Thank you. My earliest ancestors here were just four and five generations ago, but they came and immediately put their hands to their tasks. As bronze workers, as engineers, as carpenters. They didn't have much, but what they had they earned, and they in their labor and their wisdom laid up for my generation and provided goods and services to others. They cast off their old languages and spoke only English, they gave up the styles of government that had failed them in the past and took up American Civics.
I have NEVER seen an Italian, Irish, Polish, English, German, or any other flag that is my "heritage" in any old family photos, and yet flying proudly at the door of my Great Grandfather, who died at 98 years old, was ALWAYS the American Flag. He spoke enough English to barely get through the day, but damn it he LOVED this nation and always did his best to honor the gift it had given him.
So yes, everyone should be proud of their ancestors if they came here in the original settling. But if your ancestors came later on, and lived their lives to live up to the standard SET by those original founders, you should be just as proud. I am, and fuck ANYONE who would classify my true Immigrant ancestors from these fucking Welfare Carpetbaggers today.
It's a clown clown clown clown world.
Yep, exactly.
Anyone living a shitty life would be better off dead.
Anaconda has ZERO friends.
Therefore.... (Grabs coat hanger.)
Our values and culture came from Christianity, not from Whiteness. This is the reason we left Europe, not because they weren't white enough for us.
Mmmmm, I'm pretty sure that you can't force someone to go to school at gunpoint. Like, not going to school is a truancy issue. You'd just accrue some sort of demerits until you were expelled.
A guy at work, an uncle on one side of my family, and an aunt on another side, all died from Covid.
And I'm here to say that the lockdowns, masks, all the shit that they've put upon the nation, destroying countless lives for so long? NONE OF THAT SHIT SAVED THEM. They couldn't see their families, their grandkids, their old friends. They couldn't go on vacation. They existed entirely in their homes, lonely and isolated, and at their jobs, where they kept the wheels greased for all the shitheads who do their Talk Shows from their basements. And then they DIED, without their own families allowed in to see them.
THE LOCKDOWNS, THE MASKS, THE CONSTANT SHAME AND DESTRUCTION AND FEAR, NONE OF IT DID ANY GOOD AT ALL.
Years ago, when there was still a modicum of sanity, I remember Season One Luke Cage reprimanding a young black thug who dared to call him that word. He gave him a history lesson about the Boston Massacre, and what it means to be an American. I was like "Damn right, Luke! Spread the truth!"
Then, somehow, by season 2, Luke is punching holes in walls, scaring his girlfriend, and saying "Sometimes you gots to lean into it, and become the Nigga that they say you is." Made me very, very sad. Somehow, it was more racist to have a black superhero who respects the police (though he himself was set up by dirty cops when he WAS a cop,) and who protects women and teaches children, than it is to turn him into any and all negative stereotypes you could imagine.
I swear, Time Travel needs to be a thing. At least to let me go to a timeline where people still know how to act and think.
My uncle and aunt (different sides of the very, very large family) died of "Covid," but in reality they died of all the complications they suffered from the various treatments they were given to stave off the Covid (which was never cured, despite the medications and ventilator causing various pneumonias and infections and organ failures.)
Also, a good dude at work died of Covid.
I'd never say it wasn't real. But I will never stop saying that any of the insane, civilization-ending measures we were forced to take did any good at all. After all, these Most Vulnerable among us? My relatives and friend? THEY STILL DIED ANYWAY.
Take it with a grain of salt, but the guy looks skeezy as hell, and his production company is called "Kid Love Productions." I've got no proof, but I would not be surprised in the slightest.
I can't tell if you're making a joke, or just reading the BLM Playbook.
Plot Twist: They're the Same Picture.
My default response is to stop treating the kid like a child, and instead treat them like Luggage. Pick 'em up, carry 'em to a place where they're not going to disturb shoppers. Just stare at them, eventually asking "Are you done now?" When they start acting like a human again, then tell them in no uncertain terms "You will NEVER get what you want if that's how you act. If you want Good Things, you have to earn them by doing Good Things, the things that I tell you to do."
