TrueTomHarley

I assure you, we were all flabbergasted to discover it. It’s sort of like JFK saying to his advisors, ‘I don’t know what all the fuss is about with my being Catholic. It is not as though I am a good one.’ Ah, well. Maybe more than you think.

No. I removed it because the local elders were uncomfortable with it, judging from its cover an invitation to brawl with apostates—whereas the Witness organization encourages just the opposite—you know, along the lines of ‘a slave of the Lord does not need to fight.’ It was only the local brothers, so far as I know, not anyone else. It was not even brought up specifically; removing it was just my response to a shepherding call. I could have stuck to my guns without consequence other than to continue to be viewed by them as not exemplary. But I have voluntarily signed on to a program that involves submission to Christian headship, and to consider the interests of others, not just my own. Removing the book put to rest any notion that I favor seeking out apostates and fighting with them, which I do not. So I took it down. I explained it a little more in the next book, ‘In the Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction.’ Parts of it that I really like I have incorporated elsewhere.

We are not ‘aware’ of anything online, where truthful speech is punished, where liars proliferate, and where, unless you know someone personally, you haven’t a clue. You can get a feel for someone over time, but nothing more. Frankly, the biggest mystery here (by far) is you, who dials up the judgment 10-fold and dials back the fellow-feeling by as much. ‘All men online are liars’ says the apostle Paul, adjusted for the present digital age.

Oh, yeah! Is he obnoxious? Send him right over! We thrive on people like that! Just doing our bit so the open club can stay pristine. I hear next on the 10-year list is that blogging’s okay, provided you avoid those ne’er-do-wells in the closed club

JWI was on the verge of doing so but couldn’t find your card in the card catalogue—none of which would have happened had he heeded my urging to modernize.

“Bad dog, bad! No biscuit!”

…says the guy who will take anyone’s head off if he detects an interest in politics, thus revealing it is not so much an interest in politics he abhors but an interest in politics that is not his. Okay, got it. Transgender Visibility Day already existed, even though no one had ever heard of it. But it is sort of like the country in mourning over September 11th, (9/11) or December 7th (Pearl Harbor) and some twerp says, ‘Don’t forget, it’s also National Tic Tac Toe Day! We made it that just a few years ago.”

The link was excellent. I remember my parents going to pbs and npr but only after Walter Cronkite was no longer THE source. In those days I trusted the NYT the way my doctors still trust the Lancet or the BMJ. Rogue reporters have explained a lot about how we were fooled for so long. Tucker They fired him:

What in the world are you talking about? I have no idea who those two fellows are. As for the downvote, it’s because Vic Vomodog and I used to pull shoulder to shoulder in the work until he went over to the dark side. Believe me, he hated the book TrueTom vs the Apostates! and rejoiced when I took it down for a few misspellings.

Thank you, Dr. Adhominem. Coming from such a learned source as you, it means a lot. I pledge to always do my best.

No. We grill him mercilessly there and make him squirm mightily, let me tell you.

It doesn’t matter. No matter what the topic is or where it is, it always boils down to a squabble with George.

He’s me. too.

He’s me. Can’t slip anything past you, I see.

Do you think i could capture the essence of it? Remember, when I write of myself, I am full of self-deprecatory humor. Would that work for you?

As Jehovah’s Witnesses, we are encouraged not only to take an interest in people, but to ‘love people’—the title of our latest brochure. The “eyes of God” want us to do this. It is very hard to do this with someone who reveals nothing of himself, who eternally thinks everyone is out to get him, and who seemingly exists only to criticize others. You should spill more.

I think there is.

Okay, so I know this post is not addressed to me, having never been a Bethel member, but I did visit there once, as a young man, and dined with them. I quickly got the sense of the food-plate flow, that after prayer, everyone picked up the serving dish nearest him or her, helped themselves, then passes it around till all ten people had been served. So, when dessert came, strawberries, I saw the plate start with the person on my immediate left and head clockwise. When it finally makes its way to me, I knew everyone had had their shot, so what remained was mine. Alas—I did not realize that some postpone their desserts and have it later! So here I am, munching away, when someone says, ‘Hey! Who took all the strawberries?!’ Whereupon, I looked up, strawberries hanging from my mouth, and made like Chuck Berry: “It wasn't me, Sarge. Uhm-uhm, Sarge, it wasn't me. It must have been some other body, Uh, uh, Sarge, it wasn't me.”

Waiting for the attack from those IBMers across the Deep Blue lake, no doubt, led by Watson himself.

I think we can take Geo Jackson’s words as a template. ‘You don’t want to take sides,’ he says, and to show the challenge of keeping neutral, he uses the example of contesting politicians in Australia, one of whom wanted to draft people of Jackson’s age into the military and one of whom did not. Now that would test your resolve to stay neutral, he said, nonetheless you must do it. If he was as ignorant of politics as some seem to think is the gold standard, he would not have even known which politician’s views would be to his benefit and which one would not. Of course, I leaned into him on this point, informing him that: I’m sure he gave my words all the consideration they deserved before instantly turning his attention to other matters.

You don’t want to know. They’re holding a ice cream social for the candidates in that wicked place.

Well, whose fault is that? Next thing, you will be calling me a cult leader for having manipulated you into spilling it. It is not shocking to be informed, though neither is it a sin to opt out. One firebrand brother on X stated emphatically, straight out of the blue, “Jehovah’s Witness are NOT INTERESTED in politics!” Well, actually some of them are, I told him. ‘I think what you are looking to say is that they do not take sides. ‘They are NOT INTERESTED IN POLITICS!’ he roared back and then blocked me.

I think these guys have some astronomical legal bills—even their licenses are under constant attack & some have lost theirs—and for that reason I cut them slack.

Nothing but sales scams for me. Just recently I had the CO in my car. He saw the ‘Messages’ app onscreen and could not stop talking about the number I hadn’t acknowledged. (693) ‘Yeah, I get so many spam calls, I don’t always go through my messages,’ I told him. ‘Clearly!’ was his reply. He kept carrying on, even said he wanted to get a picture, so I swiped the screen to show another set of apps and distract him. Unfortunately, he there saw Viber with 43.

He even says he drives a Subaru: I’ve never heard a Tucker excerpt I didn’t like. That said, I haven’t heard too many. None of those other people do I know. In the early days of Covid, however, I forwarded a Joe Rogan interview with Dr. McCullough to HQ, hoping that if they found it as informative as I did, they would overlook Joe’s explosion of profanity towards the end. Probably, I put myself on their radar screen as much as you during your recent visit, during which they said to themselves, “What is it this politician would like to tell?” Others: “He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign deities.”