Yes This should have dropped yesterday....but it didn't....I will have my wife flay me with a wet noodle as punishment.
I heard this song playing on my "60's Gold" channel on my Sirius XM, on my way to work and it reminded me of my Dad, I don't know if I had covered this song before, but if I did, it was a long time ago. I remembered this song being on my Dads reel to reel recorder. It to me did showcase the 60's to me musically and it was to me considered a "bookend" song for the decade.
The image above is what most people think of when they hear this song, the peace, and love generation the counterculture had gone mainstream and it changed music forever. Now there are a few people like me and others like my Dad and others that were around during this time, when we hear the song, this is the image that we think of,
UH-1 (Huey) dropping men off on a mountain during an operation.
This song and a couple of others pretty much described the 60's to millions of people. The 60's was a revolution in music and massive social change and upheaval. We had several prominent people assassinated during this decade from the assassination of J.F.K which scarred the national psyche to the possibilities that might have been. From the death of M.L.K and finally Robert Kennedy. Those were the low points, the War in Vietnam was raging all over American television so the people were actually seeing "War" for the first time. To the high point of the moon landings in 1969 that helped ended the decade that changed America. I remember a comment my Dad made about this song, he had said that "Let The Sunshine In" described Vietnam...Depending on the season...Either no sun or too much, there were no half measures... "
"Medley: Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In (The Flesh Failures)" (commonly called "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In", "The Age of Aquarius" or "Let the Sunshine In") is a medley of two songs written for the 1967 musical Hair by James Rado and Gerome Ragni(lyrics), and Galt MacDermot (music), released as a single by American R&B group The 5th Dimension. The song peaked at number one for six weeks on the US Billboard Hot 100 pop singles chart in the spring of 1969. The single topped the American pop charts and was eventually certified platinum in the US by the RIAA. Instrumental backing was written by Bill Holman and provided by session musicians commonly known as the Wrecking Crew. The actual recording is something of a "rarity"; the song was recorded in two cities, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, then mixed together in the studio, afterwards.
The song listed at number 66 on Billboard's "Greatest Songs of All Time".
This song was one of the most popular songs of 1969 worldwide, and in the United States it reached the number one position on both the Billboard Hot 100 (for six weeks in April and May) and the BillboardAdult Contemporaries Chart. It also reached the top of the sales charts in Canada and elsewhere. Billboard ranked it as the No. 2 record overall for 1969.
The lyrics of this song were based on the astrological belief that the world would soon be entering the "Age of Aquarius", an age of love, light, and humanity, unlike the current "Age of Pisces". The exact circumstances for the change are "When the moon is in the seventh house, and Jupiter aligns with Mars." This change was presumed to occur at the end of the 20th century; however, astrologers differ extremely widely as to when. Their proposed dates range from 2062 to 2680.
Astrologer Neil Spencer denounced the lyrics as "astrological gibberish", noting that Jupiter forms an astrological aspect with Mars several times a year and the moon is in the 7th House for two hours every day. These lines are considered by many to be merely poetic license, though some people take them literally.
A lot of corporations are still ate up with DEI, I call them "Zampolit Office" and to get promoted one would need to get the approval of the DEI office to make sure you are of acceptable political "flavor", either acceptable by checking off the correct boxes or being an "ally". Needless to say, one wonders why soo many straight white dudes are going into the trades. THis does have a long term effect, this will over generations will create a "underclass" of workers and a political class of "acceptables" unless there is a purging. Some companies have started, but most of them have not. I honestly believe that if a company is in a fight for survival, the DEI office and its many "activities will be cut soo fast because it isn't necessary for the company to survive. People are starting to move past all the drama from the "Summer of love(TM)" and the other "agitprop" that has infected the American workplace that the Chinese and Indians don't deal with.
There's a cage, made of polite smiles and soft words, being built around the honest person. If you've worked in any corporate positions, or if the company you work for has a one-sided corporate culture...you already know this.
You've most likely been in a position where you were demanded to affirm something you knew was false.
And when you hesitated? They called you cruel.
The Soviet machine is obsolete. The modern method of ideological conformity doesn't require heavy artillery or columns of infantry. Just employee handbooks and HR departments.
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This is the psychology of coercive kindness or "weaponized empathy" and understanding how it works is the first step toward refusing to be controlled by it.
The radicals have learned something that's very effective, raw force creates martyrs, but guilt? Guilt creates slaves.
When they demand that you "validate" an identity or a falsehood that contradicts truth and order, they are not appealing to your empathy. It's a loyalty test.
The belief itself is secondary or otherwise irrelevant. What matters is the act of submission...the moment you say something you do not believe because the social cost of honesty has been engineered to feel unbearable. They don't need to chain your hands by force.
