A couple questions and comments
First: Your online contact form doesn't allow me to choose the appropriate topic of "associational life" / "Social Capital"
Senator Lee,
After reading your report "Love, Marriage, and the Baby Carriage: The Rise in Unwed Childbearing" as well as listening to your town hall, I have a few comments and questions to bring to your attention:
First and foremost, I don't wish to criticize your efforts--I think you have compiled some valuable information on the family institution--however, my critical advice towards that report is that without first establishing a clear definition of what is "bad" about unwed childbearing, all you can do is point out what is happening. In other words, just because more and more children are being born into single-parent families doesn't automatically mean that those children are disadvantaged--a good political example would be Joseph Baena, who was raised by his mother through early life yet is in fact Arnold Schwarzenegger's son--statistically Baena would pull up in your cross-section, but that doesn't mean he's disadvantaged in the least, and in fact an argument could be made that he has benefited more by being the illegitimate son of a California Governor.--Sure, you can cut hairs and say, "he would have been better off if his father was married to his mother," but this is debatable. Yes, being born in a single-parent, unwed parent, household can put you at a disadvantage, but it doesn't automatically put you at a disadvantage in life.
I'm assuming by presenting "The Social Capital Project" that you are in fact trying to start a discussion and generate ideas from Utahns and possibly discover problems or solutions for future and present problems, so I'll go ahead and provide my opinions and comments and hope that some of them are taken seriously, because I think this is a very worthy endeavor and I can get behind it so long as it does actually accomplish beneficial things and not merely the appearance of accomplishing things.
If I understand you correctly, the project is meant to discover ways the government can encourage the flourishing of social capital among civilians and to recognize areas in which the government might be hindering social capital. I have a few ideas which you should look at:
Non-profits.
A lot of Utahns don't like non-profit laws that give tax breaks to non-profits, specifically property tax laws, but there are other incentives that non-profits receive that people are offended with. Personally, I don't think non-profits should necessarily receive any form of advantage that any other business organization wouldn't receive. The way that I interpret the spirit of the laws regarding them, they were designed to encourage non-profits to help the population at large, not just specific groups of the population. What I have seen, however, is that they only help niche groups get ahead and not others, and I don't see any other way around it either, because non-profits operate through the support of niche groups that only care about their niche groups' problems. The problem is that many truly disadvantaged groups are also under-represented by non-profits.
Case in point, you can go in almost any state in the US and find a shelter / safe haven house for victims of domestic abuse. The problem is, that 0 of those states recognize that Men can be the victim of domestic abuse. --They do not allow men into their facilities, only women and children. This is 2017, we're smarter than that--we know that in situations of domestic abuse, both partners are usually abusive. The discussion, however is completely one-sided, and non-profits are completely one-sided in this area too. So, why do we provide a benefit to shelters that help "victims of domestic abuse" yet those shelters are allowed to turn away "some" (i.e. men) who are victims?
More to the point, I'm a single male and outside of extremist groups that accept practically anyone that they can brainwash, I can't think of a single organization I can go to for support if I ever have struggles related to being a man, yet there are plenty of organizations related to women struggles that receive tax deductible donations. And along that same cross-section of society, which organization do you think brings in more money: Breast Cancer Awareness groups, or Prostate Cancer Awareness groups?
On the surface, the easy fix would be to encourage more non-profits to form so that under-represented groups can be equally represented, but a case can be made that because groups like the NAACP (people of color) or the NOW (women), or even religious groups like Joel Osteen's church or the Fallwell Dynasty, and yes, even the LDS church(religion), are so poweful that a narrative is established in our society that there must be something wrong with you if you stand up and support being white, or male, or atheist or some other group. --As another example, not all white nationalists are extremists, but they don't receive the same kind of benefits as other groups that represent other minorities, and sadly, the government doesn't always protect those groups the same way that they protect their equal-opposite groups.
Online Associational life.
More and more these days, networking has become less about on-the-ground networking as it has on-the-web networking. If you're going to investigate social capital, I think you should take a serious study of the digital world. It may be that people are retreating from the real world but proportionally increasing their involvement in the digital world. Thanks to digital networking, I landed one of my better jobs--a tech job based in Salt Lake City. I knew no-one who worked there, but through my social network on facebook, I was able to make friends with and receive his referral for a position that got me hired. --This job was (in my mind) the job that got me out of the recession.
Also, half of my real-life best friendships started as online friendships, though I have to point out that making the transition from online friend to real-life friend isn't easy or a smooth transition.
Volunteer opportunities/ Lack of opportunities.
I know a lot of the neighbors on my street and feel like I live in a good neighborhood even though I'm near many slummy neighborhoods in Ogden. Let me explain why: My subdivision isn't part of Ogden city--it was supposed to be created as an HOA, but the developers didn't form an HOA before they sold the lots and so it sits in a gray area. The city will not pay for any maintenance on the street and there is no HOA to cover normal expenses: that includes the broken water main line that we all had to pitch in and pay for last year (the bill was something like $8,000 to fix it several feet under the asphalt and the utility company which is run/managed by Ogden city, didn't pay for any of it but required us to fix it or have our water shut off), it also includes snow removal, so every winter, we all pitch in as neighbors to shovel our snow as well as the street. As far as I can tell, none of my neighbors are religious and none of them act out of religious fervor--we act as a community. One of my neighbors has a four-wheeler plow that they plow the road, sometimes I use my tractor, and a few other people have snow-blowers. I've met most my neighbors because of this. My point is, that our little community of about 30 houses is aware of who lives where and has an added sense of security because we have needs that we can't meet on our own and are forced to meet those needs outside of comfort zone.
Further to the point I'm trying to make, it seems to me that single parents (specifically single mothers) tend to be the ones who communities tend to know the most about because they are the neediest members of the communities. Second to them might easily be the elderly person who sits on their porch like it's still the early 1900s.
To restate the point I'm trying to make: it seems to me that the people with the greatest social capital are the ones who have the greatest needs. They are easier to approach because they can't turn down help--they need it too desperately--and by helping them there is a strong sense of personal fulfillment. Through those people--by getting involved in their lives--it is easy to network with others that help them or their family or their friends and then expand your personal network connection to them into personal Social Capital.
I think in older years it was the fact that people had needs that forced them to walk outside of their busy farms now and again and engage with their neighbors, whereas today, people have less of those needs because they can be met in many other ways.
Community Outreach
If anything, I would say there is a lack of awareness about other people in our communities more than a real lack of Social Capital. Maybe I have a warped imagination of what it was like in colonial times, but I picture the founding fathers getting together at community hubs to talk about politics openly--sometimes even spur of the moment. Today in Utah, it's hard to go to a city council meeting and see more than 15 people--10 of which are regulars. No one seems to congregate at the courthouse during trials. And there are very few physical places where people can engage in public forum unless they are organized by politicians as Q&A sessions.
Instead, from my experience, to get involved in local politics and things that matter to Utahns, you have to sign a clipboard during some county fair where some group put up a booth related to some topic you already care about. --I fail to see how anyone branches out of their personal opinions these days when the only place you might experience people of different opinion might be protesters of an event you already care about (and let's be real, no one listens to those protesters because they didn't come for community engagement, they came for whatever the activity was). Along these lines, if you do decide to meet up for a discussion outside of some public building (or inside) you usually have to schedule in advance with someone, stating that you're going to hold some meeting and then it gets put on a public agenda and then people who oppose the discussion that you have planned will be disruptive and sometimes violent (such as the debate over taking down Civil War Monuments that happened this year where supporters of keeping the monuments were harassed by people who didn't support it and triggered violent responses from both sides).
Aside from venues that charge fees to host events, I don't know of anywhere that people can go locally (within their own county) to discuss with other people who actually care about topics related to the community--excluding when they are already publicly scheduled. In other words, if I want to know about what other people in my county care about related to the national government, I have to listen to my Senators' Q&A meetings. --Caucuses in Utah were a great idea until they became polarized: I can't vote at both the Republican and the Democrat caucuses--Usually you can't even attend them both because they happen at the exact same time in different places and they don't happen all that often and don't typically involve Q&A sessions. How are good political ideas generated if half of them are stifled based on political affiliation?
Education.
You talk about in your report on Unwed Childbearing that family is "an institution with primary responsibility for ..."--that is correct, it is AN institution but not the only institution. As the old saying goes "It takes a village to raise a child." Education is another important institution that can have a mediocre effect or a major effect on your social capital in life. --Many successful business founders meet their business partners at college. Many people meet their spouses in high school and many of their life-long friends. Furthermore, education is often where people learn the skillsets that are most crucial to their future careers.
And, unfortunately, many people think the school system is broken. This would be a small drop in the bucket if other institutions could pick up the slack, but citizens age 5-13 are required to spend a majority of their waking hours not with their family but among their peers and with their teachers, and like your report indicates, if their family life isn't supportive and their school life isn't supportive, that leaves a small handful of other institutions providing, "values, knowledge, aspirations, and skills to subsequent generations."
If you want to improve people's social capital really fast, give them more opportunities through their education. --I don't mean force them to make social connections, but give everyone (not just children <18) more access to on-the-ground educational programs where they can meet people who share similar interests and opinions(the key being on-the-ground, because social networks are formed by person-to-person interactions, not online, go at your own individual pace educational programs).
Forming social networks don't end once you're out of regular school. If the intent of public schooling was to make responsible voting citizens who wouldn't be manipulated by outside powers, doesn't it stand to reason that there should be other institutions that adults (no longer children, but sometimes equally irresponsible) go to to remain responsible voting citizens? --it's no wonder so many people fell for so-called Russian election manipulation. How would they really know about it? That wasn't an issue when they were children and they weren't taught in schools that "one day, another country is going to run a bunch of biased ads on TV, Radio and the Internet to make you angry and polarized against or for a certain candidate," and they have very few outlets to learn more about the complexities of modern life. --This used to be the library, and possibly today it is supposed to be the internet, but the internet is quickly becoming a luxury that poor people cannot afford--they can't afford to go to the library all of the time while tending kids and working and they can't afford a computer or smart phone either.
