Going Back To The Days Of Asylums By Killing Kids Slowly

Reporting suggests that, since there is no real evidence linking vaccines to autism, there will be a decree from on high (executive order) declaring the link to be true. Let me explain why this is a problem, along with a few other things. 

First, let's look at why that narrative is so compelling: autism is not well known, and the unknown is terrifying to the closed mind, and scary even to those who look forward to exploring it. It's so terrifying, apparently, that parents are more willing to watch their children die a slow, painful, and fully preventable death rather than risk maybe them being autistic. 

I am autistic. I have many loved ones who are autistic. I'm not going to lie and say it's easy being autistic in a world made for and by allistic people (allistic is merely a term referring to the portion of the population that is not on the autism spectrum, just to clarify). It sucks sometimes, just like living as a disabled veteran sucks when I have to live in a nation built by and for able bodied civilians with billions of dollars in wealth and those who can make them money (who, incidentally, are also able bodied civilians). I am reminded regularly that I am not truly welcome in the country I sacrificed everything for, everything I knew I could and then some. 

Children are dying of measles for the first time in decades, with, prior to the Texas outbreak, there not even being cases recorded in the US for nearly ten years. Why is that happening? Because the MMR vaccine, which resulted in the near extinction of measles as a disease throughout multiple countries, was once erroneously linked to autism by a man who was seeking to patent a competing vaccine. He just wanted a reason to fearmonger against the MMR vaccine so his vaccine would get more support. And don't take my word for it, look it up. 

The head of HHS, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has already made statements that he believes that autism is fully environmentally caused (the genetic component is well documented, so no, not fully environmentally caused), has advocated for forced inpatient treatment for people with a variety of psychological conditions including autism, and has even gone so far as to propose camps for us. Not fun summer camps, the kind we were put in alongside a few other groups back when a scientist named Asperger decided which of us could be useful to society and which were just dead weight to be discarded. 

On top of this, the VA and DoJ have begun the work of rebuilding the old insane asylum system. They've already signed agreements to start picking up disabled veterans off the streets, drag them into court, have a judge sign all of their rights away to the government (this would be considered a guardianship), and incarcerate us for the crime of homelessness and psychological abnormality. Not illness, not disease, abnormality. Because believe it or not, that's how psychological conditions are actually decided on (something that is regularly discussed in the psychological community and may see change in our lifetime). 

This administration has made it very, very clear that they intend to revoke the rights of anyone who is not useful to them as much as they can. They have revoked the right to due process repeatedly; they revoked Miranda rights; they revoked the right to free speech; they revoked the inalienable rights found in the Declaration of Independence; granted, most of these were on a case-by-case basis, but once it's done for one person, it can be done to any. That's why the phrase "injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere" keeps coming up throughout history. Every time we give the government the authority to revoke the rights of any individual, we give it the authority to revoke ours as well. 

So, back to the point at hand, why is this reported executive order such a problem? Because it becomes legal fact, and since autism is officially recognized only in a negative light and is officially treated as a curable disease rather than a lifelong condition, it means they can seek to prosecute parents and doctors for vaccinating children. More children will die. More families will be broken. More parents will never be able to be whole again. More marriages will be destroyed. 

And all because some people think that their child turning out like me, or Anthony Hopkins, or Greta Thunburg, etc. is more terrifying to them than the possibility of watching their child die of measles, or worse, forcing other families to watch as their children die because vaccination works best in groups, not on the individual level. 

We spent decades after the end of the asylum system last time just trying to reduce the stigma against talking about behavioral health issues, let alone getting diagnosis and treatment. And this addlepated feckless moron and his equally deranged cronies want to drag us all the way back to the days of frontal lobotomies as treatment for psychosis. 

If you love anyone who might possibly have a mind that is outside the norm, you really should be contacting your congresspersons about this, and speaking out about it. Because soon, those of us who have these conditions are likely to have our rights taken away, and even as it stands, most people don't listen to us anyway. It has to come from those that seem normal, because they just think we're "crazy" and write us off entirely. 

God bless if you'll let Him, and have an otherwise great day.

A Few Things I Learned The Hard Way

I'm just old enough now to be considered to have some real life experience, so let's pretend I do. Lemme share with you some things I've learned the hard way over the last decade or so. 

First, there are never enough tears to shed. Crying is not defeat, it's not a sign of weakness, it's not something you really should reserve as a weapon of last resort. Crying is literally one of the tools our mind and body has, whether you believe that is because God gave it to us or because our distant ancestors randomly developed it, to deal with the fact that we are, in fact, finite beings dealing with thoughts and emotions that exist in a near infinite quantity, variety, and intensity. Cry often, if you can. If you have your time to cry when it's safe to do so, you may have the strength to hold back tears when it's not safe. 

Second, sometimes we just can't cry for the "right" things. There are so many tragedies that occur in this world, in our lives, in the news, in countries we've never seen nor ever will, and even in our own back yards. There is a constant barrage of things to cry about, legitimately heartbreaking things, and especially right now, when we seem to be surrounded by horrible things, day in and day out, it's sometimes just too much to cry about; the tears won't come. I have a little trick that I do when I realize that I can't cry about what bothers me now: I go back and cry about things that I cried about before but never really changed. 

In the last decade, I have lost my father, two friends, and a cat that had been in my family, that I'd known, for well over half my life at the time (it's now almost exactly half my life, as she died at age 18, and I'm now 36). On top of that, I lost so much of myself, so much of what I had hoped for. I'm not gonna bore you with a full inventory, but, in my experience, by the time you're an "adult," you've cried enough that you can remember something to cry about. And crying about something old, at least for me, helps me process the emotions of what I feel like I should be crying about today. 

