reformedorthodox

[reformedorthodox]

Working Class Americans Suffer Because of Capitalism

Here's an interesting fact: Swing districts that dictate the election - rural midwestern states - voted for Obama on his supposedly progressive platform (as we all know, he turned out to be a moderate Republican). These same districts flipped to fascist-sympathizing Trump. How could these districts both support a progressive and regressive platform at the same time? It's because they're not ideologically tied to capitalism or socialism. What I hear from the working-class rural people, and which I think many of my liberal/conservative elite friends tend to ignore, is that working-class rural folks are suffering and they're willing to grasp at anything that will improve their situation. In other words, labels don't matter unless it materially helps them. They're about the facts and real-world results. Their jobs have been exported overseas or automated. Social services have been taken out from under their feet. Most jobs are now in poor-paying service jobs. Drug overdoses are literally assuaging the pain of the crushing economic reality of middle America. Meanwhile, America's stock market is at record highs, CEOs are being paid the highest they have ever been, and corporations are making profits hand over fist. Inequality is the highest it has ever been in America. The economy is chugging along, but the last caboose left these Americans behind. The machinations of our society dictate this outcome. Yes, we can blame capitalism for this. Not only can we say that capitalism delivered this, but we can also point to the exact moment it did: Beginning with Ronald Reagan. With Reagan, we actually saw an economic revolution call neoliberalism - or in other words, capitalism off the rails. It's no coincidence that the decline of rural America coincided with the election of Reagan. It has continued even through the presidencies of supposedly "liberal" presidents Clinton and Obama. You sure as heck won't see an improvement from the personification of greedy capitalism in Donald Trump. The reason why off-the-rails-capitalism/neoliberalism is so insidious to working-class people is that it's very business-friendly. Very business-friendly means the government has a hands-off approach to a business' bottom lines. So when a company wants to send its production away from Ohio to China, neoliberal political leaders say, "Keep on doing that" while tens of thousands of Americans lose their jobs. Multiply this phenomenon across thousands of firms, and you'll see the disenfranchisement of tens of millions of Americans. The search for profits first delivered this, and that can only happen under a capitalist society. This is why we need a fundamental change in our economy. We've tried forty years of off-the-rails-capitalism and despite capitalist apologists, we're seeing inequality at the highest levels since the great depression. If you want to alleviate the pain and suffering of working-class America, you need to grab the bottom line of businesses and put it into social programs. Hell, turn some sectors of the economy completely public. This kind of change can't be done with reform or under any strictures of capitalism; it requires fundamental change. Reform approaches only placate a generation, but never changes the fundamentals. Unless we get fundamental change, rural and working-class Americans will continue to be fleeced by capitalism.

[reformedorthodox]

