Month: February 2016

You may think when you read this blog that I am possibly a closet racist….you know, one of those white people who secretly loathe black people but never say it.  I say this because this is how all conservative white people are portrayed these days.  I am a white professional, so of course I must secretly despise black people and do everything I can in a subtle and non-assuming way to undermine their success and stand in their way….I mean it’s in my DNA isn’t it?

Well, let me tell you, if you know me, this couldn’t be further from the truth.  I try very hard to be completely fair in my life.  I don’t care if you are a man, woman, gay, straight, black, white, brown.  If you do a good job for me or treat me well, I will return the favor.  Likewise if you slight me in any way or do poor work for me, I will let you know that you did in no uncertain terms.  That being said, I am very concerned about the distinct direction many in our country seem to be headed nowadays.

I think we are moving more and more to ‘acceptable racism.’  What do I mean about that?  I mean that a minority, be it gay, black, hispanic, whatever, purposely treats a majority person with disdain, disrespect or even with outright violence and hatred for the sole reason because they are the majority.  Now, when they perform these atrocities, for that is what they are-atrocities, inevitably they are excused by many people.  ‘You just can’t understand what it’s like to be black in this country’ is what is said to ameliorate the bad behavior.  Or ‘our people were enslaved by your people for hundreds of years.’  Both of these statements are true, but so what?  Did I personally enslave anyone?  Are there any current slaves, that were slaves in this country, still alive and not ensconced in a nursing home?  Does being black, gay, hispanic mean that you don’t know right from wrong?

Right now some of you are saying, well if it’s about gays, that can’t be racism.  Well, technically true but I am speaking about behavior of a group, lets say their mob mentality, and I am going to lump some gay people in with other special interest groups.  Forgive me for my lack of distinction, but it is not germane to my argument.  Now that that is out of the way, let’s get to the heart of the matter, because this is where this behavior originates, in the heart.  This type of behavior is just wrong thinking, so it can’t come from the brain, it comes from raw emotion.

I get that minorities are mad.  OK.  But at some point they have to learn to leave the past behind and look at what is available to them now.  Does everyone treat them the same?  No and that will NEVER happen.  The reason it will never happen is because everybody is different in their feelings, how they were raised, their life experiences.  And some people are just plain mean and evil and they will never change their ways.  Get over those people.  Ignore them.  Spending valuable time on people like that will only shorten the time in your life when you actually get stuff done.  There is no law that can be passed that will make a hateful person into an accepting person.  So leave them behind.  They are bitter and will never be happy or successful(even though to some they may appear to be successful) and that is their just punishment for being assholes.

I wonder when the fight for equality turned into a fight for revenge.  Some time within the past 10 or 20 years, it became less about becoming equal than it did with being able to stick it to the people that stuck it to you.  More and more you see minorities with new found media generated power and confidence seeking to harm someone they think doesn’t like them.  Why do they think they are not liked?  Usually NOT because someone actually did something to them.  No, they are told on the nightly news in obvious and not so obvious ways.  The news fuels their anger and outrage by repeating the same stories over again and tagging the events with polarizing headlines.  ‘Black man killed by police.’  Why do we care if he was black?  If it was unjust, then shouldn’t we care that ANYONE was unjustly treated by the police?  ‘Gay couple refused service by Bakery.’  People get refused service every day and why would you want ANY food to be prepared for you by someone that just said they didn’t agree with your lifestyle?(hint: Ex-Lax is chocolate flavored, or the chocolate cream pie in the movie ‘The Help’).  ‘Jury acquits White police officers in Rodney King beating.’  what does white have to do with it really?  Isn’t it heinous when any cop beats a man mercilessly?

There is a growing movement in this country to dismiss antisocial behavior in any minority that is directed at any majority(read white, straight).  It is dismissed due to many reasons.  Institutional racism.  Institutional sexism.  Institutional homophobia.  Institutional Islamaphobia.  Where is this institution where this hatred is taught?  I was not raised that way and I believe the majority of people in this country–white, black, gay, hispanic, straight–were not raised that way either.  They would never condone it and most have never engaged in any type of hateful behavior.  What the majority in this country has engaged in is apathetically standing by while bad behavior was excused due to some perceived slight committed by society in general.  We have sat by and watched while more and more behaviors are excused because we did not want to be labelled ‘racist’ ‘sexist’ ‘homophobe’ or whatever bigoted moniker someone chooses to assign to you if you don’t excuse the bad behavior of a minority.