If you've read all of this, it shouldn't surprise you when I say that I've put a lot of thought into this topic. During the recession that started in 2007 I was a recent high school graduate with the world ahead of me, but I lacked experience for many of the living-wage jobs that I felt I was qualified for and that ultimately led me into on and off depression. I grew up in a "close" family both of my parents are still married to each other and are well off, I had plenty of institutions to turn to for support, but from 2007 until 2015 I honestly feel like I lacked social capital. I struggled to get a decent job even while I was getting a post-secondary education. When I graduated with a Bachelors degree, I still struggled to get a job because I quickly learned that it's not what you know, it's who you know. Many of my peers seemed to live happier lives--they got married, had children, had nice jobs, etc. Me, I struggled, even though I was more intelligent and had more things going for me (not only were my parents together, had no family drama, but also my parents were dual earners my entire life and that gave me a little more access to wealth than most other people [at the drawback of not seeing either parent as often]).
It wasn't until I started thinking outside of the box about what I was lacking (social capital) that doors started opening for me. I have more friends right now than I have ever had in life--more friends than I can even manage. I feel pretty secure in my career, and in all areas of my life, and it has been a long time since I have felt any kind of depression. --That's actually the last point that I want to make:
When you're depressed, it's hard to develop or even utilize your social capital. I'm surprised that so few politicians admit to having depression--it must be one of the more depressing careers full of let-downs and emotional roller coaster rides! Yet, at the same time, I don't know anyone who hasn't experienced serious depression at least once in their life. To me, the biggest benefit to living in a "close knit" community or an "active" community, or to have a diverse collection of social relationships is not actually the networking side, but the sense of purpose and fulfillment that comes with it. We as humans and Americans aren't just individuals going through life independently, even though to some people who are depressed it seems like that is all there is to life. It would be nice if we had another great rallying cry like the one made by President John F. Kennedy in the '60s, "Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country," but this time around the rally was extended to not just "country" but "neighbors."
Wednesday, December 13, 2017
Thursday, November 16, 2017
Renewed Interest in Debating for My Causes
Hey,
I just watched a very interesting documentary in which one of my views was outlined very clearly, bullet for bullet with facts and data and presented respectfully and honestly for both sides. The filmmaker allowed both sides to speak without asking any questions and without really editing their responses. It was raw and came across very genuine.
I feel invigorated right now to stand up for what I believe in--on all fronts. I feel confident in all of my beliefs. I am grounded.
I feel like I've learned a few tricks from watching this documentary on how to face my opponents and I'm going to list them:
I just watched a very interesting documentary in which one of my views was outlined very clearly, bullet for bullet with facts and data and presented respectfully and honestly for both sides. The filmmaker allowed both sides to speak without asking any questions and without really editing their responses. It was raw and came across very genuine.
I feel invigorated right now to stand up for what I believe in--on all fronts. I feel confident in all of my beliefs. I am grounded.
I feel like I've learned a few tricks from watching this documentary on how to face my opponents and I'm going to list them:
- Remain calm, regardless of what they throw at you, the accusations they make, the misinformation they try to get you to agree to, listen to them, hear them out, and then ask them questions for clarity on whether they actually mean to say what I think they are saying.
- Don't stop talking just because they are talking over me, if anything, get quieter.
- A strong argument to use is: unless the environment is controlled, there are no zero-sum games. There is always loss, even people who win suffer losses to do it.
- Strong argument line: Often the things that are debatable are non-comparable. They are all bad and worthy of sympathy, yet there is no way to say which is worse and no need to!
- Strong argument line: As a society right now things are changing so fast that it's easy to be going down one mental path so quickly that you go too far and lose track of where you should have stopped.
Here's a list of things I stand for:
- Men's Rights, Masculinity, and the Male Role
- White Rights
- Globalism, Diversity, and Individuality
- Everyday Economics
- Clean Air and Water for Everyone
- Small Businesses before Big Businesses
- Rugged Individualism
- Protection of the Defenseless
- Training of the Powerful but Ignorant
Thursday, November 2, 2017
American
I have been on an American kick these last few months.
I love America.
I'm not just saying this, no one put me up to it--in fact, my readership has been down and it is doubtful anyone will read this, but I do love America.
It seems these days that many people hate america, people outside the U.S. hate American ideals. People inside the U.S. hate American politicians and find fault with American processes. It is sad, but there is actually some sort of fear attached to me coming out and saying that I love america. There is such a stigma surrounding saying the words, "I love America," that I think many Americans don't talk about their patriotism. --I find that disturbing.
I am American and I love it.
I know a surprising amount about other countries--I'm not uneducated, so let me stop any haters who might say that, "[I] don't know what other countries are like, so how can [I] love America?"
Furthermore, I know a lot about Socialism, Communism, Monarchies, Oligarchies, Theocracies, Republics, Democracies, even Anarchy, and I still appreciate my Democratic Republic.
What do I love about America?
- I love that a bunch of old farts who were somewhat clueless about the life beyond their own states were able to come together and create a unified agreement that bound each of those states together under one flag--and that it worked!
- I love that a general, who was a relative nobody in the military world, was given a commission by a congress of people who also knew very little about war, and that same general was able to convince people to work the most dangerous job in the world without pay, with barely any food, without uniforms, and merely the promise of a future that wasn't even very well fleshed out at the time.--This isn't an exaggeration on General George Washington's story, this is what happened, and yet somehow they were able to keep the British at bay until a political resolution was made.
- I love that America is a collection of people, each with different backgrounds, ethnicities, heritages, and cultures, and yet they still manage to get along.
Americans throughout history have always been adamant people. They are hardheaded. They are self-interested and primarily focused on taking care of their own with little regard or sympathy for others--YET--There is one thing that always makes that attitude alright: the willingness to negotiate.
People, some American and some not, look down on America's capitalistic approach to most things in life: "There is a price tag on everything." You can find American ideas, American entertainment, and American Products throughout the world. Yes. Everything has a price, even our weapons are sold to other countries. The point is, America is only found everywhere because Americans are willing to negotiate. If we were like some of our foreign counterparts during our formation, we might be too proud to include certain countries at the negotiation table.
History may have ended differently if we insisted on complete military dominance of England rather than reaching peace agreements, much like many countries of the modern world are attempting at this time.
America is what it is because we include others and then tell them: work with us, or work independently to do something good, but don't work against us--and I like that.
Friday, August 18, 2017
Revisit what you think you know regularly
To understand this post, please watch this 20 min video:
VICE article "Charlotesville Race and Terror"
I think it's important for people to revisit what they think they know now and again. The impression I get from most people is that they hear the word "neo-nazi", or "kkk," or "white supremacist," or "alt-right" and they think instantly that everything is about race. And in fact, I think the protesters of these groups automatically assume that that's what they are protesting against.
However, from watching this video, I can see some things that need to be brought upfront and talked about:
First, this protest isn't about the civil war monuments. The monuments are just being used as a rally point, and whether they actually care about that or not is another story.
Second, if either side focuses on the issue of race, this battle will drag on for a very very very long time with no resolution. Both sides are so rooted in their opinions on race that there will be no changing them.
Furthermore, anyone who uses race (or race issues) in this debate as their evidence or main point of argument should be disregarded because the information they are presenting isn't new, is a strawman, isn't relevant, or is flat out wrong.
Race is another rally point in this conflict.
Third, there are foreigners invested in this debate. As you see from the video, there is a Canadian who attends the alt-right rally--we can assume that this is also true for the other side (actually, it's probably more true for the other side by nature of what their beliefs are).
Fourth, these alt-righters are very organized. They are prepared. They come to these protests with equipment, and props, and safety gear, etc. They also have clear leadership and a distinct face. If history has anything to contribute, the party that is most organized usually wins the debate in the long run, so I think their opponents have some work to do to catch up.
Fifth, almost completely opposite of these alt-righters, the left seems disorganized. They aren't just less organized, they are completely disorganized. They don't seem to have common points and vision, their beliefs and values are so vast that it adds to their disorder. They don't have clear and distinct leadership. They don't come to the demonstrations with safety equipment and they rely on the law to protect them (a very bad thing to do because demonstrations of this type imply chaos and anarchy that the law cannot protect)
Finally, I wanted to mention what I saw the common ground was, because at the end of the debate, it is the common ground that makes the most lasting long-term impact.
The common ground I see is that both sides mistrust the powers that be (The government).
Both sides are afraid of losing their identity.
Both sides believe that they have been oppressed.
In an ideal situation, both sides will win some sort of government representation.
Both sides will be allowed to respectfully maintain their identity (most people know that ethic and racial minority groups want to be accepted by society at large, but they don't usually consider that white [a majority group] also want to be accepted for being white and having separate, distinct identity.) And both sides will, through their government representation or some other means, gain powers and privileges that will protect them from government oppression on all levels of government (city, county, state, federal).
--That's the ideal.
But what will actually happen is still up in the air, however, the alt-right definitely holds a powerful position, and I could see that being both good and bad--if they lose the debate, then they will receive more oppression as entities step in to further limit them (the way that affirmative action has or reverse racism) and as the tension builds they will be out for blood. On the flip side, if they win the debate, they may try to over-reach because they are powerful and because in the real world people still take racial arguments seriously even though they have been misused as a political tool since the founding of this nation.
VICE article "Charlotesville Race and Terror"
I think it's important for people to revisit what they think they know now and again. The impression I get from most people is that they hear the word "neo-nazi", or "kkk," or "white supremacist," or "alt-right" and they think instantly that everything is about race. And in fact, I think the protesters of these groups automatically assume that that's what they are protesting against.
However, from watching this video, I can see some things that need to be brought upfront and talked about:
First, this protest isn't about the civil war monuments. The monuments are just being used as a rally point, and whether they actually care about that or not is another story.
Second, if either side focuses on the issue of race, this battle will drag on for a very very very long time with no resolution. Both sides are so rooted in their opinions on race that there will be no changing them.
Furthermore, anyone who uses race (or race issues) in this debate as their evidence or main point of argument should be disregarded because the information they are presenting isn't new, is a strawman, isn't relevant, or is flat out wrong.
Race is another rally point in this conflict.
Third, there are foreigners invested in this debate. As you see from the video, there is a Canadian who attends the alt-right rally--we can assume that this is also true for the other side (actually, it's probably more true for the other side by nature of what their beliefs are).
