Adaptive Curmudgeon

Keep Your Head: Part 3: Five Stages Of Suck

I grew up in the first of what I’ve recognized as three cycles of collapse. I’ve learned by looking for parallels and differences.

As a kid in the 1970’s, I saw society crapping out. Society didn’t recognize its bad trajectory and improve. Instead they doubled down on the same failed ideas. This seems universal. In every cycle where the elite have fucked up, they doubled down.

The elite double down on their mistakes until an external force stops the cycle. The elite hate the force that stops the cycle with the white hot loathing of a thousand suns.

President Carter was as popular as dogshit on a sandwich. The press tried to cover for him but I was there and I remember everyone and their dog hating Carter. The press reported him and Reagan in a close race. Being naïve I assumed it was true. It wasn’t. Reagan curb stomped Carter like a tornado flattening a butterfly.

In what I see now as a pattern, the elites hated Reagan with every cell of their being. They hated not what he did so much as that he was the “wrong kind of people”. Compared to elites, Reagan acted “low class”. He worked in movies. He played opposite a monkey. His money didn’t come from mysterious sources. Reagan was happy cutting brush on a ranch.

I remember being told Reagan was dumber than dirt. Unlike the usual Yale and Harvard crop of zombies, Reagan attended a Christian college in Illinois. The press declared Reagan was a dipshit cowboy almost certain to start World War 3 and never let up the whole time. Meanwhile, America thrived.

More recently the press said Hillary was 99.9% sure to win. That was unquestionable truth until she lost.

As with cowboy Reagan the elites lost their fuckin’ minds over Orange Man Bad because he’s the wrong kind of person. Trump and Reagan were “low class” and elites hate them with unbridled passion. It’s as if rapport with deplorables gives the media a kryptonite enema. Trump went to the University of Pennsylvania like the son of a garbage man instead of Yale like an elite billionaire. The horror!

Everyone in any media situation will tell you that Trump is dumber than dirt… as if any monkey can run a real estate corporate conglomerate. Trump is dumb just like that dipshit cowboy Reagan was dumb. The press will call Trump too dumb to be taken seriously in the same world where I’ve all watched dementia addled Biden have trouble putting on a jacket

Just because I’m tired about hearing about “low class” and “stupid”: here’s a video of New York Representative and Chair of the House Judiciary Committee Jerry Nadler shitting his pants at a podium:

(A note about “smart” versus “dumb”. When sober and healthy all of these cats are smarter than the average bear but some have only limited exposure to non-elite America. Ford, Clinton, and the two Bushes went to Yale… as expected of elites. In case you’re wondering Hillary did too. Obama went to Harvard. Yale (8 presidents), Harvard (5), William and Mary (3), and Princeton (2) have “educated” 40% of our presidents since inception and 5 of 9 since Nixon. Nixon was offered a ride to Harvard, turned it down and went to Duke. (The press hated Nixon and after he won with a huge popular sweep just like Reagan would in the 1980s. Nixon was torn apart until he resigned over Watergate, Reagan was under constant attack culminating in hearings about the Iran/Contra Affair, and Trump’s house was raided by the FBI last month. See another pattern there?).)

Trump was never elite in behavior even though he has money such that my life’s savings is a rounding error. He eats junk food, uses small words, and has a clear source for most of his assets. Just like Reagan, the press declared Trump an incompetent nincompoop almost certain to start World War 3 and never let up the whole time. Meanwhile, just like under Reagan, America thrived.


Keep comparing cycles of suck. Foreign policy under Carter was a clusterfuck just like it is now. Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan went so badly I’d substitute the word “flee” for “withdraw” and play it to the tune of Yakety Sax  Carter’s foreign policy was to get pantsed by OPEC and the hostage crisis. The hostage crisis was a big fat hairy deal to America! America was weak and so Iran decided to roll the dice. It went like this:

“Dude you took hostages… not cool man.”

“What are you gonna’ do about it you fucking pussy?”

“I’ll call the UN!”

“I’ll call your mom!”

And that was it. What should Carter do? Hard to say. What did he do? Not a fucking thing. He couldn’t have looked more ineffectual if he stood there while Iran hit him with a custard pie.

America hadn’t recovered from a drubbing in Vietnam and it would take four Rambo movies in the 1980’s to even start thinking about it. As a kid, I expected the president to take action. Put some soldiers on planes, go to wherever this shit was happening, and reduce the place to rubble. Any kid in elementary school knows you can’t let bullies get the better of you! If some jackoff can take 52 people hostage and that’s enough to freeze all of America… how the fuck did we even exist?

Carter tried a rescue attempt. Like everything he tired, it was a world class disaster. I watched the report on the news. We tried to fly in under cover of night and the helicopters crapped out in the desert. It looked bad; incompetent. Six stoners trying to get their sober cousin to go get pizza would have looked more organized. Was it worse than Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan? Probably not. Carter’s massive fuck up cost less lives than Biden’s.

Regardless, neither one did well. As a kid watching black and white TV all I could think was; “Sneak in at night? We’re fucking America! Show up at dawn and tear the place apart brick by brick until no stone is left upon another.” Maybe my youthful self lacked elite nuance; I’d have said “the goal is to make taking hostages a very bad idea. Rescue people if you can but lay waste no matter what.” But you know what, my youthful brain’s reasoning had merit. Carter had people tying ribbons to trees. Fat lot of good that did!

When Reagan was elected, nobody wanted American hostages on their soil. The hostage game ended immediately. Foreign policy under Orange Man Bad wasn’t so bad either.


