Eight Reasons Why Left-Leaning Voters Should Stop Touting the Legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt

      How corrupt, racist, and elitist our 32nd President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was, seems to have seriously evaded the notice of most American voters who describe themselves as liberals, progressives, and Democrats.

     Most of F.D.R.'s most popular achievements - like the "end" of child labor, the 40-hour work-week, and Social Security old-age and retirement benefits - should be credited to F.D.R.'s Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins, rather than to Roosevelt himself.

     But that aside, F.D.R. - and his advisor Henry Stimson - made some horrendous wartime decisions, most of which, liberals and modern Democrats seem to have completely forgotten.

     Let's review. We're talking about a man:

     1. Who imprisoned over 110,000 Japanese-Americans who did nothing wrong, nor criminal, of their own volition. Their only "crime" was the accident of being related to their former countrymen back home in Japan.

     Think about what it means, from the perspective of the Japanese, for the United States (under F.D.R.) to intern 110,000 innocent American citizens in good standing with the law. Imagine that you attack a country. Imagine that that country responds by placing all of your emigrants as prisoners of war. Imagine that the enemy country allows children (for example, Star Trek actor George Takei) to grow up as if they were prisoners and common criminals.

     This would give you all the reason to keep the war going, and - at that - longer than it needs to go on! You would have every reason to not only fight that country in the air and at sea, but additionally to mount a full-scale land invasion on that country, for the purposes of setting those 110,000 people free!

     Franklin D. Roosevelt thus arguably kept World War II going, for much longer than it "had to" go on, by imprisoning those innocent people.

     The fact that this was done in the interest of national security - and Bill Clinton's formal apology to Fred Korematsu - do not matter. The United States is a country of laws, and the Fourth Amendment should have prevented F.D.R.'s orders to exclude Japanese-Americans from the West Coast Military Area from ever becoming law in the first place. In fact, because the Fourth Amendment is still in place, those orders were never valid laws in the first place. Which is why they were struck down in Korematsu v. U.S..

     2. Who authorized the internment of thousands of German-Americans and Italian-Americans.
     Eleven thousand German-Americans and nearly two thousand Italian-Americans were unlawfully detained during World War II. The fact that they were white, and that Japanese-Americans were detained too, does not make this "equal misery" (to paraphrase a quote by Winston Churchill) acceptable, nor sufferable. It was wrong then, and it would be wrong now.

     3. Who listened to the advice of Secretary of War Henry Stimson, when Stimson advised him not to bomb the train tracks which led to the Auschwitz cluster of several dozen forced labor, concentration, and extermination camps.

     The fact that it would have been dangerous to fly U.S. Air Force bomber planes over the area, is no excuse for shelving the plan to bomb the tracks leading to Auschwitz. The fact that Air Force planes risked being shelled by the Nazis' surface-to-air missiles, is no excuse.

     If the U.S. Military used "it's too dangerous" as an excuse all the time, then it never would have fought World War II to begin with. If the plan was made, then it should have been attempted. If it had been attempted and then it had failed, then it should have been attempted a second time (and, if necessary, a third time).

     The U.S. Military does not award anybody a medal for lack of bravery or lack of courage.

     Henry Stimson advised F.D.R. against attempting this plan, not because it probably wouldn't have worked, but because Henry Stimson was an anti-Semite. How do I know this?

     4. Listened to Henry Stimson another time - prior to the shelving of the Auschwitz plan - when Stimson advised against allowing a ship full of Jewish refugees into the United States.

     The M.S. St. Louis held about 900 passengers, the vast majority of them Jewish refugees from Europe who were trying to escape from the Nazis. When the so-called "Ship of the Damned" arrived in Cuba, passengers discovered that they had been sold fraudulent tickets, and were not allowed to disembark.

     The ship was unable to unload passengers, who turned to the United States out of desperation. After Stimson advised F.D.R. against allowing the passengers to disembark in the United States, the ship sailed to Canada, and unloaded about 600 passengers.

     The ship was eventually forced to return to Nazi-occupied Europe with 300 passengers in tow. The majority of them were murdered at the hands of the Nazis.

     5. Who was not some poor boy, nor a dirt farmer, nor a union organizer, but a nepotist, being a cousin of former President Theodore Roosevelt.

     Teddy Roosevelt had previously served as President of the United States for nearly eight years. Teddy Roosevelt was no saint himself, having served as a general out west, massacring Indians, and as Assistant Secretary of the Navy.

