It was good to see Doc Thompson again with his producer Skip LeCombe. They invited me to a nice lunch today, and it was good to catch up on things as both of our lives have been terribly busy. One of the reasons for me that I’ve been so busy, as is the case with Doc and Skip, is that we are part of the 50 million people who finance the entire world leaving the rest of planet earth to mooch or beg off the labor of our efforts. Oh, I’m sorry dear reader; you probably don’t know what I’m talking about. Well, then you should listen to this clip from Doc’s show on The Blaze Radio Network explaining how and why only about 50 million people in the entire world personally fund everything…………….and I mean everything. Listen for yourself.
That is why I call Doc Thompson a friend.
To every arrogant barnacle that believes falsely that it is their military which protects the world, their economic engine that propels all free trade, and offers hopes of freedom to the unfortunate living under the thumb print of ruthless dictators and failed socialist experiments, it is not they who help the world, but the tax payer who does not have a government job, or takes money as a welfare recipient. Only members of the free-market who directly pay taxes which then subsidize everything in the world are the true supports from which everything else would otherwise crumble economically. For every government worker in any capacity they require a tax payer who works hard to cover the costs of their existence by looted money confiscated by the IRS.
If those 50 million tax payers stopped paying taxes and decided to take a government job, or worse yet, do nothing and sign up for one of the multiple government programs paying them to be unproductive like most of the other 50% of Americas currently are, and the rest of the billions in the world who depend on the economic engine of America to keep money flowing into their pockets—such as China, Europe and especially Russia, they would all tumble into chaos if the 50 million people Doc spoke about decided to stop showing up for work.
Schools would close, militaries would cease, every endeavor of mankind would stop if the very few 50 million taxpayers in America stopped carrying the billions of others on their backs to financial mediocrity. The 50 million taxpayers of America who are now a dying breed are the engine of the world economy. Without them, everything stops. Everything. There is no way for leftist pundits to spin this irony—as their hatred for the rich keeps them from seeing their own vulnerability. It is the very few, people like Doc Thompson, whom I know personally works multiple jobs and is really plugged into his career 24 hours a day, which provides a vehicle for every welfare recipient on earth to live off of. If Doc stopped going to work and joined ranks with the other government looters, where would the parasites be then? Where would the entire world be economically?
There is no dispute. The political left hopes that nobody notices this long-term scam which has been enacted upon America for the thieving benefit of the entire world. They hope that eventually destiny will not catch up with them. But it will. America is very close now to losing forever a majority of its taxpaying adults to the ranks of government moochers. Every year, there are declines in the 50 million member number. So far, the revenue losses have been offset with new taxes for the rich and corporate rates that are incredibly high. Slowly, high taxes are forcing members of the tax paying 50 million hiding from government theft by moving out of America and taking their companies with them to avoid the high corporate tax rates. In the not too distant future there just won’t be enough of them to pay for the needs of the rest of the world.
I does not matter if you agree or not with me or Doc Thompson. The proof is all around us. Think about it. How long does anybody think it can continue?
How long?
If you haven’t taken the time to listen to Doc’s broadcast above, you need to do that now. The most powerful parts of it are at the 14 minute mark.
The Bill Cunningham Show as it is today, and probably always was—is an act. Similar to how Cunningham runs his afternoon television show which has replaced the Jerry Springer Show as tabloid television of a salacious nature, the radio show that made him famous is also only a show. Cunningham has made a good living off pandering to various demographic types. Cunningham’s WLW conservative radio talk show is geared toward small government types. His television show is geared toward the typical school levy supporter and welfare recipient. But occasionally, Cunningham has on a good guest that says some really wonderful things. One such instance was the recent visit by Wayne Allyn Root representing his website, Root For America.com. Root is to the left of my political position, but nobody of any intelligence can argue with what he said during his appearance on 700 WLW recently. Have a listen.
Even though Cunningham waffles back and forth and stays in the current political center about where Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly is, broadcasts like that one are useful. The people to the left of O’Reilly and Cunningham are worlds away from where Root and I are. People like Obama and his kind might as well live on the tumbling asteroid of Pluto out on the edge of the earth’s solar system. Obama is not even close to being on the same planet of political ideology as most of America, particularly in the middle of the country from rural Pennsylvania to the mountains of Reno, Nevada. The only people who think the way Obama does are the conquered people who live in the big cities and are addicted to social government services, or people who work for the government. Most everyone else thinks and feels as Root does—they just don’t feel comfortable vocalizing it.
I agree with what Root said, but more than anything he was spot on in blaming most of America’s current problems on the failed public education system. He was right, there are too many liberal teachers ran by big labor unions with progressive political goals as their primary objective. It has been dangerous to allow those types of people to teach our generations of children, and the severity of that danger is evident in our present society. Education must be completely re-invented; it is a dismal failure in present form. It has delivered to a massive population all the wrong ideals, values, and political sentiments, and our nation is showing the damage. It is their fault primarily that nearly half the nation lives on Pluto with Obama while people like Root and I stand on the kind of ground which founded the freest country on earth in human history.
Wayne Allyn Root did not exaggerate about his comments on the state of America. The trouble is that most people don’t hear those types of comments often enough. Too many people are content to watch Cunningham’s afternoon television show, and skip the radio audience which broadcasts segments like the one with Root. Political diatribes with fierce conviction are seldom heard on television shows away from the cable channels—and that has allowed large portions of the nation to be pulled out into space away from the firm grounding of the American Constitution. But because of media like this website, those epic broadcasts can be shared with those who were watching television instead of listening to the radio. So dear reader, I would suggest you sent this to them, and enlighten them to the ways of the world from those who are sane and defending the world from those who aren’t.
Over the weekend the “For Lakota” group of naïve, well-intentioned parents hit the neighborhoods talking up support for the levy. As I watched them, I saw nice people who truly mean well going door to door trying to win votes for a massive tax increase on property owners. They believe with all their hearts that what they are doing is best for the children—and a part of me admired their effort. But, that doesn’t make them right, just well-intentioned. A zombie craves blood and the sacrificial sustenance from others to survive. From a certain point of view, even a zombie can be made to look innocent and compassionate—after all they simply want to live—it doesn’t matter if they consume others to do it. They don’t want to die, so to continue, they must consume flesh. The same holds true of the Lakota Levy supporter who has grown over time to believe that the Lakota schools are the only means of redemption for their children, so they hit the streets going door to door talking to the people of the community with a friendly smile, and information they are taking directly to the voters. I found myself feeling sorry for those poor people the way I do a dog that has been dropped off on the side of a highway for abandonment. The dog looking crushed because the love of its life abandoned it for convenience seeks desperately for direction—and there are always only three possible fates for the lost dog—it can become wild and eat scraps the rest of its life, it may be captured by animal control and end up in a kennel possibly finding a home, but likely being put to sleep, or it will be hit by a car sending it to a grueling, painful death. Those are the metaphors I thought of watching the For Lakota people go door to door with their pro tax information. The reason I felt that way is shown on the chart seen below which shows the real story of the Lakota Levy of 2013.
