Nice 'n' Easy Does It

Saying left alone, to me, means the same. I'm not suggesting we all retreat into a cave and growl at the bears.   To be left alone, is government that is as small as possible, national, state and local. Business that provides service to the extent requested by the customer. Religion that doesn't knock on your door. So yes, the 50s were a much better time in so many ways. We can only remember them and pass the memories to family and friends. They will never happen again. My suggestion, write it down for your children, and the rest of your family. 100 years from now it will be a historical document.  Those that follow us into the future will value the insight into our times. 

Having actually worked with family most of my life, there's a lot of truth to that. You will find yourself yelling and screaming at family when you'd probably never do that with an acquaintance or friend.

Therein lies the paradox and drama. I knew in the back of my mind that having lunch with my older brother was a bad idea. But it's the job of family to stay in touch. And yet this older brother (my younger brother is much of the same mind) is getting a pain to be around, if only because of his non-stop complaints about his life.

So with a "friend," you would just discard such a person. With family, all you can do is have a good yell and rant and life carries one while you try to take it…



I'm not particularly enamored with his daughter's cheap-lounge-singer version. But she's family. What can I do?

You mentioned once wanting to get together and more formally organize and write this stuff down. And that's a great idea. There are very few people spreading Normality, let alone writing down a record of what it is.

Your instinct is correct. My instinct, though, is that this could best be expressed through parody. I can foresee some kind of show on Netflix that poked fun at all the freaks, perverts, Karens, soy-boys, and such that infest our culture. Maybe there's this one family called "The Normals" who live in Wackyville. And they are always chipper and upbeat (they have to be in order to survive). And they act like a tonic to the people around them who have never seen normal people before.

Obviously this could start as a set of short stories or novels. But do you suppose people right now could be pining for Normal because they are surrounded by Abnormal in Wackyville? I think there is a distinct possibility. But they need guides to lead them back to Normal. We certainly agree on that.

Last week, or the week before, I went back to the "Culture of Hysteria" string and was a little surprised how much there was there. I went through pages and pages and only got up to about March 20th. The string was only started on March 12th and before that we made comments elsewhere. 

I have no doubt that there is material enough to write a book, but to edit it would be a major effort. 

To try and put together the wisdom of R&T would be an enormous undertaking, but I am sure that the material here is easily as insightful as anything I have read from today's pundits. 

I have, am and will continue to write it down. So far, the autobiography, short stories and commentary total about 150,000 words. I have spread copies to my children, and adult grandchildren. In the fleeting hope that my mistakes can be avoided. Faint hope I know. We all insist on making our own mistakes. The real problem is not learning from them. Ego and general stubbornness slow the process to common sense, which is not common. 

I would surmise, Mr. Flu – and I may be wrong – that, historically, a sense of community in America came from:

1) One's extended family. In 1800, the average was seven children birthed per woman (and certainly probably not all of them survived). In 1900 it was 3.56 (no doubt more of the children survived to adulthood). In 2018 it was 1.73, which obviously is below the replacement rate, and according to recent data, due to depression and all, they are dropping relatively like flies.

With an extended family, you had oodles of interests, especially with the families you married the children into or the ones who married into your immediate family. This is all but gone now.

2) School and church. We know how both have atrophied. And it is unusual now for parents in most parts to have much say in their schools. The little one-room school house has been replaced by a government program.

3) Barn-raising (figuratively or literally) and neighborhood. It has long been noted that what made America America were the multiplicity of small voluntary groups, such as the Shriners, Eagles, 4H, Scouts, Rotary, etc. There were historically so many, I doubt that I've heard of even a quarter of the fairly major ones. Most are gone or barely hanging on. In most cases they've been made operationally (but not actually) redundant by government programs that do all this inefficiently, impersonally, and with enormous amounts of fraud. But the needs are still there. These programs don't do much good because they are so impersonal and driven more now by politics than results.

Most people nowadays don't know their neighbors and don't care to know their neighbors. And what groups you find are often (perhaps usually) formed around political "activism." That is, they are agitating. No wonder the community agitator, Obama, was elected president. And that isn't a throw-away line because it thematically rhymes. I think it's the very truth of the matter. People relate to "community" for too often in the vein of anger or grievance, even if there are ribbons and smiley-faces sprinkled on top.

In historic America, there was a sense among most of "all being in this together." Only in this kind of country could a saying such as that from Ben Franklin ("We Must Hang Together Or Surely We Shall Hang Separately) have any resonance. But now the media, the entertainment complex, and government work overtime pitting groups against each other. Biden should be impeached and convicted just for the things he's said about ordinary Americans who have resisted illegal state intrusion. He has called some of them "domestic terrorists."

You won't find real community as long as our highest members of society, including those in business and the media, are assholes. They poison everything.

