TrueTomHarley

Okay, so I know this post is not addressed to me, having never been a Bethel member, but I did visit there once, as a young man, and dined with them. I quickly got the sense of the food-plate flow, that after prayer, everyone picked up the serving dish nearest him or her, helped themselves, then passes it around till all ten people had been served. So, when dessert came, strawberries, I saw the plate start with the person on my immediate left and head clockwise. When it finally makes its way to me, I knew everyone had had their shot, so what remained was mine. Alas—I did not realize that some postpone their desserts and have it later! So here I am, munching away, when someone says, ‘Hey! Who took all the strawberries?!’ Whereupon, I looked up, strawberries hanging from my mouth, and made like Chuck Berry: “It wasn't me, Sarge. Uhm-uhm, Sarge, it wasn't me. It must have been some other body, Uh, uh, Sarge, it wasn't me.”

Waiting for the attack from those IBMers across the Deep Blue lake, no doubt, led by Watson himself.

I think we can take Geo Jackson’s words as a template. ‘You don’t want to take sides,’ he says, and to show the challenge of keeping neutral, he uses the example of contesting politicians in Australia, one of whom wanted to draft people of Jackson’s age into the military and one of whom did not. Now that would test your resolve to stay neutral, he said, nonetheless you must do it. If he was as ignorant of politics as some seem to think is the gold standard, he would not have even known which politician’s views would be to his benefit and which one would not. Of course, I leaned into him on this point, informing him that: I’m sure he gave my words all the consideration they deserved before instantly turning his attention to other matters.

You don’t want to know. They’re holding a ice cream social for the candidates in that wicked place.

Well, whose fault is that? Next thing, you will be calling me a cult leader for having manipulated you into spilling it. It is not shocking to be informed, though neither is it a sin to opt out. One firebrand brother on X stated emphatically, straight out of the blue, “Jehovah’s Witness are NOT INTERESTED in politics!” Well, actually some of them are, I told him. ‘I think what you are looking to say is that they do not take sides. ‘They are NOT INTERESTED IN POLITICS!’ he roared back and then blocked me.

I think these guys have some astronomical legal bills—even their licenses are under constant attack & some have lost theirs—and for that reason I cut them slack.

Nothing but sales scams for me. Just recently I had the CO in my car. He saw the ‘Messages’ app onscreen and could not stop talking about the number I hadn’t acknowledged. (693) ‘Yeah, I get so many spam calls, I don’t always go through my messages,’ I told him. ‘Clearly!’ was his reply. He kept carrying on, even said he wanted to get a picture, so I swiped the screen to show another set of apps and distract him. Unfortunately, he there saw Viber with 43.

He even says he drives a Subaru: I’ve never heard a Tucker excerpt I didn’t like. That said, I haven’t heard too many. None of those other people do I know. In the early days of Covid, however, I forwarded a Joe Rogan interview with Dr. McCullough to HQ, hoping that if they found it as informative as I did, they would overlook Joe’s explosion of profanity towards the end. Probably, I put myself on their radar screen as much as you during your recent visit, during which they said to themselves, “What is it this politician would like to tell?” Others: “He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign deities.”

Just once I’d like to see a Pharma ad in which the actors, rather than acting out the touted benefits of the drug, instead act out the side effects of the voiceover—gasping, clutching their throats, turning blue, hair falling out, doubling over, dropping dead, straining on the toilet to ‘go’, swiveling about in dizziness.

Journalists who go rogue often do it for me. https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-trust RFKjr is turning out a fine source as well. Look how he says 60 years ago most people (80%) trusted government and now 90% do not: https://x.com/vigilantfox/status/1777710201937732085?s=61&t=fM8K_zHB-Zw9l_mM_4QHqg

I’ll say! Those jerks who stoned Stephen turned their firepower on me! I barely made it back to the car in one piece.

You should see the mirror-image posted there.

You should not post such things in the open club. Try the closed club, where every sort of riff-raff abounds.

Me: Draw a normal human response of a person monitoring George 88 and JWI going at it for days and days in the open club over some point of chronology that neither yields an inch on. ChatGBT: Okay, I’ve considered your request and I believe the following fills the bill

Well, I suppose it’s okay for the open club but I wouldn’t put it in the closed one.

A greater den of scum and villainy has never been than in the closed club. I do my best to keep them in line, because someone has to do it—I owe it to the old hen—but let me tell you, it’s exhausting.

Oh, it’s nothing like in the closed club. Their lack of understanding is so great they barely know how to tie their shoes.

