Extrapolation

I've got a Samsung Galaxy S5 smartphone I've customized to the nth degree therefore everyone who utilizes Android is neither cheap nor stupid.

I'm rich, everybody I know is rich, therefore EVERYBODY must be rich!

The problem with today's society is people can only see through their own eyes. I think this happened when the Fairness Doctrine evaporated, cable news came to dominate and Reagan legitimized greed.

THERE YOU GO AGAIN BOBBY! REAGAN WAS OUR GREATEST PRESIDENT EVER!

People are afraid to speak up or run for office because of the plethora of uninformed blowhards who can't see beyond their own little fiefdoms.

I use vinyl, I like vinyl, the press writes about vinyl, therefore vinyl must be making a huge comeback, it's here to stay, it's gonna be bigger than ever.

Only statistics state otherwise, vinyl is 1% of the market... Actually less if you factor in streaming and theft and many other ways people acquire and listen to music.

But you can't say anything negative about vinyl, because the LP lovers will rain down upon your parade. You're screwing with their identities.

Yup, that's America... A melting pot where we all want nothing to change. Where we all want cell access but no cell towers. Where we don't want to sacrifice even a teeny bit for the greater good. Or we pay lip service to inanities.

Like signing at concerts.

Huh?

More power to you if you're deaf and going to the show, but I've got an insight for you, even the HEARING people can't understand the lyrics!

I'm not saying that we shouldn't have wheelchair ramps, but I am saying that America is bending so far over to avoid offending anybody that we've got mental gridlock.

Forget the blowhards in the media. They know what they're doing. They've got talking points, they want to move the ball. Yup, Fox and MSNBC are playing football, it's not about the news. Hell, even the WSJ, the right wing paper of record, got it right yesterday, stating that the Amazon/Hachette fracas is a direct result of an ignorant government that blew up the agency model all under the guise of benefiting the public.

In other words, if you're not willing to see the other person's viewpoint, you're not gonna know much.

But you've also got to know that your personal experience cannot necessarily be extrapolated to the world at large. And by being so easily offended that you've been lumped into a group you don't identify with, you're now part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Statistics tell us most people are not on KitKat, hell, most people don't even know what KitKat is, they think it's a candy bar. But there are advantages to having everybody on the same OS. Just because you're on KitKat, that does not mean everybody else is!

And just because Apple is rich and smug that does not make them right, nor a repository for hatred. Hell, you might have had an iRiver or some other fakokta MP3 player but the truth is almost everybody had an iPod. And if we can't agree on facts, we can't move forward as a society.

Sure, some people are going to lose in a move to socialized medicine, but the benefits will outweigh the losses. You won't have to pay for the indigent who go to the emergency room.

But no one wants to sacrifice in America anymore. They just want to complain.

Everybody's a self-styled expert, basing their opinions on little more than what they can see at the end of their nose.

So you've got politicians contradicting themselves, saying there's no global warming for the ignorant, but stating there is for the residents of Miami.

Everybody's playing a game, where they're trying to win.

And the truth is, most people vocalizing don't even know what the game is. These self-styled experts are being screwed by the string-pullers as they try to get ahead.

Spotify payments aren't big enough!

Then stop stealing and get all your fans to buy albums, better yet, get everybody to subscribe to Spotify Premium. But you don't want to take any personal responsibility, you'd just rather complain about the way things are.

And the truth is our country is being cleaved as you ignorantly pontificate about the irrelevant. The rich and connected control the government, the elite schools, the jobs and the money.

But you're arguing about smartphones.

Apple is important because it's building an ecosystem of tools that will make our lives better. Will the company succeed?

All their competitors are not as effective, because of a multiplicity of products that don't seamlessly work together.

Oh, that's right, YOU'VE got a solution!

But we don't care about you, we care about EVERYBODY!

And the truth is most people are sheep. There's a handful of early adopters. And if a product is good enough, and lucky enough, there will be a tipping point where the masses will follow the early adopters into a new world.

But everybody in the old world hates this. We must keep buying CDs and physical books and pay as much as we did before otherwise...

Otherwise WHAT?

Your life might be a bit different.

And the truth is, when it comes to technology, your life is probably better.

But you're still poor and powerless so you yell and kvetch and those who truly have any power ignore you.

That's right.

Everybody's ignoring you because you're myopic and disorganized.

Educate people, wake them up, build a mass, then you've got a chance to effect your preferred solution.

Instead, those in power love the disarray. The poor and disaffected can't get their house in order. They'd rather stay home, watch reality television and drink. That's how vapid their little lives are.

When the truth is those people changing the world barely sleep, and make a lot of money, and move mountains.

And everybody else HATES them for it!

So which way do you want to have it, who do you want to be? Someone who effects change or someone who carps? Someone who can see the big picture or someone who can only see their own environment?

One person can change the world. Through insight and will.

But we have an educational system that decries insight. That's what they teach at those elite institutions, the ability to hold two contrasting opinions in your brain at the same time.

Like I love Android, but most people who use Android have cheap phones and don't utilize most of its power.

Like I love vinyl, but it's a niche product, like Civil War re-enactment, and it will never go mainstream, its heyday is done.

Like I have my own personal preferences and beliefs, but if I want to effect change, I've got to do something that affects everyone.

So we've got country artists bitching that the hits are all about tailgates, rims and booze.

THEY ARE!

But the truth is these hits are catchy and the Americana dreck has got great lyrics and not so catchy tunes. Write a catchy tune that says something and we'll all be interested.

But you won't. Because you think your music is good enough. And everybody YOU KNOW hates the hit music and loves Americana.

And there we've got the problem right there. Unless you're willing to wade into the mainstream and do what they do better, you're never gonna win.

But you don't really want to win, you really want to BITCH!

P.S. Just because the winners work hard and make money that makes them neither right nor admirable, but you must admit they're smart. Unfortunately, smart is oftentimes a product of education, and the rich and entitled have an ever tightening grip on that. It's hard to pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you're disadvantaged, I believe you should be given help, but at the end of the day you've got to take action as an individual.

P.P.S. Stop being proud to be poor. I'm not saying poor is admirable, I've lived on nothing, it's heartbreaking and you never really recover. But my point is don't keep telling everybody how you can't afford this, or it would be nice to have that. The truth is you've got some money, and your choices are different, or you're a saver. In other words, you're lying about being disadvantaged. But the rich don't do this. They're proud of what they achieve. In other words, if you went to a good school and pay your bills and drive a ten year old car that does not make you BETTER than those with more money, and conversely, those with more are not better than you. I'm not impressed by you turning your pockets inside out.

P.P.P.S. If you truly are poor, you're probably not reading this, you most likely don't have internet access. Poverty is a stigma and a hard hole to lift yourself out of. But if you dropped out of community college and do manual labor and dream of being a singer that's a choice, not a sentence, and you're sacrificing for your dream just like any entrepreneur. You choose this life, you choose the long odds, you could have played it safe and you didn't. If the end result is you live on nothing...THAT'S YOUR CHOICE!


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