Wall Street didn't do this to you

For the record, I think Wall Street is corrupt and has its tentacles around every aspect of contemporary America, and I think if there was any justice in the world, the banksters and their dirty, debt-baiting, money-sucking empires would have imploded without dragging all of the world down into the hole with them.  And the student loan scam is a national crime scene, one with the government's fingerprints all over it too.

However, my dear young women, Wall Street didn't do this to you:

or to you:

Your own poor choices did that to you. In America birth control is legal and often free and no woman is forced to have sex with irresponsible men, and yet women often do have sex with violent, unstable, or irresponsible men, bring their children into the world and then expect society to mop up after all of this terrible decision making. [Exhibit A: Rodrick Dantzler, a man from my neighborhood who killed 7 (seven) people, mostly women and children this summer after his wife kicked him out. It was revealed in the news today that he had fathered a child not only with this woman, but with three other women, not including the other girlfriend he killed or the female friend wounded in the police shootout.]

Look at the guy - sex on a stick, right? No sane woman would let a long history of violent behavior, incarceration, and mental illness keep her from having a piece o' that, right? Wait, no. How can that be right? But apparently ole Rodrick was beating them off with a baseball bat, yeah.

And, as to why, as queried above, anyone should have to choose between food and rent - it's because these things cost money to produce, build, or maintain, and no one owes them to you just because you exist and want them. I agree that it's horrific that your three-year-old son should have to live in dire poverty, but who created that situation? One hint: not Wall Street.

To the pregnant woman with the health compromised baby: consider adoption. I'm serious. It's not going to get any easier or better for you. At this point, adoption is the best option for your long-term future and your baby's.

The middle class stumbles...after shooting itself in the foot

As per usual, I've been reading a lot of financial and economic news, and right now there is a constant refrain of "the end of the middle class in America" in the news.  The middle class has, indeed, taken a beating.  Wages have stagnated, jobs have been outsourced.  The Federal Reserve has been playing with the money supply, banks, let off their leashes, preyed on everyone they could catch, and the resulting boom/bust cycles made A LOT of money disappear.  However, during the past 30 or so years when all of this was coming to a slow head, the middle class was doing a hatchet job on its economic future by participating or condoning the destruction of the traditional family and all the security it once afforded.

I'm not reading anything in the media about how divorce and illegitimacy are direct contributors to the spiking of the poverty rate - in particular, the child poverty rate.

Two of my old classmates are currently getting divorced.  Amy* lost primary custody of her children in her divorce as her ex was a stay-at-home father [I have to say, this sounds off to me; how is this even possible?  Her kids are school-age.].  She gets them a few hours one weekday night and every other weekend.  She spaced on a critical job requirement and lost her teaching job; in this economy, it's almost outside the realm of the possible that she will find another.  I don't know her financial details, but the divorce had to be costly, and she has a mortgage.  She does have a new boyfriend.  A year from now she will be either living with him or with her parents and declaring bankruptcy, if she hasn't already.  The math supports no other conclusion.

Michelle's* husband came home one day and told her, "I don't love you anymore, and I think I want a divorce."  He's never given her - or anyone else - a reason for why he wants this, he just does.  Together, they were just barely holding their heads above water.  They had a mortgage on a house that - like many, many houses in Michigan - is now underwater. Make that a mortgage and a second mortgage.  They each had some credit card debt.  She got downsized at work right before their second baby was born, and now only works a few hours a week.  After the lawyers get paid, they will be so far below water that the surface light will not be visible.  She has moved their two children into her parents' house, and he's looking for a roommate.

Michelle has two coworkers, sisters whom I also knew once upon a time.  The first is divorced, the second is getting divorced.  Her husband is bipolar and self-medicates with booze.  She has a couple of kids and was living with her parents, but now has moved in with her sister.  Her employment outlook is shaky; it looks like she's going to lose her job.

