From Behind Enemy Lines

The subject of vaccinations is of importance to me because I strongly believe in childhood vaccines. Robert F. Kennedy has plans for vaccines, and the Left is in a tizzy over it, so I wanted to discuss it a bit. But first…

A bit of background on me. My first daughter was born in the 90s, and as a dutiful parent, I took her in for her first set of shots when I was told to. She got her shot, and about 30 minutes after she got it, she started screaming. Not crying, but screaming, that sound that causes parents to run to the ER. I thought at first it was just a bit of lingering pain from the shot, so I did warm washcloths at the vaccination site, baby Tylenol, snuggles, breastfeeding, all that stuff. The screaming continued. She barely breathed. It was just a continuous scream, like the sound out of a piece of machinery. I called my doctor, and in the middle of that call, she stopped. Other than the fact that she was exhausted from screaming for a couple of hours, it was like nothing happened. She was bubbly, happy, eating again… My doctor suggested that we wait until she was older to get any further vaccinations, because that was definitely Not Normal.

I ended up not getting any of her childhood vaccines. I was too afraid that she would end up screaming and in pain again. By the time my daughter was about 3 or 4, Dr. Andrew Wakefield published a study that made claims he had proven that vaccines caused autism. I skimmed his study, but at the time I was not a good researcher, nor was I an experienced adult. I assumed that Dr. Wakefield wouldn’t have been published if his study wasn’t good. I decreed that my child would never be vaccinated again.

Of course, that didn’t happen. To get my kid into school, I had to get her vaccinated. I didn’t live in the States at the time, and my option was to lie and say I was a member of a religion that didn’t allow vaccinations. That was the only exception allowed. I didn’t lie, and my kid got vaccinated, in a truncated schedule that allowed her to enter kindergarten with her peers. She was fine, and she’s not autistic.

We now know, of course, that Dr. Wakefield’s study(1) was critically flawed, and that vaccines do not cause autism. In fact, not only is there no causation, there’s not even any correlation. His study and one other made some extremely bad jumps in (lack of) logic and the scare of the late 90s and early 2000s was enacted. I was caught up in that. I did not want my later children to be vaccinated, because my memory of my first child’s experience, along with my emotional reaction to the study, put me into a froth. My partner explained that the study was wrong, and sent me off to learn more about it.

That led to one of my first true research deep dives. I had to educate myself in order to understand a lot of what I was reading. I didn’t want to depend on experts, because it was an “expert” who had misled me the first time. By the time I was done, I was not only willing to get the kids vaccinated, I was demanding we do so.

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We’ve all heard it. That damned One Percent. If only they would share their wealth! If only the One Percent would pay their fair share! How dare the One Percent take away from me and mine!

The outrage is real, but what’s behind it?

The short answer is, greed. It’s more than that, though. There’s a sense of entitlement we build up for various reasons, and we, as Americans, have certain expectations. Someone, somewhere, told us that we deserve to own a house by the time we’re 30. Someone said that we ought to have a car by age 25. Someone implied that we should be able to afford lavish vacations by age 50. The list goes on.

This elusive “someone” goes right back to the media, in my very strong opinion. Television shows and movies highlight the people who are exceptions to all the rules. That’s just film, after all. None of us are interested in seeing boring stuff on tv, right? You go to television (and books and such) to read about the extraordinary, the strange, the unusual. But when it’s force fed to us on a regular basis, it can seem like each of us, ALL of us, should have those things.

The bottom line is, not all of us can afford to own our own homes. Not everyone can afford a car. Not everyone can afford to have one parent stay home and watch the kids. Not everyone can afford expensive medical care. It is (in some cases) a sad state of affairs, but it is the way of the world.

The basic status of human beings is poverty. While we’re working on “extreme poverty” around the world (defined as not having the basic human needs of water, shelter, food met), basically about half the world population lives in poverty. It should be noted, however, that 90% of those who live in the worst poverty tend to live in African and Asian countries (World Poverty Statistics 2024 | Social Income. https://socialincome.org/en/int. Accessed 2 Dec. 2024.).  In America, we consider a person to be living in poverty if they’re bringing home (before taxes) $14,580 a year (or roughly $40 per day). Elsewhere in the world, “poverty” is defined as bringing home less than about $7 a day (“Overview.” World Bank, https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview. Accessed 2 Dec. 2024.).

