Month: June 2023

Learning From Your Mistakes

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What is the mission?  So that’s the first mistake.  When I was young, I was told by everyone that being an American meant that I could be sure that I was living in the land of opportunity and all I had to do was work hard and follow my dreams.  And to some extent it proved to be true.  What they didn’t say was that this was a temporary situation and my children and grandchildren would be out of luck.  Lesson learned.  Opportunities are as you find them.  Just because a college has a course in classical languages does not mean there are paying jobs for people who take those classes.  Or in English Literature, or Art History or Gender Studies for that matter.  There may not even be jobs for engineers or accountants.  It’s strictly up to you to figure out what people will pay for.  And that’s part of the mission.  Because the mission is to thrive.  It’s not some automatic thing.  You are constantly figuring out the changing rules and playing field that is life in 21st century America.

How about safety?  But America is the safest place in the world.  We have safe water, safe air, safe food, safe medicines, safe cars and safe roads.  There’s the EPA, the FDA, OSHA, the DOT, you name it.  We’ve got local law enforcement, the FBI, NSA, CIA and another dozen alphabet soup agencies keeping us safe from bad guys foreign and domestic.  And yet crime, property and violent, are skyrocketing.  To a large extent you have been thrown back on your own resources to avoid becoming the victim of accidents and attacks.  Now you even have to consider whether the banks you keep your money in are safe from mismanagement and malfeasance.  All of this is on you now.  Where you live, where and how you travel and what institutions you interact with and trust, you must carefully decide these things and base those decisions on accurate evaluations of the way things actually are, not what they’re alleged to be by the government or the press.

And then there’s the federal government.  The old joke was that the scariest words an American could hear were “I’m from the federal government and I’m here to help.”  Well, they don’t pretend any longer that they want to help.  If the feds come looking for you, they’re probably going to bust down your front door and perp walk you to their gulag.  The government has made it their sworn duty to separate you from your constitutional rights and as much of your money and possessions as they possibly can.  Avoiding the malevolent influence and attention of the feds may now be the number one priority of people who hope to thrive.

But the picture isn’t all doom and gloom.  There are still lots of good people and opportunities to live a meaningful and happy life.  What it takes is a mindset that accepts that life isn’t a cakewalk and that the government isn’t your friend.  You must decide how you will navigate the hazards of our society and pass this knowledge along to your children.

If you are realistic and aware of the pitfalls that have been planted in our landscape then you will have a better than even chance of avoiding them and living a rich and productive life.

But for those who either can’t or won’t heed the danger signals and instead blunder through the minefield that is today’s America, there is the high probability that you will become one of the cautionary tales that litter our society.

Be smart, stay safe, thrive.

Arizonan Sojourn, South Carolinian Dreams by Tyler James Cook – A Book Review

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Tyler Cook is the blogger known as the Portly Politico.  He writes about music, politics and all manner of things from the point of view of his corner of South Carolina.  And personally, I think he’s a very good guy.

Tyler has written a book, “Arizonan Sojourn, South Carolinian Dreams” that I would describe as a travelogue.  It chronicles his various trips to small towns in his state along with a trip to the Grand Canyon and environs.  The writing is a first-person account of the trials and tribulations that go along with travel.  Tyler describes the various sights and activities that he partakes in and we get his take on the experience of exploring the environment he sojourns through.  There are local festivals and local cuisine and we even travel with him on a river rafting excursion with his girlfriend.

As far as my recommendation, this book is for those who are looking for the Millennial take on the road experience.  Tyler enjoys experiencing the small-town world of his neck of the woods.  Reading this will provide you with that sensibility.

An Observation on Leadership

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Right now Vladimir Putin is battling against internal and external foes that beggar the imagination.  He has a war on his flank, NATO arming and training his enemy, the Western world strangling off commerce and trade and a mad general in revolt at his doorstep.

And yet when he speaks to his nation he sounds like this.

