In the late 1980s-early 1990s, I spent many Saturdays rehabbing an apartment building above an old, fire-gutted bank at 292-98 South Orange Avenue, Newark, New Jersey with Habitat for Humanity. The red brick structure was three stories tall and a half-block wide, with boarded-up windows. Working on the upper floors, we walked across tattered sheets of plywood lightly fastened to the remaining floor joists that spanned the inner shell of the building. Watch your step.
The "pussification of men" seems to go hand in hand with female hysteria. The women I know who have a strong, responsible man tend to be more grounded and content and respect their man, while the women who have "pussified" mates are more angry, anxious and controlling, with little respect for their men.
Which came first I have no idea, but there is no doubt that the hapless husband has been a staple of entertainment media for decades, as has the "we don't need no man modern woman."
De-womanize women (take away her role of mother, as a single child raised properly can change the course of history), destroy the family, demoralize the society.
Exorcist, Father Chad Ripperger, speaks to this extensively. There are many recordings of his on YT.
Funny how with all the yap about "female empowerment" today's women--generally speaking--are weaker, more cowardly, more irrational, and a lot dumber than their grandmothers were. Making men weak did not strengthen women after all. Any more than calling themselves empowered and nice made them either.
Yes, but I have gotten many messages from, and spoken with, many smart women who have seen the scam.
Some men I know aren't hysterical but nonetheless repeat, with self-assurance, stupid stuff they've heard on TV and have supported all of the craziness.
Feb 9, 2023·edited Feb 9, 2023Liked by Mark Oshinskie
Many men are being led around by their cocks by the women they let into their lives. (Excuse my rough language! Don't let it trigger you!) What could have been a strong, real man, has been reduced to a child. Hubs works on the Bering Sea on a fishing boat and 98% of his co-workers are told what to do by their wives. I don't know how they work at sea with their nuts securely left at home in their wife's handbag.
This single woman escaped from an abusive cult like group. I did not escape by being "nice" and letting the fear govern me once I saw through the lies.
Now the whole world seems to have become that cult I fled.
The unfortunate irony being that it’s these maniacal mothers who are damaging their little dumplings immune systems and psyches with their paranoid hypochondria.
Daniel Laruso is quite pusified. Interesting contrast to Johnny Lawrence. Johnny is all balls and no responsibility, Daniel is all responsibility and no balls.
We are in a chemical soup that was not present during our evolution. Understand that endocrine disruptors (in most plastics and millions of products for 50+ years) literally change sexual expression in humans, and not for the better. We have been making men less manly and woman less womanly by our love of plastics. Remember footy pajamas? Baby bottles and nipples both plastic? All the toys. (go with wood). This isn't about choice, it's about chemicals, framed as choice. Intentional? Doesn't matter at this point, sexuality expression affected.
I believe "gritty parents and chores" are now illegal! There are numerous examples of "gritty parents" being punished, sometimes severely, for attempting to force so-called children into slavery, like washing dishes, mowing lawns, or shoveling snow. And there are well documented instances of parents whose children have been apprehended by CPS (child "protection" services) for merely raising their voices - aka yelling at the kids.
Pussification has pretty much destroyed ALL of the youth groups and activities that once helped develop useful skills and fostered initiative, independence, and self confidence. Unfortunately!
Spent the past several weekends in sub-zero weather, cooking, cleaning, hiking, skiing, outdoorsing, working on Eagle requirements and leadership with Scouts
It’s easy to be cynical
It takes work to make the changes we want to see
I see a lot of good fruit coming from the local units and I work with over a half dozen of them.
I was just thinking along the same lines for the past few days. We've lost the manliness of the men in our Country and in the world. It is considered wrong now to be strong as men b/c that may offend somebody somewhere. I'm hoping I taught my kids better. My second son wanted a moped but we told him he needed to find a job so he could buy one himself. We wouldn't buy it for him. So, he went out and he found himself a job on a horseradish root farm. This work is dirty, hard, and hot even in the Swedish "summers". He perservered though and was able to buy himself the moped that he wanted (that made our lives easier, actually, but he needed to learn to earn something on his own).
That job of his led to another job that the other 2 oldest helped out with on another horseradish root farm. I still have pics I took of them coming home looking like they'd been underground all day! This job led to my two youngest (girls) getting a job on a vegetable farm planting potatoes, harvesting carrots and onions and other veggies and then washing prepping and packaging them. My youngest, especially, did NOT like the job. I told her that was fine but she wasn't allowed to leave it till she found another. She never did find another and now, one of the youngest workers there since she started when she was 14, she has one of the highest salaries for the teens that work there and she is trusted by the boss to take care of things when he isn't around. Amazingly, this sense of responsibility and higher pay has made her like the job a little more each year.
