The end of white guilt ?

White people shoulda thought of this years ago. White guilt is going to be eliminated, not because any of the issues actually get fixed, but because the trigger words for white guilt will have lost all meaning.

This country is racist, That town is racist, This person is racist, That college is racist, The police are racist, The media is racist,

racist

RACIST

RACIST


Cursed.jpegIt reminds me of the scene in The Mummy Returns where one of the bad guys is grumbling at another bad guy “This is Cursed, That is Cursed,” and starts pointing at random objects “Cursed, Cursed, Cursed!”

Of course all three of those bad guys come to a nasty end at the hands of their employer, The Mummy. Nonetheless it stands as an example of what happens when you overuse a word.

After a while the word loses all meaning and no-one pays attention anymore. Oops! The Mummy just ate you.


College-Campus.jpegSince I mentioned “trigger words” I wonder where the White safe space is? Where on college campuses can oppressed fearful white student go and not hear the incessant “trigger word” of their assumed guilt.

Oh yeah, there aren’t any spaces like that. Not anymore, even though there used to be. They were called college campuses. Ironic that once the Campus was the bastion of freedom of speech, free exchange of ideas, and an opportunity for young adults to mature while coming to grips with the world in a place of safety.

Today however that feeling of safety has been reduced by nothing other than Social Justice Warriors run amok. Now it’s perfectly okay to terrorize people who are symbols of oppression even if they themselves are not oppressors, and never have been.

WTF

Unless those people happen to be followers of Islam / Daesh.

Then it’s forbidden to say anything at all, regardless of the horrific oppression of women, the enforced control over women’s bodies, the enslavement of children for sexual purposes, the murder of people who believe in a different version of God, the murder of gay people, or simply those presumed to be gay.

Speaking out against these horrors is racist, leaving a large percent of the population with a WTF look on their faces.

Yes, I just conflated Islam with Daesh. I did it on purpose and in this particular way because there’s not much difference, and because Isis, was an Egyptian goddess and I’d like to see her name restored to her.


My point is, that amidst all the noise and craziness of tiny events and small affronts, we’re losing sight of some really important global issues and simultaneously devaluing the impact that certain words should have.

If you call someone a racist, that word should have impact. It should mean something and is supposed to be a word that invites censure of the person being described as such.

If everyone is racist, then no-one is. If everyone is special, then no-one is.


What has brought this particular train of thought to derailment in this blog, is the recent dust-up at a Missouri college. Apparently the football team is threatening to strike unless a white university president is removed.

ap-university-of-missouri-protests-grow-after-athletes-jump-in.jpgI’m sad to report that Monday, the rabid crowd got their wish, the president resigned.

BUT was it his fault that there was name calling? That some drunken frat boy yelled the “N” word at members of a black student organization?

That two trucks drove by a student protest flying Confederate Battle flags? That someone made a swastika of Poo in a Dorm bathroom?

NO! It wasn’t.

confederate-Flag-in-a-truck.pngRegardless of what many people apparently would like to think, white people are not all controlling, omniscient, all powerful beings.

This president’s ONLY failing in this matter was that he happened to be white.

That is exemplified by one of the student groups issuing a long list of demands that read like random sections from a drunken reading of Mein Kampf. (I know kids, you don’t know what that is and you’re afraid to read it because it was written by Hitler and might trigger you.)

The standout demand was they wanted the university president to acknowledge his “white privilege”. Which to me is akin to nothing short of saying “I’m a racist, and all white people are racists. Please kill us and burn our societies to the ground. Then bitch at those of us that survive because you can’t charge your damn iPhone.”

Whatever investigations this university president may have initiated to get to the bottom of the events didn’t bear fruit within the requisite 15 minutes demanded by a campus full of short attention span morons.

No white people were randomly dragged forth from a dorm to be punished by the mob for their complicity in institutional racism. The crowd demanded instant action and heads of the offenders on pikes.


Funny story. There once was a little town in Florida called Rosewood. The town was almost exclusively black and it’s people lived in relative peace with churches, stores, a turpentine mill and sugarcane mill. In all respects it was a nice middle class town.

In 1923, in a completely wrong misguided quest for instant “Justice” white men lynched a black resident of Rosewood because a white woman who was having an affair told a lie.

Seems the woman had been smacked around by her lover while her husband was at work. In an attempt to explain her injuries she claimed a black drifter had beaten her and she implied she’d been raped.

Predictably, people lost their damn minds. The folks in Rosewood justifiable organized to protect themselves. The white folks organized to essentially compound their screw up and began combing the countryside for black people and burned virtually every structure in Rosewood to the ground.

