Arrow Stoppers

There’s two kinds of people in this world when you boil it all down. You got your talkers and you got your doers. Most people are just talkers, all they do is talk. But when it is all said and done, it’s the doers that change this world. And when they do that, they change us, and that’s why we never forget them.

I was told once the best most people would ever do when, or if, there was ever a conflict on this soil is be ‘arrow stoppers.’ It sounded like a joke, but the hard, ice blue eyes were serious…and the two decades he spent in a couple SFGA’s spoke to the truth of his statement. He wasn’t wrong, once the ‘Don’t Tread On Me/MAGA/Muh Constitooshun’ gilding is rubbed off, the true colors tell a different story. Everyone is the exception to the rule, of course, so I’ll just have to believe the mythos and not my lying eyes. The right continues put inordinate focus in areas where those before me have willfully ceded the field, such as academia, business, media, technology, politics, and religion to name a few. There is no political solution because the right refuses to become better at politics than the left. Similarly, to nearly a man the ‘conservatives’ have failed to conserve anything in business because who cares about your country and children when you can make an extra dollar or avoid bad PR. The left is at least willing to burn down their own business for their beliefs. Those of you with any experience in the business world are familiar with the concept of opportunity cost. We are bleeding capital, in the form of time, worrying about national politics we cannot change and shouting at people who will never hear us. So now that New Year’s resolution season is over, here’s some ways to maybe get off the arrow stopper bubble and into the useful category.

• It’s no secret the vast majority of Americans are overweight. Brass tacks, you aren’t serious if you’re not either functionally fit or making real changes to get that way. It’s disastrous for your long-term health not to be. While I’m sure everyone has excuses or ‘gland problems,’ unfortunately bullets and angry communists don’t play by bracket racing rules. You’re an adult, figure out how to maximize your physical ability and go do it. You can’t change national politics, but you can change that.

• If I wanted subjugate a ‘free’ population, one of the things I would do is make them practical serfs. Almost ¾ of the US population lives paycheck to paycheck. Those of you who do, render yourselves utter slaves to whatever PC insanity your employer decides to come up with, and economic refugees in any kind of recession. Serious people don’t remain in a situation where you will suffer all kinds of indignities because you financially must. Serious people have the money for competent representation in the event the cops don’t do the no-knock you’ve been fantasizing about, and decide to just arrest you at work. Serious people don’t let said arrest turn their family into indigents. Learn to coupon if you don’t, it’s easily $2000-$3000 per year of after-tax money. Grow what food you can. Find another skill and learn it if you have to. There is no reason to be wasting 10-20 hours a week on the internet if you are struggling, unless you’re getting paid to bicker and comment on the internet. You are not free if someone can dictate via economic means whether you feed your family or not on a weekly basis.

• Educate yourself. Whether it is material science, medicine, carpentry or philosophy, you need to be progressing in something. I do not mean reading a blog, I mean learning something new. Part and parcel of education is the practice of the discipline, which again requires something more than simply a computer and large bags of Cheetos. Incurious and perpetually uneducated people are not serious. While the left has certainly earned the distain it receives for being about as free-thinking as the borg, the right has not done much better. One should not be able to sum their political ideology up on a bumper sticker or with asinine acronyms.

• ‘It’s not what you know, it’s who you know’ rings as true today as it ever has. People on the fence or even on the wrong side often times are useful. I work with people who may be political enemies or semi-clueless, but I go out of my way to maintain a good work relationship with them. The less they know about my true intentions, the easier it is to remain a question mark in their mind or even appear as an ally and confidant to them. I also work with people who have fractured the work environment and created enemies among a third of the company because of their insistence on being abrasive with political views. They will be in the first wave of pogroms because they had no discretion, and it has directly affected their careers.

• Conversely, I actively look to network with doers. Stasis is contagious, I avoid it and those who practice it like the plague. I have more in common with the hippie teaching climbing classes at REI than I do with the guy sitting in his recliner and angrily wasting hour after hour and day after day ranting in a comments sections somewhere, or attempting to buy his way out of skillset problem. You can do nothing with people like that, and worse yet you pick up bad habits from them. The time spent trying to rehab a recalcitrant ‘muh bad knees/muh wife/muh _______’ is better spent spreading your influence and ability to gather information among so called ‘normies.’ The landed gentry you know doesn’t have to know your intentions, but the favors and goodwill you cultivated with them certainly are more of an asset than the ‘can’t do’ who may have political overlap with you. One could also consider this building a base of support among the populace rather than alienating them, the chief success of the so-called patriot movement of the last 30 years. People will protect people they like and know, because loyalty above all else is personal.

• None of the above will get accomplished without a metric to measure your progress. Vague ideas, and goals without deadlines are useless. I live in a world that is made or broken by very inflexible dates, and your career and consequently livelihood is determined by your ability to meet those obligations. ‘Getting fit’ is not a plan, it’s a sentiment and an excuse for failure. ‘I will lose 10 lbs. and run an 8 minute mile in the next 6 months’ is a goal. ‘I will limit my caloric intake to 2200 calories, run 10 miles a week and do circuit training three days a week until I lose 10 lbs and can run an 8 minute mile’ is a goal with a start of a plan. Force yourself to either fail or succeed. If you fail, at least you had the temerity to set a goal and I can respect that. Failure can be a temporary state, far better than the contemptible waste of organic material that is the man content to talk about what he wants to accomplish rather than doing it. Set goals, and be religious in your pursuit of them. Rather than wring your hands over what you cannot change on the national stage, busy yourself changing what you can about yourself.

To be completely honest with you, the readers, I do not enjoy this. I do not like writing this type of stuff. Nor am I inclined to martial disciplines and most of the other trappings of being a dissident politico in a country that sees my continued existence as an act of violence. I do it because I’m unwilling to live with the alternative. Hobbies are optional, a calling is not.  Do one thing you don’t want to do today. Do another tomorrow. Keep doing it until you’re good at it. Rinse and repeat. A lot of people need to have an uncomfortably honest conversation about whether their approach is results oriented or not. Be serious and be effective, you will not get a second chance.