The craziness of the last few of years has created a situation where potential retail and restaurant employees will sometimes present glowing resumes, then don’t come close to living up to what they claimed they knew – assuming they showed up for work at all. The next thing you know they’re applying for unemployment. I got to thinking about this when a website visitor told me that his odds of finding a job seem to decrease as time passes. He goes on to say that a friend offered to compose a fake resume and provide a fake reference for him, but that he’s uncomfortable with lying to get a job he wouldn’t otherwise get. He wonders if there are any circumstance under which he could justify accepting the offer of the bogus credentials.

I first suggested that he mentally walk through what could happen if he took the offer of the made-up resume. I told him, “Assume you’re hired. You have an immediate double burden. First, as with any new job, you have to prove yourself. Second, you have to maintain the lie. You have to remember two realities: the truth, and the ‘truth’ as you presented it. You can never slip up and forget. In addition to doing your job well, you have to do a good job preserving the fraud.

“You’ll have to go out of your way to avoid situations in which you might be exposed. For example, if you said you had a college degree when in fact you don’t, you’d have to avoid discussions about college – or be prepared to make things up. And once you did, you’d have to remember them. The same gnoes with a phony reference. All these fictions must be remembered.

“Of course, what does all this do to your pride and self-respect? It may be true that you’re good at what you do, but if your work is the only factor that matters, then why lie? Also, when you lie to someone, you’re not showing them respect. The fact that you got away with it will lead you to respect your employer even less.”

The simple fact is this: Desperate situations sometimes call for desperate measures – assuming that the desperate measure is effective. Lying undermines your relationship with your employer and it imposes burdens on you. Yes, you might claim, “I now have a paycheck whereas last week I didn’t. It worked.” But all you did was trade one high-risk situation (unemployment), for another (getting found out and fired). The old adage, “What a tangled web we weave…” is true.

Sophisticated liars can often get away with it, but if you were a good liar, you wouldn’t have emailed me. You’re particularly at risk for getting caught for the simple reason that you’re divided on the subject. Commitment to a difficult course of action requires unwavering resolve. Without that, you’re going to create new problems rather than alleviate old ones.

Before setting yourself up for exposure, you could say, “I don’t have that credential. But here’s what I do have to offer. Will you hear me out?” If nothing else, you’ll be respected for being honest – qualities in short supply nowadays. It doesn’t guarantee you the job, but it does give you an opportunity to show a virtuous trait on which people place great value. It also shows confidence and security; qualities that matter to employers.

Most of us are taught, “Don’t lie. It’s wrong. Do the right thing.” And then life gives us a simultaneous “wink-wink” implying, “Do what you have to do.” What passes for morality is often nothing more than a mishmash of dogmatic commands, hypocrisy and contradiction. Some people fall for it, and some don’t, but there’s certainly enough of it to go around – starting with politics and ending with your resume.

I suspect you’re already convinced that you shouldn’t lie. But you’ve got to have reasons other than the fact that lying is hard work. Otherwise, you’ll never feel good about your course of action. You don’t pour gasoline on a fire or use poison to cure a disease. Explore other options.

Michael J. Hurd

It’s important to be careful about the way we phrase things when talking about ourselves or others. And “being nice” has nothing to do with it; the way we phrase things has an impact on how we view them, and sometimes it can be unhealthy.

For example, if you say, “I think I’m addicted to cigarettes,” you’re implying that you are helpless. I know everybody says we’re supposed to think of things like this as addiction, but that doesn’t do you any favors. Validate your power over smoking by saying, “I shouldn’t smoke, but I like the effect I get from it. But it’s more important that I commit to stopping.” It’s honest and closer to the truth.

Another example: “Johnny is rude and hostile. He should work through his issues.” The implication is that he can’t help his insulting behavior and attitude. If so, then what does “work” have to do with it? Perhaps it’s more accurate to say, “Johnny is rude and hostile. If he doesn’t stop, he’s going to alienate people who are important to him.” In other words, Johnny changes his behavior or he faces the consequences.

