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We Have Work To Do

Was 2024 different from 2023? Better or worse? The answer to that will be drastically different for those who experienced severe tragedy in 2023 or 2024. For those that didn’t, what was different about 2024? And the real question, what are you going to do differently in 2025 to make it better than 2024? The real answer is a very uncomfortable one. We have work to do.

Anytime something is better than before, it goes through an arduous process prior to the improvement of status. When making glass, it goes through extreme heat. For muscles to get bigger, they first tear. If you obtained a degree, license, or certification, you first took some very difficult tests.

There is no workaround. There are no cliff notes for actual progress. There’s no “swipe right” or “door dash me a degree please.” It’s the hard process that makes it real, adds value, makes it better, provides a sense of accomplishment.


What does that mean for you? For most, we could start with opening our minds. If I type, “Liberals are..” and you immediately finish that sentence with something negative, you have work to do. Because my first instinct is to finish the sentence with the word “needed.” I said this on the first page of my book, America’s Greatest Threat: America, “Without both liberals and conservatives, we don’t have a thriving country.” The same can be said on the other side. No “side” is any better than the other. They have work to do.

A recent example of this was the tragedy of the man driving the truck through a New Orleans crowd. Conservatives ran immediately to border policies, which was disrespectful of the deceased, if nothing else. They ran without all the facts. Just like liberals did with the last 5 mass shootings. They just ran headlines to push an agenda without waiting for the facts.

The facts came out that he was an American. Border policies had nothing to do with this. If you can’t see the problem with that, just because they appear to be on your “team”, you have work to do.


This thinking only comes about from limiting our informational intake to resounding echo chambers of negative outrage that captivates our attention and merely stokes previously held beliefs, that on the surface appear to be axiomatic, regardless of whether they are actually right, wrong, good, or bad. There was a paper recently released that showed that most Americans believe that if someone disagrees with them, it was because they did not listen properly. They must not have actually heard them. That is a big problem. They may just disagree because people have varying perspectives. Perspectives that you don’t have. And it is likely that you may benefit from other perspectives. Actually, it isn’t likely, it is a guarantee. We all have work to do.

If 2025 brings us anything, may it bring us the instantiation of diverse conversation, leading to and from diversity of thought, completely irrespective of nonmalleable identity characteristics. May it bring difficult, yet civil, discourse, with a central goal to make the immediate world around us better, often beginning with understanding others better, especially those we don’t align with optimally. May it produce conversations that have a central aim, and may we not be so rigid in our thinking that we can’t see that there may be a better way of thinking than the mode we currently employ.

If you want to see 2025 as being better than 2024, start with reshaping how you view those you don’t often agree with. Jesus did. So can we. Clearly, we have work to do.

Stay Classy GP!

Grainger

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The Best Two Presidential Candidates?

The founders were on to something when they left England. They left a situation where they knew it was wrong and couldn’t last. They left a monarchy. They had already seen what a pure democracy did. The mob rules. Two wolves and a sheep decide what’s for dinner. Every night. So pure democracy didn’t work. Monarchy didn’t work either. The rulers corrupted the church and caused an alliance between church and state so powerful that no one could stand against it. This is the reason they sought to keep it separate. To put a check on the government, the church, and ensure freedom to worship without such corruption looking over their heads. If you can’t tell me how to worship, then you can’t tell me to worship or not to worship.

This leaves them with brainstorming possible solutions. Fortunately, they eventually came to the correct solution. A republic: a representative democracy. Alexander Hamilton stated, “But a representative democracy, where the right of election is well secured and regulated & the exercise of the legislative, executive and judiciary authorities, is vested in select persons, chosen really and not nominally by the people, will in my opinion be most likely to be happy, regular and durable.”

Ronald Reagan said it best…

However, this can only come about if it truly represents the people. And the way this was ensured was to document that those governing only do so by the sovereignty of the consent of the governed. Meaning, the people being governed are those who chose the government. Those who make rules, enforce rules, and execute rules, only do so with the consent of the governed. This is what it means to be in a representative democracy. When people far away from the meeting itself needed to be at the meetings, they would send a representative to speak on their behalf. Whose behalf? The governed, who gave consent.

