Adaptive Curmudgeon

I’ll cop to a major character flaw. I like the McRib. I absolutely crave those greasy death bombs! I assume you’re sane and won’t touch anything that gross. Good for you. It means there’s extra pressed pork mystery meat for me!

Now I’ll mention a character trait I don’t consider a flaw. I hate eating in my truck. It’s crude, ridiculous, uncivilized, and undignified. I don’t care if it’s Filet Mignon or a McRib, an adult should endeavor to eat at a table when possible. I get it, there are exceptions. Sometimes you’re in a hurry and need to cram calories down your gullet like a human garbage disposal on hell’s own treadmill. But in general it’s better to eat like a civilized human being. I view meals at the wheel as degrading lessening of the human condition.  That’s just me. YMMV.

It should be a harmless preference. However, it’s 2021 and the world has gone to shit. The nearest McDonalds has closed its dining room. I’m not sure the explanation du jour for closing dining rooms. For a while (over a year ago) it was based on some voodoo explanation about viruses. Honestly, I laugh at that. The dining room of a McDonalds is only marginally cleaner than the floor of a subway urinal. Yet the black death of 2020 crossed some sort of virulence threshold and we can save humanity by eating in a car’s cab; which is apparently sterile. Now it’s 2021 and the dining room is closed exactly like it was before but for entirely new and improved reasons.

There’s not enough workforce to staff the place.

My McRib addicted self has noticed that McDonalds dining rooms are open in fits and starts. Though recently everyone within a few hundred miles of me just plain gave up.

This is why I notice it. If I want a McRib I have to eat at the wheel of an idling Dodge…. like a disgusting uncivilized animal. Gross. (McRibs are gross too but, as we’ve already established, that’s different.)

During the brief unknowable season of the McRib I’ve started playing a game. I’ve started watching which fast food restaurants have open dining rooms and which don’t. A large number are reduced to hurling food at plebeians like feeding hogs in a automotive livestock chute. The pattern, or lack thereof, is interesting.

The game expanded and soon I started counting who’s wearing masks and who isn’t. Sometimes it’s “required” because some jackass in politics thinks this two year old idea matters and they’re just the God to have such control. Sometimes it’s not required by regulation (never law) but corporate asshats require masks anyway. Why wouldn’t they? I’ll politely receive a McRib from a masked employee but there are shrieking Karens who won’t do the opposite.

Then the game became tracking the fading hours of operation. In the hinterland, fast food restaurants are struggling. Not only are they running out of employees to mop the floor in the dining room but they’re running out of employees to man the drive through. They’re closing earlier and opening later (don’t get me started about Egg McMuffins). Hours are irregular. Sometimes they’re closed during hours they’ve posted as open. Sometimes they run out of people and close right then.

Wherever you go, they’re hiring. These are different than the hiring signs from the Trump boom. It went from “good pay, decent hours” to hands and knees begging; “for the love of God, please work here!”

Meanwhile, getting served by masked subservient (and almost universally female) servants feels hinky. It makes me nervous. It feels like they’re lower class and I’m upper and I hate the very ide of that! (It’s a damn McRib… nobody in that exchange is anything but low class.)

I truly believe all humans are created equal and the masks clearly seperate servant from customer. When someone at Starbucks or McDonalds has their face covered they start feeling less… human. They become depersonalized food serving units. I can’t see them smile. I don’t hear what they’re saying. The interaction becomes clipped and short.

For the unmasked I might try a humorous connection “I love McRibs… you’re doing God’s work m’lady!” For the masked, a formal line is drawn and they’re clearly lesser beings than the unmasked freak driving the truck. I try to mumble “thank you” but they almost subconsciously have eyes averted like there’s something unclean about their job at the drive through.

The phrase “supply chain disruption” does not explain any of this.

Employees locked behind a face burka don’t look safe… they look chained. As far as I can tell none of them like it. Then again nobody gives a shit about the employees’ opinion… which is why employers are scrambling to keep the whole thing running.

Ace of Spades has a good take on it:

I think there is a darker undercurrent in all this, and the COVID vaccine mandate may have been the last straw. Why do people work in the first place? A big answer to this, of course, is “for the money.” This is certainly true, but it is only true to a point. It’s different for everyone, but at some point – and I suspect it is a lower point than most would expect – money becomes less important than intangibles for a lot of people. The big intangible is respect. The vax mandate is a respect black hole. The aggressively pro-vaccine crowd is pissed because it took so long and the companies lacked the courage to act independently. The anti-mandate crowd is pissed because no one at the company stood up for them. The neutral crowd who couldn’t care less one way or the other resents all of the jawboning and time wasting and paperwork hoops they have to go through. Absolutely nobody feels respected in this matter, and it is a major matter.

While supply chains have been disrupted, that’s just a symptom of a bigger problem. People who’ve never heard of Ayn Rand and don’t give a shit about politics instinctively knew when to “Go Galt”. They’re not going Galt… they’ve already gone. That’s why you could fully staff a McDonalds in 2019 and can’t in 2021.

