Walmart has announced a subscription service they’re calling Walmart+ for $100 a year that gives members unlimited free shipping from Walmart.com, free same day shipping from Walmart stores, and 5 cents off per gallon on gas at their stations (Sams Club – a Walmart subsidiary – gas stations not yet included but the company says they will be soon). That’s basically it for now. You can also skip lines in Walmart stores and pay with your Walmart+ account and just walk out the door or something.
The name is boring, adding another Plus branded subscription service to the AppleTV+, Disney+, but – Is it worth it?
You may have noticed by that list that the perks are as generic as the service name. Despite the analyst headlines and overwhelming consensus that this is “Walmarts answer to Amazon Prime”, this is clearly not designed to compete with Amazon Prime like the media hot takes are claiming. More on that in a minute.
The major missing feature is video… Amazon Prime includes movie and tv show streaming in its service along with a bunch of other perks like free cloud storage for photos that most users don’t take advantage of and Walmart isn’t offering anything like that at launch. They could have as the company used to own video streaming streaming service Vudu that offered free and paid streaming rentals and sold it for some reason to Comcast’s Fandango who wanted it for who-knows-why (Fandango already has a streaming service that does the exact same thing Vudu does and its parent company Comcast owns NBCUniversal which already streams its own content on its apps and the newly debuted Peacock streaming service but they wanted one more streamer). Making the lack of video in Walmart+ and Walmarts sale of Vudu even stranger is that at the same time all this is going on, Walmart also wants to co-parent Tik Tok with Microsoft as the phone based short video making/watching app looks for a buyer.
So for whatever reason, Walmart isn’t trying to compete with, er, their biggest competitor, Amazon, who debuted Prime 15 years ago. This is a defensive move to retain customers within their Walmart ecosystem to help dissuade more people from defecting to Amazon for their shopping needs, not an offensive move (at least not yet) to compete with Amazon users who already buy most of their delivered goods through Amazon.
BUT – the one thing that would make Walmart+ worth the hundy a year is the same day free delivery from local stores. That one is a winner because many Walmart stores are also grocery stores so that means unlimited free same day delivery on groceries without having to tip a deliverer (I’m assuming) and without marked up prices like grocery delivery services such as Instacart instates on all the items they make available with their partners.
Walmart+ launches September 15 so will be looking into it more but at this point I’m thinking it’s a probable buy for that reason.
President Trump held a news conference regarding the improving job market but diverted from the subject of economics to also comment on the pertinent subject of equality and justice as they pertain to police interactions. He honored George Floyd and noted that equality is “really what our Constitution requires and it’s what our country is all about“ and hoped that Floyd might be gazing from heaven with gladness that the country is going through that focus. Nice words. So naturally, every liar who hates him lied about it…
Trumps actual quote + my imagined paraphrase of the collective voices crafting the response went exactly like
“President Trump: “Equal justice under the law must mean that every American receives equal treatment in every encounter with law enforcement regardless of race … Hopefully George Floyd is looking down right now & saying this is a great thing that’s happening for our country … in terms of equality”.
-followed by something like:
Corporate Press: “crap. Way too unifying and positive. um… lets go with ‘Trump sez Floyd would be impressed by the current jobless rates’, or something. No one googles this shit anyway lol”…
Not very classy, guys… It’s one thing to run with the “Trump sed to drink bleach!” type of fake quotes without looking up the actual video because you think its funny and doesn’t need to be accurate because “it sounds like something he’d say anyway” but you’re really gonna bring George Floyd into that game of liars telephone?… Rude.”
I didn’t examine the time stamps to located which chickens came before which eggs on when the media’s domino of dishonesty started toppling on this narrative, but they all went with the basic theme of cutting out the separation of topics between the economy and equal justice in policing in order to squish Trumps words about the George Floyd together with the other topic of the U.S. economy. The context and separation of topics was in no way unclear, but most news media knows people don’t fact-check anti-Trump reports to any degree of consequence, so it was an easy editorial choice to go with the lie.
I encourage you to follow the link to the other examples of how this was reported, but the award for most boiled-down version of the narrative was this Bloomberg post that basically just took the talking points of the smear and made it a news report. The headline reads “Trump Invokes Floyd in Jobs Remarks as Black Unemployment Soars” as a double misleader that both lies about the President invoking Floyd “in jobs remarks” (he didn’t. It was a conference on job growth but Floyd was never mentioned in any context of anything about jobs) and adding the “as [this other negative thing happens]” technique of leading the reader (as opposed to reporting on Trumps thesis that a strong economy will bring racial justice). The byline bullet point below the headline contradicts it by admitting that Trump said ‘A great day for him’ ‘after remarks on equality’ (not remarks on jobs…), and then reports that black unemployment rose to 16.8%. Then they use *this* photo of Trump mid-action of getting up or down from his seat, just to make sure the point is driven home to the reader that we’re not supposed to be viewing this favorably.
With the number of outlets that ran with the fake narrative in the mainstream media – you can imagine the level of less stringent fact checkers repeating it all over social media. I scrolled through 4 different people posting 3 different links with the lie on Facebook before I even looked other areas to see the ditto’s echoing the line that Trump claimed a deified figure of history would be their fan.
Retired Marine General James N. Mattis was Trumps first Secretary of War Defense but resigned in protest after failing to convince the President that he needed to blow up more countries. Now, the same Mattis who said we needed to keep fighting an 18 year long war, bomb more people, police more nations, ultimately resigned from the administration when it pulled troops out of Syria instead of following his advice to put more in, and now sits as a board member for General Dynamics (aka one of the largest defense contractors in the US) thinks President Trump is bad?… lol. Filed under “No freakin doy”.
Mattis has been laying in wait to come out against Trump in an effort to damage/prevent his reelection bid. He finally made his move in a public condemnation over Trump traveling across the street during a press conference to a church near the White House that was the victim of arson by “protestors” (cuz setting buildings on fire is an appropriate method of free-speech expression, right?) the night before. Mattis said he was angry and appalled, mainly over the Presidential security detail clearing protestors who were blocking the way and accused Trump’s message of unity in front of the victimized place of worship of trying “to divide us.”
About James Mattis
General Mattis was named President-elect Donald Trump’s Secretary of Defense in December 2016, a month before the new administration was officially sworn into office. He was frequently referred to a “Mad Dog” Mattis, which the L.A. Times said was a nickname his troops gave him “behind his back” after the battle of Fallujah in 2004 where he reportedly ordered attacks on ambulances and aid workers, prevented civilians from escaping, and posed for trophy photos with the people they killed. Under his command, Marines killed so many civilians that the municipal soccer stadium reportedly had to be turned into a graveyard. Whether the troops meant the nickname of comparing Mattis to an insane animal as a compliment or not is disputed, but the nickname stuck and was used by Trump around his nomination time. Less understandable as “maybe they mean it as a compliment?” is his nickname as “The Warrior Monk”, alluding to his 40+ year long war related career and the fact that he has never been married.
I could find no record of any additional nickname alluding to the apparent laziness and alcoholism of both his eyeballs which sport obscene beer bellies.
