Okay, that headline was a joke. At least in terms of writing, I doubt I’m someone who will ever be called “speechless,” as the following will attest.
But since Covid has robbed my wife and I of the ability to wander around Europe for a while, I’ve not had much to contribute to the ol’ Bald Sasquatch. We find ourselves simply puttering around the house, getting her healed from knee replacement surgery, and keeping up on the news. Oh, and still trying to learn Portuguese, although that has slowed down quite a bit due to that damned Covid.
As to the news, the political meltdown in the US of course dominates much of the world’s headlines. After finding my ever-increasing liberal viewpoints burnished by residing in Europe, I’ve had an equally ever-increasing curiosity at to just how American conservatives –especially the religious ones– view liberal ideas, especially given how much better Europe works than the US in terms of creating a happy, healthy, and safe populace.
Well, I got a reply I could sink my teeth into. While I hate lumping large groups of people into one belief set, over the years I have found very strong consistency of thought amidst American conservatives. I find it to be very rare that I can mention any one of the many basic conservative tenets and find a conservative who doesn’t agree with it. So, while acknowledging the following commentary can’t possibly represent every individual conservative’s mindset, I post it in order to help any other liberals who have been, like me, confused as to why they think the way they do.
I have added my responses in red to the original post, but I also added the original post in its entirety without my comments at the bottom if you’d prefer to read it and make up your own mind as to what was said.
I should add that I do not know the writer; it was forwarded to me by a religiously conservative person who used it as a response to my questions. I will admit that since I do respect and love said person, I found myself extremely saddened by the amount of vitriol and propaganda-acceptance found in the following diatribe. Ultimately, that’s why I decided to share, because we need to understand both sides first before there can be any healing… and there needs to be healing in the US. Divisiveness gets us nowhere. Besides, I do believe in this quote:
“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
Anyway, it helped me to understand more, so I thought I’d share. I know it’s a lot of reading, and I promise, once we’re able to travel again, this will return as mostly a travelogue blog.
Here’s the diatribe with my responses:
Dear Liberal or never-Trumper:
If you are a Liberal or a never-Trumper who can’t stand Trump, and cannot possibly fathom why conservatives would ever vote for him, let me finally fill you in.
It’s not that we love Donald Trump so much. It’s that we can’t stand you. And we will do whatever it takes — even if that means electing a rude obnoxious unpredictable narcissist (your words not ours) to the office of President of the United States — because the only thing we find more dangerous to this nation than Donald Trump is you.
Right off the bat is a load of hooey. Liberals didn’t put Trump on the Republican ticket, Republicans did. You had a whole load of conservatives standing on that platform, and you chose the most amoral, uninformed, bigoted, sociopathic, inexperienced guy up there. One who sold you a bill of goods that he was some sort of great businessman, when there is a ton of information out there indicating otherwise, information you ignore because you made your bed out of old stinky sheets and now want to blame someone else for making your bed with them.
How is that possible you might ask? Well, you have done everything in your power to destroy our country.
•From tearing down the police, to tearing down our history, to tearing down our borders.
That’s quite a broad generalization, but here’s what you’re missing. People are upset at the continued abuse police around the country heap on people of color. Liberals tend to be empathetic toward all people, so, for example, even though I’m white, I cringe when I hear the thousands of stories of black people and how they feel when they get stopped even for a traffic violation in the United States. Some of the defunding-police stuff might be extreme, but what has the right done to corral the worst actors in the police force? They defend them, generally. So who is defending the black people? The only answer conservatives seem to give is “obey the law and everything will be fine.” Maybe fine for you, but not for a whole lot of people out there you apparently have no empathy for.
As for tearing down history, you might be well served to learn the actual history of the United States. It is one of genocide; it is estimated that as many as 95,000,000 to 114,000,000 Native Americans were killed as the US took over the land from them. It is one of misreported history; we are only just now learning how horrific Christopher Columbus was, and despite that, we still have a day named after him. I’m guessing the movement to change that day to Indigenous Peoples’ Day would be met with complete disdain from you, because the history you prefer was written by people like you.
We also of course credit him for “discovering” America, when not only did Leif Erikson beat him to it, but more importantly, millions of native Americans were already living there. So if you want to complain about “tearing down history,” you might be more accurate and call it “revisiting the history written by white men.”
And of course, the Constitution itself codified slavery. And then once slavery was over it dealt with the “negro problem” by assigning them 3/5ths of the value of a white man. The history of the Civil War has been consistently rewritten and downplayed by white men as something other than a fight over slavery. So yeah, it needs some revisiting, even if just by point of emphasis.
There is nothing wrong with learning true history, even if it’s ugly. I am pretty sure there’s not a German alive who hasn’t been thoroughly schooled in how incredibly awful their country was under Nazism. They do that to help prevent it from happening again, and because it’s important to learn the truth. If your definition of “tearing down history” really means “keep the real truth away from the people,” then you’re damn right we want to tear it down.
As to tearing down borders, it’s all about making immigration reasonable and fair, and understanding that many families are willing to risk life and limb to get away from a horrendous situation in many of those countries. When immigration processes take up to 20 years, you’re not giving a lot of people much in the way of alternatives. If sympathy for the poor and downtrodden is a crime of the liberals, then I’m sure most of them would gladly cry “guilty!” Yes, I’ve heard some Democrats talk about completely open borders, but I doubt that’s the sentiment of most liberals, as opposed to figuring out a way to make it fair.
•From systematically destroying our schools and brainwashing our kids into believing socialism is the answer to anything (despite being a failure everywhere), while demonizing religion and faith, and glorifying abortion, violence, and thug culture.
I guess I’d need to know better what you’re talking about in “destroying our schools.” Generally, liberals want education to be more accessible to everyone. It’s the conservatives that set it up so that our best and brightest end up starting life significantly in debt, while almost every other advanced country actually encourages higher education. Why are you blaming liberals for that? Making college excessively expensive was entirely a Republican action. Restricting funding for education in favor of a monstrously oversized military is another Republican action. And yet you want to blame it on Democrats? In fact, why don’t you look at the state of education levels in red states vs. blue states. I think that says it all.
As to Socialism being a failure everywhere, that’s another propaganda line many if not most conservatives swallow hook, line, and sinker. Despotic regimes on both the right and the left fail to make life better for their people. You can call those systems whatever you want, but they don’t define the centrist ideologies of European Socialism. In fact, Europe sits firmly to the left of the US and trounces it in every Quality of Life metric you can think of, from crime to health to education to, well, pretty much everything, including freedom. Do your research before you call Socialism a failure everywhere.
As to demonizing religion and faith, most liberals only chafe when any group insists that everyone believe that they do, where all other beliefs are ostracized, marginalized, or condemned. We get it that you think you believe in The One True Religion. So does everyone else who believes in their religion. What you don’t get is that any fair and reasonable society needs to respect all other beliefs, especially religious ones. It isn’t so much that liberals don’t respect Christianity, we just generally don’t respect the lack of respect that so many Christians give any other belief system.
