The Nehor

The desperate need to parse out guilt is unhealthy. The best metaphor I know of is that we all live in a broken down apartment building. Because of the flaws in construction and ongoing damage to the premises by people in it the place is unsafe. It is more unsafe for some than for others. Minorities and women find the premises more unsafe. Now a lot of the problems were there before any of us got here. Some are neglecting maintenance they should be doing and others are actively making the situation worse. The goal is to fix the building we all live in. Parsing out exactly how much of the responsibility lies on the original builders, those who lived here before, and those who are living here now aren’t productive and are mostly used as a dodge by people who think they see advantages for themselves in the broken down nature of the place because their living situation in it is marginally better. So do we fix the house or do the people in the better apartments just whine about how everyone else is trying to make them feel guilty when the call is to figure out how to fix the whole thing. We’ll probably collectively choose inaction and suffering over improvement because this is what humanity tends to do. We could choose differently but we probably won’t.

Men generally don’t hold other men accountable for harassing and making women feel unsafe. Many defend and downplay. Women learn quickly most men won’t listen or help so they turn to a kind of collective self-defense. It is not the guilt that is usually imputed. Most women know some men are safe or at least safer. However the caution women live with is there and has nothing to do with guilt. They can’t operate on ‘innocent until proven guilty’ because the stakes are way too high for that presumption to matter. Low bar but that is where we are at. We are terrible at the latter. Woah, I don’t think we should jump straight to Bible burning. Reporting often doesn’t help. I really wish it did. I know a few people whose lives were ruined by reporting misconduct. It is not enough to say people should report. We have to defend those who do report. We are terrible at these. Create environments where situational awareness is less necessary. Note this treatment has to extend to all women or the message is muddled. If it only applies to close family and friends it can be a toxic message. Also the main goal would be for sons to not treat women badly. Teaching women how they ought to be treated is good but the threat comes from the boys and men. Except due to many factors men tend to listen to and go along with what men say and do over what women say and do. You’re splitting hairs and trying to make it about you again. And again it is about you. I dislike that the lived experience of so many people is such that these kinds of lyrics are an accurate and relatable experience. I don’t think paving over the problem by complaining about people signing and writing about horrible experiences is helpful. Refusing to speak about problems means they are here to stay. The counsel of scripture is, of course, much more mixed. Also the culture of the Church is not conducive to defending victims. Sometimes it manages it. Sometimes it does not. Too often rape culture is seen as a women’s issue that has to be solved when men are overwhelmingly the people causing the problem. Also if women would just be situationally aware, wear the right clothing, stay out of certain areas, and live in a kind of maximum safety then bad things won’t happen….to them. Just to the bad women who bring it on themselves by being a little less aware, dressing slutty, or going to the wrong places. There is an expectation that women have to police themselves perfectly or they (to some level) deserve what happens. Sometimes this is just blatant victim blaming. Sometimes it is people wanting to believe in a just universe rationalizing what the victim did wrong that led to the event so that they can assure themselves it won’t happen to them or to people they care about. That if you do the right thing you will be safe. You see this in any story where a man rapes or assaults a woman. It also fixates on the less common forms of assault where strangers are the aggressor. More often it is acquaintances or friends or family or a spouse.

A lot of this seems to come down to an argument that some poor people are bad people which is yeah, so what? Some of the oppressed are bad therefore status quo that oppresses them is somehow good? No thanks. A lot of my friends are fleeing Texas to avoid persecution and denial of medical care so I don’t consider Texas to be some glorious utopia and many of those I know are drowning in medical debt and can’t buy a home and all that fun stuff. I think a lot of these problems can be fixed and I don’t think the impoverished are causing them.

I think this approach in thinking that the non-elite white people would not support this is incorrect. However, it is not off the reservation thinking. Those who think it are in good company. This was actually what Lincoln was thinking would happen. There was a hope that those who benefitted the least from slavery would be uninterested in the conflict. Sadly historians who do deep dives into the correspondence of Confederate soldiers have found that the lowly privates and other enlisted of the Confederate army were, generally speaking, very pro-slavery. The groundswell of Confederate dissatisfaction with the war from the relatively poor never materialized. They appear to have largely bought into the system they were defending even if its benefits to them were relatively minimal. The cynic in me thinks this is best explained by the old quote from LBJ: "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." There is a huge advantage of creating an underclass below your poorer classes. Having someone beneath them is a reminder that things could be worse and help you buy into the status quo. LBJ was from the South and was a staunch member of the Southern bloc in Congress throughout his career. He knew how racism in the South worked inside and out and the “Lost Cause” mythos the Confederate historians wrote was built up to build this kind of loyalty to the status quo even if it didn’t benefit you much individually.