How many times have you heard somebody say, usually in reverent tones, “Please be supportive.” In reality this usually means, “Please agree with me.” If you want me to agree with you, just say so. Don’t giftwrap it in guilt by implying that not agreeing with you is failing to be supportive. Nonsense. Of course, if you ask me to agree with you and I cannot comply, I have to be honest with you. Make-believe doesn’t accomplish anything.

One of my favorite phrases is, “I’m not motivated.” When translated into reality, it means, “I’m not going to do this because I don’t feel like it.” “I’m not motivated” is just a convenient bypass around having to give a reason. In reality-speak, one could say, “I don’t see the point of doing this, and here’s why…” – a perfectly valid reason. Another way to handle not being motivated is to say, “I have weighed the pros and cons and I don’t see doing this as important enough to warrant the effort.” At least you’re being honest with yourself.

How we talk to others and to ourselves is a reflection of the way we end up acting, feeling and thinking. It’s important to listen to yourself and make sure you’re clear and consistent in what you say, think and do. And feel free to examine the words of others in the same way.

A lot of this has to do with thinking. People often ask me what a cognitive behavioral psychotherapist does, and I say that he or she invites you to look objectively at what you’re doing, saying and thinking. By subjecting your thoughts and statements to the honesty test, a skilled therapist can help you to help yourself.

Another phrase with no clear meaning is, “Get help.” More often than not, when someone says that, they’re really saying, “This person should do what I want him or her to do.” Oops … control is not the same as help. A psychotherapist can help you help yourself, but when you leave the therapy office, it’s all up to you. Therapists don’t “treat” you as if you’re a medical case, or “operate” on you to mold you into something you’re not. You mold yourself.

If you’re not getting the results you want out of life, it most probably goes back to erroneous thinking. Therapy or not, you owe it to yourself to pay attention to what you say. Remember: When you speak, you’re also listening to yourself, and it all comes down to the words.

Follow Dr. Hurd on Facebook. Search under “Michael Hurd” (Charleston SC). Get up-to-the-minute postings, recommended articles and links, and engage in back-and-forth discussion with Dr. Hurd on topics of interest. Also follow Dr. Hurd on X at @MichaelJHurd1, drmichaelhurd on Instagram, @DrHurd on TruthSocial. Dr. Hurd is also now a Newsmax Insider!

FEMA Information officers keep telling the media why they have no money for rural, Trump-voting areas, but plenty of money for left-wing hotbeads like Asheville, NC.

Listening to a “FEMA Information Officer” is like relying on WHO for a flu virus or the Soviets for Chernobyl.

Despite their smug sociopathy, leftists are supposedly worried. Are they, really?

“The Hill” and other Establishment Communist publications are talking about Democrats “hitting the panic button” because they feel Trump is pulling ahead.

All I can say is that I remember these headlines EXACTLY from 4 years ago this time. We have seen it all before.

If Democrats really are in a panic, heaven help Donald Trump, JD Vance and their families. Because when totalitarian psychopaths panic, the bullets start to fly.

I will keep saying it because it’s true, and because they keep providing evidence, over and over again: These lefist-RINO career politician American fascist power mongers are capable of ANYTHING.

“A professor at the University of Kansas has been placed on administrative leave after saying that men who don’t vote for Vice President Kamala Harris because she’s a woman should be shot. “We could line all those guys up and shoot them,” he said in a recently leaked video. The university has not named the instructor as of Wednesday evening.” [Breitbart 10-9-24]

A UNIVERSITY professor said this. Not a serial killer. Increasingly, what’s the difference?

Administrative leave TRANSLATION: “Make it look like we’re punishing him until the story dies after 48 hours and we’ll put him back.” Of course, he will end up as the president of Harvard or Columbia, or land a gig with MSNBC.

It’s a left-wing Nazi Germany.

