Never Let Them Demoralize You, Complete With Gratuitous Economic Bikini Graph

“Maybe we got ’em demoralized.” – Aliens

I was reminded that, even though I bragged I was the Inventor of the Bikini Graph®, I had produced no bikini graph in a recent post.  My apologies.  Here is the most recent GDP of the United States.  With bikini.  How can you be sad after seeing these results???

I was on the football team at my high school.  I know the football teams on television are all above average, but they had to play someone.  And we were the ones they got to play so they could be above average.

Going from memory, I’m certain we never had a winning season in high school.  My senior year, we won a single varsity game, and that was by a margin of two points – we won 8-6.  A record of 1-8 might sound like it only took nine weeks to make, but it seems a lot longer while you’re making it.

One particular game we went into the locker room at halftime, down by some amazing deficit that rhymes with 38-6.  It was winter.  The rain that was coming down on the field was freezing creating a wet yet frozen field.  It was a miserable day, but still better than watching a Disney® movie made in the last 20 years.

Our head coach then said to the team, “Listen, guys, go on out there and play like it’s zero-zero.”

I don’t know if you’ve ever gone into a locker room, realizing you were going to have to go back out onto the field and spend the next hour of your life going toe-to-toe against another team that was, statistically speaking, certain to win.  It’s as unpleasant as spending time in an elevator with Bill Clinton and his old-man onion breath.

Bill Clinton thought that the only thing that could make him cry was an onion.  Then Hillary started throwing ashtrays at him.

Now, I may not be a math major, but our team was down by 32 points.  Playing like we were zero-zero was like assuming that we were not already getting hammered like Hunter Biden on a Tuesday morning.  To me, this didn’t make sense, I even thought it was borderline delusional.  It wasn’t zero-zero.  It was at least 32 points below zero-zero.

As I got older, I began to figure it out.  What the coaches were trying to help us overcome was simple.  Demoralization.  We weren’t winning.  We weren’t going to win, since our quarterback couldn’t throw farther than about forty feet, and couldn’t count higher than 12 without taking off his shoes.  Of course, having six fingers on each hand did improve his grip, so he rarely fumbled . . .

But there is a choice in life.  You can live, knowing that you are going to fail, and acting like you’re going to fail.  Or you can live, and just do your best in every moment, knowing that you’ve left it all out there, like a monkey in a minefield, when everything goes ba-BOON.

It’s a fact:  humans eat more bananas than monkeys.  Personally?  I find that monkeys are more filling.

Living life as a failure is demoralization.

But what is demoralization?  Demoralization is depriving people of spirit, of morale, of courage.

I don’t know about you, but I was proud to go back on the field when we were losing.  Not proud that we were losing.  But proud that we had the guts to go back out there, again and again, and give it everything we had on each play.

I’m not telling any secrets when I say that it’s the goal of some groups to demoralize the people of the United States.  The news in 2020 has been a constant drumbeat to demoralize anyone who would oppose the Leftist, globalist agenda.

If you were to take them at face value, there’s no way that Americans could ever be sovereign in their own nation again.  And certainly, we should live in fear of disease for the rest of our lives and put everything on hold because of it.  Masks?  Why not make them mandatory forever.  To me?  That sounds like giving up.  And also, Wal-Mart® may not enforce the mask policy, but they still get pretty upset when I show up without pants.

Uncle Hunter always said, “Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.”  Uncle Hunter did crack.

That demoralization is not where it ends.  Looking at the news, we have seen our cities burn for months.  Sure, I don’t live in Minneapolis, and I’ve only been there a few times.  But Minneapolis is an American city.  To watch it burn is demoralizing – I don’t live in Minnesota, but if I’m an American it does hurt to watch an American city burn.  How bad is it?  BLM® and Antifa© have made cops look good.

It also shows us how far we’ve fallen.  Just like when we see people beaten on the streets for the crime of wearing a red hat that shows support for the president they voted for is a defeat for law and order.  I even heard where a protest started because an amputee’s limb got stolen – that was completely out of hand.

How do I know this?  Despite being the very example of an iron-willed observer of American politics, I occasionally admit to being human, too.  I don’t want Seattle to burn.  Or Minneapolis.  Or Portland.  These are American cities, built with American hands and American material and American labor.  We should be proud of them – we should want them to thrive.  Watching evil people destroy them?

It’s demoralizing.

Man, I hope I can get the two gyros for $6 deal there.

