My family is... Not a healthy or happy one. I imagine most people know this by now. Yet, for reasons that I honestly do not understand, my parents are still together. Toxic, painful, continuously arguing, but still together...

The same cannot be said for extended family. Divorces everywhere. A number of children out of wedlock. Painful intergenerational relations on both side. Lots of "not talking". Lost of... Honestly, relationships that are far more negative than they are positive. As the black sheep "loser" of the family, I can't tell you how shit my relationship with nearly all my cousins is, right now. I could, I suppose, blame myself for that, but I really don't think it is that simple...

I actually don't think this is that uncommon, where I live. Sure, most people don't have family quite as toxic as my own, however divorce is utterly ubiquitous. Siblings not getting along is probably more common than not. And honestly, it feels like people almost expect families to behave like this - not communicating, not really talking, and generally... Not behaving like civilised adults. At least amongst the majority "white" population, in addition to the "blak" population (among whom it is most definitely even worse, lol), this is... All too common.

Thoughts? What's it like for you lot, where you live? Do you get along with your extended family? Are you close to them? I realise that I am almost certainly an outlier, where my family are fucking shit, in addition to being the "black sheep loser to end all black sheep losers", but... I'm just curious.

I like the idea that "family is the people you choose to include in it", but I am yet to find my... "One". I'm honestly yet to really find anyone. So I don't have that to have as my "core". I'm sure it's very different for those that do. Unfortunately, though, I'm not sure I will ever even find that...

So yeah. Pretty blackpilled about "family", at the moment, after mounting betrayals, I have to be honest. Would appreciate some... Alternative insights, if your life experience differs in that way.

This is just an observation. YMMV, of course. But I've noticed this with increasing frequency in recent years...

It's not necessarily a "new" thing. Lying certainly isn't new. But I imagine there must have been a time when, hypothetically, you could make plans with someone, or discuss something, and they would damn well hold to it/keep their word...

Like, in my observation, this happens all the damn time: people flake, people change their mind at the last minute, people ghost (and I do it, too), people, worst of all, change plans, or change their mind, and don't even tell you...

I'm not talking just with women, either. My male "friends" do this. My family does this. Constantly. Randoms I meet, and plan to meet up with later, do this too. And sure, I'm a common factor, but I see this happening more generally, to all manner of people I know, too.

I really, really wish that we "as a society" hadn't normalised this... "Flaky", noncommittal, "my needs come first, always" bullshit...

I really, really do.

If there's a culture where keeping your word and actually committing is still the default, I look forward to one day finding it. Because I am yet to really... Ever experience that. And I've travelled fairly widely and met a lot of people.

Seriously, whether it is for AWS, or for “free delivery on Amazon products”, their ads are absolutely terrible…

And it’s not like Coca-Cola’s “we don’t need to try” shitty ads (e.g. “My pizza goes best with a coke”) - these are some of the worst “big budget” ads I have ever seen…

Is this the norm, for Shittyzon..? Or is this just a thing here, where they have less competition perhaps..?

It’s weird. Surely, AWS doesn’t even need to advertise, yet they put out these terrible, nonsensical, extremely cringe ads, lol…

I suppose the Georgia runoffs should be a future focus, but really… You have at least two more years of this administration, and of, uhh, obvious mental decline all round…

Electoral “democracy” clearly ain’t working (I’m not sure why anyone thought it would), and I imagine at least some… Subsets of “globohomo” are going to be rather emboldened by this result, so…

What plan now? Do you feel that there is anything you can do to change the current direction of your country and/or states, pre-2024, or is it essentially a case of “strap in for the ride”..??

I’m essentially merely an external observer, here. I don’t really have any skin in this game, lol…

As the title says.

Like, nothing against the guy, necessarily, but it is pretty clear that he cannot even speak with full mental function, let alone making important decisions and the like...

It just seems like a really bad idea to elect someone who is clearly... Not well. Let alone the likelihood that being in that position will make his health outcomes worse...

I understand that D's felt like he was their best chance, and that they needed to win that seat, but it just seems irresponsible all round, for all parties involved, no?

How are voters so dumb that they saw all that, and went "Yup, that's the guy I want representing me, right now!"

Sad...

