What happens to the Tea Party enthusiasts, Beck acolytes and Palin lovers when they buck up against the cold, hard facts of a changing American landscape that doesn’t favor their brand of politics?
Texas will become a majority Hispanic state within eight short years. By 2020 the majority of Texas voters will be Hispanic and we will no longer be a reliably red state in senate or presidential elections. Several other western and southern states will quickly follow suit as the tide of Hispanic births drastically alters predictable voting patterns and we’ll eventually watch the political fruits of our GOP business friendly immigration policies fundamentally change the American face of politics forever.
The greedy republican bastards have condemned themselves to eventual irrelevance by sucking the cock of business while giving the Democrats a whole new plantation to politically rape. The morons have undercut their own future viability and the irony of it all is quite ripe.
We can thank the Bush legacy for the everlasting change in our state’s demographics. His governorship and presidency were marked by a full turn of the cheek towards business interests as illegals flooded across our border, providing a large pool of cheap, unskilled, slave labor ripe for exploitation.
While business has grown fat on underpaid illegals, the individual taxpayer has been left to take up the expensive slack in providing social services, education, medical care and incarceration for these destitute, non-English speaking people.
I don’t blame the Mexicans for coming to America. I would have fled that corrupt shit hole, too, given half a chance. We gave these people thousands of unwatched miles to take that chance and a soft landing when they arrived – too little immigration enforcement, too many benefits and easy employment. Why not hop the border, risk the minor hassles of La Migra for a chance at a better life?
It’s become painfully obvious that federal government has no serious interest in curbing the influx of illegal aliens or hammering the people who employ them, both sides of the political aisle are equally culpable for this travesty. Governor Brewer has been the only high-stature, elected official to take decisive action and I suspect that’s only because the growing financial costs of illegal aliens have started to outweigh the business benefits to the state.
A recent Texas Monthly article on Houston’s new school superintendent brought the raw costs of unfettered illegal immigration into stark reality. Eighty percent of HISD schoolchildren qualify for the free lunch program, thirty percent dropout, ninety percent are rated as Title I recipients, twenty-nine percent are labeled as bilingual/ESL learners and sixty-two percent of their students are categorized as Hispanic. Blacks make up 26% of the student population, Whites and Asians only 10%.
Do these children look like future Republicans to you? Rocked in the cradling hands of government assistance from birth, does anyone believe they’ll grow into the new face of conservatism?
Houston is the fourth largest city in the country, our three other major cities are in the top fifteen and our surrounding exurbs are growing rapidly with white flight, but the steady stampede towards well-lit, heavily patrolled cul-de-sacs of immaculate green and stellar school districts won’t let them outrun the hard political fact of demographics at the end of the day. The only saving grace from the tide of democrat-voting wave of brown skin coming our way is the wealth to escape bad neighborhoods and you can bet your last dollar the state will be reaching for those healthy resources, wherever they’re gated, to pay the bills incurred by their new majority constituency.
Homegrown Texans have always been well aware of the brown lines, places where you don’t want your children raised or schooled unless education and civil behavior are unimportant sidelines. Middle class Hispanics knew these lines as well as whites, where the mojados and chulos lived, low-class, low rent, the neighborhoods of illegals and their first generation of prison-prone progeny. Small niches where Spanish ruled the day, Spanglish came in a close second and drug dealing marked the trifecta on most corners.
Used to be the Texas sons and daughters on the brown side of the line crossed over into the blue and white-collar classes a generation or two into American melting pot, acquired solid technical skills or advanced degrees, opened a business, bought land and moved their chain of family over the meridian that marked the divide. The dominant culture demanded their rise if they wanted respect and punished those who didn’t conform with impoverished segregation.
Texas Hispanics, back in the day, drank from separate fountains and sat in the balcony of theaters. They couldn’t enter many stores or file complaints against officials. Determined to change the blatant, stultifying effects of racism, Hispanics grew into a small but influential force in Texas as they educated their sons and daughters into the mainstream of prosperity and political influence. The proverbial melting pot worked quite well in Texas, so well in fact, that it’s rare to find a Texas family that hasn’t blended both cultures through the bonds of marriage and children.
