Category Archives: Historical

Ford vs. Ferrari – a Review

Once upon a time, Henry Ford II (“the Deuce”) decided he wanted to get into Grand Prix racing.  Back then there was some truth to the motto “win on Sunday/sell on Monday.” Ford had enjoyed success in NASCAR (truly “stock car” racing back in those days), but didn’t have a foothold in the sports car market, despite once building a sporty two-seater Thunderbird. The simple solution was to just buy Ferrari, which had been dominating the 24 Hours of Le Mans in the GT Class for some time.

Long story short: Enzo Ferrari led Henry II on for a while, then pulled out of the deal at the last minute. This chapped Ford’s hiney. The Deuce made the decision that Ford would enter its own GT cars in Le Mans, and beat the Europeans at their own game, on their own turf. Trouble was, Ford didn’t have a platform, and would have to build their GT cars almost from scratch. Ford would first use their existing 289 V8, but later upgrade to big block overkill.

What happened was truly astounding. Within a couple years from the Deuce’s command, Ford fielded a team of GT40s (incredible machines for their time, and still no slouchers 60 years later) that dethroned Ferrari for good, and dominated Le Mans for years–even once Ford pulled the plug on the GT program after making their point).

The real-life story is fascinating, with real-life drama and excitement. What a natural mine for a dramatic movie. The  true story is one of several personalities in multiple teams. The filmmakers chose to focus on just two men in one team–the most colorful and well-known (Carol Shelby) and the most tragic (Ken Miles). I like the Shelby America team best, partly because it was composed of hot-rodders instead of college-educated engineers.

Ken Miles himself was a great fit for a team like that. He was Old School. Professional race drivers today know less about cars than a cashier at Auto Zone, but Miles was a mechanic as well as a driver. An especially talented driver, I would add.

The acting and direction in the movie is top-notch. Plenty of creative license was taken, as you can imagine, but the pacing is adequate and the racing scenes are visually gratifying. In my personal director’s cut, there would be a little more racing and a little less personal drama…but then I’m a gearhead.

The film glosses over a lot of details in this real-life saga, like losing early skirmishes with Ferrari due to problems like an Italian-built transmission that couldn’t handle the torque of the American V8. Other details were tweaked or fabricated to increase the tension, to placate the women in the audience who got dragged to the theater by husbands or boyfriends, and to take typical Hollywood cheap shots at capitalists and American mass production. But if you’ve watched anything else made by Commiewood in the last 20 years, then you probably won’t even notice any of that, so subtle is it by comparison

I strongly recommend this movie. Once you see it, if you’d like to know the more complete story of this slice of motorsports history, read Go Like Hell by A.J. Baime.

The Shelter-In-Place E-Book Sale…Part 2

I’m not calling it “the Martial Law Book Sale” because I’m trying desperately to be optimistic about the shutdown and what will happen afterwards.

While we’re waiting (and hoping) for this to blow over, don’t succumb to boredom. Kick back with a good book and enjoy the down time.

Mike has reduced the prices of all his e-novels, now. Also, I’ve slashed the prices of my shorter books and will add those links, too. Remember, you can click on the images or the text links to buy. And all these books are available not only on Amazon for the Kindle, but at Barnes & Noble for the Nook, Kobo, the Apple Store, and just about every other store where you can buy e-books, for whatever device.

-Hank

Fast Cars and Rock & Roll…that title tells you exactly what you’re in for in this 459 page  high-testosterone tale of Deke Jones’ adventures with racing, rock music,  and ravishing women.

CLICK HERE TO READ IT ON YOUR KINDLE!

Click here to read it on Kobo.

Click here to get it from Smashwords.

Click here to get it everywhere else.

Deke Jones is back for 612 pages of private detective work mixed with irreverent mayhem in Shadow Hand Blues, trying to solve a cold-case mystery after stumbling on a dead blues man’s electric guitar.

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There are no elves, unicorns, or pixie ninjas in Gods & Proxies, but it’s about as epic a fantasy as you could possibly get in 316 pages. Or is it a fantasy at all?

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Click here to read it on Kobo.

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The Curly Wolf is 321 pages of western action, innocent romance, and larger-than-life characters.

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Buy all three Retreads novels from Amazon.
Buy the whole series from Amazon.

The entire Retreads series is available for a song at Amazon. Well, I don’t think they actually make you sing. But the three E-Books will cost less than a cheeseburger from the drive-through.

