Survivalism, confirmation bias, and the "Obama Boom"
A common topic on survivalist forums is "normalcy bias". This is where people assume that because something has always been a certain way that it will always be so. Survivalists like to whip this one out as the cause of the poor downtrodden sheeple just not getting the "fact" that TEOTW is surely upon us. Never mind that TEOTW hasn't happened yet, that all their predictions of it have been wrong.
Well, I want to add another bias to the mix. Confirmation bias is where a person goes looking for "proof" of the truth of a preconceived opinion. If one only has a hammer, one will see nothing but protruding nails. Survivalists have a BIG problem with confirmation bias imo. They are so convinced that the world is about to end that they grab onto any strand of "proof" they can find. I guess they don't want all the money they've spent on preps to be a total loss.
I have been thinking about confirmation bias lately as the result of two articles on MSNBC. One was about some prognosticator saying that "we are in year six of a 20 year boom". Well, ok, opinions are like assholes, everybody has them and most of them stink like poo. But today, MSNBC directly referenced the "Obama Boom". This wasn't some dude who has smoked too much wacky tobacky blowing hot air, but a news item that pointed out that the improving economy may change people's opinion of Obama.
Anybody remember "2016: Obama's America"? When Obama was first elected, this video popped up, asserting that America would be in a state of near collapse and chaos if Obama got eight years to ruin it. Well, a weird thing happened on the way to TEOTWAWKI: San Francisco has such a tight housing market that sellers are making the sale of their houses contingent on the seller wrapping up a place to move to. Wall Street is on a tear. The numbers of employed persons in the state of Oregon is at an all time high.
The normal response among the far right to this is something along the lines of "who you gonna believe, me and my fellow doomsters or your lying eyes?" Searches for survivalist topics are down two thirds from a December 2012 peak. (Apparently, many thought that a nonexistent prediction from a calendar that is only 50% legible by archaeologists, never mind laypeople, was far scarier than an inexperienced president.) Doomer Michael Snyder (you know him, The Economic Collapse Blog) and many others are starting to look crazy when every piece of good news is met by them sticking their fingers in their ears and screaming "lalala, it's all fake, the numbers are cooked".
This is confirmation bias at work. Having cut their teeth on the near meltdown of global finance in 2008, they are grabbing onto every string of bad news from Greece in order to keep the doom gravy train from derailing. Other than being careful what horse you hitch your cart to (although admittedly people have been expecting Jesus to return for 2000 years), what this says is that some people simply can't accept that maybe the world WON'T end next week. This doesn't mean to stop prepping (although many people have and will, and after all hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and earthquakes do happen) but that you don't need to prep for TEOTW. Even an earthquake is far less demanding to prep for. And as I have noted, a tree falling on your power line or a water pipe bursting in your ceiling is far more likely than a zombie apocalypse.
Tuesday, December 16, 2014
Saturday, August 30, 2014
DA'ASH away all! Surviving the latest terror threat
Happy Labor Day. (Actually, the REAL Labor Day is on May 1, but that's another discussion.) On this Labor Day, the latest arm of the Al Qaeda octopus, generally called Islamic State/ISIS/ISIL, is on the march, controlling vast areas of Syria and Iraq, with expensively trained (with YOUR tax dollars, folks!) Iraqi military disappearing when confronted with an actual foe. Islamic State is known in the Muslim world via their Arabic acronym, DA'ASH (duh-ash) which I can't remember what it means in Arabic. Since "ISIS" is a pagan god, and ISIL is too close for comfort to ISIS, I will henceforth refer to Islamic State as DA'ASH.
DA'ASH has vowed attacks on the American mainland, with shopping malls, downtown Chicago, and the White House as explicit targets. Obama and his merry pranksters are doing nothing, as usual, so protecting oneself from DA'ASH and their operatives rests with the citizens. What should one do?
1) Shop online.
Yes, you will have to pay shipping. But $10 shipping is cheap compared to losing your legs to a pressure cooker bomb. This Labor Day, the malls will be full of back to school shoppers. Steer clear. Amazon is usually cheaper anyway.
