Catching up

[TheHeadlessHorseman]

Murf - I think the word that you meant to use is extortion, as blackmail implies that I actually did something wrong, and somebody is using that information against me to get what they want. Whereas with extortion, I did nothing wrong, but somebody is trying to get something from me by making unfair threats. There is a difference.

Andy - I only saw the headline regarding the election result, but I haven't watched any news clips yet, did they actually say that they will be eliminating those events, or is it just something that they are considering?

[Murfreesboro]

HH, you are absolutely right. Extortion, not blackmail. Thanks for the correction.

If you lived in the South you'd be running into people who disapprove of the "Happy Holidays" greeting. Of course, our schools have capitulated to the woke crowd. It's now Winter Break, not Christmas Break. Most years Good Friday gets folded into Spring Break, though we do still get Good Friday off around here if it falls too late for Spring Break.

I told both my husband and my daughter that story about the woman who nagged you at the school meeting, and how the principal reacted. They both got a big laugh out of it.

My older son has a close college friend who lives in Manhattan with his wife and newborn daughter. They are folks who celebrate Hannakah, not Christmas. I am worried for them under the newly-elected mayor. I fear a great deal is going to change in NYC soon,, and not for the better, especially not for folks like his family. I haven't yet had the opportunity to ask my son what his friend is thinking. He had planned to visit them this fall, but I think maybe the shutdown and subsequent trouble at the airports has caused him to put that trip on pause.

[TheHeadlessHorseman]

As I told Mike and Andy a few years ago, I have always, and will always say Merry Christmas, and I will say it until the day I die, regardless of how society continues to evolve in the years to come, and they try to force us to conform to what they deem to be socially acceptable in their brave new world.

I know that I can be abrasive sometimes, that's why MauEvig doesn't like me, and probably why she doesn't come here anymore, but I always speak my mind, and the same things that I say here are the same things that I would say to anybody that I was having a face to face conversation with.

I know that my earlier comments may have come across as harsh, maybe even antisemitic, but I assure you that wasn't my intention. As I said, I don't discriminate against anybody, I have Jewish friends that are good decent people that don't push their traditions on other people. However, around here specifically, there are a large number of them that try to ruin Christmas for the rest of us by complaining that our Christmas traditions are insensitive to them.

I guess that things like that don't happen where you guys are, and you should be thankful for that, but around here they will just start arguing with you outside of Walmart because they saw you loading Christmas decorations into your car, that's what happened one day when we were there. We were loading the car and some woman just walked up to us and said ... oh, you celebrate Christmas? I replied .. yes we do, doesn't everybody? She sneered back at us ... No! ... I don't! But I guess you believe in the man on the stick. ... She was referring to Christ ... my wife saw how angry I was and told me to let it be, and honestly, if she wasn't there I probably would have spit in that woman's face.

Of course, she was a average looking white woman, so how was I supposed to know what her religion is? I don't know, maybe she thought we were the same faith as her until she saw the decorations, but even then, why bother to say anything to us? Just mind your own business and leave people alone. The bad thing is that incidents like that happen frequently around here, and unfortunately nobody has done anything about it.

I also wanted to clarify something from earlier, when I mentioned the Karen stereotype, there are actually 2 different types of Karens, the white privilege Karen, and the woke inclusive Karen, which is the one I was referring to. I don't know why society uses the same name to describe white women with different behavioral traits, but it shows you how dumb they are.

Regarding current events and the news, I'm going to be honest with you guys, I hardly ever check the news, I'm always so busy during the day and when I get home I just want to hang out with my family and do other things. So while I saw the headlines about the new mayor, I didn't click on it or watch any clips, and I didn't watch anything leading to his victory, so I legitimately have no idea what you guys are talking about, though it does seem to have you both concerned. Like I said, I don't know anything about this guy, but clearly enough people voted for him to get him in there, and unless he has stated outright that he intends to go after certain groups, or eliminate the events that Andy mentioned, then I doubt that he will be causing many issues, and if he does I'm sure that people will fight back.