Fourth, these alt-righters are very organized. They are prepared. They come to these protests with equipment, and props, and safety gear, etc. They also have clear leadership and a distinct face. If history has anything to contribute, the party that is most organized usually wins the debate in the long run, so I think their opponents have some work to do to catch up.
Fifth, almost completely opposite of these alt-righters, the left seems disorganized. They aren't just less organized, they are completely disorganized. They don't seem to have common points and vision, their beliefs and values are so vast that it adds to their disorder. They don't have clear and distinct leadership. They don't come to the demonstrations with safety equipment and they rely on the law to protect them (a very bad thing to do because demonstrations of this type imply chaos and anarchy that the law cannot protect)
Finally, I wanted to mention what I saw the common ground was, because at the end of the debate, it is the common ground that makes the most lasting long-term impact.
The common ground I see is that both sides mistrust the powers that be (The government).
Both sides are afraid of losing their identity.
Both sides believe that they have been oppressed.
In an ideal situation, both sides will win some sort of government representation.
Both sides will be allowed to respectfully maintain their identity (most people know that ethic and racial minority groups want to be accepted by society at large, but they don't usually consider that white [a majority group] also want to be accepted for being white and having separate, distinct identity.) And both sides will, through their government representation or some other means, gain powers and privileges that will protect them from government oppression on all levels of government (city, county, state, federal).
--That's the ideal.
But what will actually happen is still up in the air, however, the alt-right definitely holds a powerful position, and I could see that being both good and bad--if they lose the debate, then they will receive more oppression as entities step in to further limit them (the way that affirmative action has or reverse racism) and as the tension builds they will be out for blood. On the flip side, if they win the debate, they may try to over-reach because they are powerful and because in the real world people still take racial arguments seriously even though they have been misused as a political tool since the founding of this nation.
Wednesday, August 9, 2017
A list of You Can't Haves
What I'm about to say is very sensitive information. I have told several people bits and pieces of this information, but I haven't explored it from a bigger picture, and I haven't told everyone everything--like I'm about to do now.
This is a list of my last girlfriends post-college and why I am not with them anymore, as well as what I learned from the relationship. It may seem like a jab at these individuals, and perhaps it is, but I am fine with people assuming that I will talk poorly of them years down the road if things ended badly. I am over them; all of them, but one can never truly be over all of their past relationships. The best I can hope for is that the more I talk about them, the more free I am for my future relationships. People who know me best will realize that the things I share below are merely my opinions and views and do not represent my personal character.
In order of appearance:
BreAnn Hoffmann, though I knew her also as Bre Orton. Bre went to high school with me and we were mildly friends though I could never fully commit to any feelings with her because at that time of my life she was too weird for me.
While we were together, Bre cheated on me. Not just once, not just twice with the same person; but with multiple people all of the time. I raised/babysat her child from when he was one until he was almost two. She was still married initially, in a bad relationship where her husband would manipulate her, and she had recently had a child and planned to divorce her husband when I came in the picture. Because her husband had a tight hold on her, guilting her at every turn, threatening to pull her financial support out from under her, and various other things, I suppose Bre turned to me because I was safe and steady. I am aware that I am a very stable person--my emotions don't always fly off the handle, I make people comfortable around me, and I'm a very hopeful person; so I'm sure the appeal of being safe, with someone nice, attracted her somewhat.
I'm not perfect, and I realize now that there were times when I did get upset and emotional--after all, I kept discovering that she was cheating on me and I found it difficult to trust her. In any case, I think because I cannot do any more than any other human can do, I got her scared of me. She was scared that I would pull the rug out from under her the way that other people in her life did, and that initial safety she found in me dissipated.
She broke up with me. I had committed to work through everything she threw at me--I was somewhat arrogant at the time thinking that my ability to resolve conflicts would allow me to overcome anything and that I could make our relationship work. And, you know what, I think Bre actually gave me a lot of experience in resolving conflicts--real world experience that people pay good money for and I got it for free just by having my heart ripped out and smashed over and over and over.
I don't regret her breaking up with me. Initially, I wanted to get back together with her because I thought that somehow it was my fault, but over the years I have realized that I did everything I was capable of doing and that she was in the wrong--I don't normally attribute rightness or wrongness to people, but in this case, what she did was very wrong. Very very wrong.
I am at peace with this relationship and how it played out, how it ended. The benefits of it, the growth I made, the things I learned--they outweigh the bad things that happened. I would repeat this relationship if given the chance again, even knowing that I would ultimately fail and that it would end the way it ended. The only bad thing about this relationship was that I had grown too close to her son and when it was over, I never got to see him again. I kind of wonder how he will turn out--whether he will make it, or whether he will have problems, but I will never know the answer to this.
After Bre, came Brianna. Sadly, her last name escapes me. We weren't together very long, but if people wanted to do some digging I could say that her family is an Itallian family (long since came to the U.S.) her dad was an LDS bishop, they live in Layton and he owns a yardscaping company. Brianna helped me while I was remodeling my Taylorsville house--she painted with me, she kept me in good spirits so that I could do the work of a craftsman. Things were good, but we had a few conflicts and after my last relationship I had resolved not to bend as much.
Brianna wanted to be a stay at home mom. She was divorced and, sadly, depressed. She was a porn addict who sat at home playing the Sims all day and, well, watching porn regularly while she recovered from her divorce. Her parents desperately wanted her to be a Mormon girl and guilted her and planted all these wild ideas in her mind that diminished her self-esteem. I think that that is what brought us together, honestly. I am a builder. I build people up, I'm positive, and I've had enough experience in life to know and see what sorts of things drag people down and burden them. Her parents blamed her situation (she was divorced) on her wickedness. I thought that was the dumbest thing. She needed to be loved while she made her transformation, rebuilt her self-worth, and then succeeded at life.
She knew I wasn't going to be Mormon, I don't know how she felt about it--I believe she wanted me to join in churchness with her, but I wasn't ever going to. Through the course of the relationship, though it was only a few short months, I saw her get worse and worse as her parents tore her down and her own mind tore her apart seeing me how I am. She had a breakdown when pulled out of her element and that solidified the end of us.
You see, she wasn't "allowed" by her parents to stay out passed midnight. I was very accommodating of this because I didn't really have a house equipped to spend the night (it being under construction and me living in it through the process). I would pick her up in Layton, drive her to Taylorsville, and drop her off at 9o'clock at the front runner train station which she could take home on the last train. If she wanted to stay later, I would simply drive her all the way home, which would put me home at around 1 or 2 am and then I would have to be to work at 8am. I learned just how much sleep my body needs, even under the physical constraints of working 8 hours in a high stress environment and then coming home to several hours of physical labor remodeling my home. I'm a workaholic, plain and simple.
One night, I was tired, I didn't want to drive her home to Layton, and I warned her that I would not be driving her home. I think she wanted to push her limits and experiment to see if she would be fine mentally staying overnight; but I don't think she realized the toll her parents would put on her for staying over. She didn't have work the next day so I told her she could hang out at my place, or walk to the store or basically anywhere from my home while I was at work. She stayed the night, she stayed at my house all day, and the whole time she texted her mother who must have thought she had been led astray by a devil. When I arrived home from work, she had packed everything she ever brought to my house. She even took back a few gifts that she had given me and proceeded to tell me that it was over. Then the awkwardness ensued: how does she get her things back to her house? --Being the nice person I was, I offered to drive her, but she said I wasn't welcome at her parents house, and that her dad was on the way. I told her that I could take her part way and she said to just drop her and her stuff off at the train station in case he decided not to come she could just travel with it on the train. --That was the most pathetic thing I had heard; I believe she thought her own father was going to disown her and might not actually pick her up. So I dropped her off at the train station.
Boy was I mad.
In my anger, I sent out the nastiest --yet TRUE-- text I have ever told anyone. I sent it to her father, explaining how he was destroying his own daughter. I told him about what I had observed in her and that his guilting her and keeping his thumb on her ultimately was bringing her down. She wasn't learning how to be a real person because he was making her ashamed and, in truth he was abusing her mentally in a deranged need to control everything about her. I am disgusted by him. Even still. I am disgusted by him and by everyone like him. You do not do that to your daughter. You do not do that to your family. You do not do that to anyone. She claimed it was because he was Italian and had that fiery Italian personality, but I saw it differently. I saw a puny, disturbing, disgusting man who tried to compensate by controlling other people who were less powerful than he.
Interestingly, I hung out with her at her house a few times after that--up until her father informed her that I had talked poorly of him through a text message. Big baby. Most likely he didn't tell her the truth of what I had said. Now that I'm 28 and more of a man, if the same things had happened again, I'd probably not be afraid to go punch his lights out if he did them again.
Then came Taylor Gough. I hear she's married now, good for her. While she was with me, I was coping with things and trying to figure out what life I really wanted to live. Perhaps I was shook up from my experience with Brianna and thought that maybe I should go to church, or perhaps I was merely looking for validation and to fit in in a state that is so animositous to people who are not like them. I don't really know, or don't want to say that I know, but I was attending church and looked like a Mormon boy--sorta. I think Taylor thought I would be a super Mormon, but no one who leaves the LDS church and comes back is ever a super Mormon because they realize things about the real world that put bad light on the LDS church. It just doesn't work. In any case, if I had stayed Mormon my whole life, Taylor and I would probably be married right now because my pre-college days I probably was the person she hoped I would be.
She broke up with me. We got engaged on Christmas and I was expecting a long engagement, but as time goes on you wonder why you are engaged for so long when you're so young. I've learned that the older you are, probably the longer of an engagement you need in order to get your life, career and everything else in order so that the two of you can be settled with each other, but at 22 or 23--however old I was, it seemed pointless because both of us had careers ahead of us and life ahead of us, it would have been better to just be married and tackle it as married couples do.
I remember the day she broke up with me. It was a sunday, and for her sake I was trying to be a Mormon, so I was at church while she texted me saying she "needed to talk"--I knew it was over when I got that message, even though there really wasn't anything wrong in our relationship.
You see, Mormons feel very guilty when they get sexually involved outside of marriage. Funny thing was, we weren't sexually involved. A little bit of grinding, yes, putting my hand up her shirt, sure, but actual sexual acts--none. None! We didn't do anything and it was hard for me because I have a slightly higher sex drive so those months with her were difficult (another reason to push the marriage forward).