There are tools I use to cry about old things. Songs, sometimes old videos, sometimes random audio files, pictures, etc. If you've known me for a long time, you may know some of these song titles, and you may even know why they break my heart, and despite that, why I still listen to them from time to time:

"Letters from War" 

"His Theme" 

"Christmas Shoes"

"Happy Birthday" (not that one, this one's a rap song)

"Cinderella" 

"Butterfly Kisses" 

Third, the pain of grief doesn't actually go away; you just learn to live with it. That sounds like a bad thing, but in a way, it's like whoever or whatever you lost is still with you, even in their absence. You'll never fully know the size or shape of the hole you'll leave behind in the lives of people who you've affected, hopefully the people you love. But when you lose them, you'll know the exact size, shape, location, depth, and searing pain of the hole they left behind. It's less like a wound that will scar over and eventually heal, and closer to cobblestone; the hole from a missing stone is always there, but you learn to tread carefully around it, until you sometimes just need to sit down next to the hole and remember what was lost, and why it hurts so much to have lost it. 

Finally, pretend to be the person you want to be. This is probably one of the most frustrating and annoying pieces of advice that I've ever gathered, and take it with a massive grain of salt, but if you use it this one way, it can help a lot: when you're in a situation and you're not sure what to do, ask yourself what that person, the person you want to be, would do, and then do it, or as close to it as you can manage without harming yourself or anyone around you. The person I want to be is kind, caring, and willing to help others know they're not alone. Which is why I'm writing all this BS for you to read. 

If you bothered reading all of this, do me one solid favor: sometime within the next day, do something for yourself that you wouldn't have otherwise; give yourself a kindness that you would have otherwise been denied. Doesn't need to be huge, maybe it's just making yourself a cup of tea you haven't had in a long time because drinking the same few flavors for the last month has just gotten too boring, or maybe it's changing into clean, dry clothes when you'd normally just tough it out, or something else equally mundane. Just, do something kind for yourself. I believe that every act of kindness we perform, even for ourselves, brings more kindness into the world, and makes it a tiny bit better than it would have been otherwise as a result. 

Anyway, I've wasted enough of your time for tonight. God Bless if you'll let Him, and have an otherwise great day.

Purely Hypothetical Thoughts About The Civil Liberties We've Been Losing

 This is purely hypothetical, but let's do a thought experiment. 

If you wanted to be able to create a system in which you are allowed to basically put everyone but you and your peers under constant surveillance, and get them to thank you for taking their right to privacy away, how would you do it?

Here's how I'd go about it. First, I'd start undermining any sort of assistance there might be in raising kids. I'd create a mythology that the "nuclear family" should be the only family unit, much like was done to sell suburban homes, which in turn was to sell automobiles. So I'd probably use that.

That would make it so that grandparents and other extended family have little to no role in raising kids without there needing to be conversations about schedules and driving time and other logistical issues that don't really show up in multi-generational housing or in close knit communities.

Then, I'd start to make it harder to get any other support for raising kids. I'd cut funding to schools so that the environment becomes toxic. I'd cut funding to daycare just to make it too expensive to use for most people. I'd make sure that any working parent has to work even more for childcare.

Then, I'd force wages to stagnate, maybe by creating a tax structure and monetary policy that so heavily benefits the hyper-rich that they can literally work people to death and it be viewed as positive. I'd even create a myth that letting them keep more money would cause wealth to trickle down.

With this, I'd make sure that the hyper rich, large equity firms, and foreign corporations have more access to the residential housing market than actual residents, making housing prices so high that it takes an entire full time job to barely cover it with nothing to spare. Why? So they work more.

Having kids would then require you to be working multiple jobs and/or overtime, at least 60 hours a week, and all that time you have to pay someone else to be with your kids or you have to hope they do well in the extremely underfunded public school that you send them to every day. It never ends.

Meanwhile, I'd make sure that my peers, the super rich and powerful, have full access to everything I'm cutting off from the working class; they'd have access to high quality housing, good childcare, and well funded schools, even their public schools as funding could be based on property taxes.

Then, if a new technology came out that allowed people to have their very lives quantified and surveilled constantly, I'd make sure there was a way to heavily monetize that, a way that would be out of reach for the working class except to become middle men in an absolutely broken system.

I'd make sure that the most popular ways to access that technology were addictive, and used tools to actually make your quality of life worse by using them, increasing stress, decreasing access to good information, and flooding users with misinformation constantly so they can never tell what's true.

This is part of where that lack of funding for education gets to play double duty, because since I'd have defunded education except for the rich so much, none of the working class would have ready access to the education necessary (like epistemology) to be able to assess information on their own.

Then, I'd build entire companies that market directly to children but allow unvetted adults onto the platforms, wait for the inevitable and horrific crimes to occur, and then use that to justify getting the government to tie everyone's currently partially anonymous data with their government ID num.

Of course, that would be sacrificing children in the most horrific way possible, but we're looking to build a surveillance state here. I'd set up all these different things that would be the government taking away people's privacy and autonomy and label it all with "think of the children!"

Oh, and I'll have set up a cultural construct that makes parenthood equivalent to godhood, making child abuse ridiculously common in the nation I'm overseeing, so common that it's still part of our cultural media and treated as either humor or justice, punishing bad kids; doesn't need to make sense.

That way, anyone who has education and/or experience raising kids can't tell the parents that they need to parent, because "how dare they tell you how to raise your kids!?" I'd ensure the news covers juvenile crimes heavily, alongside the horrific crimes above, so everyone is scared for and of kids.

Then, I declare that I can fix it all with some new laws. Laws that make it so that you can't buy what you want because kids can't have it; laws that make it so that you have to give your government ID number to corporations to be sold with your data; laws that take away your liberties one by one.

And then I'd do just that. I've already made it so that parents will literally fight and die to support these laws because they never had access to the time or resources to learn that I'm lying to their faces, since none of these laws would address root causes at all. But I'd run into a problem.