Of course, the state wasn’t bearing the burden of absorbing millions of illegal aliens prior to the early nineties. A manageable trickle came, some stayed, most went home on a seasonal basis. That hasn’t been the case for the past twenty years. We can’t perform miracles with these kinds of numbers, as the Houston school district so aptly proves, and most of these people will remain a permanent, impoverished, tax supported underclass for the rest of my natural-born days.
And they will eventually vote, in droves, but it won’t be for white Republicans.
You can take that hard fact to the bank.
If neo-conservatives, the people who predominately represent the Tea Party constituency, are smart and want to remain relevant in federal politics, they need to start slating a long line of Hispanic candidates right now, at the most local levels, targeting the hapless political by-product constituencies they’ve been busy vilifying as part of the national scourge. I don’t see that happening, though.
I have serious doubts that the Palinite-Beckheads will be able to mitigate the inevitable tide of voting demographics rolling their way and I suspect they haven’t bothered to take their heads out of their vaunted cheerleader’s fragrant asses long enough to mark the real world we’re living in right now, much less form a cogent strategic response to the ascendancy of Hispanic majorities in large electoral states.
A November takeover won’t change the inevitable, a GOP win in 2012 won’t alter it either. The Republican party set themselves up for fast decline when they sold their principles and souls to the company store.
The American landscape is undergoing a fundamental electoral change facilitated by our haphazard immigration policy and corrupt ruling class. I see nothing more substantial than the ephemera of blustering rhetoric and patriotic sentiment standing in the way of the coming democratic tide.
Texas will be lost. Unfortunately, inherently conservative blue dogs won’t be representing the state this time around. Calderon’s brown-skinned, dispossessed Chavista’s will be pulling our state’s, and the nation’s, political levers. Sheila Jackson Lee will look like Barry Goldwater compared to the representatives pumped out of places like Houston’s inner districts.
Numbers don’t lie and there’s no getting around this set of uncomfortable statistical facts.
Texas will become a majority Hispanic state within eight short years
Well, that’s depressing.
Just an immutable fact, my friend.
So, you are saying that I will have to move back North. There’s an unhappy prospect. Wyoming is going to get mighty crowded … and then there’s that little Yellowstone caldera problem. We could take back Montana from the rich Turners, I guess.
I’d suggest an Indian reservation as a last bastion, HM.
Funny that, considering they’re federally protected.
It’s foolhardy to let strangers into your home to live with your family without vetting them first. What the average person understands about Mexico and Mexicans couldn’t fill a thimble. I’m not saying you can’t let anyone you choose enter your home, but most folks have some sort of idea of the background, beliefs, history and comportment of such a person. And references.
That’s the problem with so-called nation-building in countries that haven’t the centuries of civilized morality to underpin their fledgling efforts. They may think nothing of selfish grasping, lying, cheating and deceit as it is a matter of survival. This may make them excellent Wall Street execs but not exactly prime candidates for an alliance.
When we lived in Mexico City, the J.R. once posed a question to an assembled group of friends: A new Cadillac and an old VW Beetle have an accident. Who is at fault?
I swear by everything true, not a one of them blinked an eye before saying, “The Cadillac, of course!”
And we would pretend that centuries of such magical thinking will be turned around in one generation? Good great Gott, but we’re heading toward worshiping fire within another generation ourselves.
True words, Joan.
Just wondering, when the Mexicans begin to govern (the soon to be most populated state, Texas) will they pick the low hanging fruit and remake Texas into a replica of whence they fled… or look to the Constitution, Bill of Rights and Deceleration of Independence for guidance ?
If the amount of Mexican flag waving on the Texas side of the border is any indication… maybe Montana Ted is on to something.
or look to the Constitution, Bill of Rights and Deceleration of Independence for guidance ?
Unlikely for several reasons:
1/ They don’t have the culture for it
2/ Their children will not be educated for it in the public schools.
3/ The “Political Correctness” movement will prevent many from speaking up about the Constitution as it is “too divisive”
4/ The melting pot is is not being used anymore.
Hence my earlier comment about the numbers game being depressing.
This Country will understand the essence of Balkanization in it’s truest meaning.
After the USA goes down this road, the rest of the world follows rapidly, for we have been the traffic cop at the crossroads.
As others have pointed out, Texas already has an immigration problem. Its prosperity has drawn many workers from formerly wealthy states like Massachusetts and California. Lacking the ability to understand exactly why Texas is prosperous when their former home states aren’t, they immediately begin trying to convert the Texas economy into that of the state they fled.