Additionally, I, for one, am extremely tired of the persecution complex expressed by so many Christians who neglect to remember that they’ve already won so much systematic installation of religious belief in American institutions. “Under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, not when it was written. “In God we Trust” was added to money in 1956. These are not foundational beliefs from the start of the nation, in fact the founders did everything they could to prevent exactly that kind of thing from happening. Liberals prefer to be inclusive and sensitive to people of all beliefs, so forcing atheists, for example, to labor under the yoke of “You better believe in God, or you’re not a true American,” is simply not what America was founded upon. To put it another way, would you want to handle money that glorified Muhammad? Since I’m sure you wouldn’t, why do you think it’s okay for a country to make every citizen do that with your God?
I know of no liberal who glorifies abortion, violence, or thug culture. Liberals simply say, “I may or may not ever get an abortion myself, but I’m going to trust the mother to make up her own mind, and not force my beliefs on her.” And it’s not the liberals who have armed themselves to the teeth. In fact, it’s conservatives who spread the lie that Obama was buying up or confiscating all the ammunition, when it fact it was due to the increased purchases by conservatives who were terrified he was going to take away his guns, one of the many lies that never dissipates even though it never happens.
•From calling us racists every time we expect everyone of any skin color to follow our laws equally, to telling us that our “tolerance” of lifestyles we don’t agree with isn’t nearly enough — ironically all while lecturing us on hate speech.
If you’re white and well off, everything’s grand in the US. We can understand why you don’t want things to change. You’re at the top of the food chain! You have your health insurance, and you don’t fear for your life when you get stopped for a speeding ticket, and you’re not looked at with suspicion every time you walk into a store.
Let me ask you this, what has right-leaning America done to help right the wrongs of the past? What has it done to help black people rise up from poverty? Under right wing oriented leadership (even under Obama the US still leaned more right than most advanced democratic countries), blacks still only own TEN PERCENT of what whites do. After all these years of leaning right, how is this acceptable? How can that be called a fair system? Again, if you look past white-washed history, you can see how the country systematically kept its foot on the neck of people of color and the already downtrodden, and it’s something that continues to this day.
While you gaslight us about 52 genders, polyamory, grown men in dresses sharing public locker rooms with little girls, and normalize the sexualization of young children, you simultaneously ridicule us for having the audacity to wish someone a “Merry Christmas” or hang a flag on the 4th of July, stand for the national anthem, or don a MAGA hat in public.
It’s so funny… in Europe there is generally tolerance for all sorts of sexual orientations. What has happened as a result? Nothing. No one’s afraid of grown men in dresses molesting little girls in locker rooms. No one’s afraid of their heterosexual kid deciding to be homosexual because he saw something like it on TV. If you’re going to have a fear, make it based on something real. And no one I know hates “Merry Christmas.” What they do hate is the idea that you have to accept it even if you’re a Jew, or a Muslim, or an Atheist, or whatever. Liberals prefer tolerance and acceptance. They don’t much like a lack of tolerance or acceptance, and so you get an earful when you insist that everyone behave and believe like you.
By the way, your mocking of “52 genders” etc. demonstrates a decided lack of knowledge about the science of human sexuality. Do a little research. You might discover that biology plays a huge role in how people behave sexually. Ignorance breeds intolerance and bigotry. Yours is on full display with that paragraph.
So much for your “tolerance.”
Liberals are all for tolerance, but they’re not so tolerant of intolerance or bigotry. I’m pretty sure Jesus wasn’t either: 1 John 2:11. “But the one who hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes.”
We’re also not interested in the fact that you think you can unilaterally decide that 250 years of the right-to-bear-arms against a tyrannical or ineffective government should be abolished because you can’t get the violence in the cities you manage under control.
Another oversimplification of an issue that has been highjacked by conservative fear-mongering. Most liberals just want some sanity in gun laws. The second amendment is easily interpreted as “guns for militias.” (Although I don’t know why it needs an interpretation, it actually uses the word “militias.” Do you belong to a militia?) It doesn’t say that everyone should be able to run out and buy a gun, especially the types of mass-killing guns that people 250 years ago couldn’t even conceive of.
That free-speech should be tossed out the window, and that those who disagree with your opinions are fair game for public harassment.
This has gone on from both sides, you certainly can’t only call out liberals for harassment. And it has nothing to do with disagreeing with opinions, it has everything to do with refusing to dialog to find some sort of acceptable compromise. The far right has been just as entrenched and unforgiving as the far left, but if you want to paint everyone with the same brush by starting with the extremists, you might as well try to ban all Muslims from entering the country. Oh wait, your hero already illegally tried that.
That spoiled children with nose-rings and tats who still live off their parent’s dime should be allowed to destroy cities and peoples livelihoods without repercussions.
Talk about being judgmental! What business is it of yours if someone has nose rings and tats? Truth be told, the most awful, entitled, and spoiled children are those who were born into wealth. The US tried to do something about it by passing laws to make it more difficult for families to inherit wealth, which allowed them to just grow wealthier and wealthier simply by having wealth in the first place (by far the easiest and most common way to be wealthy in the US). But the Republicans erased that, paving the way for the greatest wealth disparity in history. Again, if you learn actual world history, you’ll find that’s always a recipe for disaster, but that history is ignored by conservatives because “this week we get to stay rich.”
That chaos, and lawlessness, and disrespect for authority should be the norm.
Again, I don’t know any mainstream liberal who believes that. What they do see, however, is that blacks in particular are finally fed up, especially with a white supremacist like Trump leading the way. What has been done to help the blacks? The war on drugs? The thing Nixon started precisely to keep blacks on the bottom of the economic heap? It worked: blacks make up 13% of America’s population, but account for 40% of the prison population. If you’re going to have any answer to that other than the country’s policies keeping them on the bottom, that answer will have to be racist. So while no one enjoys seeing rioting and civil unrest, I ask you, what has the country done to help blacks climb the same ladder of prosperity that whites are accorded? In general, most attempts at it are derided by the right, while they offer no solutions otherwise (much like they do with health care). So while there’s not a desire to see unrest, most liberals simply can’t blame them much. Wealth disparity historically has always ended up in violence. You could have stopped it, but you didn’t want to learn your history. Riots are the language of the unheard. You could stopped and listened, but instead you bemoan lawlessness in a land of laws that has systematically kept the blacks on the bottom rungs.
Also, if you did take the time to learn the real history of the United States, you’d find a history replete with riots, protects, and violence against the status quo, which has always been about rich white men getting richer at the expense of everyone below them.
This is your agenda. And you wonder why we find you more dangerous than Donald Trump?
We don’t wonder, we know why. You want to protect what you already have, regardless of all the people who will never get a chance to have the same. So you call us dangerous and unhinged while supporting a President who is clearly the most dangerous and unhinged President in American history. And then blame his election on liberals. Wow. And I have to say again, you think liberalism is all so dangerous, but Europe is replete with liberalism and as a result is kicking America’s ass. Why are you so afraid of a better life?
Your narrative is a constant drone of oppressor/oppressed race-baiting intended to divide the country in as many ways as you possibly can. You love to sell “victim-hood” to people of color because it’s such an easy sell compared to actually teaching people to stand on their own two feet and take personal responsibility for their own lives and their own communities and their own futures.
But you won’t do that, you will never do that, because then you will lose control over people of color. They might actually start thinking for themselves, God forbid!
