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Where in the World is Doug Phillips (Who is a Tool)? Part 12


Coconut Flan

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17 hours ago, hoipolloi said:

What are the chances that Dougie will be involved in these tours?

A chance to dress up and be around young girls? Straight to his heart. 

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an immersive week of curated commemorative events

I don't know why, but this strikes me as pretentious.  Also, why pre-teens?  Easier to manage than actual teens?  Where's the money going to come from?  Will there be cos-play?  

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18 minutes ago, Howl said:

I don't know why, but this strikes me as pretentious.  Also, why pre-teens?  Easier to manage than actual teens?  Where's the money going to come from?  Will there be cos-play?  

Maybe because no one trusts Doug around 16/17/18 year old girls. 

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29 minutes ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

Maybe because no one trusts Doug around 16/17/18 year old girls. 

Ahhhh, very good point. I wonder how much input Beall had in making that decision. 

Speaking of teens, have the youngest two kids "graduated" from high school?  I hope they at least head over to School O'Sproul when the time comes, to get them out of the house and on the way to adulthood. 

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From Liberty's LinkedIn:

346195571_Screenshot2022-09-22at14-58-59LibertyPhillipsonLinkedInIn6weeksIwillbetakingmyfirstgroupofstudentsovertoNormandy.png.9f286a29022e0da6516da09f72982d49.png

1661359120082.jpg.a1c91fd83f14e5293db7cdc45228334e.jpg

 

On 9/21/2022 at 10:11 AM, Howl said:

Speaking of teens, have the youngest two kids "graduated" from high school?  I hope they at least head over to School O'Sproul when the time comes, to get them out of the house and on the way to adulthood. 

I think only Virginia would still be in high school. She'll be 16 next month. I'm pretty sure Prov is already going to be 19 in December.

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Preteen b/c they're selling it to parents who miss VF and/or are neo-conservatives. Harder sell to high schoolers IMO and you have to negotiate more attitude. Preteens still cheerfully obey easily.

I will say though when I taught 5th grade decades ago there was one kid who was genuinely obsessed with military history. He went on to enlist in the air force. 

Still boggles my mind that fundies idolize the military and yet so rarely do their young people enlist. 

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17 minutes ago, neuroticcat said:

Still boggles my mind that fundies idolize the military and yet so rarely do their young people enlist. 

Both Doug and Geoff were pretty vocal in the VF days about the evils of young men joining the military as it is now, mostly because that would involve the possibility of the young men submitting to women over them, and because women in the military was a sign of God’s judgement (or something like that.) They were  pretty mad when “don’t ask, don’t tell” was repealed as well. They’d love to be part of the military in the 1940s (or at least they think they do) and to compensate for that they play dress up at conferences and form little militias of their own. 

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Yeah, the official VF line was not submitting to the women/gays/communists in today's military. Honestly though, I think it's just that most fundie families fear anything that takes the place of daddy as the ultimate authority. Hence why so many isolationist OG fundies would home birth, home school, home church, refuse to work for anyone else, etc.. They don't want to answer to anyone, and are terrified of their children being exposed to outside views. When push comes to shove, the military is just like college; something the parents can't control, and therefore dangerous.

Naturally, they love the *concept* of duty, valor, service, and heroism, so they convince themselves that there was some perfect time in history when OF COURSE they would have embodied all of those things, and they'll cosplay to prove it :2wankers:

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Also, military service could potentially remove the patriarch from direct control over the home scene,  and who knows what might happen while he was gone. 

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The promotion for the trip to Europe sounds exactly like the tours that Doug sold during the VF days. My guess is that he is behind it or at least heavily involved.

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We were family friends with an ATI family growing up. The eldest was my age - they had six kids and gradually disappeared from school/church to 90s ATI with prairie dresses and all the rest. My family lived in Knoxville for awhile so they'd always come stay with us when they were at their big conference. I had no idea it was such a cult at the time - just thought they were odd homeschoolers - but they had so many of the same lines as early Duggars: we dress all the same b/c it's easier to see each other when we're out, to eliminate discontentment. They'd sing for us when they came. Stuff like that.

Anyway, the oldest did ALERT and became a taxidermist I think, but then he enlisted for real and that was his ticket out. Pretty sure he is still estranged from his family. Even if they could get over communism or women in authority, losing control is a big risk, and the military is not fundie friendly.