Rand was something of a bitch, and so she missed the change among the working classes. Rand fretted over captains of industry and genius materials scientists, but it never crossed her cold heart that the honest hard working entry level McDonalds floor mopper had a breaking point too. They’re not NPCs, they’re people. When that line is crossed (as it has been) they’ll “shrug” just as much as a pissed off brain surgeon. (It’s also much easier for them to shrug than the brain surgeon. They can always find another McDonalds job if they change their mind. A pilot at United Airlines has a lot more to lose. Which is why shortages are coming from the bottom up.)

This isn’t just “supply chain disruption”. After all, the supply chain (barely) held. McRibs are present and on site. The lights are still on. There’s no shortage of the buckets of BBQ sauce that I’m addicted to.

Overworked skeleton crews slowly losing the fight are not “supply chain”. They’re mistreated humans. Whether on purpose or by accident, whether through well intentioned but unwise micromanagement or revoltingly elitist snobbery they’ve driven workers out of the workforce. President Potato, whom it’s said has earned the greatest number of votes in all of America’s history, can’t see the problem. Nor can half of society. The other half isn’t about to explain the obvious.

For good or ill, this is almost a permanent change to society. It’s not a temporary situation. It’s not going away. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to get another McRibs.

Mondays in the Bidenverse are surreal. I show up to work like always. I do my job like always. But each Monday I begin by wondering if I actually have a job at all.

We all know that keeping a modern job is completely unrelated to doing a modern job. Unless you burn down a factory or drop a busload of nuns off a cliff with the company forklift, you won’t be fired. Even then… who knows? However, getting canned for arbitrary non-work related issues is a looming threat.

It’s common to say this is new. It’s not. It’s been leaning that way most of my life. Certain articles of free thought were “sketchy” long ago. They inexorably drifted into Wrongthink. In modern times, we forget that firing a plumber for his opinion on sexuality wasn’t always a thing. Social media turned the dial to eleven before most of the modern workforce was out of diapers. They don’t know what a free workforce even feels like.

In addition to Wrongthink, we’ve grown used to punishment for genetic apostasy or internal emotion. You won’t get canned for being incompetent but it’s easy to get canned for being male or white. The worst fate is reserved for the pool loser who still (horrors!) wants to just do their job. “Not being a team player” a fatal flaw when you’re evaluated by a nonentity who’s only skill is following the herd. It’s all about the pieces of flair.

In September, President Potato doubled down on stupid. He fucked up my world along with the workplace of most Americans; which makes sense for a man who’s never had a job in the workplace. Bidendriod the Awesomnator (somehow) deleted HIPPA. (Laws are only words ya’ know.) He put every worker’s medical decisions under review by HR and (ultimately) President Potato himself… because he is apparently a God Emperor. Big britches for an unpopular doddering one-term placeholder.

I look hard but just can’t see his crown.

I miss going to work for the purposes of doing stuff. I do so now out of inertia; such is the Bidenverse. I guess I’ll keep at it so long as the job is there… however how long that may be. It’s not great for a hard working personality like mine. I still remember job satisfaction unrelated to a paycheck.

Of course, the Bidenverse’s effect on workers has nothing to do with things like “unexpected supply chain disruption”… that would be silly. Everything from an orange grove in Florida to a oil pipeline in North Dakota to a car factory in Detroit… hell, all the way to a Tickle Me Elmo factory in Guangzhou has been kicked in the nuts. Given all this, Commander Corn Pop is going to “fix it” by bitching about a single overloaded shipping dock in LA? Suuuure…. pull the other one, it’s got bells on it.

The good news is this. Economic collapse is just economic collapse. It has happened before. Mismanagement by clueless incontinent geezers is just part of the cliché. We’re in the phase where nobody knows who’s running things. The press will report “ruler X is fit and healthy and totally in control” right up until they report “ruler X died two weeks ago”. Then they’ll claim “all hail Ruler Y who was found in a spare room just lying around. He’s fit and healthy and totally in control.” It will continue until they run out of doddering old fools. Such was the case in the declining USSR, such it is for us. That’s not so bad. Right here and right now, I might get fired. That not the worst fate. It’s not a bed of roses but it’s not a bullet to the skull.

Others face circumstances I don’t. For example, I’m currently unlikely to wind up in a concentration camp. Here’s a test; what do Australia 2021 and Germany 1940 have in common. Hint: it’s not kangaroos.

I’m lucky. So far, I have a full freezer, my health is well, my soul intact, I’ve stacked plenty of ammo, and the McRib is still available. Here’s a test; what is different between America and Australia in 2021? Hint: it’s not the McRib.

Shit looks dire but our enemy is a drooling puppet at the head of a paper tiger. Even if Captain Depends puts me on the street, this is not the only world. The material is the least important arena… and even that’s not completely fucked yet. Others have faced this situation; many have carried on and even thrived. They show the way.

In case you need it (and we all do), I’m linking to a story of hope. Please enjoy How I Survived Being Canceled:

Like many others, you may have decided not to comply with the vaccine mandate, or your employer is bearing down on you, and you have not decided. You’re thinking about how you would make a living, care for your family, and how the government could arbitrarily defy your constitutional rights. I know the feeling, because I was there…over twenty years ago.

. . .

God is much bigger than the U.S. government.  He has his ways of taking care of you.  You never know where your support can come from, so don’t let pride frustrate God’s ways to provide for you.

