
“It’s Catherine Deneuve, you butthead,” called out Emily from the other side of the counter. She pretended she could speak French. “She later apologized for critiquing Me 2.”
“Okay,” Tom responds. “Maybe she did. But she and some ninety-nine other famous French women said the usual male courting rituals shouldn’t be called sexual harassment, and that’s what’s happening here in the US. It’s killing our romance. I guess French women are different from their American species. I’ll be moving to Paris.”
“I was going to propose tomorrow at the top of the Empire building,” Ted announces. “But for fear of being laughed at I may just as well throw myself over the railing.”
“Why should you guys have the exclusive right to propose?” Emily wonders. “Why can’t I propose? Waiting for someone nice to propose is very frustrating for women.”
“I’m sure that most of us men were already proposed to in bed by our girlfriends after our cummy, whispering let’s get married,” Frank says. “Most of us would be too embarrassed to say ‘no.’ So Emily, get your act together.”
“Would you like me to try?” Emily asks, her eyes full of seduction.
“Are you proposing?” Frank asks, among loud laughter.
Emily comes around, pushing his friend Fred off his seat and sits next to Frank. “Yes, I am,” she says. “Pay me a drink to seal it.”
The Hullahoo friends raise their glasses, cheering, “Long live Me 2!”
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ENCHANTÉ’S TRAVEL ALBUM – CAMEROON SPECIAL: THE STREET CHILDREN
THE LOST CHILDREN – LES ENFANTS PERDUS – ENFANTS DE LA RUE or STREET CHILDREN OF AFRICA.
Hélène Pieume, left on the picture below, was an essential Cameroonian staff member of our Transport Sector Project team. She worked in the World Bank’s Resident Mission in Yaounde, Cameroon’s capital, and after retirement, she started GivHope in 2014 in Yaounde to keep orphaned children off the street and help impoverished families find employment and a better way of life.
Their mission: One child, one family, one community …
Pieume Helene, who Founded GivHOPE in 2014 believes GivHOPE project falls in straight line within the framework of government’s guidance and the strategy set up in the Cameroon’s Vision Document for Development Horizon 2035 on the one hand and the Cameroon Strategy Document for Growth and Employment 2035, (DSCE) on the other.
GivHOPE wants to break the silence and takes the lead in the fight against social exclusion of street children by the implementation of local initiatives for assistance to these socially vulnerable children, including via the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
Their website is at http://givhopeafrica.org/
Whoever has visited African cities has seen little children roaming the streets begging, often led by ‘pimps’ to collect money for them, and growing up into criminality and hopeless poverty. They are driven to cities from all areas where war is waging or parents have stopped caring for them. GivHope is a wonderful undertaking to combat this abominable situation. State ministries are trying to address the fate of these children but the bureaucracy is not able to handle it all and private organizations must help. GivHope is doing that and has developed into a sustainable organization doing much good, succeeding in putting poor children in school and finding work for youngsters. Some pictures follow below.
Seed money for micro-enterprises from donations.
Hélène with “her” children.
Hélène discussing with her team.
‘Espérance’, a young girl, providing for herself and her child with a “carry out” cookery.
Young mother with children taken care of by Hélène at GivHope.
Hèléne with a young man successful in carpentry work.
Participants in GivHope showing credentials on how much they achieved.
GivHope can be reached on FaceBook under https://www.facebook.com/Givhopeafrica
You can donate on their website! All bits help to keep orphaned children off the streets and struggling families and single moms to find a rewarding employment using seed money from GivHope donations!