The Messages Fly But the Network is Down

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

We’re in a heck of a time. Our communications are thoroughly broken.

When I talk of what’s going on with the student loans, a lot of you think I’m being immoral for saying they shouldn’t be paid back. There’s been a ton of nonsense about “on the backs of the middle class” but none of that is remotely true. There’s a lot of things you’re assuming that have no basis in reality. They would, of course, if reality were even vaguely logical and if our system weren’t error piled on folly piled on sheer insanity.

I’m working on a post for Monday, this supposing I get Sunday to work on it, of course, but while working on it, I myself found how many of my assumptions of what’s going on there are wrong. (And not in favor of “make them pay” or “if they don’t the middle class does” to be clear. There is literally nonsense going on supporting Obamacare in the middle of all that. We should never underestimate the ability of the left to self-serve while creating even more slaves to the state, right?) Which is why that post will take longer. (And again, I want to point out that this is not in favor of Biden’s plan. That’s at best cosmetic. It’s not even putting a bandaid on it. It’s putting a bow on a bleeding wound, and with that buying the loyalty and the votes of the stupid young who think if they keep voting left, one day they’ll be free.)

This is not the place for that discussion. This is just an example. You get to yell at me on Monday, when that post goes up.

But the main point of this post is this: We’re a lot of us trapped in vicious systems/places from which we can’t escape except by quitting, but unable or unwilling to communicate what is going on.

In the case of people on the right trapped in student loans that make no sense, it’s shame. “Well, I was stupid, and I signed that contract, so it’s all my fault and I should suffer.” So they don’t even correct the misconceptions when they see it. But it’s not just that. People in professions where they have to hide their politics don’t want to talk about the mess in their professions, because it might be traced to them.

In its simplest form, for years I didn’t complain about my writing “career” to the point that I lied to fans of a book series when it was cancelled and told them I’d “lost interest” or wanted to do something else now. What was I going to do, really? Tell them I didn’t sell very well. Or that I sold so badly that the publisher made me change? But then the publisher will get letters and get p*ssed because I talked about it.

I once found myself with three other “right wing” authors (the others not SF) and we were having dinner, and one of us — might have been me. I honestly don’t remember — let it slip how low our advances and royalties were. And then the others shared theirs, and we were all about the same. And it was both horrifying and very freeing. For that moment, I wasn’t crushed in shame of how I was failing. All of us were. And I knew the other people were good. In fact, we had become friends because I was a fan.

Or, you know, my statements were so horrifyingly low that I was afraid to give them to my lawyer, so he could draft a letter asking for reversal. Ironically, he was the one who looked at them and told me they weren’t low, so much as they were absolutely impossible: the same exact number, down to the single digit, for books that were out the same time, even in different fields/publishers. (Weirdly? Not dishonesty so much as a formula. As I explained, publishers don’t have any idea how much each individual title sells. Yes, it can be figured out, but it would take a lot of work/trained accountants, which most publishers probably can’t afford at this point. Maybe. I know even electronically, it took my husband years of perfecting a program to do it. And he can’t sell the program, because enough things change every period, that he has to use it/adjust it. He does this for pay for a medium publishing company and it takes a bizarre amount of time and work. He gave a workshop at Liberty Con (And he’s willing to talk to anyone wanting to know more about this, but no, he’s not taking any more clients.) So publisher’s have a formula. If you’re a mid-list author, take your initial lay down and divide by the number of years it’s been out, or something like.) So, you know, I was embarrassed into silence by numbers that aren’t even real.

This is going on with a lot of us. Particularly those of us who know we’re “smart” and “competent” and yet our results don’t seem to support it. We know what the problem is. Or at least we think we do. But what if we’re just using this as an excuse.

Such a silence is particularly effective against the right, because we have a “do or die” ethic, and most of us were raised with “no excuses. Just do.” So when we keep failing again and again and again, we might know that what’s causing it is beyond our control, but that sounds too much like whining.

This is not even just in professions. There are any number of “romantic age” males and females on our side, desperate to form a family or at least a relationship, who have no clue how to find someone else, and are afraid to confess how little they’ve dated/how unsuccessfully. And all the structures existing are not “leading to marriage.”

Actually this is a good example for the problems with communication and knowledge in society, because the captured means of narrative — both ficiton and non fiction — have been thoroughly captured by a left who doesn’t want to know the truth, but to sell their view of how the world should be as truth, adding to the confusion.

So, males, isolated in their loneliness, unable to figure out how to even reach out — complicated by the fact that in professional situations both men and women not of the left often have to at least keep quiet, and often outright pretend to be on the other side — think that women are all as portrayed in the leftist media, so they’re into the hookup culture, or they only want rich men, or never want children, or whatever.

Meanwhile, the women trapped in same, think all men just want sex, have no interest in a relationship/marriage and all the rest.

And each of them, too scared or unable to talk about it, assumes that everyone else who is happily married have taken everyone who is like them. And everyone else is having wild sex all the time.

This is not helped by the propagation of “Surveys” whose internals are often bizarrely corrupt, but that’s not what’s shown.

And so, isolated, each person thinks they’re uniquely failing, and everyone is against them, and that they’re the only ones. Which leads either to despair or maladaptive “solutions.”

It’s pretty much like this, everywhere.

And if you think that is by design from the left you’d be ALMOST right.

They’re not doing this to silence you. They’re not doing this to shape you. They’re not doing this to enslave you. Those are happy bonuses.

No, the problem is that the left QUITE LITERALLY believes that “narrative shapes the world.”

I’m not making this up, difficult as it is to believe, but yes, they SERIOUS AS A HEART ATTACK believe that if you don’t have a counter narrative, and that if everyone believes the narrative, then it is true.

Part of this are half-baked New Age Philosophies, rooted in affirmations and the like. Part are fundamental misunderstandings of quantum (and science in general.) Part …. insanity?

I confess the phenomenon scares me and it took me forever to accept they do indeed believe this. It’s at a the root of their war on “disinformation” and their war on opposing speech in general.

If we all clap for Tinker Bell Communism, it will be real.

And of course, it’s not true. All the imposed narrative does is add bad information to lack of information, and means that all the solutions are increasingly corrupted, leading to — eventually — the whole system collapsing.

It doesn’t prevent the system collapsing — USSR, for ex — what it does is prevent the implementation of useful or effective solutions.

You can believe you’ve produced ten tons of steel. It won’t cause steel to appear. What it causes is trials of the saboteurs who stole the steel. Because a scapegoat must exist, or else you’ll get punished.

This is what we’re living with right now.

And the only possible solution is almost impossible: We need to start talking.

No matter how embarrassing it is. No matter how much we feel it’s really our fault and we’re just making excuses. We need to talk. I’m open to stories. I can anonymize them.

We need to know what’s going on in all these little fiefdoms where the leftist stupidity has bound everyone in darkness and silence.

We need to know who is not being stupid, but struggling against impossible odds. Who has to go along, to literally keep body and soul together.

We are all making a lot of assumptions about groups and professions and situations that aren’t ours. And because our only news and even our mass entertainment that shape our images of each other are in the hands of the left and even our personal sharing in places like Facebook is tampered with, our assumptions are often completely wrong.

The messages are flying but the network is down.

It’s time to rebuild the network. What do people say about you/your situation that’s completely wrong and burns you up? If it has a basis in regulation/law/structure we need to know.

Let’s talk.

215 thoughts on “The Messages Fly But the Network is Down”

    1. May I suggest the real estate instead?

      The endowments . . . well, my mom put one together in memory of my late dad. It was something he wanted.

      The endowment money does not actually belong to the university.

      They get to use the interest for one particular purpose. If they try to do anything else with it, or the university ceases to exist, or the specific program the endowment supports ceases to exist, the money goes away. There’s another institution designated, just in case the family dies out: there will be someone watching them. (I’d guess some of the older endowments aren’t being watched well, or the uses were inadequetely specific.)

      I suspect if our little endowment is set up thus, the big ones are thus-with-bells-and-whistles. Why wouldn’t they be?

      It makes sense if you think about it: it’s the same thing as wealthy folks putting stuff in trusts so they don’t get taxed on it.

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      1. Did the endowment have a purpose? Is that purpose being met? Did you set it up to withdraw it if that purpose was NOT met? And did you do so?

        If the answer to any of these is No, then you turned it over to the institution, and the institution can have it seized for proven misconduct after trial.

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      2. “The endowment money does not actually belong to the university.”

        Until the university wants it badly enough to go looking for a sympathetic judge…

        Probably not an issue for small endowments. But iirc, there is the occasional large endowment that effectively gets seized by a university with assistance from a judge.

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  2. It’s be nice if we could start thinking critically and start talking civilly.

    Most, or at least many discussions elsewhere, there, and, in my humble opinion, also here as well, seem to quickly degenerate to rants full of ad hominem red herrings carried by straw men up slippery slopes.