On the chart, it is obvious the student enrollment will decrease dramatically in the years to come, yet Lakota plans to spend extraordinary amounts of money on salaries inflating wages that already average over $63K per year exacerbating them even further. In fact, the salary proposals are reckless—even by my standards. The graph shows clearly how much money should be budgeted based on enrollment numbers if all things stayed the same—and teachers with staff kept their current inflated wages. If enrollment at Lakota was 17,000 students per year, the budget should be $150 million. Yet it is clear by the chart that enrollment will drop down to under 16,000 by the year 2017 yet Lakota is proposing to pay employees at rates suitable to a school enrollment of around 18,000 students. The well-intentioned “For Lakota” volunteers going door to door obviously don’t care, or have not been told that the school is planning to over-pay their employees and carry staff that isn’t needed due to a 2000 student reduction in overall enrollment. They are simply mindlessly conveying the talking points given to them by the school.
The literature those volunteers are passing out states emphatically that the tax increase proposal is going for building upgrades, instructional technology, software and computers that will allow students to learn on the type of advanced systems that are needed to give them an advantage in preparing for higher education. Preparing current academic programs and modernizing courses. Offering additional art, music, and physical education for grades 4-6. Offering bus service to students in grades 2-6 who live farther than a mile from school. Encouraging participation in extra-cirriculars by reducing fees. Strengthening school security and maintaining current facilities. In other words, Lakota wishes to back-track from the mistakes they made trying to force previous levies down the community’s throat, and now want to offer all those items as though there were some type of bonus—like buying a special item on an $19.95 infomercial—then learning you get not just one—but two if you act now. The scam is all the same.
The literature from the For Lakota campaign goes on to state that the current budget is balanced, that they cut annual spending by $20.8 million, that salaries for all teachers and support staff have been frozen for the last 3 years (except for educational advancement—getting master’s and doctorate degrees—etc), and that the last levy was approved in 2005—the same year that YouTube was started. What all that nonsense is missing is the information on the chart above. Everything stated might justify a few million dollars as far as security, along with brick and mortar costs. The rest is from unmanaged salaries driven by collective bargaining agreements.
The sadness I felt for the levy supporters was the same as might be felt for an abandoned dog. Lakota knows what they are doing—they have the same information that is shown on that chart—because the numbers come from the same sources. They know that they are misleading the public at large—they know it full well. Yet they allow the very gullible, and numerically challenged to continue to mis-represent themselves with emotional statements that facts don’t support.
The truth is in the chart above, declining enrollment cannot be hidden from the public. Lakota is trying to do everything it can to get people to look at everything but what the real financial situation is—and that is Lakota will have to have large lay-offs just to deal with the current reality. Even with their work-reductions they could still keep their inflated wages and even offer pay increases—but they would have to reduce their staff considerably—which they will have to do one way or the other. With those facts known, Lakota will be operating with massive budget surpluses till 2017 where they plan to ask for more money then, and again around 2021, then again around 2025 going on forever. Every levy attempt will add around an additional $16 dollars per month to most house payments. For new residents who have come from high tax zones, especially from the East, that may not seem like a big deal. But for long-term residents like me who have been in the area for many decades and plan to remain for many more I can easily see taxes per $100,000 in assessment going up $100 by 2025—and there is no reason for it other than the misleading statements provided on the For Lakota literature. The information is misleading because there is money for those things right now—without a levy, and next year there will be even more, because declining enrollment will drive the surplus. But that is only if Lakota does the management side of their jobs and cut employees based on student enrollment. This means the only reason for the current levy is to avoid the painful process of cutting workers at Lakota to directly respond to enrollment needs. Lakota has a lack of will to engage in that process—and that is why it is sad to see them using the efforts of nice people to cover their crimes of indecision and mismanagement.
The very expensive wine was flowing freely at the type of dinner that cost a small group of five over $2500. It was the type of thing that business professionals and political science majors spend many thousands of dollars in college hoping they’ll achieve some day. The minds were powerful; the participants were dressed in their latest fashions from Nordstroms, and the topics were at the top of discussion in any level of human endeavor. It was a power dinner and at 8 PM in the evening my wife sent me a text………..”are you done yet.” I replied, “not yet, I’m about to wrap it up. I’ll be home very soon. Get everything ready.” The handshakes concluded and all members of the small party left into the parking lot by different trajectories as I headed for my motorcycle parked far away but in clear view of the restaurant. I do this so my enemies cannot tamper with my transportation while I’m involved in these kinds of activities. I never sit with my back to a crowd, and I never sit somewhere where I cannot see my transportation at all times. It is an old trick I learned from friends I who were “hit men” during the 80’s working for a branch of the mob stationed in Chicago responsible for the Chester Road portion of business coming out of Sharonville, Ohio. Precautions no longer necessary I headed home quickly and within 25 minutes was in front of the same computer station that had been set up 9 months prior for the solitary purpose of playing an online game called The Old Republic. My wife and I have duel computers built specifically for heavy online gaming, and she was waiting for me with both units powered up and ready to go. I sat down and we began to play the same video game that we had played almost every day since the previous December when we started our journey into a galaxy far, far away set in a time, a long time ago.
I consider the time my wife and I have spent playing that game together to be far more important than the value of the dinner described, or any other dealing I’ve been involved with at any point in my life. The reason can be seen in the above video. In the real world that we all live in there are veils of deceit that permeate everything—even the dinner mentioned. There is a sense that nothing is as it really is—that everything is dressed up to disguise the ugliness that is left unmentioned. Our society is at war, but nobody discusses it—the war is not over racism, equal rights, or even political ideology—but over philosophy—even religion. It is a war over values which nobody discusses. However, in the Star Wars game my wife and I have spent well over a thousand hours playing together as one of our favorite past times, values are the theme of the entire game, and I relish the environment.
I feel most comfortable on the space ship I have in the game in the middle of space away from the noise of the busy metropolis worlds, or the baron outposts that exist in the outer rim. The ship is mine, the space is mine, and the control I have of what goes on within it are for me and me alone. Of all the cool things to do in The Old Republic my favorite are the space missions. They are not traditional flight simulators, but the graphic combat is absolutely astounding. I never tire of them. In that place the perspective of existence is easy to see. The values of the game make sense to me, and the war between the factions eluded to in the above video are those of our modern age, which go unsaid in the dinner meetings previously described. In such meetings it is permissible to discuss football team power rankings, baseball playoff scenarios, and the latest in fashion, but not the things that really matter—philosophy. But in The Old Republic, my wife and I can play side by side on many far flung worlds against players who adhere openly to the opposite philosophy, the fight between statism represented by the Imperial players, and individual freedom represented by players of The Old Republic. The fight for freedom versus control is out in the open and obvious. Those attracted to the Imperial faction tend to support statism, while those who support the Republic tend to support individual freedom, and within the confines of that game, it is easier to see the boundaries that exist in the real world—and I relish the honesty.
I have said it on many occasions, I believe Star Wars and their movies, the television shows, the many novels, the comics, and the video games are bringing a philosophy to tomorrow’s world that will have far-reaching consequences deep into the future. Those consequences are stepped carefully around during dinner meetings as nobody feels comfortable discussing them in public, because most people feel unqualified to express their feelings about philosophy. But philosophy is the foundation of thought, and without firmness in a manner of belief, people have a tendency to drift in their convictions. However, in the world of The Old Republic, the characters are not shy about their beliefs, and they are willing to fight to support them—which for my wife and I, is why we’d rather play that game together, than do just about anything else. Meetings like the one I was engaged in do not impress her. But beating a terrible villain on a remote world in TheOld Republic does.
