COVID-19, Drones, Wisconsin and Play Dates...

First things first watch this video:

Now that you've seen that. Let's talk about it.

Finance guru gets on TV and says that Chinese ways of enforcing their lock-down is perfectly legit because of the results. Classic the ends justify the means argument.

So, there's a concept in law that I think is a pretty big deal. Many times when you hear about evidence getting thrown out of a trial its due to the "Fruit of the Poison Tree" doctrine. Basically, that means that if evidence is found via illegal means and other evidence is found as a result of illegally obtained evidence, that is fruit of the poisonous tree and it is not admissible.

Now its a child of the exclusionary rule, and there are exceptions. But it is a pretty big part of our legal system used to discourage police from using unsavory means to obtain evidence. Making sure they know ahead of time that if they don't do it right, they won't be able to use it. Now I think we can all agree that preventing police from illegally obtaining evidence is a good thing.

The ends justifying the means is a pretty weak argument, for anything. But fear has taken over most people's heads nowadays. For the most part, people are scared of this disease. Perfectly rational fear. Fear is one of those nifty defense mechanisms we have that have helped keep us alive. Now where it goes off the rails is when people let fear dominate their rational mind. And there's been a shortage of rationality in this situation, in my humble opinion.

Next up, the drones. The scolding drones. If this isn't something that makes your skin crawl I don't want you as a reader. Drones flying around, watching everyone, and giving you government propaganda from the sky. I know we already live in a world that is essentially a surveillance state, but at least it was a little understated before. A security camera here, another in the stop light, they are everywhere but at least they try to make them as unobtrusive as possible so you don't have to have the fact that someone is watching you at the forefront of your mind every minute of the day.

This New Jersey town has decided to go right to having drones flying around telling people to disperse and social distance and whatever else. If that's not a dystopian wet dream I don't know what is. They've thrown all pretenses out the window and have gone all in on watching their citizens all the time, and not feeling the least bit self conscious about it.

And now we come to Wisconsin, and their lovely accent. No, their exceptionally even tempered police who came to tell this woman that she's in violation of the stay at home order because she sent her kid to another person's house to play with their kid. I don't know what the order in Wisconsin is, but do we really want to say that kids can't go play with other kids? Sure no gatherings of more than 10, I'll bite off on that. So you've got mom, dad, kid 1 and kid 2 so you're safely under the threshold.

However, that's not the thing that bothers me the most. Its not even the fact that these cops are talking to this woman like she's a complete imbecile. Or that they're saying Orwellian things like, "Your uncooperative actions will be documented" Its the fact that one of her neighbors called the police on her. Not because she's cooking meth in her trailer. Not because she's running an underage brothel out of her trailer. Not because she is illegally imprisoning illegal immigrants and forcing them to watch Seinfeld reruns. No, they called the cops because her kid went to another kids house.

Something like this happened somewhere before, I saw it in an old newsreel somewhere. I wish I could've understood it better but the narration was in German.

Danger Close....

Whence one is dealing with close air support or CAS in a war zone, danger close means just that the danger is mother fucking close. Or the bombs and/or projectiles they are going to be hurling at some target coordinate is too close to friendlies for comfort. Always remember, friendly fire isn't.

So someone at work got this COVID-19 bullshit. Luckily she's already bouncing back from that shit. Now that in my current life is the definition of danger close. I mean I walked right by her on a daily basis.

What do you do with this information? I suppose you could panic. I suppose you could hide in your house and not do anything for the rest of your life but if you're like me that's not really appealing. I'd rather get this shit and die than sit in the house not getting near another person for the rest of my life. I mean how long can this go on? I understand there's a new virus and its killing people. Of course if you pay attention to the news you'd probably think that a quarter of the world's population has already taken a dirt nap from this stuff. If I'm not mistaken the last numbers I heard was

• Total cases: 213,144
• Total deaths: 4,513

For the statisticians in the room, that's 0.001% of Americans have bucked the kicket from this thing. Currently, some of the most dire projections have the death toll from this thing at 240,000 Americans. Now do NOT get me wrong, I am not minimizing the suffering of the families hit by this thing. But if 240,000 Americans die from this that's exactly 0.07% of the population. That would put it at the third leading cause of death in the country. Behind heart disease and cancer. Now heart disease and cancer are not (to the best of my limited knowledge) not something that you can catch. Heart disease you're either born with or you develop over the course of a lifetime of poor decisions. Cancer, again from what my pea brain retains, is in all of us, it just depends on whether it metastasizes or not. If I'm wrong about that stuff let me know.

