Posts by ShotWhileTryingToEscape

6

Interesting place for a KH. My thoughts

by joe134cd in

yesterday i happened to be driving through a rural town where i made an observation.

first let me describe this town.

it’s almost a shadow of its former self.

ShotWhileTryingToEscape

Toward the end his excerpt from a much longer article describes the human desolation joe writes of in his OP:

‘Nothing has changed’

The 1967 referendum gave us the right to be counted on the census, but it didn’t give us anything much else

Today it’s a community of 5,000. But there is an acute housing shortage: an estimated 700 more homes are needed to accommodate the population, which is largely welfare dependent.

Yarrabah has the social and economic issues – teenage pregnancy and child removal, alcohol abuse, poverty, unemployment, health problems, petty crime, inadequate housing – that underscore life in too many Indigenous communities but escape the notice of the rest of Australia. There have been three suicides in the past few months; one just a week or so earlier.

“There’s no jobs in Yarrabah. If you want a job, you have to leave,” Marrie says.

Along the way, she points out massacre sites such as Skeleton Creek, where the white men cut off the Jidindi’s heads and put them on sharpened stakes that lined the waterway as it meandered up into the hinterland. We cross Blackfellow Creek, also a massacre site and an old Aboriginal camping ground, before heading up the valley.

“The ’67 referendum gave us the right to be counted on the census, but it didn’t give us anything much else. It was just words on paper that had really no meaning. Everything we got after that, we had to fight hard to get – and nothing has changed.”

6

Interesting place for a KH. My thoughts

by joe134cd in

yesterday i happened to be driving through a rural town where i made an observation.

first let me describe this town.

it’s almost a shadow of its former self.

ShotWhileTryingToEscape

jwundubbed, It doesn’t seem implausible to me that joe134cd would come to the assessment in the OP. Maybe l am assuming that he has driven through that rural town before but my experience with the dereliction of rural life in general makes his thumbnail sketch ring true. Add to that joe’s one single sentence “It is poor, with mainly an indigenous population.” and one can nearly guess at the rest.

Joe could tell us where in particular he lives. I gather it is Australia?

Like the U.S. the policies of Australia toward their indigenous populations have undermined and demoralized their families and traditional lives. But it goes on worldwide. The cost of progress paid by those who never asked for it on the first place

When I read this thread and just googled these words” plight of indigenous people.” this scenario joe describes is abundantly represented ( without specifying the presence of churches).

Here is a short random yet relevant piece below.

https://youtu.be/H41kZfvQss0

As to the presence of the Mormon church and the K Hall? It would be interesting to find if either serves any function that would provide a reason to clean up and show up for mutual support and purpose.

Frankly l hoped for support and purpose back in the day from church.

It is a pretty sad situation.

9

A 'typical JW' story

by joey jojo in

i am friends with an elderly 'worldly' woman, who was unaware i am an ex-jw.

she employs a jw husband and wife pioneer couple for odd jobs around her house- mowing, cleaning etc.

the couple has been working for her and her recently deceased husband for years.. just before the 2019 international convention, despite the fact that the husband was fighting his last battle with illness, the couple kept asking him to attend the convention with them.

ShotWhileTryingToEscape

The Watchtower training impairs the free flow of natural empathy.

It is painful to hear how the Catholic couple believed their Jehovah’s Witness helpers were friends after all those years.

I wonder if the Catholic woman’s hurt would be ameliorated if she knew that these hard core JWs only doing their “job” both in their paid labors and their friendliness or if she knew how this same JW couple would cut off their own children if they had converted to Catholicism. If she knew that she might realize that what happened to her wasn’t personal.

Yep. We were trained to do Jehovah’s work. Nothing personal. Pretty sick stuff. Glad l am out.

46

Sound Familiar?

by peacefulpete in

a republican congressman voted his conscience to impeach trump.

the results might surprise some of us.. "my dad's cousins sent me a petition - a certified letter - saying they disowned me because i'm in 'the devil's army' now," kinzinger said in a phone conversation on thursday.

"it's been crazy, when you have friends - that you thought were good friends that would love you no matter what - that don't.".

ShotWhileTryingToEscape

(I wasn’t drinking when l wrote the above post but my dropped thoughts and typos make me wonder. Alzheimer’s? I hope not.)

Summary? I hope it’s clear that I am not hating any of my fellow Americans. I just don’t see a way forward by ignoring our history.

The United States began when Europeans displaced indigenous Americans. Spaniards did it in South America— so there is nothing new here. We enslaved indigenous people( problems with that: they knew the land) and imported Africans who had fewer escape routes.

