Category: Cultural Obscenities

How our culture has allowed itself to become twisted

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Conservatives, It’s not enough…

It’s not enough to whinge and complain.

The question is, how will we address the issues we’re complaining about?

It’s not enough to sit behind keyboards making nasty comments about liberals or Democrats.

In doing this we’re no better than the liberals or Democrats that do the same on Twitter.

It’s not enough to boycott this company, or that.

Are we brave enough, to not only boycott the company who’s offended, but to boycott their parent company? Are we strong enough to boycott the other companies who share board members with the company we’re boycotting?

It’s not enough to say the election was stolen, or Trump 2024 or DeSantis 2024.

Have we actually done the research to validate the assertion or political choice, or simply repeating what we’ve been told, casting votes for the person the Republican Party says to?

It’s not enough to watch conservative curated snippets of the Jan 6th hearing.

Watching curated snippets that cast the hearing in a negative light, is no different than those watching the hearing and swallowing the snippets the committee has curated and says is true.

I think for myself. I’ve looked at the available information and made choices. They weren’t always the correct choices, or even the best choices. But I own them. For better or worse, they’re mine.

I look at the time and effort spent endlessly commenting on Twitter, Gab, Truth Social, Facebook, News articles, American Thinker, Breitbart, and the myriad other conservative outlets, and I have to ask.

Is this all we’ve got?

An upvote?
A snarky comment?
A meme?
An online argument?
A ‘share’ with followers?

Really?

Obviously we all have computers. How about spending all that energy, time and resource to figure a way out of this mess?

If, as so many of you say, the ship is sinking, it’s no matter who’s right and who’s wrong. The water is rising, we’ll all drown. Whatever differences we had will be settled in silence.

Will we go the route of Melville:

“To the last, I grapple with thee; From Hell’s heart, I stab at thee; For hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee.”

Or will we put aside our differences, bridge the gap, and demonstrate what we’ve said we stand for.

Work!

Doing what needs to be done, because it needs doing.

Not for fame, not for riches, or clicks, or accolades. But because the survival of our country is in our best interest. Implicitly demonstrating that Capitalism is what ultimately drives societies forward to better futures.

So what if there will be those whose asses undeservedly get pulled from the water?

They, will stand as witnesses to the abject failure of marxism, socialism, or communism. Their survival and shame will haunt them all the days of their wretched lives. Because they will know they live by our largess, not by the sweat of their brow or the work of their own hand.

So Conservatives, and our more middle of the road friends…

Let’s get to work.

Put the phone down, push back from your keyboards, stop feeding the beast of the media, and self indulgent click bait.

Assess your skills and knowledge then direct it at the problems at hand.

How do we get this country’s supply chain moving?

Retired Truckers, Longshoremen, material handlers, shippers, planners? It’s time for you to take the stage.

How do we stop more and more people climbing onto a sinking lifeboat?

Retired diplomats, ambassadors, immigration professionals, Any thoughts?

What do we have to do to be energy independent?

Retired oil producers, roughnecks, drilling crews, coal miners, power plant workers, Nuclear engineers, This is your bailiwick.

How do we peacefully, yet undeniably make our voices heard in the halls of power?

Children of the ’50s, ’60s, 70’s 80’s. We were really good at making Washington listen. It’s time for us to decorate our walkers, dust off our signs, create easily remembered slogans, songs, and present clear and unified messages. It’s time to march once again.

(Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

I know us old farts wanted to leave the issues to the young. We wanted to go fishing, put our feet up, watch the sunset, and pass peacefully from this mortal coil.

Unfortunately, our Nation, our Home isn’t done with us yet. “Once more into the breach dear friends…”

It sucks! But it is what it is.

Perhaps we can enjoy fishing and the sunset for a while after we help set things right.

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Oh… This is getting So out of hand.

The other half got a haircut yesterday.

You’d think something as mundane as that wouldn’t be fraught with controversy…

You’d be wrong

We live in a mad mad world.

The stylist was talking with another stylist about a customer she’d had the day before.

The customer in question, was apparently transitioning from one gender to the other. “Okay, this is probably going to go off the rails,” I think.

As the story unfolds, apparently the stylist referred to the customer as a “She”. OMG! The horror!

The customer corrected the stylist’s use of pronoun defiantly proclaiming the proper pronoun was “IT”.

