Wise man once said…”I’d rather be a bridge builder than a dam maker.” …or something along that line.
️More Bad News for Canadians
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Beautiful outcome, i also consider fate and karma to be a big part of our destiny. I hate to point it out but you were and are fortunate to have come by such a job which was exactly what life intended and I'm not gonna say the "P" word but man to be in that situation was such a moment and to turn out in such a way a flip of a coin could have changed the entire situation "Luck" is also another variable. But like the lottery it only takes that 1 and you never will win if you don't play at all.
And to take it back to the OP I'll say that even though Canada might be in a situation that's not ideal it's better then alot of places, and I don't ever see Canada nor America letting one another get to third world status like some of our neighbors to the south. Everytime I think about complaining about our societal idiocracys i tell myself they are first world problems and things could be much worse.
And to take it back to the OP I'll say that even though Canada might be in a situation that's not ideal it's better then alot of places, and I don't ever see Canada nor America letting one another get to third world status like some of our neighbors to the south. Everytime I think about complaining about our societal idiocracys i tell myself they are first world problems and things could be much worse.
Fucking A.
Privilege is a lottery for sure, as is misfortune. What you inherit materially, temperamentally, genetically, who's around you, where you live, when you live, who you meet, get to know, where you go...it's a lottery—to a baby, and a child...and to us adults. It's the same. We feel stuck, or some of us feel free. It can come and go in degrees. And our fates are just the same anyway.
But "privilege" is a dirty word if it's being thrown in your face, just like "Juden" could be. It's unpragmatic, as long as we wish to be civil. That's the Canadian talking.
Now I hear and read a lot about social division, and I know it's a real thing, especially in the U.S. right now. I don't sense it around me though, where I live. It's not like that here. This is Friendly Manitoba. The Empire is crumbling for sure, but Canada has a massive geographic advantage, like Russia. Anyway, I hope you guys can come up with an amicable two-state solution before it comes to serious blows, or some dumbass American Napolean, or Hitler decides to test his fate in the Great White North. We're ready. Bring it on. Our beavers will build their dams with your bones while we dine on poutine and a double double.
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There’s a big red maple tree in the front yard of my childhood home a half mile South of Bug Tussle.
I was born and raised in a family of Christians, only. We weren’t Protestant Christians, just Christians. It’s a South west Missouri hillbilly cult. There’s not many of us, we don’t recruit.
My mother took me out by that tree, the first day I got my World Book Encyclopedia set we all get the autumn we turn four.
She said look up and what do you see?
I said I see some people riding in a jet plane way up high, Mama.
She said I see it too. Do you have any questions about that?
I said what keeps them up there?
She said let’s go get your new World Books and see.
I am privileged beyond any kind of of measurement, born lucky beyond the ability of words to express, and I had nothing to do with it, I didn’t earn it, and no government policy can ever mandate it.
The 20 year old pretty girl singer at the J Bar H Rodeo in 1946, whose father owned 2,000 acres of bottomland and whose mother was a locally famous writer, and was engaged to a multi millionaire who owned a book publishing company, met a sharp dressed boy from Bug Tussle at the cafe where she waited tables.
He said here’s a quarter, could you please play some songs on the juke box you like?
He was engaged to a 6’ 4” blonde torch singer who was a Julliard School of Music graduate and a Music Professor at Drury College.
If Daddy hadn’t liked what she played on the juke box I would not be here.
And if he hadn’t been the sharpest dressed boy with flawless manners she had ever seen I’d not be here, either.
Xxxxx
I gave you a land on which you had not labored and cities that you had not built, and you dwell in them.
You eat the fruit of vineyards and olive orchards that you did not plant.’
Xxxxx
Those of us born to the manor blessed have a sacred duty to lift up those born lowly in the stables, and whose mothers were outcasts, on the road to Bethlehem.
A lucky few of us had mothers who sang like angels over our cribs.
(My mother was much better, than Jenny Lou Carson , she had better time and a greater range.)