Now, Donald Trump comes along and says whatever he wants to because he can.  Nobody will fire him for this and the more the press reports his outrageous behavior, the more everyday Americans say ‘Finally, someone who is not afraid.’ A white man is not afraid.  Has he done anything racist?  Maybe, but you have got to believe that he did not become a successful businessman by being intentionally racist.  He would have been marginalized by customers, clients, the media.  But we heard not one word about his supposed racism until he ran for President.  Dontcha think if one of the richest people in the world was openly racist, it would have been noticed by now?  And has anyone come forward to say, “Mr Trump found out I was a Mexican and he never gave me raises like the whites I worked with and made me do all the menial and demeaning tasks.’ ? Of course not.  Trump cannot really afford to be a racist.  He’s a businessman and racism is bad business.  The almighty Dollar affords everyone the ultimate equality.  A dollar doesn’t care if a black hand or a white hand or a gay hand clutches it….it is worth the same at QT for all of them.

But I digress.  Racism these days has been the battle cry for a multitude of bad behavior.  Ferguson Missouri was burned and looted in the name of protest of racism.  The media loved it and fueled it.  Then they get to report the violence they helped create–great ratings!!!  They didn’t bother to report the real facts of the case when they became known–that Michael Brown did not have his hands up and that he had already beaten a much smaller policeman by the time he was shot.  He was not an innocent man–he had just robbed a convenience store.  But that’s not news.  He cannot be a hero if they report the truth, the story becomes less dramatic.  He becomes just what he was–another criminal hiding behind his race.  Who suffered in this case?  Well, the police officer, who worked every day in the community to protect the very people who turned on him, left his job, got death threats and was beaten badly by the man he shot.  Notice I said the man he shot.  I didn’t use a color prefix because it doesn’t matter.  If he was white, he would still be a criminal and would still have deserved to be shot.

The good people–black, white, gay, straight, hispanic, Islamic–of this country need to send the message to the media that this needs to stop before a lot of people get hurt.  The anger boiling up from both sides is ripe to explode and it won’t be pretty and the minorities will not win because they are outnumbered.  It is right to want and expect equality.  Everybody claims that this is the agenda.  But when a group called Black Lives Matter gets mad when someone says all lives matter, you see how bad it has become.  They got pissed because someone stole their thunder.  Someone undermined their whining.  They took attention away from them by being fair. If all lives matter, then that group is no longer a focal point for the angry people.  All lives do matter.  All lives should matter.   We should all care when anyone is discriminated against.  When people are discriminated against because of race, religion, sexual preference, we all lose.  Potentially wonderful people may be denied something that they could use to make society better as a whole. I despise racism, sexism, homophobia.  From ANYONE. This means that if a black person hides behind his or her race to explain bad behavior, I am going to despise them.  Not because they are black, but because they refuse to take responsibility for their bad behavior.

I grew up in the North, around zero black people.  I moved to Atlanta and I am surrounded and frequently outnumbered by black people. You know what?  The majority of black people I have dealt with personally–as friends, employees, professors, colleagues, etc-have been decent, hard working people.  Same with gays and hispanics.  I don’t personally know any muslims, but people are basically all the same and good and bad behavior exists in all communities.  I know people(white people) who are afraid to go to certain areas of Atlanta because they feel like they are at risk.  Guess what?  They are right.  Those areas of Atlanta are not safe for anyone, but more so for a white person who stands out.  This is the complete opposite of the South 75 years ago.  Is this really what Martin Luther King fought for?  Did he really fight for the day when black people could behave just exactly like the Klan that terrorized them?  I don’t think so.  Does Louis Farrakhan fight for equality?  No, he is a blatantly hateful, racist person.  Why doesn’t the news media call him out for what he is?  They are afraid of being labelled racist for calling a racist a racist.  So how crazy is that?  He doesn’t want peace.  He thrives on anger and outrage against another race of people….sound familiar?  If it’s unacceptable for white people to act that way, it’s unacceptable for black people to act that way also.  It is wrong.  Hatred is wrong and not ever at the root of any really meaningful movement.  Farrakhan does not want equality for blacks, he wants revenge.  I am sure he has reasons for it.  I am sure he stokes his hatred daily to keep the fire hot so he can pass it on.  When will he be happy?  A person like that can never be happy.  Even if every white person was wiped from the face of the earth, he would not be happy.  He would still blame all of his failures on someone else.