She actually wanted me to come home from church early to talk to her, so I did, and what she told me was "I don't want to have to push you to go to the Temple with me." --I was temple worthy. I had been to the temple the month before, which is kind of a big deal, you don't just get a free pass! But somehow that wasn't good enough for her. She had never been to the temple in her life, she didn't know how weird it is, the brain fucking that goes on in there--it's a wonder I'm even remotely sane having lived through that. Yet, she wanted to go to the temple every month or every week or who knows what, and thought that I wouldn't allow that when we got married. Ridiculous.
I remember being so angry that she told me that. I felt like I wasn't good enough for her, even though I was doing everything I was supposed to. I felt I was being screwed over by a phony religion that teaches girls that they can't have a relationship with, or marry anyone who isn't in the religion, and that somehow those people are lesser people. I was angry. Really angry.
I believe the words that came out of my mouth were, "Fuck you! You are a selfish bitch. You think that a relationship is all about you and what you want? It's not, it's a two way street and you have to be shaped by me as much as you shape me. Get out of my house!" And I kicked her out in that manner. She left. I was vindicated. I felt pretty good for sticking up for myself in that way. Fuck her. And fuck anyone who thinks that religion is more important than relationships. Your beliefs are not more important than the relationships you hold.
I suppose I should take a step back and point something out form the big picture level. I get the impression that Taylor was using me--as did all of these girls without knowing it. They were using me to look respectable, to look like they had their lives together and were capable of luring in an attractive, well-to-do man. Taylor had just become an elementary school teacher, things were looking up for her, her family was proud of her and it was looking like she was going to pull herself up by her bootstraps, get out of the semi-poverty that her parents were in, and be on scale (maybe even better) than her sister and brother. I was another element of that success: she was trying to build herself out to be a perfect person where everything is perfect, and she didn't see (because I didn't let her see and because it didn't bother me as much) that she was being very one-sided. Taylor was arrogant.
Brianna was using me to make herself think she was capable of luring a man in. She was using me to build up her own self-worth and as a safe hideaway from her oppressive family--again, how could she ever become a real human being if she wasn't given independence and wasn't verbally degraded regularly? How could she become a real human if she was scared?
Bre, too, used me for safety as well as to appear successful and capable of luring a man. She was using me as a self-esteem boost so that she could recover and be able to fight back and win her own independence. You'll see that everyone else was the same way...
After Taylor, I went through a phase of no-girlfriend, just sleeping around. I had one-night stands, I had three night stands, I had good experiences, bad experiences, in between, but none that I wanted to keep in my life. I also quit my job in Salt Lake and moved to Ogden again to figure myself out. I learned a lot as a bachelor or semi-bachelor and made a friend or two that I've kept. Then, I started dating Miranda.
Miranda Kronieg was a virgin, though she had been married for three years to an officer in the air force. They were "separated" but living in the same house and he was often gone with military business anyway. It's weird that I was okay with this at the time, but you learn through experimenting. They were Christian, and on their wedding night she was so scared and he was so scared (both virgins) that they didn't actually have sex. They didn't talk about it, she blamed him for not being confident, and their family and friends all assumed they were having sex. I took her virginity. I liked her, I dated her for several months and she moved out of the apartment they were living in, got a job with TSA and had filed her divorce papers or rather, she was in the process of responding to them. I kept aloof from that aspect because I didn't want to be considered an influence for her getting a divorce.
During that time, I got a job in Draper and was fed up with the commute so I moved to West Jordan rather quickly. I didn't really involve her in my plans because, again, I didn't want it to seem like I was pushing her to get divorced, and I simply told her that I was going to move closer to my work. Meanwhile, she moved to N.Salt Lake to be closer to the airport anyway, so it wasn't like we were moving drastically away from each other. --I only mention this because she made a comment to me about how she wished I would have told her, but I'm not sure why.
When she finally got settled into her apartment, she broke up with me. I remember that I had lent her my DSL modem because I was on their competitor at the time and didn't need it. She told me over the phone, rather angrily that she could never be with someone like me. --I didn't know what she meant or why she said that. I calmly asked if I could have my modem back, drove out there the next day, picked it up, said "Thanks," as cheerfully as I could and never spoke to her again. I didn't want her to see that I was upset and confused and any other emotions so I acted the man and coolly collected my possessions and left for good.
I really don't know why we broke up, I don't know what she meant, "someone like [me]" or why she was angry. I remember that she was being hit on at work and decided to hang out with some guy friends she met at work, but I can't say whether that was influential in her decision or not. I also recall that she got confused when I made the statement about her childhood (she was foster-adopted because her original family was into drugs and a bad environment) and she had me read her adoption letter/socialwork paperwork. I told her "this stuff doesn't matter to me, what matters to me is who you are now," and I think she took it as, "I don't care about your past or what you've been through," but how would I know this without her telling me?
I lack all details and if the details aren't apparent I don't even bother trying to figure them out once a person tells me its over. I have developed a very strong, very firm stance that "If someone wants me around, they will make it apparent. If they don't want me around, they will make it apparent as well; but if they are in between, then I don't want to be around." I would rather they want me around if only to figure out whether they want me around, than to be lukewarm, unsure if they want me or not. [[Women, do yourselves a favor and don't ever be lukewarm--your sex complains about men for the same reason and so many men make the attempt to be either hot or cold, show the same respect.]]
After Miranda, I was back to the bachelor life. I ultimately quit that job in Draper to remake myself again, slept around a lot, and progressed in other areas of my life.
Then I met Shelly King. Shelly is a single mother or three kids--two adopted one of her own. Her ex-husband is something else. He has committed identity fraud in the past and who knows what else because from the sound of him he's a habitual liar. I know a few of those and can only imagine what it's like to be married to one.
Regardless, Shelly has issues of her own. Though I wouldn't say she's a habitual liar, she does exaggerate a lot. She has a lot of confidence--false confidence--but she plays it well. It took being with her for a while to really recognize how full of shit she was. I think she lied to compensate, but she could also lie due to deep seated mental illness that has gone diagnosed. Overall, she's a good person, but perhaps I don't know her well enough to make that judgement?
In any case, while we were together things were good, up until she pulled the whole "I want to be a Mormon" card, and I started having flashbacks of being with Brianna and Taylor. She also gave me a scare like Bre did when, one night out of the blue, some guy showed up at her house, parked on her lawn (not even the driveway) and was over for a couple hours doing who knows what.
Shelly claimed that he barged in uninvited and she was too nice to send him away, I waited outside her home without her knowing for an hour waiting for him to leave(I got off work early and was going to surprise her after she put the kids to bed). She was texting me the whole time and I told her to give him the count of three to leave or I would come over and kick his ass. I counted to three and walked over to his truck, deflated the tires, and that's when he came outside. I yelled at him told him not to come back and she filed a report with the police.
Ultimately, I broke up with her because of some off comment she made about how if I wasn't going to be the kind of person she wanted me to be (a Mormon) that she had plenty of other guys who would be that for her. I didn't wait to find out if that was true, I ran; go find a guy like me only better if you don't appreciate me.
Finally, my last girlfriend was Kenzie Rentie. She was nice and sweet initially and gave me the right level of attention that I needed, but then she got over her head in her career. I started to see a side of Kenzie that was bitter and vengeful that I didn't like. She was upset because of her work environment and I think she turned inward and shut out the world. She stopped texting me and for the last two months of our relationship it was hit or miss on whether I would get to hang out with her on the weekend, or any weekday.
What I noticed about Kenzie, was that she had plenty of time to text back and forth with other people and plenty of time to coordinate and hang out with her old friends and co-workers, but I got put in a second seat. I hated that. I put my relationship with my significant other first--if I haven't spent enough time with them then any of my spare time I would expend to be with them. Quality time is important to me, and if I can't have quality time, then at least communication, and we didn't really have either.
I broke up with Kenzie because she wouldn't talk to me or make time for me. She claimed that she was just so used to being independent that it didn't cross her mind, but let's be real here: I'm the most independent person around and yet I still find time and have always found time to make everyone satisfied. I don't need people, I just like certain people in my life and will go out of my way to keep them. I work more than most people, often putting in 60+ hour weeks because I run a small business, and I still text, call or hang out with everyone I care about. Independence isn't the issue, self-centeredness is.
Kenzie was obsessed with running away from her life and problems. Granted, she had a few minor problems, but if she only knew to reach out to basically anyone around her, she would realize that her problems aren't so bad. She kept telling me that she was going to move to Germany, or just disappear one day and not tell anyone--and that she had already done so once in the past. Telling me this only made me feel insecure about our relationship, I wonder what she expected me to do, just wait around for the day when she left without telling me? She had the personality to not care about people, she distanced herself from me by not talking to me enough, and she vocalized that she was going to leave at some point in the future--that's not the kind of things people do who want to keep relationships in their life and so my fear of being left behind and not having a future with her, as well as the fact that the latter months of our relationship consisted of basically no relationship at all, I broke up with her.
I can't speak for her motives, I can only firmly express my own opinions and observations, but from what I saw I'm gravely disappointed. Kenzie had a plan to go through life on her own, by herself. She obviously enjoyed me in her life, otherwise she wouldn't have kept me for as long as she did, but ultimately she threw me in the trash for her own personal objectives. Relationships don't work that way.
The funny thing about my character, as I learned from being with Kenzie, is that at any moment I was willing to jump back aboard her ship that was setting sail if only she would tell me that she wanted me to come with and made accommodations for me. I forgive and I forget easily, but if there is one thing Kenzie did wrong with our relationship, it was that she didn't instill hope in me. I've learned that if you want a relationship to last, you have to make sure your partner has hope for the future with you.
After being with Kenzie I have realized that I am not going to as easily assist my significant other as I have in the past. Kenzie might not realize this now, but I would like to think that at least a few of my previous girlfriends do realize that being with me comes with seen and unseen benefits. I am stable. I am confident. I am smart. I am hopeful. I put a lot of time and energy into making my girlfriend comfortable so that she can handle her other areas of life. I try to relieve burdens, not just the obvious ones that free up time and boost energy, but I also offer myself as a sounding board and thinking cap so that they can think about and deal with their mental or emotional burdens. I do my part in my relationships, that is certain.
