Society

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by Reid Fitzsimons

USAA is a giant insurance and financial services corporation that caters primarily to the military and veterans. Indeed, it was founded 100 years ago by a group of military officers looking for a way to insure their automobiles considering their particular circumstance. As USAA grew, they became renown for their service to members, their integrity, and their sense of honor. They became the insurance and banking equivalent of the reliable, competent, and honest mechanic who you never have to question- if he says “this is what’s broken and this is what we need to do to fix it and it will cost this much,” you know he telling the truth.

Photo of USAA CEO Wayne Peacock used in a March 2022 article in the San Antonio Express-News with the headline, "San Antonio’s USAA Bank hit with $140 million in fines by banking regulators."

Sadly, in the last few years USAA evolved its priorities from providing stellar services to members to become just like any other insurance and financial company: mass marketing, empty promises, emphasis on profits, marginal customer service, and the like. In early 2020 a new CEO was appointed, the first to have never been in the military, but rather had spent his adult life in the corporate world. As it happened, later in 2020 an event occurred that excited and titillated all manner of privileged white people: the killing of a restrained black criminal at the hands of a brutish police officer. Now rich white elites, which accurately describes the USAA CEO, could virtue signal and put on display how wonderful they are to their heart's content. Accordingly, the CEO of USAA sent a mass e-mail (admittedly, severely paraphrased!) saying, All our members are horrid racists, homophobes and all other kinds of phobes, but don’t worry, I am the enlightened one and if you vow allegiance to me and my fellow elites, you have a chance for salvation. Indeed, I am one of the bravest because I am willing to have ‘conversations’ about social justice and all that kind of thing!

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by Reid Fitzsimons

I’m a tall white guy, but I don’t have any sense of “tall pride” or “male pride” or “white pride.” I’m not ashamed to be tall or male or white because it’s just the way it is. The thing about pride is that, by definition, it is something related to accomplishment. For example, one might feel a neighborly pride because they learned the skills that allow them to help the widow next door with a plumbing problem, or do-gooder pride because they set up a fun and wholesome project for poor kids in an impoverished country. Feeling pride merely for existing is empty and meaningless, like getting an award for simply showing up and meeting minimal expectations. Really, how much pride can a male athlete, who doesn’t do well competing against fellow males, feel by declaring he’s a female and beating girls? Hopefully none.

The proud winner is Rhys McKinnon, who later changed his name to Rachael McKinnon, and again to Veronica Ivy. Apparently winning and attention is everything for this guy, even if he had to pretend to be a girl to ride to victory.
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by Reid Fitzsimons

There’s a well known adage that says a frog placed in a pan with cool water will remain in the pan as the water is gradually heated until it dies. I doubt that it’s true, but the point is valid: if something pernicious is initially portrayed as benign but slowly changes until it’s harmful, it has a chance of eventually being accepted. The chronically battered wife probably didn’t fall in love with her husband because he beat her from the start, it just kind of escalated until it becomes the norm.

Presently, the water is still tepid in regards to normalizing pedophilia, i.e. adults having sex with children. Soon enough, however, it will be boiling, and one of the most disgraceful accusations- of being a pedophile- will give way to something like, “if you don’t accept and embrace sex between adults and children you are a pedophobe!

A chubby bearded guy with glasses titillated, along with others, by watching prepubescent boys dressed up as sexy girls. If progressives have their way, this malevolence will become routine.

As usual, this type of societal transformation begins with nuancing the language. Hence, the current innocuous term being floated, which sounds so much less pejorative than “child molester” or “pedophile,” is Minor Attracted People, or MAP. The main advocate for this term seems to be a “transgender” (of course; “they and them” pronouns) post-doctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins named Allyn Walker who wrote a book entitled A Long, Dark Shadow: Minor Attracted People and Their Pursuit of Dignity.

