The Jews inspired me during my high school years. High school seemed comparable to me to the Munich massacre, the raid on Entebbe, et cetera. It was much much later I learned there is more to one side of everything and after reading Jimmy Carter Peace not Apartheid, I have a more balanced perspective. Looking back and having read some posts here I wish I had fought more. Not that fighting is a good thing, but a worse thing is to hide and come to accept injustice as though you deserve it.
Self-confidence is so valuable in the adult years that it compels educators and administrators to stand up for the personhood of bullied children. Action or inaction sends a message to children and especially to the victims.
I thought Marsh Northern Virginia was a democracy, but I guess I didn't make that clear.
All adults, starting at 18, except for criminals serving a term of imprisonment.
I think it is overkill the way certain states disenfranchise convicted felons after release. Wasn't the idea do your time and get it over with? Why not just make the sentence for life? (Or is it racially motivated? Bingo.)
At least, no passing if you have to go in the opposite oncoming lane.
No radar detectors. 55 MPH (entirely to save fuel). .08 alcohol legal limit for adults of drinking age, any measureable quantity if too young to drink.
My ideal society would be very social-safety-net oriented. Free schooling through college and graduate school, with financial support for students to live on. Free health care of any kind, with people having the right to choose their own providers and treatments, if any. Public transportation widely available and encouraged. Urban development promoted and urban sprawl curbed with strict zoning and environmental laws.
Autistics and other neurodivergent people would be fully accepted and integrated in all levels of society. It would be an openly neurodiverse society with people having the ability to perform social functions best suited to them.
People would have individual rights over their own lives. People's freedom of belief and expression would be respected. Drug use would be completely legal as long as it was done in private.
And the speed limit would be 35 mph or lower everywhere. Strictly enforced. If you don't like it, take one of the subways, buses, or high-speed trains we'll build.
United States
men: average age at first marriage, 27.1, 60.4% of men married (56.8% with wife present not separated)
women: average age at first marriage, 25.3, 56.9% of women married (53.0% with husband present not separated)
Marsh Virginia Republic
men: 34.6, 30.2%
women:
Ooops. Let's try that again.
United States
men: average age at first marriage, 27.1, 60.4% of men married (56.8% with wife present not separated)
women: average age at first marriage, 25.3, 56.9% of women married (53.0% with husband present not separated)
Marsh Virginia Republic
men: 34.6, 30.2%
women: 31.3, 29.4%
Czech Republic, total fertility rate: 1.2 (per woman)
Russia: 1.27
Japan: 1.3 or 1.4
Marsh Virginia Republic: 1.45
Guatemala: 3 something per woman.
That would be important to note because the fact I live in a Hispanic area, if I really was a country we would have a large Latino population ourselves.
I would presume Latinas would vastly outnumber Caucasians in the maternity section of the big box store
You know, maybe if you don't have kids, maybe you really care whether someone else's kid gets a good education and start in life.
I think too many parents think "my kid my kid my kid and screw all the rest"- I don't think parents believe in equal opportunity unless it benefits their kid, rich folks lavish their kids even if the kids aren't as qualified
I remember a political cartoon from 1990.
Ninja turtle Congress
Faraway dictator, technologically near, plotting mass destruction, all he really wants is a role in a ninja turtle movie (Saddam depicted as Krang, multiple arms holding missiles)
All we really need is a ninja turtle Congress
[more free] "pizza while we deal with the bad guys" [people shout Ayyyyy!]
[campaign speeches] "my opponent smoked pot in 1972! My opponent favors only one death penalty! I favor [three methods] simultaneously!" [people shout Ayyyyy!]
I was greatly inspired by the NATO actions on behalf of Bosnia and Kosovo. I had been dismayed when UNPROFOR was not authorized to use deadly force to save Bosnians. I have really come to respect coalition building as a way to make things better.
I'd share what is on my mind but not enough time now.
So here I am listening to the Pat Benatar song Invincible. Somehow it is making me think of domestic violence, as I heard it back in July 1996, two things were happening in my life/my parents life.
1. Huntington, WV: I had earned a Master's out of Marshall two months earlier and I was deep in criminal justice-related efforts for the state of WV. Domestic violence was priority one. I had to summarize volumes of research for consumption further up the applied research chain of command.
2. Mom and Dad's neighbor woman on the opposite side of WV remarried her abusive husband, who would often come running over to our place. Dad was dying of multiple myleoma. Dad bought a 9-millimeter gun from my best friend. Mom later took it away from him as he got much closer to the end.
(And later we would have the same thing revisited at home....)
a. Early 1997: another neighbor woman drives off leaving her then-husband stranded someplace. He gets home, maybe walking. This is the part that amazes me: his attack on his wife was absolutely calmly premediated. The wife was bringing my mom hot tea when he came in unexpectedly. He paused long enough to keep his wife from spilling tea on Mom. and then as the wife told police, he "cold cocked her".
b. June 1997: We rented the place to a HUD family. First night, he trips over a 13-inch TV set, and regards that as a hostile act by his wife. As they had just bought a shotgun a few hours earlier at Wal Mart, I got the hell out of there and called the state police from the neighbor's.