I don't know if anyone else listened to the Serial podcast, but season 2 is about Bowe Bergdahl's story. Found his isolated homeschooling upbringing an interesting component.

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4 hours ago, neuroticcat said:

I don't know if anyone else listened to the Serial podcast, but season 2 is about Bowe Bergdahl's story. Found his isolated homeschooling upbringing an interesting component.

Interesting.  Could you give us a brief summary? 

4 hours ago, neuroticcat said:

...and the military is not fundie friendly.

True, but some branches, esp. Air Force, are riddled with Evangelicals and Evangelical chaplains. 

Also, the whole covid vaccination thing.  I was watching an on-line event done by The New Hampshire Institute for Civics Education (NH Civics) + PBS with Gen. (retired) James Mattis on What is the Role of the Military in a Democracy? After conversation with the moderator, Mattis answered questions from people in college and high school ROTC programs.  One high school kid was asking, after prefacing his question with some covid vaccine blah blah, if it was "fair" for someone (I'm guessing his father or a relative) who had been in the military for 17 years to be kicked out over vaccine refusal. 

After talking about George Washington's order for all troops at Valley Forge to be "vaccinated" for smallpox, Mattis told the kid that if he didn't understand the need universal vaccination among the troops and obeying orders, he might consider that he was in the wrong line of work.  So yes, definitely not fundie friendly.  

A bit of thread drift: George Washington had small pox as a 19 year old; he knew how bad it could be. The process of innoculation at Valley Forge was called variolation. Here's a description from the History website: How Crude Smallpox Inoculations Helped George Washington Win the War  As commander of the Continental Army, Washington faced dual enemies: the British and smallpox. So he made a risky move.

“An inoculation doctor would cut an incision in the flesh of the person being inoculated and implant a thread laced with live pustular matter into the wound,” explains Fenn. “The hope and intent was for the person to come down with smallpox. When smallpox was conveyed in that fashion, it was usually a milder case than it was when it was contracted in the natural way.”   It took about a month to recover, and the death rate was about 5 to 10 percent of soldiers. 

I have an appointment for a Covid booster (Omicron!) on the 27th.  Woohoo. 

But back to fundies and the military, the whole issue of providing abortion health care in active military and the VA will send many fundies around the bend. 

 

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6 hours ago, Howl said:

Interesting.  Could you give us a brief summary? 

 

 

I've pasted an excerpt from the transcript that I could find below. In my memory (though I'm reaching back awhile) there were religious elements mentioned elsewhere, but that could simply be me reading between the lines.  What stuck out to me was how obviously ill-equipped he was for life in general because of homeschooling. Elsewhere in the podcast, he explains his reasons for going AWOL, and he talks about his idealism and wanting to live by some kind of code of the warrior from times long past. It definitely had some of the LARPing vibes we see in VF. It made me think: Doug was LARPing but so many *actually believed it* I mean, maybe there are other non-dominionist homeschoolers who want to idolize the military, but of course my mind went to these corners of fundamentalism. Especially because of the rigidity of his idealism - that there was one "right" way with zero compromise.

 

Here's the transcript from the episode: "

Sarah Koenig

Bowe sorted through his upbringing and found it wanting.

Bowe Bergdahl

I'll give you a bit of a backstory. I literally grew up by myself, in the middle of nowhere. And growing up homeschooled and out in the middle of nowhere, I grew up by myself, taking care of myself, being completely isolated from human beings.

Mark Boal

So you just grew up like fucking around in the woods and like stuff like that?

Bowe Bergdahl

Yeah. Pretty much. I mean, I grew up following cats, you know? I had...there was usually like six cats, and, you know, we had dogs and horses and guns. We had chickens. So I grew up wandering around the wilderness with guns—BB guns, air guns, .22s, shotguns. And just, that was it. I just wandered around.

Sarah Koenig

Bowe grew up on 40 acres, down a dirt road in a valley, outside the small town of Hailey. His father worked at UPS, and his mother homeschooled him and his older sister. Bowe had a hard time with the school work. He couldn't read very well then. He couldn't take in what was on the page. And so he wasn't good at his work, or he wouldn't do it. And he says he'd get punished for that, and for other things, in a way that he says felt unpredictable to him.