And you're spot on about using other shitty kids to show your own kid how not to act. It works on my dog, too, lol. She loves being the best behaved around. No matter how rambunctious and willful she's being if we're out on a walk, if she sees some other dog, she's immediately heeled, walking at my pace, not going on lawns or anything. People love comparisons, and winning, even more.
Lives are never saved; death is merely postponed. Suppose we lock down the United States of America for merely One Minute. ONE MINUTE. There are 330,138,453 Americans as I post this, according to the US Population Clock that the CDC uses (I don't trust it either, but let's roll with this.) And let's suppose that we did that to "save" ONE LIFE. Let's say that it actually DOES stop someone dying of something that would have actually killed them immediately. Okay. That's a good thing, that someone didn't die, I am on board with that concept.
But now I will take the number of Americans, and divide by 80 (assuming average length of life between men and women, this is a little generous, but it's okay, this is a rough estimate.) And then I will divide by 365, for all the days in the year. And then I will divide by 24, for the hours in a day, and then divide by 60, for the minutes in an hour.
And I find that by locking down the US for One Minute, to save One Life, we have actually wasted time equivalent to the entire lives of 7.851 Americans.
"Oh, but it's spread out among so many people." Irrelevant. All of those people matter just as much as the one person you "saved," right? If we saved Eight people, and cost time equivalent to the lives of 7.851 other people, at least that's a net gain. Because everyone is Equal, right?
And then... was there any OTHER way to save that One Life? Or those Eight Lives? Could we have, perhaps, only put THOSE people into some sort of Medical Lockdown, I'll call it a new word that I'll just make up right now. Uhhhh, let's call it a... Quaaaa... ran... tine! A Quarantine! Couldn't we have just "Quarantined" those vulnerable people who were at risk? That way we could have only had a minimal sacrifice of Life Seconds, for the same gain!
And even supposing we couldn't do that... did the Lockdowns even DO ANYTHING? Was everything conducted PROPERLY? Surely, SURELY, there wasn't some horrible botched system that CAUSED horrendous death by putting those vulnerable people into situations that actually ended their lives, purely for political gain, right???
You know, it's a funny thing. This was first posted (that I saw, anyway) right around the George Floyd BLM Riots. It's been posted again every couple months.
Every single time I see it, I'm less and less like the kid who grew up watching Family Matters and the Fresh Prince, and learning how to be a man just as much from Carl Winslow and Phillip Banks as I did from my own stepfather and grandfathers. As I got older, I was fascinated with Frederick Douglass, and counted him as one of America's Greatest Heroes.
I still believe he is, and take solace that today they'd call him an Uncle Tom and a House N-Word; he who actually risked his life to physically fight back against a slave master who regularly attacked him. But he's dead, and his legacy is almost dead too. And when that legacy is gone, I honestly wouldn't care at all what happens next, so long as the end result is an end to the madness.
We could have all been in this together. That's what We wanted. We wanted to get over the bullshit, and all been Americans United Together. I didn't want it to be Us VS You. But if it's got to be Us or You, it's sure as fuck not gonna be good for You.
The problem is that bravery is when you give up the more beneficial (or at least what is more beneficial to the individual) to protect the less beneficial; a coward will leave his wife and children to save himself. Rationally, he could get another wife and kids as long as he is still alive. Life would be the most profitable. However, Bravery is always outward looking, and therefore the Brave man would risk losing "everything" to protect the EVERYTHING that actually matters to him.
The 9/11 Terrorists absolutely 100% believed that their actions would give them far, far more than it would cost them. It was all about their gain; 52 virgins, glory for Allah, Death to America, all that stuff. They stood only to "gain" in their minds.