It’s been a few years and I still have problems with capitalism

My deployment to Iraq defines a large portion of my life. I was a medic attached to a National Guard infantry unit, and despite having a relatively "easy" deployment, I came back with PTSD and depression. An example of the hard transition: I went to Disneyland two weeks after I came back from Iraq. While in a place of enchantment, my cheeks ached. I had been so stern for so long that my smiling muscles were underused. (This also shows how great Disneyland is) That's a light-hearted example. In reality, I silently suffered suicidal thoughts for years, and I dropped out of university multiple times, which lead me to question my service. I sacrificed my body and mind for America, but I kept wondering, "Why?" Ultimately, based on research, the atrocity of the Iraq war is at capitalism's feet. Yes, that economic system that we often credit for giving us democracy, freedom, and a decent paycheck. To understand how we can blame capitalism, let's start from the beginning. To begin the inquiry, it's helpful to look at the five major promises of the war. 1. Iraq held weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) - nuclear, biological and chemical weapons that could attack America - and it was necessaryto make America safe from it 2. Iraq was in cahoots with Al-Qaeda 3. Iraq was involved with 9/11 4. American forces would be welcomed with open arms to embrace western-style democracy 5. The war would be quick and easy As it turned out, none of these promises held a grain of truth. Iraq did not hold WMDs after Desert Storm; Saddam saw Al-Qaeda as a threat to his hegemony; Saddam didn't communicate with Al-Qaeda to coordinate attacks on 9/11; American forces were not welcome en masse; the war lasted nearly a decade. That's a tough pill to swallow as 4,500 troops died in Iraq, and 50,000 severely injured, with veteran suicides routinely outnumbering the troop casualties every year. This adds urgency to the question of "why?" by adding another item: "why was the American public deceived into fighting the war?" Actually, the American public didn't wholly buy the war justifications. 50% of Americans opposed the Iraq war, holding anti-war rallies for months across every major city before the invasion. Obviously, it was not enough, but they saw something the other half did not. For 50% of Americans, the reason we went to Iraq was for oil. Let's investigate this claim. We will look at testimonials and accounts by journalists and soldiers on the ground, including my own. By the time I graduated from initial military training, the Iraq war was ramping up, and I was eager to get into the fight. Training makes you eager to prove your mettle. So I walked up to my First Sergeant and asked to be on the next unit's deployment to Iraq (again, I was in the National Guard, so asking to deploy was a thing). He glinted with pride in his eyes as a young buck offered himself to go to war. I would too if I were in his position. Word got around my unit, and on two separate occasions, Sergeants walked up to me and said something to the effect of, "Why would you volunteer yourself?" One said, "We get into a major war every thirty years and small ones every ten. You'll get your time." The other said something more meaningful to me, "See this ribbon I have here? This ribbon is for fighting for the war on terrorism. I didn't fight any fucking terrorists. I fought the Iraqi Army. There are no fucking terrorists over there." He implied that the war was based on lies. (There would later be insurgents in Iraq, whom we called terrorists) Now, let's look at the ground-level experience of other soldiers. First Lieutenant Paul Rickeoff lead a platoon of soldiers in the hottest areas of Baghdad. In his book "Chasing Ghosts," he recounted the tales of not having the necessary body armor, no humanitarian aid, and no real plan to bring Iraq to its feet. There were death and destruction, and he didn't have the help he needed to help the Iraqi people. In Chris Hedge's and Laila Al-Arrian's book "Collateral Damage," Americans enacted a sort of terrorism to keep civilians in line by routinely conducting home raids, convoys, patrols, detentions, and military checkpoints. Untrained to fight an insurgency, American troops killed indiscriminately both insurgents and civilians. In "War Without End" by Michael Schwartz, he called these acts of terrorism as collective punishment. Of course, there are the deaths involved with insurgents – insurgents who never have fought if we did not invade. The collective punishment, indiscriminate killed, and search and destroy of insurgents killed between 150,000 to 600,000 Iraqis. It also internally displace 2 million Iraqis. A state that had never seen Al-Qaeda now had operatives running from village to village, all the while American troops blindly and haphazardly tried to keep the peace. Journalist Thomas E. Ricks offers a broader perspective on the debacle. Ricks recorded conversations with General Petraeus during the war, a principal coordinator in fighting the insurgency, and wrote his bird's eye view of the Iraq war in the book "Fiasco." In it, we begin to piece together these different random violent experiences of Soldiers and Marines into a larger narrative. Ricks asserts a bold claim: The widespread chaos of individual servicemembers is because America did not have a game plan. Why wouldn't America have a game plan in Iraq? What was its real intention? Ricks continues in his book that during the initial invasion, American troops stood idly by as the bureaucracies and government offices were ransacked (it should be noted that after WWII, America worked in tandem with the defeated police and military to restore order). Instead of protecting the public good, military leaders directed troops to protect oil refineries. During the invasion, American bombers were directed to not hit oil refineries. Then, shortly after the invasion, American contractors were immediately sent to the refineries, and modified the refineries to American proprietary technology, making Iraq dependent on American expertise. Wolfowitz, an architect of the Iraq war, made plans to increase Iraqi oil production from 2.5 million barrels a day to 3.5 million barrels. This focus on protecting oil refineries had dire consequences – millions of Iraqis suffered from a lack of clean water, power, and food because American troops protected oil rather than the livelihood of Iraqis. Thus, it's evident that the Iraq war suffered a lack of coordination for a lot of troops but was very well-coordinated to protect oil interests. I recall hearing Sarah Palin, in the 2008 election, justify the Iraq war by saying, "at least we got oil out of it." (we never did, actually) So what does oil have to do with blaming the Iraq war on capitalism? We've looked at individual experiences and a broad stroke of American actions in Iraq. Now let's step back even further and look at the structures of the American economy. The American economy runs on cheap energy. It is what allows people to commute to work, to enable factories to build gizmos and to travel and enjoy themselves. Every time the price of oil goes up, it gums the economy as money is not spent on goods and services, but is instead gobbled by oil producers. According to the Research Unit for Political Economy in their book "Behind the Invasion of Iraq," America was primed to invade Iraq even before 9/11. The book predicted that America would go to war in Iraq for a simple reason: America needs cheap energy, and it needed to get out of the grip to OPEC. The logic is simple: The goal in a capitalist economy is to generate profits. That's why capitalists invest - they hope to get a return. So they spend to build factories and other materials, until one day, the supply of the goods they produce outstrips demand. As demand declines, producers slow down their production and fire workers. Over investment and underwhelming demand inevitably trigger recessions. There is no right solution to fix the inevitable recession. Still, one way to alleviate a pending recession is to issue a credit to Americans. Americans hold the lion's share of the world's debt. But in order to make sure American keeps spending, debt cannot be piled up into gas for cars or expensive energy for homes. In addition, capitalist economies can help ward off pending economic collapse by using its military: 1. The military secures supplies to oil, furthering access to cheap energy 2. Invading Iraq makes sure oil is always tied to the dollar, which props up the economy 3. Controlling the oil makes sure other economies bend to America's will So there you have it. This is the argument why we went to war in Iraq: to get oil. And why is oil so essential? Because the capitalist economy needs cheap energy, and the dollar needs to remain stable. American adventurism into Iraq harkens to many other colonial projects, like that into the Philippines (so America could have access to Chinese markets), into Central and South America (for cheap labor and resources) and Vietnam (to maintain French colonialism). It also rings true to British, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French colonialism across the globe: To exploit the local resources for profit at home. In the end, the American adventure in Iraq is just another colonial expedition. It functioned with the exact same reasons as European powers at the beginning of the 20th century and often operated with similar brutality. It comes at the price of hundreds of thousands of dead human beings and thousands of injured service members. One can imagine a simple counter-argument: We needed to invade Iraq to maintain American dominance in the world. A conservative friend of mine, a sniper in the Marine Corps, retorted to me, "I don't mind America being #2 behind China if it means we're not invading other countries." I agree: Invading and killing other people in unseen parts of the world is not worth maintaining American hegemony. We can imagine better than the cyclical nature of capitalist invasion; this is why I'm opposed to it.

