I have found that as I age, I have less and less patience for bullshit.
I cannot stand when someone lies to my face and expects me to believe what they’re saying. (This does not include your teenager. Oh, we can despise when our teenager does it. But, it’s actually to be expected and developmentally correct, along with the shrugged shoulders and the disdainful eye rolling. But then, as the parent, we also have the power to take action and make them understand that there are consequences to their finagling.)
I can also see with my own two eyes the truth in front of me when it comes to the everyday nonsensical ridiculousness being thrown at me by so-called grown ups in our society. There are those who think they are smarter, wiser, and know what is best for you because they won some votes from some people somewhere in the bowels of an election booth. That is their proof of dominance, by the way, not the fact that they actually have ever accomplished anything.
They decide that they, and they alone, know what you can do, what you can say, and what you are to believe. (Word police, thought police, mask police, vaccine police, pronoun police, abortion police, gun police, religions police, patriotism police…and on and on and on.)
I am not sure when we, here in the US, decided to give up our individual agency to the government. When did we as a People, decide that the Constitution is only a suggestion rather than the law? When did we decide that some bureaucratic individual, whose incompetence is protected by civil service regulations, should hold sway over our right to live according to our own desires, wants, and needs?
One of the hallmarks of the US is that our ancestors came to this country in order to live a life without government interference and threats. When did we become such a spineless useless people? When did we become a people so lazy that we prefer the politics of jealousy rather than demanding the right to create our own future? It used to be that you were not entitled to what someone else builds and creates. When did that change?
Now I am not talking about deriding the idea of a social safety net. Decent societies take care of those in dire straits. It is our obligation within a healthy society to make sure that those who need help are helped. But then there also has to be the right kind of help, too. What is the old adage, “give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he will eat forever.” We do not teach people to fish any longer.
Oh, but we complain. We complain alot about people’s inability to figure out how to work the system. Yet then we do not give them the tools to understand how the system works. And of course, then those inadequates whose job it is to help those who need help, instead of reviewing and taking stock of their own malfeasance, blame some mysterious unseen manipulator who prevents any forward movement. A cabal of puppeteers who control and work behind the scenes to deny any individual success. The conspiracists take hold and they seek to manipulate the masses even further from every corner of society. (The Deep State, The illuminati, The racialist, and of course, that old stand by, now the Zionists, ahem the Jews.)
The politics of grievance doesn't do anything for someone’s attractiveness.
I have to tell you, this gaslighting is making me cringe.
The inability of the average person to take responsibility, to acknowledge their own agency and to try to figure out their own future is galling. When did everything change so?
Now one of the issues that frightens me as I grow older is the sway that the federal government has over medical issues. This is not saying health insurance is great. It’s not. Our system is so beyond broken. (I have stories to tell that would make your hair stand on end. I think alot of us do.) But putting everyone on medicare is not going to solve the issue. How would that even work?
The healthcare system needs to be fixed from the very bottom up.
Remember it is up to the states to make all the healthcare decisions, not the federal government. That is in this little document called the Constitution. It’s why even medicaid today is different from state to state.
Oh, the federal government can say, you must have X, Y, AZ as a minimum, but they cannot in whole tell the state what they have to do in order to get federal money. There is the carrot and the stick approach of course, but how has that worked out so far? Not so good. Working in the healthcare field and dealing with different states and people in need, it is frustrating and at times life threatening.
(I just read a story about a family in California with a severely nonverbal autistic son. Mom could not get the help she needed for him because there was no spaces available- meaning the state decided that they do not want to spend the money needed to help all those citizens who live in California in need of help. So she would need to go to the ER and try to get him admitted for days or weeks at a time to get him, and by extension the family, some help. Finally, thankfully after years of asking for help there was a space. But this story got me thinking about the bullshit law that was passed giving $150,000 to illegal aliens to help them buy a house. Who is going to pay for that, and why are the taxpayers of Cali supposed to pay for this when there are families in need of medical support and they are not getting it?)