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by Reid Fitzsimons

I’m a white male, so I have white male pride. I’m taller than average, so I have taller than average pride. I’m a white male raised in the suburbs, so I have taller than average white male suburban pride. I demand “pride months” and that people chant “white male suburban taller than average rights are human rights!” You might respond, “Isn’t pride supposed to be based on some kind of accomplishment, especially one that took some effort and maybe even a little sacrifice? You can’t really be proud of merely being who you are based on skin color or height or whatever. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be okay with what or who you are, it just has nothing to do with pride.” And I say, “What are you, some hate-filled cisgender fascist who supports the oppressive meritocracy, a backward thinker who believes actual accomplishment is better than being wonderful simply because you feel you are? You’re just like Hitler!”

Two sides of the same "pride" coin

I first met Vivian in a tiny Honduran village in 2008. My wife and I had opened a little project for children of the village a year before and we were fortunate to have many volunteers, mostly young people from the US, Canada, and Europe. One of these had befriended one of teenage attendees, Myra, and visited Myra’s house, a typical single room mud and stick hut with a dirt floor and without electricity. Our volunteer from Belgium asked me the next day if we knew Myra had a little sister who was dying. We did not, so I soon visited there myself and encountered 2½ year-old Vivian, who was hairless, had lots of scars on her body, and weighed 11 pounds. Her beleaguered mother was holding Vivian and constantly shifting her from breast to breast in a largely futile attempt to feed her: mom was simply dry, and Vivian was simply starving to death.

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by Reid Fitzsimons

When we moved to South Alabama in 2008 we learned our new neighbor had a sophisticated sounding English surname. Based on this, we envisioned him to likely be a cultivated person, maybe a retired college professor. This image was quickly dispelled upon meeting him: he was an ignorant vestige from the Jim Crow/KKK days, an overt racist and, we later learned, an lifelong alcoholic with anger control issues; his pleasant wife certainly earned to title of “long-suffering.” In America today, of course, accusations of “racism” from people either trying to justify their privilege or victim status (or usually both) spew out like stomach contents at a drunken frat party, but I suspect there are very few people under 50 today who have actually met a real racist. This is because they have largely died off, like our bigoted and imbecilic neighbor of 10+ years ago.

Trevor Anderson of South Carolina, recently fired from his position as a middle school French teacher

More recently, Mr. Trevor Anderson was discharged from his position as a French teacher at a South Carolina middle-school. This was a blip in the news cycle seen at Foxnews.com (link below). In a prejudicial way, as with our Alabama neighbor, I immediately envisioned an educated and serious person, someone certainly able to control himself (I recall elementary school teachers in the 1960s admonishing us to “control yourselves”). It ended up, however, that Mr. Anderson has a avocation as an enraged pro-abortion activist. Apparently in response to pro-life demonstrators near his favorite abortion clinic, the gentleman in question grabbed a megaphone and generously shared his thoughts. Among his litany of passionate outrage were the following quotes: "I teach them French. I teach them that people like you are a piece of s---… I teach them that Christians are f---ing idiots...You're all f---ing idiots.” And, presumably in response to a black pro-lifer, he suggested "You do what all these White people tell you to do, you f---ing c--n. You f---ing j---- boo…Do a little dance for us like your masters want you to." And, to a pro-life woman, "You deserve to be called a c---, you deserve to be called a b----."

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by Reid Fitzsimons

Joe Biden, our demented, deranged, and diminished President, has an interesting verbal tic. For decades he has told tall tales and make believe anecdotes that he thinks will be to his political advantage. From his silly “I was coal miner” to this cynical and vicious “the other driver involved in the death of my wife and infant daughter (in the 1970’s) was drunk,” there is no fantasy too fantastic for him not to utter. Not uncommonly, we know he is lying because he’ll insert the phrase “Not a joke!” The introduction to this article, which is about why so many girls and young women believe they want to become males, is definitely not a joke, as follows.

The time I spent in Kenya in 2002 and 2003 as the volunteer medical director (PA) of a remotely located clinic coincided with the peak of the African AIDS epidemic. AIDS was only one among many hideous diseases- malaria was actually more common- that maimed and killed so many, and never a week went by (sometimes never a day) where there was misery and suffering incomprehensible to most Americans. One horrific belief among some men with AIDS was that they could be cured by having sex with a young female, and the girl really didn’t have any say in the matter. One day, the tragedy of the day was a girl of perhaps 18 who, in one clinic visit, was diagnosed with AIDS, tuberculosis, syphilis, and noted to have peau d'orange on the skin on her breasts, suggestive of an atypical form of breast cancer. Keep this in mind when considering the things that cause us so much angst in our very privileged American lives.

