Something fun, something ugly

 

There is something I always tell people that if they read this they will know immediately who is writing this blog. I write under this alias(?) of a name so I can say what I want to say and not have to listen to people tell me how wrong I am. And as you know dear reader I never tell you what to do or think, yet….

Do not grow old. Live long, prosper, live a fruitful life, but under no circumstances grow old. It is way too much of a pain to bend down and try to pick something up or be extra careful with just about every movement so you don’t throw your back out. Or watch what you eat or drink, how much you exercise, why getting out of bed is an immense struggle just to put your feet on the floor. You ever hear the phrase you must give thanks every morning when you sit up and put your feet on the floor. When you get old, you certainly understand that phrase with multiple meanings.

 

And for your paranoid, outrageous conspiracy theory of the day. Have you ever wondered why Trump is so okay with Putin taking over Ukraine, you know a border country that really isn’t Russia’s yet he makes believe it is Russian. Why would Trump even care? I don’t know, yet if I was the Mexican President I might want to know.

Watching the dominos fall, great real world experience for Econ 101 students

 

I am not an economics major, yet like most even average Americans we can see the dominos being lined up to fall.

I am not one hundred percent sure a recession is coming, yet if you lay off thousands of people especially concentrated in one area, yet also some in other areas you can perceive what might happen next. Many local businesses will suffer do to reduced business such as restaurants and other local spots in D. C.. Once the local businesses start losing money then they either lay off or close completely. Once they close then distributors and wholesalers lose customers and you guessed it, they start laying people off. Company by company up the corporate food chain will be impacted. More workers losing work with less employment opportunities in an area either creates a spiraling situation in that area or a drain of the workforce as they move elsewhere to survive.

If this drain in D.C. starts to migrate then where does it head next. Of course and as always the workers, especially the service industry workers are hit hardest. If they cannot find work, then things start to get dicey as they look to alternate means to survive.

Do they do the right thing and move to new locations and start their own businesses or find employment? Or do they wallow and let circumstances sour their attitude? Well lets not speak bad of those less fortunate.

And in our current Administration’s worldview, how would they react to large scale claims to the unemployment system? If current direction of cuts are the leading example, many people could be left with nothing.

That’s okay because Trump says he can fix it all and it is only him. So Econ students get out your pen and paper and start taking notes because Trump will save the day and you can record the great savior at work. Or you can deal in reality and take notes about how bad things get when you let a fraud take over the government. I bet you can even get a book or two out of it.

Have fun

Oops forgot to add the call to action

 And like all milquetoast calls to action it is probably what you expect. Write your Representative or Senator, just like that the world’s problems are solved. Okay not really, however, if you are specific and let them know you mean business it might help a tad bit.

And let me make this easier for you.

For your Representative go to this link:

Find Your Representative | house.gov

You can enter your zip code and you have their email address. And if you feel you need write or address your Representative professionally there are resources you can internet search to help you.

For your Senator:

U.S. Senate: Contacting U.S. Senators

There are two per state so you can write one or both. And same for Senators if you want to make sure you write a proper salutation or what not, there are resources on the internet.

And if you think what should I say, well in my milquetoast call to action, try talking about, why is Musk in charge of my information?; how about writing legislation that overturns Citizens United; why don’t you control the budget, not Musk; we want a balanced budget, yet we want it done correctly which is Congress’ job, how about working on making Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid healthy, instead of hacking up the government, why don’t we make these agencies more answerable to Congress and the money allocated for them; how about tax breaks for me, not the one percent who do not need the money; and make sure they don’t lie to you about trickle down economics and all that BS; and whatever else you might think of like making the Department of Education a quality endeavor instead of just pushing over a cliff; or what about accountability to people who hurt the people with their actions. The list can go on yet  for now just touching on these subjects is a start or even a few.

Now here is the real call to action. Let them know you expect results and if you do not get them, you will work within their district to primary them. Yep this means if they continue to screw you then you need to recruit someone to run as a Democrat or Republican probably starting late this year to run against them in the primary. And be prepared to work.

As you know I would prefer just to ditch the Republicans and Democrats completely and elect a slew of independents, yet if you help overall the parties then that might work too. As long as you let them know, you are paying attention and expect results now. If not expect a whole new crop of people looking to replace them in Congress.