Bowe says he was scared all the time of getting in trouble, and that he didn't have the greatest relationship with his parents. His dad is a strong personality.

Bowe Bergdahl

If you met him personally, you'd probably like him. It's just that he's, you know...'cause he's a pretty cool person.

Mark Boal

Uh-huh.

Bowe Bergdahl

But it's just—

Sarah Koenig

It's just...complicated. Bowe's solution was the same one teenagers have used for centuries. Get out of the house.

Bowe Bergdahl

I started working officially when I turned 13, 'cause that was the legal age. And so I started, you know, spending more time at work than at home, 'cause work turned into my, you know, saving grace, basically, 'cause it got me out of the house for an official reason.

So at age 13, I kind of basically started moving out. I spent more time at work and went home to sleep and eat maybe, dinner or breakfast, and then go back to work.

Sarah Koenig

When he was about 15, Bowe fell in with a family that was pretty different from the one he'd grown up with. Someone he met through his job convinced him to take fencing classes at a little performing arts school in Ketchum, the next town over from Hailey.

Kim Harrison—she's the one from episode five who told the story about contacting Interpol—Kim was helping run the school. Her son also took fencing classes there. And her daughter Kayla took ballet. Soon, Bowe was around all the time.

Kayla Harrison

He ended up becoming attached to our family.

Sarah Koenig

That's Kayla. A few people told me, if you want to know about Bowe, talk to Kayla. She understands him. Kayla says with her, Bowe was watchful and serious and very sweet.

Kayla Harrison

Like, one birthday, for my birthday card, he went around our small little town with a card, and just asked random people to sign it for me.

Sarah Koenig

Oh, really?

Kayla Harrison

And write a little message. Yeah, it was the coolest idea. And knowing Bowe and how shy he is and how little he wants to, you know, be noticed and have strangers know who he is, that was an even bigger gesture than it seemed like, because, you know, because that's hard for him. He doesn't want to do that. I know he doesn't like that.

Sarah Koenig

Right. This is like teenager Bowe, like 16, 17?

Kayla Harrison

Yeah, teenager Bowe is super quiet. He...he would blush very easily. He's gonna be very mad at me for saying that, but he blushes really easily. And so he was really easy to embarrass. And, uh, he just...he didn't...he wanted...I don't know. He was just...gentlemanly is a good word. He was very much a gentleman and very, very conscious about saying the wrong thing or being inappropriate or anything like that."

***skipping a bit***

 

Bowe was a teenager who'd never been to school. And now, with the Strega crowd, he was testing out ideas, testing out behaviors. And maybe more than most people, he worked on improving himself, as if he were in training. His friends said it was sometimes a little overboard. He might punch trees or bricks to toughen up his hands. He wanted to get better at things, at reading or dancing or writing. He wrote stories. Mostly, though, he was trying to figure himself out.

Nick

It really mattered to him, the seeking and knowing what kind of man he was gonna be.

Sarah Koenig

Nick was about five years older than Bowe. He also worked at Strega. He and Bowe would talk and talk, for hours sometimes. Nick says it wasn't so much that Bowe was searching for something concrete, like a profession. He was wrestling with the big existential questions.

Nick

And I...you know, I really think so much of it had to do with questions of...of virtue, of what was right. More than anything, I think that's what he...that's what he was really working on and focused on all the time, was coming up with this...these values for himself.

Sarah Koenig

Mm-hm.

Nick

And he just did a lot of watching to see what everyone else did and...and reflected against it. And he didn't want it to be anyone else's.

Sarah Koenig

Bowe wasn't gonna take anyone else's word for it, about what was right, what was moral. He was gonna forge his own code. And Kayla says the one he ended up adopting for himself, it was strict, and it was uncompromising.

Kayla Harrison

And I've had arguments about...with him about this many times. And he gets really, you know, passionate about it. Like, you know there's a problem in the world, but what kind of human are you unless you're doing something about it? Like, you're not a good person if you know that there's something wrong and you're not doing everything in your power to fix it.

Sarah Koenig

Really?

Kayla Harrison

Mm-hmm. He holds the world and everybody in it to unrealistically high expectations. And if you don't live by those expectations, or by those morals and that honor that he thinks you should and he tries to live himself, then he has no respect for you.

