I suppose this is all Trump has to talk about.
I bet 90% of his cabinet meetings rehash the same subject matter.
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Trump’s role model…
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It’s interesting (and revealing) that, while Trump incessantly brags about going to Wharton, the school goes out of its way to avoid reminding people of the fact. Aside from reporting on his antics as president, the only mention of his name on Wharton’s website occurs in a 125th Anniversary roundup—back in 2006—of famous graduates.
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I too was forced to wait until Boy Scouting to begin unravelling local mysteries (which began my lifelong love for scooby snacks) and to earn my Pesky Kid merit badge.
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The new thought for a lot of organizations will be to have Trump speak on a video address and then decide whether to let the blather through to the audience - technical problems, eh?
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The Scouts was an organic, grassroots movement which was then guided by BP. The BB was a top down organisation.
I was alluding to the fact that the Guides seem to be far more progressive than the Scouts.
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Which is pretty much my point.
It’s just another reason why I would have been happier there.
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So, there are two things going on here.
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Whether politicizing the Boy Scouts is appropriate – which ties into whether they are already political, and other examples of scouting being politicized (such as the Hitler Youth)
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How completely wingnut crazy his speech actually was. On the latter I recommend Toronto Star’s stalwart Daniel Dale’s summation.
The second point bothers me more. It speaks to either Trump’s mental instability (which has already been raised many times in Boing Boing’s comment boards) and/or a deliberate policy to ease the US into accepting authoritarian rule (as discussed by Dale in another article today). Both of these are pretty bad news.
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Wasn’t disagreeing, just expanding slightly for non-UK audience. Americans often seem to think they invented the Boy Scouts.
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The gays and trans-genders, sure,I mean we all like a bit of dressing up for the gang show; but allowing girls in to the Scouts? That is the thin end of the wedge!
Over the last 2 years, what in Trump’s behavior would lead anyone to think that he could show up and give an inspirational, apolitical speech? And now that he’s explicitly brought politics into a space that is supposed to be politically neutral, why has the BSA issued no push-back against the politicization of their organization by their honorary president? It has nothing to do with his politics being “wrong”; I would expect the same level of condemnation if Obama had used his 2010 video address to savage John McCain and complain about how terrible Republicans were for not helping to pass the ACA. The BSA is supposed to be an apolitical organization (though “supposed to be” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that statement), and Trump has shown no inclination to ever be apolitical. Maintaining neutrality may very well be impossible when “don’t invite the extremely partisan political figure who is incapable of talking about anything but the size of his electoral penis to speak at our children’s camping extravaganza” is itself seen as a political decision. I would expect an organization whose essential commandments are to be “trustworthy”, “helpful”, “friendly”, “courteous”, “kind”, “brave”, and “cheerful” (among others) to do the right thing and not invite someone who is the embodiment of the exact opposite of those principles to speak at their largest gathering, regardless of who they are.
For the record, I’m well aware that the BSA stands apart from the international scouting organization in its right-wing leanings, which is why I have only ever discussed the BSA itself, and not scouting as a whole. I even think that there are a lot of troops, like mine and those of some others in this thread, that are much more aligned with the international organization’s principles than those of the BSA. The problem is that the BSA’s official policies provide a lot of cover for a lot of ugly, discriminatory behavior by conservative communities, and troops that disobey those policies risk being shut down entirely. The national leadership has started to take some steps in the right direction over the last few years, but their silence on the heels of Trump coming in to turn the national jamboree into a Republican party political rally / ego-stroking festival for the president is actually quite deafening by comparison.
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both British scouting, and the BSA, as well as many associated groups in other countries all have their roots in the same retired British military guy and the group he founded.
They all have the same troubling origins to their ideological base. And they all are weird paramilitary groups for kids. Shit the Hitler youth aren’t just a purportedly clever reference used to mock scouts. They were created to mimic British scouting and turn it to more directly political uses.
Each nations scouting got it’s own quirks, problems etc. But most of them come out of the same colonialist, psuedo-military and often fascist friendly trends around the turn of the century.
And that’s the thing. My account sounds fucking crazy. But it was a series of seemingly isolated situations, spread out over years. And things I was often shielded from fully hearing about till later.
Looking back, And as I entered my teens. The trend and forces at work were absolutely clear and deeply troubling. At the time I didn’t connect any of it. And till I did I fucking loved scouts.
Read the writings of the guy who founded scouts. Look at its connection to the British military at the time. Peep the continued Rudyard Kipling references still in scouting materials. And all the cow boys and Indians bullshit.