To girls and young women: if you can’t live up to this standard of womanhood, if you’re not hot and sexy, you are a LOSER and might as well “transition” and become a guy.
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by Reid Fitzsimons

Sam Brinton (standing) was a Biden appointee as a deputy assistant secretary, Dept. of Energy

As a nation, as hopefully compassionate and reasoned people, we need to understand and admit “transgenderism” is not real. Gender (or sex) is an immutable thing, and can no more be changed than eye color. My eyes are the most drab of colors- brown- and even though society has declared blue and green are the most desirable, mine are brown, and always will be.

That is not to say there is not something called “gender dysphoria.” The word “dysphoria” is of Greek origin and basically means difficult mood. We see the prefix “dys” in a number of medical words (dysuria- difficult urination) and “phoria” is often prefixed with “eu,” i.e. euphoria- a state of happiness, perhaps excessively so. Dysphorias of any type are an emotional state, in which a person typically has poor self-esteem, an inner directed dislike or even hatred, and a general dissatisfaction in life, as if something is seriously missing. These people are inclined to search for an explanation for how they feel, and are exceptionally susceptible to those offering easy answers, to those who are more than happy to exploit them. You can see this by watching predatory televangelists: “Send me a donation of $$$ and you will find everlasting comfort and joy in God’s love.”

There are a number of basic tenets that should be considered when analyzing this thing called “transgenderism,” with four of them as follows. First, it is almost exclusively a concept/luxury found in wealthy societies- people who live in impoverished countries and societies- most of the world- are busy worrying where they will find something to eat or if they will die of a tropical disease, not what pronoun they might prefer. Second, it went from essentially having no historical precedent to what amounts to a cultural pandemic in the blink of an eye, which is consistent with a fad and/or intentional propagation. Third, and relatedly, there are a significant number of upper caste people who profit, both financially and in regards to political and cultural power, by “transgenderism.” Finally, This type of frenetic movement inevitably takes on the characteristics of the harshest of religions: You WILL bow down before Baal and you WILL offer up sacrifices, lest you be destroyed!

A "drag queen" invited to read to children at a Binghamton, NY library
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Dr. Anthony Fauci, NIH functionary since 1968 and multimillionaire, a corona virus celebrity who became the face of the establishment during the pandemic. In Nov. 2021, he made the impressively grandiose statement in regards to criticism directed at him, “But they’re really criticizing science, because I represent science”

by Reid Fitzsimons

I have some friends who are into natural remedies. Sometimes they ask my thoughts, as a retired medical practitioner (PA), about various substances and treatments they might have heard about. When I was younger, I probably would have repeated the standard line- there is no scientific evidence it provides any benefit- but now I’m more, “what the heck, if it’s harmless, give it a try.” Recently they asked about tree-derived substance from Southeast Asia called kratom, something that has been used indigenously for centuries and said to be an analgesic, stimulant, antihypertensive, and to enhance sexual functioning, among other things. In researching this substance I realized it has actual drug properties, including opioid components. It is not illegal at the Federal level, but has been made illegal in several states and other countries. It has a number of potential adverse effects, and is not something I would take lightly. In fact, the FDA notes it has no scientific data that would support the use of kratom for medical purposes and warns the public NOT to use any products labeled as containing kratom, due to reported deaths. And the FDA can be trusted……….correct?

Something happened just shy of three years ago, something that effected the world and perhaps forever changed the relationship between people and governments (or at least traditionally free and democratic governments), this being the corona virus pandemic. Three years later, it’s both fascinating and deeply disturbing to look retrospectively at actions taken by governments and, equally troublesome (if not previously inconceivable), the scientific and medical establishment. Up until 2020, I was pretty much all in for standard, allopathic medicine. Certainly over the years I had been aware of that some study was the ultimate study that proved this or that medicine or treatment was perfect, until the next ultimate study refuted the last ultimate study and the new finding became the gold standard that could never be refuted...until the next study: it truly is necessary to understand that science and medicine are NOT infallible by any means, because in the end science and medicine are products of people who are fallible, and may well have selfish and self-interests influencing them. Nevertheless, within context, I embraced and supported the orthodoxy.