With Bre, I took care of her kid so she could get experience working, network, and advance in her career. I took care of her in a lot of unseen ways and I did the same for Brianna, Taylor, Miranda, Shelly and yes, even Kenzie.
I'm not like other guys, even the nice guys, because I have both a natural affinity to certain skills and was also trained in communicating and understanding people and life in general. I don't know everything there is to know about people, but I know a lot more than people twice, three times, even four times my age. I get so frustrated with people in general because I see them and I see their problems and I see how easy the solutions are and yet I also watch them opt out of the solution because they don't know, haven't learned their lesson, or don't care anymore. I also, apparently, have a terrible time finding someone who is my equal, because all of the women I have been with in my adult years have used me as a crutch to stand up with, support themselves, and heal, and none of them have treated me like an equal, like a life-partner, like a true friend.
I understand that I have a lot to offer. I understand that I'm cute and attractive and that through some magical osmosis the women who hang around me appear to be slightly more attractive as well. I get that I'm a giver and I freely share my positive energy with everyone. I also realize that I'm an empathetic person and people find it very easy to connect with me and feel at ease. And yeah, I am intelligent, I have a lot of practice coming up with advice and quotes and I utilize thinking methods that increase the perspective of others and expand their minds. And sure, I come from a wealthy family that is also somewhat respectable and I too have plenty of money horded away. BUT, all of these great things about me are not an invitation to use me for a self-esteem boost or as merely a getaway from danger. I expect more and I will have more.
This is a list of my last girlfriends post-college and why I am not with them anymore, as well as what I learned from the relationship. It may seem like a jab at these individuals, and perhaps it is, but I am fine with people assuming that I will talk poorly of them years down the road if things ended badly. I am over them; all of them, but one can never truly be over all of their past relationships. The best I can hope for is that the more I talk about them, the more free I am for my future relationships. People who know me best will realize that the things I share below are merely my opinions and views and do not represent my personal character.
In order of appearance:
BreAnn Hoffmann, though I knew her also as Bre Orton. Bre went to high school with me and we were mildly friends though I could never fully commit to any feelings with her because at that time of my life she was too weird for me.
While we were together, Bre cheated on me. Not just once, not just twice with the same person; but with multiple people all of the time. I raised/babysat her child from when he was one until he was almost two. She was still married initially, in a bad relationship where her husband would manipulate her, and she had recently had a child and planned to divorce her husband when I came in the picture. Because her husband had a tight hold on her, guilting her at every turn, threatening to pull her financial support out from under her, and various other things, I suppose Bre turned to me because I was safe and steady. I am aware that I am a very stable person--my emotions don't always fly off the handle, I make people comfortable around me, and I'm a very hopeful person; so I'm sure the appeal of being safe, with someone nice, attracted her somewhat.
I'm not perfect, and I realize now that there were times when I did get upset and emotional--after all, I kept discovering that she was cheating on me and I found it difficult to trust her. In any case, I think because I cannot do any more than any other human can do, I got her scared of me. She was scared that I would pull the rug out from under her the way that other people in her life did, and that initial safety she found in me dissipated.
She broke up with me. I had committed to work through everything she threw at me--I was somewhat arrogant at the time thinking that my ability to resolve conflicts would allow me to overcome anything and that I could make our relationship work. And, you know what, I think Bre actually gave me a lot of experience in resolving conflicts--real world experience that people pay good money for and I got it for free just by having my heart ripped out and smashed over and over and over.
I don't regret her breaking up with me. Initially, I wanted to get back together with her because I thought that somehow it was my fault, but over the years I have realized that I did everything I was capable of doing and that she was in the wrong--I don't normally attribute rightness or wrongness to people, but in this case, what she did was very wrong. Very very wrong.
I am at peace with this relationship and how it played out, how it ended. The benefits of it, the growth I made, the things I learned--they outweigh the bad things that happened. I would repeat this relationship if given the chance again, even knowing that I would ultimately fail and that it would end the way it ended. The only bad thing about this relationship was that I had grown too close to her son and when it was over, I never got to see him again. I kind of wonder how he will turn out--whether he will make it, or whether he will have problems, but I will never know the answer to this.
After Bre, came Brianna. Sadly, her last name escapes me. We weren't together very long, but if people wanted to do some digging I could say that her family is an Itallian family (long since came to the U.S.) her dad was an LDS bishop, they live in Layton and he owns a yardscaping company. Brianna helped me while I was remodeling my Taylorsville house--she painted with me, she kept me in good spirits so that I could do the work of a craftsman. Things were good, but we had a few conflicts and after my last relationship I had resolved not to bend as much.
Brianna wanted to be a stay at home mom. She was divorced and, sadly, depressed. She was a porn addict who sat at home playing the Sims all day and, well, watching porn regularly while she recovered from her divorce. Her parents desperately wanted her to be a Mormon girl and guilted her and planted all these wild ideas in her mind that diminished her self-esteem. I think that that is what brought us together, honestly. I am a builder. I build people up, I'm positive, and I've had enough experience in life to know and see what sorts of things drag people down and burden them. Her parents blamed her situation (she was divorced) on her wickedness. I thought that was the dumbest thing. She needed to be loved while she made her transformation, rebuilt her self-worth, and then succeeded at life.
She knew I wasn't going to be Mormon, I don't know how she felt about it--I believe she wanted me to join in churchness with her, but I wasn't ever going to. Through the course of the relationship, though it was only a few short months, I saw her get worse and worse as her parents tore her down and her own mind tore her apart seeing me how I am. She had a breakdown when pulled out of her element and that solidified the end of us.
You see, she wasn't "allowed" by her parents to stay out passed midnight. I was very accommodating of this because I didn't really have a house equipped to spend the night (it being under construction and me living in it through the process). I would pick her up in Layton, drive her to Taylorsville, and drop her off at 9o'clock at the front runner train station which she could take home on the last train. If she wanted to stay later, I would simply drive her all the way home, which would put me home at around 1 or 2 am and then I would have to be to work at 8am. I learned just how much sleep my body needs, even under the physical constraints of working 8 hours in a high stress environment and then coming home to several hours of physical labor remodeling my home. I'm a workaholic, plain and simple.
One night, I was tired, I didn't want to drive her home to Layton, and I warned her that I would not be driving her home. I think she wanted to push her limits and experiment to see if she would be fine mentally staying overnight; but I don't think she realized the toll her parents would put on her for staying over. She didn't have work the next day so I told her she could hang out at my place, or walk to the store or basically anywhere from my home while I was at work. She stayed the night, she stayed at my house all day, and the whole time she texted her mother who must have thought she had been led astray by a devil. When I arrived home from work, she had packed everything she ever brought to my house. She even took back a few gifts that she had given me and proceeded to tell me that it was over. Then the awkwardness ensued: how does she get her things back to her house? --Being the nice person I was, I offered to drive her, but she said I wasn't welcome at her parents house, and that her dad was on the way. I told her that I could take her part way and she said to just drop her and her stuff off at the train station in case he decided not to come she could just travel with it on the train. --That was the most pathetic thing I had heard; I believe she thought her own father was going to disown her and might not actually pick her up. So I dropped her off at the train station.
Boy was I mad.
In my anger, I sent out the nastiest --yet TRUE-- text I have ever told anyone. I sent it to her father, explaining how he was destroying his own daughter. I told him about what I had observed in her and that his guilting her and keeping his thumb on her ultimately was bringing her down. She wasn't learning how to be a real person because he was making her ashamed and, in truth he was abusing her mentally in a deranged need to control everything about her. I am disgusted by him. Even still. I am disgusted by him and by everyone like him. You do not do that to your daughter. You do not do that to your family. You do not do that to anyone. She claimed it was because he was Italian and had that fiery Italian personality, but I saw it differently. I saw a puny, disturbing, disgusting man who tried to compensate by controlling other people who were less powerful than he.
Interestingly, I hung out with her at her house a few times after that--up until her father informed her that I had talked poorly of him through a text message. Big baby. Most likely he didn't tell her the truth of what I had said. Now that I'm 28 and more of a man, if the same things had happened again, I'd probably not be afraid to go punch his lights out if he did them again.
Then came Taylor Gough. I hear she's married now, good for her. While she was with me, I was coping with things and trying to figure out what life I really wanted to live. Perhaps I was shook up from my experience with Brianna and thought that maybe I should go to church, or perhaps I was merely looking for validation and to fit in in a state that is so animositous to people who are not like them. I don't really know, or don't want to say that I know, but I was attending church and looked like a Mormon boy--sorta. I think Taylor thought I would be a super Mormon, but no one who leaves the LDS church and comes back is ever a super Mormon because they realize things about the real world that put bad light on the LDS church. It just doesn't work. In any case, if I had stayed Mormon my whole life, Taylor and I would probably be married right now because my pre-college days I probably was the person she hoped I would be.
She broke up with me. We got engaged on Christmas and I was expecting a long engagement, but as time goes on you wonder why you are engaged for so long when you're so young. I've learned that the older you are, probably the longer of an engagement you need in order to get your life, career and everything else in order so that the two of you can be settled with each other, but at 22 or 23--however old I was, it seemed pointless because both of us had careers ahead of us and life ahead of us, it would have been better to just be married and tackle it as married couples do.
I remember the day she broke up with me. It was a sunday, and for her sake I was trying to be a Mormon, so I was at church while she texted me saying she "needed to talk"--I knew it was over when I got that message, even though there really wasn't anything wrong in our relationship.
You see, Mormons feel very guilty when they get sexually involved outside of marriage. Funny thing was, we weren't sexually involved. A little bit of grinding, yes, putting my hand up her shirt, sure, but actual sexual acts--none. None! We didn't do anything and it was hard for me because I have a slightly higher sex drive so those months with her were difficult (another reason to push the marriage forward).
She actually wanted me to come home from church early to talk to her, so I did, and what she told me was "I don't want to have to push you to go to the Temple with me." --I was temple worthy. I had been to the temple the month before, which is kind of a big deal, you don't just get a free pass! But somehow that wasn't good enough for her. She had never been to the temple in her life, she didn't know how weird it is, the brain fucking that goes on in there--it's a wonder I'm even remotely sane having lived through that. Yet, she wanted to go to the temple every month or every week or who knows what, and thought that I wouldn't allow that when we got married. Ridiculous.
