I'm so sorry that happened to you.
I really tend to hate the parents' rights crowds. Children deserve rights and knowledge and community.
I'm so sorry that happened to you.
I really tend to hate the parents' rights crowds. Children deserve rights and knowledge and community.
Friendly reminder to everyone that the rest of the world has signed on the United Nation's Connvention on the Rights of the Child; the US doesn't like that it could prevent children from being spanked, because God wants us to spank our children (spare the rod, spoil the child).
Religion is often a basis for the suffering of children.
The start of your comment reminded me of the exchange between Trevor Noah & Tomi Lauren where Trevor asks her, okay, so if this protest isn't good, and this kind isn't good, how should black people protest? How should they make their grievances known? And she just could not answer that question. Protests aren't comfortable--they're disruptive by nature. If protests don't challenge anything or make anyone uncomfortable, what are they even doing?
I'll contend all day long that the 'Texas Miracle (TM)' is largely built on the backs of underpaid Latin/Mexican labor. (I would say totally, but that oil $$$ does its work too.) Republicans shitting all over immigration does, in fact, rob their localities of economic gains. I hope migrants in Mexico are treated more humanely than the United States has done. Hell, that's still quite the low bar.
Something I didn't learn until this week, but James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family (wrote "Dare to Discipline", a book about how we really needed to start hitting kid again in the 70s), was an assistant to a counselor who was a eugenics-loving, racist marriage counselor. Dobson wrote/published materials for Popenoe (the eugenicist counselor) as his assistant. Very few years later, Dobson started writing many of those same ideas as himself, but wrapped up with religion.
So these young whippersnappers might be trying to bring back eugenics, but that's largely because for the last 50 years, eugenics have been evangelized to many, many (especially Christians) in all but name.
I had a young woman, maybe 17 last semester, turn in a paper --it was a 12 page research/argumentative paper about why gender complementarianism (ie woman and men have different, distinct roles with men at the top). She's a good student, a good writer, but literally she's heard this set of morals from the pulpit her whole life... So like... Yeah. I read another young man's paper where his takeaway from 12 Years a Slave was "wow, not all slave owners were abusive monsters--some were pretty kind and treated their slaves like family." The kids are as alright as the rest of us are.
I'm sure there are plenty of podcasts that cover this group and happening. This is the one I like.
They are doing the same playbook. The longer I'm an adult, the less inclined I am to defend parents' rights so strongly. Children are people, not property.
Forgive me, but I don't believe political affiliation is a protected class--protected classes are the only things people can't discriminate based on. So like, race, sex, religion are protected, but democrat/republican/green party aren't protected. Businesses can legally discriminate against non-protected classes. It's just usually a bad business strategy to turn customers away.
Not DeSantis, but red states are really getting records for out of state care their people seek.
I know it's a whataboutism, but I really can't stand that we can't have something like a gun registry because "MuH gUnz!?!!" and the government might take them or whatever, but we can't buy or borrow books without government agencies being able to secretly procure that information. Now private medical records from the doctor's office, not just like a person googling around, are being hoovered up for overtly political reasons against vulnerable people. Why are guns so much more sacred than people being able to live?
I've been fascinated with how the religious right has stood behind someone so obviously out of line with their 'principles'. There actually have been people doing interesting work on that front, if you know who/where to look. I'd definitely recommend the book "Jesus and John Wayne" by Kristin Kobes du Mez, which chronicles the growing power of conservative Christianity in government starting back in the 40s through the election of Trump, and how electing Trump really was an expression of their values, not a departure from it. Podcasts like "Conspirituality" and "Straight White American Jesus" also try to take an honest look at the cultishness and where it's coming from. What's hard is that deradicalization is hard and often has to be done one person at a time. When we have one percent of the country needing to be deradicalized, maybe we can find people to go talk and make connections with each person. When it's 30% of the country, that's a much different proposition. Maybe society can figure out how to do that better--Conspirituality sometimes talks about how cults differ as leaderless, online only groups. Maybe social media can also reach people... But it won't if kids can't find information online that challenges the worldviews their parents want to program into them.
And recently, that Amazon Duggar documentary "Shiny Happy People" came out, and it's not a bad entry point to understand the issues I'm talking about either. I think it does a good job to show how these 'throwback' values play on nostalgia too act as an on ramp for people to raise their children in--children who are then encouraged to be literal warriors for Christ--or their GOP allies.