Man, it’s hard to know where to start with such a racist rant. To think that blacks owning only 10% of what whites own has anything to do with liberal sympathies is the very definition of gaslighting. The truth is that it has everything to do with a very white, male-dominated country doing everything in its power to keep it that way. Ironically, thinking for themselves is exactly what liberalism is all about. Part of the reason Democrats are so scattered and less unified than the right is because they actually believe everyone should think for themselves. I’ve met very few conservatives who don’t walk the party line, issue by issue. If you call yourself a religious conservative, I can tell you point by point what you believe. That’s a lot harder to do with liberals.
This is why we will vote for Donald Trump.
•Not because he is the most charming character on the block.
•Not because he is the most polite politician to have ever graced the oval office.
•Not because he is the most palatable choice, or because we love his moral character or because the man never lies, but because we are sick to death of you and all of the destructive crap you are doing to this once beautiful and relatively safe country.
Again, you nominated him. It’s your hate that got us into this mess. None of these things happened under Obama, or even the Bushes. You nominated and elected the worst possible human being to ever sit in the oval office, and then pretend it’s all the liberal’s fault. Own your own shit.
Your ineffective and completely dysfunctional liberal “leadership” has literally destroyed our most beautiful cities, our public education system, and done it’s damndest to rip faith out of people’s lives.
The states and cities labor under the overarching laws of the Republic. If cities are dysfunctional, it has as much to do with where money is directed and where emphasis is placed. Is it placed on infrastructure, or education, or arts and sciences? No, the emphasis is placed on How To Make More Money, and a gargantuan military. And then you say it’s all the Dems fault when the American system fails American cities.
That said, from a personal perspective, I visited New York City last year, and since I’d visited multiple times in the 70s and 80s when it was an awful pit, the differences I saw were amazing. Crime is way down, Central Park is safe, and the city is working (pre-COVID anyway, COVID has certainly turned a lot of stuff on its ear). And the city has been largely run by Democrats. But more tellingly, if you look on a state by state basis, the red states dominate the BOTTOM rankings for education, crime, health, you name it. If being red is so great, why do all the red states suck?
Also, I’m always bemused by the idea that liberals are trying to rip your faith away. If you’re so certain of your faith, why are you so easily scared that someone is going to take it away? Again, liberalism is all about letting people believe what they want to believe, not forcing anything down anyone’s throats, which is exactly something American evangelicals try to do by infiltrating politics. Which is much of the reason the US is in such political turmoil today.
However bad Donald Trump may be, and he is far from perfect, there is no possible way he could be any worse for our country than you people are.
We are sick to death of your stupid, destructive, ignorant, and intolerant behavior and beliefs — parading as “wokeness.” We are beyond sick of your hypocrisy and B.S.
There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t shake my head over the hypocrisy of Christians turning their nose up at the homeless, or being satisfied with tens of millions of Americans having no health insurance in a country that routinely charges $300 to $700 for a bag of saline, whereas a bill I received for the same thing, after an uninsured neurosurgery operation performed in a private hospital in the EU, was 95 cents. I’m pretty sure you could put exactly that in the dictionary under “B.S.”
We are fed up with your disrespectful divisiveness and constant unrelenting harping and whining and complaining (while you live in the most privileged nation in the world), while making literally zero contributions of anything positive to our society.
Case in point. It is the ultimate hypocrisy for you to bemoan divisiveness while continuing to support a President who calls anyone who disagrees with him by a childish name, and who routinely and constantly divides and disenfranchises all Democrats. I never would’ve believed that any American, much less 40 some-odd percent of them, would tolerate leadership by divisiveness… and then blame it on liberals. And no, the US is no longer the most privileged nation in the world, unless you’re in the top 10% of the economic scale that is. And only that if you’re at least going to define privileged as the most healthy, educated, happy, safe, and free. That title now goes to the “woke” Europeans. By the way, the whining and harping is incessant from the right. You just don’t think it is because you agree with it.
Your entire focus is on ripping things down, never ever building anything up. Think about that as there is something fundamentally very wrong in the psychology of people who choose destruction as their primary modus operandi.
If Donald J Trump is reelected, don’t blame us, look in the mirror and blame yourselves.
You’re a bit focused on the current rioting, which was never on the mainstream liberal agenda. It has happened, and we’re all sad for it, but until the right begins to listen and show sympathy for the large groups of people it has fought to keep down, it’s hardly unexpected. Additionally, the riots you blame on all liberals made up only about 15% of the BLM protests, and most of those were instigated by extremists on both sides. But that becomes your flash point and ultimate descriptor of all liberalism. Let’s conveniently forget about the 85% that were peaceful.
Because you are the ones that are responsible for the rise of Donald Trump.
You are the ones who have created this monster that you so despise, by your very actions. By your refusal to respect your fellow Americans, and the things that are important to us.
No, I’m pretty sure most liberals are fed up with Republicans doing everything they can to prevent people of color and others from voting. They’re also fed up with undermining previously understood acceptable behavior. Replacing Supreme Court justices only when it suits the party, or a President showing his tax returns and divesting himself of all potential conflicts of interest, or blocking Obama at every turn in a manner that can best be described as treason, are all examples of party before country. Speaking of which, before and when Obama was elected, conservatives went crazy, they said the country was going to be destroyed, he was going to take all your guns, and invite Muslim sympathies into the government, and hell, he wasn’t even born in the US! “Woke” people got sick of all those lies and fear mongering, especially when all Obama did was begin the process of catching the US up to the rest of the world in health care as well as leaving the country economically far better off than when he found it. The only thing Trump has done is make sure the wealthy got even wealthier, and spent the country into a lot of debt doing it. What happened to the fiscal responsibility platform? It gave way to “We get to make the richer rich!” So yeah, we’re pretty sick of all that.
You have made fun of the “fly-over states,” the people who “cling to their guns and religion,” the middle class factory workers and coal miners and underprivileged rural populations that you dismissively call “yahoos” and “deplorables.”
One politician called some people deplorables, and suddenly all Democrats are accused of it. Again, what most liberals are sad about is that the red states suck when it comes to Quality of Life metrics, and most everything else. The blue states are carrying the bulk of the heavy lifting of the US. But facts never seem to matter.
You have mocked our faith and our religion.
No, we chafe at being forced to hear about your religion, or worse, your obvious desire to turn the US into a theocracy. It’s supposed to be a country that provides liberty and freedom for all, including practicing your own religion any way you want as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone. But believe me, being a Christian and supporting Trump certainly creates a certain amount of built-in mockery. You really think Jesus would support Trump? Pu-lease.
You have mocked our values and our patriotism.
If anything, that clearly goes both ways. But if patriotism essentially means you cannot kneel in protest, or that businesses can turn away people based on their sexual orientation, or that people of color have to “stay in their place” and not have their issues addressed, then yeah, that patriotism doesn’t sound so cool.
You have trampled our flag and insulted our veterans and treated our first responders with contempt and hatred.
My God, there’s an awful lot of spewed hate here, and nothing in the way of facts. One fact I can provide is your leader mocking an American hero because “He doesn’t like people who get captured” as well as tons of other mockery, including calling soldiers “losers and suckers.” If you would just once call out any one of the thousands of idiotic and hateful things he has said by publicly responding with something like, “Donald, we know you’re trying to work for us, but those people don’t deserve mockery like that,” you’d earn some respect. Instead, your silence and your support paints you with the same hate and contempt that Donald exudes. Of course, John McCain stood up against that and as a result Trump mocked and belittled him even after his death. Don’t complain about insults if you’re going to tolerate your own.