[reformedorthodox]

Vietnam: The To-Be Ally Turned Enemy

Growing up in the 90s, I was given a pretty stark image of Communism: Ho Chi Minh (the leader of Vietnam) perpetuated mass genocide, flaunted human rights norms, and oppressed the people. But did you know, before the Vietnam war, Ho Chi Minh (HCM) was so revered by the intelligence community that they designated him "Agent 19"? Before HCM was a communist, he was more a nationalist. In other communist countries where they had hard, multiple expulsions of 'capitalists' and their sympathizers, HCM brought into the fold petty capitalists and small-time land owners. He didn't purge them right out. In fact, he saw these people as instrumental in beating out the French colonists. After Vietnam earned their hard-won victory over the French colonists, HCM dissolved the communist party, hoping to appeal to the United States for protection. He wroter letter after letter, asking for US aid. He was so adamant about US aid that he even offered ports as military bases for the US Navy. In fact, when addressing 100,000 people about their victory of the French, HCM quoted from the US Declaration of Independence, again hoping to win their favor. Yet, despite his best efforts to win an ally with America, America didn't listen to the country fighting for its own survival and self-determination - a story that all Americans can identify with. Rather, it listened to its French ally, and former rulers of Vietnam. And to boot, HCM never committed mass genocide, nor flaunted human rights norms, nor oppressed the people. It's hard to prove something that didn't happen. The worst of it, was perhaps the re-education camps of the capitalists once the war was over. But many would later move on to live in the US. Rather, mass genocide and flaunting human rights norms was the purview of the United States - the My Lai massacre comes to mind. America, it seemed, was more interested in keeping its ally happy than listen to the cries for help from a new-found nation. This miscalculation costed millions of Vietnamese lives, tens of thousands of American lives, and lingering effects of Agent Orange and PTSD for both sides.

[reformedorthodox]

Trotsky nailed this 81 years ago. And it still holds true.

