The Ravens Nest

Sometimes, Words Really Do Mean Things.

Two Culture War articles in a row and I’m not feeling great about it but I should put it out there.

I remember watching the DVD Jeff Hardy: My Life, My Rules after getting it for my birthday several years ago. It was great and I’ve always been a Jeff Hardy fan, no matter where he’s gone and his “Antichrist of Professional Wrestling” gimmick was among one of my favorites.

To cut right to the point, Hardy really doesn’t have much to do with this article. In fact, CM Punk has more to do with this article because during the segments where he’s commenting on his match with Hardy, after cashing in his Money In The Bank Contract on Hardy, suddenly, he’s bringing Hardy’s real-life issues with substance abuse into the promos. Now that’s pro wrestling, we all get the desire to build up a match but during the commentary/interview segment he said “People call Jeff Hardy a free spirit…and I think we all know what that means.”

It was in that moment, everyone else had dropped character to comment on their respective programs with Hardy, including his brother because another real-life angle had been leveraged but when the characters were dropped and Punk went on, my first thought was “What a prick!”

This isn’t about CM Punk either. We all know he has been the type to really get terse and prickly. We also know that he’s claims to be absolutely straight edge. No drinking, no smoking, no drugs. Again, I can’t comment on the veracity of that statement just as I can’t comment on how false it may be.

What I can comment on, getting away from pro wrestling is the fact that our own world has become quite the reflection of the pro wrestling world. Two “sides” out there are cutting promos, getting you invested and laughing all the way to the bank.

In a recent article by the New York Times opinion section, the headline read, well, I’ll let you see it for yourself…

Yeah, I’m gonna just keep that in it’s size and not shrink it down. It needs to be seen. For years now, we’ve been telling people that this “antiracism” thing is not the do-gooder thing it appears to be.

The focus here is on Ibrahim Kendi, the man behind books such as How To Be An Antiracist amongst other works. Kendi’s entire thesis is that it’s all racist. The entire system was set against him and other black folks from birth. It’s all the fault of white people. Now, all must do their penance, of course. Anyone with criticism of his thesis is a racist, no matter what complexion with which you may have been born. Kendi has placed his argument behind what he believes to be bullet-proof plexiglas. You’re not allowed to criticize or touch it in any way, shape or form.

At one point, Kendi wrote that “The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination,” and then later revised that to quote, “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”

To quote CM Punk, “…I think we all know what that means.”

I am open to being wrong on this point, however, given the trends in academia and corporations everywhere, I doubt that I am. What that means is that if you don’t buy into the dogma (which is what it is if you’re not allowed to question it or subject it to scrutiny) or you face the double-whammy and you’re born white, you can now be treated as a second-class citizen based on that alone.

One in six hiring managers have been told to “deprioritize” hiring white people in order to meet DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) Standards, Best Buy’s leadership training programs literally exclude people if they’re white and they’ve been under fire for it recently and according to Bloomberg, only six percent of jobs went to white applicants.

Guess what? The lawsuits against those companies and firms have kicked off in a big way and the courts are hearing them. At some point hiring due to ethnicity rather than skills and qualifications becomes a bigger headache than it’s worth. Kendi’s own dogma-turned-policy is failing. Not only is his dogma-turned-policy failing but his Center for Antiracism Research at Boston University had half of it’s staff laid off and it’s budget slashed recently. This comes after raising fifty-five million dollars. I have to ask where that fifty-five million went?

There is a better question involved here. Why are companies taking this on as an initiative? What’s happening that caused one activist’s religion to become a crusade, bordering a modern-day witch hunt?

In 2017, Larry Fink, CEO of Blackrock, a company that owns just about everything talked about “forcing behaviors” onto companies stating that, if they didn’t, they’d be impacted.

Impacted how? Companies have an ESG (Environmental, Social & Governance) Score that must be maintained and, if not, they lose investment money. If they lose investment money, the company starts to go under and then, hedge funds, investment companies, etc can then just buy it all for pennies on the dollar once the desperation sets in.

As Razörfist put it, this happens in three steps. First, go broke meaning the company begins to suffer financially. Any company that has public investors is now legally-obligated to make money for those investors as they have bought stake in the company and expect a return on investment. Investment is risky but if you purchase stock in a company and the company does well, so do you but you are never guaranteed to make money on your investment and can, in fact, lose money on your investment so if you’re looking to become an investor in a company, do your research and choose wisely. Back to the point, if the company is not making money, the investors won’t roll their profits back into the company in order for the company to grow. The business now has to go look for a loan and that loan comes with a contract. The business is now not allowed to do certain things it may need to if it takes the money. Once money is in hand, now there’s a new investor as equity has essentially been purchased. This is where the second phase kicks in; get woke. Under the terms of the contract the business now has to engage in behaviors it may not normally engage in, this includes hiring practices with hiring managers having to ask State Street for permission to hire white men back in 2021. That’s when the business begins the accelerated trend toward extinction. That’s the third phase of the cycle: Ultimately Croak.