My kids knew from day one that we, as parents, weren't going to be giving them anything that they could buy for themselves with a little elbow grease and hard work. They all knew from the beginning that I started my first job when I was in kindergarten. I delivered newspapers in my neighborhood and at 5 years old I had to collect the quarter for those papers every month. That was my pay. If I didn't collect it, I didn't get paid. By the time I was in high school, I was paying for everything for myself besides room and board. I told them and continue to tell them, the crap jobs help to teach you what you don't want to do the rest of your life. Use that to inspire you to be better at whatever it is you do want to do or what you need to do to be able to do what you do want to do and you will go far in life and you won't end up flipping burgers for a living...
I hope we as a country find our way soon though or it won't matter that my kids are hard workers b/c there won't be a country for them to be working for left worth working for...
I have always tried to tell myself there are no unpleasant jobs. They are all just jobs and if you approach them with interest you will find that you actually enjoy working. I don't know if it works for others but it has always worked for me.
Feb 9, 2023·edited Feb 9, 2023Liked by Mark Oshinskie
there are also many satisfactions from physically exhausting dirty work, all food tastes great when you’re hungry, washing the dirt off and sleeping like a baby when your head finally hits the soft pillow.
I love doing labor, and did so as recently as 4 years ago (I'm 57 now). Physical work makes me healthy, happy, and more content with life. Unfortunately, I never entered a unionized trade as a career, so there isn't much money in it for me. I'm back behind a desk again making pretty decent bucks, mostly so I can treat my step-granddaughter (and family) to a cottage rental in the summer, theater nights out, and other treats that I can't afford as a laborer. I hate the stress of management, and I may go back to labor in a few years when she turns 16, if my body is still up to it.
Beware that you may be creating the type of people that this article is about. It sounds like they have a false sense of entitlement to let you work and pay for their pleasure. In the end it could bite you in the ass.
Yes, you nailed it concerning my missus' daughter; I barely tolerate her company (I kind of have to, for the missus). But, I adore the granddaughter, and I try to get her out doing fun stuff (and sometimes getting a a bruise or two) that her hover-mom would never allow. Naturally, I also try to impart some sense of responsibility and common sense to her. I think she is starting to see my view of the world, and maybe she will mature into a reasonably sane person (11 years old now, she is still quite young).
Same here. I'm a mid 60's fossil and grew up fixing our car brakes, changing the oil, so on. First real job after paper route was chasing down gate jumpers at the CNE, who were generally rather unpleasant fellows. I did road repair and was a garbageman for summer jobs in high school. Garbage pickup then was twice a week for each house, no limits or restrictions on what could be put out. 2 men riding on the boards at the back and an alcoholic driver, 10 hours days minimum. My partner got a badly broken leg from being run over by the driver at the dump.
Even though I later became a "professional", I became unemployed at one point in my early 30's so went to work for my buddy building additions and renovating massive old apartments above street level stores in the old part of Toronto. Coated in cement and drywall dust day after day, carrying 4x10 double sheets of drywall up the narrow steps is something that still haunts me. Mixed a lot of cement on plywood, in wheelbarrows, and mixers.
Though I went back into "soft" jobs, I have never stopped DIY and can hardly conceive of hiring to do jobs at home. I just had to dig up my tree root blocked sewer pipe and yes, mix cement and bucket it downstairs to fill the long basement floor trench.
This summer I have to remove and dig out the poorly built and wrongly sloped patio. Wife asks me who I'm going to hire to do it - LOL, she's in for a surprise as usual. As I fossilize, these jobs get tougher for me so I just do them slower. (I'm also cheap so there is that, but hey, I live in Canada where everybody is a lot poorer than our southern neighbours).
I know how to do a lot of things - and with the internet it's even easier for anybody to know. But the difference now is not knowledge or the ability to gain knowledge, it's just as you say - a pure aversion to tackling anything slightly dirty or difficult. I encourage young people to get into a trade as they are going to be rare and make a small fortune, but most look at me like I'm a kook and are aiming for those soft, mysterious jobs - which aren't going to be as prevalent as they imagine.
The only way this is going to turn around is serious widespread hardship. Collapse of systems. Mostly I foresee a general decline, as has been happening, which will continue until something breaks completely. But there will be no major turnaround in attitude or gumption without it.