And, of course, the books are for sale individually, too. Hell and Gone was the series premier, my first bestseller, and still the most popular of all my books.

Buy Hell and Gone for the Kindle.
Click to buy on Amazon.

Buy it for the Nook on Barnes & Noble.

Buy it at the Kobo store.

Buy it at the Apple store.

Buy it at Smashwords.

Also available as an audiobook from Audible. Comment on this post to get a coupon code for a discount!

The second Retreads novel is Tier Zero. Many readers thought it was even better than the first book.

Click to buy Tier Zero for the Kindle.
Click to buy on Amazon.

Buy it for the Nook on Barnes & Noble.

Buy it at the Kobo store.

Buy it at the Apple store.

Buy it at Smashwords.

Also available as an audiobook from Audible. Comment on this post to get a coupon code for a discount!

With the third book, False Flag, the Retreads series took a turn into SHTF (I believe the current term in use is “boogaloo”) patriot fiction.

Buy False Flag for the Kindle.
Click to buy on Amazon.

Buy it for the Nook on Barnes & Noble.

Buy it at the Kobo store.

Buy it at the Apple store.

Buy it at Smashwords.

Below are some shorter books that were priced lower than the full-length novels. Now they’re even cheaper! (Sale prices will be visible after clicking on the links.)

Long before mixed martial arts, men of the west displayed their violent prowess with fists only. Tomato Can Comeback is the tale of a young fighter’s quest for redemption…on the canvas.


Also available as an audiobook from Audible. Comment on this post to get a coupon code for a discount!

Radical Times is set during the aftermath of the Civil War, when a soldier returns to the girl he loved, but is caught in the middle between two factions that still want to fight.

Thus Spake the Bard tells the story of a troubador and his creative friend, who get on the wrong side of a sheriff from Nottingham.


The Greater Good is a satire, dropping snark bombs on the superhero genre and leftist groupthink.


There will one day be a full-length Honor Triad novel, but for now there are two short books in this heroic fantasy series: The Bloodstained Defile, and The Gryphon of Tirshal.

Len Levinson on His Sergeant Series

I’ve blogged about Mr. Levinson a few times before. Some readers of action-adventure have called him a “trash genius”–an epithet that evidently pleases Len.

I really don’t like that label. I’ve read a lot of Len’s fiction and none of it was trash. It wasn’t Tolstoy, but it wasn’t meant to be. And here’s an important point: If Len wanted to write highbrow literary fiction, in my opinion he could easily craft a novel in a league with War and Peace.

I was fortunate enough to become an author years ago. All three of the novels (so far) in my Retreads series have been Amazon bestsellers. A pleasant surprise was a type of reaction those books got from readers: that they captured the fun and excitement of the pulp and paramilitary adventure fiction of yesteryear, but with a high caliber of prose that most of the classic men’s fiction never achieved. I was shooting for exactly that combination of excitement, realism (two attributes that seldom go together) and well-crafted writing. But the praise surprised me in that readers found it remarkable. I didn’t appreciate how rare it was, because I had read so much of Len’s work… which is action-packed, well-plotted, with realistic dialog and great characterization.

Len and I have different styles, different experiences, and different areas of interest, but anybody who likes my fiction should definitely read Len Levinson.

I am happy to share another insight into Len’s writing career, in his own words:

One day circa 1979 I was sitting in the East 50s office of paperback packager Jim Bryans. I just delivered a manuscript and we were speaking about various matters that I don’t remember. Then out of the blue he asked: “Have you ever written a World War Two novel?”

I replied that I had indeed written a World War Two novel called DOOM PLATOON by Richard Gallagher, set during the Battle of the Bulge, published by Belmont-Tower in 1978.

Jim said that a publisher contact of his was looking for someone to write a World War Two series, and asked me to bring him (Jim) a copy of DOOM PLATOON for submission to the publisher. I did so ASAP and a few weeks later Jim called to say the publisher wanted to meet me.

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The publisher was Walter Zacharius who together with Roberta Grossman owned Zebra Publishing, their offices on Park Avenue South around 32nd Street. I think Jim attended the meeting but Walter and I did most of the talking. Walter told me he’d liked DOOM PLATOON and wanted me to write something similar as a series. He also said that he’d been in the Quartermaster Corps during World War Two and rose to the rank of sergeant. I distinctly remember him saying that he had participated in the liberation of Paris.

