Zombies R Us

We need cages, I guess. We need them at the zoo. And we need them in prisons. In both cases, the cages protect the rest of us from attack or injury. Some point out that animals should be able to live in their natural habitat, and it’s up to us to avoid them. Some even tacitly say the same of criminals. It’s our fault that we get hurt by them, not their fault. I guess criminals are seen as having their own natural habitat that we should not enter.

Well, OK, then.

Here’s a question: Should we put ourselves in cages to protect ourselves from the ravages of reality?

No? Think back a few years, to COVID. That’s what we were told to do, and much of the country eagerly locked themselves in. But far more than physical isolation was the emotional isolation. The people who locked themselves in looked on in fear as the rest of us did all we could to live normal lives. Those whose natural state is mental confinement looked on in horror as the rest of us questioned, investigated and reasoned. We asked, what in the hell is a cloth mask good for, since no research indicated any effectiveness. Even Propagandist in Chief, Anthony Fauci, laughed when asked if people should wear masks. But the self-confined insisted that masks were essential. They wore them everywhere, inside, outside, in the car alone. Everywhere. It became evident that they were not doing this as a rational response to the disease, but as a declaration to the world of their absolute commitment to self-confinement.

People lined up for shots. Two shots, and you’re home free. Oops, no.

Continual shots forever, and maybe you won’t get COVID, or at least your symptoms might not be as severe. People who had been vaccinated, in the false belief that they could never get the disease, spewed hatred at the people with natural immunity who refused the shots. They refused based on the shots not having been adequately tested, and on the minor fact that a person who had already had COVID had nothing to gain by having the shot. Do you vaccinate a person against measles, two weeks after they’ve had measles? Stop making sense!

Ivermectin was derided as horse medicine, even though it’s been an effective treatment for humans for decades.

But we have no proof that it cures COVID! No, but it seemed to be an effective treatment. The real issue is that we cannot have individual doctors using their own individual judgment. We must have pronouncements from on high. Whatever Big Brother says, goes. THAT was the real issue. There were those who were panic stricken, not so much by COVID, but by the terror of discovering that there are people who think for themselves.

Zombie movies hold great interest to me.

They are mostly hokey and not really worth watching. Yet, people watch them. Why? Here’s my thought: Zombies represent the horror of absolute conformity. No one is born a conformist. As we grow thru childhood, we are taught conformity. No one would suggest that we don’t need to learn a certain amount of conformity. The issue is, how much? And so, zombie movies. Every movie has the same premise: Normal people live normal lives, but if the zombies get them, they are converted into mindless conformists, indistinguishable from any other zombie. The one goal, the motivation of all zombies, is to convert everyone else into a zombie, to set every zombie against the normies who have individual thoughts and interests.

Am I right? Is that why anyone bothers to watch some very poorly done movies (and some very good ones)?

The COVID debacle graphically demonstrates what we all suspected. There ae those who think for themselves, and those who don’t. Whatever the issue du jour is, it comes down to that. Rational people make their own decisions, develop their own values. Zombies mindlessly conform.

That’s how I see it, at least. I am less concerned with who can or cannot get married, or with what foods we should or shouldn’t eat. I am concerned with all the people who simply go along, and insist that everyone else do the same.

Like and dislike based on your own standards, or become a zombie. Zombies don’t reflect. They don’t contemplate possibilities. Everything is absolute; with no range of possibilities.

There are cages at the zoo. Accept them, or not. Same for prisons. But when the culture itself is its own cage, do not accept them. Ever. No zombie movie ends with the zombies having been permanently vanquished. They’re always there. We must always fight to hold them back. And we must never become one of them.

“The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he’s in prison.”—Fyodor Dostoyevsky, ca 1860

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Marching On

MLK talked of having been to the mountaintop and seeing all there is to see. It’s a great metaphor that’s been used by others in various contexts.

Another common metaphor is that of marching forward for the cause, sometimes literally, often philosophically. Susan B Anthony literally marched with her companions for the right of woman to vote, fifty years after former (male) slaves had already received that right. It took constant effort but she did finally succeed.

Civil rights activism didn’t start with MLK, but he was one of the most significant people involved. He marched with thousands of others for equal rights.

Woman’s rights similarly followed such a course. Millions marched. Equal pay for equal work. Equal consideration under the law. Thousands maybe millions marched for that. I’m old enough that I don’t need to read history books about this, I experienced it first hand.

There is a long history of racism in the USA. It has been entrenched, and it has been disrupted. Arguably MLK was the biggest disruptor. His marches brought about desegregation not just by law but within our own minds. Again, I don’t need a history book, I was there. It was not just the laws that changed it was people’s mindsets that changed, and he changed them.

The civil rights movement made it to the mountain top. But it didn’t know enough to stop marching. And now the anti-racists are the racists. Now the very organizations that sought to end racism practice it. Schools, universities, businesses directly violate the laws that were made to stop racism. They deliberately seek to consider race as part of their admissions and employment practices. In today’s world, in today’s America, these are the most racist people there are.

Susan B Anthony marched to gain the vote for women. And she achieved it. But there was more to be done. Equal pay, equal consideration. Again, I can personally remember when women weren’t lawyers, were hardly seen in the executive offices except as secretaries, and only rarely ran for higher office. But the woman’s movement made it to the top of the mountain.

They are the ones who insist that there are jobs that should go to women. Only a generation ago they complained of the imbalance of male to females in colleges and universities. Today there’s an imbalance, but it goes the other way, more women than men. Do they seek to reset the balance? Not at all. It’s going their way and as long as the bigotry goes their way it’s OK.

Again, I’ve lived it. I saw hatred and intolerance in the 1960s and I see it now. I saw it in the KKK and in the Dixiecrats. I saw it in a prevailing practice, to some extent even in my own mind, of justification for separating races and genders where there was no justification. I see the bigotry today, but not from the same people. Today the sexists are woman, woman who speak of masculinity only with the modifier ‘toxic’. They fail to see the sad irony of condemning men for being assertive and aggressive, when they are necessary aspects of succeeding in business. In some people’s minds, while men should have to work their way to the top, women should be placed there.

Similarly for racism. The very people who condemned racism in the 1960s now practice it. Even as they condemn whites for associating with each other and allegedly freezing blacks out of jobs, blacks and their supporters openly practice the racism that they condemn. Black businesses stress that they are black and strive to hire primarily black employees.

Pay some conscious attention to the media that you are exposed to incessantly. See how many news stories and shows have flattering stories about women-owned this or black-owned that. Now try to find a story about a man-owned this or white-owned that. Try to find a story about poverty that centers around white men, as if there are no poor white men. When we hear the word poverty, our minds are conditioned to think of black people and women.

But there is news reporting about white men. There are two kinds of white men according to the media. There are the white men who, by the mere act of being employers and landlords, and of expecting tenants and employees to keep up their end of the bargain, are considered by the media to be racist and sexist. The other white men that the media highlight are the apologists. These are the good white men. Not entirely good, because they are of course sexist and racist, but at least they admit it. We call this woke.

And there’s the fight against censorship. I think some don’t know the history. Once upon a time, some governments in the USA censored the publication of some works. You couldn’t buy these books because governments wouldn’t let anybody sell them. That just does not happen anymore, but that is what censorship really was. Whether a school decides to offer certain books is a choice, not censorship. If parents and taxpayers weigh in, that is their right. If, for any reason, books are withheld from a library by anybody besides government, that is a choice. If you want your kids to read that book, go buy it. If any government attempts to restrict you from buying it, get back to me. I’ll march that picket line right along with you.

Today, the very people who claim that it is censorship when taxpayers do not buy them a book, are the same people who claim the right to keep certain speakers from speaking on college campuses. They are the same people who believe that assassinating people is a justifiable thing to do, to keep them from saying what they don’t want other people to hear. And it has never occurred to them that they are the censors. Adolf Hitler had nothing on them.

I’ve lived long enough to see the entire progression marching up one side and then marching right back down the other side. The oppressed are now the oppressor. Our schools don’t educate, they indoctrinate. Students no longer learn science they learn scientism. They learn that slavery is entirely the fault of white Europeans, in total disregard for factual history. They learn that all white people are racists no matter what, and that all blacks are victims, no matter what. This is a great philosophy, if you are totalitarian.

Perhaps progressivism was good for something once, depending on how you define progressivism.

I didn’t want to make this about political parties, but Susan B Anthony had more support among Republicans than Democrats. The same for MLK. You may not have known this because they never taught you that in school. I think you know why.

