Cut grandson's hair or put him in a dress

[Mike]

I'd have happily shown up in a dress and heels. Just sayin'

[denimini]

I am amazed that such an intellectually isolated place can exist in the US.

[crfriend]

I am amazed that such an intellectually isolated place can exist in the US.

Don't be. The place is not what the propaganda would have you believe, nor is it the same place that it was even 50 years ago.

[JohnH]

I am amazed that such an intellectually isolated place can exist in the US.

It shouldn't surprise you as the US as a whole is intellectually isolated. We continue to screw around with feet and inches instead of using metric units. I was watching a video about a W123 Mercedes diesel, and the person describing the car said the turning radius of the car was 10 centimeters !

You go to a post office to mail a package. It is weighed in pounds and ounces instead of grams. 16 ounces to a pound? Ugh.

Then there are people who say the earth is 6000 years old. From the quote "A thousand years are but a day in God's sight" and the earth was created in 6 days, they arrive at the 6000 year figure.

The there are others who say, "If the King James version was good enough for Martin Luther it's good enough for me."

Not all "Christians" are anti-intellectual. James Clerk Maxwell was the father of electromagnetism and was a devout Christian, as well as some other scientists.


John

[Dust]

Another sad aspect I noticed that the boy could have long hair if he wore a dress and called himself a girl. This again is saying a real male wouldn't wear a dress.

And it pushes kids who are just exploring and being kids needlessly into the whole transgender thing. Why can't we just let kids be kids?

[Jim]

Then there are people who say the earth is 6000 years old. From the quote "A thousand years are but a day in God's sight" and the earth was created in 6 days, they arrive at the 6000 year figure.

Actually the 6000 years old argument comes from the genealogies in the bible that gives men's ages when they had a son, etc. If there are not skipped generations, the calculation from the creation of Adam is fairly close to Bishop Ussher's calculation of the creation at 4004 BC. Given the assumptions that the biblical chronology is accurate and literal, and that what God reveals is surer than changing human hypotheses, it is not too foolish. Of course, your assumptions may differ.

The "A thousand years are but a day in God's sight" quote may be used by millennialists who believe that the millennium of Christ's rule is the seventh sabbatical millennium; ie will start any time or has started. It is also used by the day-age creationists, who believe each of the 6 days of creation in Genesis represents an age, not a literal day, so they can reconcile Genesis with the scientific concensus of the age of the earth.

[Dust]

As to all of the remarks about the woes of the U.S., I can say this:

We have the government we deserve. There are probably a few thousand individuals in the state and federal legislatures, and there are 320 million of us.

We stand by and watch this happen.

John, you speak the truth, but the average Joe is more concerned about what deity you believe in or what toilet you piss in rather than what the police or the IRS steal from you, or the fact that we have thousands upon thousands of prisoners locked up for nonviolent offenses.

Quite frankly I'm tired of listening to it. We're not a free republic, we a nation of mob rule where elected leaders and our judicial system pander to whatever special interest put them in power, whether it be big money, religious institutions, or perhaps some far left ideology, but for the life of me, I can't think of any wide spread liberal oppression....

But no.. it's not our government's fault, it's ours... WE LET THIS HAPPEN.

The "average Joe" isn't interested in religion or even the LGBT stuff. He's interested in football, MMA, or the lastest episode of whatever on Netflix. The same sort of thing could be said for the "average Jane" too.

There is "liberal" oppression (de-platforming, people run out of their jobs even, just for supporting "conservative" ideas even if those ideas were mainstream a couple years prior) but that's not the point.

We did let this happen. We let it happen when we shut up rather than trying to engage and discuss things. We let this happen when we skipped out on voting, or worse yet, just mindlessly punched the same "D" or "R" we always have without actually finding out who these people are and what they are doing. We let it happen then we said "not my problem" or "not my hill to die on".

[moonshadow]

Gheeze... I had to Google "MMA"... goes to show the rock I live under...

Perhaps you are correct in your assessment of "average Joe/Jane", I should rephrase to "voter".

There is "liberal" oppression (de-platforming, people run out of their jobs even, just for supporting "conservative" ideas even if those ideas were mainstream a couple years prior) but that's not the point.

Perhaps, and I don't claim to know every scenario the world over, but I do know I come from a long line of privileged white rednecks, myself dipping in that privilege from time to time, and I've never known a liberal to cost myself or anyone else I've really known anything.

Pretty much all of my woes are of my own doing, and the same goes for those in my family, whether they want to admit it or not. And again, I'm really just an ordinary white guy, up to 5 years ago, completely "cis-acting" and normal... I'm basically the definition of what liberals love to hate, and yet they've never really bothered me or stood in my way.

To be fair, nor have conservatives. Despite a few brushes over the last few years in regards to my dress, those people were in the extreme minority and honestly I don't even know their political alignments. Liberals still keep their distance from me today, and I'm often accused by liberals of being too conservative and by conservatives of being too liberal.

