On the Subtleties of Attacking and Being Attacked

Let me start by saying that I don't really have time to write this, yet I feel compelled to do it. I'm a little resentful of that. As such (the lack of time, not the resentment), this may be a little sketchy at times. I don't know; I haven't written it yet. I'm just expressing my annoyance.

So... I have been accused of "attacking" "christians," recently. More than once.
On the one hand, I have no issue with the idea of attacking "christians;" however, I don't believe it's an accurate description of what happened. Or the relationship of what happened. No more than I would say it's ever accurate to say that someone being abused "attacked his/her abuser."

But let me step to the side of that for the moment and give a different example:
As I have mentioned before, though not in a while, I have a butt-ton of collectibles, and I have been working on selling them off for a while via eBay. Not a great place to do that, but the best option available (sort of like U-haul (and I may have a post about them coming up, too)). It just so happens that this week I listed a quite expensive card to the site. Not terribly long after listing it, someone messaged me and began haranguing me about my chosen price point, long rambling incohesive messages. Three of them, in fact. I, of course, responded, but I did it in a very cohesive manner, responding to each "point" he made by number. Then he accused me of attacking him.

Basically, because I used actual sentences, addressed each of his issues separately, and, honestly, because I made sense, he felt threatened. Because I had a smarter, better worded argument. In short, I used facts when what he had come at me with was an emotional response to the fact that he wants my card and can't afford it.

For some reason, facts seem to threaten people and make them feel attacked.

But the dude came into my space and went after me. He initiated the conflict.
But I "attacked him."

And this is what dealing with "christians" is often like.
You say a thing that is a fact, like:
The United States was not founded as a "christian" nation nor were most of the founding fathers "christians." In fact, the biggest movers among them, the ones everyone thinks of when you start talking "founding fathers," none of them were "christians." They were deists. By definition, they did not believe in the divinity of Jesus. He was just some dude with delusions of grandeur, which is true. In fact, many of the founding fathers frequently criticized "christianity." As Thomas Paine did with the following quote:

The study of theology, as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing.; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and admits of no conclusion.

For posting that, I was accused of "attacking 'christians.'"

Was I making a point? Yes.
Did I go into anyone else's space to make that point? No. 
I made the point in -my- space, on my "wall."
So did I "attack" anyone? Or any peoples? No.
Did I clearly state an actual fact? Group of facts, actually. Yes.
If someone else reads that fact and feels threatened by a fact, is that my fault? No, not really.

There's really two things going on here:
The first is that if someone is coming into your space and initiating something, you're not the one doing the attacking. 
Wait! Here's how to think of it:
You ever get punched on the playground as a kid and hit the other kid back and have them go tell on you for hitting them? Yeah, it's that. 
Don't come in my space and accuse me of attacking you because of something I am doing in my space. 

But here is the bigger issue, at least for me:
"christians" don't get to complain, ever, about being attacked. Not in this day and age, anyway. You can follow the Republican, i.e. "christian," shenanigans all the way back to Newt Gingrich, who is really the one who started all of the current shit we have going on in our politics, and how he, for lack of a better way of putting it, weaponized "christians" and turned them into nothing more than a political bat for the republicans. So for the last 30-40 years, "christians" have been on the attack against the rest of society. When someone fights back (confronts them with their lies and delusions), they don't get to suddenly cry out, "oh! oh! You're attacking me!"

And you also don't get to use the "good people" argument about how it's not all "christians." Republicans have revealed themselves to be evil and fascist, and the vast VAST majority of "christians" are republicans and support republicans. That makes them complicit and responsible. If you don't want to be judged by those standards, don't be a part of that group. Don't vote for republicans, and don't fucking be a "christian." Because not one of them is a Christian. [And just shut the fuck up with your "judge not lest you be judged" bullshit -- I'm just applying the objective criteria for what the term means; it's not my fault if you don't meet it.]

So am I "attacking" "christians"? Well, I don't think so. Maybe counterattacking, but it's more like a defensive maneuver. But, yeah, sure, I am gonna keep calling out the bullshit and lies and delusions that "christians" cling to. Someone needs to do it.
And, honestly, at this point, someone does need to wage a little war back against "christians." The organized church is evil. Pure and simple. I don't know that organized religion can resist without becoming evil. What else can you expect from something founded on the belief of lies and fairy tales.
Anyway...
I've gotten off topic.