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I came across this post on Quora. With all the ‘discussions’ going on concerning government and business, I think this is relevant. It is the most succinct explanation that I’ve seen of the difference between what business is and what government is. They are truly two different worlds.

I knew little of business until I went into business. Boy, was THAT an eyeopener!

Chris Worth

Studied at Warwick Business SchoolUpdated 7y

Is government inefficient and wasteful, as compared to private business?

It is - and to a degree that’s truly frightening. What’s more important, though: it couldn’t be any other way.

Efficiency isn’t some natural positive state economic systems strive for. Quite the opposite; the more you can spend on yourself, the fatter and fuller and safer you’ll feel. Believe me, nobody in business likes the competitor that forced him to halve his profit. Nobody in business likes the innovator who just took her market. Nobody likes the change in consumer preferences that made them invest millions in altering their products.

Business is forced to find ways of providing better products and services, at cheaper prices, at lower costs of production. To stay in business. And this process is continuous. It never says “that’s efficient enough, you can stop now.”

That’s why “normal profits” - those earned by commodity businesses like fuel and steel production - hover around 3%, just enough to make doing them worthwhile. It’s why the huge majority of companies, after all the risks of investing and marketing, consider a 15% return on their spending to be a good year.

Government and the public sector, of course, don’t have these competitive checks and balances on their spending patterns. Indeed, they have the opposite: the need to please backers and special interests, the need to win votes, to make themselves ever bigger and more important. Add that to the fact they’re not spending their own money, and that they actually get penalised for not spending as much as possible (when did any government department celebrate spending less?) and you have the recipe for wastefulness.

Here’s a thought experiment: imagine a country having several governments, all active at the same time. As a citizen, you get to choose which of the active governments provides your schools, your roads, your hospitals, and the government you choose gets to tax you. Faced with such market competition, governments would develop a more businesslike approach to spending your money… very, very quickly. Because the government that couldn’t do so wouldn’t survive.

(A side note: at the international level this is effectively what happens, with corporate “citizens” able to choose the government - i.e. the tax territory - that gives them the best deal.)

So - public sectors worldwide are grossly inefficient and massively wasteful. Not because they’re fundamentally incompetent people, but because they have no reason to be any other way.

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Hating the Hate

Hate is terrible, right? Should it be illegal? Hell, no.

Hate is a thought. If you make it illegal, it becomes a Thought Crime a la Orwell’s 1984. To enforce these laws, you need Thought Police a la 1984. So much for The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

Still, hate is terrible, and we shouldn’t hate. Any progressive will tell you that.

But progressives need to hate. I don’t know why, but they do. What a conundrum! Haters who decry hate! Whatever can they do to resolve this issue? Easy, progressives have declared that they hate the haters.

Apparently, hating haters is OK.

So, all progressives need to do is declare that everyone they hate is a racist, a white supremacist, right wing extremist, or the ever popular, Fascist. Having declared that everyone they don’t like is one or all of these things, progressives can then hate the hate. They can then believe that Kimmel isn’t hate-baiting scum because he’s hating the hate. They can rationalize that shooting Trump and Charlie Kirk and a CEO is all justifiable, because they’re hating the hate. They can rationalize that the shredding of inner cities in ‘mostly peaceful protests’ is justifiable, because they’re hating the hate.

Progressivism is not known for its rationality. Really.

Have you ever heard a progressive think their way thru an issue rationally?

“A baby in the womb is ‘biomass’, therefore abortion is not murder.” That’s not a thought process, that’s an excuse.

“A woman must be believed.” So much for innocent until proved guilty as outlined in the constitution.

“We must depose a legitimately elected president in order to save democracy.” That’s one of my favorite progressive non-sequiturs.

“We need DEI to stop racism.” The implementation of DEI invariably consists of discriminating against white men. Oh, wait, no. DEI consists of FAVORING everyone who ISN’T a white male. So, you see, that’s different, right?

Hating the hate. To a perverted mind, that makes sense. Hitler was sure the Jews hated Germans, so hating the hate by the Jews was justifiable. BTW, Hitler was a progressive. Your progressive history teacher might have failed to tell you that.

Hating the hate. The lamebrained excuse that haters use to justify their hate. That’s how Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, Maxine Waters, John Brennan, Merrick Garland and Ilhan Omar justify their hate.

All of the above is just my opinion. Decide for yourself whether it’s true.

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My grandson wrote a note to me earlier, concerning his views on abortion. This is not the first exchange we’ve had, but I think there’s some good thoughts here that others might find interesting.

My grandson said:

People using religion against abortion will get nowhere in the US due to laws regarding separation of Church and State. I am by no means saying I believe in abortion or respect anyone who does. I just find it ridiculous that these people think apologetics will change laws and convince normal people who happen to believe in child murder (actually ridiculous as it sounds, I’ve met quite a few folks who fit that description.)

We need to stop looking for evidence in the Bible. I know quite a bit about that book and I’m still not convinced it offers an opinion or doctrine on the issue. If we want to fight abortion, our best weapons are ethics, pathos, and above all, common sense. Like I said, religious doctrine, apologetics, and angry conservative-sounding arguments will get us nowhere.

Love,

M.

My response:

I agree with that. I’ve observed that people are much more inclined to do what feels right to them than to obey laws. With what I’ve seen lately, I agree with that attitude. Our lawmakers and our courts are a disgrace. I can not blindly state that we have any moral obligation to obey laws.

Murder is illegal, and nobody argues that it should be legal. Yet, murders persist. Making abortion illegal would not end abortions. They happened, even back when abortion was illegal.

It comes down to moral and ethical standards, and those cannot be successfully dictated to people. People need to be convinced, feel it within themselves. There are far fewer absolutes in this world than most people want to consider. Is killing always wrong? Is abortion always wrong? Or never wrong? Morality and ethics need room to breathe. Turning them into inviolable rules does not reinforce them, it diminishes them.

Whether you consider it relevant or not, one of Jesus’ chief messages was that God did not want us following rules for the sake of following rules. He wanted us to consider our own lives and the lives of others under the light of God’s love. But that light illuminates different things to different people. I don’t think you can convince the world that abortion is wrong, by proclaiming that abortion is wrong. You must make a convincing case. Dogmatism will work against you, not for you. You must listen, if you hope to be listened to. This approach is directly opposite to much of what you have experienced. But you know that much of what you have experienced is fundamentally flawed. Many people are not committed to convincing others; they are committed to convincing themselves. They live inside a shell, and they continually reinforce that shell, making it denser and denser, more and more impenetrable. They feel safer in there, but they add nothing to the quality of the life of anyone else. Don’t be like that.

Love,

Grampa

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Abe Lincoln gives me a smile while he waits to give the speech that closes the ceremony.

Steve and Lisa Ball sang civil war “hits” from the civil war. Steve told the history of how each song came to be. As with music today, the songs relate to events happening at the time. Several are still familiar today. The couple were excellent.

All of the above are descendants of civil war soldiers and are members today of the General William H Lytle Camp, Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War. The flags in the ground to the right mark gravestones of civil war soldiers. Spring Grove Cemetery is the final resting place of about sixty Northern generals, and of three presidents.

After firing a salute, soldiers turn their rifles muzzle down into the ground and rest their hands and head on the butt of their rifle. This, in honor of those who died in the civil war. They are hard to see in the photo. They are to the left of the USA flag.

We tend to treat holidays as an extra day off. Don’t you love those three day weekends?! But they should be more than that. Memorial Day commemorates those who died in service of our country. No need for politics, right now; these are PEOPLE; fathers, husbands, brothers, democrats and republicans. They deserve our respect and consideration. Please remember them always, not just once a year.

Also, please consider listening to the podcast below. I make some personal observations about Memorial Day and of civil war ancestors of both Jan and me.

As John Donne says, “Ask not for whom the bell tolls…”

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A few days ago I had an interesting conversation with a gentleman concerning the effort by lawyers to take Trump down. That covers a lot of territory, but I will focus only on the following:

I couldn’t remember the name of the group which was formed explicitly to destroy Trump’s legitimate right to challenge the 2020 election, so I asked Duck AI to find the name. The following conversation ensued. Note, thru it all, that Duck AI is trying to lead me away from involving democrats in any of this, when they were in fact behind the whole ugly scenario.