Either way it is time Congress went back to doing their job, which is control the purse strings, hold the Executive branch accountable for how the money is spent, balance the budget and most importantly represent you.

You pay their salaries through your hard work, why not spend an extra few minutes a day making sure they work hard for you.

Or primary the lot!

I’m sorry to say, you won

 Wait who is the you in the title? Is it every bogeyman you can think of in our modern society? So, guess who is losing? No one? Well no, but why aren’t we winning.

And as you have figured out by now whether you want to admit it or not, you are not winning by design.

Common sense, practical thinking, taking time to actually study is discouraged. Is it by society’s bogeymen or by us?

It could be us since we spend more time playing games on our phones than reading books, well thought out articles on the events of the day, even watching worthwhile videos on Youtube beyond how to fix the washing machine at home (those are worthwhile because it never hurts to save some money, the problem is when you absolutely need to just to eat) or history videos, yet do we learn anything to apply to our modern world. We do, but how do we apply it?

I am coming across five times more negative than I would like, yet it is hard to drive a point home in the modern world without being hit upside the head by the problems of our society. And there is so much doom and gloom. Do I espouse a revolutionary world? No, I would just like to make our world better within the existing system for all of us. You know, the milquetoast of revolutionaries. The polar opposite of Trump.

Yet, what is wrong with wanting something better in a practical fashion. Apparently everything in our modern world. You have heard the phrase in some shape form or fashion, if you ain’t rich, you ain’t shit.

And that does seem to be the modern mantra. And then as always our elitists love to tell us how to live  in this world, there is now de-influencers. Yep, you are now supposed to listen to people tell you not to buy everything you see on the internet and we need people that are popular to tell us that? “back in the day” we use to call that common sense, now the idea of common sense is to be discarded along with everything else that helps us do better such as values and morals. And have you noticed elitists love to tell us how to live like we need them to do such. Otherwise how would we exist. Elitism is just another entity taking our souls and lives away from us and replacing it with programs and self help books (maybe the ones we shouldn’t be reading) to live a better life.

We are stuck though. To lead a better life requires effort, not just the watching the washing machine repair video work, but work at many levels. Is it revolutionary work? It should not be, however we keep postponing it so eventually it may need to be. I hope not. I prefer my little milquetoast attitude if we just do better, things will be better.

Partially goes back to my need to start using resources better. There is quite an extensive list of viable and even easily readable books on what is happening and not looking down your nose at us elitism with valid answers to our problems. I don’t use them enough or this blog would be peppered with them right and left with answers. You read a well thought out book on society and resources supplement or enhance the point the author wants to make. And there are the books, articles  etc that can supplement why I am trying to encourage you to take action in our society.

Do I get lazy and say you need to do your own research? No because to prove my points I need to direct you to the correct resources. You know, common sense approach to helping you help me.

 

And I also feel that the world’s bogeymen have not won yet, even though that might be hard to prove with the richest man in the world running amok in our lives vis a vie his access to all our information through the entity that is supposed to protect us. The picture looks bleak.

And there are many saying we are in decline and that eventually we will need to rebuild from the ashes after we have burnt the planet down. Again the milquetoast in me says we can do better. The longer we wait the harder it will be to prevent the complete burning of our house.

So what next for me, you, the winners, the losers, the in between, the future generations, the diehards, the decrepit? I don’t know. What I do know is I am not ready to give up on us and hopefully one day a few of you will agree with me. After that it is just another small revolution to bring back common sense and decency to our lives and a government that is responsive to us not them.

Yes it is a dreary cloudy day here in North Texas so maybe I am just feeling a bit morbid. Who knows? It is about to become cold. The news tells us it will be the coldest two days of the year. Let’s hope we survive 36 hours of below freezing temperature because spring is right around the corner. And yes this is Texas, surviving 36 hours of below freezing temperature is a big deal, said sarcastically.