You put them on yourself, and thank them for it.
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The compassionate tyrant is still a tyrant.
The moment you stop lying for them is the moment their power over you ends.
"Lo there do I see my father. Lo there do I see my mother and my sisters and my brothers. Lo there do I see the line of my people, back to the beginning. Lo, they do call to me, they bid me take my place among them, in the Halls of Valhalla, where the brave may live forever."
I have been called "Old Fashioned", a throwback to an age gone by, my mannerism and speech are of an age that doesn't exist anymore, and I am perfectly fine with that. Unlike the leftist indoctrinated kids and soiboi's of today, I and the people that I associate with know where we came from, we know what our parents did and our lineage help build a nation and sacrificed for her. This gives us a spine I hope my son can draw from if necessary if the time comes because he knows the family lineage also so he isn't one of the "lost souls" that permeates modern society.
I got this from the "Templer Mind"
There is a particular expression you learn to recognize if you spend enough time observing the men who populate the progressive left...not the strategists, not the ideologues with tenure and publishing deals, but the rank and file, the ones who show up to shout on cue.
It's the face of a man standing at the edge of something he cannot name, screaming so he doesn't have to listen to what rises from below.
Look past the slogans, the performative rage, and ironic detachment. What lives behind those eyes is not ideology. It's terror.
The terror of a man who suspects, in the marrow of his bones, that he is nothing...and that no amount of moral theater will make him something.
He's the victim of a spiritual crime committed across generations.
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The modern leftist is not born. He's manufactured. Not in a single act of malice, but through the patient, methodical demolition of every structure that once gave a man his bearings: the Father, the Faith, and the Family.
Three pillars.
Three points of orientation by which a man could locate himself in the cosmos.
When you tear these down You create a vacuum, and nature, as Aristotle observed, abhors a vacuum. So does the soul. The emptiness does not remain empty. It fills with something far worse than the silence of an unanswered question. It fills with dread.
"When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none.
Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished.
Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation." (Matthew 12:43-45)
This is the exact psychological mechanism by which a soul is hollowed out and then colonized by sin. The modern progressive man has had the old furniture removed...God, duty, lineage, purpose...and has been told that the empty room is liberation.
But the room doesn't stay empty. The seven worse spirits always arrive...right on schedule.
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He has been taught, from boyhood, that his ancestors were not builders but plunderers. That his instincts...to protect, to provide, to lead, and to fight...are not virtues, but pathologies requiring chemical and social correction.
That the God of his fathers is a fairy tale weaponized by the powerful, and that faith itself is a species of intellectual cowardice.
He has been instructed to destroy the Father in every sense: to reject paternal authority, to scorn patriarchal structures, and to sever the vertical thread that connects him to something above and something before.
But he hasn't become Nietzsche's Übermensch. He has become a ghost. He is a man in outline only, filled with nothing but the low hum of existential dread.
A man can live without comfort, without safety, without pleasure. But he cannot live without meaning. The void implodes. And when it does, He reaches with the desperate reflex of a drowning animal for anything that promises to fill the hole.
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The Regime, and by this I mean the interlocking apparatus of institutional power that governs not only policy, but also perception, does not fear the nihilism it has created.
It harvests it.
Consider this. A man with a purpose can't be steered. A man who answers to God has a North Star that no government program or corporate initiative can relocate.
A man who protects his wife and children has a concrete loyalty that supersedes an abstract allegiance to the State. A man rooted in a living tradition is a man with ballast.
Such a man is useless to this regime. Worse actually...he is an obstacle.
But the hollow man? The man who believes in nothing?
He is pure potential energy, a vessel waiting to be filled, a mercenary of the spirit who will fight with total commitment for whoever offers him the next dose of borrowed meaning.
He is not loyal. He is desperate. And desperation, properly channeled, is the most powerful force on earth.
They hand him a sword made of cardboard and point him at their enemies.
And because the emptiness inside him is so vast, so ravenous...he swings that cardboard sword with the ferocity of a man whose life depends on it.
Because it does. Not his physical life, but his psychic survival. Every ounce of his fanaticism is proportional to the abyss he is fleeing. He does not argue policy with hysteria because he has carefully weighed the evidence and arrived at a reasoned position.
He argues with hysteria because the argument is the anesthesia.
The moment the shouting stops, the moment there is no enemy to name and no cause to champion, he is back in that empty room at three in the morning. Back with the silence. Back with the void.
This is why you can't reason with him. You're not contending with a position. You're contending with a survival mechanism.
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The hollow man believes he is the Resistance. He wears the uniform of the revolutionary. He quotes the rhetoric of liberation. He sees himself as the spiritual heir of the barricade and the underground, the brave dissident speaking truth to power.