[reformedorthodox]

In the Vietnam war, veterans asked why the back side of their helmet covers had a desert pattern on it. Many remarked, jokingly, we would enter into a war in the Middle East. Twenty years later, we defended Kuwait from Iraqi aggression. Twelve years later, we occupied Iraq. Now as we transition from ACUs to OCP, with a refocus on traditional Army doctrine instead of COIN, one must wonder... where are we going to war, next? OCP looks awfully good for fighting in Eastern Europe, or perhaps China? Many ask why I am a socialist/communist. It's not that I hate America. I don't. It's because I like America and what it's given me that drives me to be a socialist/communist. Crazy thought, huh? Since Vietnam, veterans kept telling each other, 'never again' or 'we'll finish the fight so our children don't have to' or 'we won't let this mistake happen again' But the wars keep on coming. One war in Iraq, one war in Afghanistan, and two undeclared wars at the tip of the Arabian peninsula and one in Syria and western Iraq. Counting Vietnam, that's 5/6 ugly wars America has engaged in. (The sixth one being the defense of Kuwait from Saddam. Most Americans agree that's okay. This doesn't also include the numerous smaller engagements like Somalia, or in Panama.) Now we're tens of thousands of military dead from these wars, millions of people displaced, and I just can't help but wonder: "Why do we keep fighting these wars? Why does this happen with such regularity?" At this rate, by the time I'm 40, we'll be in another minor war, and by the time I'm 60, we'll be in another major war. How many more men must die? How many more civilians must suffer before we realize that this are wars of choice, wars for money, wars of aggression - all under the guise of democracy and freedom. What is never mentioned is our secret desire for more money. In Vietnam, it was to protect French colonial interests in the region. In the first Gulf war, it was to protect Kuwait's oil fields. The invasion of Afghanistan was justified, mostly, if we gave a damn about it instead of losing our focus in Iraq - which we invaded for oil. All these were under the guise of 'the domino theory' 'WMDs' 'fight the Taliban (people we supported in the past).' All of these justifications were either falsified or our own making. When we enter war with either China or Russia, we must ask - what is our monied interests?

[reformedorthodox]

In the deep, heavy darkness of the foul-smelling hold of the ship, where they could not see the sky, nor hear the night noises, nor feel the warm compassion of the tribe, they held their breath against the agony... In a strange moment, when you suddenly caught your breath, did some intimation from the future give to your spirits a hint of promise? In the darkness did you hear the silent feet of your children beating a melody of freedom to words which you would never know, in a land in which your bones would be warmed again in the depths of the cold earth in which you will sleep unknown, unrealized and alone?

Howard Thurman, On View the Coasts of Africa

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I'm currently a reader (teaching assistant without the ability to teach, just grade and assist) for an upper-division course on Social Movements and Public Policy - it's essentially a class on black communist radicals and how they lurched the civil rights movement in its direction in the 20th century. In reading the text, I stumbled upon this bittersweet, emotional and reflective quote about the black experience.

[reformedorthodox]

Soldiers = Hero

In some circles, every service member is a hero. But if everyone is a hero, everyone is the same, thus they are nobodies.

There are heroes in the ranks, and certainly some are brave to serve, but don't be quick to call someone a hero. In fact, some service members relish the idea of killing another human being.

[reformedorthodox]

Chief operating officer Troy Alstead said the company will increase starting-pay rates in all U.S. markets beginning in January and allow visible tattoos. Starbucks is also creating a contest that offers winners “Starbucks for Life.”

Ugh, socialists, thinking they can educated their workers and give them good pay. /s

[reformedorthodox]

Hundreds of NYPD Officers Turn Their Backs on Mayor

When a mayor runs on a police-reform platform, and is blamed for the dead of a police officer by someone who was obviously mentally deranged... You wonder, when did the mob mentality take over the police force?

[reformedorthodox]

Torture After 9/11

It may seem, to those who see America under the spectre of a random, terroristic harm, that torture is a justified mean of extracting information. If it saves American lives, why not apply pain and duress to someone who is obviously a bad guy? On balance, it appears that torturing comes out ahead despite its gruesomeness.

My reply is that on balance, in the short-term, it is true. But on the scale of months and years, it costs more lives than we all would collectively be willing to admit. Actionable intelligence from torture may win a battle, but vast civil unrest resulting from torture can and has upended occupying armies. Torture by the British during the American revolutionary war was a major coalescing factor in George Washington’s Army. 