Anyway, back to this Coronavirus shit. I think the damage its doing in what its turning us into is going to be far greater than the death toll from the actual sickness. Jobless claims are through the roof, unprecedented levels. The fed went so far as to project 32% unemployment. The Great Depression unemployment rate was 24.9%. So, my logic says that we are going from a viral outbreak that could kill a small fraction of the population, to a economic calamity that will kill just as many if not more, just in different ways.

Obviously, I could be wrong, I've been wrong before. The question that I have is this, is slowing the spread of this virus worth the years of economic struggle and the economic damage that many Americans will NOT recover from?

Just Another Day In The Shitshow...

The government is always an easy target for ridicule. Always, and for the most part I understand it. Hence the shitshow in the title. For the most part the government is a shitshow. Now where I start to get a little perturbed is when the ire is directed at the people who work for the government.

I'm not exactly sure what a bureaucrat is so I looked that shit up. Here's what Google hit me with.

Bureaucrat: an official in a government department, in particular one perceived as being concerned with procedural correctness at the expense of people's needs.

The vast majority of government workers aren't that asshole. Are some of us, absolutely. Are some of you assholes? When dealing with government employees the majority of you are assholes. 

For the most part government employees have thankless jobs. The pay is mediocre, benefits are good and for anyone concerned with security in the jobs its a good spot. All in all I'd say the good outweighs the bad. I mean, with this coronavirus shit going on and everything being closed I'm worried that there are going to be a whole lot more mouths on the breadline coming up here soon.

In any case, the point of this here is to try to separate the government from the employee. Mostly because there's not a whole helluva lot the employee can do about the bureaucracy. Its just not in their job description.

Moving right along. I'm waiting patiently for the coronavirus to spread like wildfire through my place of employment. I work in a prison. Its a really big petri dish of dirty motherfuckers who as soon as this thing gets in there its going to fly through everyone in a flash. The worst part about it is, we can't shut it down. I mean if you work at Staples or Best Buy, they can literally just shut those places down and in a couple weeks or months when we get a handle on this thing then its back to normal. I'm in a situation that regardless of the state of the handle, I've gotta work. So first off, I can say that's a good thing because I don't have to worry about not getting paid.

But I'm a little nervous, but then I remember how my brain really works and honestly and I'm only speaking for me here, no one else. I do not wish what I'm about to say to become standard practice. The doctors and scientists on TV say that much like chicken pox, once you get the coronavirus you'll be immune to it for a period of time, or you'll have a resistance to it.

So guess what I want to do? Yep, let's get it over with. I distinctly remember as a kid, and I'm about to show my age here, but when I got chicken pox my mom called the doctor and the doctor said, stick him and his brother in the same bed for the next couple weeks until they've both recovered. Get them both out of the way now so you don't have to do it one at a time. Then a couple days later my aunt and uncle brought my cousins over to get it too. 

In any case, the virus so far, seems to kill old people and people with preexisting conditions. So if you are a reasonably healthy person chances are pretty damn good you're going to make it and then the antibodies will be in you to fight that shit off. They can even use your blood, plasma and other material to help research into finding a cure or a vaccine. So as for me, let's roll the dice. At least if I was immune for a period of time I could not be walking around on eggshells recoiling in terror every time someone so much as sneezes.

And I could help science...win win all around. Steven Covey would love me.

Corona Crazy...

I couldn't resist jumping back in and throwing my two cents out for this COVID-19 insanity that is continuing unabated and actually seems to be accelerating.