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    1. I’d like to see a visual for that imagery!
      I suspect a lot of people on blogs like Sarah’s end up venting because it’s NOT safe to do so elsewhere.
      There’s a good reason most of us use pseudonyms, even here.

      Liked by 1 person

  3. Before I even finish the article I’m already thinking “and I just listened to someone else talking about the competency crisis and loss of knowledge/tech.”

    Welcome to the end times, all.

    (Agnostic on student loans myself. I certainly am sympathetic to the argument they shouldn’t have interest rates.)

    Liked by 1 person

    1. The government needs to get out of the student loan business and make student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy. Blanket forgiveness is unnecessary.

      Liked by 1 person

      2. Um…. Look, I’ll be honest, yes, those will help and MIGHT be achievable. But I want that combined with forgiveness OR AT LEAST commutation, because otherwise people who DO NOT QUALIFY FOR BANKRUPTCY will still be beholden to the government.
        If you switch it to a private lender at reasonable terms that might satisfy it. I disapprove of debt-slavery to the government particularly

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  4. Sorry I missed Dan’s workshop. There was so much to do and so many people to talk to at Liberty Con. Maybe I’ll catch you guys at Son of Silver Con. Not that I’m going to have anything to do with the paper pushers, aka traditional publishing, but knowledge is good.

    So many of us have found our way here to talk to other sane people. Also I’ve begun attending the Eastern Orthodox Church where the people are friendly and sane. Seeing all the young catechumens (over 50 since I started going a year ago) is really encouraging as well as all the young families. Cling to the islands of sanity where you can find them.

    Liked by 1 person

  5. “But the main point of this post is this: We’re a lot of us trapped in vicious systems/places from which we can’t escape except by quitting, but unable or unwilling to communicate what is going on.”

    This is the follow-on to me yelling about doctors all shutting up in Canada, the USA, Britain and Australia last night at like 1AM, right?

    Less advertised is the number of doctors who QUIT and left the healthcare system between 2021-23. Scads of them. They freaking quit and now they’re doing something else. Because, among other things, you do NOT test an experimental treatment on the healthcare providers. Because that is cutting off the branch you are standing on. But they did it. They are STILL doing it right now, in 2023. There are still physicians and nurses fighting dismissals for refusing the jab.

    And yet, given that outrage and the number of guys who quit and walked away, we are still hearing -nothing- from doctors as a profession. Even the retired/quit guys are saying nothing.

    To me, this is like Omelas. IMHO, you do not just walk away from Omelas. You come back with friends, and you burn it down.

    Well, it turns out, this is just me. People don’t think like that. They just walk away. I’m the weird one.

    Disappointing, really. All that talk about responsibility, professionalism, dedication, patient care… and its all bullshit.

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    1. They’re just small individuals who have realized that they can’t retain any kind of professionalism or sense of ethics in the system — and that the system can and will grind them into dust without even noticing they were there. Standing up against it doesn’t restore responsibility, ethics, humanity, or competency; it only gets your life and livelihood destroyed.

      This is where the “network down” aspect comes in. Omelas is a great analogy. How, in this broken wilderness outside the narrative, do we manage to find enough friends to return and burn it down?

      But maybe that’s actually what we’re doing, and it’s just very hard to see. And it takes time. It’s hard to wait for others to catch up.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. It might not even require burning it down, at least not as a first step. If we got enough of them speaking to each other, could they find a way of setting up their own system? Nothing so stringently organized that it would be recognized as a system and be beaten down by all the things making the current healthcare system a waking nightmare. Something more diffuse; something more creative; something that would let them do the good work they’re capable of doing, and help the like-minded in doing their own.

        I don’t know what form this would take. I don’t have the knowledge to lay out a framework of ideas. But they do. If they could get themselves together, they might start finding those solutions.

        Wouldn’t that be great?

        Et, republica restituendae

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      2. I’d never heard of Omelas. Now that I’ve looked it up, you’re exactly right. How can we NOT return, immediately, and burn it down salt it nuke it? But like Phantom observed, most everyone isn’t like that. Isn’t like most of us (at a guess).

        The Bible story of Gideon’s army bubbles up at moments like this, when there seems to be an obvious winnowing down of people tasked for battle. And all the people who aren’t called to do that get a pass to go home and do whatever. That went down to 300 against… a lot more than that.

        Leaning forward with my ears cocked for the FBI at the door has become tiresome. :) Wait we must.

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        1. Omelas might work, if the designated scapegoat volunteered for it, or was paid somehow for it. Some people will subject themselves to the most amazingly bad things if they think they are doing something special for others, and if they think there is an ultimate reward for them for it. Not having read the story, or at least not remembering it, I don’t know if the chosen child gained anything in the end for the utter misery they were subjected to.

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          1. It didn’t have that kind of depth. It was a shallow leftist allegory pushing false consciousness, systemic oppression, and encouraging the breaking of eggs.

            Liked by 1 person

            2. And yet the commie left is not content in its administration of civilization in the suffering and killing of one scapegoat, but in killing millions of them…

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            3. And yet the commie left is not content in its administration of civilization in the suffering and killing of one scapegoat, but in killing millions of them…

              Liked by 1 person

    2. The national medical academies are all run by the left as are the universities. You only hear from the docs in universities, not the ones seeing patients. Those of us seeing patients talk to our patients one on one. That’s the best we can do. This is an example of what Sarah is talking about. The medical field is so severely broken, I can’t even see a way out any more. Paint all doctors with a broad brush because our symbolic “leaders” are all coopted . Then wonder why we throw up our hands and walk away.

      Liked by 1 person

    3. The national medical academies are all run by the left as are the universities. You only hear from the docs in universities, not the ones seeing patients. Those of us seeing patients talk to our patients one on one. That’s the best we can do. This is an example of what Sarah is talking about. The medical field is so severely broken, I can’t even see a way out any more. Paint all doctors with a broad brush because our symbolic “leaders” are all coopted . Then wonder why we throw up our hands and walk away.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. The doctors actually seeing patients are mostly employees nowadays, not self-employed physicians. They toe the corporate line or lose their job; blacklisted if they’re unlucky.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Used to be if you were in the hospital your primary did rounds in the morning to check up on you and was part of your medical team with the specialist. That has gone the way of the dodo bird.

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        2. Actually, it’s worse. Our specialty boards put out a letter during Covid saying that if we were putting out information, not approved by our dear leaders that they could pull our certifications. That means you are no longer an employable physician (we all have to be board-certified). As far as I know, they never walked that back. I’m still telling patients whatever I think is true, but I may not be at any moment. I’m lucky in that I’m in a position to do that. None of the young guys are (hello, $250,000 student loans!).

          Liked by 1 person

            1. It’s not only that; licensing is used to arbitrarily limit the number of doctors permitted to practice medicine, restricting the availability of health care and keeping costs artificially high. The number and size of hospitals is similarly constrained. The only thing free from any sort of limits is medical bureaucracy.
              ———————————
              A good Zombie Apocalypse novel is at least as believable as anything we’ve heard out of the ‘Publick Health Authoriteez’ over the last three years.

              Liked by 1 person

              1. And then they import third world trained doctors. I’ve had three so far, an almost every time there’s some issue, cultural or otherwise.
                It’s not a race thing. It’s a “Do you know how different training is over there?”

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    4. The mass exodus of doctors and nurses from the medical establishment started shortly after 0bamacare was imposed on them. The COVID insanity just pushed more out.

      So now we have fewer doctors and nurses, but hordes more bureaucrats to ‘manage health care’ and they wonder why medical costs have shot up even faster than college costs.

      And their insane ‘solution’ is to impose more of the same idiocy. If a problem gets worse the harder you try to ‘fix’ it, you’re doing it wrong! STOP!!
      ———————————
      Why do so many idiots believe that our problems will be solved by the same shitheads that caused them?

      Liked by 1 person

        1. We lost our family doctor to “retirement.” He had been doing fine up to 2020 and abruptly decided to sell his practice to some young Romanian dude. Who, unfortunately, is a jackass.

          Walk-in clinic for the win.

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          1. Our primary, for all 3 of us, and mom, is heading out to retirement too. Don’t know when. It is coming. Not looking forward to it. Last time the primary physician retired, 25 years ago, we went through being constantly being reassigned a primary as the new ones didn’t stay in the area more than 6 months to maybe a year, until we got the current one. Harder on mom because of dad. She had to be the one to keep track of all the stuff his primary should have been if the primary had been around long enough. Right now when “family” history comes up all I have to say is “A.J.L. is my dad.” (died 2009) and “J.V.L. is mom.” “Look it up.”. Son gets to do the same with dad and I. (Yes, we do fill out the forms.) Not only will we I have to break in a new primary, or, I am afraid a dozen or more (given, well, now), everyone except son is on medicare. Oh joy.

