The Battle Of Peer Dependency: Chapter Four - Part Twelve

Hello!

I'm sitting on the couch with my favorite tiny person who has a snow day from school today.  We're in the middle of  an expected snowfall of 3-5" which isn't terribly unusual, but there is a high wind that makes the 26 degree F temperature feel much, much colder.

Spawn's ok with having a day off of school while we watch "train crossing" videos on YouTube.   He was decidedly more sad when school closed unexpectedly - from a preschooler's point of view - due to COVID for three weeks.    Spawn turned four during the COVID closure and he missed his friends from school.   Every day, Spawn would ask about various classmates.  "Is Travis at home?"  "Is Cici with her grandmother?  "Is Izzie playing with her siblings?"  Thanks to a weekly class meeting through Google Classrooms, Spawn got to see most of his classmates on the computer - although that was a bit of a mixed blessing.  One day, Izzie got a hold of a cookie and half the class declared that they wanted a cookie as well.  Suddenly, four moms were trying to explain that just because  Izzie has a particularly desirable type of cookie in her hand doesn't mean that we have that kind of cookie at home, too.

Reviewing Marina Sears' "The Battle of Peer Dependency" has made me more aware of my son's budding interest in his peers. 

And, in a very strange alignment of events, I am currently reading a book on the short lives of the Romanov sisters Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia.   

My son is having a pretty standard American childhood  - or as standard as possible during a pandemic - where I expect that he'll have some number of friends who are not members of the immediate family.

The Romanov sisters, on the other hand, had very limited interaction with people their own age.   Some of the restriction was for safety reasons; assassination was a serious threat to any member of the government and Imperial Family - and a frequent use of bombing created a high risk of injury or death to the daughters despite their very distant chance of ever ascending the Imperial throne.  Some of the restriction was due to be members of a royal family; princesses couldn't associate with just any local kid.   Some of the restrictions were due to the personalities of the Tsar and Tsarina; Tsarina Alexandra shared a common personality trait with her grandmother Queen Victoria that made Tsarina Alexandra extremely attached to her husband and often refused to let people outside the immediate family spend much time with him or her children.   Finally - and in hindsight, most damaging to the family - was Tsarina Alexandra's sheltering of her children from the worldliness of Russian nobility.

When the daughters were children, having the four of them born in six years meant that they were not unduly lonely.  The daughters, though, became more and more fascinated by any young person they met as they matured into school girls and young teens.   Their lives were so circumscribed that several young women of minor nobility or acceptably wealthy families wrote about how grateful that they were that they had far more freedom than the Imperial daughters.

I was strongly reminded of the Romanov daughters asking detailed questions about what going to school was like or what it was like playing with neighbors when I re-read this section from the fourth chapter of the book:

Recently, a group of twenty-five workers joined our family as we held a week-long family camp for single mothers and their children. The camp was located 20 minutes west of San Antonio, Texas, on a very beautiful 40-acre camp. It was held in August with no air conditioners, lots of dirt, and work that was very hard. The schedule was grueling, with children's groups to be taught, meals to be cooked, daily camp cleaning, and bathing children so they could be put to bed. It truly was a time to say, "A regular person's job is from sun to sun, but a worker at a single mother's camp is never done. As we gathered after camp to reminisce and share stories, I marveled at the young people's attitude and perspectives. They commented that it was the hardest week of their lives, but they couldn't wait to do it again. The adults groaned as some suggested doing a camp every other month. When I asked them if we should have the same young people on kitchen duty all of the time, they said, "No, we want to work in the kitchen. It was so much fun." I realize that doing something for the Lord according to His will is what brought true joy. The work was hard, long, and dirty, but the rewards were incredible and long-lasting. The workers had new gratefulness for their intact families, a burden and genuine love for those to whom we were ministering, and a picture of the true work of the church.(pgs 59-60)

Back in 2003, I was a camp counselor at a camp for at-risk kids in poverty located on Lake Michigan.  At the time, I spent most of the summer completely exhausted and overwhelmed by caring for a cabin of girls for 5 or 9 days at a time while planning workshops.    

I don't know that I'd ever do it again - it was physically and emotionally exhausting when I was in my early 20's - but I also met a group of awesome counselors and very cool campers as well.

When I read this, I honestly wonder how much of the Sears' children's excitement was from being around workers their own age for a full week.   Pre-teens, teenagers and young adults are primed to spend far more time around peers than they are around young kids or older adults.  This is a positive, universal development milestone rather than a sign of moral weakness as the CP/QF crowd declares.  Teenagers are going to be finding spouses among peers.  They are going to be making future business connections among peers.  The people with who they will be raising their children will be their peers - not people of their parents' generation.

The funny bit about this section is that Sears undermines her own premise about peer-to-peer relationships.  Remember, Christian Patriarchy/Quiverfull often teaches that families with lots of kids don't need outside friendships - and that outside friendships without excessive family oversight will lead immediately to sinful behavior.  Presumably, many of the 25 workers were teens or young single adults - but the world didn't end.   In fact, it sounds like those teenagers got a whole lot of work done as a group - and I've seen that happen in a wide variety of setting with teens as well.

Throughout this book, I've noticed that Marina Sears would be a nightmare to have in a playgroup since she's got a very rigid, very uncompromising set of views about how everyone else should raise their children - and she doesn't want your failure of children around her children who she is frog-marching to be soldiers for Christ, thank you very much.

I picked this next quote to show why she has no adult friends either:

Wrong focus in a friendship is not only limited to young people. It has been my sad experience to see wives replace the friendship and intimacy with their husbands for a best girlfriend, and to see their husbands trading precious memories of friendship with their wives, for that of fishing, hunting, or golfing "buddies". (pg. 61)

Having close friends outside of your marriage is not a threat to your marriage - but expecting your spouse to fill every personal need is.

There are entire topics of importance to me as a woman that my husband has no practical life experience in.   For example, I keep my hair in a variety of lengths and styles depending on ever-changing seasonal needs and personal whims.   My husband will tell me that he really likes how my hair looks - but he's of no help for situations like "I have a wedding this weekend and my hair is at a weird length.  I need up-do ideas right now." 

Two years ago, I traveled with my husband to a family wedding.  The wedding was in mid-spring - but the weather was unseasonably hot and humid.  This meant I needed an up-do to stay sane - but I was struggling to get a reasonably finished look.  I kept having strands of hair drop out of the hairstyle....and with my arrow-straight hair, that looks sloppy rather than artistic or cute.   With the help of $10 of emergency hair accessories and a ton of hair spray, I managed to wrestle my hair into a French twist and trap it against my head using two combs attached to either ends of an elastic beaded web.   

The top of the twist did have the ends of my hair sticking out and looked odd to me.   I turned to my husband who was putting his shoes on and asked "Does this hairstyle look ok for an adult woman at a wedding rather than like a college kid?"

My husband turned about five shades paler as he blurted out "I don't know!" 

 At the exact same moment, I replied, "Sorry.  Wrong person to ask."   

We both laughed pretty hard - and a female family friend I ran into before the wedding told me my hair looked fine.  

And even that points out the difference. 

My husband appreciates my hair and makes me want to feel good - so he compliments my hair as pretty.     My female friend understands that there are entire societal situational rules about appropriate hairstyles for women - and so she let me know that my hair was fine (e.g., appropriate for the situation).

It's sad that Marina Sears doesn't recognize the difference herself.

Babbling Botkin: Last Leadership Memo to the President - Part Three

I am wiped out today!  

My husband and I own an old farmhouse that a previous owner decorated with lashings of 1960's-style wood paneling.  

I don't like wood paneling - but taking it out seemed like a massive undertaking so I learned to tolerate it.  

Not long before my son was born, my sister-in-law pointed out that painting the wood paneling would change the look a lot.  In fact, her really cute house had previously had similar dark wood paneling - and adding some soft pastel colors made it look much lighter and brighter.  

I've been a bit busy in the intervening four years, but I always planned to take on that paneling - and today was the day!  The center hallway of house had poor lighting, no windows and the dark paneling absorbed whatever light made it into the area.   

Now,  I painted the central hallway and the staircase in off-white semi-gloss.  As a paint associate, I know that flat paint is in - but I like the shine of glossy paint, plus I like the increased durability of the higher gloss paints.  There is so much more light in that area - and I haven't seen it in daylight when the light enters through the window at the top of the stair!

Let's see if I can write this before I fall asleep :-). 

We are at the final installation reviewing Geoffrey Botkin's video, "My Last Leadership Memo to the President.  Maybe."    I must admit the title is catchy in its brazen refusal to admit the obvious that Trump is leaving office on January 20th and will not be coming back.  