I was born and raised in a family of Christians, only. We weren’t Protestant Christians, just Christians. It’s a South west Missouri hillbilly cult. There’s not many of us, we don’t recruit.
My mother took me out by that tree, the first day I got my World Book Encyclopedia set we all get the autumn we turn four.
She said look up and what do you see?
I said I see some people riding in a jet plane way up high, Mama.
She said I see it too. Do you have any questions about that?
I said what keeps them up there?
She said let’s go get your new World Books and see.
I am privileged beyond any kind of of measurement, born lucky beyond the ability of words to express, and I had nothing to do with it, I didn’t earn it, and no government policy can ever mandate it.
The 20 year old pretty girl singer at the J Bar H Rodeo in 1946, whose father owned 2,000 acres of bottomland and whose mother was a locally famous writer, and was engaged to a multi millionaire who owned a book publishing company, met a sharp dressed boy from Bug Tussle at the cafe where she waited tables.
He said here’s a quarter, could you please play some songs on the juke box you like?
He was engaged to a 6’ 4” blonde torch singer who was a Julliard School of Music graduate and a Music Professor at Drury College.
If Daddy hadn’t liked what she played on the juke box I would not be here.
And if he hadn’t been the sharpest dressed boy with flawless manners she had ever seen I’d not be here, either.
Xxxxx
I gave you a land on which you had not labored and cities that you had not built, and you dwell in them.
You eat the fruit of vineyards and olive orchards that you did not plant.’
Xxxxx
Those of us born to the manor blessed have a sacred duty to lift up those born lowly in the stables, and whose mothers were outcasts, on the road to Bethlehem.
A lucky few of us had mothers who sang like angels over our cribs.
(My mother was much better, than Jenny Lou Carson , she had better time and a greater range.)
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Strange as strange can be the old time Scottish tradition Christians only never, ever testified, seldom did they pray, and never prayers in public, and did not solicit converts, ask for tithes, send missionaries, and did not fight except in defense of the nation or an outcast.
All we asked was to be left alone, to follow the Master.
We did more or less invent and perfect hillbilly music over the television and radio.
And our women were and still are, really pretty.
Just checking back in to see if you guys are still at it. Since you are, perhaps it would be helpful--this being an international forum--to illustrate how the same words have different meanings in different countries
"I was sentenced to eight years in the living hell that is the gulag by the communist government for criticizing Stalin in a private letter"
A. Solzhenitsyn
"I threw my empty beer can out the car window and some communist snowflake yelled at me! I remember when this was a free country!"
Anyone of about half the people in the United States
"I was sentenced to eight years in the living hell that is the gulag by the communist government for criticizing Stalin in a private letter"
A. Solzhenitsyn
"I threw my empty beer can out the car window and some communist snowflake yelled at me! I remember when this was a free country!"
Anyone of about half the people in the United States
My objection to the use of the word “privilege” stems from its primary use these days as a pejorative. An insult that is difficult to defend against without a long discussion of semantics. It’s weaponized language, intended to diminish and shame the target.
Further, it obfuscates the real problem of negative discrimination by creating the false narrative that people are left poor, abused, oppressed etc., because someone else has it better than they do. One person’s success does not necessarily create another person’s downfall. It’s much more complicated than that, and shouting simplistic slogans does nothing to fix the problem. It just creates a scapegoat.
We’ve seen this throughout history, where a group of people are singled out as privilaged, are demonized, shunned, imprisoned and killed. Stalin was a champion at this, to the tune of 20 million dead Russians.
We should strive for a world where everyone has equal access to opportunities. But don’t expect that it will make us all equals, because we aren’t.
Further, it obfuscates the real problem of negative discrimination by creating the false narrative that people are left poor, abused, oppressed etc., because someone else has it better than they do. One person’s success does not necessarily create another person’s downfall. It’s much more complicated than that, and shouting simplistic slogans does nothing to fix the problem. It just creates a scapegoat.
