This post may contain affiliate links. Please read our disclosure for more information.
In part one of this two-part series, I made the case that being fake dependent on government subsidies is much more preferable to being real dependent on government subsidies. I also made the observation that far too many Americans find themselves on the wrong side of the dependency divide—without government subsidies, their quality of life would plummet.
So what should you do if you happen to be one of those poor souls who are real dependent on government subsidies?
Well, the short answer is to design your life so you’re no longer real dependent on government subsidies. And the surest way to become fake dependent on government subsidies is to swim against our cultural currents. For roughly three generations now, our culture has been in the hands of the woke, and our woke overlords haven’t been grooming us to be exquisite stewards of our lives. “Big is beautiful,” “any degree’s a good degree,” “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle,” “healthcare is a human right,” “black lives matter,” “gender is fluid,” “smash capitalism”—in ways big and small, we have been groomed to be dysfunctional losers who are totally dependent on the government.
To avoid the misery of real dependency, then, you have to embrace movements or concepts that flout the values and attitudes our woke overlords are using their cultural hegemony to ruthlessly promote. Here are some suggestions:
FIRE Movement: Financial independence is the supreme antidote to real dependency. Save 25 times your annual living expenses and the likelihood of you being real dependent on government subsidies is damn close to zero. Financial independence is also a great way to maintain your dignity. Our morally superior woke overlords have no qualms weaponizing government subsidies the way cartel overlords weaponize addiction. Financial independence = fake dependency = living your life on your terms—screw the woke.
Minimalism: You can’t be fake dependent on government subsidies if your living expenses are high and your income is modest or worse. For most Americans, because their incomes aren’t large enough to secure the trappings of wealth and still be indifferent to the value of the subsidies they receive, fake dependency requires a minimalist mindset: needs before wants (including the need to save at least 15 percent of your income for your future self), and functional before fancy (laminate countertops work just as well as granite countertops).
Tiny Homes: Nothing subdues one’s living expenses like a tiny home. It’s much easier to buy a 400-square-foot home without a mortgage than a 3,000-square-foot home, and the monthly operating expenses of a 400-square-foot-home are much smaller than a 3,000-square-foot-home (providing they’re in the same zip code, of course). I’m not saying living in a tiny home would be a blast. But it certainly wouldn’t be abject misery either. You have to decide what pain you prefer. The pain of having limited space? Or the pain of having high housing costs and being real dependent on government subsidies?
Homeschooling: I have no faith in public school administrators and very little faith in public school teachers. Far too many of them have been compromised by the cult of wokeism. Our public school system is thus more concerned with its students having the “right” thoughts than with its students having the skills and knowledge necessary to be self-reliant adults (i.e., to be exquisite stewards of their health, career, finances, relationships, and freedom). As long as our children emerge from 13 years of “education” believing that America and its Constitution suck, white people are morally inferior to “people of color,” and the gender they were “assigned at birth” was a grave injustice, our public schools have done their job.
Our woke overlords have worked too long and too hard to gain hegemony over public education to ever surrender that control. No amount of uppity parents haranguing school board members at school board meetings is going to weaken the woke grip on education. And no amount of voting is going to weaken the woke grip on education either. The Democrats are the party of the woke. And the Republicans are the party of the impotent—they’re “not worth a bucket of warm spit” when it comes to defending freedom.
The only way to save your children from woke indoctrination and give them a decent shot of avoiding real dependency in adulthood is to avoid public education with extreme prejudice. Hello, homeschooling. Teach your kids yourself. Sit down with your kids every day and do a half hour of Khan Academy math, a half hour of reading, and a half hour of journaling. Then for the rest of the day do something that either piques the curiosity of your kids or helps them develop a worthwhile skill (e.g., how to program an iPhone app, how to build a shed, how to set up a small DIY solar system, etc.). It isn’t hard to out-educate our public schools. And if your kids advance beyond your ability to teach them, outsource the teaching. If your daughter wants to learn ballet, you don’t tell her no because teaching ballet is beyond your ken. You sign her up for ballet lessons at the local dance school. Likewise, if your daughter wants to learn calculus, you don’t tell her no because teaching calculus is beyond your ken. You hire a non-woke calculus tutor.