The same thing will happen with Mexican immigrants. Were they less in number, and assimilateable, it would work. But if the culture of Mexico is dominant, then they will indeed lack the ability to reject the corruption they left behind in Mexico.
Of course, the Muslims are going to do the same thing to Western Europe.
Always a pleasure to stop by and read the lessons gleaned from ‘centuries of civilized morality’.
One of the most civilized of all gentlemen stated that we must either conquer and rule or lose and serve, suffer or triumph, be the anvil or hammer. Some of us thought America had evolved unique and attractive ways of dealing with those truths. So did the rest of the world until you came along, Arthur. Perhaps you will make the world safe again for the glories of Mexican civilization, and even the noble savage.
Deep down, you do not believe you have the right to live. I agree. But it would be good if you did not insist on company.
“Deep down, you do not believe you have the right to live. I agree. But it would be good if you did not insist on company.”
Hmmmm.
“He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death.”
– H. H. Munro (Saki) (1870-1916)
You have a nice Labor Day as well. As always I’m in debt for clearing up what’s ‘deep down’ inside of me.
But you give me far too much credit.
As with you the world didn’t so much as notice nor even care when ‘I came along’.
Cheers!
Arthur, I’m rather surprised to find that you support the modern day, government approved, corporate plantation system.
I would have thought that you preferred less worker exploitation, systemic poverty, and a permanent underclass with no legal recourse to address abuses practiced by employers, landlords or the police.
Our own low-skilled, low wage, hard working underclass have been displaced by these slave laborers, don’t you have a care for your own people?
I don’t support the corporatist mess we’ve got ourselves into. We’ve outsourced and off shored ourselves in the foot big time.
I merely noticed about how ‘centuries of civilized morality’ have allowed some of us to arrive at this sort of worldview:
“They may think nothing of selfish grasping, lying, cheating and deceit as it is a matter of survival. This may make them excellent Wall Street execs but not exactly prime candidates for an alliance.
or this:
“Perhaps you will make the world safe again for the glories of Mexican civilization, and even the noble savage.”
Oops.
Left this out which provides the context for the first quote:
“It’s foolhardy to let strangers into your home to live with your family without vetting them first. What the average person understands about Mexico and Mexicans couldn’t fill a thimble. I’m not saying you can’t let anyone you choose enter your home, but most folks have some sort of idea of the background, beliefs, history and comportment of such a person. And references.”
I think it’s entirely reasonable for people to be upset by the near-term impact millions of peasants fleeing a failed, corrupt state will have on our own country.
Joan’s comments were addressed to Karzai et al, I’m quite sure you aren’t all that impressed by his government, the warlords or the lovely Taliban. But who knows, you may surprise me by endorsing their peculiar brand of misogynist thinking, child rape, consistent corruption and religious fundamentalism.
Or maybe you approve of nation building and the export of liberal democracy in third world countries?
James took a sharp stick after you because it appears that many progressive minded people seem to harbor sentimental feelings towards brown skinned people living in the worst poverty, under some of the most atrocious tyrants in the third world.
Progressives seem to believe these impoverished people are somehow pristine in their outlook and world views, their oppressed, harsh lives are to be admired and that their limited, ignorant political views should be validated and adopted.
Frankly, if I was a poor Mexican, I’d be going all Robespiere on that cesspool of kleptocracy in Mexico City.
Joan made an accurate statement, what’s your problem with it?
Do you have a lot of poor Mexicans in your family, as friends?
Or do you only know the one who cleans your toilet once a week?
I don’t have a house keeper.
I’ve known any number of ‘poor Mexicans’ over the years. Certainly as many as anyone around here. My wife has lived there. I have a number of friends in the country and I’ve visited any number of times.
And I and my friends haven’t the experience Joan seems to have had.
Unsurprisingly.
Suggested reading: EM Forster, “Passage to India”.
Great yarn about those dearly missed days of the Raj.
So, y’all are friends with the sort of people who work in chicken processing plants, mow lawns, shingle roofs, clean houses, stand in front of Home Depot praying for day labor employment while worrying about getting deported back to a country with no chance of earning a living?
Because Joan had an experience you’ve yet to encounter, her story is invalid? Mighty white of you, Arthur.