Isn’t that sweet? AI appreciates my patience in helping get this right. Here’s what’s really going on: This AI did not make any mistakes. This AI was following the algorithm, which clearly wants it to lead people away from knowledge of democrat involvement in the 65 Project. It was like pulling teeth to get it to admit that it was, basically, lying its ass off.

OK, I might be wrong about that…I have no idea if AI has an ass.

It wanted me to believe that the 65 Project was a conservative effort when it was in fact perpetrated by the democrat machine. It was an effort to stomp all over everyone’s’ right to legal representation. It further wanted us to believe that there was something inherently unethical, illegal and unconstitutional about challenging an election. That is full-strength bullshit. Both parties have been challenging elections for as long as there have been elections. Trump did NOTHING wrong. It doesn’t matter how you want it to be, that is how it is.

Here’s my take on the 65 Project. The ‘Project’ is further proof that the democrat machine knows no bounds. They have wanted to shut Trump up, any way they can, for over ten solid years. The term lawfare goes back aways, but you may be aware that it gets used much more these days.

Here’s a quote from Wikipedia:

“Detractors have alternately begun to define the term (lawfare) as, “An attempt to damage or delegitimize an opponent, or to deter an individual’s usage of their legal rights”. The term may refer to the use of legal systems and principles against an enemy, such as by damaging or delegitimizing them, wasting their time, energy, and money (e.g., by bringing strategic lawsuits against public participation, or SLAPP), or winning a public relations victory. Alternatively, it may describe a tactic used by repressive regimes to label and discourage civil society or individuals from claiming their legal rights via national or international legal systems.”

Yup, that’s what they did, all right. What are you going to do about it? Here’s a suggestion. As Trump goes after the slime of DC, John Brennan, Merrick Garland, James Comey, et al, let him. Do not complain as he goes after Alvin Bragg, Fani Willis, and Leticia James. Do not buy the “Who? Me?” crap from the progressive left. Yes, them.

Ethical government is hanging by a thread. It’s up to you.

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Who Would You Follow, If Your Life Depended On It?

So, have you read Lord of the Flies lately? If you haven’t you should. Just as 1984 and Brave New World predicted much of what has come to be, Lord of the Flies predicted much of what we see today.

Brave New World was published in the early thirties. That’s deep into the Great Depression, and Adolf Hitler is just now cementing absolute power in Germany. I don’t know when the expression “New World Order” first appeared, but certainly Hitler epitomized the sentiment. Brave New World cynically examined what such a world might become. The book is still relevant today.

1984 was written shortly after WWII. Stalin has risen to absolute control. The turmoil of WWII has made it easy for him to expand The Soviet Union into western Europe. Even with the collapse of the Soviet Union, we still feel the effects of Stalin today. Ukraine and Crimea are current examples. 1984, although allegorical, examines the brutal totalitarianism of Stalin. The book is still relevant today.

Lord of the Flies was written in 1954. It is about a group of boys stranded on a desert island. They must find ways to survive. Just as importantly, they must find a way to function as a group, a society, with no adult supervision. What was the book examining? Is it still relevant? The book considers two ways of life, two factions, that develop on the island. The one, represented by Ralph, represents rationality and logical problem solving. Ralph is not immensely emotional. He does not magnetically draw the other boys to him, but he can solve their problems. In contrast, Jack has a magnetic personality. He desires leadership. He desires a following. This is more important to him than actually improving life on the island.

Initially, as things develop on the island, Ralph and Jack work somewhat corporately, to everyone’s benefit. Ultimately, Jack incites his followers to chase down Ralph and kill him, shouting “Kill the pig!” Ralph is saved in the nick of time by a crew from a ship that has just landed.

It’s a grim story. But what is it trying to tell us? What are we to learn?

We have three novels here, that I assert were each observing the forces that brought on WWII and its aftermath. I figured out long ago that people are far more constant, generation by generation, then we like to think, which is why I say, ‘times change, people don’t.’

What people were in the 1940s, we are today.

So, if Ralph and Jack existed in 1954, they exist today. Who, today, would be the rational Ralph, and who is the tribalist Jack? I think we have a bit of a conundrum, in the person of Donald Trump. Is he a tribalist? Largely, yes. He needs followers. And he is clever. He makes absurd statements intended to draw condemnation, and in doing that, his enemies reveal themselves, and self-isolate from the tribe.

But here’s the part few people realize. Trump really is very knowledgeable and rational. He is a professional problem solver. You can’t be a high level developer for your entire life, make billions doing it, and not be rational. Highly rational. His detractors won’t like hearing me say that, but true is true.

Is Trump like Ralph, able to comprehend, assess, and solve problems that others can’t even anticipate? Yes. Is he nearly neurotic, like Jack, in his desire to lead and to have a following? Also, yes.

Now, the big question: Can the ‘Ralph’ trait and the ‘Jack’ trait peacefully coexist in the same person? Apparently so. Political parties are, almost by definition, Jack like. They demand fealty, almost blind acceptance of the leadership. If you do not accept, and especially if you speak against them, they shout “Kill the pig!”, and you’re the pig.

There is a whole lot of Jack in the political parties, very little of Ralph.

Well, if Ralph isn’t in the political parties, where is he? Ralph is the scientific method. The scientific method is nearly the opposite of party tribalism. The scientific method is like herding cats. Putting the self aside is essential to science. Going along is also frowned upon. Being able to walk away from a hypothesis because you realize you were mistaken is essential.

Today, the scientists who embrace the scientific method have been largely replaced with people with science degrees, but who are party loyalists at heart. If you want to advance in college science departments, you must not seek the truth, you must seek confirmation of party premises. If a scientist comes up with the ‘wrong’ answer, they will be denounced by people who wouldn’t know the truth if it bit them in the butt.

There is even a name for this, ‘scientism.’

In Lord of the Flies, the uneasy truce of Ralph and Jack has disintegrated, and Jack is in the final stage of seeking total control. Tribalism is attempting to destroy rationalism. Today, politics is attempting to destroy science.

But who are we talking about today? Are we talking about Anthony Fauci, who disgracefully politicized science, right in front of our faces? Or how about RFK, who is politicizing drug policy and research? Keep in mind that Fauci’s drug policy, by some strange coincidence, strongly parallels drug company marketing efforts. The science was not even close to being settled (still isn’t), when we were told that we must get the shot, or else be ostracized. Jimmy Kimmel, that great scientific sage, wished us dead. “Kill the pig!”

What about RFK? I’m not convinced, one way or the other, about his approach. Do you know what that makes me? It makes me a scientist. Remember, absolute belief is not science, it is tribalism.

Trump put RFK in position. He’s put a lot of people in position. What is he trying to make happen? Is he putting people in place to cement his tribalistic tendencies? Or is he putting people in place to promote rationality? I’m coming down on the side of rationality. Governments are not known for rational problem solving. Governments, especially political parties (redundant?) are known for tribalism first, problem solving if they get around to it. After all, politics is about issues. If you solve the issues, what’s left for the parties to tribalize about? If there were no devil, political parties would have to invent him…Can you say, Donald Trump?

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The Old Man in the Mountain

Geology and politics don’t mix. Trust me. Politics is about manipulating people, which is quite doable. Geology is about studying the earth’s crust, and how it got that way. It takes very little study of geology to realize that the earth is not so easily manipulated.

Sure, we dig quarries, dam rivers and drill for oil and are vastly impressed with our abilities. Bear in mind, these accomplishments are little more than pinpricks in the earth’s crust.

We can NOT alter the big, and I mean BIG picture.

Rivers must flow. Dams only alter the course somewhat, and to our advantage, but ultimately the water must have its way. Drilling for oil bothers a lot of people, but it has essentially no effect on the earth’s geology. The smallest storm, thunderstorms, contain more energy than most people can imagine, and are entirely unstoppable. We can go inside, run and hide, but we can’t steer or stop a thunderstorm. And don’t get me started on hurricanes.

Earthquakes and volcanoes. Now, THERE’S some energy. They literally move continents. They raise mountain ranges up out of the ground. Man’s abilities, man’s ability to control the earth’s energy is about as significant as a fruit fly’s ability to trip an elephant.

Anything that man can build, nature can destroy. We can’t manipulate nature so much as we can hide from it. We build houses that allow us to live at the temperature we want, not the temperature that nature has provided. A roof keeps us dry when it rains. We have little microcosms of escape from nature. But the world in general calls the shots, not us.

But politics and government is a different thing.