You have made environmentalism your religion, while trashing every city you have taken responsibility for.
I don’t know where you get this stuff, but you might be well served to actually dialog with some mainstream liberals. And I’ve got news for you, the large cities in America ARE the US. If your policies only support the country folk, then yeah, you’re not supporting the entire country.
You scream from the rooftops about “global warming” and a “green new deal” while allowing tens of thousands of homeless people to cover your streets in literal sh*t and garbage and needles and plastic waste without doing a single thing to help them.
Really? That’s all the Dems fault? The completely failed War on Drugs, and excessive investment into the military instead of social programs are nowhere to be found on the blame scale?
By the way, we do have memories. It wasn’t so long ago that everyone on the right was screaming, “There’s no climate change! It’s all a hoax!” Now everyone but the most ignorant diehards accept that there is accelerated climate change, but we now are left arguing as to what to do it about it. But see, you were wrong then, and gradually changed your minds only when it was obvious you were looking foolish. You’d look a lot smarter if you admitted you were wrong at some point instead of just trying to change the narrative.
But we’re supposed to put YOU in charge of the environment while gutting our entire economy to institute this plan when you can’t even clean up a single city??
You complain — endlessly — yet have failed to solve a single social problem anywhere.
I’m curious what social problems you think Republicans have solved.
In fact, all you have done is create more of them.
We’ve had enough. We are tired of quietly sitting by and being the “silent” majority. So don’t be surprised when the day comes when we finally respond. And trust me it’s coming, sooner than you might think.
The US has been to the right of center for just about ever. Many if not most of the problems the US is experiencing has largely been caused by this. And again, it’s funny how Europe has solved a number of these issues with far greater success, all coming from the left of the US. Explain how that can be, please.
If Donald Trump is reelected it will be because you and your “comrades” have chosen to trash the police, harass law-abiding citizens, and go on rampages destroying public property that we have all paid for and you have zero respect for.
No, if Donald Trump is reelected it’s because Republicans nominated him in the first place, and are so brainwashed by right wing ideology that it can’t see that most of the people of the world are incredulously watching a country they used to respect fall apart under the leadership of Trump. Man, if Obama were President today you’d be ripping him a new one for being the man in charge while the country went up in flames. You still blame him with your guy in charge. Amazing.
If Donald Trump is reelected it will be because we are sick of your complete and utter nonsense and destruction.
You’re really focused on this destruction thing. Let’s rewind to before Trump. That stuff wasn’t happening. Trump exacerbated it all by pushing national policies that exacerbate wealth disparity and blaming the left for everything (which you obviously have swallowed hook, line, and sinker, which should give you pause given his 20,000 and counting lies– it’s so weird to me that so many people can listen to a man who lies as he breathes but decide he’s not ever lying to you…) and increase bankruptcies and poverty due to America’s idiotic health care system, and on and on. And the world is horrified. And the voiceless do the only thing that has been left for them.
How does it feel to know that half of this country finds you FAR more despicable than Donald J. Trump, the man you consider to be the anti-Christ? Let that sink in.
Sad. Because I don’t know one liberal, hell, one person, who is more despicable than Trump. He’s a sociopath. He’s a man-child. You screwed up. Own it and earn some respect. Because most of the world sure as hell doesn’t respect American conservatism at all as a result of your unwavering support for an obvious liar, cheat, blowhard… the list could go on forever.
We consider you to be more despicable, more dangerous, more stupid, and more narcissistic than Donald Trump. Maybe allow yourself a few seconds of self-reflection to let that sink in.
It’s a shame that you feel the need to color everyone who has liberal views with the same brush. No one likes your hatred of so many people. We just hate Trump because he’s truly an awful man. But the thing that really gets me is when supposed Christians –followers of a man who preached love and forgiveness above all else– have descended into such hatred. And believe me, we don’t need a few seconds of self-reflection to understand that you hate.
This election isn’t about Donald Trump vs. Joe Biden. This is about Donald Trump vs. YOU.
If that’s the case, I’ll take me. I’ll take virtually anyone over Trump. The fact that he can stand there and say what he says and you refuse to condemn ANY of it makes you an accessory to heinousness. They also thought they could control Hitler, by the way, as tiresome as that trope is now. We can only hope he doesn’t lead the US down anywhere near the same path, but he’s certainly capable of it, and that should terrify everyone. It’s amazing that it doesn’t.
On the morning of November 3 if Donald J. Trump is reelected, the only people you have to blame is the left-wing media drones and yourselves.
You did this. Yep you did.”
I’ll concede something to you, the far left isn’t doing anyone any favors, any more than the far right is. But the far left shouldn’t be used to define most liberals, any more than the KKK should be used to define what you’re all about (at least I hope not). The idea that you want to blame anyone but Republicans for nominating Trump is amazing. If anything, it proves that you will believe whatever you want to believe, which is pretty much what the American elite has coerced and bribed you into believing. So nope, this is all on you.
I’ll finish with a quote from which you purport to take your religious instruction: 1 John 4:20. “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.”
And so it is the hate you spew that sometimes pushes us to mock your faith, because clearly you are more consumed by hate than love. As for most liberals, they do despise Trump because of who he is, but we don’t hate conservatives, we just lament their hypocrisy and platform of hate.
All that said, I of course received no response. Indeed, I have yet to find a conservative who is willing to answer for, and to, all of the questions that their beliefs create. Be a hater, fine. Just don’t wrap yourself up in the pages of the bible and the American flag while doing it. The only thing worse than a hater is a hypocritical hater.
And here below is the rant without my comments. While I found it hate-filled and devoid of facts, it does help to understand where at least that right winger is coming from. Sadly, however, I don’t believe anyone who harbors this amount of hate will ever listen to anything other than what he or she already agrees with. We must move on without them.
Dear Liberal or never-Trumper:
If you are a Liberal or a never-Trumper who can’t stand Trump, and cannot possibly fathom why conservatives would ever vote for him, let me finally fill you in.
It’s not that we love Donald Trump so much. It’s that we can’t stand you. And we will do whatever it takes — even if that means electing a rude obnoxious unpredictable narcissist (your words not ours) to the office of President of the United States — because the only thing we find more dangerous to this nation than Donald Trump is you.
How is that possible you might ask? Well, you have done everything in your power to destroy our country.
•From tearing down the police, to tearing down our history, to tearing down our borders.
•From systematically destroying our schools and brainwashing our kids into believing socialism is the answer to anything (despite being a failure everywhere), while demonizing religion and faith, and glorifying abortion, violence, and thug culture.
•From calling us racists every time we expect everyone of any skin color to follow our laws equally, to telling us that our “tolerance” of lifestyles we don’t agree with isn’t nearly enough — ironically all while lecturing us on hate speech.
While you gaslight us about 52 genders, polyamory, grown men in dresses sharing public locker rooms with little girls, and normalize the sexualization of young children, you simultaneously ridicule us for having the audacity to wish someone a “Merry Christmas” or hang a flag on the 4th of July, stand for the national anthem, or don a MAGA hat in public.