Cheers

The one problem Trump cannot and will not solve

 

For every society to be successful, the fundamentals of the society have to be strong. One problem we face today is young people do not know what is a healthy relationship. They want to know. They struggle with trying to find out why the myth of being in love is such a failure for them. They look all the time for the right answer, yet it alludes them like trying to catch up to the horizon. You drive or even sail across a beautiful never ending open field or desert landscape or calm waters with very gently lapping waves against the boat towards this far away line that divides the sky from the earth. Yet it keeps moving or changes over time and then fades into darkness as evening comes. There is a dream, a point they want to reach, but then the sun goes down and they are left with another lonely night to contemplate what might have been.

And it is not their fault, nor anyone’s really because so many of us grew up not knowing what is a healthy relationship.  You know it is a problem because there are so many books to help you find a healthy relationship. And tomorrow there will be a new book released upon a public trying to survive in whatever version of a relationship they feel is the right one for them.

And yet there are answers or even an answer, but we struggle with it because society runs us away from it. And how we are chased away depends on who is doing the talking. Liberals will use terms like partnership. A couple needs to develop a partnership for their relationship. In some ways there is some truth to that, but that cannot be the foundation of a healthy relationship. A partnership is better defined for businesses than people in a relationship. Or women need to have control over their own bodies, which they do, but that also leads to acceptance of women commoditizing their bodies with prostitution or pornography. The more a woman has to use these tools for economic survival shows the more a society has lost track of what is a healthy woman. Woman should not have to sell themselves to earn a living, no matter how many people tell you that you are liberated and in control woman by doing so. The more woman sell themselves the more it shows the economics of that society are struggling, the values and morals are struggling, the foundations are more aligned with control of people than people being liberated. Women as a commodity is just one symptom of a society in decline and you may think things like OnlyFans help women be liberated because they have control of the situation, I say quit lying to yourself. Liberation comes from you being respected as a person.

Conservatives will talk about the need for the family, women should stay home and be traditional  or “trad” wives. What is a traditional wife? Is it one that stays home and does all the domestic chores and takes care of the children while the man goes off and earns the bacon? Honestly only in farm households and suburbia in the 1950’s do/can we even conjure up that picture. There is no real traditional wife. The era more determines what the role of the wife has been than some idealistic dream to make people think that is the correct relationship. So how do you define what is a healthy relationship in this modern era? Too many people fall for the myth of the traditional wife without really applying it to today’s world. And just like prostitution a traditional wife can be commoditized for the benefit of the man. If the expectation is she is the servant of the man, it is her role to only please then you do not have a healthy relationship. Yet some on the Christian right are trying to sell you this perverted notion of a relationship. In no way shape or form is that the role of a traditional wife. Control of another person is not a relationship.

And in both cases of a partnership or traditional wife concept a healthy relationship can be built. The relationship though shouldn’t be defined by society because society has it’s own morals that could be good or could be destructive.

Some people can simply say the only reason we have relationships is to procreate, to continue the species. And yes that is one reason to have a relationship and if we were still living in the wilderness and had no more intelligence than animals that might be all we need. We have something more in our banged up heads and that is a brain that functions differently than animals. So procreation is not the only reason for a relationship, but in a relationship you do need to be open to life because for us to continue to grow both in number and in higher ideals you need to create more life.

And before I go any further I am not going to say I have the correct answer. Sorry to burst the bubble here, yet it is you that has the answer for you. The problem I am addressing today is no one helps you to find that answer. I am somewhat active in life so I speak with many people including young people and I hear over and over why can’t I find someone.

Or people who think they have found someone and they aren’t sure why it isn’t working they way they thought much less some perfect dream.

Our society throws so much garbage at us, we lose track of why we even want a healthy relationship hence we cannot define one.  And for a society to be great, become great or be great again, the foundations of human relationships need to be strong. And yes that includes families, raising children with values, parents who understand each other and want to be with each other.

If you talk to anyone in a long term relationship, many will say you have to choose to love. And yes you do. There are going to be days, you do not particularly feel like loving your spouse. It happens. The difference is people understand when you are arguing and need to stop, or choose to love or others for a variety of reasons do not stop and choose to hate. And once the underlying separations begin it takes more and more work to coming back to choose to love. Our society encourages the choosing to hate.

