Month: August 2013

Easily Offended

08-25-2013

My favorite group (my sarcasm here will certainly offend somebody) is the easily offended. My Lord! Our policies in this Country were supposedly designed to protect folks. Well, those policies have created SO MANY whiny, weak, ignorant, entitled, pampered, protected, petulant CHILDREN who go crying to their mommy (or Uncle in our case) at the slightest PERCEIVED injustice!!!! Folks, if you are one of those who “suffer” from that sort of thing, I will tell you that you will make an easy target when things do get rough. Grow up, stand up, and focus on things that matter! Oh, I forgot! You DON’T HAVE TO!!!! Your Uncle will make sure of that. Just keep calling him Uncle!!!

So, where did all this come from? I point the finger again at social construction. In humans, power and protection by proxy is natural… as long as you are six years old. Parents are supposed to defend their children and beat back the attackers to ensure survival. I think I have seen this same sort of thing played out on National Geographic too. The difference seems to be the continued prolonging (remain on parents’ insurance until 26?) of adulthood. You never have to grow up! Boy, it sure would be nice if the world were really Never Land and no one had to grow up. I would enjoy frolicking and flying about, without a care in the world. However, this seems to be reserved for only a few; well maybe a few million and counting.

The real world consequences for raising generation after generation of Peter Pans is that America is not Never Land. There are people who work, build, teach and grow families with the goal of creating a legacy of name and fulfillment for the next generation. The Peter Pans are beginning to outnumber the producers. Again, that would be fine, except for the fact that there is no magical pot of gold anywhere.

In times past, what would happen if you did not work? What would happen if you purchased something on your word or credit and you could not pay? What would happen if you chose a life of immoral depravity? What would have happened if you chose these sorts of things fifty or a hundred years ago? What has changed?

Today, and in the recent decades of memory, our culture and government have made every effort to ensure there are no consequences for choices. In many cases, the policies have ensured that there are no real choices to make. I have heard many explanations for this. Some include that certain people were oppressed. Others were victims of greedy big business tactics. Even more were victims of discrimination of varying types.

I have the right of life, liberty and to pursue happiness. I do not deserve an outcome. I do not get a free pass because I have been passed over in jobs for the purpose of selecting a quota candidate. Nor do I want employment or promotion because of my demographic descriptors. I do not have the freedom to demand everything be to my liking. I am not equal in skill, ability and education to everyone else.

AND, I am American counter-culture. America culture supports that removal of consequences and discomforts. American culture celebrates and ensures success and opportunity for some while denying equality for others all in the name of correcting issues of equality in the past. American culture seeks to ensure outcomes, no matter how they come about. American culture has blown past ensuring equal opportunity in jobs and schools by making neither necessary through lifelong entitlement programs.

BUT, we are helping people…

No, you are celebrating short-term pleasure while ignoring the blaring long-term consequences. Of course people will take the easy path. Of course people will take handouts, jobs they don’t qualify for and rewards for actions never taken. OF COURSE! It is in us to want the comfortable and easy and fun and irresponsible. YES WE CAN!!! We absolutely can! Recent American culture is making every effort to change the realities of “human physics” and then ignoring what will not change!! The same derailed culture then acts baffled. The cognitively neutered inhabitants are left wondering why people are acting like a/immoral soulless, sociopathic animals. You made them. You encouraged that. You begged for this.

The party will end. The bill and bone collectors will come calling. A nation will not survive with just inhabitants that are ignorant, absent and incompetent. A nation will fold under the weight of debt designated to falsely prop up myths. A nation will surrender to invaders when its citizenry has never even had to fight to make a budget, much less for unlearned concepts like honor, dignity, and freedom.

However, I doubt seriously that this will reach anyone other than the “choir”. The foxes are running the hen houses. The thieves are manning the cash registers. The foolishly ignorant are standing at the podiums and chalkboards. The family has sold their children as cultural slaves in order to avoid discomfort or inconvenience I their lives. The churches have traded the blood of the savior for the Kool-Aid of the Uncle.

So go ahead and keep trying to take my life, liberty and the opportunity for me to pursue happiness. Keep stripping away the layers of protection. Go ahead and sell out to the bullies of the new culture. Pawn our future in order to pay for our short-sighted and stupid choices of yesterday. Keep threatening the future of my children. Shun, denounce and throw away God so that you have absolutely no worries about guilt or shame or future consequence for your flesh driven evil choices! No, I am not easily offended. Instead I am properly prepared and equally determined to do what is necessary to ensure the proper future for me and my family. I am not offended. I am ready.