So much for your “tolerance.”
We’re also not interested in the fact that you think you can unilaterally decide that 250 years of the right-to-bear-arms against a tyrannical or ineffective government should be abolished because you can’t get the violence in the cities you manage under control.
That free-speech should be tossed out the window, and that those who disagree with your opinions are fair game for public harassment.
That spoiled children with nose-rings and tats who still live off their parent’s dime should be allowed to destroy cities and peoples livelihoods without repercussions.
That chaos, and lawlessness, and disrespect for authority should be the norm.
This is your agenda. And you wonder why we find you more dangerous than Donald Trump?
Your narrative is a constant drone of oppressor/oppressed race-baiting intended to divide the country in as many ways as you possibly can. You love to sell “victim-hood” to people of color because it’s such an easy sell compared to actually teaching people to stand on their own two feet and take personal responsibility for their own lives and their own communities and their own futures.
But you won’t do that, you will never do that, because then you will lose control over people of color. They might actually start thinking for themselves, God forbid!
This is why we will vote for Donald Trump.
•Not because he is the most charming character on the block.
•Not because he is the most polite politician to have ever graced the oval office.
•Not because he is the most palatable choice, or because we love his moral character or because the man never lies, but because we are sick to death of you and all of the destructive crap you are doing to this once beautiful and relatively safe country.
Your ineffective and completely dysfunctional liberal “leadership” has literally destroyed our most beautiful cities, our public education system, and done it’s damndest to rip faith out of people’s lives.
However bad Donald Trump may be, and he is far from perfect, there is no possible way he could be any worse for our country than you people are.
We are sick to death of your stupid, destructive, ignorant, and intolerant behavior and beliefs — parading as “wokeness.” We are beyond sick of your hypocrisy and B.S.
We are fed up with your disrespectful divisiveness and constant unrelenting harping and whining and complaining (while you live in the most privileged nation in the world), while making literally zero contributions of anything positive to our society.
Your entire focus is on ripping things down, never ever building anything up. Think about that as there is something fundamentally very wrong in the psychology of people who choose destruction as their primary modus operandi.
If Donald J Trump is reelected, don’t blame us, look in the mirror and blame yourselves.
Because you are the ones that are responsible for the rise of Donald Trump.
You are the ones who have created this monster that you so despise, by your very actions. By your refusal to respect your fellow Americans, and the things that are important to us.
You have made fun of the “fly-over states,” the people who “cling to their guns and religion,” the middle class factory workers and coal miners and underprivileged rural populations that you dismissively call “yahoos” and “deplorables.”
You have mocked our faith and our religion.
You have mocked our values and our patriotism.
You have trampled our flag and insulted our veterans and treated our first responders with contempt and hatred.
You have made environmentalism your religion, while trashing every city you have taken responsibility for.
You scream from the rooftops about “global warming” and a “green new deal” while allowing tens of thousands of homeless people to cover your streets in literal sh*t and garbage and needles and plastic waste without doing a single thing to help them.
But we’re supposed to put YOU in charge of the environment while gutting our entire economy to institute this plan when you can’t even clean up a single city??
You complain — endlessly — yet have failed to solve a single social problem anywhere.
In fact, all you have done is create more of them.
We’ve had enough. We are tired of quietly sitting by and being the “silent” majority. So don’t be surprised when the day comes when we finally respond. And trust me it’s coming, sooner than you might think.
If Donald Trump is reelected it will be because you and your “comrades” have chosen to trash the police, harass law-abiding citizens, and go on rampages destroying public property that we have all paid for and you have zero respect for.
If Donald Trump is reelected it will be because we are sick of your complete and utter nonsense and destruction.
How does it feel to know that half of this country finds you FAR more despicable than Donald J. Trump, the man you consider to be the anti-Christ? Let that sink in.
We consider you to be more despicable, more dangerous, more stupid, and more narcissistic than Donald Trump. Maybe allow yourself a few seconds of self-reflection to let that sink in.
This election isn’t about Donald Trump vs. Joe Biden. This is about Donald Trump vs. YOU.
Cochem, Germany, is simply one of the most charming towns you’ll find this side of Oz.
Cochem Castle dominates the skyline, but it’s not a castle of particular note otherwise. It was long in ruins until 1868 when it was purchased by a businessman for a paltry sum and then reconstructed.
We didn’t get a chance to go inside because of the hour, but that same hour allowed us to grab a photo of its main tower shining in the sun.
But mostly it was the town itself that delighted us, with its narrow cobblestone streets amidst traditional German architecture.
It also has a beautiful river running through it, I mean, is that the definition of picturesque or what?
As you can see, it was packed with tourists. Actually, it could be that they all ran for cover upon seeing a rather large bearded foreigner stomping around like a duck.
Since there isn’t a lot of other news to relate about Cochem other than the views, we’ll just mosey on through the rest of this entry with a series of captionless photos. Enjoy!
So that’s Cochem, Germany. A town we’d never heard of, but one we enjoyed visiting all the same!
We also saw this graffiti while in Trier. I’m not sure what the first word is, but “deine” is “your,” in German, so I’m thinking maybe “stretch your clitoris?” Or “strudel your clitoris?” How am I supposed to know what weird deviant things the Germans are up to nowadays? I’m also a little dubious about the graphic matching the words, but what do I know about German physiology? Maybe that’s what it looks like after you strudel it? We were left confused but a little intrigued.
But the star of our story isn’t Chinese words that sound like English swear words, or sexually-oriented graffiti, it’s Trier, Germany, a town we visited while we were in Luxembourg. We just used that lead-in, because later on I use the word “butt,” and this way anyone that would be offended by that has already run for the hills.
I had never heard of Trier, until I learned that in English it used to be called Treves, which I think I had heard of, but I have no idea in what context. If someone would’ve asked me to tell them everything I know about Treves, or Trier, it would pretty much have started and ended with “I think I’ve heard of it.” Now of course we’re experts.
I get a special kick out of visiting previously unknown-to-us places, many of which have their unique and special charms that make a visit absolutely delightful. I call them the “B” or “C” level attractions: not the first places you think of going to during an overseas trip, but once you live here and can meander anywhere, you stumble across some very delightful locales. Trier was certainly one of those.
This is the Electoral Palace: the seat of the district government. This is why governments are always the butt of so many jokes, because of course wherever there’s a seat, there’s almost always a butt.
They have a lot of Roman history in Trier, seeing as how it’s only about 1,300 km (a little over 800 miles) from Rome, which was nothing to those guys in their heyday, what with all their advanced horse technology and all. Today, Trier is only about a 30 minute drive from Luxembourg, which is part of the reason we visited. It’s kinda fun to pore over a map and exclaim, “Let’s drive to Germany!” Which is almost as much fun as poring over a map and exclaiming, “Strudel your clitoris!”
If you look over an historical timeline of Trier, you’ll see that it was invaded and destroyed seemingly continuously. The Celts, Romans, Huns, Germanic tribes, Germanic Franks, Germanic Hot Dogs (just kidding), Vikings, French, and Prussians all had a hand in either conquering or controlling Trier. Which is what led to their most famous bumper sticker: “Go Conquer Someone Else- Trier Harder.”