So, what do we do?  We stop being politically correct for one.  We tell it like it is.  We don’t use racial slurs, even when they are about our own race.  We don’t treat people differently because of their minority status.  This means we don’t discriminate against them and we don’t discriminate for them either.  Discrimination breeds the kind of hatred that lives in Farrakhan.  That hatred did not live in Martin Luther King.  I feel certain he faced just as much racism as any black in the South during the 50s and 60s and yet he fought for equality and wanted all of our children to play together.  For the most part, our children do play together–peacefully.  Children do not have the capacity to discriminate based on unimportant things like color or sexual preference.  They discriminate based on bad behavior and they discriminate based on what they perceive their parents want.  If someone treats them bad, they remember and pull away from that person.  If we label that person–any label other than person–this plants the seed of future bigotry.  More and more we are seeing black people segregate themselves and then not allow whites in.  Martin is rolling over in his grave.  He fought for integration and his grandchildren’s peers are seeking to be what he fought against.

Please people, lets get smarter before it’s too late.  Let’s start treating everybody how they deserve to be retreated.  Let’s admit that everyone has the potential to be good or bad and that there are no free passes for your minority status.  Lets set the standards of behavior high and make sure our children know that it’s wrong to treat ANYONE  in a bad way because of what they are instead of who they are.  This country is an amazing place.  It really is the land of opportunity for everyone who wants to try.  Let’s finally let the past go.  We can never go backward and undo what’s been done.  We need to learn from the mistakes of the past and not repeat them in reverse.  We all have the power to act this way, but more importantly, we need to call out EVERY person who discriminates against anyone, regardless of what their personal minority status is.  Bad behavior is not racist–it’s exists in every group and doesn’t care what you are.

So, to answer the headline, which I am sure a lot of people clicked on because it’s intriguing…..When is Racism Acceptable?  NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER.  Did you get that?  Racism is wrong, no matter what you are or how many times you were the victim of it.  I have always wondered why some people, when abused or misused, go on to commit the same affront to someone else….the ‘shit rolls downhill’ phenomenon.  Don’t you remember how it made you feel?  Why would you want to do that to someone else?

This is the slogan a lot of Bernie Sanders supporters are using.  I have to wonder who came up with it.  Although the supporters think it’s really catchy, I hate to tell them it can easily be turned into slogans for the opposition.  How about ‘Feeling the Bern: How Socialism will vaporize your property rights.’  This is an example of exactly how much tunnel vision Bernie supporters have.  They believe so much in their candidate that they cannot conceive of why anyone would disagree with them.  This will likely be their downfall.  Only by understanding your enemies can you hope to defeat them.

Sanders supporters love Bernie for the same reason that Obama supporters loved him in 2008.  They see him as a Savior.  A deliverer of free school, free medical care, free, free, free.  Many of them have yet to experience the agony of a higher tax bracket and how that mutates their paycheck from a nice fat sum to a pile of pennies.  They all aspire to get there.  I doubt that many of them truly want to be socialists.  Socialism is all about sacrificing for the good of all, at the expense of many.  Does anyone really believe that these self centered young people want to give away what they have to make life better for others?  Of course not.  They want others to give in order that they may get more, but I feel certain that they would balk in mass at the idea of them giving away to others.

For example, truly poor people still don’t have their own cell phones in some places…..THE HORROR!!!!  I suggest, that in order to equalize cell phone access that all the IPhone owners be charged double for their phones to make sure everyone has access to the latest, greatest phone to take selfies with.  I mean, there are even people out there suffering through the degradation of owning a flip phone.  They need to be saved.  It’s inhuman to expect anyone to live without a good phone these days.  Do you suppose that, if I circulated this on college campuses, I would get support for it?  I doubt it.

