Category: Current Events

Living a Good Life in a Dystopian Future

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Why did millions of immigrants come to America in its first hundred or so years as a nation?  Opportunity.  And that includes both economic opportunity and the opportunity to enjoy a measure of freedom that did not exist anywhere else.

Now, part of that economic opportunity was predicated on the opening up of an empty continent.  There was land being given away for a song and also the tremendous advantages that the industrial revolution was creating meant that all the potential locked up in this empty new world could be extracted at a phenomenal rate.  The steam engine and then the internal combustion engine created the modern world and with it the enormous middle class that was the heart of America in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Now we live in the aftermath of those events.  The continent has been tamed and to some extent filled.  Technology has more or less leveled off.  But as we experienced after World War II there is an enormous dynamism to the human capital that was mid-century America.

And that dynamism was fueled by a meritocratic outlook that tried to select the best man for the job and let him earn his way from there.  Business was a sort of Darwinian selection where everyone competed for the highest salary, the biggest office, the best benefits package and if truth be told, the prettiest secretary.

Well, things have changed.  In the last ten or twenty years all of the major sectors of our society have said that merit is racist, sexist, homophobic and now transphobic.  Children will no longer be graded in school according to ability and effort and workers will no longer be hired or promoted according to ability or achievements.  They will instead be given these academic and career rewards based on the color of their skins and their position in the sexual dysfunction hierarchy.

Now this will have a devastating effect on both the people who aren’t advantaged by the hierarchy (i.e., white people in general and straight white men in particular) and also the society itself.  After all, if meritocracy was the driving force that powered the American century and its dominance of the world in almost every field, then the removal of this force will create the opposite effect.  And we are already seeing this in multiple instances.  Wherever “equity” has been introduced, mediocrity, at best, has set in.  Anyone who has observed the American workplace from within over the last thirty years can think of several examples where a woman or minority affirmative action hire has proven so incredibly incompetent that people were hard pressed not to assume it was done as a way to punish those who worked in the same department as these disasters.

So now that equity has been codified by the government and this race based corporate sabotage will be practiced on an industrial scale, we can expect severe economic and societal dislocations.  Companies that employ unqualified individuals and then shield these individuals from answering for the results of their incompetence will not be able to compete with meritocratic organizations.  They will produce inferior and over-priced products that won’t be bought.  So, this policy, if enforced, will doom American industry when competing against products and services provided by competitors who hire based on ability.

And so, after that long and winding introduction, I reach the point of my essay.  In the future, it will only be possible to thrive by living in a place that allows people to be rewarded for competence and hard work.  Maybe that will be a red state.  Maybe it will be a foreign country.  But for the foreseeable future it won’t be a Fortune 500 company operating in a blue state.  Theoretically you can still be a small businessman living in a blue state if your skill set is in high demand.  Tradesmen and technicians who can pick and choose their assignments may still be able to write their own tickets.  Especially if their skills are needed for critical equipment and components.

But even these exceptions still have to endure the other shortcomings of living in these awful places.  Their kids will have to be taught by leftist propagandists (unless they’re home-schooled).  They will be subject to absurd administrative interference in their lives.  They will be surrounded by brain-dead zombies.  And they will be in proximity to dangerous urban areas from which violent mobs may erupt at any time.

Our current leftist leaders want to turn you into a serf.  If you don’t want that to happen then you will have to do something about it.  The best thing you can do is figure out where merit is rewarded and move there.  I’m still trying to figure out which place makes the most sense for me.  For younger people it’s easier.  The only caveat I make for them is this.  Make sure it’s a place where you can find a wife and raise a family.  Everything else will probably take care of itself.

Lifeboat

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Today I had to head out for a work training that I wasn’t looking forward to.  I mean, Saturday?  What is this the 1930s?  And then I thought, yeah, it kinda is.

And in addition, yesterday the ZMan’s “power hour” podcast failed to materialize for almost the first time I can remember.  And it didn’t show up today either, something about his work schedule.  So, I was even more out of my routine for this point of the week.

But every day we have on this Earth is a good day in some sense so I figured I’d see what would develop.  Well, the training was not what I’d call interesting but studying the people turned out to be amusing.  It’s funny how small towns seem to perpetuate “types.”  There’s the politician who’s always doing his schtick and the police officer who immediately sizes up the people in the room.  And you can recognize school teachers and small businessmen and doctors and tradesmen.

And each of these different types approach their time in the group differently and somewhat as adversaries.  Their differences of opinion are extremely predictable and almost stereotypical.  And I’m sure that goes for me too.  Anyone who has been trained as an engineer will fall back on a predictable way of approaching a problem or a project.  I’m sure that the selectman looks at me as a sort of obstacle when any kind of technical issue interferes with something he’s working on.

And so even though the subject matter wasn’t something I wanted to spend my Saturday on I kind of enjoyed interacting with a room of my fellow humans.  It reminded me of that famous Alfred Hitchcock WWII movie “Lifeboat.”  You have a bunch of people who have escaped from an American passenger ship that was sunk by a German U-boat.  They include a cross section of American society from the millionaire industrialist, to the working-class sailors of the sunken ship, with a female newspaper columnist, and a love interest for one of the sailors thrown in to make the movie interesting for the women viewers.  And, of course, they include a German sailor that escaped from the U-boat that also sank.  Watching the “allied” passengers aggravate each other over social differences is even more interesting than the conflict with the Nazi “prisoner” who eventually becomes the leader of the castaways.

I guess if my politics had been known to the other participants some of them at least would probably have likened me to the German U-boat commander.  But regardless, involving yourself with the people around you is a good and necessary thing.  I think a big part of the problem with the blue states is that the Right has refused to get involved in local politics and so by default, it has been taken over by the Left.  How could that not turn into a disaster?  And even in the Red States, allowing other people to make decisions that you’re too busy to worry about is a recipe for disaster.