See, I might be stuck in a nation that, say, had a court case that enshrined the right to privacy to include freedom from unnecessary search and seizure, but also freedom from government interference with personal choices. I'd need to get that overturned, so I'd get millions to fight for that.

How would I do that? Focus on the wrong part of that court case and turn that into something demonic, sell it to religious leaders who benefit from their "flock" being too undereducated to identify a scam, and spend decades getting the highest court in the land stacked with corrupt judges I control.

Once I get that overturned, I'd have some of my peers in the ruling class make a big deal about how it's all about that wrong part of the court case, and declare that they'll fix it by passing laws that don't actually enshrine the right to privacy, and then they never pass the laws anyway.

See, it's all basic slight of hand just scaled up; I'm making them look in the wrong direction so I can pick their pocket. Make them think the right to privacy only matters about one subject, and then pass laws that revoke their right to privacy when they use that technology I mentioned earlier.

On top of that, any technology that powerful would almost certainly become necessary to daily living, so by passing these laws, like, say, requiring all general use operating systems to store and transmit that government ID data as "age verification" (yeah, a lot of people will buy that).

I might even write the law so that it doesn't technically require government ID, but I'd made it a fine, so that profit-driven companies that might be held liable will be forced by their shareholders to go with the most extreme version just to be safe. I might even coordinate this globally.

And then I just have to wait until enough horrible things are happening at once to quietly pass these laws and rules and regulations that take away freedom without people talking about it, because they're more important things going on, like say, a budding dictatorship in a superpower republic.

But the one thing I would hope no one figures out is that the ruling class are all in on this because that dictatorship needn't be the way they control our lives and work us to death; they can do it through surveillance, restriction of access to resources, and continued toxic fiscal policy.

In short: I'd have built the system and situation that the State of California, theocratic organizations like Collective Shout, government ranging from the UK and former commonwealth nations, the EU, and more are using to sell you that to protect children, they have to own your entire life.

There's a reason I don't want Newsom to be the next Democratic presidential candidate: because he's not progressive; he talks like one, but his policies are that of a neoliberal, which is a form of conservative that figured out that the working class will rise up if conditions get bad enough.

He signed the Digital Age Assurance Act either knowing that the only way developers could meet that requirement and the requirements from Visa/Mastercard, the EU, the UK, and Australia is to integrate government ID systems into the verification and allow that to be tied to user data or blind to it.

Now, I can't say for certain whether or not this conglomeration of a perfect storm to take away privacy and autonomy rights from people all over the world was planned, but I can tell you that the people who benefit from these laws will be able to break them for their own data; it's always a fine.

If a fine is the only punishment for breaking a law, that is a law that applies exclusively to working class people. The ruling class can either use their wealth and influence to avoid being charged in the first place, or pay the meager fine out of their petty cash. The punishment doesn't harm them.

Now, a lot of this is legitimately just coincidence. The myth of the nuclear family used to sell the suburbs and keep people out of multi-generational housing was done well before anyone would have come up with this idea, for instance. Same with the decades-long plan to overturn Roe v Wade.

But it's clear that these laws to "Save the Children" won't affect members of the ruling class, a massive percentage of which clearly were either aware of or participated in Epstein's crimes or similar ones, I think we're being lied to about why they're targeting working class civil liberties.

They're not protecting us, or our children, from the most vile ones, they are the most vile ones. So why are we letting them take away our rights to privacy, autonomy, access to information, and more? 

Because they think we're too ignorant to know better, and what scares me is they might be right.

So I'm doing what I can do, which is point out what I've pointed out here. If you read this far, thank you and I apologize for being so wordy, but that's who I am. 

Try to do something good for yourself today, some kindness you wouldn't otherwise. It literally makes the world a better place.

God Bless if you'll let Him, and have an otherwise great day. 

Hard Truths I Don't Wanna Talk About But Have To

Note: this was originally formatted to be posted to Bluesky, but it got really long, so I posted it here. That's why it looks like I somehow typed it out on sticky notes. 

Let me go ahead and say up front that I fully expect to receive a lot of backlash for this. There may even be threats against my life, and there's a non-zero chance that this will result in my psychological conditions being exacerbated to levels I can't actually survive. Yet, I must speak. 

First, I'm gonna recommend that anyone who feels like that they might want to get involved with any kinetic action in the foreseeable future read "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Robert A. Heinlein. It contains a layout of a proper revolutionary setup, including some analysis of the "why"s involved

Then, I suggest you do some cursory reading on revolutions in history, both successful and unsuccessful. Note how few of the ones that sacrificed the element of surprise as well as exposed all their members to public scrutiny before they were ready to act failed. It's a lot.

Next, I need to spell out some hard truths. 

Calls to violence will not produce the results you want if you want to end the fascism.

Note: "calls to violence." If you did the reading I recommend, you understand why I chose those words. 

I'm an infantry veteran; I know violence is a tool.

The reasons why calls to violence result in failure are numerous, but two are particularly important:

One: You expose yourself and all your comrades to intense scrutiny and surveillance. You don't want your enemy watching you until after you've begun to act.

Two: You lose the element of surprise. 

To be an effective tool for positive change, violence must be controlled, carefully directed, and focused on practical outcomes rather than retribution. If you fail to keep those in mind, at best you create a decades long insurgency which will eventually be wiped out. You will lose. We will lose.

Authoritarian regimes don't need excuses only once they've fully cemented their power, and believe it or not, the current authoritarian regime in the US is actually farther from that today than they were 10 months ago; they're losing their power base and they know it.

The actions already being undertaken, many of them including partial cooperation with some elected officials and organizations that have proven they serve the community rather than the federal executive, are working. The SS cosplayer is being reassigned, they're paying to cool down rhetoric.