Mattis appears to have been, during his military career and beyond, the sort of war loving military man that Hollywood thinks everyone in the military upper ranks is. In 2005 there were calls to discipline him for saying it was “a hell of a lot of fun” to shoot the Taliban, who “slap women around for five years because they didn’t wear a veil.” Nihad Awad of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) commented on that saying “We do not need generals who treat the grim business of war as a sporting event. These disturbing remarks are indicative of an apparent indifference to the value of human life.” I disagree, because – it was the Taliban, after all, (and to be fair: CAIR is also designated as a terrorist organization by the UAE) but nevertheless, Nihad didn’t know how deadnuts spot-on he was when he described Mattis in exactly those terms. This Slate article on Mattis from 2010 depicts his attitude about using human beings as canon fodder to the degree that the dude is even against his men wearing helmets on their motorcycles cuz he only wants risk taking dudes ready to get hurt and die within his ranks. If you think that interpretation sounds exaggerated then you tell me what *you* gleaned from this portion of the piece:
Maintaining this culture of ferocity is why Mattis bristles about excessive hand-wringing over Marines who might want to ride without motorcycle helmets. Marines need to be risk-takers. That’s why the corps advertises at extreme sporting events. Ferocity is part of what the corps works to build in boot camp, and it is central to its storied history and traditions. If that’s the kind of spirit you need to fight wars, then you have to accept that the kind of person you want is going to sometimes ride at 120 miles an hour on a bike and hurt himself.
In and out of the Trump Cabinet
This history and “Mad Dog” approach to warfare made some question how well he would fit into Donald Trumps administration, which was promised during the campaign to be decidedly more anti-war than any of the previous Democrat or Republican administrations in living memory. The Mad Dog was portrayed as an anti-torture advocate who would bring a Trumpian aggressive attitude to a foreign policy that was decidedly non-aggressive in a sort of “speak loudly and carry a big stick, but leave that stick at your side until absolutely necessary” (paraphrase) type approach.
Turns out, the fit wasn’t so great.
Mattis finally left the administration in frustration over being unable to convince President Trump to escalate war rhetoric, drop more bombs, send more troops, or start any of the new wars he was looking forward to commanding from the White House. The last straw that caused him to resign in protest was when Trump, against Mattis’ reported wishes and advisement, and hopes and dreams of spilling more blood for no good reason, had US troops removed from Syria.
This made sense to Trump, whose approach to war is more practical, eg – along the lines of “defeat the enemy and get out”, while such an approach is an outrage to warmongers who see every excuse for conflict as a potential for more escalation.
We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency.
Does the USA want to be the Policeman of the Middle East, getting NOTHING but spending precious lives and trillions of dollars protecting others who, in almost all cases, do not appreciate what we are doing? Do we want to be there forever? Time for others to finally fight…..
I said on the day of his departure from the administration that he was biding his time to use some bullsh*t “Trump is bad for the American Way” appeal to Trumps base (well, specifically I predicted that he would just use “conservative appeals”) to try and peel them back into the hawks nest but I said it would likely come closer to the election. Indeed, that same month it was revealed that Mattis had explored a potential run for President to defeat Trump and Make America War-focused again.
“Shocker”… Mattis rebukes Trump in election year
While Mattis ultimately decided not to run against Trump in 2020, his commitment to seeing the President he served under get removed from office remains strong and he finally pounced this month, claiming that Trump is bad for “the Constitution” or something.
The statement had a bunch of tired talking points like Trump being -gasp – “divisive” (as if THIS was the big secret revealed) and referring to Trumps press conference that showcased St Johns church – an area landmark damaged by the fires that were part of the devastation from the riots “protests” the night before and continuing into the next day – as a “bizarre photo op” (“wtf is all this calling for peace crap??” he must have furiously exclaimed) and express outrage that the President said he would bring in the U.S. Military to protect and defend the country if the domestic terrorism didn’t stop.
Read this portion of his complaint and you can almost feel Mattis’ heartbreak at learning of such a crushing proclamation antithetical to everything he believes in regarding the countries armed forces – that his precious tools of death would be used, not as pawns in foreign countries, but on American soil protecting actual American citizens from harm.
When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens — much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.
These checklists of outrages about “divisiveness” and “photo ops” (ie: every single thing a President does in public) are all obviously designed to blow a kiss to the corporate press already circulating those same talking points and try to lend them some seeming credibility from his stature as someone who loves killing people.
Not sure why Mattis thinks the Constitution contains the rights for mob gatherings to impede the travel of the President for any reason (I checked. It doesn’t) – even/including if it is for a demonstration in the street to showcase that you think racism and/or murder is bad. Given his history, he was also presumably super angry that only strictly non-lethal tactics were used to clear the mobs out of the way for the president to visit one of the sites their movement tried to destroy and tell the American people he would put an end to such destruction.
Of course the point of all this is to seize the opportunity to get the President some negative news coverage at a time when his leadership was doing way too well for comfort. While the corporate press succeeded in whipping up an international frenzy of hate and outrage causing violence (that the main anti-Trump fake-Republican group wasted no time cutting into ads) over the seemingly unjust killing of a black suspect in Minnesota during his arrest, the coverage doesn’t appear to be doing much to dent Trumps reputation. This wasn’t helped by the fact that the incident occurred in a Democrat city, under a Democrat mayor, by a Democrat union, and under a Democrat prosecutor, Democrat attorney general, and Democrat Governor, with Republican President Trump (the same guy who undid the worst damage from the Democrat crime bill of the 90s last year) being the only one who acted swiftly for justice in the situation.
While it was never a secret that Mattis, like others in the so called deep state coup participants, wanted Trump replaced with someone easier to convince into sending troops and bombs and bases and money around the world at pre-Trump levels in the Presidency again (whether that be himself or Joe Biden, or future Republicans running for office under a cloud of “see?? Trump lost and you will too unless you fall in line on war games”) this wasn’t common knowledge to the average observer and thus gave weight to the intended effect, which was “respected General turns on Trump”.
Whether any Conservatives at all who like the President will be duped by this charade remains to be seen (the Senates most Trump-critical Republicans, Lisa Murkowski (AK) and Mitt Romney (UT) both praised Mattis’ comments), but at the time of this writing is rather doubtful given the easy-to-reveal history of Mattis’ opposition for the platform of de-escalating violence that they voted for.
Trump haters, on the other hand are all in on this talking point, and Mattis citing the Constitution I guess makes them feel like they have some cover for becoming war shills in the name of justifying their hate for the President because he pens mean Tweets.
At the last minute before I published this post, I saw this tweet from Rich Higgins, a the former director for strategic planning in the National Security Council, making the following claim about Mattis:
President Trump has expressed concern about states, particularly the key election states of Michigan and Nevada, changing their voting rules this election year to shift to mail-in voting in the name of safety because of the Wuhan Coronavirus.
Increased mail-in voting increases potential for fraud, so naturally this should be a bipartisan issue, right? You would think the Democratic party might have an interest in protecting Democracy and specifically – the citizens rights to have their vote counted and not illegally cancelled out by a fraudulent tally. But no… the Democrat party and its partisan defenders take the opposite position and ridicule the concern in the first place.
