Patriot Realm

On February 23, 1945 atop of Mount Suribachi on the southern end of the island photographer Joe Rosenthal captured the image of six Marines, raising an unfurling American flag.

The Battle of Iwo Jima was a key conflict in the Pacific Theatre of World War II, fought between the United States Marine Corps and the Imperial Japanese Army. It was one of the bloodiest and most intense battles of the war.

Iwo Jima is a small volcanic island located 750 miles south of Tokyo, Japan. The U.S. sought to capture it because it had Japanese airfields that were launching attacks on American B-29 bombers. The island could serve as an emergency landing site for U.S. bombers returning from missions over Japan. It would provide a staging ground for the planned invasion of Japan.

Some time ago I bought a new kettle.   It was a whistling one and while it took a long time to come to the boil, it certainly yelled loudly that it had arrived.    Poor Shaydee didn't like the noise, so I retired it to the cupboard and I went back to my electric kettle. 

Noise has become something that many people no longer like.   Especially when it is shrill and high pitched.   Like so many young people today.   So many lefties love to screech.   Maybe, like my kettle, they are just letting off steam?    Perhaps they are frustrated because they are told what to think and not how to think. 

Have you ever wondered how and why the Youth of today are  holding rallies ,  their loud voices proclaiming all sorts of alarming predictions for the future.   Using people like Greta Thunberg to speak with fire and brimstone about the end of the world.   Pretending that young kindergarten  children  have important things to say about what they think the future holds.   Even using "old white  men " who should know better to say the end is nigh!      People who are easily conned into believing things that are untrue. 

Maybe young people today are like my kettle? Screaming and letting off steam because no one will let them have ambition and think for themselves. 

Moscow, 1930s. The Devil drops by for a visit. 

I first discovered this book in my youth. I have always had a fondness for old book stores and it was one day, back in the 70's that I was foraging through a load of dusty tomes in a Charlotte Street book shop in Brisbane that I sniffed out a new but strange book. Its title intrigued me. Perhaps as a young and somewhat optimistic young buck, I felt it might be a Russian version of " Lady Chatterley's Lover. "  I sauntered toward the cashier with a casual air and a look of student style indifference.  and paid a modest sum and chortled and sniggered smugly as I went back to my student digs to digest a night of Russian porn and the sensual delights of The Master and Margarita.  Oh, a good night ahead!

Yet what I had purchased for pennies turned out to be a life changing book for me and it had absolutely nothing to do with a gardener pulling weeds while guzzling bundy ginger beer and an older woman swooning at the sight of the gardeners youthful bare chest. I had been duped yet it was the best con I have ever fallen for. 

Mikhail Bulgakov was born in 1891 in Kiev, in present-day Ukraine. He first trained in medicine but gave up his profession as a doctor to pursue writing. He started working on The Master and Margarita in 1928 but due to censorship it was not published until 1966, more than twenty-five years after his death.

The book used crazy parable-like fantasy to jab at tyranny, yet he faced censorship and couldn’t publish freely in his lifetime. Even then, parody had its critics and censors. So what was it about?   How it ended up in a second hand bookstore in Brisbane for my humble self to grab is something I will never really be able to fathom. 

Political parties were meant to serve the people, but in today’s climate, they resemble warring tribes more than democratic institutions. Blind loyalty has replaced independent thought, and dissent is met with hostility, not debate.

Leaders demand absolute obedience, punishing those who stray from the party line.

But history warns us - when a tribe values survival over truth, it eventually turns inward, consuming its own members in a spiral of self-destruction. Are we watching the slow implosion of party politics, and if so, what comes next? 

We humans have always been tribal creatures. There’s even an idea called Dunbar’s Number, which suggests humans can only maintain meaningful relationships with about 150 people. Beyond that, social cohesion starts to break down, and factions form.