Uncategorized – RESOLVE

Civility or ‘the streets’?

By Steve Woodward

The Pilot is a Moore County newspaper that caters to northern Yankee and California transplants, tormented devotees of the radical Left who love our moderate central North Carolina weather and relatively affordable real estate. Pilot management even allows some of these refugees to submit opinion pieces for publication without regard for the inherent risk of alienating the churchgoing, conservative, America First Republicans who comprise the county’s majority. Presumably, the calculation is that they long ago dropped their subscriptions or never subscribed in the first place.

When the nation’s voters handed Donald J. Trump a mandate last November and elected him to be the nation’s 47th President, many local guest columnists and all of the permanent scribes descended into a period of extended mourning, then denial and, ultimately, rage. Kamala Harris was going to be the ideal puppet president to finalize the American decline that Barack Obama initiated and that Joe Biden dutifully, if unknowingly, advanced. Until voters rejected that plan.

Fortunately, one Pilot contributor rises above the spittle spewing, teeth gnashing, end-of-democracy hysteria when assessing the ascendance of MAGA 2.0. Charles Luckey (photo nearby) is a gifted writer who, despite his thinly veiled dislike of Trump and his resurgence, does not engage in the usual comparisons of Trump to Adolf Hitler, or repeat the tired “convicted felon” refrain, or challenge Trump’s allegiance to country.

In the brief thumbnail bio on Luckey at the conclusion of his writings, he is described as a “seasoned soldier”. That’s an understatement. I looked him up. Luckey retired from the U.S. Army in 2020 having given a combined 43 years of service. His titles included Chief of Security Operations in Iraq, Assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Commanding General of the U.S. Army Reserve. At the time of his retirement Luckey was the Army’s oldest Green Beret.

This context is important toward understanding Luckey’s view of our nation’s state of affairs in 2025. In his March 22, 2025, column, he implores those we elect to “seek nonpartisan pathways back to statesmanship”. He observes that idealogical combatants are “doubling down on gracelessness.”

As is to be expected, the General can’t stomach Trump’s approach to ending the carnage in Ukraine (through diplomatic channels leading to Vladimir Putin). But he readily acknowledges that there is merit in Trump’s full scale assault on government bloat and waste. And on the topic of politicians behaving badly Luckey begins his column by scolding Rep. Al Green (D-TX) for his outburst amid Trump’s speech to Congress, and later admonished Biden’s pardons of family members for potentially inviting “ever more egregious abuses of official power”.

We can’t help but observe a stark contrast: Luckey’s measured barbs and cautionary notes about the decline of civility, on one hand, while, on the other, warnings delivered repeatedly by a roster of regional and national anti-MAGA flamethrowers who wonder why there is not more outrage, more resistance and, yes, more vandalized Teslas.

While Luckey urges Americans to arrive, ultimately, at a place of forgiveness, the reality all around us suggests a trend in the opposite direction. Underlying the mounting Trump/Russia/tariffs/DOGE hysteria is the still vivid memory of Trump’s brush with death last July and that rifle barrel protruding from a hedge on his West Palm Beach golf course soon thereafter. There has yet to be a satisfactory explanation as to how Trump was vulnerable to assassination and who, or what, was behind it.

And let us not delude ourselves into a belief that those threats are in the past. Even as Tesla vehicles, charging stations and dealerships are targeted around the country — with real bullets and real explosives — we see Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz publicly delighting in the decline of Tesla’s stock price and suggesting he will physically overpower conservatives if given the opportunity. (The most damaging vice presidential running mate to a ticket’s chances since Thomas Eagleton in 1972 was far less eloquent, of course. He said he would “kick asses”.)

Largely overlooked by corporate media have been a series of so-called swatting incidents in which police are called to a home on a false pretense that someone inside is about to commit murderous acts. The targets have been conservative bloggers and social media influencers, or their family members. (A “successful” swat in the minds of the deranged is a cop killed by a terrified homeowner who overreacts).

A staff member with Alex Jones’ InfoWars pro-American values digital media production company was shot and killed in Austin, Texas, earlier this month as he approached individuals attempting to burglarize his vehicle. It was ignored by most media outlets.

