STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC

This article was first posted on Straight Line Logic on Memorial Day, 2015. It will be published every Memorial Day for as long as SLL continues as a website.

You don’t fight for your country, you fight for your government.

The Golden Pinnacle, by Robert Gore

On Memorial Day, America remembers and honors those who died while serving in the military. It is altogether fitting and proper to ask: for what did they die? Do the rationales offered by the military and government officials who decide when and how the US will go to war, and embraced by the public, particularly those who lose loved ones, stand up to scrutiny and analysis? Some will recoil, claiming it inappropriate on a day devoted to honoring the dead. However, it is because war is a matter of life and death, for members of the military and inevitably civilians, that its putative justifications be subject to the strictest tests of truth and the most probing of analyses.

Millions have marched off to war believing they were defending the US, which implies the US was under attack. Yet, setting aside for a moment Pearl Harbor and 9/11, US territory hasn’t been invaded by a foreign power since the Mexican-American War (arguably—Mexico claimed the territory it “invaded” was part of Mexico), or, if the Confederacy is considered a foreign power, the Civil War. That war ended a century-and-a-half ago, yet every US military involvement since has been justified as a defense of the US. That has gradually attenuated, in a little noted slide, to a defense of US “interests,” which is something far different.

Reality recognition or nuclear nihilism?

The world is threatened by a blockade more deadly than Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. That blockade is the refusal among the West’s ruling class to allow entry of any thoughts not conforming to their prejudices, slogans, and unattainable objectives. Their minds are more tightly sealed than Hormuz or Bab-el-Mandeb ever has been. In their credentialed arrogance they preen about their intelligence. They are fools repeatedly rushing in where no angel would tread.

If President Trump’s Iran adventure represents what now passes for his and his administration’s mental processes, the U.S. and the world are in grave danger. This fiasco in progress has bypassed every marker of intellectual proficiency. It offers no cognizance of history, geography, or military reality, no recognition of past mistakes, no lessons learned, no acknowledgement that their may be things about which its perpetrators are ignorant. It’s bereft of elementary common sense, much less wisdom tempered by experience and humility.

Trump is not playing with a full deck. Not only are his mental processes visibly deteriorating, but he’s morally compromised in every way possible. His abject servility to Netanyahu, Israel, and the American Jewish lobby may well be due to their ruthless blackmail. He is leading the U.S. to humiliation and defeat that will spell the end of the last vestiges of its failing empire.

THE GRAY RADIANCE DESCRIPTION, CHAPTER ONE

THE GRAY RADIANCE AMAZON LINK

That fall may come to be regarded as the first phase of the Age of Chaos. Many of us will be probably be alive to see the culmination of this first phase, but the entire Age of Chaos will probably play out long after we’re all dead. An empire must have the ability to expand its dominion and to subjugate the people within it. Both expansion and subjugation have become problematic.

Simplicius just justified a monthly or annual subscription. See:

All Hell Set to Break Loose? IRGC Promises Historic Devastation After Khamenei Confirmed Killed by Israeli-US

Bob

My friends call me Bob. They also call me Robert. Either one’s okay, friend.

Back to work.

There’s nothing so important that it can’t wait for the cat to get out of the way of your computer screen.

I’ve had six or seven careers. I lost my resume.

Sometimes I get so excited about having something to write that I forget to write it down.

The Bible has some nifty aphorisms.

So does Charley Harper.

So does Oscar Wilde.

Shakespeare had a thing or two to say, but it’s in English.

What’s going to happen when you start driving?

Ode to Joy has never failed to lift my spirits.

The best medium for the Internet is material designed to disappear in two days. Unfortunately, this page is designed to disappear in two minutes.

You can be imprisoned for just about anything, but a smile is pretty low risk.

If you go through life without someone thinking you’re crazy, you’re doing something wrong.

Things aren’t going to turn out as predicted.

It’s only taken 67 years for to slow down.

How do I know when it’s time to stop working? When the cat rubs against my legs. How do I know when it’s time to keep working? When the cat rubs against my legs.

You don’t have to answer the phone just because it has a ring-tone you like.