This representation keeps both the government and the governed in check. The first check in the constitution was consent. This checked the government. The second check in the constitution was the sovereign being excluded from government. That’s a check on the governed- us. In this manner, neither can have too much power. See, Athens didn’t last nearly as long as Sparta for one main reason, Sparta had divisions of the government and Athens did not. In Athens, the government was the governed and it was all ran by the people entirely.  

Ok, enough with the history lesson. What does this have to do with the presidential candidates? Glad you asked. If you were to poll Americans, the overwhelming majority would say that Trump and Harris are NOT the best two options we have for president in this country. Most conservatives and liberals would rather someone less divisive. Someone that will unite the country. But that is definitely not what we have.

What we currently have in our country are two people running for president that the majority of the “governed” did not “consent” to. This is a massive problem. Politicians have routinely been accused of lying. Why? Because they say they are going to represent us in order to get our vote, then once elected, they do the opposite, which is always what they intended on doing anyway. It is rare to see a politician truly vote and lobby on behalf of the people that elected him or her. Recently, there was a group of politicians that got together to discuss the future of the area they served, and one stood up and said, “You expect us to listen to these people that don’t know as much as we do and just do what they want?” To which the speaker said, “Yes. That’s exactly what a representative democracy is.” This happened this year, 2024. Someone had to be reminded publicly that they represent people. They didn’t just get elected to do whatever they wanted. They got elected to represent us. That’s tragic.

If we don’t begin holding the “government” accountable to the “consent of the governed”, the government will only get bigger and bigger until it’s too big and we no longer have a republic, but rather an oligarchy or aristocracy. While an aristocracy is labeled as the better of the two because of a lack of corruption, neither are good, because they do not keep each other in check. As it stands, we have two candidates that were not chosen by the “governed”, but by financial elites that believe they know better than the entire country. The “governed” must get louder, or they will be silenced.

Stay Classy GP!

Grainger

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The Death of Scientific Research

The world of research, using the scientific method, has traditionally been a place for verification of previously held beliefs, epiphanies of contradiction to previously held beliefs, information they did not realize they needed, nor did they see coming, and above all, factual discoveries that are entirely objective.

Research has a goal of proving something is not. It typically cannot prove something is, it can only prove something is not. In order to prove anything, you need facts. From those facts, you propose a theory as to why and how you reached the conclusion you did. But you first need the facts. Facts like, the best possible environment for a child to be raised is in a low-conflict home with his/her two biological parents. This has been proven time and time again.

But right away, we run into a problem in the current climate of scientific research. The issue is not the sample sizes. The issue is usually not random selection, in most cases. The research is not typically littered with mixed feelings or things easily proved wrong. The issue is that when one turns in a research paper that does not conform to the current ideological climate, which is based solely on identity and feelings, it simply does not get published. If, somehow, it does get published, the person who authored the paper gets cancelled. The author gets publicly ridiculed, shunned by peers overnight, and sometimes fired from the university that funded the research, citing “differences in direction.”

This should scare you. Because if something does not change course, we will have no verifiable data that speaks to factual issues if it does not affirm and confirm a feeling about identity. There is nothing scientific nor right about this. It is a huge problem.

I won’t mention the journal, but I recently reviewed every paper written and published in this one particular American journal in the last 18 months. There are usually five papers per issue, sometimes 6, sometimes 4. I reviewed 13 issues. In total, there were 65 papers written. Of those papers, there were 23 papers that were not about an extreme minority issue. These papers would pose a significant relevance to approximately 15% of the country. Of the 23 papers that were not about a minority issue of identity, there was one… ONE about religion/spirituality (RS). And the entire paper was written to scold all researchers who have researched RS and not spoken loud enough denouncing what religion teaches and not being inclusive enough. In other words, “we don’t agree with you, so stop writing it.”