A lot of them are raised to be that way though. One of the big pushes in a lot of Christian circles, for example, is the push to raise kids believing in complementarianism instead of egalitarianism--simply put, that god created men and women to have different roles, and that men just so happen to be in the role of leadership. Combine that with extreme purity culture (at times involving courtship instead of dating, for example) and a fervor to push for big families, and you get a bunch of grown ups looking up after 5, 10 years in a marriage going, "wait, I was promised happiness, why am I so miserable?" Divorce is a huge tool to help. We need to give people, especially women and children, a safe exit from high control spaces.
Part of what I remember is that the coaching job was in Washington, and he sued for the job after moving to Florida. Then, when asked, he said he'd be ready to start coaching in Washington again with like 3 days notice of reinstatement. He won his case, but did not move back up or try to retake his old job in any way. Makes the standing in the case look real funny.
If you're privileged enough not to be threatened in that situation (ie you're not a younger woman, an immigrant, LGBTQ+) and it's not emotionally damaging to maintain the relationship, do. Be there, but be open about different and willing to answer questions. Either they'll be an ass eventually, or maybe, just maybe, you can show them the rabbit hole is just their head in the sand. Cult deprogrammers say over and over that the best way to get people to see reason is through personal conversation. But don't have expectations that it'll work all at once, or if they go back and forth in their beliefs. Unlearning worldviews is hard work.
I do enjoy verbing my nouns. I approve.
Also, Michigan is blue now. Flint and Snyder's "emergency managers" really weren't that long ago.
Lol, this exactly. I tried to make an account 3 different times, each on a different server, couldn't get sign-up to submit till the third time. I was one of too many trying. Better problem than nobody being here!
Cork let go. Cork was... Free.
And then came an explosion of sound.
I've had female relatives mad when the churches they attended started letting women vote in church matters. So I'm guessing about like that. Self hate is such a warm little cocoon once you cut off the parts of yourself that it demands.
They want the faithful to outbreed the heathens.
Yeah, conveniently that's about the time that it got real offensive to be openly racist. Closet racists hated abortions as the new code. Then kids grew up learning AbOrTiOn StOpS a BeAtInG hEaRt and that it's always murder. And here we are.
I don't know if blue states would extradite her though. Many would not. So maybe she could uproot her whole family and life to leave and make a new home. However, she's super high profile in the Google now; any time she left the state or got pulled over for speeding or something, she'd be vulnerable to harassment. And if Republicans do this to the whole country... Ugh.
I loved how small she sounded at the end of questioning by the first guy. Then the chud in the back-right corner has to jump on and say "oh since Jesus is God, he wrote the ten commandments, don't you just feel the luuuv in them" and totally tried to give her back face after the questioning. But as the first rep said, the bill, as it's written, is arrogant and idolatrous. But she just wants to "keep it clean", and ignore every other piece of history that shows the coalition that formed to create the US.
Yeah, black kids don't need the help of white kids to succeed. They need their schools funded as if rich white children went to them though.
Also, school isn't just about success, it's about learning to live in a society, one which isn't just a monoculture. Hard to learn to live together (for all kinds of races & identities) spending entire childhoods separated.
... how did he think Florida's economy was stronger than that of Texas or California??
My small city is getting a new Christan Nationalism school next year. The neighbors aren't thrilled that the adults will all be in armed to the teeth at this school in the middle of a decent neighborhood. One of my kid's friends is going there next year, and told the class that her dad is draining her bank account for the tuition. For an elementary school year education.
Another fun fact: private schools don't have to take all applicants, so they regularly turn away students with disabilities or special learning needs.
I pointed that out to friends of a friend visiting from Ohio, after they told me how their state did a great thing, making vouchers available to all families in the state. I pointed out how the public schools need the 'regular' kids to help subsidize the special services needed by other kids. When the non-special needs kids aren't there, funding for the specialists gets too expensive for public schools to be able to maintain. The lady clearly didn't know what to say to that, and after a minute she just said how their children's private school was too small to be able to have specialists like that. Not sure how that invalidates my point about accessibility of education for all students... It was too sensitive an event to voice that I don't think public money should be going to institutions that are tax exempt churches. If churches don't want to pay taxes, their organizations shouldn't have their hands out for the public coffers. Simple.
