Tagged: family

I Need Security: Harmless Stupid vs. Insecure Stupid

Everyone knows there is a distinction between “stupid” and “ignorant”. The main difference being “stupid people who mean well” are different than “stupid people”. And we call “stupid people who mean well” “ignorant”.

In my experience, I have come to see one other division of the general category of “stupid”. I see “harmless stupid” as most humor and silly assumptions that do not negatively affect life, even if they do hinder success. One example of this that comes to mind is misattributing cause and effect—not ignorantly—but harmlessly. Like when the regularly scheduled sprinkler system goes off during the outdoor church service and people attribute it to the devil doing devil things. They aren’t ignorant of the situation, they just are stupid.

Different from this kind of stupid is the kind which causes insecurity in life. One easy example of this would be alcoholic parents. They may be great parents most of the time, but the weekly or monthly instances of uncontrollable outbursts or whatever particular scenes unfold (kids trying to wake up passed-out parents etc.) leads to insecurity in life.

With me? Make sense?

Routine, even if for harmlessly stupid reasons, is still secure. “Every Monday after dinner my parents drove exactly the number of miles as the calendar date. I never understood why. Still don’t. But we got ice cream afterwords and it was fun overall.” That’s a bizarre and stupid routine, but it is not problematic.

Put another way, and to get to the point of this post, I value security over intelligence.

Moreover, I do not believe that stupidity is necessarily insecure.

What I am not certain about is if I am actually right. All I know today is that I need security.

My wife hails from one of the most uneducated regions, continents, and countries on the Earth. While dating, I noted many harmlessly stupid comments and observations. (This was/is not too different than any other day, or any other interaction with folks.)

Little anecdotes about “everyone there believes all Americans are rich” were cute to hear and even carried an air of “why would they believe otherwise if the only source was Hollywood films?” intentionally-sympathetic soundness. Couple this with the fact that no educated American wants to admit the reality that, “What you just said is completely without thought at a level that is beyond ignorance and evidences some mixture of mental laziness and legitimate inability to think”—especially if the conversant is BIPOC.

To be clear—I have witnessed first-hand many, many American friends hear my wife tell the same anecdotes and they all respond the same way, ie, no one calls out what each of us plainly hears. And why not?

I cannot answer for anyone but myself, and my no-call was because I believed there was harmless stupidity.

But the other kind, the stupidity which leads to insecurity, that is now something I am dealing with every day. And I don’t know how to right the ship. I don’t know how to course correct.

Readers might offer advice about the big things, like kindness, compassion, empathy. And I wanted to believe those exist, but have slowly been convinced that those are culturally-based postures and so the problem in this culture-clash-called-my-family is not resolved.

So far, my solution has been to try “let’s start with truth” and go from there. “Could we agree to say true things?” But the language barrier is such that even this seemingly simple request relies tremendously on ignoring reality and relying on hopeful intentions.

He said: “What did you buy?”

She said: “Groceries.”

So far so good.

He said: “What is this item?”

She said: “Oh, underwear.”

Setback.

He said: “In your culture is ‘underwear’ in the same category as ‘food and soap’ and other things that we use up?”

She said: “It’s wrong to buy underwear now?!!”

So even something as supposedly universal as “truth” seems out of reach.

Of course, the easy solution is to resign. To simply not care. To “let go and let God”. To choose a “non-fighting” version of “peace” as the higher ground in every moment of every day. But the problem with that is I tell the truth. I don’t tell it in a “I’m just keeping it one hundred” provocateur kinda way (mostly not at least). I just need my words to mean things, and I need my kids to mean the same things when they say the same words.

In other words, I need security.

A Woman in 1899, Another in 1920, and One from 2024

Self-satisfaction begins with reading a variety of books. This morning, already, I have read from F Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise and Jack London’s short story “The White Silence.”

The necessary vital stats of these two giants for this post include London’s work preceding Fitzgerald’s by about 30 years; oh, and London wrote about life in the wild, whereas Fitzgerald wrote about life in, what later would be called, the concrete jungle—the city, specifically high society.

In writing about “life”, they also wrote about women. Women are everywhere, it seems. And not to be avoided.

In order of my reading today, here is a blurb from F Scott on women.

“I’ve got an adjective that just fits you.” This was one of his favorite starts—he seldom had a word in mind, but it was a curiosity provoker, and he could always produce something complimentary if he got in a tight corner.

“Oh—what?” Isabelle’s face was a study in enraptured curiosity.

And, now for the real test, from 30 years earlier and a world away, Jack London’s entry on women.

