I tell her I love her as she leaves. She hears and deliberately ignores. She is still mad.
Without intention, I spoke hurtfully to her the night before. She told me about an issue she had with something she ordered online. She began the conversation saying, “I’m fighting with China…”
The Communist company shipped the wrong color of Crocs, and my wife was not happy. She wanted to return them for the colors she ordered and our children picked out, to which the company responded: “Look how bright the colors are!”
My wife responded and said, they were not the colors she ordered, and that she wanted the ones she had, to which the Communist company responded: “We will give you a discount on your next purchase.”
My wife told me she was going to threaten with a bad review. I made a mistake of telling her, “They don’t care. You’re dealing with Communists. You get what they give you.”
“But they’ll care if I write a bad review. They won’t want that. It will hurt them.”
“They don’t care. They’re Communists.”
She lashed out at me. She sought support and affirmation from me for the efforts she was making to try and get our children what she wanted. She was fighting as she knew how, but she failed to understand the fundamental essence of Communism: the individual is a non-entity.
I accepted the lashing, and after a few minutes’ time, I sought peace by apologizing for my inconsideration to her struggle. My attempt at appeasement was acknowledged, if not accepted, and as I sought to reconcile, I inquired on the matter.
They did not care.
As a western culture, especially as Americans, we take for granted all that we have, and how truly great of an aberration or existence and expectations are to the mass of the remaining world. We fail to understand how little much of the world regards the value of human individualism: our desires, wants, and dreams. As Americans, we are beginning to see that what we have constructed can just as readily be undone.
As we make online pick-up orders for groceries, we increasingly see that what we order is not what we receive, but as it is convenient, we take what we receive—and then return for what we lack on a separate trip that takes as much time as if we had entered the store and selected our own groceries for ourselves the first time. Such is not a “Communist” or “Socialist” action, but a different denigration of individual wants for the convenience of corporate expedience. It is a choice we make—to surrender our own initiative and defer to the actions and selections of another.
It is a conditioning of mind and spirit to accept rather than to will, and when economic conditions fail to improve under the promises of Statists at home, even if absent direct labels of “Communist” or “Socialist,” we will see choices ever limited and hardships, or exigencies—requiring further government interventions—grow. Such is the nature of societies that defer their fate to self-interested actors speaking under utilitarian guise.
Where are we today? Where are we going? Today it is Crocs, tomorrow…
Our car manufacturing industry is shut down completely over a waiting for microchips. An entire industry is frozen by a single, miniscule part. Do we expect a geopolitical adversary to suddenly change their priority of shipment to appease a society and culture historically in direct opposition to their own interests? Was the supply demand unexpectedly changed? No. What did?
“Look how bright the colors are!”
China is making high volume purchases of commodities they have historically purchased little, to none of—corn—driving prices to over double their value a year prior. These costs will be transferred on in groceries. Corn-based products will increase, but proteins—which are finished nearly entirely from corn-based feed regiments at low conversion rates, will sky rocket. Why?
“Look how bright the colors are!”
Domestically, we seek government assistance for government-made problems. We seek aid for an economy destroyed entirely by governments’ denial of others to accept the risks of choosing to exist and participate in an active society. Governments still deny the liberty, not a right (in apparent opposition to the first defined Constitutional Amendment), to assemble: whether for faith, commerce, or simply “to be.”
Economies, businesses, and lives are ruined “for our own protection.”
“Look how bright the colors are! You will take what we give you.”
As a society, we fail to acknowledge the reality and truth of these controlling and shaping philosophies. In defiance to our historical Western belief, made possible in the example and emancipation of Christianity, to our new-age collectives: the individual does not matter. To these actors, You do not matter and, as You hold no value, You deserve no respect or acknowledgment. you will take what WE give you.”
“Look how bright the colors are!”