Thai Dad

My mom was born in Thailand. She moved here at about six. Today she speaks about two words of Thai and is, in soul, a modern, fashionable, conservative Mormon grandma. She's literally the same as everyone else in Rexburg, she's just brown and we eat rice a little more often. My brother just got married in the spring to the sweetest little Southern bell of a girl from Virginia. We were a little worried when he got serious with the first girl he dated off of his mission but it's been so great to get to know her and how she's the nicest girl who can stand her own against his teasing. She was adopted at 10 from Ethiopia. My parents built their new house in the countryside right across the street from where their best friend built his. He's a real estate agent who helped my wife and I find our house. Loves snowmobiling and Trump. Most generous soul you'd ever meet. He came from Venezuala as a teenager and bemoans the state of his former country, but not too often. This is his home. What the identitarians have correct is that being American is more than just an "idea" or a "paragraph". Being American IS to belong to a tangible group of people. It's not racial. You can have a foreign accent. You can have different ancestors. But you have to decide to belong and build up this country and everyone else in it. You gotta love eagles flying over American flags while crying about fallen soldiers. You gotta believe we're all gonna strike it rich one day in some new technology. You gotta love being outside. And deep down, you gotta know that this is the best country on earth.

@Kokujinkisama @CrimArgetlam I've seen them go so far in defense that the sins of Communist regimes are because Stalin and Mao and Pot were *actually* capitalist. State Capitalism, they call it. It's truly a cult.

The problem with this film is identical to the core issue with leftist thought, how they process the world and comprehend things in general. To be a leftist is to embody to the extent of personification, moral relativism. Moral relativism in essence is to divorce oneself from any notion of objective morality. Further, it is a rejection of ontology. The rejection of what entities exist (are real, thus true) in an effort to render all things abstract and nebulous categorically. Wrongness (evil) to them becomes objectivity itself. It’s why in spite of the 20th century’s failures which were spearheaded by atheists and communists, they are still able to promote and support their causes (no matter how much death is attributed to them) and denigrate capitalism in spite of how successful it was (essentially eliminating famine, and reducing poverty to a degree that is unprecedented in human history). To them, the failure of Communism is never laid at the feet of the communists themselves but rather the aggressions of Capitalist nations. But if you ask them why Capitalist nations were better positioned to weather the aggressions of communist ones, they never can pinpoint why that was. Meanwhile, if you listen to their grievances about capitalist societies they are quick to point to instances of greed which when left unchecked, corrode society and causes issues. A standard they (unsurprisingly) never attribute to the downfall of communist nations to the exhaustion of us all. The human condition is an ontological topic. It is both the analysis/study and understanding of what it is to be human. Greed is inherent to being human. So then the questions become those of “which system stifles and or facilitates greed more?” Or, “which economic model recognizes, contends with or even, manipulates the reality of greed better than the other for the sake of positive outcomes?” Everyone who isn’t a leftist is weighing or has weighed these questions. Because everyone who isn’t a leftist is engaging with reality in a way that they blatantly refuse to do. Yes, we know greed is a powerful thing. If left unchecked, it can ruin nations. What they aren’t grasping is that rather than collapsing to something as fundamental (poultry, widespread, common) to human behavior as greed, capitalist societies endure (thrive even), UNLIKE THE COMMUNIST ONES

@LanceVader @xwanyex Lemme exaggerate sometimes maaaannn

@athaidad @xwanyex 8 is considered an above average family for us.

Still today — with the one, giant notable exception of our church friends — we are much more likely to hear skepticism or shock or some other kind of negativity in reaction to having more kids than we are unequivocal congratulations.

@LDSLaw "Yeah, I'm pretty sure they said we're celebrating fast Sunday next week. For some reason."

My face when we all sit down to a sumptuous breakfast feast of pancakes, freerange eggs, sausage, with maple syrup, etc., and my 17 year old son comes downstairs and is like, "Umm.. Guys.. Today is fast Sunday..." D'oh!