2) Avoid government buildings and iconic landmarks like famous skyscrapers.
Now, if you work in downtown Chicago or NYC, or for a congresscritter, this is easier said than done. We all have to eat. Maybe you can get transferred elsewhere. For the rest of us, don't be around high profile targets unless absolutely necessary.
3) Keep track of important dates.
I've met retired people who don't know what day it is. They go to a govt office, and can't believe it's closed. Oh yeah, it's Labor Day! DUH! In September alone, there are three important dates:
*Labor Day, September 1
*September 11 anniversary, called Patriot Day in some places
*Jewish High Holy Days such as Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah
Try staycationing at home. Of course, Jews will want to celebrate the High Holy Days, and fortunately most synagogues have ample security. But...
4) BE AWARE!
Situational awareness is the best defense one has if one is going to be at a high profile target on a holiday. Unattended backpacks, weird people, cars behaving strangely, all could be signs of a terror attack.
5) Be Prepared.
Would you know how to stop bleeding from someone's ripped off leg or arm after a bombing? Would you know how to treat burns or deep cuts? Do you know CPR? All could be useful skills after a terror attack.
6) DON'T PANIC!
Most sheeple panic and freak out if there's a terror attack. Don't be a sheep. Keep your cool. Be cynical about "security laws" proposed after a major attack, while the sheep are bleating for politicians to DO SOMETHING! The best line of defense against terror isn't cops or soldiers, it's YOU. No law can take the place of common sense. Unfortunately, common sense seems to be rather uncommon.
Happy Labor Day. (Actually, the REAL Labor Day is on May 1, but that's another discussion.) On this Labor Day, the latest arm of the Al Qaeda octopus, generally called Islamic State/ISIS/ISIL, is on the march, controlling vast areas of Syria and Iraq, with expensively trained (with YOUR tax dollars, folks!) Iraqi military disappearing when confronted with an actual foe. Islamic State is known in the Muslim world via their Arabic acronym, DA'ASH (duh-ash) which I can't remember what it means in Arabic. Since "ISIS" is a pagan god, and ISIL is too close for comfort to ISIS, I will henceforth refer to Islamic State as DA'ASH.
DA'ASH has vowed attacks on the American mainland, with shopping malls, downtown Chicago, and the White House as explicit targets. Obama and his merry pranksters are doing nothing, as usual, so protecting oneself from DA'ASH and their operatives rests with the citizens. What should one do?
1) Shop online.
Yes, you will have to pay shipping. But $10 shipping is cheap compared to losing your legs to a pressure cooker bomb. This Labor Day, the malls will be full of back to school shoppers. Steer clear. Amazon is usually cheaper anyway.
2) Avoid government buildings and iconic landmarks like famous skyscrapers.
Now, if you work in downtown Chicago or NYC, or for a congresscritter, this is easier said than done. We all have to eat. Maybe you can get transferred elsewhere. For the rest of us, don't be around high profile targets unless absolutely necessary.
3) Keep track of important dates.
I've met retired people who don't know what day it is. They go to a govt office, and can't believe it's closed. Oh yeah, it's Labor Day! DUH! In September alone, there are three important dates:
*Labor Day, September 1
*September 11 anniversary, called Patriot Day in some places
*Jewish High Holy Days such as Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah
Try staycationing at home. Of course, Jews will want to celebrate the High Holy Days, and fortunately most synagogues have ample security. But...
4) BE AWARE!
Situational awareness is the best defense one has if one is going to be at a high profile target on a holiday. Unattended backpacks, weird people, cars behaving strangely, all could be signs of a terror attack.
5) Be Prepared.
Would you know how to stop bleeding from someone's ripped off leg or arm after a bombing? Would you know how to treat burns or deep cuts? Do you know CPR? All could be useful skills after a terror attack.
6) DON'T PANIC!
Most sheeple panic and freak out if there's a terror attack. Don't be a sheep. Keep your cool. Be cynical about "security laws" proposed after a major attack, while the sheep are bleating for politicians to DO SOMETHING! The best line of defense against terror isn't cops or soldiers, it's YOU. No law can take the place of common sense. Unfortunately, common sense seems to be rather uncommon.
