A Truthful Man Could Never Be Elected.

Every single President in my lifetime has lied to the American public. 

I was born 11 days after Reagan was inaugurated.  He lied about Iran Contra.

The first presidential election that I remember was Bush the First.  He lied about new taxes.

Clinton.  Oh, my goodness, where do I start with Clinton?  He lied about a goodly amount of things, including under oath, about not having sexual relations with “that woman” (an embarrassing escapade in our country’s history that I’m still not sure what we were all so worked up about, other than the fact that he lied, but that’s my point – the point I’m about to make).

Bush the Second lied, too.  He lied about intelligence that he’d received.  He lied about his recollections of the day of 9/11.  Quite simply, he lied, just like any other president.

Recently, there has been much foofurraw over the fact that President Obama lied his ass off, on multiple occasions, for multiple reasons in defense of the ACA (or, if you please, Obamacare).  He’s lied for a myriad of other reasons, too, but these are the most recent, most blatant, most telling lies of his administration, so far, because even his most dyed-in-the-wool defenders and staunchest allies are having trouble spinning and defending him over this. 

I don’t really care, to be honest, if the President lies.  They all lie.  Politicians are in the business of deflecting and driving narratives to suit their purpose and political goals.  This means that pretty much every statement that comes out of their mouths, which isn’t opinion, is a deliberate obfuscation, misdirection, or outright lie. 

The thing that gets me is the tribalism inherent here, where when their guy lies, people spin it and excuse it, and when the opposition lies, the same people will clutch their pearls and gasp breathlessly about how it is simply beyond the pale for a president to lie to the American people.  The same cast of characters that were outraged when Bush lied, are now scrambling about like angry ants, trying to change the narrative from Obama blatantly lying, into him having “misspoken” or having made a “terrible mistake.”  Of course, the same folks that were outraged about Obama’s lies were the ones covering for Bush back then, too. 

The moral, gentle reader, is a simple one, at least to me.  Regardless of how horrible a statement this is to make, the simple truth is this:

You should not trust a single thing that an American President tells you, ever.  The same goes for any politician of any level in our government.  The truth is a moving target to these people.  Like the Rockefellers and steel barons of old, to them, the end justifies the means, and so to gain what they consider to be a net political good, they will lie, cheat, and steal.  They don’t care who they trample on their way to their glory.  They couldn’t give a shit less. 

Check your own facts and truths.  Rely on you, and only trusted sources to make your decision on the truth of the matter.  The President will lie to you.  It is a part of that office.  No truthful man could ever hold the Presidency in this day and age; it would simply be impossible. 

This is a terribly sad truth, but it is truth, nonetheless.  It should be inexcusable for a President to lie to the American people, but the fact is, one that did not would never get elected.

We’re financially hosed.  The only way to save ourselves is to take drastic steps to get our financial house in order.  These include cutting entitlements most likely by means testing Social Security and Medicare.  You could cut every single other expense in the government balance sheet and social security and medicare alone would still eventually bankrupt us at current income levels. 

So how do we save ourselves?  We cut government programs, means test for entitlements, and raise taxes.  Ladies and gentlemen, this is the truth – it is the only path by which we don’t spiral into death by debt.

Would that platform get a President elected? 

Hell no, it wouldn’t.  So what do they do?  They tell us everything is okay.  A small tax increase here, or a tiny cut over there, and we’re good to go.  They lie.  They tell us what we want to hear so we’ll vote for them, and then, their entire tenure in office, they work their asses off to kick the can down the road, so that their term will be up by the time the reckoning comes.

This is why Obama illegally changed the timing of the ACA for group plans, and more recently, individual plans.  He wants to wait until after the midterm elections to foist the truth on us of how boned we are, and in the mean time, he’ll continue to lie his ass off to keep those votes. 

Stop acting like the next president is going to be the messiah who fixes all of our problems.  The solution to your problems is you.  Period.  Fix your own problems, and the problems of the nation will be fixed, one by one, at an individual level.  Don’t stare mooney-eyed at your next leader, in anticipation of what he’s going to do for you.  Be your own leader.  Do for you what needs to be done, and we’ll all be fine.  

The Sanctity of Marriage...

It has been legal for gay people to marry each other now for close to a year in my state. 

I’ve noticed that the strength and sanctity of my non-gay marriage remains unaffected. 

However, I can’t help but notice that people are still fighting the wrong fight in places where the gay marriage debate is still ongoing:

Why, oh why, are you asking - begging, even – for your state’s permission to get married, instead of demanding to know why the hell the state is involved in marriage in the first place?  Why should you have to ask the state’s permission to get married?  Why have we accepted this as being the status-quo?  Totally normal? 

