Supporting the Revolution

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Every aspect of our lives is touched by the division that splits the people of the United States into two almost completely non-overlapping groups; the Left and the Right.  Sure, there are people who claim they are outside these two groups but they’re wrong.  And that’s because the Left will not let you be exempt.  You’re either inside their orthodoxy or you are a pariah whose destruction they will pursue doggedly.  And for those of us on the Right, we have to struggle to survive this pursuit.

But no one just wants to survive.  We want to enjoy all aspects of life.  We want family, friends and things we can do to make our lives enjoyable.  And we want to forget about the Left and their lunacy whenever we can.  Now I won’t delve into the problems of avoiding the governmental controls that the federal government imposes or the even more onerous controls that blue states force their citizens to endure.  Let’s save all that for another day.

Instead let’s talk about what we can do as individuals to create the options we want in our lives.  A trivial example is the recent outrage over Anheuser Busch and their fake spokeswoman.  Here is an opportunity to use your status as a consumer to punish a company that went out of its way to antagonize its patrons and you can make a statement to the rest of the beer companies that you value a company that at worst stays neutral in the culture wars.  Even better would be finding a company that openly supports traditional values.  But neutrality will do.

Now look at that example.  And translate it into as many other choices and decisions that you make in your life.  The bank you keep your money in, the stores where you buy your groceries, the places you shop for your hobby supplies, the browser you use on the internet, even the social media sites where you interact with the on-line world.  All of these are potential choices.  Of course, some of them will be non-starters.  Amazon, Walmart, Target and the rest of the retailers are hopelessly left-wing.  The best you can do is occasionally try to shop directly from manufacturers who you know to be non-leftist.  That’s not such an easy thing.

But in other cases, there are choices.  Recently, Elon Musk has significantly reduced the anti-right activities on Twitter.  He’s un-banned numerous people on the Right and openly refused to silence even outspoken right-wing voices.  As an experiment I’ve recently decided to pay him his eight bucks a month to get the controversial “blue check” and I’m not saying it’s been some kind of golden ticket to viral success but I do enjoy some of the content I find on Twitter and I feel like I’m supporting a platform that doesn’t hate me.  So, if you have a choice between using Twitter or Facebook well that should be easy.    And I feel a hell of a lot happier with what I pay Twitter compared to the cable bill that supports the likes of CNN, MSNBC and the rest of the lefties that inhabit the various cable networks.  One of these days I’ll cut the cable and just use the channels that don’t hate me.  That will be a big day.

For another example, I use the Brave and DuckDuckGo combination as my browser and search engine respectively.  They respect privacy and block a lot of the ads that usually follow you around the internet.  As for news I use the sites that at least provide both sides on current events.  Real Clear Politics balances their articles about 50/50 between Left and Right.  It’s not ideal but I can just pick and choose based on the sources.

In the future I’m expecting that there will be a major dedicated right-wing news site on the internet with some free and some paywalled content that I will be willing to pay for.  That’s because I expect that Tucker Carlson will be participating in some kind of a larger news/opinion project with some of his more ethical colleagues.  Maybe it will be on Twitter, maybe on substack, but I suspect soon there will be a service that will be worth a few bucks.

And I expect in the future more companies and platforms will start trying to brand themselves as friendly to the Right or to conservatives or traditionalists or some other words to that effect.  Now it’s going to take some vetting to eliminate the phonies and the grifters who just want to jump on a bandwagon.  Probably word of mouth from trusted sources will be most helpful.

But in general, I think it’s a good idea to go out of your way to find a product or service that is produced by people who don’t openly despise you and buy it.  Don’t get ripped off doing it.  The premium for patronizing someone on our side should be reasonable.  Is that 10 or 15%.  Sure.  But not 100%!  And the quality should be comparable, not noticeably inferior.  I remember I tried using a coffee brand because they advertised their sympathy for the military but the coffee wasn’t any good.  So, I had to drop that.

Anyway, you get the picture.  It’s time for us to start putting our money where our mouths are.  Look for worthwhile products on our side and support them.  And if they pan out, pass the info along on social media.

Fight the power baby!

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.