The first part of the review featured Botkin attempting to convince the President that he and his family would be assassinated if they left office.    Personally, I think running his own personal family cult for the last 10 years or so has made Botkin sloppy.   He's kept his daughters under his thumb by teaching them that the world is filled with rapists who will attack them if they go to the grocery store alone and unarmed in the middle of the morning - but that kind of insane hype is hard to pull off with people who interact with other adult humans.    I find Trump to be quite credulous if information is combined with praise - but he's nearly impervious to things he does not want to hear.  I doubt he wants to hear that unnamed people are out to get him from a random nobody.

The second part of the review is a historically inaccurate review of Nicholas II's reign and abdication.  It's fascinating that the historical person Botkin thinks Trump has most to learn from is Nicholas II - the last ruler of an authoritarian hereditary monarchy.    Botkin has always espoused strange views on governance that combine a very strong, heavy-handed government based on Leviticus for people who disagree with him - while still wanting the small, weak, local governance of Botkin's personal life espoused by Libertarians.    Those two governance types seem like a paradox - but that section made it clear for the rest of us: Botkin wants to be a authoritarian monarch.    In that system, he can punish anyone he wants while being above punishment - let alone criticized.

Most of the previous section of quotes from Botkin had a running fogginess about which revolution - and therefore what time period we were in.    Here we reach a section with a set time point:

The population was managed through intimidation and then punishment and then terror.  There was routine murder of non-Communists.  Nicholas II and his entire family were rounded up, were put under house arrest and then assassinated by the Cheka, the small secret police force.[00:03:26] 

A critical skill in teaching is figuring out where a student's mental concept map has an error.   

Here's a quick timeline of the rise of Communism in Russia:

• February 1917 - Nicholas II abdicates; a provisional government with lots of local control forms.
• March 1917 - The Imperial Family is arrested by the provisional government.
• October 1917 - Provisional government falls; Civil War begins.
• July 1918 - The Imperial Family is murdered in Yekaterinburg.
  
• June 1923 - End of Russian Civil War - between 7-12 million deaths occurring over five years.

Near as I can tell, Botkin believes that February 1917 marks the beginning of a combined Communist government and everything that happened after February 1917 can be blamed on the Communists alone.   

Unfortunately, it's not that simple.   

The House of Romanov had stayed in power by using intimidation and punishment to keep the population from rebelling.  

The supporters of the monarchy and allied supporters who didn't want to restore the monarchy but also didn't want to have a communist government used intimidation and execution to fight back against communist governments.

Hell, even the communist-socialist groups were not aligned.  The October Revolution occurred when a left-wing socialist controlled provisional government fell to the left-wing communist city-groups known as soviets.    Now, to Botkin, that might sound like two identical groups - but just because a government is based on government-control of the economy doesn't mean that government is happily aligned with all other Marxist government.

Don't believe me?   Look up China and Russia's relations after 1940.

From 1917-1923, Russia was a war zone.  Political violence is never right - and in this case - all sides were using it.    That means Botkin's breathless assertion that non-Communists were being killed was true - but so were Communists.

Let's discuss the arrests and murders of the Imperial Family.

If I've not made it clear so far, there were a lot of very angry armed people in Russia in 1917.   The Provisional Government had control of the government - but their control was tenuous at best.  The arrest of the Tsar fulfilled two issues.   The arrest showed people that the government had control over the former leader while providing some security to Nicholas II and his family against assassination.

Why was Nicholas II and his family murdered?   

Let's think about what a heredity monarchy is.  In that form of government, the office of the head of the government is passed down through a single family line.  The House of Romanov had strictly punished members of the House who married non-royals with expulsion from the line of succession and exile until 1911.   In that year, the House adapted their rules so that members outside of the direct line of succession could marry non-royals if they renounced their place in the line of succession.   This matters because there were a total of 65 members of the House who were in the line of succession at the time of the abdication. 

 As heredity monarchies go, that's not very many.  

World War I made exiling the Tsar's family nearly impossible.  France and Belgium were active war zones. Germany and Austria-Hungary, two empires that the Imperial Family had close family ties to, were enemy states.  The Tsar also had family ties in Great Britain which was allied to Russia in World War I - but popular opinion was strongly against absolute monarchists in Britain an offer of exile was revoked.  

Even if a country had been found, the Imperial Family would have to be transported somehow through areas of Russia held by military groups who wanted the Tsar dead.

In a country where over 1 million men have been killed in a foreign war and the government is struggling to maintain power, any members of the House eligible for succession were a threat.  Nicholas abdicated for his son Alexei - but Alexei was a minor whose life-threatening hemophilia was not widely known.  Would he abide by an abdication made by his father when he was 21 or 25?   

The Tsar also had four handsome eligible daughters between the ages of 22 and 17.  While Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia were officially only able to succeed if all male members of the House of Romanov died, Russia does have a long history of female rulers.  In a country in a state of near chaos, what would happen if one of the daughters married a fairly powerful member of the military allied with the anti-Communists?  Would a new imperial house be founded linking the House of Romanov with a new military leader?

After 15 months of imprisonment, the chances of the Romanov House being restored by anti-communist forces grew too high.   In June of 1918, Grand Duke Michael, the next in line to succession after the abdication was murdered. The Imperial Family was murdered on the 18th of July 1918.  The next day, six additional members of the House of Romanov were thrown into a mine shaft and killed - including an elderly nun who had been serving the poor for decades.  Finally, in January of 1919, four more male members in the line succession were murdered.   Correctly recognizing that Russia was unsafe for Romanov survivors, 47 additional members of the family entered exile.

Lenin then called for ruthless mass terror and a merciless smashing of counter-revolutionary activity. He issued his famous "Hanging Order" instructing party faithful to round up and hang 100 dissident citizens simply as a public deterrent to dissent. Just randomly picking them off the street. One hundred citizens as a public deterrent to dissent.[00:03:52] 

Lenin was a terrible, ruthless, cruel leader.

In the previous post, Botkin rambled about how the communist started committing crimes while there was a revolution going on.  That made no sense in relation to the February and October Revolutions of 1917 - but is completely true of Lenin's followers after the 1905 Revolution.  

Lenin had been agitating for the rise of the proletariat for a decade prior to the Russian Civil War.  When he was unable to be organizing in Russia, he'd escape to a safer country like Switzerland and argue finer points of Communist theory with other organizers - critically important points like "Can communism rise up from industrial workers alone or are experiences of the agrarian class the only way for communism to rise?"   Seriously, this was a major fracture point among Communist philosophers. 

Eventually, Lenin got tired of waiting and decided to help things along.  Since the proletariat was always short on cash, Lenin advocated robbing banks, train stations and other cash-heavy locations to fund the revolution. Several groups took him up on this endorsement of crime including one led by future crimes- against- humanity leader Joseph Stalin.

Lenin did write a telegram in  August of 1918 ordering the leaders of the Penza Gubernia to publicly hang 100 dissidents to pre-emptively avoid the riots preventing food from reaching the major cities of Russia from reoccurring.    No one knows if the orders were followed out - but even if they were not - Lenin is a horrible, horrible person.

Weirdly enough, Botkin seems more upset in the video about the idea that these people were randomly picked up off the streets than the fact they were possibly murdered extrajudicially....

And then the nation descended into a deadly civil war which lasted five bloody years before the Soviet Union was created.[00:03:59] 

Nope again.    The "Hanging Order" preserved at the Library of Congress happened a year after the Civil War started.  In the timeline at the beginning of the post, it would fit in two months after the Imperial Family were massacred.

Seriously, Botkin needs to take better notes or make a timeline or learn how to read for comprehension.  

I will agree that the Russian Civil War lasted 5 years.   *rolls eyes*

"The essence of Bolshevism." - said Parvus describing what was going on in 1918, he said - "is to ignite the revolution everywhere, not choosing the time, regardless of the political situation and other historical realities.  Whoever is against is the enemy, and the conversation with the enemies is short - they are subject to urgent and unconditional destruction. [00:04:29] 

Who the fuck is Parvus?

*goes to the interwebs*

Ah, Parvus is Alexander Parvus who got the entire idea of "permanent revolution" revived in the early 1900's.  He was also worked with German Intelligence to try and foment a communist uprising in Russia to undermine Russia during WWII.

As a counter-point, there were roughly 30 countries that actively described themselves as Communist or Socialist in 1985 containing roughly 1/3 of the world's population.

Today, there are four countries in that same category- China, Vietnam, Cuba and Laos - or five if you count North Korea* who swears they are not Communists.  The total world population in Communist countries has dropped to 20% 

And North Korea's set of problems is pretty deep regardless of if Kim Jong-Un calls himself a communist leader, or an absolute monarch, or a completely democratically elected *wink-wink* president so I'll keep them off the list.

I feel like Botkin is stuck in, oh, 1983 and somehow missed the fact that 26 countries have left Communism.    It's really not an ongoing worry for anyone besides Botkin.