In February, the U.S. House minority leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), warned that Democrats are motivated to fight the MAGA agenda “in the courts” and “in the streets”. In recent days, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX; photo nearby) characterized fellow Texan, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), as an opponent who must be “knocked over the head … you go clean off on him.” This was after Crockett said she longed for a birthday present in the form of Elon Musk being “taken down”.

What is the end game? Jonathan Last, editor of The Bulwark, a Trump loathing, far Left digital media platform, has the answer. He is urging a surge of resistance to Trump that will end with conflict. He does not mince words:

“This movement should have millions of highly activated people attached to it by the end of 2025 … The goal should be a day when two million people show up in either New York or Washington and demonstrate that there is an unprecedented mass movement opposing the authoritarians … You dare Trump to do what he’s always wanted: To take the mask all the way off and use force against American citizens. … If you put two million people in the streets Trump will look weak if he doesn’t respond, but will look like a tyrant if he does.”

With due respect to Gen. Luckey, before we can restore civility, we just might need to defend the freedoms for which you fought, sir. Let Mr. Last assemble his two million-strong resistance brigade. I’m guessing a few million patriots will step into the breach so Trump doesn’t have to. He’s already taken a bullet.

Forgotten

By Steve Woodward

So-called celebrity Paris Hilton lost her Malibu, California, home amid a series of recent wildfires around greater Los Angeles. I read about it while visiting The Hollywood Reporter web site. Others enduring a similar fate, the site reports, include comedian Billy Crystal, and actors Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Ricki Lake and Mandy Moore, to name a few. Various talent agents, producers and directors also saw their homes reduced to ashes.

The Wall Street Journal reports that billionaires such as Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and shopping mall mogul Herb Simon are among owners of more than 12,000 structures incinerated by various wildfires.

Breathlessly, the Journal reminds its readers that many of southern California’s wealthy elite “are scrambling to find both short- and long-term housing.” A luxury real estate agent says the aftermath of the fires is “really frightening for these people.” Another says open houses for leased properties are “drawing 50 to 60 people at once, many in tears.”

Recently, I read the names of other Americans who’ve lost their homes and need temporary shelter. Vickie Revis. Kathy Varvel. Kristen Hicks. Richard Neeb. Jody Henderson.

I found their names in news stories posted at the Asheville Citizen Times website. They are not celebrities. They are not famous. They reside in western North Carolina. Their residences after flood waters raged through on September 27 are motel rooms, campers and mobile homes. They don’t have talent agents. They are not contacting luxury real estate agents.

“The need is so great,” says Jason Ward in Swannanoa, nearly four months after a hurricane that came ashore along Florida’s west coast roared into North Carolina’s high country. “We have people in campers. It’s a nightmare situation.” (WarRoom.org, January 15, 2025)

Between 121,000 and 132,000 homes in western NC were estimated to have been damaged by the storm. At least 104 fatalities have been confirmed. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, more widely known as a four-letter word, FEMA, long ago abandoned the region. FEMA checks have allowed many in need to live in motel rooms but those funds gradually are being cut off. With severe cold and winter conditions settling, a FEMA spokesperson matter of factly told a Citizen Times reporter that 3,500 people would lose temporary housing in motels as of January 9. With a storm in the forecast, FEMA showed its compassion by extending the deadline — by ONE DAY.

Paris Hilton’s foundation raised more than $800,000 soon after the wildfires. That’s great. Not everyone who lost a home around L.A. is wealthy and self-sufficient. In the Carolina mountains, a wealth of tireless compassion is all the folks can count on.

“It’s neighbors helping neighbors,” said Jason Seidel in Marion. “The only thing we get is what we provide for ourselves.” (WarRoom.org, January 15, 2025)

Josh Stein, yet another Democrat occupying the North Carolina Governor’s mansion, actually said this during his inaugural remarks: “We must overcome the unprecedented storm that ravaged our state and everyday struggles that impact our neighbors. And we will.”

He did not say why efforts to overcome were not pursued by his predecessor, Governor Roy Cooper. On January 2, Stein announced an executive order to expedite the construction of 1,000 temporary housing units. He did not say why Cooper failed to enact a similar executive order in October, November or December.

