Neanderpundit

One of my greatest failings, and one of the things I have the most trouble with, is Hatred.

I work very hard not to develop hatred, and I am not always successful. When I do manage to accumulate some, I do my level best to shed it as soon as I can.

Hatred is a pair of blinders, a way your enemies (and darker forces) have of preventing you from thinking clearly.

THis is not the same as anger, though anger can have the same effect if you allow hatred to be involved. Anger should not, properly speaking, be an overwhelming force; I tend to think that if anger overwhelms it is because it has opened a door for hatred to enter.

I have never served in the military. Generations before me saw to it that it was unnecesary for my generation, though plenty of others have since. What I observe, and certainly, my observations are those of an outsider who has not been there, is that hatred is not an asset under fire.

What I do know its this: Whether hunting, or pest control, or slaughtering farm animals, it’s a job. I suspect it’s the same in the military, though as I say, I have no personal experience to relate in that manner.

There is a common theme among all who would not have us defend ourselves definitively, and it is “If we do X we become JUST LIKE THEM”

Well, if we do not do X, we become them. If we do not do X, our way of life is in some grave danger.

And it is specifically because of people who cannot envision doing a tough job when it needs to be done, people who feel the need to wait until hatred overcomes them before they can do a hard job. There is no room for hatred anywhere. There is neither room for believing that you must hate to stop someone from harming you or your loved ones. You have to do that dispassionately, because it is just a job, like making sure termites don’t eat your walls or rain doesn’t wash away your foundation. Do it and get on with your life. If you wait for hatred and anger and fear to give you a reason to act, you have waited too long, and the very hatred and fear and anger you espouse as the only legitimate reason to act will blind you and render you incapable of doing what needs to be done, when you need to do it. Just my .02

There’s an episode Mike spends mostly inside a dairy, and one of the things he does is run a carousel milker.
In order to keep dirt and shit from sticking to a cow’s udders, the big dairy farms use a blowtorch to very quickly burn all the hair off a cow’s udders.

That got me to thinking.

usually, that’s a bad idea.

This time, I had no idea how bad until I actually tried it.

Manscaping with a Bic is the blue fairy godmother of all bad ideas.

It’s not even the way the hair burns down and seems to want to flame out right at the hair follicle, nor the sharp and unexpected pain it causes, but those things in combination with the smell of burning nut hair, combine to make this something you should just Not Do.

I’m sure, if you have a half of a brain, you’re freaked out by the bullshit going down all over the place, and the utter lack of action on the part of President Pixiedust.

You may be pissed about all of this, but you might just be about to get more pissed.

See, we’ve been, as a nation, Exceptional. We’ve done some dumb shit, but even the dumb shit has, in is own way, been exceptional.

And President pixiedust hates that.

The way he’s treated our friends, the way he’s treated our enemies, the way he’s handled domestic affairs and foreign ones, is not because he is incompetent, for he is not. It is not because he’s inept-he may well be, but his handlers are not.

No, this is all because he, and his handlers, want to show the rest of the planet that we can be mediocre too. “We’re bad friends! We’re stupid enemies! We fuck up the environment! We really are just like you!

Pascal has a piece in which he talks about having our nose rubbed in our mediocrity. You should read it. he almost nevber crapblogs so it’s probably safe over there.