The town was abandoned and never rebuilt.

I learned about Rosewood in junior high school, in Florida… You know that place everyone likes to call redneck and stupid???  

The lesson about Rosewood was that misguided “Justice” is NOT Justice at all. Lies have consequences, People shouldn’t rush to judgement or punishment, because if you do without due process and obedience to the laws we all have a hand in creating, you create far more damage than good.

Rosewood isn’t just a lesson about racism. It’s a lesson about how panicky and stupid people can become if they become a mob and have a target.


When there were no heads on pikes and “frontier justice” didn’t happen… After all, HOW are you going to track down random individuals who may or may NOT be students of the university? The ONLY conclusion the SJW crowd could come up with was that the president of the university must inevitably be a racist, and therefore part of the problem.

At this point the social justice crowd has demonstrated far more institutionalized racism than a few individuals yelling nigger, or being artistic with shit.

The first event; The student government president who is black, claiming someone in a passing truck (were they students?) called him bad names,” has yet to be verified.

Yet the mere suggestion that nothing was being done was enough to start an inevitable cascade of insanity. Unverified as the allegation is, and will no doubt remain, I wonder if there was some conflict between the Student government president and the University president.

Was this a revenge situation that got out of control? We’ll never know because with the resignation of the offensive white sacrificial goat all investigations will stop. Case closed, we got our man and he was punished.

The only thing we have to show for all this angst is a man who happened to be white was persecuted, bullied, and intimidated, into leaving his job and potentially losing his career with no proof of wrongdoing, apparently only because he is white.

KKK.pngI call that pretty much the definition of racism.

Good job! Students of the University of Missouri. The only thing you didn’t do was march in sheets with torches, burning crosses on lawns.


In related news this morning, The Chancellor of the University of Missouri is also resigning. There had apparently been complaints of various types against him.

Given that the students are now running the show and are on a roll, why don’t they just demand degrees and finish the job of devaluing American College degrees to toilet paper.

Based on the “Critical Thinking Skills” demonstrated by these and other “Thinkers” in the SJW crowd college diplomas clearly aren’t what they once were.

Insomnia Sucks

It’s happening more and more often now.

I’ll go to bed because I’m dog tired, then I’ll wake up an hour or two later and not be able to get back to sleep.

Sometimes it’s a noise that wakes me, sometimes it’s nightmares, and sometimes it’s just this weird super tension in my shoulders.

I don’t know what to do about it.

I’m going to get a massage next week, maybe that will help. I have vague memories of my Dad being like this. Whenever I asked him if he was Okay, his automatic response was;

“I’m fine Son, go back to bed, you shouldn’t be up so late.”

Of course in retrospect neither should he.

I remember his Lucky smoldering in the ashtray as he stubbed it out to herd me back to bed. He’d tuck me in, pat me and say goodnight, then return to the couch light another smoke, and go back to reading his book.

Except, he wasn’t reading, he’d be on the same page for hours. He was thinking about stuff, stuff that he didn’t feel like he could share.

I wonder if he was thinking about the same kinds of things that I do in the dead of night. I’ll never know for sure but I suspect the answer is yes.

My Dad had an amazing “public face”. You only got to see what was behind the mask if you watched very closely. Even then, it was only a glimpse.

I used to think that my Dad’s mask had become a trap. You saw most of the time, only what you were supposed to see. 

You never saw weakness, or fear, and only rarely sadness.

I sometimes pictured my Dad as The Man in The Iron Mask.

Now, having been around the block a few times. I’ve learned that most people, even your closest friends and family don’t want to see you without The Mask.

This is especially true if you’re a man. No matter what the FemNazi’s say… A strong silent Man is what they really want. The minute you get touchy-feely it’s over!

If you’re touchy-feely, you’re one of the girls and subject to the pecking order.  The guy who kept his own council and did what the hell he knew was right, is the one who’s respected.

He’s the Alpha Male, all the rest are betas or less.

I don’t smoke anymore. But tonight, I’m going to do something else my Dad did on sleepless nights.

I’m going to have a drink, I’m going to think about shit over a glass.

I’m going to address my demons, come up with a plan, and when I lay down I’m going to remember just for a moment being that little boy in the middle of the night getting tucked in by my Dad.

As I drift off to sleep…

I’ll silently thank my Dad for The Mask.

More interviews this week.

One in LA, One on the phone, and another in San Diego.

The San Diego interview is going to be a real bear. 3.5 hours of panel questions UGHHHH!

