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I was at a corporate HR leadership retreat in 2016 during the first after-Trump victory crying game.

The tears and the whiskey were both flowing—the whiskey thru the disbelief and denial; the tears came when the resistance to reality became futile.

I am having a hard time with it this time around. I cannot buy into the narrative of doom. It makes me a bit angry at influential actors for perpetrating such disempowering destractions.

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Oh man, Amri, I can only imagine what that retreat was like! Great line: "The tears and the whiskey were both flowing"

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Nov 8Liked by Ted Balaker

The same for me during my high school... I knew all of my friends would be miserable. Now my friends AND family are miserable. I'm scared to admit I'm not actually terrified and at least choosing to focus on the good even if things go bad. As someone who wasn't depressed and/or constantly sharing that fact, I was really not at all popular at my high school.

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wow, what an interesting predicament: " I'm scared to admit I'm not actually terrified"

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People online really don’t want to hear that they will be ok. Every time someone tries to gently push back with “governments change all the time”, or “he didn’t do that last time”, or “he never said he would do that”, or “that would be unconstitutional”, they get accused of not understanding the situation or of being insensitive.

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It’s because they haven’t spent much time working in or with the federal government. He might try and change a whole lot really fast.

Even changes get changed after four years.

Each day in a President’s office one’s chances to do anything durable diminish.

We shall see

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Yeah, I agree there's a lot of that going on.

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Nov 8Liked by Ted Balaker

Worse yet, what happens when these future neurosurgeons notice many of their own patients hold political affiliations & personal beliefs they find abhorrent???

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Ha, good point! Funny and terrifying. Best to take an extra close look at your surgeon's bio before scheduling any procedures

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Nov 8Liked by Ted Balaker

I have to admit I couldn't read this piece in detail. As someone who was put through years of therapy I didn't need, it was... dare I say it, triggering. A lot of my classmates could barely handle a single basic homework assignment, and then blamed their mental health problems on the system for assigning said homework.

I can't put my thoughts into words better than just... agreed. This is terrifying. It ABSOLUTELY does more harm than good.

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"the system" is a very handy scapegoat

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The irony is that creating a whole generation of fragile-coddled people has made it even less likely they’ll win any elections and overcome any attempts by others to harm them in real life. By creating a super-safe generation, they have created an easily-corralled one. The only thing left to ask is: did they really not know this would happen?

Remember: The Dark Ages were dark on purpose.

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Yes. Excellent point: "The irony is that creating a whole generation of fragile-coddled people has made it even less likely they’ll win any elections and overcome any attempts by others to harm them in real life"

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Nov 9Liked by Ted Balaker

Is it really the colleges that are overprotecting or the children already came overprotected and the colleges are merely giving them what they want/expect?

Perhaps Gen X parents did things in reverse and now we have young adults acting like babies, b/c we treated them like young adults when they were babies? From ages 0-3, I wonder how many of these kids were in daycare, expected to just be resilient and sleep-trained by 6 months. And now at 18, they are asking for the care they never received? It's a stretch idea....

How are these kids even educated if they don't know how the rest of the world lives? I'd like to give them a few days in North Korea.

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Good point. Many times the answer is "both." Kids come to college already coddled and then colleges continue the coddling. But colleges often offer some especially bad guidance. The coddling-related problems are generally worse at elite universities where students don't live at home and live in an intellectual monoculture. And I think your "stretch idea" is interesting -- also the field trip to N. Korea!

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Nov 11Liked by Ted Balaker

I see that kids not only get luxury beliefs at the elite institutions, but "luxury grief" too. They get to whine about problems that aren't really problems b/c they actually have no real problems in their lives. I remember I used to joke about my "first world problems" all the time, but by saying that, I understood it wasn't a big deal in the whole scheme of things. But these college kids don't understand that joke. They think their "first world problems" signal the apocalypse, and they act accordingly.

