Tag: Thrive

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.

Thrive

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The old saying is that the best revenge is to live well.  Now that’s not really true.  The best revenge is luring your enemy into a convenient catacomb, shackle him to the wall and brick him into an alcove where he’ll die of hunger and thirst.

But living well means enjoying the things that make life full and rich.  And the secret to overcoming the toxic effects of the death cult that attacks our lives from all directions is not to spend all our time fighting it.  Sure, we must expend a certain amount of our time in fighting it.  There are political battles and cultural battles and personal battles.  But if we let this fighting take up all our time then we lose.  Because we never have a chance to bring the good things into our lives that make us happy.  Our lives are robbed of beauty and joy.  We survive but we can’t thrive.

So, what we need to do is look at the things that give joy to us and make sure that we make time for them.  And we need to pass these things along to the young people.  Because the Left is attacking many of these things and trying to eliminate them from the world.  They have declared all of western civilization, racist.  Western music, western art, western literature, all of it is suspect.  So, Shakespeare is evil unless all the good characters are portrayed by transgender actors or something.  And Mozart is evil unless there is a female rapper twerking to it somehow.  And worst of all is Christianity.  The Bible is evil unless there is a lesbian minister declaring that Jesus was gay.

Now you can spend all your time battling the woke scolds who declare all these fatwahs against our culture.  But instead it is better to spend time enjoying these forbidden things.  Go to a Shakespeare play or any play.  Or if you can’t find a non-woke production then buy the DVDs of the old productions.  Go to a concert.  It doesn’t have to be classical music.  I also like country music.  Maybe you like jazz.  Find a concert and go listen to something that makes you feel alive.  Have a few beers (not Bud Light) and a burger and go with people who enjoy that music too.

Find a local theater that has revivals of old movies and find the movies that you like there.  And read the classics.  And by classics I don’t mean ancient.  Anything from more than seventy years ago is safe from the taint of our modern disease.  And even today there are authors who aren’t infected.  Look up reviews by people who aren’t woke, like me.

And if your tastes run to action-adventure movies or punk rock or metal then let these things be what you search out.  After all, these are just as forbidden as Shakespeare and Mozart.  They aren’t woke enough for our current rulers.  They still have too much freedom in their DNA.

And make sure you bring along the kids when you do these things.  They aren’t exposed to anything normal in their outside lives.  Everything in the social media world that they live in is steeped in the TikTok, YouTube orthodoxy that reinforces all the lies and prejudices against the good and beautiful things that existed in the past.  They are proselytized to think all the strange and weird things being pushed are normal and healthy.  So, make sure they are exposed to as many of the healthy and normal influences as you possibly can.

So that’s a simple message.  Make sure that you leave plenty of space in your life for the enjoyable and exciting things that the present culture is trying to eliminate.  Fighting the culture war will take care of itself.  And by enjoying your life and sharing it with the young you help to squeeze out the influence of the Left from your life.  And that is priceless.

Surviving and Thriving as a Permanent Political Minority in America – Part 1

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As I’ve made clear since the 2022 mid-terms, I no longer expect the Republicans to be able to win the presidency or majorities in congress for the foreseeable future, if ever.  But that’s not the same as just surrendering to the progressive agenda.  I still think there’s a chance that red state governments may take effective measures to protect their citizens from the evils that the federal government is rolling out even as we speak.

So, what this leaves me to do is contemplate what measures I should take as an individual to insulate myself and my family from the worst of the damage.  And this is the correct strategy.  It’s time to stop imagining we’re going to re-take the federal government.  The Democrats gamed the system so thoroughly and for so long that it’s next to impossible for the Stupid Party to win.  And, honestly, I’m pretty sure they don’t want to.  So, the correct mindset is to identify and perform the activities that you can in order to make the best life for you and yours.

And this is not a small thing.  The benefits you can produce and the problems you can prevent are enormous.  Basically, what you are doing is wrenching back under your control things that the progressives have stolen away from you via school-based propaganda and unconstitutional government actions.  You have to intervene either personally or through private groups or both to produce the outcomes you desire.  And you want to put yourself in places where there are more people that agree with you, people who can be allies and possibly friends.

So, let’s look at some of the examples of things that could be done.

  • School

Here’s one of the biggest impacts you can have on your life.  If you send your children to the public schools and don’t involve yourself in what they are being taught then you deserve to be called a member of the Stupid Party.  The first step is to find out what they’re being taught.  Request to see the lesson plans and syllabus for your children’s classes.  Pay attention to both important subjects like math and science and also the soft subjects like social studies and language.  Find out how extreme the problems are and decide whether it’s possible to allow the children to remain there.  Maybe by talking to your kids about the nature of the disinformation they are being fed you can inoculate them from the damage.  If there isn’t a way to change the worst of it then you must get your kids out.  Maybe this means sending them to a private or religious school.  Maybe it’s possible for them to be home schooled.  But whichever way you affect a change you are probably performing the most important service you can for your children.