The Hollywood Reporter describes victims of recent wildfires as “climate refugees”, an absurd attempt to blame “climate change” while ignoring the root cause of the fires — Gov. Gavin Newsom and other elected officials bowing to rigid environmentalism.

Out in California, Pacific Palisades and Malibu are bathed in brilliant sunshine that illuminates utter devastation. Celebrities and tycoons who lost homes have sought lodging in famous places like the Beverly Hills Hotel, paying thousands of dollars a night, and consoling themselves over glasses of wine in the iconic Polo Lounge.

Back in North Carolina, in Waynesville, temperatures are dropping and snow is falling. People displaced from homes by the floods are living in 50 donated campers in an a community they call their Haven on a Hill. To make a cup of coffee every morning, gas is pumped by hand out of canisters and transferred to generators that power appliances and provide modest heating.

We’ll never forget the early days after the floods. We’ll never forget the many citizens who donated emergency supplies and the pilots who formed a volunteer Air Force to deliver them into North Carolina’s western counties. But in January 2025 we must heed the call of duty again. The crisis has not ended. In fact, it has barely subsided. What to do?

Start here:
Haven On The Hill (Waynesville, NC)
Facebook account Click here
Appalachian United Initiative Click here
Valley Strong Disaster Relief Click here
Project Your Home Click here

MAGA 2.0

By Steve Woodward

Corrupt media, fellow deranged Leftists (do not ever again call them Liberals, an extinct ideological species since the Age of Obama) and fake Republicans are getting off to a rough start. They were deflecting suicidal tendencies on January 6, 2025, by revisiting the “horror” and “devastation” of January 6, 2021.

In 2025, Donald Trump’s election has been certified. The margin of victory was too big to rig. Thus, Vice President Kamala Harris was obligated to stand in the chamber of the U.S. Senate and read aloud the verdict of November 5, 2024, and the symbolism was beautiful. Harris might as well have been standing in the gallows. Her political future is best symbolized by a lifeless corpse adorned in a pant suit, dangling from a rope.

Conversely, I have vivid memories of the 6 January 2021, and cherish all of them except for the bone numbing winds that gusted across the Capitol Mall that day. I was physically in Washington on 6 January 2021. (Come and get me). But patriots show up when duty calls. Always. Our nation would not exist if brave soldiers had surrendered to severe weather across the brutal years of the Revolutionary War. Yet, today, snowflake Leftists literally hide when forecasters predict … snowflakes.

Exhibit A. Here is how Josh Stein is demonstrating leadership amid the opening days of his rein as Governor of North Carolina:

“We regret to inform you that the inaugural ceremony, block party, and Executive Mansion open house originally scheduled for this Saturday and Sunday, January 11 and 12th, will be cancelled due to inclement weather and approaching winter storms across the state.

“Governor Stein and the Committee thank you for your interest in attending the events, and they were looking forward to celebrating this weekend with you all. But as with any storm, safety has to be paramount. (Emphasis added)

Democrats, as usual, have no sense of irony. They are bailing out amid a tepid forecast that might suggest wearing an overcoat even after these many months during which they’ve asked citizens of western North Carolina to be patient after incomprehensible surges of water transformed their communities into uninhabitable swamps.

Let this sink in: Newly elected Democrats Josh Stein, Rachel Hunt (Lt. Governor), and Jeff Jackson (Attorney General) are afraid to assemble in Raleigh this Saturday to join other newly elected Council of State officers (including Republicans Dave Boliek and Luke Farley) because someone might fail to navigate a small patch of ice. But they have yet to grasp, or respond to, what life is like when your home and much of the infrastructure that supports its has been decimated by a real weather event — the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in late September 2024 that will linger well into 2025 and beyond.

The ascendency of MAGA in 2025 is not only about the return of Donald Trump to the White House and his coming role as the 47th President of the United States. It is the beginning of an era of reckoning that will demand accountability among Republicans at every level of government, from the halls of power to grass roots assemblies.