Sarah Koenig

Yeah.

Kayla Harrison

And he doesn't...he doesn't understand.

[LAUGHS]

Sarah Koenig

It just sounds sort of impossibly idealistic, to the point where it kind of is, um...sort of [LAUGHS] strangles how you move through the world or something.

Kayla Harrison

Yeah. It's really handicapping to him. Like, it's a handicap. He's constantly struggling to understand how people are OK with everything.

[LAUGHS]

You know what I mean? Like, he doesn't have an understanding of how differently they view the world.

Sarah Koenig

Yeah.

Kayla Harrison

I think he's slowly understanding that not everybody can accept the way he thinks.

Sarah Koenig

Uh-huh.

Kayla Harrison

But that's never going to change the way he thinks.

Sarah Koenig

I get it. Yeah.

Kayla Harrison

Like, his...he has the least flexible system ever.

 

https://serialpodcast.org/season-two/7/hindsight-part-1/transcript

6 hours ago, Howl said:

True, but some branches, esp. Air Force, are riddled with Evangelicals and Evangelical chaplains. 

Totally agree with this, but, at least for my ATI friends, the kind of mainstream evangelicals like this were too liberal. They had been pulled out of a conservative Christian school to go ATI. Later, when one of the girls grew up, she married a young man who was conservative, patriotic, what we would probably think of as "fundie-lite." Her parents didn't come to her wedding over it. 

They may have been extreme, but I think - especially 20 years ago - there was a big gap *in practice* between Gothardism and run of the mill evangelicalism. I think as we are seeing all too clearly now, the roots of the ideologies are the same and bearing ugly fruit as "fringe" fundamentalism becomes more mainstream. 

Anyway, for my friend, the army was not a sheltered evangelical place at all. He met ordinary "worldly" people.

Edited by neuroticcat
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Thanks for that summary.  I had totally forgotten about Bowe Bergdahl.  He was held and tortured by the Taliban for five years, then came home to a court martial and was dishonorably discharged from the Army, so zero veteran benefits. 

I wonder how he has fared in his life since then. There is a very detailed WIKI about him that mentions this: According to documents released by his defense team, Bergdahl was diagnosed with schizotypal personality disorder following an Army Sanity Board evaluation. On July 27, 2015, a memorandum from the sanity board stated "Though Sgt. Bergdahl did have a severe mental disease or defect at the time of the alleged criminal conduct, he was able to appreciate the nature and quality and wrongfulness of this conduct."

 

 

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They should be explicit about Doug Phillips' involvement in this venture. I absolutely would not want my minor daughter, teen, tween, or otherwise, in his care.

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8 hours ago, zandria said:

They should be explicit about Doug Phillips' involvement in this venture.

They wonʻt be, especially if heʻs technically participating as a private citizen, which is quite possible. 

He has no official role in OM although Be-All is on the BOD. Weʻll have to see if he shows up as the videographer or gives a special guest lecture, sharing his vast knowledge of modern European history.

Meanwhile, *someone* is posting on the VF FB page about the downfall of Alex Jones being due his telling lies:

Quote

Alex Jones was so convinced of the enemy, so convinced of their tactics, and so convinced of himself, that he believed that just because he thought something must be true, that it was true. 
He thought that tidbits of information could be construed to present a conspiracy thesis as fact. Perhaps you have used social media to do the same. Or perhaps you are reading others who do. Now would be a good time to stop. Today Alex Jones was held accountable, a few months ago it was Amber Heard, but there are many others who have yet to be held accountable. [Emphasis added]

Re: bolded. Now who could that be referring to? :confusion-questionmarks:

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They made it to London; tons of pics on Instagram stories for both Operation Meatball, and Faith's account.

36bead3e-8bf8-47ff-9014-72ed3c817ec1.thumb.jpeg.733d3f4138d41505436fa42ef9e74cc7.jpeg

 

Spoiler

ee6b9dd4-30b5-4ad0-a410-534b1e04b831.thumb.jpeg.9346643965940277d8e34399f65b2004.jpeg

 

Faith, making an interesting fashion choice for chaperoning a group of young children though the airport...

