Tag: 8 years

Subtweeting #521

liam neeson meme from imgflip https://imgflip.com/i/49hzjyI’ve been refraining from writing for a long time. The world got a little bit crazy, and my writing is and always had been intended an outlet of importance only to myself. But this year…2020…it has sucked more than anything has sucked before. Seeing so many people hurt, so many people sick, and so many people left without any real help, it’s kind of lit the fires again (so to speak.) This is me just dipping my feet back in the pool. No citations, no extra research because honestly I don’t have time for it. But who knows, maybe I will start making more time for writing again.

So…here it goes. My subtweeting is usually to avoid the crazy mob of pundits’ fans and their socks. Maybe someday I’ll shift a focus to being an influencer, but right now most of what I see is people using their powers to rile up their fans with shit-poor information.

The bigger problem with this, is that it is inspiring conflict, not resolution. Inspiring people to act and protect is beautiful. Inspiring people to suppress, to harm, or do violence, by word, inference, or gesture…that makes one part of the problem.

If the response is violence, suppression, or harm, it means that the system is either incapable of addressing the problem, or there is an agenda that specifically seeks to condone/promote the disparity.

If you’re wondering why there isn’t more oversight, simply look at everyone not voting for it. That’s literally all that is necessary. Vote them out, and vote representatives in that support term limits.

It might take a decade, but the end result will be all of the old good-ol’ boys will be gone, and younger, less corrupted representatives will only get 8 years(or whatever) to make their difference. The old guys will not be able to maintain their status quo.

We would also see quickly, a more diverse representation. Is the majority still white? Yep, but not for long. By creating/supporting initiatives that lessen the strength of minority votes, institutional agendas remain entrenched.

I hate to say it, but look at Russia. Putin’s playbook was a long long game, and it worked. Ignore that he’s scary as hell, but he systematically realign most of Russia to his agenda. I think honestly that’s the same playbook we’re seeing from the political institution now.

A small change in policy now nudges demographics to a more controllable voting situation. Think of it as non-geographic gerrymandering. And here we are, letting it happen, year after year, letting the same people do the same things to us.

Vote them out…vote them out and for heaven’s sake, don’t let them stay and continue to do harm.




In the Army…almost!

Something you might not know about me…I was in the Army…for about two days.

The Story…

Believe it or not…I was recruited and sworn into the Army at age 16 to become a Russian linguist. At the time, this was a DREAM job for me in so many ways, they weren’t just paying for school on the GI…I had a full ride for 6 years of school and OCS when I signed on for 8 years (all this was in writing).

Of course, this is ME…so nothing really goes as planned. Just two days after swearing in, a quack of a contract surgeon that wasn’t even a part of the MEPS staff examined my knee (required for anyone joining that had an arthroscopic surgery in the previous year), and determined that my kneecap was too loose for service in the military…thus permanently disqualifying me from service.

If you’d known me at the time, you’d know how bad a call this was on the doctors part.

This was a really pivotal point for me…because up until this point I had a plan, and it included a paid-for masters degree and an extra $60k sign-on for my first 8 years and made OCS mandatory. This wasn’t just school, it was a guaranteed career with some serious career opportunities available when I was done. When I found out I wasn’t going to be able to serve…it had an incredibly negative effect on me. I couldn’t do what i thought I was supposed to be doing. Never you mind that I was already physically capable of all the physical training requirements, and nevermind that I’d aced all their tests. I was mad because I wasn’t ever going to get to serve in the manner I thought I was supposed to.

…and it’s always been something I felt everyone should do, myself included.

Being the all or nothing sort of guy I am…I wouldn’t even speak to my recruiter again. He fought and fought hard for me, apparently he went pretty for up to get the ruling changed…so much that it actually took him six months to get my status changed contingent on my willingness to re-enlist, but by then I’d already slipped down into the craziness that was my senior year and was bent on getting a full ride to some obscure college as far from everything local as possible.

It was when I found that my aptitude for learning saved me, and I learned that I could enjoy life without it needing to be rigid.

Eventually, I learned that it was their loss, not mine.

Anyhow…thus ends the day’s journal. 😉

-T