            Liked by 2 people

            1. Make friends with the ladies at the front desk. That’ll keep you alive when everything else in the system is trying to kill you.

              Docs come and go, but office staff is forever. If they’re on your side and they like you, they”ll find a way.

              Sometimes this is hard to do, but if all you do is bring donuts with you that’ll help a lot.

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              1. I wish. They are always different too. Except the dentist and veterinarian.

                Our dentist (Dr. N.) we’ve had forever, is now part time. The main receptionist (Dr. N.’s wife) is still full time but training replacements. The new dentist (Dr. R.) who is now in charge is great. Rolls his eyes when discussing the Dr. N., something about now that he is writing the checks his Dr. N. suddenly decides the clinic needs all kind of stuff. Oh. Dr. R. is the son. So, while the dental clinic is M. Dentist, we use the two dentists first names. It is great. The clinic is not on the approved list for dental. Don’t care. Insurance on dental sucks. Always has. We’ll pay out of pocket before changing.

                Liked by 1 person

      3. Saw a story yesterday. Seems the Gov. of Maine imposed a vaccine mandate, no exceptions, no exemptions. So a bunch of experienced nurses/therapists got the boot. By a strange coincidence, even though they were “discharged,” the state ruled they weren’t entitled to unemployment. Many had to burn through their savings, take scut jobs, etc.
        Now, the government has removed the mandate in the face of serious doctor/nurse shortages and the hospital system is sending out, “You were One of Us, in the past….would you like to join us again? Let’s talk.” messages.
        I gather the State of Maine and the hospital system are receiving LOTS of mid-finger salutes.

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        1. The provincial systems across the country are -still- imposing the jab mandate and -still- pursuing nurses in court for refusing the jab. Consequently there is a large and growing “nursing shortage” as ever-increasing numbers of the remaining nurses burn out and quit.

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          1. Look at it from their perspective. Doctors and nurses cost money. If there are fewer doctors and nurses, expenditures for ‘Universal Free Healthcare’ can be reduced. Everybody benefits!

            Sort of like the farmer trying to save money on horse feed. Got it down to two oats a day, but then for some reason the damn horse up and died on him.
            ———————————
            Under socialized medicine, each patient incurs expenses which end when the patient dies. In private practice, each patient provides profits which end when the patient dies. Which patient would YOU rather be?

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          1. Lot of that going around. It’s a blessing to actually realize it (’cause you can’t let it go if you don’t know it’s there), but still.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. I am SO old that I have actually learned that you can’t -do- anything if you are angry and hating everything all the time. You can’t even pay attention to what’s happening right in front of your face if you are busy looking inward at your anger and hatred.

              Those things make you blind, ineffective and predictable. Also miserable.

              In my books a recurring theme is that you can’t make people do it right by punching them in the face. At most all you get is their attention. After that you have to set aside the negative emotions and WORK WITH THEM to fix whatever they broke. That’s how life is. Too bad for us.

              Now, on the -good- side, I stumbled across something very fun and positive. Siegfrieds Mechanical Music Museum in Rüdesheim, Germany had a Marble Machine party/festival/exposition this week.

              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvUU8joBb1Q This is the original Marble Machine.

              Now, quite apart from Wintergaten the band, or the musicians in it, the machines themselves have attracted some very excited kids who want to make music and they want to make crazy instruments. It is uplifting, something that I have found in short supply of late, which made it nice to find. Worth a little search to find the videos.

              Liked by 1 person

              1. Oh, yeah, I’ve been watching Martin’s Great Marble Machine Adventure for almost 3 years. It’s a blast.

                What really gets me is his incredible musical talent. He just picks up an instrument and starts playing, and magic comes out.

                Under communism, he’d be working in a State factory somewhere. This is why freedom is so essential. Talent and ingenuity like that can’t be regimented and commanded by some overbearing centralized authority.
                ———————————
                The one thing we need more of from the government is LESS!!

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    6. There are several elements.

      Also, this can be seen in law, and in some other things.

      You have a particular set of skills, which you worked hard on and maybe take pride in. You have a certain amount of people to keep happy, or not piss off to the point that you get black listed in the occupation, or at least locally. (Local is more a problem, if your alma mater is going to hell, and you want to continue working in your alma mater’s catchment area.) You have some people who can make it impossible for you to do business. You also have a bunch of people who you are friends with, or who helped you learn about the occupation. And, you can absolutely screw over the latter by making a stink in the wrong way. And maybe you have a vocation.

      If you have a vocation, it can be very easy to try to convince yourself that you can still continue, or at least that maybe the next career gamble will not be a bust.

      There may well be university professions that have not yet self destructed, or not yet grossly betrayed the public trust.

      I have the sense that they are living on borrowed time.

      Few are crazed enough to see the matter as I do.

      There seem to be three choices. 1. Do nothing. 2. Talk quietly to a few people. 3. Make a loud noise.

      If professionals fail to identify and repair the problem before it comes to public attention, and the public has to fix it, then the professional deserve the loss of trust and respect.

      Liked by 2 people

    7. The real thing about Omelas is that the restrictions included not so much as a kind word to the child.

      All you had to do is say something nice to the kid, and there’s nothing stopping you, and it’s all up.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. Le Guin managed to powerfully p1ss me off with that one. If that’s what “good writing” is, then she was “good.” Enraging and confounding the reader, a real public service.

        Yeah, all you have to do is one kind word, but they all chicken out and flee their shame instead. [irritable swearing.] Now that’s entertainment.

        Liked by 2 people

  6. “In the case of people on the right trapped in student loans that make no sense, it’s shame.”

    Yeah, been there. I shouldn’t have been so stupid as to take out those loans (but I was). I should’ve known the contract I signed was abusive at best, and most likely a scam (but I didn’t). Yet my failure to recognize those things when it mattered does NOT mean they aren’t real.

    I look at student loan cancelation as restitution to fraud victims. The fraud in this case being perpetrated by our national government, in collusion with the entire higher-education system. But I don’t just want student loans to be canceled. I want the whole system killed. For the same reason you don’t tell a Bernie Madoff type to make restitution and then let him continue running the same damn Ponzi scheme, there should be no more government-run or -guaranteed student loans at all. Cancel the loans, close the whole program, and issue no more. Zip. Nada. Zilch. Kill it with fire.

    Yes, I’m aware that it would throw the college/university system into chaos, and many colleges and universities would perish in the upheaval. The entire higher-ed system as we know it could collapse — and that’d be a feature, not a bug. I worked inside it for 20 years, and I know how rotten it is. The Augean stables have nothing on it.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. We didn’t get deeper than the research on the “Parent Plus” student loans for our son. We refused to use those. Didn’t pick up on any scam vibes. Just the terms were ridiculous on the face. Too many didn’t believe us and took them anyway. They learned differently, unfortunately. The University scams, not offering required classes in timely manner, changing degree requirements, that was a very unpleasant surprise.

      Liked by 1 person

    3. It would be somewhat less of a problem if student loans could be discharged through personal bankruptcy.

      It would help if college administrators would focus on providing education and minimizing overhead.

      But mostly, it requires people to stop treating higher education as a thrice-damned cargo cult.

      I dropped out as a Junior. Changing federal regulations meant there was not going to be job in my chosen field upon my graduation, so I stopped by the campus career center to see what help and guidance the school and their alumni network could provide.
      Turned out the answer to that, was that once you finished paying the university, their only interest was in you was your donating money to the university. It was a beautiful building, touted in all the promotional literature, and completely worthless for the advertised purpose.
      I cut my losses, and was back in the black in under three years.

      Then, I got married.
      I didn’t realize it at the time, but I married into more debt than I could imagine. It was simply mathematically impossible for her to pay off her student loans at the wages her credentials allowed. If they hadn’t been forgiven due to a chronic illness rendering her unable to work, we’d still be paying on them with no end in sight.
      And to reiterate the point, school was 3 decades ago.
      But perhaps the worst part, is that she can’t even contemplate that she might have made a bad decision.
      She got the most amazing education she could get.
      End of discussion and a blank look.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Step one, require universities to act as cosigners for all student loans used for tuition at their institutions.
        Step two, permit student loans to be discharged through bankruptcy.
        Will never happen as the universities know it would destroy their clever Ponsi schemes.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. No, discharging loans through bankruptcy should be step one. Step two is requiring the loan originators (that is, the lending institutions) to hold onto the loans for several years into the repayment period.

          THEY will hold the universities’ feet to the fire far more effectively than any legislation could ever do.

          Liked by 1 person

          2. “Step two is requiring the loan originators (that is, the lending institutions) to hold onto the loans for several years into the repayment period.”

            You mean the federal government? Because that’s who originates student loans.