Traumas can heal, and debts can be repaid.  Standing up for what you believe in is eternal.

I’ve posted a little bit about how my job may be in jeopardy due to the vax mandate. I haven’t said much because I cherish privacy. Also, I’d rather not let my job monopolize more pleasant (and important!) parts of life.

Even so, the struggle hasn’t been without benefit. I needed to be reminded that a job is just a job and a soul is a soul. I am surprisingly thankful for that.

I also note that the torturous worry and mood swings and stress of a career in the noose has gradually changed. What started as doom doesn’t have the same black finality. My personal moment of greatest darkness was several weeks ago.

I could be wrong but it feels like the tide has changed. Do you feel it too?

I’m not the only one seeing hope on the horizon. The incomparable Sarah Hoyt has som words of wisdom on the matter:

Spit out the black pill. You KNOW PRECISELY where it’s been. Rinse your mouth.

She included a link to Bill Whittle who shares equal optimism:

Shit’s crazy lately. The stupidity leads to weirdness. Weirdness leads to instability. Standing around wondering how completely fucked we’re going to be before stability returns… if it ever will… is making us all tense.

It’s the weekend. I invite y’all to let off a little pressure. Let’s all sit back and enjoy some sci-fi reading from back before sci-fi was colonized by whiny woke asshats.

First, a 1951 short story by Arthur C. Clarke. Click the link to see it reproduced in its entirety (I assume it’s not a copywrite infringement). I present to you Superiority:

“The ultimate cause of our failure was a simple one: despite all statements to the contrary, it was not due to lack of bravery on the part of our men, or to any fault of the Fleet’s. We were defeated by one thing only – by the inferior science of our enemies. I repeat – by the inferior science of our enemies.”

Second, another 1951 short story by C. M. Kornbluth. This is one of my absolute favorites. (It’s reproduced in its entirety by Project Gutenberg.) I present to you The Marching Morons:

“The attrition of accidents, illness, wars and such took care of that. Your intelligence was bred out. It is gone. Children that should have been born never were. The just-average, they’ll-get-along majority took over the population. The average IQ now is 45.”

Every word is linked for free just above this line. (You can’t stop the signal Mal!)

If you want to buy a copy I sure as hell won’t stop you. Please use the links below. Since they originate on my page. I’ll get a tuppence from the Bezo-collective no matter what you buy. (Amazon requires an “I get money from this” disclaimer in case there’s still a living human in 2021 hasn’t figured out how sponsored links work. If that 90 year old cloistered monk still exists, I want to meet him. I assume he’s busy cutting checks to mail order stuff from late night TV ads repeated off VHS tapes.)

You’ll find Superiority nestled in The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke.*

You can also buy The Marching Morons.*

Also, anyone who loves The Marching Morons will love the excellent documentary Idiocracy. (Seriously, if you haven’t seen Idiocracy, do it now. Its got what plants crave!)

Happy reading.

A.C.

*Note: I bought my version’s of those texts under different titles. That’s the thing with old sci-fi from periodicals, they’re available in various anthologies. If the products at one of these links is low quality, please tell me asap.

Like many (most?) employees, I was ordered to take the vaccine. I resisted. I’m not naïve. I know nobody cares about an employee. I’m probably toast.

Here’s why I didn’t comply:

If there’s a line… a needle in your vein crosses it.

I don’t care what other people do, that’s their choice. I also won’t split hairs about the exact legal definition of “coercion” or “consent”. There are degrees in all things but none of this is on the part of the spectrum labeled “willing” or “voluntary”.

I wound up drawing a line in the sand. It’s almost as if I witnessed a braver, more confident version of myself doing what I knew to be right.

Like many others, I requested a Religious Exemption. “I won’t comply. Here’s why.”

I don’t know the odds of keeping my job. Each day I wait for the other shoe to drop; a carefully phrased legalistic response: “Pursuant to policy XYZ, your heartfelt request was ignored and shredded the hour we received it. You’re denied. You’re fired.”

Like everyone, I don’t have a magical “prepper plan” that’ll save my bacon. (Though things could be worse.) Nobody is adequately prepared to lose their livelihood.

Yet I have no regrets. Society went off the rails at the spiritual level but I didn’t. Your soul comes before your paycheck. Each person is different so if it doesn’t affect you in the same way, that’s fine. As for me, it was a spiritual fork in the road. When you know what’s right, all that remains is being man enough to do it.

In the last month what has happened in my workplace? Nothing.

I’m still not fired. I’m still not vaxxed.

I’m not yet impoverished. I have not died of covid.

There has been no word. Each day is a mystery. I may be fired tomorrow. Maybe next week. Maybe after Christmas. (They’d have to be nuts to fire dozens or thousands the month before Christmas. Folks fired in the shadow of a Christmas tree will not forget that moment!)

I wonder if management is in a corner looking at paint in all directions? It feels like nobody expected things to go this far. They didn’t expect it. I didn’t expect it. Now that they’re committed to a mandate and their workforce isn’t fully compliant do they really want to fire a zillion people? You can wonder if management is bluffing but unvaxxed workers are not. They’ve already demonstrated supreme commitment. When their job was seriously threatened they said “what part of ‘I will not comply’ confuses you?” That’s not a group about to change their mind. They’ve had most of a year getting browbeaten daily. They are not “hesitant”. They are hardened.