That militarising children and teaching them outdoorsy shit may have accidentally prepared the people being colonized to establish militaries themselves (or spurred fears of that happening I’m not aware of any actual connection between scouting and revolutionaries at the time) is coincidental.
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On my walk to the bus for work there is a sticker on a lamp pole that says “This is not normal”. And on the way home another sticker facing the other direction says “Never give up”. It’s a nice daily reminder.
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You know, I read through Daniel Dale’s article and thought, “OK. So pretty much what we’ve come to expect.”
Except for 15:
15) He suggested children voted for him: “So I have to tell you. What we did, in all fairness, is an unbelievable tribute to you and all the other millions and millions of people that came out and voted for Make America Great Again.”
What the actual fuck?? Does he know where he is, and who he is speaking to? Did he explicitly acknowledge the Scouts in his speech?
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There may be a few who turned 18 in time to vote last year in attendance at the Jamboree, but more importantly, there are kids who were trapped at this speech who were outraged1, and they will be able to vote in 2018 and more who will be able to vote in 2020.
1. My co-worker’s son was there and outraged. In a crowd that big, from all over the country, seems reasonable that he wasn’t the only one.
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Seriously, read Kipling. I don’t think you have fully understood him.
Kipling had many faults (Auden wrote “Time, that with this strange excuse pardoned Kipling and his views”, the excuse being that he wrote well) but his attitude to non-white, non-Christian people wasn’t only far in advance of many people of his time, it is far in advance of that of many Americans walking around right now. Read Kim, carefully. The white racist Protestant clergyman is mocked. Indians talk approvingly of the new generation of Anglo-Indians (“mixed race” in American speak) who understand the country. The hero is Irish; he is befriended and helped by a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Muslim and a Zoroastrian. The role of the English is seen to be promoting civilisation by holding the ring between the different groups and keeping local rulers under control. Mark Twain, no friend to imperialists, noted this aspect of Indian rule when he visited. Kipling’s view was that in the long run the peoples of the British empire would and should mix and that the rule of Britain should bring enlightenment and civilisation. We may laugh at the idea now, but it was progressive then.
The British committed many atrocities in India, the worst perhaps being the Bengal famine. Some of them were racists (though some, like Auchinleck, were racists in that they preferred Indians to white British people.) Some were enlightened administrators. Kipling was on the side of the enlightened administrators.
As for the comparison you make between the Hitlerjugend and the Boy Scouts, it won’t wash. Read the history of Germany. The militarisation and the rule of the military have their roots long before B-P. Fortunately WW2 killed most of them off and they lost their power base in East Prussia to the Soviet Union, and Germany is a different country.
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“Puny fraud!”
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So far as I’m aware the Hitler youth were explicitly inspired by British scouting. In much the same way that Wehrmacht uniforms were inspired by British military uniforms. Hitler was a bit of an Anglophile. Whether the comparison is fair or not wasn’t what I was commenting on. It is,however intellectually
flat and "fuck the system maaaaan, common. But multiple scout inspired groups have been created (or adapted) by fascist groups as part of an overall strategy of militarising and indoctrinating the general public.
I’ve read Kipling. Remember that whole white man’s burden thing? Seemingly positive representations of foreign and non-white cultures are generally of the noble savage, closer to nature, simpler and more honorable tropes that are generally considered stereotype. Nasty stereotype. Western civilization represented as primary and entitled or required to lead or guide lesser cultures to greatness. With an occasional fetishization of poverty or savageness as somehow providing closeness to god or honor or whatever.
Kipling is considerably more complex than all that. But it’s there and he wrote as part of a long tradition of such things in British and colonial lit.
Man falls into the same tradition. Macho literature about the glory of exploration and military expeditions in frontier locations with strange people’s. Both implicitly accept racialist ideas, the importance and beneficial natural of colonial control. And the social and class distinction and benefits of the grand British military tradition.
Perhaps no better or worse than anything else mainstream published at the time. But that was the intellectual frame work at the time. And they both embody it quite well.
More over if I recall correctly the Kipling derived stuff was added to scouting later as a part of a general attempt to demilitarize scouting. Less army for kids, more outdoorsy self sufficiency. So while Kipling may have had a bit more going on than the common reading of the white man’s burden. It’s inclusion in scouting was based rather heavily on the colonialism defending, racialised common interpretation.
And at base the idea of a children’s organization explicitly predicated on providing children with the skills of military scouts and instilling specific, mainstream, dogmatic values. Is a little creepy without any of the other shit.
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Well, that Jamboree crowd was bigger than the inauguration crowd.
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For what it’s worth three of the five U.S. Presidents who were former Boy Scouts were Democrats (including Obama).
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