     Another relative of theirs - Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. (born in 1916) - helped found the Office of Strategic Services (which eventually morphed into what is now the C.I.A.), and led America's coup against the democratically elected leader of Iran, Muhammad Mosaddegh, in 1953.

     Franklin D. Roosevelt also married his own cousin, Eleanor.

     Franklin D. Roosevelt is treated by Democrats today, as George W. Bush was treated by Republicans in the early 2000s; as a self-made man who pulled himself up by his own bootstraps and made a name for himself out of nothing. Nothing could be further from the truth.

     F.D.R. was nothing more than a spoiled, power-hungry elitist, who rode on the back of his cousin Teddy's accomplishments. Aside from being a nepotistic cousin-fucker whose parents were sixth-cousins.

     6. Who was the governor of the State of New York, prior to becoming president.

     F.D.R. served as governor of New York from 1929 to 1932. Before that, he was Assistant Secretary of the Navy (like his relative Teddy), and prior to that, he served in the New York State Legislature. Before that, he was a lawyer.

     Moreover, F.D.R.'s father James was a businessman and a horse breeder. James once took Franklin to meet Grover Cleveland while Cleveland was president. In fact, Cleveland told Franklin that he hoped Franklin would never become president.

     F.D.R. grew up playing polo and tennis, and received a free sailboat from his father at the age of sixteen. It would probably be fair to conclude that F.D.R. never performed a day of honest hard work in his whole life.

     

     7. Whose legacy was based on the myth that wartime spending can get a country out of a recession without many negative consequences.

     Sure, the United States emerged from World War II as the wealthiest country on the face of the Earth. But that was arguably due only to the facts that the other developed countries of the world were thoroughly bombed to rubble during the conflict, and because the U.S. was so far geographically removed from the other Allied nations that it never suffered significant military attacks.

     The U.S. may have recovered from the losses it suffered during World War II. But the number of people paying federal income taxes skyrocketed (from 7% to 64%) from 1940 to 1944. To the extent to which high income taxes discourage people from working and earning more, the economy has never recovered (in that regard). That number now sits at 44%.

     Additionally, the country has never recovered from the increased militarism which was brought about by its second major involvement in an international military conflagration. Prior to that, the U.S. had been relatively uninvolved in wars (that is, if you don't count its colonialism in the Philippines, Hawaii, and elsewhere). The people who settled America sailed across an entire ocean for a reason; to get away from Europe, its kings, and its endless conflicts (including religious wars).

     8. Was not an honest public servant, but rather, someone who knew how to do the bare minimum of what was required, in order to keep his power and his job. Richard Nixon could be described the same way.

     F.D.R. is credited for having lifted people out of poverty. But this came at the expense of the freedom of the interned Japanese, German, and Italian Americans. It came at the expense of forgetting the contributions of people like Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, and the legislators who wrote the laws that F.D.R. merely enforced.

     F.D.R.'s successes came at the expense of a legacy wherein modern-day Democrats "vote blue no matter who", despite all the indications that the Democratic Party is no longer interested in helping anybody other than wealthy professionals who live in wealthy suburbs which are growing so quickly that they resemble cancerous tumors on the face of the Earth more than they resemble livable human settlements.

     Don't even get me started on F.D.R.'s mischaracterization of the Philippines and Hawaii as if they were "American" in late 1941, in order to excuse American military involvement in the Pacific theater of World War II.
     For more information on this, please watch Daniel Immerwahr's presentation "How to Hide an Empire", available at the following link:
     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaKOOqXDnqA
     Or read this article on the same topic:
     http://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/feb/15/the-us-hidden-empire-overseas-territories-united-states-guam-puerto-rico-american-samoa

     Or his confiscation of gold from American citizens, after which he turned around and sold the gold to big banks at a 28% profit.

     Or his refusal to meet (or "snubbing") of African-American Olympic champion runner Jesse Owens, which genocidal dictator Adolf Hitler didn't even have the gall to do.