All of these women came from the exact same family background as I did: intact families with middle class incomes and college educations.  All of them grew up in safe neighborhoods, went to good schools, attended church.  And all of them are now toast financially.  Not just for now, for at least a decade into the future, probably decades.  Not because their jobs were outsourced or because they bet too much on derivatives or had a major medical event.  Because of divorce.  It is so depressing.  And their kids won't even have the stability - financially, psychologically, or even possibly physically - that they had even.

When Amy posted on Facebook about how hard her divorce was, a laundry list of women I knew in high school posted things like, "It's hard now, but you'll work through the pain!" And, "You will make it; you're a strong woman." And, "God will walk you through this.  Praying for you!!!"  I had no idea so many people I'd graduated with were already divorced.

People think divorce is something you get through, but really it's very hard for women to recover from divorce.  Remarriage is much less likely for them than their first marriage was, and they lose any/all of the equity they built in their twenties and thirties, starting over with a large debt hangover, expensive dependents, and a reduced ability to make money due to their family responsibilities.  They can save less for retirement, one they will face alone, because it takes so much time to recover from the divorce.

And that's just divorce.  Never married motherhood is a whole different scenario, bleak from the very outset financially for all but the richest moms.  An old coworker of mine, Jenny*, has three children, by two different fathers (actually three of my old coworkers have children by two different fathers).  The last guy mooched off her for the better part of a decade before she kicked him out.  Her parents have bailed her out time and again.  She's stuck making less than $30K, paying a mortgage on a old house that's underwater.  Interestingly enough, her standards for Mr. Right have not lowered at all.  She's even more exacting now about what she wants.  Jenny's parents are, again, still together and financially secure enough, even now, to infuse her with cash every so often.

The upcoming waves of women who age into retirement age and extreme economic vulnerability are going to be catastrophic for America.  So far we have papered over some of the damage with increased social spending, but that is not going to be possible in future.  The first wave of unprepared Boomer divorcees is hitting now, and there are plenty of stories about women who "did everything right" - got college degrees (and more college degrees), got decent jobs, got downsized and now live in friends' attics all over the nation.  What they have in common - no husbands - is never mentioned.  Boomer women, at least, had good jobs once.  Millenials may never have those kinds of jobs.

At a family reunion this summer I found myself talking to an aunt about her childhood.  She grew up working class.  Her father worked in a factory, did some kind of testing around huge chemical vats. He carpooled with four other men an hour each way to work.  He barely made a wage able to support a wife and three children.  Until my aunt was a sophomore in high school she lived in a basement.  He built their house on his off hours with materials he could only afford to buy piecemeal.  He dug the foundation first and they lived in that.  When it rained, it got wet and they had to bail it out with buckets.  They had a huge garden and canned everything they could.  He hunted, and his wife canned the venison.  Things were very, very close to the bone, but by the time she was in high school, the upstairs was finished and they moved into a proper house.  He retired in his early sixties without a pension and promptly died of cancer, probably caused by his constant exposure to toxic chemicals.  His widow worked part time at the dime store until her death some twenty years later, and left $50K to her children as an inheritance.

What struck me about this story was that it happened so close to when I was born, and yet it resembled my childhood not at all.  My aunt is only about twenty-seven years older than I am, and grew up in the same community as my father.  We Americans born after the temporary financial boom of the mid-twentieth century forget that this is the way people used to live, used to expect to live: a life full of hard, physical work and poverty pressing in on all sides.  The difference is that my aunt's mother knew how to survive that and even save money, and we have all but lost the ability to be that thrifty or the willingness to learn.

We are going to have to learn it again, though, because we squandered the good times, and leaner days are ahead.  If you are thinking of divorce, please read the above again.  If your situation is not completely untenable, do yourself a favor and stay married.  

*Name changed

What I did on my summer vacation

Tended a vegetable garden (Note the difference between the growth of what is in the raised beds and what is not.)

Spackled and finally painted the bathroom (& replaced hideous light fixtures, etc.)

Put in an herb garden.

Enjoyed the beauty of Northern Michigan with my family.

Began gathering the harvest of summer...

...and putting it away for winter.












