I'm a Liberal - Lori Galligher

I'm a liberal, but that doesn't mean what a lot of you apparently think it does. Let's break it down, shall we? Because quite frankly, I'm getting a little tired of being told what I believe and what I stand for. Spoiler alert: not every liberal is the same, though the majority of liberals I know think along roughly these same lines:

1. I believe a country should take care of its weakest members. A country cannot call itself civilized when its children, disabled, sick, and elderly are neglected. PERIOD.

2. I believe healthcare is a right, not a privilege. Somehow that's interpreted as "I believe Obamacare is the end-all, be-all." This is not the case. I'm fully aware that the ACA has problems, that a national healthcare system would require everyone to chip in, and that it's impossible to create one that is devoid of flaws, but I have yet to hear an argument against it that makes "let people die because they can't afford healthcare" a better alternative. I believe healthcare should be far cheaper than it is, and that everyone should have access to it. And no, I'm not opposed to paying higher taxes in the name of making that happen.

3. I believe education should be affordable. It doesn't necessarily have to be free (though it works in other countries so I'm mystified as to why it can't work in the US), but at the end of the day, there is no excuse for students graduating college saddled with five- or six-figure debt.

4. I don't believe your money should be taken from you and given to people who don't want to work. I have literally never encountered anyone who believes this. Ever. I just have a massive moral problem with a society where a handful of people can possess the majority of the wealth while there are people literally starving to death, freezing to death, or dying because they can't afford to go to the doctor. Fair wages, lower housing costs, universal healthcare, affordable education, and the wealthy actually paying their share would go a long way toward alleviating this. Somehow believing that makes me a communist.

5. I don't throw around "I'm willing to pay higher taxes" lightly. If I'm suggesting something that involves paying more, well, it's because I'm fine with paying my share as long as it's actually going to something besides lining corporate pockets or bombing other countries while Americans die without healthcare.

6. I believe companies should be required to pay their employees a decent, livable wage. Somehow this is always interpreted as me wanting burger flippers to be able to afford a penthouse apartment and a Mercedes. What it actually means is that no one should have to work three full-time jobs just to keep their head above water. Restaurant servers should not have to rely on tips, multibillion-dollar companies should not have employees on food stamps, workers shouldn't have to work themselves into the ground just to barely make ends meet, and minimum wage should be enough for someone to work 40 hours and live.

7. I am not anti-Christian. I have no desire to stop Christians from being Christians, to close churches, to ban the Bible, to forbid prayer in school, etc. (BTW, prayer in school is NOT illegal; *compulsory* prayer in school is - and should be - illegal). All I ask is that Christians recognize *my* right to live according to *my* beliefs. When I get pissed off that a politician is trying to legislate Scripture into law, I'm not "offended by Christianity" -- I'm offended that you're trying to force me to live by your religion's rules. You know how you get really upset at the thought of Muslims imposing Sharia law on you? That's how I feel about Christians trying to impose biblical law on me. Be a Christian. Do your thing. Just don't force it on me or mine.

8. I don't believe LGBT people should have more rights than you. I just believe they should have the *same* rights as you.

9. I don't believe illegal immigrants should come to America and have the world at their feet, especially since THIS ISN'T WHAT THEY DO (spoiler: undocumented immigrants are ineligible for all those programs they're supposed to be abusing, and if they're "stealing" your job it's because your employer is hiring illegally). I believe there are far more humane ways to handle undocumented immigration than our current practices (i.e., detaining children, splitting up families, ending DACA, etc).

10. I don't believe the government should regulate everything, but since greed is such a driving force in our country, we NEED regulations to prevent cut corners, environmental destruction, tainted food/water, unsafe materials in consumable goods or medical equipment, etc. It's not that I want the government's hands in everything -- I just don't trust people trying to make money to ensure that their products/practices/etc. are actually SAFE. Is the government devoid of shadiness? Of course not. But with those regulations in place, consumers have recourse if they're harmed and companies are liable for medical bills, environmental cleanup, etc. Just kind of seems like common sense when the alternative to government regulation is letting companies bring their bottom line into the equation.