The dam is going to break, we just don’t know how. You feel it too. The whole economy is frozen up; everyone in every workplace is waiting for… something.

Everything is uncertain but nothing has changed… save I.

What has happened to me? Something wonderful.

When I was forced to take a stand, I lost the option of evasion. Fate removed my “go to” choice. I’m all about predicting where dramatic things will happen and being somewhere else. I’ll scamper away from conflict like a little bitch. I only want to be left alone. For the last two years as cities went mad, Karens patrolled mask zones, freedoms were curtailed, and whole city blocks were burned to the ground I was safely “pre-bugged out”.

I expected to stay that way indefinitely.

Things changed on September 9th. The President made a speech which specifically targeted me for “correction”! I’ve never before heard any president of either party speak that way about Americans! I wouldn’t speak that way to an errant child! Any man who talks like that in a bar will wind up bloodied in the parking lot. We all just know that! His  tantrum lit a fuse when he should have been trying to smooth things out.

The bastard made it personal. He came for my livelihood. Why target my job? I’m pretty sure it’s because that’s the greatest damage he can do. If Biden had enough power to drag me out of my own home in handcuffs he would. (Ask Australia about that.)

After the speech (outburst?), I was forced to accept what is and what is not. Any conciliatory middle ground had been burned flat. I was forced to take a side… clearly. I sent my Religious justification to a callous and uncaring HR. What a goat rodeo! HR spent decades bitching at anyone who mentions God in the workplace. Now they demand I and countless others expound about God’s role in their life? They wanted it. They got it. Someone in HR is probably getting PTSD reading my religious views.

I was forced into it. I wrote it all down. I signed my name on the dotted line. Then something interesting happened. It felt like God smiled; “About time you did that Curmudgeon! You needed it.” A wave of peace came to me.

What a gift! Maybe that was the plan. Biden’s little hissy fit coaxed my reticent self to reaffirm and solidify the spiritual focus I might very well need in the coming winter.

Writing it all out made all the difference. If I once wrestled with doubt, I do no more. I made a choice. My choice is done. The die is cast, the Rubicon crossed; it feels good!

Does this mean I’m free and clear? Heck no! I still don’t know if I’ll keep my job or not. I might be fiscally screwed.

Strangely, it’s hard to care. I don’t control the job situation; which means I bear no responsibility. They will do what they will. I don’t care if they burn the whole economy down; it’s not my fault.

What a relief! It’s one thing to sail the seas of whatever happens. I can do that. It’s another to feel responsible for the gale. That was too much. I didn’t realize how much weight had settled on me until it was lifted from my shoulders.

All things have a purpose. Fate, or God, or chance; or whatever you want to call it, got me to take the next step. I have freewill. I had the opportunity to wimp out. I could choose subjugation. It would have been easy. I would have been applauded.

What would have been my reward for wimping out? A steady paycheck that’s a personal jail cell. A trap where the walls would move in by increments. A short break but then another moment of spiritual degradation. There’s always another step on the path to hell. If two shots aren’t enough to break a man, how about three? Four is already on the horizon. If a third or fourth shot doesn’t do it, then what? Submit my DNA to HR? Blood tests at work? Tattoo my employee number on my ass? Mandatory transfer to Newark? Daily affirmation that my boss is the one true God? Who knows?

Better to do the right thing today when it’s clear and obvious and spiritually right for me than endure a lifetime of wondering what new stupid unworkable degrading mandate they’ll shove up my ass next week. I picked this hill for my career to die on. I’m almost happy about it.

I don’t know if this whole mandate thing was for the best but it might have been a necessary step for me. The world told me to fold… and I remembered this isn’t the only world. It felt good.

If our mad world is getting to you, just do the right thing. The rest will follow. After that you’ll feel lighter. You’ll be able to smile for the ones still in the scrum and say this:

Not my circus, not my monkeys.

I wish you all the best. Always remember; even if you’re the last person standing, you’re never alone.

[Warning: Forgive me for philosophizing. Recently, I feel like I can almost but not quite grasp the infinite. Skip today’s post (and tomorrow’s) if you wish.]

A month ago I mentioned my job was in jeopardy:

“Today I told my supervisor I have not gotten the vaccine and that I will not get the vaccine.”

I don’t share this lightly. It’s a private matter. I would have preferred to keep it that way. Alas, I don’t get to choose the intellectual health of the society in which I live.

I reluctantly shared my situation to give hope to those who need it. People need to know their pain is not borne in isolation. Pain shared hurts, pain in isolation kills.

Propaganda is meant to isolate us. “News” reports only a handful of knuckle dragging, illiterate, dolts are “hesitant”. This, of course, is false. As with all things human, there are infinite and varied reasons for individuals to make infinite and varied life choices. Each adult must consider their specific circumstances; anathema to those who would manipulate us en masse. “Fake News” reduces the infinite to “those who disagree are few, evil, and stupid”. It’s propaganda.

