The charade of "success"

The charade of "success"
Anonymous Conservative reminds us that most of what passes for "success" in modern American society is entirely manufactured and most claims to it being based on "talent" and "hard work" are entirely false.

Joe Biden forgets his line, and a reporter jumps in to help him remember it. All those reporter positions are remarkably important in so many ways. Now, I almost think it funny that if you had asked me as a kid, "Could you grow up to be a reporter if you wanted?" I would have replied, "This is America, I can grow up to be anything if I put in the effort." And I would have thought that becoming a reporter was half-assing it, and it would have been impossible to fail.

In truth, there were a lot of doors which were always closed, because there was a giant secret out there which the conspiracy needed to hide. Utility line worker, data-processor or IT guy, especially in certain banks, hotel/motel owner in areas of importance, taxi drivers, reporters, celebrities of all stripes, scientific researchers in certain fields, lawyers, prosecutors and politicians at all levels, CIA Officers, and a ton of other positions were for club members only, or people the club felt they could control. I will bet if you tried to be a bum loitering on certain street corners, you'd get chased off, and think it was just another bum chasing you off. Or you'd have a job fall in your lap and think it good luck, instead of the reality that was a vital posted surveillance position, and the bum there needed to be (((their))) bum.

I always thought it bizarre Erik Prince walked into the CIA, fresh out of the Navy SEALs, heir to a billionaire fortune, as comfortable in a high-society soiree at a five-star restaurant as he would be hip deep in mud somewhere getting shot at, high IQ and full of piss and vinegar, and CIA told him he didn't have what it took. The guy who built an entire shadow CIA/Pentagon from scratch all on his own, tearing shit up across the entire globe, maybe with a hand in tearing down the Cabal, didn't have what it took to be a case officer, or a paramilitary?

All throughout the country, people were moving into their final positions in life, doors opening, others closing due to the vagaries of fate (or so they thought), blind to a machine that was all around them, amassing files on them from the time they were children with reports from the other little kids in the school around them, watching them, looking to compromise them, and having failed, expending its effort thwarting them or moving them somewhere else.

How many good young kids, filled with ability, effort, and determination, had a dream like being an actor, or a writer, or a reporter, and they ended up expending their entire life on the dream, betting everything on themselves, and died baffled at how they ended up failing while surrounded by untalented rubes who soared?

Amy Schumer wasn't paid $13 million for a single comedy special because she is funny or because she sells massive quantities of tickets to her shows. Megan Markle wasn't paid $145 million to produce documentaries because she has an amazing production record or even because anyone will watch them. Obama hasn't even begun writing the book for which he was paid a $65 million advance and he will probably never write it. Tom Preston wasn't paid $100 million for making MySpace a lasting corporate success. Marc Racicot wasn't made Chairman of the Republican National Committee or the Governor of Montana because he was such a staunch Republican or particularly adept at managing political operations.

On a much smaller scale, John Scalzi wasn't paid $250,000 per book by Tor Books because Tor expects to make at least $10 million of profit on the deal. These are all people who are owned by the Prometheans, who have sold their souls for what passes for "success" and who will dutifully say whatever they are told to say and produce whatever they are told to produce. And in most cases, it's not even necessary to tell them anything at all, as they were selected and propped up and promoted because they are naturally inclined to do their masters' bidding.

Years ago, I was told by the editor of the editorial page for the St. Paul Pioneer Press that I would NEVER be permitted to have a regular column on the op/ed page. I applied for the slot after the token conservative left the paper, thinking that because I was a) already a popular weekly columnist on the Technology page, b) a local who grew up in a St. Paul suburb, and, c) only the sixth columnist in the 150-year history of the paper to be nationally syndicated, I was an obvious shoe-in for the job.

I wrote three sample columns, which the editor freely admitted were of sufficient quality to appear on the page. But he made it clear that I would not be given the slot, not then and not in the future. At the time, I thought this was because my libertarianism was simply too intense for the paper. But now I understand that I had bumped up against the ceiling of what had been deemed my permissible level of success. After all, put a bright young, nationally-syndicated writer on the editorial page at the age of 25, he's probably the obvious candidate for op/ed editor within a decade. And who knows where he might go after that? Best to shunt him off the track at the start. I didn't mind then and I don't mind now. I was still able to go off and do what I really wanted to do, which was to make computer games with my friends. But the situation always struck me as a little bit strange and somewhat inexplicable.

The vacant slot was instead given to DJ Tice, a nominal conservative who left the paper in 2003 to become the Government and Politics team leader at the Star Tribune and now plays the role of house conservative as the Commentary editor there. Are you even remotely surprised to learn that Tice is now anti-Trump and last year described Robert Mueller as "evidence of what truly makes America great"?

Talent will always find a way to some level of success, but it can be prevented from finding its way to the positions that are deemed strategically important. That's why they hate and fear Donald Trump. As a rich, playboy developer, he's essentially harmless to them. As President of the United States of America, not so much.