When I arrived at my game that day my wife had snacks lined up by my keyboard ready for two or three hours of gaming. Her computer sits right next to mine and our characters link up online so we can travel together in that virtual world the way we would in the real one. We both love the game for its honesty—and for the commitment to goodness that TheOld Republic stands for. I enjoy fighting for that Republic the way I’d like to fight for the American Republic—if only people in the real world were as honest with their beliefs, as they are within the world of a video game. Under such conditions, I will choose the honesty of fiction over the falseness of reality.
There is a freedom in the of The Old Republic that does not exist in the real world of current, but it should. The philosophy of America articulated through The Constitution allows for that freedom, but in practice, it has been surrendered to discussion about sports teams, and redundant trivia—leaving the most important things in life unrepresented. In The Old Republic I am free to punish evil, and stand for good without the worry and concern of confrontation with statist government. In the real world there is constant worry about arrests, legal costs, and social castigation for doing the right things—and standing up for what’s right over what’s wrong. In The Old Republic, such concerns do not exist, which is why my wife and I prefer that environment over all others. That is the reason even after a long day associating with the kind of people young professionals dream of growing up to correlate with, and dinning in luxury among—my eye was on the clock dreaming of getting home to my wife who awaited me at the spaceport of Corellia. It is then that we experience freedom, and justice the way the human mind desires—away from the failed philosophies, and political corruption that leads to war, and the suppression of freedom in the real Republic of America. It is in the fictional world of the computer where real freedom resides, and why video games in general are so popular—and hold so much power over the minds of tomorrow. I foresee a literal day when the video above comes true as shown, in the world of the living, of the real. The statists are out to destroy those who cherish freedom, and the fight has not yet manifested beyond unspoken words over wine glasses and sports trivia. But it’s coming……….trust me. For now, the only world that matters is the one in The Old Republic—where honesty is clearer through the lost art of philosophy accompanied by the sights, sounds, and action from a computer generated world that is freer providing relief from the real world we are all chained to.
My wife and I have never really returned from our vacation that started so many months ago during the cold December months of late 2012. I have cut back my personal meetings and interactions to a bare minimum in favor of this fictional world because the vacation has been that good, so good that not even the indulgencies of opulence conducted under luxurious and socially acceptable conditions hold a candle to tasting freedom within the purely imagination driven world of The Old Republic.
It is now at a point that I cannot read all my email, let alone respond to all of them. But I have a group of people who when I see their name in the header, I make a point to at least read what they send me. Of these people is a group that sends me rumors, facts, and happenings behind the enemy lines at the Lakota school district. I learn all kinds of things from these “double agents” who show their Lakota employers politeness and cooperation to their faces, but are willing to cut out their heart through actions driven by pent-up frustration. One such email came to me from within the For Lakota campaign as the participants were promoting their pro levy zombie tactics to one another through a Facebook campaign.
I put a small caption of these Facebook diatribes upon these pages below for analysis, because it offers a fascinating glimpse into the thoughts and actions of the typical levy supporter. Most of the normal people who vote against school levies don’t get a chance to interact with these levy supporters because what they say disgusts us. But in the context of their social imposition, it is relevant to understand their mindset. With that in mind, read the exchange below with caution. The shallow perspective may be extremely insulting, yet it is the kind of dialogue that is going on within the confines of the typical levy supporter openly broadcast on their Facebook accounts.
Please take the time to vote!!! We can all make this happen!!! Our children deserve the best so let’s make sure that Lakota is able to give it to them….Register, Show Up and Vote YES for Issue 7-Lakota School Levy!!!!! Thanks Laura Macdonald Kennedy for the great Lorax quote!!!! — feelinghopeful with Jeanne Brauns and 84 others.
Andrea Sack Sandy If you are “on the fence” just Vote Yes, do it for “that one teacher” whose extra time with your child, kind words or endearing smile changed your son or daughters life. Be responsible for the well-being of our children and our community. Do the Right Thing!!!! Vote Yes!!!!!
So let’s study what is meant by the phrase, “Our children deserve the best so let’s make sure that Lakota is able to give it to them,” since this appears to be a common belief among the levy supporters. What is the determining qualification for why “their” children deserve the best? Why do they deserve the best, because they are the children of these particular women? What makes these mothers so special? Are these children royalty for some future kingdom—what makes them so prone to entitlement? And why does Lakota have to give them this attribute. Lakota in the context provided is all tax payers in the Lakota district. These mothers are supporting the open looting of financial assets from every tax payer to fulfill the Barbi dream house mentality that their children are automatically deserving of some special treatment just for being born.
The word “let’s” implies collective action, as though through thuggish democracy the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. The levy advocate above states clearly that even if voters are on the fence, they should just vote Yes for some greater purpose—defined by the levy supporter. They are encouraging thoughtless compliance to the mob rule of group assimilation. The purpose of this Facebook communication is not to address a single fact as to why taxes need to be increased at Lakota, but simply to advance the emotion of the argument with thoughtless compliance.
Always at the center of these rally cries are the “needs of the children” which are exploited, as if kids will be destroyed if such a tax increase is not passed. Yet the responsibility for raising children falls squarely on the shoulders of the parents. Most of these staunch advocates of tax increases come from voters who are deeply insecure about their parenting skills, and would rather pass that responsibility off onto a paid teacher who is professionally trained. This equates to the same mentality of the person who sends their car to the dealer to change their oil or replace the brakes. Since they lack the skills to make the repairs to their vehicles on their own, they would rather pay large fees to have someone else perform the task for them. The same trend translates over into their family lives; they would rather pay a specialist to do their parenting for them, because they lack the skills of parenting needed to raise children. They seek to cover up this deep insecurity with rally cries supporting teachers who they fully expect to do their parenting jobs for them while they run around like busy bodies gossiping about everyone who intersects their life, eating too much, shopping too much and are continually busy so they can always have an excuse for avoiding the scary task of parenting. The escapades of their life are a travesty of errors brought about by their need to avoid the insecurities of parenting. So they want Lakota teachers to do their job for them, and expect the “community” to pay for their children to be fixed, just like a mechanic fixes their cars. The notion is as stupid as those same tax advocates asking the community to pay for their oil change, when the rest of us tend to do it ourselves.
Most voters in the Lakota district already raised their kids, and they did it on their own. They didn’t leave the task of raising children to professional teachers. In previous generations, when education quality seemed to be higher, and still cost a lot less than it does today, teachers were only a part of the lives of children, they weren’t expected to actually be the parents the way modern levy supporters do. The guilt that many parents feel over their lack of skill in communicating with their children is covered up with their radical support of tax increases. In a warped way, the levy advocates believe that they can sin every day of the week, but on Sunday, they can say a prayer and get into heaven. In the case of their children’s educations, they believe they can be gossiping, materialistic, social menaces and all the sins of their lives will be erased if they campaign for higher taxes at their children’s school. They convince themselves and anyone who will listen that everything they do is “for the children” but it’s really for them—to cover the sins of their chosen lifestyle and the guilt they feel over it.