Based on a post titled

"Franklin D. Roosevelt Was an Elitist,

and He and His Adviser Henry Stimson

Were Anti-Semitic War Criminals",

originally posted to Facebook on August 8th, 2021

Edited and Expanded on September 9th, 2021

Originally published to this blog on September 9th, 2021

Five Reasons Why I Don't Feel Comfortable Introducing Myself Using Gender Pronouns

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Reason #1: I Am an Individual, Not a Gender Identity
3. Reason #2: I Don't Care What People Call Me
4. Reason #3: Focusing on Gender Pronouns Sexualizes People and Triggers Me
5. Reason #4: I Do Not Care About Being Misgendered
6. Reason #5: I Do Not Want to Be Referred To
7. Conclusion

 

 

 

Content

 

 

 

1. Introduction

      A pronoun is a word or phrase used to refer to someone or something. Gender pronouns (or gender-based pronouns) are used to refer to a person by their gender, as shorthand, in place of their name.

     Over the last several years, it has become more and more common - especially in socially liberal or left-leaning circles - to provide one's gender-based pronouns, while introducing oneself to a new group of people.

     I have encountered this phenomenon twice so far in my life; once in a union meeting, and again for a meeting of environmentalists.

     I have written this article in order to explain why I do not feel comfortable introducing myself using gender pronouns.

2. Reason #1: I Am an Individual, Not a Gender Identity

     For one, my gender identity is not an integral part of my identity. I do not primarily identify as a man, a woman, male, nor female, nor anything else "in between" nor "other". What I primarily identify as, is an individual.

     If someone wishes to refer to me, then I would hope that they would refer to me as "Joe" (my first name), or as "Joseph", "Joey", or "Joe Kopsick" (or my full name "Joseph William Kopsick").

     Notice that I said "hope". I hope that people refer to me by my chosen name. If someone wants to call me "Steve", "Billy", "Josephine", "Princess", or "X AE A-12", that is their choice. Attempting to refer to me by that name would be completely unproductive, and would only confuse people about to whom they're referring. But it would not offend or insult me.

3. Reason #2: I Don't Care What People Call Me

     There is no point in getting "offended" or "insulted" when someone refers to you by the wrong name. If they're doing it on purpose, then I would understand feeling offended. But even if a person is trying to offend or insult you, nobody can actually make you feel one way or another. Your feelings are under your control.

     If you suspect that someone is trying to hurt your feelings by calling you by the incorrect name, then you have every right to confront the person about that. As long as you remember that feeling insulted, or saying "I'm offended", doesn't give you any extra rights.

     All you can do is inform people of the name, or pronouns, with which you would like to be referred, and hope that they respond in-kind. You cannot make someone refer to you by any name, because they are in control of their mouths and voice boxes; not you.

 

     I have no preferences regarding what I would like people to call me. As I explained, if they don't call me "Joe", then I may suspect that they are talking about somebody else. But I am not about to start ordering people to call me by any particular name, nor by any particular set of pronouns.

     That's because I am not a grammar Nazi, nor a control freak. I do not care what people call me.

4. Reason #3: Focusing on Gender Pronouns Sexualizes People and Triggers Me

     Another reason why I don't care whether people call me by he/him pronouns, she/her pronouns, or anything else, is because I consider the use of gender-based pronouns to be sexualizing.

     If I were introducing myself with as much attention to gender as the rest of the group would wish, then I would be allowing them to refer to me with a reference to my sex or gender, instead of with a reference to my individuality (the easiest way to do so being to use my first name).

     As I explained, I primarily consider myself to be an individual human being, rather than as a member of the male biological sex, or the masculine gender, or the female biological sex, or the feminine gender, or anything else.

     I am not primarily a member of any group; I identify as myself.

     Even though (as far as I know) I have XY sex chromosomes, that fact does not dictate my identity as much as some people might assume it does. If socially tolerant people are correct - and gender is fluid, and biological sex does not dictate who you're attracted to, nor whom you love, nor whether you are more masculine or feminine - then telling you that I identify as male should not tell you jack shit about who I am as a person.

     In my opinion, treating my sex or gender as an integral part of who I am, is just submission to the false assumption (ironically shared by socially "tolerant" people) that telling you my gender identity will tell you everything (or anything) that you need to know about me. It does not.

     I could allow you to refer to me by "he/him" pronouns, but that would be denying that I have a feminine side. I could allow you to refer to me by "she/her" pronouns - as a way of recognizing my feminine side - but that would only be a distraction from the fact that I have XY sex chromosomes and the external genital appearances characteristic of a biological male (i.e., a penis and testicles).

     I was molested as a child.

     When I tried to grow my hair long in high school, I was treated as if I were a girl; as if having long hair alone, made me a girl or a woman. I knew then that that was not so, and I still know it today.

