There is No “They” Holding You Back
Once you get beyond the surprisingly good job he did of defending Brett Kavanaugh during his hearings, I’ve never had a lot of particularly nice things to say about the late Lindsey Graham. Still, I did love this story:
This may seem like a big jump, but I thought about that quote when I read these comments from streamer Asmongold about an interesting Korean AI show concept that shows poor people crawling through cold pipes, facing harsh challenges, while rich people enjoy watching them from outside:
Americans do have real enemies in the world. Iran considers us to be “The Great Satan.” Russia, China, and many other countries might not want all of us dead per se, but would they like to see us humbled, broken, poorer, and weaker? Absolutely. You might even legitimately have some crazy neighbor, jealous ex-girlfriend, or rival gang member that truly, specifically, wants YOU hurt, dead, or crushed. You might also have some guy at work that would love to see you fired, a jealous rival on your football team rooting for you to fail, or a nasty fake friend who secretly tells everyone you’re a skank because she’s jealous of how pretty you are.
PS: Enjoy this… uh, completely unrelated picture that I am posting for unknown reasons (cough, cough, cough):
However, Lindsey Graham was on to something because there isn’t a “they” that actually cares enough about you to hope you fail. There are just people, groups, companies, and nations pursuing their own interests, and they care about you only to the extent that you impact that.
This tweet I made seven years ago still regularly circulates on X and, in a roundabout and, if I do say so myself, hilarious way, it touches on this subject:
You hear different flavors of this nonsense from black liberals all the time, but the truth is most white people don’t think about “black people” at all unless there’s a reason to do it. No, white people don’t sit around, rubbing their hands together evilly, plotting about how they can hold black people back. If anything, most white people would probably prefer that most black people succeed, if only because it would mean less crime, poverty, and violence in America.
“The Jews” aren’t even really a thing to begin with because that assumes that they act like some sort of hivemind, as opposed to being spread across multiple countries, in multiple political parties, with sometimes competing interests. For example, Israel is a Jewish nation, and their primary interest is not being murdered by the radical Islamists around them. On the other hand, Bernie Sanders is ethnically Jewish, but he hates Israel. Chuck Schumer and Ben Shapiro are also both Jews, and they probably agree on almost nothing about American politics. There are only something like 15 million Jews on the whole planet, and the idea that they’re bossing America around, trying to take over the Middle East, and are behind every evil thing happening in the world is laughable.
Rich people aren’t making you poor. Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates didn’t make anyone drop out of high school and spend 5 years working part-time at a dead-end job while ordering DoorDash for dinner every night. If anything, wealthy people would prefer that more people become prosperous, if only because that means those people will have more money to spend on the services they’re selling. They don’t want people to stay poor; they’re primarily interested in making sure that THEY don’t end up poor.
Do you ever hear people blaming the other sex for all of the problems we have today? You know, feminists screaming about the patriarchy or incels enraged at every woman on the planet because they can’t get a date? I hate to tell you this, but there is no patriarchy and the woman you run into at Starbucks or the grocery store had nothing to do with men being the ones expected to pay for dates or most women liking tall, attractive, rich, famous men best. “They” aren’t ruining your love life or holding you back.
You bitterly hear Gen Z people complaining about Baby Boomers because they think they’re somehow keeping young Americans from succeeding by having money and houses at the end of their lives. They get extremely upset when their Boomer “they” gives them life advice based on their long successful lives, instead of just nodding along vacantly when Gen Z tries to claim that they have it tougher than anyone in all of human history because houses are more expensive than normal right now.
Granted, you could make an argument that Boomers had it easier than any other generation, but if so, it isn’t by much. Boomers were drafted to fight in Vietnam, were mentally infected by dirty hippies, and it isn’t like they showed up and were just handed everything. When successful Boomers talk about hard work, saving money, living below your means, and struggling to succeed, it’s because it’s what they had to do to make it.
When they talk about that, they get an “Okay Boomer.” But if you don’t even want to do as much as they did, why do you think you deserve to get what they’ve gotten? In any case, whatever is going on with Gen Z isn’t being caused by Boomers buying a relatively cheap house (and houses still cost roughly the same per square foot as they did in the seventies) and living in it for 40 years.
Big Food and Big Pharma aren’t malevolent per se; they just want to make as much money as possible, and if a few eggs get broken making the omelet, too bad, so sad. “The police” aren’t out to get black men; they’re just doing their jobs and trying to make it home alive at the end of their shift. The World Economic Forum, Council on Foreign Relations, and the global elite don’t run the world; they’re mainly just pretentious, bored rich people networking and trying to feel like a big deal.
The point of this isn’t that there aren’t bad people in the world; it’s that our problems usually have very little to do with them and a lot to do with us. The more time we spend focusing outward on “them’s” and “they’s” that are supposedly holding us back, the less time we have to fix the real issues, which almost always start with us.
The Democrats are largely a collection of socioeconomic malcontents with low self-esteem and thus have adopted a victim mindset to help mitigate the justified depression that would envelope them having to accept the truth that their views, choices and behavior is responsible for their lack of life success. People within that space are generally lost, and are really defined as insane, unless they can get effective cognitive behavior therapy. However, it is good to know that they are lost because it helps prevent the waste of time arguing logical points with them... and instead should energize the rest to ensure their insanity does not leak out and gain power and influence over society and the economy.
Now, these lost people are primarily female. And we have promoted females to a dominate position in many of our institutions and parts of our economy. So, in effect, we have allowed the insane to gain power and influence.
That fat girl with the sign in any other day would never have felt safe displaying that sign because the majority would not put up with that insanity. But since the promotion of females and thus the promotion of insane people, she feels safe. She should not feel safe. My guess is that there were plenty of people there that did not agree at all, not only with her position, but the crap behavior for bringing it and displaying it at a fucking basketball game. If I had been there and close by I would have been telling her that she is a crap person for doing that. Why would she go to a basketball game to rage her idiot political views? I would tell her to go away. She is not welcome. She is insane. She should leave and go exercise. She should not feel welcome and safe behaving like that.
Yes, there are no they... but there are categories of we the people that can be identified and lumped together as having a common behavior.
In any random population there's bound to be a normal distribution of smart vs dumb, good vs evil, pretty vs ugly, tall vs short etc. There were a lot of baby boomers born. Many already died either through bad luck or bad decisions. Many have survived through good luck & good decisions. I think the normal rules of statistics still apply to more recent generations. The drums simply beat louder in today's world.