            The university’s only function is to ask you how much of the offered loan you actually want to claim each semester, give that information to the feds, take that amount of money from the feds and apply it to your tuition and fees, and then hand you the balance in cash, if there is any.

            Liked by 2 people

      2. Federal student loans are a government grab for indentured servants.

        The universities that accept them are government entities, and the feds have acquired ever more increasing control over them.

        It is no accident that the prices are being increased.

        It is no accident that the carefully curated government tertiary, secondary, and primary schools are all in on sending people to tertiary schools.

        It is no accident that the employment regulations, and the mostly college ‘educated’ people that companies hire with are pushing for entirely unnecessary college degrees.

        It is no accident that the hothouse ideologies that can only survive in tertiary schools or in degree holders denying that tertiary schools are pretty worthless, deny that the hothouse ideologies are fascist.

        Illegal immigration is de facto slavery.

        If the people complaining most loudly about unfree labor really had a problem with unfree labor, they would address the schools and the illegals first.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. I remain amazed and grateful noone has suggested universal service as a way to “work off,” student loan debt. Military recruiting issue? No problem – the next tranche of student loan graduates are yours for five years. Be responsible – pay off your loan with service! (Dear G*d in Heaven – did I just re-invent, “work will make you free”?

          Liked by 1 person

  7. I’m fortunate that I owe nobody anything. And that I’m working with a friend that might give me a profession that lets me enjoy the years up to my retirement, then retire.

    I haven’t…given up on children, family, that kind of thing, but dear God I can’t see it with most American women. Short of someone from some fictional place where the ’10s and ’20s somehow missed them…I can’t see myself dating an American girl. And I don’t think there are a lot of American women around these days.

    I still retain hope. A great deal of it.

    The problem is trying to share it with people without getting my head bitten off.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Those “fictional places” are small towns — really small towns. There, you may find a woman or two who let the insanity pass her by and didn’t buy into it, usually because she was brought up to believe in a sane belief system that helped inoculate her against it. (For example, various traditional flavors of Christianity). The success rate isn’t 100%, obviously, but there are, proportionally, a lot more sane women coming out of small towns than out of big cities. I know because I married one of ’em: my wife is from a small rural town of 3,000 people.

      If you’re still in California, or the Eastern seaboard, or similar states, then try moving to a small town in Iowa, or South Dakota, or Texas. You’ll start meeting non-zero numbers of sane women if you do.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. We sane American women exist, we’re just quiet about it. And live in small towns. We’re usually the quiet ones, and yes, involved in our churches.

        There’s another way that sane women grow up – they see the insanity early on and rebel quietly. People think I’m crazy for refusing to participate in all manner of societal madness. I say, why feed the Machine? I’d rather tend my garden and write my stories than follow the crowd into university indoctrination and a traditional career. Will I be poor forever? Probably. Will I ever meet an actual man instead of the Lost Boys that my generation has produced? I certainly hope so.

        Liked by 1 person

        2. We sane American women exist, we’re just quiet about it
          ………………………

          I refused to participate in the casual hookup, which was happening in the ’70s when I was in college. Non-traditional careers. I was not dating when in college ’74 – ’77 and working for the USFS (we were dating by the time I changed districts but it was my classmate who headhunted me to the district, not the-guy-dating-who-became-husband). I learned to not even bother saying “no” (sexual harassment by the USFS male members of the crew? Don’t be hilarious. Of coarse it happened.) I just ignored them. They eventually gave up. It also helped that I was so naive that more than a few most innuendos weren’t understand. What fun was that? Second district none of that happened. None. Didn’t happen when went to work as a Log Scaler either. OTOH when the training supervisor introduced me, my 6’2″ husband was with us, also a trainee. He’d been training already for 3 weeks. Not discrimination. He could start immediately after the job offer. I still had to finish my last two weeks and final week. Point is, I never fussed, fretted, or threw a tantrum. I ignored the inappropriate and did my job.

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          1. I still remember being told my best male friend at the time got hit up by the SF club’s resident “liberated woman,” with, “I’ve had 10 lovers, and only two of them have been adequate. Wanna be number 11?”
            I was told his response was, “No thanks, I don’t take used merchandise.”
            Still makes me grin.

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            1. I had to laugh the 3rd season I was on that district. Wish I’d thought of it the first season. Pat started writing me letters, which were delivered to the tiny store, where even the locals got mail, so not private. Obviously I now had a boyfriend back at school. So the locals on the crew backed off (or got tired of being “ignored”. And?). She was helping her husband on the campaign to lure me to a different district for the next year :-) She might also have been working on the campaign to get future boyfriend/hubby and I to try dating too.

              Liked by 1 person

        3. I’ve given up for myself but I still root for everyone else. I’ll be happy for everyone who finds someone.

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          1. $SPOUSE and I found each other when we were in our 40s. We got married 7 years later, unfortunately too late for littles of our own, though we’re watching over some of the next generation(s).

            And this was in a big metro area. FWIW, Flyover Falls is a medium sized city (20K people or so), and there’s indications that sanity can be found there. We live in $TINY_TOWN (population of people in the medium 3 figures for the “metro” area), and yeah, we have crazies, but also sane ones. IMHO, the sweet spot is 1000-30,000 people for economic opportunities and good chances of finding somebody decent. $Tiny_Town is way too small unless you ranch.

            Liked by 1 person

    3. You’re in the wrong place for the kind of date you need.

      I’m further inland, and as a weird note I have a friend whose adult son works for a nationwide chain. Well, he somehow got added to a list for a store somewhere in the South and then ended up getting tagged for a dating site based on that location. And he found out that he couldn’t find a date locally based on interests, but the ones there were more suited to his ideals. Just based on online chatting.

      All that is just to say that you’re living in the wrong culture for that, and America has quite a few different cultures.

      Liked by 1 person

        1. d*mn it. Get out of my head.
          New place isn’t home. Nowhere but Colorado will ever be home again. I could maybe love Northern California, because it’s the climate I grew up with, but well–
          Only altitude and politics COMBINED pushed me out of Colorado. I’m not going to put my head in that political noose again.
          But New Place isn’t right. It just is less wrong. I can sleep at night. It will have to be enough for now.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Am I in your head?
            …Or are you in my head?
            …I think, Great Aunt, that we have the oddest echos in the oddest places and it is weird. Good. But weird.
            I agree with Northern California, especially near the coast. The climate is what I want. There were places and people that I wanted to be with.
            Now? With very few exceptions, the only thing I would feel if San Francisco was to burn to the ground is a great wave of pity. And a desire to make sure the flames don’t spread.
            Same with the East Bay, Berkeley and Oakland and even San Jose.

            Liked by 1 person

          2. I am that way about Oregon. Even Willamette Valley. It hasn’t ran us out, yet. We’ve talked about Montana or Wyoming. Not sure I can take that much snow in the winter. We’ve never considered E. Oregon. Would be better than Willamette Valley, but still stuck with Salem and Portland metro. Then there is all the small pine … Two foresters who have fought wildfire, one of which got regularly sent to the big fires? We each shudder, still, after 45 years, at the thought. We cut that off when we chose not to buy his parents house 37 years ago when they sold to move into Bend (next to La Pine State Park). Well before the current wildfire scares that are now and the last decade.

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  8. “Nobody wants to work anymore!”

    …Just about everyone where I work wants to work, but upper management cuts hours to the point that if even 2 people call in sick, it’s a mad scramble to cover everything. And sure, they’re always hiring more people… but there’s a limited amount of hours to portion out to all positions. More people hired does not mean more people working at any one point in time.

    Liked by 1 person

    2. There’s also that weird thing that I heard about a couple (?) of years ago in which people are submitting applications on the corporate websites, but the local group/office/affiliate isn’t getting them. Some individuals were discussing it (at Ace’s, I think, though it might have been here), and one of them confirmed it by mentioning that her son had applied on the website for the local supermarket repeatedly, but the manager never got the applications (and in fact apparently wasn’t getting any applications). The son eventually got the job because the manager directly hired him instead of waiting for corporate.

      Liked by 2 people

      2. Still happening. Been happening for decades in manufacturing, other trades, and software, depending on the company. Manufacturing anymore is temporary to hire and you must go through the temporary company. But if you just apply for jobs through the temporary company you don’t get sent out. Happened to son. Took someone from the company to pull his application and resume. The temp agency never sent it out. Hired through temp agency until they company decides to hire you, or not. If not, eventually you are let go, no fuss, no complications. Software? Don’t put down the correct buzz words and experience time, the temp agency software won’t spit out your resume to forward. Never mind that the computer buzz word searches, especially experience time, are impossible to meet. If you say you meet those qualifications it can be demonstratively proven false, even if you were part of the beta team. (Five years of experience on C# required! When not even the C# development team can claim that!)