In a country that brags constantly about its freedom, why do we give the government first right of refusal when we want to commit our lives to someone that we love?  

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

The thing that I don’t think that Maslow addressed very well, possibly because it was irrelevant to him, was that a human at every level will feel compelled to complain and be miserable about the fact that they don’t have the things one level above them, because those are the things that are missing in each particular person’s life.  We are avaricious beings, by nature, always striving in our own way to enlarge our own, personal slice of the pie, and so we tend to envy the things that we don’t have, more than we appreciate the things that we do. 

And really, thank God for that, because our species would never have survived without that drive, or at least we’d still be living hand-to-mouth hunter/gatherer lifestyles, completely content with being eaten by dire wolves and likely dying before our 50^th birthday in some terrible fashion. 

However, an interesting phenomenon has arisen from the fact that we are avaricious beings, by nature.  It has become even more clear as the gap between rich and poor continues to widen.  Some people refer to this phenomenon as the “first world problems” effect, which is to say that despite the fact that people living in modern, first world nations enjoy a life that is far better than that lived by the majority of humanity (both alive and long dead), we still bitch and complain that we don’t have more. 

The socialite debutante living in Manhattan, eating whenever she wants and sipping lattes that cost more than most people spend on all of their food for an entire week, complains about how unfair it is that she can’t afford those beautiful Versace pumps in the Macy’s display window (her co-worker totally bought a pair last week and she is SOOO jealous!), while the starving 5 year old boy in Guatemala drinks raw sewage out of a gutter because it’s the only water that he has available to him.

The 20-something hipster in San-Fran bitches about how slow the wi-fi connection is at his local Starbucks while using a hand-held, touch screen Ipad device that has nearly instant access to the entire database of human knowledge on a whim, while a 13-year old girl in Nigeria is having her clitoris cut off with a dirty shard of glass so that she can never enjoy sex.   

The 40 year old soccer mom sits in her air conditioned, 4x4 SUV with a 325 horsepower V8 complaining about how bad the traffic is, while a young Indian boy walks miles upon miles to his school every day, in stifling heat and humidity, and in shoes that are worn completely through. 

I am not bringing these examples up because I think that it is wrong that some people have things and some people do not. I have no urge to redistribute wealth, and “fix” the wealth gap (as if it is even something that needs to be “fixed”, or even CAN be “fixed”, at least by something other than market forces). 

I only bring them up because I think that it is a strange relic of evolution that everybody on Earth constantly looks up to the person above them and thinks “oh my God, I want THAT!” and very few regularly look behind them at the person below them and think “Boy, am I lucky that I don’t live like that!”  Part of this is the “whistling past the graveyard” effect, where folks don’t want to look at what life would be like if they lost what they had.  Some of it is the fact that looking back, we can’t help but realize that it was more than just our skill and talent and work ethic that got us where we are – that there was some luck involved, too, and we don’t like to think that we aren’t 100% the masters of our lives.  But most of it is just human nature – we are evolutionarily designed to want more; to strive for it.. To FIGHT for it.

Another funny aspect of this is that many of the grievance mongering movements of today, but especially feminism, focus so strongly on these “first world problems” issues that I can’t help but laugh.  While upper-middle class women complain that women don’t get paid the same as men for doing easier, less dangerous, less skill-requiring, less demanding jobs than the men do, women in Nigeria are having their genitals mutilated by a society that views them as chattel property instead of self-determinate individuals.  While rich white women in America complain that because they can’t get their birth control pills for free, they are being “denied” access to birth control and are being treated as sub-human, women in Afghanistan have to live in fear every day of men throwing acid in their face for daring to have the tenacity to learn how to read.  While rich white women in America worry and hand-wring about “rape culture” in America, women all over the world are actually being raped, sold into forced marriage, and forced to be prostitutes against their will. 

The entire feminist movement is one big bitch-fest about “first world problems.”  This is one of the reasons that I look with such glee at hashtags such as #solidarityisforwhitewomen on twitter, where they lay bare the fact that women in America have only “freed” themselves from doing the things that they don’t want to do by paying other women, usually ethnic women, to do those things FOR them.  They pay ethnic women to do the housework, cook the meals, do the ironing, raise the kids… you know, all those nasty jobs that the "patriarchy" had them doing right up until they “freed” themselves.

Feminism, and the subsequent “freeing” of all of it’s wealthy, first-world adherents, would not be possible without in turn shackling another group of women to take care of all the dirty, nasty things that feminists can no longer do and still be ideologically pure. 