Why? Because in most nations today, the governing mechanic known as democracy still has much more power than they want you to know. If they could actually make your vote and your voice useless, they wouldn't be paying billions to buy or silence them. The narrative that it doesn't matter helps them.

That hasn't changed; all that's changed is the tools they use are slightly different. Instead of massacres like Tulsa or assassinations, they use voter suppression laws, destruction of education, propaganda, poverty/long work hours, etc., all under the color of law. It's not better, just different.

And yet they fail; they fail a lot. NYC has a mayor who is actively and visibly progressive, so much so that his in-person service to the community has become a meme among many who support him. WI has a progressive leaning state Supreme Court for the first time in my lifetime, possibly longer. 

And you know what the pivotal factor was for each of those victories for us, for the working class? Working class voter turnout, especially among marginalized groups that are constantly being fed propaganda that their vote doesn't count. Clearly, it did and it does. They're scared of our votes.

Yet that's not enough. Electoralism is the least effective method of activism for the left. So we need to use other methods. Not just violence, but protests, boycotts, targeted campaigns against bad actors to shame, discredit, or even destroy them socially and economically, all legal and effective.

And yes, there come times in history where violence becomes a viable tool for positive change, but it's important to avoid accelerationism, because the people who pay the price during violent upheavals are the poorest, the most vulnerable, the people we need most to protect. The cost is always high.

The highest casualties in any war are civilians. Not soldiers, not politicians, not even journalists and other third parties in the battlefield. It is up to us to prepare so that such casualties are reduced as much as possible. Prep water treatment, long lasting food, shelter and repair tools, etc.

If you want to go to war, prepare to defend peace. That doesn't just mean get ready to fight, it means get ready to help people who want no part in the war, no matter the reason. They're innocent, and they're going to be the ones paying the price if we screw all of this up. So be ready to help them.

Finally, I need to point out some things a lot of people do not want to admit: winning the slow way sucks ass, it feels like injustice, it costs far too much, and I don't know anyone that actually wants to do it. Yet, it produces much better results, in regards to both cost and lasting power. 

Also, we're not alone this time. We have support from people and organizations that have never properly supported us before, and some of them are willing to literally stand with us. The National Guard is a state and local militia; their existence is a check on federal governmental power. 

We've seen local authorities, state leaders, political organizations across the sociopolitical spectrum, and more finally provide a little support. Don't blindly trust any of them, obviously, but it's a good sign when even the NRA can see when the authoritarian goons have gone too far.

And this leads to the last harsh truth: violence needs to be our last resort for a reason, because we are getting much more support this time around in part because we refused to let agitators turn our protests into cover for rioting, vandalism, and other crimes. We need that. 

If you want to live in a country that relies on democracy, a country in which the voice of the people matters more than the voices of politicians and agitators, you need to win more people over. You alienate too much of the populace and the only way you win is by becoming authoritarian yourself. 

Most of the time, after a collapse of an empire, what replaces it is a significantly more authoritarian and often much more conservative power structure. This is born out in history time and time again, and if you think this is bad, imagine if it was replaced by a real theocracy with no democracy. 

That's what you risk when you go kinetic: millions of innocent lives lost, a forced need for authoritarianism no matter who takes over, and the very high likelihood that we end up with either a hyper-conservative theocracy or an overt oligarchy, all without any level of democracy. 

Why? Because the people who can weather the storm the best still come out on top, and right now, that's pretty much just the obscenely rich and/or corrupt religious leaders. The only way to change that is to ensure that there are effectively zero casualties, which is impossible in kinetic warfare.

"The soldier, above al other people, prays for peace," is something that I wish were more true, but for many of us, it is quite true. There is nothing I want more than a nation where everyone can thrive, where poverty means you get chicken instead of steak, not that you're homeless. 

I do not believe I will ever live in such a country; if one does exist in my lifetime, it won't be mine. But I will continue to do anything I can to push us towards that end. I was promised "liberty and justice for all" when I signed up for service, and I will die before I accept less than that. 

That all being said, there may come a day where violence is the only viable option left, and should that day arrive before I expire, my intent is to help those in need, not become a hinderance. Good militaries do that for their service members, because it lets them fight harder on the front lines.

But for now, despite everything, including the murders perpetrated by ICE, what we've done so far has had a significant effect. We haven't won the war yet, but we're making headway. We've convinced a majority of surveyed Americans to support the cause at least a bit, and that's not nothing. 

Keep up the fight, but keep things holstered for now. Take the time we've bought to learn more, prepare more, and build community support networks. Even if we win without violence, all that work will make us stronger, and we'll have more power to make changes that help everyone. 

Some good resources for you:

"The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" by Robert A. Heinlein

Belle of the Ranch on Youtube (leftist news channel, no sensationalism, incredibly good analysis)

https://archive.org/details/military-manuals (lots of good info here) 

Answering A Basic Question About Costs Vs Earnings

Someone recently asked "how can someone be both hard working and unable to afford the basics?" Here's my answer:

Short version: working hard is not correlated with higher pay, and "basics" cost a lot more than most people realize unless they're handling their budget very actively.

Simply put, there is no objective correlation between the effort needed to complete a job and its monetary value, and thus there is no objective correlation between the effort needed to complete a job and the pay received for completing it.

As a good example: An E-1 in the US Army currently receives approximately $2,319 per month. The job requires being available at all times outside of those specifically allowed by orders and/or memorandum. You don't get guaranteed holidays, you don't really get to choose where you live, you even have sacrificed most of your Constitutional rights in return for what rights are granted under UCMJ. For that pay, you can be required to literally die, not to mention having to maintain military standards of physical fitness, psychological health, appearance, equipment, etc. Most people in the US can agree that it is a very, very difficult job, and that anyone successfully completing it day in and day out for the minimum three years that they're contracted for (four is more common, but some are only for three) can be considered "hard working," but even if you pretend that they're only working for 8 hours a day, it's only about $9.66/hour.