He's nothing of the kind. He's a foot soldier for the most powerful institutions on earth. His "revolution" is sponsored by every Fortune 500 company, endorsed by every intelligence agency, amplified by every major media platform, and taught as gospel in every prestigious university.
He marches in lockstep with HR departments, pharmaceutical conglomerates, global financial institutions, and the bureaucratic apparatus of the surveillance state...and he calls this subversion.
The real dissidents, in every age, are the ones the powerful seek to silence.
The man who builds a family against the economic incentives designed to prevent it.
The woman who embraces motherhood in a culture that treats it as a disease.
The priest who preaches the unchanging Gospel in a world that demands he update it quarterly.
These are the people the hollow man is deployed against.
He destroys his own heritage to pave the road for a monoculture that will erase every particular loyalty, every local tradition, every organic community that stands between the individual and the totalitarian State.
He's a nihilistic battering ram, swung against the gates of order so the wolves may enter.
I set this song as the ringtone for when my son calls me, I did this part of the post back in 2019 when he turned of age. Certain people to me get a special ringtone and this one is my Son's, LOL I set the ringtone the day he started driving.,
Well it is official, my son passed his drivers test and got a 100% on the driving practical. The driver instructor commented that this is the first time she ever gave out a 100% and he was in earshot, wow, talk about swelling his head. I guess all that driving we had him do paid off, he drove very confidently on the course and on the road. We are proud, but nervous. Egads...we will be establishing a " gofundme" for the insurance, lol.
I quickly took a picture of the score....
He is getting ready to depart for the first time by himself...setting up his music and other important stuff that is important for teenagers..
Here he is departing to go to the Boy Scout camp to work the requirements of his last merit badge before his Eagle project in August. Strange seeing my truck departing without me driving it....I was having momentary flashbacks of..
Well anyway, I contacted my insurance company USAA and officially added him as a licensed driver and my insurance from $2400 a year to $6000....Holy Chit..... I drive a 20 year old truck and the spousal unit drives a 10 year old Edge. Sheesh. We are checking into defensive driver and my son qualifies for the A&B grade discount, I am hopeful that this drops my insurance to a more manageable level. The Joys of living near the ATL.
I heard this song on the "70's" channel when I was driving to work and I vaguely remember this song when it first came out in 1978. It was a bit different than the disco that was still prevalent at this time. I thought the band had a lot of talent but this song was their only hit to make the billboard.
"Driver's Seat" is a 1978 song by the Welsh band Sniff 'n' the Tears that appears on their debut album, Fickle Heart. The band is considered a one-hit wonder as "Driver's Seat" was their only hit. The genesis of the song dates back to 1973 and a demo tape recorded for a French record label by singer/guitaristPaul Roberts for the band Ashes of Moon. However, that band broke up and, at the suggestion of drummer Luigi Salvoni, Roberts re-formed it as Sniff 'n' the Tears with guitarists Laurence "Loz" Netto and Mick Dyche and bassist Nick South. They shopped the demo tape and signed with the small Chiswick label in 1977.
According to Paul Roberts, "Driver's Seat" isn't about driving, but rather "fragmented, conflicting thoughts and emotions that might follow the break-up of a relationship". One of the key decisions in arranging the song was to start with drums and additively bring in other instruments. "Driver's Seat" reached number 15 on the AmericanBillboard Pop Singles chart in the fall of 1979, and reached the top 10 in The Netherlands in November 1980.
Virginia’s election of alleged “moderate” Democrat, Abigail Spanberger, proves a couple of things. First, given her immediate actions—what Meghan McCain described as an effort to “turn Virginia into Minneapolis”—it confirms there are no such things as “moderate” Democrats anymore. CIAbigail has already moved to unwind many of the reforms of former governor Youngkin, including ending hand-counting ballot safeguards and reinstating discriminatory DEI policies. Second, her victory once again illustrates how concentrated urban populations rule over rural counties in statewide elections, regardless of how divergent their values, needs, or ways of life may be.
In dense urban and suburban environments, daily life is mediated by public systems so thoroughly that their presence becomes invisible. Garbage disappears on schedule, utilities are reliable, grocery stores are minutes away, and commercial centers appear as if by market magic—though many are in fact the result of tax abatements, subsidies, zoning favoritism, and government-directed incentives. When most necessities are delivered through a mix of public provision and state-assisted development, and the most effort required is dragging a wheelie bin to the curb, it is hardly surprising that residents come to see larger government as natural, benevolent, and even indispensable. By contrast, someone living a hundred miles from a major airport or a full-service hospital experiences government very differently and understandably struggles to see why taxes must rise to support services that feel distant, unnecessary, or irrelevant to daily survival.