I remember being so angry that she told me that. I felt like I wasn't good enough for her, even though I was doing everything I was supposed to. I felt I was being screwed over by a phony religion that teaches girls that they can't have a relationship with, or marry anyone who isn't in the religion, and that somehow those people are lesser people. I was angry. Really angry.
I believe the words that came out of my mouth were, "Fuck you! You are a selfish bitch. You think that a relationship is all about you and what you want? It's not, it's a two way street and you have to be shaped by me as much as you shape me. Get out of my house!" And I kicked her out in that manner. She left. I was vindicated. I felt pretty good for sticking up for myself in that way. Fuck her. And fuck anyone who thinks that religion is more important than relationships. Your beliefs are not more important than the relationships you hold.
I suppose I should take a step back and point something out form the big picture level. I get the impression that Taylor was using me--as did all of these girls without knowing it. They were using me to look respectable, to look like they had their lives together and were capable of luring in an attractive, well-to-do man. Taylor had just become an elementary school teacher, things were looking up for her, her family was proud of her and it was looking like she was going to pull herself up by her bootstraps, get out of the semi-poverty that her parents were in, and be on scale (maybe even better) than her sister and brother. I was another element of that success: she was trying to build herself out to be a perfect person where everything is perfect, and she didn't see (because I didn't let her see and because it didn't bother me as much) that she was being very one-sided. Taylor was arrogant.
Brianna was using me to make herself think she was capable of luring a man in. She was using me to build up her own self-worth and as a safe hideaway from her oppressive family--again, how could she ever become a real human being if she wasn't given independence and wasn't verbally degraded regularly? How could she become a real human if she was scared?
Bre, too, used me for safety as well as to appear successful and capable of luring a man. She was using me as a self-esteem boost so that she could recover and be able to fight back and win her own independence. You'll see that everyone else was the same way...
After Taylor, I went through a phase of no-girlfriend, just sleeping around. I had one-night stands, I had three night stands, I had good experiences, bad experiences, in between, but none that I wanted to keep in my life. I also quit my job in Salt Lake and moved to Ogden again to figure myself out. I learned a lot as a bachelor or semi-bachelor and made a friend or two that I've kept. Then, I started dating Miranda.
Miranda Kronieg was a virgin, though she had been married for three years to an officer in the air force. They were "separated" but living in the same house and he was often gone with military business anyway. It's weird that I was okay with this at the time, but you learn through experimenting. They were Christian, and on their wedding night she was so scared and he was so scared (both virgins) that they didn't actually have sex. They didn't talk about it, she blamed him for not being confident, and their family and friends all assumed they were having sex. I took her virginity. I liked her, I dated her for several months and she moved out of the apartment they were living in, got a job with TSA and had filed her divorce papers or rather, she was in the process of responding to them. I kept aloof from that aspect because I didn't want to be considered an influence for her getting a divorce.
During that time, I got a job in Draper and was fed up with the commute so I moved to West Jordan rather quickly. I didn't really involve her in my plans because, again, I didn't want it to seem like I was pushing her to get divorced, and I simply told her that I was going to move closer to my work. Meanwhile, she moved to N.Salt Lake to be closer to the airport anyway, so it wasn't like we were moving drastically away from each other. --I only mention this because she made a comment to me about how she wished I would have told her, but I'm not sure why.
When she finally got settled into her apartment, she broke up with me. I remember that I had lent her my DSL modem because I was on their competitor at the time and didn't need it. She told me over the phone, rather angrily that she could never be with someone like me. --I didn't know what she meant or why she said that. I calmly asked if I could have my modem back, drove out there the next day, picked it up, said "Thanks," as cheerfully as I could and never spoke to her again. I didn't want her to see that I was upset and confused and any other emotions so I acted the man and coolly collected my possessions and left for good.
I really don't know why we broke up, I don't know what she meant, "someone like [me]" or why she was angry. I remember that she was being hit on at work and decided to hang out with some guy friends she met at work, but I can't say whether that was influential in her decision or not. I also recall that she got confused when I made the statement about her childhood (she was foster-adopted because her original family was into drugs and a bad environment) and she had me read her adoption letter/socialwork paperwork. I told her "this stuff doesn't matter to me, what matters to me is who you are now," and I think she took it as, "I don't care about your past or what you've been through," but how would I know this without her telling me?
I lack all details and if the details aren't apparent I don't even bother trying to figure them out once a person tells me its over. I have developed a very strong, very firm stance that "If someone wants me around, they will make it apparent. If they don't want me around, they will make it apparent as well; but if they are in between, then I don't want to be around." I would rather they want me around if only to figure out whether they want me around, than to be lukewarm, unsure if they want me or not. [[Women, do yourselves a favor and don't ever be lukewarm--your sex complains about men for the same reason and so many men make the attempt to be either hot or cold, show the same respect.]]
After Miranda, I was back to the bachelor life. I ultimately quit that job in Draper to remake myself again, slept around a lot, and progressed in other areas of my life.
Then I met Shelly King. Shelly is a single mother or three kids--two adopted one of her own. Her ex-husband is something else. He has committed identity fraud in the past and who knows what else because from the sound of him he's a habitual liar. I know a few of those and can only imagine what it's like to be married to one.
Regardless, Shelly has issues of her own. Though I wouldn't say she's a habitual liar, she does exaggerate a lot. She has a lot of confidence--false confidence--but she plays it well. It took being with her for a while to really recognize how full of shit she was. I think she lied to compensate, but she could also lie due to deep seated mental illness that has gone diagnosed. Overall, she's a good person, but perhaps I don't know her well enough to make that judgement?
In any case, while we were together things were good, up until she pulled the whole "I want to be a Mormon" card, and I started having flashbacks of being with Brianna and Taylor. She also gave me a scare like Bre did when, one night out of the blue, some guy showed up at her house, parked on her lawn (not even the driveway) and was over for a couple hours doing who knows what.
Shelly claimed that he barged in uninvited and she was too nice to send him away, I waited outside her home without her knowing for an hour waiting for him to leave(I got off work early and was going to surprise her after she put the kids to bed). She was texting me the whole time and I told her to give him the count of three to leave or I would come over and kick his ass. I counted to three and walked over to his truck, deflated the tires, and that's when he came outside. I yelled at him told him not to come back and she filed a report with the police.
Ultimately, I broke up with her because of some off comment she made about how if I wasn't going to be the kind of person she wanted me to be (a Mormon) that she had plenty of other guys who would be that for her. I didn't wait to find out if that was true, I ran; go find a guy like me only better if you don't appreciate me.
Finally, my last girlfriend was Kenzie Rentie. She was nice and sweet initially and gave me the right level of attention that I needed, but then she got over her head in her career. I started to see a side of Kenzie that was bitter and vengeful that I didn't like. She was upset because of her work environment and I think she turned inward and shut out the world. She stopped texting me and for the last two months of our relationship it was hit or miss on whether I would get to hang out with her on the weekend, or any weekday.
What I noticed about Kenzie, was that she had plenty of time to text back and forth with other people and plenty of time to coordinate and hang out with her old friends and co-workers, but I got put in a second seat. I hated that. I put my relationship with my significant other first--if I haven't spent enough time with them then any of my spare time I would expend to be with them. Quality time is important to me, and if I can't have quality time, then at least communication, and we didn't really have either.
I broke up with Kenzie because she wouldn't talk to me or make time for me. She claimed that she was just so used to being independent that it didn't cross her mind, but let's be real here: I'm the most independent person around and yet I still find time and have always found time to make everyone satisfied. I don't need people, I just like certain people in my life and will go out of my way to keep them. I work more than most people, often putting in 60+ hour weeks because I run a small business, and I still text, call or hang out with everyone I care about. Independence isn't the issue, self-centeredness is.
Kenzie was obsessed with running away from her life and problems. Granted, she had a few minor problems, but if she only knew to reach out to basically anyone around her, she would realize that her problems aren't so bad. She kept telling me that she was going to move to Germany, or just disappear one day and not tell anyone--and that she had already done so once in the past. Telling me this only made me feel insecure about our relationship, I wonder what she expected me to do, just wait around for the day when she left without telling me? She had the personality to not care about people, she distanced herself from me by not talking to me enough, and she vocalized that she was going to leave at some point in the future--that's not the kind of things people do who want to keep relationships in their life and so my fear of being left behind and not having a future with her, as well as the fact that the latter months of our relationship consisted of basically no relationship at all, I broke up with her.
I can't speak for her motives, I can only firmly express my own opinions and observations, but from what I saw I'm gravely disappointed. Kenzie had a plan to go through life on her own, by herself. She obviously enjoyed me in her life, otherwise she wouldn't have kept me for as long as she did, but ultimately she threw me in the trash for her own personal objectives. Relationships don't work that way.
The funny thing about my character, as I learned from being with Kenzie, is that at any moment I was willing to jump back aboard her ship that was setting sail if only she would tell me that she wanted me to come with and made accommodations for me. I forgive and I forget easily, but if there is one thing Kenzie did wrong with our relationship, it was that she didn't instill hope in me. I've learned that if you want a relationship to last, you have to make sure your partner has hope for the future with you.
After being with Kenzie I have realized that I am not going to as easily assist my significant other as I have in the past. Kenzie might not realize this now, but I would like to think that at least a few of my previous girlfriends do realize that being with me comes with seen and unseen benefits. I am stable. I am confident. I am smart. I am hopeful. I put a lot of time and energy into making my girlfriend comfortable so that she can handle her other areas of life. I try to relieve burdens, not just the obvious ones that free up time and boost energy, but I also offer myself as a sounding board and thinking cap so that they can think about and deal with their mental or emotional burdens. I do my part in my relationships, that is certain.
With Bre, I took care of her kid so she could get experience working, network, and advance in her career. I took care of her in a lot of unseen ways and I did the same for Brianna, Taylor, Miranda, Shelly and yes, even Kenzie.