Straw-manning the issue
The first tactic to ridiculing a point with merit to it is to remove the merit and argue against an alternate dumber version of the argument in a technique known as the Strawman Fallacy.
While Trump has been rightfully suspicious of the fast track attempt to use mass mail-in voting as the standard for this years election, Trump critics bashing him on this strawman his position into “any vote by mail is bad” which is a much easier position (that he never took) to tear down, especially since military votes are by mail and Trump himself votes absentee ballots. This technique was used to roast the President as a hypocrite by media who made no attempt to give readers a glimpse into what the actual concern expressed is or might be.
CNN’s Chris Cillizza summed up this dumb non-point on a CNN.com article (which is notable because it would be one thing if a journalist displayed this level of lack-of-journalism on their blog or social media profile but to do so on their platform of alleged journalism only validates via illustration, Trumps claim that CNN is Fake News):
President Donald Trump made very clear that voting by mail — an alternative many are suggesting to deal with the ongoing stay-at-home directives — is a very bad thing. And more than that, he suggested, it’s deeply corrupt.”No, mail ballots, they cheat,” said Trump. “OK, people cheat. Mail ballots are a very dangerous thing for this country because they are cheaters.”
You might have noticed that Trump is not terribly thorough and precise with every sentence that casually references another that he’s said in that moment or the week prior when he speaks off the cuff to an audience that knows (or he thinks knows) what he’s talking about (like supporters at a rally or members of the press) and this makes for easy attack points by dishonest media critics to just isolate those moments instead of doing that journalism thingy where they aggregate the facts on the topic together and report them in a way to inform the people of the Presidents position. Instead, these corporate press outlets pluck these moments out of any further explanatory context and rebut the literalness of those isolated phrases rather than the collective explanation. The above quotes are not the only comments the President has said, yet Cilizza uses those and those alone to dishonestly summarize his position. With the false premise that “Trump thinks no one should ever vote by mail”, the premise is set for the “gotchya”. In reality, the lines above were spoken, as I noted, in reference to his previous comments on the subject regarding hastily expanded mass mail-in voting and Trump made the mistake of mentioning it in a press conference where he assumed the reporters attending would have been good enough at their jobs to know the subject matter.
Nah. Instead of referencing the larger issue, a reporter was all “uhhm, didn’t you just recently vote by mail?” and Trump was all “Duh. Yea. You can do that in Florida and I was in the White House so I voted absentee” and the reporter was like “how do you reconcile that?” and Trump was like “Wtf b*ch”. *(Paraphrased / not a real transcript).
Cilizza used the actual back and forth, where the reporter actually did say “How do you reconcile that” and Trump said he was in the White House, probably not even catching on that the reporter was trying to trap him and thought she was just being stupid, and then called it “obvious hypocrisy” instead of the non-contradictory reality it is. The lying title of that Cilizza article, btw, is “Donald Trump’s blatant hypocrisy on voting by mail” even though only an approximate 26 lines of the post (including the “how do you reconcile that?” transcript) are dedicated to that false premise and 56 lines afterward acknowledging the higher propensity of mail-in fraud, but making excuses for it as not a big enough deal to do anything about…
The problem with mail-in fraud
Cilizza gets to the point that “The problem is that Trump thinks absentee voting is good for him but not for other people. Because of, er, fraud.” – which again, is false. Trump never said or implied anything about the current absentee voting system in place – his comments were only about rushed state wide mass mail-in voting – but Cilizza can’t just be out there writing posts like “Trump is right about this issue” – so first came the false “lol what a hypocrite” thesis that headlined the post, and then buried underneath comes the acknowledgement of the issue at hand:
Now, what Trump is right about is that absentee voting and vote-by-mail have been the places in the recent past where the small amount of voter fraud that exists has been discovered. (Nota bene: The only difference, effectively, between absentee voting and vote-by-mail is that in the former you have to request a ballot while in the latter a ballot is sent to you.)
Yea… doy…
The concern is, again, not that registered voters who mail in their ballots are currently doing a bad thing, but that a new policy automatically mailing ballots to millions of people that didn’t ask for them, comes with the obvious potential of mailing voter fraud opportunities. Without a thorough review to do this right, you’re potentially sending millions of ballots to people who don’t exist or are ineligible voters.
For such a policy to avoid this obvious loophole for election theft, the voter rolls would have to undergo a re-indexing to update the Governments inefficient system of doing seemingly simple tasks it manages to fail at like keeping track of people who moved, are registered in multiple states by accident or on purpose, who have died or have been convicted of a felony that makes them ineligible to cast a vote.
Trying to make the non-controversial a controversy
Situations like this where journalists want to editorially slant a message but not completely bald-faced-lie about it entirely do so by couching the truth they don’t want focused on in a swarm of “yea, but still”. Again – I’m picking on CNN’s Chris Cilizza here, but only because his article on the subject was so exemplary of the others who did the exact same thing in the same way. In his pre-mentioned article he admits to national mail-in fraud but when talking about specific examples, makes sure they are only ones that are obscure, hyper-local, and from a long time ago, such as one in the Democratic primaries for local offices like sheriff in “the late 1990s” (couldn’t give an exact year, bro? “1997” is in both the top of the article and its URL…), quoting from what “The New York Times wrote back then“:
“Many of the absentee voters were assisted in voting by supporters of various candidates after claiming that they could not read (sometimes despite high school or college degrees) or that they suffered from physical maladies (one saying he had been kicked in the head by a mule).”
The NYT caption on this photo reads: “An absentee ballot in Florida. Almost 2 percent of mailed ballots are rejected, double the rate for in-person voting.” -Credit… Sarah Beth Glicksteen for The New York Times
The Times article reports that election administrators say that just the increasing trend of more people choosing to vote by mail “will probably result in more uncounted votes, and it increases the potential for fraud”, noting in particular that voting by mail contains “vastly more prevalent” fraud than the in-person voting fraud that most media attention surrounds. Despite being from 2012, it offers more pertinent historical record highlights than CNN-Cilizza’s 1997 Georgia sheriff primary example, such as:
In Florida, absentee-ballot scandals seem to arrive like clockwork around election time. Before this year’s primary, for example, a woman in Hialeah was charged with forging an elderly voter’s signature, a felony, and possessing 31 completed absentee ballots, 29 more than allowed under a local law.
The flaws of absentee voting raise questions about the most elementary promises of democracy. “The right to have one’s vote counted is as important as the act of voting itself,” Justice Paul H. Anderson of the Minnesota Supreme Court wrote while considering disputed absentee ballots in the close 2008 Senate election between Al Franken and Norm Coleman.
Voting by mail is now common enough and problematic enough that election experts say there have been multiple elections in which no one can say with confidence which candidate was the deserved winner.