I'm ashamed at how the people of North America behaved the last 3 years. Totally changed my perception of what we were supposed to be. It's irreversible IMO. It's like pushing aside the women and children to get into the lifeboat, something that can never be lived down. Permanent damage to self respect for many, though they will never admit it.
I think the pussification of the USA is the most shocking thing. The anti corona protests in Europe were very large and very often, though not covered by the msm (of course). The Truckers here in Canada was one of the most significant events of the whole period, and actually started the cascade of serious restrictions being dropped world wide. They scared the crap out of governments everywhere, whether people want to believe that or not.
I saw nothing, no pushback in the USA that I can remember.
I went to many including the first massive cop assault of Adamson BBQ who refused the second shutdown here Nov 2020. Some big ones in Toronto before and concurrent with Ottawa.
I've been wrong before many times but I was never more wrong than when I thought "The Americans and Canadians won't put up with this bullshit for long, we'll shut down this nonsense almost instantly". LOL.
The Nazification of the USA is nearly complete. Few remember that there was a truckers' convoy in the USA that converged on Washington, DC soon after the similar protest in Canada. In the USA, however, the gestapo prevented the truckers from entering the city and the media did not report on it AT ALL.
And as I remember, people were afraid to support the US truckers with donations because they didn’t want their bank accounts frozen (like Trudeau did in Canada).
I recently watched part of a documentary regarding all this & interviews with people who were survivors of or descendants of survivors of the Holocaust. What struck me was the memories passed down of the preholocost tightening of control, removing means of communication, etc. And these people saw the similarities immediately. My conclusion is that MANY Europeans have such memories passed down that that’s why they protested immediately and hard. Here in the USA, we didn’t experience all those atrocities and restrictions. I think that may have something to do with the differences on protests between USA & Europe.
This was a great line. "Even though 7,600 Americans died daily before Coronamania, during the past three years, many thought, or at least pretended, that no one should get sick or die, no matter how old or overweight."
Just so. We are at war with the rulers of the world, and it is a 5th generation war of information, where the targets are our minds and the opinions contained therein.
A few months ago, one of us accidentally won a *very* large television in a raffle.
It sits unopened in my garage. I'm not quite sure what to do with it, but I hesitate to infect another person and I really don't want to pay to haul it to the dump.
Government abetted by big media are dispensing fear. Young people, especially the zoom class, are riddled with anxiety and made up issues. I recently heard iof parents to be who were not satisfied with a “baby monitor “ ( who even had those in the 70s?) but want an electronic device to track the newborn heart and respiration rate while sleeping. Medicalizing and technicalizing of ordinary life - from birth to death. No wonder we have a rash of mental illness, suicides, and drug addiction.
Such a poignant essay, Mark. I’ve long lamented the loss of gumption. I spent hot Alabama summers with my grandparents, picking row crops like cotton and bell peppers. Papaw logged pine trees in the winter and sharecropped in the summer. They had an outhouse and a well from which we drew buckets of cold, iron-flavored water, and everybody drank from the same ladle.. Playtime meant grabbing a bb gun, running into a clearing in the woods, throwing a hubcap into the air and shooting it. Redneck skeet. We were plain covered up in white privilege!
I’m 66 now and have always been grateful for my childhood. (Rick Bragg, a great Southern writer, tells the finest stories about ‘my’ people). I worked my way through college and have led an adventurous life, including sailing around the world on a 43’ sailboat. My grandsons will never enjoy such life-enhancing challenges, and since their Grandpa is dead, they won’t learn how to fix and build practically everything, as he could. My estate planning does not allow them to use my money for college. Trade school, yes. I’m glad I’m old. I don’t see any way out of this mess. I enjoy your essays very much. Thanks!
I'm your age and was fortunate enough to have spent some time with my "country" relatives in rural southwest Mississippi. My grandmother had the outhouse back of her house, but I never had to use it- she got indoor plumbing before I was born. Loved your term "redneck skeet"- did some of that too. I don't think your old- just more mature than the younger folks.
As you said, this started long before covid. Look around, very few people mow their own grass or shovel their own driveways anymore. Simple daily physical tasks of living now outsourced to those with the "big equipment." We are just too damn lazy. This started decades ago when parents no longer required "chores" done by their children. There was a time most children were paid an allowance AFTER doing chores. Now they are just given money anytime they want, for doing nothing.