We dropped legal slavery ( though we virtually continued it through the convict lease system and state prisons lol) but international trade with nations that don’t observe human rights can undersell us if we don’t find ways to use cheap labor ourselves. Our remarkable in document, the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution can hardly paper over this problem.

How can we be fair if no one else is?

MMM, l am building the case for this: Though we aspire to justice in this country, we built national wealth by exploiting indigenous, immigrant or kidnapped labor. LIKE EVERYONE ELSE HAS. We sorta/kinda try to honor individual rights in the U.S.A. but we no less than others on this planet have sacrifice zones, the boneyards of the discarded workers. Terrifying places. Absolutely heartbreaking and terrible.

Our political parties play a shell game with this mess. Big government is run by big money. It is more convenient to pay out checks in the sacrifice zones than to address the dysfunction has become self perpetuating.

Always.

l just want us to be honest. And compassionate.

46

Sound Familiar?

by peacefulpete in

a republican congressman voted his conscience to impeach trump.

the results might surprise some of us.. "my dad's cousins sent me a petition - a certified letter - saying they disowned me because i'm in 'the devil's army' now," kinzinger said in a phone conversation on thursday.

"it's been crazy, when you have friends - that you thought were good friends that would love you no matter what - that don't.".

ShotWhileTryingToEscape

Likewise, the principle of private property rights, freedom of association, freedom of speech, individual rights that are part of each human (of all races) as a matter of birth, whether you think that is from God or not, are embodied well in the constitution, especially the first ten amendments. The nation’s founding wasn’t framed to benefit white men over others. — MMM

Thomas Jefferson it’s assumed would agree to agree with your statement. But Jefferson was deeply dependent on slavery both for his life of privilege and ease. His slaves were not citizens. Persons of African descent were not citizens until 1868.

Pres. Lincoln was careful to avoid linking freedom/equal rights to black Africans (or even pale descendants of Africans) with the war to save the Union. So many Union troops despised the blacks that it was hardly the driving force behind the North’s recruitment drive.

Native Americans were not citizens until way after slavery. In fact Union Generals Sherman, Sheridan, Custer barely switched horses after the War between the States before killing Indians in the Western states and territories. So much for human and civil rights being for everyone.

Rather, the nation has stains on its past, created when people were not living up to the principles.——MMM

I agree that the nation has stains on its past.

But the stains were built into the design of our nation. Those who “were not living up to the principles” of the Founding Fathers were the founders themselves !

The stains were supported in law by none other than the Supreme Court of the time. Check out the Dred Scot decision.

The Civil War was fought to save the Union. During the fighting it’s well argued that Lincoln realized it was a political if not moral necessity. But in the beginning the least concern had been black equality. In fact, Federal commitment to black freedoms was so lame, only 12 years after freedom’s dream arrived it ended:

“On April 24, 1877, as part of a political compromise that enabled his election, President Rutherford B. Hayes withdrew federal troops from Louisiana -- the last federally-occupied former Confederate state -- just 12 years after the end of the Civil War. The withdrawal marked the end of Reconstruction and paved the way for the unrestrained resurgence of white supremacist rule in the South, carrying with it the rapid deterioration of political rights for Black people.”—End of Reconstruction in the South

This end of protecting the vulnerable freedmen tell all that America had lost interest in black citizens securin fair protection under the law. Enter JimCrow, convict leading and lynching.

MMM, I believe in free enterprise, l love my country, l love the Constitution. I have real admiration for our flawed Founding Fathers.

But there are problems that have been let grow.Snd our economy is breaking too.

I do not believe the new administration going to solve the Divide . I don’t believe the last one even tried. The Divide was there and is still growing .

Our beloved country was founded by extraordinary men who believed that they were standing on their own feet when they wrote the Constitution. But they only stood as high as they did by stepping on the black,brown AND white toes of people they chose to exploit.

Is that relevant here? I think so. And thanks for mentioning the Golden Rule— it’s relevant too.

I hope you are well, MMM. I appreciate your ability to organize this conversation and glad you have persisted in a civil exchange.

46

Sound Familiar?

by peacefulpete in

a republican congressman voted his conscience to impeach trump.

the results might surprise some of us.. "my dad's cousins sent me a petition - a certified letter - saying they disowned me because i'm in 'the devil's army' now," kinzinger said in a phone conversation on thursday.

"it's been crazy, when you have friends - that you thought were good friends that would love you no matter what - that don't.".

ShotWhileTryingToEscape

...but how would one prove it?—hybridous

Actually l didn’t touch that part of your post.