When you show how socialist ideas will impact individuals, they rarely jump for joy and say ‘I would gladly give all that I have to make things better for everyone.’  That’s a very naive notion about people and not even a 5 year old is usually willing to give up what they have to equalize things for others.  So, Bernie, a master manipulator, has invented a villain to be targeted.  Those evil rich people…..that 1% of the population that has the nerve to have a lot of money.  Why, if we could just take all their money, we could get whatever we want.  They have more than enough money to pay for free college for everyone who wants it, healthcare for anyone that wants it, for heavens sake, free IPhones for all as well.

The problem is that the math just doesn’t work.  In order to fund all these ‘free’ things, middle class people will have to anty up much more than they are already being bilked for and turn it over to a government that is notoriously horrible at managing anything.  The government will make absolutely certain that this money is distributed in a fair manner and everyone will have whatever they want…HOORAY!!!!!  Bernie has already said that he will definitely raise taxes.  To the millenials still in college, this doesn’t mean much.  Most of them have no clue what most adults pay in taxes every year.  It’s one of those cold realities that slap you in the face once you have your diploma and your first job out of college.  You take that job offer—$80,000 a year!!!  Hot Damn.  Comes to about $1,500+ a week.  Well who couldn’t live on that?  So you diligently start your job, enthusiastically expecting that $1,500 check and planning what all you will do with it.  Then you get the paycheck…open the envelope….’Hey, what happened to my $1,500?’  It was stripped by taxes down to about $1,000 a week.  Well, still pretty good money right?  Hold on.  Rent is $1,000/month, student loans are $1,000/month.  Car payment $500/month–had to get something nice and new since you are a professional adult now…are you keeping track?  That $6000/month paycheck is now down to $1,500/month.  Out of that you buy food, medical care, gas, utilities, etc, etc.  Ah, reality.  You really could use some of that $2,000 a month they government took from you.  And guess what they do with that money?  They allocate a large amount of it for people that don’t work or that try to raise 5 kids when they don’t have resources for one.  You pick up the slack.

You cannot tell the young ens this, however.  They think they are different.  They would gladly give up more money, because of all the ‘free’ things they get.  Now they are starting to realize that ‘free’ means that a taxpayer funded it.  Now they are the taxpayers, not the ones getting the freebies.  How long do you think they will feel the Bern from that?

The title of this post is also a lyric from a song performed by REM.  They were terribly offended that Donald Trump used it for one of his rallies.  Perhaps they will also be pissed that I used it to title a post.  Well, since I can’t play music on this post(probably could but I don’t have the talent to do it), I hope they won’t be too offended.

What does the title imply?  Well it implies that the world, or at least our country, is turning into something unrecognizable to many people my age.  My age is over 18 and less than 65–what employers are allowed to ask prospective employees.  I’ll give you a hint, I remember hearing about Watergate on the radio.  Interpret that as you may.  Things that were taught to me ask a child and a young woman seem to have less importance to people.  I get that things change and evolve over time under the influence of advances in technology, medicine, communication, etc.  I am not worried about those changes.  The changes that are frightening are the attitudes towards work, how we treat others and our own personal responsibility.

When I was growing up, I couldn’t wait to get a job and earn my ‘own money.’  My first job paid a whopping $1/hr and had no benefits.  There were no mandated lunch breaks, no rules about who could be hired or fired, no taxes taken out, just a job for what I felt was a fortune.  I worked hard all summer, sometimes 14 hours a day.  Of course ‘work’ was sitting on the back of a horse and guiding people around wooded trails.  I saved all the money I made and had enough to buy new clothes for school that fall.  We grew up pretty poor.  We never went without food, but it was a struggle for my mother to buy us new clothes every year.  Buying my own clothes took a big load off her.  I was proud of those clothes.  I bought them at a discount store, but it didn’t matter.  I bought them myself.  This was to be the first time I experienced the jealousy of someone who didn’t work towards me.  It was my own sister.  She complained to my mother that I got more new school clothes than her.  My mother explained that I paid for all of them.  Didn’t matter, my sister felt that she should always get as much as I got or it ‘wasn’t fair.’