Hear me: We are a society inching our way toward concentration camps. Or worse. Whites, males, Christians, legal citizens, conservatives and heterosexuals are the most vulnerable. Leftists are riddled with hatred and they are in charge of absolutely everything. Nazism began on the university and cultural level. It can happen in America too. The targets are different; the process is the same. Wake the hell up.

Follow Dr. Hurd on Facebook. Search under “Michael Hurd” (Charleston SC). Get up-to-the-minute postings, recommended articles and links, and engage in back-and-forth discussion with Dr. Hurd on topics of interest. Also follow Dr. Hurd on X at @MichaelJHurd1, drmichaelhurd on Instagram, @DrHurd on TruthSocial. Dr. Hurd is also now a Newsmax Insider!

It’s been obvious for years that China has a Potemkin economy, kept alive by slave labor, market bubbles, and government underwriting. it can’t last forever. The latest grim forecast about the economy comes from Peter St Onge, an economist with a much deeper fund of knowledge about and understanding of the Chinese economy than I could have in a thousand lifetimes.

The biggest hint that the Chinese economy was in trouble was the demise of Evergrande, a massive property developer in China. The bankruptcy was huge, with the company’s assets valued at a probably inflated $245 billion and debts of $300 billion. However, Evergrande was just the biggest pop in the Chinese real estate bubble, not the only one.

Image: An abandoned luxury project in China. YouTube screen grab.

Across the board, Chinese ventures have been having problems, whether with overvalued assets, the Belt and Road initiative (which was fading even before Israel blew up the Belt and Road port in Yemen), or its demographic implosion, which will leave it as a nation of old men.

The military is also somewhat illusory. In May or June, a nuclear submarine sank in a Chinese shipyard—although, to be fair, we had a disastrous Navy ship fire a few years back, and a New Zealand ship just ran aground and caught fire. These things do happen.

Generally, though, the Chinese military has a competency problem with both men and equipment. My guess is that this is because communist countries do things in a slipshod fashion. The only spur to work is fear. As is the case with all slaves (which is what people in a totalitarian state are), when there’s no immediate oversight, people do as little as possible, and they do things badly.

Now, St Onge’s insights tell me that things are much worse than I had realized based solely on my semi-informed reading of reports about the Chinese economy. Three weeks ago, St Onge did a short video explaining how the above problems, plus a shrinking manufacturing sector, were leading to a coming recession in China:

In the three weeks since that video, St Onge says things have gotten much worse. China, he reports, is no longer on the edge of a recession. Instead, it’s dropped into the full danger category, forcing the Politburo to hold an emergency economic session and to start printing money like crazy to prop up the manufacturing, banking, and real estate sectors:

Specifically, Beijing’s going to dump about 3.8 trillion yuan — roughly half a trillion dollars — to keep the economy running.

At the same time, China is slashing interest rates.

By the way, does any of this sound like déjà vu all over again? Because if it does, you’re right. It’s exactly what the Biden government has been doing to force a smiley face on the American economy. That is, it’s printed money and slashed interest rates.

The problem, of course, is that, whether in China or the United States, monetary policies cannot make up for a vacuum within the economy itself. If all the other government policies disincentivize the most important capital a nation has—the human capital—no government jiggery-pokery can keep the economic flywheel spinning.

Economies boom when people dive in, getting creative and working hard because there’s something in it for them. Government created inflationary wealth can lead only to eventual collapse because it’s all fake.

Currently, I view China as a serious geopolitical enemy, right up there with Iran. While Iran relies on physical terror, China is more insidious. It seeks to bankrupt America while destabilizing the people’s values through things such as TikTok. (In China, TikTok is not flooded with videos about sexual perversion, race hatred, anti-capitalism, anti-Americans, and mental illness. Just sayin’.) I’d rather face an outright war with a plainly seen enemy than slowly die before an enemy that destroys our manufacturing sector with cheap goods and destroys our national identity with values that are anti-liberty, anti-normal, and anti-moral.  

Having said that, considering how deeply entangled our economy is with China’s economy, if China falls, none of us will have a soft landing.

