In Sergio Leone's cinematic masterpiece Once Upon a Time in the West, one of the scenes that has always stuck with me is when the character of Morton ('choo choo' man) comes to see Henry Fonda's character 'Frank' in the rocky hills dotting the landscape in the environs of the story location. I won't rehash it here, but suffice it to say that it is a psychological slaughter: at the end of it, Frank has enunciated the supremacy of violence over money and influence, and it is all capped off with Frank kicking choo choo's crutches out from under him and dismissing him contemptuously with "I could squash you like a wormy apple."

'Wormy apple' is an apt metaphor for the United States at this time. Contemporaneous with its founding, George Washington could write with complete accuracy: With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. Today, it would be just as accurate to write: "With the barest shades of similarity, you share neither the same religion, nor manners, nor habits, nor political principles." Washington's Farewell Address is a sobering and illuminating read. In it, he anticipates just about every ill that has befallen the nation since that time, except for the most important one: the abandonment of Christianity. Knowing that the Constitution was written for a Christian people by Christians and that Christianity was the lifeblood of the nation, he would know that there was no redressing such a grievous blow. We've come to the point where the very name of the country is all but risible, for while all virtues have waned, the only element which could be said to be a uniting one that has grown amongst its people for the last seven decades or so, is the zeal for 'freedom,' which unpacked amounts to little more than the following:

• To live life as one chooses unmoored from morality, history, and tradition: to live according to one's whims.
• To be entertained from sunup to sundown with the only interruption being the activities required to the filling of one's pocket¹I am not here disparaging industry as a whole, nor even industry that has as one of its ends comfort and the enjoyments that come from honest labor. What I am disparaging is labor that has as its sole end the ease and comfort of one's self and family. This civilization was not built by and cannot be sustained by such..

The worms devouring what used to be the 'apple of the eye' of the entire world, are the various pathologically self-absorbed groups that have gained the ascendency while most Americans were glued to and distracted by their various entertainments and hobbies. The groups that come immediately to the fore as having had the most pernicious impact upon the very fabric of the nation are the sexual deviants (homosexuals, transvestites, and their seemingly endless variants across the spectrum of sin), misogynistic women whose soulless purpose in life is to ensure that their 'right' to murder the consequence of their gender is guaranteed, and the racists who abhor excellence and want to 'equitably' dismantle it in the name of a non-existent democracy in order to, as Will Durant put it, return to "a condition which they idealize by recalling its equality and forgetting its poverty." The reader can probably add to this list. All of these worms were in essence given an open invitation by ostensible Christians who were swept up by the same pomps as everyone else and who left a gigantic moral vacuum in the wake of their dereliction of their Christian duty.

If it weren't for the many strengths that we inherited from our betters of previous generations, we would right now, be under the boot of any number of oppressive foreign powers. It is only what was bequeathed to us by past generations that surely keeps our enemies at bay, although it must be said that our enemies just as surely recognize that absent the mass and gravity of the military bequeathed to us, that they would be able to kick our crutches out from under us and crush us like a wormy apple. In prior generations, the phrase was 'better dead than red.' If China were to issue the following ultimatum to the antisocial automatons²'social justice warriors' currently inhabiting our halls of power:

Can anyone doubt, given the general moral and intellectual state of the government of the United States as it is of this writing, that capitulation would occur within 12-14 hours? For the new freedom lovers have neither a concept nor clue of the meaning of words like freedom, nor truth, nor justice, nor bravery, nor heroism, nor sacrifice, nor art, nor beauty, and the new creed, if one were enunciated, would be "better red than dead."

What brought worms and apples to my mind today is a discussion that I was having with some colleagues and friends about the timing of the DOJ's Special Counsel Report by Robert Hur that is dated February 5, 2024, but which wasn't released until February 8, 2024³I'm not sure of the actual date it was published on the justice.gov website. and the subsequent almost wholly unprecedented move of putting Joe Biden in front of a microphone with what appeared to be unscripted questions, a comparatively short time to prepare him, and perhaps most critically, no one to interrupt the conference and help him to shuffle off of the stage once the questions became substantive. If there is a plan to shoe somebody else onto the ballot as the democrat candidate, the release of the report and the embarrassing press conference that followed hard upon its heels would certainly be conducive towards that end.

Of course, the worms could care less whether it's Joe Biden or some other iniquitous actor: all that matters is that the lack of morality and principle be maintained. To take a recent example of wormy behavior: can anyone imagine that any of those who are currently getting their student debt paid off are going to experience a moral crisis in the midst of having their hands in the wallets, purses, and bank accounts of the American taxpayer if they were to hear that these events were scripted? No, the first, perhaps only, question would be: "I can keep my hand where it is, right?"