Thus, as we go forth, not only will our movement inflict pain and scrutiny on Stein and his Democrat snowflakes. This also marks the beginning of a time of reckoning for our elected Republicans, and to be clear, here is the roll call that your author will ruthlessly hold to account: RINO Sen. Thom Tillis (photo nearby). Sen. Ted Budd. Rep. Richard Hudson. NC Sen. Tom McInnis. NC Rep. Neal Jackson. The North Carolina Republican Party, specifically chair Jason Simmons. The North Carolina Supreme Court. The Moore County Board of Commissioners. The Moore County Board of Education, specifically chair Robin Calcutt and vice chair Shannon Davis. The Moore County Republican Party, specifically its divisive chair and vice chair, Tom Beddow and Bill Demastus, who have alienated untold numbers of donors and volunteers across the past four years, and who soon will be unseated.

Steve Bannon said it best. No longer is it Republicans versus Democrats. It is the Global elitist Left and compliant establishment Republicans against whom we will and must wage war on behalf of MAGA populist-nationalists.

Winter is coming for those committed to transforming the United States into a Marxist empire and, also, for weak Republicans who have merely pretended to support the overdue upheaval that ensues on January 20, 2025, at one minute after 12 noon. Enjoy shivering in the icy shadows of irrelevance.

Trump ascends

By Steve Woodward

There is a Santa Claus, after all. His name is Jack Smith. Rather than jolly, he is a petulant, tormented “special counsel” who was tasked with sending Donald Trump to prison for a long time. Smith, and his enabler, Attorney General Merrick Garland, had it all figured out. Almost. They missed one detail. They never imagined Trump’s resurgence as a presidential candidate in 2024. They never thought he would win. Again.

Framing the Thanksgiving season as the start of the most wonderful time of the year is, suddenly, more than just a recitation of an old lyric. Smith has made it so by dropping, suddenly, baseless criminal cases against Trump. The highest profile was a four-count case purporting that Trump and his allies sought to “overturn” the 2020 presidential election results. An even more flimsy case also was halted — the one alleging Trump improperly retained classified documents in his Mar-a-Lago residence (though he had every right to possess them).

Smith was unapologetic even as his pirate ship sunk into the murky waters of irrelevance. “This outcome is not based on the merits or strength of the case against the defendant,” Smith insisted in a statement after the November 25, 2024, announcement. He would have us believe that Trump was doomed if not for those pesky elections results earlier this month.

This, of course, ignores more significant defeats Smith absorbed at the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court throughout the arduous process. A July 1 SCOTUS ruling was the kill shot. “The court issued its landmark opinion in Trump v. U.S., which gutted the J6 case by concluding most of the conduct cited in the indictment represented official acts protected by presidential immunity,” writes independent reporter Julie Kelly.

“Even if Trump had lost the election,” Kelly continues, “the J6 indictment would not have survived another immunity test before the Supreme Court.”

If Smith is Santa, assign head elf status to New York Judge Juan Marchan, who recently delayed indefinitely the sentencing of Trump in connection with 34 so-called felony convictions Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg manufactured last summer. Like Smith, Marchan faced the reality that the persistent “lawfare” gig is up. It’s over, folks. Trump dodged a real bullet and now has been spared this unprecedented judicial firing squad.

Our American legal system is not as fungible as those who sought to exploit it had presumed. This year we can ignore seasonal advertising campaigns to ignite our Christmas “spirit”. Instead, in this historic season, we can embrace something much more inspiring than a TV ad showcasing a Mercedes-Benz topped by a giant red bow covered by fake snow.

Look no further than the pollsters. They have pivoted from swing state prognostication on Trump vs. Harris to polls seeking to gauge the “national mood”. Even some Democrats are feeling giddy, and admitting it.

A recent CBS News/YouGov poll (November 19-22, 2024) instructs us that more than half of Americans (55%) feel happy or satisfied about Trump’s win. Even more revealing is this: Among Democrats surveyed in the same poll, 56% said they are motivated to support Trump or, at least, are not motivated either way (to support or oppose his policies). What is left unsaid is the likely conclusion that these Americans can’t imagine Trump will not deliver measurable improvements easily surpassing the Biden-Harris dumpster fire.