This divide maps cleanly onto modern electoral geography. As population density increases, so does support for liberal, government-centered policies, a pattern visible in virtually every election heat map. The closer one lives to a dense urban core, the more likely one is to support expansive government programs; the farther away, the more skepticism tends to grow. When people spend their entire lives in environments where government quietly handles problems they never have to think about, independence and private enterprise begin to appear risky, even threatening. They assume that without government, those services might disappear and that they would, for the first time, must pay for them directly, manage them personally, or go without.
The rural counties and the urban areas, meanwhile, have profoundly different philosophies, ideologies, and views of religion—and yet they are regulated, taxed, and governed as if they were interchangeable with the urban cores that dominate statewide elections. This tension is no longer abstract or theoretical. We see it in counties openly discussing secession, state realignment, or outright political separation as a means of escaping governance they no longer recognize as legitimate.
I’ve written before about how Congress actively assisted West Virginia’s break from Virginia over slavery in 1861 and awarded it statehood in 1863. Setting aside how legally questionable and non-reproducible that episode would be today, the fact that people are even contemplating similar ideas tells you something is broken. The current arrangement does not feel particularly fair and it certainly does not feel representative.
The U.S. Constitution reflects a uniquely American insight: democracy without geography becomes domination. The Founders never believed that raw headcounts alone produced legitimacy. They believed legitimacy came from distributed consent across real, distinct communities. That is why they created the Electoral College to elect presidents, split Congress into two chambers, apportioned House seats by population, and granted each state equal representation in the Senate. These were not accidents or compromises born of ignorance; they were deliberate structural restraints on the tyranny of concentrated majorities. Modern states abandoned that insight—not because it was wrong, but because it was inconvenient.
I’ve been thinking about this problem for nearly twenty years. Every presidential cycle, when a handful of urban counties like Fulton County in Georgia or the swamp-infested counties of Northern Virginia, effectively determine who sits behind the Resolute Desk, I revisit it, then drop it again. Since the disastrous election of 2020, however, I’ve been more deliberate, jotting down possible alternatives to the permanent domination of rural counties by cities—domination that exists solely because cities have more headcount. I keep arriving at the same conclusion: the problem is not democracy itself, but the absence of federalism inside the states.
Out of roughly ten mechanisms I examined, three stand out as serious possibilities, all would require amendments to state constitutions. I proposed several frameworks to ChatGPT and Grok, told them to use Virginia as a crash-test dummy, and then compared, synthesized the outputs and ranked by legal survivability.
The most legally durable option would be a dual-majority requirement for statewide offices. Under such a system, a candidate would need to win both the statewide popular vote and a majority of counties or regions. This does not dilute urban votes or give rural areas veto power. It simply requires geographic legitimacy in addition to numerical superiority. Cities could still decide elections—but only if their preferences were shared, at least in part, beyond their own boundaries. Courts have historically been more comfortable with outcome-qualification rules than with systems that directly weight votes, making this approach especially resilient.
A closely related option would replace counties with regions. Virginia is already functionally divided into recognizable geographic blocs—Northern Virginia, Hampton Roads, Central Virginia, the Shenandoah Valley, Southwest Virginia. Requiring a candidate to win the statewide vote and carry a minimum number of regions would prevent a single metro area from imposing its will on the rest of the Commonwealth, while avoiding the legal vulnerability of treating tiny rural counties as coequal to Fairfax or Loudoun. It forces candidates to assemble geographically broad coalitions rather than relying on one dense population center.
The most philosophically honest, though legally ambitious, solution would be a state-level electoral college. Counties or regions would function as political units, each receiving a combination of population-based electors and a small fixed allotment recognizing territorial status. Statewide offices would be decided by electoral votes rather than raw totals. This mirrors the logic of the federal system and acknowledges that states are composed of communities, not just aggregates of individuals. Properly designed, with population remaining the dominant factor, such a system could survive judicial scrutiny, though it would require careful drafting and political courage.
While I personally prefer the last option, none of these reforms would guarantee conservative victories, nor are they meant to. Their purpose is not partisan advantage but political relevance—rural Virginians would not be asking to rule cities; they are asking not to be ruled by them. Federalism was never about efficiency. It was about legitimacy. When fundamentally different ways of life are governed as if they are interchangeable, resentment becomes inevitable and consent erodes.
We see the same dynamic play out at the county level elsewhere. I lived in Park City, Utah, in Summit County, which is still (despite the sprawl) majority farm and ranch land. Yet the county is effectively ruled by Park City rather than the county seat of Coalville. Scale changes, but the problem remains the same.
Virginia is beginning to experience that reality firsthand. The real question is not whether these mechanisms are sufficiently democratic. It is whether a system that permanently subordinates one culture, one economy, and one way of life to another can plausibly claim to be representative at all.
If geography no longer matters, then consent soon won’t either.