“Worked for Ike.”

Truth, thank you.

EISENHOWER: “The Chance for Peace” Address
Delivered Before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16th, 1953
https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/file/chance_for_peace.pdf

“IN THIS SPRING of 1953 the free world weighs one question above all others: the chance for a just peace for all peoples.

To weigh this chance is to summon instantly to mind another recent moment of great decision. It came with that yet more hopeful spring of 1945, bright with the promise of victory and of freedom. The hope of all just men in that moment too was a just and lasting peace.

The 8 years that have passed have seen that hope waver, grow dim, and almost die. And the shadow of fear again has darkly lengthened across the world.

Today the hope of free men remains stubborn and brave, but it is sternly disciplined by experience. It shuns not only all crude counsel of despair but also the self-deceit of easy illusion. It weighs the chance for peace with sure, clear knowledge of what happened to the vain hope of 1945.

In that spring of victory the soldiers of the Western Allies met the soldiers of Russia in the center of Europe. They were triumphant comrades in arms. Their peoples shared the joyous prospect of building, in honor of their dead, the only fitting monument-an age of just peace. All these war-
weary peoples shared too this concrete, decent purpose: to guard vigilantly against the domination ever again of any part of the world by a single, unbridled aggressive power.

THIS COMMON PURPOSE LASTED AN INSTANT AND PERISHED. The nations of the world divided to follow TWO distinct roads.

The United States and our valued friends, the other free nations, chose one road.

The leaders of the Soviet Union chose another.

The way chosen by the United States was plainly marked by a few clear precepts, which govern its conduct in world affairs.

FIRST: No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be an enemy, for all humanity shares the common hunger for peace and fellowship and justice.

SECOND: No nation’s security and well-being can be lastingly achieved in isolation but only in effective cooperation with fellow nations.

THIRD: Any nation’s right to a form of government and an economic system of its own choosing is inalienable.

FOURTH: Any nation’s attempt to dictate to other nations their form of government is indefensible.

And FIFTH: A nation’s hope of lasting peace cannot be firmly based upon any race in armaments but rather upon just relations and honest understanding with all other nations.

In the light of these principles the citizens of the United States defined the way they proposed to follow, through the aftermath of war, toward true peace.

This way was faithful to the spirit that inspired the United Nations: to prohibit strife, to relieve tensions, to banish fears. This way was to control and to reduce armaments. This way was to allow all nations to devote their energies and resources to the great and good tasks of healing the
war’s wounds, of clothing and feeding and housing the needy, of perfecting a just political life, of enjoying the fruits of their own free toil.

The Soviet government held a vastly different vision of the future.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower

The LEFT always wants to change the Supreme Court because they fundamentally disagree with the EQUAL PROTECTION of the law because they are the victims of capitalism. You are to go to prison for discrimination against even gays or transgenders, but discrimination based entirely upon material wealth is OK because they want to confiscate what anyone has that is more than what they have.

Socialism Violates the Ten Commandments … You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.…

The LEFT is anti-religion on every level, as evidenced by the fight for ABORTION with no restrictions or limitations. The killing of children in Gaza is horrible, but not killing infants. They have rejected the very existence of any God, just as Marx did. The slogan IN GOD WE TRUST was put on the currency after the Civil War, for it was religion that freed the slaves – not the LEFT. This is a sad testament on our society and why it cannot survive intact.

Even Zelensky has outlawed not only speaking Russian, but he has outlawed their Orthodox Christianity and the Pope has condemned Zelensky for outlawing their region. At the same time, he now claims to be a Jew but has his children baptized and never mentioned he was Jewish before being President.

The biggest problem we have is that events such as the Rescue the Republic ensures the destruction of the United States because it merely illustrates the great divide and polarization implying there is even a possibility to rescuing the republic.

The polarization is so great, and the media is so compromised that there is no possible way that the United States can survive as a “united” confederation. As communism fell, it is our time for the collapse due to these same Marxist ideas that have undermined our very foundation of freedom.