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My Kind of Summer
We’re coming up on the last week of August here, folks! That’s so exciting!
The Rest Of The Month
We’re at the cusp of the very last week of August 2019 and it’s looking like a winner!
Okay, to be fair, it’s creeping up into uncomfortable territory at the end of the week. That’s okay because today it’s absolutely GLORIOUS!
I got to mow the grass first thing this morning. It wasn’t sweltering. It wasn’t humid. It wasn’t blazing or otherwise nasty. It’s just the way I’d like Summer to be. Bouncing somewhere between the mid-60s and low 70s is about as much Summer as I can stand.
Fortunately, it’s going to be ranging from the mid-50s to the upper 70s for most of the coming week. That’s pretty darned nice.
As such, I’m feeling grateful for the change in the weather. I was really miserable last week due to the sauna-like conditions which were, mercifully, removed by a quick storm front. Nothing like a bit of rain to put an end to the nasty, hazy days of Summer.
I’ve got tons of projects to finish up on and it’s a lot easier to do so when I’m not stuck mopping at the perspiration, reapplying deodorant, refilling glasses of water to keep from being dehydrated by the ambient heat and so forth. I like my climate to remain temperate.
This is my kind of Summer
Get Enola’s book, The Forgotten: The Mentalists Series: Book Two, on Amazon!
As you might have guessed, I like using my video editing software. I’m getting used to the interface so that I can make more videos for Season 2 on my prepper channel. I need to put more new videos on my Christmas channel as well. Eventually, I’ll be putting book trailers on the site for my superhero genre book series. Of course, (as you can see above) I’m also loading up my own personal YouTube channel with random experiments.
Why So Brittle?
I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn’t learn something from him. ~Galileo Galilei
I’m not sure I’m entirely on board with Galileo, there. I’ve met plenty of people who were so ignorant that not only did I NOT learn something from them (except to eschew their company) but it actually drained a couple of IQ points just being around them.
There’s a trend these days that’s really disturbing. There is some question as to whether worldwide mass-communication has exacerbated the human tendency towards tribalism or merely brought it into the open.
Back in the days of expensive long distance, snail mail and regional isolation, people would move from one place to another hoping to get away from cliques, bullies and full-on oppression. If you didn’t fit in, you either moved somewhere you hoped or perhaps had been told that the grass was greener. If it was true, you would find yourself fitting in with people who were simpatico and life would be better.
Artists could move out of stodgy, no-nonsense farm or industrial communities and find a happy home among more bohemian folks. Type A Overachievers could move to the big city and join the rat race to make their fortune. Restless souls could jump in a Conestoga wagon and head west in hope of carving a homestead from the wilderness.
There always seemed to be someplace else you could go if you didn’t fit in. Eventually, you’d find your happy place or you’d settle for wherever you happened to run out of money or energy to move on.
Nowadays, we’re all connected. We can find kindred souls on the internet at any time of the day or night. We find that even though we might be the only person in a hundred miles who enjoy a particular hobby or suffer a specific medical condition, we’re suddenly able to find an entire nation of people just like us spanning the entire globe!
That’s freaking cool!!! The problem is, it’s only cool if you’re cool about it.
When you find your peeps, you celebrate! It’s a great day! Then you start whooping it up and people who don’t like what you like start chiming in. As long as it’s good-natured humor, no prob. Cowboys fans bust on Steelers fans. D&D nerds bust on sport-heads. Conservatives bust on Liberals. It’s all good until someone gets offended.
In usual human interaction, the natural reaction is to apologize for giving offense. I don’t really think that people are stupid for being Cowboy fans any more than I think someone is stupid for preferring chocolate ice cream. I don’t personally care for either of them but I don’t begrudge it to those who do.
The problem with getting offended is that you’ve got a choice. If you’re offended by the topic of discussion, bug out. If you’re stuck somewhere where you are stuck in line or waiting in a doctor’s office or some other inescapable scenario and there’s a conversation going on that’s offensive to you, it can be difficult.