This is a common attitude nowadays. People have made choices that mean they cannot make the type of salary that some other people make.  They perhaps feel trapped in a lower paying job.  They complain about never being able to get ahead.  They say if only they made more, things would be better.  They say that it is criminal that people only get paid a certain amount for basically unskilled labor. What they don’t say is that they want the opportunity to learn more important or valuable skills to earn more.  No, they just want more for the job they already do.  They feel it’s ‘not fair’ that others earn so much and they earn so little.  They complain that they cannot feed their families on such a low salary.  They are jealous and bitter.  They will not expend extra energy going out of their way to get new skills.  They will spend a lot of time and energy complaining–which they call protesting.  Time away from the children they are so desperate to support, time they could be working and making more money or learning new skills.  However, they have time to protest.

Jealousy is poisonous.  It doesn’t help anyone involved, least of all the ones that are jealous.  These people have been convinced that somehow they have been wronged by being forced to work a low paying job.  Nobody tells them that a low paying job, if done very well, can be a stepping stone to a better paying job.  In order to grow beyond that job, they have to perhaps make sacrifices.  Give up time that might be spent doing enjoyable things working more or learning new skills or going to school.  It’s not easy.  Just demanding more pay because they are having trouble making ends meet is not productive at all.  What got them in a situation where the only job they can get is minimum wage when they have child?  When I was younger, I made just as little on a proportional basis compared to someone in my position now.  I didn’t sit around whining that I didn’t make as much money as my boss.  I got up off my ass and went back to school, while I still worked.  It took another 9 years of working at lower paying jobs, but now I have a higher paying job.

You also have to have a work ethic and take responsibility for your own life.  If you only work the absolute minimum number of hours possible or put in the minimum amount of effort required at that job, do you really expect to rise to the top?  Young people these days do.  They have been coached to believe there should be no winners or losers, just participants.  This is not reality.  There are winners in life–they are the ones who find out what it takes to get what they want and then implement it.  They also accept responsibility for what doesn’t go right.  They don’t try to blame mishaps and setbacks on other people.  Are some bad situations caused by other people?  Absolutely.  Can you overcome these occurrences in the country?  Absolutely.  To be successful you have to be just as good at failing as you are at succeeding.  Admit the mistakes that caused your failures and don’t ever repeat them.  Don’t whine about the mistakes and say that they were beyond your control.  If you really examine your failures, you will find that usually are the main architect of your failure.  Only once you admit this can you learn the important lessons from the misstep.  You learn so much more from failures than you do from winning.  I promise you that.

Is the world as we know it really over?  I have to be hopeful.  I do know a few young people who are on fire about what they do and are willing to do whatever is necessary to get where they are going.  They don’t complain about being poor or tired or not having what everyone else has.  They look at what they want.  They determine what they need to get there.  Then they go for it.  They cannot help but succeed, even if they never reach their ultimate goal.  The journey is half the battle.  When you are busy working towards a lofty goal, you forget about what others have or don’t have.  You just focus on what you need to do.  That kind of attitude made this country great.  The attitude that, in this country, anything is really possible for anyone.  I still believe that, even now.  I have to.  For those young people who think income equality and socialism is a great idea, they need to understand that in 25 years they will be the ones supporting the young and dumb and they won’t like it any more than I do.

This is what the liberals most want to do.  They claim to have safety of the populace in mind, but most don’t even understand what they are asking for.  They want to limit the access Legal gun owners with carry permits have to anywhere they are.  I have had one person tell me she would not feel safe if I showed up with a gun.  I am not a convicted felon.  My most horrific crime to date is speeding…..lock my ass up quick!!!  I tried to reason with this person, but she has been convinced that my gun would jump up out of my purse and shoot her without warning.  I find it perplexing.  Have liberals all been exposed to the same autonomous guns?  I have never encountered these guns that shoot without warning or provocation.