(And yes I use the term illegal aliens, because they are here illegally in the country, just like I use the word homeless, and not unhoused, because it denotes exactly the situation the homeless find themselves. The word police are worried about stigmas? Instead of falling into a tizzy about how we talk, maybe do something productive and help those in need of help. Fix the immigration system and find a way to actually help the homeless.)
By the way medicaid and medicare not free. Someone has to pay for it, and you will pay with your taxes. And if you think it’s only going to be people earning over $400,000 who will have their taxes raised, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. Take a look at the tax base in countries with national health care. Take a look at how much they lose to the government for the programs being clamored for. Everyone pays. They pay alot. That is the choice you need to make and be wholly prepared for if you want a bureaucrat making decisions over our medical care.
Also look at the systems in other countries. See how they treat people. See what the death rates from cancer are. See what they will pay for, and at what age do they stop treating people properly? Look at the viability of these systems and decide if this is what you want for your family. (Look at the NHS. Gen Z likes stories about dystopia. Well they can go to the UK and live it for realz.)
It even goes to the “right to die” movement. You have countries like Canada that are killing perfectly healthy individuals simply because they are autistic. Psychiatrists decide that they cannot help these persons any longer so they say yes they can commit suicide. There is no push back from the medical community. The courts say under law its just fine and dandy.
Here’s an example: 10 years ago my son had a therapist who threw up his hands and told me there was nothing else he could do for him. So if we lived in Canada, and my son because he was emotionally lost at the time, decided that he had wanted to commit suicide, and this “therapist” said its ok because as an “expert” there is no way to help him, then the state would have helped him kill himself. Because the doctor is the boss not the parent. (Meanwhile, fast forward 10 years, we have found someone who is competent and my son is getting the help he needs. )
I am reminded that when there is national healthcare those who are at risk at not getting the help they need are the disabled and the elderly. It doesn’t really matter what you mandate. Eventually you run out of other people’s money. Something’s got to give and those less able to add to society are the ones that get shunted to the side.
Now I don’t know what the answer is. But I do know what the questions are. I also know why I am pissed off.
I do know that history tells us what happens when we give government too much say over our day to day choices. I don’t need to be infantilized. Some faceless bureaucrat does not know better how to handle my problems for myself or my family.
You know when someone promised you everything it used to be that this was when you took a step back and examined the charlatan before you. You didn’t clap your hands and say “hallelujah.” You knew dumbassery when you saw it.
I have no patience for liars. Oh, I despise liars. I despise those who think that the average person is stupid. I despise being gaslit. I despise machiavellian politics.
It’s probably, why as I age, I spend more time ranting on line than I do in the company of other human beings.
By the way, if this post disturbs you, go ahead and unfollow and unsubscribe. If you leave a nasty comment it will be deleted and you will be blocked. If you want to have a real grown up conversation about what I have written you are welcome to comment below. Adulting is respected by this cranky old lady.
You make very good points. The part about psychiatrists deciding if someone is beyond help and can commit suicide is not that different than them encouraging gender dysphoric youth to go ahead and transition to “prevent suicide” - this has happened to a relative and they are in very bad shape emotionally. Also agree that with age, our BS meter becomes more finely tuned.
Definitely frustrating times. An important factor may be a lack of national unity, in the US anyway. We were drawn together during the depression, WW2, the cold war, and perhaps the Vietnam fiasco.
Having come through those days we were declared the strongest nation on earth, a veritable empire. We began paying attention to conspicuous consumption. National unity faded as individualism grew. The concept of objective truth and moral accountability (In G_d We Trust) decayed, grew dim, and faded away. Political power and individual power are all that remain.
There was a time in Israel's history that is perhaps parallel. Not long after entering the lands promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, things started to go sideways (Judges 21:25). To wit: "In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes". This resulted in the lack of unified governance and the resulting individualism, where people acted according to their own judgment rather than following a collective moral or legal standard.
That history ended badly, as did the Roman empire and it appears the US has forgotten history is repetitive. If we won't stand together for something greater than ourselves, we final won't stand at all. Little wonder it all feels so chaotic and dysfunctional.