Carter never made anything better. When my house was cold the president told me the solution was to wear a sweater. Gas was scarce so he made laws about driving slow. He applied solutions that even a clueless kid saw as ineffective.

A child starts with the belief that adults are… um… adults. With time, they realize some adults are fucking morons. That was the lesson of growing up when I did. “Welcome to Gen X… the economy sucks and nobody cares about you.” I’m not complaining, it’s simply what it was.

Is that different from now? Has a child in 2022 witnessed intelligent adults managing events intelligently? How many canceled classes or conflicting mask mandates does it take for a kid to realize the people in charge are morons? If there’s a kid in 2022 that still thinks his teacher is pretty smart, that’s because the teacher is his drug dealer.


Eventually I sussed out the end game of the incompetence cycle. It wasn’t just bugs and gasoline and hostages… it was death. The people in charge invited death. They wanted it.

Consider the part about being cold and eating bugs. I lived in a town that had firewood and farms right there. So how the hell was it going to happen there? “Shut up kid, it’s necessary because of overpopulation.” They focused on gloom and doom even while rejecting obvious solutions.

The cycle of bullshit got dark toward the end. The elites drifted from overpopulated people nibbling on crickets to outright starvation. People in Ethiopia were starving. This was presented as if it had nothing to do with anyone in Ethiopia! It was just the beginning. A wave of death was going to sweep the planet. People in lab coats said so! Sad distended children were on our black and white TV every day. Cold, then poverty, then bugs, then death. It always ends in death. They lust for it.

Sometime in the middle of the Reagan era it dawned on the elites that none of us was going to starve as instructed. So inconvenient. Soon there was a new way all the peasants would die. Russkies would nuke us! This was the same thing since the 1950’s but Reagan was “low class”. Therefore, world war 3 was unavoidable. Working class losers voting for the dipshit cowboy Reagan had caused it! We’d voted wrong. We’d all be reduced to glowing radioactive skeletons. We deserved it!


That’s the cycle. You have to live through it and watch with clear eyes to see it. Once you see it you can’t un-see it. I’ve coined the five stage cycle of suck:

  1. We made this situation that sucks and now it sucks to be you.
  2. It didn’t suck in the past but now it will suck for your whole future.
  3. Your fate is to endure the suck. You deserve it.
  4. It’s never going to get better. You deserve it.
  5. There are too many peasants… most of them will die. They deserve it.

What I heard half a lifetime ago is what’s being taught to kids right now. Total nuclear annihilation faded. New boogeymen are invented to suit the times. It doesn’t matter so long as it’s clear that the people who vote wrong will cause most of the peasants to die. Whether it’s from AIDS or COVID or failed crops or nuclear bombs it’s all just death. Death because you disobeyed.

Kids don’t know the authority figures, media, politicians are full of shit. How can they? They take it to heart and become twitchy. The multiple disheartening failures are always layered thick; starvation, bugs for food, no more cars, and endless death through pandemics… I could find all that in newspapers in 1975 or I could find it in Reddit threads in 2022. Same shit, new cycle.

When eggheads get too much power. They indulge in their fantasies. Their failure to use reason and grounded notions leads to mismanagement. Invariably it starts to collapse but to chance course would require discarding their false notions. Instead they double down and make it worse.

The final stages are when it’s obvious that everything sucks; they declare it’ll always suck. Nobody in the Carter era told me Reagan was going to show up and play the cold war to a no-shots fired stalemate. Nobody in the Obama era told me an Orange weirdo was going to show up and set the economy on fire until unemployment was the lowest in a lifetime. The people who bring failure want to lock you into failure. “We’re all you get and there is no other option.

Finally comes death; the ultimate thrill for the mismanaging elite. “The peasants need to suffer and eventually die.” The reason can be anything, usually somehow tied to overpopulation. Gaia / peak oil / viral loads / etc… it’s always something. It leaves the elites in charge and the peasants eating crickets.

It’s a lie. Getting lied to sucks. It’s harder on the soul if you haven’t seen it before.


This is the third cycle of the bullshit pipeline I’ve seen in my short life. Here’s what I’ve learned:

Death and misery are not a done deal. Most of the suffering is caused by people who are incompetent and don’t want to accept their limits. When they stop doubling down, the misery ends.

Even as Carter/Obama/Biden ran/run the economy into the ground it doesn’t have to stay that way. They tell you it can’t get better but that’s because they can’t do better.

That’s the most cruel and horrible part of the bullshit pipeline. Statement #4 on the list; this is never going to get better. That’s the deadly one!

The forces that create a bullshit pipeline need you to be depressed. Happy fulfilled people don’t fall into the gravity well of bullshit. They keep on keepin’ on until another sunny day. They have weddings in the middle of wars, celebrate birthdays during a pandemic, and go fishing during a recession.

Hope comes from resilience. This is why elites that can’t manage success go after kids. They went after kids when I was a kid. They’re going after them now. For a while I truly believed by the time I was old enough to own a Chevy I’d be starving or radioactive. Fortunately, it didn’t get me down… not for long. If I’d put a bullet in my head (or let the teachers drag me down further) I’d never have a chance to blog about my two motorcycles and freezer full of bacon! The future didn’t suck!


Of three bullshit pipelines, two of them turned an economic corner and got better amazingly fast. One election and BOOM… new hope and cheaper gas. The third bullshit pipeline is going on right now. It seems to be following the same trajectory as the first two. First it’s a little funky, then it’s flat out berserk, and then we’re all gonna’ die. And then? Well I’m not sure but I’m optimistic.

The future doesn’t have to suck and I’m not listening to liars that say it must.

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