I know most these levy supporters will read this at some point in time over the next couple of months and I challenge any of them to dispute my claims in the comments below. I know what is in their hearts and I invite them to dispute it with me. But they can’t because what I have said here is true—it is the backbone of their neurosis—they seek redemption for the sins of their crumbling lives off the backs of their children and they hope that nobody notices. But anybody with any level of intelligences sees the situation clearly. Only the like-minded levy supporter is blind to the messages of mental depletion that is written upon their foreheads with invisible ink, yet the messages are there for those with special lighting who can see it plain as day. My special lighting comes from experience, and in dealing with these types of people for thirty years now. I have met and dealt with every personality type that gets involved with these school levy things, and I know how they think. The tax increase is not for their children, but to get them off the hook for being terrible parents either by choice, or by personal insecurities. The cry for better schools is the subtle demand that someone besides them raise their children for them. The crime is that those types of parents believe falsely that their children can be maintained like their cars—dropped off at the dealer to have their oil changed and brakes fixed—then returned to them all ready to run for a few thousand more miles. But kids don’t work like that—and no amount of tax money thrown into the black hole of public education can change that fact. Kids need love, and they need parents who are role models. And that can’t be purchased at a school, or supplied through tax increases.
I am certainly no fan of Bill and Hillary Clinton. If either of them were to pass me in public I would not shake their hand or acknowledge them in any way aside from anyone else. They are both disgraces to America for many reasons. It does not surprise me that Bill’s mistress Gennifer Flowers claimed that Hillary was a bisexual. It would not surprise me if the Clinton household regularly participated in three-way sex and that Hillary actually found it appealing to learn of her husband’s multiple sexual liaisons with other women. Hillary obviously has a kind of voyeuristic lust for her husband’s sexual recklessness that is more common among women from her generation than many people care to admit. But what does surprise me is that Gennifer Flowers said she would support Hillary for president in spite of all the hard public relation battles that went on over the years between them, for the one all-powerful reason………………because Hillary is a woman.
This statement reminded me of the stupidity of the levy supporters at Lakota that tried to make me out to be a “sexist” because I called levy supporters “latté sipping prostitutes with asses the size of car tires and diamond rings to match.” My political opponents believed that all the women of my community would join their band-wagon against me for the one solitary reason, because they were all women. The suggestion was that being a woman trumped all logic and individual thought and that as a demographic group, they all stood together.
Several years ago there was a very distinguished family member who came to my home while I was at work to take my wife out to lunch—to supposedly touch base and see how things were going—to talk “girl talk.” I have discussed that my wife has never worked in a career and has been a housewife for most of our 25 years of marriage. It’s an arrangement that we mutually support and believe very passionately in. We rejected the social concerns of the 60s, of feminism, and diluted family relationships early in our marriage, and maintained that position even to the present. I even spent a considerable amount of time explaining that position in my novel Tail of the Dragon released last year, staying sold out during four fiscal quarters. My wife and I have always been staunch supporters of traditional families, and rejected many of the arguments made by feminists. At events, particularly where this family member was present, the first question they’d ask my wife is, “do you have a job yet?” Or, “you never want to be in a position where you have to depend on a man, after all, what if something were to happen to Rich.” This went on for many, many years, and we casually brushed off the comments after each engagement out of politeness. All the other women in the family however buckled under these types of elder statesman, and they were diminished greatly in my eyes by the influence of the bra burning exploits of the family feminists. Over the years, my wife began to stick out like a sore thumb at Holiday dinners and this really made some of the women mad, especially the aforementioned woman. This prompted the luncheon she invited my wife on out-of-the-blue, which naturally drew my suspicion. But I do not tell my wife where to go and where not to go. She is free to do what she pleases when she pleases to do it-which is my gift to her for being the centerpiece of our family, so my wife agreed to meet with the family feminist to…………..”touch base.”
The luncheon went the way I expected and over the next two hours migrated from small talk centering on all the family’s children to an all-out assault against my wife’s chosen way of life. The meeting ended by this family member telling my wife that “we’re going to get you if you don’t listen,” meaning that my wife was making the other women in the family question feminism, and that my wife needed to get on board with the collectivism of womanhood—otherwise there would be consequences.
Well, I don’t take threats well—in fact, I don’t take them at all—ever. Never have, and I never will. As close as that family member was to us, we have never spoken since, and that was over a decade ago. There are of course the casual hellos, and good-byes out of politeness, but never any discussions of a personal matter. But as angry as I was, I didn’t tell my wife how to feel and think about the situation—she arrived at her own conclusions, which were of course very similar to mine. After that event it left us both wondering who “WE” was. After a lot of time passed it became more clear who the “WE” were in reference. My wife was expected to surrender her loyalty to our family in favor of the collective whole of the family member’s suggestion. If she didn’t, there was a threat of action—either social castigation, or possible physical violence.
The result dramatically backfired. My wife and I haven’t been married for a quarter of a century because we don’t get along. She may not be as violent, and display such a vicious temper as I do at times, but she is every bit as vindictive when threatened maybe more so. A rift formed in our family from that point on that never recovered, and is why I can talk about the things I do here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom knowing full well that everybody reads it. That is because my life is aligned with my thoughts, and what I have said here in writing, I have said in person to many people to their faces. My wife was made to feel badly by other women for many years because she stayed home with our children and baked cakes for their birthdays personally instead of buying one from Kroger. When my kids wanted a drink, my wife was there. When they wanted help with their homework, my wife was there. When my kids wanted someone to drive them someplace, my wife was ALWAYS there. My wife was there every single day of their growing up years to cook them fresh food for every meal and teach them values as question arose. Because of my wife, my kids never had to rely on a third-party for instruction.
Of course over the years the roots planted in such times begin to yield fruit. The family member mentioned who threatened my wife found her existence plagued with social problems from her part of the line. All the women who bought into the feminist dialogue are suffering through various problems, such as financial stabilization, ethical conduct, and personal aptitude. My children have no such problems—zero and that is more than a proud father talking. It is everyone who meets them. The family member was wrong, and my wife was right. The implied threat backfired and caused rifts in our family that will last a lifetime because it is not the will of any group—even a group of women, to change the mind of a single individual. It was not my wife’s duty or task as a woman to yield to the pressure of a powerful family member who subscribed to the feminist arguments of her day. In my family, my wife and I agreed to reject those arguments in favor of tradition and the results are self-evident.
What Gennifer Flowers is talking about in reference to Hillary is virtually the same. She clearly resents that she is not married to Bill Clinton, and would love to have been the first lady of America if only she could have stayed with her lover. But she is willing to put personal issues aside in favor of Hillary for president not because she is a better person for the job, or has a proven track record as a politician. She stated that she would vote for Hillary only because they share womanhood in common, and that the sex or race of a candidate is the primary qualifier of their decision to vote for a so-called leader. Gennifer Flowers is talking about collectivism of the worst sort, and brings to light why Barack Obama is the current president not because of his skill as a politician, but because he is a man of color. People of color have voted for Obama nearly 100% of the time because of the color of the politician’s skin, not by the beliefs of the individual. Flowers is suggesting the same. Women should vote for Hillary forgetting the Benghazi debacle, the lies, the murders, he incredible deception projected by the Clintons over many years, because she is a women—and only for that reason.