In turn I mentioned that I enlisted in the Army in 1954, served three years in the Infantry and Corps of Engineers during the Cold War, was stationed in Alaska about half of my enlistment, therefore I knew basic military life up close and personal although I’d never been in a hot war. I also said that infantry weapons during my Army years were identical to those used during World War Two, or modified somewhat, and main principles of fire and maneuver also were pretty much the same. I assured Walter that I could write about World War Two with a high degree of authenticity although I’d never been there.

I agreed to Walter’s deal, probably signed the contract then and there, walked home to my broken-down pad in Hell’s Kitchen and tried to figure whether the series should focus on one person or on a unit like a platoon. Finally I decided on one person who would be a tough sergeant similar to Sergeant Mazursky in DOOM PLATOON.

Mazursky had been based loosely on a friend named Mike, a World War Two veteran and very tough guy seven years older than I. Mike had been been ready to rumble at any moment and seemed to have no fear or caution when any conflict arose. Occasionally he threw shocking temper tantrums in public and seemed ready to punch out people. Physical intimidation was perfectly okay with him but we usually got along well and he became one of my most significant mentors, for better or worse.

Mike’s military career had not exactly been illustrious. He went AWOL numerous times during World War Two in Europe, had broken out of a stockade, and instead of fighting for his country full time, had been wheeling and dealing in black markets of France and Germany.

After mustering out, Mike attended Columbia University for a year or two, then dropped out to sell marijuana and become something of a gigolo. He got arrested at the Mexican/Texas border for smuggling marijuana and served five years in a federal prison during which he wrote for and helped edit the prison newspaper. I met him shortly after he was released in 1961, the same year I arrived in New York City.

Mike was a very complicated guy. He could be vicious or extraordinarily gentle and kind. He could insult you savagely, then take you to dinner. He could cruelly put you down, then burst into laughter as if it was all a big joke. A deeply devoted party animal, he also was a heavy drinker and doper. Cocaine was his drug of choice. He did not believe in God, had Communist inclinations, was surprisingly well read and could talk like an educated man, which he was, or growl like a gangster, which he also was.

He also was amazingly successful with women although not exceptionally good-looking in my opinion. He vaguely resembled the actor Victor Mature combined with John Garfield, Rocky Marciano and Sylvester Stallone. He always had girlfriends even after he got married.

Once I asked him the secret of his success with women. He replied that women were attracted to confident men, but mainly just wanted to be loved. He certainly was very confident and actually seemed to love all the women with whom he was involved.

Another time he said to me: “You’re the craziest person I ever met in my life, but you SEEM normal.”

Mike was a first class conversationalist, raconteur and storyteller. I often listened to him spellbound, although his wife Maggie said he never let facts get in the way of a good story.

Mike introduced me to my first wife, a Cuban immigrant whom he called Chi-Chi. Our marriage was stormy and ended in divorce after four years because we simply weren’t compatible souls. During a period of post-divorce angst, I blamed Mike for my misery. “If it hadn’t been for you, I never would have met Chi-Chi.”

Mike replied with a winsome smile, “I only introduced you to Chi-Chi. I never told you to marry her.”

Of course he was right. My bad judgement was the cause of my unhappiness. I knew that Chi-Chi and I weren’t compatible but I was dazzled by her beauty and couldn’t think clearly, as happened often during my younger days.

Mike became the basis for my new central character Sergeant Mahoney and I decided to call the series THE SERGEANT by Gordon Davis. I was very excited about writing this series because I had been interested in war since childhood, and read many novels and historical works about war. Born in 1935, I literally grew up in the atmosphere of World War Two. I remember ration books, paper and metal drives, and regular reports of casualties. Victory was by no means certain, many setbacks were reported, and an atmosphere of desperation pervaded the land. Occasionally we schoolchildren did bombing drills where we sat with our back to walls and hoped no bombers would ever come.

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I thought my background growing up during World War Two, and three years in the Army, were ideal preparation for writing a World War Two land battle novel. My next big literary decision concerned when to start the action, but the answer seemed obvious. I should begin the novel with the D-Day landings in Normandy and then carry each novel forward chronologically.

What would the first plot be? I didn’t want to write about actual landings and the subsequent grinding fight for the beachhead because it had been done in movies numerous times, most notably THE LONGEST DAY. Instead I dreamed up a suspenseful commando style mission behind enemy lines to blow up a critical bridge that supported trains carrying German soldiers and equipment to the front.