The big rub against homeschooling, of course, is that it requires the full-time efforts of one parent. One parent must stay home and teach the kids, and the other parent must leave the home to secure the household’s income. Very few families can afford this luxury, however. In order to live in an HGTV home and drive new cars, they need two incomes. But a family can live comfortably on one income if it humbles itself by living in a tiny home or a trailer and driving nothing but beaters. Again, you have to pick your pain. The pain of looking poor? Or the pain of having your kids taught by the most anti-America, anti-white, and anti-parent zealots this country has ever seen?
Propaganda Avoidance: Little of our news today is meant to inform; it’s meant, like education, to indoctrinate…to manufacture consent. And the same goes for entertainment. If you want to be fake dependent on government subsidies, you must avoid woke news and woke entertainment like the plague. Under no circumstances should you be consuming mainstream or corporate news. Focus instead on citizen journalists like me and old-time wisdom (e.g., the Bible, the Stoics, our Founding Fathers, etc.). And be very, very leery of any entertainment produced this century, especially after 2010. Current Hollywood has much contempt for America, traditional families, and white people, and its product shows it.
Some day in the future, I’ll create a page on this blog dedicated to non-woke news and non-woke entertainment. Here’s a sampling of what that page will contain.
Groovy Approved Citizen Journalists
Jimmy Dore
Tim Pool
Russell Brand
Styxhexenhammer666
Matt Christiansen
Groovy Approved Movies
Mighty Joe Young
On the Waterfront
A Night to Remember
Cool Hand Luke
The Quiet Man
Groovy Approved Television Shows
The Honeymooners
Burns and Allen
Peyton Place
Dark Shadows
Columbo
Traditionalism (i.e., biological realism): Men have distinct physical and cognitive traits, and women have distinct physical and cognitive traits. That’s why ancient civilizations made men the warrior class and women the nurturing class. That’s why Mrs. Groovy has done 99 percent of the shopping, cooking, and laundry during our marriage, and I have done 99 percent of the hammering, ladder-climbing, and toilet-unclogging during our marriage. It wasn’t some millennia-long plot by evil men that persists to this day. Traditional gender roles evolved because they make sense—they play to the peculiar strengths of men and the peculiar strengths of women. Yes, some women want to install roofs in the hot summer sun. But the vast majority don’t.* And, yes, some men want to “chest feed” their newborn children. But the vast majority don’t.
* Granted, the vast majority of men don’t want to install roofs in the hot summer sun either. But every time a see a roofing crew, it’s only comprised of men. I guess a better way of proving that roofing is naturally a man’s job is to pose some questions: What hourly wage would be needed to produce an all-male roofing crew? Fifteen dollars an hour? Twenty dollars an hour? And what hourly wage would be needed to produce an all-female roofing crew? A hundred dollars an hour? Two hundred dollars an hour? Without men, roofing wouldn’t be economically feasible.
Don’t believe the woke hogwash that gender is a “social construct.” Long-term happiness and success—and, therefore, fake dependency—are best achieved by submitting to the dictates of nature. So if you’re a man, be masculine—lift weights, strive professionally, and if you ever start a family, heroically stand between your family and the forces of depravity. And if you’re a woman, be feminine—be small and cute, spark the “better angels of mankind’s nature” in those around you, and if you ever start a family, make your family’s home an oasis of tranquility.
Extreme Ownership: This concept invented by Navy SEAL Jocko Willink can be distilled down to one pithy sentence: the only one responsible for your well-being is you and you alone. No one is coming to save you—not the village, not the rich, and certainly not the government. You have to be the “first responder” to every critical aspect of your life. When it comes to health, for instance, you’re not waiting for “Medicare for all.” You’re exercising every day and not poisoning your body with refined sugar, refined carbs, tobacco, alcohol, or illicit drugs. When it comes to income, you’re not waiting for UBI. You’re excelling at your job, mastering new skills, and making sure your future self is provided for by maxing out a Roth IRA. When it comes to the fickle finger of fate, you’re not depending on the government’s safety net to protect you. You’re creating your own DIY safety net—by being an honest, hardworking person, by building up a solid emergency fund, and by establishing a family and dedicating yourself to the success of your spouse and your children. “Seek, and you shall find.” “Give, and it will be given to you.” In other words, adopt an extreme ownership mindset—where excuse-making and responsibility-shirking are never tolerated—and there’s a very good chance you’ll never be real dependent on government subsidies.
Final Thoughts
Okay, groovy freedomist, that’s all I got. What say you? Are you fake dependent on government subsidies, or real dependent? And if you are real dependent on government subsidies, are you doing everything possible to extricate yourself from that sorry predicament? Let me know when you get a chance. Peace.
Leave a Reply