Saturday, May 17, 2014
Dude, where's my country? (apologies to Michael Moore)
I recently checked Lisa Sain's blog and was surprised to see her posting again. Since her severely autistic son is now in residential care, she wrote that she "feels human again" and sleeps in a clean bed and even has a boyfriend. I haven't read much of her blog, but I know that her son Preston practically demolished the inside of her house with his frequent, terrifyingly violent meltdowns. She recently said that he would rip out chunks of drywall and eat them. Among other things.
So I googled Kelli Stapleton to see how the case was coming along. Her trial is in a couple months. And then I found myself staring at the following link, via a couple clicks:
http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2009/12/kent_state_professor_trudy_ste.html
Trudy's son was 6 foot, 200 lbs of rage. Uncontrolled rage. Rage so fierce that he ultimately beat his mother to death. The jail had to keep him in a separate cell. It took two months to find a placement.
One thing that seems to pop up over and over is that there are zero services for teens and adults with autism. Parents look and look and are turned away every place they go. If the kid is violent, there are even less than zero. There are no institutions anymore. Few group homes take autistics. I suspect that the "bulge" of autistic kids who started being born in the late 80s will eventually wind up on the streets, alongside the schizophrenics and bipolars and delusionals and so forth.
When Reagan closed the institutions, he expected other options to be instituted. Future politicians refused to fund that. So we have a network of grungy "group homes" in rundown suburban tract homes, built for happy 50s and 60s families, cheaply retrofitted for a small number of special needs persons. The group homes are horrid, dirty, smelly, and abusive. As for the rest, we have the streets. Maybe the institutions were bad. But now we have something much worse.
So, to recap: millions of special needs people who nobody will care for. Parents grow old and die, if the kid doesn't kill them first. The bureaucracy is full of chair warmers whose refrain is "not my responsibility, sorry". Schools refuse to teach the kids, and after age 22 it's "sorry, not our responsibility".
Reading forum posts from autistic adults, it's clear that even the higher functioning ones find it hard to hold jobs and live independently. Many live in fear of their benefit checks being yanked out from under them by callous politicians. In England, the disabled have faced the end of ALL benefits. At least one man starved to death.
How much longer until the world decides to build death camps for the disabled? I'm reminded of the part of the neo Nazi novel The Turner Diaries where after the white revolutionaries take Los Angeles, everybody deemed "lesser" is simply marched into the mountains, never to be seen again. In the future, there may be camps set up in Flyover Country where the "imperfect" are taken to "disappear". A burning human body smells quite rancid, from what I've heard. If you think of a place like Auschwitz, where the kremas operated day and night, the smell must have been horrible, yet nobody thought to ask, hey guys what the frick is that awful smell, anyway?
Sometimes, I wonder what the world would be like if the Nazis had succeeded in their goal of slaughtering every "non-Aryan" on earth. One truism of genetics is that small, inbred populations eventually have weird diseases surface, the result of random genetic combinations. The Fundamentalist LDS Church, a Mormon polygamy cult near the Grand Canyon, was ruled by a man who wanted to create a master race via inbreeding. His efforts caused a weird, rarely seen disorder called fumarase deficiency to afflict and kill hundreds of cultists. If the Nazis had succeeded, eventually some disease would have popped up and torn through the remaining "perfect" humans like a firestorm in the Southern California mountains in August. And that would have been that.
When cops are given free rein to kill the disabled, and so are their parents, and we willingly via neglect put the disabled in positions to be killed, we come ever closer to genocide. When bureaucrats refuse to help, and so does everybody else, ditto. America in the 1940s was in some respects not such a great place; millions lived in third world conditions, people were confined in institutions on the word of a single doctor, and who can forget the internment of the Japanese. But we defeated evil, real evil. Now WE ARE that evil. I don't know what Satan did with my country, but I want it back.