Arthurstonehenge is quite comfy in his chair, Daphne. I, however, left behind any hope of the American Dream when I sold all and moved to Mexico City to live and work among the poorer sections of the 20 million strong urban area.
I have also lived and worked among the poorest in my own country. Even now I do. I can say with years of experience to back it up, that the humanity and personhood of each and every acquaintance was never derided, always defended; never rosily romanticized, always challenged to grow and change. The warmest and best friendships were made there. Their emphasis on relationship above all is a quality sorely lacking even in our best communities here in the U.S.
The J.R. has experience in Haiti. He has watched how a stunted and physically hungry mind and body cannot fathom the logic of keeping and feeding a hen today in order to have eggs tomorrow. It does not make Haitians lesser mortals or less worthy of humble respect. But it can and does make for intelligent discourse about the cultural divides that exist in reality, that make for conflicting purposes and ends when juxtaposed with other cultures. Civilization is a real concept. Truth and justice are rare commodities that find their nurture in cultures who have sought out such ideals. For centuries.
Much of the world’s experience is still nasty, brutish, and short. Of such conditions is a survival mindset made. Tribalistic and violent struggling for power down through the centuries has yielded the fruit of its womb even in the modern world: violence, duplicity, and outright theft are seen as logical tactics for success.
Likewise, a respect for human dignity, for truth and straightforwardness, the logic and reason for treating all men equally, the idea of individual freedom is a concept not readily shared by other societies. It’s just the way it is.
My anecdote about our Mexican friends is repeated endlessly by those in power in Washington: that those with money are at fault for every calamity, every unfortunate event, every fateful loss. Why do they constantly beat that drum that sounds so illogical and unreasonable? Because they know the indoctrinated culture to whom they are speaking. That’s the wicked little truth about the elitists who would scorn any attempt to differentiate between the ideal and the real. It’s not convenient for their power-brokering.
“Why some of my best friends are black”, says the Woodchuck, pointedly!
Arthurstone,
I’ll tell you what I said to illegals to their face.
“Get the hell out of my country; go back and fix yours. Clean it up, take it over and run the crooks out.”
There are more of them than there of the politicians. They can win that fight if they want, or they can die in the dirt. They don’t get to do it here illegally.
The Post-Modernist crap you spout is the source of our troubles. You equate Freedom with Tolerance. That’s nonsense of the prime order. I don’t have to tolerate idiocy of any kind; Progressivism is a first order mental incapacitation exhibited as Post-Modern babble.
de Tocqueville-
If, in the course of this book, I have not succeeded in convincing the reader of the importance I attach to the practical experience, behavior, opinions, and, in a word, the customs of Americans, in maintaining their laws, I have failed in the main objective I set myself in writing it.
I am convinced that the luckiest of geographical conditions and the best laws are unable to uphold a constitution in the face of poor customs, whereas the latter can still turn even the most unfavorable conditions and the worst laws to advantage.
The Mexicans, aiming for a federal system, took the federal constitution of the Anglo-Americans as their model and copied it almost exactly. But although they transported the letter of the law, they failed to transfer at the same time the spirit which gave it life. Even today, Mexico veers constantly from anarchy to military despotism and back again.
We see in astonishment the new nations of South America being torn asunder for a quarter of a century by an endless succession of revolutions and we expect to see their return to what may be called their natural state. But who can say for sure that revolutions are not these days the most natural state for the Spanish of South America?
Exhaustion drives them to take a moment’s rest which becomes the impetus for a fresh bout of frenzy.
There are nations whose early education has been so defective and whose character displays such a weird confusion of passions, of ignorance, and of all kinds of false ideas that they could not by themselves perceive the reason for their suffering; they sink beneath unrecognized evils.
Orwell–
Till recently it was thought proper to pretend that human beings are very much alike, but in fact any one able to use his eyes knows that the average of human behavior differs from country to country. Things that could happen in one country could not happen in another
Giamattista Vico–
Man became all he is without understanding it.
Ovid–
The cause is hidden. The effect is visible to all.
Simon Bolivar–
I consider that for us, Latin America is ungovernable; whosoever works for a revolution is plowing the sea; this country will ineluctably fall into the hands of a mob gone wild, later again to fall under the domination of obscure small tyrants of every color and race; we will be dominated by every kind of crime and exhausted by our cruel excesses.
The most sensible action to take in Latin America is to emigrate.