“Yes, Ruth,” continued her husband, having recourse to the macaronic jargon in which it was alone possible for them to understand each other; “wait until we clean up and pull for the Outside. We’ll take the White Man’s canoe and go to the Salt Water. Yes, bad water, rough water—great mountains dance up and down all the time. And so big, so far, so far away—you travel ten sleep, twenty sleep, forty sleep”—he graphically enumerated the days on his fingers—“all the time water, bad water. Then you come to great village, plenty people, just the same mosquitoes next summer. Wigwams oh, so high—ten, twenty pines. Hi-yu skookum!”

He paused impotently, cast an appealing glance at Malemute Kid, then laboriously placed twenty pines, end on end, by sign language. Malemute Kid smiled with cheery cynicism; but Ruth’s eyes were wide with wonder, and with pleasure; for she half believed he was joking, and such condescension pleased her poor woman’s heart.

“And then you step into a—a box, and pouf! up you go.” He tossed his empty cup in the air by way of illustration and. As he deftly caught it, cried: “And biff! down you come. Oh, great medicine men! You go Fort Yukon, I go Arctic City—twenty five sleep—big string, all the time—I catch him string—I say, ‘Hello, Ruth! How are ye?’—and you say, ‘Is that my good husband?’—and I say, ‘Yes’—and you say, ‘No can bake good bread, no more soda’—then I say, ‘Look in cache, under flour; good-by.’ You look and catch plenty soda. All the time you Fort Yukon, me Arctic City. Hi-yu medicine man!”

Ruth smiled so ingenuously at the fairy story that both men burst into laughter. A row among the dogs cut short the wonders of the Outside, and by the time the snarling combatants were separated, she had lashed the sleds and all was ready for the trail.

I know, I know. Way more from London. But it’s to serve a point, my point.

The earlier-dated passage from London required more words as the task before him included also announcing the different cultures.

But they both offer the same comment—and oh, how detestable the situation!

They both convey a man telling a fairy tale to their woman, and they both convey that women are beholden to men.

We are now one hundred years from F Scott and this question is, by my thinking, the pre-eminent question of our time. My generation has no other issue of more importance on the docket.

And for my part, I have determined resolution of the question. This will not shock regular readers.

I can put the matter in one of two ways, a kind of “glass is half-full” version and a kind of “glass is half-empty” version.

Half-empty: Women are no longer beholden to men. And without men, women are actively disintegrating civilization.

Half-full: Wise women would do well to choose to live as if beholden to men, regardless the true nature of their plight.

****

For the record, Ruth is infinitely more attractive to me. According to the text, she displays taking “pleasure” and “ smiles ingenuously.” (Look it up, if you don’t know. I had to.) She also lashed the sleds.

What did Isabelle do? Nothing that an animal in heat couldn’t.

Report Cards in 2024: Grandparents Don’t Know—But Now You Do

I want to homeschool my step-son. His mother wants him to go to school. Naturally, she wins.

Here’s the rub. I actually do care about the boy. I actually do know that he has a bright future ahead of him—economically and in the ability to become fully man. I actually do want him to have a good life—something totally within his grasp as both an American and as my step-son. But especially as my step-son.

The image above is from his first report card (of course it not called that anymore—one up-vote for truth) at this new school.

I speak and read (and write) English very well. In fact, my communication abilities are excellent, as you can surely tell. Furthermore, I believe that I understand and can explain to you what this image states about my step-son.

Because of that, I know with certainty that it does not tell me anything about how my step-son is performing. According to this document, there is no standard. There is no benchmark. There is no measure.

This document is worse than a teacher grading on a curve to pass the class rather than admitting failure and reteaching the concept. It is also worse than just failing the students and dealing with whatever consequence is already designated in the rulebooks.

As an American, and former military officer, what really pisses me off though is how the document seems to indicate some amount of success to folks that cannot read English—vis-à-vis his mother.

The catalyst for this post is that the human bloggers who sometimes read my posts likely have not seen this type of performance document. They hear about climate change, CRT, book banning, soft standards, social justice, and all the other hot button cable news cycle topics which fall under the “education” umbrella. But they do not see or hear that the real problem is actually much worse. They do not see that there is actually no measure of performance anymore. None. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

Keep in mind, to be clear, I am not claiming that this is a case of “the blind leading the blind”. Or “stupid is as stupid does”. I am pointedly claiming that this is knowingly wrong. It would be better if the school did what “developing” countries (third world) do and just gives “A’s” to everyone, regardless of performance, with the reasoning that an A is the best grade, so it must be desirable.