It made me wonder..Of course our nation with such high sounding principles made laws inconsistent and hypocritical with the above words from the Declaration of Independence. That way the *true*citizens could secure slave labor and defraud native peoples of their indigenous lands.

Not even Africans born in the States and FREE were allowed citizenship until after the Civil War. It took the 14 th Amendment of 1868 to fix that.

Eventually the American Civil Liberties Union was set up to test that assumption of equal value or equal protection under the law -thus the Constitution became the means of as you said proving each ones equal value.

46

Sound Familiar?

by peacefulpete in

a republican congressman voted his conscience to impeach trump.

the results might surprise some of us.. "my dad's cousins sent me a petition - a certified letter - saying they disowned me because i'm in 'the devil's army' now," kinzinger said in a phone conversation on thursday.

"it's been crazy, when you have friends - that you thought were good friends that would love you no matter what - that don't.".

ShotWhileTryingToEscape

You are right , hybridus. We citizens assumed this even though in fact in our past there have been classes of people who were not treated with equal value. Nevertheless our own Declaration of Independence has led many Americans to make the assumption that we do have equal value and even possess unalienable Rights.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

46

Sound Familiar?

by peacefulpete in

a republican congressman voted his conscience to impeach trump.

the results might surprise some of us.. "my dad's cousins sent me a petition - a certified letter - saying they disowned me because i'm in 'the devil's army' now," kinzinger said in a phone conversation on thursday.

"it's been crazy, when you have friends - that you thought were good friends that would love you no matter what - that don't.".

ShotWhileTryingToEscape

I’ll just put this out there. Short and concise : the divide is foundational. It’s fundamental. We have grave differences on how to organize society. It has little to do with religion, nothing to do with Trump. It has nothing to do with racism, although you wouldn’t know that listening to the news.

It’s the foundation principles that have defined western civilization, the ones that make capitalism even remotely possible. We are at that level.

There isn’t a middle ground as far as I can see.—-MMM

MMM, you say we have grave differences about how to organize society. And you seem to suggest that there are destructive threats rising from these differences. Threats to the very the western principles upon which we have built our lives and our economic ( capitalistic) system.

If we accept this assessment the problem then a question comes to mind: When the Constitution was framed on Western values did it really provide a sound framework for social order? Or did it create a time bomb by failing to recognize the equal value of all citizen to have a share of, a voice in society.

The answer is historical: Native Americans, women, white men without property, and chattel slaves were bound to a social order that legally excluded them from enjoying the fruits of Western Values.

So while there is every reason to love the “new nation conceived in liberty” the Founding Fathers limited who they wanted to share those freedoms: Native Americans, women, white men without property, and chattel slaves were bound to a social order that legally excluded them from enjoying the fruits of Western Values.

*******************************************************

Pertinent to the birth of our nation- I think River Gang’s observation on the ways in which a marriage might fail speaks to this matter.

I regret to have to say the I have been through a divorce.

No single event caused that, just several decades worth of resentment which accumulated finally to explosion point.

(Back then, I had never even heard of “conflict management”)

Also RG wrote:

As in many things, timing is all important in conflict management. If allowed to fester for too long without being effectively managed, then the consequences are likely to be drastic (eg. War)

22

What do you see?

by Simon in

jw
friends

do you see a man with a backpack running into the woods?.

do you see a dog running out of the woods?.

i saw the man running first .... .

ShotWhileTryingToEscape

Power of suggestion?

I also saw the man first, then he dog.

This reminds me of a post recently about a comedian first gave you some hilarious & bogus words to popular songs—then he played that song— and you heard exactly what he told you!

31

If only someone had kicked my a$$.. (This is post is not for theists)

by HowTheBibleWasCreated in

i think back on the 30+ years of bs as well as my fading almost a decade and even now being low key in person to hopefully save my nieces from the wt.

i'm a wreck in some ways.

i'm other days i'm stable however when it comes to theism i depart quickly and with anger!

ShotWhileTryingToEscape

Hey, Disillusioned,

I appreciate that your posts nail down those elusive flashes of doubt or uneasiness that hold us open to later thought to build on.

I like to listen to Mormon Stories on YouTube while l work. I am heartened by these people delineating their own dawning realization of belief in a damaging and dishonest religious organization. These interviews by John Delin (sp?) have helped me feel at peace with my own inability to see any sooner than l did.

P.S.Here’s something along the lines of the OP that I just remembered.

Have a laugh.

https://youtu.be/SAIEIJHNFx4