     When I introduce myself to a new group of people, I want them to know what my first name is. That is the way that we all grew up introducing ourselves, and there is no need for that to change. I do not say this out of lack of tolerance for transgender individuals; I say it because there is no need to overload people with information about me aside from my name.

     Also, I do not want people to be thinking about my dick and balls just because I am meeting them for the first time.

     Parents in the Millennial generation (my generation) have spoken up recently about the fact that babies are routinely dressed in gender-specific ways; blue for boys, and pink for girls. It used to be the other way around, actually; blood-red used to stand for males (many of whom became soldiers) while sky-blue stood for the peaceful nurturing nature associated with females.

     Several years ago, a "gender-reveal party" caused a wildfire that burned down twenty-two thousand acres of California wilderness. Millennial parents were quick to point out that that wildfire was an indication that people's obsession with their children's genders has gotten out of hand.
     You can read about that fire at the following link:
     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Dorado_Fire

     People do not need to be thinking about your child's genitals when you inform them that you have given birth to a baby. Similarly, people do not need to know that I have a penis and testicles in order to know that I like to be called Joe.

     Do you need to know that I have a dick, or XY sex chromosomes - or know that I have no plans to take hormones or get surgery - in order to call me by my preferred name of Joe? No, you don't.

     Groups that ask people to introduce themselves with their name and gender pronouns, should think about the fact that many people have sexual trauma in their past.

     Having to decide whether I am more masculine or feminine, in front of a group of strangers, is triggering for me; it traumatizes me and causes me to think about the complicated past I have in terms of trying to figure out what my gender identity is or is not.

     When I am told "Please introduce yourself and tell us your pronouns", I am no longer looking forward to the meeting; now I am anxiously worrying about how to deal with referencing my sexual or gender identity. I am worrying about how to avoid being objectified sexually, or sexualized, when all I should be doing is waiting to tell people what my name is.

     After I introduce myself, people should be thinking about the fact that my name is Joe. They should not be thinking about whether I have a penis, whether I am attracted to men, nor whether I am taking hormones or seeking gender confirmation surgery.

     The person who molested me as a child, was obsessed with my appearance and sexuality and my sex. I grew up fixated on my appearance, and having to worry about whether I seemed masculine-looking enough, while retaining my right to have a nurturing and feminine side.

     I don't need to go through the rest of my life worrying that complete strangers are going to treat me the same way as my child molester.

     My name is Joe. Some biological women are named Joe (or Jo) too. The fact that my name is Joe, has absolutely nothing to do with my external genital appearance, nor with whether I am more masculine or feminine.

     Stop sexualizing me. And stop sexualizing your infants.

5. Reason #4: I Do Not Care About Being Misgendered

     If you feel it necessary to use pronouns when referring to me, then I would not be offended, hurt, insulted, nor shocked, if you guessed. Not even if you guessed incorrectly. I would be confused, but not offended.
     I do not care about being misgendered (that is, identified as a member of "the wrong gender"). I would rather be misgendered, than order people to use - or not to use - certain words, when referring to me.



6. Reason #5: I Do Not Want to Be Referred To

     When I introduce myself to a group, I assume that - if someone wishes to speak to me - they will address me directly, calling me by my name.

     I do not assume that they will chiefly reference me by referring to me in the third person while speaking to other people in the group.

     If you need to mention me to someone else in the group, then my first name "Joe" will suffice perfectly, in place of whatever pronouns you may wish that I had indicated that I prefer.

 

     As I explained, I do not wish to "force" nor "make" people call me by any particular name(s) or gender pronoun(s), and I cannot force anybody to say anything because I don't control their mouth.

     But what I suggest, is that, if someone wishes to refer to me, to another person in the group, then there is no reason whatsoever why they need to refer to me as "him" or "he".

     Instead of "him" or "her", say "Joe". Instead of "he" or "she", say "Joe".

     Now, it may feel awkward to you to say "Joe" every five seconds instead of using "he" as shorthand, but imagine how awkward I might feel having my gender referred to every few seconds, or (even worse) being prompted to focus on my gender as if it were an integral (or the second-most important) part of my identity.

     There is no reason why you can't say to someone, "How do you think Joe feels about that" instead of "How do you think he feels about that". There is no reason why you can't say, "Let's invite Joe to the event later this week" instead of "Let's invite him to the event later this week."

     If you think that all of this is a bit too much for me to tell you about myself, then imagine how I must feel when you ask me to talk about my sexual or gender identity the very same moment that I meet you for the first time!