I also chauffeured my son to scout camp, swim lessons, birthday parties, play dates, played round after round of Harry Potter spell dueling, and taught him two-digit addition/subtraction and about Ancient Egypt.  It was a good summer, and, frankly, I needed the break.  Working hard outdoors is good for my mental and physical health.  I've been reading and lurking, but not commenting much.  I've saved some thoughts for future blog pieces here, although I'm not sure how much "wisdom" I have left to impart.  I suppose we will see.

I feel honored that people keep checking back here and that I've been added to a number of blogrolls.  Thanks once again for reading.

Rodrick Dantzler in my neighborhood

I've been away on vacation from the blog world.  It's done me and my mental state a lot of good; I was experiencing a high level of anxiety from the doomsday scenarios I was reading (of my own volition sometimes rather obsessively).  I feel better now.  Calmer.  Mostly I've been gardening - vegetable first, then flower, and taking care of my kid, husband, and household.  The most exciting thing that happened last week was when my coonhound, Ruby, wandered out of the gate my son left open and went into a neighbor's yard.

The most exciting thing that happened this week was when Rodrick Dantzler murdered seven people in and around my neighborhood, leading the police on a high-speed chase, shooting two other people, taking three people hostage, and then - tardily - offing himself.  Scary stuff.  When I let the dogs out to pee last night, the choppers were still circling and police sirens overwhelmed the usual nighttime sounds of crickets and critters.

This is not the kind of thing that happens where I live, and obviously people are upset.  They want answers, and since the perpetrator is now dead and before crazy, they are harder to come by.  Dantzler was bi-polar.  He had a long rap sheet full of violence.  He'd served time.  He had been with many women and had at least two children with two different women.  He was abusive and had restraining orders against him.

He murdered four women, 2 girls, and 1 man, so I should have expected that outcry for more domestic violence legislation, but this article's ("Rodrick Dantzler's killing spree spurs call for stronger stance against domestic violence") made me do a double take.  Go read it.  One paragraph that stands out:

Domestic violence reflects a male-dominated society that does not hold men accountable for abusive actions, she said, noting that the majority of victims are women and the perpetrators men. About 5 to 10 percent of domestic violence victims are male, and most are involved in same-sex relationships, she added.

One of the commentators left this remark:

While it's wildly unpopular to criticize victims, we must also not shy away from teaching our children that who they CHOOSE to hang around with can have potentially deadly consequences. Rodrick Dantzler obviously had a rap sheet a mile long. All of the people involved with this individual, including a number of his victims CHOSE to associate with him.

My response is as follows.  I'm posting it here because it isn't showing up on the site, and I took awhile to compose it.

"Exactly right. I see a lot of people commenting on how we can retrain men not to be abusive. The fact is that women are very frequently abusive, including physically abusive to the men they are involved with. A Florida study recently found that women are more likely than men to stalk, attack and psychologically abuse their partners. Federal statistics show that when child abuse occurs "Nearly two-fifths
of victims were maltreated by their mother acting alone." Why is this? So many more houses are headed by women who are parenting alone now. That's a hard row to hoe, and throws more kids into poverty with all of its attendant poor outcomes and violence, but we as a society don't seem to want to limit women's choices in any way at any time, so - what the heck.

While it is worthwhile to try and educate people on men who abuse, we also need to see through the Victorian idea of women as helpless, harmless, innocent bystanders to abuse and also ask ourselves why so many young women prefer to be with men who are thuggish and abusive. Are women more sexually attracted to dominant men? Will they tolerate abuse and chaos if that means they have sexual access to thugs? Why do women take up with men who have raps sheets and lots of children scattered about among many women when there are plenty of more civilized men who would be better mate material? Why do women choose to have children with these men when reproductive choices make that optional even when pregnancy occurs?

The fact is, many women chose to be with Rodrick Dantzler, and he wasn't hiding who he was. Why did they choose him, and how can we train women to choose better? Women control sexual access and they choose which men get to reproduce. Rather than throw more money at retraining the whole male population - including the majority of men who aren't like this anyway - to not be abusive (a task made more complex by all the evidence provided daily by women that violent, dominant men actually make out pretty well and get plenty of sex), we should figure out why women are drawn to these men and how we can retrain them not to be or to choose non-violent men over violent ones."

