Guiding youngsters gently into the harsh realities of life is the best way of creating mature adults.
There used to be a company, in Wales, which produced novelty vending machines, which had a sticker on the front proclaiming that, for a nominal sum, the user would get "a prize every time".
Then there's the well-meaning socialist sports day in which everyone, wherever they ended on the field, would get a trophy. Obviously, this was conceived with the best of intentions by people who, in all probability, have had sand kicked in their faces too, too many times and who wanted to raise a salad-and-tofu fist up to the vicissitudes of reality. But as we all know, roads paved with diamond intent lead to some pretty awful places and, of course, not being able to cope with reality is one of the worst places imaginable.
The concept of winners and losers isn't meant to deflate and demoralise. Naturally, it will demoralise some, but that's partly because they don't have the support structures in place to fling them back out into the arena which, as many psychologists are wont to aver, is the best of actions. You see this with people who have had a prang in the car, or who've been thrown from a horse: the best advice is often to get back into it - drive the car still, if it's still driveable: get back on the spirited steed, if it hasn't bolted for the hills. What you don't want to do is forget it ever happened, instead you learn the lessons the experience has taught you, alter your technique.
That is how you learn.
Pretending that the winning is in the taking part instead of clearing the highest bar, beating your nearest competitor to the tape by a blinkered nose or disturbing the most distant blade of grass is, well, tantamount to communism. Think about it: if you're going to be paid the same whether you're a brain surgeon or a street-sweeper then why, barring an ephemeral sense of satisfaction or, perhaps, a gun to the head, would you bother to put yourself to the stress of the former? It's all very well saying that it isn't the winning but the taking part that is important, and whatever other balmy platitudes one anoints those who don't make the effort with, but if the last man gets the same prize as the first, what's the point of making the effort?
Besides, losing occasionally steels one for the inevitable disappointments life is wont to swing around. If you don't experience these things in a manageable environment, what are you going to do when the bottom falls out of your worldview? Become a social justice warrior?
Good luck with that!
What do you think? How has the occasional loss helped you to grow? Let us know in the comments section below and, as always, please do like and share this article.
Social Justice Warriors come in all shapes and sizes.
These pansies attack anyone who dare to say anything which could be even slightly regarded in the least bit negative about women, programmed by the "micro-aggression" culture, notwithstanding the actual intent behind the words. Gone are the days when "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me": now even the United Nations is considering a "cyber touch" to be as harmful as a physical touch, which is why the names have been omitted from this article - but they know who they are. True, women are sacred - but to mount them atop a pedestal in a glass case is also wrong.
The rag-week harpy - they are often young and relatively unfamiliar with the ways of the world, yet ready and willing to vociferously announce that ignorance to the world - is usually given the tinder of resentment by those who have carried unresolved disappointments throughout their lives and are keen to poison the youthful and impressionable minds of those in their care. She then uses that tinder in the fire and energy of her youth to stoke a raging inferno, unbounded by hearth or grate, such that it becomes all consuming. She uses the force of her half-understood argument to activate the confirmation biases of those in positions of authority, such as the United Nations, to affect the lives of the harmless as if they had done the most egregious wrong, or else to use that argument in militancy until those who Would Not Listen to her discordant screeches buckle in submission. The buck, however, stops with the unbending.
Enter Donald Trump, stage right. Buoyed by electoral success, from those with whom the tolerance for this screeching had worn thin and from the Brexit pioneers whose courage encouraged them, Trump is on course to put an end to the harpy by depriving it of its habitat. Feeding, as it does, on the social pressure to be Politically Correct, it will find no succour in Trump's America and, America being in many respects the bellwether for the western world, it will be forced onto less anti-social fare and, thus, tamed.
It may not have been pretty - it may not even have been seemly - but American President-Elect Donald Trump's surprise win on 8th November is a great motivator.
In a country where electoral success has usually followed the money Trump was at an acute disadvantage. Whilst he is worth anything from $1bn to $10bn depending on the markets, Hillarity was getting her fill of generous campaign donations from the crooked and the venal pay-for-play marks. Remember, you can't cheat an honest man.
But what has been done gives hope to all those struggling to find success. After all, if The Donald can do it on a relative shoestring (although with campaign funds running into the millions, that's a pretty big shoestring even if, against the Clingon billions it's still a shoestring), then anything is possible. And that's my point.
It's classic Olinsky - the false accusation of the opposition of things the accusers are themselves guilty of.
Now the Left is trying to get at the Electoral College system. They are trying, first, to say that the election result on the popular vote gives it to the Democrats. There are three problems with this: firstly although, for a while, there was a voter difference favouring Hillarity for a while, there were reports that, once the final three states declared, Trump got the popular vote too, by a margin of some seven hundred thousand votes - 62.2 million for Hillarity as against 62.9 million for Trump, giving him about 303 Electoral Votes: close, Hillarity but - ahem - no cigar. Then, when you factor in second problem, around three million dead "voters" and approximately three million illegal voters, the latter of whom were sanctioned by Obama: then Trump's win is decisive. The third problem is that the Electoral College system is the one used to fight the election. If it needed changing, then it would have been fair to change it outside of the electoral cycle, such as just after a new president has been sworn into office. Even then, it would be the height of skulduggery to use that change to then influence the election that preceded the change: retroactive legislation is always a problem.