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I wanted to share this young man’s post on TikTok with you, because it says a LOT in a small space.

@truscum_tr_nny Trans activists love to fuck EVERYTHING up for transsexuals. Thanks a lot. #Trump2024 #transsexual #Igbtrepublican #republican #conservative #LGBT #transgender #kamala #CapCut ♬ original sound – Nicholas

So… long story short, Trump is going to stop public taxpayer money (ie Medicare/Medicaid) from paying for transition surgeries. The kid isn’t the least bit upset about that. No, he’s upset over the fact that when gender dysphoria was considered a mental disorder, it was treated as one. That means that necessary care, through a doctor who’d gone to the trouble of having you tested six ways to Sunday, was covered. Just like being diabetic was covered. Or being clinically depressed was covered. Now that “being trans” is a social movement and they’ve removed it as a mental disorder, it’s not covered.

Now… I’m going to say something that would make the Left clutch its pearls, but y’all might just agree. I believe that gender dysphoria should be reinstated as a mental disorder. So should a few other things, but that’s another post. And then we, and by we I mean We The People, should get off our fucking high horses and stop making mental disorders so shameful for people.

I have mental disorders. I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder. If you met me, you probably would never know. It’s an invisible disorder, and I’m lucky that it’s well controlled  by medication. I don’t hide that I have it, and I often share with others who suffer from anxiety who feel alone or scared. Too many people want to demonize those who have mental disorders, and frankly, it irritates the fuck out of me. Here’s the thing… your body might not produce insulin, so you have to get it in a bottle. My brain over-produces certain chemicals, and I need meds to make it stop. It’s not a shameful thing. It’s just a thing.

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@notmelissavitelliKeep melting down

♬ original sound – MelissaVitelli

This couple is part of the reason I found the LGB community on the Right. The lady in the back is the Trump person, and the one talking in front is her wife. Her wife did not vote for Trump. Her wife, however, is not an idiot.

The reason I’m posting this because this is how it’s supposed to work. You can vote differently, think differently, even have different values (to a point), and still be loving partners. For a very long time, I did not back anything Right… and my partner still loved me. I still loved him. Now I have one partner who’s very Right, and one who’s moderately Left, and I love them both. It helps me hear outside my echo chamber, among other things, and it also makes it very clear to me that we often have the same goal but with different ideas on how to achieve them.

Those who’ve chosen to end relationships over Trump winning are also choosing to enact the stupid Handmaid’s Tale stuff. They’re feeding right into it. They are training themselves to REact rather than to act. I find it difficult to watch. I also find it rather disgusting to watch women cut off their hair or say they’re going to purposefully gain weight “to be unattractive to men.” Excuse me, but there are women out there who have lost their hair because of disease, who have no choice of the matter, and they are still beautiful. There are women who are fat and they are beautiful. I’m fat, and I’m beautiful. 🙂 Those women who are doing the 4B movement are just douches. It’s horrendous, and so against every single thing the Left purports to be for.

It’s been a heck of a few weeks, but things seem to finally be slowing down slightly. I am behind in postings, and hella busy, so if I miss one or two, I apologize. It’s National Novel Writing Month, and I’m writing a new cookbook. I hope to have the first draft complete by Dec 1st. That eats a lot of time, because it requires me to do a LOT of writing each day, but it’s very productive.

I got talking with friends about the differences between the Left and the Right. The biggest one that I see is the concept of morals. These are, of course, very sweeping generalities. Take what you will from them.

The Right has a very strict sense of morality, and while there are people under the Big Tent with different beliefs, generally speaking the vast majority hold incredibly similar morals. You can be a straight laced, white Christian and be Republican. You can be as gay as they come, pagan, and be Republican. But if you think it’s okay to punch people because of their beliefs, you can’t really be Republican. The opposite is true of the Left. On the Left, if you aren’t clad in rainbows and supportive of whatever the victim-de-jour requires, you can’t be Democrat. On the other hand, you can have wildly different moral codes, and in fact have moral codes that change depending on the moment.