George Washington believed torture endangers the treatment of caught American soldiers, thus he forbade the Continental Army from practicing it. In addition, Napoleon proclaimed torture produces poor, unreliable intelligence.

Two great tacticians, two broad statements that can guide our policy: Torture endangers our own troops and the intelligence is not always reliable.

Deeper than that, there is a moral argument to be made against torture, but I suspect those who support torture would consider themselves realist, and that’s the audience I’m writing to. They understand that war is brutal and tough. War requires a certain sacrifice of morality. The nature of today's threats, realists may argue, is so random and so hidden that the old rules of war from GW's and Napoleon's time do not apply. If we don’t torture, people will die. Thus, their argument could be summed up in this way: "Survival depends on discarding some moral authority in the most immoral of human conditions, random, unpredictable warfare.” 

If the discarding of morality in warfare was true, we would not have rules to warfare. It would be more chaos. Yet, there’s a reason why soldiers today do not pillage and why the nation, on the whole, seeks to abide by the Geneva conventions even against adversaries who do not abide by it.

The reason is that betraying the rules of war creates more chaos in an already chaotic environment. This may be hard for many to imagine, but the rules of war do allow for a certain order. When we violate these rules, the increased chaos costs American lives. These rules, very importantly, include the idea of not torturing.

When we betray our own rules of warfare, we create a precedence for our enemies to behave in similar barbaric and dangerous ways, and we give up the moral high ground. As we give up the moral high ground, we give one additional arrow to America’s enemies to shoot us with. 

The Neo-Cons will argue that these jihadists are brutal and will kill Americans no matter what, and therefore torturing should be permissible. This is not necessarily always the case - a major reason why Americans stayed in Iraq was directly related to Abu Ghraib and the torture that occurred there. That lead to major fighting in the Sunni triangle, costing hundreds of precious American lives.

Are we fighting with one hand tied behind our back? Yes. Because we can. Because we’re strong. Because doing so otherwise can mean we can lose in the end, even if there are short-term gains. As Nietzsche once said:

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster." 

Let’s not be mistaken: Torture is monstrous. 

[reformedorthodox]

Seven Reasons Police Brutality Is Systemic, Not Anecdotal

Official misconduct doesn't just come from "a few bad apples."

After healthcare reform, gay civil rights being won and the drawdown of US troops in the Middle East (which at this time is at the precipice of another full-out war) - the new Civil Rights movement is gearing towards one of the many facets of what the executive power can exercise: The power to execute. 

In other words, the power to kill. 

As our national debate turns turns and focuses on police brutality, many corners of American society will undoubtedly feel uncomfortable, lashing out with anger and frustration. A quick tune to Fox News bears this fact easily.

Do not be confused, however, who is getting the rawer deal: Not the white Americans frustrated that race is being used to frame the debate, but it is actually the minorities who are disproportionately killed by police. The minorities have been mad for a while. The whites are mad because 'race' has entered into the conversation recently.

Claims of "race-baiting" by conservative whites are deaf to the cries of the racial minorities, whose protests have recently reached a crescendo. 

I could go on about why there is a case against this prejudice and racist mindset, but if we are to convince others the new civil rights agenda against police brutality and the apparent racial divide, it is best to convince the skeptics with a voice from their own fold: The American Conservative.

In this article, the writers discuss how the problems of police brutality is not a one-off occurrence in society, that even individual attributions of being "aggressive against police" does not stand against the overwhelming evidence that on the whole, police target, profile, arrest and kill blacks largely disproportionate to their population numbers.

[reformedorthodox]

PSA: Imperial President?

Public service announcement about basic government function: 

(1) Executive orders are legal and even George Washington used them

(2) Can always be repealed and/or constrained by congress

(3) Using evidence of 'executive action' to claim Obama is an 'Emperor' would also mean that Obama is 'emperor-lite' - he's issued nearly half of what Reagan did

(4) Using 'emperor' and 'imperial' to describe Obama's recent action puts the discussion on Obama's character and perceived flaws, rather than the real issue at hand: Undocumented/illegal residents in the United States. 