In the private sector, their position would be an entry level security contractor, which starts at $15/hour currently, and generally has set hours, employment protections, and the worst that happens to you if you don't show up to work is that you get fired. I've done both jobs, working private security and as lower enlisted in the Army, specifically 11B (Infantry). I didn't even see the hardest parts of the job in the Army, as I never deployed, and most of my career was in the National Guard, which means I only worked it for a weekend out of the month. I've only had maybe two jobs in my life harder than my service as an infantryman, and both actually paid even less than $9.66/hour. Working entry-level private security is way, way easier, but I made more money doing it, and I wasn't even armed security.

That's the reality of our economy. There's no correlation between being a hard worker and getting paid well. The best paid people in the world at the moment spend more time on social media during work hours than they do performing any measurable labor. And the worst paid people tend to be working 60+ hour weeks between multiple jobs, and they're never easy jobs, or else their higher paid superiors would be doing them. Even it you pretend that food service and customer service jobs are easy, of the top twenty hardest jobs according to a survey done in May of this year, only five break six figures on as an average salary, with those being doctor, lawyer, astronaut, pilot, and air traffic controller, all but one being fairly prestigious careers that tend not to be available to children of the working poor and the last only barely being above $100,000/year on average.

Now, there's the other part to your question; affording basics. The average rent for the USA according to a report by Zillow is $2,000 per month. The average cost of groceries for one person without notable dietary restrictions or requirements beyond the norm is right around $400, little less if you're female, little more if you're male. If you're not working full time at a single job (working full time at one job is required for benefits in most companies, and full times jobs have been replaced by part time positions for years, so most working poor have multiple part time positions), your health insurance costs an average of just over $450 per month. According to JD power, the average cellphone bill is $141/month, but that seems high, so let's call it $100. According to Yahoo Finance, the average American spends a little over $1000/month on transportation, but I think that takes into account people traveling long distances readily, so let's just go with about $50 for a bus pass. So, for a single person, no kids, no mooching roommates, no disabled people they need to take care of, no special dietary needs, and minimal transportation needs, we're at $3000/month. For someone working a single full time job, they'd need to be making $18.75 per hour to just cover that. No gas, no car maintenance, no entertainment, no clothes budget, no repair or replacing of furniture, etc. Just the most basic things possible. Even working 60 hours a week, you need $12.50 per hour, and still are lacking access to those other things. And again, that's for one able-bodied standard person, not for parents who have to cover their kids' needs, not for adults who have to help their own parents, not people with disabilities, etc. For every other person involved, the costs can go up exponentially.

So, that's how you can be a hard worker and still not have enough for basics.

God bless if you'll let Him, and have an otherwise great day.

Kindness, Suffering, And Becoming A Kind Person

 Kindness should be born of kindness. Being kind, showing care, compassion, love, should produce more of the same. And I'm sure it does to some extent.

Anyone can do kind things. I can't think of anyone that hasn't done at least one kind thing in their lifetime. But to be kind, to take the concept into yourself and choose to make it a part of who you are, that's different. I seek to be kind, and if my loved ones are to be believed, I am a kind person.

Kindness should be born of kindness, but kind people are born of cruelty, suffering, pain, anguish, depression, anxiety, stress, and pretty much every other bad thing. Some of us caused those horrible things in our past, I know I did. I was a hateful person; I caused cruelty, suffering, pain, and anguish. But that did not make me kind, it rarely does.

What made me kind was a combination of experiencing those things, and watching others experience them alongside me. I can think of a few very low points in my life, and each one was marked first with pain and suffering, but then with kindness.

I remember, after making a lot of bad decisions, I was working a low-wage job just trying to get by, living on my own for the first time, and I didn't budget well, neither my money nor my time. I went to work one day with no lunch, and no money to buy one. It was an 8 hour shift, I could have been just fine, but that wasn't good enough for my coworker. He handed me what cash he had, and took over while I went to buy myself lunch, just a couple burgers from a nearby gas station. After that, I understood that being hungry wasn't a moral failing, and that being kind to the hungry was not enabling them like I'd been taught in school.

I remember during US Army Infantry OSUT, a lot of low points. Two specifically come to mind. One day, I couldn't process conflicting orders, and part of that was because one set of orders came from NCOs with actual authority, and the other set came from the small group of bullies in my platoon that decided they could just force other people to do what they wanted, and my brain couldn't parse the difference between authority and power. So it broke. I had never experienced a panic or anxiety attack up to that point, but I had read about them, and realized, to some extent, that that's what I was experiencing. And I knew that I should just focus on one task at a time, to try to reorder my mind.

The task I chose to focus on was changing my footwear. We were allowed to change out of our boots into our running shoes in the evenings, so that's what I decided to do. But I could also tell I was about to cry, and if there's one thing you don't want to do where bullies can see you, it's cry. So I planned to go into the latrine and just sit on one of the toilets in a stall, change my shoes there, so no one could see me. So I get up, and go around towards the latrine. All the stalls were filled, so I just went into the supply closet and locked the door.

What my fellow trainees saw was someone who was clearly not mentally well in the moment, one of their own, taking shoe laces to an enclosed space and locking himself in there. They panicked. They began pounding on the door, and I had no idea why. Eventually, I could tell the voice of one of them, one that had been kind to me, and let him in. I was completely broken at that moment, the pounding on the door broke my concentration on the task, and I couldn't control my emotions. I was bawling. He sat with me, peeked out to tell the other guys he had it under control and to quiet down, and stayed with me until I could process things again.