The same ignorance has been seen in family politics, and even local politics where my opponents having no way to win an argument against me attempted to use feminism as a club to unify the women of all political types under common causes of sexuality—which is a dangerous assumption. It didn’t work of course, but did bring out the unusual amount of anxiety many men feel toward their wives fearful that they will turn against them and run toward the collectivist tendencies of group behavior, in this case feminism. The implied threat against my family seen many times is that if I or my wife did not yield to the power of the collective, then our individualities would be snuffed out. The same rational is being put forth by Gennifer Flowers toward Hillary Clinton, a rival for her affection toward the only man it sounds like she ever loved in Bill Clinton. Collective feminism takes higher value over individual desires, or as Spock would say in Star Trek, “The needs of the many would out-weigh the needs of the few.” Well, Spock is wrong, and so are the feminists. The many do not trump individual thought, yet those who allow for such possibilities find themselves in a life constantly in trouble seeking solace which never comes from the group. Women should vote for whom they think is the best person, they should not vote in a certain way because feminism demands it. So long as these elements exist in American culture, no amount of bright lights and academic progress can erase the fact that society is still functioning as a hunter and gather tribe stuck in a village mentality. So long as individuality is frowned upon and collectivism is championed, society will continue to be corrupt, stagnant, and morally lost. As far as presidential candidates who represent collectivism none is more positioned than Hillary Clinton who is a buffoon, and a woman of many secrets. Yet women will have to make the choice that is a hard one, one that my wife had to make many times over many years, to reject feminism for the thoughts of their own mind, and to be dedicated to themselves and their families and reject their collective associations for which they are members only because of their sexuality.
As to the next question many reading this will ask, what does my wife do with herself now that the children are grown? How does she fill her days? The answer is she is free to do whatever she pleases. She is a free woman. She is not in service to an institution, a social obligation, or any family member. She can do what she wants when she wants to do it. And lucky for her, she likes to read, because I do too. That is the key to a long marriage, and really nothing else, shared common interest, and making sure that outside influences do not end up in the bedroom. Ladies, forget about Hillary Clinton or Opera. Strive for freedom and drop the concerns for inclusion in any groups of collective endeavor. Be individuals and strive every day to be free. You will be a lot happier if you do.
Everybody is good at something if they spend any time and effort to dig out their uniqueness from the swirling broth of social soup. I have been fortunate to discover that I am good at a lot of things one of which is the unique skill of discovering trends a long way out before they manifest into the rest of society. I predicted well over 15 years ago the collapse of the housing market—which my daughter reminds me of often. Over ten years ago I predicted the rise of a welfare politician like Barack Obama, the collapse of Europe financially, and the current bursting of the college bubble. I would have vast arguments/discussions with my in-laws over college back in a time when everyone was going and was ashamed to say otherwise. The view I argued against was that college was not a magic Harry Potter potion where once a degree was obtained would fill the personal bank accounts of the graduates. Their view of college had been shaped by LBJ’s great society, and blinded them to the perilous results currently before us all—leaving unskilled spoiled brats as the primary workforce who were trained by their educations to be government workers and nothing else, because nothing else in the reality of capitalism supports the view of the world shaped by modern public education and college experiences.
Another unique skill I have is the ability to be surrounded with the worst news possible, death, famine, ignorance, hard luck, etc., and still find something good to work with in order to escape. This has been beneficial as a family matriarch and those who have ridden my coattails in the past have discovered the financial benefits of tagging along for the ride as I can drag them through the worst portions of their life and they will come out smelling like roses on the other end. The trick is that they have to shut up and listen. I don’t mind people riding my coat tails until they become back seat drivers and attempt to share equal credit for the decisions made along the way. I don’t do the sharing thing, not even when it comes to ideas.
I have played Red Dead and L.A. Noire, and both are wonderful games. Red Dead is one of the best modern westerns I have ever seen, it’s a great game with large open worlds and is a real technical marvel driven by intensely realistic story lines. It was a successful title. L.A. Noire was a L.A. Confidential type of story that featured good guys in 1940’s Los Angeles solving crimes to root out the bad guys. As good as that game was, it did not find an audience, as modern young people who drive the video game market could not relate. So they shrugged the game. Grand Theft Auto is a game that I can’t stand however, because it is evil. It requires the player to be bad in order to succeed and glorifies drug selling, prostitution, and social decrepitude. So I don’t play it, and have rejected the title.
Yet millions of kids absolutely love GTA which is a kind of compass needle which points to the direction society is moving—one that current education lovers, government statists, and political think tanks will find repulsive. A video game with a billion dollars in sales has the power to change cultural references. Movies that make a billion dollars during their entire release are thought of as social shaping indicators that drive artistically the values of human culture—and are taken very seriously. Musical records that make that much money over a multiyear period are considered classics that define the generation of their release, but there are no definitions that can articulate the impact of a GTA video game that makes over a billion dollars in just three days. The plot of the game is the beating and maiming of street whores, having shoot-outs with police, and stealing cars, and the graphics are very realistic.
I’m not going to say that the game is bad however. It is a work of art that reflects the times that created it. For all the reasons that L.A. Noire failed, GTA succeeds because it is the product of the first generation that have grown up entirely with failed role-models in their lives. The parents at the homes of millennials have divorced too often and shown themselves to be physical and intellectual weaklings. Father can never know best because he is on his second and third marriage by the time he’s forty. Meanwhile the millennial’s step-fathers are losers who have sex with their mothers and complain a lot and do not have the moral authority to discipline children. The teachers at their schools are out-of-touch and seem to be coming from a different world. They are teaching statism to a generation that will be lucky to maintain a job at McDonalds—let alone work in a six figure income. Millennials have had their religion stripped away from them and have been molded socially with a dangerous replacement of socialism taught in their schools mixed with carefully controlled capitalism broadcast to them from the largest stable influence in their lives, the television. They can’t trust their teachers, they can’t trust their parents, and they can’t trust their religion. They are a hapless heap of social failures created for them by the previous generations functioning from failed philosophy. It is not their fault that they have been given a rage that cannot be communicated any other way but in total social rejection.
When I mentioned that football games in high school were headed toward extinction, the attitude of this millennial generation was what I had in mind. Without values in those experiences, there is nothing to keep their minds anchored into the future—and public schools have taught the opposite. They have exacerbated this entire situation. Public schools have imposed themselves upon the American family, helping to destroy families, showing children that the real authority in the world is what they see at school, not at home, which is draped with chaos and decadence.
The success of Grand Theft Auto 5 is a sign of the times to come. The players are living out a fantasy that fulfills the emptiness given to them by a statist society overflowing with failure. I would say that GTA5 is the ultimate libertarian fantasy, and that will be the political persuasion of this millennial generation. I am so sure of it that you dear reader can mark it on your calendar. Within ten years it will be discovered that social gun acceptance will increase dramatically, sexual promiscuity will greatly increase, drug use will become more open, and a hatred of the police will permeate a vast majority of the population. The social models that were built-in America from the 1930’s to the 1980’s will be wiped away completely for good and bad leaving a world that will not be surprised by every mass shooting that occurs, won’t give a damn about fairness or equality, and will have no respect for the law, or the politicians who make them. For those over 40 who found the Occupy Wall-Street crowd dangerous, and morally corrupt, nothing has been seen yet as these poor hopeless millennials were born without trust and let down by every adult they had ever met from the time of birth till their social maturity at age 10.
It won’t be Rock Star Games that is at fault for the decadence of society in the years to come, it is the failure of an education system driven by government to carry entire generations of people to a statist philosophy that was rejected at the most primal levels of subsequent age brackets. After all, public education is sold to the public as the fix all for all problems, and quite the opposite is true. The failure of public education is the reason that GTA 5 made a billion dollars in three days. It is the reason I hate public education so intensely because it is creating the kind of world where young people cannot relate to good guys, but only the bad.