I recently checked Lisa Sain's blog and was surprised to see her posting again. Since her severely autistic son is now in residential care, she wrote that she "feels human again" and sleeps in a clean bed and even has a boyfriend. I haven't read much of her blog, but I know that her son Preston practically demolished the inside of her house with his frequent, terrifyingly violent meltdowns. She recently said that he would rip out chunks of drywall and eat them. Among other things.
So I googled Kelli Stapleton to see how the case was coming along. Her trial is in a couple months. And then I found myself staring at the following link, via a couple clicks:
http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2009/12/kent_state_professor_trudy_ste.html
Trudy's son was 6 foot, 200 lbs of rage. Uncontrolled rage. Rage so fierce that he ultimately beat his mother to death. The jail had to keep him in a separate cell. It took two months to find a placement.
One thing that seems to pop up over and over is that there are zero services for teens and adults with autism. Parents look and look and are turned away every place they go. If the kid is violent, there are even less than zero. There are no institutions anymore. Few group homes take autistics. I suspect that the "bulge" of autistic kids who started being born in the late 80s will eventually wind up on the streets, alongside the schizophrenics and bipolars and delusionals and so forth.
When Reagan closed the institutions, he expected other options to be instituted. Future politicians refused to fund that. So we have a network of grungy "group homes" in rundown suburban tract homes, built for happy 50s and 60s families, cheaply retrofitted for a small number of special needs persons. The group homes are horrid, dirty, smelly, and abusive. As for the rest, we have the streets. Maybe the institutions were bad. But now we have something much worse.
So, to recap: millions of special needs people who nobody will care for. Parents grow old and die, if the kid doesn't kill them first. The bureaucracy is full of chair warmers whose refrain is "not my responsibility, sorry". Schools refuse to teach the kids, and after age 22 it's "sorry, not our responsibility".
Reading forum posts from autistic adults, it's clear that even the higher functioning ones find it hard to hold jobs and live independently. Many live in fear of their benefit checks being yanked out from under them by callous politicians. In England, the disabled have faced the end of ALL benefits. At least one man starved to death.
How much longer until the world decides to build death camps for the disabled? I'm reminded of the part of the neo Nazi novel The Turner Diaries where after the white revolutionaries take Los Angeles, everybody deemed "lesser" is simply marched into the mountains, never to be seen again. In the future, there may be camps set up in Flyover Country where the "imperfect" are taken to "disappear". A burning human body smells quite rancid, from what I've heard. If you think of a place like Auschwitz, where the kremas operated day and night, the smell must have been horrible, yet nobody thought to ask, hey guys what the frick is that awful smell, anyway?
Sometimes, I wonder what the world would be like if the Nazis had succeeded in their goal of slaughtering every "non-Aryan" on earth. One truism of genetics is that small, inbred populations eventually have weird diseases surface, the result of random genetic combinations. The Fundamentalist LDS Church, a Mormon polygamy cult near the Grand Canyon, was ruled by a man who wanted to create a master race via inbreeding. His efforts caused a weird, rarely seen disorder called fumarase deficiency to afflict and kill hundreds of cultists. If the Nazis had succeeded, eventually some disease would have popped up and torn through the remaining "perfect" humans like a firestorm in the Southern California mountains in August. And that would have been that.
When cops are given free rein to kill the disabled, and so are their parents, and we willingly via neglect put the disabled in positions to be killed, we come ever closer to genocide. When bureaucrats refuse to help, and so does everybody else, ditto. America in the 1940s was in some respects not such a great place; millions lived in third world conditions, people were confined in institutions on the word of a single doctor, and who can forget the internment of the Japanese. But we defeated evil, real evil. Now WE ARE that evil. I don't know what Satan did with my country, but I want it back.
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
Maren Sanchez, a dead air conditioner, and yet more car follies: when SHTF blindsides you unexpectedly
I am writing at 11 pm Pacific time because my air conditioner quit a week ago and it's unbearably hot in here, and I can't sleep. Even worse, I've been stuck at home for a week because some woman with Florida plates on her car, and no insurance, backed into my car in a Wal Mart parking lot. Since she had no insurance, our insurance company is making us pay the $750 deductible towards repairs. My mom blames me, of course, so for two weeks I've been listening to her blame me.