— R. A. Grier

Whose side are you on?

August 22, 2013

I really don’t have the desire to correct “stupid” anymore. There was a point in history where I would hear or read some re-re-re-(ad nauseam)-gurgitated “truth” or “fact” and get fired up; ready to right the wrong! There are SO many now. You really shouldn’t argue with drunks, zealots or stupid people. It is pointless unless you are just bored, need some entertainment and have a lot of time to kill.

Folks don’t bother to check the facts or even consider that the information being presented is just smoke & mirrors intended to distract. I talk about Red Herring and people start looking for bait and tackle in my hands. Too many generations have lined up to be cognitively neutered and stripped of any semblance of or compunction to exercise any level of critical thinking. All under the glorious flag of “progress”. Keep watching your favorite “news” show and listening to that radio host!! Certainly they have your best interest in mind!! Certainly!

How is all that “progress” going? The world should be perfect by now… right? Not so much. Forever, the politicos have told us, “We have regulated the bad guys!” How is that going? “We have declared a war on drugs!” How is that going? “We have been fighting poverty for decades!” How is that going? “We have spent trillions on education!” How is that going? BUT, you listen to that tasty BS gravy when the next candidate promises to make everything better than the last guy! By the way, how has that gone?

Wow, what an opportunity we were given! A few hundred years ago, we had a nation that was vast, filled with natural resources and led by a common goal and Spirit. Those new Americans struggled, fought and built their Country. Soon, those qualities and efforts yielded the strongest nation in the world. Very soon after that we have a shell of a Union, inhabited by so many that don’t know and don’t care. My, how far we have come! If you care to look for an answer for the downfall, I suggest you ask a simple question, “What changed?”

It seems that right wing folks forget that there are people out there who actually need help and are actually trying to do better for themselves, their families and their Country. Right wing folks don’t bat an eyelash when giving out huge bonuses to top level employees that emboldened the bottom line by eliminating lots of hourly employees. Right wing folks tend to want to run the world according to what they think should happen and are fine as long as no one disagrees; then they send in the soldiers to die for something that really doesn’t matter, all in the name of honor, duty and service to their Country.

It seems that left leaners are all squishy over protecting the endangered spotted dust mite (or something equally spotted and endangered) but have no desire to save an endangered country by saving the endangered logical thinkers. No, they will gladly run them over with inane regulation, policy and then back the bus up for another pass over the body. Left leaners tend to want to “just even the playing field” by evening everyone’s bank account. Well, devalue the dollar, deposit a million “whatevers” of the new currency in each single person’s account in the country and in ten years some will have more than others. Left leaners want to make the government the almighty. Well, that is just wrong.

You have to make choices. Every one of them matters! It may be something quite simple such as which milk to buy and where to buy it. It may much more difficult such as whether or not to end a life at a clinic that champions women’s health. Just know that no matter how great, how small, how many or how few of these decisions you make or avoid making; there is a consequence. Those of you enjoying the spoils of whatever side is currently winning will most certainly wail when your side comes up short on the power scale. Culture drives the hedonism that dictates the “get what you can, while you can” mentality. People getting the bonuses don’t care as long as there is another bonus. People getting entitled don’t care as long as they are still entitled. Those who hide their heads in the sand will feel so violated and victimized when their heads are snatched from the sand and they are enslaved by the new regime.

Be happy you are winning. Your side is in power and they are making all the bad stuff go away and they are making your side comfortable!

Be incensed that you are being ruled by those who don’t understand. Your side is in the minority so you must yell, scream, write letters, plot, scheme and whatever else it takes to get back on top!

Be turned off by it all because it’s just too difficult to sort it all out. They are all idiots and corrupt and too stupid to change and you are just one insignificant person. Give up and turn Oprah on or flip the channel to Honey Boo Boo.

Any of those is fine, because I fear it doesn’t really matter at this point what you do. I fear that particular ship of opportunity has sailed.

What can come of this? Most assuredly, there will be another civil-type war on American soil. Rational thought is in such short supply now. When you add the constraint of time and the very real danger of war; there will be no stopping bloodshed. Many will die and many more will be scarred in some form or fashion. Some of the non-flesh scars will look like vehement segregation from those unlike themselves. Of course, there will be some segregation along color or ethnic lines, but I believe that the next civil war will create lasting divisions along cultural, religious and class lines. If you are smart perhaps you can begin to choose whose side you are on!

— R. A. Grier