Opinion: New year time to accept reality

There haven’t been many years where, as New Year’s Day approached, I thought “I’m glad I survived this one; I wasn’t sure I would.” This has been one of those years.

It was a year marked with unrelated random health emergencies, financial crises partly caused by those health emergencies, and general trouble.

I’m glad to see the year end and I’m hoping next year will be better.

If your past 12 months were rough, I hope the coming year is smooth sailing. If the past year has been good to you, I hope it was merely a hint at the great things to come.

One common thread I noticed running through all the troubles this past year was that government never made any situation better and seemed actively determined to make each of them worse in some way. Often, in multiple ways.

I can’t figure out why anyone would want to keep this parasitic institution around. It’s like insisting you need your alien brain slug and don’t want anyone pointing out the harm it’s doing to your health. It’s a net negative in your life and for society and you don’t need it (but it spends a lot of your money trying to fool you into believing you do).

If this thought offends you or hurts your feelings you might need to realize reality doesn’t care about your feelings. Reality simply is, whether you like it or not.

A new year is a great time to decide to accept reality anew. Work with how things are, and if you don’t like them, see if you can do something to change the way things are and will be into the future. Change is going to happen; see if you can guide it.

This is what I do. Most people act as though government is a concrete thing with rights or authority. This is the reality I have to work with. I do my best to point out to these people that the emperor has no clothes. They can believe me or they can continue to live in a fantasy world -- it’s not something I control.

What I can do is keep telling the truth, hoping it makes an eventual impact. Making a better future than might otherwise be. The universe doesn’t care if anyone has a good year. It’s our job, as humans, to help each other have the best year possible. Telling the truth is a good start.

Farwell’s Kent McManigal champions liberty. Contact him at:

[email protected]