Sigmund Freud–
It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct.
Benjamin Franklin–
History affords us many instances of the ruin of states, by the prosecution of measures ill suited to the temper and genius of their people.
Herman Melville–
Is there some principal of nature which states that we never know the quality of what we have until it is gone?
J. A. Froude–
Things which in his eager youth Lord Tennyson had despised he saw now that he had been mistaken in. Like Goethe, perhaps he felt that he was stumbling over the roots of the tree which he had helped to plant.
Liberal democracy is an aberration in human history. It has existed in western Europe for a while, and in the former colonies of the UK. But it’s definitely new, and culturally alien to many.
Gordon, please define Liberal. Do you mean it in the true sense or in the stolen, bastardized usage now in vogue meaning Progressive.
If the former, that would be Libertarian; it is unknown in Europe. Here the Proggy fools made the term liberal a filthy word, that is why they use the term Progressive, to hide their true nature.
How many Hispanics do you know Daphne?
About 20% of our workforce is Hispanic and while they started out mostly liberal when we hired them as students, most are now quite conservative now that they pay taxes, own a home and have kids.
Our babysitter is old-school Mexico and rabidly anti-Obama. She liked Clinton, though. I listen to her and her family tell Obama jokes and it makes my heart warm.
Hispanic culture is inherently conservative. And the shenanigans of Chavez and Moreles who are wrecking their nations serve just to drive more and more into the GOP camp.
“Hispanic culture is inherently conservative.” And it takes one generation for the overwhelming welfare state to rope in one half of the females as welfare dependent single mothers. No contest, evil beats innocence.
James, please provide the source for your statement that 50% of Hispanic females are welfare-dependent single mothers.
Austin, hundreds. Considering my fifteen years living in the Hispanic community through ties of marriage, I’m well aware of middle class Hispanics general attitudes on politics as well as their poorer cousins.
While middle class Hispanics are notably socially conservative, they are also deeply Catholic or Evangelical, neither of those religious groups are noted for their political conservatism.
Our newly arrived Mexicans aren’t nearly as socially conservative as our fellow Hispanic Texans.
There’s a difference between the two.
G- I don’t have time at the moment to verify James assertion, but 54% of all Texas medicaid recipients are Hispanic, which indicates that a very high number are on federal assistance of some sort.
The figure I stated above for children receiving free school lunch in HISD is also indicative of higher levels of public assistance in the Hispanic community.
The statistic is not of hispanic females, but of the first generation of hispanic females born here to illegal hispanic immigrants.
If there were one source only, I might remember it, but there were too many writing on the subject. My recollection is that the LA Times did a story on California only, but that it is the same problem nationwide.
It is not an accident, it is a policy. Twenty million undocumented Democrats in the hopper.
G- I don’t have time at the moment to verify James assertion, but 54% of all Texas medicaid recipients are Hispanic, which indicates that a very high number are on federal assistance of some sort.
I don’t believe that 50% of Hispanic females (I assume he means of child-bearing age) are welfare-dependent single mothers.
I also strongly believe that like other immigrant groups before them (Germans, Italians, Jews and Chinese) who came to the US in large numbers during 20-year waves of immigration (legal and otherwise), Hispanic immigrants (for the most part) will assimilate and integrate into American society and enrich our nation immeasurably.
will assimilate and integrate into American society and enrich our nation immeasurably.
Sure they will…as democrats.
That’s what they said about the other groups. Except for the Jews, ethnic identity alone is not predictive of voting patterns. I suspect as the years go by Hispanics will vote much the same as the descendants of the Italian immigrants do. If they live in NY they’ll vote Democrat. In Jersey, they’ll swing. In Texas, they’ll vote Republican.
I also strongly believe that like other immigrant groups before them (Germans, Italians, Jews and Chinese) who came to the US in large numbers during 20-year waves of immigration (legal and otherwise) [snip]</em.
At the time of mass immigration of those groups, this country didn't have the coddling welfare programs then that the US has now. Those groups may have gone into the ghetto of their own making to assimilate, but they worked and learned the language, no victimhood and no race card waving.
Thanks for the rewrite of history.
As to the other statement, "…ethnic identity alone is not predictive of voting patterns." "If they live in NY they’ll vote Democrat. In Jersey, they’ll swing. In Texas, they’ll vote Republican."