And so, Mr. President, all Americans understand that if you cross the Rubicon, there will be no retreat, only moving forward.  On the other side of the Rubicon is a place of justice that can protect you from arbitrary injustice and a place of leadership, a secure place of leadership from which you can restructure the administration and give American citizens the protection they need to lawfully position themselves against enemies foreign and domestic and the escalating tyranny which faces a nation ruled by the deep state. [00:05:06]

That place across the Rubicon is known as an authoritarian dictatorship. 

It's what Nicholas II had going for him - he just dressed it up by saying that God dictated that his family be allowed to rule forever.

I have no doubt that Trump would enjoy immensely being an authoritarian dictator - but the US is a democracy.   

We've been a democracy for 245 years - and we will continue to be one when Joe Biden is sworn in on January 20th at noon.

Good night - and God bless America!

Babbling Botkin: Last Leadership Memo to the President - Part Two

 Good morning!

For people who have forgotten, Geoffrey Botkin was a member of a conservative think tank and lobbying group in Washington, DC. in the 1990's.   I'm assuming that this conspiracy filled memo that he sent to President Trump is a holdover from that period of time.  Otherwise, maybe he's been writing these memos for decades and sending them to the President weekly.

Honestly, I don't know which would be weirder - but I can't rule either out.

The first section of the memo demonstrated Geoffrey Botkin's lack of understanding about the Constitutional transition of power for the President, an inability to keep up with national news about the state of the election, and a disturbing level of credulousness towards conspiracy theories.  

As my husband succinctly noted, "He reads government documents the same way he reads the Bible.  He combines reading to support a predetermined opinion with shoddy comprehension."  

Scathing - yes.  Accurate - yes.

Next in his video memo titled "My Last Leadership Memo to the President.  Maybe." Botkin makes a transition from political mentor to history teacher.     He has a succinct style of communicating information that is both relaxing and easy to follow. 

Unfortunately, nearly every word out of his mouth is wrong.   

I don't mean that Botkin advances an unusual interpretation of events in Russian history.  No, he creates lists of facts are easily shown to be wrong - and tops it off with a weird interpretation. 

Here - even the first 30 seconds about Nicholas II is a mishmash of wrong facts and bizarre interpretation: 

Nicholas II was a reform minded leader.  He was a conservative.  He was a nationalist.  But he had never been confronted with the simultaneous crises of world war and world revolution and famine and national blockades and insurrection and it all hit at the very same time. [00:01:53]

No, Nicholas II was not a reform minded leader.  Nicholas II was the son of an absolute monarch who focused on remaining an absolute monarch.   He bristled at any hint of reforms to improve the lives of the poor in Russia and tolerated the Duma as long as the Duma did not impinge on his authority.

Yes, Nicholas II was a conservative - but only in the broad term meaning "he wanted the status quo to remain unchanged".   Geoffrey Botkin's et al., views on very limited local government, a Bible-based theocracy and everyone being able to carry as many weapons as they wanted would be as foreign and unpalatable to Nicholas II as the doctrine of absolute monarchy is to Botkin.     

Yes, Nicholas II was a nationalist - but that stopped being a revolutionary viewpoint 200 years previously.  

The last rambling sentence of that quote makes me laugh.  Botkin makes it sound like Nicholas II was having a great day on Wednesday and wham!  Thursday brought a world war, famine, national blockades, insurrection and even world revolution all at once!  Oh, the horrors!

More realistically, Nicholas II inherited a nation in 1894 that was in the process of modernizing many areas while being saddled with an absolute monarch.   European monarchies had survived (so far) by allowing governmental reforms that granted powers to elected officials while reserving certain powers to the monarchy.   Nicholas's grandfather, Alexander II, was genuinely interested in certain reforms in Russia prior to his assassination.   His son, Alexander III, who succeeded him, on the other hand, was not interested in reformation and his views on continuing the absolute powers of the monarch were shared by his son.

Domestically, Nicholas II was presented with requests for reforms as soon as he was crowned - and he reacted to most of them with irritation and refusal.   While ignoring these requests was personally satisfying to Nicholas II, it did nothing to improve the living and working conditions of rural or industrial workers.   Workers had been striking throughout the 1890's and the lack of substantial reform increased anger at the Tsar.

In terms of foreign affairs, Russia chose to negotiate aggressively with Japan about division of powers in the East in 1903.  When talks broke down, Japan declared war in 1904 and immediately attacked the Russian navy in Port Arthur.  Within two months, the Russian Pacific fleet had been decimated and Russia was struggling to move army and navy reinforcements the massive distance required to reach the battlefield.   The war, which Russia was losing badly, became extremely unpopular domestically.  The war ended a bit over a year later with the Treaty of Portsmouth.  

The combination of miserable domestic conditions and fighting a losing war increased domestic tensions in 1905.  The Tsar's popularity plunged after his forces shot and killed members of a planned, peaceful march who were going to present the Tsar with a list of requested reforms.  Soon, much larger strikes and work-stoppages appeared in cities and spread to the countryside.  

Faced with the options of political reform or being overthrown, Nicholas II signed the October Manifesto which gave basic human rights to all Russians, allowed all groups to be represented in the Duma, introduced voting rights for all men, and required that all new laws be approved by the Duma.  

Initially, the October Manifesto was accepted as a sign of good faith by Russians and the riots and work stoppages ended.  Quickly, however, the fact that the Tsar retained the right to veto any laws passed by the Duma combined with the Tsar's imposition of martial law quickly showed that Nicholas II was not planning to change much in Russia.

The process of figuring out how universal male suffrage and the new powers of the Duma would work bought Nicholas II a decade of relative internal peace.    After a few rough starts, the Duma figured out how to use their control of the finances of the state of get reforms passed and Nicholas II accepted the input of the Duma in limited amounts.

The final straw that broke the frail truce between the Russian people and the Tsar was World War I.  The same issues that had plagued Russia during the Russo-Japanese War of difficult transportation of troops and equipment existed during this war.  Additionally, Germany had greatly increased their military technology while Russia's had stagnated.   This meant that hungry, threadbare, undertrained Russian conscripts were marching thousands of miles before facing the most modern war technologies.  The casualties on the Russian side were horrific and the only reason that Germany was able to fight the Eastern Front to a stand-still was the willingness of the Russian military to throw thousands of troops at the front despite terrible losses. 

The ongoing deaths combined with the shortages inherent from mobilizing a military by depleting the available workforce caused Russia to be near complete collapse by 1917.

Nicholas II had many points where greater reforms may well have forestalled the fall of the House of Romanov - but he chose to maintain as much personal power as he could for as long as he could - and paid the ultimate price.

TL;DR - Nicholas II had faced two decades of internal calls for reform prior to the collapse of his empire.   There were many moments where he could have made different choices; this was not a sudden or catastrophic change.

And they escalated in 1916 and threw the nation into a state of emergency.  The hard left communists used this crisis to organize a climate of hatred toward Nicholas, a campaign of hatred towards him, making it impossible for him to lead effectively. [00:02:11]

Yeah, things got worse in 1916 - but WWI sent Russia into a precipitous decline in prosperity for the average person starting in 1914.   By 1917, over 1 million Russian soldiers had been killed on the Eastern Front.  Over 15 million were actively in the military which meant that there were 15 million fewer agricultural and industrial workers available to produce goods.  

It was a slow burn that finally exploded - regardless of how poorly that supports Botkin's attempt to mangle history.

The leftist might have had a good propaganda machine - but Nicholas II gave them plenty to work with.  The loss of the Russo-Japanese War embarrassed the Russians.  Despite the promises of the October Manifesto in 1905, reform had stalled out.  Citizens had tried various other forms of rebellion to get increased living conditions - and the Tsar simply wasn't interested in change.   Finally, a massive war of limited interest to the average citizen was crippling the economy and killing men. 

That's not a situation where it is hard to turn people against leader with a history of incompetence.

Importantly, Nicholas had managed to undermine the support of Monarchists at the same time.   The Monarchists felt his reforms had gone too far - but the promotion of Rasputin into power especially soured the monarchists against Nicholas II.   

Honestly, Nicholas II had never been an effective leader; WWI just made everyone miserable enough to finally force him out of power.

They committed criminal acts as concerned citizens took to the streets looking for change.  These were the communists and the socialists coming together, combining together to start this revolution and the nation was reeling from the revolution. [00:02:28] 

Psst!  Botkin!  This is Russia in 1916.  Protesting was a criminal act - you didn't even need to add violence, looting or property damage.

This bit is a great demonstration of how little research Botkin did for this memo.  Which revolution is he talking about?  Because there are actually three revolutions that Botkin may be talking about - but I have no idea if Botkin knows that.

The 1905 Revolution was 11 years in the past.  Russia had been doing well enough for the nine years prior to WWI - so I don't think that the nation could be said to be reeling from that revolution.  