By comparison we’ve had Biden, Trump, Obama, Bush and Clinton as our leaders over the last thirty years.  We are led by men who in at least one case can’t even articulate a complete sentence off a teleprompter.  Even Clinton, who was glib, could never inspire his country.

Putin is not our leader.  Russia is not our country.  But if honesty matters at all, it’s necessary to admit that we are led by, at best, mediocrities and in some cases fools.  I don’t envy the Russians their situation.  It is beyond dire.  It’s catastrophic.  And come to think of it, I’m not so sanguine about our own prospects.  Pushing a desperate man to the brink who controls an enormous arsenal of nuclear ICBMs is not exactly rational.  We could be hearing some very bad news at any time.

But to finish my thought.  I wish we had a leader that was half as eloquent, even half as rational.  We don’t need a Caesar or a Napoleon.  We could use a Pericles but I’d settle for a Washington.  Instead we’ve got Joe Biden.

Yevgeny Prigozhin Declares War on Russia

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The head of the Wagner group has headed into Russia with his army.  Is Prigozhin crossing the Rubicon?  We’ll probably know very soon.  The outcome of this mutiny cannot be predicted.

Apparently the Russian military was trying to separate Prigozhin from his troops and he decided to forestall that by starting his own war!

I would say things are spinning out of control.  What this will mean to the larger war can only be imagined.  But obviously if the CIA has been hinting about coups occurring in Belarus then possibly this is related.

Stay tuned.

Update:

Putin addresses the Russian nation about the rebellion.

Affirmative Action, Once More into the Breach

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The US Supreme Court is currently deliberating on two cases about affirmative action in higher education.  The Harvard University case is called “Students for Fair Admissions v. Presidents and Fellows of Harvard College.”  And the University of North Carolina case is called “Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina.”

The crux of the case is whether it’s constitutional to allow discrimination against someone based on race.  Most colleges boost the chances of black and Hispanic students to gain entry into a college by manipulating their profile in ways that do not reflect their academic achievement.  And by virtue of this boosting, they harm the chances of white and Asian candidates that are competing for these college admissions.

Now this has been looked at before.  Over the last fifty years various Supreme Court cases have admitted that affirmative action is unconstitutional.  But its practice has been justified as a temporary crutch to compensate for past injustices that discriminated against minorities.  However, fifty years is a pretty permanent “temporary.”  Could this be the Supreme Court that finally ends this unjust practice?  From what I’ve read a decision is expected in the next six weeks.  Some leftist think tanks believe that the court is poised to throw out affirmative action.  Well, I hope they’re right but I’m not all that confident.

Let’s review.  John Roberts is a hopeless liberal.  Gorsuch and Kavanaugh have proven unreliable on occasion so it’s a complete crapshoot.  What is certain is that the latest case will answer the question whether there’s any hope at all of this court providing justice on constitutional grounds for such things as freedom of speech, freedom of association and other constitutional rights that have been stolen from us by courts and the administrative state.

I’m pretty excited about this case regardless of its outcome.  Like so much of what has gone on over the last few years, this event will provide clarity about another facet of our world.  Like the fraudulent elections and the Justice Department lawfare against Donald Trump and the January 6th defendants, each of these examples strips away another part of the façade that hides the reality of the American system of government.  There’s a liberating feeling that comes from seeing things as they actually are.  Surprisingly, instead of making someone feel powerless, seeing through these ruses gives one a feeling of power.  You feel much more in control.  These facades are like buoys in the ocean.  You know that there are dangerous rocks below the surface but because there is a marker, you can choose to avoid them.  It’s the fakes that you don’t know about that can do the real harm.

Well, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Roberts; do your worst.  In six weeks, we’ll find out just how awful you really are.  Put in those terms, I’m expecting the worst, so if I’m surprised, I can only be pleasantly surprised.  What has been pleasant was reading about Clarence Thomas’s cross-examination on the benefits of affirmative action.  Being a recipient of affirmative action, he knows exactly what it does and doesn’t do.  And he wasn’t buying any of the “research” that its defenders presented.  I at least know how his vote will be cast, for honesty and justice.