Infinite mystery: cats—women—God

It’s short as a syllable, long as a book. No matter where you travel; it’s the only way to go.

Copyright is God’s joke on the Internet.

Some of this material appears in prior work. Some of it will appear in future work. I’ve hired a high-dollar lawyer to sue myself for infringement. Some of it is Mom’s, but I don’t think she’ll sue.

I recently suspended Straight Line Logic from 1/15 to “probably 2/8,” because of circumstances attendant on the death and memorial service of my mom, Ella Mae Warner. I had a number of things I had to do for the service, including write her eulogy. I was mourning her passing, and I didn’t feel that I had the time or the energy to post on SLL every night. I posted a video of the service and my eulogy yesterday.

Not posting every night became an unexpected bright spot during this time. My schedule is such that I read alternative media, my main news source, early in the morning. I have a day job. It takes 11/2 to 2 hours after dinner, seven days a week, to cull from my alternative media reading what I consider the best articles and post them on SLL. During my hiatus, I realized that nightly posting had become a grind. I’ve been doing it since 2014, except for an occasional short vacation, and it’s been a pleasure getting my evenings back.

Deaths of close loved ones often prompt reexamination of one’s own life. I am 67. My mom’s passing has led me to ask the question: if it’s a grind, why do it? Life’s too short.

Writing my own articles has never been a grind, and I will continue to post them on Straight Line Logic. However, my pace of late has been about one a month, and I don’t anticipate that changing. It may even slow. I’m finding it increasingly tedious and difficult to try to cut through the vitriol, hypocrisy, lies, and now, AI-generated lies, to write original and worthwhile articles.

Many of my regular nightly readers will be disappointed, but I believe they’ll understand. It’s time for a change.

Check back once in a while for my articles. As in the past, they will also be posted on other websites if the people running them so choose.

Thank you.

Robert

The YouTube video of my mom’s service. For an extraordinary video-within-a video, put together by my brother-in-law, 47:05.

My eulogy.

Mom

Mom took a memoir writing class from 2009 until 2011, and excerpts from her stories are in this eulogy. What better way to convey her life than through her own words?

I was born in Silverton Colorado on July 17, 1937.

I am the third child of Edna May Corlett Michael and Enos Samuel Michael (Shorty), and the baby sister of Frederick William Michael (Freddy) age 5, and Clarence Richard Michael (Dickie) 15 months old.

Mom’s dad, Shorty, was 5 feet, 2 inches tall, but he was the tallest person in his family. He had a seventh-grade education and began his career as a hard-rock miner when he was 15. He married Edna in 1932 and they divorced in 1939, when Mom was two.

Daddy was granted custody of us kids. I asked if Edna had fought for custody. When he told me no, I cried. I wanted to be wanted by her. I have often wondered what my life would have been like with both a mother and father, even if they were divorced.

It was the tail end of the Great Depression, and Shorty had three children to support. He couldn’t bring them with him to the mining camps, so he had to find people he could pay to take them in. Sometimes the children were split up. When Mom was four, the father she had rarely seen came for her and Freddy, to take them to a new lady in a new town, Winnemucca, in northeastern Nevada.

Daddy told us that . . . we were going to live with a lady called Mrs. Mayo.

I’m always reminded of May Mayo whenever I hear the phrase ‘cruel and unusual punishment.’

Mom wasn’t exaggerating. The slightest transgression got a whack from Mrs. Mayo’s razor strap. Backtalk, as she called it, got a slap across the mouth. There were endless chores.

Unless Daddy was visiting, we were served small portions that never filled us up and were never allowed to ask for seconds. Usually, we had to sit on the floor behind the stove and wait until the grownups were finished before we could eat. . . . I stole food every chance I got.

When she was seven-years old, tragedy struck that would literally stay with Mom her entire life. Brother Freddy had run away and Brother Dickie had joined Mom at Mrs. Mayos’. Dickie had a friend, Robert Woods, who had made a bow and arrow from a willow branch. Mom wouldn’t let Woods and Dickie in the house, trying to stop them with a broom.