Government is there to manipulate us, and some of us are easily manipulated. We are not as the towering oak, or the highest mountain peak, or the flaming volcano, or like the tornado which will not be stopped from going where it will. No, we the people can be manipulated with a compliment. Or with a warning. Or with a fear of being left out. What the earth is, we are not. What we are, the earth is not.

And this brings me to an incident that happened about twenty years ago, the collapse of the Old Man in the Mountain. Some of you may know of the collapse, if you’re old enough and lived close enough to Cannon Mountain in NH, near Franconia. The Old Man was one big damn chunk of Granite State granite, about 40 feet tall and 25 feet wide. By my guess, it was about 1000 feet above the valley floor below, thru which runs Interstate 93.

The Old Man in the Mountain was such a significant landmark that they have a scenic overlook where you can stop and look at where he USED to be. Gone, but not forgotten.

How did this unusual outcropping of granite come to be? The entire area used to be relatively flat land, solid granite bedrock. But the glaciers came and had their way. The glaciers themselves, and the horrendous flood of water from the glacial melt of 12,000 years ago carved valleys into the solid granite. Yes, that took some serous energy. Man can’t approach anything like that. I mean, NOT EVEN CLOSE! With all of that erosion, and over 10,000 years of weathering, we had the Old Man in the Mountain. Simple as that.

I stood on his forehead. When I was a young teenager, I went to Camp Evergreen for a few summers. We did a lot of hiking. One three day hike took us up the back way (NOT the sheer cliff), to the Old Man’s forehead. So, I feel the loss. And in a way, I feel somewhat fortunate. We could have been standing on his forehead when he collapsed into the valley. How many days did I miss by? Oh, about 25 years. You laugh. But that is billion year old granite, with the face exposed for at least 10,000 years. In percentages, escaping the collapse by 25 years was a near miss.

Fortunately, though, he collapsed in the middle of the night. People went to bed that night with the 10,000 year old man there, and woke up the next morning to find him gone, a pile of rubble at the bottom of the cliff.

I was an earth science teacher then. I understood the process. Even huge chunks of granite that have been there for a billion years have a lifespan. I understood the forces, the energy, the mass. The Old Man was gone, and that’s that.

When it happened, when the news broke, I was living in Ohio (still am). I was driving my Corvair, but don’t remember where I was going. The news came over the radio. And the governor of NH came on and said they would immediately get to work putting the Old Man back up there. I immediately told him, right thru the radio, “Oh, no, you won’t.” He must have been listening, because the next day he come on and said he had been told by engineers that putting the Old Man back up there was an impossibility.

And that gets me back to where I started. We are legends in our own minds. But we only exist in whatever way nature decides to allow us to. Nature manipulates us all the time, so much so, that we don’t even think about it. We can manipulate nature in only the smallest ways.

Politicians manipulate people for a living. I must say, they are quite good at it. It is amazing the degree to which people will grovel in the hopes of receiving favor from their leaders. In the meantime, nature doesn’t give a shit. Is it surprising, then, that a politician, a governor, who was accustomed to calling the shots, to manipulating his reality, foolishly presumed that his authority extended to granite? But the granite refused to obey.

To know me is to know that I make no effort to disguise my contempt for the political ‘process’. Perhaps this story gives you just a little insight as to why. I know who the boss REALLY is.

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Where Do Assassins Come From?

Cole Allen recently attempted to assassinate President Trump. Assassinations are not new; we are not in a brand new age of violence. This is just the same old age of violence. There have been countless assassinations since the time of Julius Caesar and beyond. I’m old enough to remember where I was when JFK was assassinated.

You don’t need to read still another report on this most recent attempt. You already know all you care to know. You probably had your conclusions in place before it happened.

But here’s a question we avoid: Is there ever a time when an assassination is justified, and on what basis do you decide? People often speculate on the degree to which life would have changed if Hitler had been assassinated. Few people today support him, or anything about him. Yet, he was highly popular in his time, and had legitimate issues with existing leadership in Germany. But knowing what we now know, it’s not hard to be supportive of the idea of assassinating Hitler. (Attempts were, in fact, made). If it had happened, and you were alive then, what would have been your reaction? Joy? Horror?

What about Lincoln? It may seem offensive to mention Lincoln in the same conversation with Hitler, but the parallels are obvious. Lincoln was a threat to the southern culture just as Hitler was a threat to Jewish culture. Southerners were indeed oppressed by Lincoln. Then again, slaves were oppressed by Southerners.

Every leader is reviled by someone, and revered by someone. Is there some standard, some mathematical equation that can determine when it’s appropriate to shoot someone who is abusing power? Whose mathematical formula should we use?

This may sound radical, but hey, I’m a radical; I can’t make a blanket denouncement of assassination. Hitler? Yes, although it’s impossible to say how it would have changed things. The assassination of Stalin and Mao would likely have saved tens of millions of lives.

Who decides? Who deserves praise for what they did, and who deserves condemnation? I think we need to look at the assassin, not just their victim. WHY did they do it? Did they make sure to be well informed, consider consequences? Could they reasonably conclude that it was for the best for the most people? In many cases, yes, they could. But DID they? As near as I can tell, the answer is almost always, “No.” The word ‘delusional’ comes to mind. There is no rationality to be seen in any of the attempts on Trump’s life. Only delusion. I’ve read Allen’s manifesto. It is a testament to delusion. There is no calculation considering what an assassination would accomplish. There are references to Trump’s sins that are entirely false, representing nothing more than belief in the disinformation being routinely spewed by Trump’s political opponents, including the MSM.

Is it the media’s fault, then? To some extent, yes. Yet millions of people watch/listen to that crap, and they don’t go shoot anyone. I think the truth, the mathematical calculation, is that nearly all assassins are mentally unstable. Perhaps they have delusions of grandeur or, quite the opposite, feelings of inadequacy. Assassination meets a need within themselves. That is the true motive.

I have noticed that many people need to hate. But they want to feel justified in it, so they hate whoever it is socially acceptable to hate. That varies from year to year, and they follow right along, based not on principle, but on the need to hate. Some of these people graduate into assassination.

Having written this, I find that I have solved nothing. I was hoping for more, weren’t you?

We are the same people as were our ancestors, going back for millennia. You’d think we’d learn.

Perhaps we can at least do this: Allen clearly did none of his own evaluation. He followed the prompt laid down by others, but acted differently than normal. He expresses not one unique thought, observation or rationale regarding his hatred of Trump. He seems to be the real life embodiment of the Manchurian Candidate, programmed to mindlessly kill.

His family is shocked, simply shocked, that the did this. But I wonder if they in fact contributed. Did they caution him concerning propagandistic indoctrination coming from the media, or did they feed it to him?

Do not be the fodder that feeds such minds.

p.s I just heard what that idiot comedian on ABC said. Why does anyone watch him? Let me know in the comments.

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The following was my comment on an excellent article by Bad Catitude, concerning universal basic income, linked below. I liked my comment so much, I’ve posted it here. I hope you like it, too.

Great article, as usual, BUT...

Look at life before the industrial revolution. It was hand to mouth existence for nearly everyone. And the aristocracy served at least some purpose, in organizing that basic existence for greatest efficiency and order. And peace, of sorts.

New developments make life easier and cheaper. Imagine going to Home Depot to buy 2x4s that were entirely hand cut from hand cut trees. Because they used to be hand cut, just like that. How about hand woven cloth from hand spun thread from hand picked cotton? Production efficiency makes things far cheaper.

Now we are producing things that have essentially no cost. Our entertainment, once produced, costs essentially nothing to duplicate and distribute. That’s why Substack can exist. Books used to be hand copied. Then fixed type presses. Then Gutenberg created movable type. That’s not even almost the end of it. The hand written manuscripts still had to be transformed into print with type set by hand, one letter at a time. Then linotype was perfected, and the typesetter could type in the letters as he read the manuscript. Now, there is no typesetter. The original manuscript becomes a printed book with almost no labor. Now, AI threatens to do most of an author’s work. That’s just one more step in a centuries long process.

Books, 2x4s, food, transportation are all vastly less labor intensive, making them effectively much less expensive. And with less expense, more demand. MUCH more demand. We are now a consumer economy, something that didn’t even exist two centuries ago. Karl Marx, of whom I am NOT a fan, understood this in the nineteenth century better than most people do today.