The next option would be the February Revolution in 1917.  This revolution makes sense based on it being the revolution that brought down Nicholas II - but the February Revolution was a spontaneous series of protests by locals that grew until the regime fell.  The problem is that the partial coalescence of various communist and socialist groups happened during the Provisional Government period between the February Revolution of 1917 and the October Revolution of the same year.

The last option would be the October Revolution - but in that case - Nicholas II was already deposed and under house arrest at that time.

Nicholas volunteered to step aside so the nation could heal. Now, let me repeat that. Nicholas volunteered at the beginning of 1917, he volunteered to step aside so the nation could heal. His younger brother was nominated to rule but then declined the crown when he realized how powerful the communist revolutionaries had become in just a matter of weeks.[00:02:48] 

Nicholas II never volunteered to reduce his personal power ever.  .

He agreed to abdicate only when the army had turned against him.    

His initial abdication would have left his son twelve-year old son Alexei as Tsar.  Alexei, however, was often severely ill from hemophilia and his doctors did not believe he'd survive if separated from his parents and siblings when they were forced into exile.  His second abdication document had both Tsar Nicholas II's abdication and the removal of Alexei from the line of succession.

This meant the next Tsar would be the Grand Duke Michael Alexanderovich - who was Nicholas II's younger brother.  

The bit that Botkin missed somehow is that the Grand Duke had been trying to get kicked out of the line of succession for years.   In 1909, he was having an affair openly with a married woman of common birth.  The Grand Duke fathered a son with Natalia in 1910 before she was legally divorced.  He had the divorce backdated to be certain that his morganatically born son would be claimed as his rather than Natalia's first husband.    Finally, he married her without his brother's knowledge in 1912.  

The Grand Duke claimed two reasons for marrying Natalia.  One was that he loved her.  The second was that he wanted to be removed from the line of succession and creating a morganatic line with a commoner would do that.

Nicholas II was extremely upset.  He banished the Grand Duke and his family and froze his assets soon after the wedding.  

When WWI started, the Grand Duke asked to come home and help out with the war effort.  The Grand Duke was allowed to do so and became an effective and popular military leader.   Personally, however, he was more and more angry at the leaders in Russia - including his brother - for incompetence and greatly admired the soldiers he was working with.

Technically, the Grand Duke did not decline the crown.  If he had, there would have been an uncle or cousin who would have been offered the crown; that's how succession happens in monarchy.   

No, the Grand Duke was smarter than that.  He essentially said that he would take the crown when it was offered to him by a Russian government supported by the people.

A new provisional government was then quickly taken over by Lenin and Trotsky who began to consolidate power by controlling the media, cleansing Russia of all the patriots and re-educating others into voluntary slavery.[00:03:05] 

Oh, Geoffrey, life in Russia would have been easier if anything had been that quick.

The new provisional government formed between the February and October revolutions.  Since the February Revolution was caused by a spontaneous uprising, there wasn't a single party or a coalition of parties ready to form a stable government.  The fall of a government is stressful for a population who is not facing hunger and want; the Russian people were already exhausted, hungry, and fearful. 

To help move the government closer to the people, there was much more local control of government during the provincial government period.   The downside was that there was continual jockeying for power between political and geographic groups.  This is the period where various communist and socialist groups started to coalesce to attempt to control the government - but the initial outcome was the October Revolution. 

The October Revolution was the beginning of Russia becoming a communist government - but that happened after a five-year-long civil war between all of the factions in the government.

Botkin is always one of the people who is worrying about the government controlling the media - but he's managed to start a conservative think tank, spent years running with an obscure religious organization who wanted to take over the government, launched his own family based media company and, most recently, started his own YouTube channel.    

His own life, in fact, contradicts his own scare stories.

Botkin's never spoken out against the effects of involuntary slavery in the USA.   Vision Forum, the cult he ran with, firmly believed in the "slavery was good for slaves" lies of the Lost Cause Myth.

Until he's worried about the effects of our history in our country, I'm not going to listen to him wring his hands about Russian history.

On the other hand, Botkin is never going to read my blog.  I write long posts with obscure topics.   Similarly, Trump is never going to read anything written by Botkin.  He writes shorter posts that outlast the president's attention span.   Finally, Trump is never going to watch a video by Botkin.   Trump only watches videos made by people he views to be powerful, successful, and in favor of Trump.    Botkin is clearly enamored on Trump - but having a few thousand viewers on YouTube means nothing.  

How do I know?  I have a few thousand viewers on my defunct YouTube channel that I used for posting lessons when I taught high school.    Just saying.

In the last post, we get to see Botkin try to explain the horrors of Lenin - and still fail miserably.

Babbling Botkin: Last Leadership Memo to the President - Part One

Hello, buddies!

Does everyone have a crazy uncle? 

I do -several, really, of varying race and gender - but is that a universal niche in families that needs to be filled?   Every family is required to have an older relative who has gotten really, really into conspiracy theories - and has gotten in so deeply that the rest of the family accepts that any conversation that last longer than five minutes will reference some wacky theory involving politics or health?  

I bring this to your attention because I realize that Geoffrey Botkin has cannon-balled into this trope - and he's given us a short, but marvelous opus to crazy-unclehood in his most recent video "My Last Leadership Memo to the President. Maybe."   Even the title is nuts!

The video opens with an out-of-focus slim young man throwing something into a small stream surrounded by a dormant deciduous forest.  Next to the young man, a handsome golden lab wanders around.   We get various shots of nature scenery and the dog for the next minute and a half while Botkin does a voice-over.

Dear Mr. President,

The date is January 9th.  If you voluntarily leave office on January 20th with so many election and integrity issues unresolved, those lawsuits unresolved, your life will not become less stressful, but more stressful.[00:00:17] 

Pretty sure, Uncle Geoff, that the President can figure out the date you printed on the memo without you reading it aloud.  If not, do we really want the leader of the free world who is functionally illiterate?

Fun fact: The Constitution states the office of the President transfers to the winner of the election on the 20th of January.   Whether Trump leaves voluntarily is moot; the powers of the Presidency will be transferred to President-Elect Biden who won the Electoral College.

As a point of fact, the election issues have been put to bed.   President Trump had one successful lawsuit that affected 200 votes and 60 lawsuits that he lost.  The sixty lost cases included plenty that were summarily rejected as without merit by judges that Trump appointed as well as appointees from Presidents Bush and Obama.  The Supreme Court rejected unanimously one last-ditch effort  by the State of Texas to disenfranchise the entire State of  Pennsylvania.   There was a minor disagreement on the Supreme Court in that Justices Thomas and Alito thought the suit should have been heard by the Court before being dismissed for lack of standing while the other seven justices felt the suit could be summarily dismissed....but even Thomas and Alito agreed that the suit itself was groundless. 

The integrity issues surrounding Trump will never be ended because he has no integrity.    

Trump never seemed to be unduly stressed by being the president -he got a whole lot of golfing and glad-handing in - and I really doubt he's looking forward to less stress when he leaves.   

Possible criminal indictment - yes.  Crumbling financial straits - yes.    Restful retirement - no.

You will step into a season of grave danger for your family.  You will also miss a lawful opportunity to uphold the oath of office you took four years ago. [00:00:27] 

Trump will still have Secret Service coverage.  No former president or member of a former president's family has been assassinated in the history of the US.   

As for the Oath of Office, well, Trump's never been too serious on that one.  From what I can remember without using notes, he blabbed military secrets to a friendly nation which strained our relationship with Israel.   He handed a national security issue at Mar-Lago surrounded by non-clearanced guests.  Historians will be working out what exactly Russia had on Trump that made him fawn all over Putin at Helsinki.   He asked Russia and China to investigate his political rivals before his election and asked Ukraine to do the same after the election.   

That's just the foreign affairs.   

Domestically, he threatened to withhold federal support to states with large Democratic voting blocs during a pandemic.  He threatened all sorts of violence against Black Lives Matters (BLM) protests - despite constitutional protections for freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.

Oh, and he long-conned his way into a protest-turned-riot that was a coup attempt.  

That's NOT what the Founding Fathers had in mind.

If you think organizing an alternative party will be possible when you are a private citizen, you are mistaken. Patriots are already vacillating before the speed and the fury of leftist reprisals.  The climate of hatred towards you created by your adversaries will make any personal pursuits difficult.  You would have the stomach to fight, but the climate of fear and intimidation threatening every State Legislature will result in quarreling and then disunity.[00:00:57] 

*laughs*

I mean, now that he's banned from Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat, it'd be hard for him to organize a barbeque let alone a separate political party.

Hearing that extreme right wing insurrectionist white supremacists are frightened because the lawful government is using the absurd amount of evidence the rioters created while committing crimes to bring them to justice is the best thing I've heard all day.    To quote a friend, "Maybe don't post video of you committing a crime combined with your name, hometown, and detailed description of how much you enjoyed breaking that law unless you want to help the prosecutors in your future case."

