The Phantom Menace

June 08, 2023 By: Nick Carraway Category: Uncategorized

Two types of people typically read these. Both groups could be labeled somewhere on the liberal to progressive spectrum. Occasionally, someone else might stumble in here and this is really more meant for them than the regular readers. I honestly don’t know what to call myself. Some people might say liberal. Others might say progressive. There might be others that go with leftist. The rest would say none of those things. Simply put, none of us quite fit the orthodoxy completely for any of those terms. We might be out of lockstep with the base on an isolated issue or two. Then again, the whole point is that labels have ruined our politics.

At the heart of it all is a battle over the term “woke”. Wikipedia says it means “an adjective from African-American vernacular English meaning alert to racial prejudice and discrimination.” However, it is probably the expansion of this to women, other ethnic minorities, and the LGTBQ+ community that has flummoxed people on every side of the ideological divide. In short, it is one thing to support and dignify individuals born into groups that they can’t control. It is another to support and bolster individuals that may or may not choose a group they were not necessarily born into.

When I was coming of age back in the 1980s, it was explained to me back then what it meant to be gay or lesbian. We also had bisexuals at the time, but transgender was not really a thing. Crossdressing certainly was. Obviously it was all a thing but some people were still forced to live in the closet. The debate back then was whether it was an inherited trait or whether it was a learned trait. It seems we have not quite gotten past this point.

Half Empty’s piece got me thinking. In particular, the part where the government official asks why they wanted to celebrate a pedophile. The official was speaking of Harvey Milk. Who or what someone is attracted to really isn’t a choice. The decision to act on said attraction is a choice. Gay and lesbian people are attracted to men and women. Pedophiles are attracted to children. Most pedophiles publicly identify as heterosexual. Certainly, if we look to our politics we will notice that the rates of sexual abusers is higher in the Republican party than in the Democratic party.

Ultimately, we can argue about whether any of these conditions are learned or natural. On top of that, one can choose to accept or not accept someone’s lifestyle choice if it is indeed a choice. A Wikipedia study showed that 7.1 percent of the population identify somewhere on the LGTBQ+ spectrum. An estimated 0.6% identify as transgender. Naturally, that jives with everything I have said. What is interesting is that when MAGA people have been polled on this point they seem to think that 20 percent of the population is transgender. Thus, we get to the heart of the matter. It is ignorance. If I believe that one in five people are transgender when that wasn’t true before then I also believe that something must be causing people to become transgender (or gay, lesbian, or bisexual).

Yet, when we look at the obvious facts on the demographics, we see the demographics absolutely have not changed. Two things immediately become true. First, no one is trying to convert people to be something they are not and even if there were, no one could convert you to be something that you are not. Secondly, this is yet another situation where proportionality gets the best of us. We are told about all of these people doing this or that and they are mere phantoms. They are figments of our imagination. So, we can choose to accept the seven percent or not. What we can’t do is treat them as any less of a human being than what anyone else is. One can tolerate anyone and still not agree with their choices. That has not changed and never should change. So, I say let them fight over pronouns, skunky beer, and chicken sandwiches all they want. The rest of us can live our lives and be the best humans we can possibly be.

All That Other Stuff

May 31, 2022 By: Nick Carraway Category: Uncategorized

Our politics seems to have hit a single note these days and I would love to apologize for that. However, we’ve hit an existential crisis and we seemingly have any number of solutions that people are throwing out there. Then, there’s this guy.

It’s not the gun. It’s the evil. Raise your damn kids. Take them to church. Spank them when they deserve it. Be good to your neighbors. Throw this woke shit out of the window. Fire the blue-haired school teachers. Get in the room when the babies need you. Man up. — Robert J. O’Neill

He was a part of the seal team that took out Osama Bin Laden, so as much as I would love to throw all the snark I can at this guy, let’s treat him with the respect he deserves. So, let’s take these shots seriously. Asserting that a mass shooter is evil is like saying water is wet. A mass shooter must be evil or disturbed to shoot a room of strangers. So, saying the problem is evil is not particularly helpful. How does one identify evil before it acts? Therein lies the question.

Well, based on statistics on church attendance, 41 percent of Christians in the United States attend weekly or more as of 2018. Believe it or not, that puts the U.S. at about the midpoint in the world. Most of the countries in front of them reside exclusively in Central America, South America, and Africa. Japan is the notable exception to that. Of course, this is the percentage of Christians that attend at least once a week. It doesn’t count people that don’t identify as Christians. Poland comes in tied at 41 percent. Otherwise, every other industrialized country in Europe comes in below that. Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and the United Kingdom all came in at five percent or lower.

Of course, then we get to the parenting advice portion of the tweet. We should spank our kids when they deserve it and be good to our neighbors. I’m not sure about the spanking part, but clearly something is going on when 18 year old kids want to rush out and buy a military grade weapon. Something is missing there. So, I’m not tossing this sentiment away. We can reasonably debate the best way to raise kids, but I think most reasonable people would agree that an 18 year old (or anyone else) shouldn’t have access to semi-automatic weapons or enough bullets to take out an entire elementary school.

Of course, the focus of the message was probably the reference to “woke shit” and blue haired teachers. I’ve only worked with one that I remember, so I’m not quite sure what he thinks is going on in schools. Naturally, it is a lot easier to simply say “woke shit” and not define your terms. I can imagine the very worst that way. The truth of the matter is that teachers encounter the world and the whole gamut of options on a daily basis. Most of us deal with that compassionately. A few of us don’t. We tolerate all of our students because that’s what compassionate people do. We certainly don’t preach one way or the other. We accept. I suppose if that qualifies as “woke shit” then call me guilty.

I certainly don’t mean to pick on Mr. O’Neill too much. After all, he is a legitimate war hero and he deserves our respect. That being said, he is trying really hard to blame anything else for these tragedies except the one thing we know is at fault. It is the one thing that separates us from the rest of the industrialized world. There are bad parents, Godless heathens, and mentally ill teenagers everywhere. What there isn’t is easy access to guns. Let’s keep our eye on the ball here.

Crenshaw Gets Mocked in the Best Ways

June 03, 2021 By: El Jefe Category: Mini-Trump

Mini Trump, Dan Crenshaw, has just stepped in it, and he’s being unmercifully mocked.  Imitating Trump, he’s trying to whip up outrage over the fake issue of “woke” policies in the US military…you know, those terrible policies like racial and gender equality, non-discrimination, and inclusion.  He has asked that “whistleblowers” in the military report, through his “Whistleblower Form” all “woke” policies that are supposedly destroying the military as he remembers it.  And the results are hilarious, quoting from movies like A Few Good Men, Stripes, MASH, and others.  Here’s a few great examples of the reports Crenshaw is now receiving:

https://twitter.com/FlaBeJota/status/1398756227920896000?s=20

https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1398786540419964933?s=20

It goes on and on and is most entertaining.  Crenshaw wins the National Embarrassment of Texas award for today.