So, since I'm listening to my brain bake in 100 degree heat, I've been thinking a lot about Maren Sanchez. If you were following the national news towards the end of April, you know that she's the 16 year old girl from an affluent Connecticut family who was killed on the day of her junior prom by a crazed admirer: a 16 year old boy who wouldn't take no for an answer.
He was obsessed with her, but she wouldn't give him the time of day. Turns out he was being treated for "ADHD" and "depression", overdiagnosed maladies that are "treated" with amphetamines and SSRI antidepressants. IMO only opioids are more dangerous. Those drugs cause psychosis, among other things. The boy had been acting strangely for a few months before he killed Sanchez. In one episode, he ripped off his pants in front of a class. Under the influence of "legal dope", he apparently decided that if he couldn't have her, nobody would.
Maren was blissfully unaware that she was going to die. The night before she was killed, she was painting scenery for a drama club production of Little Shop of Horrors. She asked to be excused to have her nails done. An hour later, she returned and showed off her new nail job. Then she picked up a paintbrush and went back to work. She had picked out her prom dress, a turquoise colored gown with gold trim, and tweeted a selfie of herself wearing it. Her boyfriend would have given her a single red rose on prom night. Then it would have been off to a local hotel ballroom for prom. Perhaps she would have danced to popular EDM DJ Avicii:
Hey, brother, do you still believe in one another?
Hey, sister, do you still believe in love I wonder?
If the sky comes falling down for you
There's nothing this world can do
-Avicii, Hey Brother
On the morning before her prom, she was asked out by her stalker. When she said no, he threw her down some stairs, then leapt on top of her and slashed her throat, breasts, and face with a "kitchen knife" (likely a long chef knife of the kind available at most supermarkets, I have one by my bedside for protection, since I can't own a gun). She was rushed to a hospital, where she died. At 7 am she was looking forward to prom, at 8 am she was dead. Her sky came falling down. She never saw it coming.
Last Saturday when I turned down my AC for the night, I didn't know the compressor would suddenly quit. When I went to Wal Mart at the beginning of the month to buy food, I didn't know that my car would be wrecked. My mom was doing errands a couple months ago, unaware that she would narrowly escape death. The belief that there will be plenty of warning before SHTF is rooted in Biblical beliefs about the Apocalypse and the Revelation of John of Patmos, where the signs pile up warning true Christians. In most cases, it's simply not true. There is little or no warning, in real life. Maren Sanchez was buried in her prom gown, holding that rose, forever frozen in time as a happy 11th grade teen looking forward to prom. What will you do if the sky comes falling down for you, and that's the one scenario you DIDN'T prep for?
I am writing at 11 pm Pacific time because my air conditioner quit a week ago and it's unbearably hot in here, and I can't sleep. Even worse, I've been stuck at home for a week because some woman with Florida plates on her car, and no insurance, backed into my car in a Wal Mart parking lot. Since she had no insurance, our insurance company is making us pay the $750 deductible towards repairs. My mom blames me, of course, so for two weeks I've been listening to her blame me.
So, since I'm listening to my brain bake in 100 degree heat, I've been thinking a lot about Maren Sanchez. If you were following the national news towards the end of April, you know that she's the 16 year old girl from an affluent Connecticut family who was killed on the day of her junior prom by a crazed admirer: a 16 year old boy who wouldn't take no for an answer.
He was obsessed with her, but she wouldn't give him the time of day. Turns out he was being treated for "ADHD" and "depression", overdiagnosed maladies that are "treated" with amphetamines and SSRI antidepressants. IMO only opioids are more dangerous. Those drugs cause psychosis, among other things. The boy had been acting strangely for a few months before he killed Sanchez. In one episode, he ripped off his pants in front of a class. Under the influence of "legal dope", he apparently decided that if he couldn't have her, nobody would.
