Be sure to check out the Roses & Thorns section and hit up the comments with your own!
Without further ado, here are some thoughts based on headlines I’m seeing, the classes I’m taking, the YouTube holes I’m falling down, and the adventures of/with my 3-yr-old son.
The World Needs Your Voice
In the process of my recovery, I have had to confront the fact that I am an incredibly fearful person. In my case, my fear mostly manifests as anger & rage. I demand control and when I can’t get it or can’t exercise it, I get angry. What’s really happening is that I have trust issues and when I don’t feel like I have control in a situation I am afraid that it won’t go well for me.
On Saturday morning I came across this post from
over at .In it he describes the Fear Matrix™. What it boils down to is “a whole lot of folks wanna frighten you into compliance of some sort.” Being a prisoner of fear is something I know a lot about. It’s something that I’m working on overcoming by putting faith in a higher power.
As I was processing the insights in Mr. Z’s article I was reminded of this video from After Skool. It’s a wonderful parable which highlights the trap of victimhood which is at the core of the Fear Matrix™.
Something I’ve learned is that openness and honesty about our fears is key to overcoming them. In that vein, the world needs your voice, if only to know that it’s okay to be a flawed, incomplete human being who’s working on improvement.
Cultural Appropriation
I don’t listen to hip hop or rap. I find most of the genre(s) to be devoid of substance. At least, any substance to which anyone should be exposed. That’s my opinion, you don’t have to agree with me.
As regards hip hop or rap, I don’t think it’s ‘cultural appropriation’ for white people to engage in it. Eminem and Iggy Azalea took a lot of heat for being white in the hip hop genre. They (among many others) were accused of cultural appropriation and attempts were made to run them out. Black people hip hop ‘artists’ all across the US were very vocal about ‘white people’ appropriating “black culture.”
I think it’s ridiculous.
If the rules are that ‘white people’ can’t do hip hop or rap because it’s appropriating culture from ‘black people,’ then ‘black people’ ought not to appropriate culture from ‘white people.’ That means stay the hell out of country music.
Side note, I don’t actually think it should be a rule. I really do not care what color your skin is or where you’re from, as I’m generally listening and can’t tell anyway. Also, as a believer in meritocracy, if I think your music is good, then I don’t care what you look like. If I don’t like your music, it has nothing to do with your skin color. (Case-in-point: Gangstagrass is a great blend of country and rap; Darius Rucker is an amazing country singer; and some of the best bluegrass and country right now is coming out of Canada via The Dead South and Colter Wall.)
(Yes, I know Wagon Wheel isn’t Mr. Rucker’s. Original here.)
We come now to the point of this post. My wife and I were sitting at the kitchen table on Thursday morning when she said to me, “I know the answer to this question already, but I’m going to ask it anyway. Have you heard the new song that Beyonce released on Monday?” My answer was, of course, “No.” I don’t follow Beyonce. I don’t have strong feelings about her or her music. I can recognize that she’s a cultural force, but that’s about as far as my interest goes. My wife proceeded to play the song for me.
Again, I don’t have strong feelings about Beyonce. I like the song. But if the contention has been that music is (and should be) culturally (and racially) segregated, then Beyonce is guilty of cultural appropriation. Unfortunately, the racist Left doesn’t play by the rules that it sets out for the rest of the country. So Beyonce will, as always, be lauded as a cultural hero.
The E-Communist
I still [for some reason unbeknownst to me] receive The Economist Today in my email. I honestly am just too lazy to cancel it, and while I don’t like or trust The Economist, I am at least aware enough of my feelings toward it that I can open the newsletter and get a good laugh.
Like this one:
A couple of things here. First, I seem to recall a moment when space-based weaponry was the stuff of conspiracy theory. 🤔
This is not to pardon Marjorie Taylor Greene, or speak for her or excuse her stupidity. I just want to highlight that none of the articles take on the possibility of space-based weaponry as a reality. They just jump right to “She said Jewish! She’s an anti-Semite!” [And notice the 2nd Newsweek headline which is from two years after the fact and is used to excuse actually anti-Semitic comments made by Ilhan Omar. Omar is still a horrendous waste of humanity, and a vicious anti-Semite, but then so is the Democrat Party … so it’s fine, I guess.] Never mind that the potential development and use of space-based weaponry was on the table as early as [checks notes] August of 2021. [And probably before, but I didn’t research too hard.]
The next bit about the Economist newsletter was that they were stupid enough to even pose the question, “Will electrification of industry live up to its promise?” Srsly?! You fucking morons. Of course the answer is no. Why would you even put that out there? Worse yet, you’re going to try to convince me that electric factories 1) don’t already exist (no manufacturing anywhere ever is done with electricity) and; 2) “electrification” isn’t one of the biggest fascist conspiracies on the planet? Government has been using its threat of force to take taxpayer monies and subsidize (read: own) “green energy” companies (most of whom have government lackies on their board) for years.
The whole thing is absurd. And funny. So I thought I’d share the ridiculousness with you.
Roses & Thorns
To close out the free series this week I’m going to attempt to find three good things (roses) and three bad things (thorns) from the past week. The intent is to both learn to see the good and reward ourselves for the successes as well as learn to objectively see and correct things that need to be corrected.
Roses
Despite not [yet] having a paying job, I am able to rely on the support of family. I’ve been given a lot of opportunity to work independently (at my wife’s store) and spend a lot of time with my son.
Faith is tough, but I am reminded often that putting faith in a higher power (as opposed to acting as if I have complete control) is the better idea.
We got snow on Friday afternoon into the evening. It could have been much worse, and visibility and road conditions deteriorated significantly, but by Saturday morning the snow had stopped, the sun rose into a cloudless sky, and all was beautiful and fresh.
Thorns
Job hunting. More specifically, I hate virtual career fairs. They’re pointless and of all of them I’ve attended I’ve never once had a recruiter tell me anything other than “Make sure you apply on our website.” Well fuck you. If all it took was to apply on the website, I’d have done that by now. You silly fuck. I’m at a career fair to bypass the ATS and speak to a fucking human.
The news is awash with the sentencing ruling from Donald Trump’s “fraud” trial in New York. The problem with Leftist Morons pointing to it and crowing their victory is that the trial started with illegal bullshit. The judge in the case ruled that he was guilty of fraud before the trial started. Trump didn’t get a trial, anywhere at any time, to determine guilt or innocence regarding fraud. The kangaroo court in NY was a show trial to put Trump in a courtroom (pre-determined as guilty) and decide how much he was going to suffer and pay for his ‘crimes.’ The result was already decided, and frankly I’m surprised that the judge held back from revoking his business licenses entirely.
Response to this article in NY Mag by Charlotte Cowles has been predictably unsympathetic. Now, I’m all for schadenfreude. It’s deliciously ironic to read about a financial advice columnist losing $50k to a scam. But as “Katie Gatti Tassin of Money with Katie, who was quoted in the original essay, told [Morning Brew], ‘The irony is that everyone who reads this piece probably will be less susceptible to fraud in the future…but we won’t keep talking about it openly or sharing our experiences if we’re met with people calling for our husbands to divorce us.’” As I noted at the top, let’s talk about our fears and failures and learn to give each other some grace that we may receive the same grace in return.
As you can tell, Roses & Thorns is unique to you and can run the gamut from small wins (or losses) to big things (in or out of our control).
Share your Roses & Thorns in the comments below.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Mad Hattor's Shop to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.