The moral?  Take some time to appreciate all that you have.  You have antibiotics, the internet, fast, efficient transportation, a roof over your head to keep you warm in the winter, and air conditioning to keep you cool in the summer, but at the same time, don’t lose that drive for something better.  

City Folk, You Have No Idea What You're Talking About...

Most of these folks have no understanding of the fact that THE ONLY REASON that there is any wildlife left in Africa at all is because of the economic draw that these animals have.  African countries make big money selling hunts to bwanas that want to come over and bag an elephant or a lion or so forth. 

Tsetse flies in Africa decimate their cattle ranches yearly.  Cape Buffalo carry the tsetse parasite, and that transfers into domestic cattle.  We had the same problem here in the USA with brucellosis in the native Bison, so we killed them all.  The only reason that African countries put up with this and don’t kill every Cape Buffalo pawing the ground is because they make huge money off of safaris where bwanas come in to hunt them some dugga boy mbogo. 

There is a term for elephants that most of these latte sipping jackasses will never hear, and that is “rampaging cull”.  This is an elephant that has discovered that it can get all it wants to eat by stomping the shit out of African villages and eating all of their food supplies.  Of course, this means that these subsistence farmers are going to starve to death, because an elephant can eat all of their food in a couple of days.  There is no way that the African governments would have put up with this bullshit if it weren’t for the fact that bwanas come over to kill these rampaging culls to the tune of 50,000 to 75,000 a pop JUST FOR THE TAG.  Forget the daily rates and other fees and things they buy while they’re there.  If it weren’t for this, every elephant in Africa would have been killed off long ago. 

It is easy for them to denigrate these activities from their gilded perch on top of some highrise in New York.  It is a litte less easy to understand life in an area where there is an overpopulation of lions, causing them to begin to starve, meaning they begin eating anything they can find – livestock that these people literally rely on for survival, and in some cases, the people themselves.  If it weren’t for the reasonable wildlife management efforts created by these bwanas, there would be no lions left, because these people fighting for their own survival would have killed them off years ago… 

City folk just can’t seem to get over the fact that they know very little about life.  They think they know it all, but the truth is that they have lived their entire life on a 2 mile by 13 mile concrete island and are just pig damn ignorant of the truth of day to day life outside their little bubble.  Of course, they’ll never admit that… 

Men - The More Emotional Sex of the Species

One of the first things an intelligent person will recognize as they become an adult and start to more completely understand interpersonal relationships is that people deal with things in different ways.  The splits arise between socio-economic groups, racial divides, individual personalities, and gender.  The most glaring one is gender, and that is what I’m fixing to talk about today; the differences between the ways that men and women tend to deal with grief. 

The funny thing is that men are raised to expect that women are different, and are taught to understand this and find a way to work through the differences. We understand on a visceral level that sometimes things that don’t upset us at all will upset our wives, and things that upset us won’t upset our wives. Women, on the other hand, tend to be taught that their way of communicating, and their likes/dislikes are correct, and that men’s ways of communicating and men’s likes/dislikes are incorrect (he won’t talk to me or open up! Why is he so closed off emotionally?!!). Therefore, when a woman starts crying over something that a man can’t understand, he does what he can to help her. When a man starts crying over something a woman doesn’t understand, she is shocked and caught off guard, as well as feeling inside that she’s seeing something wrong that shouldn’t be happening and it scares her away.

This is really just a matter of education and teaching our kids the truth in the matter, which is that despite all outward appearances, it is my absolute belief that men, not women, are actually the more emotional sex of the species.  We just do a better job if hiding it. 

So the point here is this:

Women, Don’t run away or act disgusted when confronted by your husband’s emotions. Don’t be afraid of anger or physical expressions of inner states of being.  Understand that what you’re seeing is no different than the way that you express yourself emotionally, it’s just that we do it differently than you do, and there is an evolutionarily sound reason for this. When women grieve, they tend to cry. When men greive, they like to vent; to kill things in virtual reality (or in my case, real life).  Men express grief through anger, not sadness, and there is a reason for that. One isn’t better than another. And both are felt with equal depth. Don’t sneer at how your husband expresses his emotions, in the same way that you would expect him to not sneer at you when you express yours in your way.

My friend and co-worker’s 12 year old daughter passed away in August, very suddenly after being first diagnosed with leukemia the week before. It put us all back on our heels. I felt partially wrecked for quite some time now, and with her diagnosis and subsequent slide into oblivion, and I BECAME ANGRY.

VERY, VERY FUCKING ANGRY.

I wanted to punch God in his face. I wanted to go find a panda bear and put a bullet in it’s stupid head for being too lazy to fuck to save its own species.

I wanted to club a baby seal. I wanted to, in the words of the immortal Tyler Durden “Destroy something beautiful” so that I could punish the universe somehow.

