All the joy has left this country. At least, that's the way it seems.

Two years of ridiculous COVID bullshit, a year of President Drool Cup and his street walker VP, gonna love you long time.

Everything's twice the price it used to be not too long ago. The leaders of our armed forces have lost their fucking minds, holding maneuvers for gender assignments and pronoun definitions, the navy painting aircraft carriers in PRIDE rainbow camouflage. Teachers telling children that the police are going to murder them the first chance they get. Rewriting history like they did in the Soviet Union, and on and on.

And everyone is soooooooo happy.

It doesn't have to be this way, but it is, at least for now.

Sig Forum is a place of sanity in an insane world.

quote:

Originally posted by Edmond:
Sig Forum is a place of sanity in an insane world.

It’s more than that even. It’s medicine.

For me, the worst part of the past several years is watching our society becoming distrustful, polarized and increasingly hateful.
I guess we will see if a house divided can remain standing.

Yeah, this last year or so has been pretty depressing. I tell myself that change for the better is coming...it's just around the corner. So far, that's been working.

quote:

Originally posted by Edmond:
Sig Forum is a place of sanity in an insane world.

Agree

It’s more than that; it’s a societal acceptance of retreat. I see it as a result of the abandonment of principles and reason. It’s unacceptable as a free people and if it continues, it will be our demise.

I've had to refocus my emotional energy purely on my family and friends for just this reason. My son turned eight today. We went to have dinner at his favorite family restaurant that we've taken him to since he was a year old and change. I have memories of him standing in the booth and not being tall enough to look over the seatback. Today, the host seated us and on his way back to the front desk said "your server will be right over, so have your vaccine cards ready." I immediately told him "No, if we have to show our papers, we're out of here. I'm not playing that game, vaccinated or no." He apologized as we got up and left. As it turns out, the state mandate for requiring that horseshit ends tomorrow, but I'll never be back. They missed it by that much. If you're going to be a Nazi right up to the line, well then fuck you. We went across the street to another place and had a better meal than I think we've ever had at the other place in almost seven years, and walked in without masks and nobody raised an eyebrow. My son had a complimentary birthday waffle brownie with vanilla ice cream afterwards (it was awesome), we did some mad libs, and laughed ourselves silly several times.

I hate that this is the dynamic we're raising him with. I can't recall leaving a restaurant right after being seated when I was a kid. My father used to have me pull the lever on the cigarette pack dispenser (Camel full flavor) in the lobby, and we sat in the smoking section. For all the hyper-sensitive bullshit these days combined with the masks, there was no instantly judging someone's politics and values by their appearance in the 80's, was there? It seems like that was life on another planet. Now I'm making eye contact and giving a nod to complete strangers in the grocery store who return the gesture because we're somehow allies for daring to show our faces.

The constant drumbeat of hysteria about everything on all the news channels, even local ones. Printed media and online. The lying morons in political office.

Life just isn't Fun anymore.

I retired on 1/1/2020 and these fuckers have sucked all the enjoyment out of it. It's not retirement, it's just existing from one manufactured crisis to the next.

an oasis of sanity

one thing that saddens me - young people don't know how bad things are. They never experienced anything else. They think this is "normal"

haha. P220 Smudge, your post made my night. I salute you.
A job well done. You showed your young son what it means to be a man. And he will carry that forward his whole life. More need to do what you did.

I’ve been focusing my energy on the internal world verses the external world. Meaning I have dedicated a tremendous amount of energy into fixing problems in my life and tending to issues I have direct control over. I believe I discovered the teachings of stoic philosophers and leaders like Marcus Aurelius at arguably one of the best times I possibly could. I am hardly a person you would ever call stoic but their philosophy is slowly changing my mindset for the better.

I see a lot of anger in the world around me. A lot of anger. I try to do what I can to keep from contributing to the sadness and anger. Twice in the past two months I have seen random people fighting out in public. Prior to this year I have not seen that happen once in the almost decade I have lived in my cozy little neck of the woods. People are on edge.

I’ve cut down drastically on my news consumption and focused a hell of a lot more on my family and interesting projects that I had started and not finished. I’ve turned a trashed looking garage into a slightly more organized work shop. It’s still very much a work in progress but it has brought me tremendous joy to see the progress I’ve made so far. Just today I received parts from Bratislava (Slovakia) for an electric bicycle project I’ve been working on. The parts actually came in EARLY!