Interestingly, Trump is excellent at making adversaries without anyone fanning the flames.  I've been opposed to him as a politician and a person since he called all Mexicans rapists - but he's insulted so many people and groups that I'm sure I'm going to forget someone.  I remember Mexicans, Muslims, Black Americans, Native Americans, and women as entire groups.

No, Captain Bone-spurs has no stomach to fight himself.   He bailed on serving in Vietnam. 

On the 6th, he gave a rousing speech encouraging violence towards the Capitol and promised he'd be right alongside the protestors.   Then, he departed and watched the chaos on TV.   

He is, in fact, the definition of a coward.

Dunno about the state where Botkin lives - but my State Capitol has had armed protestors show up for voting times and there was a plot to kidnap our governor.   The people who are actively disrupting democracy right now are violent right wingers - not left wingers.
 

This will close off the opportunity of electoral reform and seal away the chance for an honest election in 2024.  If you leave voluntarily, before certain electors are decertified, today's current 2020 lawsuits will wither away, and those which need to be opened against America's criminal conspirators within the Deep State will not be brought to the courts. [00:01:23] 

Hey now. 

We pulled off a very legal election in 2020 in spite of attempts at voter suppression by the GOP and a raging pandemic.

If Trump had focused on the Senate Election in Georgia instead of telling people to not vote while whining about the fact he totally did not lose, the GOP would be in control of the Senate from 2020-2022.   Just saying.

 Uncle Geoffrey is now in the wet-dream of conspiracy theorists.  That magical heady land where logic, rules, procedures and reality disappear.  A land where fishing stories are real - and the bigger the better!

The problem is that the fantasy land withers in the light of day.

Trump's term is done on January 20th at noon.   His acceptance of that fact matters not a whit.

We talked 'bout the lawsuits. Trump lost biggly.   

Jesus, we have Trump to thank for the word "biggly" as well.  That's really a minor thing - but biggly.

Pretty sure that we can't bring lawsuits against criminal conspirators in the Deep State.   Government officials are solidly protected against lawsuits in the course of doing their jobs.  This certainly brings problems in some respects - but it's the law and would need government support to change.   

Also, if the government officials are committing crimes, that's a criminal investigation - which can lead to jail time - which is a separate legal proceeding from a lawsuit which is a way to get redress from a civil wrong.    They are two very different things - and people should be very wary of taking any advice from someone who doesn't know the difference.   

For sane people, though, the use of "Deep State" is a cue to disregard all information from the speaker.

For non-US readers, "Deep State" is a conspiracy theory that believes that there is a secret cabal of non-elected government workers who are working to overthrow Trump, the GOP, and America.   

It's one of those theories that happens when people fall asleep in their high school government class and so never learn that most of the US federal government is made up of nonpartisan bureaucracy that exists to serve citizens while working with the current administration.   These are the departments that cover things like the military, the social safety net, collecting taxes, providing education, space research, and regulating food, drugs, businesses and environment.  The current administration can certainly promote pet projects in each of these areas and squash other projects - but there's a certain amount of inertia built into the system due to the simple size and importance of the job of keeping vital infrastructure going.

Most people see the inertia and think "Well, that's government" with a shrug.   Conspiracy theorists see the same thing and create a new cabal.

The most disappointing bit in this video section is that the cavorting doggy disappears at 1:22 to be replaced with a picture of Trump on Air Force One.  Bye, bye pup!  I will miss you!

 I laughed so loudly at this next part that my kid wanted to know what was funny.  I told him a joke to distract him, then read this to my husband who guffawed:

Please see the details that I provide in the long version of this letter which I have sent to your office.  As you read it, please consider carefully what happened to the leader of Russia back at the start of the twentieth century.[00:01:38] 

Come on, Uncle Geoffrey!  Don't hold out on us now! 

Grace us with the finer details of your inner knowledge of the Deep State!

Wait... he can't.    The Deep State KNOWS about his website.  

The only safe option is to send a paper letter to the President of the United States.   

Yup, that's fail-safe.   

The President of the United States only gets a letter or two a day and will immediately open up a letter from a random guy in middle America and pour over it. *rolls eyes*

Far more likely, the intern of an aide of an aide of an aide may read this on the 18th or 19th.   Finding that the letter contains nothing of interest, a form letter will be returned to Botkin and his deeply fascinating letter will be shredded.   

The picture of Trump on Air Force One fades to a picture of Tzar Nicholas II.  

Does Trump know who Nicholas II is?   I'd bet not; Trump's knowledge of American history has seemed exceptionally weak these last four years so I doubt he's got a good founding in Russian history.

But don't you worry, dear reader!  We've got two more posts from this video in which we get to listen to Botkin skewer Russian history!

Joyfully At Home: Chapter Fourteen - Part One

 

I swear this started as a good day.

I dropped Spawn off at school and started driving to a grocery store when the alternator on my car died.  I got the car off the road safely and called for a tow truck.    Years ago, one of my aunts was critically injured when her disabled car was hit by another car - so I got out of the van and paced up and down the side of the road while waiting for the tow truck.

I lost track of the number of people who stopped to see if I needed anything.  One person apologized for not stopping on their way to dropping their kid off at school - and I told them I was fine.  

The tow driver took me to my aunt-in-law's house where I got my mother-in-law to drive me to pick up my son at school.  We all enjoyed a walk from school to a local restaurant.  It's about 4/10ths of a mile and Spawn rocked it in his walker.  

I was pretty wiped by the time we brought our food home - so Spawn and I had a good nap.

Then I opened the interwebs to see if the Georgia Special Senate Election had been called.   

I found that pro-Trump rioters had invaded the Capitol - and the President is wishy-washy about denouncing them.   

Honestly, I feel sick.   

I kind of thought Trump was going to go out in a ball of flames - but more like a crazy-uncle type of flames than inciting riots.    

My mistake.

I need to distract myself so I'm going to post out-of-order another section from "Joyfully At Home" by Jasmine Baucham.  In true form, my copy of "The Battle For Peer Dependence" is missing in action - but my copy of "Joyfully At Home" surfaced.  

We are starting Chapter 14.  Chapter 13 was an impassioned defense of stay-at-home daughterhood that failed to answer the main objection to stay-at-home daughterhood "How will you support yourself financially if you never marry, get divorced or are widowed early?"   Chapter 14, then, attempts to weave some defenses for other oddities of stay-at-home daughterhood.  

Here's the first question:

Question 1: What is your belief on college? Do you think that women should go to college? (pg. 163) 

After the question, Jasmine brings up the importance of grounding any answer in the Bible - but somehow manages to miss that no one went to college in the Bible....and that we segregated people with presently treatable skin conditions to a leper colony.   

IOW, sometimes the Bible doesn't have particularly pertinent answers to modern questions besides the standard ones about how to treat other people and how to worship God.

Next, Jasmine discusses how she wanted to go to an Ivy League school during most of her childhood, but her aspirations for college shrunk every year during high school.    That's a really unusual situation for someone as skilled as Jasmine - until you realize the source:

There were several things that made me shy away from my UCLA and and NYU ideals.  One was a five point sermon my dad's been preaching to Trey and me since we entered high school :

• Most BA degrees are not worth the paper they're written on.
• Four years is too much time to waste.
• $80,000 ( Room & Board/ State School) to $250,000( Room & Board/Ivy League) is too much money to spend.
• College is not for everyone.
• Most universities are philosophically antagonistic to Christianity.

(pgs. 163-164)

Voddie Baucham's five point sermon is extremely weird considering the fact that he has three post-secondary degrees!   The fact that Rev. Baucham earned multiple degrees from accredited institutions gave him access to jobs that people who followed his advice would be unable to access.

Allow to me rebut his arguments.

1) "Most BA degrees are not worth the paper they are written on". 

 This is simply wrong.   Completing a four year degree has consistently been the most effective way for people to increase their lifetime earnings and compete for the widest pool of jobs available.  People with a bachelor's degree have shorter spells of unemployment and are eligible for higher wages than people without.

2) "Four years is too much time to waste."

This might be a valid point for a CP/QF son who could start earning good wages faster through technical or trades training - maybe.   The point is moot for a stay-at-home daughter who will be working as an unpaid kitchen/nursery assistant for the same period of time because she's wasting a few years anyways.   Looking at a longer time frame, a stay-at-home daughter is ideally supposed to become a homeschooling mother in the fullness of time.   Going to college to solidify a young woman's reading, writing, math, science and social studies skills is an investment in her children's high school education - hardly a waste of time.

3)"$80,000 ( Room & Board/ State School) to $250,000( Room & Board/Ivy League) is too much money to spend." 
I agree with Rev. Baucham on this one - don't pay full price for your college education. 

On the other hand, Rev. Baucham isn't telling his children the entire truth about college prices. 