I wrote in a state of deep intellectual and emotional involvement, and around six weeks later submitted the completed manuscript to Walter, certain that he’d love it. A short while later he invited me to his office, told me that in fact he did like the novel and would publish it BUT he pointed out that ordinary soldiers never went on commando missions behind enemy lines, and he wanted subsequent novels to be about ordinary soldiers engaged in standard World War Two front line battle action. I said okay and that’s what I gave him in the next eight novels in the series.

I loved the cover for the first SERGEANT. It really stood out on book store shelves. Subsequent SERGEANT covers were similar. Walter really understood marketing and that’s why Zebra was the most successful privately owned publishing company in America.

Looking back, I think THE SERGEANT series marked a turning point in my literary career. Somehow I gained a more comprehensive understanding of novel writing while working on its plots, subplots and characters. It was the second series that I created, the first being BUTLER for Belmont-Tower, but THE SERGEANT seemed of much higher quality than BUTLER. Many readers have praised THE SERGEANT in blogs and on Facebook, which has been most gratifying.

THE SERGEANT SERIES has been republished by Piccadilly as ebooks by Len Levinson and presently available from Amazon. He also wrote another gritty WWII series called The Ratbastards which I heartily recommend. In my previous post, you’ll find links to my other reviews (to date) of his Sergeant books.

Doom River: The Sergeant #5 – a Review

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Well, this is embarrassing. I began posting reviews of Len Levinson’s (writing as Gordon Davis) magnificent WWII series The Sergeant in chronological order after starting out of sequence with my first couple reviews back on The Two-Fisted Blog…and somehow, I skipped right over this book despite posting an Amazon review back on May 9 of 2017. So here it is, finally:

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Master Sergeant Mahoney and Corporal Cranepool have just returned from their attachment to a French unit liberating Paris. It was supposed to be cushy duty, but only the end of it was cushy–in the arms of some French floozies in a fancy hotel.

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The Sergeant and his sidekick are back just in time to meet Charlie Company’s new C.O. Captain Anderson is a young, inexperienced officer, but one of the good ones (a rare combo, in my day). They’re also just in time for one of Patton’s “recon in force” missions, to push across the Moselle and keep the pressure on the Germans.

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This installment in the series could launch a character study on the sort of men who populate the officer corps of an army. Whether a commander wants to make a name for himself, or simply doesn’t want a sub-par evaluation, it is their troops who are used like cannon fodder to enhance or maintain their egos.

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Mahoney himself has some moments in this book in which hedemonstrates more humanity than is normal for him. (Also, in this one we are introduced to PFC Butsko. I can’t help but notice the similarities between him and the platoon sergeant of The RatBastards–also named Butsko.)

I’m not sure when I’ll complete reviews for the final three books in the series…but I plan to. Meanwhile, you can read the remaining reviews of this series so far here and here.

Midway – a Review

The Japanese could have taken Midway almost unopposed on their way to attack Pearl Harbor. That oversight fit into a larger pattern of miscalculations that spelled doom for the Japanese Empire.

But America’s victory was far from a foregone conclusion by the time the Japanese got serious about capturing the “unsinkable aircraft carrier” that was Midway Atoll. The “sleeping giant” Admiral Yamamoto feared was just awakening and the limping American Pacific Fleet was outmatched going into the battle. It was rather miraculous that we even had three carriers to throw against the Jap Navy. What happened once the forces squared off might be even more miraculous.

 

What’s nice about this film is that it builds a fairly thorough picture of the early phase of the Pacific War. It’s not just about the battle of Midway, but goes back to cover Pearl Harbor, and even ranges as far as Doolittle’s raid on Tokyo. It spends time on junior and mid-level officers I don’t remember seeing portrayed in any other movie, including a couple pilots who were instrumental in winning the statistically unlikely victory.

My apologies for writing this review too late for you to see this film in the theaters–because it was worth the ticket price. If you’re sick of most the garbage Hollywood spews out, and would like to see more good flicks like this one, then I encourage you to spend some voting dollars on your own copy of Midway as soon as possible.

Pearl Harbor and Triggering Coincidence Theorists

Look at maps of Europe and Asia before and after WWII, to understand ultimately what was accomplished by it on a geopolitical scope. That will help you understand why FDR was so desperate to get America involved and insure that the correct ideology prevailed.