When I wouldn’t budge, he pulled the string back and let the arrow fly. I felt a piercing pain in my left eye and it was wet when I put my hand up.

My mother, Ella Mae Warner, passed away 12/22. Her funeral is 2/5. I am doing the eulogy. I have been handed a gift from God. My mom led an incredible life, and one of the things she did was take a memoir class. Her collected stories are around 500-700 pages. I had read some of them. Now I am reading each one, word by word . . . and rereading many of them. I know a great story when I see one. This one is beyond that, and well-written to boot. There’s no way I can do this justice if I don’t take this time. My mom is actually writing the eulogy, because much of it will be from her memoirs. I’ll do the best I can to keep up. I’ll post her eulogy when I get back. The service may be videotaped; my sister is making that decision. Here is the announcement I sent out:

My mom, Ella Mae Warner, passed away on December 22, 2025. She was born July 17, 1937 in Silverton, Colorado, the daughter of Enos and Edna May Michael. She had two brothers, Fred and Dickie, who have both passed away. She married my father, Ray Gore, in 1956. I was born in 1958 (after which, we moved to Los Alamos), my sister Judi in 1960, and my brother Jim in 1962.

Mom was a full-time mother for many years. She started a successful business in our home teaching the women of Los Alamos sewing techniques (she was an excellent seamstress). Later, she worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory and at several LANL contractors.

Mom and dad divorced in 1983. In 1995, mom married Charley Warner. They lived in Rio Rancho, New Mexico. Charley died in 2007. On Thanksgiving, 2023, mom fell and broke her hip. She was unable to regain mobility and moved into a nursing home. She died peacefully at the nursing home.

A memorial service will be held Thursday, February 5, 10 a.m. at Rio Rancho United Methodist Church, 1652 Abrazo Rd NE, Rio Rancho, NM 87124. In lieu of flowers, please donate to Watermelon Ranch in Rio Rancho (www.wmranch.org) in memory of Ella Mae Warner. That is the no-kill animal shelter where mom got Yoda, her beloved dog. My brother and his wife, Cyndie, have been caring for Yoda and brought her to the nursing home to visit mom almost every weekend.

Everyone who knew my mother knows how much we are going to miss her. We hope you will be able to attend the service.

Robert

h/t The Burning Platform

T.L. Davis has a refreshing habit one finds occasionally in the alternative media but not often enough. When confronted with facts that admit of alternative interpretations, or when facts are ambiguous, he says so and argues accordingly. I’ve known him personally for a long time. He has strong views, many of which I agree with, some of which I don’t, but the basic intellectual integrity always comes through. I repost most of his articles, and he’s cited a couple of mine. From Davis at tldavis.com:

Sometimes it isn’t what is being said that’s important, but the volume of the message that tells the truth. From out of almost nowhere, the X message from liberals is that somehow the actions of ICE are totalitarian and dystopian, but when the FBI came after grandmothers praying in front of the capitol on January 6th, that wasn’t. They still call January 6th an insurrection, knowing that it wasn’t. This is all media hype that the left and bots have been able to manufacture for a long time and it works, if the point is to destabilize the nation, pit one group against another.

One cannot take these “people” (some of them are not) seriously, not because they have a different opinion, but because their opinions are guided by politics, not principle. I don’t like what ICE is doing in Minneapolis at every step, but they’re doing their jobs and when you have animated, brainwashed useful idiots all over the streets every day, there’s liable to be conflict and errors made. None of the left is calling for a pause in demonstrations to keep people safe, they are increasing the pressure to create mistakes. When people will not show proof of citizenship, knowing that ICE is there to determine and arrest illegals, that’s interference. There’s a thin line and it’s determined by the circumstances, this volatile situation is one of those circumstances when it changes.

Saying that, I am not likely to provide proof of citizenship on demand, or provide ID on a whim, but then, I’m not in Minneapolis during a surge of ICE agents with the intent of ridding the United States of illegals who have been defrauding the US Government and particularly taking my tax dollars and sending them to Somalia. I am more willing to cooperate there, where I will be aiding them by establishing my identity. That does not extend to being randomly pulled over on the street, however.

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