The modern American is morally adrift. We see the community he is making in Seattle, Portland, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. We did not fight the British for this.

Others have advised that the only way to start to take back America is precisely through the historic means that so powerfully did shape people and communities: small volunteer groups based not on agitation but fixing tangible problems...or just sharing good, wholesome American interests. We do that here to a great extent. We're part of H.W. Bush's "a thousand points of light" and all that – which he surely did not mean in this way, but it describes the task ahead of us.

And every American also had the Garbo instinct, to be left alone, to be free from the busy-bodies. Community was to be entered into voluntarily because you wanted to, not because it was thrust upon you by the naggers.

Very true, several years ago I served on the board of the local food bank. These were good people but suffering from the perception that they were hammers and the world was full of nails. the professional deformation I mentioned earlier. They had little interest in eliminating hunger, as that would eliminate their program. Instead the only saw growing lines of people seeking free or low cost food, most of whom were far from any kind of hunger crisis. Government has gotten into the poverty business and they fear the political blowback to end the gravy train. We can thank FDR and LBJ for most of it but every administration has built on free handouts. In this we are no different than the Romans, bread and circus. 

I was thinking much of what you wrote, but didn't want to take the time to write down. Sometimes I am just too tired. Having rested a bit and watched three more episodes of The Chosen I feel refreshed and able to again pick up my pen, metaphorically speaking. 

The reasons you mentioned are certainly large contributing factors to the dissolution of community in our nation. I also think education, technology and wealth have much to do with it. 

From the late 1800s to the early 1960s the American public education system's first job was to make Americans out of all of us. We were brought up with a unifying message of America's greatness and possibilities. That did not omit America's mistakes, but it did not preach America's sins to the exclusion of everything else. One might think today's education system is set up to unify the students of the country to hate America, which is does, but its larger job is to divide and make everyone feel put upon in one way or another. That we are justifiably aggrieved for not being as smart, or as beautiful or as tall or as skinny or as white or as black or as funny or as fast or as strong and so on and so forth, as others. Equality is preached, but division and inequity are what is actually taught. Everyone is mad at everyone else for reasons real, and mostly, imagined.  

Technology amplifies the above with the proliferation of lies about how great this or that person is, and puffed up grievances about how bad this or that person is treated. This garbage goes out to tens, maybe hundreds of millions, who consciously or not are influenced by this nonsense. In previous times, these people might complain to family and friends, who would eventually say "enough already. Grow up." (Your lunch with your brother) Technology lets these people complain non-stop with others egging them on. 

Wealth has given many the ability to reject norms and family, both of which kept people tethered to reality in the past. Not so much today.  A week or so ago, I heard someone define libertarians as leftists who wanted tax cuts. I think that is a pretty good definition.  

Finally, it has long been the goal of our sociopathic overlords, i.e. politicians, bureaucrats and plutocrats to keep people divided. They have succeeded beyond their dreams in getting the country split about 50/50. At such numbers, the people have little actual power. The rulers fill the vacuum. They don't want people to work together regardless of politics. They don't want communities in which neighbors help each other as that lessens dependence on government which lessens government's power. They want control. 

Yes. Good point. That's a major part of it.



Yes. Absent teaching gratitude toward a Creator (or just gratitude in general), the Left has substituted grievance.

I caught a few moments of the WGC (Weirdo Grievance Committee) on a local station last night. And all it took was a few seconds.

They were covering what is euphemistically called a "gay pride parade." But these are Nazis with a Lisp. One person there (and he was such a flamer that "he" does indeed seem to be the wrong pronoun) was going on about "They are trying to erase us."

And it occurred to me that there is very little to be proud about in such people. They represent the worse of both sexes. They lack the masculinity of the male and adopt the worst trait of "emotional blackmail" of the female.

And although this small "man" with a faggoty accent would commonly be known as a "twerp," I'm pretty sure that his exaggerated gay way of speaking was not natural. I know there are indeed people who are born flamers. But I think at least half of their mannerisms and speech are adopted. It's much like the faux country singers who adopt that "country" twang in their singing and sound as phony as a three dollar bill when they do so.

Be that as it may, these meetings of the WGC are not about pride. It is about emotional blackmail. It is about trying to force everyone to support them to the nth degree in ridiculous and intrusive ways. You want to suck cock and take it in the ass? That's your business. But don't tell me I'm "erasing" you if I don't make your perversions front-and-center in every aspect of society.

Imaging there was a sewing club who wasn't just content to adopt new members and spread their craft at fairs and such. Imagine that they made a showy protest and demanded that every school have sewing clubs. And if they didn't, they would make showy protests in the street and announce how the lack of support for making everyone interested in sewing made them feel "erased."

This is how ridiculous these lisping bullies are. They are not proud. They are Nazis.