While no one can excuse Japan’s belligerence in those days, it is also true that our government provoked that country in various ways — freezing her assets in America; closing the Panama Canal to her shipping; progressively halting vital exports to Japan until we finally joined Britain in an all-out embargo; sending a hostile note to the Japanese ambassador implying military threats if Tokyo did not alter its Pacific policies; and on November 26th — just 11 days before the Japanese attack — delivering an ultimatum that demanded, as prerequisites to resumed trade, that Japan withdraw all troops from China and Indochina, and in effect abrogate her Tripartite Treaty with Germany and Italy.

…The bait offered Japan was our Pacific Fleet. In 1940, Admiral J.O. Richardson, the fleet’s commander, flew to Washington to protest FDR’s decision to permanently base the fleet in Hawaii instead of its normal berthing on the U.S. West Coast. The admiral had sound reasons: Pearl Harbor was vulnerable to attack, being approachable from any direction; it could not be effectively rigged with nets and baffles to defend against torpedo planes; and in Hawaii it would be hard to supply and train crews for his undermanned vessels. Pearl Harbor also lacked adequate fuel supplies and dry docks, and keeping men far from their families would create morale problems. The argument became heated. Said Richardson: “I came away with the impression that, despite his spoken word, the President was fully determined to put the United States into the war if Great Britain could hold out until he was reelected.”

All Men Are Created Equal

First of all, Happy Birthday, America.

This Independence Day is probably a good time to make a point about something that’s become controversial in recent years. There is a faction at work in the political landscape that seems to have a vested interest in convincing right-wingers to abandon our commitment to freedom through individual rights (which the Founding Fathers won for us), and instead obsess over petty, superficial genetic differences.

A descent into white tribalism under an appropriately pale “god-emperor” is the only thing that can save “muh westurn sivulizayshun,” they tell us. I suspect some of them actually believe it. Part of their dogma has necessarily been to ridicule the idea of equality–especially as it is so famously referred to in the Declaration of Independence.

First of all, some of the men who supported the Patriot cause during the Revolution certainly harbored sentiments that are considered racist (or at least separatist) today. Some of them may have even been almost as racially-obsessed as the current Democrat Party…though that’s rather difficult to imagine. This is not an attempt to whitewash them all as abolitionists or colorblind according to the Current Year ideal.

But secondly, neither were they stupid. The Founders were highly intelligent men, more literate than probably anybody who currently works in Washington DC, or in the mainstream media.

Time-warp the Founding Fathers to present-day America, sit them down for a debate, and none of them would try to argue that Mike Tyson has the exact same capabilities as Stephen Hawking and vice-versa. That was not intended by the phrase “all men are created equal.”

You must appreciate, first, that English is an evolving language. Devolving for the last couple generations, actually. Some words have changed meanings, while others have lost certain nuances, and what was as obvious back then as the nose on your face is now in question, or even flat-out denied. What didn’t even need explanation to the average layman in the 18th Century is beyond the reckoning of the dumbed-down Useful Idiots of today.

Secondly, you must appreciate that the constitutional republic in America is utterly unique in world history. Whether monarchies, sultanates, or empires, the governments  of the world had predominantly been formed upon the premise that the people in the ruling class are inherently superior to the serfs, peasants, and other citizens. Yes, there were anomalies like Iceland, and even the British flirted with the idea of individual rights, but most of the human race was conditioned to believe that;

  1. Only the “superior” people in the ruling class had rights.
  2. A person was born into their station. Never mind that every noble and royal line could trace its lineage back to a commoner who simply was a talented leader.
  3. “Inferior” people (subjects) in the lower societal classes basically belonged to the royalty and nobility, to be used however their betters saw fit.
  4. Whatever a subject earned or made or inherited ultimately belonged to their betters, and could be confiscated if some fat cat wanted it (similar to how the Democrats and their IRS enforcers operate today).
  5. A subject’s life was not their own. A king or queen could sacrifice them at any time in a war, show trial, or royal temper tantrum.
  6. If you wanted to build houses or repair shoes, but your lord or lady wanted you to clean out sewers instead, for whatever reason, then you cleaned out the sewers. And liked it.

The Founders had a radical idea: that every man was a free moral agent with the same opportunity to accept salvation from their Creator. They believed that government should serve people–not the other way around–by protecting the individual rights endowed to each man by virtue of being a creation of God. Nobody had more or better rights simply because they were born to a certain family. All were blessed by God and accountable to God. What they earned belonged to them; they were free to make their own decisions; and they owed their lives to no earthly king.