The other low point from OSUT was during my final physical fitness test. I hate running, always have. Running two miles sucked ass. And I failed the two mile run over and over up until then, and this was my last chance. If I failed this test, I was going to be removed from service. About a quarter mile from the finish, a red pickup truck had been parked, and it pulled out and drove beside me. My Senior Drill Sergeant, driving his own truck, began shouting at me that I could do this, that I worked too hard to give up, and that gave me just enough motivation to sprint the last hundred yards or so. I passed with mere seconds to spare. That may not sound like kindness to you, but it was to me.

And I can remember low points when no one was there to be kind, or maybe someone was there but they weren't kind. I remember the time a group of people I had considered friends referred to loving me as an obligation, and laughed. Either no one saw my pain, or no one who did cared. I remember both being the bullied kid no one acknowledged, and being one of the people who saw the bullied kid and chose not to acknowledge them. I remember seeking help in school because another student had threatened my life repeatedly, only to be told that I needed to just ignore him.

Eventually, when you see enough cruelty and suffering, you have to make a choice. You can choose to see it and do nothing; I think that's what most people do. I know that's what I did for a good while. You can choose to just not see it, to choose ignorance; I'm pretty sure I did that too, I might still do it. Or you can choose to see it and decide that, as long as you can change it, no one will have to face cruelty and suffering with no one there to show them kindness; if you choose that, your life will definitely get worse. You will see more and more suffering as time goes on, and eventually will be faced with situations where "as long as you can change it" becomes a lot more of a problem than you might think. But there will be times when you can change it; there will be times where your kindness can change a life. And if that only happens once, even with all the extra suffering you will see and endure, maybe that's still worth it.

I used to wonder what I wanted my life to be after I'm gone, what kind of legacy I would want to leave. I already know that I won't be remembered for long; that's not sad to me, that's just the reality of not being famous. Most people are remembered for a few generations max. I don't want a permanent reminder of my existence, no headstone, no memorial plaque in a park somewhere, nothing like that. I'll be gone, if you want a place to go to talk to me, plant a tree; it'll probably last longer than the memory of me.

But what do I really want to leave behind? I want the world to be better for having had me in it, as opposed to not having me at all. I have a lot to make up for; those years of hate spread toxicity in the world that I can never truly clean up, but maybe I can do more good than the bad I did. And in my estimation, even small acts of love, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, etc. make the world better. So I seek to be kind, in all that I do. I fail a lot, but I fail less now than I used to, and given enough time, I might actually become the kind person my loved ones tell me I am. Maybe.

God Bless if you'll let Him, and have an otherwise great day.

Don't Let Them Bring Back The Worst Parts Of History

CW: the darkest parts of American and World History repeating themselves

Multiple members of Congress as well as the current President of the United States, all Republicans of course, have called for the rebirth of the "insane" asylum system. They have called for the revocation of all rights and privileges as a citizen for anyone they deem as insane, and having them imprisoned in long term, compulsory "treatment" centers (literally exactly like the worst of the old asylums), until they're deemed a worthwhile citizen by the GOP standards.

So, let's first cover why I used quotation marks twice above. The asylums claimed to treat insanity, but many of them did nothing of the sort. The asylum system existed primarily as a method by which those in power could take those they didn't want in the public eye, which included people with actual severe psychological conditions, but also homeless people, poor people, and people that the ones in power did not want to be believed when their knowledge of something someone in power did might come out, and others. They were never safe havens for those with psychological issues, they were prisons that didn't require due process to send someone to that had the backing of the medical community. They weren't for the truly "insane," and the centers being proposed aren't there to "treat" anything. They're still just prisons that don't require due process.

Now let's cover why this should concern you: they're specifically saying that it's not just their primary target group they want to imprison, but also anyone associated with them. Do you care about someone who is trans? Congrats, you are now "insane" according to GOP lawmakers and should be locked up (one lawmaker literally said you should be straight-jacketed).

What's they're reasoning for this? The victim of a recent high profile murder was an outspoken bigot against trans people, and the person currently charged with the crime had a relationship with his trans roommate.

Note that today several homeless people were shot in Minneapolis, curiously mere days after a Fox News host openly said to kill all mentally ill homeless people. Yet there is no push to classify Fox viewers as dangerously insane. Two lawmakers were assassinated earlier this year, and yet there is no push to classify people like that murderer as dangerously insane. Look at any violence against those on the left or marginalized groups, you will find that the perpetrator, if known, is from a class of people not being classified as dangerously insane. Probably because those that commit violent crime in general are such an extreme minority that painting any demographic group they're in as dangerous is absolutely ridiculous, so much so that you might call it "insane."

This isn't a move to get mentally ill people help. It's a move to allow the GOP to revoke rights from anyone not sufficiently conservative for their liking, or possibly just not loyal enough for their liking. If this were implemented, it would not stop with trans people and their loved ones; it would eventually include all members of the LGBTQ+ community, anyone who has different spiritual beliefs from GOP leadership, members of labor unions, easily targeted ethnic minorities, and more.

How do I know? Because we've seen this trend before. We saw it on US soil when the rich and powerful put people they didn't want to exist but didn't care to kill into asylums. We saw it in Europe as they started with the socialists and trade unionists. We see it in dictatorships around the world now, designating entire people groups as undesirable and then throwing them somewhere so the general populace can feel "safe" knowing they're locked away. But fear is necessary for control, so they either have to release the people they locked up periodically so they can stoke fear again, or they have to designate another people group to be the new boogeyman. Usually, it's the latter.

I'm begging you, please, do not support this. Contact your lawmakers and tell them to push back against this, censure those lawmakers, propose laws to protect the rights of all Americans. Please, because while you might be safe from the first wave, most of the people I dearly love are not, nor am I. We are beyond the point where we can speak for ourselves and expect a good outcome, you must speak up too. Do not live out "first they came," speak out now.

God bless if you'll let Him, and have an otherwise great day.