[Murfreesboro]

HH, it is unfathomable to me that someone would accost a family over purchasing Christmas decorations. That is really terrible. The way that woman spoke to you about "the man on the stick" makes me wonder if she were a militant atheist rather than an adherent of any religion.

There aren't many Jewish people at all in Murfreesboro. I think that population is concentrated more in Nashville, where there is certainly at least one synagogue, but we have no Jewish place of worship here. I have occasionally seen yards or apartments both here and in Nashville decorated with Hannakuh lights, blue and silver stars of David, or large outdoor menorahs. They are just as pretty as Christmas lights, and I certainly understand that their children want to set out sparkly lights at their holiday, too. Nobody is offended by either type of display, as far as I know.

We do have a surprisingly large Muslim population, and about 12 or 15 years ago there was a lot of controversy about a new mosque which was built in another part of town. Lots of locals did not like it, but so far there's been no violence connected with it that I'm aware of. Our neighbors directly across the street are Muslim. They moved here from Jerusalem maybe 25 years ago, a largish extended family. They have always been very cordial toward us. Once, many years ago, the father wished me a merry Christmas on Dec 25, which I thought was sweet of him. Their religion mandates charity, so periodically they will give gifts to people in the neighborhood, including us. The dad works at a factory that makes toiletries, so the gifts are excess bottles of shower gel, shampoo, that sort of thing. Once in a while I'll bake them a loaf of bread to return the favor. I try to keep up with when Ramadan occurs so I don't give them extra food at a time when they are fasting.

Whether because of factory work or the university in town, there are a fair number of Asians from non-Muslim countries, too. There is an ornate Buddhist temple on the outskirts of town. One of my younger son's good friends from childhood is a Buddhist. His family is Laotian.

My daughter has been intrigued by Messianic Judaism for many years. We have no Messianic congregations in Murfreesboro, but they exist in Nashville and Franklin. My understanding is that the Messianic Jews accept Christ as the Messiah, but they adhere to Jewish customs and festivals, and they don't celebrate Christmas.

Once, 15 or so years ago, I saw a billboard up in Nashville during the Christnas season that must have been paid for by atheists. It had a picture of the Wise Men on it, and the caption, "You know it's a myth." I did find that offensive. I'm not sure why people who don't believe in God feel the need to attack those of us who do. Sort of like that woman who accosted your family in the parking lot.

[Murfreesboro]

I'm starting another post just to break things up a bit. I am familiar with the term "Karen" and its modern slang usage, though I have no idea why it caught on. I haven't known a great number of women named Karen in my life. Does it perhaps reference a character in a movie or tv show?

I can certainly understand why you don't have time to follow politics. You have a lot on your plate! The new mayor-elect of NYC has attracted a lot of attention because he is not your run-of-the-mill politician. He is officially a Democratic Socialist, but he quotes Karl Marx and other Communist leaders approvingly, so most people believe he is really a Communist. Since NYC is the unofficial capital of the Capitalist world, many folks find that disconcerting. In addition, he is a Muslim (foreign-born, I believe) who in the past has expressed approval of the international jihad and those organizations that support it. He seems very hostile to Israel and has said that if Netanyahu were to visit NYC, he'd have him arrested as a war criminal (I don't think as mayor he would actually have the authority to do that, but he's said he would). Apparently a great many well-to-do people believe he will be hostile to them and try to tax or seize their property, as he has threatened these things, so some are actually moving out. Many people are dismayed that, only 24 years after 9/11, NYC has elected a communist Muslim jihadist as mayor.

It's true that he was democratically elected. So was Hitler. That's not a guarantee that the electorate has chosen wisely. I read an article a few days ago analyzing the coalition that elected him. The conclusion was that he was not elected by the working class, even though they are the ones who would supposedly benefit from his exonomic policies. Instead, he was elected by a coalition of recent immigrants and college-educated white liberals. Lots of "Karens," I guess.

