Month: March 2022

In the Quiet of the Evening

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Today was a pretty good day.  Knocked a couple of items off the to-do list, had some good meals, got some air outside.  Did a walkaround the house and yard.  The pond is a mess.  Lots of fallen branches and even a good-sized tree in the water.  The beaver’s dam is completely gone and the level of the water has fallen a couple of feet.  The wear and tear on the external woodwork of the house is moderate.  Some fenceposts will need repair.  Camera Girl was raking in her gardens, removing the eleven billion oak leaves that migrate in from the forest over the winter.  I was looking at the poison ivy vines that I still need to pull up (gotta get going on that!).  Saw a few birds and a frog and way too many flies for my liking.  Planted some seeds in indoor planters.  Spring is right on schedule.  Good start to the day.

Then I read some of the news items.  Wow!  The world truly is run by scoundrels and idiots.  Some of them, like Joe Biden, are both.  They’re running the country into the ground and doing anything and everything to try and point the finger of blame away from themselves.  The Ukraine, Hunter’s laptop, gas prices, food prices, a coming recession.  It’s a litany of bad news.  That’s a let-down.  But even bad news has its silver lining.  I noticed that Biden’s job approval rating sank five points over the last couple of days so his attempts to misdirect the blame for inflation to the Ukraine crisis hasn’t worked.  That’s a plus.  The New York Times has admitted what every intelligent person already knew, that the Hunter Biden laptop was legitimate.  Seems like the powers that be are preparing to deep six Dementia Joe.  That’s kind of good.  Sure, we still have to figure out how to get someone better in the White House but at least torpedoing a disaster like Biden is definitely a win.  You see, the news isn’t all bad.

So, shrugging off the news I get to work on my writing and turn out a post for the site and bang out a thousand words of fiction.  Now the day is back on course.  I look at the website stats for the last thirty days and I notice that DuckDuckGo has surpassed Google as the largest organic search source for the site.  And some of the other search engines are also catching up to Google.  This is very good news.  Google ignores all of my political and current events posts and only shows photography and review posts.  Obviously, that’s a problem.  DuckDuckGo has been featuring my political posts but even my review and photography stuff is breaking through there too.  All very good.  Still running into delays on the web business stuff I’m working on but it shouldn’t take more than a week or so to straighten that stuff out.  So, the weekend is ending on a high note.  And next week should be excellent.  Forecast is for every day from now on to be at least in the fifties with nighttime temps in the thirties.  Not exactly balmy but with a little luck no ice or snow on the horizon.

In the quiet of the evening, I have a chance to reflect on the day.  So, the world is what it is, but if you look at it the right way you can find the bright side and go about your business trying to improve your little corner of the world.  You do your work.  Fix the things that need fixing.  Make some progress.  Earn your daily bread.  Socialize with the people you care about.  Interact with everyone else as well as you can.  And end the day with the world slightly better than when you found it in the morning.  And if you have a hard time finding the improvement then make something up.  Celebrate the perfectly ordinary.  Reward yourself by playing your favorite old movie or whatever entertainment you prefer, make a bowl of popcorn and open a beer or whatever you drink and enjoy an hour and a half just because you need something to lift your spirits.  End the day on a positive note and look forward to something good coming along tomorrow.  And if it doesn’t come along, go out and find it.  Make your own good luck.  Search for the good.  Search for good people.  Enjoy your life.  That’s what it’s for.

School Vouchers Should be the Path Forward for Education in this Country

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The public schools have become a hopeless trainwreck.  The best way I see for escaping this defective system is to provide any parent who wants to opt out of the local public school, with the dollar equivalent cost of the local public-school education as a voucher and let him find a better school.  This will serve two purposes.  It will better educate the youth of America and it will force the public schools to improve or wither away.

This will be an enormously expensive undertaking.  Currently the budget for primary and secondary public education is in the range of 750 billion dollars a year.  But really what it requires is the federal government to fund the initial outlay and then the local governments to repay the federal government for the children that do not attend their local public schools.  Of course, the public schools will become a smaller and smaller part of the education system and the states can figure out a way for the tax revenues that currently pay for education to be distributed directly to the parents instead of going through the federal government.  And with the competition from other schools the cost of education will most probably be lower than what the public schools currently cost the local towns and cities.  After all New York City has the most expensive public school system in the country on a per child basis but the achievement level of all but the few gifted schools ranges from mediocre to abysmal.  Competing with it on a dollar basis should be simple.

The outcome of allowing school choice in the United States would be the largest single increase in the intelligence of Americans since the space race pushed math and science education into the limelight back in the fifties and sixties.  Suddenly kids who had languished in terrible schools all around this country, especially in the cities, would find out that they had brains that actually worked.  And without the poison of the woke narrative being dripped into their heads kids might figure out that there was more to life than staring at their phones.  And with a real-world curriculum, kids and parents would have a common base of knowledge from which to understand each other.

So, this will never happen.  The school teachers are the most powerful voting block in the Democratic coalition.  Their privileges are jealously guarded by the recipients of their donations and votes.  And it would require tremendous voting change in this country to make school vouchers happen for the general population.  The public-school teachers know that if they have to compete against private schools, they’ll be forced to actually teach children instead of doing whatever it is they currently do.  That’s a gravy train they’ve been on for decades and they will do whatever it takes to keep it going.

But the only voting block bigger than the teachers’ unions is the parents of America.  Currently the mothers vote for the Democrats in a lopsided way.  If they ever came to their senses and voted for their children’s welfare instead of for their feminist vanity then there would be a chance of fixing things.  There have been the first stirrings of this in Virginia with the Youngkin revolt.  It would require an enormous shift to allow something like school vouchers to become law.  Because of this difficulty many people think it is more reasonable to reform the public schools but I see that as a false choice.  The inertia of the current population of teachers and administrators in the schools is an irresistible force that cannot be changed.  It can only be abandoned.

