Destiny

You know, I wonder whether most of these myths get started because writers feel squeamish about not having control–that they clutch at whatever they can to give them the illusion of control, or at whatever explanation gives them that illusion.

...

Another way to deal with the lack of control is to cling to someone who will save you. Hence all the agent myths. If you can’t control your own destiny, then find someone who can and hand over everything to them.

-Joe Vasicek

Suddenly, after decades of dealing with people of the most outlandish beliefs and far-left politics, slavish adherence to gun-control and environmental myths, and blind eyes to the misbehavior of their "elites"...

It makes sense now.

If you can’t control your own destiny, then find someone who can and hand over everything to them. And if someone else crosses your path who is completely outside your world, who exists in the self-assured belief that they control their own destiny... either they must be an elite that you can hand your destiny over to, or they are a threat to your entire world, because they challenge your deepest beliefs, your basest fears, and your ego.

And if the person you've handed control over to is a little crazy, and greedy, corrupt, misogynist, inclined to party on the nation's dime... well, they're still the one who will save you, so you turn a blind eye to their shortcomings and still trust in them - because there's no one else, and you believe you can't do it.

So when that vet, or that neighbor, or that other economist, or that immigrant from a country where they've already tried socialism and seen its murderous logic at its fullest, tells you that you and you alone are responsible for your own destiny, and you have failed yourself, your community, your family, and your nation by handing that control over - when they mock your belief in your betters, and point out how the people you trust to make it all better never will, just by existing, then they become a threat to your ego, your worldview, your sanity, your culture, and your religion.

It's not baseless hatred for the NRA - it's fear. It's fear that strikes at their root of who they are, and they respond to that fear with the same hatred self-assured people who protect and defend their own destiny reserve for terrorists who blow up skyscrapers and insane, evil beings who choose to slaughter their schoolmates for revenge, glory, and power.

That's why we are "the domestic terrorists." Because we terrify them with our freedom, our independence. We shame them. We mock them, just by existing. We defy all the myths, do not follow any of the rules, pay no attention to our betters, and nothing bad happens to us.

Worse yet, we win. And we keep winning. And no matter how much they try to get their elite to punish us, to force us to capitulate, we keep on existing, unashamedly, and pushing back. So hold your head high, my friends, and when you run across not just a neighbor who disagrees with you politically, but one who screams "you have blood on your hands because you own a gun / don't believe in global warming / are a capitalist pig"... look at them as the small and terrified soul that they are, and pity them. They're screaming out of fear, because we shatter their myths with the casual arrogance of Godzilla rampaging across Tokyo merely by living our own lives.

You are responsible for yourself, and your destiny is in your own hands. Own it, in all the glory and all the pain that will come - it is only one life, but it is yours, and it is up to you to live it.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Invictus,
by William Ernest Henley