This was a tragedy, but the bigger tragedy is that women are choosing to be with men like Dantzler every day and to make children with these men.  And no one says anything, like it doesn't matter that women make terrible choices for themselves, for their children, and, ultimately, for the safety and security of our communities and society.

My hometown

We are not dead yet. There are still people who are refusing to roll over and let everything fade.  Vision, creativity, hard work: we still have those.  Buy local, eat local, believe in your community, and invest whatever of your resources you have there.  That's the future.

Busy

I've been slow and sporadic about updating the blog.  There are many reasons.  First of all, I think it's better for my overall mental health to focus on positive action in my personal life rather than reading about negative events, micro and macro, so intensively.  While I do think we are all (except the very rich) facing a significant decline in our standard of living due to the decrease in the number of jobs -  in particular, well paying, sustainable jobs - monetary instability, an aging population, and gross amounts of debt, I really can't say if the Doomer stuff I've read here and there - stuff that really ratchets up my anxiety - is just gloom porn or not.  So I'm hedging my bets doing things that aren't too radical, things that I've wanted to implement for some time but was too lazy or cheap to do, in order to make our lives at least slightly more independent of the food/energy system.  I built six 4X4 raised beds with my neighbor and am planting a bigger garden.  I cut down the pine trees in my yard that dropped needles which killed any and all undergrowth and planted a honey crisp apple tree.  (I already have raspberries and grapes growing, and I think I might actually get a decent crop from both this year.)  I've shopped rummage sales and stocked up on stuff like candles and electric heaters.  I bought a cast iron woodstove for my enclosed porch as a back-up heat source.  I haven't yet installed it, though, as my neighbor told me it was terribly expensive to do so and so I haven't had the nerve to call the woodstove people and get a quote.  I'll do it, I'll do it.  I got a composter used off Craigslist and am looking over rain barrels too.

All of this takes time.  I've also been busy with my son's Cub Scouts den; last weekend at the Cub Scout camp out, he crossed over and became a Wolf Cub.  I am the new Wolf den leader.  He's had end-of-the-year school projects, readers' theater stuff, and I've had to liaise with his school because his teacher wants him assessed for ADHD.  While he is hyper and easily gets off task (I don't think we sat through a whole mass even once until he was five) he's very bright and has no problem with his schoolwork and also has a number of friends at school, so the doctor tells me there is no real need for evaluation or even any sort of treatment.  I'm not sure what I should do to make him sit in his chair more when he's got the material they're covering down already and the class is full of other boys who like to wiggle.  My brain has been busy with this small problem.

Finally, my crappy HP Pavilion laptop has been dying a slow death of many cuts for awhile now, but I think it may finally have gotten injured enough to put down.  My dog Milo kicked it off the bed last week when he jumped off to go bark at a phantom burglar, and now the power cord doesn't like to stay in.  

So if I'm in and out here, bear with me.  I am a real person behind the grerp facade.  And now I have to go dig in some fencing so the bunnies can't eat the lettuce I have to plant.  Have a lovely Memorial Day weekend and spare a thought for all those who died in service of our country.  

A letter from a reader re: the Manosphere

I received this letter the other day in my inbox:

Greetings Grerp,

I love what you do, please keep it up.

I believe you already addressed the issue of schadenfraude before on MRAs but lately it has become extremely disturbing.

First off, I actually came across these blogs last year when the misandrist media really placed the last straw on the camel's back. That last straw was the movie Eat Pray Love (I've heard of the book prior but dismissed it as garden variety chick lit unworthy of my attention), which celebrated a vain, selfish and immoral woman while indulging in crass stereotypes of Italy and India (my native country).  From those blogs I learnt everything from alpha/beta, NAWALT, alimony, hypergamy and game to small government conservatism, the failure of two-party system, messianic wars, the craven nature of elected officials who ignore existential threats, etc. In other words, my ideas of society were transformed from the small scale (male/female relations) to the large scale (government, politics, war).