The American Black Church has a proverb you can hear from the pulpit almost every Sunday: “People who know better, do better.”

The American Education system resoundingly proves that that proverb is merely trite, wishful thinking. In fact, the schools prove it is a stupid saying. The teachers’ proverb is, “People who know better, submit without resistance.”

What Exactly Do You Want Me To Do?

“Join me in lifting up these heroes and their families in prayer.”

That’s what Nikki Haley tweeted.

I’m not stupid and I’m not tone deaf. I know that this is the appropriate statement for public consumption after tragedy strikes.

But I am serious and earnestly want to know. It is tragic that Americans are being killed overseas because they’re Americans and I would like to do anything I can to support those who agree that it is a tragedy. So again, what, Mrs. Haley (et al), exactly do you want me to do? Turn agreeable? Blithely nod?

You want me to close my eyes? You want me to close my eyes and bow my head? You want me to talk with my eyes closed and head bowed?

You want me to close my eyes, bow my head, and think thoughts?

You want me to keep my eyes open and look towards outer-space and think thoughts?

You want me to talk to some named, but never seen, invisible being that folks write about, but never see?

You want me to, while thinking about the three dead and dozens injured, speak words in the hearing of others (or no one) that request something of some deceased-but-still-powerful ancestor?

How could I possibly join you if I do not know what you mean?

****

Wouldn’t it be nice if people actually said something that meant something?

Something like, “If, like me, you believe that there is only one god powerful enough to comfort mourners, meter justice, and grant forgiveness, one living god that was, is, and is to come, the King of kings and Lord of lords, that his name is Jesus Christ, then join me tonight, at 8pm EST in reciting the prayer he taught us to prayer.”

Yeah, that’d be something worth posting.

Wake Up, H-. You’re Being Lied to by Your Mother.

It really bothers me that my choice of wife has resulted in the kidnap of my daughter. These days, I think it probably best to say “kidnap/runaway.” I think the addition of runaway better reveals the indifference and poor parenting involved. We’re not talking about a fairy tale here. We’re talking about years long moral crimes by mothers and all who support them.

Coming a close second to the fact of physical separation and the resultant lack of influence by yours truly is the absolute nonsense behind the idea that I, me, have any responsibility for the situation. Let me be clear: I don’t cause these crimes.

Not only have I done nothing (ever) that any reasonable person would think indicates that I don’t want to raise or can’t raise or shouldn’t raise my daughter, I have only ever acted with the intent to raise my daughter. Do you know how easy it would be to quit these days?

My intent is evident all the way from the fact that I have a job down to the fact that I have never—not ever—suggested that her mom not get time to raise her. She’s your kid too, dummy! Of course you get the chance to screw her up like your parents screwed you up!

Physiological effects surface by just typing this description of the perverse nature of the situation: a mother kidnapping her daughter from the father while stealing his money to foot the mealticket and nearly every single witness, the judge, and the jury look away. Does God?

It bothers me.

Did I ever mention on here that despite thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars being stolen by H-’s mom that when I finally saw H- again, she was wearing socks with more than one hole in them? That they were thin as tissue?

Do you see the three-fold problem with that, dear reader? First, no one over there has thought to teach her self-respect. Second, “Buy the kid some friggin’ socks!” And third, “Pay attention to your kid’s socks!”

Why is my daughter clothed like a pauper when the money you steal should have her keeping up with the Kardashians? Or do you work for me and not have money left over for H-? I wonder what your husband thinks of his benfactor? Sounds fun. Maybe someday his balls will drop.

The great flaw of Christianity, if it can be called that, is exemplified by the following question that constantly circles my situation. The folks who put this question to me usually preface it with, “Now don’t get upset, but…”

The question is, “Is there anything you are doing to cause this situation?”

I want to answer them, “Uh, yeah. Tons of things. Like, breathing. And eating. And putting one foot in front of the other. The other day I turned on the water; I think that had something to do with it,” but instead an anger of the hottest kind boils over into, “I AM NOT CAUSING THIS!! IT IS NOT A SITUATION WHICH IS AN EFFECT OF A CAUSE!!” (That use of capital letters is meant to convey yelling in the most passionate rage.)

Some people, it seems, live on a planet where there is a balance book, a zero sum world. In their world, if you help an old lady across the street a couple times as a kid, then your future ex-wife is morally grounded, narrowly avoiding the ever-present call all women face to embody a virulent waif. On the other hand, if you discard every instinct and signal your body sends, in favor of optimism, and accordingly marry someone (whose action of leaning over in her car, as the two of you drive separately from her job to the restaurant of your first date, is, you later find out, for the purpose of taking a hit of weed), divorce her later before the madness spirals totally out of control, and write—with uncommon voice, vocabulary, and velocity—both how you feel about the State you served’s defense of a mother’s right to kidnap and neglect a child, rob the father, and that she never once, not once, ever, never ever supports herself (or her daughter) financially, then it’s open season on you.