Here’s what’s true. Centralized bureaucratic powers always seek to dominate. This is true with every bureaucracy (government or otherwise). It is true when a public school uses a six year old as fiscal feedstock. It is true when a college encourages young adults to accept debt for a useless degree. It is true when Silicon Valley software spies on you. It is true when a hospital calculates rate of return on your deathbed.

To be fully human, you must make decisions for you… not for the bureaucracy. They attempt to thwart this. You are told, as if in an old sci-fi plot, “resistance is futile.” Your defeat is guaranteed; you have no hope to prevail.

This is not true. The human spirit matters. Your loss is not inevitable. Their win is not certain.

They know this. Whenever we remove ourselves from propaganda, we know it too. Centralized power appears to have the upper hand but appearance isn’t reality. They seek oppression with a system built to serve. In so doing they’ve overextended and ground to a halt. They can’t do much of anything. They can’t deliver food to Des Moines. They can’t keep the power grid stable in California. The military can’t win; it couldn’t even arrange an orderly retreat. Congress creates inflation it can’t counteract. States can’t maintain civil peace when their cities erupt in chaos.

Consider two small failures; they can’t remove the trash in New York and they can’t teach kids fractions in Virginia without a shitstorm of indoctrination. How incompetent can you get? Anyone with a truck can haul trash. Anyone with an average IQ can teach fractions without adding Marx. The collective might of bureaucracy fails on both counts.

That’s why everything is unstable. The wheels are falling off. Panic is palpable. Egomaniacs would rule rather than serve. They’re walking caricatures of failure.

Another limitation; they’ve no idea how to change course. Witness how desperately they cling to “Armageddon by pandemic”. It’s two years into the “black death with a 99.7% survival rate” and only the true Kool-Aid drinkers are still worried. The Amish never noticed but the woke are terrorized (then again they’re always terrorized). The sane middle relaxed and began behaving like normal people. They went to football games where they started chanting Let’s Go Brandon.

Meanwhile various bureaucracies and government layers are whipping the dead horse. They seem to think this it will help them. It won’t. Bludgeoning Americans to line up like cattle at the inoculation chute will do… what exactly? Balance the budget? Rescue people from Afghanistan? Control inflation? Find someone to work at McDonalds? Restore supply chains? Control lawless cities? Generate heating fuel?

If the President had a magic wand to make us all vaccinated on Tuesday… he’d still be losing control on Wednesday.

He missed a beautiful moment where a humble man could enjoy a big win. By June, everyone who wanted the vaccination had it. Yay team! The government turned “we happily provide you with what you want” to “we’re going to forcefully shove it up your ass if you don’t take it”. A noble accomplishment became divisive chaos. Instead of uniting behind a voluntary triumph we’re now in a mandatory knife fight. Dumbass!

Damn! I was trying to stay mellow and failed. What I wrote sounded overwrought didn’t it?

Oh well, it’s truth. When the times are mad, an honest assessment sounds crazy.

Don’t let normalcy bias rob you of your senses. You are on the cusp of change as much as a Jew in Germany. 1938 was not a fluke… it’s a historic pattern.

Here’s the good news, we’re not going quietly into that dark night… at least not all of us.

What’s next? I have no clue. The future is not yet written, especially yours. All that matters is this; if you seek to remain whole, you are not alone. Even if you’re the last person standing, you’re never alone.

I’d like to thank society for (barely) holding it’s shit together. I took a week and a half (mostly) off grid holiday. The word was already on fire. It wasn’t completely reduced to ash while I was gone. Yay.

A silly but true story:

I no longer take for granted that I can step away from society and it’ll manage to stay sane while I’m gone. Back in 2007 I was shocked when everything true went to false and vice versa in a single week.

I paddled away from a constitutional Republic with a nominally capitalist economic system. Nothing is perfect but it was at least more or less stable.

I spent a week fishing and canoe camping. I had no contact with the outside world for a week. I returned to a nation that had totally rejected markets. It had shut down the stock exchange to thwart markets changing prices lower. It was busily hurling money at entities that had profited for many years but might otherwise lose money during the current “crisis”.

I remember thinking “I was gone a week and the stock exchange is down? How can that be?” I tried to figure out what was happening and the discussions were like this:

AC: “WTF is going on?”

Everyone (trying to explain): “You see some people didn’t pay their subprime loans…”

AC: “Yes, that’s why they’re subprime.”

Everyone: “… so anyway everyone thought shitty risky loans would get paid back in full. When they weren’t, this company you’ve never heard of was out of money.”

AC: “When you give money to people who are risky you take on risk. It gets expensive to deny risk.”

Everyone: “…stop talking Poindexter! So there was a bailout of this company.”

AC: “That seems unwise.”

Everyone: “…and so everyone calmed down. But then this other company also wanted a bailout but it didn’t get a bailout.”

AC: “You can’t always get what you want. Mick Jagger says so.”

Everyone: “…so everyone’s stock price went to shit.”

AC: “The stock prices adjusted to reflect the financial health of the underlying company.”

Everyone: “NO! Shut up, this is serious. When prices go down it’s bad. So they shut down the stock market to keep the prices from dropping.”

AC: “Like closing your eyes so you become invisible?”

