February 28, 2019

Gun Violence, My six year old, and complete frustration

Last night at bedtime, Henry my six year old says to me "Daddy what will we do if there is a break in?" I said "what do you mean buddy? Like if someone comes into the house?" He said yes and then asked what would happen if the person had a gun and before I could really answer he says that "there wont be any survivors... Everyone will die" Now, I know where this is coming from. It is coming from the active shooter drills that they are doing in school. But, this is my little kindergartener boy..... I mean what the fuck? I am incredibly sad and angry about this. I am not naive enough to think that legislation can stop all violence but god damnit why is it so impossible to get gun owners to agree to just some small amount of sanity? To agree to some small amounts of inconvenience to them that likely will not result in any loss of gun ownership by law abiding citizens? If I have to sit and discuss his family being murdered to a 6 year old why is it completely out of bounds to demand that we start treating gun violence as an emergency? As an epidemic?

The irony to me is that every time I get into a conversation with someone clinging to their 2nd amendment they want to spout off about how patriotic they are and how they are responsible and law abiding they are. Yeah you know the type - they can have my gun when they pry it.... We lose an unbelievable amount of people to gun violence every year. And it is called patriotic to just be ok with that? How much more innocence do we demand be ripped away from kids that are 6 years old before we start thinking about how we can change the issue and start putting into place real action?

That conversation last night really fucked with my head. Knowing that my son is contemplating the possibility that his family will be murdered or that he and his friends will be murdered at school. And that the only thing that we are doing about it is basically showing kids how to hide in a closet. We aren't doing a damn thing about reducing the instances of gun violence at all. We are just putting it on the shoulders of kids like my boy. We are just making teachers sugar coat it as best they can that we aren't going to do a damn thing about it.

Sick. Just sick.

February 9, 2019

Thank you for the Heart!

It is much appreciated. I love this site and its community!

February 2, 2019

I said a lot of stupid racist stuff when I was a KID.

(I apologize for spelling out some very horrible language in this story about myself as a kid.)

I would like to think that I had no idea what I was saying, how hurtful it was, or even what it meant. And for the most part I didn’t other than I knew it wasn’t “right” to categorize people. Sadly it wasn’t until I was in 8th grade that I realized how stupid I was. I lived on the east side of Saint Paul in the 80’s. This was an area that had recently had many Hmong immigrants. And it was VERY blue collar and had MANY veterans that lived there. Terms like gooks chinks and other things were learned behavior that were used. The thing is that I didn’t have any animosity to them. I was friends with almost all of them. But I was engrained to using this disgusting insulting language. I also went to a school where we had autistic kids in the school. As you can imagine hateful things like retard were common. But we interacted, knew them, shared story time and again there was no hate or animosity. We were dumbass kids that SHOULD have known better, but our social environment failed us.

In 8th grade I moved to a different school in a different part of the city and met a friend who heard me casually use one of these insults. And he tore into for it. At first I was shocked at how wrong he said I was, but then the light bulb went on I KNEW I was wrong. Really wrong. I don’t know why it took someone shaking me to wake me up. I wasn’t someone that didn’t befriend so,done because they were a different race or because of any other physical appearance. I absolutely adored MLK’s message. My parents were not racist, but there was this awful language that we just... learned.

As a father now I am constantly thinking back to my childhood and I am hawk like in watching for that creeping into my kids lives. Admittedly where I live we are in a bubble,. Affluent, very white, and insanely privileged. I grew up hating the people where I live now...known as cake eater land (Edina for fellow MN DUers) My kids understand that we live in a bubble. They understand what white privilege is, even as I am still striving to understand my privilege every day. But they are growing up in a different time too. There is plenty of hate. There is all the same hurtful language out there and more. But they don’t seem to let it seep into their vernacular or how they look at people. I hope it is because I am doing a good job parenting but I also think that even though there is still hate, that we are creating a better social environment for kids to grow up in. I have to hope for that.

In light of the news that has come out in VA I just had to think back about how I was a stupid foul mouthed insulting shit. but I was a stupid impressionable kid that was around a lot of bad insulting language that I didn’t really fully understand. That is a far ways from being a 25 year old educated person who should have long since come to grips with their own stupidity and to become comfortable talking about it and finding some way to underscore why that made you a better person today. The fact that he didn’t do that leaves me wondering if he ever did really learn anything from his own actions.

February 2, 2019

Eventually we are going to have to pick a candidate

Thankfully we have a bit of time and right now we have to go through the gristmill of figuring out who that is going to be. The only thing I know is that we aren’t going to have a perfect candidate. We likely are going to have to push for them to change their position on something. But I think we need to be real careful about how much weight we give to these imperfections before we do settle on a candidate.It’s one thing to identify faults but we blow them completely out of proportion and we allow the opposition to absolutely divide us.

I am just so tired of that.

January 2, 2019

Bad actors on forums

Hi. I am writing this here as I didn’t want to post it in the general forums and create a big to do there and the admin forum didn’t seem to fit either. Anyways, here’s what I have to say. There are a number of bad actors here on the forums. I have ran different internet message board communities for a long time. For a number of different topics. I have dealt with trolls, jerks, and gadflies on far too many occasions and can spot them pretty easily. There are a number of folks here that are intentionally creating division and disruption. I am not talking about people presenting a different side to an issue but people that like to play to our democratic ideals to discredit one and other on these forums. They play by the rules technically but the intent is there to create division and infighting. With the non-moderator set up here I don’t know how you go about dealing with it. And I wouldn’t say that anything needs to change per se, but rather that I would keep an eye on it.

I know I myself have a low post count but I have been here for a pretty good ampunt of time viewing. I had a different username at one point going back to Bush W.

I haop no offense is taking to me raising this issue as I think you guys do a really good job here. But just wanted to say that as a lingtime admin and moderator of many communities there is a recognizable pattern that caught my attention.

Thanks guys.

November 9, 2018

Enough

Before the LA Kings MN Wild game last I night I saw something that I have never seen at a sports event. Sure there have been moments of silence and all that but I have never heard an announcer go off like this one did here.

This was good to hear

https://www.foxsports.com/west/story/los-angeles-kings-honor-victims-families-thousand-oaks-shooting-110818?utm_campaign=share_buttons&utm_medium=fscom&utm_content=return_visit&utm_term=story_pinned&utm_source=share_url

November 7, 2018

Ok so it's time to start looking at flights to washington. Let's go people!

If you can't go to Washington you need to get to your local protests as soon as the word comes down.

This firing (and I do mean firing) of Sessions is the dumbest fucking thing he could do. Many liberals and progressives may have been satiated by the results last night and now he is choosing to light the fire once again.

Fired up! Ready to go!

November 7, 2018

Evers declared winner by NYT

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/06/us/elections/results-wisconsin-elections.html

November 5, 2018

Drove my city of Edina, MN

An affluent city suburb of Minneapolis and took inventory of the signs in the yards. I drove probably 80% of the city and the signs are HEAVILY in favor of democrats. This suburb borders Minneapolis which is heavily democratic itself. If other first ring suburbs are the same Minnesota should remain blue. It will do my heart and mind some good when Erik Paulsen is out of office and Dean Phillips is in. Walz should take the governorship here. Feeling Great about a True Blue Minnesota tomorrow night!