Maren was blissfully unaware that she was going to die. The night before she was killed, she was painting scenery for a drama club production of Little Shop of Horrors. She asked to be excused to have her nails done. An hour later, she returned and showed off her new nail job. Then she picked up a paintbrush and went back to work. She had picked out her prom dress, a turquoise colored gown with gold trim, and tweeted a selfie of herself wearing it. Her boyfriend would have given her a single red rose on prom night. Then it would have been off to a local hotel ballroom for prom. Perhaps she would have danced to popular EDM DJ Avicii:
Hey, brother, do you still believe in one another?
Hey, sister, do you still believe in love I wonder?
If the sky comes falling down for you
There's nothing this world can do
-Avicii, Hey Brother
On the morning before her prom, she was asked out by her stalker. When she said no, he threw her down some stairs, then leapt on top of her and slashed her throat, breasts, and face with a "kitchen knife" (likely a long chef knife of the kind available at most supermarkets, I have one by my bedside for protection, since I can't own a gun). She was rushed to a hospital, where she died. At 7 am she was looking forward to prom, at 8 am she was dead. Her sky came falling down. She never saw it coming.
Last Saturday when I turned down my AC for the night, I didn't know the compressor would suddenly quit. When I went to Wal Mart at the beginning of the month to buy food, I didn't know that my car would be wrecked. My mom was doing errands a couple months ago, unaware that she would narrowly escape death. The belief that there will be plenty of warning before SHTF is rooted in Biblical beliefs about the Apocalypse and the Revelation of John of Patmos, where the signs pile up warning true Christians. In most cases, it's simply not true. There is little or no warning, in real life. Maren Sanchez was buried in her prom gown, holding that rose, forever frozen in time as a happy 11th grade teen looking forward to prom. What will you do if the sky comes falling down for you, and that's the one scenario you DIDN'T prep for?
Monday, March 31, 2014
The everyday SHTF: Are you prepared?
"What will SHTF be like?" Ask that on any prepper board and you'll get fanciful tales of EMP bursts sending us back to 1700, Obama seizing power as a dictator leading to civil war and militias saving the day, etc. About the only thing missing is zombies.
What's more likely is a SHTF affecting just you. For example, my cousin, who lives in Reno, got home after picking up her kids from school to find the fire dept at her apartment building. This was right after the big December cold snap, and a cheap water pipe had burst, flooding three apartments, including hers. Most of her stuff was ruined. Even worse, the complex had a 0% vacancy rate. Three families were dumped onto the street. My cousin, her hubby, and her two kids had to shoehorn themselves into a single bedroom of her mom's dinky house in Sparks. Crowded, you bet. She eventually found another place.
I was driving to downtown a couple weeks ago when the cars in front of me lurched forward, then stopped, at a red light. I stopped in time, but the woman behind me didn't. My car was gouged up pretty bad, and the front of her car was bashed in. Then, just this morning, my mom's van was almost totaled by a guy who didn't see her stopped at a red light in time. Fortunately, he swerved at the last second. I am not ready-yet-to live without my parents.
People get lost in the woods all the time, like the San Francisco family that got lost near Roseburg, Oregon, a few years ago. No cell phone service. So dad tried to hike out, and died, during winter. His family was ultimately rescued. Compare that to the Oregon native who took a wrong turn in the woods near Medford. Once she realized she was lost, she stopped, bedded down for the night using a blanket she had in her vehicle, then followed her tire tracks back to the main road the next morning, showing up at the command post set up for searchers, and startling them.
Are YOU ready for something like that? Losing your job, or house, or car? People collect guns to ward off attacking UN troops, then end up selling the guns at a discount for food. One guy and his wife got lost in the desert, and he decided to hike out. Wifey was ultimately rescued, but no trace of him was ever found. People get lost in Death Valley, and are swallowed by the desert. Maybe a bone is found years later. It's more likely that you'll get hit by lightning than that you'll be fighting in a new American Revolution. Are YOU prepped?
"What will SHTF be like?" Ask that on any prepper board and you'll get fanciful tales of EMP bursts sending us back to 1700, Obama seizing power as a dictator leading to civil war and militias saving the day, etc. About the only thing missing is zombies.