This concept of individual rights was not popular, even in a Great Britain which had grown increasingly liberal* since the Magna Carta.

The Founders bothered to spell out their beliefs precisely because they were so idiosyncratic in a world where most people accepted the idea that those born to a “higher station” should rule, and law should hang on their every whim and fancy. Americans rejected the notion that anyone was owed anything by someone else simply by virtue of who they were born to (so much for Affirmative Action).

Contrary to either revisionist narrative you’re likely to hear, the Founding Fathers were neither white supremacists, nor egalitarians of the Baby Boomer stripe.

The word “equal” was used not to imply that every single man has the same exact capabilities, but to mean that nobody is actually born to a “higher station,” giving them the right to dictate when another man should live or die, to make their decisions for them, or to take for themselves the ownership of human beings that only God can rightfully claim. All men are equally accountable to God, and under His authority, subject to the same self-evident laws and endowed with the same unalienable rights.

*I use the word “liberal” to convey the word’s actual meaning. I do not use it in the Newspeak context it is so mindlessly used today.

A Real-Life Indiana Jones

There’s a new book out that pulp fans, adventure addicts, and history buffs may want to check out:

Indiana MacCreagh by Roderick Heather.

Ever since the first Indiana Jones film hit the silver screen in 1981, there has been speculation as to whether the fictional character was inspired by real-life.

Gordon ‘Indiana’ MacCreagh is the stand-out candidate. An intrepid explorer, adventurer and big-game hunter, he was also a prolific author whose writing entertained millions around the world.

MacCreagh spoke several languages, he was a self-taught entomologist and social anthropologist. He was a pilot, musician and keen photographer who traveled extensively overseas including South America, the Indian sub-continent, China, Tibet and Africa. He also led expeditions to the Amazon basin and Ethiopia in search of the Lost Ark of the Covenant.

MacCreagh enjoyed a remarkable and fascinating life but the details are something of a mystery and full of contradictions. This book sets out to discover the truth behind the legend and to explore whether MacCreagh could indeed have been the inspiration for the Indiana Jones stories. It is not only a biography, but also a tale of adventure as well as something of a detective story. Based on detailed research, the author challenges the previously accepted version of MacCreagh’s early life and in so doing, provides a fascinating insight into the man, his personality and achievements.

Indiana MacCreagh – published by New Generation Publishing, ISBN 978-1-78955-500-4

Memorial Day 2019

Since the turn of the 20th Century, the wars America fought have not been to protect or improve the interests of America or Americans. However, American men and boys lost their lives in the belief that they were fighting for freedom. That deserves and commands our respect.

It is impossible for us to repay them for their ultimate sacrifice. But we remember them, and are forever grateful for the freedom we enjoy because of the patriots who put their lives on the line, starting in 1775.

What The HighwayMen Tells Us About Our Cultural Paradigm Shift

This recent movie by John Lee Hancock seems like a radical departure from the 1967 counterculture film that elevated Bonnie and Clyde from grotesque criminals to sympathetic antiheroes in popular culture.

Film critics are nearly in lockstep, bleating that The Highwaymen is a step backwards from The Narrative so carefully cultivated over generations. Americans who identify as “conservative” praise the new film because it is more factually based and has a “law and order” slant to it.

Both the critics and cheerleaders of The Highwaymen are stuck in a superficial analysis of the film, seemingly oblivious to how it fits into the context of where we are culturally and politically, and have conveniently missed or ignored hints from the film makers why The Narrative of Bonnie and Clyde has been turned topsy-turvy.

But context is crucial. To understand how both the Hancock and Penn films could spawn from the same cultural Marxist Hive Mind, and yet take such dramatically opposed perspectives, we have to go back to when the Baby Boomers were young radicals spitting on veterans returning home from Vietnam at the airports.

The Boomers were the most pampered generation in recorded world history. They showed their appreciation for the peace and prosperity they inherited by strangling the golden goose, ensuring that nobody else could enjoy the world they grew up in. Pop culture was just one of the weapons in their arsenal.

In the lost America they enjoyed, cultural icons like pioneers, farmers, cowboys, soldiers, inventors, entrepreneurs and fathers were accepted and promoted as role models that children should aspire to emulate. But this infuriated the cultural Marxists, who wanted a society like what we have now, where the “heroes” are degenerate celebrities, drag queens, pedophiles, other sexual deviants, illiterate street gangsters, sleazy lawyers, hate crime hoaxers, infanticidal feminists, grifters, serial killers and treasonous politicians.

