Posts by em1913

85

“Monkey this up”...

by minimus in

jw
friends

that expression is a no-no now.

it is racist and hateful.

some people just need to get the monkey off their backs..

I'm not familiar with Morph's Law, but having looked it up, I stand by my comments. Economics, especially the Austrian variety, despite the best efforts of its adherents to paint it as a science based on Pure Fact and Reason, is as much a matter of Faith As The Assured Expectation Of Things Hoped For, The Evident Demonstration Of Realities Not Beheld as any form of religious belief. I know a lot of Libertarians, Anarcho-Capitalists, and god-forbid Randites with sticky copies of "Atlas Shrugged" under their mattresses who are just as desperately culty in their beliefs as any hard-boiled Witness. And I'll put an awful lot of the Trump people I've met in the same camp. Not all, certainly, but a distressing number of them, especially old white people who live in the whitest state in the union and are nonetheless convinced that OMG MEXICANS ARE HERE TO STEAL OUR JOBS AND WRECK OUR PROUD CULCHA when they see the brown-skinned carnies working the Tilt-A-Whirl at the county fair. What Richard Hofstadter wrote about "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" in 1964 is even more true today. (Not that I'm citing him as scripture, you understand, but I do suggest you look it up and read it -- well worth anyone's time.)

Now, you can turn it around and say MARXIST! POT, KETTLE, ETC., but the difference is I don't look to Marx as the last word in my beliefs. I believe he was correct in his analysis of class structure, but I don't hang by his every written word as sacred writ. Why would I? As human beings we're all just making this up as we go along, and anyone who claims otherwise, who claims to have the Real Truth, is just as deluded as the cheesiest elder on the platform. So, sure, go ahead, Morph away. But look in the mirror while doing it.

85

“Monkey this up”...

by minimus in

jw
friends

that expression is a no-no now.

it is racist and hateful.

some people just need to get the monkey off their backs..

em1913

In other words, "sorry, I have my religion."

I don't agree that the good Austrians proved anything, except to those already inclined to accept those beliefs. But that's your religion, and those are your Scriptures, just as some people choose to believe that Jesus Christ is physically present in a cookie, or that a bunch of men in Patterson were chosen to lead God's People thru Armageddon, or that a hacky novelist from the 1940s with a rape fetish could develop a world-changing philosophy, and you can believe it if you want. And if it makes it easier for you to sleep thru the night putting the groups I mentioned on the "left,"then go right ahead and do that. It puts you completely at odds with all historical understanding of the Populist movment in the United States since the 1930s, but hey, the world is full of new ideas, and now that I think of it, I love the idea of somebody like Robert Welch actually being a leftist. Serves the old candy-coated blowhard right. Or left, as the case may be. I bet he and Ike had a good time at the cell meetings.

I really do suggest, though, that you visit the nice folks at Gab and run your ideas by them. I think you'll find them a lively bunch.

As far as board software is concerned, I think I've figured out what happened -- I have the habit of spacing between paragraphs for legibility, and I think the software, coupled with my particularly ancient browser, might have a problem with that -- it was inserting spaces where none existed, and cutting out any part of the post below that space. If that's what happened, I'm perfectly happy to withdraw my censorship comment. I'm a moderator myself on a board, and I know that certain software has the ability to be set to "discourage" specific people from posting by throwing various roadblocks in their path, but I'm satisified, through your own colorful language, that this isn't the case here.

23

Stroup's "The Jehovah's Witnesses."

by em1913 in

a book that doesn't get a lot of talk these days is herbert h. stroup's 1945 study "the jehovah's witnesses.

" which is too bad, because in the field of jw studies it pretty much stands on its own as a serious, scholarly look at the rutherford era of the movement -- one written with no theological or doctrinal axes to grind, but rather with the impartial eye of a professional sociologist.. stroup received no cooperation whatever from brooklyn in writing this book, but he spent a great deal of time among rank-and-file witnesses of the late 1930s and early 1940s, attending their meetings, joining them in field service, and eating at their homes, and what emerges is a picture of an overwhelmingly working-class movement which overlapped in its hopes and ultimate goals the ambitions of other radical social movements of the 1930s.

the witnesses were not marching in labor parades or participating in sit-down strikes or engaging in other forms of street-level radicalism, but stroup finds that, in their individual views on the social and economic structures of the time, they were largely in harmony with those who were, even in spite of their religion's supposed disavowal of politics, and he sees them as much as a political movement in that sense as a religious one.

em1913

There was no room on earth big enough to contain those two.

Coughlin was in pretty close contact with actual Nazi agents thru most of the late 1930s, which influenced much of his broadcast content -- a lot of what he had to say, especially about the Poor Suffering Sudeten Germans and that Christian Gentleman Gen. Franco, came direct from Goebbels by way of these contacts.The Judge had his own skeletons in the closet viz. Hitler, but there doesn't, at least, seem to be any evidence that he was pen-pals with Goebbels.

64

The Longest Goodbye Of John McCain

by minimus in

jw
friends

can you believe it?

this funeral arrangement goes on and on and on.

if the people loved him so much he would have been elected president.

em1913

"The indisputable facts show that a class of men who indulge in hunting wild beasts merely for the thrill and selfish pleasure derived therefrom are also the men who indulge and delight in military training and the prosecution of wars, and also that they are to a large degree religionists, given over to formalism and the praise and adulation of men...."

-- w38, p 359 para. 27

Well, I guess two out of three ain't bad.

