Christ, what an asshole
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The BSA leadership owes all of us (especially those who were contemplating encouraging their offspring in that direction) why allowing their meeting to become a strident political platform is an acceptable thing. “But this was the president!” will not suffice in such a case a trump. This is anything but being prepared.
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Just want to mention that when I was in the Scouts (Pacific Northwest, early-mid 1960s) it was as secular and non-partisan an outfit as you could imagine. Religion seldom came up–although there were Christian Sunday prayers at Camporee–and neither politics nor rah-rah militarism were mentioned. Sexuality was never discussed, not even among the kids (believe it or not!). It was all camping, hiking, building things, and hanging out with friends. Maybe it was just our Scout leaders who chose to run things that way. Whatever the case, it was a shock to me when, later in the sixties, the BSA became notorious for spouting conservative politics, supporting our troops, and kicking out the Wrong Sort of People.
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By firelight, as the best scary ghost stories get told.
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More than that, they need to repudiate his speech.
This situation is a textbook example of how authoritarians wreck a free society by attacking its institutional foundations. Institutions do not defend themselves, they are defended by the people who make up the institution. When there is no one of courage within a institution willing to defend it, that is when it falls to the autocrat.
The BSA needs to recognize that Trump’s speech was an attack on the Boy Scouts of America itself, even if it just sounded like an attack on other politicians. If they let it pass without a response then they will be capitulating to his corrupting influence.
Its too late for them to do nothing and hope they can come out unscathed. They are going to be damaged no matter what they do now. Its their choice to let the damage rot away at their values and standing or if they are going to take their licks in public by standing up for their principles. Anyone can say they have values, it takes strength of character to actually live those values when there is a cost to doing so.
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Trump really knows how to tailor his speeches to his audience said no one, ever. He does have one speech - it’s the stuff that’s on his mind, i.e. himself, because what else would it possibly be? Nothing else is important and he doesn’t know - or want to know - about anything else.
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Well… He didn’t get rich spending his own money.
He got rich because his dad died one day.
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Trump to Boy Scouts:
Could you make your shirts a little more brown?
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I have very fond memories of Cub Scouts- camping trips, Pinewood Derby races, craft projects, a surprisingly large dose of Native American mythology and learning to respect and protect nature… I quit as soon as I entered the actual Boy Scouts, when my nice, sensitive friends were mostly replaced by macho bullies. I didn’t learn until college that discrimination against homosexuals or atheists was even a thing in the BSA. I’ll always be grateful to my Scoutmaster for giving me that positive experience, but looking back on it, it was an extremely isolated haven in a corrupt and morally bankrupt organization. I’m glad I left when I did.
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I was in the Cub Scouts also but left because it clashed with Scooby Doo. I am also glad I left when I did.
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I read that as ‘by firefight’ at first.
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WTF was that?
So maybe I should scrape together the money necessary to go to the 2019 World Scout Jamboree (to be held in the same place).
If Trump is still in office then, I’d really like to know how a more international crowd of young people reacts to his speech…
I would like to ask you guys to remember that scouting is an international organization, and the Internet is an international network. So, whenever you say things like that about “the scouts”, please make it unambiguously clear that you’re talking about the Boy Scouts of America. Otherwise, these things get read out of context and create bad publicity for the rest of us.
Decent people who visibly resist the bastards who are in power become martyrs. They are kicked out and get to form their competing organization, which unfortunately won’t be part of the international scouting organization.
Decent people who keep a low profile until they are in the majority succeed at changing an organization.
Loud opposition tends to make organizations more extreme, not less.
No. Heads of state are usually honorary presidents of national scouting organizations, so they get invited to speak at major National Jamborees like this one. The sane ones tend to keep their speeches mostly apolitical. National scouting organizations are not supposed to get involved in politics by specifically disinviting their honorary presidents if their politics are wrong.
The BSA sent a strong contingent to the 2015 World Scout Jamboree in Japan, where they were surrounded by Muslim scouts, a few Jewish scouts, and lots of scouts who don’t take their religion (if any) seriously. They didn’t beat up anyone. In fact, they were very nice and friendly.
Trump’s sexual innuendo was very appropriate for the 12-18 crowd:
“[My friend] sold his company for a tremendous amount of money,” Trump told the kids. “And he went out and bought a big yacht. And he had a very…interesting life.”
Trump really leaned into the “interesting” in “interesting life.”
“I won’t go into any more than that cause you’re Boy Scouts,” Trump said. “So I’m not going to tell you what he did.”
No really. No irony. Perfectly appropriate. No one has more fun with that kind of talk than a thirteen year old. And I do expect them to grow out of that phase before they’re eighteen.
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The decent people of the BSA [1] have had fifty years to work on their slow and steady approach. It has not worked.
After a while, it stops being subtle resistance and becomes collaboration.
If non-bigoted alternatives to the BSA are not recognised by the global Scouting movement, that’s on the Scouts rather than the dissidents.
[1] And you are right; I should have been more careful to distinguish global Scouting from the BSA. Even the Baden-Powell version has some pretty sketchy history, though.
By all accounts the Girl Scouts need to go co-ed.
However, it’s worth pointing out than in its origins Scouting was not about “idealising colonialism…racialist concepts of the outside world.” (The Girl Guides are named for the Indian Corps of Guides). Baden-Powell had the objective of uniting social classes and the various nationalities of the Empire (and elsewhere).
In India the British authorities were actually worried about the Scout movement - it might train Indians to be revolutionaries - but it was spreading by 1916 with Hindus and Muslims involved in the leadership and became a very large movement. So much for the “Christian denominations.”
I left the organisation quite early but it wasn’t over its beliefs and practices but because one of the local leaders was a paedophile and nobody would listen to me. Like all organisations it is very variable at different times and in different places, and I think it’s wrong to generalise - especially on the basis of the US operation.
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I was at the 1985 National Jamboree. Three helicopters flew in. Three limos stopped by the helicopters and then drove to the stage. Nancy Reagan got out of one of the limos. She gave her speech. “Hi kids, Don’t do drugs.” Went back into limo, and then flew away.
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I am not sure Trump really knows how to talk to children. I am sure he avoids it. I am willing to bet many of his talks with Barron go very much like this speech…
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Of course he does. Open mouth, say first thing that comes out. Works for two and three year olds.
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You haven’t seen the Boys Brigade then.
Baden-Powell’s Scouts were practically hippies in comparison.
I would have had a far happier time in the Girl Guides 
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