When I was a kid playing cops and robbers provoked fights because nobody wanted to play the bad guy. Everyone wanted to be the good guy. This was the result of previous generations who had grown up on westerns and kids saw that their parents liked good guys and hated the bad—and kids always wanting deep in their minds to please their parents wanted to be something their parents would respect. So every kid wanted to play the good guy in such games. Now it is the opposite problem. Now kids fight to be the bad guy. They have learned that their parents are flawed characters and cannot be made to be happy, so they have given up. Public schools sought to fill the void with statist educations which only made things worse. That is why GTA5 is such a hot seller and is the envy of the entertainment market. The movie industry is aghast by the numbers, politicians are completely unable to comprehend the why or how. Society is in for a very rough ride that they are not prepared to deal with. Politics will change dramatically within the decade—and there is no stopping it at this point. The situation will just have to play itself out. To understand that situation, study the sales of Grand Theft Auto 5, and the future of America will become quite clear, and it has nothing to do with the values of Bill O’Reilly on Fox News, or the hand holding unified world of George Soros. It will be more like the plot of Grand Theft Auto 5, and for that, the blame deserves to be placed on the shoulders of the institution that promised since the creation of The Department of Education in 1979 to make society better not worse. Public education is the cause of GTA5’s success, and the blame deserves to be assigned there and only there as it has ushered in a period that will be one of the darkest in the American experience. Mark my words—I see it as clear as a noon day sun upon a hot cloudless desert.
I find that an important observation for the simple reason that within ten years there will be a dramatic shift in public sentiment toward the traditions of public education, especially the benefit of extra-curricular activities like football and cheerleading. As the college bubble busts, millions of kids realizing they are not going to get a scholarship to a school that will only waste their time will not submit to the age-old scam of public education funding. When the youth of the current generation, the age of young people who are rushing out to purchase the latest Fantasy Flight Game offering, there will not be sympathetic ears to future levy requests and the type of tripe offered by the Lakota school system shown below attempting to sell the benefits of Common Core instruction to a gullible public.
Common Core is a statist education system, and those who support it typically see big government solutions to family problems. They envision the school stepping in to a family to save the child from a future their parents are not qualified to provide—at least as defined by the statist. The pro and con selections above are clearly in favor of preserving the present education system—which a year or two ago might have upset me greatly. But there is a trend forming that the supporters of Common Core and public education in general has not yet identified—the trend that can be seen in gaming circles where young people from age 15 to 30 are gathering to play games like Magic the Gathering, X-Wing, and War Hammer. Those gamers are not raising families as their predecessors did many years ago, the types of people who attended the Cherokee Elementary meeting about Common Core shown in the above documents. Those previous generations loved the social activity of public school, the bands, the cheerleading and the football. The next generation doesn’t care so much, and it shows. There’s nothing in a Friday night football game for them when it is far more exciting to play a war game with friends over pizza.
When I was a kid, only remote pockets of people did these kinds of things, playing games and indulging in “anti-social” behavior which was the typical stereotypes of Dungeon and Dragon players. Most everyone else craved to “be seen” at the football game parents and students alike. In this way, the school was the center piece of a community, and the labor unions took advantage of the social addiction with high taxes for wages that were clearly inflated. Increasingly, the demographic group who plays Fantasy Flight types of games and video games is changing the marketplace. Speaking with these people increasingly with my experiences playing X-Wing there is a noticeable rebellion against school centered activity. I do not see today’s X-Wing, and Magic players sitting in a future meeting of Common Core education and listening like mindless drones to the diatribes of big government school board types. I see a rejection of state centered education in favor of alternatives.
Jaden Smith represents well this new emerging public school sentiment from the upcoming generation. Jaden might be best known as the star of the remake of “The Karate Kid” and for his lifelong role as the son of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, but the 15-year-old is also starring in his own online controversy after sounding off against America’s education system, calling school a brainwashing tool. And guess what………….It should come as no surprise, but as a 45-year-old man, I agree with the young fellow. He’s dead right.
Jaden tweeted to his more than 4.5 million followers on Sept. 12, “School Is The Tool To Brainwash The Youth” and “If Newborn Babies Could Speak They Would Be The Most Intelligent Beings On Planet Earth.”
Jaden, 15, is considered Hollywood royalty, being a friend of Justin Bieber and dating a sister of the Kardashians, Kylie Jenner, but some people say he is setting a bad example with his comments.
Jaden Smith’s opinion is rather typical of the gaming crowd—a crowd that is growing rapidly. Again, when I was a kid, nobody spoke the way Smith did. Nobody wanted to be considered a “social outcast.” But increasingly, it is cool to be against statism, and to play table-top war games and World of Warcraft late into the night. Those people once they become property owners of their own and get married are likely to plug their children into a computer and homeschool them so that they can save the expense of paying for fees at a public school for typical sports programs, and transportation costs. The parents of tomorrow won’t be whisking their children off to soccer games to satisfy some silly social imposition of public opinion—they will be playing games with their kids at their dinner tables and staying home to save the money so they can buy more games from Fantasy Flight Games.
I bought a new B-Wing fighter over the weekend from the Wave 3 release of Star Wars: X-Wing. The store owner told me that his shipment of 50 arrived on Thursday and were gone by Sunday. I bought his last one. Ten years ago, I along with a handful of others would have been the only ones to make such a purchase. Today, there are at least 50 in three days. Ten years from now, it will be commonplace, and high school sports will be the rarity. The social gains made in public school that were so important to previous generations are dying on the vine, and Common Core, with all the cheerleading by statists for it, is an education system that is currently on the life support of extraordinary high taxes paid by a sympathetic generation who still sees public schools as the center of communities. But at Yattaquest in Mt. Healthy on a Friday night, or Gamestop any day of the week, an entirely new voting bloc is emerging, and they feel about public school the same as what Jaden Smith does. When they grow up and have property and their own families, they won’t listen to the kind of Common Core presentations that Joan Powell and company performed at Lakota with the above documents.
Public education may win a victory here and there, but the nail is already in their coffin. The youth of today will not support it in the future the way that other generations have because they have seen the scam firsthand. The statists who advance the myth that public education and society in general are the pillars of a community are going to learn in the very near future the folly of their beliefs. To see the future, visit a war game store on the weekend and study the type of people who are so passionate about those games. Society may call them nerds, but they are smart, because their hobby demands they use their brains, and they see through the veil of statist education programs like Common Core—and they won’t bite on the bait thrown into the tax increase waters. They won’t care if the statists call them names such as selfish, greedy, or anti-social. Because all they will care about is having enough money to purchase a new pack of Magic the Gathering, or X-Wing Miniatures. To them, the schools can rot away into oblivion and free the children who are imprisoned within their clutches of unthinking tyranny.
To know how ridiculously misleading and parasitic the Lakota school system intends to make itself upon the community which is its host it is important to read the quarter page public awareness column that the community newspaper gives to Lakota’s Superintendent each week. This latest week, as much as their campaign strategy has been designed to diffuse my “narcissism” Mantia acknowledges that she is reading here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom frequently, because she addressed several of my recent points made upon these pages. Her topic this week was a proposal to reduce fees in extracurricular activities so to increase student participation. But first she felt she needed to set the record straight on the value of teachers who volunteer their time—“for a small fee of course”—to provide students with extracurricular activities. She said, “Many, though not all of our extra-curriculars are guided by our teachers. They earn a small amount of extra money for doing it, but the vast majority put in far more hours than they’re required to, because they love what they’re doing and know how much it means to kids. Per-hour our coaches and advisors could make far more money working at any fast food restaurant.” The most dangerous part of that statement is that Mantia is a quarter million dollar member of Lakota’s management team and they are preparing to engage the labor union in 2014 contract negotiations. Mantia clearly is on the side of the teachers and the union based on just the statement she provided above—so anyone hoping that Lakota will put up a good fight against the union can wake up. Mantia is a former teacher, and she is on the business side of teachers. The management at Lakota is bought and paid for by the labor union and they are just “narcissistic” enough to believe that the residents of Lakota are stupid enough to supplement their scam with higher taxes.
