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For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught
To say the things he truly feels
And not the words of one who kneels
The record shows I took the blows
And did it my way
—Frank Sinatra
I don’t think transgender women are women. I think they’re men with mental health issues. And I don’t give a rat’s ass what our Progressive Overlords have to say about this matter. No amount of drugs or surgery will ever endow a biological man with XX chromosomes and functional female parts—and compelling reality-based people to accept this Frankensteinian tomfoolery is an affront to decency and liberty.
Now I have a question for you. If I were heavily in debt and derived the bulk of my income from this blog, do you think I would divulge my true thoughts on transgenderism? Hell no.
I like to think of myself as a modern-day Terry Malloy, but deep down, I know I’m not. When I worked in government and discovered a culture of sloth that was systematically abusing the taxpayers, I said and did nothing. Yep, when my Terry Malloy moment came (see below video), I slunk into the shadows of cravenness like an egg-sucking dog. I had a chance to be a hero but I was too cowardly to jeopardize the comfort of a regular paycheck, a bevy of employer-provided benefits, and a gold-plated pension.
Today, however, I use this blog to frequently rail against my erstwhile government employer and poop all over Progressive sensibilities (see here, here, and here). And the sad truth is that I only do so because I’m financially strong. If I were up to my eyeballs in debt and my livelihood depended on this blog, I wouldn’t be nearly so “brave.”
Simply put, FIRE has done far more to give me guts than my devotion to honor ever has.
The Moral Imperative of FIRE
Check out the following two YouTube videos.
In the first video, we learn that several Boeing employees questioned the flight-worthiness of the 737 Max and did nothing to stop its entry into the global fleet of commercial airplanes.
One employee quipped that the 737 Max was “designed by clowns who in turn [were] supervised by monkeys.” Another employee rhetorically asked, “Would you put your family on a Max simulator trained aircraft?” This same employee then balefully answered, “I wouldn’t.”
In the second video, we learn that ABC News had the Jeffery Epstein story years before it was revealed by the Miami Herald. A frustrated Amy Robach groused to a fellow ABC employee:
“I’ve had this story for three years… It was unbelievable what we had. Clinton—we had everything. I tried for three years to get it on to no avail and now it’s all coming out and it’s like these new revelations. And I freaking had all of it. I’m so pissed right now. Every day I get more and more pissed… What we had was unreal.”
It’s easy to point the steely finger of indignation at Robach and the 737-Max naysayers. Why weren’t they screaming their revelations from the rooftop?! Why did they fail so miserably when fate supplied them with their own Terry Malloy moments?
I don’t think Robach and the 737-Max naysayers are bad people. In fact, I think they’re actually good people. My guess is that they failed their Terry Malloy moments because they were financially weak. They had large mortgages, their kids were either in college or on the doorstep of college, they hadn’t begun saving for retirement yet—whatever. I firmly believe that they, like most Americans, were overextended financially and this left them woefully dependent on their jobs. Had they not been so dependent on their jobs—had they been armed with good old fashioned FU money—I’m sure they would have responded to their bosses’ perfidy much more heroically.
For the longest time, I only thought of FIRE as a happiness imperative. You master money and your odds of living a fulfilling life shoot up dramatically. But now I also see FIRE as a moral imperative. Very rarely do the financially weak speak truth to power. You raise a generation of financial morons—and convince them that debt in the pursuit of ever more glorious stuff is hardly a vice—and you will have a generation that is incapable of standing up to evil or corruption.
Nature doesn’t produce Terry Malloys in large numbers. Only the FIRE movement can do that.
Final Thoughts
Okay, groovy freedomist, that’s all I got. What say you? I say America has a shortage of heroes, not because America has a shortage of good people, but because America has a shortage of financially strong people. But maybe I got it all wrong. Maybe one’s financial situation has nothing to do with how one acts when one is confronted with evil or corruption. Let me know what you think when you get a chance. Peace.
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