At this point in the story I’ve got my “What The Fuck” face on. The other half ignored me and continued the story.

The stylist, of course apologized explaining that she meant no offense. This wasn’t good enough for the mortally aggrieved customer. (He/She/It… whatever) Continued to manufacture outrage over this insignificant incident, turning everyone’s trip to the hair place into a crazed social justice nightmare.

A) How was the stylist to know “It” was the preferred pronoun?
B) The Stylist did the professional thing by apologizing.
C) The aggrieved customer had all the social decorum of a turd in a punchbowl.

The other half was laughing and said to me, “All I could picture as this story was being told was YOU sitting in a chair during the actual incident.”

Good Point!

I wouldn’t have been able to let it pass. I hate shitty behavior and the shitty people exhibiting it.

The first thing that popped into my head was that since “IT” didn’t have their pronoun tattooed on ITS forehead how was anyone to know? I’m sure that my expressing that thought would have added fuel to the fire.

The second thing that popped into my head is that “IT” usually refers to an object. Then I remembered being a boy in the Deep South.

The first word I ever learned to describe a Black person was the “N-Word”. But the context was that one went to get the “N-Word” to clean up a mess.

For Example: “Bill, please go get the broom to sweep up this mess on the floor.”

My childhood memory has the statement from my Grandfather telling me, “Hey boy, go get the “N-word” to clean up that mess.”

In my experience the “N-Word” was used to reduce a kind thoughtful human being, (Eddie would tell me jokes and ride me around on his shoulders and we’d laugh the whole time,) to nothing more than an object on par with a mop or broom. (For the sake of clarity, Eddie was an employee of my Grandfather, and I probably wasn’t more than 5.)

As I thought about the implications of a human being demanding to be called “IT” I couldn’t help but notice the similarity.

What completely astounds me, is that any human being would willingly demean & diminish their own humanity in this way.

People like the aforementioned customer, would loose their shit if I, a white CIS male, were to refer to an African American as “IT”. They’d be saying I was racist or any number of other ugly things. (Then again, most of the ugly words they’d call me have lost much of their former impact and meanings.)

Then they’d turn around and make a spectacle of themselves in a public place demanding to be called “IT”.

All the while annoying the rest of us “normal” people who use pronouns based in history and languages dating back 5 thousand years or more.

The other half is right…

It’s a good thing I wasn’t there for the incident itself.

Depending on how screeching they were, I could easily see myself leading off with,

“Nobody gives a fuck about your pronouns! Now sit the fuck down and shut the hell up. There are actual humans in this business, trust me they do not consider themselves the equivalent of a dildo or pocket pussy. Both of which, by the way, are ITS.”

No, I don’t think it would have ended well at all…

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I never saw that coming…

As a child growing up in Florida, I remember going to Walt Disney World before they actually had a park.

We drove and drove and then there was a sign that said something like, “Welcome to the Future Disneyworld” There was a place to eat, and a gift shop of course. They also had mockups of the park as the designers envisioned it, and a nice little tour that explained what they were going to do to the area of what was essentially a kind of marshy chunk of land.

For a kid it was pretty neat, even though there weren’t any rides or much of anything else. After all I’d already been to Disney World well before it opened. Several years later, I went to Disney World and mostly remember the monorail.

Even then, large portions of what would become the entire park were still under construction. We were fairly regular visitors then. Each time we went it was a revelation because newer sections of the park opened. I recall ticket books and the like. That’s where the phrase, “E-Ticket Ride” came from.

After we moved out of Florida our visits to Disney World became less frequent and when I got to visit Disneyland in California, I was honestly disappointed. It was so small, noisy, cramped, and I guess due to the scale, it just seemed cheap. Yeah, Disney World spoiled me.

I think in the 35 or so years I’ve been in California, I’ve been to Disneyland maybe 3 times. At least one of those visits was back in the day when corporations could buy the park for an afternoon or evening and have private events. I honestly don’t know if corporations can still do that or if they would these days.

The last time I looked into going to Disneyland or Disney World I quickly dismissed the idea because it had become prohibitively expensive even with discount coupons offered by the company I worked for.

Occasionally, over the years I’ve been invited to join friends at Disneyland and after looking at the prices, politely declined. For that kind of money, I’d rather go to Las Vegas and enjoy more adult shows or entertainment. And so, Disneyland and Disney World dropped off my radar decades ago.