I don’t know if I managed to live through one of America’s best times or if the best is yet to come. Generally, I hope for the best and try to embrace optimism while I do what I can to prepare myself and family for the worst.

I expressed a similar sentiment to my wife a couple of weeks ago. I told her it was getting to me a little. In spite of the fact that for the first time in a very long time, things are just starting to turn around. At least some people in our country seem to be seeing things more as they are than the way they are told to perceive them. From CRT, to the the gigantic ass Covid lies to the actual, unhideable inflation that the MSM won't talk about. It's the inflation that seems to be waking most from their funk.

It ain't turned around yet, that's for sure but more and more, people are waking up to the bullshit. I believe it will eventually change for the better. Quoting from Full Metal Jacket, 'It's a huge shit sandwich and everybody's gonna have to take a bite' before we get there.

quote:

Originally posted by stickman428:
I’ve been focusing my energy on the internal world verses the external world. Meaning I have dedicated a tremendous amount of energy into fixing problems in my life and tending to issues I have direct control over. I believe I discovered the teachings of stoic philosophers and leaders like Marcus Aurelius at arguably one of the best times I possibly could. I am hardly a person you would ever call stoic but their philosophy is slowly changing my mindset for the better.

I see a lot of anger in the world around me. A lot of anger. I try to do what I can to keep from contributing to the sadness and anger. Twice in the past two months I have seen random people fighting out in public. Prior to this year I have not seen that happen once in the almost decade I have lived in my cozy little neck of the woods. People are on edge.

I’ve cut down drastically on my news consumption and focused a hell of a lot more on my family and interesting projects that I had started and not finished. I’ve turned a trashed looking garage into a slightly more organized work shop. It’s still very much a work in progress but it has brought me tremendous joy to see the progress I’ve made so far. Just today I received parts from Bratislava (Slovakia) for an electric bicycle project I’ve been working on. The parts actually came in EARLY!

I don’t know if I managed to live through one of America’s best times or if the best is yet to come. Generally, I hope for the best and try to embrace optimism while I do what I can to prepare myself and family for the worst.

That's great. Several years back, Dennis Miller said that he was, "Focusing on living life from the inside out, rather than letting outside issues influence him." I thought a lot of that statement. And yours.

I feel like this sometimes when I start super-serving myself the news feeds. I know it's bad for me, but dopamine.

I'm bugging out, going to Big Bend National Park this weekend. 3 day rally ride. Really bad cell service. TexMex food. Almost zero light pollution. Or Twitter pollution. Quite looking forward to my detox.

While I agree with everything written above, the problem with tuning out (even for a bit) is that that’s exactly what would allow the lunatics to have more and more control over everything. So yeah, we’re in dark times, but it can be WAY worse if the CRT BLM wokestapo Branch Covidians are given more space.

^^ I think more and more people may be realizing that they aren't the only ones who tuned out - the kung flu panic is becoming harder to sustain or renew. At the same time the yo-yos aren't just engaging in overreach, they're making an art form of it.

Even at the worst of times my response has been "You're lucky I have commitments that are important to me". My avenging ways are on pause...

Well.....the boys are all out of college.....the mortgage is paid....that list of commitments that me me sane grows shorter.

Ah, The divided states of America. Where the meek have inherited the earth. Let’s see how long they can keep it

I have experienced this malaise 3 times in my life: Jimmy Carter, Obama and now Biden.

During the Carter years I was to young to understand how bad it was. I was 6 through 10 years old. I am sure my parents worried daily. I did though feel the joy when Reagan was elected. The country was upbeat, hostages were free and U.S. won the gold in hockey. It was a "miracle".

We all know the Obama years. The malaise was racism. Division of Americans while putting Americans into factions. I think the economy was stagnant, nothing special. I personally never had money to invest so maybe it was good for some.

The Biden years: A complicit lying media that cannot reveal the truth about voter fraud, inflation, continued racisms, Hunter Biden, etc.
The list is bigger.

It is depressing but I have to be strong for my family. I have to be the teacher. I have to have confidence. I will. It will get better.