I Forgive You*

*And other things the federal government has never said to one penny of my debt.

Ever since the plandemic kickoff party back in 2020 (Theme: Two Weeks to Flatten the Curve! *rents steamroller costume*), a few phrases have wormed their way into my daily vocabulary and show no sign of hanging up their festive hashtag-hats. Up there with #SMH and #TheMediaIsTheVirus and #MakeItMakeSense in my Top Ten Tags arsenal is #HowIsThisEvenAThing?

(#HITEAT for short.)

It’s a thing, okay?

Like that time when eating inside was dangerous—because germs—so restaurants dragged their tables and chairs outside—because fresh air—but then sometimes it was too cold or too hot or too rainy to actually eat outside—because climate change—so they built walls around the outside tables which were then technically inside—because common sense—and then these inside-outside tables were somehow magically safe from COVID—because lunacy. Remember that?

#HowWasThatEvenAThing?

Or how about when our own government was working with Big Tech to violate our constitutional rights and censor our speech and decide for us what we could say and what we could see online… or when the same tyrants deemed Walmart essential but labeled every Mom & Pop shop that sells the exact same crap superfluous… or when the rule makers required (and continue to require) an ID to buy alcohol, board a plane, cash a check, rent a car, apply for a marriage license, enroll your kids in daycare, secure a line of credit, or enter a federal building… but not to vote?

Seriously. How are these things even… things? Like actual things that we acknowledge or obey that started with one person’s really stupid idea, and then that person had the balls to present their really stupid idea to another group of people and they all agreed that the stupid idea was so amazing that they leapt, in unison, to implement it. And then that group somehow got countless hoards of other people on board and turned the stupid idea into a mandate or a law.

I repeat: HITEAT?

This makes perfect sense, as long as you don’t think about it even briefly. Source: CNBC.

The latest #HITEAT that has me #SMH is Biden’s plan to forgive tens of billions of dollars of student loan debt. Just wipe it off the books. Poof! You owe nothing. I mean, sure you got the education and the diploma that lots of folks didn’t get because they didn’t know it was going to be free after all, which is completely unfair—as is the part where taxpayers who didn’t go to college or did but already paid off their own loans are now funding your education (you’re welcome!). But apparently our benevolent dictator feels super sad that you’re going to graduate college—that you elected to attend and will ostensibly benefit from—with all that pesky debt over your head.

Do you need to go lie down? You look peaked.

Strangely, Biden does not feel even a tiny bit sad for the millions of Americans who can’t pay their medical bills or their grocery bills or their mortgages.

Biden regime: “Sorry you can’t afford life-saving medication, life-sustaining food, or life-preserving shelter. That sucks. We’d help you out, but we’re laser focused on DEI and climate change and gender identity at the moment.”

But elective, exorbitant, unnecessary indoctrination education?

“We got you, boo. Degree’s on us. Now go toss that cap into the air and take yourself to Disneyland to celebrate. You can afford it!”

“Oh, I have to pay that loan back? You guys should have been clearer about that.” ~Millennials

There’s no trying to understand HITEAT. I-A-T because if you’re trying to attract reluctant young voters who clearly find you vile and revolting and otherwise unelectable, promising to pad their pockets with tens of thousands of surprise dollars is a pretty solid strategy.

Read the full, infuriating article here.

Remember when you ran for class president and the day of the election, your opponent brought lollipops/temporary tattoos/ponies for every kid in the entire school and you lost handily to that sneaky bastard even though nobody actually liked him and he was literally the worst class president that school ever had?

Maybe that was me. What I’m saying is, buying votes is hardly novel.

Seems like a move that could backfire big-time, though, namely in the form of pissing off an equal—or likely, even far greater—number of more mature voters who settled their debt the old fashioned way (by—gasp!—paying it off themselves) and who are already deeply concerned about the participation-trophy generation’s grossly swollen sense of entitlement.

Tell me you’re Gen Me without telling me you’re Gen Me.

I literally had to Google, “what are the arguments for student loan forgiveness,” because I couldn’t come up with anything outside of the buying-young-voters benefit on my own. One of the actual justifications was “social equity.” See, student loan debt disproportionately burdens low- and middle-income individuals, therefore we should all feel horribly guilty and want to remedy this STAT. The thing is, so does every other type of debt on the planet, you imbeciles. How does letting the already educated (and thus, more employable) portion of the population off the financial hook benefit the disadvantaged in any way exactly?

Me, waiting for an answer to that question.

Another half-assed argument for this absurd proposal is that somehow forgiving student debt makes education more accessible to a broader range of people. Specifically, people who can time-travel back a decade or so ago, take out massive student loans, go to school, and then sit around and wait for them to be forgiven with this new understanding of the system. Outside of that elite group, I’m not sure how forgiving existing student loans is making education any more accessible to anyone currently living in the actual world.

@netflixisajokemaybe you're not such a great business #nealbrennan #studentloans #studentdebt

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*Please watch the hilarious Neal Brennan explain the wisdom of student loans; you won’t regret it.

“But college has gotten so expensive!” people who borrow money to pay for it whine. “I'm going to have to make some tough choices about where I can cut back on my spending [to pay for the education I chose to get],” said one frustrated borrower in this ABC News article (who used his real name and everything, bless his heart). Another debtor, also identified by name, age, location and job description, has it figured out. "I have sworn up and down that I am just not paying on these [student loans] anymore," she said. (Do you guys think that would work with, like, a Range Rover or a lake house? Because I’d like to have both, regardless of my ability to pay for them, thanks!)

If the argument is simply that any amount of debt is too great a price to pay for an education, then they should make education free from the start, for everyone, period. If you’re going to essentially make higher education free retroactively, then everyone who has ever paid for college—whether they financed it or paid cash—should get a nice, fat reimbursement check. Right? How is anything else fair? And when did fairness become as passé as MySpace and Blackberries and the Ice Bucket Challenge?

It would take an entire Substack novella to detail all of the stupid, worthless crap I’ve bought that in retrospect, I would very much like to be reimbursed for. There are also lots of things I sort of own—my house, an investment property, a ski boat, my kids’ continuing education—that mostly serve me well (sort of like a degree?) and that I plan to continue to pay off… but I also wouldn’t mind if a sweet bureaucratic sugar daddy would sweep in and just close out the tab for me.

I’ll give a cool five bucks to each and every reader who can make a solid argument for debt forgiveness that a) actually makes logical sense, and b) doesn’t make me want to punch anyone in the esophagus.

THIS LITTLE BEAUTY went to copyedit this week!

Your heads are going to explode when you read it. It is honestly so heartwarming and hilarious and packed with information and insight that I may need to go have myself a millennial lie-down just thinking about it.

A million* [*actual figure] thanks to the army of amazing, talented contributors
who helped me turn this crazy idea into an actual book.

Coming SOON!