Sorry, Bible-believers, but if you really thought that “choice of spouse” was that important, then that should’ve been the end of the matter and we can forget about the whole Gospel thing.

But you and I both know that life is about much more than marriage and family relationships, don’t we? That’s right. We do.

The thing, in short, is this.

Every bone in my body tells me I am right, tells me my way of seeing—not everything—but this situation is reality.

I would be betraying myself, I have betrayed myself, by giving time and action to the notion that I somehow, in some way, play a role in the situation. That is simply not true. It is an untenable option.

I want my daughter, I have always wanted my daughter, and I have done nothing to push her away from me. Never. Even the divorce was my way of trying to save her from experiencing her mother for at least some of her childhood—exactly half, if I had my way.

Instead, all my efforts have dropped me off on soil where I am the one who never sees H-.

This bothers me. It depresses me. It makes me want to quit. Quit with a capital Q. I feel like ending all effort and just vegging out on the couch in front of the tv. No more work, no more parenting my other kids. No more reading. No more piano. No more nuthin’. Just leave me alone.

But I persist. I persevere.

Why? Because if I was H-, and this daydream may be my fatal flaw, if I was H-, then I would want to know that I had experienced violence at the hands of the only person I trusted. In other words, if I was H-, I would want to know I had been kidnapped.

I would want to know.

****

Half the reason I am motivated to “keep on, keepin’ on” in life is the quest to find reality. What is real? Put differently, am I alone?

Reality for me, I guess, means peace. It means evidence of order—irrespective of feelings. Reality is not the chaos caused by passions. Most importantly, reality is worth fighting for.

Am I really a deadbeat dad, deemed by society as unworthy of raising my own child? Is that the reality? Am I really some maladjusted, bitter, and just plain mean terrorist of a man, being justly punished for an unending reign of terror—but a man who is always one moment away from changing his ways to the reward of being reunited with his daughter? Is that reality?

Or, or, or, are those and other grandiose fantasies being perpetuated from every angle with all intensity upon an unsuspecting teenage girl who finds herself bound by a seemingly unbreakable spell made up of an unrelenting dark web of lies and half-truths cast by her own mother?

Reality, for me, is the latter. But H- is the one who must decide. So I persist. Because she is my daughter and worth fighting for.

Efficiency as Divine Telos?

Did I mention my mother-in-law is staying with us?

Well, one thing that has become crystalized in my marriage to someone outside the dominant culture on Earth is that without communication, besides all the obvious examples of the profound inability to experience good things, efficiency goes right out the window. This occurs all day, every day.

To hear it is like listening to “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” in the round, but the words are, “Oh, you didn’t mean that? I guess we throw it away.”

And verse two, “Oh, you didn’t mean that? Well, we can’t get that time back either.”

But, and here’s an instance of why I sought this marriage in particular, the question remains, “So what? If we had a perfectly efficient marriage, what would that indicate? Is that what life is all about? Efficiency?”

I say, “No.”

That’s Not Exactly How I’d Put It

So my mother-in-law is back with us for a short time before her return to Ethiopia. I believe I have mentioned to someone, maybe not as a post, that her stay with us is not as bad as I had imagined it could be. In truth, it gives my wife someone to talk to, and Ethiopians (or “abasha” if you want to appear “in the know” to them) seem to need people to be happy, far more than I do at least.

At dinner the other night sat my wife, her mother, my step-son, A-, and the two toddlers and I. Whatever caused the moment to develop, the toddlers were declaring that A- was the source of the problem. To hear this gives me great pleasure and my laughter indicated as much.

My mother-in-law asked her daughter, my wife, what was so funny and my wife tried to explain, but even a dummy like me knows this “joke” is very hard to translate. I gave my wife the tip, “Tell your mom that I have trained the two younger ones to always blame A-.”

My wife, generally one to laugh thoughtlessly when anyone laughs, stopped smiling as she realized that her mom might not like to know this fact. Her mom, point of fact, raised A- in the homeland from 1-8 until his father allowed him to join his mom (now my wife) back in 2018. Sensing this, I added, “Tell her that it’s because A- had it so easy for his first 8 years.”

A- surprisingly, and unsurprisingly, clarified, “9 years,” I think because he didn’t officially move in with me until 2019.

