Sein und Schein (Part XIII)

A Wayward World in Which Appearances Command Being

On Tuesday, May 6, 2025, Riley Gaines and Olivia Krolczyk spoke at the off-campus Ethnic Cultural Theatre at the University of Washington in Seattle. On the day before, Cinco de Mayo (May 5th), thirty-one vigilantes were arrested on campus for trespassing, property destruction, disorderly conduct, and conspiring to commit same.¹ Apparently, they had sought to occupy a newly opened engineering building funded by the Boeing Corporation with important economic ties to the genocidal state of Israel. Although I can easily applaud their cause, the tactics that they used to champion it left much to be desired and likely did more to entrench public opinion than to persuade anyone to change their mind. Their brand of “protest” suggests strongly an affiliation with the militant wing of one of Seattle’s many socialist political parties. They have no respect for private property that is not their own and feel that the public domain belongs to them. Estimates of as much as a million dollars’ worth of damage were recorded.

The two events appear to have been unrelated, but one could not help, but believe that among the many tens of protestors chanting “God Is Trans!” outside the Ethnic Cultural Theatre there were several who had participated in the previous evening’s destruction, and of these likely some who had already been released from jail by the King County judicial system. My suspicion toward our local judicial system and the American criminal judicial system, in general, is not without cause.

Truly it is difficult to know how those protesting against the appearance of Gaines and Krolczyk had even found time to organize in protest. I first learned about the event on May 1st via a direct email from one of the event’s sponsors. Then too, the University of Washington appears to breed underground dissidents and socialist planners, and I would not be surprised to learn that many of these groups’ members are employed by the university.

No matter, for every three protestors in front of the theatre there was one police officer, and I could not help but comment to all whom I met at the event about the cost of free speech in the city of Seattle. Indeed, I once thought that Americans took pride in their right to free speech. Its current cost in cities such as Seattle suggests that free speech is anything, but a right. I am probably one of the loudest proponents of the MAGA movement in the entire city, but I broadcast silently with a pro-MAGA sign in the window of my sixth floor apartment — very distant from the rabble below. Although I always try to wear something red and avoid the color blue, I could just as well be considered a communist as a dedicated MAGA supporter by those who view me.

Think of it! Seattle is the single largest concentration of people in the State of Washington, and nearly every public event sponsored by the Republican Party takes place in a much smaller, distant suburb many miles away from the city’s center. This is not by coincidence. Part of the reason that I attended the event last Tuesday was to encourage more of them where I live!

In the end, it is not like the entire City of Seattle is filled with rabid ideologues. Since I replaced my bright red T R U M P sign on November 5, 2024 with a black M A G A sign, the mentally ill and drug-addicted who hang out beneath my 6th story window on the other side of the street have pleasantly diminished in number and frequency! My M A G A sign is my response to the BLM advertisements at the First Baptist Church that I pass along my way to the grocery store several times a week. Karl Marx despised the Christian faith, and the leaders of the BLM movement are all espoused Marxists! We are, indeed, “a wayward world in which appearances command being”.

I do not own an automobile, and I very much dislike bugs, bums, and busses — the 3 Bs of Seattle’s public transportation system. I walk nearly everywhere I go, and when I do use mass transport, it is the light rail. Even it is reputed for its important acts of criminal violence, though. Still I tread unafraid. My four newly acquired karate merit belts are evidence of my fortitude.

Hopefully, you have understood by now that liberty is something more than just an idea. It is a way of life. The words,

… endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

were anything, but idle, when those who signed their names to the Declaration of Independence in 1776 agreed to have the document delivered to King George III of England. The document was very much akin to a declaration of war, as every signatory surely knew that our independence would not be something that the British king would willingly grant. He viewed us as his subjects and the land that we occupied as his domain.

Our objection was, of course, that we were not being treated as the king would treat his other subjects in England.

As land owners we had asked for a seat in the British parliament in order to share in the decisions to which the British king was himself bound, and we were denied. In the end our goal was not to overthrow the King of England, it was merely to loosen his grip on our economic and physical well-being. We felt stifled and were willing to risk our person and property to enjoy the same rights as other British subjects.

The impetus for the formation of the Confederate States of America in 1861 was pretty much the same, but the circumstances were considerably different, and the new “king” was much closer to home. Today, the “king” does not reside in some distant capital — say, London, England, or Washington, D.C. —; rather, he resides in our front room and sits at our kitchen table. He can knock on our door at any time or just knock it down, if knocking does not produce the intended media effect.

The state, written small comes in many different forms, and the American state is not invulnerable to the travesties of all states — those that came before it, and those that will surely follow provided that the globalists do not have their way and create a global state from which there will be no escape short of global revolution.

We live in exciting times, and many have yet to awake.

Then too, there are those who are “woke” and think that they have “awakened”.

In liberty,

Roddy A. Stegemann, First Hill, Seattle 98104
Author of Mount Cambitas - The Story of Real Money, “A Call for the Restoration of Monetary Order” (Parts I and II), the Substack series “Let’s End the Money Racket”.

1. On May 5, 1862 a small, mostly voluntary, Mexican military defeated a larger French imperial force at the Battle of Puebla. Mexico had won its freedom from Spanish rule in 1821 and the newly formed Mexican government struggled to assert itself. By 1848 Mexico had lost half of its territory to the United States and by 1862 was still severely in debt to its European creditors.

While the United States were broiled in war against the newly formed American Confederacy, Mexico’s European creditors arrived in Veracruz, Mexico to exact payment from the ailing Mexican government. The United States were distracted and the Mexican government was weak, and Napoléon III of France was ambitious. His defeat at the Battle of Puebla was only one of several military encounters. By 1864 the French emperor, Napoleon III, had installed a pro-French monarchy in Mexico under the leadership of the Austrian Archduke Maximilian of Habsburg.

After the defeat of the Confederate States of America (CSA) the Johnson Administration, whose foreign policy was largely guided by Lincoln’s former Secretary of State, William Seward, took an interest in the French presence and provided material, military, and diplomatic assistance to the deposed President of Mexico, Benito Juárez, who was living in exile. It was during the rule of Maximillian that famous Mexican rebels such as Porfirio Díaz and Mariano Escobedo led successful guerrilla campaigns against the Hapsburg ruler.

In the end the holiday is more celebrated in the US than in Mexico.