With a population just over 100,000, it’s only a small city, but it is considered to be Germany’s oldest. The main old town area is easy to walk and has several impressive cathedrals and other ancient buildings. This church kinda looks like it’s right on the water, but that’s just wet pavement from a rainy day.
As usual, they built to impress should God ever want to pay a visit and feel comforted by all the expense and grandiosity they created just to make him feel at home. Huge organs are of course a must, because at his age, God is getting pretty hard of hearing.
Bavarian architecture dominates the area, making one feel like you’re back in Leavenworth, Washington, USA, which is modeled after a Bavarian village. Oh wait, Trier is an actual Bavarian town. Whew! Now we don’t have to go all the way back to Washington just to see Bavarian architecture!
This is the the Porta Nigra (Latin for “black gate”): the best preserved Roman city gate north of the Alps.
I got a kick out of this building. When you look closely, you can see a door on the right that features quite a steep first step, and there are no indications that a staircase ever made its way up there. Maybe that’s where the inspiration for the song “Stairway to Heaven” came from? Or maybe that’s a door specially made for angels so they don’t have to get their feet wet before entering? On the other hand, maybe they just had a stupid architect.
When reading over a timeline of the city, I came across the following:
It was a somewhat cold and rainy day, although we were able to avoid any downpours or anything else particularly nasty, other than the ghosts of Hitler, Marx, and a Germanic hot dog.
We really couldn’t get enough of the Bavarian style. It’s so charming and old-world-y. We thoroughly enjoyed wandering around the town, where we fit right in because we’re also so charming and old— . Well, yeah, just old.
Unfortunately, as you can see by this photo, Russell hasn’t exactly kept up with his gladiator training of late.
No visit to a German town would be complete without tossing back a couple of steins of beer.
So we’re simply living life one day at a time. Since we’re retired, we essentially have no increments of change or excitement to look forward to. This is our life without travel. No wonder old people just talk about their health! I promise I won’t bore you with that here; suffice it to say once you are well into the second half of your life, pieces of your body just start falling off without warning, and other parts you didn’t even know existed start hurting for no reason at all. Plus doctors want to just start removing organs because the organs apparently get tired of doing whatever it is they were tasked to do in the first place. So treasure your youth when you have it, because no one wants to tell you the ugly truth about what it’s like when that’s gone. And we won’t be the first. Just be afraid. Be very afraid.
Vianden Castle gets its very own entry because 1) we took a lot of pictures, 2) I’m breaking out of my routine by doing this blog so I can only handle one topic at a time because it’s just all so weird now, 3) it is one of the most impressive castles we’ve ever visited; indeed, it’s one of the largest and finest fortified castles west of the Rhine; in fact, 
One little known fact about the town of Vianden is that they used hobbits as slaves. We know this because of the size of the doors where they lived beneath the homes.
Some of the hobbits eventually earned their freedom and so were able to live in nicer places, often labeled with a “58,” which, as everyone knows, is a numerical code for “hobbit,” because there are six letters in “hobbit,” and 6 is between 5 and 8, and the word “eight” ends in a “t” just like hobbit, and 8 minus 5 is 3, times 2 is 6, and that’s exactly how many letters are in hobbit! I mean, you can’t just make these eerie coincidences up, right?
One of the hazards of waiting so long to blog is that now neither of us remember if this was a church inside the castle or inside a church in the town. Heck, maybe it’s not even in a church, it could be part of an Oompa Loompa factory. Anyway, a picture’s worth a thousand words so make up your own.
We do remember this was a kitchen inside the castle. Funny how one always remembers specifics when it comes to food, huh?
You can get idea from this tower just how long Rapunzel would have had to grow her hair to escape. Of course, she wouldn’t have gotten far, dragging twenty pounds of hair thirty meters behind her. A pretty stupid story, really. But it had a really hairy ending.
In 1820, the Dutch King Willem I sold the castle to a businessman, who promptly sold everything, including all the doors and windows (true story… I know you think I make lots of things up, and sometimes I do. But if I say “true story,” then I’m not. Most of the time anyway). After this, Vianden Castle fell into decay and became a doorless and windowless ruin.
In 1966, restoration started, and in 1977 the Grand Duke of Luxembourg transferred it to State ownership. By then large parts of the castle had been rebuilt based on old images.
Vianden Castle is now a museum and is also used for official State occasions.
A view of the town of Vianden from the castle. Isn’t that the very definition of quaint?
And it gets even quainter with other views. In fact, it’s downright quaintalicious!
Just imagine this place as it was in the 14th century with masses of unbathed people jostling around horses and their inevitable poop, and knights tromping around inside metal cans with no place for their sweat to go except into their iron shoes. The middle ages always makes me wonder how our sense of smell didn’t devolve and disappear as a result of simply being overwhelmed. But, maybe their noses figured out how to just be whelmed. Hence, the term “nosewhelm.”
Fortunately, there was no historical scratch and sniff on the tour so I just basked in Carolyn’s perfume. She always smells very nice.
How did I get this picture of the castle you might ask? Did they have balloon rides? Did I hurl my phone in the air as far as I could after pressing the auto-click camera button? It doesn’t take much of a super sleuth to notice some strange ghosting in the image, however. Is that a ghostly building in the shadows? That’s actually a reflection; this is a picture of a picture that was on one of the walls in the castle and it’s a helluva lot better than anything I could shoot so there you go.
There’s a cute little balcony for some Romeo and Juliet-style romance.
And here’s my own personal Juliet giving you some perspective as to just how immense the castle is.
Of course, forty years later, Romeo is sitting at one end of the table for dinner, Juliet is on the other, and they’re barely speaking. Living happily ever after my ass.
Wells can be a very deep subject.
I’m thinking that fireplace, as big as it might be, really didn’t put much of a dent in the cold air in this room during the winter. At least the knights could keep their nuts warm. Actually, I couldn’t find any reference to nuts native to Luxembourg, so maybe they were just keeping their barley warm. True fact: Middle Ages food for poor people revolved around barley. Grain provided about three quarters of their calories in the 14th century. That seems like barley enough. Doh! I oat to know better.
Not an easy thing to conquer especially if you’re wearing 15–25 kg (33-55 pounds) of armor. A funny joke would have been to line the walls with magnets.
This is the exact same face she made when I told her Trump won the election.
The town of Vianden is very small and quaint, and we were delighted to discover that there are a lot of Portuguese in Luxembourg because the pay is so much better. So while we don’t know a lick of Luxembourgish, and Carolyn only a little French from high school, we were able to communicate with the Portuguese because of our knowledge of, well, English. They spoke English well so we didn’t have to torture them with our Portuguese.
While in Luxembourg we talked with a number of Portuguese. The general theme was “Luxembourg is nice, but we really miss Portugal.” Plus they confirmed what I wondered… sure it’s nice to earn more, but everything costs more too. They all seemed a little homesick to me.
Still, it’s a very cute town, even if it was almost completely devoid of tourists because we were the only ones dumb enough to be touristing as the Covid pandemic started to hit. But hey, we didn’t catch anything because that meant there were very few people to catch it from even if they had it! So who’re the dumb ones now?