 Shopping for colleges is a lot like purchasing a used car.   There is always a sticker price for tuition, room and board for each college - but savvy buyers never pay that price.   Jasmine - like most high school students- believes the main effort is getting into a college.   Her father - like most college graduates - knows that the real competition is finding a college that wants YOU as a student strongly enough that they will give you a discounted rate through scholarships, grants etc., so your degree will cost a fraction of the sticker price.   

The college I graduated from had a sticker price of $22,000 per year.  I paid $7,500 per year.  

Jasmine seems bright and articulate.  I'm sure she could have gotten some decent scholarships at a variety of colleges - and possibly full-ride ones.

4) "College is not for everyone."   

I agree in generality with Rev. Baucham - not everyone is a good fit for college.

But Rev. Baucham isn't speaking to a crowd of high school students - he's speaking to his two high school aged children.  

I have no idea of Trey Baucham's personality or academic skills - but Jasmine seems to be a natural fit for college - and we know she is because she did eventually earn a 4-year degree.  

Homeschooling parents are supposed to know more about their children's academic needs and strengths than a teacher - so why is Jasmine's father giving her crap-tastic advice?  Because she's a girl?  To keep his followers happy? 

5) "Most universities are philosophically antagonistic to Christianity."   

First, Jasmine and Trey wouldn't be going to "most" universities; they would be going to a university. I'm certain they could find quite a few Christian universities - and maybe even a Christian university that supported their worldview if that's a major concern.

Second, most universities are also philosophically antagonistic to smoking pot, having Quidditch tournaments, and having adult students treat professors as equals rather than respected elders - but each of those things happen everyday at universities all over the US.   If you need to avoid the philosophical antagonism of universities to Christianity, avoid the area where philosophically inclined professors hang out to argue rhetoric and join the local "Students for Christ" club in whatever form it takes.  

Personally, I avoided both groups like the plague - but you do you.

Well, things have settled down in DC so far.   Have a good night.

Babbling Botkin: "What if My Husband Dies?" - Part Ten

 Hello and belated Merry Christmas!

I've been very busy the last few weeks.  Spawn is old enough now that he has some idea that Christmas is a fun thing so I've been helping set up a Christmas tree, making ornaments for his teachers and wrapping presents.  I've also been enjoying having a relatively low stress Christmas since we have no outside obligations this year!  

When I got Spawn up Christmas morning, I realized that he was expecting Santa in our living room right now.  Thankfully, Spawn was very gracious when I explained that Santa had a very, very long day and night last night and was asleep at the North Pole with some tired reindeer.  

Spawn has grown into a little boy instead of a toddler this year.   As he's gotten older, I find him more and more fun to play with so I've definitely spent a few times where I meant to write a blog post playing on the floor with him.   He got a present from my brother that was a tractor and airplane that came with working toy drills.  He is currently "fixing" the floor and the couch using the drills which is adorable once I block out the continual whine of the drill sound.

As soon as Geoffrey Botkin brought up apprenticeships in his video "What If My Husband Dies?", I knew he'd bring this into the video:

[00:10:55]   You know in the State of Virginia you can actually do an apprenticeship to become an attorney. You don't need to go to law school.  You can actually do an apprenticeship to learn that trade which is how they viewed it in Virginia and it is still possible to be able to do that. 

Can you become a lawyer through an apprenticeship in Virginia? Yes.

Can a person follow the Botkin-approved methods of home schooling and self-study only and become and become an apprentice to a lawyer in Virginia?  Nope.

How long did it take me to determine that?  Under 30 seconds on the internet.  I googled "Virginia Law Apprenticeship Program" and found the Virginia Board of Bar Examiner's Law Reader Program website.  The first requirement for applicants is that they possess the correct moral character and fitness to be a lawyer.  No problems there - but the second requirement is that the applicant has finished a bachelor's degree from an accredited university.   

That's not happening unless you are Jasmine Holmes nee Baucham.

For argument's sake, let's pretend there's a College Plus graduate who lives in Virginia who has decided to give the apprenticeship route a shot.   

Finding a supervising attorney for the apprenticeship sounds hard.  

• The person needs to have a broad enough legal career for the Bar to be assured that the lawyer can design the correct curriculum. 
• They also need to have enough professional teaching experience that the Bar deems them capable of teaching.  
• The person needs to have practiced law for at least 10 years and 10 of the previous 12 years in Virginia and is currently practicing law.  There is a loophole for Circuit Court judges to be the supervising attorney while retired - but only if the judge worked for at least 10 years on the Circuit and has been retired no less than 5 years.
• The supervising lawyer needs to have a large enough law library that Bar can be certain that the apprentice can have unrestricted access to the law library during the three year program.   

There's a limited number of active lawyers who fit each of those descriptions.  Assuming a Virginia lawyer got through undergraduate work at 22, went directly into law school immediately, and spent the first ten years of their career working in varying legal fields, the earliest a supervising lawyer could take on a law reading apprentice is at age 35.   

Is that likely?  I doubt it.  A safer assumption would be that a supervising attorney would likely be closer to 50 years old than 35 - and that winnows down the field quite a bit.  

The Bar limits the number of law readers per supervising attorney to one - presumably because otherwise the attorney would be running a law school.   Because of that limitation, our legal eagle who was ready to be a supervising attorney at 35 would be able to supervise 10 law readers during a 30 year career.  The safer assumption of a supervising attorney beginning at age 50 would have 5 law readers during the remaining fifteen years of their career.   

But what about those retired Circuit Court judges?  Well, they can supervise a total of two law readers if they start one reader immediately on retirement and the second reader as soon as the first reader is done.

Finally, the supervising attorney is adding a whole lot of work to their lives - while still maintaining their legal career outside of the apprenticeship.    During the three-year program, the supervising lawyer needs to produce 40 weeks of curriculum yearly that keeps the student reading law occupied for a minimum of 25 hours a week.  For eighteen of the twenty five hours a week, the supervising attorney needs to be in the same physical location as the reader.  The reader is guaranteed to have 3 hours of one-on-one time a week with the supervising attorney to discuss the work the reader has completed - which means the supervising attorney needs to read and critique the law reader's work at some point.

Personally, I can see this system working fine for a former law school professor who wanted to leave academia but didn't want to entirely give up teaching.   That professional would have experience setting up curriculum, have colleagues from their former institution to get support from, and would possibly find the demands of a single law student refreshing compared to dealing with several classes at once.

For other lawyers.....it's a heaps of work on top of a busy career.   

Tl;dr - Botkin didn't bother doing 30 seconds of reading before bringing Virginia's legal apprenticeship system into his fantasy world.   

But really - is that the worst thing?  Oh, no.  No, the worst thing is that he dumped this strange, half-baked fever dream in the middle of a podcast for a woman fearing widowhood with four sons still at home.    That's a far bigger travesty than Botkin's usual methodology of ignoring reality.

Babbling Botkin: "What If My Husband Dies?" - Part Nine

 

We survived the first week of distance learning with Spawn!  

I do not want to homeschool my kid - but during a global pandemics - needs must.   Thankfully, he's young and doing fine on traditional literacy and numeracy skills so I can use most of the time to focus in on PT and OT skills.   I do some skills most mornings that way Spawn has a little more consistency in a world that has changed a lot from his point of view.  This morning - which is Saturday in case this takes me longer than a day to write - we went outside to plant some daffodil bulbs. 

Does anyone else wonder what percentage of floral bulb exports end up being thrown out or composted after sitting in someone's car or front entry way for nine months?  Is that just me? 

Anyways, I had picked up a pack of 35 ruffled pink/white daffodils in September and managed to bring them in from my car before they were roasted or frozen.   Spawn declared that he was a farmer and managed to do a very respectable job of moving dirt around considering my hoe and shovel are adult-sized and Spawn's an average sized nearly four-year old.     I thought he'd be willing to touch the bulbs but balk at touching dirt.  I was totally wrong; he handed me a few bulbs, then made a dash for the dirt which he played with quite happily.     After we got them planted, he and I moseyed our way over to look at the cows and the skid steer that was cleaning out the barn.   I figure both of those are plenty of PT work - doubly so since the tools required a lot of balance practice and motor planning - and we'll get some OT work in by coloring, taking beads out of playdough or doing a puzzle later today.

The bit that turned out to be more exhausting than I expected was keeping track of the one virtual class meeting, one virtual small group meeting, one in-person PT meeting and one in-person Speech/OT meetings on top of our usual schedule of events.    I felt like I was always on the move during a week where I had more hours than usual at work - but I think that will settle itself out with time.

We are over halfway through Geoffrey Botkin's video monologue titled "What If My Husband Dies?"  The last section was about how critically important it was for boys to be around their fathers to learn how business works.  Boys also have to be around their dads at work to learn diligence, perseverance and skills.   Apparently, there's no other way to learn these skills outside of shadowing your father at his self-owned business.  Nope.....the rest of us are out of luck.  :-)

Onward to the next jarring moment:

[00:09:34] So all boys need to be getting everything they can from their fathers in the way of character by watching them in every single age of life.  If your sons do lose their father try to find some way the mentoring process can continue with other responsible men in your community.  Now, that's, that's a hard ask, I know.  But as long as you're getting to know men and - maybe you and your husband can even talk about it - who are the kind of men you would like your sons to be around?