I'm not like other guys, even the nice guys, because I have both a natural affinity to certain skills and was also trained in communicating and understanding people and life in general. I don't know everything there is to know about people, but I know a lot more than people twice, three times, even four times my age. I get so frustrated with people in general because I see them and I see their problems and I see how easy the solutions are and yet I also watch them opt out of the solution because they don't know, haven't learned their lesson, or don't care anymore. I also, apparently, have a terrible time finding someone who is my equal, because all of the women I have been with in my adult years have used me as a crutch to stand up with, support themselves, and heal, and none of them have treated me like an equal, like a life-partner, like a true friend.
I understand that I have a lot to offer. I understand that I'm cute and attractive and that through some magical osmosis the women who hang around me appear to be slightly more attractive as well. I get that I'm a giver and I freely share my positive energy with everyone. I also realize that I'm an empathetic person and people find it very easy to connect with me and feel at ease. And yeah, I am intelligent, I have a lot of practice coming up with advice and quotes and I utilize thinking methods that increase the perspective of others and expand their minds. And sure, I come from a wealthy family that is also somewhat respectable and I too have plenty of money horded away. BUT, all of these great things about me are not an invitation to use me for a self-esteem boost or as merely a getaway from danger. I expect more and I will have more.
Sunday, July 30, 2017
She's back!
I've been a long-time fan and love-crush of Lights. Excited to see that she's making new music for me again.
AND
AND
Monday, July 3, 2017
Pain before pleasure
I explained this to my friend the other day and now I think it's time to write about it:
People desire pain more than they desire pleasure. Psychologists are wrong.
Pain gives us motivation; it gives us a reason and a purpose. Pleasure is fleeting, it only lasts for a brief moment usually, and then we have to work very hard to achieve it again. I think people have been doing this for so long that they've subconsciously realized that the "easy"route in life is to enjoy pain.
See, the thing that psychologists were trying to describe was that people have a natural tendency to do what is easiest. They want the easy life, and if that life has more pleasure then pain, great, otherwise it's not worth it to recalculate and try again.
"Being yourself" is the definition of this. It's easy to be yourself. It's easy to say "I don't like that so I'm not doing it again", it's easy to justify decisions based on subjective criteria that centers around what you are best at, because if you are good at a thing, or it comes naturally, then it's easy for you.
Back to my original premise: people prefer pain over pleasure.-- It's not so much that they prefer it, it's that it's easier to be wrong than absolutely right. It's easier to make mistakes than to calculate the perfect course of action that will lead to the most pleasure. As I've argued time and time again, everything is always changing, and for most people it's easier to accept change, stick their head in the sand or grin and bear it rather than protest, stick up for themselves, and adapt.
I've seen people who have it made, seemingly by accident. They appear to have the good and simple life, and yet when change comes, they will abandon it on a whim. I've seen people who want so much out of life that when they finally get it they aren't satisfied with it because it doesn't involve enough pain and drama.
What are we humans?
Are were more than bags of meat tossed in the grinder of life? Do we truly hold on to the things we love and enjoy because we want to keep them or do we hold on to them at all? Do they stick with us because of anything that we do, or do they stick with us because it's easier.
People are sheep. They would rather not do hard things even if it causes them pain by not doing them. They do not think when they don't have to. They do not make decisions when they do not have to. And yet, pain is the motivating favor to thinking or decision making.
The dark, unsettling truth about life is that what need to experience pain now and again to realize that we are alive. We need pain to appreciate the pleasurable things. We need pain to justify our actions. We need pain more than we need pleasure.
Furthermore, I think people recognize this subconsciously. Their subconscious is a pattern seeker and probably realized this pattern long ago. Pain leads to pleasure, so why not do things that cause pain in order that pleasure will result?
Self sabotage is real. People will unknowingly sabotage themselves. These days it's easy to get attention (a pleasure) by causing drama then complaining about it. It's easy to feel high and powerful by resorting to drugs and tobacco. It's easy to feel as though you are happy, just by numbing your brain through alcohol. It's easy to push people away and feel in control or independent.
Those things are easy.
Then comes pain, which your subconscious has already associated with eventual pleasure, and suddenly you start to like the pain. You start to cause pain every where you go. You forget how to hold on to pleasure, and you forget how to manually obtain it. Your pleasure and pain cycle is on autopilot because it's so much easier that way.
It's not that self harmers enjoy the pain of a razorblade, it's that they enjoy the endorphins that their body releases to comfort them in response.
This is the greatest flaw of mankind. We are accustomed only to pain bringing pleasure, and we feel out of place or that the world is off when we receive pleasure without pain.
People desire pain more than they desire pleasure. Psychologists are wrong.
Pain gives us motivation; it gives us a reason and a purpose. Pleasure is fleeting, it only lasts for a brief moment usually, and then we have to work very hard to achieve it again. I think people have been doing this for so long that they've subconsciously realized that the "easy"route in life is to enjoy pain.
See, the thing that psychologists were trying to describe was that people have a natural tendency to do what is easiest. They want the easy life, and if that life has more pleasure then pain, great, otherwise it's not worth it to recalculate and try again.
"Being yourself" is the definition of this. It's easy to be yourself. It's easy to say "I don't like that so I'm not doing it again", it's easy to justify decisions based on subjective criteria that centers around what you are best at, because if you are good at a thing, or it comes naturally, then it's easy for you.
Back to my original premise: people prefer pain over pleasure.-- It's not so much that they prefer it, it's that it's easier to be wrong than absolutely right. It's easier to make mistakes than to calculate the perfect course of action that will lead to the most pleasure. As I've argued time and time again, everything is always changing, and for most people it's easier to accept change, stick their head in the sand or grin and bear it rather than protest, stick up for themselves, and adapt.
I've seen people who have it made, seemingly by accident. They appear to have the good and simple life, and yet when change comes, they will abandon it on a whim. I've seen people who want so much out of life that when they finally get it they aren't satisfied with it because it doesn't involve enough pain and drama.
What are we humans?
Are were more than bags of meat tossed in the grinder of life? Do we truly hold on to the things we love and enjoy because we want to keep them or do we hold on to them at all? Do they stick with us because of anything that we do, or do they stick with us because it's easier.
People are sheep. They would rather not do hard things even if it causes them pain by not doing them. They do not think when they don't have to. They do not make decisions when they do not have to. And yet, pain is the motivating favor to thinking or decision making.
The dark, unsettling truth about life is that what need to experience pain now and again to realize that we are alive. We need pain to appreciate the pleasurable things. We need pain to justify our actions. We need pain more than we need pleasure.
Furthermore, I think people recognize this subconsciously. Their subconscious is a pattern seeker and probably realized this pattern long ago. Pain leads to pleasure, so why not do things that cause pain in order that pleasure will result?
Self sabotage is real. People will unknowingly sabotage themselves. These days it's easy to get attention (a pleasure) by causing drama then complaining about it. It's easy to feel high and powerful by resorting to drugs and tobacco. It's easy to feel as though you are happy, just by numbing your brain through alcohol. It's easy to push people away and feel in control or independent.
Those things are easy.
Then comes pain, which your subconscious has already associated with eventual pleasure, and suddenly you start to like the pain. You start to cause pain every where you go. You forget how to hold on to pleasure, and you forget how to manually obtain it. Your pleasure and pain cycle is on autopilot because it's so much easier that way.
It's not that self harmers enjoy the pain of a razorblade, it's that they enjoy the endorphins that their body releases to comfort them in response.
This is the greatest flaw of mankind. We are accustomed only to pain bringing pleasure, and we feel out of place or that the world is off when we receive pleasure without pain.
Thursday, February 9, 2017
10,105 Days
It has taken me 10,105 days to say what I am about to say, and it's pretty important.
I realize now more than ever--I mean to say that it is so clear to me now, and thankfully I'm not too late for me:
Let me articulate what I am going to say, because even though I understand it, I don't know how to express it in a clear and concise manner.
I've wasted many years of my life chasing after things that I should not have. I have sought money, I have sought women, I have sought friendships and companion ships. I have sought fame and popularity, I have sought to make a difference in this world and save other people. I've sought knowledge and I've sought understanding, but none of those things are what I should have been chasing.
I should have been chasing after my dreams. Not my wants, but my visions.
I know I have said this in the past that I know HOW to get what I want, I just don't know what I want, and so part of my journey thus far has been to figure out 'what I want.' I've learned a great deal in the last 10k days, not just about what I want but what I should want, and how to get it. I don't want to waste precious time explaining how I got here, because that's not important. What is important is that I am here, right now, and this is--more than ever before--the beginning of the future me.
I am all out of excuses. I've used every excuse imaginable to avoid coming to this conclusion and I don't want to make any more excuses. Nothing is in my way except time, and I lucked out to have an abundance of it--more than most people are born with. Many more years.
I have all of the tools I need. I don't need an education, but I got one. It doesn't help me all the time, but it helps me some of the time, but even if I didn't get one, it would not matter. I have all the tools I need right here in my mind. I am resourceful. I am intelligent. If I don't know it already, then I can learn it. I can figure out how to do it.
I have accumulated more resources now than I have ever accumulated. In the past, that was cause for me to make up excuses because I was too scared to risk those resources. I thought that if I risked them and lost them all that I would never get them back and I would be moving backwards not forwards. Now I see that there is no other alternative. If I want to do something, I either MUST do it full force, or not at all. I must take the leap or the risk, or shut my mouth and forget about it. And my mind will tell me which choice to go after--if I can't stand the thought of not doing a thing, then I should do it. If I'm on the fence, then I know I shouldn't do it, because the worst course of action is to commit to something halfway and then bail out on the 99 out of 100%, just as I'm about to score the biggest reward imaginable. --That's how you waste your time, money, and resources and more importantly, your talents.
Life is a process.
You don't go from point A to B. You go from now to infinity. There is no end. And because there is no end, the end doesn't matter, and the past doesn't matter either. Ya, they exist, ya they are useful, but they are ONLY useful in relation to other points on my timeline. What is more important is where I am right now, whether I'm satisfied, or unsatisfied.
If I'm not happy, it's because I'm not satisfied with something. If I don't think things are fair, who cares? Fairness is just another term for excuse. Fairness is what people care about who worry day in day out, fairness is what people turn to when they need a reason to be a certain way or live a certain way. Work is what matters most. Life is not pointless unless you chose to live a pointless life, and I don't want that.