        Even though the last company I worked for, when I did get an interview it was because I responded to a small ad in the paper. But it was because the owner had seen my name “somewhere before”. That and we both had a connection to a specific company (I’d worked for the company before they moved to Portland, and owner had rented computer space from a client of theirs when first starting the software). The reason he’d seen my name? Because while dropping off my resume at the another software company I already knew about, noticed this company was in the same complex, so I dropped my resume there too. This was over a year before I was called in for an interview.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Keep in mind that supermarkets aren’t typically looking for people with stellar resumes and buzz words. Not to knock on the people who work there, but many jobs at a supermarket tend to be good starter jobs (with the potential to work up the ranks of the company if you choose to stick around).

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Son builds cabinets. Start is minimum wage. With $1/hour premium for swing. $2/hour graveyard when they had graveyard. No hiring buzz words.

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              1. I will mention a recent head cashier got hired – not promoted – hired because she was retired from another company. Haven’t seen her in weeks because management seems to have finally figured out what I knew two days after meeting her: Flaming covert narcissist, mind always on how best to verbally savage anyone who “made a mistake” – read, pointed out something that was actually Head Cashier’s job that she needed to take care of.

                People aren’t getting promoted. Cross-trained to do more entry-level jobs for the same wage, maybe, but never promoted.

                Liked by 1 person

                1. I don’t know how many times, weeks to months, son was “acting supervisor” on his shift because a supervisor had left, and no one hired. After second time, after he’d actually been with the company for a year (18 months with the temp to hire 6 months stint) he started applying to let management know he was interested. Every supervisor hired was from outside, until they finally promoted him. He has now moved on. His shift never had the full staffing. Still required to meet same production as fully staffed day shift. He was headhunted away.

                  Liked by 2 people

                2. Saw this working at Disneyland almost twenty years ago.
                  The park had a long standing tradition of promoting from within the ranks. This led to managers and bosses who understood how a job was supposed to be done, and how valuable customer service is.
                  But a new park director said that a manager had to have experience, and started hiring from outside; people who didn’t know how a job was done, but were good at filling out paperwork.
                  My immediate boss, the “lead”, had years of experience in the park and could unflappably deal with any situation.
                  The area manager had managed a restaurant for several years, and apparently look good on paper.
                  From the few interactions I had with him, he neither knew nor cared how the job was done. Or how the job made certain aspects of his expectations unrealistic.
                  Personally, I blame the infestation of whack job HR departments, trying to make rules that have nothing to do with reality.

                  Liked by 1 person

    3. There is this. But there is ALSO, “I need hours, call me.” And then the guy who says that ALWAYS ‘has plans’ when the hours are available and he’s needed. Then he whines nobody calls about hour as.. WHY BOTHER? Why, Yes, I have been there. I have made those calls, and after a while decided to stop wasting my time calling.

      Liked by 2 people

  9. I walked away from government medical (DOD civ) job 2 years short of a pension the 1st of May. A system already broken is in utter collapse after the recent invention of a whole new agency to take control of military medicine away from the services. “To save money” you know, as if a whole new agency in DC has ever “saved money” on anything. They even took command away from all the hospital commanders. They have been re-designated “directors” to make sure they know they don’t run anything. All decisions come from unelected ding-dongs in DC who have never practiced medicine in their lives. For my installation that meant that since (5 or more years from now) they will off-site all dependent and retiree care, they will cut budget by attrition of providers now, dumping more and more on the remaining providers, then berating them for inability to meet “access” to care metrics without enough staff, so that more quit. By the time I left it was rats deserting a sinking ship, I was one of 3 clinicians who quit in a two week period.

    Add to that my constitutional inability to lie, which means that like a lot of folks, my one-on-one advice to patients (or staff) inclined to hear was not exactly in-line with the party line, I would eventually ended up on thin ice anyway. I was literally having to do chapter physical on kids for refusing the vaccine the same time I was failing other kids on physicals for advanced schools because they’d had provoked PEs from the vaccine. Attested to by their pulmonologists, not my opinion, not that anyone wants to talk about that.

    I think I’ve wandered off from my original thought which is simply that I had become too burned out to manage any part of my life except the damn job and survival. My husband, kids, friends, home were all suffering. I’m still practicing but am now in the gig economy, working Locum and feeling like a new human because I have control of how I work, when I work, and what I am willing to do as part of that work. I’m having fun, my conscience is quiet for the first time since the summer of 2020 and I don’t plan to ever go back to a full- (or even part-) time dedicated practice where I have to sit down, shut up, and do as ordered without being able to just walk away to the next gig.

    This despite my vocation for taking care of servicemen and women since I was 22, both as a GI and civ. I do miss the troops, but can’t watch what is being done to them.

    Not quite dropping out of practice, but definitely walking away.

    Liked by 3 people

    1. I wasn’t in medicine and I did manage to hold on until I was eligible for retirement, but otherwise very similar: getting terribly bitter and frustrated, and it was beginning to slop over into other aspects of my life. Am probably completely retired now that my beloved’s former office has decided it doesn’t need either of us, but don’t miss DoD at all.

      Liked by 1 person

    2. You just described the entire Canadian healthcare system. And the silence remains deafening up here. Mostly because there was one doctor and a couple of nurses who spoke up, and who are -still- being dragged through the courts. Not just fired, but charged with crimes over Farcebook posts.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I won’t lie, even now I keep a lot of stuff close to the vest because the reserve retirement I expect at 60 comes from the government and what if they decide that anyone too uppity just gets their pensions stripped? Or my VA benefits? Because I’m a trusting idiot, that’s most of my retirement plan and I am really regretting not being more diversified instead of banking on what had always been a sure thing. Hell, my handle isn’t that anonymous, and I certainly hang out at the wrong places :)

        Liked by 2 people

      2. There is a local doc here in BC who is basically facing mandatory re-education and massive fines, possibly loss of license.

        Why? Well the MOA addressed a patient by the legal name found on her Care Card. Problem: the kid is “trans” (bullshit) and mommy is a bug wheel in one of the local Pronoun People organizations

        Liked by 1 person

  10. In those cases where Colleges/Universities make it impossible to complete the requirements for a degree in the set amount of time via class scheduling , changing requirements, or other obstructive behaviors the loans should be recaptured from the schools for failing to provide the product paid for.

    In the cases where someone took out loans to pursue a field of study and got their degree in a timely fashion when even a little due diligence would have shown that there almost no way to get a job in that field, I’m inclined to make them pay. Though the loans should be dischargeable in bankruptcy. No good reason to make a life lesson a life sentence.

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    1. cases where someone took out loans to pursue a field of study and got their degree in a timely fashion when even a little due diligence would have shown that there almost no way to get a job in that field, I’m inclined to make them pay.
      ………………………

      Depends. When do you prove that pursuing a field of study is a viable option? When starting? Or near graduation? Because the job market can change that fast. Granted there are studies that are ridiculous no matter how it is spun. But one can’t change coarse of study direction easily even if the change is related closely to prior study (almost guarantied to add a term, two or three).

      Liked by 2 people

  11. My daughter is 24, and I guess she’s on the other side of the communication divide. Poor kid just isn’t interested in becoming somebody’s baby mama, which is the closest I see in a lot of relationships these days. Of course, daughter never got a college degree: she works as a pharmacy technician. Maybe the wealthier kids from her hs graduating class, the ones who got the scholarships and are now working high-paying whote collar jobs are different. I’m furious about the whole stereotyping about American women, though. From my daughter’s point of view, single guys just want to make enough money to buy weed/alcohol/video games. And our church is tiny and has no young men her age at all, so don’t suggest it.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Um. Where are you located? Know of a young man (age 34) who is not into weed or alcohol, and saves his money … Does play video games. He also works 40+ hours a week.

      Liked by 1 person

        2. 10 years isn’t too large of an age gap, for the right two. Cousin, age 44, just married (first), his bride is 32.

          Alas. He is in Oregon.

          Liked by 1 person

    2. Have her hunt down Engineering students. We are a bunch of workaholics who have very little opportunity to mingle with the fairer sex.

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      1. My brother’s an engineering student. While he did miraculously get married, can confirm that most of his friends are, um, not so social as they might be. They’re good guys, though, for the most part, if completely Odd.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Oh. The young man I’m talking about is an Eagle Scout. Does that help? (FYI. FWIW. He is going to never forgive me. Ever. Talking dating and him is forbidden.) Yes, my son (might be a bit prejudice in his favor?)

          Liked by 1 person

          3. I have nearly 10 years on my bride, who I met via a social introduction (church friend’s co-worker).
            This after untold numbers of tolerating awkward introductions that didn’t go anywhere. So keep making introductions!

            Liked by 1 person

        2. If they are anything like when I was in school (2000-2005), they tend to have a lot of departmental social stuff (pub nights, etc). If there is an engineering undergrad society or somesuch, they will have calendars etc. Believe me, no pretty girl is going to be shunned at one of those.