There was one entire journal dedicated to women. There was one entire journal dedicated to African Americans. There were none dedicated to men. None dedicated to any race other than the black race. So, in 65 papers, we can’t talk about men at all, but we can talk about women’s issues for an entire issue? And they thought it appropriate to dedicate over 65% of their time to less than 15% of the American population. This is why it should scare you. Because for the rest of the 85% of the American population, there is no research being conducted and published (without dire consequences) that will help you or psychological professionals know better how to help you in your time of need.

I recently read a book by a very accomplished scholar in the realm of gender expression, sex genes, and overall human biology. She stated that she found facts for and against those suffering from gender dysphoria. The journals would allow her to only publish the research that makes those with gender dysphoria feel better. But not the research that shows the fact that suicide ideation does not decrease after transition. She was able to meet her hero in the field of sexology and asked him why he hadn’t published anything in a long time. His answer was chilling. He stated that one day, out of nowhere, after publishing and lecturing for 40 years, he was asked to leave the university where he taught after already being denied entries into journals where he had been published for years. His findings were not much different than before, but the cultural and societal landscape had changed, and his facts were no longer accepted. Again, this should scare you.

The more malevolent consequence of this is that when one attempts to speak from a place of factual experience, someone will cite research to the contrary and no one will be able to refute it with other research findings because there will be none to cite. This will further allow ideological radicals to push an agenda for various purposes, but they are usually tied to money.

For example, if one says, “Every couple in my town of 10,000 people that has lived together prior to being married was divorced before they reached year 8 of their marriage”, someone will be able to quote research that couples are better living together prior to marriage. Unfortunately for them, there is current research that shows that for those couples who cohabitate, year one is better than those who didn’t. But every year after, they show a lower relationship satisfaction rating than the married couples who did not cohabitate prior to marriage. The couples who cohabitated prior to marriage are typically divorced by year seven.

Perhaps it’s time to stop being quiet. If we don’t, there will be no factual research out there to support best practices and methods for achieving the best possible results in our lives. Facts like being raised by your two biological parents in a low-conflict home. This is a verifiable fact that will be shut down and society will begin to believe that this is not the ultimate good to reach for when raising children. But it is. This doesn’t mean that everything else is terrible. It just means that there is a verifiable goal to strive towards that will result in the best possible outcome for the child. The statistics show that every family unit outside of this increases the risk of low grades, poverty, incarceration, dropouts, and teen pregnancies. We know this because we have current research that shows this.

In our society, we need research on all issues, not just the ones we agree with. We need research on teenagers with gender dysphoria and we need research on the positive effects of religion on depression. We need all, not some.

Stay Classy GP!

Grainger

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Enough is Enough is Enough

After looking at the events at the capitol, you have to ask why. Why are there people this upset? Why did they resort to a peaceful protest on the capitol? Yes, there were a small faction, less than 100, that went to violence. But most were there in disgust of how the election went down. There were obvious activities taking place that caused everyone to question the validity of the election.

For starters, never, in the history of our country has an election just “paused” and then resumed hours later like GA… only to yield thousands of votes that just “appeared” for only one candidate. That’s statistically impossible. This is obvious. Then there’s the truck driver in PA that was carrying blank ballots that were later “counted”.

There are more but let’s stick to the point. The point is that in our nation’s history, when a group of people felt oppressed, they spoke out. If they felt they weren’t heard, they speak louder. Then they turn to protests. Let’s not forget what happened in MN over the summer that sparked many violent acts and some peaceful protests along the way. I have a friend that supports BLM that said he went to Nashville for a peaceful protest and everyone he saw there left at the same time. Only later did the violence occur. Meaning, that an entire group wasn’t responsible for the nonsense of a small faction of that group. So, we can’t hold the entire #MAGA group responsible for what these few idiots did either. And certainly not Trump. He actually spoke against violence of any kind. And his speech never even got in the zip code of meeting the Brandenburg vs Ohio test.

It was once black people. It was once women. It was once LGBT. They spoke out against the oppression and didn’t feel as thought they were heard. So they protested. They stayed angry at the situation. In most cases, it stayed peaceful.

