On Leadership

You won't like him when he's angry.   Source

That's the beginning of the big boss fight when 90's Jesus smacked it down with Zeus on a scale more epic than any mere mortal can conceive. That also has absolutely nothing to do with anything. Continuing what I was discussing in my previous article, I'm having to get my GED. Because I'm not made of money (that's some other Eggleton), I'm taking a class so they'll pay for the test for me. They asked for me to write an essay for Language, so I wrote the article below. I did no research, nor did I do an outline. I did it all in one draft. It's a GED class and anybody who can't crap out an essay better than this doesn't deserve a diploma. Without further ado, here's my polished turd of an essay.

LEADERSHIP

   In these questionable times we find ourselves in, one must raise a question of leadership. What makes a good leader? The common man will raise many points in an attempt to grasp such a nebulous concept. He will say that a good leader is somebody he can trust, somebody he can have a beer with, perhaps even somebody who has a good financial history. It seems imperative for the common man to be able to relate to his leader.

   This is why the common man is a fool. He searches for the father he never had, a powerful patriarch to guide and protect him through life. We edge toward a time when we may be led by a matriarch, but even those women we may elect are forced to fill a male archetypal role. The commoners wish to have leaders they may relate to, yet they turn to deceivers who have accumulated more wealth than a thousand common men.

   This seems a cynical view of the wealthy elite, and some may write this off as jealousy. But one must ask, how does such a person become rich? By taking the money of others. This is the basis of all economics. Though theft is considered a horrifying concept, simply outrageous, confidence games are legitimate. What is advertising  but convincing others to give the con man money for products they don't actually need?

   With this being said, our current system invalidates all candidates who aren't millionaires. The common man trusts their leaders? If these men of greed had a knife to a peasant's throat and were offered a million dollars for murder, would they do it? Every commoner, these followers, would say yes. They would then rationalize it by saying that anybody would, but they only do so out of the romance of Stockholm Syndrome. When afflicted by this perversion, a boot on the neck feels an awful lot like a kiss.

   If you want to vote for somebody you trust and vote for a liar, are you in any position to call anybody mad? In this nation where those we trust raid the coffers and murder the citizenry under the guise of protecting national security, we must ask what is missing. It is certainly true that a leader is somebody we can trust and relate to. In branches of civilization beyond the hearthfire, into the towns and cities and counties and  states, all the way up to the national and global levels, we are searching for grander versions of our own parents. As adults, we long for the patriarch and/or matriarch that will protect us from our own decisions and the decisions of others.

   More important than our ability to understand our leaders is their ability to understand us. For us to trust them, they have to trust us. In the ancient world, a king who divides himself from the people was a king who would one day divide himself from his own head. We send the poor to fight our battles overseas while the wealthy never know pain. In ancient Greece, it was the wealthy elite, the kings and noblemen, who protected the others.

   Why was this? Because they could afford the best weapons and armor. A leader is not a sanctified rose, to be spirited away and protected. This is a cult of personality. Leaders are but flesh and blood, mere men and women like us. They are to be starving and bleeding with their people, fighting and working alongside their fellow man.

   Someday, we may stop searching for these perverse mothers and fathers. We may look to elect our brothers and sisters, those who understand us. If the common man may elevate his peers to such a state, he may someday come to have the confidence and loyalty to trust himself to take charge of his own fate. Though we may never see this day when there are no slaves, there are no masters, we can still dream. Dreams are the one thing the thieves may never steal.

And now I give you a picture of a puppy.

Cute, indeed.   Source

Not Dead But Dreaming

Sorry for the long break. Life interrupted cyberlife and life doesn't play fair.

Let me tell you something about homeschooling. It sounds like a good idea on paper. What parent doesn't want to teach their kids and protect them from the corrupting influences they'll find in public schools? You build a relationship with their kids, keep them from drugs and crime, protect them from school shootings, all that. Sounds great, huh?

In practice, this is a terrible, terrible idea. Your kids need to experience other kids. They need to learn how to socialize and build friendships. If their only friends are mom and dad, who are they going to turn to with their problems? Everyone likes to romanticize their relationship with their kids by saying their kids can come to them with anything. Ask yourself two questions; First, are you going to be able to be there for your kids? And secondly, are they going to want to tell you about their problems?

Everyone likes to think that they will always be there for their kids. But when you're tired from working to put food on the table, most parents will come home, have dinner, and get some Me Time in front of the TV. They seem to assume that their kids will voice in their concerns, but you're both hypnotized by the talking heads in the glowing box in front of you. You watch American Idol or some such rubbish, call it bonding, and call it a night. This isn't bonding at all, it's coexisting. How can a teenager learn the subtle nuances of communication from this? Do you really think that they'll talk about their personal problems in this situation? You're not their friend. You're an authority figure and a distant one at that.

People adore the idea of being friends with their kids, to reclaim that closeness they think people had back in the day...but they're not willing to put forth any effort to fulfill this. Relationships require work that nobody seems to have time for these days. We live in a state of misery and loneliness only an industrialized society brings. In no other part of human history have so many people occupied the same rooms and been so distant. Close families and friendships are a wonderful thing, but are we capable of this? We show each other bite-sized bursts of love during every other commercial break and dive back into the quagmire of distraction. Those dollar menu social scenes are only broken down further if everybody is buried in their phones, Liking each other's statuses on Facebook and reading what some dickbag on Twitter is saying. The good times are gone, but are they lost forever?

In all probability, yes. With nobody wanting to make a change, nothing will change. It's easy to say you want change yet you won't turn off that fucking TV.

Source

My original point, before I got distracted like a monkey with a taser, was the problem with homeschooling I haven't addressed: It doesn't mean a goddamn thing. The State no longer recognizes homeschool diplomas, so, for all intents and purposes, you're forcing them to drop out. I fell out of the blogosphere because I was trying to go back to college. I put two years into community college once upon a time and I'd like to finish that up...unfortunately, all that school time was for nothing because I have to get a bloody GED to go back. 

Being poor (again, college dropout in the hizzy), I couldn't afford the $50 for the test, so I had to put thirty hours into the class to prep for the GED. Surrounded by broken hopes and broken minds, I realized one thing very quickly: I was massively overqualified for this class. Somehow they managed to find me thirty hours of work that wouldn't put me to sleep and I'm now off to get my GED...eight years after I graduated from high school. The gods are real and they're damn lunatics.

But everybody, I'm here to tell you that you can do away with that headstone you were lovingly carving out of gold for me. You can take my picture off the milk carton with offers of a million dollar reward. I'm not dead, I'm not missing, I've just let shit get in the way. I hope to once again regal you with obvious wisdom, with all the subtlety of a drunken, raging Sean Connery.

SourceI Googled "drunken raging Sean Connery"
and this is what I got.
Hey Google. That's rough.
Just the way you're mama likes it.

I'll be here, hope to see you here too.