This is particularly a media narrative, but you see it all the time, now, in everything from officialdom to academia to “the news”…

Literally any “unusual” or “unseasonal” meteorological event, anywhere in the world, must be “climate change”…

Here in Aus they are trying to connect it to “indigenous seasonal calendars” and “racial justice”, to make it a woke issue, never mind, of course, their largely failed attempts to rope in the Pacific Islanders…

It never bloody ends, hey? Especially with the once-again useless COP on, right now…

My city’s mayor, who somehow just won re-election, is currently on a ratepayer-funded trip to that conference, because she is a Green, and of course she isn’t gonna miss another “Green junket”…

It’s just crazy, this whole thing. Not, admittedly, quite as crazy as “the gender wars”, which we all know about, but man… EVERYTHING is a never-ending apocalypse to the left, even without their whole “democracy in danger” rhetoric, lately…

This is just a casual observation. Obviously the situation is going to be different in different places, but I don’t think this is unique to where I live…

I’ve noticed this in particular with regard to recent local government elections, where the candidates, and the coverage, was far more focussed on global “culture war” stuff (Climate Change, “queer” shit, statues, dual naming, etc.) than on any local issues relatively unrelated to that stuff (population growth, infrastructure, rates, transport, roads, the local environment, planning, etc.)…

Culture wars defined these elections. Nearly every single candidate statement in my council mentioned them. But the media was the worst bit, particularly on the “queer pronouns” shit…

I’ve also noticed this in media coverage of shit like “defense”, and manufacturing. Everything is pro-globalist, and if you dare to support local jobs, or indeed suggest that, say, defense should be focussed locally, instead of effectively acting as a giant airstrip and dockyard in the coming WW3, you’re seen as a “traitor”/“against national interests”…

We see this also with other relatively local issues, like the national park closure I posted about last week, where most of even the “conservative” press, which are the only ones to even mention it, are, naturally enough, on the side of the virtue signalers and the bullying bureaucrats, rather than the local “whites”/non-Abos…

We also saw this during Covid, we see it in the coverage of state and federal elections, and we see it with, for example, the fact that fucking Kanye, or the UK political crisis, or the Lebanon refugee crisis, get top billing on all news, while outbreaks of water-borne diseases in the towns recently ravaged by floods (again, as I said, city folk just don’t give a shit) barely rate a mention…

It’s just fucking depressing. I hate all this “any global issue or event is more important than anything affecting local people” shit.

No wonder people feel so disillusioned with the media and political classes. No wonder…

I can’t link on mobile. Apologies. I’ll do some linkage tomorrow.

Anyway so this chick is an Environmental Science grad, which… Makes her barely more qualified than I. However, in “Current Era”, apparently that is enough to earn you cred, both in TikTok-land, and among some segments of the mainstream press…

This fucking bitch made her name on TikTok, making videos “shaming” “conspiracies” such as, uhh, Ivermectin to treat Covid, the Wuhan Lab Leak, and all kinds of stuff… Then she started making “conspiracy pyramids”, where, if you “believe these conspiracies”, *you are literally an antisemite, racist bigot”. Unironically…

This shit went all over Reddit. Like, it was everywhere. And got hugely upvoted. You’ve probably seen them, even if you didn’t know who made them.

Guess what her latest target is? Golf. She has declared war on golf, and literally hundreds of “TikTokers” have followed suit. To the point of making videos going around mocking and “shaming”” golfers. Because it is “bad for the environment”, according to them, and we should literally be building on the land taken up by the courses (ironic)…

Wanna know who else declared war on golf? The socialist premier of Victoria, Australia, who even banned golf during the pandemic (despite it being an outdoors, largely distanced activity), and a bunch of left wing mayors, including the extremely woke Lord Mayor of Sydney…

Because, funnily enough, they want the land. Never mind the fact that their political enemies likely play golf.

Oh, and now the Mainstream Media is largely onboard with this “war on golf”, because it is “crusty”, and “conservative”, “played by millionaires” and (supposedly) “bad for the environment”…

You know who else declared war on golf, a couple of years before all this? The fucking CCP. Like, massively. To the point of destroying like half of the country’s golf courses.

Remind me who owns TikTok again? And who owns the company that bought shares in Reddit? Remind me again why such a regime might want the Wuflu leak discredited, and why? 🤔

None of this is organic. None of it. And these people are either useful dupes, or, as I suspect is the case with the woman who started all this, they are almost certainly in on it…

I feel like this is very obvious to most people, but is really... Not something we are "allowed" to admit to, at least officially.