Money is becoming meaningless to a large degree. It cost me nothing to put these words in front of you, and nothing for you to read them. I expect, and will receive, little compensation. Perhaps 20% of the people who work at a job/profession provide any physical thing. The other 80% are essentially dispensable. That doesn’t make them undesirable, just dispensable.

This is our brave new world. Should we rejoice? Should we bemoan the injustice of having it so easy, because others have it easier? I’d say it depends on how you look at it.

Remember, Individualists Unite! now has a companion site at The Radical Individualist. The Radical Individualist is where I now post my creative writing. If you haven’t already done it, please visit and subscribe so you get the full treatment! Click here > The Radical Individualist

bad cattitude

the basics of universal basic income

some memes are just intellectual herpes and never seem to really go away, lingering and always and popping up at moments of societal immunosuppression. such moments are often driven by fear of somet…

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2 months ago · 229 likes · 114 comments · el gato malo

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The Tyranny that Defines Iran

Iran has been a huge problem for the entire world for 47 years. Why hasn’t something been done before now? Let’s consider that…

Everybody knows I’m an individualist. Everybody has a right to proclaim their individualism. No legitimate government would stand in the way of that.

OK, so what is individualism?

Words are easy to say but are sometimes difficult to define. We say the words socialism, capitalism, democracy, communism, fascism with ease. But it’s not so easy to explain what they mean. I suspect that most people that fling those words around have never really bothered with definitions.

So what is individualism and what has it got to do with anything else? It’s easy enough to maintain that any individual has the right to live their own life on their own terms. But what about interactions within the real world? A total individualist might go off and live in the woods and be truly his own person on his own terms. But that’s not me and that’s not most individualists.

As a contractor I dealt with various people on a daily basis. I didn’t get to call all the shots simply by declaring myself an individualist. After all, I was dealing with other individualists. That might sound like a recipe for disaster with all these individualists trying to claim their right to be their own person. The funny thing is there was almost never a problem at a construction site. When a building gets built every individual’s responsibilities are clearly defined. On the one hand you have responsibilities that you must meet but on the other hand it’s entirely up to you how to accomplish it. It’s not kumbaya by any means, but there is a spirit of cooperation. The more we cooperate, even while meeting our own individual responsibilities, the better it is for everyone.

The thing is we all agreed to be there and to be part of the construction. We all knew what we were getting into and we all had the option to stay out of it. But then there’s governments. We are forced into participation. We proclaim that if governments are democracies, then it’s all fair. And that is total bullshit.

When people are forced to participate in an alleged democracy you cannot equate it with freedom.

Yet we need governments. But I have concluded that no legitimate government exists that does not recognize the supremacy of the individual ahead of the group. No legitimate government can claim that all citizens should pledge fealty, or like or respect the leaders of that government. A legitimate government makes only those laws that are necessary for the basic operation of the culture. In the USA we have two political parties and they both expect us to pledge loyalty to them. Make no mistake, even as they each push and shove, and insist that they are the ‘good’ party, overarching all of that is the presumption that every American citizen should pledge their loyalty to one party or the other. They seek to diminish any sense of individual identity and vision.

The two parties consider us to be subjects not citizens.

Voting, even when the election isn’t rigged, is still just a pretense. You get to vote for this party loyalist or that party loyalist. What about the majority of us, who are loyalist to neither party?

I’ve said this sort of thing many times before, but I think it’s time to consider some other factors as well. Donald Trump certainly has pushed the limits of his authority. He has not necessarily pushed them beyond what other presidents have done but he has pushed them. Harry Truman involved us in Korea with no declaration of war. LBJ got us into Vietnam with no declaration of war. Barack Obama had us involved militarily in Syria and various other countries of the Middle East, with no declaration of war.

I concluded long ago that laws don’t matter so much as the people who interpret and enforce them. So I look at the people more than I look at the law. We all know that Donald Trump is something quite different from any other president this country has known. Some conclude that this is horrible; others are glad that this has finally happened. It’s obvious enough which side of this I am on.

The law. Federal law. International law. So what? There has never been a time in the history of man when there hasn’t been tyranny, oftentimes horrible and brutal. And the laws have meant nothing. After all it is the tyrants who make the law in a country with tyrannical government. So, what is tyranny? Is the federal government of the USA tyrannical? Don’t presume that it is not. We are ruled by two special interest groups. We the people have no frigging power of our own.

Then again it is nowhere as bad here as it was in Venezuela and is in Iran. What are we to do when we the people, we the individuals, have no effective voice in our own government?

The United States of America was formed of revolution, because a group of its citizens decided it would no longer tolerate the tyranny that they were experiencing. Somehow that revolution worked out, for the most part.

Could we reasonably expect Venezuelans to revolt against the oppressive Maduro regime? Can we reasonably expect Iranians to revolt against the oppressive Khomeini regime? And if not, does the USA or any other country or any international organization have a right, a responsibility even, to step in and overthrow such governments? There is no neat clean answer to that question, but that in no way permits us to ignore the question.

Iran has been run by terrorist psychopaths for close to half a century. Presidents and world leaders have postulated, ruminated, passed resolutions, even maintained military bases in the region.

Hold that thought, while I go back to being a contractor and building buildings. You don’t get paid to try hard in construction, you get paid to succeed. You don’t get paid to give speeches or pass resolutions. You get paid when you accomplish the goal. And no single contractor can achieve that goal alone. It takes resolve, focus, experience, and a sense of cooperation.

I take that outlook, that approach to construction, and compare it to the effectiveness or lack thereof of government. Government is nearly the polar opposite of success-driven construction.

Who else was a construction contractor besides me? Donald Trump. I easily recognize his approach. I see the focus. I see that he applies pragmatism where others would apply the law. Aye, there’s the rub. Trump’s approach works. The law and lawyers does not. Should we continue to smugly proclaim that we are a nation of laws when in fact we are a nation of politicians and special interests jockeying for position?

Knaves protest at No King’s rallies, but would readily accept a king promoted by the MSM.

The likes of Chuck Schumer vociferously endorse voter ID when it suits them and then vociferously oppose it, when it suits them. The same for illegal immigration. For that matter the same for military action. The knaves suck it up, equivocating not at all, earnestly demonstrating, holding whatever sign someone puts in their hand.

I am an individualist. Donald Trump is an individualist. We both built successful careers around getting things done. I’ve had to think about what Trump is doing, how far he is exceeding law and custom. I didn’t vote for him in 2016, on the one hand, nor did I believe the total horseshit that Hillary and her crew were slinging about him, on the other hand. With all that has gone on since 2015, with all that I have seen Trump accomplish in spite of the entire city of Washington DC trying to take him down, and with the gang rape of the constitution eagerly engaged in by the progressive movement, I’m left with no choice but to trust Trump.

It is not blind faith. I am nobody’s follower. But Donald Trump has a career of success, of focus on goals and of achieving them. Washington DC has a record of abysmal failure. Pragmatic people can see this, political camp followers cannot.

Countless hundreds of thousands of people have suffered and died under the psychopathic regime of Khamenei in Iran.

Forty-seven years. There was no end in sight. Posturing, policy, coalitions, speeches and resolutions by the DC crowd have only made things worse. Trump is making the difference. It’s been a mere four weeks, not forty-seven years, with minimal loss of American military lives. Khamanei and his top leaders are dead; Iran’s military is all but gone. The psychopath’s ability to raise revenue to pursue terrorism is diminished nearly to nothing. Yet the DC crowd proclaims that Trump has lost. Any rational person knows better.

The one real issue at this point is the Strait of Hormuz. Only a fool doesn’t know that Trump will handle that. Nobody else will, but he will. And when he does Iran will be still weaker. There is not a snowball’s chance in hell that Iran will continue as a terrorist state as long as Trump is in office. There is not a snowball’s chance in hell that the Washington DC crowd will develop anything resembling competence anytime in the near future.

I am an individualist and a pragmatist. My life centers around defining goals and achieving them. I have never been able to do it alone; I have never even tried to do it alone. I seek those who know how to get the job done and they seek me. And we support Donald Trump.

p.s. Don’t forget that the Friday, creative writing segment of Individualists Unite! will no longer appear here. It has a new home at The Radical Individualist. Please click here to subscribe— Subscribe

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Hello, to all Individualist Unite! subscribers.

Remember, the Friday edition of Individualists Unite! has become The Radical Individualist. If you have not already subscribed to The Radical Individualist, please click the link below.

After you read Building a Life there is a button to push to subscribe to The Radical Individualist.