I grew up in the 60s-70s & my parents expected us to have a real work ethic. I was a doctor’s daughter & even so, I did every minimum wage job there was - waitress, maid, sales girl, & I had pride in all of them & learned a lot. Never, ever thought I was “too good” to do such work. I raised my boys the same - as soon as they could legally work, every summer they either sacked groceries, worked on a farm, did roofing or worked for a welder. My older son came home one day - hot, exhausted & filthy & told me not only would none of his high school friends do the kind of hard labor he was doing, they weren’t even expected to work. We were boomer parents & late to have kids so most of their friends’ parents were 10 years or more younger than us. I just laughed & told him it builds character. And it DID.
Another nail in the coffin of grit for men is the idea of “toxic masculinity”, which now seems to mean that being masculine is toxic. Thank god my son doesn’t buy that crap, but I have many times reaffirmed that masculinity is a desirable trait, just to outweigh the noise coming from society. Thanks for another great article, Mark.
Your co-worker in New Jersey was correct about the 12 step program. It does allow a person to search their own souls if they are willing to- it just provides a platform to overcome the addiction. The vast majority of folks cannot do it alone because most of us are fragile and we need support. The "program" provides a base- the individual has to engage. It's not for everyone, but many have benefited and gotten sober.
I liked so many things about this post, but especially "bring some toughness to bear". Doing those tough jobs while I was a teenager built in some appreciation for what my parents and grandparents had done earlier to establish their households and lives. I've mixed a few wheelbarrows of concrete, dug holes with a posthole digger, dug holes for concrete footings, etc. I still mow my yard with a push mower- don't mind sweating, but it's tougher than it used to be.
Thanks for the exquisite writing- It helps me to search my own soul a bit- but mainly it helps me to more clearly understand this whole scam of the last 3 years and to put it in the proper perspective. This whole business has been evil and it's not over.
Sorry if I posted this before. There is a great book entitled "Spoiled Rotten: Affluence, Anxiety, And Social Decay In America" (1999) that explains much of this.
From the Amazon review:
properly measured standards of material well-being have grown for practically all U.S. residents over the last twenty-five years, and this fantastic growth is responsible for a variety of negative social consequences
It's strange to think, but it's almost as though to be normal and happy, one MUST work hard.
Great article. I worked in a factory (no A/C) where we made heat treating furnaces for half my working life. I worked with steel and although it wasn't a death trap, you still needed to work smart. Without people doing the grunt work, there are no automobiles, computers and other "luxuries".
When you have been out in the world a bit, away from your phone or computer or video game, you can get a taste of what it means to survive. It takes some grit and determination at times. The rush to create virtual reality is destroying all will to survive beyond being plugged-in.
I see this in my teenage grandkids. Were I to ask them to help me move mostly boxes and storage bins, I don't think they could handle much more than a few.
American men have become pussified.
Hard work and fresh air needed.
Scouting, gritty parents and chores will go a long way to wean these kids from screens and immaturity.
Thanks for another prosaic gem, Mark.
Totally pussified
Thanks for saying that, so I didn't have to.
And many women have become unrealistic, particularly re: Covid. Everything is a crisis!
The "pussification of men" seems to go hand in hand with female hysteria. The women I know who have a strong, responsible man tend to be more grounded and content and respect their man, while the women who have "pussified" mates are more angry, anxious and controlling, with little respect for their men.
Which came first I have no idea, but there is no doubt that the hapless husband has been a staple of entertainment media for decades, as has the "we don't need no man modern woman."
I could almost think it's deliberate.
Straight out of the communist playbook
Destroy denigrate and attack;
De-womanize women (take away her role of mother, as a single child raised properly can change the course of history), destroy the family, demoralize the society.
Exorcist, Father Chad Ripperger, speaks to this extensively. There are many recordings of his on YT.
Here's one of his recordings on the matter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDwHdMEuuTI
About 13 minutes in: The Office of Motherhood vs. the Career
"A woman can make or break a nation, by how she raises a single child" - G.K. Chesterton
"The privilege of women was to form the mind of men - that's a much greater thing than having a career"
Father Ripperger is a rip indeed.
Funny how with all the yap about "female empowerment" today's women--generally speaking--are weaker, more cowardly, more irrational, and a lot dumber than their grandmothers were. Making men weak did not strengthen women after all. Any more than calling themselves empowered and nice made them either.
Hear hear
The women need to be controlling of pussified men or nothing will ever get done. 1 out of 2 in a marriage can only get so much done in a day.