Everyone: “Don’t make jokes! It’s real. Everything was horrible. When the company nobody cares about went belly up, suddenly all the banks were fucked. So now the government is giving money to banks.”

AC: “Um…”

Everyone: “You don’t understand, you had to be there. According to the people on TV it was the end of the world.”

AC: “I was on the world. It’s still there. The fishing is great.”

Everyone: “Don’t be an asshole. Anyone who disagrees is a jerk.”

AC: “So, in addition to shutting down the stock market. What else did they do. Are there tanks on the streets?”

Everyone: “Right now they’re negotiating an incredibly unpopular banking bailout. It will be bigger than anything ever before. They’re trying to decide if it’ll be monumentally large or stupendously large.”

AC: “That would encourage bad decisions in the future.”

Everyone: “No, using government debt to invent money to give it to banks is the only possible thing to to. It makes sense if you were in the middle of it.”

AC: “I have a telegram from the future. In 2021 the Federal Debt will be 28 trillion.”

Everyone: “It’s necessary.”

AC: “The debt now is 8 trillion.”

Everyone: “If we don’t do it the banks will be screwed.”

AC: “The debt will increase by 350%.”

Everyone: “I’m telling you. Everything was destroyed!”

AC: “Buildings? Roads? What was destroyed?”

Everyone: “Everything. The value that doesn’t exist was found to not exist. We had to do this!”

AC (Backing away slowly): “Ok, well I’ve got to go now. I’m sure this will all work out fine and we won’t be facing inflation and shortages of consumer goods 14 years from now.”

The point is, distance gives you perspective. Right now, the 23rd month of 2020 is just another step in cascading disasters that began long ago. Also, I’ve almost come to expect the jolt of checking off of and back onto society’s runaway train of decline can be jarring. The thing about society losing it’s shit, is that you don’t as easily see it if you never pull your head out of the matrix*.

Since things suck so bad lately, I’ve lowered my expectations. This means I’m delighted that the bare minimum has held up. The power grid is still running, President Potato and his Chinese Handlers haven’t created a war in Taiwan, and jack booted thugs beating unvaccinated people is still (mostly) limited a hazy future and far away places like Australia. Also, I think the McRib is still available!

Well done to one and all. Of course, the long decline is still evident. The giant miasma of stupidity snuffing out freedom everywhere hasn’t dissipated. The rule of law remains divided into two viewpoints with one being de facto illegal and the other being de facto exempt. The universal tendency of egomaniacs to grab the wheel remains unchecked.

More deeply rooted, perhaps the heart of the whole thing: great swaths of the population still see free will and self determination as a burden. They seek to shift the burden of life’s choices to someone else, who invariably fucks it all up. But it’s the 23rd month of 2020 and I can only hope for so much.

It wasn’t just nice to leave, it was necessary. I’m more or less happy to have returned. What more can one ask?

Here’s a neat video of an iceberg flipping over.

*Perhaps “the matrix” isn’t a simulation? Maybe it’s the ass end of social media?

Also read this.

This was all baked into the cake back in March 2020 when governors started deciding if restaurants could be open and how workplaces would operate. It was unavoidable from that moment. It took a while for the effects to become obvious but they were present instantly. It will get more obvious with time. Furthermore, none of this will resolve until the government takes its hands off the wheel and there’s not the slightest hint they’ve got the intelligence or humility to do so.

Get used to it.

Update: The whole point of the video is that immensely complex endeavors “self organize” among free and economically interested people planet wide and that no single person can understand or control it all. President Potato lacks the humility to allow a system to operate on its own. So, he ordered the docks in California to work harder, like any clueless boss would do.

Every employee has at least once watched a boss wade into a complex situation, bitch at the people in the vicinity to work harder, and then run away with the smug condescending air of someone who has no clue how anything gets done but feels like they control it all. Admit it, you’ve seen this in just about every workplace you’ve experienced.  Every shitty boss in creation thinks bitching at employees will make the whole system more productive. After all, pouring over spreadsheets and figuring out to invest more in forklift maintenance or whatever would require a lot more effort… so bitching at employees is the default.

Predictably, Biden’s simple obvious solution sounded great and did no good at all. Things have gotten worse. Anyone who has thought about a simple pencil already knew that would be the result.

menticide (n): the systematic effort to undermine and destroy a person’s values and beliefs, as by the use of prolonged interrogation, drugs, torture, etc., and to induce radically different ideas.

Yesterday I wandered in the weeds. I added a spare paragraph to a perfectly adequate post. I don’t know why I added it. We already know it’s true. Why bother to state the obvious?

…Unless you’re Amish, you don’t have a society free of propaganda in which to take refuge. You’ll be surrounded by people in the thrall of electronic “media” and they’re hooked deeply. They’re junkies. They can’t quit.

The addiction merits attention. It must be addressed. It cannot be endured or ignored. Because our world is awash in propaganda, we need to attend to our mental health. It’s vital we withdraw from the avalanche of lies to the extent we can; at a minimum one must periodically come up for air and become reacquainted with reality. Few know such an option exists. Even fewer try it. Compared to just a few years ago, possibly even compared to Soviet Russia, propaganda has reached vast proportions.

