“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago
Yeah, shit’s fucked up. So what?
I’m trying to be a ray of sunshine. It’s not easy. In general I’m as cheerful as a Curmudgeon gets… which ain’t much.
But I’m getting worried about people. I feel like they need a kick in the ass. I’m getting a vibe of despair in some of my comments (including some private conversations).
Despair is a sin. Sure, we all go there sometimes, but don’t hang out there. It’s a bad neighborhood.
Didn’t you read Dune? Don’t you know fear is the mindkiller?
Too much fear, and misery, and resignation, and you’ve already built your own cage. Don’t do that. Don’t give up on yourself. More importantly don’t infect others with defeat. Never make the world a worse place.
Some of y’all are clinging to misery like an alcoholic clutches his last can of gay Bud Light. (See what I did there? Never pass up a potential punchline!)
I withdrew (incompletely and temporarily) from comment about current politics. Why would a sane person stay engaged? Right now politics is deeply unserious. It’s stupid fractally. It’s stupid at scales large and small. It’s stupid as seen from a thousand miles away and it’s stupid at the molecular level. It’s stupid in milliseconds and it’s stupid in years.
Rather than let that shit clog my colon, I’m trying to take the high road. I ponder in good faith. What can one learn from all this stupid? What does the accelerating pace of chaos really mean? Is a person who says provably stupid things actually deluded or acting in malice? Is there anything linking dipshit NPCs to Jaynes’ Bicameral Mind? If you took a monkey and shoved a cell phone up its ass would it get as messed up as a Gen Z who cuts off their dick after watching TikTok? What is the true meaning of someone wearing a mask alone in their car?
One thing I came to, through cognition while sitting under a sacred fig tree, is that our enemies are hollow. Look at ’em! Do they look healthy, bold, strong, clever, intelligent? Do they look like they’re growing and becoming more excellent in their evilness?
Hell no! They’re droolingly stupid! Many are geriatric losers and others are clueless waifs that will be eaten by reality.
The geriatrics are losing steam fast. Why not be happy about that?
Pissed off about California’s left coast’s politics? Then look at their two most powerful politicians. Nancy Pelosi has been in Congress since 1987 and her husband has been having gay naked hammer fights in the living room. She’s going to resign soon. To what end? To spend more time with her husband? Diane Feinstein has been a barnacle on humanity since ’92 and she’s toast. She’ll either resign or die pretty soon. Kamala Harris is half their age and is reputed to have sucked dick all the way to the office of the Vice President. Have you noticed that there isn’t a single living human being that likes her?
Speaking of uniparty toads, Mitch McConnell has been in the senate since 1985 and he’ll probably be gone soon. People of his own party call him “Turtle”.
The press lied hard to drag candidate John Fetterman across the finish line despite his stroke. So now the guy is missing in a hospital somewhere. Fetterman reminds me of a guy who won more votes than any other candidate in history without having to hardly campaign at all. He can barely complete a sentence.
I’m supposed to be driven to despair by that crew of losers? Call me back when you’ve got Stalin on the line.
The point is, none of us like where things are or where it’s going, but we are faced with enemies that… well… just look at ’em. Things could be worse. The bitch who’s fucking up some kid’s mind in a university literature course looks like this:
But she isn’t the same as a fucking Terminator:
I get it, things are dire. They could be better. We could have teachers that teach, doctors that cure, police that enforce laws as written, and judges that show judgement.
But we don’t. So embrace the suck. It could be a lot worse!
It feels like our side is slowly getting addicted to misery. Nut up! Look at the miracles that abound. Look how damn good we’ve got it.
Even as western societies in a dozen countries teeter on the edge we’re pretty damn close to the richest, happiest, fattest, laziest, most well treated human beings ever to walk the earth. The grid is still up, the roads are mostly paved, the McRib might come back this summer. This is not the end of everything. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
The HOA Karen might bitch about your yard but when is the last time Genghis Kahn burned down your garage? When I sail my little homemade boat will a Viking Longboat show up and attack? If they ban gas stoves and incandescent lights is that really Orwell’s vision of a boot stomping on a human face forever?
If your work is annoying because six identical psychotic green haired lesbians harpies make you sit through a Powerpoint about diversity… isn’t that still better than dying of black lung from the coal mines?
Considering the baseline level of horror that is human existence, $5 eggs and bumbling mis-rule by geriatric morons isn’t the worst of fates. Things are still much better than they could be. Shit is damn near fabulous!
Don’t focus on the negative and potential. Focus on the positive and actual. Here’s a real world example, guns:
There’s a dozen tools in DC right now fiddling with lawfare. They’re re-interpreting some policy somewhere in a way that makes a dictionary cry. What’s new? They’ll write a memo that’ll somehow function in a law-ish way. So what? They’ll make a register of folding bumpstock plastic Glock assault revolvers based on some spastic interpretation of the word “infringe”. We live in a world where more than half the states have Constitutional carry and we’re acting like it’s the end times.
The various infringements are dumb but it’s not Stalin’s minions kicking down the door… yet. Enjoy the liberty you have.
In the big picture, stupid rules have accomplished the opposite of disarmament. The more they squeeze the less they grasp. The Clinton “Assault Weapons” Ban of 1994 faffed about with dipshit cosmetics like bayonet lugs and folding stocks. This made us thirst for those particular gadgets. 30 years later everyone and their dog has a closet full of AR-15s. Americans buy enough of them annually to equip an army. And we practice with ’em too. If you go to a range and some dude whips out an AR, you don’t even notice. The nightmare military style death reaper is as rare as a Honda Civic. Thanks Bill!
Whenever you feel like whining, do something. Think they’re going too far? Then get off your ass and walk into a shop and pick up another firearm. In 20 minutes you can pick out a bolt action 300 win mag, top it with a scope that’ll pick out the ass-hairs on a gnat, and spend the weekend putting six shots out of six into the diameter of a DVD at 300 yards. Can you imagine how pathetic the gun grabbers would feel if they new how little an arm brace really matters?
Regular generic rednecks like me will pick off a poker chip at 100 yards and it’s not even worth noticing. Meanwhile we’re bitching about some marginal restriction so that the NRA can muster up more funding.
I get it. The gun control shit never stops and it’s infuriating. In a perfect world, I’d have a fuckin howitzer. I’d paint “shall not be infringed” on the side, pick off elk from a half mile away, and carry out the quarters with a bulldozer. But if you look at it honestly, our world is closer to that than other options. We whine about things a disarmed Soviet peasant in 1983 would weep to ponder.
Buck up folks. None of us has yet had to charge a machine gun nest or do a Rambo style evasive forest run. Shit may suck, but it’s all paperwork and mindfucks. Rub some dirt on it and go back to enjoying life.
As always, thanks for listening.
A.C.