You have to win, you have to be right, they didn’t love you in the first place your friends will say, how dare they treat you like that your friends go on, and in being on your side they are not helping you. Sometimes you will be right, sometimes you won’t, yet both times you need to stop and walk away and come back to it when you are ready to discuss. Will feelings be hurt sometimes? Will you have to compromise sometimes? Probably all times is the answer.

The only way you win is when you both decide what is best going forward. And the answer yesterday may not be the answer today. Our society does not tell you that.

And healthy relationships are more than partnerships. You need the emotional attachment that does not come from a business relationship. Yet in whatever agreements you make to run your family, make decisions about your finances they need to be made together and sometimes it will feel like a partnership.

All in all though we, as a society, spend more time destroying relationships than building them up. So if you truly want to make America great or great again, we need to start at home. We need to find ways to support couples and families. And this is hard. Many of us including myself did not have good role models. And not because my parents were bad. Both actually were good individuals, yet both struggled with each other and by the time I was five my parents were divorced. It took many years for me to even begin to understand I needed a relationship with someone and it needed to be healthy. And from there it took many years of marriage to begin to create a healthy relationship. And it was a struggle, yet for some reason my wife and I kept going. Yet perseverance by itself is not the answer. How many times have you heard “we stayed together because of the kids?” And then poof the relationship is gone. Perseverance by itself is not the answer and is one reason why I know I do not have the answer nor does a self help book either.

People need to know though they need a healthy relationship and from there what they do is share it. First with their children and then with their interactions with others in society.

Again I do not have the answer, yet I can say by showing the person you want to have a relationship with, you need to respect yourself and them and then you need to choose to love. So easy to type onto a page with written words, so difficult to do once much less daily in our current world. 

And by chance after you read this, get off the internet and go talk to someone, give them your love and respect for just a moment. That at least is a start.

Happy Valentine’s Day

Idealism is a failure

 

I was meandering around in my brain and that thought came up. And I thought that already has to be a book. I internet searched the phrase on three different search engines and nothing that matched it exactly appeared or found.

There are quite a few references discussing the failure of idealism yet not the exact phrase. Here are some interesting references I found:      

               The phrase “your idealism is a epic failure” (which appeared in the text box as I typed idealism is a failure.) coughed up this:

How does your idealism make you suffer? : r/infj

Reddit · r/infj

70+ comments · 8 years ago

 

I am the opposite. For many many years now, I've practiced the "Fail Fast. Fast Forward" approach; which means I learn quickly from my mistakes ...

Idealism is Just Sophistry: The Fatal Flaw of External Reality ...

Jan 14, 2024

What does Nietzsche mean by "All idealism is falseness in the ...

Mar 6, 2023

Clarification for idealism : r/askphilosophy - Reddit

Sep 14, 2024

Why reject idealism? : r/askphilosophy - Reddit

May 11, 2014

More results from www.reddit.com

 

(“a epic” is what the phrase contained, not an epic. Don’t know why)

Or I found:

Dave Pollard

https://howtosavetheworld.ca › 2009/05/06 › the-curse-...

 

May 6, 2009 — I have always been an idealist. Even as a young child I imagined worlds that were, in every way, perfect and simple.

 

 

Newsweek

https://www.newsweek.com

 

What's Wrong With Idealism? - Newsweek

Published: Jan 15, 1995

Author: Newswee…

Estimated Reading Time: 6 mins

What remains is idealism without ideas. It offers no guide to political action and creates the illusion that important decisions can be taken without conflict. The result is a failure of...

 

 

Essentia Foundation

https://www.essentiafoundation.org › idealism-may-not...

 

Idealism may not be what you think | Essentia Foundation

 

1.     

Florida Atlantic University

https://www.fau.edu › spa › pdf

 

^[PDF]

The Failure of Idealism: Mental Models and the Inability to …

The Failure of Idealism: Mental Models and the Inability to Change Public administrators are attracted to ideals. American public administration has been intimately involved with the …

 

So you can go down many rabbit holes with this one phrase, yet as I was thinking I could not see how any idealism worked. And I think many of you with just a quick thought may come to the same conclusion. We have many “ism”s yet we do not have many utopian societies. Yet the phrase that caught my attention the most is driving me mad because as I contemplated about the failure of idealism I realized idealism fails because it has no path of action. The phrase I found that came closest to my internalized meanderings is:
               What remains is idealism without ideas. It offers no guide to political action and creates the illusion that important decisions can be taken without conflict. The result is a failure of leadership. In the Clinton administration, principles enshrined in high rhetoric, such as America's commitment to Bosnia's national survival, are frequently abandoned when their cost becomes apparent.