Me?  I’ve done several things to stop being personally demoralized:

  1. I’ve stopped listening to/reading things that sap my spirit.  I used to listen to NPR® – they used to tilt left, but still provide a decent coverage that wasn’t unhinged. Not after 2015.  I got very sick of the constant partisanship and anti-Americanism.  In one segment, an NPR™ correspondent told us how awful it was that we followed our own immigration laws and that it was immoral to report illegals.  In the very next segment?  Another correspondent told us how human trafficking of illegals was evil.    I’m gonna need a bigger scorecard for this one.  Which laws are we going to enforce this week?  Are pants optional?
  2. Drudge® used to be a great source of news. I thought he was balanced.  Now, after the Chinese bought his site?  Horribly tilted to the Left.  Me?  Scott Adams put me on to Ground News (LINK).  It’s a great site that actually analyzes the news in the most nonpartisan way that I’ve ever seen.  It shows which news stories are being slanted by the Left, and which ones are being slanted by the Right.  Goodbye, Drudge.  Last I heard he had an opinion about North Korean journalism:  “Can’t complain.”

I hear Best Korea is great at geometry.  They have a supreme ruler.

  1. I increased listening to/watching/reading things that add to my spirit.
    1. I like Scott Adams while I’m exercising.  There are more that I like and will share if you’re interested, but I’d love to see your suggestions below.
    2. Lots of new movies are just awful. They’re preachy, but to make up for that defect, they’re also not good.  Give me the Outlaw Josey Wales any day of the week over almost any movie not made by Mel Gibson in the last five years.  I think I enjoyed three new movies in all of 2019, and none of them were as good as Sean Connery’s home videos where he just eats crunchy breakfast cereal on camera and then asks for a bottle of gin.
    3. New books are, mostly, not as good as older ones. Missing?    Missing?  Humanity being the goal, not the problem.  Missing?  Girls in metal bras on the cover.
  2. It also helps to maintain or increase positive habits.
    1. Get enough sleep. This is one where I’m a chronic offender, at least during the week.  I’ll make it up on the other side of the dirt, I guess.
    2. Eat better. That’s been off and on this year.  Sadly, more off than on.  But I have found that what food I eat is very, very significant on my mood.  Also?  Rubbing butter on my chest may not help my attitude, but it does make my skin shiny and the dog will play with me.
    3. Exercise more. This is one that has immediate payoffs and long term payoffs.  The sad part is my employer seems to take a dim view of me just hanging out all afternoon in the gym with the weightbrahs.

A Canticle for Gibson?  At least one reader will get this.

There are some other things that can help, too:

  • Get rid of habits that make you feel bad. Which habits?  I know mine.  Do you know yours?
  • Fix things about your environment that upset you. Or don’t let them upset you.  I have a banister that’s been hanging for the better part of a decade now.  I walk by it at least once a day.  It doesn’t really bother me.  It’s also on my list.  I’m sure I’ll have it fixed by 2030 or so.
  • For me, prayer works. Your mileage may vary, and I certainly don’t criticize readers that think that all of the splendor and wonder and amazing complexity of humanity that lead to symphonies and sonnets and songs and Gilligan’s Island around us are random effects of a cosmic fluctuation.  Because all of that random probability is more likely than God, right?  Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have put Gilligan’s Island on the list, though that might be proof of Satan if it weren’t for Mary Ann.

A friend in college grew up next door to her.  She would come over and have coffee with his mom.  He had, um, conflicts about this.

We all own what goes into our minds, at least at this point in 2020.  We cannot be forced to consume media.  We choose what we watch, what we hear, what we read.  We don’t owe it to anyone, anyone at all to consume lies in the news that have more holes in them than Batman’s parents.

To be clear:  this isn’t an attempt to avoid reality.  We must face truth unafraid.  Each of us must be ready to go back onto that field in the freezing rain after halftime, down by 32 points.  And I’ll agree with you if you said we lost the game – the scoreboard would agree.  But we didn’t fail.  We played every down as hard as we could.

I’m not saying we should be deluded into thinking we’ll win every game we play, but giving in to fear about possible futures is demoralization itself.

The truth is that we cannot be demoralized without our own consent.

The easiest path?  Don’t consent.  Understand that, in the end?

We win.

Author: John

Nobel-Prize Winning, MacArthur Genius Grant Near Recipient writing to you regularly about Fitness, Wealth, and Wisdom - How to be happy and how to be healthy. Oh, and rich.