This was our plan for visiting the castle and town. No, seriously, the castle is also the sight of one of the most important battles of the Luxembourg Resistance during World War II. They actually fought inside the castle. This is what Wikipedia says about the battle:
Ah Vianden, such history, such beauty, we are honored to have seen ya.
Oh, and here’s the Taj Mahal for my daughter Cortney. An inside joke. We’ll see if she gets it.
Our recounting of the top castles in Luxembourg was rudely interrupted by a post about taking a walk. My apologies. But in this age of the coronavirus, nothing is more important than getting out for a walk. Now get out there (but stay away from everyone!), exercise those legs, and then come back to this blog. Now. Get out. Really. You’re becoming a potato. This will still be here when you get back. Go on! Shoo!
I’m gonna lead with Brandenbourg Castle, just to illustrate the lengths we go to just to inform and entertain you, dear reader. Oh wait, um, except there’s a bit of broccoli in your teeth. You better get that. Anyway, here we are driving down a back road hoping like hell there isn’t a large band of forest people around this bend who hate Americans that live in Portugal. Or maybe they just hate rental cars. You never know.
After an arduous journey through an area that would feel like home to any hillbilly from Deliverance, we finally found this gem. That is, as long as you think a gem is a piece of petrified squirrel poop.
One of the coolest castles we saw in Luxembourg was Larochette Castle. Here we see the castle from the other side of town, on a viewpoint that must have been designed solely to provide one with a great view of the castle, and rooftops.
Built in the the 11th century, the castle was destroyed by fire at the end of the 16th century. Once the fire insurance paperwork is settled I’m sure they’ll get around to rebuilding more of it.
We couldn’t get inside, but a walk around it revealed some fascinating scenes. Talk about livin’ on the edge!
A stairway to Kevin.
You’d think someone back then would’ve stared at this cliff for a while, chin in hand, and mused aloud to the architect, “Yer thinking maybe that cliff will be staying put then?” Apparently so, because almost 1,000 years later, the cliff is doing just fine, thank you, while the house above now features plenty of natural air conditioning.
We thought it was just an old ruin you couldn’t get into. Turns out that Castle Hunting should not be a late winter pastime. This castle, like so many others we drove up to, is closed from October until Easter. Doh!
This is the Verlorenkost watchtower (which literally translates to “Lost Food”- honestly, Google it under German if you don’t believe me). The reason for that name is that there’s a legend that a cook was carrying pots full of food when she stumbled, breaking them all and ruining the food. Seriously. You can’t make this stuff up. Well, I can, but you can’t. And I didn’t this time. Next time I probably will though.
Behind these natural columns are doorways that lead into a secret dungeon where the Duke of Larochette used to keep his stores of chocolate bars, fortified wine, and girlie magazines out of sight of the Duchess. Okay, you see the difference? I made that one up. Everyone knows they didn’t have chocolate bars back then.
This little fella began following us all around the castle. He was one of the friendliest cats we’ve ever encountered, aside from being a gorgeous, albeit very well fed, specimen. Plus his expression is perfect to place right next to any one of my bad jokes.
it” time, and when life actually gives you that round tuit, you really don’t feel like doing most of those things you’ve been dying to get done. I think we all just need to feel like there’s something more than can always be done, even if we actually never will get around to them.
These two dung beetles provided some inspiration for me to make it a long walk. I mean, if one beetle can push a ball of shit five times as big as its body the equivalent of several kilometers, I can certainly add some extra kilometerage to my own expedition, especially since I’m sans ball of shit. Full of shit, maybe. But ball of shit, no.
I probably have 50 versions of this scene in my photo library. Every time I start out on a walk and see this, I have to admire it and take the shot.
Here we are looking the other direction after hiking for a while. I know I don’t have this exact perspective already in my photo library so yay!
This photo might make for a great jigsaw puzzle scene. That is, as long as someone else pieces together the whole water area. The town of Sesimbra is beyond the first promontory. If you look close you can see a hotel on the second one. Sesimbra is nestled right between the two promontories.
You wouldn’t know it, but before the lockdown it was a rare sight to see this much of the ocean without also seeing some boats. Today, not a one.
The waves crashing against the shore create the only noise you can hear when you’re out walking nowadays, especially in the nature preserve. Well, that and your breathing, depending on the incline you just walked and how many candy bars you ate the previous week.
There are paths everywhere. Despite that, most of the time I encounter no one, in fact almost no living thing at all. However, lately, because of the quarantine, I do encounter more people hiking than I used to. A friendly “boa tarde!” (good afternoon) is exchanged virtually every time, although I’ve noticed the younger people generally prefer “ola!” Or maybe they just want me to give them a cola, I dunno. This different language stuff is hard.
Once you get to the main road (the ocean you can see in the previous picture is beyond the horizon here), there are scattered houses, some of which are abandoned. This home here is in an area with about a dozen abandoned houses in an apparent failed development. Either the developer ran out of money, or they were building in a public nature preserve and the government told them to knock it off. Apparently, after the dictatorship was toppled in 1974, people built all sorts of things where they shouldn’t because the government was in chaos. Eventually, of course, things got under control.
Typically, abandoned houses in Portugal just sit and slowly (very, very slowly) dilapidate themselves to death. Since the construction style doesn’t seem to have changed for decades, if not centuries, it’s hard to tell if these ruins are fifty years old or two hundred. But man, you can’t see it so well but this place has a million euro view of the ocean and Lisbon. Amazing to let it go to waste.
Funnily enough, after they’re abandoned, almost all of them are plastered with “vende” (for sale) signs, often just with spray paint. This one has far more potential than most, obviously, because they get a printed sign in both Portuguese and English, which isn’t very common. Usually it’s just “vende” and some phone number that was probably disconnected in 1993.
This was a great home until that giant bowling ball came crashing through.
You don’t really think of forests when you think of Portugal, but while they don’t compare to the grand expanses of evergreens in the Pacific Northwest, they still have plenty of trees you can wander through. Almost no one in Europe has any idea what a sasquatch or Big Foot is however.
Lately I’ve been going one way through the nature preserve and then returning via the main road, especially now that there are fewer cars out.
This is normally a fairly busy street. Today, due to the coronavirus, I feel like Will Smith in I Am Legend. There are no zombies though, because it’s daylight. Duh.
Today, you can just walk and walk in almost total silence (if you tune out the huffing and puffing of course).
But all that silence sometimes makes you wonder if maybe you are in fact the last man on earth.
And then a dog suddenly snarls and barks and lunges at you from behind a fence, clearly desiring nothing more than tearing into your flesh… it’s today’s zombie!
But, I do get to see some amazing views even while dodging the dangers. Here, Lisbon is off in the distance. Sometimes the views are so clear it just takes your breath away. Kind of a Vista d’ Coronavirus you might say.
This is the view we get after we drive down our side road and stop to turn onto the main highway. While we don’t have that kind of view right from our house, we get to see it every time we go out and about.
But the thing that really gets my goat is, well goats.
For some reason, the grass is always tastier on the other side of the fence. And because they have horns (and don’t know it because they never look at themselves in the mirror), once they poke their head through they sometimes can’t get back out. I had to grab this knucklehead by the horns and twist and turn and fight him until he finally got his head back out. But not only did he not bother to thank me, he just stuck his head right back through again. Fine, eat your stupid greener grass you stupid goat.
