A Song for the New Year

A lonely impulse of delight/Drove to this tumult in the clouds

I’d rather be playing the guitar.

Left to my own devices, I'd spend my time solely in aesthetic pursuits. I'd probably be in the studio, now - trying to nail a difficult guitar part, maybe despairing that I can't sing for shit. It'd be a safer life. In the words of Mark Knopfler: 'Maybe get a blister on your little finger/Maybe get a blister on your thumb'.

But that's not how I can roll. I feel like the ‘movers’ in Money For Nothing 'we gotta install microwave ovens/Custom kitchen deliveries/We gotta move these refrigerators/We gotta move these color TV's'.

Instead of trying to record songs as best as I can, I am left to be yet another special forces operative in the Information War. We all prepared extensively for that in the two years of the Q operation, when we developed our skills and we learned as much as we could before the Four Horseman of Apocalypse were unleashed upon us.

Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, by Viktor Vasnetsov. Death, Famine, War, and Conquest; the Lamb is at the top.

To see the western world unraveling before our very eyes is the stuff nightmares are made of - only much worse, because we know it's real.

The war is taking place in the midst of our communities.

At the same time, we have to fight for redemption defying incredible odds, and in the midst of the people who are not awake, therefore are pawns to 'the system'. Worse, they laugh at us on their way to self-destruction. And these NPCs, these 'normies', these people under the 'mass formation psychosis' are, many times, people we love and cherish and respect. It's not a different tribe that we can objectify and set them apart from us. They’re us.

So it's a battle unlike any other that any of us ever faced. Luckily, we don't have to do it on our own, we have the memory and the example of our betters, of our distinguished forefathers. For my American friends, that reference mostly amounts to 'the greatest generation' of WW2 and the 'Founding Fathers'. Which are cool templates, no doubt about it. But since I have a different heritage, maybe I can bring something new to the conversation.

Gualdim Pais statue in Tomar, Portugal.

Most of my ancestors came from the Iberian Peninsula, a part of Europe that I think has a an interesting example to offer. In 711, North African Moors crossed the Mediterranean and invaded the unprepared Gothic Kingdoms. In just seven years, Islam had conquered most of today's Spain and Portugal.

It took the Christian native Iberians not 7 years, and not 70 years to re-conquer their land. It took them way more than 7 hundred years to do so. It was a multi-generational effort. Let that sink in.

To achieve that, Spain and Portugal had to invent themselves - and, as importantly - Christendom  had to reinvent itself.

It would be too long for our purpose here to talk about how Crusaders digging in the ruins of Salomon's temple led to the rebirth of Europe and of Christianity - but it suffice to say that it took a concerted effort of a multitude of leaders and heroes during 8 centuries to expel the Moors from their last European foothold in Granada.

The Conquest of Granada.

Good things are worth fighting for. I am also aware that this may not be over in my lifetime.

I think we need a song for the new year. Remember Roger Water's line: 'Did you exchange/a walk-on part in a war/for a lead role in a cage?' I did not.

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There is a cope from many anons that I must distance myself from: it's the idea that the outcome of the Information War is already written, our victory is locked in, guaranteed - and imminent.

I don't believe any of that. Ultimate victory is guaranteed only in the sense of our immortal soul - not in our earthly struggles. At the same time, I do believe in miracles.

W. B. Yeats

Nor law, nor duty bade me fight/Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,/A lonely impulse of delight/Drove to this tumult in the clouds

I leave you friends with a poem by WB Yeats about war.

An Irish Airman foresees his Death

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I know that I shall meet my fate

Somewhere among the clouds above;

Those that I fight I do not hate,

Those that I guard I do not love;

My country is Kiltartan Cross,

My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,

No likely end could bring them loss

Or leave them happier than before.

Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,

Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,

A lonely impulse of delight

Drove to this tumult in the clouds;

I balanced all, brought all to mind,

The years to come seemed waste of breath,

A waste of breath the years behind

In balance with this life, this death.