The Radical Individualist

Building a Life

Note: The Great Algorithm is pleased when you click thru to the page. It benefits all Substack authors if you click the title and read from the actual site. Thanks…

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3 months ago · The Radical Individualist

That topic is my new site, The Radical Individualist.

I had said last week that I would import your emails from the Individualists Unite, over to The Radical Individualist. But Substack won’t let me.

So you will have to sign up yourself, which is easy. Just click the button below. Please click the ‘free’ button, if prompted.

In doing this you will not see much change in your emails, at least not initially. But if you don’t subscribe to The Radical Individualist, you will get only half of the posts that you are used to.

Push this button:

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Thanks,

Chip-The Radical Individualist

The Unexplainable Expalined

I’m a science teacher. I can go on and on about the development of the universe and of the earth. But perhaps you aren’t so interested in hearing about it. I understand.

But of all that is known about the universe and the earth, there are two things that are worth considering, even if the science doesn’t mean that much to you.

Life. How did it get here? You probably know at least a little about evolution, whether or not you accept it or reject it. But, no, evolution is not what I asked about. I asked how did life get here? Once it was here, then life evolved, first as single celled organisms and then into multiple-celled complex organisms such as trees and people. Accept it or reject it, either way the science is well known, meticulously laid out.

But how did life get here? Am I being redundant? No. What science cannot explain, even after century’s worth of research and consideration, is how did the first life appear? At some point, presumably some specific time and place, some particles of inanimate matter developed a will. Some molecules of minerals or some such started to control the environment rather than BE the environment. These minerals created their own new molecules, surly using the sun’s energy to do it.

How? How do some lifeless minerals develop a will? How do some minerals decide to reverse natural, billion year old processes? Understand, there is nothing supernatural about it. The chemistry is known. Yet chemists, biologists, any other scientists have been unable to make this ‘just happen’ in a lab. In other words, even knowing very precisely what is required, they have been unable to create life in a laboratory. Yet, billions of years ago, some minerals did it, all on their own.

Scientists have a term, abiogenesis. It describes the above. Scientists have postulated what molecules would have developed first. They’ve laid out a scenario. Yet they can’t duplicate it in a lab. They can’t make any molecule, or group of molecules, willfully alter their environment for their own purposes. And that’s what life is, the ability to be proactive in the environment, not reactive. Life is conscious, deliberately constructive, unlike mere granite of such.

Now consider this. We all know the term “The Big Bang.” Besides a fun TV show, the term refers to the beginning of the universe. Scientists don’t think there was an actual bang, but they do believe that in a very short moment, the universe essentially appeared out of nothing. Scientists can tell you all about it, in detail, but only AFTER that initial moment of creation of the universe. They cannot explain THE moment when the universe was created.

Science has determined a lot, dedicating centuries of research and study to determine the content and the activity of the universe. There is much they still don’t know, but they’ve got it pretty well figured. All except for that initial nanosecond. That stymies them.

Even little children know that the earth is a planet that revolves around the sun, and that the sun is a star. Little children know of galaxies, and that the sun and our solar system are part of the Milky Way galaxy. This is more than Copernicus and Galileo knew.

But what caused the universe to appear from nowhere? Nobody knows. With all that scientists can explain, they can’t explain that.

What caused inanimate matter to develop a will? Nobody knows. Evolution can tell us much of what has happened since then, but it can’t explain that.

The essentials elude us. Can we know these things with further refinement in our research and mathematical formulas? I think not. The answers are to be found elsewhere. What do you think?

Please remember, Individualists Unite is spinning off a second site, The Radical Individualist. If you haven’t already done so, please check this out.

The Radical Individualist

I'm Splitting Up With Me!

I’ve been trying to go two directions at once…

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3 months ago · 1 like · The Radical Individualist

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Before we begin…Yesterday I sent a post informing my subscribers that I was creating a new page, The Radical Individualist. The Radical Individualist will be my page for fiction such as the one posted below, The Legendary Donut Stomping Incident.

Your subscription was going to be automatic, but the Substack algorithm, in its infinite wisdom, will not let me import my email list from Individualists Unite over to The Radical Individualist. You will have to subscribe on your own. Please click here and subscribe (by all means, choose the ‘Free’ option). You will receive the same number of emails (two/week) as before. Subscribe to The Radical Individualist

And now, back to our regularly scheduled post…

The Legendary Donut Stomping Incident

a short story

by Chip Kussmaul

Let me say at the outset, that it’s all my brother, Wes’, fault. I was only five. I could not be expected, at that age, to exercise good judgment. Wes, on the other hand, was all of seven years old, and should have known better.

But that’s Wes for you. Always with the big ideas. Was then, is now. At five years old, and with Wes being the only brother I had, I had no way to know that many of his grand plans were best left in the planning stages.

And I should mention my father, who I will from now on refer to as Dad. None of this was his fault, but still, he was the one with a proclivity for donuts. Sure, we all liked them, but my mother (Mom) only bothered to stop at the baker for donuts because of Dad’s inclinations. Except for that, there would have been no donuts to stomp. So, at least to an extent, he also bears some responsibility.

But back to Wes, the chief instigator. I was always tagging along with him. He was wise beyond my years, and I had implicit faith in his judgement. We built things out of scrap lumber and old tools. We built birdhouses that birds couldn’t get into. We built airplanes that didn’t fly. We explored the universe, which consisted of a stream at the end of the street, and a vacant lot with a neat old abandoned car. We’d take turns ‘driving’. Well, mostly, Wes drove. He said I was too young. I had no way of knowing that he was, too. We could almost hear the crowds at the Indy 500 as we raced around the oval in our imaginations.

I learned much from my wise brother, it’s true. But the thing to recognize is that I never had the chance to form my own opinions, develop my own perspectives, because Wes was always there, calling the shots. No one had told me that I had choices. I went where Wes went, did what he did.

And so it happened, one memorable morning, a Tuesday I believe, that my mother returned from grocery shopping. Gentlemen that we were, Wes and I helped to bring groceries in from the car and place them on the kitchen counter. I remember this well, because I had only recently matured to the point of being able to see over the top of the counter. And there among the other packages was the bag of still warm donuts that she had picked up from the baker.

Fate has its ways. We were putting things away, and were about done, when the phone rang. Mom told Wes, and I still remember after all those years, she said, “Wes, see to the donuts.” She then went into the hall, around the corner and sat at the phone desk to answer. It was her Aunt Sally. They liked to talk. I really couldn’t relate to those conversations, although Mom was usually quite engaged.

But back to those donuts. Back to Wes ‘seeing to them.’ I was pretty sure, even at my young age, that Mom meant for Wes to put them in the cupboard. Wes thought differently. He always thought differently.

“She said to see to them. Well, I’m seeing them, right here. If I put them in the cupboard, I won’t be able to see them. So I can’t put them in the cupboard.”

I was pretty sure that his logic was flawed. Had I been aware that there was such a thing as logic, I would have been sure of it.

“Mom just means put the donuts away,” I said. “That’s what she meant.”

“That’s not what she said. She said to see to the donuts, so I have to see to the donuts.”

I had no answer to that. I merely observed as Wes contemplated possibilities. Things tend to go bad when Wes contemplates possibilities. I know that now.

Wes looked into the bag. “These donuts are awful fluffy. There’s something wrong with them.” He held the bag open for me. “See?”

“They’re supposed to be that way,” I said with a five year-old’s level of conviction.

“No, they’re not. They’re too fluffy. When Dad gets home and sees them fluffy like this, he’ll be upset.”

“No, he won’t,” I said. I based this on nothing. It just seemed true.

“Yes, he will. He doesn’t like them like this.”

“You sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

We both regarded the donuts with concern.

“We should flatten them out,” Wes concluded.

“How?”

Wes seemed to have a ready answer. He always had a ready answer. “We’ll put them on the floor and stomp them flat, that’s how.”

I wasn’t so sure, “We should ask Mom.”

“She’s on the phone with Aunt Sally.”

“We can still ask.”

“Why should we? Do you think she’s got any better way to stomp them?”

He had me there. “Still, you should ask.”

Wes gave me his ‘younger brother is so dumb’ look. “OK. Just for you, I’ll ask.”

We proceeded out of the kitchen, Wes with the bag of donuts in hand, into the hallway and stood before Mom. At this moment she appeared quite engaged with Aunt Sally on the phone. We waited patiently. She remained engaged.

“Mom…” Wes offered.

Still no acknowledgement from Mom.

