I like to think of myself as Joe Sixpack — the average American guy.  Actually, I'm not Joe, but I'm part of a Joe Sixpack collective.  When my five dear friends and I start talking politics, as we do regularly via email, we come pretty darn close to being a stand-in for the older, middle-class, patriotic American male.  We're loud, and we're proud — and we're deeply frustrated that other Americans who claim to share our values are like mongooses paralyzed by the leftist cobra.

The six of us are geographically, educationally, and experientially diverse.  We live in Maine; the People's Republic of Connecticut; metro Washington, D.C.; the bright red Shenandoah Valley of western Virginia; South Carolina; Florida; and California.  Our alma maters range from the U.S. Naval Academy to U.C. "Berserkly" to Florida State and points in between.

Three of us are Vietnam combat vets.  We are a CEO of a respected consulting company, an aerospace executive, an I.T. entrepreneur, project management professionals in engineering and construction and in shipbuilding, and a Silicon Valley pioneer.  There's also a retired USMC colonel who is a naval aviator.  (He is our designated outlier.)

Image: Men talking by Andrew Feinberg.  CC BY 2.0.

We have one thing in common: we are fierce patriots and cannot stand what is happening to the USA.  We are Joe Sixpack.  When we get together, we are deeply frustrated by the passivity of so many conservative Americans.  Specifically:

• Why are all the political eggs being placed in Joe Manchin's basket to protect us from Build Back Better?  Why aren't patriots in toss-up states such as New Hampshire, Montana, and others with Democrat senators like Maggie Hassan and Jon Tester bombarding them with phone calls and showing up en masse at their local offices?
• Why aren't patriots abandoning the ego-driven and narcissistic Facebook and Twitter platforms?
• Since President Brandon has now delegated/abdicated the COVID solution to the states, why can't the governors take the lead to solve problems?  Or follow the lead of good men like Ron DeSantis?  The Constitution says there is a lot of power in the states, but while Democrats lust after that power, Republicans just sit there.
• Why don't people start demanding a reckoning that compares the number of abortions in the USA last year to the number of COVID deaths?  (Betcha abortions beat COVID by 2:1.)
• Where is the outrage at the swamp's blatant corruption?  Shouldn't more people be angry rather than cynical?  Why are 50% of congresscritters millionaires compared to less than 2% of the rest of us?  And worse, why do they start like the rest of us and end up as millionaires?  After all, it was another Democrat, Harry S. Truman, who wrote a longish quotation about money and politics that was eventually paraphrased as "you can't get rich in politics unless you're a crook."
• Been on a long flight lately?  The draconian mask mandates are stifling.  For example, on a nine-hour flight from Rome to Atlanta in October, I was awakened twice to adjust my mask.  Why must we wear masks inside all air terminals and not inside all buildings in "free" states like Florida and South Carolina, for example?  I know that Brandon ordered it, but it's stupid.
• Are we suffering from Dynamic Apathy?  Everyone must know we are no longer at the precipice of the abyss; we are in it.  (Hat tip to Mark Levin.)  Why aren't we doing what the left did last year, by taking to the streets to make our voices heard, although without the bloodshed, looting, and arson?
• Why are we allowing ourselves to be terrorized by a virus with an average 1% mortality rate?  FDR was right: the only thing we need to fear is fear itself.  Also, even as we fight against the vaccine mandates, why aren't we yelling from the treetops that it's time to focus on treatments?
• We hear that "saving lives" is a focal point of government.  Who among us thinks immortality is achievable?
• What are the differences among the seasonal flu, COVID and its variants, and the common cold?  (My Joe Sixpack collective sees this as a good idea for one of Dr. Joondeph's excellent articles.)

As I said, the virtue of my Joe Sixpack collective is that we represent ordinary Americans who remember a time when America was a well managed, highly functional, sane country.  It's not just that we want our country back.  It's also that we want our fellow citizens to want that same country back.  No, not to want it back.  That's not enough.  To demand it back, and we Joe Sixpacks are really wondering why they're not doing that.

PFB can't yet go public with his name.