  • Local Politics

Believe it or not, even in a deep blue state there are things that you can do to improve the local environment.  At the very least, when you are looking to move to a new home or get a new job look at the complexion of the community you are considering.  Without a doubt there are better and worse choices to choose from.  You can look at the voting record of your town.  You can read up on the referenda that the town has voted on over the last few years.  You can look for the telltale signs of a small town being invaded by the refugees from the local progressive stronghold.  Look at the local test scores of the schools and just look around for what kind of signs the town and the local businesses put up.  If you find yourself surrounded by BLM and rainbow banners then think hard and long about moving there.

Find out if there’s a local Republican Town Committee and go to a few meetings and listen to what they talk about.  Hear what priorities they have.  Ask a few pointed questions about any recent progressive initiatives like low-cost housing or DIE programs.  Figure out if you’ll be in the minority or the majority politically.  And consider getting involved on a town committee if you have the expertise or the interest.  Finance, zoning and budget committees are especially useful.  Get to know your neighbors and let them know you.  That’s how you find allies and maybe friends.  Hiding your head in the sand is how we got in this mess in the first place.

Alright I’ll stop at two for this first part.  But you get the point.  Grabbing hold of your life is the only way to limit the damage the progressives do to you and your family.  Applying this strategy across the whole length and breadth of your life is how you take control and deny the Evil Party from ruining your world.

Don’t Just Survive, Thrive

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There is a writer by the name of Nassim Nicholas Taleb who wrote a book called “Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder.”  The thesis of his book is that thriving is not about being robust enough to survive stress but rather being adaptable enough to improve your life in the face of stress.

Well, if he is right, we are about to be blessed with the opportunity to prove just how adaptable we truly are.  Now that the Supreme Court has abandoned us to the thugocracy we can expect amazing things from our government.  And if the Georgia elections go half as badly as the presidential elections did in that state, we are going to see stuff that would test the patience of Job.

I expect executive orders attacking the first and second amendments to be forthcoming from the Lying Sack of Crap Elect who is hoping to start infesting the White House in January.  He will attack religion, free speech and guns with every weapon at his disposal.  Hopefully some of those federal judges that President Trump installed will show themselves of some use and block these orders as unconstitutional but that’s yet to be seen.

I also expect the Justice Department to resume the BLM support activism that we saw under the former thug Obama.  That means that any Red State that tries to squelch BLM rioting in its jurisdiction will be harassed by the FBI and the Attorney General’s office.

And I’m assuming that the anti-trust investigations against Google, Facebook and Twitter will be curtailed or rather the investigations will center on why any conservative views are being expressed on these platforms at all.  It wouldn’t surprise me to see federal banking policy embrace the idea of banks punishing individual citizens who have espoused ideas that the Left does not approve of.  I mean why stop at canceling someone’s VISA card or PayPal account?  Why shouldn’t the federal government coordinate denying all bank access to such terrible people.  All they’d have to do is write it into some banking policy and the banks will be only too happy to follow in lock step.  Folks like me who run a tiny blog site have been more or less invisible or uninteresting to the powers that be.  But in the days ahead they may decide that to be fair, every sinner should be made to suffer equally.  So, who knows I may find myself de-platformed too.

And there could be even bigger fish to fry too.  The goons on the Left have threatened to pack the Supreme Court.  If they do, I wouldn’t be surprised if they then went whole hog and used a rubber stamp SCOTUS to discover that the First and Second Amendments don’t actually mean anything at all.  At that point we would get a close up look at what living in Venezuela is all about.

Why am I saying all this?  Because even these things do not represent the end of the world.  What they would represent are the acts of an illegitimate government attempting to destroy the freedoms that were enshrined in the US Constitution.  And I think that there will be a violent reaction to what has gone on for the last year.  I expect that the fraudulent election of the Lying Sack of Crap (Biden) will spark a level of outrage in the country that we haven’t seen before.  I wholly expect state governments to initiate action to insulate themselves from the harmful executive orders that the Lying Sack of Crap and his henchmen will instigate.

What I am suggesting to the readers here is that it is wise to look for ways to avoid being harmed by the terrible things that will be going on.  Find ways to shield you, your family and friends from the negative consequences of these things.  Be smart, inventive and maybe even work some of these things to your advantage.  I intend to promote products and services that will be sought after on our side of the fence.  Maybe you can think of filling a need that is unfilled because of the social media censorship.  Be creative.  Don’t just survive, thrive.

Merry Christmas