MAGA to SSDD and Back Again
Worse than the "malaise" of the Carter years, the Biden administration's pogrom of same shit, different day must end.
In my experience, young engineers and MBAs are born like the goddess Venus, fully formed and ready to take on the world.
Full of good intentions and enough energy to light a small city, they show up for their first day of work with their backpacks their mom packed for them, excited to solve problems, explore opportunities and slay dragons for their new employer, only to run headlong into the policies, procedures and manuals corporations seemingly design to defeat every innovation and positive impulse.
Fast forward just a few years later, and they are so frustrated or angry that they begin looking for an out. The lucky ones find that escape hatch, but some never do, crushed by regimentation and bureaucracy until they become a repository for frustration and anger. At some point, the unlucky ones begin to accept their fate as just another cog in the corporate Leviathan, swallowing their frustration and anger, often becoming passive aggressive and bitter, radiating apathy and infecting everyone around them.
I’ve been around organizations my entire working life, most of that time managing people, and I have seen a certain cycle occur. Years ago, I read a description of this cycle: “Frustration leads to anger; unresolved anger leads to apathy, apathy leads to decay."
Or as we used to call it when I was hauling bricks for my dad and uncles in the Mississippi summer heat and humidity - SSDD.
Same shit, different day.
Most people have experienced periods of Jimmy Carter era “malaise”, feeling as though they are running in place in their personal or professional lives. I’ve been there when a career change didn’t work out the way I thought it would. Thankfully, I’ve had the strength to recognize my mistake and found the escape hatch mentioned earlier. I’ve had situations where I have gone to my superiors and just said, “I can’t give you what you are asking for, I’m not a good fit and I know it. I need to make a change.”
Work is just a part of your life, something you can electively change – so what happens when SSDD is so pervasive, so constant, and so oppressive that it just becomes your life and there is no place to go to get away from it? What if the environment in which you live becomes so out of control and so completely opposed to what you need it to be, the frustration and anger is constant?
Nothing in career or life remains static – at least that is true until we take the big dirt nap. Things tend to always move forward or retreat, they get better or worse. This is why American soldiers are taught to keep moving, to push ahead. While there may be intermittent pauses, the world keeps turning and eventually, we get off the “X” (as in “X” marks the spot) by choice, are forced off it, or that is where we end. I suppose that is why some people see no other answer other than suicide, they can’t see a way off the X (or have become so accustomed to it, they are afraid to move).
I believe most people do see a way forward. They keep moving, they keep fighting, they keep living for their families and themselves, just looking for that break that changes their situations, and confidently believing better days are coming. I’ve always counted myself among this group as I suspect the folks reading this do as well. If you can see your way to something better, it makes it easier to withstand SSDD.
I have been struggling with an explanation for the SSDD frustration I constantly feel these days. It’s something that is omnipresent, every hour, every day. I’ve been around for over six decades and I have seen a lot, the closest to where we are today was the Carter years with its stagflation, malaise and the lack of national self-determination brought about by the OPEC oil embargo. The national frustration came to a head in the form of Operation Eagle Claw, the failed hostage rescue attempt launched on April 24th, 1980, that ended with burning and abandoned US assets in the Iranian desert and eight U.S. servicemen dead, and no hostages rescued. Those hostages would spend another 270 days in captivity, released only after Ronald Reagan defeated Carter in the 1980 election.
Just as during the run up to the Carter years, America is falling into a pattern of frustration, anger, and apathy. The end of a controversial, hated president, followed by a long period of uncertainty and confusion, then a president and administration clearly weak and out of their league. Largely brought about by bad decisions in government, our military morale and readiness is being degraded, our warfighting assets are falling behind those of our geopolitical enemies, our foreign policy becoming impotent, our national economy being ruined, and the very cohesion and fabric of our society being torn apart.
The difference between today and the Carter years is that in the Carter years, the degradation was caused by ignorance and incompetence, today it is by devotion to political dogma and willful maliciousness. Rather admit the “malaise” and not knowing what to do about it as Carter essentially did, this regime chooses to lie and gaslight, diverting the blame onto the American people as they push America farther into the ditch.
President Trump did some things with which I did not agree. Every now and again, he leaked a little progressivism – the spending, the stance on pre-emptive action on guns, the catastrophic pandemic responses, turning America over to Fauci and Birx – but despite these missteps, his aggressive, counter-establishment domestic economic and social policies, his firm stance with NATO states, and projections of strength toward North Korea, Iran, Russia, and China, worked - actually Making America Great Again.
Just as the Reagan landslide caused an earthquake in geopolitics, America needs another dose to get us of the Biden X. Right now, the only candidate showing that energy is Trump, no matter how we feel about DeSantis and the also rans, if they can’t go toe to toe with the OG, they won’t be able to withstand a Democrat Party/Deep State full frontal assault of the magnitude that is coming.
Democrats are fully invested in SSDD, destroying that is an existential threat to them.
This is exactly right:
“The difference between today and the Carter years is that in the Carter years, the degradation was caused by ignorance and incompetence, today it is by devotion to political dogma and willful maliciousness. Rather admit the “malaise” and not knowing what to do about it as Carter essentially did, this regime chooses to lie and gaslight, diverting the blame onto the American people as they push America farther into the ditch.”
The abominations of the Biden regime are willful—& therefore all the more maddening.
As the late Great Charles Krauthammer wrote, “Decline is a choice”.
The malice and hatred of the Biden Regime seems to stem from Satan himself.