Yes... it's still perfectly legal and permissible to be obnoxious, regardless if your political affiliation. Perhaps the reason I have trouble making friends is because I refuse to take a side.

just mindlessly punched the same "D" or "R" we always have without actually finding out who these people are and what they are doing.

+1

[JohnH]

We did let this happen. We let it happen when we shut up rather than trying to engage and discuss things. We let this happen when we skipped out on voting, or worse yet, just mindlessly punched the same "D" or "R" we always have without actually finding out who these people are and what they are doing. We let it happen then we said "not my problem" or "not my hill to die on".

A HUGE problem is we have only two effective parties. As far as Big Business there is only the Redemlican party as both the Democratic and Republican parties are beholden to special interests.
A study needs to be conducted to find ways to increase the number of parties prior to calling a Constitutional Convention of the States to bypass Congress.

[crfriend]

A HUGE problem is we have only two effective parties. As far as Big Business there is only the Redemlican party as both the Democratic and Republican parties are beholden to special interests.

This is the crux of the issue. When one actually looks at what's going on in Washington DC from a "black box" perspective there is only one party operating and that party is completely under the control of the extremely rich and behaves accordingly. The "little guy" (99.99%+ of the population) has precisely no say in the matter at all.

In essence, the Republic has failed and the system is now operating as an oligarchy in the same manner that modern Russia is. [1]

A study needs to be conducted to find ways to increase the number of parties prior to calling a Constitutional Convention of the States to bypass Congress.

This will either be explicitly disallowed, or the new parties will also be wholly under the control of the oligarchs.

To crib the classic "Bones" line from the original Star Trek, "It's dead, Jim."


[1] At least Russia with Putin has an honest-to-goodness strongman at the helm.

[JohnH]

So the alternative might be a break up of the United States same as what happened with the Soviet Union. Texas, where I live, is fortunate to have its own electrical grid (ERCOT). It also has a long coastline, a wide range of climates, and borders on Mexico. Of all the states I believe it would be in the best position to be its own country.

Perhaps then the states might come together to form one or more new unions.

[Ralph]

The comments so far in this thread are brilliant and fascinating, and there is nothing I can really add to the main topic. One thing confused me from the original article, though:

Four-year-old Michael Trimble, called “Tink” by his friends and family, was reportedly excited for his very first day of “big kids” school a couple of weeks ago.

What kind of "big kids school" would a four-year-old attend? Perhaps grade levels have changed since I was four, but IIRC in the US you're typically in day care at age 4, kindergarten at age 5, and start primary school somewhere between 5 1/2 to 6 1/2 years old.

[Ralph]

Then there are people who say the earth is 6000 years old. From the quote "A thousand years are but a day in God's sight" and the earth was created in 6 days, they arrive at the 6000 year figure.

I don't think that's where it comes from. That verse is used to justify a lot of chronological gymnastics (i.e. explaining how Genesis talks about days when geological evidence suggests millennia) but James Ussher, among others, went by more detailed chronology. Genesis gives specific numbers of years for each generation - such-and-so was X years old when he had a son, that son was Y years old when he had a son, and so forth. Ussher gathered all those references up into a timeline, filled in the gaps with guesswork, and added the time elapsed from the birth of Christ to his own year (something in the 17th century) to arrive at a total number of years elapsed from the first day of creation to the present.

I'm inclined to believe Genesis is largely metaphorical, trying to describe a universe-sized act of creation to cavemen in terms they would understand, but I'm also willing to accept the notion that if there is a deity capable of creating the entire universe ex nihilo, such a deity could also bend time in such a way that from our perspective it would appear to all take place in six 24-hour days.

[Dust]

A study needs to be conducted to find ways to increase the number of parties prior to calling a Constitutional Convention of the States to bypass Congress.

I'm told there is a LAW of political science (there are very few) that any winner-take-all system will devolve into a two party rule. In other words, it's completely unavoidable, unless you restructure voting to give representatives based on percentage of the vote earned, instead of one representative for a given geographic area. You could completely restructure Congress into something like a parliamentary system. At minimum, you would need to have members of the House of Representatives chosen this way in each state, but that might not even do it.

[moonshadow]

This is the crux of the issue. When one actually looks at what's going on in Washington DC from a "black box" perspective there is only one party operating and that party is completely under the control of the extremely rich and behaves accordingly. The "little guy" (99.99%+ of the population) has precisely no say in the matter at all.

What we're talking about here is an "us vs them" mentality. I don't think that's the case. The 99% can't agree on anything. Its not the politicians at each other's throat (save for the occasional theater acts)... no, it's the 99% that are harassing each other.

We are our own wost enemies, and again, we have the government we deserve.

If we dissolve and form a new union the oligarchs need only sit back and watch the 320 million of us back bite each other to the point where we beg for leadership, even if it is oligarchic.

The politicians spout off their rhetoric and leave it to us uneducated dimwits to pull the trigger and start killing each other.

The mess we're in is not the president's fault or any members or of Congress, or any other elected official for that matter, we the people are the ones that need to take responsibility.

I mean the oligarchs are not gods for Christ sake. They are mortal, flesh and blood just like the rest of us.

They have power because we give them power.