But it’s a job that I really want, So I’m going to be studying my ass off to make sure that I at least look like I’m got half a brain in my head.

I worry that I’ve lost a couple of steps only due to lack of use. My brain seems to put crap I don’t need into deep cold storage. It takes a while for me to recall stuff from cold storage to active systems.

Think about a really big ZIP file and how long it takes to decompress.

The tough problem is that everyone interviewing wants everything they’re interested in to be current in your brain.

Think about that, and how tough it would be to have your entire life experience available in story form, customized for each person you met in the course of a day.


Well this weeks interview schedule is completed. I haven’t gotten any offers yet but the number of Interviews via Phone and in Person is a damn sight more than I’ve had in the past few years.

Fingers, toes, and every other appendage is crossed but at this point I don’t think I’ve reached the “Hey this guy is perfect” point so I’ll keep sending applications.

THANKS APPLE!

Ya know, ALL I WANTED to do was play a couple of songs that I own that are loaded on my phone while I had a 10 minute break between things.

BUT that was not to happen.

WHY? because of this…

So then I tried on my iPad and got the same screen. GRRRRR! I just want to play my music why am I seeing this? What does it mean? Why is it going on and on and on and on? Why is there no message, no instruction, no prompt, NOTHING?

30 minutes later my phone still hadn’t changed or give me any indication about what the hell I was supposed to do or what the machine was doing. I reset both machines then tried again.

Same screen,

Reset

Same Screen

I actually started thinking Apple may have given me a perfect reason NOT to upgrade my Phone or iPad. After all, if I can’t access the 30GB of music on either device, then I can FLUSH music from the devices, and dump iTunes from the iPhone and iPad.

Then I wouldn’t need additional storage because without functional iTunes the music is useless and for that matter so is any movie that would be played through iTunes.

After letting it run in the background on my phone for over 1 hour the damn thing finally gave me a prompt that said something like….

Do you want to start a free subscription to Apple Music or Go to your Music.

Really?

You blocked my accessing my local music storage for over an hour while your stupid screen tried to figure out if it should present two freaking buttons?

AND this you’re doing after I already answered this same question months ago, and after I’ve been successfully using phone and pad to play music.

Obviously, something updated but didn’t bother to preserve my previous answers.

Nonetheless, my few minutes of listening to music was trashed, and every time I accessed my phone and pad, for text messages, or calendar stuff I had to deal with this stupid screen.

Apple, you’re better than this. I’m begging you, don’t make iTunes on the iPhone and iPad as hated as it is on the Mac.

So here’s the thing…

I understand websites wanting to put you on mailing lists.

I get that it’s about the click count and revenue.

What I don’t get is a web site that won’t let me at least do a little “window shopping”

I’ve been to a few websites, the most recent was something called Wayfair. This site bills itself as a Home goods site in the clickthrough ad, BUT they want your email address before you even get to find out if they carry anything that you’d purchase.

For example, I know Williams-Sonoma and Bed Bath & Beyond carry name brand products from Cuisineart, and Keurig, and both sites will sell online.

I don’t know if Wayfair sells quality products unless I give up an email address and they have no way of knowing if the address I’ve given them is legit, or a “Burner”.

Perhaps if they’d let me browse for a bit, or they hid their prices until I gave them an email address, I’d be more likely to cooperate.

As it is, if the first thing I see when I’ve clicked on a retail site from an AD, is “Give use your email address” I’m 100% likely to close the browser window. They’ve wasted their advertising dollar and time. And I’m not going to waste any more of my time looking at their site.

I feel like I shouldn’t be asked to sign up for yet more JUNK mail, before I’ve even had a chance to decide if the retailer carries products I’m interested in.

I know an email address isn’t that big a deal, but I feel like email addresses are to some extent the currency of the internet and as such me being charged an entry fee to a website I know nothing about is kinda like prepaying to eat at a restaurant while standing in line with no menu and no idea what the place serves.

I use an ad blocker all the time. Recently, I’ve been seeing some websites scolding me about my use of an ad blocker and telling me I should open myself to the flood of ads that make trying to get real information from the internet so difficult. I disagree.

When I actually do notice an ad that is NOT popping up over what I want to read, and I do click on it I have some reasonable expectation that I’ll “window shop” and make a decision based on what I see.

I’m not likely to pay for food before I see it, I’m equally not likely to give up an email address just to gain entrance to a “me too” site.

I know I’m in the minority, but a guy has to have some standards!

Since I wrote this piece, Wayfair has apparently removed the email wall. Maybe I’m not the minority I thought I was.

Hmm.