Therefore, I would argue that even if it was scripted, it doesn't really tell us anything new, doesn't give any information that is of relevance to anyone who's been paying attention for more than the past few years, i.e. when the consequences of supporting leftist (i.e. 'liberal') policies and politicians became impossible to ignore by all but the most rabidly unhinged. It's akin to stating that that "well-meaning, elderly man" Kermit Gosnell actually murdered 40,001 babies as opposed to just 40,000. As concerns his guilt as a murderer, such information doesn't change his status one bit. Besides, for most Americans, a scripted ploy to shuffle Joe Biden off of the stage of politics permanently will hardly register as a blip on their screen, literally, and will soon be forgotten. Considering the rate at which disasters keep coming, even those who have been paying attention will find it all but impossible to keep up. So if it was orchestrated, it's par for the course for the worms and their largely democrat cohorts, and to them matters not at all, and as for any conservative worthy of the name, it will mean little as concerns the evaluation of the democrat party and what it represents.

That being said, although I am not aware of any hard evidence having been adduced to make a definitive conclusion, there certainly is substantial evidence that meets the standard of induction that would point to these events having been planned in the event Joe Biden is removed from office and replaced on the ballot:

• The default corrupt nature of the human heart.
• A long-established history of such Machiavellian ploys in the annals of human history.
• The immoral beliefs of the Democrat party.
• The history of immorality that is part and parcel of the Democrat party.
• The lifelong track record of the immorality of Joe Biden.
• The history of the immorality exhibited by those with whom Joe Biden chose to ally and surround himself.

In my discussion with my friends and colleagues, it came up that such a scripted stunt was incredibly obvious, and I remarked that 'incredibly obvious' is all that's needed to dupe the typical "freedom-loving 'murican" given their decades of amorality, outright immorality, or apathy. Reflecting just a bit more, I recalled countless conversations I've had with various freedom lovers over the years and how the stock response has typically been a blank stare⁴This has been especially the case when it came to calls for action or exerting some effort beyond uttering uninformed shoot-from-the-hip opinions on politics and morality., as though their minds are waiting for the jingle of their favorite television or streaming service program to start playing.

It was at that moment in my ruminations that John Stuart Mill’s Considerations on Representative Government came to my mind. I read it many years ago, and while there are numerous things that I took from it, only one has remained with me essentially verbatim (emphasis added):

Of course, "caring for his own ease and his own pocket" is common to all, but as regards the typical American (whether he professes belief in 'God' or not), it is, as Mill states, his only ambition. All of my observations have led me to conclude that this 'every man is an island' approach to citizenship in our republic means, for most Americans, irrespective of whether they are on the left or the right, that the only dialog (if it can be called that) which either side is able to muster is either hyperbolic insults and accusations or the trading of risus sophisticus barbs. This has been the case for many years and it shows, such that when the typical leftist and the typical republican discuss moral issues (i.e. politics) the well from which they draw is not only shallow, it is nearly dry and consists in material drawn from representative sources such as The Daily Show and the Babylon Bee respectively. Granted, I do appreciate the efforts of those who put together the satirical articles and videos such as those created by organizations like the Babylon Bee, but when they are the only 'food for thought' being consumed by ostensible conservatives, well, then you end up where we are. The descent will continue unabated absent a sufficient mass of true conservatives who can contend with the philodoxers with something other than superficial opinion, barbs, and platitudes.

If James Russell Lowell was right that the idol is the measure of the worshipper, it is also almost certainly true that the representatives in a representative government will be the measure of the citizenry and therefore, it then follows that Joe Biden and Co. are exactly what we 'the people' of the United States deserve. Putting aside the question of the legitimacy of the last election, only the most myopic amongst us⁵Yes, I recognize that that's the majority at this point. would believe that the current state of this country is due to the corruption and ineptitude of the last few years. Everyone who voted for the Carters, Clintons and, Obamas of the world, who have supported the disintegration of marriage, the usurpation of it by the sexually deviant, the murder of the unborn, the increase in the welfare state, the utter and total failure known as the 'war on drugs,' along with the endless wars abroad, all bear a heavy responsibility for the state in which this country finds itself. To be frank, the republican electees to the highest office in the land have been pretty weak as of late and contributed much to the problems that this country has as well: Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. come to mind immediately, but even Trump, while he accomplished some pretty tremendous things for the good of the country, exhibits manifold traits that are the antithesis of sobriety and probity. And yet, he's the best candidate at this time. For the majority of Americans who currently have inherited the privilege to vote, as well as the majority of their children one day to be entrusted with that privilege, the sounds from the alarm bells which have been and are ringing off of the wall have been seamlessly integrated into the practically ubiquitous and incessant soundtracks of our entertainments.