49 thoughts on “Never Let Them Demoralize You, Complete With Gratuitous Economic Bikini Graph”

      1. “Humanity being the goal, not the problem.” Another Leibowitz reference? “That six of Miller’s last nine publications were with Mercury Press is indicative of the turn his writing had taken toward ‘human’ stories, less crowded with incident, more concerned with values.”–David N. Samuelson, “The Lost Canticles of Walter M. Miller, Jr”. Science-Fiction Studies. DePauw University. 3 (26): 3–26 (March 1976).

  3. Easy to get demoralized these days. Your post is an important half time talk.

    Looking for a different news source?

    http://5000best.com/websites/News/

    Mary Ann all the way!!!

    While on the subject of “wholesome” sexy icons from the mid-60s, lately I’ve been on a nostalgia binge upon reading about the recent death of Dame Diana Rigg. She didn’t need to wear a bikini to be the sexiest star ever to grace a TV screen. The Avengers were NEVER demoralized as they saved the world week after week. “Mrs. Peel, we’re needed!”

    https://www.pinterest.com/beharlee/emma-peel/

    https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-27986272

    1. Yup…A Canticle for Leibowitz and let’s hope not. All in for MaryAnn..hot and she can cook! and I love Banana and coconut cream pie!

  4. OT, but could you please have a look at your spam filter and set it to something a little less “sensitive”? I’ve lost more comments to your filter lately than have been posted. From three different accounts (in case you are blocking). The last one included nothing more offensive than use of the word s**ks, which I believe you’ve used yourself from time to time.

    2. Socks?
      Sicks?
      Sycks?
      Secks?

      Nope, I bet the offender is the Polish ‘swcks’.
      Am I right?

  5. Mary Ann was my favorite, which made me think of why. After some thought, I realized Mary Ann would help change a flat, while Ginger would complain and file her nails. Maybe that’s what some men want, but to me, that’s just too much upkeep.

    1. For these with enough money, I suspect the equation would be different. And I suspect that Ginger would let her man step out on her, if he made it worth her while.

      And for any rando reading this: If you value either of those things, please keep clear of the Mary Anns, you bounder.

      And to the rando ladies, yeah, I get it. Stuck on an island where the only viable mates are Mr. Howell (taken) and the professor, who’s going to be a lot of work, Ginger seems the way to go. Don’t do it! See above for who values her.

      Note you never get the ladies arguing over X vs. Y on that island. Which, see above, is a good fight all on its own.

  6. What has improved my morale?

    1. Avoiding debt like the plague. Still have a 1998 vehicle. I wonder how that’s going to have 0% emissions? Hmmm.

    2. Retirement. This one was a surprise. I planned on retiring to start a second career, but then SARS-2 and the Troubles deferred those plans shortly after I retired. Now I get to read challenging books, comment thoughtfully on this blog, live a less harried life, and who knows, if things settle down, maybe I’ll resume that prep for a second career.

    3. No cable news. I get a morale boost knowing not one dime goes to CNN.

    4. Prayer and reading the Bible nearly daily.

    5. Living in a Mayberry of like-minded people. The self-sorting I’ve alluded to in posts past.

    6. Thinking about how I enjoyed watching Gilligan’s Island. Always liked Ginger, but Maryanne was a very close second. 🙂

    1. I’ve heard of far more than one person retiring now. It’s probably a good time.

      Your list is very, very good.

  8. Before I get distracted by the groan-worthy* puns , I would encourage you and your readers to check the fine print: https://about.ground.news/frequently-asked-questions.

    Click through the links: for example, how do they assign bias? Well, they use 3 NGOs including something called Ad Fonte. How does “to the source” calculate it? They use an algorithm sorting sources on a spectrum. CBS news is considered neutral.

    Once I stop laughing, I might go check through the other two and continue reading through the FAQ links. The creators are from the Silicon Valley tribe, so it could go either way (“grey” or “deep blue”). I still have not found their funding source (or ad fonte’s), though the fact that their tool is only useful (with care) if you pay for it is a good sign.

    Be careful out there folks. I like Epoch Times and the Babylon Bee for a general sense of what stories are trending, and I know I won’t be misled by the latter into thinking I actually know anything real, and that the former will only block stories that make the CCP look good.

    YMMV.

    *Brian hair guy in autocorrect.