11. I believe our current administration is fascist. Not because I dislike them or because I can’t get over an election, but because I've spent too many years reading and learning about the Third Reich to miss the similarities. Not because any administration I dislike must be Nazis, but because things are actually mirroring authoritarian and fascist regimes of the past.

12. I believe the systemic racism and misogyny in our society is much worse than many people think, and desperately needs to be addressed. Which means those with privilege -- white, straight, male, economic, etc. -- need to start listening, even if you don't like what you're hearing, so we can start dismantling everything that's causing people to be marginalized.

13. I am not interested in coming after your blessed guns, nor is anyone serving in government. What I am interested in is the enforcement of present laws and enacting new, common sense gun regulations. Got another opinion? Put it on your page, not mine.

14. I believe in so-called political correctness. I prefer to think it’s social politeness. If I call you Chuck and you say you prefer to be called Charles I’ll call you Charles. It’s the polite thing to do. Not because everyone is a delicate snowflake, but because as Maya Angelou put it, when we know better, we do better. When someone tells you that a term or phrase is more accurate/less hurtful than the one you're using, you now know better. So why not do better? How does it hurt you to NOT hurt another person?

15. I believe in funding sustainable energy, including offering education to people currently working in coal or oil so they can change jobs. There are too many sustainable options available for us to continue with coal and oil. Sorry, billionaires. Maybe try investing in something else.

16. I believe that women should not be treated as a separate class of human. They should be paid the same as men who do the same work, should have the same rights as men and should be free from abuse. Why on earth shouldn’t they be?

I think that about covers it. Bottom line is that I'm a liberal because I think we should take care of each other. That doesn't mean you should work 80 hours a week so your lazy neighbor can get all your money. It just means I don't believe there is any scenario in which preventable suffering is an acceptable outcome as long as money is saved.

THE WORLD HAS LOVED, HATED AND ENVIED THE U.S.

THE WORLD HAS LOVED, HATED AND ENVIED THE U.S. NOW, FOR THE FIRST TIME, WE PITY IT
Irish Times
April 25, 2020
By Fintan O’Toole

Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.

However bad things are for most other rich democracies, it is hard not to feel sorry for Americans. Most of them did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Yet they are locked down with a malignant narcissist who, instead of protecting his people from Covid-19, has amplified its lethality. The country Trump promised to make great again has never in its history seemed so pitiful.

Will American prestige ever recover from this shameful episode? The US went into the coronavirus crisis with immense advantages: precious weeks of warning about what was coming, the world’s best concentration of medical and scientific expertise, effectively limitless financial resources, a military complex with stunning logistical capacity and most of the world’s leading technology corporations. Yet it managed to make itself the global epicenter of the pandemic.

As the American writer George Packer puts it in the current edition of the Atlantic, “The United States reacted ... like Pakistan or Belarus – like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering.”

It is one thing to be powerless in the face of a natural disaster, quite another to watch vast power being squandered in real time – wilfully, malevolently, vindictively. It is one thing for governments to fail (as, in one degree or another, most governments did), quite another to watch a ruler and his supporters actively spread a deadly virus. Trump, his party, and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News became vectors of the pestilence.

The grotesque spectacle of the president openly inciting people (some of them armed) to take to the streets to oppose the restrictions that save lives is the manifestation of a political death wish. What are supposed to be daily briefings on the crisis, demonstrative of national unity in the face of a shared challenge, have been used by Trump merely to sow confusion and division. They provide a recurring horror show in which all the neuroses that haunt the American subconscious dance naked on live TV.
If the plague is a test, its ruling political nexus ensured that the US would fail it at a terrible cost in human lives. In the process, the idea of the US as the world’s leading nation – an idea that has shaped the past century – has all but evaporated.

Other than the Trump impersonator Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, who is now looking to the US as the exemplar of anything other than what not to do? How many people in Düsseldorf or Dublin are wishing they lived in Detroit or Dallas?