You can decide whether or not interjecting is appropriate or necessary. This is why we invented earphones, folks. Technology is great. Put those earphones in and dial up something you do want to hear.
The real problem with getting offended is that, somehow, people have gotten the idea that once you offend someone the conversation needs to end.
Granted, if the offenders are talking loudly about something that is either illegal or immoral (by general social standards), people are well within their rights to ask the offenders to take it to another venue, speak quietly among themselves or just change the subject.
Unfortunately, people are getting offended by every-goddamned-thing! Pronouns. Pronouns! People are getting offended by the improper use of imaginary pronouns. Frankly, the attempt to reinvent the English language to suit the agenda of a micro-minority of humanity is offensive to me.
I understand that certain groups of people feel marginalized because they are actually a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the overall population. I understand that certain groups of people feel marginalized because they’re being instructed in how to feel marginalized. I understand that when you’re surrounded by people who don’t get who you are or what you’re about, you can feel very vulnerable and perhaps even freakish.
I’ve been there.
The thing is, as I mentioned above, you’re almost definitely not alone. You may feel alone, but you’re almost definitely not.
I suppose there are some niches that people fit into that make them one in a billion, but even then there are at least seven of them on this planet.
The problem is that those who are marginalized have convinced themselves that enough is enough. Okay, I can identify with that perspective. The thing I can’t identify with is when these people decide that getting offended is the chock in the wheels of society.
Just because you’re offended doesn’t mean that you’re right! You might actually be every bit the freak that the majority of people think you are! That’s actually a possibility!
Taking a mental illness and trying to turn it into a societal virtue is not only a hard sell, but it’s also detrimental to society at large!
Gender is not a mental construct. It is a less scandalous-sounding synonym for the word “sex”.
People are trying to separate the two and they’re inseparable. Just because you’re non-gender-conforming doesn’t make you not a guy or a gal. Gender/Sex is expressed at the chromosome level. It is biological. It is easily identifiable by the most cursory investigation.
The genderists like to argue that if you say that guys have nuts and gals have boobs then those who (for whatever reason) cease to have those, therefore, are no longer guys nor gals. C’mon, folks. That’s the 10,000 foot summary. That’s the toddler-simplification view.
Obviously, a woman who has undergone radical mastectomy is still a woman. Even if she has undergone a hysterectomy, had her ovaries removed and had her vagina superglued shut, she’s still a woman. Why? Because if you take a hair clipping, a fingernail clipping, a cheek swab, a blood draw or whatever, she’s got the XX chromosome pairing. Until sex-change surgeons can learn to modify that, a woman is a woman and a man is a man.
Getting offended by observing the patently obvious is fucking stupid. Trying to change the English language to include gender-nonspecific pronouns in order not to offend people is fucking stupid. Trying to oppress the majority in order to suit a micro-minority is fucking stupid.
You might be able to pull it off for a while. You might get pockets of compliance in specific communities where the micro-minority is more prevalent. You might even be able to populate an entire city with people in the micro-minority and enforce the nonsense for generations.
The fact will remain that the micro-minority is actually just odd and ought to seek therapy rather than seeking an injunction against the rest of human civilization.
Some things are simply wrong.
- Murdering humans who are occupying a uterus is wrong.
- Changing language to accommodate a micro-minority is wrong.
- Redefining existing words (like racism) to fit the agenda of knuckleheads is wrong.
- Hating people for being different than you is wrong.
- Molesting kids is wrong.
- Killing people who haven’t presented a clear and present threat to your own life is wrong.
- Molesting animals is wrong.
- Coddling criminals to suit a political agenda is wrong.
- Victimizing people economically to suit a political agenda is wrong.
The list is far longer than that but you get the idea. There are things that are empirically wrong in this world and there are subcultures who are trying to normalize them. That’s not okay. I’m offended by that.
Luke, you’re going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view. ~Obi-Wan Kenobi
That’s my bit of philosophizing for the weekend. I hope you enjoyed the video and the post. If not, there are plenty of blogs on the internet that might appeal to you. That’s something that I am pro-choice about.