It hurts my heart to agree but the majority of women are hysterical.
Yes, but I have gotten many messages from, and spoken with, many smart women who have seen the scam.
Some men I know aren't hysterical but nonetheless repeat, with self-assurance, stupid stuff they've heard on TV and have supported all of the craziness.
Many men are being led around by their cocks by the women they let into their lives. (Excuse my rough language! Don't let it trigger you!) What could have been a strong, real man, has been reduced to a child. Hubs works on the Bering Sea on a fishing boat and 98% of his co-workers are told what to do by their wives. I don't know how they work at sea with their nuts securely left at home in their wife's handbag.
😂🤣
This single woman escaped from an abusive cult like group. I did not escape by being "nice" and letting the fear govern me once I saw through the lies.
Now the whole world seems to have become that cult I fled.
Thank u for saying that Mark.
The unfortunate irony being that it’s these maniacal mothers who are damaging their little dumplings immune systems and psyches with their paranoid hypochondria.
Cliffs Notes version
I’m a far less gifted wordsmith…and not as smart, but at least I have dug a few ditches and mixed concrete. :)
Indeed, and these women need to be ridiculed for their emotional outbursts and avoided as much as possible.
Non-woke TV Series 'Cobra Kai's main character, Johnny Lawrence sums it all up in four words.
Don't be a pussy.
Wait, there's a modern non-woke TV series. I'll have to check it out. We try to stick to shows that were made pre-2000 or better yet, pre-1970.
First 2 seasons were good. After that ... naaahhhh. Just my opinion.
Daniel Laruso is quite pusified. Interesting contrast to Johnny Lawrence. Johnny is all balls and no responsibility, Daniel is all responsibility and no balls.
We are in a chemical soup that was not present during our evolution. Understand that endocrine disruptors (in most plastics and millions of products for 50+ years) literally change sexual expression in humans, and not for the better. We have been making men less manly and woman less womanly by our love of plastics. Remember footy pajamas? Baby bottles and nipples both plastic? All the toys. (go with wood). This isn't about choice, it's about chemicals, framed as choice. Intentional? Doesn't matter at this point, sexuality expression affected.
https://www.endocrine.org/topics/edc/what-edcs-are/common-edcs/reproduction
I believe "gritty parents and chores" are now illegal! There are numerous examples of "gritty parents" being punished, sometimes severely, for attempting to force so-called children into slavery, like washing dishes, mowing lawns, or shoveling snow. And there are well documented instances of parents whose children have been apprehended by CPS (child "protection" services) for merely raising their voices - aka yelling at the kids.
Communist society takeover
Invent problems that don’t exist
They always have the “cure “ - just like the lockdowns, masks and jabs
All there to break society, marriage and the family
Here it is... Communism reloaded - we're here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDwHdMEuuTI)
Sadly, Boys Scouts isn't what it used to be.
Pussification has pretty much destroyed ALL of the youth groups and activities that once helped develop useful skills and fostered initiative, independence, and self confidence. Unfortunately!
Yes! I have been calling it the pussification of America!
Everyone gets a trophy too.
Too many single moms.
Destruction of the family
Cross Scouting off your list. The current version is as woke as it comes.
Spent the past several weekends in sub-zero weather, cooking, cleaning, hiking, skiing, outdoorsing, working on Eagle requirements and leadership with Scouts
It’s easy to be cynical
It takes work to make the changes we want to see
I see a lot of good fruit coming from the local units and I work with over a half dozen of them.
🎯NJ Election Advisor.
I was just thinking along the same lines for the past few days. We've lost the manliness of the men in our Country and in the world. It is considered wrong now to be strong as men b/c that may offend somebody somewhere. I'm hoping I taught my kids better. My second son wanted a moped but we told him he needed to find a job so he could buy one himself. We wouldn't buy it for him. So, he went out and he found himself a job on a horseradish root farm. This work is dirty, hard, and hot even in the Swedish "summers". He perservered though and was able to buy himself the moped that he wanted (that made our lives easier, actually, but he needed to learn to earn something on his own).
That job of his led to another job that the other 2 oldest helped out with on another horseradish root farm. I still have pics I took of them coming home looking like they'd been underground all day! This job led to my two youngest (girls) getting a job on a vegetable farm planting potatoes, harvesting carrots and onions and other veggies and then washing prepping and packaging them. My youngest, especially, did NOT like the job. I told her that was fine but she wasn't allowed to leave it till she found another. She never did find another and now, one of the youngest workers there since she started when she was 14, she has one of the highest salaries for the teens that work there and she is trusted by the boss to take care of things when he isn't around. Amazingly, this sense of responsibility and higher pay has made her like the job a little more each year.