My glider died a few years back sadly. Cute video though.

I don’t think they were being deliberately deceptive but they were wrong. After the Civil War there was a bit of a crisis of identity in the Southern States. They lost a lot of lives, had a lot of their infrastructure burned, and a lot of their way of life dependent on slavery was gone. So all those people died for nothing or worse, died for something odious. So the “Lost Cause” mythos cropped up to soften the Confederacy’s image and make slavery less important so that their cause wasn’t so odious. State’s rights became a popular rallying cry. They also played up the Union occupation as particularly brutal, desperately looked for ways to show how the Confederacy wasn’t ‘that bad’ for enslaved and free black people and the like. This revisionism went deep to the point that many Confederate stalwarts who never mentioned state’s rights publicly post-war held it up as the casus belli of the conflict. On a more practical level the aristocratic planter class wasn’t going to give up slavery. Their plantation lifestyle and wealth relied on it. Getting paid for their slaves wasn’t going to get them to shrug and agree to free everyone. The South didn’t secede because Lincoln was going to abolish slavery or even emancipate the slaves. It occurred because Lincoln was staunchly opposed to expanding slavery into the western territories. They wanted to spread the system they were using into the west. It is also important to note that the South and the North were operating on very different economic and social systems. The South had a very entrenched class system. Plantation owners were more like feudal lords than business owners. The North had a class system too of course but it was much more flexible and was based around free farming and industrialization. Once the war was over the South rapidly industrialized. The divide was mostly gone once the South was on a similar economic system though the South found new methods to oppress the Black people in their midst and went to town with those. So yeah, I don’t believe that would have worked. As a post-war rationalization it sounds good. From a mostly disinterested viewer taking a large view emancipation with compensation probably seemed reasonable. It didn’t seem reasonable to the Southern elite. It would require massive systemic changes and there was also the deep-rooted fear of losing control. That is understandable until you remember that their fear was losing control over other people.

So the problem is the impoverished, the marginalized, and the oppressed and they are the reason that God’s judgement will fall upon us. *checks Bible, Book of Mormon, and D&C* Well, that seems to be a radical interpretation of Christianity in general and the LDS faith as well. “Blessed are the wealthy for the impoverished oppress them horribly by not working enough for their enrichment. Cursed are the poor for they are useless layabouts and shall be cast into hell.”

I should be clear. I am not saying humanity on Earth is in a good place right now. We aren’t. But military conflict isn’t the big problem. There is less of that at the moment.

Using “The Scarlet Letter” here which is a story that has a lot to say about misogyny in punishment is kind of ironic. In that story the evil adulteress is publicly shamed while the sinful man she was with is still seen as a pillar of the community. This is still a problem where the guy often gets away with it with minimal punishment if any at all while the woman is left with the scars and public disdain. Even when the guy is a predator and the woman is the victim.

What was achieved? A long peace. That is what historians call it. It has prevented the great powers on Earth from directly clashing. Yes, there are some proxy wars though I try to be careful about saying that they are exclusively proxy wars as the nations and powers on the ground have agency and are making decisions too. Reducing all nations to puppets of great powers is simplistic. However, on the whole, conflict is down. They don’t love their fellow man? Well, that is not at all new. There was no utopian age where they did. This isn’t a new development that shows that Satan is somehow winning. By this standard Satan has always been winning.

While we have great potential to destroy the nuclear weapon detente has led to the long peace in which peer competitors powers with nuclear weapons don’t openly fight against each other.

Depends why you were in the police car. If it was due to a protest or defending the marginalized or other good things then it makes an awesome wife.

Global conflict levels are still very low compared to most of recorded history. Also I think you meant Amalek.

I think it is more looking beyond the mark but I am a cynical guy so probably a bad judge.

He wasn’t just talking about looking into LDS theology before the experiment. He was championing it over non-LDS Christianity with videos about stuff like the LDS view of the Godhead being superior to the Trinity. That is not examining the faith, it is arguing for it and his arguments are the kind you get out of the LDS playbook. I get an “insider trying to look like an outsider” vibe. I would wait to see if this conversion sticks before championing this as a great victory. And that it doesn’t turn into an attempt at monetizing the conversion. I doubt that if monetization is the goal that this guy will succeed in any case. This isn’t the kind of story that is likely to gain traction for more than a short time period with such a relatively small social media channel and it is hard to keep up interest unless he gets a new schtick or angle going soon to keep people interested and to draw more people in he will get a short shot in the limelight and then probably fade. Youtubers who hope to make it big are a dime a dozen and only a few succeed. Succeeding when your primary appeal is to a small target audience like LDS people makes it harder.