What I’ve been surprised to learn is that Disney World has enjoyed freedom from full taxation, and autonomy in their operations in Florida for 50 years. That kind of benefit had never crossed my mind. Like most folks, I assumed that Disney World had in fact been providing tax revenue to the state of Florida.

I applaud the Florida Legislators for stripping Disney of their tax exempt status. It sends a very clear message. Stay out of politics you’re a business, BE a business!

I suppose in truth they have indirectly paying taxes via sales tax and various tourism taxes from hotels, restaurants, airfares, and car rentals for tourists visiting the state. But no matter how you slice it, Disney had a dang good sweetheart deal. Even if they were paying reduced taxes, over 50 years that has to have added up.

You also have to wonder what the environmental impact of Disney World has on the vast tract of land they occupy. The trash alone must be monumental. Food waste, paper, plastic, human waste, you name it. Typically, Disney parks are immaculately clean. But in the case of Disney World… Where does it all go? What happened to the natural environment in that swath of Florida? Was any of it preserved?

To be fair, in the 60’s undeveloped Florida land was seen as opportunity and in need of development. Then, very little concern was paid to environmental issues. I strongly suspect that had it been practical the Florida Everglades would have been paved over for housing projects.

Disney could have kept its mouth shut about the Florida Parental Rights Bill. Certainly some of the Disney lawyers must have read the bill and informed Disney executives that much of the media hyperbole was not factual.

The Parental Rights Bill wasn’t an open assault on LGBT… lmnop people everywhere.

I do have a concern now that because of the wailing, gnashing of teeth, and over the top dramatics, that there may be an open assault on all LGBT people’s rights.

My concern is not due to the Parental Rights Bill. It’s due to the reaction and conflation of what I think of as the vocal lunatic fringe, the LGBT… lmnop, with the LGB community at large.

That conflation coupled with the “Normal” LGB community’s parroting of whatever the HRC or as OutSpoken puts it, “Gay Inc.” tells them to believe or think, may set gay rights back by decades.

The LGB community fought very hard for a very long time to win the rights that they were guaranteed by The Constitution of the United States. In many cases, those rights could arbitrarily be abridged for no other reason than they were homosexual.

LGB folks have the right to marry, to not face discrimination in housing, their workplace, or any other aspect of their lives. That was what we were fighting for, and we’ve achieved it for the most part.

Will we stand by while a lunatic fringe seizes our voice and uses it to polarize parts of the nation who tolerate us, into our enemies?

The gender fluid, crossdresser activists, should not, and do not speak for all the LGBT community. Nor do virtue signaling corporations.

Let the LGB community speak for ourselves. Generally, we just want to live our lives, love who we love, live quietly, and be left the hell alone.

It’s time for the LGB community, the real LGB community to stand up and roar.

The first and best place to start is roaring at Disney and the “lmnop” fringe by siding with the Florida legislature. Yes, I said side with Florida lawmakers.

Children should not be sexualized in the schools, Full DAMN Stop!
Parents have the responsibility for their children’s behaviors until they’re 18, Parents should also have the right to generally determine what their children are taught in public schools.
Public schools prohibit teaching a religious belief system, it could be argued gender fluidity is simply another belief system.
Disney World should be paying fair taxes and should not enjoy a sweetheart deal if they’re going to enter into politics.
Disney World is an entertainment venue, not a Political Action Committee. If they choose to be a PAC, they shouldn’t be, in effect subsidized by Florida tax payer dollars.

Most LGB people knew there was something different about them from an early age. But at that early age, the difference was irrelevant to them. Something that was an occasionally passing thought, quickly and easily superseded by a sparkly butterfly, or the next baseball game.

The time to address the difference is when the difference becomes an irrefutable issue that occupies a lot of a child’s brainpower. For most, it started at puberty, 3rd graders typically aren’t there yet.

After children have entered puberty, and are questioning all the weird changes in their bodies and minds, I’m all for providing useful education and the knowledge that they’re not alone or abnormal. Until then, let children be children and don’t trouble them with sexuality or pronouns.

I call upon my brothers and sisters in the LGB community to stand up to the insanity. Say “No” to the fringe, remind them that we are inclusive but that a larger majority of us are quite content being the gender we are, and wouldn’t have it any other way.

Remind them that it is our work, our voice, and our lived lives they are usurping. Perhaps remind them of the old adage: They’re nothing scarier than a full grown adult queen.