My kids knew from day one that we, as parents, weren't going to be giving them anything that they could buy for themselves with a little elbow grease and hard work. They all knew from the beginning that I started my first job when I was in kindergarten. I delivered newspapers in my neighborhood and at 5 years old I had to collect the quarter for those papers every month. That was my pay. If I didn't collect it, I didn't get paid. By the time I was in high school, I was paying for everything for myself besides room and board. I told them and continue to tell them, the crap jobs help to teach you what you don't want to do the rest of your life. Use that to inspire you to be better at whatever it is you do want to do or what you need to do to be able to do what you do want to do and you will go far in life and you won't end up flipping burgers for a living...
I hope we as a country find our way soon though or it won't matter that my kids are hard workers b/c there won't be a country for them to be working for left worth working for...
I have always tried to tell myself there are no unpleasant jobs. They are all just jobs and if you approach them with interest you will find that you actually enjoy working. I don't know if it works for others but it has always worked for me.
Well done!
there are also many satisfactions from physically exhausting dirty work, all food tastes great when you’re hungry, washing the dirt off and sleeping like a baby when your head finally hits the soft pillow.
I love doing labor, and did so as recently as 4 years ago (I'm 57 now). Physical work makes me healthy, happy, and more content with life. Unfortunately, I never entered a unionized trade as a career, so there isn't much money in it for me. I'm back behind a desk again making pretty decent bucks, mostly so I can treat my step-granddaughter (and family) to a cottage rental in the summer, theater nights out, and other treats that I can't afford as a laborer. I hate the stress of management, and I may go back to labor in a few years when she turns 16, if my body is still up to it.
Beware that you may be creating the type of people that this article is about. It sounds like they have a false sense of entitlement to let you work and pay for their pleasure. In the end it could bite you in the ass.
Yes, you nailed it concerning my missus' daughter; I barely tolerate her company (I kind of have to, for the missus). But, I adore the granddaughter, and I try to get her out doing fun stuff (and sometimes getting a a bruise or two) that her hover-mom would never allow. Naturally, I also try to impart some sense of responsibility and common sense to her. I think she is starting to see my view of the world, and maybe she will mature into a reasonably sane person (11 years old now, she is still quite young).
Same here. I'm a mid 60's fossil and grew up fixing our car brakes, changing the oil, so on. First real job after paper route was chasing down gate jumpers at the CNE, who were generally rather unpleasant fellows. I did road repair and was a garbageman for summer jobs in high school. Garbage pickup then was twice a week for each house, no limits or restrictions on what could be put out. 2 men riding on the boards at the back and an alcoholic driver, 10 hours days minimum. My partner got a badly broken leg from being run over by the driver at the dump.
Even though I later became a "professional", I became unemployed at one point in my early 30's so went to work for my buddy building additions and renovating massive old apartments above street level stores in the old part of Toronto. Coated in cement and drywall dust day after day, carrying 4x10 double sheets of drywall up the narrow steps is something that still haunts me. Mixed a lot of cement on plywood, in wheelbarrows, and mixers.
Though I went back into "soft" jobs, I have never stopped DIY and can hardly conceive of hiring to do jobs at home. I just had to dig up my tree root blocked sewer pipe and yes, mix cement and bucket it downstairs to fill the long basement floor trench.
This summer I have to remove and dig out the poorly built and wrongly sloped patio. Wife asks me who I'm going to hire to do it - LOL, she's in for a surprise as usual. As I fossilize, these jobs get tougher for me so I just do them slower. (I'm also cheap so there is that, but hey, I live in Canada where everybody is a lot poorer than our southern neighbours).
I know how to do a lot of things - and with the internet it's even easier for anybody to know. But the difference now is not knowledge or the ability to gain knowledge, it's just as you say - a pure aversion to tackling anything slightly dirty or difficult. I encourage young people to get into a trade as they are going to be rare and make a small fortune, but most look at me like I'm a kook and are aiming for those soft, mysterious jobs - which aren't going to be as prevalent as they imagine.
The only way this is going to turn around is serious widespread hardship. Collapse of systems. Mostly I foresee a general decline, as has been happening, which will continue until something breaks completely. But there will be no major turnaround in attitude or gumption without it.
Immune, so true from top to bottom.