Mantia goes on to say, “The two qualities we see young people develop so often in extra-curricular activities are leadership and teamwork. They also learn the value of sacrifice and hard work, and often, other life lessons. They may have to accept that they may not always be the star. Sometimes they will have other roles to fill.” She goes on for several more paragraphs with the same kind of progressive drivel for the next quarter page in the newspaper in that same fashion neglecting to report that the causes for the high fees imposed upon students and their families in the first place are due to her mismanagement. She chose to raise sports fees to punish parents for voting down Lakota’s previous three levies, and not ask the teachers and other Lakota employees to take a 5% pay cut which was proposed by No Lakota Levy after the levy defeats. Instead she advised the rest of Lakota’s management to raise sports fees to protect the teachers who work under her from unnecessary public scrutiny over their average salaries of 63K per year. She chose protecting the highly paid public employees over the community health then, and now to appear as though she were doing the community a favor ahead of the fourth levy attempt, she is floating the idea of being “compassionate” so that she can earn votes for a levy allowing her to throw that money gained straight at her upcoming union contract—which she already blew the negotiations by revealing her pro-teacher position—which for those who know her was a foregone conclusion. CLICK HERE TO SEE THE FINANCIAL FACTS ABOUT THE UPCOMING LEVY.
Mantia had the audacity to state that her teachers would make more money working at a fast food restaurant then they would be paid to stick around a few extra hours a day to teach kids during extra-curricular activities. For those who aren’t so good at math, with an average salary of 63K per year, the teachers average approximately $30 dollars an hour, so teachers can make a lot of extra cash off their “extra-curricular sacrifices.” But what’s worse in Mantia’s comments are the things she values from these experiences which come straight out of the progressive playbook, sacrifice, team-work and other “shared values.”
The statements about communist penetration of our public schools have been underway for many years, so long that it is doubtful that Mantia has the intellectual history to grapple with the issues. She and her teachers are paid well to not pay attention to the “big picture” only to teach it. She was raised into the system and knows of nothing else. The attack against America was subtle, and occurred before her time. She believes she is sticking up for her employees with her comments and support of another tax increase against the community. But she is the one who’s narcissistic, and wrong. My father-in-law was visiting over the weekend and told me the story of how on Friday he was called into a school district where he lives in Kentucky as a substitute—a very affluent district that is the home of many thoroughbred owners. The demographics there are very similar to Lakota. He was called in to teach as he has been a teacher for public schools for several decades, and now in his later years does it only as a substitute. He holds several degrees, one of them a Master’s in geology. He reported his anger to me upon seeing two of the topics given by an advanced English teacher to their class written on the chalk board, one on the merits of Marxism, the other on the merits of feminism. Students had to pick one of those two topics to write about. It wasn’t hidden with subtle dialogue the way that Lakota hides their progressive educations, because there isn’t a narcissistic Rich Hoffman in my father-in-law’s school district to call them out, so they recklessly placed their agenda up on the chalk board for all to see. He was aghast at what his very affluent public school was teaching children and his obvious question—why wasn’t there a third topic about capitalism to choose from? The answer was that public schools are not about American traditional values, they are about collapsing economies and advancing fairness for all—at the expense of productivity. They are about higher taxes through schools as a way to redistribute income from one sector of the economy to another and they advance their agenda recklessly through the narcissism of the parents who support a large centralized institution that is simply a parasite upon the community. Those parents believe that in exchange for their support of people like Superintendent Mantia, and the 63K per year teachers at Lakota, that their child will escape a life of mediocrity and become successful adults. But what those parents discover too late is that the taxes raised are intended to be spent on teaching their children the merits of sacrifice—of sharing their wealth for the benefit of others. What their children are learning, which was confirmed in the comments of Superintendent Mantia in the Sunday, September 15, 2013 edition of Today’s Pulse of Butler County, is that kids are learning to work hard for the sacrifice of others so that collective society can advance fulfilling the aims of communists many years ago. These school officials will mislead, manipulate, and stoop to any low to advance the progressive platform.
The fight of our day is not in Syria, Russia, or even the Middle East, it is in our public schools where saboteurs are using our money stolen from property taxes to convert our children into socialists through an advanced communist plot hatched before Superintendent Mantia was even born. She is paid to advance that plot and look not too closely at their intentions—which is driven by government for the service of government with the ultimate example of narcissism provided anywhere. And it is our task to put an end to their scheme. There is no hiding it now; they are out in the open with their intentions. All that is required now is to admit that such sinister plots are at play and they intend to feed off the innocent minds of our children for a social goal that is not in their best interest. As Mantia said in her article, sometimes kids need to “learn the value of sacrifice and hard work, and often, other life lessons. They may have to accept that they may not always be the star. Sometimes they will have other roles to fill.” Those roles under communism are to work hard for the benefit of the greater good, a greater good that is determined by mother government for the benefit of itself and the employees who make it grow.
In our family creativity is extremely important. I raised my girls on the idea of creative enterprise even when the world no longer values such things because the benefits extend well into more remote aspects of individual lives. As little girls my wife and I would allow them to convert the entire house into the concepts of their creative thoughts. My girls had access to the entire basement to create anything they wished any time they desired. If their creative enterprises took them into the late hours, we let them do it without restriction. This followed a tradition my mom started with me, allowing me to do much the same, only on a smaller scale. The belief was that the mind being active had value on a young person and that value would translate over into other aspects of their lives. It was certainly true for me. I did so much of it that many adults were deeply concerned when I arrived into my teenage years showing no desire for pop rock music, girls, or fashion of any kind. I didn’t care about school, or the people I knew there because I was more content to live within the world of my own making, than in sharing my space with others. The creativity that I had as a young person was the first foundation I had into self-reliance. When some of those adults decided that I needed to grown up, and took away all that creativity, I gave them a string of violent years in protest which really never went away.
For my children I never restricted them in manners of creativity. Over many years I have known many very affluent families in Indian Hill, Northern Kentucky, and other similar places where their wealth afforded them the luxury of eccentricities. I have known entertainment types on both American coasts who make their livings off creativity, and host grand extravaganzas at great expense for their children and grandchildren. But all such events and people fell short of what my daughters did for my grandson, for reasons that defy conventional logic. As adults, and for the first time in their lives my wife and two children all shared equally in creative input as each are extremely gifted at different crafting skills, which was why my wife had baked, and cooked for a straight 30 hours without going to bed or resting. She even forgot to eat all day Friday in preparation for our grandson’s birthday. Her mind was in rapture with creative enterprise as the cake, and various other extravagant deserts she prepared had her mind working on overdrive.
My daughters meanwhile where busy at work transferring their Liberty Township home into a storybook setting of a living mythological significance. Most everything cooked was done by either my wife or daughters, and every decoration was made or built by an immediate family member meaning my children or one of their husbands. Nothing was store bought directly. Everything was made by hand only for the event of my grandson’s first birthday. There was no financial reward at the end of the endeavor, not a single bit of it was done with a fiscal concern. The entire effort was performed for the solitary reason of launching the young fellow into a life filled with creativity unhindered by convention.