What's more likely is a SHTF affecting just you. For example, my cousin, who lives in Reno, got home after picking up her kids from school to find the fire dept at her apartment building. This was right after the big December cold snap, and a cheap water pipe had burst, flooding three apartments, including hers. Most of her stuff was ruined. Even worse, the complex had a 0% vacancy rate. Three families were dumped onto the street. My cousin, her hubby, and her two kids had to shoehorn themselves into a single bedroom of her mom's dinky house in Sparks. Crowded, you bet. She eventually found another place.
I was driving to downtown a couple weeks ago when the cars in front of me lurched forward, then stopped, at a red light. I stopped in time, but the woman behind me didn't. My car was gouged up pretty bad, and the front of her car was bashed in. Then, just this morning, my mom's van was almost totaled by a guy who didn't see her stopped at a red light in time. Fortunately, he swerved at the last second. I am not ready-yet-to live without my parents.
People get lost in the woods all the time, like the San Francisco family that got lost near Roseburg, Oregon, a few years ago. No cell phone service. So dad tried to hike out, and died, during winter. His family was ultimately rescued. Compare that to the Oregon native who took a wrong turn in the woods near Medford. Once she realized she was lost, she stopped, bedded down for the night using a blanket she had in her vehicle, then followed her tire tracks back to the main road the next morning, showing up at the command post set up for searchers, and startling them.
Are YOU ready for something like that? Losing your job, or house, or car? People collect guns to ward off attacking UN troops, then end up selling the guns at a discount for food. One guy and his wife got lost in the desert, and he decided to hike out. Wifey was ultimately rescued, but no trace of him was ever found. People get lost in Death Valley, and are swallowed by the desert. Maybe a bone is found years later. It's more likely that you'll get hit by lightning than that you'll be fighting in a new American Revolution. Are YOU prepped?
Monday, January 6, 2014
Neurodiverse and neurotypical talking past each other?
I recently read the following:
http://marlowefranklin.blogspot.com/2014/01/discrimination-and-bigotry-against.html
Now, as a "neurodiverse" individual, I can understand where the parents are coming from. Having an ASD kid means, for many, physical abuse, screaming, property destruction, etc etc until the parent loses it and starts fantasizing about killing their kid. It may not be so much evil as mental illness induced by PTSD-type events.
But you know what? Aspies also suffer. We are bullied in school, bullied to the point where "normal" kids are routinely doing physical and even sexual harm to us. Furthermore, the only response the educational system has to this bullying is to reward the bullies and tell us that it's our fault we were bullied because we are "weak" and need to "toughen up". We are told that our symptoms aren't real, that we are only doing them because we're jerks who are constantly seeking what one of my teachers called "negative attention". We can't succeed in life, we're told, so we seek attention in "destructive" ways.
Furthermore, once we graduate school-IF we do-we can't find a job. Nobody will hire us because "nobody likes a debbie downer"-an outlook formed by years of bullying. We aren't "team players", and thus are unfit to hire. When we try to get SSI, we are told to "find a job you lazy bum!". Do you see the double bind here? We are constantly told that we could become NT if only we tried hard enough. Autism is a defect in brain wiring-we CAN'T just shed it like a snake sheds its skin. After 40 or 50 years of this, we become bitter and hateful. Many of us had mentally ill families who abused us.
Yes, some parents are abused by their ASD kids until they snap. But we are victims of abuse too. The system doesn't care about parents OR sufferers, we are only there to be abused by bureaucrats so they can get more funding, which never seems to reach the people who need it, having been diverted into the pockets of some manager somewhere.
I don't pretend to judge Kelli Stapleton, or any other parent of a special needs kid. Christianity says that only God Himself has the right to judge. I don't know if God exists, but if He does, we need to leave the judging to Him, and start talking TO each other, rather than PAST each other.
Our current system is set up to reward sociopaths and cull the "weak". Billionaires routinely talk of culling the population, which means they want 90% of us to die. I don't mind dying, but the desire to wipe out all but the sociopaths should be called what it is: Genocide.