 

This is from the Newsweek article” What’s wrong with idealism”  listed above.

 

The article pretty much describes where my thoughts devolved into to a point yet I also think that it is much more. I guess you have to look at how broad of a definition of idealism you want to use. Are we talking large scale idealism such as communism or democracy? Are we going to say the ideal has to be all encompassing for mankind? And is that where the failure lies? Or can you as the Newsweek article discusses relate it to a specific idealism that tries to solve one problem in society?

 

The article also discusses the people behind idealism or people trying to create an ideal solution to a problem. They have specific groups in mind and there is also much more, yet their example does highlight problems with trying to come up with an ideal for any situation.

Idealism in any shape form or fashion according to my brain offers no guide to political action. The authors of any ideal have to back out of the ideal and create a path to achieve the goal. In it’s most generic sense communism needed socialism to arrive at communism. Somewhere someone had to centralize all planning so all wealth could be distributed equally. Could it still be achieved? I doubt it since there are too many humans involved. And is it because of humanity or human nature that idealism will always fail? Probably, yet we still create ideals all the time. There is something ingrained in the human spirit that wants a perfect world, some kind of equality amongst men.

 

Philosophers spent millennia developing idea after idea to no avail. No one has turned the table on the foibles of mankind and figured out what we need to do to all be equal.

 

And this is not my original point, yet it must be said at this moment. This is why I believe our Constitutional Republic is the best idea so far. The key behind it is the concept of equal opportunity with protections stated for those not in power or not as “equal” as others. The failure of course is humans still want to control other humans and in our case is it the economic hierarchy  that so many of us foolishly believe will support the masses also. No wonder socialism looks so good to so many. Socialism will fail, yet capitalism only succeeds for the one percent, the rest of us are serfs. We did come close by the 1950’s. Yet it is not this time that Trump refers to when he says make America great again. No he has a different America he wants to make great. Unfortunately too many of his supporters think it is the 1950’s and (white) American workers are going to be treated well. At one point our parents and grandparents worked hard and started creating equal opportunity in practice, yet the one percent said “holy shit, this doesn’t work for us” and began the process of buying off our government for their benefit.  No revolution, no bodies lying in the street, just plain old economic power plays because they could. So most Americans do not realize how bad they were screwed. You look at the wealth gap from the 70’s to now and it is obvious, but no one  wants to do that because then you have to admit how much of a patsy you became.

 

Anyway the above paragraph was not my original intent in thinking about why idealism is a failure. Or

maybe I was thinking the above because that leaves us with one successful idealism and that is the idealism that since I am richer than you I am better than you and you must follow me or you are a bad person. It seems like that is where our society is headed unless some philosopher can create a new idealism that replaces all the failed ones that we can rally behind and watch fizzle out once we try to put it in practice without a true path for implementing it.

 

Idealisms are failures for many reasons yet I will cling to our idea of a constitutional republic until someone comes up with something better. I just hope others realize it is up to us to fight for it before it is too late.

 

Or maybe just maybe the ideal world is not of this world and we need to focus not on things on this earth. It seems when we lose our moral compass and our faith is when our societies decline. To what truth do we follow? Ours? Or? Right now it seems our society has no moral compass and more and more the lack of morals much less the casting aside of our Republic’s ideals show we are in a great heap of fecal matter.

Latest podcast is live

 a podcast that is a bit of a follow up to my blog post: "the help I need is out there" is live. Please go to Youtube and search for dallasareaopinion and look for the latest edition on resources.

Cheers

Everything Elon Musk is doing is unconstitutional

 He was not elected, he was not confirmed by the Senate for a Cabinet level post, there is no job description for what he is doing. Trump cannot just say he is implementing his policy when there is no office for him to work from nor has he been identified as a Federal employee.

Everything he is doing is unconstitutional. Someone needs to get a Court to halt any and everything he is implementing until exactly what his role is defined.