I figure most of the people, if any, who read this blog are at least moderately intelligent and even if you're not, you do have an attention span of more than a few seconds which places you solidly in the top 10% of all humans on the planet. So, now that I've made reading this take more than 15 seconds I can rest assured that all the dip shits have lost interest and I can start talking about this thing.

So, someone is going to have to explain to me why, W-H-Y did the panic item of choice become toilet paper? What in the fuck is the big deal with toilet paper? I mean, I get it you want to have a clean booty hole. No problem with that. But is it really something that we all have to hoard now because everyone is scared that Coronavirus is gonna get you and you're going to need 3000 times the typical amount of TP?

By the way, so far as I have read explosive diarrhea is not one of the symptoms of this thing, and (I know some may find this disgusting) but typically the bathtub or shower is right next to the toilet so if you do run completely out of toilet paper, just jump your ass in the shower and rinse that shit off.

What else, so this panic buying shit got under my skin quick. I work for a prison system. And we need to buy soap, disinfectant and hand sanitizer for the petri dish that is every prison and jail throughout the country. And all of a sudden, you can't buy this shit anywhere. Not in the little bottles, not in big bottles, I couldn't even get the shit in 55 gallon drums. So some douchebag has a 55 gallon drum of purell in his garage that he might use a tenth of in the next 5 years and I can't get it in a prison where its really needed.

And then, the profiteers. Price gougers and Capitalists of Opportunity or whatever you want to call this litter of missing chromosome fucktards that need to be set on fire in a dumpster behind a Dollar General outside of Fort Polk, LA.

Then there's this guy...https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/15/technology/matt-colvin-hand-sanitizer-donation.html?auth=login-google1tap&login=google1tap

I mean at least he donated the shit, to get out of a price gouging charge to be sure, but once you read the article it says that someone threatened his wife and children. Threatened to kill them. So, the guy is a douchebag, and he should get hit for this shit. Maybe a few months in jail could be appropriate, or make him refund all the money he did make on Amazon. He already had to eat all the money he spent on the rest of the stuff. Kill his Amazon account, make him volunteer at a homeless shelter, hell make him be the guinea pig for the coronavirus vaccine.

But don't threaten the man's wife and kids. Especially the kids. The wife, she's an adult, she probably should've told her douchebag husband how people were going to respond to this. But given that the guy originally went to the press to say he couldn't sell the stuff on Amazon, the guy is obviously either a complete psychopath or an absolute fucking moron.

The craziness continues. Everyone has to stay in the house. Don't go to work if you don't have to. Essential workers that work in one state and live in another may have to start showing ID and authorization to cross state lines. The government is exercising powers it has to direct private industry production. And all sorts of other fun things.

Okay, forgive me for being "that guy" but am I the only one who is even remotely concerned with the government having the power to tell me that I have to stay in the house? Government's don't normally do too well with giving power back once they get a hold of it. Just saying.

I get it, the virus and flattening the curve and people are stupid and on and on it can go. I don't disagree with the logic behind all this shit. I'm just a little concerned when its all going to end. How long can we keep this up before collectively we just have to say, "You know what, fuck it, I'd rather get sick and I'd rather people die than have to live like a shut in and do nothing but watch movies and eat ramen noodles till the end of days" There's already reports in Europe of people basically ignoring social distancing and the governor of Florida had to get involved in shutting the beach down for spring break.

All I'm saying is there's only so long that these restrictions can be tolerated. All non life sustaining businesses are closed...what follows that? The most crushing unemployment rate the country and probably the world has ever seen. It will take generations to recover from it. Hopefully, that's not how this all goes down.

Anyway, I'm done for now. Please argue with me. I enjoy the stimulation. Lord knows there isn't much else to do right now.

Avoidance...