Are Christians Commanded To "Call Out" Sin? Part 1 - My Fear

 I've been seeing a lot of people claiming that Christians are commanded to call out sin, and I'm going to go more in depth at a later date, but that is a lie. I have dug deep into the Word to find the scriptures wherein Christ or any of His Disciples commands us to condemn the sins of others. I have seen where He described how to react to when someone sins against us, I have seen where He and His disciples give advice on what actions we should avoid and what kinds of people who claim to be Christian but act otherwise should be avoided, I have seen where He commands us not to condemn others and many places where He commands us to forgive over and over, and I have seen His three commandments, but I cannot find where He or His disciples tell us to condemn others with our speech.

I'm going to be honest, I approached this with fear, abject fear, deep in me that froze me with every new verse I looked at. Why? Because, in all the time I've known Him and followed Him and His teachings, I have never felt Him call me to judge others, or pass judgement onto others based on my own understanding of what is or isn't sin, with the exceptions laid out in the Gospels as I mentioned above. I was scared that I would find the verse, the passage, the message wherein He or His disciples told us to go to the unsaved and tell them they are living in sin, to tell them that they are condemned, to condemn then with our very words. I grew up being raised by a brilliant Charismatic preacher, and I spent most of my young life in Evangelical or Charismatic churches, so I expected to find what I did not want to.

But all I could find was love, grace, and mercy. All I could find was commands to be gentle, to lift others up, and to avoid those who refuse to do so. All I could find was the same God I had known all my life telling His people, His followers to love others and leave judgement to Him. I was so scared that I was wrong, that my understanding of His love was so wrong, but I couldn't find the proof that it was; instead, I found His word reassuring me that loving others without judgement is the right thing to do.

If you read this and feel that I am condemning you, consider two possibilities: first, you may not actually believe in the Christianity of the Bible, where the teachings of Christ are primary, those of His disciples secondary, and the history is to understand what all we were saved from, and it's okay to believe something other than what I do; second, you may be this kind of Christian, and as described in the Bible and in both Charismatic and Evangelical tradition, the Spirit may be convicting you to look at your own actions, and the state of your heart, and telling you it's time to grow and heal with Christ's help. There are other possible answers, of course, but these are the two that come to my mind.

And if you read this and feel angrily vindicated: I understand, but please, in your anger do not commit acts of hatred, whether they be driven by malice or indifference or ignorance. Treat others as you would be treated, at the very least.

And to my brothers, sisters, and others in Christ, I leave you with this reminder from Christ's own words: "Whatever you have done for the least of these, you have done for Me."

God bless if you'll let Him, and have an otherwise great day.

Comments On Public Services Including The Military And USPS

 Just wanna comment some things people may want to know:

The USPS is a public service mandated by the US Constitution; it is, in fact, the only such public service. Before you ask, although the military, the most expensive public service in the world by a good margin, is authorized by the Constitution, it is not mandated; it just says that Congress has the power to set it up, not that Congress has to. In fact, if Congress suddenly decided to do so, they could dismantle the entire military with a single law, and that law would technically be constitutional, but they can't do that with the postal service. 

Around 330,000 veterans, myself included, receive prescriptions, durable medical equipment, medical supplies, and legal documentation through the postal service. 

Before DeJoy became Postmaster General, I had not even experienced a significant delay in receiving my medications, durable medical equipment, medical supplies, or legal documentation through the USPS, and even after his open attempts to partially dismantle the postal service, I've only experienced some mild delays. 

When I had a prescription that the VA chose to deliver through a private parcel service, just one prescription for maybe two years, delivered once a month or so, I've had it lost multiple times, I've had it delayed indefinitely, I've even had it sent to the wrong location. The reason why the VA needed it delivered through a private service was because it was temperature and time sensitive, yet it was not transported any more quickly than the USPS transported other medication for me, it was not transported in temperature controlled trucks, and as I found out the hard way, did not even have insurance covering its loss that I could access, yet every package I've ever sent through USPS has at least had that insurance.

Public services are not profit-seeking ventures, and trying to frame them as profit-seeking ventures or heaven-forbid force them into becoming one breaks them to the point that they stop providing service to millions of Americans. This is why things that should be public services or utilities, like internet providers, rarely provide exemplary service even to their best customers, much less those who need the service the most. Your water bills are going up, your power bills are going up, in part because, although they are legally not supposed to make a profit, your utilities are framed internally and externally as profit-seeking ventures, rather than public services. 

If you are in favor of privatizing public services, the first one you should be looking into is the military. Currently, because it is a public service, each soldier begins with a pay rate of just over $20,000 per year plus benefits; if you want to privatize that, you shift over to the market rate of $9,000-$22,000 per month. Per soldier. That's one branch, and the lowest cost part of operating the military. Who's going to pay that? I don't see any rich people volunteering to raise the military wage up to 1,300%. No president or member of Congress has ever suggested we meet market rate for military personnel, much less privatize it, which they could legally do without violating constitutional law, unlike the postal service. Why? Because the extreme majority of the defense budget goes to private companies who supply the military, not to military personnel, and when there finally is funding allocated for military members and their families (like desperately needed repairs to military housing and schools for military families) it can get poached by the executive branch to buy things from private contractors instead. 

But the postal service doesn't have that kind of budget, and they're required to make their own money, unlike the military. Why do you think that a service that primarily serves the people of the United States under mandate of the U.S. Constitution would be constantly attacked and threatened to be dismantled through profit-seeking behavior while a drastically more expensive public service that primarily serves to reinforce American diplomacy (which includes maintaining a level of control over international markets like the oil market, as well as supporting private companies inside and outside of the USA) and historically has almost never directly served the people of the United States in general but rather only the top echelons of society, is considered so sacred that even reducing funding is considered treason to some? 