[TheHeadlessHorseman]

Regarding the nutcase at Walmart, she was definitely of that faith because that comment about the man on the stick is something they say often now, though that was the first time we heard it. They also go around pushing the conspiracy theory that Christ is actually the Anti-Christ, and have said other, far worse, derogatory things about Christ on a regular basis, but I won't type them here, or ever repeat them out of my mouth.

It started during the pandemic, and it's got increasingly worse since then. I don't know, maybe they were stuck at home without family there during the holidays, and they looked out their windows and saw Christians celebrating Christmas and just went nuts. Of course, we don't know the real reason why they started to verbally attack anybody that celebrates Christmas, or why the city hasn't done anything about it, as it happens rather frequently. So far they have only been giving people verbal tongue lashings, but there hasn't been any vandalism or violence, though it's only a matter of time until it happens. To clarify, most of them that live here a decent people that don't bother anybody, it's only a small group of them here that behave that way, and it's mostly women. I guess they don't have anything better to do during the holiday season than to walk around the city and go to every Christmas event and harass people.

I know that you don't watch South Park, but many people blame that show for the rise in antisemitism in the last 20 years, as there is a character, a young kid, named Cartman that is a absolute racist, he's against every race that isn't white, but he targets their specific group the most, and while it is absolutely hilarious to watch, it has caused kids to emulate his behavior when they're at school, resulting in widespread, and undeserved racism, and it's probably one of the contributing factors that started the woke movement for inclusivity.

You can watch this 20 second clip to get a idea of what I'm talking about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PG6MkNJNCU

The atheists around here are actually very polite, which is why I didn't have much to say about them earlier. In their own words, their approach is logic based, they are the type of people that promote science against religion, they hand out flyers and pamphlets at events during the Christmas season and they only argue with you if somebody starts the argument first. Most of us are just annoyed by them, but they really are a small annoyance compared to the other people I've mentioned.

As for the other cultures in our community, surprisingly, they are all very nice people, the Muslims, Asians, and other cultures here are very accepting of our Christmas traditions, and they often participate in our Christmas events and activities. Actually, every Asian family that we know is Catholic, and they celebrate Christmas with the everybody else here. Most of the foreigners that are here are good decent people that just want to live in peace with their families, and they don't cause any issues for anybody.

I don't know where the Karen term came from, I can only guess that it was the name of the first woman they recorded being a b***h to other people in public.

Netanya WHO? I'm joking, I know who that is. As for the new mayor, based on the information you posted, I can understand why people might be concerned about his potential agenda, but I think that if something similar to the events that led to the start of WW2 were to occur in our world today that most people wouldn't stand for it and they would eradicate the regime.

Well, at least us older people would, the younger people today have been programmed since they learned how to walk to be mindless drones that obey and follow without thinking for themselves. Seriously, just look at how social media has manipulated their mind and turned everybody into *followers*, trust me, the people that operate social media didn't choose that word randomly, they knew exactly what they were doing, that's why they tell them to *follow* every single thing online, they are making sure that the adults of tomorrow don't have the ability to make choices for themselves.

Murf, you should be thankful to the Good Lord above that your kids are already grown up, because having school aged kids in the world today is more terrifying than it's ever been, and not just because of the external dangers in the world, but the dangers that come from within. When we started our family I didn't think that we would ever have to worry about what they were learning in school, but now it seems that they put more effort into poisoning their minds with the woke agenda than they do to further their education. I can't tell you how many times we ask the kids what they learned today, and do you think they tell us that it was something educational that they should be learning? No, it's always some woke garbage, and then we have to sit there and tell them the real truth.

My wife and I have seriously considered home schooling them, but the only reason that we haven't done it yet is because of the impact it would have on their social lives, sure, they have friends that live in the neighborhood, but it wouldn't be the same.

Do you remember the tagline for the X-Files movie? Man, they had no idea how right they were ...

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