I'm not romanticizing dangerous jobs. I'm just saying that people today don't know what serious risk is.
I'm ashamed at how the people of North America behaved the last 3 years. Totally changed my perception of what we were supposed to be. It's irreversible IMO. It's like pushing aside the women and children to get into the lifeboat, something that can never be lived down. Permanent damage to self respect for many, though they will never admit it.
I know many men that would push women and children aside to get in the life boat and never suffer a dab of lost self respect.
I think the pussification of the USA is the most shocking thing. The anti corona protests in Europe were very large and very often, though not covered by the msm (of course). The Truckers here in Canada was one of the most significant events of the whole period, and actually started the cascade of serious restrictions being dropped world wide. They scared the crap out of governments everywhere, whether people want to believe that or not.
I saw nothing, no pushback in the USA that I can remember.
I went to the only three anti-lockdown in 2020 that I knew about. Less than 50 people at each.
About 800 at one in 2021, re: vaxxes.
I went to many including the first massive cop assault of Adamson BBQ who refused the second shutdown here Nov 2020. Some big ones in Toronto before and concurrent with Ottawa.
I've been wrong before many times but I was never more wrong than when I thought "The Americans and Canadians won't put up with this bullshit for long, we'll shut down this nonsense almost instantly". LOL.
I also overestimated people.
You guys are not alone. I thought "we'd" stand up, too.
The Nazification of the USA is nearly complete. Few remember that there was a truckers' convoy in the USA that converged on Washington, DC soon after the similar protest in Canada. In the USA, however, the gestapo prevented the truckers from entering the city and the media did not report on it AT ALL.
I remember.
And as I remember, people were afraid to support the US truckers with donations because they didn’t want their bank accounts frozen (like Trudeau did in Canada).
I recently watched part of a documentary regarding all this & interviews with people who were survivors of or descendants of survivors of the Holocaust. What struck me was the memories passed down of the preholocost tightening of control, removing means of communication, etc. And these people saw the similarities immediately. My conclusion is that MANY Europeans have such memories passed down that that’s why they protested immediately and hard. Here in the USA, we didn’t experience all those atrocities and restrictions. I think that may have something to do with the differences on protests between USA & Europe.
Everyone should have to listen to Vera Sharav's speech at Nuremburg's 75th memorial. If you haven't heard it it is a must.
This was a great line. "Even though 7,600 Americans died daily before Coronamania, during the past three years, many thought, or at least pretended, that no one should get sick or die, no matter how old or overweight."
That has been the case for quite a long time. The only remedy is to shoot your tv
I like that idea...gives me a good reason for having a firearm.
Just so. We are at war with the rulers of the world, and it is a 5th generation war of information, where the targets are our minds and the opinions contained therein.
A few months ago, one of us accidentally won a *very* large television in a raffle.
It sits unopened in my garage. I'm not quite sure what to do with it, but I hesitate to infect another person and I really don't want to pay to haul it to the dump.
agree. Perhaps you can find a place to donate it..... where you are certain it will be used with care. TVs can be deadly weapons as well
Sell it to a Wokester and buy some firearms
Oh that's a great idea. (I've got a long wishlist of items that I might take on boat tour someday.)
One way we really could shoot our ways out of this. Lol
I was banned from the office because I'm not vaxxed and I wouldn't mask up. I used the lack of a commute to work out more, the others all got fat.
I now go back in a couple of days a week, but no one is there. We allowed America to be destroyed over the sniffles.
Ayup. While we were worried about Nuclear Devastation instead we were taken out by an overblown cold.
Government abetted by big media are dispensing fear. Young people, especially the zoom class, are riddled with anxiety and made up issues. I recently heard iof parents to be who were not satisfied with a “baby monitor “ ( who even had those in the 70s?) but want an electronic device to track the newborn heart and respiration rate while sleeping. Medicalizing and technicalizing of ordinary life - from birth to death. No wonder we have a rash of mental illness, suicides, and drug addiction.
Such a poignant essay, Mark. I’ve long lamented the loss of gumption. I spent hot Alabama summers with my grandparents, picking row crops like cotton and bell peppers. Papaw logged pine trees in the winter and sharecropped in the summer. They had an outhouse and a well from which we drew buckets of cold, iron-flavored water, and everybody drank from the same ladle.. Playtime meant grabbing a bb gun, running into a clearing in the woods, throwing a hubcap into the air and shooting it. Redneck skeet. We were plain covered up in white privilege!