They couldn’t get the population to accept such a radical change overnight, though. Boiling frogs requires a gradual long march. You could conclude that Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde was one of the early experiments by the cultural svengalis, to determine just how big a step in that direction American moviegoers would accept. The film attempted to transform some murdering thieves from the Depression Era into sympathetic characters. Long story short: it worked.

There was a slew of films glorifying criminals and other “antiheroes” in the wake of Bonnie and Clyde. (You could argue that the trend never really stopped.) Some of the copycat flicks, like George Roy Hill’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) not only made the criminals sympathetic, but presented as almost non-human the people who attempted to serve justice. The Pinkerton agents tracking down the protagonists of that film are disposable, interchangeable empty suits, insignificant except for their employment by an “oppressive system” to harass the very human main characters portrayed by popular actors. They are nameless, faceless drones working for “the man.”

The movie critics, now foaming at the mouth because the Texas Rangers in The Highwaymen who stopped the glamorous bankrobbers are portrayed sympathetically, gush in masturbatory praise over the trailblazing, romantic, revisionist Bonnie and Clyde from 1967.

The makers of The Highwaymen are also fans of that Arthur Penn cinematic whitewash.

What has happened in the USA since 1967? To put it simply: the inmates took over the asylum. The communist agitators have been running our government for quite a while now, though they are considered “moderate” or “liberal” by the talking heads on Cux News because they have shoved the Overton Window so far left since taking power.

The “anti-establishment” radicals from the 1960s ARE the Establishment, now. Those who encouraged others to “question authority” now are IN authority. They have been for a while. Those who sought to destroy our institutions now CONTROL those institutions. Those who once complained about the messages in Hollywood movies now DESIGN Hollywood’s messages.

In a 180 degree turn from the Arthur Penn flick, Bonnie and Clyde were almost non-persons in The Highwaymen. Their treatment is shockingly reminiscent of the faceless Pinkertons in Butch Cassidy. Parker and Barrow’s brutality was emphasized, but nothing else was revealed about them (except a little backstory on Clyde’s history of thievery). We didn’t even get a good look at their faces until the end. To put it another way: they were just faceless murderers for nearly the entire film.

That about-face from the Vietnam-era counterculture antihero schtick might be confusing to some.

Know what else could be superficially confusing? The revisionist history on Clyde’s homosexuality. That was intentionally left out of the old movie, because society wasn’t yet conditioned to accept sodomy as normal or preferable. Even a lot of lefties at the time still considered it perverse.

But now homosexuality is ubiquitously promoted as normal and moral–and you better not speak against it or you’ll either lose your job, be fined out of business, or in some cases, jailed. Audiences wouldn’t bat an eye at seeing Clyde depicted that way today, so why wouldn’t the film-makers ram it down our throats as usual, to perpetuate their familiarity-conditioning? They insert it absolutely everywhere else, even when it’s not relevant or necessary, let alone historically accurate. What a curious artistic decision, my dear Watson.

It all makes sense if you look at the cultural landscape today and how different it is from the Vietnam era. Again: the counterculture then is the Establishment now, and vice-versa. Now the ruling class must be presented as noble and heroic, while the everyman proles must be depicted as suspicious, unwashed, and dangerous. Outsiders, dissenters, and anti-establishment rebels need to be feared, doxxed, ostracized, demonized, financially ruined, and, the very moment it is acceptable to popular opinion: riddled like Swiss cheese by armed government goons.

Like free speech and everything else, the fringe left’s position is opposite what it supposedly was before they secured ironclad institutional power.

As an adjunct of this, the film makers had to rewrite Clyde as heterosexual or they just couldn’t have brought themselves to show him for the murdering thief he was.

The Vietnam-era Bonnie and Clyde were stand-ins for the likes of Saul Alinsky and Jane Fonda, while the nameless, soul-less G-Men were stand-ins for Joe McCarthy and Barry Goldwater. The current-year law men (played by Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson) are stand-ins for Eric Holder and John Brennan; while the faceless, soul-less bankrobbers are stand-ins for the likes of Donald Trump, Roger Stone and the average deplorable in Flyover Country.

The Highwaymen screenwriter John Fusco is another fan of Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde, and himself (in the interview linked above) implies a connection between Trump supporters and Bonnie and Clyde, confirming the reason for this paradigm shift.