It's a very strange time, in this sort of... "Mental health" space. On the one hand we have literally thousands of Tiktok, Instagram, Snapchat and Tumblr posts by edgy teens claiming to have mental issues, whether they actually do or not, and capitalising on that "brand", while on the other hand... The way we actually treat this shit is fundamentally not working...

Look, I appreciate that brain chemistry plays a role in most mental health issues. So does trauma. So does genetics. But the fact that "we", as a society, choose to pretend like depression and anxiety are purely caused by internal problems, and can be treated almost solely as such? That's frankly fucking insane...

The fact that men, in particular, are treated like it is their... Fault, that they are suffering, even if they are poor, even if they have a shit job, or are lonely, or have no friends that they can rely on, or are dealing with... Personal issues from having seen, or experienced, really bad shit... The fact that we say "just go to therapy" or "just take the pill, bro", or "just smoke some weed, bro. It'll help" - frankly it's fucked.

The sheer lack of support in society, to actually... Help people, and do more than just talk. To actually offer practical solutions, and get people truly connected to their society (men's sheds are great and all, but they fundamentally fail to replace what church, and the local sports team, say, once provided), and defeat that... Isolation, that has become the heart of "modern society". That's where the fundamental problems lie, I think. Let alone, say, if you get laid off, or sacked, or lose your position somehow - there is NO support, for most people, when that happens. None at all.

No wonder people fall through the cracks. No wonder we hear about people like Paul Green (rugby league coach - sacked), Jacinda Barclay and Harley Balic (AFL, womens and men's respectively - left out of their team squads during Covid) killing themselves, let alone "ordinary" people who generally have even less support, and certainly considerably less money to play with...

The whole thing is just... Pretty fucked up, frankly. Leftists constantly whine about Catholicism teaching "the flock" to "externalise blame", but now we have a secular society that teaches everyone to, in essence, BOTH externalise and internalise blame, both at the same time, which is... Probably not any healthier, frankly.

I just wish "we", in Current Era, dealt with these things better than we do.

I've been thinking about this a bit, lately. Australia is in the middle of a massive flooding crisis (again), which has mainly affected rural areas. Yet it has been extremely noticeable that, each time this has happened in the last year or so, the media has been far more concerned (to the point of it almost being comical) with flooding in the respective capital city impacted, rather than the much heavier hit rural areas...

Population size and density plays into this. I realise that. As does proximity, with media orgs and journalists mostly being based out of the capitals. But it is so blatant, when it gets to the point where even specific "regional networks" are more concerned with the city than the country, and when regional areas are almost completely ignored, even when people actually die in the flood.

So there's that. Which is nothing if not representative of a trend that we have seen in this country for at least a decade.

But there's more than that - when the journalists do get out to these country towns (varying in size from a few thousand people to literally 100K), and interview the people there, it is immediately apparent that they see the world in a completely different way, both to the journalist asking the questions, and to most... "Elite" city folk.

They're not worried about climate change. They don't view these floods as "apocalyptic", or "the worst we have ever seen". They're just going about their business, trying to survive and get by, and actually banding together to look after each other, and the vulnerable members of their community. It's actually remarkably wholesome to see (what we see of it, which is not much).

This, in complete contrast to the city/suburban folk who got flooded out, who have... Already literally turned on each other, and started apportioning blame. Despite the fact that they are the ones the government mostly focussed on, and they got the most support, before anyone else.

This, despite the fact that people in those "rural communities" are poorer, less "educated", and generally... With worse health outcomes than people in the city.

It was the same during Covid, of course, but I've never seen it to quite this extent before. These are "the forgotten people", whose votes are generally discounted (because rural electorates, which get swamped by city voters) and who are, I have to be honest, largely ignored, by not just the media, but by... "City folk" more broadly.

Obviously you see this trend even more clearly in the US, and arguably the UK. I think this phenomenon is pretty much part of most "human societies", for at least the last 200 years or so, but it's still... Really jarring when you see it. The level of disenfranchisement be real. And we should really do better.

Arguably, this was a big part of the Trump phenomenon, and Brexit. And perhaps Meloni, and the recent Swedish election, even, too. It's just... Stunning, frankly, that the "elites" continue down this same path, even here, and don't seem to have learned a single fucking thing from those examples...

So yeah. Thanks for coming to my TED talk. I've been wanting to get that one out of my system, for days, since I really started to think about it, lol...