Fuck this guy. Inept, egotistical blow-hard, corrupting everything he touches.
I hope to hell the BSA leadership makes a statement about this.
I wonder how many Jewish and Muslim scouts will get beat up at that Jamboree tonight.
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Yeah, fuck that.
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In trump’s own words?
That’s just… Sad.
Having to try trotting out his talking point in front of a bunch of kids to try desperately getting anyone not already deeply on the conservative bandwagon and thus will forgive anything due to him having ® by his name on CNN to think he’s a genius well spoken beloved politician.
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At what point do the GOP faithful start getting embarrassed by this constant need to brag about winning the election and the weird prattling on about things that aren’t even remotely related to the event at hand?
Never? Is this the new normal?
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God, this guy’s such a mope.
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Did the speech end with a rousing rendition of tomorrow belongs to me?
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Is a member of a psuedo-military organization based on idealizing British colonialism, racialist concepts of the outside world, blind patriotism and explicit ties to specific Christian denominations. Often times to the exclusion of other religious outlooks.
I can stamp my feet and say “that’s not what I learned in Scouts”. But the fact of the matter is there’s some deeply troubling shit in the roots and basis of scouting. And always has been. As much fun as I had it was never terribly welcoming to anyone who was in anyway different, or interested in questioning or challenging things. Probably why I didn’t stick with it.
It doesn’t surprise me that it would be trivially simple to get large crowds of scouts chanting along with a maniac. And it doesn’t surprise me that the central organization sees nothing wrong with that.
Given the general trend in jargon over on the alt right. Cuck. Betas. And what have probably.
You had to wait till it hit the news? It was made pretty clear to us when we were in scouting. And the “I’m an Atheist” thing didn’t fly particularly well either.
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Don’t worry folks. No one was indoctrinated. They were all there to earn a special merit badge for enduring a loudmouth.
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This Is Not Normal.
Never let yourself forget that. Personally, I have a sticky note on my monitor as an extra reminder, but it’s probably unnecessary at this point.
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I once saw a Shriner clown pontificate about kids missing limbs at a hospital. His audience was 3-year olds. Trump is just as aware.
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My troop was (apparently) extremely secular compared to the national organization. We didn’t really interface with the national organization much at all, so as a scout I was sort of sheltered from most of the right-wing bullshittery. We were ostensibly sponsored by one of the local parishes, but it came up so infrequently that I’m not even entirely sure if that was still the case the whole time I was a member. “Reverent” was both the last and least part of the oath for most of the kids and leaders in our group. By today’s standards I wouldn’t exactly say it was a haven of progressive pro-LGBT values, but religious duty and anti-homosexuality were so far removed from the way my troop operated that it genuinely was news to me that you couldn’t be a boy scout if you were gay. Or atheist.
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Yeah, although traditions are only worthwhile if they mean something. If a tradition is only followed because the tradition of the tradition is to perpetuate the tradition, then … ?
Also, they may have been hesitant, but I wonder if they’re having second thoughts about that now.
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I hope in the very least they release a statement disavowing some of Trump’s comments. It’s disgusting that Trump, who was never a scout, encouraged the crowd to boo Obama, who was.
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How does one explain the Scouts’ Honor Code to someone who lacks an ethical core?
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Hard to think of a worse example of the values espoused by the Scouts. Even his remarks were unprepared.
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Not all that dissimilar from my troop. But rose colored glasses and all that. My family’s priest (the openly gay Episcopalian one) was curiously unwelcome at any and all scouting events. Our troop leader at one point gave a very tolerant talk about how gayness was wrong. The only Jewish scout in our local org was just never around until it was time to get those religious tolerance badges. There was a series of protests, from higher up the ladder not scouts or their parents, when a couple Muslim kids joined. My siblings and I were denied communion, then pressed into giving confession on that one field trip to the catholic church noone told our parents we were going on. Which was weird. And the refusing us communion was counter to catholic practice at the time. Mom was pissed. Then there was the time the closeted gay kid was tied to a tree. Smeared with shit, pantsed, pelted with beers and left. For two days. By the Eagle Scouts. Who weren’t punished by the Troop (but were arrested). My mother who had been our scout leader, or den master, or whatever the title was. From tiger cubs right up till we qualified as full Boy Scouts wasn’t allow to continue on or progress in the organization. Ostensibly because she had never herself been a Boy Scout. But she’d never been a Boy Scout because vagina.
Oh and the time the cub scout den leader who wasn’t my mom told me I couldn’t participate if I ever mentioned not believing in god again.
It was there. And it was more and more apparent as you moved from dealing with your parents and friends parents in smallish neighborhood group to interacting with the full organization more.
I ditched it when the hazing started, but I’d had serious reservations for a while there. Still helped a friend with his eagle scout shit. None of the other scouts would because he was “weird” (ie Bipolar).
You can totally be an Atheist Boy Scout. For the most part they never got around to kicking people out for that (at least in recent history). You just weren’t allowed to mention it. And had to regularly profess a belief in god.
I didn’t even get that kind of guff at church. Our big gay priest though my questions and protests were fascinating. Though the borrowed Nuns weren’t big fans.
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Oh, come now! I suspect that there is something or someone out there that you revere.
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Everything is culture war. Everything.
That tweeter knows!
That was one of the most disillusioning lessons I learned as a kid. War can be scary, but it gets weird when you see people on that battlefield who can’t/won’t see it, even as they act out the programs of imperialism.
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“Did President Obama ever come to a Jamboree?”
Looks like Obama is indeed guilty of this, and took flak for it. That’s too bad, I’d have thought he’d have seen the value in it. He recorded a message for the 2010 jamboree (which I guess got booed as well).