 

     In fact, if your question is "How do you think Joe feels about that", then why don't you ask me how I feel about it, instead of asking someone else!?

     If we referred to each other by their names when speaking to each other - and never gossiped about each other behind one another's backs - then there would be almost zero need for third-person pronouns (let alone gender pronouns).

     The American-Israeli philosopher Dr. Martin Buber explained, in his book I and Thou, referring to someone as "it" or "he" has a very different character from calling that person "you". Dr. Buber (not "he", but Dr. Buber) explains that referring to someone in the third person, separates that person from oneself (I). When you engage directly with a person, and speak directly to them, you remove that separation, and enter into a real, direct relationship with that person.

     Buber even went so far as to assert that this implies that there is no such thing as "they" (a plural form of the third-person pronouns "it", "he", and "she"). Referring to a group of people as "they" not only separates them from yourself and the person to whom you are speaking, it "others" them. Here, I use "other" as a verb, meaning that calling people "they" implies that they are so different from you and the person to whom you are speaking, that it is almost as if they are not worthy of being spoken to directly.

     I would prefer that people not gossip about me behind my back. I would prefer that people refer to me as "Joe". But just because I might prefer that, that does not mean that it gives me any right to do anything about it.

     Stop talking about me, and start talking to me.

 


7. Conclusion

     I care more about other people's freedom to use whichever words they please, than I am worried about being misgendered. I care more about helping people not to feel excluded or "othered" than I do about labeling them.

     This is why my preferred pronouns are "Shut the fuck up", "Joe-self" and "Go-fuck-your-self".

Written on September 8th, 2021

Published on September 8th, 2021

Greens and Libertarians: Eternal Partners in the Struggle Against Fascism (Infographic)

 

     For more information about what the Green Party and the Libertarian Party have in common, please read my October 2020 infographic titled "Venn Diagram: What Do the Green Party and the Libertarian Party Have in Common?", available at the following link:
     http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2020/10/what-do-green-party-and-libertarian.html

Image Created on August 31st, 2021

Edited on September 7th, 2021

First published to this blog on September 7th, 2021

If You Are Seeing This Image, Then Please Stop Calling Me on the Phone

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. First Image

3. Second Image

4. First Text Portion, Written in October 2020 (Background Text Explaining the Context of These Images)

5. Second Text Portion, Written in August 2021 (Background Text Explaining the Context of These Images)

 

 

Content

 

 

1. Introduction

      What follows is a guide to respecting your friends' communication-related boundaries, during this time of desperate need for social contact, brought on by the "physical distancing", "social distancing", and shelter-in-place orders which are supposedly necessitated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
     The purpose of this article is to explain that non-stop talking (or "monologuing") is not acceptable, even during a time when one is in desperate need of social contact. Taking turns monologuing is better than one person monologuing, but it is still not good enough.

     I have written the article below in order to impart a lesson about healthy communication skills. I used to have hopes, dreams, and goals. I do not want my goals - nor who I am as a person - to be entirely subsumed under my need for social contact.
     I cannot spend all of my time worrying about other people's problems; I have enough problems of my own. Your friends are the same way.

2. First Image

 

Click, open in a new tab or window, and/or download

in order to see in full resolution.

3. Second Image

This image was created in response to a friend
who kept calling me and asking "What's new?".

Click, open in a new tab or window, and/or download

in order to see in full resolution.

 

4. First Text Portion, Written in October 2020
     (Background Text Explaining the Context of These Images)

 

 

     I don't want to be the guy who doesn't pick up the phone when his friends need him. Don't make me consider being that guy.
     I want to be part of my friends' lives so I can help them, not to listen to them talk about ghosts and shit.

     People doing non-stop talking to me literally triggers my P.T.S.D..
     I was stood over, yelled at, lectured at, and never allowed to talk or properly explain myself. That is how my father tortured me. I cannot sit here and fucking listen to people talk about meaningless bullshit forever.
     If we're having a conversation, there has to be a purpose. Either you want me to help you, or you do not.
     I know I'm a good listener, but I cannot listen to people go on and vent about their problems, especially if they don't want help or advice. I cannot be that person. Not yet anyway.
     I have a life. I work more than 40 hours a week. Nobody seems to understand that I can't spend all my free time on the phone and that I can't have people in my house in the half hour before I leave for work. It slows me down.