The mother-in-law didn’t appear to think it was as funny as I did and to boot she told my wife that, “A- did not have it very easy and he was a very good boy.”

This of course made me laugh even harder because it is patently untrue as measured by his habits/character etc. and the fact that it was now clear to me that “easy” and “hard” were not being translated accurately.

As you know, dear furinj (that’s the name for white folks), by “easy” I meant things like “A-went through life unmolested to the point of living a perfectly terrible balance of getting everything he desired, having no understandable cause-and-effect relationship to his life choices, and being emotionally and mentally neglected.”

My mother-in-law, of course, meant, “He was beaten, with implements sometimes, and while I regret that, he is clearly better for it.”

The next day, he and I had to get some of his grandma’s stuff out of our shed and you can imagine the picture. I would climb over things, begin to lift them or push them and expect that the boy would take note of his necessary role and “put in his oar” as it were. Instead, he moved out of the way every time, as if he was just there to watch. (Bear in mind, it has been four years of this. This includes when I get in the car and hand the pizza boxes to him in the passenger seat only to watch as he squishes back into the seat thinking that the boxes are going to accidentally bump him otherwise.)

We find everything; the grandma’s bags are now in the house. Now they need to be carried to upstairs. He grabs two of them as she watches. I know their language enough to count to ten and hear the number “hulet” which is “two”. So I put together that ol’ grandma is suggesting that he doesn’t need to carry two at a time—and I can attest that they were heavy. A- boldly insists that he can do it—a fact to be decided in real time.

I can’t help but chide him and comment, “Oh, I see. When grandma’s watching you turn into a strongman. Nice.”

A- responds in kind, “I was a good boy for nine years…”

That’s not exactly how I’d put it.

Never Incentivize the Female’s Fantasy—Divorce Must Actually Devastate Her

So I just learned of an old friend’s divorce. Like many other friends of mine this man just retired from the military, and only when this was clear did the evil cunt announce her intentions. To make matters worse, their last duty station was in Europe, and for the common, internationally known reasons, this first grade teacher has decided to keep the kids over there with her.

First, don’t even start if you’re going to take one step towards suggesting that anything about the situation is the natural result of their daily, twenty plus year relationship. This move is so low, and happens so frequently to retired military men that there is never anything about the actual personalities involved, no. The only two factors or variables at play are the fact that divorce is incentivized and the female (no “woman” as such would even consider accepting a dime more or a minute more from her ex), the female, as a creature, is the most depressed and despicable entity on the earth. You will never find another—no murderer, no rapist, no genocidal maniac—who can even tread water next to a female.

Unreal and uncouth, one must never incentivize, these, their fantasies. If this time-honored dictum is ignored, then children, men, and eventually a nation will be destroyed. They will all be destroyed because these mentally incapable females possess unbounded imagination. This results in one of two outcomes. The first possible outcome might best be embodied by the legendary George Washington. The second outcome is best embodied by the current population of the American penal system—fatherless males.

The female—as part of her growth into womanhood—must have her imagination bounded. She must have restrictions. Life cannot possibly appear to keep getting better and better and always improve and never disappoint. These fantasies must remain on the pages and stages.

No, the female must have a very concrete and inescapable situation staring at her to perform. This is how to bring her womanly character to the surface. She must see the limits to her life daily and she must, daily, face the fact that without her man, she will certainly face abject poverty and lose her children. This is the only way.

It seems that the male alone, for reasons known only to the LORD God himself, comes into the world designed to absorb the apparently latent happiness available within each breath of air. The female, on the other hand, hates the air, hates the sun—hates the very day. The female, on the other hand, listens to every lie, believes every instinct, and obeys every passion. I write this in the hopes that someday my two daughters read it.

Two Random, Intriguing Thoughts on Friday

I realized this morning while sitting at the hotel breakfast that all the wonky Dr. Seuss characters (the Zeds, Noothgrushs, Tweetle-Beetles etx.) are actually not wonky but exact replications—in 2D—of people.

Secondly, and more importantly if you’re on a quest for meaning like me, I realized an important fact. Those of us with “guardian” personalities—I’m talking military, police, first responders etc—are frustrated and angered as a rule, almost necessarily so, because we see (from our perches as “guardians”) folks wasting our efforts. As in, “In post-armageddon dystopias, where rule-of-law is only foreign scribbles on the pages of unread books, you’d be able to dye your hair blue, but you choose to do that while I’m on shift? And in response to having to eat oatmeal instead of a smoothie for breakfast as a kid? Ahh. What am I even doing here?!”