So to me, they are unquestionably Cowards. They took a shortcut to their goal, and to hell with everyone else. Did they try and offer Islam to those people? Did they show the same mercy to them that Allah did for them? Islam itself says that everyone deserves Judgement, so why not spread the good news that Allah has allowed a way for mankind to be at peace with him?
Out of Selfishness. Out of Cowardace.
I share the Gospel of Christ all over the place. I have a Savior who got the Eternally Living Shit kicked out of him in my stead, and when I find myself before him, screaming "Lord, I'm not worth it! Why would you do this for me!?" He replies simply "It's cool, I got this, don't worry about it." Though I absolutely believe that no human being deserves Mercy, I spread it as much as I can, despite being ignored, despite being ridiculed, despite (twice already, possibly with a third time coming up on the horizon!) it closing doors with women I cared about and costing me relationships that I really believe could be THE ONE.
What do I get from this? Nothing. Christ already paid for my sins. I could die today, and get Glory. I could continue on for a thousand years and be instrumental in saving countless sinners through His Gospel; and I get nothing more than if I DID die today. Sharing the Gospel can only cost me something.
So Bill Maher is a jackass here. It would have been braver for Mohammad Atta to sit on that plane and try and explain Islam to the other passengers, than it would have been for him to end the lives of so many for his own selfish desires. He was a Coward, and now he's in Hell. And Bill "Kid Lover" Maher is exactly like him.
Dude runs "Kid Love Productions."
Only 5 to 1 odds? Bro, don't get a job in Vegas, you can't run numbers for SHIT.
This is a situation wherein I, personally, would die in a hail of gunfire. If anyone was going to inject anything into my child to fundamentally warp or destroy any part of their God Given Identity, it would be my duty to defend unto the death. They could arrest the scraps of flesh and bone that would be left, if they wanted, because so long as I had any purchase on this world, there would be no capitulation.
"We have to stop the White Supremacist Attacks against Asian Americans!!!"
"uh, actually, something like 92% of all attacks against Asians are done by Blacks in Americ-"
(THIS POST HAS BEEN SHACKLED IN NEUTRONIUM CHAINS AND BANISHED TO THE STYGIAN DEPTHS!!!!)
Sweet, time to sue Coke! Class Action from the Diabetics, INCOMING!
Rebuttal: "You never opened yourself. You turned inward. You found virtue in things you never did, you never accomplished, the mere accidents of your existence. And now you struggle to reconcile your narrative that 'Black is Inherently Good, White is Inherently Bad,' with your instincts as a mother, and are at a real risk of transferring any and all internalized hatred (which you should not feel either, as you should be focusing on your accomplishments, not on your skin in any regard,) onto your baby."
I fear for this child's life, and psyche, being raised by a mother who could possibly, POSSIBLY, have a newborn daughter and feel anything other than bliss in having brought a new life into the world, a continuation of her mortality beyond her own self, let alone one who would seize upon it as an opportunity to pontificate on Racial Struggle.
I dropped a John Money bomb on a bunch of co-workers the other day. I suppose that I risk a super leftie going nuts and trying to get me fired, but there's not much keeping me there these days. Got other things I'm working on, that will pay off far greater if/when I make it work out.
False Equivalence. The mathematician says "I am right!" when he calculates the equations that safely put the team on the moon. He is no less correct because Timmy says "I am right!" when he takes the last cookie from Tommy, because Tommy is a Doodoo.
Once again, you look to what others say and do to determine your own course of action. You react, ceding all power to others. I will never do this. I and I alone determine my course.
What Delusion? The Delusion that I am Me and I Behave as my nature dictates? You are putting the entire cause for your behavior outside of yourself. This is weakness. Make up your mind based on who you ARE.
I would LOVE a coordinated campaign where we somehow make it that everyone who shows up at any of his events would be carrying signs that say "I would sooner die than vote for a Traitor."
Bonus Points for anyone who manages to make him and his campaign think that they're on his side, and he lets them take the podium to speak, and they say it to the "crowd" (of empty rented jeeps, Biden Style.)