I think liberals have been too fast to apologize and try to make nice when they have been accused of "attacking" others. Which is what we do because, mostly, we believe people should be allowed to live their lives as they see fit, and liberals have empathy whereas conservatives tend to... well, just not have any. Empathy. So we try to make it better. 
But I encourage you to look at the bigger picture any time this accusation gets tossed around. Whose space did it happen in? Was anyone targeted? Where did the aggression begin?

I guess that's all I have to say about this at the moment. Normally, I would take a week or so on a piece like this so that I could go back over it and make sure I had everything in order and didn't ramble too much. But I wrote this yesterday. You're getting it pretty raw.

And by the way, the Thomas Paine quote is from his "The Age of Reason." Because it was also implied that I just made it up so that I could support my thesis about the founding fathers. Nope, didn't make it up. I do think I need to read the whole pamphlet, though. Who knows what other quotable quotes are in  there?

Also
#fuckrepublicans

My Apolitical Life

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you guys out there think I'm "political." As things stand at the moment, I could certainly understand that perception; after all, I've been writing some pretty politically charged posts, lately. However, the idea of me being "political" is one of the most outrageous thoughts anyone could have, which is why I never have that thought.

Probably what killed politics for me -- maybe I should say "who" -- was Thomas Jefferson. Seriously, what an ass.

Oh, yeah, a lot of you, probably most of you, are saying right now, "But he was a great man!"

And I just want to say to that: Not so much.
In fact, he was so much not a great man and so ashamed of himself over how he handled his presidency that he didn't want to be remembered for it. At all.

And you're all saying, "But! But! Declaration of Independence!"

Okay, sure, the man could write, but, really, he did his best work when he wrote the Declaration and it was all downhill from there.

Actually, the Declaration is the root of the problem. See, I believed it. As a kid, I mean. Well, I still do. "All men are created equal." ALL humankind are created equal.

I was a really patriotic kid. It was a thing my teachers would comment on to my mom, even, about how much I knew about the Revolutionary time period and the people involved. Yeah, the Revolution was one of those things I got into sometime after dinosaurs. Dinosaurs at four. Astronomy at five (which started out being related to dinosaurs). The Revolution at six. Because, hey, it was 1976, so I started reading books and books and books -- lots of biographies -- about the Revolutionary War and the founding fathers.

So, we have this document, see, that says "all men are created equal," and we fought a war over it to gain independence from a government that treated us unfairly and, then, after winning that war, we doubled down on slavery because of "politics." And I get it. I mean, I understand why Washington and a few of the others decided that the new nation was too fragile at the time to deal with that issue and felt the need to put it off till later, but... BUT!

Thomas Jefferson, the man who WROTE "all men are created equal" would not defend that. Didn't even believe that. He kept his own children as slaves and refused to free his slaves even on his deathbed, while many, if not most, of the other founding fathers had done at least as much as that, but Jefferson refused. He adamantly refused to free his slaves even upon his death despite the urging of many of closest friends and allies. Basically, Jefferson's life and lifestyle didn't match his rhetoric, and the whole thing really soured "politics" for me. I mean, if you couldn't trust Jefferson... Well, who could you trust, right?

Actually, in high school, I became a great admirer of Alexander Hamilton. Not that that was enough to make me like politics.

It's not really politics that are the problem; it's the politicians.

All of that to say: None of this is about "politics." It's not about Republicans and Democrats. It's not about the Right and the Left. It's not even about Conservatives and Liberals. It's about what's right and what's wrong.

And I don't mean what's right and wrong as defined by some (usually false) sense of Christian moralism. I mean what's right as defined by the ideals we (theoretically) ascribe to by being American (which I will define narrowly as someone who is a citizen of the United States of America), the highest of which is, "All men are created equal."

