We’re not cancelled; these are just our Wilderness Years

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Jack Graham

Jack Graham writes and podcasts about culture and politics from a Gothic Marxist-Humanist perspective. He co-hosts the I Don't Speak German podcast with Daniel Harper. Support Jack on Patreon.

8 Comments

  1. Tim B.
    July 14, 2016 @ 12:30 pm

    The appointment of Boris Jonson as Foreign Secretary doesn’t so much prove that satire is dead as take it out back to the wood chipper. (to mix Coen Brother movies)

    Reply

  2. Tom Marshall
    July 14, 2016 @ 3:17 pm

    Oh now this is marvellous!

    Reply

  3. Ozman Jones
    July 14, 2016 @ 4:14 pm

    A response, this is a true story…

    Hello, I’m Ozman Jones, and I own and run the Ozman Jones Commercial Interior Design Company*. And I’m here to tell you how I made it in business, and how you can make it too.

    The secret of success is hard work and determination. Without these things I could never have turned the zero dollars my dad gave me on my 21st birthday into a very decent privately owned business that supports myself, my wife and four children. In the past it has also supported various employees, some to pay for university degrees, some to start their own competing businesses (and good luck to them).

    Some hang around waiting for handouts. That doesn’t work. You just end up embittered, entitled and useless. Some people expect life to serve them what they want on a silver platter. I can’t stand people like that. I had to work hard to succeed, and there’s no reason why you can’t do that too.

    Some people say I had advantages… HAH! I had an apprenticeship, a real one with tools and back breaking labour and early starts.

    I have been criticised for my work ethic. “You work too bloody hard,” they said, “you’ll make the rest of us look bad.” they said. “Why are you studying during your work lunch break?” they would ask, “Why aren’t you debating football like the rest of us.”

    I never joined a union in an industry dominated by them**. I took fewer holidays, by choice, and worked under precarious contracts, by choice. When my choices didn’t work out, they scoffed, “Come join us, brother, in this warm and cosy collective we have. From here we can blame our situation on others. Come comrade, join us, there’s a Welshman*** here who’s read Marx.”

    And still others said it was just luck. And I found the harder I worked, the luckier I got.

    I discovered after a while, others, outside my sphere of work mates and friends, noticed my enterprise and wanted to partner with me. If you want to be part of the winners club, where the winners help the other winners, then use your individual enterprise and initiative to turn things around for yourself.

    There are certain facts of life that everyone has to come to terms with. You never get anywhere without a hard-headed appreciation of how the world works. This is especially true in business. If you’re going to succeed in a business, you need to make yourself master of the facts of that business. University does not teach this, life and experience does. ****

    And here I diverge from the narrative.

    I no longer employ staff; the overwhelming weight of legislation regarding employees decided that for me.*****

    In the last ten years the privatisation of a number of Local Council and State Government offices has improved the efficiency with which I can perform my services for my clients immensely. ******

    Corporatism is the enemy. But within the companies and interest groups controlling the State I would include not just the business monopolies, but unions (who operate more like large corporations), all religions (who operate more like large corporations), all so called social justice movements (who operate more like large corporations)…

    In fact anyone who wants me to think like them, be like them, act like them and toe the line that they have drawn for me. I support no political party, for no party fits. I belong to no movement, or organisation or ideology. I trust no *isms that claim to have my best interests at heart.

    It can be daunting to step outside the collectivist viewpoint, it can be cold and harsh, but the rewards are amazing. And I don’t mean monetarily, although that is nice, but in the personal growth that can take place, the compassion that develops for those less fortunate in life, and the relationships that grow from working together toward a worthwhile life that feels earned and not gifted.

    I begin my case.

    And thank you, Jack Graham.*******

    EDITOR’S ENDNOTES:

    • Not it’s real name. But it is my real business now.

    ** I have a really good story about unions and their mission to ‘do good’ for the workers If anyone wants to hear it. It’s a doozy!

    *** It was always a Welshman. I live in Australia and every union meeting and rally I attended invariably had a Welshman somewhere on the program. And before I’m accused of racism or something similar; my surname really is Jones, my father was an Owen, my grandfather a Llewellyn and his wife a Bronwin, and… you get the picture.