The Right likes to talk about how intolerant the Left is, and the Left makes all sorts of claims about intolerance on the Right. Trump’s election win has the Left trotting out Karl Popper’s essay on intolerance, of course. Let me share:

“Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.” — Karl Popper, The Open Societies and Its Enemies

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BLUF: Be compassionate. Yes, even if it hurts. Yes, even if they’re assholes and dickwads. I want to know that I picked the right side. I want to know that this is the side that isn’t lying to me.

Right, we have a new President Elect. Trump defied the odds, and he took it all. He is the President Elect. He won us the Senate. And it looks like he won us the House. I’m sure most of us have been celebrating in some fashion or another for the past couple of days. And now it’s time to buckle down.

The Right have decried the Left for having majorities and doing nothing with them. We have the majority across the board for the next while, and we NEED to be doing stuff with it. We need to enact those campaign promises. Better economy, getting dangerous criminal aliens out of the country, lower grocery costs, better housing market, and the list goes on. This isn’t going to happen overnight, but Trump must put himself to work immediately and start getting things done.

The Left is so aflutter with terror right now that there might actually be a teaching moment, if the Right can keep things together. For the next few weeks, between election results and inauguration, the Left expects to be treated like dirt. We can’t. We must act with compassion.

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And… it’s over. Election season is done. Yesterday (or earlier) everyone cast their votes. Today, we have a new President elect.

Of course, I’m writing this in advance. At the time of writing this, we’re still in the throes of early voting, and Election Day is still a bit away. I can’t say that I’ll be unhappy to see the election mess over with. I may change my mind about that by the time this is published, of course.

Here are my prediction, made about a week before election. Take from it what you will.

I think that Trump is going to get in. I’m afraid to hope for that, right now, but I just feel like that’s what’s about to happen. I can’t find a poll that I trust, so I really don’t know. Everyone I do trust is saying that this election is too close to call. Still, I’ve seen lots of Trump signs and a lot fewer Harris ones over the past few months. That must mean something… right?

If Trump gets in, I believe we’re going to see the cities burn. I doubt that the mayhem will erupt into rural areas, if only because rural folk don’t put up with that crap. I think that the cities will be hugely damaged by rioters of the Left. I expect there to be some loss of life in the days to come. I am sure that a number of people will play stupid games and win stupid prizes, and we’ll hear all about it on the news.

If Harris gets in, there are likely to be challenges over voter fraud. I am going to assume that if Harris gets in, even by a slim margin, all the challenges will be dismissed. I have some major concerns about a Harris presidency. She and her group have spent a lot of time calling the Right Nazis and racists, and that means they themselves are likely those things. We tend to accuse others of doing the things we don’t want to admit we’re doing ourselves. I’m concerned she’ll actually attempt to round up Trump followers and reeducate them.

I’d like to say that I don’t believe things will be All That Bad, but I suspect no matter who’s in office, it’s going to be bad. Trump, for better or worse, has become the face of divisiveness in politics. I know that’s 99% to do with the Left media distorting things, but it is what it is. It’s why I wanted to see Nikki Haley or Ted Cruz up there rather than Trump. But this is where we are.

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So here I am. The waters have retreated and I’m standing on dry beach, and all these new people are standing around and near me. I’m being welcomed, and it all seems very friendly. I want to let my guard down. I really do. But damn, folks, it’s HARD.

Recently, I had a conversation with Chris about birth control. We all know that “just don’t have sex” doesn’t work, and hasn’t worked since before written history. I was explaining that to me, it just makes sense that if you want a low abortion rate (which I do), then the answer is to have effective, inexpensive, low side-effect birth control. Preferably, you want several types, too, so that people have choices, and so that men and women both can be involved in being responsible.

I pointed out that there are many people on the Right who advocate eradicating both abortion AND birth control, and I want to know why. Why is that so important, to remove birth control from people? It makes no sense to me.