So for those of you new to my blog, lets sum up. I went to Afghanistan in 2008, got back in 2009. Saw a whole bunch of really fun stuff over there, did a lot of really fun things over there. Came back, started a family, damn near got divorced, still hanging on by a thread and now I live in Pennsylvania while my wife and daughters live in Michigan. I know, that's a very brief overview but the cherry on top to all of that is that since 2009, I've been dealing with a pretty pronounced case of PTSD. I've had my ups and my downs. But that is enough to bring you up to speed on what I'm about to cover.

Avoidance: The action of keeping away from or not doing something.

How many of us (vets) can see that in our daily lives. I'm going to take a wild guess and say just about all of us. Even the ones who don't have PTSD.

Just a thought, I could be wrong, but at least for me who is the only person I can speak for with any kind of certainty, avoidance is the order of the day. Has been for years. Its like it became my first general order.

I will avoid everything within the limits of my life and quit my avoidance only when properly relieved.

 That fit in there pretty good. For those of you who don't know, the first general order is I will guard everything within the limits of my post and quit my post only when properly relieved.

So anyways, avoidance is mother fucker. Because if you're avoiding everything in your life you're really not solving anything or getting anywhere. Avoidance is all about comfort. You avoid things so you're not uncomfortable. You don't want to deal with crowds because they make your hands sweat. You don't want to be near hajis because they make your heart race. You don't want to smell diesel because it just smells so damn good. Seriously they need to make cologne out of that shit.

In my case, I've been known to hide out in my house or work for months at a time. Basically, if it is not required to maintain my employment or my life I don't do it. Just enough to make sure I don't get fired and I don't die. I can't really explain it any more succinctly than that.

Now there's a lot of issues with that, chief among them is basically being dead. For all intents and purposes I believe that acting like that is tantamount to volunteering to be dead.

If that's not dumb as a box of shit I don't know what is.

But what do you do about it? I mean you can spout a few platitudes about whatever but that doesn't really help anyone who is right in the thick of this shit. Truly it doesn't. I always love it when people say shit like, "Oh you just need to get out there and do things, once you do that it'll go away."

How about this, the idea isn't to get it to go away. Truthfully, I don' think it will ever go away. Those feelings will always be just one little step away. To be perfectly honest, I don't know if I them to go away. If they did, I might be losing a major part of my life. Something that I am ridiculously proud of.  When my country called, I answered. I fought, and I made it home. I don't want to suppress that or forget it.

So how do we get to being able to live with it and not drive myself and/or everyone around me fucking insane? That's the $64,000 question.

Enter Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Stage Left!

CBT to my fat ass's rescue.

Is it a miracle cure? I suppose initially I thought so. But you have to get in your own head, which is someplace I imagine the majority of us combat vets aren't real keen on going most times.

So I dreamed up an imaginary friend to help me out. Okay, I might have had a little help from my adolescent fantasy land that I lived in from about 9-15 years of age, but whatever works right. Just imagine Ronda Rousey with tiggle bitties. That's my imaginary friend. A better characterization might be the woman who calls out all my destructive thought patterns and is nice enough to call me a "bitch" when I need to hear it. I do need to hear that quite a bit.

Basically, the way that I understand it (and I'm not a shrink so I may get it wrong, I'm only talking about me) is that the basis of CBT is to catch yourself thinking the bullshit that makes you unhappy, anxious, depressed, lazy or anything else you don't want to be and when you catch yourself, challenge that shit and find the fallacious thinking that you are doing and show yourself that you're full of shit.

Its hard to do. Its not easy to spend your day examining your thoughts and checking them. Especially when you're like me. I've got to challenge just about every thought that runs through my head. But it gets easier, and you learn different things to adapt your mind to the rigors of thinking about thinking. In my case, I created my imaginary friend. So in my head its almost like someone else is in there watching my thoughts and when a bad one comes by it grabs it, shakes it in my face and says, "What is this shit, bitch?"

It works. No one can tell me it doesn't. I do it every day and if I didn't do it everyday I would most likely have eaten a bullet many many years ago. So my existence is a testament to how well this stuff works.

See for yourself. Talk to a shrink. Tell them you want to do CBT, most of them will be all over that shit. If you don't want to go to a shrink, then you gotta read. So decide which one you hate less and if it you elect to read, this is the book you should start with FEELING GOOD

Okay, that's enough of my shit for one day.