Z-Man fleshed out the concept better than I have:

Whether by design or by accident, mass media is a form of menticide, a systematic destruction of the conscious mind of the people. Instead of the quiet predictability of familiar routines, the modern mind is a riot of chaos, doubt, and outrage. The natural human desire to live a peaceful life is drowned out by a riot in the head, triggered by the constant stream of insanity from the mass media.

Menticide. Precisely.

One thing menticide robs from us is connection. I’m as much a loner as anyone and yet even I seek connection with my fellow human. This is almost impossible now. Two people cannot connect unless both are free of the spell.

When you talk to a person steeped in mass media you are not connecting with that person at all. Whatever unique personality might have been there is submerged. Layers of training defend it against true interaction. If they’re a lefty, they’ll quote from the many media sources that instruct them on what to say. If they’re the opposite, they’ll still tell you a narrative. It’ll be what they heard on Gab or a meme they liked or some scrap from whatever slivers of media the censored Deplorables can unearth.

When I try to mention some thought I had that doesn’t come from “approved sources”, it’s literally unintelligible. Perhaps an idea is digested from my imperfect reading of history, or arrived at from personal experience, or even through some revelatory thought while hunting grouse. If it didn’t originate on a screen, it goes nowhere. My idea might be dumb or wise, but it’s not evaluated. Because it’s unique, it won’t be considered. It can’t be considered. The programmed follow a pattern. An idea that breaks the pattern doesn’t exist.

When a nerd like me says “you know, Marcus Aurelius had some ideas about…” or “when I was hunting I thought…” or “this one time in band camp I did this thing…” it’s doomed. Ideas from the media are evaluated in light of the media by avatars of the media. I might as well talk to my woodsplitter.

Most concepts cannot be communicated in any depth greater than Crimethink.

What to do? Z-Man offers the same prescription I offer:

…those who seek to survive it will need to find a way to silence the riot of the modern mind. Ironically, that means going back to where it started and taking a page from the cultural radicals. To quiet the mind, to break free of the narcotic of media menticide, it means you must turn off, tune out, and drop out.

This doesn’t mean you’ve got to go Amish and spend your days plowing potato hills behind a Percheron. But it does acknowledge that’s one way to go. The Amish, who live in close proximity to madness, have not themselves gone mad. (If they’d open a sanatorium for us overwrought English I’d gladly pay.)

A personal note: My temporary salve in 2021 was camping (sometimes with my little motorcycle parked next to my tent and sometimes with a homemade sailboat beached nearby). It was good clean fun. I basked in the timeless simple joy of it all.

I hadn’t realized it, but I’ve become dependent. As 2020 (now entering it’s 23rd month) lumbered forward, each new week brings more manufactured chaos into my world. My banked and stored “chill” is dangerously depleted. In a world gone mad, I crave nights lying in a sleeping bag, listening to owls and voices on the wind, with a thirst bordering on desperation.

I shouldn’t have painted myself into a corner. It’s better to have many outlets instead of one. But it happened and the next step is up to me. Logistics is now an enemy. Winter is nigh and camping in winter is less fun than it once was. (I used to love winter camping. I would love to do it again. However, sleeping on the ground in a snowdrift is from a time I have passed. Age is not a curse, but it will not be denied.)

I was idly pondering the acquisition of a hot tent. I hadn’t made the buy. I failed to act with proper dispatch. While I considered an expensive “luxury”, President Potato yanked the rug out from under me. He decided to actively undercut my income; because of course no life is too remote or unimportant to evade the Governmental edict. The Eye of Sauron sees all and have opinions on everything. Captain Droolcup has put my job on the chopping block of his Utopian world of mandatory medicine. He may succeed or he may not. I’m too chicken to risk unnecessary expense until I know.

The snow is not deep. I think I’ll try a week of day hikes and low key hunting. I may lack a suitable tent but I have boots. We’ll see if that calms the soul.

In the meantime, take care of yourself. Keep the media at bay. Do it for your own health. Don’t give up. 2020 isn’t done with us but there’s hope. Recreational panic is wearing thin in the zeitgeist. In the long run, we may emerge sane.

If you learn nothing else from 2020 (a year which is now 23 months long) it’s this:

Propaganda works on you even if you know it’s propaganda.

We’ve all experienced it. You spend all day in a world where the sky is blue and gravity points down. Everything seems normal.

Then the folks in power squat over your house and dump propaganda through electronic devices* into your mind. It’s a brutal assault!

Some pinhead on TV says that virtually every voter in creation wants free shit from the government and they’ll burn their own neighborhood to get it. You’re reminded that this is a good thing. Your vote is important, unless you vote wrong, in which case it’s bad. Morality is outdated. God is dead. Earning things is bad. Having them granted to you is good.

Ads feature lesbian plumbers, black fly fishermen, and everyone who doesn’t buy a particular product is racist. Subarus are made of love and electric cars run on magic. Every corporation loves you. Every fictional CEO is a white male amoral monster. Every actual CEO wants to fix your bad mentality. The former spends his spare time tying widows to train tracks and and the latter is saving dolphins from climate change. Politicians accused of sexually assaulting empowered women who are completely helpless is sorted based on party. Believe all women, unless they accuse a Clinton.