And just after we move to the sanity of Martinsburg out of the lawless countryside, I remember this, one guy tried to shoot another, the gun jammed, and the first guy justifiably got whupped bad.
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So I am imaging a six country military coalition invading the neighbors to provide some kind of regime change.
Having just won the Marshall U. war, I guess we could have provided enough battle-hardened veterans to the coalition. I'd guess we'd have air supremacy very fast.
I'd expect my humanist friends (Rachael, Rebecca, Julie) to be eager coalition partners. It would be the same kind of "we'd better go in there and make it right with might" as the NATO operation against Serbia in 1999.
No, I am not a woman, nor gay, but I fancied good old Marshland coming to their defense too in a June 1990 daydream I bothered to write down.
A Wikipedia description of the plot might go like this:
Diplomatic conditions are deteriorating badly between Marshland and _______ with riots outside the Marsh embassy as well as civil unrest at home as Marshes start to persecute their Christian minority.
Ambassador Elizabeth Gordon is the Marsh ambassador with a staff of 150 and 60 Marsh marines as security. She expects to be recalled any day.
Tom Genkis and Fred Harmon wish to leave _______ because they are gay in a predominantly-Christian country. Before they can reach the Marsh embassy, a gang harasses them. They devour Tom as Fred gets away, running for the compound.
Ambassador Gordon initially invokes Ministry of State protocol, trying to seal off the compound, but she is too late as Fred jumps into the compound and asks a Marsh marine colonel, Brenda Boxer, for assistance. Before the marine can explain peculiarities of international law, Ambassador Gordon runs over.
The ambassador does not want to cause a lot of trouble but as a former Marine she is damned if she is going to let this go on. She takes Boxer's semiautomatic pistol and walks into the street, driving off the crowd with a succession of shoots. "The worst I'd get is dirty looks and a deportation." she explains to Colonel Boxer as she two Marines carry Tom, who needs prompt medical attention, inside.
The difficulty is getting Tom out of the country for medical attention. The ambassador finds a fine print regulation in the diplomatic treaty of 1989 that lets an unarmed helicopter medevac embassy personnel. Without too much delay, she gets the female Marsh Prime Minister to give approval to send a helo from a carrier offshore. All the same, the Prime Minister orders the carrier to be on alert if the rescue flight is opposed.
It is not, except by one police officer who raises his service weapon at the landing helo. Boxer, on the compound wall, illuminates the officer's badge and chest with a laser target finder, and the officer holsters his weapon.
Nevertheless, the officer shouts a curse at the Marshes as the helo takes off with Tom and Fred, landing on the carrier. The pilot returns with a polite salute.
Three weeks later, they are Marsh citizens in the homeland. The Prime Minister quietly refuses to prosecute the ambassador, and even gives her a medal when the embassy staff soon return after diplomatic relations are terminated.
Spoilers end here.
Is this now, officially, the most insane thread in the history of AFF?
And I don't mean "insane" in a good way.
Maybe. Really?
Nobody, no place is perfect.
What is your critique on a well-intended free country anyway?
Yes I had my problems with Christians and the faith, but I assure you, nothing comparable with gay people. My dad thought, and my brother still thinks, a lot of self-called Christians are a major source of trouble in the world. Mom was ready to accept most people, she always had progressive racial attitudes for example, told me about a picnic she had with a friend of color when a restaurant wouldn't have them. My mom was cool before equality was cool.
I can't imagine we would have really felt the same the summer of 1990.
This matter is going to PM, Max.
Operation_Deliberate_Force (1995 NATO bombing in Bosnia and Herzegovina) targeted the heavy weapons around Bosnian cities.
I was glad to see the bullies get bullied a little.
In the daydream I thought we Marshes were the good guys.
Sure, there is some anger at a real person going on in June 1990 but not against a gay person.
Sure, I was molested at the age of 8, but I have the intelligence to distinguish between a child molester and people who are gay. So I can say I have or have had no hostile agenda against gay people, like I had against Christians 15 16 and 17 years ago.
So in the court of public opinion, what am I so guilty of, anyway? Having a safe space in the back of my mind?
My parents were raised Lutheran. They deliberately raised us neutrally with respect to religions.
Other?
If we were a free country we would love to attract more minorities of course. I really had myself and members of my family first in mind.
I think I was describing the religious attitudes of four people, two now deceased.
My aunt is very very Lutheran. The summer I spent with her in 1993 was the summer I got saved (in a Baptist church).
I should have put down a lot more Hindus and Jews. Mom really liked Hinduism. Dad really really liked Judaism.
Christianity, hmmmmm. There is no marriage in Heaven, the dead are like the angels in Heaven. Seven brothers married to one woman one after the other as each dies, fuhgedaboutit. Islam sounds like a better afterlife, 72 virgins. Muslims can't have alcohol but I don't miss it anyway. My brother actually saif he thought it could be cool, once.