Contemplations On The Empty Manger

Childless-by-Choice in the Season of the Infant

Another Winter Solstice has passed and today the light is beginning to return. Out here in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that means our overcrowded mini-metropolis only has a few more days of "Christmas Crazy" to go. This is the season when we load up with tourists and families returning for the holidays, and between the drunk drivers and rage-a-holics it's a good time to stay off the roads as much as possible.

There always seem to be strange stories that appear during this season: massive apartment fires, plane crashes, bodies in bathtubs covered in concrete and coffee grounds. Then there's also the tragic but less remarkable uptick in assaults and domestic violence. Otherwise good people are on edge because of the stress of having to make everything "perfect" for their families even though they can't afford it. It seems like being poor is the worst thing someone can be accused these days, and Christmas is when you have to put up or shut up because all the neighbors are watching.

Credit cards start to max out with 25% interest, but that's okay because it's necessary to show off the outward signs of success by lavishing our families with expensive gifts. We have the rest of the year to figure out how to balance the checkbook, yeah? It’s a season of hope alright, but not the version they teach in Sunday school.

People want their kids to have the same experiences they had back in the day even though that world doesn't exist anymore, yet in the back of their minds they know the bills are piling up at a time when groceries have more than doubled in price. Eventually some folks will cross the line where recovery becomes impossible, so in order to keep those thoughts at bay they push the gas pedal a little harder on the freeway and cut off the nameless driver next to them, taking out their aggressions on each other like starving rats in a cage.

It feels like a lifetime ago since I saw the documentary Life and Debt at a small independent film festival, but I still remember being shocked to the core by the premise. The movie was about the IMF using loan shark tactics to bankrupt Jamaica and it was backed up by a solid Tuff Gong soundtrack that really drove the point home. It just so happens that I was also working with Jamaicans at the time who were able to verify everything. For me it seemed like Grand Theft Nation, a crime of the century that should be the headline of every newspaper across the globe. For them it was just a grim reality they were forced to contend with every day.

The ones who were lucky enough to grab H2-B visas scraped together all the savings they had to buy a plane ticket to the States and worked their fingers to the bone so that they could send money back to their families. Twenty of them would rent an unfurnished house with mattresses on the floor and come up with a schedule to rotate beds. An adventurous friend tried dating one, but when he invited her over to spend the night she was turned off by his attempt to consummate their relationship in a room with no privacy.

It was a few more years until I put the pieces together and figured out that our government had the same plan for us. Just like how our police officers went from blue collar friendlies to black tactical storm troopers and brought the war in the Middle East to our highways and doorsteps, the very same inflation and debt bombs we used on countless other countries were eventually dropped on Main Street and left a smoking crater of 3rd world corruption and destitution where our economy used to be. I rarely return to the mainland now because it's so depressing. When you're in the middle of it the decline the gradual changes are much less noticeable, but coming back after a few years to see abandoned buildings and grass growing empty parking lots where my childhood memories of a wealthy nation took place always hits me like a gut punch. At times I wish I could put on my blinders like everyone else and pretend like it's not happening but I'm not wired like that. I've always been the nosy kid who wants to know how the machine works, even if it's broken.

Yes, I'm aware these aren't the typical platitudes that people expect writers to crank out over the holidays, and maybe if I had children I would be more focused on wrapping presents and intricately stuffing stockings like my mom used to do in order to make their experience special. That actually sounds like a nice distraction even with the heaps of extra stress involved, but now my Solstice rituals are completed and tomorrow is just another day to catch up on chores and maybe bake some banana bread and lilikoi butter.

Usually I don't mind relaxing a home while the rest of the world gears up for a post-holiday depression, but something unpleasant finally happened at work last week and even though I had been preparing for it, the ordeal was far more mentally taxing than I imagined. Someone with better connections successfully pushed me out of one of my jobs despite my hard work and commitment, and the excuse I got from management was "Well, it's the holidays and he has kids". Those words felt like a container ship of irony being dropped on my head, and the guilt-tripping manipulation tactics didn't stop there. The insinuation was that I'm somehow selfish and therefore less deserving of an opportunity even though for me the choice to not have children feels like a major sacrifice. It's a painful subject that I don't like to talk about, but now that it's becoming more popular for others to push people like us around apparently the time has arrived to start pushing back.