We’ve seen this throughout history, where a group of people are singled out as privilaged, are demonized, shunned, imprisoned and killed. Stalin was a champion at this, to the tune of 20 million dead Russians.
We should strive for a world where everyone has equal access to opportunities. But don’t expect that it will make us all equals, because we aren’t.
We’ve seen this throughout history, where a group of people are singled out as privilaged, are demonized, shunned, imprisoned and killed. Stalin was a champion at this, to the tune of 20 million dead Russians.
Xxxxxx
The frontlines of Russia’s war in Ukraine have become infested with rats and mice, reportedly spreading disease that causes soldiers to vomit and bleed from their eyes, crippling combat capability and recreating the gruesome conditions that plagued troops in the trench warfare of World War I.
The infestations are due partly to the change in seasons and mice’s mating cycle, but are also a measure of how the war has become static, after Ukraine’s counteroffensive was largely rebuffed by heavily fortified Russian defenses. Amid another harsh winter, mice are foraging along the nearly 1,000-kilometer (621-mile) frontline, spreading disease and dissatisfaction as they search for food and warmth.
Xxxxx
What price freedom?
And freedom not just for you, but also the hobo riding in the boxcar ten cars back.
It’s worth a few surplus shells, for others to restore their freedom, to me.
Xxxxxx
The frontlines of Russia’s war in Ukraine have become infested with rats and mice, reportedly spreading disease that causes soldiers to vomit and bleed from their eyes, crippling combat capability and recreating the gruesome conditions that plagued troops in the trench warfare of World War I.
The infestations are due partly to the change in seasons and mice’s mating cycle, but are also a measure of how the war has become static, after Ukraine’s counteroffensive was largely rebuffed by heavily fortified Russian defenses. Amid another harsh winter, mice are foraging along the nearly 1,000-kilometer (621-mile) frontline, spreading disease and dissatisfaction as they search for food and warmth.
Xxxxx
What price freedom?
And freedom not just for you, but also the hobo riding in the boxcar ten cars back.
It’s worth a few surplus shells, for others to restore their freedom, to me.
It's true that we have a serious, and IMO, hopeless and irreparable, social division here, but it is by no means unique to the U.S. I'm reasonably aware of the dynamics in Canada over the last several years and it is essentially the same there...as for that matter it is across the entire western world...and that is not a coincidence...it's being generated from the same source.
Divide and conquer is the oldest trick in the book.
As for "the Empire", that too is not simply the USA...it is a transnational empire. Now I could easily define all of this in much more specific detail, but that would require language that would no doubt be perceived as being too political.
Always have, always will. So will the rest of the world. It's human nature to be distrustful of those "who do not look/speak/believe/think/etc. as we do" It's also natural to distrust/dislike or fear,"different.". Nothing has changed in tens of thousands of years. Unless the mods stay agile and attentive . . . such shows up here every so often. A lotta folks feel their beliefs/mores/etc to be superior to any other and therefore, refuse to encourage assimilation.
Bias, even bigotry are truly human behaviors.
Human nature has not changed. Technology is what has changed...radically changed.
I'm going to interpret that as not specific to my comments, which were completely neutral. But since you're saying it in response to me...if that's how you perceive what I said, it's very sad.
Wow! I simply agreed with what I cited from your previous post. Unsure what you took from that. I did expand your "western world" to include the rest of the world. There was nothing personal in anything I wrote. I do wonder now, what triggered you to take that as a personal attack?
I was specifically addressing the antisemitism which appeared a couple of years ago as well as some earlier stuff. We've all been reasonably well behaved, on the playground, for quite a while, suppressing our biases and such. But, only reasonably.
Just wasn't sure if your reference to bias (and such) was meant as an interpretation of my comments...I'm glad that's not the case. It's probably a tendency on my part of how I read your comments based on the many years here of the little episodes of sparring with you. Generally speaking our views tend to differ greatly.