Like many men (who once suffered rejection and slights from women), I reveled in the company of like minded individuals who had similar stories. At first it was cathartic and rejuvenating. I believe it is occasionally healthy for men and women to bitch about the other genders in their own setting. And I still believe that.

My issue with the MRM is that it has there was so much individual anti-WOMAN feeling that it quickly devolved into an anti-WOMEN rage.

I was first alarmed when they gleefully covered the rape of Lara Logan by an Egyptian mob, some even suggesting that stupid women like her deserve it. Admittedly, it was foolish to send a woman to cover that particular story. But it does not follow that she is a bad person and does not deserve our empathy. Of course this doesn't mean I endorse bizarre stunts like "slut walks"... women would do best to act with common sense, be aware of the id that is the male libido and take the necessary precautions.

This latest scandal concerning the French assclown chief of the IMF is another example where the MRM jumped to the defense of this charmless mediocrity even though the accusations of sexual assaults against him are legion.

A good number of MRAs are libertarians and others not impressed with the two parties - nothing wrong with that in of itself. However these tend to be the characters who indulge in the most vicious anti-Semitism.

Chief among the MRA culprits are inmalafide (Ferdinand Bardamu) - a half educated, geopolitically illiterate, economically ignorant, hysterical, emotional fringe character who has opened up his forum to those even more deranged than him. Among the more stupid of his acolytes are Advocatus Diaboli (easily he runs one of the most idiotic blogs I have ever seen).  And there is Whiskey who actually advocates women be relieved of their jobs in media, finance, HR and other female-centric professions so they are more receptive to beta males!!

There was a time when all of the above performed a vital function and provided useful information and advice for men who were trying to navigate the powerful misandrist forces in all aspects of society be it in politics, family, law, universities, sports, media or even the military!  But lately like many things which outlasted its usefulness, MRA blogs have become counterproductive. Like many rebels who once railed against an unjust authority, they are slowly turning into tyrannical psychopaths.

Which is why I am turning away from MRA blogs for good, it was a fun 9 months while it lasted. While I thank them for all they have done before, I'm afraid what they offer men right now will do them more harm than good.

I request that if you choose to place this on your blog, that you keep it anonymous.

I decided to post this here - even though I'm sure to get flak for it - because I think he has some real points and these points I've heard echoed in the Manosphere by Dalrock, Athol Kay, Elusive Wapiti, Oz Conservative, OneSTDV, Ulysses, and others who seem to be pushing back against the notion that women are just oxygen sucks thieves, and the wisest course of action is just to build a bunker and set aside a metric ton of liquor.

I didn't comment on the Lara Logan case, but my opinion was that being in the middle of a male Egyptian mob during a Revolution was a stupid, stupid move - on her part and the part of her network.  My advice to my readers would be to not do that.  Be realistic about your safety and plan accordingly.  Still, assault is bad stuff and should not be celebrated.  I have no stomach for a "Bitch was askin' for it" mindset.  If we can't be kind and compassionate to each other as we endeavor to improve our society in the small ways we can affect daily, there is no point to our existence.

I am also uncomfortable with the race hostility I've been reading of late in this area of the web.  I am an adult, and I've lived as a minority in places I definitely didn't fit in.  I have observed patterns of behaviors amongst people, and I do believe in things like national character and biological difference.   I am also completely done with the White Guilt.  Much of racial pontificating, however, seems like self-serving pride to me.  Does it matter if one race or ethnic group is smarter or stronger than another or others if they use their abilities to pillage and destroy?  To rape the planet and cheat whole populations of people out of their savings or land?  Again, if we can't be kind to one another and as equally observant of our own flaws as we are of others', it's all kind of pointless.  Page me when a bunch of Japanese researchers conclude that white people are the bestest race of all.  On the other hand, don't.  I've got a garden to plant, a bathroom to paint, and a summer curriculum to put together for my son.

In any case, please feel free to leave feedback for my reader.  I would like to thank him for taking the time to write and for his kind comments about this blog.  I've had a number of really kind emails lately.  What an encouragement!  Thank you all so much.