Genocide isn't like in The Turner Diaries where the undesirables march meekly into the mountains, never to be heard from again. Genocide is mass graves and gas chambers and ovens emitting horrible smells. Genocide is your friends and their families being rounded up by stormtroopers and "vanishing".
The word "genocide" is tossed around a lot in the ND community, by people who should know better. A handful of desperate parents killing their kids, while abhorrent, is not genocide. Genocide is a system where the weak are abandoned and sent off to die, not by their families but by bureaucrats. When aspies are told to kill themselves and that nobody would care if they did, that's genocide. When families are cast aside to save money, that's genocide. When nobody will help the Kelli Stapletons of the world, then those same people celebrate when they snap, that's genocide.
It's not Kelli's fault that she was put on a merry go round until she snapped. It IS the fault of sociopathic politicians and their Wall Street friends who think that the only good commoner is a dead one. Parents and kids need to stop hating each other and start hating the REAL evil.
I recently read the following:
http://marlowefranklin.blogspot.com/2014/01/discrimination-and-bigotry-against.html
Now, as a "neurodiverse" individual, I can understand where the parents are coming from. Having an ASD kid means, for many, physical abuse, screaming, property destruction, etc etc until the parent loses it and starts fantasizing about killing their kid. It may not be so much evil as mental illness induced by PTSD-type events.
But you know what? Aspies also suffer. We are bullied in school, bullied to the point where "normal" kids are routinely doing physical and even sexual harm to us. Furthermore, the only response the educational system has to this bullying is to reward the bullies and tell us that it's our fault we were bullied because we are "weak" and need to "toughen up". We are told that our symptoms aren't real, that we are only doing them because we're jerks who are constantly seeking what one of my teachers called "negative attention". We can't succeed in life, we're told, so we seek attention in "destructive" ways.
Furthermore, once we graduate school-IF we do-we can't find a job. Nobody will hire us because "nobody likes a debbie downer"-an outlook formed by years of bullying. We aren't "team players", and thus are unfit to hire. When we try to get SSI, we are told to "find a job you lazy bum!". Do you see the double bind here? We are constantly told that we could become NT if only we tried hard enough. Autism is a defect in brain wiring-we CAN'T just shed it like a snake sheds its skin. After 40 or 50 years of this, we become bitter and hateful. Many of us had mentally ill families who abused us.
Yes, some parents are abused by their ASD kids until they snap. But we are victims of abuse too. The system doesn't care about parents OR sufferers, we are only there to be abused by bureaucrats so they can get more funding, which never seems to reach the people who need it, having been diverted into the pockets of some manager somewhere.
I don't pretend to judge Kelli Stapleton, or any other parent of a special needs kid. Christianity says that only God Himself has the right to judge. I don't know if God exists, but if He does, we need to leave the judging to Him, and start talking TO each other, rather than PAST each other.
Our current system is set up to reward sociopaths and cull the "weak". Billionaires routinely talk of culling the population, which means they want 90% of us to die. I don't mind dying, but the desire to wipe out all but the sociopaths should be called what it is: Genocide.
Genocide isn't like in The Turner Diaries where the undesirables march meekly into the mountains, never to be heard from again. Genocide is mass graves and gas chambers and ovens emitting horrible smells. Genocide is your friends and their families being rounded up by stormtroopers and "vanishing".
The word "genocide" is tossed around a lot in the ND community, by people who should know better. A handful of desperate parents killing their kids, while abhorrent, is not genocide. Genocide is a system where the weak are abandoned and sent off to die, not by their families but by bureaucrats. When aspies are told to kill themselves and that nobody would care if they did, that's genocide. When families are cast aside to save money, that's genocide. When nobody will help the Kelli Stapletons of the world, then those same people celebrate when they snap, that's genocide.
It's not Kelli's fault that she was put on a merry go round until she snapped. It IS the fault of sociopathic politicians and their Wall Street friends who think that the only good commoner is a dead one. Parents and kids need to stop hating each other and start hating the REAL evil.
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