Which is exactly Trumps stated concern that Cilizza and other Trump critics are trying to dismiss. One has to wonder why that might be…
Republicans should fight very hard when it comes to state wide mail-in voting. Democrats are clamoring for it. Tremendous potential for voter fraud, and for whatever reason, doesn’t work out well for Republicans. @foxandfriends
Vox writer Aaron Rupar responded to this with the headline “Trump isn’t even trying to hide his self-interested reasons for opposing mail-in voting” with the byline quoting Trump saying “For whatever reason, [it] doesn’t work out well for Republicans”, calling that an example of President Trump “saying the quiet part loud” when it comes to his opposition to mail-in voting. The reality is just the opposite: disproportionate Democrat votes in increased mail-in ballots than exist in the rest of the voting tallies suggests evidence to exactly Trumps concern about fraud.
In that same Vox piece, Rupar totally makes stuff up about to boost mail-in voting by claiming Trump totally makes stuff up to discredit mail-in voting:
"You get thousands and thousands of people sitting in somebody's living room, signing ballots all over the place. No. I think that mail-in voting is a terrible thing" — Trump totally makes stuff up on Tuesday to discredit mail-in voting pic.twitter.com/bsUjFxPwIP
A bipartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform, chaired by former president Jimmy Carter and former secretary of state James A. Baker III, concluded in 2005 that “absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud” and that “vote buying schemes are far more difficult to detect when citizens vote by mail.” Carter and Baker also pointed out that citizens who vote at nursing homes “are more susceptible to pressure, overt and subtle, or to intimidation.” In Florida, there is even a name for this: “granny farming.”
Thiessen also notes items of consequence that the higher rates of mail-in ballots not even being counted are undisputed.
A Massachusetts Institute of Technology study found that in the 2008 presidential election, 7.6 million of 35.5 million mail-in ballots requested were not counted because they never reached voters or were rejected for irregularities. That is a failure rate of more than 21 percent. In 2008, it did not matter because the election was not particularly close and mail-in ballots only accounted for a fraction of votes cast. But imagine the impact that would have in a close election in which mail-in voting is tried on a massive scale.
Again: more than a tiny bit suspicious that so called “Democrats” would be downplaying these known threats to democracy, no?
As admitted by Cilizza (again – in his article that calls Trumps absentee voting “hypocritical”), Thiessen also cites the difference between absentee votes and a state-wide change to mass mail voting:
Moreover, there is a huge difference between sending ballots to a small number of citizens who request them and requiring that they be mailed to every registered voter, as Democrats are demanding. Under the Democrats’ plan, ballots would inevitably be sent to wrong addresses or inactive voters, putting millions of blank ballots into circulation — an invitation for fraud. Add to that the danger of what Democrats call “community ballot collection” (a.k.a. “ballot harvesting”) where campaign workers collect absentee ballots in bulk and deliver them to election officials, and you have a recipe for disaster.
Seems more like the validation of Trumps concern about a rushed change of plans to enact state-wide mail-in voting this election year is far from controversial – it’s nearly universally agreed upon by data published and opined in the same sources that are attacking this concern (NY Times, WashPo, CNN, just to name the 3 quoted in this post by me).
Know who else agrees? Chris Cilizza…
In the same article mentioned several times in this post – the one dubiously calling Trump a hypocrite in the title and claiming that voter fraud shouldn’t be a concern, Chris Cilizza says the same thing as Trump. Specifically that:
So, there’s no question that past history has suggested that absentee balloting and vote-by-mail are more likely than in-person voting to be subject to bad actors. Which makes sense since the vote is being cast, usually, in the privacy of your home, as opposed to at a polling place with official poll watchers and election officials not only keeping an eye out for any irregularities but also taking the ballot from you as soon as you cast it.
Specifically: The mainstream media coverage of the Wuhan coronavirus and its editorializing of its severity and effects vs the severity and effects of local and federal governments reaction to it, is making people act irrationally hysterical, panicked, and without critical thinking. But “insane” is a shorter and accurate summary (that is not an attack on those actually afflicted with cognitive illnesses).
Recording his show from his back yard, Bill Maher tries to talk some sense into his viewers on the subject.
“Now that we’re starting to see some hope in all this, don’t hope-shame me” is the bizarre but necessary plea someone in the logical position on this issue at this time faces from the unwashed masses.
“You know the problem with nonstop gloom and doom is it gives Trump the chance to play the optimist. And optimists tend to win American elections.”
As I’ve noted before about the bizarre “Trump was too optimistic” attacks – the anti-Trump doomsday media is only helping his re-election. Maybe it’s a secret conspiracy to manipulate media consumers with a little Bugs Bunny style reverse-psychology but that still makes it my duty to tip you off about it in the event that you don’t want to be one of those manipulated tools aiding the Donald Show into a Season 2 renewal.
Maher cited FDR’s “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” which has been a winning inspirational theme for him and politicians after him, most famously “the other 3 letter president”, JFK. Maher doesn’t fear the Chinese virus so much as he fears that “as s*** as he is, I can see Trump riding that into a second term. And then there will be no hope left for you to shame.”
I selfishly assume that one of his writers must have heard me point out the “early seasons of Nickelodeons Rugrats cinematography” technique fearmongers are using to make a micro organism appear visually scary by showing the scrubbing broccoli ball image. As Maher put it: anything “you magnify a thousand times” looks scary, and illustrate the point with a micro-zoomed image of a pubic hair.
Update (May 14th): Dave Portnoy’s take
The CEO of Barstool Sports had a similar thesis with slightly different words.
Emergency Press Conference – When Did Flattening The Curve Turn Into Finding The Cure pic.twitter.com/ZaSTxL6Tuc
A few days ago a story went viral allegedly showing a 9 year old boy with dwarfism reeling in so much pain from having been relentlessly bullied that he was crying and said he just wanted to die.
I didn’t watch it because that’s not my idea of a good time and I don’t need to consume media of people in emotional anguish in order to empathize with them or come to the conclusion that ostracizing people for the way they look is bad. I also saw zero value in posting the original story except to virtue-signal the notion that basically, “hey u guyz, this world is so terrible and cruel but you know what?? I think that’s BAD, man! I think people who are jerks are NOT NICE!” and build clout over yet another sentiment that no one disagrees with just so I can feel good about myself. I confess that that is exactly what I thought of everyone posting the story at first, for exactly those implications — and another thing that really grinds my gears is the existence and distribution of the video in the first place.
I don’t think parents should post videos of their children in stress, failures, or otherwise humiliating or pitiable situations on the internet for it to live forever and be a part of who they are to the public. Why wasn’t THIS – the fact that the mother is putting her Childs pain in the public square for us to tut tut at, instead of just showing it to the school administrators at the source of the bullying), the real scandal?
But I’m getting ahead of myself…
My interest in the story perked when I saw comedian Brad Williams – a standup and also awesome dude who also has dwarfism – had taken the lead to raise funds and give the kid a treat in the form of a trip to Disneyland, all expenses paid.
