House of Eratosthenes

I’m quite done with 2022. I had a politics-goal, and a career-goal. No goals for family. I scored three-for-two, which isn’t doing badly at all. I saw the Republicans take the House of Representatives this year. But, like many, I’m weary of this exercise of lowering the threshold of victory down into the floorboards. It’s tiring and it’s befuddling. In politics, the question is whether we like businesses to continue operating and prospering, or do we want to see them swallowed up in huge city-blight tumbleweeds of homelessness, illiteracy, sprawl, decay, drug use and human waste. What’s up with these photo-finish races?

Even if the center of gravity lands on the good side of the brink and the precarious teetering eventually subsides, with disaster averted — which is usually not the case — the question remains outstanding. Why this precarious teetering? Should businesses be successful. It’s a no brainer. Someone out there wants them to fail? And is picking up votes. Silly.

There are those who would protest, and earnestly, that I should look deeper at the underlying intent. Maybe people vote that way because they can see something I can’t see. But I dunno. Does it matter? The policies promoted make it much more difficult to run a business and hire people. Once they’re enacted, that’s the effect they have. Look at the cities these people run. Decay decay decay, time after time. So can their supporters really see something that eludes me? If there is something there, it doesn’t seem to matter. The far more relevant thing taking place here, is that they’re being fooled. The very few people who profit in some way from this continued suffering, have mastered the technique of fooling the electorate and knocking that center of gravity outward, over the edge, so the disastrous tumbling becomes inevitable. And then we get more democrats, with all the wreckage they bring. Soaring rents, permanent underclasses, tent cities, druggies, bums, and an ever-swelling smorgasboard of weird new “rights” and re-definitions.

For 2023 I want: Less deception. Less treachery.

It’s not realistic for me to demand fewer attempts. The attempts made in this year past, have worked. If deception works, you have to expect more of it. I suppose my hopes would then have to depend on the incredulity of those who are to be deceived.

And this doesn’t seem, to me, to be asking for a whole lot. Just stop buying bullshit. The people who are lying to you are trying to hurt you; if they weren’t trying to hurt you, there’d be no reason for them to lie to you. People need to ask themselves, when they see a “package” of something presented to them, if the contents are the same as the labeling. They’re usually not. For example, feminists want to stop men from “mansplaining” and this looks like an appeal to good manners. Is that what it is? A woman wants to use a cigarette lighter to check her gas tank; I should just go ahead and let her? That doesn’t seem like kindness or good manners to me. Or she’s jumping one car from another, hooking the cables up to the wrong posts. She wouldn’t want me pointing out to her the right way to do it? Funny, that; if I were her, I’d want someone to go ahead and correct me. Mansplaining: The labeling on the package is good manners. The contents within are different, a two-tiered, caste society in which men keep their male mouths shut unless someone addressees them first. So say no, because we don’t have caste systems in America, or at least we’re not supposed to have them or want them. That’s my wish. Do that with everything. Ask if the contents match the labeling. Presume a mismatch until it’s proven otherwise. Presume deception.

Because that’s where we’re living now.

There are people who look at themselves, and see something different from what’s there. To expect them to match up their labeling with their content, and present themselves with honesty, is too much. You can’t be honest with others if you’re not honest with yourself. So in situations like this, we have three, not just two, different compositions: what’s presented; what the presenter sees when he looks in the mirror; what’s really there. All three can be different. And my example of this would be the Trump hating Republican who goes around saying “Stick a fork in Trump, he’s done, he’s dragging down the party.” These people see themselves as party loyalists, weary of defeat, seeing something others don’t see. They’ve figured out the albatross that’s been weighing down the Republican party forever, and it’s the orange man who came on the scene in 2015. Get rid of him, and we have a chance! But…that’s not what they are. If they were really weary of defeat, and looking forward to victories, they’d be asking about agendas. The Republican party, you’ll notice, has never won without one. Quite to the contrary, the party has a long history of “good mannered” people who think dressing sharp and saying “please” and “thank you” will get the job done. It never has.

So the Trump hater sees himself as a far-seeing savior of the party, dedicated to good feelings and good manners; unbeknownst to him, he presents himself as something quite different, a curmudgeon who hates a certain orange-colored real estate and casino mogul; and what he is, is a third thing quite different from the other two. A neurotic, fearful little sycophant, intent on assembling a social-media coterie of disembodied voices helping each other hate. Only the last of those three maintains any sort of goal that has a potential for success. They log onto Facebook or Twitter or whatever, and do their hating. They look like what they are.

For that, we should be thankful. There are other things that are quadrupably mendacious — they pass themselves off as something, they see themselves as a different thing, they’re perceived as something different from those two, and what they really are is something different from those three. That would be our U.S. election system. I keep hearing all sorts of bad things about me that apply if I question this system or the results it produces, which suggests there should be some solid evidence available that would make me feel better about all of it. But I’ve come across no such thing. When the rubber meets the road, the argument that our elections should earn my trust, is based on usurpation of the benefit of the doubt. Apologists for the status quo get it, because they want it. I’m to prove my skepticism, or shut up, for some reason. But how much of a status quo is this? We’re living in a post pandemic world. Our elections have been reformed, hastily, and not entirely very well, out of our frantic reaction to the virus that came from China. If I want to be fair about it, I should maintain confidence in the system that’s directly proportionate to the rigor of the challenges and questions that were posed to the new system while it was in its developmental stages. Well, we were never allowed to ask any, and we’re still not allowed.

I look around and see — you know what? Everything is like this. Everything.

It’s almost 2023 and I’m still seeing people running around out there wearing masks. Driving in their cars, wearing masks. Alone. They are not presenting themselves as what they truly are, and what they look like, to me, is something different entirely.

It’s a simple wish. I’m gathering I’m not the only one that has it. As we bid good-bye to 2022, which I will recall only slightly more fondly than 2021 and 2020 — I want less bullshit. Less deception.

Say what you mean. Be what you are. See yourself as I see you, and correct things accordingly before you pop up on my radar, so I don’t have to do it for you.

And don’t ever lie to me. It’s not because it upsets me. You’re not succeeding the way you think. You’re actually amusing, in an annoying way.

Best way to get started going down that road, is not to do it. Everyone should insist on it. Less nonsense, less excrement.

And get off my lawn.

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MendaciousSunday, December 25th, 2022

Mendacious
Sunday, December 25th, 2022