Book Recommendation: The Coddling of the American Mind.

Here's a website all about it.

Now, I got a remote start installed on my truck today. Mostly because its starting to get F-ing cold around here and I don't want to have to get in a cold truck every morning. I want to get in a warm truck. So $339 later here I am.

But I had to take it in to the shop this morning to get it put in, and I didn't have anyone to give me a ride home so instead of waiting there I figured I'd head over to Barnes & Noble and see what I could dig up. First book I picked up was "The Coddling of the American Mind"

Its no big secret that college campuses are bastions of leftist thought. That in and of itself is not earth shattering at all. The problem with it is that they have gotten to the point where the free exchange of ideas is tantamount to violence in their minds. The idea being that, if you think differently than they do, and you have the nerve to speak, then you're being violent.

I am about midway through the book and I got it this morning so I can tell you the prose is excellent and it keeps you interested. I haven't gotten to the last part of the book where they are going to delve into some solutions to this mental illness that seems to be pervasive in all these kids.

That is one thing that I think they did exceptionally well. They recommend CBT, which anyone who has been through my wonderful history with PTSD knows is a Godsend. Its basically, a thought modification project you do in your own head. For the most part, works like a charm. So, if you find yourself in a depressed state, do some reading on CBT, do some of the thought worksheets and start catching your bullshit thoughts before they spill out into your life. Its what I did. If you need a place to start reading here it is.

Also, I don't think I'm the only one who finds the fact that these guys posit that these college kids who can't seem to hear certain words without having a conniption, need to do some cognitive behavioral therapy. They may not have meant it this way, I cannot speak to their motives, but in my mind the implication there is that these kids are on some level, fucking nuts.

Now I'm not one for bashing generations. Okay, that's not true. But I normally do it up, not down. I train the majority of ire onto the boomers. Additionally, I work in a profession where younger people are needed, and my profession is having exceptional problems attracting and keeping quality kids nowadays. This doesn't bode well for the future of my job. Which, unfortunately isn't going anywhere. So we need to figure out how to work with this younger generation and be able to hand this off to someone when I'm too old for this shit.

Typically, older folks love to bash the kids. I'm not really too interested in that on a macro level. On a micro-level, I think its great. These chuckle-heads are endlessly entertaining to me. But when you think about it big picture, whether we like it or not, its the old who have to adjust to the young. Pretty soon we'll be senior citizens drawing our non-existent social security and belly aching about the discount we get at the Cracker Barrel, and they'll be running...well everything.

I also would like to point out how each generation always manages to forget that the generations that they love to talk shit about are their own damn kids. Take some fucking responsibility. My kids are 5 and 3. So I'm going to have to answer for them in a couple decades.

That went all over the place didn't it? Anyway, pick up a copy if you're looking for something to read.

Today, She Put The Dog Down...

And I wasn't there. I knew it was coming, but I didn't know it was coming today. I picked that dog out. When he came up and laid on my feet years ago I said, This one.

Now after that he became a royal pain in the ass. He was a spaz. He had to be medicated and toward the end of his life he peed everywhere. But he was a dog, and that by itself made him good.

My wife tells me she did it while I wasn't home because I didn't even like the dog. Which is partly true. I didn't really like him, but there were times when he grew on me. But that's not what I'm getting at here. I picked him out. I am part of the family, I'm supposed to be the head of the family. I wanted to be there. Not just for the dog, but for her.

She calls me up crying to let me know that Ranger is gone and while I felt for him, I felt for her too. I felt for my little girls. My little girls who are going to ask where the dog is later. I didn't want to miss this. I want to be there for my family. But I can't. My job, and our future won't allow that right now.

But it doesn't hurt any less.

I'm sorry I wasn't there to at least say goodbye Ranger.

I'm sorry I wasn't there to comfort you Princess.

I'm sorry I won't be there to answer your questions girls.

I'm so so sorry.