Eh-typical American Abroad

caveat tweetor—I do not fact check my retweets. He/they. Privilege disclosure: tall, thin, able-bodied, college degreed, right-handed, cis-het urban white male.

[Eh-typical American Abroad @thebhgg]

I love my original pinned tweet, but now I gotta preface it with where I’m thinking of spending more of my time.

https://t.co/2Lc2C4kJJt

[Eh-typical American Abroad @thebhgg]

My personal experience is not a random sample, and cannot be used to reliable generalizations about the whole world.

And yet…I let it control my biases, attribution, confirmation, and status quo.

I don't know what else I can do.

[Eh-typical American Abroad @thebhgg]

@Zanov88 @Noahpinion The editors at Wikipedia aren’t idiots. Perhaps you think they don’t believe their article on the subject

https://t.co/u4LQ1hGZc2

“most scientists believe it spread to human populations through natural zoonotic transmission”

[Eh-typical American Abroad @thebhgg]

@XianJaneway I’m just saying that private corporations act the way they do because the people who are on them have certain incentives. We can shape that! It is not inevitable!

[Eh-typical American Abroad @thebhgg]

@XianJaneway I believe Elizabeth Warren suggested that corporate boards be mandated to have non-shareholder-elected positions. Iirc the intention was to have worker-elected positions. Workers might be interested in longevity of the company, and for not (say) poisoning local rivers.

[Eh-typical American Abroad @thebhgg]

@XianJaneway “The Girl with the List” on TikTok is someone who tracks a list of things pregnancy does to a woman’s body/life. Her content is not for the faint of heart.

[Eh-typical American Abroad @thebhgg]

@TerribleMaps I’m curious what the largest (pop) city in the MAGA zone would be.

[Eh-typical American Abroad @thebhgg]

@NotRealMusic I enjoyed learning about Carole King in the musical “Beautiful”.

[Michael @BellularGaming]

Announcing Wormtongue, my new Peter Theil backed startup

[Eh-typical American Abroad @thebhgg]

@cowb0yfilm Oh MY!

[Eh-typical American Abroad @thebhgg]

@XianJaneway Welcome!

It’s good to have the option.

[Eh-typical American Abroad @thebhgg]

@WordserviceDan @XianJaneway @abby4thepeople What I love about this post is the lack of self-awareness.

[Eh-typical American Abroad @thebhgg]

@XianJaneway With the wheels? Why?

[Eh-typical American Abroad @thebhgg]

@outbreakupdates @XianJaneway I run the risk of “blaming the victim” but I can’t help but point out that institutions wield their power of suppression ruthlessly.

If you point this out as a subordinate, it reads very differently than if you defend it from a position of authority.

[Eh-typical American Abroad @thebhgg]

@outbreakupdates @XianJaneway Sammelweis seems like a real cautionary tale of the choice between wanting to be right versus wanting to be effective.

Compare the stories of Sammelweis (e.g. refusing to share data) vs Dr Lister’s (of Listerine fame) later approach.

[Bonhoeffer's Child @bonhoefferchild]

Reminder: If you complained about a football player kneeling at a game in political/societal protest, but you are fine with football teams honoring political propagandist Charlie Kirk … your issue was never with politicized sports. Your issue is that you don’t like black people.

[Ex-Evangelical Janeway🖖🥂🔍🏴‍☠️ @XianJaneway]

#QuietQuitting vs #ChaoticWorking

[Eh-typical American Abroad @thebhgg]

@XianJaneway @DudeAdhd 💔

[Eh-typical American Abroad @thebhgg]

@XianJaneway You are an amazing person, with an amazing story.

[Susan Danielle @realprophetguy]

I've posted the answers to "Dobson or Nazi?" below!
Turns out, it's surprisingly hard to tell..

Why? It's likely that his framework for family/social order was highly influenced by his mentor: eugenicist, sociologist, and marriage counselor Paul Popenoe.

Popenoe's work for the Human Betterment Foundation was incredibly influential — so influential, in fact, that Hitler and the Nazis partialy modeled their sterilization program on his reports. Popenoe wasn’t just a fan of the Nazi regime—his research directly helped build its machinery. Dobson worked at Popenoe's counseling center, and they travelled together to teach on family & marriage.

My point here isn’t really about eugenics, or “bad apples”— it's about the overlap. Both Dobson/Popenoe’s family order and the Nazi model contain compassion, nurture, and empathy to a tightly controlled sphere: only in women, only at home, only when it serves men and empire. Germany First. America First.

Family, in the Nazi regime, was a microcosm of authoritarian control. As Hitler put it so aptly in his speech on the role of women and family in the Reich: "The larger world rests upon the smaller world, and without it cannot stand.”

Here is my point: Containing women’s agency—and with it, compassion—was itself a mechanism enabling and justifying state violence. If German men were compassionate; if empathy extended beyond the private sphere of German homes, the Nazi machinery of war and genocide could not function. Empathy cannot send a Jewish family to the chambers.

Love, in Hitler’s Germany could only exist to serve authority, or it might challenge it — and that's the crux.

Nazi's knew what every fascist does: Empathy is the only thing powerful enough to fight empire, to fight cruelty — it is the only thing that stands between us and a thousand horrors that will steal, kill, and destroy our humanity in the name of self preservation.

No wonder these ideas are back on the rise—‘toxic empathy,’ ‘America First.’ Dobson’s teaching is fertile soil for it all.

What a tragic irony: the most influential American evangelical leader gave our churches—and our families—a model for social control drawn straight from Nazi blueprints. Antichrist, wrapped in Jesus, a man who lived and taught the opposite: that true masculinity means embracing empathy, embodying it; that power is made perfect in weakness—and that it is always, always obedient to Love.

It’s no accident that Jesus chose women as the first Apostles of this truth: Empire kills, but love is stronger than the grave.

So today, if you're feeling hopeless, remember this:
Men die.
Their empires fall—but love is different.
It survives.
It survived the camps. It survived in you.
And love, for all it's softness, has so much life.

Find it, and hold onto it tightly. It's got so much fight in it. And it never fails.

[Eh-typical American Abroad @thebhgg]

@LynnSosnoskie I hope you don’t age out too quickly. The next stage is Rx glasses that cost a fortune that can never leave your face.

*waves*

[Eh-typical American Abroad @thebhgg]

@westonpagano @SarahTaber_bww Some groups tried it, then abandoned it. Like Taber points out in this thread, hunter gatherers tend to understand A LOT about the growing cycle of plants and how they might cultivate them. Ag becomes a choice; one with trade offs. Getting storeable food isn’t unique to ag.
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[Eh-typical American Abroad @thebhgg]

@westonpagano @SarahTaber_bww Again, I want to point to Graeber and Weinberg “The Dawn of Everything” It’s a fantastic book.

They point out that agriculture comes with some downsides. Agriculture should not be thought of as a stepping stone on the way towards progress.
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