Four people die. Zero businesses destroyed. This is considered a riot

Now insert conservatives/republicans. They’ve been called every name in the book. Been made to feel inferior. Called racist with no evidence or base to the claim. Been told that being white is automatically a sin. Was told that being a male makes you toxic by nature. Written off as conspiracy theorists only to find total validity in such theories, such as Biden’s connection to China or the made-up allegations against Trump (ALL of which were proven false). As I’m writing this, I’m reminded of how many small, locally owned businesses were completely destroyed and it was consistently called “protests” by the media, but around 100 white punks (who deserve to be in prison) storm the capitol and it’s called “riots”. This is obvious. The media isn’t even trying to hide their disgust for all things conservative. Same goes for Hollywood and secondary education. Conservatives are the extreme minority that is tired of not being listened to and sick of being treated so poorly.

At some point, those people stand up and say, and I quote Joe Biden, “enough is enough is enough.” Yes, Mr. Biden, enough is enough. Enough kicking republican voter location workers out without explanation while the democrat workers stay and count alone. Enough mail-in voting that has proven to be an easy device for fraud (absentee is different, they’re requested first and validated by voter ID). Enough writing someone off solely based on their party affiliation.

Twenty-five people die. 1500 businesses destroyed. This is considered a peaceful protest

Have both sides done this? Of course they have. This is why blind tribalism is a total cancer that is eating our country. Democrats have objected to the last three GOP presidents. Democrats said to go ahead and appoint a SCOTUS before election in 2016 and don’t wait. Democrats supported the protests and refuse to condemn the violent looting and destroying of local businesses, citing that sometimes this is the only way to get the attention of the difference makers.

Now all of the sudden the GOP does these exact same things and it’s all of the sudden atrocious. Well the “deplorables” have had enough. They have watched as the so-called leaders of our country trample on the 1st, 5th and 14th amendments and absolutely spit on the separation of powers while basically saying, “What are you going to do about it?”

Did Trump cause this? Partially, yes. Obama? partially yes. These two presidents had an opportunity to unify the country and only did more to divide it. Part of their job is the set the tone for the nation. Trump never accepted that role. He just made brilliant business moves and got the country back on a very good fiscal track while tweeting the dumbest and most antagonizing things ever. No tone set. Obama set the tone that cops are racist and white people should pay. As a result, we see what we see. If you truly believe that one of these presidents did NOT divide our country, you, my friend, are guilty of Tribalism at the worst degree. Anyone paying attention would agree that BOTH of these presidents divided our country, unless you’re blinded by tribalism.

What is the solution? END TRIBALISM. Also, A third and fourth party being treated as equals. It can never happen as long as super-pacs are allowed. But its’ vital. We have to have leaders that speak up against the nonsense of their own parties, to call out the hypocrisy within the party. We have to have leaders that seek to truly bring unity. To support both the LEO’s and black citizens. Not vilify either.

When the sudden exodus to Parler came, you have to ask yourself why a large group of people would do that. Why would they leave the most popular format on the planet for something else? Are THAT many people just “stupid”? Of course not. Then why? Because they are being mistreated. Again, does this go both ways? Of course. Liberals are often mistreated by conservatives as well. Usually for no reason. Making comments like “dumb libtards don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground” by the right or “hope Parler lets you find FreeDumb!” by the left does nothing but further divide. It gets us nowhere.

If you want to be part of the solution, shake off your blind tribalistic allegiance to party and only support other Americans. We all want to get to the same destination. We just have different ideas of how to get there. If conservatives aren’t treated better, if the constitution isn’t treated better, if the 1st, 2nd, 5th, and 14th amendments continue to be under attack, and separation of powers is routinely ignored, a live-action reenactment of the Boston Tea Party will take place. This can be avoided, but unity and understanding must take place. And that can only happen if you seek to understand a person with an opinion other than your own. This goes for Conservatives AND Liberals!

Stay Classy GP!

Grainger