Secondly, others - not necessarily on the Left, for the President Elect has drawn ire from within his own party platform too - are trying to block Trump's path to the WhiteHouse by having the Electoral College select a surrogate, a Hamilton Candidate. There is, apparently, provision for this in the Constitution such that processes could be put in play to prevent unsuitable candidates from assuming office. It's unclear, however, what makes Trump unsuitable: unconventional, certainly, but unsuitable? The reasons I have heard range from hearsay to slander, including that Trump had the support of the KKK - even though he didn't solicit such support, nor is the admiration reciprocated - and that the Alt Right, such as it can be clearly defined and which supported Trump, is said to be a white supremacy movement, when it is nothing of the sort. Then there are the usual ad-hominems which are either unproven, unproven or debunked all.
I was reading an opinion piece by self-made millionaire James Caan, CBE, recently, in which he calmly and rationally freaked out about the Brexit result.
On the issue of the falling pound, many economists are of the opinion that the pound has been over-valued for a long time anyway, and a haircut was long overdue. The value of Sterling is dependant on many things, not least of which is the relative value of other currencies. The American economy has started moving in positive directions and therefore the dollar, the other half of the cable pair, is forcing the pound to look weaker in relation. Add to which the likes of George Soros and his, now widely known, appetite for world government, for which the European Union was a test-bed, and you have someone who can manipulate forex markets by dint of his great wealth.
On the face of it, the Law would appear to be as applicable to the very wealthy as to the very poor. This is how it should be.
Of course, Trey Gowdy is American - an American legislator, no less. He sprang to fame during the Benghazi hearings, from which we learnt of Hillarity Clingon's private email server if nothing else. It's possible that the American system of jurisprudence is materially different enough from that of the British that American law is the Great Equaliser - but I wouldn't count on it. You see, wherever you go in the world, be it the Americas, Australia, India, Russia, Britain, I would imagine that, unless the law is so flexible as to militate against codification - if, in other words, it's arbitrary, as in a repressive dictatorship - there will always be loopholes and secret tunnels through the Law well known to lawyers. And even were that arbitrary nature manipulable by lawyers, the skill of the lawyer would still come at a price.
Throughout the election campaign, Hillarity Clingon kept pressing the fact that Donald Trump has no government experience.
Naturally, knowing the ropes would make things run a little smoother, but when you're in business you often have to learn on the job, as it were. Every situation is different - every customer is different - and to act in one situation as you did in another could have the situation practice some impromptu dentistry upon you.
Besides, having only the rudiments as a guide is often a great source of innovation. If you have the established to guide you, it's always a temptation to run your schemes along already-lain tracks rather than to lay your own. After all, that way is easy but, as Einstein reminded us, one popular definition of insanity is to do the same thing and expect different results. If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got: everyone knows that. And Trump is a game-changer: he's proven that by defying all expectations to become the President-Elect.
I believe it was Bill Clinton, in his 1992 election race, who said "it's the economy, stupid" (as opposed to his 2016 motto I'm with Stupid) - and indeed if you've got the beans, you've got the means, as it were. Economic success will open more doors than a house-to-house chauffeur, and this is where the genius of the business-government crossover lurks. Of course, that Trump has more plans than making the American economy great is crême-Anglais on the apple pie, salt on those there hominy-grits, ketchup with that Macdieselburger, but the way he's going to do that is firstly down to bringing home the bacon.
From Cher to Jay Z and tinsel-knickers, from Miley Cyrus to Amy Schumer, from Lena Dunham to Al Sharpton, from wotsisface to thingy, celebrities and has-beens alike have been falling over themselves to look like born fools over the election of Donald Trump.
None of them have yet applied for citizenship of another country or, in the case of Cher and a few other jellybeans, another planet.
Also, there's this clique in Tinselvania which more-or-less renders unemployable any actors who would dare vote... yeugh... Republican. Even if actors have it in their minds so to do, they will make a play to the Democrat gallery lest anyone suspect that they are batting for the other team, so to speak. Oh, don't get me wrong, you can be gayer than a treeful of sleep-deprived absinthe salesmen, camper than several pairs of comedy breasts fashioned into a disco ball and more louche than an unsecured nutter, but be a Ra-Ra-Republican and, whilst the tolerant liberals are in charge you'll never work in this town again.
But for those poor souls who have to get by on a mere whim of studio favour, they have to go through the motions, no matter how putrid the septic tank. That they haven't seen fit to follow through on their promises, however, has blown their little scheme to smithereens, no longer to be believed except by the most vapid and vacant star-struck individuals.
Have you ever wondered why Hillarity Clingon is not now President Elect of the United States of America?
But I'll tell you one good reason. She never got any criticism, at least not from anyone within her circle. If the stories are correct, also, she would bite the head off anyone who dared question her, anyway, so no real surprises there.
A good maxim to live by, for those who want any degree of success in life, is to take responsibility for your current situation, because only then can you begin to effect the change you wish to see.
If the President-Elect took time out of his schedule to address the rioters, telling them that all the fears they have been cajoled into investing emotions in, of gays being exterminated - he's not a Muslim, after all - or Latinos and Blacks being held in concentration camps and women being chained to the stove, are nonsense, and giving some proof thereof, then it might at least thin out the protesters. It might, of course, not - but even in that case, his stock will have risen enough for Barmy Banana himself to be shamed into action.
Naturally, the owning of a problem, the assumption of responsibility, is not always a function of culpability, nor should it always be viewed as such. If people, generally, put two and two together and make five well, that might be a barrier to this being done: nonetheless, it would be an excellent bona fide which would help in the cohesion Trump has vowed to foster.