    **** I’ve never attended University, I failed most subjects in High School including Math, Physics, History and scraped through English with barely a passing grade (can you not tell). And yet I excelled in Social Studies, where I was given my government sponsored dose of Feminism, Socialism, Collectivism, etc. I didn’t receive a High School Certificate. Now I employ University Graduates and, once they have been rigorously retrained, they can be useful.

    ***** Five years ago my company employed three people in various roles, now I source it all from others like myself; individual contractors and on a contract by contract basis. Thank the unions for that bit of progress.

    ****** Take building approvals which would take up to six weeks for assessment under the old, government run system, and can now be turned around in three days, at much less cost to everyone.

    ******* No, really. Thank you. I’ve learned much from reading your posts and listening to the pod casts. I’ve probably gone way off track here with what you were trying to articulate, but you have inspired me to put down some of my thoughts. And for that, I truly thank you.

    Reply

    • Austin Loomis
      July 15, 2016 @ 1:07 pm

      It’s okay, Jack. You don’t have to pretend to be exactly the sort of brainwashed drobe you’re arguing against, the sort who sees a post like this and immediately goes on an ir- or anti-relevant tirade against labor unions, the sort who gripes about a “government sponsored dose of Feminism, Socialism, Collectivism, etc.” and doesn’t realize he might as well be putting a neon sign on his head saying “I am a complete jackass and nothing I say can deserve to be taken seriously. If I were an American, I’d use ‘Democrat’ as an adjective.”

      There was only one explanation for this atmosphere that he was willing to believe: that these people were civilized, and that for amusement they were acting out a parody of the squalor of high school life, which parody Casimir had been too slow to get so far. The obvious explanation—that it was really this way—was so horrible that it had not even entered his mind.
      — Neal Stephenson, The Big U

      Reply

      • Ozman Jones
        July 15, 2016 @ 4:35 pm

        A Jackass… I’ve been called worse, and most often by myself. But, an ad hominem attack, when I was commenting on ideology, and not attacking Jack. I had thought it might be clear I like Jack Graham. I may disagree with some of his positions on various issues, but I like Jack, what I know of him from his writing and podcasts, very much.

        The …”government sponsored dose of Feminism, Socialism, Collectivism, etc” was a cheap shot, I agree, and I would take it back if I wrote this again. Probably had more to do with the teacher presenting the class, than the material itself. In some sort of feeble defense, this was written at around 2.00am after completing a rather long day of work and some sarcasm borne of exhaustion was bound to creep in.

        In writing I was very aware that I was not born and raised in the UK, and that the subtleties of the situations and circumstances are very different in my country (although Australia and the UK share much) I did mention that I was more than likely way off track. Australia does not have anything like the class structure that exists in the UK, nor the preponderance of inherited wealth.

        What most Australians do have, that often is misread by many is a deep seated line in sarcasm and flippancy. To quote the Doctor on seriousness…”About what I do? Yes, not necessarily the way I do it.”

        Just for the record, I think Trump is a…. Jackass, for want of better word, and a dangerous one. If I lived in the states I would vote Democrat and most likely would have supported Saunders over Hillary. Make of that what you will.

        I live in a country that is far more Socialistic than the US is, has ever been, or will be in the foreseeable future. And I will recognise right now the privilege I have living here.

        Reply

        • Jack Graham
          July 15, 2016 @ 6:25 pm

          Play nice now kids.

          Reply

          • Austin Loomis
            July 15, 2016 @ 8:52 pm

            Okay, I’ll play nice. I shouldn’t have said the bit about Ozman being your sockpuppet; I didn’t and couldn’t mean it. I said it as an alternative to saying the things I would and could have meant, and would have been unable to walk back the way Jones is now trying to walk back that one moment of getting caught saying what he really thinks.

            I’ll play nice and give him credit for the statement “I was commenting on ideology, and not attacking Jack”; he can’t have been attacking you, given that, as far as I could tell, he wasn’t actually answering any of your arguments or even admitting that you’d made them.

            …And, apparently, that’s as nice as I can play. If I said any more of what I’m thinking in this space, you’d just have to delete it, so I’ll take it to my Tumblr now.

  4. Anthony D Herrera
    July 14, 2016 @ 8:21 pm

    Reading this all I could think was “George Clooney’s blood vein with a baby swordfish stuck in.” And other stuff. I thought about other stuff too.

    Reply

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