This might be the case, but the largest sponsor of the BSA did have a hard-line policy on homosexuality:
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Fair enough, but they aren’t very big around where I am.
Honestly, they are so nutty I’d be like, “Bye, Felicia.”
just the right degree of rambling incoherence. I really like the way you managed to touch on about a dozen discrete topics in that one run-on sentence. Bravo!
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Quite. She’ll be wanting a perpetuum mobile for x-mas. Kids today…
[Insert Four Yorkshiremen-style rant to your own liking HERE.]
I agree, but breaking with a generations-long tradition of inviting the sitting US President would in itself be making a political statement. They were pretty much screwed no matter what they did.
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Disclaimer: I am not an eagle scout. My experience with scouting was pretty miserable. Campouts invariably had most of the troop shivering in the rain, while the adults and older scouts hung out in RVs. The whole thing was an exercise in class warfare.
From my experience with scouting, this latest bit with 45 is hardly a bug, its a feature. The whole organization should be retired for the 19th century relic that it is.
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He can’t -not invite- the President, is the problem.
I have a problem with his show of humility on behalf of someone else. It just can’t work!
I was in one Troop a bit like that. But then my other Troop, I used to play cribbage with the leaders and it was all good times. Years later I learned why they were drinking soda so late into the evening. Never an Eagle scout either. Didn’t care for that ladder part.
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Sessions took an oath to be loyal to the Constitution. He may be a radical bigot, but credit where due on the recusal.
I had a very different experience in the 1980s. We had a camp out every month and we were all in tents. Our leaders were a couple of retired gentlemen and one of the dads from the troop. We learned a lot. I quit just before getting my Eagle when the leadership flipped and I could no longer ignore the “reverent” part of the oath.
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The fact that they distributed flyers advising scouts not to participate in chants like “lock her up” or “build that wall” means they knew he was probably going to try to get the crowd to act like a Republican party rally. They could have made the most cursory of efforts ahead of his appearance to pre-screen the president’s speech to make sure it wasn’t going to be objectionable (a reasonable precaution for any speaker with a history of bragging about sexual assault and injecting politics into explicitly apolitical settings). They could have made clear after the fact that future invitations would be contingent upon the president not repeating his performance this year.
The president is not actually in charge of the BSA. They are under no obligation to continue upholding a tradition that the president either ignorantly or willfully exploits in a way that puts their organization’s reputation at risk. They absolutely can -not- invite the president, and they absolutely should not invite the orange idiot back without guarantees and apologies for tarnishing the event with his presence.
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They can make no such promise and you know it.
neither are you and I
Trump has tried to degrade the BSA. Your reaction could be focused on the BSA, not reacting to Trump. Focus on the next thing, not the last thing. We don’t need to avoid it in future. We need to move on from a violation, and organize to not attend next time around.
If the BSA stops inviting the President, the BSA is changed. Don’t let him get away with it and don’t enable him to change institutions just by showing up for an hour and spraying feces everywhere.
I legitimately do not understand what your suggested course of action is, then. The president has shown a willingness to flout the traditional norms of the presidential relationship with Scouting. You said it yourself: “Trump has tried to degrade the BSA”. Why, then, would we not want to punish him for doing that? Should he be allowed to get away with it just because he’s the president? Certainly, the BSA should have done more to impress upon the president that he was not invited there to give a campaign speech, and vet the things he was planning on saying. But now that their jamboree has been twisted into a Republican party rally, the BSA has two options in response:
- Do nothing, continue to invite him to speak at the jamborees unconditionally, and issue mealy-mouthed “sorry you were offended” apologies when the man inevitably does the exact same thing next time, because the tradition of inviting the president overrides the importance of limiting his ability to corrupt the organization with his mere presence.
- Put values above traditions by making it clear that anyone who behaves the way the president did will not be invited back to speak at any BSA event. It doesn’t change the BSA to uphold their values and put real consequences in place for violating their “no politics” stance. They can continue to invite the president in the future, but there must be real punishments in place if he (or she) violates the expectation that they adhere to the BSA’s attitude of political neutrality.
If they invite the president back without putting conditions and consequences in place first, they are letting him get away with what he did. The BSA will have forfeited whatever claim to political neutrality they may have, and that is what will change the institution. Organizing not to attend the jamboree the next time around will not impact Trump in any way, but it will change the BSA and the jamboree by the simple fact of the protesters’ absence. Letting Trump show up for an hour and spray feces everywhere is exactly the problem that needs to be addressed. The president is not owed a platform.
Our society is built on a foundation of soft social stigmatization of misbehavior to a much greater extent than I think anyone realized before November 8, 2016. Our institutions often don’t have hard bylaws or legislation in place to deal with someone who is shameless enough to completely ignore these soft enforcement mechanisms. Even the Office of Governmental Ethics is hamstrung by having to deal with an administration that simply does not care about being caught doing something wrong - sunlight and shame don’t work with these people, and that’s largely what the OGE’s enforcement is built on. By letting the president run roughshod over our institutions over and over again because you have to respect the office for the benefit of its future occupants, you are enabling him to single-handedly tear them down and align them to his own purposes. The only way to protect our institutions from this tiny man’s corruption is to ensure that his actions have real consequences, because the institutions themselves are far more important than their traditional relationships with the president.
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They could have slow-walked the invitation. Sent it via snail-mail, put it in an unmarked envelope and addressed it to whoever handled that sort of stuff during the previous administration. So that it would be unlikely to get the necessary attention until it was too late to act on. Something like that would have allowed them to technically maintain tradition and save face while still preventing disaster.
Reports are that they did. But, as is typical for him, the Mango Madman ignored his prepared speech and improvised. Which they also should have expected. If they had any backbone they would have done something like this lady:
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it is a course of not REACTING, which I have to say seems to distinguish it.
The real problem here, is not that an invited guest made a problematic speech. The real problem is that the most powerful country in the world is not willing or able to maintain accountable leadership. This should be a grave concern no matter who the guy is merely holding office.
sadly this could have been the output of a trump markov-chain text generator.
I do not claim that not inviting was the best option.
Personally I like the ‘immediate rebuttal’ option if you weren’t so stupid to fail to know how this would probably go.
And as a backup, assuming you are stupid, the ‘post rebuttal’ option is a reasonable attempt.
The not-actually-an-apology option is a very very poor and cowardly one.
Exhibit your bravery. Either endorse and become the Trump youth, or vociferously reject and be a patriot.
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