          Also, oddly enough, there were a ton of us into swing dancing…. That’s how I met my first girlfriend.

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    4. A big problem right now seems to be that both sides have forgotten how to court. And when men (at least) do remember, the current culture tells them that taking the actions that they need to take to meet a woman mean that he’s a sexist pig. Or maybe he’s tried those, but been burned by too many women playing games. As an example of the latter, Lotus Eaters has a clip up today on YouTube in which one of the guys mentions that he spent a couple of weeks pursuing a woman who was telling him “No,” and then moved on when he met the woman that he’s with now. When the woman that he’d formerly been pursuing found out that he was with another woman, the first woman was apparently shocked and indignant. She hadn’t really been trying to push him away. Instead, she’d been playing hard to get to make it more of a challenge for him (or something along those lines).

      Yeah, no. And that little story was preceded by a video segment in which a few different women are interviewed, and most of them (only one doesn’t, iirc) basically say, “When a guy approaches us and we say No, we’re not interested. Except when we really are interested, and we want to make sure that he’s willing to put in some effort.”

      It doesn’t take many women like that to sour a man on the experience. And society at large is meanwhile telling him that if he does make the effort, he’s a rapist. So he gives up on finding a wife. And a man without a goal of finding a wife will stay home, drink, and play video games all day long. Why shouldn’t he?

      On the other hand, they also mention the hot woman who’s the only woman without a date because all the guys think she’s unobtainable and never bother to hit on her.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. On the other hand, they also mention the hot woman who’s the only woman without a date because all the guys think she’s unobtainable and never bother to hit on her.

        Which is silly in some ways. There is something to be said for maxing out fear / apprehension and then….. there isn’t any worse after that, no matter how attractive she might be.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. It’s not just the fear of embaressment/failure, though. It’s the belief that the feminist culture has been pushing for at least a couple of decades now that a man merely showing an interest in a woman can potentially get him accused of sexual harassment. Or worse.

          And also, because she’s hot, she’s must have a boyfriend, right?

          Liked by 2 people

          1. My Dad got caught by this when he started looking around after Mom died. He wasn’t even interested in this woman but he was worried about her. She seemed seriously interested in him, insisting on hugs and so forth. Until she started accusing him of stalking her. Which was negatively entertaining, because every time they met it was VERY public or I was physically present. Usually both. I tried to explain to him that he needed to break off contact completely if he didn’t want it to escalate. He didn’t get it. He and Mom were married 45 years and he had no idea what a stalking accusation meant.

            Liked by 1 person

          2. Right on all counts, this and your post describing the confusing signals that Lotus Eaters went over.

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      2. “And that little story was preceded by a video segment in which a few different women are interviewed, and most of them (only one doesn’t, iirc) basically say, “When a guy approaches us and we say No, we’re not interested. Except when we really are interested, and we want to make sure that he’s willing to put in some effort.””

        Of course if a gal says “Yes” right away, then the guy will think you’re easy and won’t value you at all…

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      1. Hi Barb, this is Ian. He’s clean, doesn’t make messes in the house, has a brain too big for the world in general, and is perhaps too decent for his own good. Also, I think a day’s driving distance away from you? Or half a day, depending. Maybe y’all should also talk.

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        1. doesn’t make messes in the house

          You haven’t seen the parts of half completed projects strewn everywhere.

          Also currently working at walmart while having difficulty finding work in my field.

          Liked by 1 person

              1. Check out Cascade Software Systems – https://www.cascadegovsoftware.com/

                Manager: Ayren

                I know they need programmers. Work from home.

                Might not be exactly what you are looking for but programming with phone support when clients call in. It should be better than working for Walmart.

                Yes, I know of which I write. This is the company I retired from (7 1/2 years ago). Okay it has been bought by the Canadian private equity since then, 70+ old owner boss sold and retired, Ayren put in as manager. But Ayren was being groomed to take over (just he and his wife didn’t want to go into the debt to purchase it). As far as the phone support I learned as much from clients from their questions and expectations as I did from (cough) client documentation (not much), and code. Support is not (repeat Not) call center support. There are days the phone never rang.

                I am not getting anything from letting you or anyone else know that they need programmers. I have no idea what the pay structure will be. I don’t even know what the insurance is going to be like because new owners might have better options with multiple small firms than the small 10 person firm it was when I worked there. (Paid for employee’s insurance, but frankly other than basics it was catastrophic insurance and sucked. Not unusual. Hubby’s union insurance was family insurance and a whole lot better. )

                If you are interested and want to use my name that I pointed you in their direction. Sarah has permission to let you know less public option if she can. Also you can just say a former retired female programmer employee whose name you don’t know, told you (that would be me, the only female programmer employee, to not confuse me with the bosses wife who did payroll).

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        2. I can vouch for him, too, as someone who actually roomed with him during LibertyCon! What Sarah says is true. =)

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  12. @ Sarah > “a left who doesn’t want to know the truth, but to sell their view of how the world should be as truth”

    Which is what the J6 Commission Hearings (because they talked, and you were supposed to hear) were all about: shaping the narrative.

    But they did a lot of preparatory work to get the framework for that narrative.

    “Ep. 15 Former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund reveals what really happened on January 6th. Our Fox News interview with him never aired, so we invited him back.”

    Not much new to readers here, and Tucker is a bit too disingenuous about the “What does it all mean?” schtick, considering he’s interviewed Sund before, and read his book.
    I suspect that’s his own bit of “narrative shaping” for new viewers.

    Liked by 1 person

  14. I walked away from academia in the spring of 2020. Best decision I ever made. Outside of the business school, I was the token “conservative” one in a college of over 100 faculty members. It was depressing. I was cut out of committees, awards, etc. However, I was the one students came to when they had problems with faculty grading them on their opinions, or take on a topic and not on how they presented it, or when they had issues with administrators who went over the top in order not to “offend” anybody. I thought long and hard about what my leaving might mean, and did I want to “abandon” those students. In the end, I admitted I was, not miserable (yet), but certainly headed that way. Not getting promoted to full was the final signal I needed that staying would be hell.

    Husband and I had planned for it and were living off of his salary and banking mine for a year, so we had the money to leave when that became a necessity.

    Liked by 1 person

    2. “I thought long and hard about what my leaving would mean, and did I want to ‘abandon’ those students”

      That’s one of the things that keeps me working for the state — the agency I work for collects public comment on proposed regulations and we often help negotiate changes in those regulations. (The federal government has no parallel body but many states do.) Just this week, for example, I have been fielding phone calls and e-mails from disgruntled day care providers, birth center personnel, doctors, dentists and pharmacists concerning various proposed state regulations. Sometimes I get wrong number calls from people who I end up talking to for half an hour or more because they can’t get ahold of a real person at any other state agency, and they have, sometimes very tragic and heartbreaking, issues they need to discuss with someone. Such as the lady whose daughter died in a Chicago area hospital of a hospital acquired infection and wanted to know where she could file a complaint against the hospital. Or another lady whose mother died in a nursing home when she got the wrong meds and the nursing home won’t admit they did anything wrong. Etc., etc.

      I feel like I have to be there for these people or else they won’t have anyone else to listen to them argue their case (though I’m not a lawyer and don’t play one on TV). Now I know I’m not LITERALLY their only advocate, we have a director and other people on our staff who could do this, but they have enough on their plates as it is. Did I mention that our agency employed 15 people when I started in 2007 and we’re now down to 9 via attrition and retirements? And that we’ve functioned on the exact same annual budget since 2010?

      Liked by 1 person

    3. I have had co-workers ask me why am not a teacher or even professor of some sort (seriously? Ox?!) and have replied that BS from one end is enough, and yet more from administrators… I do NOT need.

      Liked by 2 people

  15. I’ve referenced Whatifalthist here a number of times, and he’s been doing some interesting videos on the breakdown of society. One of the latest ones was another in his set of possible futures for Western civilization. This one: the 30 Years War period.

    Basically, all the institutions are completely corrupt and run by lunatics who are can’t really enough people who actually believe in them to actually run a major war. So it all devolves into convoluted low intensity conflicts mostly run through demotivated conscripts and mercenaries and fought mostly until one (or both) of the combatant’s finances collapse and they default on their loans.

    Rinse, wash, repeate, until some absurd fraction of the population is dead, and enough of the fruity loops have gotten themselves killed / poisoned / defenestrated / involved with rabid squirl that the remaining saner heads decide this is an appalling and stupid way to live and hammer out a new international agreement that we’re not going to do that again, and a functional world emerges for a while.

    The thing that stuck me, is I think I’ve been saying for almost a decade that the powers that be-ish seem bound and determined to repeal the Peace of Westphalia. I just hadn’t quite put the two together.

    He also pointed out that the merc life is a pretty attractive deal for most young men: they get purpose, they get the girls, and don’t actually see that much conflict, since they’re usually the only armed band around.