I admit, I may have said to Chris that a good portion of unwanted babies (via rape and incest, for example) all have come about because of men. Women don’t rape men and then get upset over getting pregnant (or there are so few that I’ve not only never read about it, I’ve never even heard a whisper about it) and become so emotional that they require an abortion. That makes men the problem. This is, of course, a grand simplification of the issue and removes franchise from women, which is not cool. But the idea is there, and it’s not a wrong idea, it’s just that it’s too vague as currently stated. Chris’s response was, of course, that men who commit incest or diddle little girls should be fed through a wood chipper on low speed, feet first, wearing a tourniquet. I heartily agree with him on that one.

But that doesn’t address the birth control issue. The worst part is, I don’t even really know how to ask the question, or what to say to get a reasonable (ie truthful, meaningful, statistically relevant) answer. How many people on the Right are interested in legislating or otherwise taking away the right to use birth control? This is not a question about paying for it, by the by. I know there’s insurance issues and all that. That’s not a part of what I’m after here. For the purposes of this line of questioning, you can assume that everyone pays up front cash for their birth control. How do I find out whether the Left is correct about this issue?

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I watched the devastation of Helene as it tore through the Carolinas region. Entire towns are gone, and when I say gone, I mean they no longer exist. They are buried beneath rubble and mud in a level of destruction not seen (IMO) since the Galveston hurricane of 1900. I have heard reports of over 300 dead, and I think that’s ridiculously low. I know that the “official” number is currently 95 (as of this writing, 10/15/24), per NCDHHS. That number is just offensive. People on the ground are stating bluntly that they’ve seen piles of bodies.

Milton, too, was a force to be reckoned with, especially right after Helene. It spared the Carolinas, but hit Florida, and did so hard. I’ve heard of 17 deaths so far, and it’s well reported. There are news people in Florida, walking through the very wet, sometimes partially submerged neighborhoods. A number of houses are demolished, thanks to the tornadoes spawned during Milton’s arrival.

These two disasters are NOT the same. Please know, I’m not meaning to disparage any of the people involved in either hurricane. To anyone who has helped, in any way, you deserve kudos, love, support, and praise. But the response is just not the same, and the disasters are of entirely different levels.

Just as an example, “FEMA has approved more than $96 million in housing and other types of assistance for over 75,000 households.” (FEMA) and “FEMA has approved more than $177.6 million for over 56,900 households.” That means in NC, each of the households has gotten about $1280. In Florida, each household has gotten about $3093.

What?

And that’s just the reported stuff, right from FEMA’s website, which is probably quite biased. Florida, which wasn’t hit even remotely as hard, which hasn’t been rocked by watching loved ones swept away by violent mudslides they had NO warning of, have gotten more than twice what the folks in NC have gotten.

And people wonder why the folks in NC are “hunting FEMA” right now?

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So there I was, happily standing slightly left of middle, when people around me started doing weird stuff. First, it was making statements that bothered me. Stuff like calling me a TERF (trans exclusionary radical feminist), which is so far from the mark as to be almost funny. I was told that I don’t understand what it’s like to be LGBTetc. I just can’t possibly get it because I’m so normal.

Folks, these things were coming from people who’ve known me in real life, face to face, for about a decade. They know I’m pansexual (ie bisexual but really I don’t care what you stash in your slacks). They know I’m pagan. They know I’m poly. They know I’m kinky. They know I’ve had lovers of many types (men, women, and people who don’t really fit comfortably into either of the first two categories). They know I come from Hungarian stock (ie Magyar, a group who were and sometimes still are persecuted) on one side, and Scottish (a group historically persecuted) on the other. If you want to get down to brass tacks, I’m a charter member of some of those alphabet soup groups. I’m old enough that I remember when the kink community was still ruled largely by the gay men and their families.

I’m also apparently sexist, homophobic, and racist.

All of this is said of me because I decided to comment (sometimes face to face, and sometimes online) about things going on in the world. Stuff like how I don’t think you should force the word “cis” on someone, just like you (that particular group) don’t want various pronouns forced on you. Somehow, it’s always “just not the same.” And so I’m a traitor to my race, to my gender, to my country.

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