My wife didn’t understand. I explained to her that its part of a Dad’s constitution. I explained to her that back in the cave man days, her life and the life of our daughter would ABSOLUTELY DEPEND on me being the meanest, nastiest, most unforgiving motherfucker on the block. If I was going to be evolutionarily and biologically successful, every saber toothed tiger in a 100 mile radius needed to know that it was a bad idea to mess with my girls, lest they have ME to deal with after.

So we’re wired to get pissed and want to fuck some shit up. Virtually or in real life. It’s how it works. Lots of western gals don’t seem to be capable of grokking such a thing.

Many western women don’t know how to deal with a man who has emotions, because our culture has lead them to believe that such a thing doesn’t even exist.  So when a man gets angry, instead of understanding that it is his evolutionarily wired way of showing grief and hurt, they fear that and run away because they don’t understand what is happening.  Hold your angry, grieving husband, ladies, don’t chide him for doing what he’s designed to do. 

I can’t really figure out why some women can’t deal with the fact that their spouse is human, but it really does seem to turn them off when they discover that fact. I do think a lot of it is training. We train men to care about women’s feelings and emotions, and women to expect men to not have any, or for men’s to not differ from theirs in any meaningful way. It’s a recipe for failure.

I’ve written this so that I can help you understand why I feel short of the ideal on Saturday, and why my wife understands why I fell short.  I needed to break something, and I was too unaware of my own self to realize that I had more important things to do than see to my own needs and desires at that particular moment. 

Mrs. Goober gets it.  Thank God.  

Damnit all, anyway...

I was just getting ready to post the exciting news.  They say to wait for 12 weeks before you go around telling everyone that you and your wife are expecting.  I waited for week 14.  Turns out the advice was good. 

The Mrs. lost our second attempt last week.  Neither one of us are taking it exceptionally well.  Especially me, although it took me a while to realize that.  I left the house and went shooting on Saturday when I had absolutely no business going anywhere other than by the side of my wife.  She made mention of it, and I accused her of nagging me or some stupid shit like that. 

Yeah, I’m a f@#$%^ idiot. 

I’ve since pulled my head out of my ass and apologized, but after a bit of introspection, I realized that the entire thing was part of my grieving process and had nothing to do with the fact that I actually wanted to go shooting on Saturday.  One too many Y chromosomes…  I’ve discussed this before, about why I think men withdraw and get angry at grief.  I posted it after my friend and co-worker’s 12 year old died of leukemia in September.  It’s in our nature to get mad, to withdraw, and to go find something to break.  It’s also against everything that our family and wives need us to be in their time of need (at least in this modern world)… 

Sigh…

I wish I were perfect.  I’m doing my best to be a better man and a better husband.  Wifey says she understands.  I think she does.  She at least appreciates the fact that I’m willing to admit when I was wrong.  I just wish I wasn’t wrong so damn often.  

This Isn't an Aberration, Folks - It's Exactly What I Knew Would Happen

I love to see the shocked looks on all of the faces of the technocrats and their supporters over this Obamacare debacle.  They are shocked – just SHOCKED – I tell you, that this hasn’t worked out.  They just can’t grok a world where top down command and control structures aren’t the best choice for every operation. 

I hate to say it, but I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO! 

The thing is, these folks are still spinning this as if it is an aberration – just some inexcusable, monumental screwup that they’ll be able to fix soon enough, if given the chance.  I look at it as I always have:

Folks, this isn’t an aberration.  It is the standard by standard every time the government tries to do something.  It just normally doesn’t effect you as much as this is going to effect you.  I tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t listen. 

They fuck up everything they touch, folks.  Most people that have this faith in the government fall into three categories:

1.       Government employees so hopelessly out of touch with the way things are actually done in the real world that they think this sort of thing is normal;

2.       People who’ve never worked with the government, and just listened to what they were told in civics class in high school;

3.       Drooling fucking morons. 

I work with the government regularly.  I can tell you for quite some time now that I’ve been ranting against this takeover, not because I think our healthcare system is fine and doesn’t need to be fixed, but because I absolutely, positively knew that it was going to be a colossal fuckup of epic proportions.  The people that I work with at the federal government are the most incompetent, self-sure, oblivious and obnoxious people I’ve ever worked around.  They have absolutely no idea what’s going on, but will be the first one to tell you how things should be done. 

This is the result.  This, friend, is what you lauded and hoped for.  To have the most incompetent and least self-aware group of people in our nation take control of your healthcare choices.  And it is a fuckup.  And that isn’t a mistake or an aberration – it’s exactly what I expected, and if you’re smart, what you should continue to expect.