    It sucks for everyone else, because in an area where only the mercenaries are active, most civil authority will just let them do what they want rather than get a tank through their living room.

    Liked by 1 person

    2. 17th century Europe didn’t have 100+ million people armed with (at least) 600 million modern guns. Any wannabe warlord that tries to sic mercenaries on his/her/its neighbors will get a very short, very brutal lesson in “snipers lurking behind every blade of grass.”

      Because most people want to live in a stable, productive civilization. One that allows them to keep the fruits of their labors, and discourages the old ‘rape, loot, pillage and burn’ nonsense. A lot of them will fight to preserve civilization, and which side do you think most of the military veterans will be on?
      ———————————
      Pacifism will, at best, get you a nice peaceful trip to the slave pens. At worst — tell me, have you ever heard of the Aztecs?

      Liked by 1 person

  16. On student loans, the theme I see most in my corner of X, the site formerly known as Twitter, is pure, angry resentment from people who paid off their own or their children’s loans. “I paid mine off! I scrimped and I saved and I gave up things I wanted for years to pay off those loans ! And now you, Ms. Gender-fluid, Gender Studies major who gets on Twitter to sneer at people like me wants ME to pay YOUR loan? $#%&!! off!”
    Which means that once again, a large group is being tarred with the actions of a tiny faction.

    Like

    1. Yep. These are not gender studies majors, or for that matter unproductive people.
      And you know what? We paid a vast portion of our sons’ and are hoping to pay for the rest, but if they can be forgiven, I don’t care.
      And no, the people wouldn’t be paying. As I said, the costs are sunk, the money spent.

      Like

    2. wants ME to pay YOUR loan? $#%&!! off!”

      Which shows how completely out of touch they are with how these loans work.

      There is no natural law of the Conservation Of Money. No matter how much the inherent value theory cultists might want there to be.

      Liked by 1 person

  19. Wow, this post sums up something I’ve been dying to say for weeks or months, but didn’t for fear that I would look like some spoiled whiny bitch.

    I’m a conservative, practicing Catholic woman and have been all my life of (nearly) 60 years. I hang out on right leaning blogs like this one, and Insty, and sometimes Ace of Spades. By the standards of SOME conservatives and SOME trad Catholics, I feel that my life has been a complete failure for the following reasons:

    I work for the evil and corrupt State of Illinois, which makes me an overpaid worthless parasite whose eventual pension will bankrupt everyone else, and probably a cooperator in abortion, transgenderism, CRT and all the other crap our shitty governor pushes. This despite the fact that the agency I work for is a legislative (not executive) branch agency and actually, sometimes, does good by mitigating the effect of proposed state regulations on the public. I know intellectually that none of this is my fault but it still bothers me sometimes.

    I LIVE in the evil and corrupt State of Illinois, which marks me as an idiot who wasn’t smart or able enough to get out and probably deserves everything I did NOT vote for. (Not to mention that we will definitely be on the wrong side if/when Civil War 2.0 breaks out.) I literally feel like I don’t belong here anymore, but, the small town where we bought a house is nice, and hubby enjoys working on it, and he doesn’t want to hear any talk about “how we don’t belong here”.

    I had only one child who turned out to be autistic, who qualified for SSI and who can’t get any job outside of a sheltered workshop with others like her. That makes us both parasites, and since I failed in my duty to bear and raise multiple productive citizens, there are some who argue online that I should not be entitled to get Social Security.

    Daughter and I are both obese despite exercising regularly. Yes, we have a weakness for carbs and sugar. Still that marks us as ugly, lazy and selfish.

    Hubby was a practicing Catholic when we met but stopped going to Mass about 20+ years ago because it was “too stressful” with our young child in tow. Which means I failed in my primary duty to “get him to heaven” and be a good example to him.

    We have lots of credit card debt, much of it incurred by hubby in the course of supporting his various hobbies but a lot of it is my fault too. We make the payments regularly but it does crowd out a lot of other things we’d like to do with our house. Still, just the mere fact that we have that debt means we’re stupid and probably deserve to spend our old age in poverty.

    I dread confrontation of any kind, and rarely or never discuss abortion, transgenderism, CRT, or other issues in person or online except among people whom I know agree with me, which makes me a sniveling coward who’s doing nothing to stop the progress of the Left. I’ve never gone out and prayed at an abortion clinic, and my daughter and I are still going to the local Y even though it was recently involved in a transgender locker room controversy, since daughter would be heartbroken if we gave it up and wouldn’t understand the reason why. If I were any kind of a serious conservative or Christian I would be out marching in front of the clinic every day and I would have immediately quit going to that Y, therefore I am a cuck and a sellout, right?

    All these things weigh on me frequently, but I cannot discuss them openly with anyone, not even my husband — if I do he tells me I’m being a “drama queen” and “making everything all about me”. I used to be a generally optimistic and energetic person but for the last couple of years it’s as if all the wind went out of my sails. But I’m old school enough that I just suck it all up and keep going every day because other people are depending on me to do it.

    Thanks, Sarah, for giving an Odd like me a chance to say these things.

    Like

    1. Eh. The obese thing. The number of people who give me a magic bullet and/or tell me to exercise when I exercise more than they do.
      Look, it’s genetics more than anything. women in my family tend to be massive. I’m massive. The only way to be skinny is to be young AND NOT EAT.
      Sigh. Shrug. You’re not alone.

      Like

      1. Speaking of triggers, I really need to do both the complete and very long writeup of all of the ways that BMI is bullshit and the one on (overmuch) fat and why it’s most often a following indicator of health, not a leading indicator. With links to the article that shows the biggest predictor of obesity happens to be where you are in the watershed, indicating factors outside of your control. (And this goes for lab rats, with the most controlled and documented diets in the world.)

        Anyway. Risk factors for extra weight include hormone fluctuations, stress, and age. Which mean women over forty get it from all directions. Fun!

        Liked by 1 person

      2. Grandmother was fairly thin, and had dementia. Mom was skinny and had dementia. I’m not as skinny as I used to be, and I hope to Himself I can avoid going like they did. (When Mom passed, she had the perfect transgender figure- she looked like a boy. And she still knew me…..mostly.)
        Anyhow, a few extra pounds and a clear mind sound a lot better than a perfect BMI and staring off into the distance in perpetuity.

        Liked by 1 person

    2. Carbs are more important than calories when you’re trying to lose weight. For some people, MUCH more important.

      Ignore the calories. Control the carbs.

      Like

    3. One thing common to both (all) sides in the current mess is judgmentalism. You are working to make your corner of the liberal wasteland a little better, which is a good thing. Think of yourself as an undercover agent for the forces of Heaven.

      Liked by 1 person

    4. Ok, lets take that one item at a time.

      You work for the state. Well, someone is gonna get that paycheck, might as well be you. Dude, I work for the public health authority here, and my opinion of its philosophical foundations and sustainability is not printable.

      You live in IL. Ok, moving is hard as shit, especially when you have a kid who sounds seriously special needs. So let’s file this under ‘You and about 10 million other non-Chicagoans”

      Your kid is no parasite. Does she need help? Sure. But it is hardly her decision that made it so. Shit happens, not your fault or hers.

      Obese despite regular exercise? Yeah, that puts you one up on me – I have a sweet tooth and don’t exercise. Also, get your thyroid checked. Seriously – Sarah has the details of what might be the issue.

      Credit card debt? Sucks, but unless you are actually a spendthrift, it comes under shit happens. You do not want to know our debt load. You are at least making payments on it, which is responsible.

      Getting hubby into Heaven? You can’t force someone onto a path of virtue. If he seriously doesn’t want to go to Church, he is, in the end, an adult.

      Non-confrontational? Eh, you and a zillion other people.

      You are human. Congratulations.

      Or as a far more eloquent man than I put it:

      “You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve,” said Aslan. “And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor in earth.”

      Stop beating yourself up over it.

      Liked by 1 person

          1. One of my favorite paradoxes:
            God’s perfect plan, requires us imperfect people.

            Just read the Bible for the extensive list of imperfect people He uses.
            You know it is God you heard when your response is:
            “You want me to do what!>\?”

            I give you Elijah, sent to a “widow” who has Nothing.
            If I feel down, I ask myself if my situation is worse than either of theirs. So far not even close.

            Like

              1. Paradoxically, He has a plan, one that covers more than 14 billion years and 100 billion light years, and is also intimately involved with each of his characters, including termites and mosquitos. Yet seems to be doing it all by the seat of His pants.

                I am impressed. He also plays dice with the universe, (loaded dice). It helps to be able to go sideways in time.

                Liked by 1 person

  20. No, the problem is that the left QUITE LITERALLY believes that “narrative shapes the world.”

    Well sure. Which is why how someone identifies themselves can over rule reality.
    Which is why all these biological males identifying as female will solve our population shortfall by having a host of babies. You just wait and see.