I’m 66 now and have always been grateful for my childhood. (Rick Bragg, a great Southern writer, tells the finest stories about ‘my’ people). I worked my way through college and have led an adventurous life, including sailing around the world on a 43’ sailboat. My grandsons will never enjoy such life-enhancing challenges, and since their Grandpa is dead, they won’t learn how to fix and build practically everything, as he could. My estate planning does not allow them to use my money for college. Trade school, yes. I’m glad I’m old. I don’t see any way out of this mess. I enjoy your essays very much. Thanks!
Teresa,
I've spent some time in Bama. Two of my kids went to UA. I like the people there.
I'm your age and was fortunate enough to have spent some time with my "country" relatives in rural southwest Mississippi. My grandmother had the outhouse back of her house, but I never had to use it- she got indoor plumbing before I was born. Loved your term "redneck skeet"- did some of that too. I don't think your old- just more mature than the younger folks.
Redneck skeet, indeed. Seriously made me laugh out loud.
Good for you. I love it.
As you said, this started long before covid. Look around, very few people mow their own grass or shovel their own driveways anymore. Simple daily physical tasks of living now outsourced to those with the "big equipment." We are just too damn lazy. This started decades ago when parents no longer required "chores" done by their children. There was a time most children were paid an allowance AFTER doing chores. Now they are just given money anytime they want, for doing nothing.
Nothing like a big cup of hot coffee and a new Dispatches from a Scamdemic article in your inbox. Great way to start the day!
I grew up in the 60s-70s & my parents expected us to have a real work ethic. I was a doctor’s daughter & even so, I did every minimum wage job there was - waitress, maid, sales girl, & I had pride in all of them & learned a lot. Never, ever thought I was “too good” to do such work. I raised my boys the same - as soon as they could legally work, every summer they either sacked groceries, worked on a farm, did roofing or worked for a welder. My older son came home one day - hot, exhausted & filthy & told me not only would none of his high school friends do the kind of hard labor he was doing, they weren’t even expected to work. We were boomer parents & late to have kids so most of their friends’ parents were 10 years or more younger than us. I just laughed & told him it builds character. And it DID.
Another nail in the coffin of grit for men is the idea of “toxic masculinity”, which now seems to mean that being masculine is toxic. Thank god my son doesn’t buy that crap, but I have many times reaffirmed that masculinity is a desirable trait, just to outweigh the noise coming from society. Thanks for another great article, Mark.
Your co-worker in New Jersey was correct about the 12 step program. It does allow a person to search their own souls if they are willing to- it just provides a platform to overcome the addiction. The vast majority of folks cannot do it alone because most of us are fragile and we need support. The "program" provides a base- the individual has to engage. It's not for everyone, but many have benefited and gotten sober.
I liked so many things about this post, but especially "bring some toughness to bear". Doing those tough jobs while I was a teenager built in some appreciation for what my parents and grandparents had done earlier to establish their households and lives. I've mixed a few wheelbarrows of concrete, dug holes with a posthole digger, dug holes for concrete footings, etc. I still mow my yard with a push mower- don't mind sweating, but it's tougher than it used to be.
Thanks for the exquisite writing- It helps me to search my own soul a bit- but mainly it helps me to more clearly understand this whole scam of the last 3 years and to put it in the proper perspective. This whole business has been evil and it's not over.
Sorry if I posted this before. There is a great book entitled "Spoiled Rotten: Affluence, Anxiety, And Social Decay In America" (1999) that explains much of this.
From the Amazon review:
properly measured standards of material well-being have grown for practically all U.S. residents over the last twenty-five years, and this fantastic growth is responsible for a variety of negative social consequences
It's strange to think, but it's almost as though to be normal and happy, one MUST work hard.
I'll go look for that.
A lack of hard work and love. Both necessary for happiness.
Real love among human beings could have stopped the insanity before the summer of 2020. It's not good for man to be alone.
Great article. I worked in a factory (no A/C) where we made heat treating furnaces for half my working life. I worked with steel and although it wasn't a death trap, you still needed to work smart. Without people doing the grunt work, there are no automobiles, computers and other "luxuries".
When you have been out in the world a bit, away from your phone or computer or video game, you can get a taste of what it means to survive. It takes some grit and determination at times. The rush to create virtual reality is destroying all will to survive beyond being plugged-in.
I see this in my teenage grandkids. Were I to ask them to help me move mostly boxes and storage bins, I don't think they could handle much more than a few.
Thank you, Mark. This essay, like all your essays, is a balm in this crazed world.