YouGov conducted a separate poll (November 17-19), through which we have learned that 57 percent of Americans aged 18 to 29 hold a favorable view of Trump. That is staggering optimism coming from a bracket of young people who have been educated to regret their nation’s founding and condemn its inherent racism and inequality. In fact, the further we are removed from Election Day’s verdict, the more that palpable optimism is building among the youngsters. Trump’s favorability increased by 19 points compared to YouGov’s poll posing the same question between November 9 and 12.

I encountered a young man who is part of the 18-29 demographic after he arrived in Pinehurst for Thanksgiving week. He attends an elite East Coast university where woke anti-semites have protested to demand a “free Palestine”. But none of that was on his mind when our paths crossed.

Without prompting this came out: “I’m so happy that we have a new president,” he said.

So much for college kids being swept up by a Harris-Walz wave of joy. It’s beautiful to behold. College students rejected them. Black men abandoned them. Hispanic voters will be taken for granted by Democrats no longer. Consider that in 2020 about one-third of Hispanic Catholics voted for Trump. He saw their support surge to 53% in this election, according to CNN exit polling.

A concerted effort by Ralph Reed and his Faith and Freedom Coalition to inspire Christian voters to cast ballots for Trump — a new survey released earlier this year revealed that 51% of “people of faith” planned to sit out the election (decline to vote) — delivered results, too.

From ReligiousNews.com: Exit poll data from CNN and other news outlets found that 72% of white Protestants and 61% of white Catholics said they voted for Trump. Among white voters, 81% of those identified as born-again or evangelical supported Trump, up from 76% in 2020.

While cable TV’s arrogant chattering class panics, as its ratings and relevance plunge toward an abyss, cultural commentator Bill Maher suggests acknowledging that the American people brutally rejected the narrative that MSNBC and CNN have repeated, first to protect a mentally declining Joe Biden, and ultimately to help people decipher Harris-Walz “messaging”.

“(Trump) is not who I would choose to administer the colonic, but it’s not like the bureaucracy isn’t bloated,” Maher said. “It’s not like the debt isn’t $36 trillion. It’s not like there aren’t thousands of regulations that do stop people from living lives that they could live better and don’t do anything. There is woke in the military. Whatever they’re going after … I’m not going to pre-hate anything.”

The pre-hating of Trump’s cabinet appointees already is under way. Matt Gaetz for attorney general, as it turns out, was pre-hated by Republicans who remain deeply skeptical of the MAGA movement (at their peril) even more than the media knives that were out for Gaetz. Don’t be surprised if the next act in this saga is a Gaetz boomerang that destroys these Swamp creatures, including South Dakota Sen. John Thune — the new Republican majority leader — who was fine with Merrick Garland for AG in 2021 but would not stomach Gaetz. (Thune has an ally, North Carolina RINO Sen. Thom Tillis).

Eventually, Trump will have his cabinet of disrupters and change agents, and the Leviathan will be tamed. The ascension of MAGA will not be deterred as it was during the first Trump administration. But even more glorious to behold will be the comeuppance imposed on the Jack Smiths, the Braggs, the Merchans, and the frothing D.C. judges who have maniacally jailed American citizens who entered the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, to defend what our founders and American soldiers died for.

As legal scholar Mike Davis observes, the Conspiracy Against Rights clause of the federal code can (must) be used to charge these judges with felonies for violating the Constitutional rights of Americans.

“These judges are culpable,” Davis said during a November 25, 2024, appear on Steve Bannon’s War Room program.

If there is a thread of justice left in this world, these January 6 judges soon will occupy the same cells vacated after Trump pardons the patriots who sat in them and were vilified because they refused to back down in the face of a massive fraud plot in 2020. They arrived at the U.S. Capitol with a viable request: Delay certification and audit the small number of states in which massive shifts in vote totals occurred between the evening of November 3, 2020, and the following morning after which, in the case of Pennsylvania, poll workers were sent home in large numbers.

Meanwhile, the snowflakes at The Atlantic are melting down and turning on their own, placing blame for Jack Smith’s demise on AG Garland, owed to his habit of being “obsessive about proceduralism” (following the rules) because this “attention to detail meant the system failed to do the basic work of holding (Trump) accountable (for) … serious crimes.”