Honestly, we weren't ready for that idea when Jefferson tossed it out there. Obviously, Jefferson wasn't ready for it, either. But he did toss it out there, and we've been fighting to reach that ideal ever since. Fighting for the innate right that each person should get to choose how to live his or her own life without someone else coming along and saying, "No, you can't do that," for no reason other than that that person doesn't choose to live that way.

Look, the USA is NOT a Christian nation. It never was, and it was never intended to be. If you believe that, then you believe a lie. In fact, the whole idea was that this would very definitively NOT BE a Christian nation. That's how the Constitution was set up: to allow people to live and believe as they want to live and believe. It is the fundamental principle that our nation was founded on.

I find it egregious that people like Trump and Bannon want to eradicate decades worth of work toward actually achieving that goal, not a goal of freedom (though it is that, too) but a goal of equality. I find it even more egregious that "Christians" have embraced their philosophy of hate and discrimination.

So, no, this is not about "politics" for me. It's about standing up for what is right and good. It is right and good that all men and women should be treated as if they were created equally, because that is what we say we believe. To my mind, the ones opposing equality (the racists, the misogynists, xenophobes), they're the ones who are unAmerican. Trump doesn't know or believe in American ideals and he wants to take away and kill the one thing that really has made America great. It's up to those of us whole believe in what "America" stands for to oppose him. It's not about politics.

What's the Point of the Electoral College?

There's been a lot on about the Electoral College, lately. What is it even for, right? I mean, why don't we just elect our President directly? One vote is one vote and all of that. People usually default into thinking that it's about State representation because it uses the same kind of system as the House of Representatives, but that's not it.

The conflict was over whether there should be a popular vote at all. Some wanted the President to be chosen by popular vote of the masses while others wanted the choice for President to be handled by Congress. The obvious issue with the President being chosen by Congress is that it could lead to the President just being a puppet for Congress, negating the whole checks and balances of the Executive branch from the system all together.

So what was the problem with the President being chosen by a general election of the people? Well, the possibility of a Trump being elected was the problem.

Basically, many of the Founding Fathers didn't trust the general population to make the best decisions; after all, the vast majority of them were uneducated to the point of not being able to read and write. They were concerned that the "people" could be taken in by someone with the "talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity," someone who was ultimately unqualified for the job but, for whatever reason, popular with the people. The Electoral College was created as a buffer between the "will of the people" and Congress.

The general election, then, was done to produce a pool of candidates for the Electoral College to look at, and the task of the Electoral College was to independently choose the best person for President from the pool of candidates. Basically. The main thing, though, was that the Electoral College was there to make sure that someone qualified got the job, not just someone who was popular.

To state it plainly:
The purpose of the Electoral College, as the Founding Fathers saw it, was to prevent people like Trump from becoming President. Period.

Of course, then parties developed, which complicated everything, and, because each State was given the power to choose its electors, etc, we have ended up where we are now, a system which undermines the purpose of the Electoral College. A system which, because the electors are no longer allowed to deliberate and choose the candidate they feel best suited for the job, has, ironically, given us the one thing the Electoral College was designed to prevent: a Trump.

So... do I think the Electoral College should "rebel" and not support Trump for President? Well, yes, if we are going to have an Electoral College, I feel that they should do exactly that. They should fulfill their function and act as a buffer between the "will of the people" and the most powerful office in the United States. They should look at the potential candidates (that used to be the top five vote getters; I'm assuming it still is, but that may not be true anymore) and choose the person most qualified to assume the role of President of the United States.

If they are not going to do that, if they are not going to serve the purpose for which they were created, we should abolish the Electoral College, because they have no point and, in this instance, have wrecked the country by both ignoring the will of the people and delivering to us the most unqualified person in history as the President. Yes, I'm saying "in history," and you can take that however you will, but I'll stand by it. You will be hard pressed to find someone more unqualified. My cat is more qualified, and he's a certified asshole.

I'm sure some of you are wondering if I understand the ramifications of what I'm saying here. Yes, I do. Yes, I realize that if the Electoral College was to actually not confirm Trump as President that it could lead to violence. However, I also believe that any violence that would take place because of that will be far less than what results from a Trump presidency.

And, sometimes, you just have to stand up for what's right. Actually, that should be always, but there are moments when it is especially called for, and this is one of them.
(And it shouldn't go to Pence, either, because he's possibly worse than Trump.)