     I have extreme difficulties setting boundaries, especially with non-stop talkers. I need help setting up these boundaries, and if someone is going to try to be my friend, then they need to be helping to set those boundaries up.
     I need more friends, not more problems, not more people to test my boundaries instead of respecting them.

     I am trying to finish a campaign. My child molester is on the loose. I am extremely busy.
     I cannot be a good listener, or even laugh an appropriate amount in a conversation, if my mind is consumed with the rage and uncertainty that have resulted from my father remaining a free man after molesting me as a child and then brainwashing me about it.

     I love you guys. But stop fucking calling me.

 

 

 

5. Second Text Portion, Written in August 2021
     (Background Text Explaining the Context of These Images)

 

     My father used my cell phone essentially as a tracking device.

 

     He got phones for me and my mom and brother, essentially only so that he could harangue us for not responding quickly (because he has abandonment issues).

     My father once fired me from my secretary job for him, for leaving my phone at home by accident.

 

     My mom would spend up to 45 minutes at a time on the phone when I was a kid. It was extremely difficult to get her attention during this time.

     Parents, please remember that small children cannot solve their own problems. If you ignore your kid for a solid hour, they could die. Cover the phone for five seconds, talk to your child, and find out whether it's an emergency, or whether it's something that can wait!

 

     When my mother's phone rings, she instantly sighs or scoffs, gets visibly agitated, and says "Jeez" or "what now!?". I never want that to be me.

     I want to live.

     I don't want to be a prisoner of my phone, an inanimate object that we have all allowed way too much control over us.

 

     I don't enjoy talking on the phone.

     Personally I think it's a useful, but deeply flawed, invention. They invented that shit 150 years ago, and still haven't even come close to perfecting the sound quality.

     It is difficult to struggle to hear my friends through crackling. It's also dehumanizing to have to listen to a roboticized voice. It stresses me out because it feels like I'm not talking to a human being.

     It feels like my friends and family have been replaced by robots.

 

     I know it's hard for my friends not to talk to me on the phone, but remember that e-mails and texts - and talking in person - exist too!

     Meeting in person may not be possible when we live far apart, but the only way to talk voice-to-voice long distance is to put up with crackling and random call-dropping. Maybe you guys can handle the stress of that, but I can’t.

 

     Last year [2020], I spent months and months trying to explain - to ten different people - that they were calling me too often, and/or for too long.

     In January 2021, I even made a twenty-minute video for YouTube [titled "Plea to My Friends and Followers: Stop Calling Me on the Phone!"], in which I named all of the things I can't do when I'm talking on the phone.

 

     The things I can't do while I'm on the phone include:

          - eating (because chewing makes noise),

          - cooking (makes noise),

          - listening to or playing music,

          - sleeping,

          - cleaning my house (if the objects make noise), and more.

 

     I can’t eat or sleep if I’m talking to you all of the time!

     I am sick of waking up to phone calls, and then waiting for my friends to stop talking to me on the phone so that I can start my day.

 

     Talking about your problems on the phone, is not the same thing as solving your problems.

     The more you call me to talk about your problems, the more powerless I feel, because I literally cannot do anything about them (besides give advice that I'm not sure whether you'll take or appreciate).

 

     Also, when talking on the phone, it is customary to let the other person talk at least 10% of the time. This is a joke, of course; 50% is the ideal. Equal conversations should be 50/50.

     If I'm not talking – or if I slip to far below that 50% threshold – then it's not always because I have nothing to say.

     It's mostly because I have learned to deal with my problems - and call the people who can solve them - instead of just going on talking about them for a half hour, or an hour, or multiple hours at a time.

     Another reason why I’m not talking, might be that I don’t feel like I will be heard, because as soon as I stop talking, you will start talking. And for minutes and minutes, before I have another chance to speak.

     Also, me pausing for half a second, should not be confused with an invitation for you to speak for another solid twenty minutes.

     I don’t know why nobody ever told you this, but it is not an equal conversation when you speak for twenty minutes, and then I say “Yeah?”, and then you speak for another twenty solid minutes. That is not polite.

 

     I have tried as hard as I can to be polite about this. But it seems that the more polite I am, the less my friends get the hint.

     I am sorry that some people will feel personally called-out by this post. But I have tried to explain this over and over and over again:

     I am trying to put my rapist/father in prison. There is no such thing as “free time” for me. Say “call me when you have some free time” all you wish; saying this does not cause me to have more free time.

     If I stopped calling to you – and/or broke up with you – then it is because I don’t enjoy talking with you as much as you think I do! Take the hint!