People lose their jobs, businesses fold and these asset managers, hedge funds and banks still walk off with a lion’s share of what is left while those whom have worked, that includes DEI hires getting nothing.

Doesn’t that reek of basically enabling a plantation-style wage-slavery to anyone else? Meanwhile, those in the DEI ideology will claim that capitalism has failed and now, socialism must be implemented. Seizure of the means of production by installments is still socialism. As Razörfist once put it, even national socialism (nazism to those not well-versed in history) is still socialism. I recommend you look up that video and check it out.

I know it seems like I’m promoting a sinister, shadowy conspiracy here, however, it’s not lurking in the shadows, it’s right here in plain sight. These activist academics are using people on Main Street to ensure people on Wall Street suck every bit of wealth up to the top and who, really, do you think will be in control if and when that system is put into place? The spoiler here is it will absolutely not be you.

The good news is that we’re beginning to, after the shunning has begun reaching critical mass, show the people involved that they’re an ever-diminishing minority and the people of whom they made enemies is growing in number.

Some have asked me why I became ordained with Universal Life Church Monastery rather than pursue the ordination path with The Troth, an organization of whom I was once a member and the answer is simple. The oath that was expressed in ordination. I watched one of our members during that year’s virtual Trothmoot take their ordination only to have antiracism included in the oath. There were proposals that we voluntarily take a part in a course called Interrogating Whiteness. Keep in mind, that The Troth claimed to be not political, however upon further investigation into the Interrogating Whiteness website, it’s geared at the political ideology of socialism. It was also expressed during the proposal that “we need to become comfortable with being uncomfortable.” Later, it was pointed out that I may have made some in the group uncomfortable with how I named one of my tarot readings. It was evident to me that the door didn’t truly swing both ways. As well, anytime I offered something reasonable, I encountered “That’s Not Enough” in response on more than one occasion. From all of that, I knew that I could not morally and ethically take that oath. Path to ordination was going to be extremely conditional and anything I did, no matter how reasonable, would not be enough. Any work to bring someone out of a truly racist organization, such as the Asatru Folk Assembly, would have been negated by these types of responses in extremity and there would have been nothing at all I could do about it because, if I work to bring someone out of extreme thought, I will not take kindly to someone illustrating that the AFA’s rhetoric might have some kernel of truth to it. Morally, ethically, I will not spend time trying to show someone that things aren’t really that bad (and they’re not) only to have someone else try to convince them that it’s that bad in the other direction and that they deserve to be punished for it. Out of the question. It’s simply unreasonable.

That’s the good news I want to cap off with, dear reader and if you’ve stayed this long, I thank you.

I hate this “culture war” and everything to do with it. I stand against extremist mobs of every type. I only have two middle fingers to cast to each, so each will only have to share. You’re a human being no matter which complexion your sporting, what you do in the bedroom (which is none of my business in the least,) or your level of ability.

I hate the rhetoric of each “side.” I hate the actions of each “side.” To me, each “side” are both making every attempt to slap labels to us, put us in boxes and ship us out, Destination: Unknown. I roundly reject that type of thought because each “side” only truly differs in how they want us divided. Each “side” has a conspiracy theory they claim is right. Each “side’s” hatred toward the other is getting so intense that if one “side” proclaims oxygen to be healthy, the other will start advocating for plastic bags to be put around their heads.

I’m sure you see the problem same as I do and I’m sure you’re just as disgusted with it as I am.

In the 90s when I was a kid, we put the -isms and -phobias on display to mock and ridicule them and laugh at them for how ridiculous they were. Don’t look at me, the late 70s and early 80s started it but the 90s kept it going. We had that on life-support and it was fading fast. By ‘08, even I was certain it was over to a degree because we finally elected a president of color. In the back of my mind, I knew he was a Wall Street guy and I knew he would do everything he could to divide us but I still gave him a chance. By 2012, my cautious optimism had given way to hoping the doomsayers were correct and the world would start undergoing the catastrophes that the movie 2012 had presented because at least it then, would have been over.

The good news is that the tide is turning and the pendulum is beginning to show signs of swinging the other way. This is where we need to be the most cautious, reader. If we don’t, then all we’re in for is another extreme that will be worse than the one we currently have.

I urge you all to understand that if you’re holding extreme views to examine them and get your head unstuck from the screen. Get out of the culture war entirely. Look around you and ask yourself if you’re really having these problems in your every day life. Don’t view it for what you want. View it for what it is. It needs to be self-evident to you and if you react with an extreme thought, ask yourself why. When it comes to revenge, an eye for an eye will only wind up making the world blind but in an age where we get over ourselves, laugh at how ridiculous we’ve been and are being and be ready, willing and able to take someone who doesn’t have necessary skills and teach them and equip them and be willing to learn if we don’t have those skills, maybe we can make a much better tomorrow that doesn’t involve investment bankers sucking every dollar out of our pockets only to enslave us with the mere scraps from their continued avaricious feasts.

Just remember that when anyone with an extreme view comes your way claiming you need to be antiracist, ask how you fit in and beware the term “ally” because, as we’ve seen in recent news…I think we all know what that really means.

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