This past weekend, my mom was talking about opening a 529 savings account for my son. I told her - no way. I'm not tying up money to be used just for "education." I'm looking at a UTMA instead. Do people not see the racket? Put all your money in this account for your child's future that can ONLY be spent on college education where your child will be further indoctrinated. Yes, this is a good investment, they say.

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so good! "I see that kids not only get luxury beliefs at the elite institutions, but "luxury grief" too."

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Nov 8Liked by Ted Balaker

💝🍪🥛🎓🦤

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Like most adults, I went to work on Wednesday. At my office, here in Canada, hardly anyone talked about it. A few people simply shrugged and said they were disappointed but not surprised. Then they got on with things

Then I went to an in person writing meetup that night. People put their heads down, focused on their writing, and talked about everything other than American politics.

Meanwhile, people in a different writing group’s Discord were having a meltdown. In Canada.

There’s a clear difference in the outlook and resilience of people who focus on getting real things done in the real world and people who are chronically online.

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Well said, Allison: "There’s a clear difference in the outlook and resilience of people who focus on getting real things done in the real world and people who are chronically online"

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Rather than being coddled with bullshit lies, members of the Democratic Party (my party) must rethink many of its policies as it ponders its future.

To have a chance at victory Democrats should try listening to the concerns of the working class for a change. As a lifelong moderate Democrat I share their distain for many of the insane positions advocated by my party.

Democrat politicians defy biology by believing that men can actually become women and belong in women’s sports, rest rooms, locker rooms and prisons and that children should be mutilated in pursuit of the impossible.

They believe borders should be open to millions of illegals which undermines workers’ wages and the affordability of housing when we can’t house our own citizens.

They discriminate against whites, Asians and men in a vain effort to counter past discrimination against others and undermine our economy by abandoning merit selection of students and employees.

Democratic mayors allow homelessness to destroy our beautiful cities because they won't say no to destructive behavior. No you can’t camp in this city. No you can’t shit in our streets No you can’t shoot up and leave your used needles everywhere. Many of our prosecutors will not take action against shoplifting unless a $1000 of goods are stolen leading to gangs destroying retail stores. They release criminals without bond to rob and murder again.

The average voter knows this is happening and outright reject our party. Enough.

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Why isn’t you Film Threat review on Rotten Tomatoes? There’s only one crappy review there now. I’m glad you finally updated the summary (after weeks with the wrong one!), but whoever is managing your RT account needs to step it up. It makes you guys look rinky-dink.

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Oof, don't get me started on RT. I might write a post about it at some point. But we are looking into Film Threat -- RT also neglected to include another positive review and we're on them about that.

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I'm in the minority opinion here. I agree that milk and cookies seem infantilizing, and I agree it's supremely important to remind people of their strength and resilience rather than fragility. I agree that work is not a place for political processing. That said, I think there's a bit of glibness on display here. We may not have any more elections in this country. And I say that not as conjecture but because of what the presidential candidate told us. The woke left has become so absurd that we normalize the extremes that Tr*mp presents. We're at a place where people are shrugging off formerly unspeakable language (political opponents are now the "enemy from within" and deserve guns in their face ?) So as of yesterday, we're no longer a free country. We get violence- or threats thereof- if we speak out of turn. It's likely the country that these young college students now grow up in will soon have more to do with Russia or Hungary than the U.S. So, even if your candidate won- maybe give the kids- and all of us- a little space to regress and grieve- at least for now.

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I enjoyed your phrasing: "maybe give the kids- and all of us- a little space to regress and grieve- at least for now." I think there's a way to grieve without behaving like children. And I agree that the woke left has created a situation where Trump's lunacy can sound like white noise.

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You really can't win, where you've got nothing to lose.

Emotionally and physically, we have to be prepared to accept the downside, or there will never be an upside.

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Yes, indeed. Growing up libertarian, I'm used to being frustrated by elections. I think plenty of people are like that -- I'm guessing including you!

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