*This* I thought and still think, is worth posting because there’s actually something to draw from the negative instance rather than just beginning and ending with “this kid was treated poorly! Repost to more people who agree that kids shouldn’t experience emotional suffering and hopelessness that makes them want to kill themselves and feel like you did something when you actually did literally nothing but make yourself feel like you did something righteous!”. Brad stepped up and countered a terrible experience with an amazing one – eg – he actually *did* something about the pain he saw someone experienced and sought to counter it with a balance of love, kindness, and gift of joy. So that story, I reposted, and I’m not sorry I did because I endorse people *doing things* over moral posturing in the guise of “spreading awareness” of something 100% of the people you are spreading that thing to already agree with the conclusion of. Brads efforts quickly met the 10 grand goal, doubled it, tripled it, and at the time of this posting, reached a whopping 300,000 empathy dollars. Wow! As I understand it, that money isn’t going to kid/his family but rather the original 25 grand goal to send him to Disney is proceeding as stated and the excess funds are going to anti-bullying charities.
However… what if the story about the bullying was a scam by an adult to emotionally manipulate the public into making someone rich and/or famous [so they could get rich that way]? Shortly after the virality of the original story, this post – or rather reposts of screenshots of this Facebook post – went just as viral:
Its contents were repeated and soon became the popular accusation. And the evidence is… interesting. But not, at the time of this writing, all that compelling. Not yet at least.
Like I said, I didn’t watch the video, and I don’t feel like analyzing it at this juncture to try and find hints and tells that it’s an actor pulling a con but I maintain that it is not cool and highly suspicious that his mother video’ed his pain and put it on display to the world, even though I – repeat – haven’t actually watched it. But even without that direct analysis, the specifics in the hoax claims above don’t pan out.
Yes, I’m pretty sure he’s 9 or 10 – not 18 or older
First, the claim that the kid is an adult and scamming the public with this sob story to enrich himself. I admit that the “what if this guy is like the plot of The Orphan” did cross my mind. But.. evidence of his adulthood is lacking. His Instagram shows him with a lit up “18” sign with some other kids and one apparent older person / young adult and the claim is that he removed reference to his 18th birthday in the caption.
But… who noticed the alleged caption to reported its existence but *didn’t* screenshot what it said before it was “deleted”? That absence of original-deleted-text on the Insta post is extremely suspect to the point of being discounted all together. Being photographed next to the number 18 doesn’t make me think he’s 18 on its own – there is no evidence to support the claim that there was a caption saying it was his 18th birthday – and there *is* evidence that it wasn’t as the same group of photos with him wearing the same shirt near the 18 shows that it’s a dude named Garlen’s 18th birthday that the event was at.
Further – and not that I’m a medical expert in the field of dwarfism, but – he doesn’t appear to me to be an adult with the disorder. He looks like a child with dwarfism. So based on appearance and the 18th-birthday falsehood, I’m ruling out the age-scam accusation.
Was it still a hoax to get you bleeding heart suckers to pay him though? Well. Lets see…
What does his social media reveal about him, exactly?
His Instagram account has a lot of posts where he doesn’t appear to “need money” for sure – but also remember that no one claimed he did. My boy Brad Williams didn’t start the Disneyland GoFundMe because his family is poor and give him cash to buy food and awesome toys – he started it to send the kid on a trip and have a blast as a gesture to remind him and others that, yes, cruel and terrible things happen, but that’s not all there is to life. There are good people and awesome things to do and see and fun to be had and joy to be experienced and let that be a reminder to him and all onlookers when faced with the crushing hurtful parts that are marbled into the experience of existing.
But – truth first, as always – let’s examine the evidence.
Some of those “he don’t need no money” posts include him in a fancy white kiddie car like those Pow Pow Power wheels badass rides that the most spoiled kid on your block had and you wish that you did, show him in Gucci sweatshirt (or at least a hoodie that says “Gucci” on it, whether or not it actually was made by the luxury brand) and, most amusingly and also disturbingly to this context – there’s this video of him holding up money like a gangster talking about “getting paid” in a post made a week ago.
Update: I’m leaving the video embed below, but his Instagram has since been made private after the scrutiny this story has brought to it. If you can’t view the embed below – it’s just what is described in the preceding paragraph…
hmmm… Well, again – “he needs money because he’s poor” was never the claim, so that’s off the table. But what are we to make of this and the other thuggy/punk style media portrayal?
Idk man, what do we typically make of kids posting thuggy puffery of themselves online? The most illuminating part of that video to me is just a reminder that Australian currency looks like the money from the board game Monopoly (at least it does to us Americans).
Unless the kid is accused of violently attacking someone and his defenders are only showing media of him that portray a meek and innocent demeanor, there’s not really anything to uncover with these revelations of him portrayed as a tough guy punk online.
Seventeen year old Trayvon Martin was killed by a single upwardly-shot bullet from a legally owned firearm by someone who credibly claimed that Martin was on top of him beating his bloodied face into the sidewalk and the prosecution and public outrage that fomented against that shooter portrayed Martin as a cherubic innocent little boy via photos from 5 years prior, all but begging the revelations of his “gang” style language, references, and gestures to come out and look much more damning because of it. But even then no one was claiming that just because Martin portrayed himself online as someone who flipped off cameras and said naughty words meant that he was guilty of attacking his shooter.
What are this 9 year old boys middle-finger photos and “gangsta life” posts online supposed to reveal about him exactly? That he’s incapable of being emotionally wounded because he’s actually a badass gangsta thug?… come on guys…
I don’t think there’s much of anything that these posts illuminate. It’s not uncommon to feel on top of the world one day and be mistreated another day so poorly that you feel like you don’t want to be alive. It’s also typical for people on social media to present themselves in a way they wish they were (ie: more powerful and confidant than they are in real life) and are almost always not genuine bankable windows into a persons real self. This goes double/triple/beyond with teens and kids. Instagram in particular is known for being the least-real-life member of the Social Media game in where people post their best and their brightest and their most peacocky of moods, attitudes, vacations, and blessings. Assuming that the clown is always laughing is a psychological trope of a mistake always, but doubly so in this context, so again, I’m not going with these being hoax-busting revelations.
The only sketchy part is the parenting choices here…
It’s not credible to claim that he’s an adult and it’s not a contradiction that he’s self-portrayed as a confidant punk on his Instagram and yet experienced painful degradation from his peers that made him feel terrible. It *is* fishy that there is so much “hey look at me” media of a 9 year old with a carefully curated social media account that this story is coming from. It’s not proof of anything – it’s just fishy… Like… flip off cameras and goof about being a pimp all you want, but what kind of mom posts that stuff online and then makes your worst day public viewing to the world? That’s where all the “wtf” attention should be in my opinion – not on whether he’s 25 and banging hookers with all that sweet sympathy cash (which, again – I’ll update if I hear different, but as of now, the family hasn’t solicited any funds and Brad Williams’ donation campaign that reached 300-grand is only paying the cost of a Disney trip and then channeling the spill-over amount to charities).
If this does turn out to be a big scam along the lines of his very non-victim-like appearances online suggest then this is gonna be another in a long line of hoaxes that prey on peoples preconceived bias’ of there being oppression around every corner that social justice warriors need to fight so they can feel valuable and worthy instead of having to confront the reality in the meaninglessness of their online crusading – but as February 21st 2020 – I have yet to uncover evidence that support these claims.
