Shit that Pissed me off – 1/6

Boy Scouts Bar Transgender Boy

Due to a lot of factors, my boys aren’t really involved in scouting any longer.  I am supportive of scouting and even though I’m aware of the larger issues that surround the Scout’s continued public disapproval of LGBTQ kids (and atheist kids for that matter), I’ve seen some attempts by the organization to soften their stance.

The people my kids have worked with are good people and whatever the national chapter of the Scouts may choose to do, our troop is a good troop that, I think, would not engage in this kind of discrimination.  If my kids were still engaged in Scouts, I don’t think I’d pull them over this because I’d be punishing my kids by taking away something they enjoy.

And that makes me kind of crazy.  Because on the one hand, I wouldn’t want to punish my kids for being who they are.  On the other hand, the Boy Scouts just punished a kid for being who they are.

As we move (slowly) towards acceptance of homosexuality in our society (even as some fight to be able to discriminate free from consequence), transgender rights has now become a new arena and I fear this fight will be harder because people don’t get it.

I do not understand why people are transgender and therefore I will hate them for it.

If you’ve spent your entire life being totally comfortable with your gender, you have no way of understanding someone who is identified as a boy because they were born with a penis but has spent their entire life playing the role of a boy.

As an actor, I get to stop being a character I don’t like when I’m done with the performance.  Someone who is pretending to be a gender with which they do not identify never gets the chance to step off stage.  They are constantly pretending.  And it is exhausting.

Giving them the freedom to stop pretending ought to be something we all celebrate.  It ought to be something that makes us happy because we ought to want other people to be happy.

I mean, aside from pedophile priests.  You gotta draw the line somewhere.

But we don’t give a fuck about that because we are more concerned with who is peeing in the stall next to our kid.  Our kid doesn’t care because they just want to get back to the playground.  They probably didn’t even notice the person in the stall next to them.

Our own discomfort with the idea of gender identity is the problem.  If we are cool with the gender identity we were assigned at birth, we can’t understand why anyone else isn’t.

The Boy Scouts should be a place where young men (and by that I mean people who identify as young men) can learn how to be responsible adult men.  Part of that responsibility should be learning to accept that we aren’t all the same.  Their rigidity is disheartening to say the least.

House Republicans Move Quickly to Show That They Don’t Give a Fuck about Ethics

Even though they backed down on their initial plan to eliminate an independent congressional ethics board, House Republicans have made it pretty clear that since Democrats don’t have any power in Washington, they don’t give a shit about being ethical.

Yes, President-Elect Trump (DAMMIT) also tweeted his displeasure with the plan but the fact is, it isn’t off the table.  Trump just said they shouldn’t be worrying about it right now.  You know, when people are paying attention.

And let’s make no mistake, any time someone says they would like to get rid of an independent board* so they can replace it with a partisan one, they are doing so because they want to get away with something.  Even if that board is imperfect and needs some adjustments, there is only one reason for proposing to eliminate something that is supposed to be impartial without having a plan to replace it with something else that is impartial but better.

Then again, I’d argue that you shouldn’t gut the ACA and then say you’ll pass something better later.

*Yes, I know they didn’t propose to eliminate it.  Rather they proposed to have it controlled by a Congressional Committee that is super partisan.

Four Kids in Chicago Torture Another Kid and Broadcast it on Facebook

I can’t squeeze humor out of this story because every part of it is horrible.  The kids in question were black and their victim was white.  That means the entire conversation will end up being about black on white crime.  As if that is what is really going on here.

The victim is mentally handicapped.  The kids who tortured him thought it would be a great thing to broadcast live on Facebook.

Before anyone pulls this incident out as an example of why Black Lives Matter should manage their own house, let us remember that these kids were caught and will go to jail.**  These kids used race as an excuse in their video but what is really important to understand is that they are sociopaths.  They wanted to beat someone up.  So they did.

Nobody should approve of what happened.  And nobody does.  First person who asks why BLM (or any other group fighting for racial equality) doesn’t condemn the act of these kids should be shouted down with a chorus of everyone condemns what these kids did!

Everyone, that is, except The Joker. But we all need to remember that The Joker is an asshole.

It is not the job of BLM to apologize for crimes committed by black people.  It is not the job of black people to apologize for crimes committed by black people.

If that were true, then white people need to spend a whole lot more time apologizing for the crimes committed by other white people.

**Never mind, the far right is already using the hashtag #BLMkidnapping to pin this one on Black Lives Matter.  Of course.

Donald Trump is Still Going to Build that Fucking Wall

It’s one of the reasons he got elected so of course Trump is going to push for the construction of a border wall that, frankly, has no chance of actually doing anything about illegal immigration.  But it looks good.

In a tweet this week, he called it the “Great Wall,” which is a good choice.  Because the Chinese Great Wall didn’t actually work.  So by naming his bullshit construction project after that other bullshit construction project, he has inadvertently identified it as doomed.

Not doomed as in it won’t happen.  Here’s my prediction:  They will start building a wall.  Taxpayers will foot the bill and the Trump administration will pressure Mexico to pay for it in some other way.

At the same time, the Trump administration is trying to pressure businesses to stop manufacturing in Mexico.  The loss of revenue and jobs in Mexico will, I would think, not help the immigration problem because if you can’t get a good paying job in Mexico, you might need to leave the country.  Now where will you go?

The wall might stop you except it will take years to fully complete a border wall between our two countries and they have ladders in Mexico.

So we’ll eventually have an incomplete border wall that was, amusingly enough, probably built at least in part by undocumented workers.

In a thousand years, someone will make a movie about our great wall starring Matt Damon.***

And we’ll have to ask ourselves – was it worth it?

***Yes, he will still be alive.