50

Financially Are You Doing Better Than a Year Ago?

by minimus in

jw
friends

this isn’t a usa question.

is your financial situation better or worse or pretty much the same?.

em1913

Worse. Crushing medical debt got worse when I required eye surgery this summer that my -- heh -- insurance declined to cover. Plus my pay has actually gone down over the past two years from where it peaked in 2016.

Oop - just saw that this "isn't" a USA question. Never mind. You can see the eye surgery did a lot of good.

23

Stroup's "The Jehovah's Witnesses."

by em1913 in

a book that doesn't get a lot of talk these days is herbert h. stroup's 1945 study "the jehovah's witnesses.

" which is too bad, because in the field of jw studies it pretty much stands on its own as a serious, scholarly look at the rutherford era of the movement -- one written with no theological or doctrinal axes to grind, but rather with the impartial eye of a professional sociologist.. stroup received no cooperation whatever from brooklyn in writing this book, but he spent a great deal of time among rank-and-file witnesses of the late 1930s and early 1940s, attending their meetings, joining them in field service, and eating at their homes, and what emerges is a picture of an overwhelmingly working-class movement which overlapped in its hopes and ultimate goals the ambitions of other radical social movements of the 1930s.

the witnesses were not marching in labor parades or participating in sit-down strikes or engaging in other forms of street-level radicalism, but stroup finds that, in their individual views on the social and economic structures of the time, they were largely in harmony with those who were, even in spite of their religion's supposed disavowal of politics, and he sees them as much as a political movement in that sense as a religious one.

em1913

I have to say that just speaking for myself, it was the "lefty" aspects of JW doctrine that attracted me to the movement. I was not particularly concerned with the "social conservative" stuff, and didn't really swallow it even when I was active -- I found a lot of it to be very actively distasteful in some of the crude sexism, especially, that I had to listen to from the platform, and my disagreement with those aspects of the program helped push me out the door.

But reading the old Rutherford books where he'd go to town on Religion, Politics, and Commerce got me pretty pumped up, and I once expressed disappointment to an elder that we didn't seem to be emphasizing those angles as much anymore. He gave me such a look, from the superior position of his advanced degree in engineering and his ten room house and his $50K a year job that I figured I'd better not raise that topic again.

85

“Monkey this up”...

by minimus in

jw
friends

that expression is a no-no now.

it is racist and hateful.

some people just need to get the monkey off their backs..

em1913

Thank you, Minimus. I've always respected what you had to say on WT matters, regardless of politics, and hope nothing I say is taken personally by anyone.

44

Did the jw's leadership ever apologize for 1975?

by dugout in

jw
friends

talking to my friend who's an elder, when i asked him did the leadership ever attempt to apologize for the 1975 prediction fiasco he said they did.

and he was going to show me.

i'm still waiting..................................................tic toc did they???

em1913

Yep, you could tell even in the 80s, when Freddie was clearly not in the thick of things anymore, that the publications were getting more and more watered-down to, at best, a junior-high level mentality. I remember the last time one of the old "large size" books was featured in the Book Study, the "Man's Salvation" book, which must have been 1984 or so -- we only studied *part* of it, because, you know, it was nine years old and OLD LIGHT and all that -- and everyone sat around afterward talking about how "deep" it was.

Well, that was "deep" as in sense of the meanderings of an odd old man's odd old mind, but it did at least try and present ideas in a way somewhat more advanced than the "See Dick And Jane In Paradise, Fill The Earth Dick and Jane, Fill the Earth" style of the Live Forever book and other publications of that period. I was embarassed to offer that kind of stuff at the door because it looked and read like something you'd give to a five year old to play with in the back seat on a long car ride.

I've not set foot in a KH since 1988, but from the stuff I've seen over the years lurking on this board, and from the occasional Newer Publication I've stumbled on at a laundromat or picked up off the floor of a subway station, the "Live Forever" book looks like a work of high theological art by comparison.

64

The Longest Goodbye Of John McCain

by minimus in

jw
friends

can you believe it?

this funeral arrangement goes on and on and on.

if the people loved him so much he would have been elected president.

em1913

I've always found political funerals tedious, although I did shed a tear during Reagan's funeral and I couldn't stand the guy when he was alive. State funerals are always about emotional manipulation, no matter who's getting planted.

As far as his position as a leading moderate goes, he was only considered one because the rest of his party has gone so batspit crazy. I feel the same way about the unwarranted lionization of Susan Collins.

44

Did the jw's leadership ever apologize for 1975?

by dugout in

jw
friends

talking to my friend who's an elder, when i asked him did the leadership ever attempt to apologize for the 1975 prediction fiasco he said they did.

and he was going to show me.

i'm still waiting..................................................tic toc did they???

em1913

I got involved during what I later learned was the aftermath of 1975 -- and I never knew that the 1975 fiasco ever even existed so far as my congregation was concerned. It was all straight down the memory hole -- elders who had been on the front lines in the middle of it walked around as though absolutely nothing had ever happened. The first I ever heard of it was, I think, in the Time magazine article about Ray Franz's banishment in 1982, and reading that was like being hit across the face with a wet towel.

I never asked the elders about it, but I dug into the Bound Volumes like a good Witness until I managed to convince myself that it was all a big misunderstanding. It got a lot harder to keep that up when I got around to reading the "Freedom Of The Sons of God" book, although Freddie's prose was obtuse enough to justify the "we're not saying, but this couuuuuuuuld happen." explanation.