GT1-Blog: The Bipartisan Patriot

The Culture of Smoke Chapter 10 Decline, Revival, and the Enduring Soul of the Cigar By BR Wilson | Guitars & Cigars Nothing stays popular forever. Not music. Not fashion. Not politicians. Christ, especially not politicians. Every tradition eventually runs headfirst into the same wall. Tastes change. Economies wobble. New generations look at the things their grandparents loved and decide they're outdated relics from a less enlightened age. Then twenty years later they drag the same thing back into the spotlight, give it a new name, and act like they've discovered buried treasure. Human beings are funny that way. The cigar has survived that cycle more than once. Its story isn't a straight line. Never was. It's a story of decline and revival, retreat and return. Some years it looked immortal. Other years it looked like it might quietly disappear into history beside rotary phones, corner drug stores, and all the other things people swear they miss once they're gone...

TALES from the GRIFT The Inertia Engine By BR Wilson, The Bipartisan Patriot I keep looking at that photograph. Three billionaires standing beneath chandeliers the size of municipal water towers, smiling at one another with the easy confidence of men who haven't checked a price tag since Clinton was explaining what the word "is" means. Maybe they were discussing politics. Maybe artificial intelligence. Maybe climate policy. Maybe yacht maintenance. Hard to tell anymore because eventually all billionaire conversations start sounding like rejected James Bond plots. The actual conversation doesn't matter. The photograph is the conversation. That's the thing. You can almost smell it. Expensive cologne. Polished marble. The faint odor of old money mixing with new money while both pretend they're completely different species. Somewhere in the background there's probably a waiter carrying a tray worth more than my first pickup truck. Christ, my first pickup truck...