Sick as a dog (the flu), with a colossal miscalculation at work (overstepping my bounds in trying to get a deal to go our way), I’ve had better days. But, one foot in front of the other, down but never out, I’m especially thankful this Thanksgiving.
I’m thankful for the beautiful world around me (despite being stuck at a computer longer than any creature should), the opportunity to put my feet on dirt, hold my wife and kids close, and wake up to the sun over the horizon with a bounty on my holiday table.
I’m thankful for the ability to think for myself.
Frankly, we are shoveled shit as a populace, and I am thankful that I don’t lap it up like a slobbering dog. I am thankful that many are not so pliable to believe in the backward myths that permeate from the confused and the indoctrinated, the mind-numbing memes from all angles of media, corporatism, and government droned down upon us from the marketing and money machines in New York, Los Angeles, and DC.
On this Thanksgiving Day, the mood strikes me to call BS on 12 totally random factoids (meaning like a fact, but not really, because it’s total bullshit)-
1. Kids need scheduling and constant oversight (heck no; self-directed, imaginative play is much better for their little minds, bodies, and spirits, right?).
2. War is good for the economy (war may be the health of the state, but for all others it brings death and destruction, which are terrible for all, excepting only the few).
3. We should all lather ourselves and our children with SPF 50 sunscreen anytime we step outside the front door (please, get some vitamin D you cry-babies).
4. Inflation is necessary and we should undercount it, massage the statistics, and then aim for 2%, which is really 5% (hogwash; inflation discourages savings and destroys the social contract, making the rich richer and the rest indentured servants).
5. Homework is good for kids (homework sucks, and you know it).
6. Consumer spending drives prosperity (backwards; it’s savings, or capital formation which drives investment and productivity growth, thereby enabling spending).
7. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day (how did the breakfast lobby sneak this in? All meals and snacks, regardless of race or religion, are equally important, although aside from Bullet Coffee, dinner is the only one I observe).
8. Deficits don’t matter (yes they do, Mr. Dick Cheney, you bonehead, and we are mortgaging our future to waste and spend without any prudence at all).
9. Russia (Iran, North Korea, etc.) is our enemy (this is scapegoating for our own political incompetence or to further the agenda of the military industrial complex that President Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in WWII, warned us about).
10. Red meat and bacon are bad for you (total BS; eat nothing but red meat and bacon and you’ll do great, especially if grass-fed/pasture-raised).
11. They hate us for our freedom (they hate us for sticking our proverbial noses everywhere).
12. The rise in mass-shootings is a gun-control issue (whether you support gun rights or not, the rise in mass shootings is not statistically correlated to a liberalization of gun laws, so it must be something else, one or some of many environmental factors that have changed over the last few decades; my sneaking suspicion’s lean towards psychiatric meds with suicidal and homicidal ideations…it’s on the damn bottle, right?).
Factoids are easy targets, but enough for now. Each deserves a column of its own, but it’s time to sit down for a roasted turkey dinner with all of the fixings. The Pilgrims and Wampanoags of 1621 are rolling over in their graves (in between servings of yams, stuffing and cranberry sauce) under the cold ground in Plymouth, Massachusetts tonight at all of the hypocrisy and propaganda shoved down our throats in the year 2017.
It’s a racket everywhere you turn, from healthcare to higher education, right down to the currency system, and a sucker is born every minute.
Today, I’m thankful that you or I, dear reader, are not one of them.
I’m thankful for the wind through the trees, the sunlight on my skin, the way my wife’s eyes turn up and to the right when she smiles, and how my eight-year-old Mia is turning into a young lady right before my very eyes. I’m thankful to live in a country where liberty remains important, if not sacred (like it once was). I’m thankful to be able to prove myself in the workplace. I’m thankful for our service members and their can-do spirits, despite their unnecessary deployments and overstretched engagements all over the world as the empire begins to buckle under its own weight.
I’m thankful for the chance to share my ideas with you, and to build the BadDaddy community of free-thinking, free-spirited parents that don’t slop at the trough every time the dinner bell rings from the grandmasters pushing paper in the halls of power.
Today, I’m thankful for Thanksgiving, and the start of the Christmas season. It’s the most wonderful time of the year (despite all of the foolishness).
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