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by Reid Fitzsimons (this is a long- over 3,000 word- article!)

In mid-November, 1982, I began my first career position as a medical practitioner (PA) at the medium-security Ray Brook Federal Prison in truly upstate NY- a few miles outside of Lake Placid, home of the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympics. The facility in fact had been built to serve as the Olympic Village with the idea it would be converted to a prison. I figured I would get a year of experience and move on, but as is so common I ended up buying a house and a year became 3 years, 2 months, and 2 weeks before I moved on to a much more fulfilling job (a longer commute and less pay initially, but it was worth it). Prison medicine is challenging, sometimes rewarding, and often interesting, but not something I wanted to do for 20 years.

Most people’s idea of a prison is probably derived from TV and movies, and sometimes there is overlap with reality. Myths include prison staff carry weapons inside, which is never true, though outside perimeter security definitely includes a variety of weapons. During much of my time we had perhaps 800 convicts, and during the night shift there were maybe 10 or 12 staff on, including the PA (24 hour medical care was available)- in other words, the convicts essentially allow the staff to maintain control. This is not out of a sense of altruism, but the reality that, barring some apocalyptic event, they could never control the outside, and eventually would loose control inside, with consequences.

Having never been in a prison before I was pleasantly surprised to discover the convicts were treated with basic respect and human dignity: never once did I hear of a convict getting a “whooping” at the hands of staff, for example. It’s possible popularized stereotypical abuse did occur at other prisons, but we were quite remotely located and the employee pool was mostly rural people who didn’t inherently carry grudges. The relatively respectful environment certainly wasn’t due to the warden, who was an arrogant popinjay obsessed with currying favor with those above him at the expense of employee morale and even security. If anything, his goal was to have his boots licked, and to lick the boots of those above; employees willing to lick his boots were not terribly uncommon. I have no fond recollections of him.

The demographics of the convicts were diverse in many metrics, including type of crime, race, and ethnicity. A plurality, if not majority, were young black men, but we had a large compliment of South Americans/Hispanics (mostly drugs, of course), and plenty of smaller groups- white collar types, Aryan Brotherhood types, Italian Mafia, white punks, and homosexuals of all ethnicities (of significance because this was at the very dawn of AIDS). Being a medium security joint, the criminals ran the gamut from murderers and rapists, bank robbers, pedophiles, thieves, organized crime and financial criminals and, of course, lots of drug offenders. By nature, Federal prisons are different from states joints, but I think there were more commonalities than not. As with most prisons, there is a jail within the prison- the segregation unit- in which convicts who commit rule infractions or actual crimes might be placed, as well as for other reasons.

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by Reid Fitzsimons

I have a friend who was raised in relative poverty but, through hard work and smart life decisions, became quite wealthy. A number of years ago his son, at perhaps the age of 13, went through an obnoxious spoiled period- very mouthy and said pretty vile things. If he had to be home by 9, or to bed by 10 on a school night, life was UNFAIR, and one of his refrains was “I HAVE RIGHTS!” Many of us can recall going through similar adolescent phases, and thankfully most of us grew up and out of this “it’s all about me” selfishness,”as did this young man.

"Toby" holds a sign with other demonstrators during a protest regarding evictions going on at the court, 6000 Chimney Rock Rd., Friday, Aug. 21, 2020, in Houston.
Privileged Yet Ignorant People Confusing "Rights" With Outcomes

It’s interesting that the term “rights” is so often invoked by privileged kids (in the years I spent do-gooding in impoverished countries I don’t recall ever hearing it). Of course, to them it’s an ill-defined generic word that essentially means, “I should get my way, I deserve whatever I want!” Unfortunately, this understanding and interpretation of “rights” is increasing in the US as we’ve become wealthier, more selfish, greedier, and more shallow: “rights” have become little more than political and cultural weapons and slogans, without regard for what they really are, and it is indeed pernicious to trivialize them. A “right” is not an argument for “I want what I want, and I want it now.”

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