H/T to the Conservative Treehouse – Neil Oliver’s Latest

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Mr. Oliver starts out discussing the UK’s latest on-line censorship bill and says what he thinks about all this mind control.  But he ends with a declaration that it’s time we take control of our own lives and start living in the real world and work with like minded individuals to make our own lives what we want them to be.  Neil Oliver is an eloquent and a persuasive speaker but in this example the simple common sense of what he is saying rises above his eloquence and speaks directly to me.  He is echoing something I have been feeling lately.  It’s time for us to live our lives and avoid as best we can the occupied territory of the enemy and work around them.  That way we don’t waste our lives on purposefully useless and aggravating nonsense.

Bravo Mr. Oliver.

Reclaiming the Family – Part 8 – The Future Belongs to the Active

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Average Americans have been passive participants in the troubling events that have surrounded them for decades.  We have watched in silent horror as all the bedrock axioms of normal life have been upended and crazy people have been encouraged by those in authority to destroy the fabric of our lives.   And it’s accelerating.  Previously, various forms of degeneracy were the innovations that the powers that be were foisting on us.  But now crime and chaos have been added to the list of activities that are being sanctioned by the governing powers in charge of our society.  The George Floyd riots are the signal that functional civil society has been abandoned by, at least, the Blue State establishment.

During the decades that this devolution has been progressing there have been attempts by the saner members of our leadership to resist this madness.  I guess the Reagan presidency was a reaction against it.  The Trump election in 2016 was also a reaction to it.  These were attempts to claw back control of the country as a whole from the progressives who have slowly but surely taken control of almost all the levers of power in the United States.  There may be another breakthrough in 2024.  If the Republicans can keep the Congress and capture the presidency there is some hope that they can at least temporarily reverse the damage being done in this country by the forces of chaos that are intent on tearing the whole thing down.

But I don’t think it’s wise to depend on some hypothetical permanent victory of the Right over the Left.  Even if it does happen at some point, it may be too late to benefit you or even your descendants.  I think it’s incumbent on each of us to look at what services and benefits are no longer available form our government or communities and find substitutes and work arounds on our own.

I think the most important service we have to address is educating our children.  The public schools are worse than useless.  They are in fact a detriment to the education and socialization of children.  I won’t go through the litany of failings and problems with public schools.  Suffice it to say that outside of a few communities the education children get in public schools is worse than useless.  It’s poison.   It is the responsibility of parents to provide for the future of their children as best they can.  Providing them with the chance to thrive in society is crucial and not only is the public-school environment failing to provide them with the rudiments of education but all of the schools from pre-K through graduate schools indoctrinate young people with propaganda that is wildly anti-survival.  Students are fed anti-human lies that encourage them to reject normal goals such as business success and family formation because of nonsense about “saving the planet” and developing their individuality.  What they need is basic survival skills like math and language skills followed by practical training in a profession or a trade.  That is what parents should be selecting for in a school.  And you’re going to have to pay for it.

The next service that we all have to be selecting for is public safety.  Living in an American city is now a very risky proposition.  There may be some large cities that are reasonably safe.  But finding them will require careful research.  Even suburbs and towns may be afflicted with the scourge of organized and disorganized criminality.  What we have to do is evaluate the areas we are considering as long-term homes and determine if our families will be safe and free from constant anxiety while moving around their extended circle of destinations.  Crime statistics are one research tool.  Another will be the political support both major parties get in the area.  Look very carefully at where you decide to live.  Moving is expensive and painful.

Employment is another important area where an active approach is very important.  If your profession is already established then you are to a large extent tied into the locations that you can set up a home base.  Of course, lately remote work has taken hold in a number of companies and professions.  But for others this isn’t a practical choice.  For many professions, American industry has severely limited the opportunities for employment inside the country.  Whole industries have been transplanted to Asia leaving careers in engineering and management severely reduced in the numbers of positions available.  For some people becoming an ex-patriot employee is an important option.

For the young who don’t currently have a profession or for those willing to change professions choosing a trade or profession that allows you to work outside of the “woke” corporations is an attractive feature.  Self-employment as a craftsman or small business owner provides flexibility and protection against being brow-beaten and even fired for not displaying the requisite amount of social justice fervor on the job.  It has to be admitted that the choice of avoiding the corporate hierarchy means you will probably never be a multi-millionaire or travel in the corporate Lear jet to Davos to hobnob with Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos.  But that may be one of the advantages too.  You’ll still have some self-respect and time to spend with your family.  Look at the areas of the country you want to live in and see what are the best opportunities for employment that fit your skill set.  You may have to be a little flexible with what you do for a living to live where you want to live.

The other thing you will want to be active about is participating in local government.  Find out who runs your town.  Go to town meetings.  Find out who the local Republicans are and find out if they’re useful or useless.  You might even have to run for dogcatcher just to get something useful done in your area.  Find out about your local police department.  Find out if your town is embarking on any kind of radical “affordable” housing project.  Often that is code for bringing in deadbeats and illegal aliens into the suburbs.

It’s your job to shape your environment.  It’s what humans have done from time immemorial.  As Americans we had a century of living under the umbrella of a powerful, mostly competent government that improved the lives of its citizens.  That time is over.  We live under a rapacious oligarchy that is trying to hold onto the shrinking resources of a declining global empire.  Finding pockets of prosperity and sanity in the crumbling American Empire will be a challenge for those who don’t want to just give up.  That’s your challenge.  And if by some miracle we, the people, manage to wrest control of America away from the oligarchs and reestablish this country as a sane and prosperous nation, you’ll be ahead of the curve if you’ve already set yourself up by being an active agent of your own happiness.