The submerged iceberg, of which it is tempting to focus on the visible tip, is the Norwegian judge’s words that he finds it ‘reasonable that boyfriends and girlfriends are going to have sex with one another.’ Make no mistake that if he didn’t find it ‘reasonable,’ as previous generations have not, he would be more amenable to the Witnesses’ discipline. He might still find it severe, but he would not likely find it illegal. But he has acquiesced to a new norm like that of my extended family, in which a 14-year-old daughter dates a 16-year-old who has his drivers’ license. As long as they are home by 9 PM, not a problem. ‘He’s a good kid,’ they say of him. And, as kids go, he probably is. But, forget about Bible principles. The challenge, which can be expected to increase, is to navigate Jehovah’s organization amidst a world that disdains the values it stand for, that considers Bible morality backwards and even harmful, and that begins to concoct laws against it. Even Matthew raises no objection to this. Maybe he doesn’t know of the judge’s words. Maybe he knows but blows them off as nothing, joining the church world insistent upon retaining the label ‘Christian’ but not so insistent upon the conduct that identifies a person as one, being more outraged over discipline than the immoral conduct that calls for it. Suicide is bad, so it is right if the Christian organization takes it seriously, modifying procedures, perhaps partly for that reason. It’s all good and welcome. Be proactive as you can. Many things done can be done differently. Many things can be tweaked to take into account changing times. It appears this is happening. But it should also be kept in mind that suicide is all the rage among the young today. They have inherited an impossible world from older generations (who also do not apologize for it) and many of them break under the strain. When my wife and I visited Ithaca, we passed a bridge on which obscenities were painted about Cornell, presumably due to the suicides that take place, some by jumping off that bridge. Ought Cornell be held liable for putting so much pressure upon young people? Or ought their parents be held liable, for pressuring the importance of ‘success’ at all costs? Anyone apologize for handing them such a world? Or what of this young person crying because she works at a good job and cannot afford rent. Just like that, it goes up by $900 in a month and she can no longer afford to eat.. Anyone apologize to her over that? https://www.dailydot.com/news/woman-has-to-cut-back-on-eating/ Or adults create AI, and just like that, it is used against children, deep-faking them naked and in sexual acts. No apologies there, either. Schools themselves are nightmares to attend, at least in the U.S, where bullying without consequence runs rampant, and yet students are sentenced into such unsafe places—it’s not as though they can opt out. Any apologies? Not only is there not, but there is a steady stream of people with degrees telling of how they are about to turn the situation around, just as they were 40 years ago. It is a pretty lengthy list of how today’s world has absolutely failed its young people, and many of them take their lives over it. As ‘repressive’ as some Witness families might be, as much as some might view them as ‘hemming people in,’ they are also sources of support and stability. You do not want to cut yourself off from your family. But the young today are encouraged to do just that, cut themselves off from where there is a safety net to leap to where there is not. All a young person must do is abide by family rules, while they are living with family, and they are fine. Previous generations, for the most part, have recognized and supported this basic fact of human life. The present one does not, and is being encouraged to not recognize and recognize it by people who will not be there to break a young person’s fall should they take one. As much as I hear that Jehovah’s Witnesses are ‘insular,’ they can’t hold a candle to the insularity of those who oppose them. To hear the latter carry on, you would think the present world is a paradise and all would know it were it not for ‘scare’ tactics of the Witnesses.

And the beard is a subliminal message for Santa Claus.

It just makes life easier when people don’t go kicking against the goads over every silly little thing. Save your kicking for when it is important. Nathaniel Hawthorne put it this way in The Scarlet Letter: “It is remarkable that persons who speculate the most boldly often conform with the most perfect quietude to the external regulations of society.” Nobody speculates more boldly than Jehovah’s Witnesses, who, in the main, are able to “conform with the most perfect quietude to the external regulations of society.” This can result in dumb situations in which people resist innocuous trends in the greater world because nobody wants to be the first to upset the status quo. In such cases, people quite reasonably look to examples from those taking the lead, It is sort of sheeplike behavior, but then—what does the Bible say about sheep? We’re clearing out a lot of nonsense now that you might have hoped would have been cleared out long ago. Times change. If you can change with them without sacrificing any core principles, that’s the thing to do. It makes life easier. You find yourself not taking a hard stand over things that don’t matter. I don’t think the GB particularly like saying, ‘Okay, now you can do this or that.’ But apparently they have come to feel sheeplike people need that from time to time. In 2017, they said beards are fine where local norms don’t get in the way. I think they were surprised that no one took them up on it, necessitating a GB update complete with bells, whistles, video history, and chariot: https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2023/12/beards-get-the-green-light.html

He didn’t shave it at the border is the point.

Doesn’t matter. I’m growing one like Rip Van Winkle as we speak. Long enough to sweep the kitchen floor with.

You don’t seem anywhere near sensitive enough to share that information with. You might mess it up. Ask Rolf. He’ll help you.

Go Rolf. I always liked the guy.

Probably Chuck Berry, distraught that they had ripped off one of his songs.