Until then – Moms: Don’t humiliate your kids to the public even if it’s with the intention of praising them or shaming bad behavior. It’s not worth it.
Apples design choices amount to “we are whatever the other guys aren’t”.
That’s a line I say a little further down in this post but I wanted to do that thing where a pull-quote is used to demonstrate a thesis cuz that’s what real journalism is, or something.
The logo for their September product announcement event appears to be a stack of clear colored plastic shells.
So does this mean they are bringing back color – or, sorry, “flavor” – options to their computers like the early 2000’s iMac and iBook options?
I’m gonna say that will be a solid no because Apples design choices amount to “we are whatever the other guys aren’t”.
So the first Apple computer debut’s as a beige square and later a beige monitor with a beige tower connected to it and their first laptops came in off-white and then off-black (or what Apple today calls “Space Gray”) – but then when every desktop maker offered nothing but a beige tower or black laptop, they come out with “flavors” of computers that include color options that are bright and zesty and intentionally absent of white, off-white, beige/tan/whatever available choices in desktop and black options for laptops taken away.
But then when the other computer makers catch up and start making fun looking colorful desktop and laptop options, Apple says “fkk-you” and makes all their machines in unpainted uniform aluminum.
The same with iPhones: They were black when most cell phones were silver, became silver when most cell phones started copying the black iPhone, and expanded into colorful options only after the industry standard for smart phones were “either silver or black”.
Apple is what the others aren’t – or at least that’s how the company wants people to think of their products. So what they offer is shaped by what the standard is and then Apple will go do the opposite.
Just a friendly reminder to well meaning philosophers with such big hearts that they become generous with other peoples money: I’m not scolding you, I’m just pointing out that desires for the well being of others doesn’t lift your moral credentials and taking from people makes you worse, not better.
The inspo for this Public Service Announcement stems from this proclamation shared with me on social media that wags a digital finger at people who point out what many think is obvious – that advocating theft from people makes you a bad person (even if it’s for reasons you think are noble redistributions) – but an increasing number of people think is virtuous:
“Wanting everyone to have healthcare and food does not make you a communist, socialist or unpatriotic. It just makes you a good person.”
That is almost mostly true. Accuracy rating of 20% to a maximum of 49%.
Wanting vs Doing
Wanting good things for people makes you nothing but just a sort-of “nice” person in an abstract theoretical way, because of course, “wanting” things can’t make you good any more than wanting to be healthy makes you lose weight or wanting to be bilingual makes you fluent in Bengali. To be those types of persons you have to do things, not “want” them.
In the past couple years from the time of this writing, a trope has cropped up in social media punditry that mocks and derides people saying that they are extending “thoughts and prayers” in the wake of something terrible happening instead of doing something more tangible to help the people you are proclaiming to psychically benefit by thinking things and mentally saying things about the poor state of affairs that has befallen them. I’m inclined to agree with the philosophy when used in the context of “instead of virtue signally a broadcast about your compassion and empathy, you should do something about it by donating, volunteering, or one-on-one helping an affected person”. But that usually only applies to contexts of natural disasters and most commonly the anti-thoughts&prayers trope is most commonly used by authoritarians in response to murders committed with guns in the context of “instead of ‘thoughts and prayers’ why aren’t you supporting more government legislation to curtail law-obeyers 2nd amendment rights in ways that wouldn’t have prevented this act of evil that you’re broadcasting ‘thoughts and prayers’ about??”. Either way, the point is the same that you can “wish” and “want” all you want but “wanting” others to be aided isn’t helping any individual lives.
Back to the meme: Wanting people to have their health cared for and to be able to eat is a great thing to want. What makes you a communist, socialist, or unpatriotic bad person is when you take steps to initiate violence (support for state force) in order to confiscate/steal other people’s representation of their labor (their money) in order to fulfill your utopian “wants” instead of use your own capital and non violently convince others to voluntarily do the same for the same purpose.
Anti-Choice is Anti-Good
You might think it’s the best thing to give $100 of your money to a homeless shelter while I might think it’s the best thing to give $100 of my money to St Jude’s Hospital and the only thing you can do to get my $100 away from kids with cancer and toward your adults without a place to live is to convince me with logical or emotional or rational appeals.
As soon as you say “I want this thing to exist, thus my want overrules your wants, so I support the use of force to take what is yours to go towards the things I want”, you are an unpatriotic bad person.
Whether you prefer communism or socialism as your preferred method of State control is your own business.
A significant portion of the August 29th 2019 episode of The Adam Carolla Show podcast’s first half recently featured a beef with his employees about them not doing a seemingly simple task over a period of many-asks by the boss that resulted in an on-air rant, then questioning, and then one of the mentioned employees of said rant, Dylan Wrenn, getting on the microphone to angrily tell Adam that if he thinks Dylan is so “stupid” then to “fkking fire him”.
Boss Carolla seemingly just wants an office in the recording studio warehouse cleaned… why is that so impossible? Why is it a subject that has to be avoided so many times to cause this on-air confrontation? These are not rhetorical questions. Please someone answer them for me because I am as baffled as Carolla is in this segment of his show and I’m positive that many, if not a majority of listeners are sympathetic to the employee side of the conflict – so tell me – enlighten me on what exactly is going on under the surface here that makes Carolla’s “please clean this office – during normal hours [not overtime or getting there early or anything extra]” so offensive?
Before continuing, skip into the first 5 minutes of the show and listen up until the 48 minute mark by either looking the episode up (I play all podcasts at 2x speed so that would be my choice, but few others seem to like that option) or by listening via this link here.
The only premise you need is that Adam Carolla, the host, is the boss. Co-hosts Bald Bryan and Gina Grad are the male and female voices that open the show and then later on, defending his colleague Dylon is Chris “Maxapada” as he is nicknamed on the show (his real last name is Laxamana). Please listen first.
Now, my “WTF is wrong with kids these days” questions that I have [about people who are my age or within 10 years of age]…
Why is there so much animosity toward doing things?
Adam brings up a previous angry employee, Gabe, who was angry at being told to clean an office used by 2 other people and asks why it is so offensive to do more than 33% of the organization within a shared space. I ask this as well… As Adam notes in the show – it is possible for one to expand up to 40 or 50% you know, adding that “you’re allowed to walk down the street and pick up a wrapper that’s not from YOUR candy bar”. So why is this concept so offensive to this generation? Obviously if there is a pattern of one person always doing extra cleaning of others carelessly created messes, that would be an injustice that I’m positive Adam and anyone else would recognize, but wtf is the deal with being pre-emptively angry over the possibility of being victimized in that way, before even performing the requested task? Maxapada points out that Adam has trained him to rinse coffee mugs that people leave out around the studio there half full with coffee even if they aren’t his and Adam says “I would say, look its not your coffee mug that’s sitting on the sink half full with coffee but if you’ve been here for 2 hours, you could give it a rinse” as cohost Gina Grad chimes in noting that “It’s your office” and Adam continues that he’s not asking anyone to do anything that he doesn’t do all day and that when you have kids – that’s your whole life is picking up things someone else puts down. So WTF is the problem here? I get that you don’t want to be a parent to your co-workers but that’s where the mentality of “no one act like a child” comes in and then no one is mommying anyone else or a group of manchildren – they’re just keeping communal spaces clean and tidy. Why is that so wrong?