@NoblestCalling @_154831 My kids make Sacrament meeting a PVP zone but do you see me quitting??

I would be embarrassed to post this

@EinsiedlerKreb @LukeFHan Preach what the Spirit constrains you to. Sometimes we are like Peter, zealously defending Christ from the soldiers. Not an unrighteous impulse, but an unnecessary one. Christ will prevail.

@athaidad @LukeFHan This is fair that we should be less upset. Doesn’t mean we should sit back idle and watch „evil people desecrate the temple“. I’m just saying we are more justified in it.

Let's lighten up on the persecution complex a tad. Jacob Hansen spent almost an entire debate talking about how the Pope falsely claims to be the successor of Peter. Catholics rightly did not accuse him of hating Catholics. Now apply this same reasoning to people who publicly say they think Joseph Smith is a false prophet. See the problem? I'm not saying don't go after Matt Fradd or others. I'm saying go after them for the right reason. Labeling it hate is the lazy and inaccurate way to respond and it feeds the narrative that Latter-day Saints have a persecution complex. I am wrapping up an >3500-word script for a response video to Matt. I'm probably putting more effort into debunking his Joseph Smith article this than the rest of X combined. So by all means disagree with me, just don't accuse me of going soft on people I like without explaining yourself.

@Manhattva @LukeFHan @Lew541207 You're right, but the scriptures show that this has always been the case. This fact calms me. God has told us to preach the truth and defend it - and the rest is in His hands.

@LukeFHan @Lew541207 But will the Daily Wire publish your rebuttal? If they do, then I will take your side on this. If not, Then their antagonism only goes one way.

@EinsiedlerKreb @LukeFHan I would say that *because* we have the truth, we ought to be *less* upset about it being under attack. Firstly because we aren't insecure about it. And secondly because it's not surprising - the truth has always been under fire. Have confidence rather than offense.

@LukeFHan The difference is we are right and they are wrong. The rules work a bit differently in this case. We are more justified in getting upset cause they are attacking objective truth. They cannot. They may think they are right and react as such but they are not right in reality.

Oh, yeah, there's absolutely a bit of art to it so that it doesn't seem like an interrogation. You gotta give people space to answer only as much as they want to. And if they clam up, then don't push. But if they talk, then hey, you've just made a new friend at the bus stop. Gauging how interested someone is in conversation is the actual *point* of small talk, in fact.

@athaidad @Aria_Churchill @DoctorPerin That's true, but someone don't like it, like me I actually despise personal questions or speaking about myself but in general you should go with a couple of simple openers to let the other person speak about them

Small talk lover here: Small talk sets the tone for the interaction. Most communication is non-verbal, you see. What you say is nothing compared to how you say it. It’s a vehicle to transmit a vibe. Getting good at small talk is getting good at connecting to people.

What’s so wrong with being a heretic anyway

I can look back and reflect on the things my parents did that hurt me or even damaged me. But I can also remember them healing me and teaching me. I know they were doing their best as imperfect humans who did a better job than *their* parents. I'm also trying my best, but I've already made so many mistakes. Whether my children forgive me will be a crucial part of their development one day.

Have you considered doing anything that might have positive lifelong consequences, parentanon? Do things that they might rise up and call you blessed later for 🥰

@Aria_Churchill @DoctorPerin Literally just ask people where they're from, where they work, hobbies, and find common ground. Think of every person you meet as a puzzle you can unlock with the right questions. Almost everyone likes talking about themselves a little bit. Be a better listener than talker.

@DoctorPerin How do you get good at small talk?

@literally_chad This is why you're the most trustworthy advisor online. Brilliant.

Herodotus explains this: You must go sit in a brothel, and accept all the women who approach you, demanding as payment only that they tell you the wickedest deed they've ever done. Your slipper girl will come in and say "I ran away from a handsome man because I'm an avoidant." You must put the shoe on her foot. She will, ofc, have taken the precaution of coming with a false leg stolen from the local morgue. You will find the shoe doesn't fit for this reason, and she will flee. Don't panic. You must then post about the experience across all social media, and renounce your anger, state that you are amazed by her sagacity, and that you wish to marry her. She will trust this.