The fact is that most legal gun owners, especially those that have gone to the trouble to apply for a carry permit, are the most responsible people you will meet.  They are not Bubbas running around in Appalachia firing at anything that moves.  They have been vetted by the local police department.  They are most certainly not felons.  Most are also fairly well trained in the use of their guns.  They understand when to use it.  They understand that it is a right that can be taken away if they abuse the use of it.  They understand it is deadly and respect this.  They don’t play with their guns.  What most liberals don’t understand is that those legal gun owners may just save their life one day.

Case in point.  A liquor store in Georgia was the site of a shooting.  A disgruntled customer who owed money to the owner shot the owner and another customer.  What stopped him from shooting others in the store?  A legal gun owner emptying his gun in the direction of the shooter.  This man undoubtedly saved lives that day.  It was not well covered in the media.  It was a footnote.  Another case in point.  A man went to sell a puppy(yes a puppy) and a gun was held to his friend’s head when they showed the puppy to the potential buyer.  Little did the ‘buyer’ a.k.a. thief know that they friend was a former Marine.  He fixed it so this ‘buyer’ would never attempt to buy something else that way.  This ‘buyer’ had also recently robbed two others at gunpoint.  How long would it have been before the ‘buyer’ killed an innocent person?  A legal gun owner stopped that from happening.

The attitudes in this country are the result of years of preaching by ultra liberals who would love to disarm those of us with sense.  The Second Amendment was designed to protect citizens from tyranny.  Most liberals don’t even know what tyranny means.  They know what Kim Khardashian had for lunch, but they don’t understand the Second Amendment, even as they rail against it.  The framers of the Constitution understood all too well what it was like to be defenseless in the face of a tyrannical government and they wanted to prevent it from ever happening again.  All this talk about whether or not someone would shoot a deer with an AK-47 is moot.  Our guns are to protect us from tyranny.

Most American gun owners are truly peaceful people.  That does not mean they are pushovers.  They don’t wish to be violent to anyone.  At the same time, they want no one to be violent to them.  They want to protect themselves, their loved ones and whatever unarmed liberals they can from becoming the victims of violence.  Violence most commonly takes the form of crime these days, but don’t ever believe that tyrannical government is not possible here.

Think tyranny doesn’t exist here?  Ask Mr Finicum’s family if tyranny is alive and well in this country.  He and his fellow protesters were called domestic terrorists nonstop from the time they occupied and empty building until the time one of them was shot with his hands in the air.  Yes, they showed up with guns.  Did they ever shoot them?  Nope.  Because they are responsible gun owners who only fire when they feel endangered.  Perhaps they should not have assumed the government had no such compunction.  Now they are all being arrested for the crime of disagreeing with the government.  And that is the definition of tyranny my friends.  We should all be watching what happens in these trials.  Of course, they will barely get any air time on the news.  That is also part of tyranny–control of information.  The government has effectively trained the media to report only what they want reported.  Thank God we now have the internet.  And the liberals hate the internet.  They hate an outlet of free speech that opposes them that they have no control over.  They want controls.  They call it hate speech.  Again, who died in Oregon?  A protester was the only person to lose a life.  Nobody else was even injured.  Think about that.  All these heavily armed, dangerous men and not a one of them shot at the authorities.  Kind of pokes holes in that whole domestic terrorist label.

Tyranny does not come from immediate overthrow of a government.  It comes in the form of multiple small erosions of liberty.  First they limit speech, but only speech in opposition.  Speech in favor of tyranny, no matter how hateful, is allowed.  They also wish to limit means to make a living.  They couch it in the form of ‘benefits.’  Benefits are nothing more than crutches they hope to get the populace dependent on.  The more they depend on the government, the less likely they are to oppose it.  It’s the most subversive form of slavery.  Finally, when they wish to gain complete control, they talk about totally removing our ability to protect ourselves.  They will protect us.  They will come to our rescue.  We are to trust that when they destroy our guns, they will step in and provide the protection we got from the guns.  But they can’t and I don’t believe for a minute that this is their goal.  Their goal is a submissive populace.  Once guns are turned in, they can do what they want without fear of retribution.  Think it can’t happen here?  Keep your head in the sand then.  I will keep my gun and protect you.