If the best you can do is accuse me of using ChatGPT instead of responding to a single thing I actually said, that’s not a debate. That’s avoiding one. I write my own stuff. Always have. Sometimes I even manage to get a line right.
But if calling it “slop” makes it easier for you to skip the point, go ahead. I grew up in Iowa. I’ve seen actual slop. What I wrote doesn’t qualify.
Fair point. Although in a poem I wrote recently, I put it this way: “You learn to read the sky when you cannot trust the roof.”
Still feels about right for the situation.
More of my writing is here, if you’re curious: https://tover153.substack.com/
Thanks for the summary. Your version is definitely easier to type, but I still prefer the line I wrote earlier: “There is a point where a person realizes the boat is not just sinking, it was built upside down to begin with.”
Still, I appreciate the reply.
I grew up in an extreme conservative Christian home. Preacher’s kid. The kind of childhood where dancing was suspicious and playing cards was basically a gateway drug. So believe me when I say this: offering free beer in exchange for turning in your neighbors is not a conservative Christian value. It is not even close. It is a saloon owner LARPing as a moral authority.
If any of the church elders I grew up with had seen this promotion, the first question would not have been about ICE. It would have been, “Why does this man own a bar, and why is he handing out alcohol like it is communion for tattletales.”
Heterosexual Awesomeness Month. Ladies’ I’m Telling Tuesdays. MAGA cocktail menus. None of this is righteousness. This is dinner theater with cheaper costumes.
And the idea that people criticizing him are “showing their wickedness” is rich. If anything is showing its true colors, it is a business model that treats turning in immigrants as a loyalty rewards program.
You do not get to wrap yourself in “Christian values” while running Whistleblower Wednesdays. Jesus did not say, “Blessed are the snitches, for they shall inherit a free domestic draft.”
If this guy wants to talk about Christian morality, then he can start with the basics. You know, the parts about loving your neighbor instead of calling ICE on them for a drink discount.
Until then, it is not faith. It is a theme bar with a persecution complex.
Reading this article gave me the same feeling I get when someone tries to fix a server with what a former trans coworker of mine proudly called percussive maintenance. You can tell right away that somebody in Washington thinks they are offering farmers a real solution, even though they seem unclear about what the actual problem is.
A little background, since my political history has taken more turns than a loose extension cord. I grew up in an extreme conservative evangelical home as a preacher’s kid. That meant I carried around beliefs I had not really inspected up close. So yes, for years I showed up and did the Republican work. I made thousands of campaign calls for Romney. I worked for someone running for the state house who did not get elected while I was on her staff, though she later squeaked out a win by six votes, which felt like watching a progress bar creep from 99 percent to complete. I checked all the boxes. Special elector. County central committee. If there was an election from 2011 on, I was probably standing in a school gym with an R next to my name.
Then the party hitched itself to President Mango Unhinged. I wrote the county Chairwoman a long, weary letter explaining that I could not pretend this was normal. I switched to Independent and then, in a moment of questionable judgment, voted for Gary Johnson. Let us call that a corrupted file in my political directory.
Later, when the Senate Election Committee decided Roy Moore was still an acceptable investment, that was it. I went to the courthouse, filled out the form, and became a Democrat. There comes a point when you realize your operating system has too many vulnerabilities to patch.
During the last presidential election, I worked as the precinct chair in a rural county. My grandparents all farmed, and I spent plenty of childhood summers walking beans, putting up hay, and roguing corn with a hoe sharp enough to qualify as a safety violation. But I have been an IT guy for decades now, and even I could see what was coming when the final tally came in and sixty six percent of the precinct voted for Mango Unhinged. That was the moment I knew the whole system was about to crash.
So reading this article about a twelve billion dollar aid package funded by tariffs that Americans are actually paying feels like watching someone reboot the wrong machine. Farmers do not need giant checks mailed out after a political fire. They need stable markets, predictable trade, and equipment that does not cost the same as a mid range server rack.
And when I see a promise to cut environmental rules to make machinery cheaper, all I hear is the unmistakable sound of someone deleting files they should not delete.
At this point I half hope Pam Bondi has my name in a folder labeled Formerly Cooperative, Now Suspiciously Reasonable. It would be the most attention the federal government has ever given a middle aged Army veteran living quietly in an RV.
This twelve billion dollar relief package is not a solution. It is the equivalent of taping over a warning light on the dashboard. Farmers deserve real fixes, not another round of political tech support from people who keep unplugging the wrong cables.
This is harder to type than it probably should be. Back in 2015, because of the way I was raised in an extreme conservative evangelical household as a preacher’s kid, I was a Republican. I had already broken with that world in every meaningful way, but I had not actually sat down and examined what I believed. So there I was, still actively involved in politics. I helped campaign for Romney. I made more than three thousand phone calls, which I am pretty sure qualifies as a minor war crime. I was on the election staff of a representative who, for the record, had not been elected yet when I worked for her. I was a special elector. I was on the county central committee. I worked every election since 2011 with an R behind my name.
And then they picked the orange man. I wrote the Chairwoman a very long letter explaining, in polite terms, that this was not going to work for me. I switched my affiliation to Independent. Unfortunately, I still had not figured out where the world was heading, so I voted for Gary Johnson. The less said about that period of my life, the better.
When the Senate Election Committee decided to finance Roy Moore, I walked directly to the courthouse, changed my registration to Democrat, and started working elections for that party instead. There is a point where a person realizes the boat is not just sinking, it was built upside down to begin with.
Anyway, based on the tone of that old letter, I find myself hoping I ended up on a list somewhere for Pam Bondi. It would be nice to feel important for a moment. Besides, what a spectacular waste of resources it would be to track down one Army veteran who lives in an RV in the middle of nowhere.
This article is mostly useless. It states the problem, but doesn’t have anything new to add.
So hearing that MLK Day and Juneteenth were dropped from the fee-free calendar and replaced with Trump’s birthday just knocked the wind out of me.
MLK Day is a day of service. Juneteenth marks freedom. These days mean something.
Trump’s birthday does not.
I cannot imagine looking a kid in the eye after that oath and explaining why the end of slavery no longer counts but a politician’s birthday does. I will not volunteer under that. Not for one more hour.
The land will outlast whoever did this. The dunes will still glow white. The mountains will still hold their shape. But the values behind the Park Service only survive if we protect them.
If you want the longer version of why this hit me so hard, I wrote about it here: https://tover153.substack.com/p/when-the-parks-stop-belonging-to