This is the funniest thing I've seen for awhile.


An Enigma

RFK Jr. was recently interviewed at a "town hall" session, which you can watch here. I came away from it the most impressed I've ever been by a politician, in the sense that he's such an unbelievably honest and forthright guy. He completely won the Democrat-voting audience over, he won me over, and there is a significant contingent even on Gab who like the dude. If anyone could serve as a unifying figure, it's him.

Take as a microcosm his answer about "gun control". The woman was so extreme, or ignorant, that she wanted to ban semi-automatic firearms-- which literally means, all guns. Except 18th century flintlock pistols, I guess. His answer went something as follows:

"I too am in favor of gun control, so I'm with you! But I'm not taking away anyone's guns: I've spent decades of my life in rural areas: people who own firearms have it as part of their identity, and any talk of taking away guns is simply going to divide our country further. What we should do is look at the root causes of firearm homicides. When I was a kid we had rifling club at school, and kids had rifles in their lockers-- yet no one would ever dream of shooting someone at school. The guns haven't changed-- so what has? One thing we should investigate are the role of SSRIs and homicidal tendencies, which is a risk noted right on the drug labels..."

As extreme as this woman was, you could read on her face that she was satisfied with his answer. At heart, most people want sensibility: they are willing to compromise if what the other person is saying is heart felt, truthful, disarming, and makes sense. RFK Jr. is "that kind" of a person, to deliver just that.

Another example: a different woman asked him, "Why should we support you if the Democratic primary process has pre-selected the winner?" His answer: "January 6th was a terrible day. The people who actually committed crimes should be punished, in whatever way is appropriate according to the law. But you also have to understand why they were there: a huge portion of the country feels like the system is rigged. I'm assuming you weren't at the Capitol building that day-- but here you are, telling me the same thing."

As in the previous case, this second woman also seemed very satisfied by his unifying, very well articulated answer. Maybe for the first time, she could empathize with the January 6th protestors, and saw that she is on the same team as they are.

This leads to the fact that I spent most of the "town hall" simply shaking my head: you can't say the stuff RFK Jr. was saying out loud, and not get shot by the CIA, or buried with legal BS ala Donald Trump. He went on long explanations of how crooked the government is, how the agencies are totally run by the mega-corporations they are supposed to be regulating... he went on a lengthy, fascinating exposition regarding the border situation, how Trump actually had it mostly right, and how much to his chagrin as a Democrat he discovered that the Biden administration undid a lot of the controls, and is flying illegals all over the country... but all explained in such a disarming, honest way that even hardcore Democrats undoubtedly found the situation frustrating as he articulated it.

To be clear, I don't agree with him on almost anything so far as policy positions go: "gun control", "affirmative action", "climate change", and so on. Meanwhile, my current hypothesis remains that the only way out of this mess is for a Franco or Hitler-like strong-arm figure to come in, with a military coup, and toss out the regime by force: sadly, we're too far gone for anything else to work. But I am willing to give peace one last shot: if by some miracle RFK Jr. is allowed to have the Democratic nomination, I will vote for him-- perhaps the "Deep State" can be taken down without bloodshed, and via politics.

If he fails and Beijing Biden gets reinstalled however, with another rigged "election" denying Trump once again, then that will confirm once and for all my hypothesis that any hope of a peaceful outcome for America is gone for good.


Free-To-Play

According to this information, a contemporary blockbuster triple-A game costs a little over 200 million USD to make, and if it sells like absolute gangbusters, pulls in about 300 million USD. Meanwhile, successful "free-to-play" games like "Genshin Impact" can rake in 2 billion USD in a single year. Is it any wonder Sony and Microsoft are both heavily leaning into "games as a service"?

It doesn't need to be this way: developers tomorrow, with the snap of their fingers, could say "to heck with it" and start making simpler games which focus on gameplay, no cut-scenes, no voice actors, no shitty Hollywood music, no "slot machine" sleazy special effects-laden manipulative presentations, and where people can just run their own dedicated servers over the Internet ala "Quake". Games like that would take a fraction the amount of time and money to make, would be a lot more fun for the developers, would be a lot more innovative, and would be ten times more fun to play: people who like movie "fake" games can just go back to watching, you know, actual movies.

Yeah, they wouldn't become billionaires-- but they don't anyway, because most of them work for publicly-traded companies, and are enriching the board and the board members' ESG buddies at BlackRock, in exchange for a pittance salary. They could "go their own", start small-to-medium sized privately-owned firms, and just go back to making honest-to-goodness games. I really hope this happens en masse over the coming years.

The same concept could apply to other aspects of life as well, such as cars. But those industries are so hyper-regulated, it would be difficult to bring any "simple", low-cost option to market. With video games however, there is no excuse.


Protestant Theories?

I've already said my opinion on the matter, so I'll leave the topic by merely posting this link. Hardly a day goes by when I don't see a situation just like this one. My question to any Protestant readers I have out there, why is it that literally every single time-- 100%-- I see a compromised "Christian" church, it's Protestant and not Orthodox or Catholic? What is going on, or is different about, Protestantism that makes it so susceptible to this kind of pure heresy and apostasy? And what, if anything, can be done to stop it?

If the situation were different and it was always Catholic churches being taken over like this, I would start to ask questions about the Church's theology, and why the door was so open to apostasy. But as I'm not a Protestant and don't know enough about their views, I'd be interested in hearing from some actual Protestant soul-searchers out there. Because it seems to me that some soul-searching is required so we can spread the Gospel, rather than losing ground by having our churches taken over.


Living Arrangement

The wife and I had a long brainstorming session regarding the current living arrangements, and we think we've arrived at a good solution: I will convert the basement into a private apartment for myself, complete with a kitchen area, while my sister-in-law and my son will swap bedrooms from the basement to the top floor, and vice-versa: that way the only other occupant of "my apartment" will be my own son-- a member of my immediate family, who causes me no distress.

When I am in the Sacristy at church, and there are people coming in and out-- the other ministers, the priest, and so forth-- I am deeply uncomfortable. Just like I was deeply uncomfortable around people in school as a child, or in my twenties working in an actual office every day, or in my forties when I'm at the grocery store. Outside of a tiny handful of my most immediate family, I have always been extremely uncomfortable around others. But I could always fight through it, because Mass only lasts an hour-- and at the end of it, I get to go home to where I'm safe. Or after a work day, I get to go home. Or after grocery shopping, I get to go home.

Except with this living arrangement! I get to go from Mass, to more Mass. Or from an office, to another office. Or from the grocery store, to another grocery store. I never feel safe. There is no respite; no break. Even when the in-laws aren't here, I'm living in the constant terror, anticipating when they will be here, the following weekend let's say.

With this basement apartment idea, I won't know or care whether they are here or not-- because the basement will be mine. I'll essentially be living alone, with my own bedroom, my own living room, my own bathroom, and my own kitchen. The only time I will even need to go upstairs is to leave the property-- with is no different than in an actual apartment, where you leave your door and have to traverse a communal hallway to exit the structure.

I really hope this works, and that for the first time in two or three years I will be able to feel safe and put my mind at rest.

I don't know why God made me this way. Axiomatically, we know He had a reason. I've always been high strung. Let's say I've had fifteen jobs in my life-- twelve of them were total disasters. I still have occasional nightmares about a Best Buy job I once had, nineteen years ago, and in which I only worked for three months. Most situations are not a "good fit" for me-- but when I do find a "good fit", I really thrive. I am hoping I can take this current "terrible fit" and turn it into a positive situation.