My life is not pointless, my life is premature. If it looks like I haven't done anything and that I've been moving backwards--maybe I have in the past, but in the future, no way. In my future, there is a point. I'm surviving, I'm slaving away for this vision I have and the funny thing is, I don't even see that vision clearly. I only see bits and pieces of my vision, but what I do see, I have made it the very purpose of my life to reach those visions.
I can have anything in life that I want, I just need to sacrifice for it. I need to take risks to get it. I need to drive, and when I fall, I need to work even harder to save myself. There is no other alternative. When I can't work any more--not when I run out of money, but when I can't work--that is when I die. Not until then. I will not give up.
Saturday, January 28, 2017
Another Lie from Senator Mike Lee
This is a letter/email sent to me from the office of Senator Mike Lee-R Utah.
I took the libery of underlining a specific part of this letter that reads, I repeat, " Of the “pregnancy services” offered by the organization, 94 percent are
abortions, according to their 2013-2014 annual report, while prenatal care and
adoption referrals account for only 5 percent and 0.5 percent, respectively."
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Here is a copy of the 2013-2014 annual report published by Planned Parenthood.
STI/STD Testing & Treatment
STI Tests, Women and Men 3,727,359
Genital Warts (HPV) Treatments 38,612
HIV Tests, Women and Men 704,079
Other Treatments 547
4,470,597
Contraception
Reversible Contraception Clients, Women 2,131,865
Emergency Contraception Kits 1,440,495
Female Sterilization Procedures 822
Vasectomy Clients 4,166
3,577,348
Cancer Screening and Prevention
Pap Tests 378,692
HPV Vaccinations 34,739
Breast Exams/Breast Care 487,029
Colposcopy Procedures 32,334
LEEP Procedures 2,095
Cryotherapy Procedures 684
Other Women’s Health Services
Pregnancy Tests 1,128,783
Prenatal Services 18,684
Abortion Services
Abortion Procedures 327,653
Other Services
Family Practice Services, Women and Men 65,464
Adoption Referrals to Other Agencies 1,880
Urinary Tract Infections Treatments 47,264
Other Procedures, Women and Men 17,187
Total services 10,590,433
Tell me where "94 percent are abortions"? ...
...of total services, abortions are 3%
Pregnancy services isn't even listed on Planned Parenthood's docket, so Mike Lee is just picking whatever he feels like from the list of data and grouping it together via language to infer that they are an evil organization that 94% of what they do is abortions.
How about this, then, liars are people who purposely distort facts to mislead people. Senators are expected to never lie, swear on a bible, and on their very life serve the truth and nothing but the truth. Yet, here we find Senator Lee lying. Lee is a liar and is not doing what we expect as a politician and should be forced to resign from office.--See how I did that? I grouped liars with people who purposely distort facts to mislead people, then I correlated that with what we expect from the leaders of our country. He doesnt' fit the bill and we should defund him. Plain and simple.
Saturday, January 21, 2017
How being 1% works with trickle down policy
Saw a meme that went like this:
Daughter to Mother:
"how does trickle down policy work?"
"First, the 1% get all of the money"
"and then what?"
"That's it"
lol This is clearly wrong. First, the 1% -starts- with 99% of the money, then they continue making money and paying low wages and issuing 'favors' instead of exchanging money and then through capitalism they weasel out another 0.9999 %
Then, the government steps in and says, let's give consumers free money to spend wherever they choose! And those consumers spend the money at big businesses where the 1% get another .000099999% of the cumulative monies.
Long story short, it's not that trickle down is bad, it's that big businesses are allowed to pay disproportionate wages (128:1 manager to employee wage ratio? give me a break) and when they spend money to grow, they award the contracts to their cronies who skim the top 80% off in profit and the bottom 20% they write off as "expenses" on their taxes and therefore don't have to pay taxes on it, and those companies they hired 'trickle down' and say, well 30% of our profits from this are expenses, and they had to hire another company that claims 40% is expenses, then 50% then 60% then 70% then 80%, then when you get to the bottom trickle down level(s) that claims they actually took a loss on the job, you find out that the big company from the beginning actually owns a majority, controlling share of the little company and the biggest company comes around at tax time and says : We have 80 different little companies that actually took a loss this year for a total of -$900M Which we would like to apply to this years taxes. We made $1B net profit, so all in all our company only made $100M this year. But then you look at their Net Worth, and you realize: They started at $6.4B at the start of the year and now they're worth $7.3B. And so they pay a corporate tax of 35% of 100M which is $35M and the price of their shares go up 15% which if they started at $125 is now $143 ($18.75 per share) and the 1% who own those shares own 99% of all 10M share so the owners of the company--that same 1%-- gained $185M in their investment accounts. So their personal net total is something like $6.25B at this point
And oh, the best part about it is that they didn't have to do anything to make that money. Nothing. From day 1 to today. All they did was sink some money into the business to buy 70% of the company back when the shares were only $30/share ($210M--which is just about 1 years profit today). And the way they were able to acquire those shares wasn't with their own money initially--they set up a mutual fund which legally accepted hard working american's 401K contributions and invested them into a select group of stocks for which they were trying to acquire. Being the broker of these stocks, they took a $5 fee each time anyone bought or sold stocks--which was 25x or more per year per person because the contributions were made off of every paycheck of these people ($125/person/year). And after doing this for 5 years for 500K people, they accumulated the necessary $210M and they "reinvested" the money into their own company (a mutual fund) by 'buying' (actually the correct term is 'selling,' because the mutual fund is selling these shares off to a private party [those 1%] on the market) out the specific shares of said original company and reserving them for themselves specifically so that they could perform a company takeover.
They basically used everyone else's money in a long-game plan to gather these shares under the umbrella of different mutual funds, and then when the time was right they bought out the shares for themselves using the fees they accumulated from brokering the mutual fund.
After a short period of time, those shares grew from $30 to $125 and then onward to $143 and everyone praises them for being these genius investors and the government doesn't really tax them yet--they can't tax them until the profits are 'realized' (i.e. cashed out) because they keep claiming them as reinvested capital gains each year when they buy stocks and other investments until they need to cash them out to live off of. But conveniently the company offers them a dividend so they never really need to cash out because they own enough shares that they can live off of the dividends, buy nice things, and other people do all the work for them and get paid less.
They pay brokers and investors to run the mutual funds and collect the fees. They pay CEOs to run the company and make them money. And then all of those people pay to put their money back into the stock market for their long-term investment (retirement) plans and that's where their money goes. Meanwhile, these 1% collect money from the investment plans (AGAIN) and when they aren't making enough money they blame the CEOs who have to cut jobs of hard working americans. Those hard working americans have to cash out or borrow against their 401K and have to pay the fees to the mutual funds to do so and thereby the 1% get money yet again!
Then, they avoid paying taxes by buying up the debts of homes that are going to foreclose, they let them foreclose rather than accepting short sell offers, and then the government pays them 60% of the value of the home through FHA insurance--plus they get to keep the home, which still has intrinsic value. They write 100% of the value of the home off on their taxes--which is how they have 80 different lending companies that listed a net Loss on their taxes--and then they wait for the next year to roll the insurance profits over or they "reinvest" again and buy up more homes that are about to default (C grade or lower loans that the normal bank doesn't want to hold onto). Then, they wait a few months and they start to sell the homes 1 by one that they already foreclosed on and collected the mortgage insurance on, and they sell them at auction for 50-80% below market and they claim the extra 20-50% on their taxes as losses under a fun field that says if you are forced to sell something below it's market value you can list it as a form of depreciation and write it off on your taxes. --If you've done your math right, YES these people are making 130% to 190% of the price they paid for the home. so a $200K home brings them up to $380K in profits. ($180K is net profit).
And they don't have to do a thing for that money because they have paid other people 1/128th of their profits to do it for them (which in the home example is $1400 to collect the money and put it up for auction--a very simple task)
The unfortunate side of all of this is that it is the byproduct of whatever form of capitalism exists in america. Capitalism is the private ownership of property capable of being exchanged. Stocks held at the mutual funds are property. Real estate is property. Debts are a form of property. Money is property. Because it benefits people to reinvest their money by not having to pay taxes on their property, they reinvest. The government sees this as a good thing, because by reinvesting they create more jobs(some attorney gets paid $1400 for every home he puts up for public auction), so they are willing to postpone collecting taxes if it means more jobs are created.
Capitalists have learned though, that they can double dip on profits with tricks like collecting fees on the exchange of property (Buy or sell something, pay a fee--buy a stock, pay a fee. Sell that stock, pay a fee. Buy a home, pay a fee, sell a home, pay a fee[they're even looking for ways that they can create their own currency so that when you use their currency, you pay a fee, when you buy into their currency, you pay a fee, but thankfully all of those methods get blocked by the government eventually--at least after all of the choice profits are already made]). They can also capitalize on your misfortune, such as seizing your home out from under you when you fail to pay your mortgage--no, you don't get reimbersed for the money you already put into it, they don't buy out the equity of your home--you aren't paid anything for this, they just take it based on the terms you agreed to when you took out a loan.
Worse, even still, is that it isn't going away. Ever. Whether you apply a trickle down policy or not is irrelevant--but they don't want you to know that. The 1% already won at this game. They already have all of the property that they need and even if the rules changed tomorrow and they suddenly couldn't 'reinvest' to avoid taxes, or if laws were created that stopped them from capitalizing on certain things--well, then they'll stop...and they'll take their property and say FU to politicians and people, and they'll live off of it for ages and ages and the other 99% would be lucky to receive table scraps from them. It's too late.--Even in the worst case scenario where there is a total government takeover, the only thing that MIGHT change is WHO the 1% are. The money is already accumulated folks. You can't change that. If someone took control of the government, they would seize control of the 1%'s wealth and then the story would continue, only be worse.
SO...I've educated you on the whole matter and now you have to make a decision:
Would you rather the 1% continue what they are doing and allow other people to try to do what the 1% do but on a much smaller scale? or would you rather they took their money and left and we got the table scraps and the economy--all life as we know it--shut down? Or, and I shudder to even list this as an option: would you rather someone else came in and took over and changed all life as we know it and seized the 1%'s wealth?
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