 

Spoiler

Screenshot.thumb.jpg.8754e9b8c48f7e6e35d6f4b35460d58c.jpg

 

 

Spoiler

611598636_screenshot2.thumb.png.7e1463a8bdde21bcf4d59292efb28b5d.png

 

Edited by Coconut Flan
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This is interesting.  Because of all the past WWII cosplay, I'm curious how they can pull this off without romanticizing war. I'd be curious to know the Meatballers reading list on WWII?  What if they encounter British people who will take them to the cleaners on military history of WWII, because it's very personal to them -- for older people, their parents and grandparents lived through The Blitz. 

Perhaps it will spark a fascination with military history in some of these kids, but couldn't it just as easily spark a fascination with being a military person?

There's something about this that creeps me out, though, because none of them are historians, although Beall did homeschool 8 kids.  And you know whatever they are teaching will be seriously skewed in some way. 

I wonder if they will visit any of the concentration camps or Flanders Field. 

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3 hours ago, Howl said:

Perhaps it will spark a fascination with military history in some of these kids, but couldn't it just as easily spark a fascination with being a military person?

 

I think that might be the point. Present a romanticized view of history with a very clear enemy, and glorify the men who fought against it, and then transfer the bravado that it stirs up into fighting the “culture war,” instead of actual military service. The new Nazis are CRT, or anti-racism, or feminism. The Botkins talked about feminism this way in one of their speeches: “fighting a foe as deadly as Hitler.”

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38 minutes ago, Columbia said:

I think that might be the point. Present a romanticized view of history with a very clear enemy, and glorify the men who fought against it, and then transfer the bravado that it stirs up into fighting the “culture war,” instead of actual military service. The new Nazis are CRT, or anti-racism, or feminism. The Botkins talked about feminism this way in one of their speeches: “fighting a foe as deadly as Hitler.”

What an excellent summary.  I think you've nailed it! 

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5 hours ago, Howl said:

I wonder if they will visit any of the concentration camps or Flanders Field. 

Maybe Flanders Field -- Faith could sing "Itʻs a Long Way to Tipperary" there -- but certainly not a concentration camp. 

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18 hours ago, Columbia said:

The Botkins talked about feminism this way in one of their speeches: “fighting a foe as deadly as Hitler.”

Wait, what? What???

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37 minutes ago, Petronella said:

Wait, what? What???

Makes sense.  In their minds, Godless women, or anyone that even remotely threatens or calls to account sacred patriarchy and by extension, penis holders (!) in any way, is definitely The Enemy. 

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8 hours ago, Petronella said:

Wait, what? What???


I may have misspoken a little. I found the quote I was thinking of. It comes from Strength and Dignity for Daughters, given at one of the VF father-daughter retreats. Elizabeth (I think) is talking about a picture she saw of young Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret giving a Christmas broadcast during WW2. 
 

Quote

"They understood that it is war time, and in war there is no place for nursing our own weaknesses and serving our own interests. I knew that we were at war, too. As Christians, we're in the middle of a fierce battle, fighting a foe deadlier than Hitler, but just as real. And I knew that because of who my father was and what he did that one day I would be called on to do the same, and the very thought made me feel weak."


The foe is not defined. One could suppose they're referring to Satan, but earlier she talks about strengthening herself to "prepare to help my father fight the battles of our time."  The references to Geoff suggest that she might be generically referring to fighting in the culture war. Which, of course, would include feminism, and is also why I think all the talk about war serves to stoke enthusiasm for culture warring instead of actual military service.

That said, I don't know much about what VF put out immediately after 9/11. I have vague memories of most of the enthusiastic culture warriors encouraging actual physical battle against the Muslims, and even enlisting in the military. It would have been interesting to see if and how VF's rhetoric about war and fighting shifted if there had been another terrorist attack of the same scale in the late 2000s - 2010s. The average pew sitter isn't too worried about Marxism when there are actual tangible enemies (that he's been told all his life want to destroy him) to fight.
 

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  • 1 month later...

In which Be-All gives advice on elections:

532238731_Be-AllsElectionAdvice.thumb.jpg.c07aed0b2aca6cdeb15d554ee7c6e222.jpg

Somehow, I don't think that Iʻd take *any* advice on *anything* from Be-All Phillips.

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