But what the fierce defenders of Trump Derangement Syndrome never will understand is that the 2024 election outcome never was about these sham lawsuits and court cases. They occupy a smoldering pile of discarded ploys and narratives also littered by masks, social distancing and needles that dispensed dangerous mRNA serums.

Playwright David Mamet seizes on why voters rejected all of it and embraced Trump’s MAGA revolution. He expresses it beautifully.

“The horror of the past four years—the appeasement of terror, the slavish support of our enemies, the abandonment of the state of Israel, the assaults on free speech—seemed to me the descent into chaos which has been the end of every world power,” Mamet wrote in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed.

“Rome, Greece, Nineveh and Tyre, Babylon, Nazi Germany—all were eventually returned to dust. … The Old Testament is a record of decline of those civilizations which fall away from God; and promises that a return to his precepts will restore his grace. We know that one day America, as all things, will go one with Nineveh and Tyre. But not today.”

Not in our time. America’s comeback begins now. See ya, Kamala. Good luck, Jack Smith.

Mark Robinson

By Steve Woodward

What to do about Mark Robinson?

Here are what my instincts tell me. Robinson is not a politician who has choreographed every step of his adult life toward amassing power.

That is a positive. That means he is not Kamala Harris. He is not Roy Cooper. He is not Josh Stein, his opponent in the race for governor, and one of the most toxic attorneys general in the nation.

Robinson is considered a fairytale story. He attended a Greensboro city council meeting in 2018, where he unleashed an oratorical masterpiece in defense of the Second Amendment. He was a working class citizen who took on the establishment. There are many such citizens but when you have the vocabulary and the lung capacity to rise up, folks notice.

Robinson was then swept into prominence by power brokers who salivated over the prospect of a black Republican running for Lt. Governor. This was a cunning strategy. In North Carolina, Lt. Governor is viewed as a benign elected office. It’s a position that does not appear on the average citizen’s radar. It was the perfect race in which to test Robinson’s “electability”.

So what then do you do in this moment in time when you are Mark Robinson? First, you feel like a lottery winner. You are not rich but your future is rich with possibilities. In this moment what do you do?

Do you interrupt the meeting with the power brokers to inform them that a business venture launched by his wife, Yolanda, ended up a tad sideways despite her intentions? Do you admit that bookkeeping irregularities are verifiable? (See reporting by The Daily Haymaker). Do you blurt out that, when they were young and in love, they conceived a child and panicked? Do you come clean that an abortion was performed even as now, years later, your Christian faith instructs that abortion is murder?

Here is what you can do. You can fight like hell. You can remind the public — and the salivating media — that candidates for public office often come from imperfect pasts. And every generation has its thresholds for what matters about a candidate’s past. In 1972 George McGovern’s vice presidential candidate was disqualified because he had been treated for mental illness. Today, Thomas Eagleton would be celebrated for overcoming the stigma.

Hillary Clinton was the inevitable heir to the presidency in 2016 despite her husband’s tainted legacy as a president who committed adultery and her negligence as Secretary of State during the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi. In the same year, Donald Trump defeated Hillary despite the media’s best effort to portray him as a sodomizing, tax evading racist.

Remember this: Russian collusion aided and abetted Trump on his way to winning the White House. Misinformation and disinformation was at heart of opposition to COVID-19 lockdowns and mandates. All of it was later debunked. Why? Corporate media is corrupt, dishonest and dysfunctional. Knowing this, must we rush to draft Mark Robinson’s political obituary? There is an American political icon who would advise against that. His name is Ronald Reagan. The media said he was an intellectual lightweight compromised by Communists in the 1950s.

Before we give up on Mark Robinson and allow a virulent Marxist to become North Carolina’s governor, why don’t we embrace what positive things Robinson can achieve to keep the state “red” and on a path toward prosperity, defying “woke” culture and government tyranny?

With Robinson in the governor’s mansion, backed by Hal Weatherman as Lt. Governor, Dan Bishop as Attorney General, and supermajorities in the General Assembly, our state’s potential is boundless.

What to do about Mark Robinson? Elect him.