The Secret to Happiness

You know what?  I’m tired.

On Wednesday, May 14, 2003 I hit “publish” on the first post here at The Smallest Minority.  That was eleven (11!) years ago today.  This is post 6348, for an average of about 1.6 posts per day.  As you may have noticed, I’ve not posted much here in the last few weeks.  I’ve been reading a bunch of my older posts and the links in them that still work.  I had plans (and I actually began work) to crank out an über-überpost for this anniversary, but I decided instead:

The one consistent overarching theme of this blog during the last eleven years has been “Tough History Coming.”

I still believe it.  I’m just not going to repeat myself for the one-hundred and eleventieth time.  Been there, done that, got the t-shirts.  But this shit is tiring, especially when I’ve seen no reason to alter my outlook over a decade later.

It’s not all been negative, though.  I was surprised as anyone when Arizona got Concealed Carry in 1994.  If you’d asked me in 2003 if I thought Arizona would be a Constitutional Carry state, I’d have had you involuntarily committed.  This map makes me grin every time I see it:

But it’s not enough. Legal recognition of the right to arms is not enough. Incorporation of that right is not enough. Kim du Toit, in that quote on the masthead (that goes to a broken link) has it right:

I don’t just want gun rights… I want individual liberty, a culture of self-reliance….I want the whole bloody thing.

And I’m not going to get it. If there were any chance of that, Obama would not have been re-elected. Mitt Romney would not have been the most recent Republican nominee for President, nor McCain before him. Politicians wouldn’t keep getting re-elected. IRS and NSA officials would need to be in protective custody.

Tar, feathers, pitchforks and torches would be an appropriate response to what our government has become, but the change has been so gradual, and associated with “de-moralization” over the last century that a significant majority of the nation is simply incapable of considering such, much less being inspired to outrage. Hell, few even bother to write letters-to-the-editor anymore. The TEA Party movement has apparently been successfully co-opted by people more interested in enriching themselves, and by the few rabid partisans who value ideology over, you know, winning. And the Big-“L” Libertarians still frighten the white people.

So we’re going to keep on spending like the money will never run out, our foreign policy will continue to be based on fundamental misunderstandings of geopolitical realities, our immigration policies will remain chaotic, schizophrenic and completely dysfunctional while our borders will remain porous, our supposed “security” agencies will continue to monitor everyone and everything, molest children and old women getting on airplanes while never catching a “terrorist…”

And we’ll keep putting up with it.

‘Cause we’re Americans. It’s now what we do.

So, I’m done worrying about it. I’ve got other things to worry about.

1) My mom has lung cancer.
2) I’m busy as hell at work.
3) I’ve volunteered to help Mr. Completely organize this year’s Gun Blogger Rendezvous
4) I’ve got a stack of books that need reading.
5) I need to get out and shoot more. (ANYBODY seen Unique on a shelf in the wild?)
6) My home needs maintenance that I’ve been neglecting.
7) I want to spend more time with my wife.

I’m not completely hanging it up here. I’ll still post from time to time – mostly in the near future I suspect about the upcoming Rendezvous – but I doubt seriously that there will be any more überposts. I greatly appreciate the hundreds of readers and dozens of commenters, and I still hope you drop by and visit, and maybe leave a comment from time to time.

Thank you for your attention and your support over the last decade-plus.  It’s meant a lot to me.  It’s given me hope.  Not a lot, but it’s better than being alone.


(click for full size)
It’s too late for me, but obviously there are millions out there who have already saved themselves!

UPDATE:  I was on Squirrel Report Episode 104 on Thursday talking about this post, überposts and blogging in general.  Longest Squirrel Report ever.

Appropriate.

How Bad Is It When You Can’t GIVE Money Away?

Mike Rowe (of Dirty Jobs fame) has an organization he runs, MikeRoweWorks.com, that gives scholarships to students studying the trades. He posts on Facebook today:

Question: If I were to form “The American Idol Scholarship Fund” and announce $15,000 of professional training for anyone who wished to become a pop star, how long do you think it would take to give away a million dollars?

A day? An hour? A minute?

What if I offered the same money to anyone who wanted to learn how to maintain and repair diesel engines? How fast would the million dollars go then?

Currently, this question has no official answer. But I can tell you this – for the last month, mikeroweWORKS has been offering FULL-RIDE scholarships to one of the best trade schools in the country. And as of now – a big chunk of that million dollars is still up for grabs. Why? Because mikeroweWORKS scholarships do not reward fame or celebrity. They reward work ethic, and the willingness to learn a necessary skill. In other words, they are designed to train people for jobs that actually exist.

Last month, I shot a few commercials to announce my latest partnership with Universal Technical Institute https://www.uti.edu/mrw As you may know, UTI trains the technicians that keep America’s trucks on the road. Not as sexy perhaps as the next American Idol, but a great place to find a few American Icons. Truth is, our Trade Schools play an important role in maintaining this thing we call “civilization,” and given the preponderance of Help Wanted signs currently papering our transportation industry, I wanted to help draw some attention to another specific career that too many people simply overlook.

Anyway, this particular commercial didn’t make it past Standards and Practices, for obvious reasons. But since I’m the only censor in these parts, I’ve made it available here, for the refined taste and sophisticated worldview of my 835,000 closest friends. http://profoundlydisconnected.com/naked-mike-unauthorized-video/ (Warning – Partial Nudity and Poor Judgment abound.)

Mike

Here’s the video:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15ja327jUMg?rel=0]

PS. As long as you’re loafing around on the interweb, do me a favor. If you or someone you know are willing to explore a career in the transportation industry, I’d seriously like to help. The opportunities are real, and the details about this particular program – along with a more tasteful version of the above message – can be found here. https://www.facebook.com/UTI

PPS. By traditional standards, this scholarship program is working just fine. I’m just personally appalled that the money didn’t vanish in the first twenty minutes. (I’ll work on my expectations.)

PPPS I know. The diet starts tomorrow.

Pass this around, would you?

I Don’t Have the TIME It Would Take to Fisk This

Sweet BLEEDING Jeebus.  I thought “professional” “news” “media” had “layers of editors and fact-checkers.”  Here’s just the FIRST PARAGRAPH of a Guardian (UK) article.

A plan by President Barack Obama to close a loophole which allows Americans to buy weapons such as machine guns, grenades and sawn-off shotguns without undergoing background checks is set to be delayed, due to intense opposition from the NRA and other anti-gun-control activists.

And it goes on like that!

The mind boggles.

Read the comments, too.

(h/t to my favorite Merchant O’Death.)