 Wait - exactly how isolated is the proper CP/QF wife and mother?

Doesn't she know men from her church or her home business or her family?   

I would view a male relative as a safer bet for a long-term mentoring process than some guy this woman is just starting to get to know in her community.    I don't mean that as a "Any guy interested in a fatherless kid is a predator" way; it's just that families tend to stay in contact with each other over decades more effectively than people in the same church or neighborhood do.

The woman can certainly talk with her husband now - but this isn't going to be something that he can plan in great detail prior to his death.    Life circumstances change over time.  Elder Joe is a great guy today - but in five years, he's going to have to move across the country for work and comes back once a decade after that.   At the same time, the mom is going to meet a really nice older woman at her job who takes her under her whole family under her wing.  They never planned it that way - but the coworker's husband teaches her boys lots of important lessons about doing what is right while taking them fishing.

Keep your sons around kind men.  That's the most important lesson - taking time to help out others who are in need.

 [00:10:03]  You know, really good responsible men who might take an interest in them and take them under their wings and help them learn and grow and prosper and develop.  So, this,  this really practical point I'm going to make is this: keep your eye open in your community for honorable men of character who might be able to do short apprenticeships with your sons as they get older.

How old are these kids again?   

This is excellent advice if your sons are in their teens and an exercise in futility if your kids are under 5.

Now - this is some crazy talk, I know - but your regional public school district may well have access to concurrent training in various trades for high school students.   

Plus, if the woman lives in an area with a history of unionizing, there are very likely trade unions or trade halls that offer paid training in skilled trades.   We are so short on skilled trades in Michigan that the local combined services hall that does training in HVAC, steamfitter/pipefitter, plumbing, and welders offers free apprenticeship classes combined with a $24,000 a year stipend.  Apprentices take classes in the morning and work for local contractors in the afternoons and so have ready-made connections for a job after they've become journeymen.

There's really no need to reinvent the wheel while dealing with a major loss.  

[00:10:27]  I've, you know , I've brought in some guys who do apprenticeships.  I've let my..... a couple of my sons go out and do apprenticeships with really good older and trustworthy men and you know it's to provide them some of the skills that I might not have been able to give them.  It's been good for them and it was a good experience.  They weren't very long periods of time. Maybe just a few months and then and then back home again.  Maybe a couple of years and then back home again but it's it's uh it's something that can really help.

I'm fascinated about the idea of sending a young man to do an internship with Botkin.   What exactly would he learn?   How to write bizarre blog articles about British politics?  How to use the more popular writings of your daughters to keep the family finances afloat?   

There's a weirdly long pause as Botkin tries to remember his kids going on apprenticeships. Yet, Noah or Lucas had to have learned CNC methods from someone.  Presumably Ben got some guidance in composition from someone.  But both of those apprenticeships - if they happened - were ones where Geoffrey Botkin wasn't the central focus so it's all a blur for him.

 How long is the apprenticeship?  A few months is very different from a few years.  Is this some kind of weird open-ended contract?  "Your son will remain in my home until I feel he has correctly articulated how to start, undermine and lose a media station.  This process could take anywhere from 30 minutes to 3 years.  Please bring your own camera, computer, appropriate clothing and a 3 month supply of weaponry."

The important thing, though, is that your kid comes home again.  No one is allowed to separate from the home commune.   Even if you get a few years of freedom - you must come home!   

My two-cents: If the LW has not done so, get her kids enrolled in a public school this spring when they reopen.  If her husband makes it through COVID, the kids can go back to homeschooling.  If he dies, at least the kids won't be dealing with entering a new school while grieving.   

I know of where I speak; the most common cause for my former homeschooled students to end up in my classroom was the death of their mother.   It's so terribly hard to reacclimate to a traditional school while grieving; enrolling the kids in school as soon as it is safe would at least mitigate that stressor.

Good luck - and don't ask Botkin for advice.

Maxwell Mania: The emotional importance of dogs compared to sisters

 I've left Sarah Maxwell's Moody Book series well enough alone on this blog because the PDF's are mind-numbingly boring.   

If you overlook the complete lack of characterization, conflict or character arc, you are left with repetitive, derivative sermons.    That's understandable.  Since Sarah Maxwell has stuck to writing what she knows, monotony interspaced with sanctimony has birthed ten dull children's books 

On the other hand, we all need a hobby and writing books where being completely unobjectionable trumps interest is certainly fills time better than wondering what the next 50 years of being one of three spinster virgin aunts does.   

Sarah Maxwell, however, has spun off into the "Hill Top Adventures" series of books.   Rather than sticking to mundane Maxwellian topics like "Oh, no!  Our pet sitting client has a rat rather than a dog!", she's moving into deep waters.    

The first book "Finding Change" involves a child's move, the father's potential loss of a job, the main character feeling bad that she's not a super-Christian like her neighbor and refusing to ever forgive her Aunt Nicole for accidentally killing her little sister. 

 Surprise! There's nothing like a cliff hanger to keep people reading! 

Except....this isn't a soap opera.  Emma is gonna forgive Aunt Nicole because otherwise Emma would be a horrible person.  Accidentally killing your niece is bad - but the real crime is lack of forgiveness!

Her newest book "Learning Lessons" combines an instantly forgettable title with this charming plot line:

Emma’s world takes on a new sparkle now that she’s a Christian and learns to forgive Aunt Shannon for the accident that took her little sister’s life. But trouble is brewing with Landlady over Taffy.

The autumn days fly by with adventures at the coffee shop job, helping with Hunter’s leaf business, Hill Top’s city-wide yard sale, and a day at the library. All the while, tension builds with Landlady, and when Emma is faced with her biggest fear, what will she do?

Now, I'm not planning on reading either of these ever - but I'd be much more likely to if there's a huge plot twist when Emma finds out that Aunt Shannon really accidently killed her sister instead of Aunt Nicole......but I doubt it.   That kind of twist requires being allowed to read fiction books or watch films or see plays - and the Maxwells do not do any of those things.   

Instead, we've got a copy error?  A sloppy confusion of character names?

I really truly did lose a much loved little brother to a medical misdiagnosis of septic shock thirty four years ago.   I've spent a lot of time in my life processing the loss of David and looking at how that tragedy affected and affects my life.    

Maybe it's because I'm not the right kind of Christian - but I can't write a sentence that includes the word "sparkle" and the mention of a child's death.   

Actually, that's probably because I write what I know.  I'd probably make equally crazy mistakes if I tried to write a children's story about giving out religious tracts. *rolls eyes*

I also loved my pets very, very much - but my parents were great at making sure we could keep the animals we adopted in our homes before we adopted them.  

Emma's parents - on the other hand - apparently don't have a lease....or decided to get a dog against the lease....or won't move if the landlady changes their lease at the next renewal.....or simply suck at adulting.

At least my parents recognized that my anxiety around change and loss stemmed from my brother dying.   Poor Emma seems stuck with two non-parents and a manically cheerful theology which is a pretty sad commentary on how she was raised.  

Poor thing.  Poor things, really, because Anna and Sarah can't feel great about learning that the thought of giving up Ellie.... I mean....Taffy...... is more stressful than either of them dying. 

Writings give us glimpses into the author's soul.   I'm very frightened of what the Maxwells have done to their kids. 

The Battle of Peer Dependency: Chapter Four - Part Nine

Hello!

Wow, did life get busy on me!  Jeepers.

A week and a half ago, my son's school had one student test positive for COVID.   Contact tracing determined that a few kids in the class should quarantine, but other than that everything was fine.  

Early this week, one teacher and another student in a different classroom tested positive.  This put 58 kids and 7 staff members out on quarantine.    I ordered a few books online for my son since I figured homeschooling would start soon.

Right now, substitute teachers can't be gotten for love or money.   High income districts that could take their pick of subs can't get a single sub to cover; a rural, fairly high poverty district like my son had no chance at finding 7 subs.    

Monday, we found out my son's pre-K - 4th grade school was closing on November 11th  until November 30th to try and contain the outbreak.    Public opinion was mixed - but a vocal minority wanted the rest of the district closed as well.   The majority of people seemed to think the school was overreacting - but then cases appeared at the other schools.  Now everyone is virtual only until after Thanksgiving.  Mask wearing is still not as widespread in my community as I'd like to see - but I see masks now - which I often did not before.

I've got a bunch of materials from the school - plus a section on "Weather" I've made for my son since he's been our family's weatherman for six months now.   He found the "Weather" felt board I made for him and realized that I missed "Thunder" and "Fog" - so I've got to make those up tonight.   