Your sports team is taking a knee for… you have no idea. Their name is racist, millionaire players are victims, and they play in a stadium named by a corporation that’s morally superior to you.

The president announces a huge infrastructure bill is “free”. The “press” nods in agreement like they actually believe it. If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor. Enjoy your $2100 savings.

Facebook labels any doubt about any pronouncement by any bureaucracy “misinformation”. Nobody’s fat on Instagram.

Your kid’s homework would make RuPaul queasy. You examine closely and realize your kid’s teacher is nearly illiterate. Any kid that takes this shit seriously is going to become a basket case and your kid will be there for 13 years. You start to panic and you’re called a domestic terrorist because you questioned the numbskull education majors that march in great herds.

Arson is peaceful protest. Speech you might agree with is violence. Violence against someone like you is free speech.

“News” tells you that inflation doesn’t exist, store shelves are not empty, the climate is affected by tax policy, a zillion illegal immigrants is going to improve your life, and worrying about your winter heating bill means you hate nature.

You’re told that printing unlimited money is just fine. You’re told that parking a $60,000 car in front of a $400,000 house is completely normal. You’re told that it’s completely normal that you’ve financed them all.

Then… the clock ticks and it’s minute two.

It’s relentless. It never ends. Each glimmer of truth comes with a truckload of lies.

The whole situation was designed. It serves a purpose. It’s targeted and delivered by the truckload. Lies this pervasive and endless are almost irresistible. They percolate through the most armored mind and take root in a weary soul.

Soon you feel despondent. Everything is hopeless. This is the new normal. It’ll never get better. You’ve become demoralized… as was intended.

The miasma of failure is a dense fog. It interferes with your thinking. From within, you cannot navigate out. As was also intended.

The best solution to this is a great big laugh. It’s all ridiculous. Quit taking any of it seriously because not a damn part is true or real. Once you step out of the onslaught you see how dumb it is. Under the earth’s true sun, you see the horizon again. Up is once again up. Down is once again down. Anytime you laugh it breaks the spell.

The defeat for evil is not hate… it is mockery.

The thing bullies and tyrants fear most is being made fun of. They don’t fear war, famine, and death… they fear being ridiculed. They fear it because it exposes them as what they are… empty failures.

Which brings me to this:

“I must admit it. I must come clean. I try turning myself over to the better angels of my nature, but I don’t know if they will have any luck, because I am 100%, prime time, on board the “Let’s Go Brandon!” bandwagon.”

When I’m feeling down, nothing warms my heart more than a good loud round of Fuck You Biden (or the PG version, Lets Go Brandon). That’s not the sound of crass misery, it’s the sound of American Citizens acting with the irreverence and spirit that marks a free people. Humor, as much as guns and laws, is what made our nation free. Without it, we are already in chains.

The power of humor to defeat asinine bastards is as old as time. Remember this?

I’ll also point you to one of my favorite blogs, The Ultimate Answer To Kings:

“It finally came to me – and that’s when I abandoned the city and most of my stuff, and gave all that was behind me a good stiff Randian Shrug.

The ultimate answer to kings is not a bullet, but a belly laugh.”

Also, I’m working on my contribution to humor. I’m 3/4 of the way through a book. It’s a combination satirical allegory and my unified field theory of the most powerful force in the universe: bullshit. Feel free to read the as yet unfinished but definitely not forgotten Attack Of The Lesbian Activist Squirrels.

Whenever modern politics gets you down, just chuckle and say “Let’s Go Brandon”.

A.C.

*While 99% of propaganda is delivered by electronic devices, it’s harder to dodge them than you think. I will go days and weeks without media or internet only to get nuked by society the instant I make contact. Unless you’re Amish, you don’t have a society free of propaganda in which to take refuge. You’ll be surrounded by people in the thrall of electronic “media” and they’re hooked deeply. They’re junkies. They can’t quit. When a junkie meets a person who’s “clean” (like yours truly at times) they are programmed to download everything… and they will… instantly! They literally cannot help themselves. If there’s a popular show they’ll turn into a Meat Tivo and tell you the plot… as if you somehow don’t have the ability to watch TV if you want. They’ll repeat CNN talking points or what they heard on NPR as if it’s vitally important you know the same bullshit that was crammed onto their tiny little hard drive. This isn’t by accident and it’s very distinctive behavior. One example; I could not avoid listening to a dozen recounts of “Game Of Thrones” from HBO. I don’t have HBO and I didn’t want some yo-yo’s rendition. I’d read the fucking books. It didn’t help. I couldn’t stop them. They couldn’t stop themselves.

(P.S. This post’s title is in honor of the American Revolutionary War’s Continental Navy captain John Paul Jones. During a pitched sea battle, he was taunted by British Captain Richard Pearson. Pearson asked “Has your ship struck?” Jones replied “I have not yet begun to fight!” As banter goes I’ll give that 3 out of 4 Klingons, an honorary Churchill cigar, and a Viking seal of approval. Within 12 hours, after a desperate battle, Pearson surrendered. Jones took Pearson’s ship. This is fortunate because the American’s ship was mortally wounded and sunk before it could be repaired.)