“Mom, we were wondering if the best way to flatten the donuts would be to put them on the floor and stomp them.”

It was an honest, straight forward question, for sure.

Mom responded, “OK, fine.”

And this is where it gets a little confusing. Later discussions centered around the possibility that Mom had said ‘OK, fine’ to her aunt concerning whatever they were discussing. But how were we to know?

Wes led me into the kitchen, and we meticulously laid out the donuts on the floor. I put mine in the center of each of the tiles. I’ve always had an artist’s eye. Wes was more haphazard. Anyway, it took us no time at all to stomp the donuts flatter than pancakes. I have to say, I was proud of my work.

Mom, apparently having concerns about the stomping sounds, left Aunt Sally in midsentence and came into the kitchen. One look in her face, and I could tell there was a problem.

“What in heaven’s name do you think you’re doing!”

“Stomping donuts,” Wes responded as if it was obvious.

“What on earth for?”

“Because Dad likes them flat.”

The conversation carried on for a while. It was finally concluded that Dad did not like his donuts stomped. Who knew?

It’s been many years since the Legendary Donut Stomping Incident transpired. As is often the case, the anger and upset has, over the years, morphed into humor and understanding. And, over the years, I’ve become somewhat less inclined to follow Wes around and to imitate what he does.

And I can never eat a donut, or even pass a donut shop, without a little grin finding its way onto my face.

If you enjoyed this and want more, you will need to subscribe to The Radical Individualist, for FREE!!! Subscribe to The Radical Individualist

Thanks. Hope to see you next time at The Radical Individualist.

I am starting a new Substack page, but also keeping this one!

I have been a bit conflicted between writing essays and writing fiction. I think some subscribers are also a little confused. So, I am keeping this site, IndividualistsUnite.Substack.com for the essays.

My new site is TheRadicalIndividualist.Substack.com. It will publish fiction, poetry, and maybe some of my songs, if I get them to the point that I want to put them out there. I will also encourage contributions from others.

It will be a barely noticeable change at first. I have generally published posts on Tuesdays and Fridays. I will continue to do so, with essays on Tuesdays on this page, and fiction on Fridays on The Radical Individualist. Or something like that. I will adapt over time.

You need do nothing, BUT…I will be importing my email list from this page over to The Radical Individualist page. If you don’t want me to, please let me know ASAP. You can PM or email me. I don’t see where I can reliably find your email from anything placed in the comments section, so please don’t count on that. Or, if you don’t want to be subscribed to The Radical Individualist, just wait for the Welcome email, and unsubscribe.

I will always appreciate any comments with thoughts on the subject matter or on the sites in general. Or on life. Or on mothers-in-law. Absolutely anything!

Expect a welcome email to The Radical Individualist in the next day or two. You can always unsubscribe from either site at any time.

Thanks!

Chip-The Radical Individualist

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Here’s what you should know about American history, but don’t—

It’s no secret that I detest what Washington DC has become. It has become a bureaucratized, self serving, autocratic morass, accurately referred to as “The Swamp.” It does appear that many people are quire comfortable with government by self-serving bureaucrats. I’m pretty sure that most bureaucrats think it’s a wonderful idea.

Still, even terrible government can have its good side. After all, it is the federal government that ended slavery. I cringe when I hear the continual din of how evil the federal government was, for promoting slavery. It didn’t. Not ever.

It wasn’t for nothing that we had a horrible civil war, and, yes, it was about slavery. Let’s consider some essential truths that many people are unaware of---You should know that the original USA was comprised of thirteen states that had been colonies of England, and successfully rebelled. These states recognized their vulnerability to the rest of the world, each individually unable to mount much of a defense against foreign aggression. This was not just theoretical. Even though these states were now free of English rule, that doesn’t mean England left them alone. American ships that, under English rule, had been protected by the English navy everywhere in the world, now had no such protection. They were often attacked by the very British navy that had previously protected them.

I’m keeping this short, but there’s a lot involved here. In the end, these thirteen brand new, independent states joined together to form the United States of America. Notice that it is plural, STATES. Not one country, thirteen of them. They formed a federal government whose primary purpose was to regulate trade between states, promote trade with other countries, and protect American shipping around the world.

That in essence, is why there ever was a USA. Citizens were not citizens of the USA, they were citizens of whatever state they lived in. Think of it this way, Europe now has the European Union, a union of individual countries. But a Frenchman is not a citizen of Italy, and an Italian is not a citizen of Germany. Their individual passports attest to that.

Passports? They have a history of their own. In the USA, in the early 1800s, passports were issued by individual states, each with their own laws and requirements. It wasn’t until 1914 that the USA federal government had a national passport program that resembles what we have today.

To repeat, in the early 1800s, people were not so much citizens of the USA; they were citizens of their individual state.

Hold that thought, and consider how people blame the federal government of that time for legalizing slavery. The federal government did no such thing. Individual states had slavery, or not, and delt with it on their own terms, just as they delt with everything else on their own terms.

It might have stayed that way, but the federal government took it upon itself to expand. There’s more to that than can be discussed here, but two major points are that the Northwest territory was obtained from England, and the Louisiana purchase obtained the Louisiana territory from France. The federal government took it upon itself to carve these territories into states. Remember, the federal government is a federation of the states. It was NEVER an autonomous entity and still, allegedly, is not.

So, the states, collectively thru the federal government, needed to carve up these territories into states that would eventually join the union. What was the one, overwhelming issue? Slavery. Generally, northern states wanted to prohibit slavery in the new states, southern states wanted to allow it. Libraries are full of books on this history. You would do well to read some of them. Or, at least watch some of the good YouTube videos on the subject.

The Cliffs Notes version is that the slavery issue quickly became THE issue. And yet the federal government had no autonomous ability to regulate slavery. It begs the question; why do people today blame a federal government that had no power or authority to do anything about it?

And then, civil war. People say it was about economics. To some extent, yes it was. But slavery was the central issue, and had been for decades. Lincoln, the first republican president, was elected (in a squeaker) with a mandate to stop the spread of slavery into any new state. As president, he couldn’t personally make that happen, but the writing was on the wall. The southern states seceded. By rights, they should have been able to. Things were dicey between the states, to say the least. It’s one of those times when it was impossible to predict the future with any confidence. Then, South Carolina took Fort Sumpter. It was a federal installation, and Lincoln had a choice. Call it an act of war by a foreign power (South Carolina having declared that it was no longer part of the Union), or call it an insurrection, with Lincoln declaring the confederate states could not constitutionally leave the Union. Lincoln went with the second one.

It was a stretch, saying that states couldn’t secede, but it’s all he had. Lincoln could not enforce any laws concerning slavery, because there were no federal laws concerning slavery. (Yes, there were some, that don’t relate here. I’m keeping it simple.)

So, civil war. Lincoln walked a fine line. He didn’t have overwhelming support, even in the North. He stretched the constitution almost to the breaking point to justify what he was doing.

At any rate, the North was victorious in the civil war, so the slaves were free, right? Wrong.

Remember, the federal government had no authority to free slaves. Yet. But shortly after the war, Congress passed the 13th amendment, outlawing ‘involuntary servitude’. Such an amendment could never have passed before the war. But after the war, for the first part of the Reconstruction era, republicans controlled the South and could make just about anything happen. So, the 13^th amendment. And the 14^th which, for the first time, made federal law concerning who was or was not a citizen of the USA. And the 15^th amendment, stipulating that restriction on voting could not be set by race or previous servitude.

And that, folks, is when the federal government became dominant over the states. For better or worse, there was now federal authority that usurped the authority of individual states to decide who was a citizen, with what qualifications, and of who could vote. Citizens were no longer seen so much as citizens of their state as they were seen as citizens of the USA. State passports became ineffective, federal passports became a reality. Even at that, it wasn’t until the Wilson administration that passports started to resemble what we think of today.

This has been the short version of how the federal government gained the power that it now has. Too many people know way too little about it. Before the civil war, the federal government was powerless to overstep individual state’s laws concerning slavery. The undereducated presume that the federal government is responsible for slavery, but ultimately it was the federal government that ended it. The undereducated think that reparations make sense. If you want to make a case for reparations, base your case on reality, please. Insist that the former confederate states pay them. And since every confederate state was democrat controlled, don’t blame all of us for slavery, blame the democratic party. Send the democratic party the bill for reparations. It is solely responsible.