    Liked by 1 person

  21. There is a case to be made that many student loans were taken out by people who are, effectively, victims of fraud…fraud on a massive scale. In which case they should be made whole out of the assets of the defrauding parties, i.e. the “institutes of higher learning” (more like “higher grifting” at this stage).

    Full disclosure: Still burdened by loans taken out for two years of study at an ITT joint. May not be fully objective, though I would say I am conflicted.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Strikes me as odd that a pack of ambulance chasing lawdogs have not filed massive class action suits equal to or greater than the billions taken from the tobacco companies. Consider that many of our institutions of higher learning (gag) have just been found guilty of racial discrimination, allowing entry to less qualified students on purely racial grounds, while excluding those with superior test scores thus guaranteeing more failed students.
      Add in knowingly selling degrees for outrageous sums in tuition that will never ensure employment sufficient for even successful graduates to ever pay off those loans. Really does not pass the “reasonable man” smell test common in civil law.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. One payoff is not a good calculus to a lawyer if it gets you blacklisted, and needing to switch careers.

        And, it looks like a lot of law schools are run by crooks who would be willing to trade on alumni influence to do just that.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. “And, it looks like a lot of law schools are run by crooks who would be willing to trade on alumni influence to do just that.”

          Law schools? Try the state bar associations. This article lays out how that works and also how they WILL steal 2024.

          https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/athena-thorne/2023/08/07/heres-why-legal-challenges-to-the-2020-election-didnt-go-anywhere-n1715765

          “In response to a post I wrote a while back about a different legal issue, commenters explained what happens to lawyers who stand up against the Left. “As soon as they take the case, their state bar association will be deluged with complaints, and their licenses will be suspended/revoked,” noted one.

          Rob Meltzer, an attorney with the Mountain States Law Group, is one of the rare attorneys today who will take on fights against Big Left. “Take a lawsuit that looks unpopular, and you disqualify yourself for the bench,” he explains. “Take an unpopular stance, risk getting your house bombed. Or you end up dead. Sounds like a great law practice when corporate law beckons, no?””

          Liked by 1 person

    2. MASSIVE FRAUD. Probably most of the people who have loans.
      WEIRDLY the “pink hair, has degree in underwater weaving” people, are usually from rich families and paid out of pocket.

      Like

  22. Strangely enough, I can see both sides. I see those currently struggling to pay off a debt that they would never have incurred given full information. I also see those who worked day and night to pay off loans that were just as fraudulent, and for the same reasons, who are now saying “Why should only the current victims of the fraud be compensated? Why not me?”

    Because that’s what it comes down to. The difference being that no one wants to score political points from the previous victims. The banks will lose nothing from them, the politicians do not fear them or want their vote. Most are old enough and/or experienced enough to see the fraud aspect of the current push for loan forgiveness. Which is not forgiveness at all, since the .gov never gives up control once they have it.

    Just dismissing those who already lost the shell game, and insisting that only those who are currently in debt to the dealer matter, is ignoring half the problem.

    They were all equally defrauded. But simply telling the dealer to forgive the current debt (not to return the money, because the house has already taken its cut) denigrates the other (and future) victims of the fraud.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I do understand that. Keep in mind we paid half of our sons’ educations, and all told the expenses probably amounted to 200k, including books and fees.
      Yeah, in a perfect world I’d want restitution, but you know what? THE URGENT THING is to stop what amounts to debt slavery to the government. NOT FOR THE VICTIMS but for the health of the republic.

      Like

  23. I have always been of the opinion that, if society (through its government) believes that credentialed individuals benefit that society, the assistance should be through grants. Which should, of course, be limited to courses of study that are believed to be beneficial. (Shortage of primary care doctors? Okay, grants for pre-med students, for those in grad school/internship/residency for that specialty. With provisions that they must be paid back only if the recipient does not end up practicing as a primary care doctor.)

    The issue of whether, and what, modern university credentials are of benefit to society is another one, for another time. Errands to get started on…

    Like

  24. My beef is I know if there is a forgiveness of loans, it will be a combo vote buy, chrony payoff, and soak the workers.
    I have said before I think the best thing (and that means it’ll never happen) would be for there to be a scale on the debt . . . got a Stem and are using it? . . . have you paid say 1/3 or more? Did they make you take some stupid classes to get it? if Yes, the rest is gone and the UNI has to reimburse the rest of the loan. If you’ve not paid in much you are still on the hook for some of it. Got a Genders Studies Masters with a DIE minor? You are still on for half. and the Uni should give back 2/3. But what about those who’ve paid back all? I guess the same. give them back a sliding scale depending on the usefulness of the degree with an increase for crap mandatory classes (manager’s daughter who interns at work takes several engineering and a flipping Diversity Studies class because they make her). The knob who had a Masters in Puppetry? I say he should pay twice. but that’s just me.

    This needs a lot of work, of course.

    Like

    1. That’s where this gets complicated. Based on prior history, we know that they would raise taxes to make up the shortfall (which, yes, is no shortfall, but it is a loss of expected future interest income) and the rest would vanish into a black hole. They would set up some insanely complicated and borderline sociopathic process to “apply” to have your debt forgiven, with every victim fighting for the crumbs that will actually “forgive” only a tiny fraction of the actual debt. All made up money, of course, that’s the way they do things.

      We take out loans from a bank, which takes out loans from the Fed, which makes up money out of thin air and charges the taxpayer interest on that air. That money is paid to a university which makes up a diploma out of thin air. We go to work and get money which is also nothing but air, but which we are legally required to use…

      Sorry. Rant over.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. Or not. Just ask any business owner what it was like to apply for COVID relief to keep the doors open, from the billions that were supposedly available for the purpose.

        This would be 60 times worse.

        Liked by 2 people

        1. “This is the first date we were allowed to apply, and the money was already gone.”

          Yeah, I know businesses that had that happen. And nonprofits.

          Like

        1. The Law of Moses provided for exactly that — every 50th year was supposed to be a jubilee year in which all debts were canceled, people who had been sold, or had sold themselves, into slavery to pay debts were freed, and land sold to pay debts was restored to its original owners. Whether or not the ancient Kingdom of Israel/Judah ever actually followed these practices to the letter is uncertain. I’m sure there are all sorts of reasons why this would never work in the modern economy but still, the notion of giving everyone an economic “do over” at least once in their lifetimes — maybe twice if they lived long enough — is intriguing to me.

          Liked by 1 person

    2. It won’t soak anyone. Look, the interest ALONE has more than repaid the loans, but it went to feed the bureaucracy.
      NO ONE will BE AFFECTED. Just disband the bureaucracy. Period. Find BGE’s comment on yesterday’ post. He partly explains it.
      BUT here’s the thing: the money is excessively and unpaiable even by those using their education. it was designed to create debt slavery to the government.
      Now, vote buying, etc. That’s what Biden is trying to do, and his “forgiveness” is mostly ornamental. The only people I know with 10 k debt either went to school 40 years ago, or have paid most of it off, somehow.
      It’s ornnamental and fixes nothing. it’s vote buying.
      what we need is for the legislature to investigate, and then declare a debt jubilee. Period.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. alas, I have faith in our gov’t to find a way. Tack something offensive as all getout and whatnot. the Relieving College Loan Overcharge Bill will be 1500 pages of fine print and even if we get the bureaucracy of that reduced, the office they’ll create for overseeing its dismantling will be twice its size.
        Yes, I know I am being a bit of a Betty Bummer (Debbie Downer’s older Sister). You can smack me later (~_^)

        Liked by 1 person

  25. No, the problem is that the left QUITE LITERALLY believes that “narrative shapes the world.”

    Almost. What the left believes, quite literally, is that “narratives ARE the world”.

    Like

    1. When we see something on TV, or the internet, we don’t much care who said it; we are primarily concerned about whether it’s true or false.

      Leftroids are all about the messenger, and it doesn’t matter what the message is. If an Eeevul Right-Wing Conservative says something, it is Wrong and must be Opposed at all costs! True or false don’t enter into it.

      Look how they’re calling Sound Of Freedom a ‘Q-Anon Conspiracy!’ Never mind the movie was made before Q (-Anon or not) was ever a thing, it’s Eeevul! REEEEE!!

      That’s how they approach everything — attack The Enemy, not address the argument. Smear the source and they can ignore the message.
      ———————————
      ‘Progressives’ suppress free speech because they don’t have the means to suppress free thought.

      Yet.

      Like

  26. It’s also helpful to stories from competent people who are making things work for them. Dave Ramsey’s radio show and YouTube channels are good for that. For example, you can listen to people explain how they paid off their student loans, bought and paid off houses, and started building wealth.

    No gimmicks, no BS, just real people and their stories.

    Liked by 1 person

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