What is up with this need to be praised by the boss?
Adam asks “is Dylon pissed? what is he upset about?” and Maxapada says that Adam is being too hard on Dylon about the whole office thing. So Adam asks “what is the hard part, on me?”, prompting an appropriate giggle from Gina Grad (lol) as a clunky way of asking essentially “what am I being unreasonably hard on my people here about?” and Maxapada says that Dylon “does a lot of hard work for the show and just doesn’t organize his office” – the implication being that if you do good work at the place you work, then any aspect where your negligence causes a problem should be overlooked and unspoken because you are competently/expertly/ wonderfully/whatever-ly doing your job elsewhere… THIS. MAKES. NO. SENSE… if you think it does then please enlighten me on what duh-moment I’m missing here, because that enlightenment wasn’t provided when this was brought up on the show.
Adam accepts the premise of what Maxapada is saying and challenges it by asking “So he works hard for the show… and you don’t work hard and Brian doesn’t work hard and I don’t work hard or everyone works hard?” to which I was squirming in my chair begging for an answer to exactly that logical extension because I’m desperate to understand the thinking behind the person who says such a thing.
I remember the feeling of anger and shame in a sense of being attacked for not doing something I was told when I was 6 or 7-ish and thinking that the oppression I was experiencing was unjustified just because I am me and I’m so awesome and great and I made the Richardland brand based on entirely that little-kid-with-only-child-syndrome premise to mock and satirize it but now when I see it exhibited and defended with righteous indignation by adults, I just don’t know WTF is going on… Adam again accepts the premise completely and asks “he works hard for the show. Alright. What’s that have to do with not cleaning his office?”
I now ask you, the reader and listener who agree’s with the employee after hearing the rant – what is the answer to that question??
Why is your motivation based on being told how awesome you are instead of DOING A GOOD JOB?…
Maxapada’s response is about morale at the studio being low “with all this office cleaning [talk & nagging]”, prompting the no-duh response question from Adam of “how do we resolve this office cleaning [issue that you’re affected by]?” because these employees seem to be entirely oblivious to the infinite loop of disaster they’re causing themselves by:
1- Not doing a thing asked of them,
2- Thereby guaranteeing and necessitating it coming up as an issue repeatedly in the future,
3- Continuing to not-doing the thing asked of them, this time with the reason that their morale is low because they’re getting nagged about the Thing-they-won’t-do so much…
Dude… I swear on a stack of Bibles that I’m legitimately seeking an answer on the genuine perspective of this mentality: what is the Adam Carolla position in this equation supposed to do/say/react with exactly? The only thing I can think of is exactly the thing that Carolla thought of, which is that if a persons morale is low – maybe they need to take some time off and come back refreshed. Cuz that’s what you would do with someone whose work you typically like but are having a problem with that they are attributing to low morale. This is where Dylon got on the microphone and gave the opposite of a “you can’t fire me, I quit!” declaration and instead said “Fire me!”. His reasoning is, again, that he’s being personally attacked. Raising the question:
Why are you taking the criticism of your refusal to do a task at work as a personal attack?
I have had this exact exchange with several people in various capacities throughout my pirate ship business career where I say that I am experiencing frustration at their lack of doing a thing I asked them to and their response is an abstract posture about the thesis of what I’m saying actually being that I think they are “[fill in the blank with things I never said about them]”. With the Carolla crew, it went down like this:
Dylon: “I’m confused because if you do think I’m as fkking lazy and atrophied and stupid as you think I am, then FIRE ME!”
Adam: “Okay, would you *like* to be fired?”
Dylon: “I would like to have a job here where my work is respected and people don’t scream at me on air for a fkkin radar cord that I didn’t put on your shelf, but FIRE ME if you think I’m this STUPID.”
Adam: Okay well, let’s take some time off and we’ll figure out the rest. If you’d like that….
And then Dylon left and presumably packed up and quit. Carolla continued upon Dylons departure from the microphone, saying:
Adam: First off… I don’t think I’m screaming at anybody – I think i’ve made my opinion pretty clear that I would like the office cleaned…you may not have taken the radar cord and wrapped it up with the jump rope – that may be the OTHER person I asked to clean the office – but its still in your office that’s not being cleaned so thus I can’t find it… What am I confused about here? Other than ‘morale is low’, what is the – Bryan – what would your take on this be?”
Bryan adds a quasi correction that while he didn’t hear Carolla talk about the subject earlier that day or whenever this incident occurred that was frustrating him, that Carolla did refer to himself as being “animated” in his frustrations about the office being cleaned (so in other words he’s saying that while Carolla isn’t “screaming” on air and doesn’t sound like he was screaming off the air, he wasn’t “not screaming” about it either) and that Bryan thinks it’s justified to be annoyed.
So Carolla asks the peanut gallery at large, “what part of this is me being unreasonable?” and asks the shows announcer Mike Dawson. Dawson says “I don’t think you’re being unreasonable” and Carolla asks “I’d like the office cleaned…why can’t Dylon clean the office he works out of” – because this is literally the only place to go with this subject… You’re asking for something to be done as a boss and a person is saying they won’t do it or just aren’t doing it, so the questions is “what is unreasonable about this ask?” and SOME-one needs to step up and answer exactly that.
How is the work you do seemingly unappreciated by the Boss just pointing out that which you repeatedly refuse-to-do that is causing a problem?
Adam asks “how does ‘organize your office’ factor into me not thinking you do work?” – yet another struggle I’ve frequently asked my crew members when faced with exactly this premise.
Maxapada’s response is “The only thing we hear a lot of the time from you – I’m not saying that you need to compliment us all the time – but its a lot of complaining – I know that’s Kindov your thing too – but it’s just, we hear a lot of why you’re upset with us”
To which I was audibly yelling at my phone the answer the Adam responded with himself saying “don’t you think if you cleaned the office around the 35th time I asked you to do it, it would help step towards that goal? What about never doing what I’m asking you to do? Don’t you think that interrupts the Praise Pipeline?”
Results
Dylon was previously given the opportunity to question and counter Charlie Kirk, the Conservative Republican founder of Turning Points USA
“It’s not about homosexuality or heterosexuality. Stop promoting SEXUALITY to our children PERIOD. Let kids be kids.”
^The above text has been shared on facebook by over 14 thousand people over the past 2 days, mostly, I think, because it highlights the inherent absurdity in a practice that is all too commonly celebrated regarding the advocacy and glorification of children being sexually conditioned.