    1. You’re absolutely right about the NGOs and “grading” of news sources. The thing I do like is that I’ve picked up stories I had seen zero about before.

      I’ll give Epoch Times a look . . . .

  9. You didn’t “loose” the game, you were merely “outscored”. There is a large difference. I was a member of the Corps of Cadets at Texas A&M. The football team got outscored a lot but every game the Fighting Texas Aggies beat the hell out of _________.
    They were teaching us a philosophy of life and they were right.

    As for Mary Ann, the story is told that she made more money off the series than anyone else. She was the only actor to negotiate a royalty on the re-runs. Nobody else thought the series would be so successful. As a result she received many millions of dollars. What a gal and what a business head.

    1. Sigh. Tina Louise (“Ginger”) and Dawn Wells (“Mary Ann”) at 86 and 82 respectively are today the only surviving cast of Gilligan’s Island.

      Ms. Louise is something of a recluse and has a current net worth estimated at $6 million.

      https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-celebrities/actors/tina-louise-net-worth/

      According to Ms. Wells, the rumor that only she got residuals is an urban myth…

      “It’s a total lie,” Wells said. “I have no idea where that story came from, but I didn’t get a dime.”

      https://www.cbr.com/mary-ann-gilligans-island-dawn-wells-millions/

      …and is pretty much broke after a decade of financial and health problems….

      https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-celebrities/actors/dawn-wells-net-worth/

      https://news.amomama.com/229358-dawn-wells-will-turn-82-this-year-glimps.html

      …but Mary Ann today is not demoralized….

      https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=280217139775420

    2. We did play really hard. I’m not sure any other team in our league hit as hard as we did. Or had so much experience punting . . . .

  10. The very first non-text item! Marvelous.

    When instructing me in playing euchre, my late father told me, “Lead ‘em like you got ‘em.” Maybe your dad told you something similar.

    Mary Ann vs. Ginger? Yeah, I know Mary Ann’s the “right” answer. And if I can only have one, she’s the choice. But I’m greedy. Both, please.

  11. I always assumed that the Professor got his pick (Ginger or MaryAnn) whenever he asked for it, and developing myself in a Professor-ly direction is something that I’ve never regretted. I think he could have gotten off the island, if he wanted to, but didn’t see the point.

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  13. After the election I’m going offline for a while.
    It’s good to keep up with the news when something big’s happening but too much is demoralizing and makes you think the whole world’s gone mad. Maybe it has but you don’t need to be reminded of it 24 hours a day.
    Also time in nature is important. Human spaces are comfortable but natural spaces like the mountains or beach give succor to the soul.

  14. We’re driving around today and the radio is saying something about N Korea.
    Wouldn’t that be something if Trump could reunite Korea in a somewhat freer rather than not fashion as his first acts in 2nd term?

  15. The good and bad in many things lies in how you look at them. For example, Minneapolis, etc., are enemy occupied territory, and have been for years. It’s easier if the enemy burns themselves out. (“Doing jobs Americans don’t want to do.”) I don’t cry myself to sleep lamenting inner city murder and abortion rates, either. (Our enemies don’t increase their numbers naturally, but by the old Shaker method of indoctrinating other people’s children and by importing foreigners.)

    2019 did produce one good movie – Knives Out. Even if it is by the guy who murdered Star Wars.

    1. I *liked* Knives Out. I agree about Minneapolis, but I’d love for us to have this country united, from sea to sea. Without treasonous Leftists destroying it all, that is.

  16. I don’t think that the words “gratuitous” and “bikini” can actually be put into the same sentence and still have the sentence be coherent or meaningful.

    Just saying.

    1. I think it’s unconstitutional, but since when did that matter?

      It’s an attempt to short circuit a system that works well enough to try to drive us toward a true democracy, and that way lies madness . . .

  18. Did Scott Adams ever quit acting like a paid shill for Trump? All I remember was claims of 8d chess back when Trump was clearly reneging on all promises.

  19. Raised with the we are not quitters mentality my high school was much the same. My brother and I have had many discussions about staying in this environment since those days. Our conclusion is no it is not good. One bad game or one bad day does not a life make but the season after season results, it affects your mental status.

    Mary Ann

    1. It does. One old boss of mine had a saying – nothing succeeds like success. And losing games got really, really old.

  20. Got it.

    Also, a major beer brand had a commercial several years ago, where the participants debated “Ginger or Mary Ann.” AN inside joke that was very well played. Classic.

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