Educate yourself. Get over 'imperial' and talk about what it's really about. America's character and humanity. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_order

/rant

[reformedorthodox]

GOP be like, "Man, Putin is an awesome hard-ass leader. Wish we had a guy like him to stand up to bullies." Obama acts like an "emperor" and GOP be like, "Oh no he can't act like that."

[reformedorthodox]

[reformedorthodox]

FECAL MATTER IS EXPECTED TO ECLIPSE ALL OTHER NATIONAL SECURITY ISSUES, THE VETERANS ADMINISTRATION DEBACLE, THE ONGOING WAR ON TERROR, F-35 ACQUISITION, OUTED CIA CHIEFS, IRS SCANDALS, ABANDONED DIPLOMATIC MISSIONS, PENDING ECONOMIC COLLAPSE, AND ANY MENTION OF FALLEN SOLDIERS OR DEAD VETERANS. Read more: http://www.duffelblog.com/2014/06/bowe-bergdahl-freed-taliban/#ixzz33Xdm7Aku

Truly, we as the general public do not know much about him and the exact circumstances that surround his capture/surrender/desertion. His unit seems adamant that he deserted in search of the Taliban. However, unit narratives don't always reflect the truth and are subject to groupthink and the "misinformation effect."

If it comes to light that he deserted, even then I could understand on some, limited level. The wars we've participated in have been shameful and I carry a heavy heart for what I did. Having said that, I could NOT see myself EVER abandoning myself to the Taliban or its affiliates. My family and friends are in America; I'm an American, I belong in America. 

Many have questioned the reasoning behind trading five detainees for one American.

In a cost-benefit analysis, he Taliban got the better deal based on numbers alone. Further, the prisoner-swap encourages the Taliban to kidnap more US troops.

I have two problems with this line of reasoning:

One, it may be a five for one swap, but Bergdahl gives more strength the US forces alone than what the Taliban got from their five detainees. He is a walking, imbedded, fluent intelligence asset.  Meanwhile, the five detainees have been held at Gutanamo Bay with little visibility to America's movements. This intelligence asset - Bergdahl - alone is worth more than the five detainees the Taliban received.

Second, the Taliban and Al Qaeda have long had an incentive to kidnap Americans. Most of them just aren't soldiers, but Bergdahl isn't the first one - and trading him in may create an incentive, but doesn't really change how the Taliban operates.

I would like to think the best of Bergdahl and that he was kidnapped, though my cynical side causes me to have reservation until more information is available. Regardless of the moral conundrum Bergdahl has presented, the rational choice was always to bring him back - it upholds our promise to never leave a fallen comrade and to gather valuable, on-the-ground intelligence. 

[reformedorthodox]

In 2004, Elizabeth Armstrong and Laura Hamilton—sociologists at the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor and the University of California–Merced, respectively—infiltrated a dorm at a Midwestern university in an effort to better understand the female college experience. The researchers interviewed more than 50 women (all of them white) from the start of their...

Intersection of Affluence and Prestige. An interesting article. 

[reformedorthodox]

Summer Time

About three years ago, I started drafting notes on my 'Economic Multiplicity' theory. It was simple and straight-forward: Economic growth isn't necessarily grown by growing businesses, but by also growing the efficiency of consumers. There's a little complicated math behind it and sociological commentary to give it some feet. It took a lot of time (read: many months) to distill my idea into a few essential sentences. 

I submitted my paper to the Charles Lave Paper Prize which rewarded new ideas, clear writing and cross-disciplinary topics. Considering that my economic model was different from what I've seen before, that I used short sentences and easy-to-read paragraphs and that it used Economic language to describe Sociological phenomenon - that indeed, I would be a good candidate for the paper prize.

But I lost out. And there's a few reasons why I didn't win - it wasn't even about the money (it was more about being recognized so I can use it for grad school; also to give validity to my ideas). First, the writing wasn't as clear as I had hoped. In fact, it's riddled with spelling and grammatical errors. Second, while the idea is new, the way I explain it feels cumbersome. Third, all my points are not flushed out - so it stands on shaky legs.

I've been told that it's a good idea, but I guess I lost out to better competition this time. Naturally, I'm dissappointed. 

But this summer, I'm going to Harvard for a Summer Program, expenses paid. :) I suppose as long as I keep trying, even if I fail once in a while, I'll be okay!