Growing Up In the Race Divide (part 5b)

Note: Go back and read the last entry in this series before reading this one.

So...
There I was, all of 20 years old, officially the unofficial youth pastor (or unofficially the official youth pastor; it's hard to know which) at my first night of youth group, and I had two kids. Middle schoolers whom I didn't know from Adam.

Initially, I couldn't even find them, because they weren't where they were supposed to be. They were down in the game room. You might think, "well, what else would you expect from middle schoolers," but that they were middle schoolers wasn't the reason. The reason they were down in the game room was because it had been weeks, at least, since they'd had any kind of teaching or, even, a leader down in the youth area. Basically, they just came each week to hang out because it was better than being at home. [And, man, I don't even know how to feel about that. I didn't then, and I still don't now. Just... how horrible is that, to have a home life that is so unenjoyable that you would rather come and just be ignored at church with nothing to do than to stay at home (because, sometimes, it was only one of them there).]

Now... You might think that the problem here was that the youth group was practically non-existent (however, we did have a few more, maybe 10 (including the two from Wednesdays), that would come on Sunday mornings, kids who had to come because their parents made them), and that was a problem, but that wasn't the problem. No, the problem was that I didn't have any of the prejudices held by the church at large and didn't care about the "acceptability" of the teenagers who came.

So let me give you some history:
My church was started as a mission of another church around 1915. At the time it was founded, the neighborhood it was planted in was a fairly well-to-do, up-and-coming middle class neighborhood. Big Southern houses and all of that. I think it probably reached its peak in the 50s and, by the 70s, was on a steep decline. The "founding fathers" of my church had all lived in the area around the church when it started; by the 80s, all of their families (and, yes, there were old men in the church, deacons and such, who had grown up in it) had moved to the outskirts of town to get away from "urban blight." [The actual definition of that term has to do with buildings (and that was true: once stately homes in the area around the church were falling into disrepair), but, when they talked about it in my church, it had to do with people.]

As the members moved farther away from the church, fewer and fewer people from the actual neighborhood around the church attended it. So, where it had once been a church that people walked to on Sunday morning, it had become a church that people drove to. And, sure, that's how churches are now (and were in the 80s), but churches didn't start out that way. Protestant churches in the US, I mean. But I digress... The point is that the church was still a mostly upper middle class/lower upper class congregation when I walked down the steps to the youth room in 1990. The people in the mile or so radius around the church weren't welcome there, and they knew it. [Which isn't to say that anyone would have been turned away (despite the fact that we had "guards" at the doors), but no one from that area, having come to the church once, would have ever come back.]

The real problem, I suppose, was that the church hired the wrong guy when they hired me. I mean, they didn't hire someone who was going to play their game. I'm sure they thought they had, but they should have known; I'd given them plenty of clues. The biggest one was that I refused to be a ministerial student despite the fact that they tried to bribe me to do it then tried to extort me to do it. They were very disappointed that I was majoring in English (so was my college faculty, except for the English department, who had tried to coerce (force) me into math). But those are other stories. I think they forgot that, although I grew up in the church, I was not ever one of them. I was part of the "hired help," and my family was, at best, lower middle class (and I'm not sure we were always that).

However, with their stated desire of hiring someone to revitalize the youth group, they definitely hired the right guy, and that's what I set out to do. [The issue here is that their stated goal was incomplete. It should have been "to revitalize the youth group with 'our kind of people.'"] And I did it by focusing on the neighborhood around the church. Because why? They were kids, and that's what I was there to do: minister to kids. I didn't care if they were rich or poor or black or white or, probably, even if they had been Martian, but I never had a green-skinned kid show up, so I guess we'll never know about that.

To make a long story short, we'll just say that I succeeded. Within a year, I was running over 30 kids on Wednesday nights and, by the end of two years, more than 50. Most of those kids were from lower income homes, and more than a dozen of them were black. Almost none of these kids had parents who went to the church. Or any church. And, now, we arrive at the problem: I thought I was doing a good thing. The right thing. But I was causing some problems higher up the food chain; I just didn't know about them.
Yet.