The organization that invited him, it says above, is the local chapter of Turning Point USA; TPUSA nationally is run by a fellow called Charlie Kirk. It's overt 'goal' is to 'promote freedom', and it does this by making lists of professors who are liberal. These professors often then get death threats. Charlie Kirk is a christofascist, and if you're not familiar with the organization or the person, you're missing someone who reliably pushes Trump and culture war on the rest of us.
He was supposed to sleep with his brother's widow in order to continue the family bloodline and make the widow more a part of the family, IIRC. He didn't want to do that, but was pressured so much that he said he'd try. This was more similar to the vibe of stealthing, but in reverse.
Because future generations have to safehold and not misuse extremely destructive knowledge. We have a world where North Korea has nuclear weapons, but do they have the ethics to use them responsibly, understanding their full potential? Do the other countries with nuclear bombs have that ethical responsibility, especially over generations? Cuz that big red button is going to be around for a while.
But if everyone is naked, the poor boys will be distracted. I mean, they already veer off course when shoulders are out. I guess the only appropriate solution is to not have the girls at (naked) school. /s
There's a Venn diagram somewhere of the states denying food aid for children and states rolling back child labor protections. From the linked article "State child labor law changes are part of a broader, troubling agenda to boost corporate profits and increase economic desperation of low-income families and children" and "While FGA lobbies for the erosion of child labor protections in states like Arkansas, Iowa, and Missouri, they are simultaneously working to limit access to anti-poverty programs like SNAP and Medicaid, block expansion of Medicaid eligibility, and promote the defunding of public education through expansion of school vouchers in the same states. Taken together, FGA’s priorities represent a radical, multilayered assault on the same low-income families whose economically desperate children are most vulnerable to recruitment by unscrupulous employers for jobs involving long hours, low wages, and hazardous conditions that harm their education, health, and well-being."
So literally the plan is: Make em super hungry, exploit them for cheap labor while they're young, tell em anyone who's still hungry is a lazy leach who deserves to starve.
For a while, mainstream/right wing news especially told voters that many people under the poverty line couldn't be that badly off since such and such a percent of them had basic conveniences in their living places, like fridges, dishwasher, etc. It was one of those 90s strategies to create resentment against public programs.
I am worried that many people won't be found. The ocean was a refuge for many, but a dangerous one. So horrible.
Not exactly fantasy, but Great Expectations by Dickens has a boy who grows up totally normal and then has his life transformed by a mysterious benefactor. It doesn't go the way the kid expects.
Also, Sanderson's Stormlight Archive & Tress and the Emerald Sea feature kinds of magic that can be accessible by anyone if they engage with it right. So perhaps give those a go. SA is a long series, but Tress is pretty approachable.
Your comment led me towards an amusing thought: in the Harry Potter universe, goblins sell things to wizards for the duration of the wizard's life, but then they expect it to go back to the goblins because ownership works differently for them vs wizards. Wizards don't always/usually understand or respect that. So... If I ever was in the position to open a brothel, perhaps I'd name it "The Goblin's Den." I... Don't know what kind of clientele that would attract though.
But see, if someone admits that their parents/grandparents/etc were flawed, then they might come to the realization that they need to examine the ideas they grew up with, maybe change some. Maybe they themselves have behaved problematicly based on things they were taught. And what if that person starts questioning their faith/faith community's behavior as part of this introspection? What if questioning makes a person feel as though they're not "honoring their father and their mother"?
I'm 100% for that introspection and personal honestly, but I can see where a lot of people will be too scared of the work. More will be more scared of the "evil" of critical thought and nuance.
Ah yes, the world wide webiverse. The net. Dialed in. Where you've got mail!
If a person killed 8 babies, by definition, they have killed 7, and thus fit the "worst" standard that OP specified.
... Or Aramark
Shudders
We also had congressional investigations and hearings about January 6th, so there is a lot of legwork there that shows his behavior--with sworn testimony. It's not like there's not plenty of public evidence, including tweets and voice and video recordings of Trump himself.
I read most of that (think I missed the last few chapters, but he was out of Elan and had done some traveling)--it was horrifying. There's also a 3 episode documentary on Netflix called "The Program" where the documentary maker revisits the now closed school where she went (The Academy at Ivy Ridge) and by episode 3, she's followed the money to one family behind a lot of these institutions. But as she and former AaIR students actually see other facilities far from where they were locked up, they're all carbon copies of each other, they're all just the same punish-for-everything camps with no escape. Fucked up that there's like a formal recipe for how to do this to families and not get caught. And that there are so few legal protections for children.