When I was a kid, my mother was a room mother at school hoping that it would engage me more in my classes which I found grotesquely boring. I hated every moment of school, starting as early as kindergarten. My teachers noticed my obvious athletic ability early on, but more than even that, they found I was very artistically inclined. My art projects were always the features hanging up in class for all to see as my teachers hoped to use me to show what a good job they were doing, and hoped to inspire other students to do the same—which none of them could of course. The reason is that I learned my creativity at home, from my mother who would do multiple craft projects all the time. As a room mother for our holiday parties, she would do elaborate gifts to give all the kids in my class. She did this until I was in the fourth grade and every kid wanted her for a mother. Many of them acted like the little craft gifts she brought to school to give them were the best things they had ever received in their lives. For some, it was. Even some of those young kids who would grow up and become wealthy, driving Ferraris and indulging in the rewards of fiscal surplus never forgot the wonderful things that Mrs. Hoffman did for them during their grade school holiday parties. The reason is that many of their parents were just beginning to accept the progressive dual income role that is now the standard today and they had no parents at home who did nice things for them—because the parents were too busy.
I made a point with my own children to make sure they at least had what I had—hopefully more. I made it so that my wife was always home, and my children had unlimited creativity to indulge in to build their brains. My children when they were little came home from school, and went straight into the basement where they built entire cities out of wood, cardboard, and putty. This went on until they were essentially graduated from high school. My wife extended the tradition my mom had started and provided for my children–an unlimited creative environment. My wife, a creative bastion herself makes blankets, clothing, cakes, and exotic foods and is a limitless resource of creativity that mixes style and fashion perfectly. When she was a teenage girl she was a model for the John Casablanca School of Modeling and had parents who had wonderfully high tastes. She was set to become a fashion model in New York—until she met me. That sense of style helped shape my kids from the raw creativity that I had, into a careful balance of fashion that my wife brought to the table. The result has been the best of the two worlds. The culmination of that experience was seen at the magnificent party my children put on for my grandson—and extended family.
Driving home the other day on my motorcycle a very expensive Harley Davidson pulled up alongside me with its radio blaring. Normally motorcycle riders wave to one another, but this guy didn’t want to look at me. He was a middle aged guy, bald, fat around the middle, and he had a mustache typical of cops and firefighters. Sure enough by the stickers on the back of his motorcycle he displayed several showing that he belonged to a firefighter’s union. He seemed to recognized me because of my heavily anti-union stance, especially among cops, firefighters, and teachers. He was playing classic rock on his Harley radio very loud and truly thought he was cool. I looked at him directly laughing hoping to engage him, but he refused to look my way. He was an example of garbage in, garbage out. Young people in their 20’s can put garbage into their minds and hide the results from the rest of the world because they are only a few years away from their childhoods—from the constant positive messages aimed at kids through toy commercials, and popular entertainment. But after abusing themselves from 18 to 30 with careless sex, terrible music, and chemical intoxicants such as marijuana and alcohol the effects begin to show by age 31 to 40. By the time those individuals are 40 to 60 they look like beat up sacks of garbage that have been drug behind a truck for twenty years. Their cell structures rebel against years of abuse and their small minds cannot give any other command to their bodies but to look like chaotic messes. They are often fat, smelly, and look sickly. This rider was a victim of many years of bad decisions and his music was an attempt to carry him back to the beginning of his life, to his morning years. In his mind he hoped that a young 20-year-old girl who is at her own beginning might find him appealing. But the young girls only see a ruined old man—fat, ugly, hairy in all the wrong places, and a follower of other such men because he’s so proud of his “union brotherhood.” The girls laugh and snicker sending photo texts to their girlfriends making fun of the Harley rider as they pull up next to the guy at stop lights.
The reason my daughters put on such an elaborate party for my grandson was to give him the start of a life that carries him far away from the fate of people like the Harley rider. It was to launch him into a lifelong quest of creativity that will take him further than any of us have been able to go thus far. The extravagance was not to impress, but to repeal a society that does not value such things—which is why society is struggling with so many personal issues. The party was intended to write upon the young boy’s static patterns a brain activity that carries him to new heights not yet known, for a life that has possibilities only experienced through boundless creativity.
I am proud of them and all their work. They did what they did not for a single ounce of social gratitude, but for the unsaid mysteries that feed the human mind of a young child. Birthdays are a celebration of life and in our family; life is meant to be lived not squandered. It would be a failure if my grandson grew up and became like the unionized Harley rider, middle aged and still stuck mentally at the age of 15, and still looking for girls the same age. The work my family did was to insure against that tragic scenario, to guarantee that our grandson will grow up to reach for the stars instead of another bottle of Jack Daniels and become just another adult porn addict. My wife stayed up all day and night cooking and baking to make sure that her grandson can begin the second year of his life with the knowledge that life can be whatever you make it to be. Learning to make life good starts by developing creativity at an early age. Creativity can be applied not just toward career goals but in every aspect of life from the time that a person wakes up in the morning until they journey off to sleep each night.
I love mornings because like my grandson’s life, they hold infinite possibilities for creative use toward goals only a human being can conger up. I never tire of their infinite possibilities as the sun gradually grows brighter throughout the day. I am proud of the party not only for my grandson’s life, but for the rest of my family, who contributed, from my mom who went against the grain when the rest of the world was going to their jobs to be the mom every kid in school wanted. I gave that to my fashion model wife who gave even more of that creativity to my own kids. While at Disney World over this past summer, my children hatched this birthday party by looking at the way Downtown Disney was decorated and decided to elaborate further into their own backyard for my grandson’s first birthday. I am proud to have watched the creative arc occur over many decades culminating at this wonderful event, dedicated to a life lived, not squandered to faceless decay. As my reference to the Harley rider shows distain, it is because in the morning of his life, he chose to waste it, and the cost of his waste is evident now, no matter how shiny the motorcycle, or loud the radio. For my grandson, the first steps into his life will more than guarantee that his life will not be wasted as the day of his life lengthens and gets warmer, and busier muddled with complexity. The intention of the party was so that when he arrives at bed at the end of the day he can rest his head knowing that he lived his day fully, and utilized every measure of what is offered to the mind that thinks creatively.
I usually wake up at 5 AM every morning to begin my day, and I am often alone with the early morning noises that accompany a sunrise. I never tire of mornings. There is something optimistic about every one of them that I find endlessly enduring. Every start of a new day is a hope for something that was better than the day before. 
I gave that to my fashion model wife who gave even more of that creativity to my own kids. While at Disney World over this past summer, my children hatched this birthday party by looking at the way Downtown Disney was decorated and decided to elaborate further into their own backyard for my grandson’s first birthday. I am proud to have watched the creative arc occur over many decades culminating at this wonderful event, dedicated to a life lived, not squandered to faceless decay. As my reference to the Harley rider shows distain, it is because in the morning of his life, he chose to waste it, and the cost of his waste is evident now, no matter how shiny the motorcycle, or loud the radio. For my grandson, the first steps into his life will more than guarantee that his life will not be wasted as the day of his life lengthens and gets warmer, and busier muddled with complexity. The intention of the party was so that when he arrives at bed at the end of the day he can rest his head knowing that he lived his day fully, and utilized every measure of what is offered to the mind that thinks creatively.