On it’s face, most people would say that’s a bad thing, but if you put it in the context of a pageant where a little girl is wearing bold eye liner, spandex showing lots of leg and upper chest, a big poofy haired wig, and is gyrating wildly for the amusement of a crowd of adults – suddenly for some reason a segment of adults advocate it as adorable and awesome. Likewise, if you put a male child in the same context of a “drag queen” show, where a little boy is wearing bold eye liner, spandex showing lots of leg and upper chest, a big poofy haired wig, and is gyrating wildly for the amusement of a crowd of adults – suddenly for some reason a segment of adults advocate it as empowering and awesome. These people who justify sexualizing kids for their own ideas of what qualifies as entertainment are worth exploring in contrast to the thesis of the meme above.
Recent controversies about touring editions of the “Drag Queen Story Hour”, where the highly sexualized art of males appropriating caricature characteristics of females and feminine sexual allure is performed while reading gender-fluid stories to kids at public library events as part of a larger discussion with the kids promoting growing up to be a gender fluid sex figure themselves, has provoked ire among parents who don’t want their young children socialized into sexual matters while emboldening other parents who are thirsty to virtue signal how open minded and gender-identity-inclusive they are by endorsing and attending the events.
Drag Queen Story Hour
This is an easy issue to rectify by just taking out the sex aspects of burlesque and prostitution signaling that is a part of drag and just make it a fun costume event where the man dressed as a woman isn’t trying so hard to evangelize gender fluidity but instead just exposes kids whom, with their parents encouragement, to the reality that performance and fun is not limited to traditional gender roles and that pretending to be a girl when you are a boy is a thing that exists, whether it appeals to you or not. There will still be parents who find it distasteful and offensive and the parents who have issues wrapped up in traditional societal staples can still fight-the-patriarchy or whatever by putting their kids in the non-sexual reading event without subjecting themselves to legitimate criticism. The fix is so easy in fact, that it begs the question of why these people are so eager to sexually propagandize little kids in the first place…
Then there’s the actual exploitation of a child combined with the sexual propaganda such as the case of a similar recent controversy regarding the use of children as sex objects for the ghoulish pleasure of adults is with the child drag kid known as Desmond Is Amazing. He’s an 11 year old with a spunky personality who likes to feel pretty and sexy dressing up as an adult woman and dancing for adoring crowds – which is a thing thats gonna happen from time to time and isn’t the worst thing a kid could be into, but the public showcasing of him as a sex object is the part that’s drawing criticism.
As LGBTQ+ activists excitedly promote the tenacity they see in many of themselves within young Desmond and view opposition to his drag performances as nothing but unreasonable homophobic small mindedness from haters of any person living outside the conformities of traditional sexual identity roles – this misses the mark entirely as Desmond isn’t opposed personally, it’s his suggestive and burlesque style stripper shows that are being glorified that people are outraged over. It would be one thing if a bunch of nosey haters heard about a childs drag show to friends and family and made it a national spotlight to campaign against but the reality is sort of the opposite: Desmonds Instagram (which a person is supposed to be over 13 years old in order to have, but there is no age verification process on instagram) promoted to his over 100,000 followers a performance he would be making at a Brooklyn gay bar where he did a stripper style dance in a crop top, blond wig, and full face of makeup collecting, also in stripper style, cash tips from the adult men in the audience. (video of another rendition of the same performance)
Desmond Is Amazing at 3 Dollar Bill in Brooklyn. Source: Instagram
While Yelp reviewers were disturbed by the show – no men were reported to have touched the child or shoved the money into his pants like regular-stripper performances – and he was wearing pants (not booty shorts or underwear or anything like that), so there wasn’t any actual abuse – just the simulated sexual portrayal of an 11 year old (or, it was last year, so some sources say he was 10 at the time) but these defense points don’t really go anywhere on a road to justifying it or do really anything at all to the folks who are more inclined to look at something like this and conclude that “Desmond needs saving“.
And while sexualizing a 10 year old girl in tight clothes and makeup for a dance performance at a bar where adults throw money at her wouldn’t be viewed favorably by public consensus and the same for a 10 year old boy doing the same thing – the loophole that is making people endorse Desmond is that he is a gay 10 year old boy dressing up as a girl to dance for an audience of adult men who throw money at him… This sort of performance sure is … different, that’s for certain, and differences from the expected and weird flamboyant boundary pushing performances are a thing that free societies tolerate without much backlash, but when it gets to the point of making highly publicized events out of strip-simulating 10 year olds, it becomes hard to advocate the “push societies arbitrary standards” meme and clouds any legitimate celebration that could be going to a spunky sassy young kid chasing his dream with overwhelming suspicions of why the hell would the adults facilitating and promoting him do it *this* way…
In June 2017, The Advocate, a major LGBT advocacy website and magazine, celebrated Lactacia. The boy has become a celebrity in the LGBT world. Hilton believed he was promoting and celebrating a young boy he considers inspiring to his identity group.
The LGBT world often struggles to separate its sexually explicit culture from its advocacy for equality and rights. In many ways they are incapable of understanding why the outside world would be appalled by explicitly sexual public displays. For them it must be out of malice, hatred, or ignorance rather than reasonable aversion.
Gay pride parades have long been extreme public displays of every form of sexual deviancy imaginable. Gay liberals see no distinction between their sexual selves and their everyday selves. They celebrate the merger of the two as identity and culture
While the LGBT world may not be intentionally trying to harm children or put them at risk, it is time leaders of the movement fully recognize the dangers of using young children to validate their sexual politics. To help further this discussion, we must be careful not to abuse the term “pedophile.” Overuse will diminish the impact of our message and make it more difficult to fight the legitimate scourge of child sexual abuse rampant around the world.
What we must do is call out the dangers of sexualizing children too early, making them vulnerable to people who do wish to exploit and abuse them. LGBT advocacy groups have a responsibility to recognize that every form of sexuality and gender identity can be freely enjoyed by adults in private, but should never involve children regardless of the context or motivation. While they intend to celebrate the uniqueness of the child, they in effect steal the child’s innocence and impose an adult identity onto him, all to validate their own insecurities. We cannot stay quiet and allow more children to lose their childhood to the dreams of progressives who only imagine the future while failing to grasp the trauma they impose in the present.
It all just comes back to the point: heterosexual or homosexual – how bout we just, like, *don’t* sexualize children?…
On the heterosexual cisgender side of child sexploitation that people rationalize into celebrating: while not in recent controversies that are in the news, the people who agree with this “don’t sexualize children” meme would most definitely agree that just as horrifying as the gay and gender-fluid child sexualization examples above are to them, that the “Toddlers in Tiaras” style pageants and competitions are equally horrible mistreatments of children. If you’re unfamiliar with those sorts of things, they do the same as the kids-in-drag style stuff, just with genetic female children instead of genetic-male children dressing like sex doll females.
Cheerleading camps and competitions and dance performances for kids under 12 that feature the same sort of cartoon-whore style makeup and costumes that feature short skirts, booty shorts, and plunging necklines – all things that only exist for the purpose of being visually sexually enticing – on the body of a prepubescent child are just as creepy and wrong to these people. And since “these people” are “most people” – again – why is this a thing that is condoned in any context or any gender?…
That’s probably why the meme above is going around. Repeat:
“It’s not about homosexuality or heterosexuality. Stop promoting SEXUALITY to our children PERIOD. Let kids be kids.”