So if my posts get less regular, I'm probably taking a walk with my kid talking about clouds....or doing PT on some playground equipment.....or practicing patterning.   I hope the school will reopen for a bit before Christmas Break - but our case numbers in Western Michigan have become dangerously high so I'm planning for a few weeks to a few months of classes at home.   

In fun news, Spawn will try using forearm crutches next week!  He's been showing plenty of strength while walking, but still needs help with balance.   He also wants to venture off of paved paths.  So far, he's been muscling his walker over uneven ground - but he can only do that on fairly flat ground.  Forearm crutches should give him better freedom to explore the world - and I'm very, very excited about it!

I'm excited about my son gaining more freedom of movement so reading "The Battle of Peer Dependency" by Marina Sears feels more crazy every time I open the book.   In the next quote, Mrs. Sears - who homeschooled her kids - demonstrates poor understanding of teenage motivations alongside a profound misunderstanding of the use of person in the English language:

Listening to young people dependent upon their peers the greed of self and the fulfillment of personal agendas can clearly be seen. A parent might hear, "But, I don't want to go. I have other plans. My friends and I are just going to play volleyball. Everyone else is going." Count the number of I's in the next conversation you have with your young person to see if they are following the direction God has given to you as a family, or if they are "pecking" at that direction. (pg. 57-58)

 How is playing volleyball with friends more selfish and greedy forcing your children to be living examples of God's Providence to widows and orphans?    Dumping that burden on your kids is cruel.  In the last four years, I've been amazed by the kindness, love, generosity and compassion afforded to me and my son.   I'm grateful for those acts of caring.   I don't force my kid to be a walking advertisement for God's Love, though!   He's almost four - and he's quite happy being a dinosaur, thank you very much.   Spawn also likes being a firetruck - so I'm pretty solid that he's doing what God wants a preschooler to do - be a kid.

Teenagers, like preschoolers, are learning how the world works as nearly-adults.  Most homeschooling families allow their teenagers to spend time with other teenagers.  Teenagers, after all, are going to spend their lives with people of their age cohort as they form families, raise children, and work.  Letting teenagers find out how people their own age interact is good parenting.   

Forcing teenagers to remain ensconced in their family of origin means that the parent is sacrificing the future of their kids for the wants of the parents.    

Counting the number of times a teenager says "I" in a conversation is a poor sign of the greed or selfishness of the kid.  It just means the kid is speaking first-person which is normal for native English speakers.

The last quote for this post shows how Mrs. Sears has moved the goal posts of success for her kids beyond God's requirements:

Upon studying the Scriptures, the root problem of peer dependency became very clear. As I looked at the lives of my children, there seemed to be little difference between them and children being reared in homes without God. Many young people without God have themselves on the throne of their lives. They seek activities, materialism, or various forms of stimuli: such as drugs, alcohol, and sex to fill the void of God and the desire to fit in. My children were saved, and on their way to heaven, and even though their activities were seemingly innocent and moral, self and pleasure where the center of their focus. The salvation experience is just beginning for every person. Allowing God to be the Lord of one's life is the essence of the Christian walk. One of the greatest struggles facing me was in the understanding that my sons had trust in Christ as their savior, but not as the Lord of their lives. My plea to the Lord was to find out if there was anything I could do to help them love Jesus more. Can one individual do anything to change another's heart? As a parent, having a good, saved, moral child was not my goal. Having children who were " Mighty in God's spirit" was what I as a parent was trying to achieve. (pg. 58)

 John 3:16 says that God so loved the world that he gave his only beloved son so that whoever believes in him may not die but have eternal life.

Marina Sears' sons had fulfilled that mandate. 

They were saved. 

They believed.  

God accepted Chris and David - but that is not good enough for their mother.   

God gave us ever so many innocent, moral pleasures.  Going for walks.  Chatting with friends.  Playing volleyball.   There is, in fact, no section of the Bible that forbids volleyball - even if the people playing volleyball are teenagers.     

No, Marina Sears is creating a dictatorship where her whims are justified as making "Mighty Warrior" - but that's not what God asked of parents.

Babbling Botkin: "What If My Husband Dies?" - Part Eight

 Fall has been fun.

My son is old enough that we got him into a Halloween costume for the second time in his life.  We dressed him up as an elephant when he was 11 months old.  At nearly two and nearly three, he flipped out at the idea of being dressed in a costume.   This year, he enjoyed being a "fire dog" when he dressed up as one of the characters from Paws Patrol.  

For the first time ever, I did all of my fall chores for my garden during the fall!  Crazy, I know - but I do like knowing that the past production plants are turning into compost as we speak.   

This next section in "What If My Husband Dies" by Geoffrey Botkin published on his YouTube channel gives a great example of privilege-blindness in CP/QF and how said blindness leads to horrible advice:

[00:08:33] I knew a.....knew a man who was a big executive at a large uh IT firm.  And he didn't have any time with his family. He realized that was wrong. He totally quit.  He came home and what he started with his boys.  He was making a lot of money at this job, this corporate job.  He started a small engine repair company with his boys.  Just so they could be with their dad.  The dad could be with the boys.  They could learn about business.  They could learn about good customers, grumpy customers, dishonest customers um difficult challenges, hard jobs, good work ethic.  And it it didn't make a whole lot of money but it made enough money,  But it gave those boys a powerful legacy and inheritance of wisdom and knowledge of how you do business.  And so by the time they were teenagers, and then older teenagers, they have a lot of knowledge practical knowledge about how how you do business in the real world with imperfect people.  That's really valuable.  So all boys needs to be getting everything they can from their fathers in the way of character by watching them at every single age of life.

When faced with so many assumptions in one place, I think the best option is to move sentence by sentence for discussion.   

Botkin knew a guy who was a "big executive" at a large IT firm.   What does that mean?  Was he a C-level executive or a manager?   How much was the man making a year?  How long had he been working at this large IT firm at a high rate of pay?  Did his earnings include access to company stock?  All of this matters because the total risk in starting a small business depends a lot on the owner's assets prior to starting the business.  Botkin's acquaintance had a small risk in starting a business since he had high income potential customers he knew from his former job plus a salary with stock options that he could leverage to set up the business and pay for his family's needs while the new business grew.

Compare that to a young married man from a cash-strapped CP/QF family or a man with 4 sons and COPD in the middle of a pandemic.......

I find the idea that the man  who had the soft skills needed to be an executive "totally quit" without having a solid plan in place.   I'd bet good money that the man planned out his exit strategy so that he was ramping up his business while working at his former employer prior to leaving.

We can safely assume this is not an option for the family writing Botkin for advice.  If they had the resources to weather the possible untimely death of the father, the wife would not be writing to Botkin.

The idealized dad set up his own small engine repair business.  Granted that the father probably had a non-compete agreement with his former company - this is still a rather huge change of career on top of starting a business.  Where did he get the cash for all of the tools and materials he needed for that?  How much start-up money did this take? How long had the father been doing small engine repair as a hobby or for personal use before he started this business?  Please tell me that he didn't quit his job randomly and start a business in an area he had no experience in; that's a horrible trope in CP/QF stories that rarely ends well in real-life.  Where did he get customers from?   How did he market his business?  How much did marketing cost upfront?   

There's no way most CP/QF men could leverage a full small engine repair business from scratch; it's just too much risk for a bank to take without assets or income.  How the letter writer in the video would pull this off is beyond me.  

The business also managed to make "enough" money without making "a lot" of money.  That construction leaves the change in economic status wide open.  A small family who was willing to drop in economic status from upper middle class to average middle class may well be fine on a small income from the business plus assets acquired prior to leaving corporate life.   A larger family who lived frugally and saved a lot might not notice the difference if they tapped into savings until the business got going.  The problem comes when faced with the reality of CP/QF families.  Most of these families are not making "enough" money to start with.   They can't afford to lose any part of their current income stream because they don't have enough left over to put money away or acquire much in assets.   Their most likely asset is their home - and betting a house on a business venture is a bad idea.  The LW is presumably in that category and cannot afford to fund a business while increasing her husband's risk of infection to COVID-19.

The weirdest bit to an outsider is Botkin's implication that the executive-turned-small-engine-mechanic's kids had a huge leg up on other kids because they understood business from watching their dad.   Plenty of other kids understand how business works thanks to getting a retail or food service job as a teenager.   Those jobs will teach a teen plenty about customer service and problem-solving skills.  Now, the teenager will not be involved directly in the nuts and bolts of making staffing choices or seeing how various actions affect margins - but every place I've ever worked will explain at least the rationale behind how those choices are made.   Equally important in my eyes is the reality that the teenager will be watching how a successful business is run.   In a family business, the teenager might be watching a successful business - or watching his father flail around because he's missing the real problems and solutions in his business.

All of this seems to have turned out well for Botkin's acquaintance - if he existed - but a single anecdote is poor support for risking everything a family has.

Good luck - and don't write to Botkin for advice.