Normally I'd go ahead and let you figure it out yourself but I'm gonna spell it out today: it's because the military is used to enrich the already rich to the detriment of those of us who serve in it. We, our lives, our minds, our bodies are sacrificed so they can increase their profit margins, but they can't figure out how to do that with the postal service. They can't figure out how to take something the Constitution of the United States of America dictates must exist and must serve the people of the United States and turn it into a way to bleed us for their benefit. 

They leave us with shoddy equipment while they pay billions every year to defense contractors to just make more shoddy equipment; when we tell them we need some equipment updated, they wait until it kills some of us before doing anything about it (See: USMC requests for upgraded amphibious vehicles *before* a catastrophic failure that resulted in multiple Marines and one Sailor dead); when we need our living spaces and the schools where our children spend most of their childhood to be fixed up because they've been left without proper maintenance for decades, they steal the money we finally get allocated for that for a pet project that went nowhere. 

And then when we've dedicated and sacrificed everything we can for our country and are left unable to function and need medications, supplies, and equipment to survive, they want to take that away too by cutting billions in funding to our healthcare while trying to dismantle the means by which we receive those things without having to have access to resources we just don't have access to because we're not rich, nor can we ever be, because we were so damaged by our time in service we can't even work an entry level job anymore. 

If you support privatizing the USPS before privatizing the military, which could theoretically improve the lives of military members as the market rate for their services is well above what they're being paid, then you do not support the military, you do not support service members and veterans, and you definitely do not support the Constitution of the United States of America. Bar none. 

God bless if you'll let Him, and have an otherwise nice day. 

On "Nobility," Ethics, And The "Claims Adjuster"

Recently, I came across some comments talking about the shooter who killed the United Healthcare CEO, who many online referred to as "the claims adjuster." Note that at this time, a young man who's family is fairly wealthy has been arrested and charged with the crime, but has not been convicted. That being said, a lot of people have been referring to him as "an entitled white kid" who "thought his feelings and problems were more important than anyone else's." I've seen this followed with a line that I found particularly damning: "He is not noble." 

Most people that are hailed as noble throughout history were anything but; nobility is largely a trait granted by those who never met the person, often those who were born long after the person died. 

We consider Winston Churchill noble, yet he sacrificed an entire city to protect his advantage in the war. We consider Theodore Roosevelt noble, yet he orchestrated the US control over the Americas that has led to so much death and destruction since (which incidentally led to the issues we have with immigration). We consider George Washington noble, but the man was a genocidal maniac as a military leader, seeking to slaughter men, women, and children among the indigenous peoples of North America. We consider Julius Caesar noble, a mass murdering narcissist who twisted the calendar so that he and his son could have months named after them during the middle of the year. 

Every "noble" person is a myth, as nobility is a myth. History doesn't count the noble, it does not even count the heroes, it doesn't even really count the winners. It counts who's left after the smoke clears, and often those who inspire or cause change, regardless of whether their intentions were noble or not, are the ones we view as heroes in the end. 

The entitled white kid in this case sacrificed everything he had to do what he did. All of his inheritance relied on him keeping a clean criminal record, yet he performed an act and kept evidence on his person that would ensure a felony conviction. Near as we can tell, he developed the plan, constructed the weapon, did all the research, and so much more all on his own because he wanted some kind of justice for what was done to him and literally millions like him. His stated reasoning was literally that the rich had taken too much, and they needed to pay, an intention that was shared by those we consider most noble in history, including Jesus of Nazareth who also committed acts of violence in the name of that intention. 

Is he noble? No, of course not. No one is. Nobility is literally just a myth perpetrated by archaic aristocracies to justify harming the poor. Is he moral? Depends on the system of ethics you're looking though, but for a person of privilege to sacrifice everything that granted him that privilege, to embrace the ruin of his life and likely to spend life incarcerated in order to spur on working class Americans toward class consciousness, which was pretty clearly stated in his "manifesto," it seems less ignoble than, for instance, leading a violent revolution that cost approximately 23,800 lives of those the revolutionaries were claiming to fight on behalf of (just under 1% of the total population of the colonies at the time) because of a tax on tea and then turning around and reinstituting slavery which condemned 15+ million people to fates most would consider worse than death. 

The purpose wasn't to avoid dealing with insurance nor was it to express pain, but that's the story corporate and political media will continue to tell. Just like they will continue to tell you that it's perfectly justified that a 42 year old woman poorly expressing frustration in the same way thousands do with insurance agents every day to be thrown in prison as a felon. 

I wonder who's bidding one is doing when they focus not on the intent, the message, the outcome, or the possible effects of an act of political violence but rather on vilifying the perpetrator to the point of drowning out all the rest. Is it the bidding of the working class, or the ruling class? Does it help those in need, or those who have so much that they're now afraid that people are aware of how much more they have than they could possible want, need, or use in dozens of lifetimes? And is it noble to do the work of the oppressors as one of the oppressed? 

I wanted to add a sarcastic ending here, something to the effect of "but that's all just useless philosophy, right?" but I think it's more important to be frank: if you're primary method of judging the nobility, morality, etc. of someone's actions is to listen to your economic superiors who control the media, you're not thinking for yourself. And if you consider a person's entire ethical worth to be able to be distilled into how the media treats them based on an action they took, you need to work harder to understanding your fellow human. 

I was trained to kill, and I hope I never have to use that training. I understand that killing is often unnecessary and therefore wrong, but it is also sometimes the best choice out of a myriad of other horrible options. I cannot say I support the killing of a CEO, but I can say I do not support the wealth gap that has grown so severe that some people have more liquid assets than they could possibly spend in several lifetimes while others die of starvation and exposure mere miles from where the rich live. I don't have a good fix for that other than the rich voluntarily giving up vast amounts of their wealth and resources to fix the system so that everyone can thrive, or as one man once said to the rich, "Sell all you have, and give to the poor." I would prefer that, to be honest. I'd gladly give everything I have for that. 

God Bless if you'll let Him, and have an otherwise nice day.