 

     The more time you talk about your problems (which I cannot solve), the more I think about the things I am not doing to write about what my father did to me. The more you talk, the more I am silently stressing-out about things I need to do around the house, and out of the house at businesses, in order to move my life forward and solve my problems.

     If you do not understand the concept of “moving one’s life forward”, then I am sorry, but I am not going to be able to explain it to you. If you think that I can easily put my other needs aside in order to talk to you, then I am sorry, but I am not going to stop sleeping, and eating, and cooking, and cleaning, and showering, and going to the bathroom, in order to make you happy.

 

     I cannot be of any use to my friends, if I am not solving my problems. I cannot solve my problems if I am listening to my friends talk on the phone every single “free” moment I have.

     Just because I have a free moment here and there, that doesn’t necessarily mean that I want to spend that moment listening to my friends talk.

     If I don’t sleep and cook and eat and clean and shower and use the restroom when I need to, then it messes with the flow of my day. If the flow of my day is impeded, then I risk failing to show up to work on time. If I fail to show up to work on time, I could be fired.

     If I am fired from my job, then I will miss paying my bills. Then – if I don’t get a new job in time - I could get behind on utilities, and lose my apartment, and end up on the street or having to live with friends or family. That option is, to me, not worth it. I would like to stay housed, through my own power and my own work.

     I will not completely re-prioritize and re-schedule my life in order to listen to you talk on the phone. I was homeless once; I am not going to be homeless again solely to make you feel heard. Go find a second person who wants to listen to you talk.

 

     I already devoted hundreds of hours listening to ten of my friends talk – and dozens of hours begging them to stop calling me so much – all throughout last year [2020].

     I have had enough.

 

     I know that many of my friends need help, and need someone to listen to them. But I cannot bear the burden of being the only friend who will listen to ten of my friends.

     I want to be supportive. And I want you to have friends. That’s “friends”, plural! Please find a second friend, or I will have no choice but to leave you with no friends at all!

     If that happens, you will have brought it upon yourselves.

 

     I love my friends. But if you love someone, let them go!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Introduction written on September 3rd, 2021

Edited and Expanded on September 7th, 2021

Published on September 3rd, 2021

 

 

First image based on an image I created in mid-2021

 Image created again on September 3rd, 2021

 Published to this blog on September 3rd, 2021

 

 

 

 

Second image created in late 2020 or early 2021

 First published to this blog on September 3rd, 2021

First text portion originally written as a Facebook post,
originally published to Facebook in October 2020

Edited and expanded on September 3rd, 2021

Published to this blog on September 3rd, 2021

Second text portion originally written as a Facebook post,
titled “I HATE FUCKING TALKING ON THE PHONE”,
originally published to Facebook on August 28^th, 2021

Edited and expanded on September 3^rd, 2021

Published to this blog on September 3^rd, 2021






Order of texts reversed on September 7th, 2021

Which Needs Do Different Political Ideologies Consider to Be Basic Government Services?

      The infographic below is a political spectrum that shows six different political ideologies, and their views on which human needs should be considered basic or essential services that government should provide.

Image created by the author of this blog, Joe Kopsick

Click on image, and open in new tab and/or window,

or download, in order to view in full resolution

     One of the things that inspired me to create the image above, was the image below, which I have seen in libertarian discussion groups online.
     This image was created to help explain the perspectives of the libertarian minarchists (advocates of the minimum amount of government necessary), and voluntaryists (libertarians who want to abolish the state as well as all coercive forms of taxation and government).

Image not created by the author of this blog

     Here is another version of the image above, which was created in order to illustrate the importance of embracing voluntaryism, rejecting the violence that the state legitimizes, and rejecting the force that the state authorizes (in order to apply the law and collect taxes, etc.).

Image not created by the author of this blog

     I urge my readers to compare and contrast the three images above, with images depicting Thomas Maslow's "hierarchy of needs".

     Those who do so will notice that the services deemed basic or essential by the progressives and communists, lines up almost perfectly with the set of basic human needs which comprise the lowest level or levels of Maslow's hierarchy (i.e., those corresponding to maintaining the health, nutrition, and well-being of the human body).

     Also, the services deemed basic by the communitarians and socialists, loosely corresponds with the human needs found in the center of Maslow's hierarchy (i.e., those that relate to belonging).

Image not created by the author of this blog

Original image created on August 5th, 2021

Article published on August 5th, 2021