The great great grandfathers of both my wife and me fought for the north. Jan’s great great grandfather, Jeduthan Grey, was killed. It is a gross insult to their memories that they are in any way referenced as being in any way responsible for slavery in states in which they did not live, and could do nothing. And by extension, it is insulting to Jan and me that we are in any way associated with it. It was the slave states, and it was the democratic party that is fully responsible for fighting so hard to keep ‘that peculiar institution.’

But there is that other side to it: It is the republican party, however good the intentions, that turned the federal government from a controllable instrument of the states, into an overpowering instrument of overreach. Ironically, in fighting to guarantee freedom and rights for slaves, the federal government has become the oppressor of freedom for everyone.

If that confuses you, if you think the federal government has protected your right to healthcare, housing and food, remember that every totalitarian state, Russia, China, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba and Iran, for instance, all do the same. Being provided for is not freedom, any more than you providing for your pets makes them free. It makes for an easy life, but your pets are not free. They are encumbered. They live as you decide they will live. They have what you decide they will have.

The times, they are a-changing, as Bob Dylan once said. More and more people reject the comfort of being someone’s pet. Like it or not, you’re going to have to adjust to being free, and not cared for. Trust me, you can handle it.

Here’s a good overview concerning the history of the 13 th amendment. 13 th amendment history

History concerning the fourteenth amendment (which does NOT say that anyone born within USA’s borders is a citizen) 14 th amendment history

History concerning the 15 th amendment (Keep in mind that, until this amendment, many white men also could not vote. And women still could not) 15 th amendment history

I just discovered this YouTube video. You might learn more in these 23 minutes than you do in your entire American history class, regarding slavery and the civil war. The Paradox of the Civil War

In looking for a graphic for this post, I came across this book, whose cover appears above. I know nothing about it, but I think I agree with it. Shrink Government: It's Too Big!

Remember, Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Finally, I know it was just an oversight on your part, but if you haven’t already ordered Breakfast at Buddy’s for a mere 99 cents. Please do it now. It will do wonders for the book’s placement in the algorithm. And it’s a great read. Just ask my wife…

Breakfast at Buddy's

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Utopia, or not?

There have been many novels and movies about Utopia.

Wouldn’t you love to live there? OK then, now tell me what, exactly, Utopia is. It’s easy to abstractly imagine an ideal place. It’s a whole lot trickier to describe specifically what that place is.

How about Dystopia? That’s the opposite of Utopia. Orwell’s “1984” and Huxley’s “Brave New World” are must-read dystopian novels. One thing I noticed in both novels is that, apparently, the majority of the people living in them thought they were just fine.

Sometimes I think too hard. But I can’t help thinking that some people’s Utopia is other people’s Dystopia, and vice versa.

Do we all want the same? If we could all go to exactly where we want to go, would we end up in the same place?

I’ve seen a movie or two and read some books relating to Utopia. Taken as a whole, it appears to be that Utopia is a place where nobody struggles, everybody is happy with who and where they are. Things just seem to work, with nobody stressing over keeping it all working. It never rains, yet there are no droughts (at least not in the movies I’ve seen.)

Clearly no such place exists and probably never will. But here’s a question: If such a place existed, would you want to live there? Would you want to live where all your needs are met by some sort of omniscient power, so you needn’t stress? Would you want to exist, day by day, with no challenges, no conflicting ideas, nothing to differentiate one day or even one life from another?

Apparently, some people would.

Or would you prefer dystopia which is, well, largely the same as Utopia. In dystopian novels and movies, nobody is allowed to differentiate themselves from others, a central power sees to everyone’s needs, and if you don’t get out of line, you’ll have a nice existence, every day and every life the same. So, Dystopia is the same as Utopia, but with a different spin.

To sum up, here’s how Utopia and Dystopia are the same:

No one has any say-so in the way are things run.

Thinking for yourself and having your own life are forbidden.

You are expected to be thankful for having an orderly, organized society with no dissent.

It is only the Winston Smiths (1984) and Bernard Marxes (Brave New World) who seem to have a problem with the way things are. Everyone else just goes along, each essentially indistinguishable from the other.

And that made me think, given that Dystopia and Utopia don’t really exist, what about Topia? Topia is the name I made up for our real cities, which are neither Dys nor U. Just Topia. (It turns out there really is a Topia, in Mexico. But this is not about that city.)

Topia is where we all live. Not ideal, but not necessarily all that bad, either. We argue. We push and we pull. That’s real life.

If we all throw our trash on the ground and don’t pay people to pick it up, it just stays there and things get uglier and uglier. That’s how it is in Topia. The movies don’t tell us what happens to the trash in Utopia or Dystopia.

If we don’t go to the effort to build enough houses, then there aren’t enough houses. Duh. The movies and books don’t tell us where the houses come from in Utopia and Dystopia.

If we don’t keep up with our energy infrastructure, there isn’t enough energy. In the books and movies about…well, you get the idea.

We are who we are, and the world is what it is. That’s what we’ve got to work with. If we produce it, we’ve got it. If we don’t, we don’t. It’s not that tricky, conceptually. Some seem to think we can channel Utopia in our minds and it will become reality. Those people generally have never built anything in their life. They don’t know what it takes. They’ve spent their lives presuming it all just happens. Think happy thoughts, and it shall all appear. Take meetings, be concerned, network, hold marches, accumulate degrees, and it will just take care of itself. Just like in the books and the movies.

Such people will have their Utopia, just as soon as we build it for them. But personally, I wouldn’t want to live there.

Just a reminder…If you haven’t already preordered Breakfast at Buddy’s for a mere 99 cents, time is running out! (Here’s a direct link— Breakfast at Buddy's

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You cannot legislate morality

There is an old saying, a fundamental truth, “You cannot legislate morality.”

Why do we even try to legislate morality? Should we draw our moral values from a Congress that most of us hold in contempt as being immoral? Politicians try to fool us, claiming that all would be fine, they could do their job, except for those people over there. Those people over there interfere with our inherent wonderfulness. They point their finger to the left. Or to the right.

Does it matter, really, which side you take? Why take a side?

Are some of us so desperate to have a side, to partake in the process, that we will eagerly grab at the lesser of two evils, rather than reject them both?

Once upon a time, in a land far away, no one presumed that there was only one right way and one wrong way. Congress was a compendium of unrehearsed ideas, fresh smells and scents of what could be. Government of, by, and for the people, if we can just figure out who the hell We The People are and what the hell we want. That was the way it was. Freedom, largely unknown before, now lay before us as a possibility.

Why have any government at all? There are good reasons. We need governments to build and maintain roads. We need traffic laws, so we hopefully don’t endanger each other. We need fire departments. We need police to protect us from criminals, although there is not common agreement on what constitutes a criminal. And we need governments to fight wars. Most of us hate war, but it is a dream to think they never need to be fought.

But why do we now think that freedom comes from governments? That is like thinking that wisdom comes from fools. Or that success comes from guessing. And is that not our government now? Fools guessing? These fools and those fools, as if the truth lies somewhere between them. The truth lies nowhere on that line.

Our governments makes laws now, not merely telling us how fast we can drive on the road, or what we can shout in a theater (but what if the theater is on fire?!). They make laws now that decide for us what is right or wrong, good or bad. Who to like, who to hate. What to eat. What pill to take. What shot to get. What to learn and what to ignore.

And they call this democracy. And they foolishly equate this with freedom. We are free to do as they say, to think what they say, to speak as they say.

They think they can legislate morality, even though true morality is unknown to them. Morality does not come from laws. Laws cannot make a person moral. Morality comes from both the heart and the head, from inside us. Laws and courts tell us what we can get away with, and who can get away with it, but not what is moral. Our hearts and minds, when we channel God, tell us what is right, what is fair, what is good.

No, governments cannot legislate morality. They can make pretense, make artificial structures made to resemble morality. But it is all fake. Make believe. Posturing. Pay no attention to the man behind the screen.

Here is the reality: Obeying the law does not make you a good person. Flouting the law does not make you a bad person. Governments are for setting speed limits, deciding which side of the street to drive on. They are not there to decide how your life should be. That is up to you. You can’t vote away your personal responsibilities, they are yours, regardless. I give and seek forgiveness and forbearance to those who have asked and from whom I have asked. It is the only way. Governments cannot step in and regulate it. They cannot make what is wrong, right. They cannot make what is right, wrong.

What is wrong with this country? Nothing. What is wrong with our government? A lot. When we abandon government and rely on ourselves, we will once again find our way.

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