I remember the line from "Risky Business" quite well.
I'm not a huge fan of profanity, but there is definite truth there. One definition of insanity is to keep doing the same things you have always done and expect different results.
When I went to see Risky Business in 1983, I was single, in my 5th year of employment at IBM and very much in the Tom Cruise mode as he gets this lecture of "not wanting to screw up". About this same time, a person that I knew would leave IBM to go to work for Microsoft! I thought they were CRAZY ... they may as well have gone out and hired a bunch of hookers to try to make a big monetary score. The person that left retired from Microsoft in their 40's with I'm certain 10's of millions of dollars.
At the time, IBM was TOTALLY SAFE ... nobody was laid off, salaries were rising. If you could hang around 30 years (and likely less), you could retire with 2/3 of your salary and full medical benefits for the rest of your life. Sometime in the late '80s a buddy and I were up fishing at Mille Lacs and ran into a couple of guys who had retired from IBM recently that were in their early '50's (I hit 30 years at 51) who had super nice motor homes, a great boat, and had been reeling in big walleyes on Mille Lacs for a MONTH STRAIGHT!
I certainly didn't want to "screw up", take risks, and jeopordize that! One would have to be a FOOL to do so!
By the time I was fired in '12, the pension had been cut to a scant 1/3 of salary with minimal medical benefits to pay for medical costs that were skyrocketing. My wife that started at IBM in '84, who I would marry in '85 will get like 1/10th salary when she retires.
In the late '70s, some of the people that had retired the early '70s were coming back to work. They had gotten what were SUPER pensions at that point that were not indexed for inflation (neither is mine). Thanks to Jimmuh Carter, their pensions were essentially worthless by '80 due to inflation, and anything they had invested (in other than IBM stock) had pretty much earned nothing in the stock market. The Dow hit 900 in January of 1965, in November of '83 it finally went above 1,000 ... stocks were not the answer in those days.
The linked NY Times article points out that politically, saying "What the F" on Trump is considered to be a lot more morally suspect by the left today than pimping for your high school buddies was in '83. Many males may not agree with the morality of buying a hooker, let alone being a pimp, but they certainly understood the concept. Something like half the country today finds the idea of even taking a shot at opportunity to be immoral in the extreme -- so extreme they often can't even associate with such a person.
How will Trump turn out? No idea. My "sense" is that he is a lot more like "going to work for Microsoft" vs sticking with IBM was in '83 than any of the other current analogies. Maybe he is more like hiring a bunch of hookers and charging your high school buddies for sex ... which if you believe the movie, might work out better than one would expect assuming an amoral world and nothing afterward. (which IS the standard assumption of post Christain BOistan).
However, if one believes the left, we live in a HIGHLY moral world. A world more like the Baptist church I grew up in, or even the Mennonite churches around where I grew up. You MUST be "morally pure" ... as in follow all the dictates of "The Party", or you need to be "shunned". Lose contact with friends, co-workers, possibly even family.
I knew some kids like that from the Baptist church -- rebels. Openly drank, smoked, chased (and at least claimed to "catch") girls ... maybe even turned "atheist", or at least cursed the people who put all the moral strictures on them. I was of course quiet and bookish before I met my wife ... so we won't go into that here. I did however at least feel the thrill of rebellion -- I went to PROM, which involved DANCING, causing embarrassement for my father a deacon at church, and my mom a good baptist woman. Dancing, movies, smoking, drinking, long hair and a few other things were bigtime sins in the church ... I had long hair as well. I was a REBEL! (sort of ... a very limited rebel)
At age 60, it seems just plain surrealistic to see millions of people so locked into a secular humanist "morality" that they shun others over political views, or basically "taking a risk" ( on a 70ish multi-billionaire with great kids). I guess in a lot of ways I've never really changed -- mostly I keep my mouth shut about politcs day to day because I realize how bad it makes many people feel that someone they know would vote for Trump. I did the same back then ... I "sinned", but other than prom and long hair, I was pretty quiet about it.
In strange ways, my Christianity has become my "open rebellion" now. When I was in high school I was embarrassed about being a Baptist. I couldn't defend young earth creation, nor really understand why our church didn't allow dancing, drinking, etc and so many of the "world churches" did. Since I had been raised that way, it "felt" like the only way to escape hell was to be "saved" which if properly done would "change me" so I no longer desired any of the worldly things.
It never really seemed to "work" ... "wanting" girls in the days of the miniskirt was an obstacle that prayers never fixed for me. I wanted to be somewhat popular at school ... and the kids that were able to do a better job of following the Baptist strictures were definitely UNpopular at school. The only "proper path" was to go to Pilsbury Baptist Bible College in Owatonna Minnesota to become a minister or missionary, or to settle in to farming or working at the turkey plant or some other local business, marry one of the good baptist girls, and settle in for what looked like a longer life at that point than it does now. Perhaps that WAS the only way "home" (to heaven) for me ... those were the cards that I was dealt by God and I walked away from the solution that was presented me -- I failed to honor my father and mother and follow the road that God put me on. "The judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether".
I don't spend a lot of time on that -- it crosses my mind with a lot of other things. It comes with my belief that God truly is SOVEREIGN -- even if he puts me in Hell for eternity because I failed to follow the simple clear path he set before me since I felt I was "smarter than that". He is STILL sovereign! I don't feel / believe that will be the outcome -- I believe that Christ died with the promise to save me by GRACE, and those thoughts are just late night nightmares. It is part of honest thoughts that come form being raised as I was raised with the wetware and spiritware that I have.
While I went through a conversion to conservative, Lutheran "process Christian", philosphical wanna be, half the population (+ 3 million HRC voters, so a MAJORITY!) formed a new religion that kinda reminds me of "Stranger In A Strange Land" which I just realized I ought to re-read. Perhaps Secular Humanism really is the Fosterite cult where all manner of sex, drug use, and wealth aquisition is "blessed" as long as the cult of government is held supreme, the planet at it's existing temprature or colder is venerated, Satan (Trump) is cursed, and those that refuse to kneel before the power of "The Party" (TP-D) are cast out into utter darkness. There have been stranger religions.
Science fiction appealed to me a lot in high school and through college, but after my conversion to conservatism as a reaction to Jimmuh Carter, I've found history, philosophy, theology, physics, biographies and such to be much more surreal than what people can make up. From my perspective, we really are trapped on an ancient intellectual and spiritual starship with nearly nobody understanding how we got here.
Is Trump "risky business"? Sure, and maybe to some extent we Trump voters really did sorta say "WTF", but from most of our perspectives, we had an even worse choice than Tom Cruise. I wonder if the folks in the the Secular Humanist / Fosterite religion remember what it feels like to be a rebel? As they forgot their sense of small, did they also forget "the will to power" and decided to "play it safe" like I did at IBM?
For me, listening to lefties heads explode on MPR / NPR day in and day out is just TOO much fun! After 8 long years, it is now the lefts turn "In the Barrel", and it is impossible for even a 60 year old me to not take a good deal of joy in that!
'via Blog this'
No comments:
Post a Comment