It seems that over 90% of the housing, perhaps all construction, features the beautiful terra cotta tile roofs that make any viewscape of Lisbon so spectacular. But if a builder ever veers from that standard, they pretty much do whatever they want.
Another oddity next door to that one, this looks like a pretty cool house with an amazing view of Lisbon across the water… and yet is apparently abandoned. I’m just waiting for the “vende” to be spray-painted on the wall so I can find out if we can maybe get it for a song. We’d need the big discount just to rehabilitate the yard. Or to buy a goat.
This is an old windmill that doesn’t have to do any work at all for this restaurant right now due to the coronavirus. Where we live is so windy we’re surprised there aren’t some wind turbines in our area (even though Trump tells us they’d give us cancer). Still, Portugal is very progressive with energy, recently producing more power from clean energy sources than it actually needed. Which may be another reason the windmill isn’t running, I dunno.
This is in our neighborhood, and I always find it amusing. Someone built a car ramp right on the edge of a cliff. Let’s hope they never accidentally lurch forward… both the car and driver would end up, well, let’s just say the hospital admittance form would probably use the word “crumpled” in the “patient condition” box.
After a long walk, home sweet home, obscured by the greenery.
I decided to finally put my doctorate in Medieval Construction and Castleology* to better use than building medieval towns with Legos®, so we set about identifying and exploring the best castles in Luxembourg. Because the only thing cooler than making a castle with Legos®, is seeing a real one in person.
Useldange Castle is thought to have been built in about the 12th century. The castle and its chapel were damaged during a war between 
The town of Useldange sports a bustling population of just over 600 people, which means it’s not much useldange to anyone anymore.
Well, yeah, as you can see by my expression, Mersch was kind of a bust. That’s just part of the deal with castle hunting, sometimes you see something amazing, and sometimes you see something that used to be a castle and now houses the administrative offices of the county, or maybe just looks like a pile of Lego pieces because it’s in ruins.
Clervaux Castle dates back to the 12th century.
As you can see, not all castles look medieval and like they were only built for combat. In fact, Clervaux Castle was built in a kind of bowl, with hills looming above on all sides… meaning it was one of the rare times we didn’t get any kind of a view from a castle.
The castle was the site of a pitched battle during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II, and was destroyed by fire. It was subsequently rebuilt.
The neighboring Church of Clervaux.
Clervaux Castle doesn’t look very castley from this angle, but neither does this umbrella-wielding knight look very nightie.
A monument to the Battle of the Bulge, which is still a pretty big thing around these parts.
Which is why they erected this monument. I guess he won because he’s not fat.
However, due to the Coronavirus scare, the poor little town, with its bustling population of just under 1,500, was seemingly deserted. We talked to a proprietor (one of a multitude of Portuguese expats we encountered) who said that normally it was busy with people year round. Little did we know that was just the beginning of a long, sad tale of quarantines and limited travel around the entire world.
No, I’m not talking about flying during the Coronavirus pandemic. I’m talking about flying Ryanair.
Which means we would’ve never seen this: the view of the “Grund” from The Walls of the Corniche, which have been called “the most beautiful balcony in Europe.” The Grund is basically the old city.
It’s quite a ways down; the walls we were standing on here were considered so impregnable they were called “The Gibraltar of the North.” But not anymore, because we were able to impregnate them easily.
We didn’t go down there because it looked like it went uphill both ways, and all the guides I read basically used adjectives like “charming” and “quaint,” which are usually travel euphemisms for “boring.”
But the views were spectacular.
The Grund is also a popular nightlife area, which means nothing to us because the world “nightlife” at our age actually means, “What’s on the telly tonight?”
This is also the place where they have the Casements du Bock, a 21-kilometer network of underground passages hewn from solid rock. Unfortunately, the tunnels were closed for the winter, so we could only wistfully imagine how exciting it would have been to be stuck in a bunch of tunnels while the hoards were attacking outside.
I can just picture a befuddled army lolling about down there asking each other, “How the hell are we gonna get up that?”
This is in front of the Grand Ducal Palace. It is the official residence of the Grand Duke of Luxembourg, and where he performs most of his duties as Luxembourg’s head of state. Here, he’s seen also providing the security, due to the country’s current financial straits.
Actually Luxembourg is swimming in dough. If you need a loan or something, just go there and start asking Luxembourgers for money. Luxembourg’s GDP per capita is third in the world, only behind Qatar (“We’re so rich, we gave away the ‘u’ in our name”), and the former Portuguese territory of Macau (who can crow about having a gambling industry seven times larger than that of Las Vegas). The US ranks tenth in GDP per capita, in case you were wondering. Portugal is 42nd, but no one wonders about that.
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This is a building.
Simon and Garfunkel would have loved this bridge if it were over troubled waters.
It’s obvious here that I fell in love with Luxembourg. Or maybe I have a thing for flagpoles.
One of the interesting things about Luxembourg is that they basically grow up speaking four languages: French, German, English, and Luxembourgish, not necessarily in that order. I didn’t know there was even a language called Luxembourgish until we got here. Actually, English isn’t on the official language list, because once they’ve put three languages on a sign, they’ve pretty much run out of room. There is also a lot of Portuguese spoken because there are a lot of Portuguese in Luxembourg, mainly because the pay in Luxembourg is a lot better. Of course, everything is more expensive than in Portugal, too.
At least UNESCO leads with English. There are over 1,000 UNESCO heritage sites in the world. We’ve got a long way to go to see ’em all, but we’re trying!
Because a sunglasses-wearing harp-playing bird is exactly what this wall needed.
The Gate of the Day.
Some of the streets were a little barren, presumably due to the coronavirus. Not much else seemed overly affected, really, especially since it was our first time and we had nothing to compare it to. But it did seem less crowded than it otherwise would have been.
Kind of a cool old building they’ve turned into a think tank lab or something.
Because nothing screams “selfie” like a fountain in a park.
We heard this was a good way to keep the coronavirus at bay. So far it’s worked!
Ryan Air (in a charming Irish accent that has me melting into butter): “Hello – Dia duit, and thank you for calling Ryan Air. How may I assist you?”
Me: “Okay.”
Ryan Air: “Yes, to hold on to during take off, landing, and any rough air. They’re only 10 euros more.”
Me: “Even if it’s an emergency?”
Me: “Come again?”
Ryan Air: “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t know how it works in your country, but over here we don’t fire someone just because they’re ugly! I mean, trust me, (now in a whisper) the guy sitting next to me here wouldn’t be sitting there if we had that policy!”
Ryan Air: “Okay, so that’s 75 euros for each checked bag as long as they don’t exceed the two kilogram limit.”
Me: “Okay, for how much weight?”
Ryan Air: “Yes, will you be wearing any clothing on the flight?”
Me: “Gawd, I guess so. But I’m still wondering what the total is.”
Ryan Air: “That’s two euros per peanut, so you just have to tell me how many peanuts you want all together.”
Ryan Air: “Absolutely. And that will even be refunded to your survivors in the unlikely event of a fatal plane crash. Would you like the twenty-five euro survivor notification option?”
Me: “Customer retent–”
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