Debt is slavery, and I refuse to become a slave just for the privilege of raising little slaves for the predator class to chew up and spit out. Public education in Hawaii has always been awful, but it wasn't until the Scamdemic that I realized how little this state cares for the welfare of children. Most notable was how they were used as hostages in order to enforce the compliance of their parents. Want to feed your family? Better take the shots and get your nose poked or you can't work and your kids will starve. The schools were also shut down forcing kids to stay home and miss out on some of the most formative experiences of their lives so that parents would be forced to stay home as well. Meanwhile the DEI initiatives were cranked up to 11 and parents were astounded to learn that not only were the kids were being indoctrinated into Marxism, but after the Fedsurrection they were also being coached to turn in their elders for suspicious behavior.

Even though I lost my job at the time I was still able to escape the majority of Covid tyranny because the State did not have that leverage on me. It was difficult enough arguing with everyone about how we were not in any real danger and they were playing Russian roulette with dangerous experimental drugs, so I can only imagine the pressure of throwing an unvaxxed kid in the mix. How would I explain to my progeny that the whole world had gone insane (but daddy knows best) without creating some sort of animosity or psychological issue? Do I stop them from going out and playing with their friends, some of whom were probably shedding spike proteins like crazy? What if one of them slipped up and revealed that I had given them veterinary ivermectin? I'm sure the incompetent monsters at CPS would have a field day with that.

Then there are the practical every day issues. I don't have family here and therefore no one to share the burden with. My wife and I just barely make ends meet with our stripped-down DIY lifestyle, never mind ultra expensive daycare and the rest of the $35k in annual expenses that it costs to raise a kid in this state. And what about the Musical Houses game we have to play every few years in one of the worst rental markets in the world? It's illegal for landlords to discriminate against families but we all know how that works out in reality. Every morning for the last 10 years the first thing I do is check to see if the housing bubble has crashed with my fingers crossed that some farm land will finally open up where we can homeschool and evade the watchful eyes of the corporate leviathan. So far the broken system has continued to roll onward under sheer momentum while our window of opportunity closes.

My wife is already worried about the probability of increased birth defects from her age. I tried to explain to her that it's the criminal vaccine schedule that spiked autism rates from 1/10k a few decades ago to the 1/34 that it is today. Hopefully Bobby Kennedy's campaign won't get drowned in the D.C. swamp and the real data gets released sooner than later, but for now with things the way they are there doesn’t seem like much point in arguing over it. Times are about to get a lot tougher and we need to be a solid unit.

Do I really want to be chasing around a toddler in my 50's, though? Granted I'm in better shape than most thanks to my paranoid conspiracy theories. Knocking seed oils, preservatives, and pasteurized dairy off the shopping list has finally banished the deadly abdominal fat that plagues most other modern adults, but every year my surfboard pop-up gets a little slower. Given our genetics it's unlikely our offspring would turn out to be low-energy bookworms, and the way I save the most money is by fixing things myself. That would be a lot more difficult if I had to constantly look over my shoulder to make sure nobody is playing with razor blades or getting flashed by the welding arc.

The reason I prefer not to contemplate the subject is that it always leads to imagining all the stuff that I could teach them while witnessing the world through their eyes. I want to see them get up after a fall, shake off the dust and try again. I want to pick the first vana out of their toes, show them how to respectfully harvest and field dress their first hog, look up questions that I don't know the answer to, and marvel as they come up with solutions that I never thought of. There's a good chance I'm going to miss out on those experiences and it makes me sad, so instead of dwelling on it I decided to try and work on becoming the best version of myself possible. If the opportunity arises I will be better prepared, but either way I will leave this earth as a much better person than the clueless jerk that I used to be.

For the reasons stated above I would like to make a respectful request for everyone out there who feels like they have a right to use social pressure on people like us because they think being childless-by-choice is some sort of moral failure. We are not the criminal government officials who created this situation, and you have no clue about the pain you might be causing us with your harassment. At best it's annoying, and at worst it's completely counterproductive. Whenever some Ozempic-popping debt slave with psychiatric issues tries cutting me down I automatically start to wonder if they really just want me to be as miserable as they are. Be honest, how often do you run into contented people who enjoy taking others down a notch?

It's also possible that the boosters have yet to reveal their most horrific effects and someday soon people like us will be asked to step up to the plate and help finish what others had started. That's an ancient Hawaiian tradition after all, and it came in very handy whenever plagues and food shortages ravaged the islands in the past. Hopefully that never comes to pass, but do you really want to risk messing with the people who might be put in charge of your legacy someday?

Much love and light to everyone out there in this Season of the Infant. I wish you all health and happiness in the coming year, and hopefully together we can come up with viable alternatives to the dying system that forced millions of people like us to make this difficult choice.

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