I'll send these labels to the appropriate wardheelers and local hacks so they can round up the ethnics for registration.
So far, fifth generation Hispanics in Texas are still voting majority democrat even when you take the welfare issue out of the mix.
I don’t see that pattern changing, G.
Take a look at our historic Hispanic strongholds of South and West Texas, it’s a continuous shade of dark blue, always has been. McCain barely squeaked out a win in Harris County (Houston), lost Bexar (San Antonio) in a landslide and only managed a ten point lead in Tarrant (Dallas).
Our changing demographics are fundamentally altering the state’s political climate, this will be a blue state in twenty years, there’s no getting around that inevitable fact
…this will be a blue state in twenty years, there’s no getting around that inevitable fact
Twenty years is a mighty long time for making political predictions, especially when using the word “inevitable.” Perhaps if you used the phrase “if current trends continue” the statement might ring truer.
As of now, your prediction has the hollow sound of an Al Gore end-of-the-world jeremiad.
You don’t like numbers much do you? This will be a majority Hispanic state within eight years, my prediction of blue state status within twenty is actually quite modest.
As of 2009 estimates, Hispanics comprise 36.9% of the Texas population. Non-Hispanic whites 49.6%.This is out of an estimated population of ~24,782,000. This means there are ~12,291, 000 whites and 9,144,000 Hispanics, a difference of ~3,147,000.
Since the 2000 census the population has grown approximately 3.9 million. If the present trends continue, it is impossible for Hispanics to overtake whites by 2020, let alone 2018, because for that to happen over 90% of the population growth would have to be Hispanic. That isn’t going to happen.
Where are you getting your figures?
My source is Here
Here are mine:
Window on state government; Susan Combs Texas State Comptroller
Scroll down to the bottom of the page for demographic data.
Texas State Data Center and Office of the State Demographer
Once again, scroll all the way down.
Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas
Chart 5
Want more?
Apologies, I forgot to add the states birth rates by race.
Your second source provides five demographic scenarios. The lowest shows Hispanics overtaking whites by 2035. The highest shows it happening in 2015. The other sources also show varying estimates, none of which agree. None of those estimates agree with those in the other two sources. Demographics is obviously a very inexact science.
So, you choose to believe the worst-case scenario, I choose to believe the best-case scenario (in terms of Hispanics outnumbering whites). I am profoundly skeptical of doomsday scenarios of any stripe, and your prediction that Texas will go blue certainly falls into that category, as does, in my opinion, your belief that current demographic trends will occur indefinitely.
I’d make a wager that my prediction (whites still outnumber Hispanics by 2020 and that Texas will be red far longer) is more accurate than yours, but the chance that either will be able to collect is minute.
So we’ll have to leave it at that.
Heather Mac Donald writes for City Journal and is just one of many innumerable respected sources.
http://www.city-journal.org/html/16_4_hispanic_family_values.html
45% of children born to Hispanic mothers (that’s ALL Hispanic mothers, not illegals only) are born outside of marriage. Hispanic woman have the highest unwed birthrate in the country, by far, at 92 per 1,000 per year. Although black women lead the unwed mother race at 68% they have far smaller broods than Hispanics. This is all now so common in Hispanic culture that it has become as accepted as it is in black culture. So much for your theory of family values vs. the welfare state, Ged. Criminality and gang culture run riot in such societies.
It gets better. “The fathers of these illegitimate children are often problematic in even more troubling ways. Social workers report that the impregnators of younger Hispanic women are with some regularity their uncles, not necessarily seen as a bad thing by the mother’s family. Alternatively, the father may be the boyfriend of the girl’s mother, who then continues to stay with the grandmother.”
Milton Friedman put it so simply. It’s just perfectly obvious that you can’t have open immigration and a welfare state at the same time.
It may be that open immigration is not a good thing with or without a welfare state when a dysfunctional state and people are right on the border.
It is especially obnoxious to hear opinions in support of others that would not be embraced, but loathed, were they discovered in the Jewish culture from which they often come. As Burke wrote, very plausible schemes have often shameful and lamentable consequences. The species of benevolence which arises from contempt is no true charity.
The most dreadful ideas in human history are invariably the product of great intelligence; the most beneficial and sustainable are of learned experience. You are posing your IQ while most people here fumble to find ways to keep the worst generation from giving away what they did not earn.
You’re winning.