Of course, for someone in New England it’s all academic.  All the big battles have already been fought and lost.  Our scope only remains in the local town decisions.  And even these are sometimes almost completely circumscribed by state and federal mandates.  But fighting the good fight is still the better way.  Just ceding everything to the Left is lazy and crazy.

So, I returned home feeling somewhat energized instead of drained as I thought I would be.  It’s funny.  People taken one at a time are mostly not so awful.  Obviously, there are the horrible exceptions but I think a lot of those are found in the upper strata of society.  Regular people tend to be regular.  They’re all full of tics and habits and mannerisms and sure they’re all a little crazy at least.  But most of them are kind of hard to truly hate.  I guess the real problem is we’ve never figured out a way to keep the mob from running our lives.  I guess the trick is to be in charge of the mob.

Well anyway I managed to escape from the Lifeboat back to my cozy island here in Dunwich.  And hopefully tomorrow I’ll have some subject more profound than this to expound upon.  Watch out for those U-boats.

28APR2023 – Summing Up the Week

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It’s been quite a week.  Joe Biden announced his plan for re-election.  Another large bank is failing.  Stagflation was declared by a few economists.  The city of Bakhmut has been almost completely erased from the map.  The US government has vowed to turn our military into a joke driving clown cars and “electric” ships.  Tucker Carlson eclipsed all of cable news by sending out a “stay tuned” message on his next gig.  And we all groaned or laughed depending on how far along we are in the grieving process.

For myself, personally, I have a bunch of stuff coming up in the next two weeks that will keep me hopping.  I even have to attend a work-related event tomorrow (Saturday!) so I won’t be able to lavish as much time as I’d like on complaining about the horrors of civilizational disintegration or mocking the disgusting degenerates who make up most of our federal government.  But I’ll be there in spirit.

It’s a funny thing.  For the last month or so when people talk to me about the 2024 election, I tell them I don’t think the Republicans can overcome the vote-by-mail scam the Democrats have introduced into swing states like Pennsylvania and Michigan.  At first, they seem at a loss what to say but after a few seconds they nod their heads and agree.  I think they are surprised that I’ve given up the fight.  But then they look at the substance and have to agree.

And that acceptance makes all the rest easier.  The idea that an absurd walking corpse like Joe Biden, whose tenure up to this point has been an unmitigated disaster for this country and who would be 86 if he somehow survives to the end of a second term, will be re-elected to the presidency of the United States of America should be an outrage and an impossibility.  But it is now talked about in the political columns as the most likely outcome of the election.  A year ago, I would have been apoplectic about this situation.  Now I see it as the status quo and my job is to find the actions that I can take to limit my exposure to the consequences of this reality.

And because of the enshrined insanity that the Biden administration produces as its stock in trade (e.g., pediatric transgender surgery and medications), I look at this status quo as the perfect laboratory to measure the strength and determination of the more normal states like Florida to revolt against this mess when it becomes unbearable.

And this laboratory is important to me.  I’m looking to see if the strength exists to defy the federal government on important issues like the anti-trans legislation and illegal immigrant policy.  It’s going to be over something very polarizing and I feel that the trans-movement is the likeliest vehicle that could trigger a revolt.  And it’s an issue that produces such a visceral response in normal people that I think it might provide just the right combination of emotions to get a large number of people to take a stand.

As it is, more than ten states have signed on to forbidding doctors from “transitioning” children through either drugs or surgery.  And this is already causing Democrat judges to at least temporarily halt these laws.  But I could see this going further.  The whole idea of forcing people to pretend to believe that men are women is an affront to freedom of speech and more basically it’s an affront to sanity.  I can see a state making a stand and regardless of what the Supreme Court may rule just plain refusing to allow the charade to continue within their jurisdiction.

So regardless of the 2024 election I’m very excited by the swirling events all around us.  I’m pretty hopeful that some kind of alternative media may be hatching among the journalists that have been cast off or ignored by the main stream media.  Tucker Carlson is only the latest (and possibly the bravest) to begin setting up shop outside of the walls of the approved organs of the press or as the ZMan calls them the “stenographers of the regime.”  My hopes may be a bit unrealistic.  I secretly wish for Elon Musk to cobble together a commercial operation that would allow the likes of Carlson, Taibbi, Greenwald and several other reporters and commentators to set up shop in a virtual newsroom that gets its public through Twitter.  It can be a multi-tiered operation with free components and also a paywall for the premium services.

So, you see, it’s not all doom and gloom.  With realistic expectations there’s still hope for some improvement to our horrendous plight.  Who knows, there might even be some kind of apocalyptic comeuppance for the Biden administration that even the Deep State will sign onto.  I mean even the CIA and the FBI must be kinda scared that if Joe Biden falls down the stairs to Air Force One that Kamala Harris will be the leader of the free world (sorta) and at that point some kind of quantum mechanical reaction could suck the planet into a wormhole.

So, I’ll be out of pocket all of tomorrow morning and maybe part of the afternoon.  Enjoy your Saturday and I’ll return later to moan and complain about life here in Dunwich.

Surgical Madness

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I wonder if the death penalty is the appropriate sentence for doctors involved in something like this.  An eighteen year old is dead because doctors were willing to slice and dice him up in an insane attempt to turn part of his intestines into an absurd substitute for the female genital tract.  While they were at it why didn’t they graft on California Condor wings so he could pretend to be an angel too.

When people look back on this someday they’ll identify this as the point at which our society became detached from reality and stepped off a cliff.

If this goes on I think I’ll volunteer for either the North Korean or the Chinese Uighur death camps.  They’re a lot saner and probably more humane.