Publishing a "Happy Independence Day!" a day after independence day is probably bad form. It is also bad for posting affiliate links. Everybody and their grandmother is having discounts and I am not posting any links. To be honest, I do not particularly like posting general links and I simply did not have time to dig through everything and come with specific product links.
Still, if you plan to be buying something from one of the retailers I have an affiliate account with, I would appreciate it if you were to start with one of my links listed in the FAQ: https://darklordofoptics.locals.com/faq
I started writing the more substantive part of this post yesterday, but got sidetracked with thinking about the origin of the ideas that make America and ran out of time. I was only able to get back to it now. I suppose, better late than never.
We live in the world that, as far as the details go, is dramatically different from the world of the founders of the United States.
For the majority of this country's existence we had to strive to get access to information. Now, we live in a constant state of information overload. Our minds evolved to make conclusions based on sparse data. You had to do some filtering on the original data to make sure you are not basing your conclusion on garbage, but that was a manageable task. In the modern world, we are in a constant state of data overload. It is a very different problem to solve.
Before we ever get to the point of really thinking through something, we have to spend an inordinate amount of time and effort simply sifting through the available information and discarding most of it as obvious bullshit that does not pass the most basic of "smell tests. Unfortunately, developing this "smell test" is increasingly difficult for people who grew up in a world dominated by social media induced horseshit. That's why the younger generations seem to be particularly susceptible to the propaganda injected into this constant information overload. Don't believe me? Just look at how many people buy into Hamas propaganda claims that IDF shoots at peaceful Palestinians coming to GHF centers for aid. Or look at the absolute contagion that is TDS. The examples are numerous.
It is bullshit that is believed by hordes of mostly young people, despite being obvious and verifiable steaming pile of manure. That's going to be an interesting problem to solve, but we will leave that for another day. The reason I even brought it up at all is that, uniquely among the nations, America is based on an idea, a creed that is to be shared by all Americans. Ideas are, unfortunately, too easily drowned out by endless streams of bovine manure. Yet, the American idea is paramount to what we are. It is also paramount to the Western civilization as we know it.
In an odd way, I can trace a direct line of thought that started when Abraham left the City of Ur in ancient Chaldea more than 4000 years ago and brought us to July of 1776 when Thomas Jefferson penned those fateful words "We hold these truths to be self- evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness".
The synthesis of Western civilization came from fusion of ancient Jewish mysticism and Greek logic. The original ideas came from the Jews. The Greeks provided the tools to get those ideas developed. Christianity, for lack of a better word, took it "mass market".
Two of these early ideas are especially important: one was that there is only one G- d and that we are all created in G-d's image. The other was the concept of linear time. Without those two ideas there is no free will, there are no unalienable rights, no individual rights and none of this radical exercise in freedom and self-governance that we call America.
Jews started it. Greeks applied logic to it. Christianity spread it to the world. The Founders argued about it incessantly. Thomas Jefferson wrote the first draft on paper working off of the ideas developed during the many arguments he had with John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman and Robert Livingston. These were the five men tasked with putting together the Declaration of Independence. The ideas are theirs, but the words are Jefferson's. He had the gift of poetic prose and the blessings of a wordsmith.
We owe him a debt of gratitude. This is America though. We appreciate the words, but we celebrate ideas. The ideas that started four thousand years ago and defined a nation 249 years ago.
Happy Independence Day, Y'all!
It is slow, but accurate and consistent.
This ammo showed some mild pressure signs, but not too significant. 
