Today: an angry rant. Read no more if you know what’s’ good for you. If I heeded what I knew was good for me, I’d not write this. Today, I don’t care.

I have always striven to take people for who they are, and generally judge them only when I have to — and even then, only based on the outcomes of their actions. I couldn’t care less where, when, to whom, how, or what you were born. Unless you are a surgeon about to cut me open, or in a similarly specialized field, I don’t care how much education you have or where you got it if you can make a positive contribution. Your monthly gross income means little (if anything) to me unless it comes with a sense of entitlement or expectations of special treatment, in which case I don’t have the time or patience for you. Everyone has a potential for insights, ideas, and contributions. I will give you the benefit of the doubt until you give me empirical data to disabuse me of my trust in your ability.

Now… to my point. There are probably a thousand things in the last few sentences that my daughter and a million others would label as “problematic” — a term she uses to dismiss things that make her uncomfortable. This text is evidence of my “isms.” Ableism. Racism. Sexism. Elitism. Etc… I’m likely to be labeled as intolerant, bigoted, hateful, and an angry old white guy. I’m supposed to bow down and apologize for the fact that I was born with testicles and yet am somehow attracted to women. If I don’t worship at the altar of, and publicly and loudly endorse, everything that isn’t what I am, I am invalid and a burden on an otherwise enlightened society. My contributions are somehow invalid because I was somehow privileged — apparently because I was born to a relatively stable household that taught me to work, and because I was privileged enough to sell my soul to the Government for 20 years in trade for an education. That makes me privileged, and therefore I should kneel down and offer all my success at the altar of the oppressed.

To all those who wonder how someone as utterly repulsive and repugnant as Donald Trump can be elected President of the United States, you are BLIND if you don’t at least partially understand. He was elected by a mob who was tired of being told they didn’t matter. He was elected by people who were tired of being taken for granted. He was elected by people who were done with being marginalized because they happen to fall into the currently unfashionable crowd. He was elected because he was the “Fuck you!” candidate. He was elected because most people like me felt like the system didn’t value them, and they reacted in anger.

To be fair, I didn’t vote for Trump — in either election. He was a pill much too bitter for me to swallow. I vote Libertarian, even knowing that my vote is nothing more than a message to the two dominant parties that my vote isn’t theirs to divide between them. I vote my conscience, which won’t allow me to vote for the corruption and utter bullshit that is establishment DC.

To those who think that Biden won because the United States populace as a whole agree with his vision, you are wrong. For a large portion of his (Biden’s) voters, this election was a choice between a shit sandwich and a turd burger, and the choice came down to which was smaller, staler, and easier to swallow. Trump, by virtue of unbelievable hubris and political incompetence, was a huge, fresh, steaming pile of the kind of shit you get after a huge dog eats ten pounds of baked beans and manages to hold it in until they have fully fermented before exploding onto the kitchen floor, walls, and ceiling. Biden, by contrast, was a typical pile of shit that had been out in the sun long enough for the worst of the smell to wear off, while maggots are steadily chewing their way through the still fragrant middle. With that contrast in mind, it should give team Biden pause when they consider how close the election was. It SHOULD have been a landslide. A MASSIVE landslide.

Biden, and more importantly the mongoloid horde of social justice warriors and cancel culture raiders who believe that their opposition are just ignorant morons, should understand that the cultural tide that resulted in President trump hasn’t really turned. People are still angry at being marginalized for not being historically marginalized; and contrary to media portrayals they aren’t all mullet wearing, tobacco chewing, jacked up, coal rolling, diesel pickup driving, gun toting, toothless rebel flag waving racists. Quit trying to paint me with that brush. It isn’t who I am, and it doesn’t represent anyone I know. Would you have me paint your favored demographic based on a select subset calculated to most effectively stilt public perception in the direction of an unflattering caricature? (I can’t help but wonder if the SJW crowd will come to the defense of the distinct minority I just offended.)

Like you, my opinions are based on a desire to alleviate suffering. I too believe in the dignity of the human soul. We just disagree about the remedies. I have thought deeply, and my opinions have evolved based on my life experience and personal study. I believe I am an intelligent and reasonable person. Yet the strongest argument I hear, outside of a few honest “lefties” I’ve had the privilege to know and debate personally, are ad hominem attacks and pleas to emotion. I’m labeled as stupid because I interpret the situation differently than the socially acceptable dogma would have me do.

My experience working within the government has taught me that government is the worst possible way to accomplish ANYTHING, and should be trusted ONLY with doing things that have no possible private alternative. I am not particularly selfish, evil intentioned, or mean spirited. I am however extremely suspicious of the motives of the powerful, and flatly proclaim that the vast majority of government “experts” (and I have been counted among that crowd) are no smarter or better informed than an average small business owner. They are usually much worse in these regards. This viewpoint leads me to different solutions than the fashionable crowd, or occasionally an acknowledgement that there is no practical solution. That doesn’t make me inherently wrong, bigoted, cold-hearted, intolerant, or any other dismissive label you might apply.

I have vague hopes that my daughter will eventually come to see me as something more than a privileged oppressor who is too ignorant to celebrate the cause of the day. I hope she eventually remembers that I tried to teach her to think critically, and that almost no issue is simple. I hope she can eventually re-learn that reasonable, well-intentioned, kind, and intelligent people can look at the same evidence, and come to completely different conclusions. I hope she isn’t the only one to learn these things. I hope they don’t learn them the hard way.

There are those who hope that the woke crowd learns the kind of unavoidable lessons that follow from the path they are on, like those learned under Robes-Pierre, Pohl Pot, Mao, Kim, Stalin, Chavez, Chauchescu, Honecker, and any number of others who couldn’t tolerate wrong-think and thoughtcrime. I hope it doesn’t come to that.

If not, my best hope is to leave this world before it gets to that point, and let the ones who made the mess clean it up. They clearly don’t want me to help in that process. I’ve been canceled based on biological and cultural traits I have had no control over — incidentally the very categories they loudly proclaim should be sacrosanct unless applied to the “dominant class” or some other glib generalization to that effect. My opinions are invalid, my motives suspect, and my reservations or needs dismissed out of hand.

Angry rant over for now…