I thought the username was @FaithLikeAbish2 for a second and was very confused about what I was learning about her

@plasmarob Yeah, because the alligators keep eating all the big numbers

this is why we haven't figured out fusion

@plasmarob Considering changing my pfp to this that my son drew

Flex your marriage and children. It is entirely moral, and possibly a civilizational duty.

@plasmarob They can make fun of the fast Mormon marriage but the sealing ordinance encourages you to be much more careful about your choice of partner than... this.

Are you out of your fucking random strangers mind

@NoblestCalling I believe his claim that he has autism.

This guy is an idiot and is going to keep failing at dating apps. She may or may not care about your politics. But she definitely cares if you have the social skills to not say something insane when she introduces you to her parents. And bringing up racism, or your weird hobby, or various other eccentric things on the second message shows her you don't have social skills.

@georgi_boorman We arrived to this independently, I think, in my marriage. I'm the stay-at-home Dad, and I will work my butt off to take care of things so that she can finish work and just play with the boys. I get plenty of time with them.

People are complaining about this. I think when Dad works full time outside the home and Mom works mostly inside it domestically, it stands to reason and indeed seems kinda fair that Dad gets to do less stressful stuff with the kids. 1/

@xwanyex They go to the store and they see that it gatekeeps goods behind payment. Greedy! They don't see that the goods exist *because* of the store and the payment.

If Walmart is just a group of people who got together and made a bunch of products available for you to buy, then of course there’s no way in which this can really be a negative in your life. But if Walmart is The Store, a cosmic entity (or at least a quasi-governmental one) assigned by our creator to the task of providing all necessary goods and services, that witch has always existed and all we shall exist — then that’s a different view!

I’ve never worked out exactly how to say this in a way that perfectly maps on to the sense I have of it, but it’s something in the left wing brain that sees institutions as more like powerful natural phenomena, instead of as collections of individual human beings with individual desires and motivations. The local school, their Landlord, the comedy cellar, IBM — the way they think of it is that there are regular people like you and me and then there are these enormous constructs that have just kind of always existed and in some sense always will exist, as though they were imbued with power by our creator at the beginning of the universe. I think it’s a sign of a certain kind of stunted development. They see these institutions sort of in the same way that an eight year-old views their parents, not really as fully formed human beings with their own incentives, but rather as all powerful overseers from whom infinite resources can be extracted, because they’ve always been there and always will be there. Similarly, to an eight-year-old, their classroom at school needs no explanation or justification; it has always existed, always will exist. How did the chairs get there? How are teachers hired? What do we want to teach? These are questions that have to be answered by actual, living, breathing individuals who respond to incentives. But the eight-year-old doesn’t think about any of that. The classroom is just *there*. How could it be otherwise? The world has always just simply contained classrooms. This is how the progressive sees the world around them — as an eight-year-old sees their parents or their teachers or the chairs and desks in their classroom. This is how you get these situations where progressives are mad that the last remaining grocery store in the ghetto doesn’t have fresh enough produce and so they make the store stock fresh produce and then when this pushes so hard on the margins that the store is no longer profitable and closes, the progressive demands that the store remain open to serve the failing neighborhood. It’s as if the store is eternal. You have to be unable to imagine a time before or after the store. You have to see the world as an eight year-old sees the world. The neighborhood grocery store merely exists. It has always existed. It must always exist. The work of the entrepreneur is invisible. The incentives that keep the store open are not legible. Neighborhoods just simply have grocery stores. This is the store in my neighborhood. If you just kind of squint at communism, what it looks like to me like is an attempt to make this relationship to reality concrete. They think they can make this understanding of the world reality. They want to make it so that all of these hidden, invisible incentives and constraints are officially irrelevant. They’ve never understood what they were for, anyway. They usually don’t even notice them. It only frustrates them to hear them pointed out. The neighborhood grocery store should simply just exist, as it has always existed.