And to expound just a little on what you said, I don't entirely disagree, but I do not believe that the current extreme divisions we are experiencing are simply about the typical human tendency of "mistrust". It's much more profound and fundamental than that IMO. It's a whole basket of things that are diametrically opposed and seem to have lost any and all common ground and ability to coexist.
Relevant to the recent turn of the discussion:
.If I could change 1 thing about America it would be less dead beat moms and dads.
My wife and I have been together since mid school and have 2 kids, neither were conceived before our 21st birthdays. I helped her get emancipated before the court when she was 16 and I was 17 but she had lived with me prior to that for about a year and a half.
We both had mothers that were unfite to raise children I'm not gonna get into details but let's just say they were and still are chasing the dragon.
My father i can say was the greatest dad a man could ask for, He wasn't rich but worked for everything he had. The first time I remember actually working hard, and I mean hard. I was about 8 years old my brother a year younger. Our dad had us out helping him build a fancy cinder block wall with a high arch made out of block as well. He was a Mason by trade but could do almost anything, the wall was made out of 12 inch block pillars and 8 inch block in-between. We had to walk 50ft, lil bro on 1 side me on the other hauling cubes of block wherever he needed it, for 3 weekends straight. I was able to buy a new nintendo game cube and my brother bought the games.
1 thing that I've learned is working hard is not a privilege, it's an opportunity to make yourself feel privileged. If you work hard enough to get out of any situation you may become fortunate enough to become privileged. I didn't have a mom to sing like an angel to me but my wife sure does sound like an angel to me when she sings to our kids. I am now privileged and fortunate enough to have an acre of land, a double wide, and a job in which I can afford to build pretty much whatever size house I want in time and at 32 I'm still realizing my American or should I say Canadian dream.
My point is that we all start somewhere my genetics are crazy, I've never done a 23 and me but from family I've been told I am part Spanish, Mexican, Native American, German, and Irish. That's a hodge podge of things and none of it has helped me in becoming a decent productive member of society. I have a rich friend who just hangs out all day with no worries. But he's my friend and I don't envy nor fill bad for him because he is the most happy person I know. 
Some of what you refer to in the lottery I don't see as privilege, such as genetics, when you live, it's the cards that you're dealt. It's the cards that everyone is dealt. You don't get to pick them. And some might confer privilege or destruction, such as who you know and where you live. The end is the same. We're here and then we're dust.
"Who you know" carries only so far, and if you can't earn the benefit, it will go away, just not necessarily with the same possibly catastrophic results for others with less resources. How about "who you are friends with". Is that privilege, and if so, what's wrong with that? Why is the notion of privilege necessarily a bad thing in and of itself? Isn't there the matter of context?
For example, I was elected to membership in the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. While I haven't been nominated for an EMMY, several members asked me if they could sponsor me for membership, and after viewing my credits, a committee, none of whom I knew, voted unanimously to make me a member. That gives me the privilege of voting for EMMY awards and attending the EMMY ceremony. It allows me to watch all of the nominated programs on either the Academy site or through a special login to watch material on pretty much any streaming platform during the nominating period so that I can make an informed decision. It allows me to help talented college students to get internships. It does zip nothing to help me land a job. How is that a bad thing? I think it's kind of cool that my colleagues wanted to do this on my behalf.
As for divisions in the US? They're primarily driven by the twin gods of Fear and Grievance, historically very powerful forces. And because we have powerful tools for spreading Fear and Grievance, it's spread very efficiently, bathing everyone with its malign stink. Put out a statement, back it up with nothing or made up stuff and the majority of people will believe it without question. According to Pew Research, about 30% of the population gets its news from social media:
Social Media and News Fact Sheet
Social media is playing a crucial role in Americans' news consumption. Today, three-in-ten U.S. adults say they regularly get news on Facebook. Slightly fewer (26%) regularly get news on YouTube.
www.pewresearch.org
Early in my career, I worked on hundreds of commercials and saw up front and close how powerfully persuasive suggestion works. The difference between 35, 40 years ago and today is that the methods of manipulating people are much more varied, but that's all.