It is hard to remember now but, even in 2017, when Trump took office, the conventional wisdom in the US was that the Republican Party and the broader framework of US political institutions would prevent him from doing too much damage. This was always a delusion, but the pandemic has exposed it in the most savage ways.

Abject surrender
What used to be called mainstream conservatism has not absorbed Trump – he has absorbed it. Almost the entire right-wing half of American politics has surrendered abjectly to him. It has sacrificed on the altar of wanton stupidity the most basic ideas of responsibility, care and even safety.
Thus, even at the very end of March, 15 Republican governors had failed to order people to stay at home or to close non-essential businesses. In Alabama, for example, it was not until April 3rd that governor Kay Ivey finally issued a stay-at-home order.

In Florida, the state with the highest concentration of elderly people with underlying conditions, governor Ron DeSantis, a Trump mini-me, kept the beach resorts open to students travelling from all over the US for spring break parties. Even on April 1st, when he issued restrictions, DeSantis exempted religious services and “recreational activities”.

Georgia governor Brian Kemp, when he finally issued a stay-at-home order on April 1st, explained: “We didn’t know that [the virus can be spread by people without symptoms] until the last 24 hours.”

This is not mere ignorance – it is deliberate and homicidal stupidity. There is, as the demonstrations this week in US cities have shown, plenty of political mileage in denying the reality of the pandemic. It is fuelled by Fox News and far-right internet sites, and it reaps for these politicians millions of dollars in donations, mostly (in an ugly irony) from older people who are most vulnerable to the coronavirus.
It draws on a concoction of conspiracy theories, hatred of science, paranoia about the “deep state” and religious providentialism (God will protect the good folks) that is now very deeply infused in the mindset of the American right.

Trump embodies and enacts this mindset, but he did not invent it. The US response to the coronavirus crisis has been paralysed by a contradiction that the Republicans have inserted into the heart of US democracy. On the one hand, they want to control all the levers of governmental power. On the other they have created a popular base by playing on the notion that government is innately evil and must not be trusted.

The contradiction was made manifest in two of Trump’s statements on the pandemic: on the one hand that he has “total authority”, and on the other that “I don’t take responsibility at all”. Caught between authoritarian and anarchic impulses, he is incapable of coherence.
Fertile ground

But this is not just Donald Trump. The crisis has shown definitively that Trump’s presidency is not an aberration. It has grown on soil long prepared to receive it. The monstrous blossoming of misrule has structure and purpose and strategy behind it.

There are very powerful interests who demand “freedom” in order to do as they like with the environment, society and the economy. They have infused a very large part of American culture with the belief that “freedom” is literally more important than life. My freedom to own assault weapons trumps your right not to get shot at school. Now, my freedom to go to the barber (“I Need a Haircut” read one banner this week in St Paul, Minnesota) trumps your need to avoid infection.

Usually when this kind of outlandish idiocy is displaying itself, there is the comforting thought that, if things were really serious, it would all stop. People would sober up. Instead, a large part of the US has hit the bottle even harder.

And the president, his party and their media allies keep supplying the drinks. There has been no moment of truth, no shock of realisation that the antics have to end. No one of any substance on the US right has stepped in to say: get a grip, people are dying here.

That is the mark of how deep the trouble is for the US – it is not just that Trump has treated the crisis merely as a way to feed tribal hatreds but that this behaviour has become normalised. When the freak show is live on TV every evening, and the star is boasting about his ratings, it is not really a freak show any more. For a very large and solid bloc of Americans, it is reality.

And this will get worse before it gets better. Trump has at least eight more months in power. In his inaugural address in 2017, he evoked “American carnage” and promised to make it stop. But now that the real carnage has arrived, he is revelling in it. He is in his element.

As things get worse, he will pump more hatred and falsehood, more death-wish defiance of reason and decency, into the groundwater. If a new administration succeeds him in 2021, it will have to clean up the toxic dump he leaves behind. If he is re-elected, toxicity will have become the lifeblood of American politics.

Either way, it will be a long time before the rest of the world can imagine America being great again.

Trump From a Brit

Someone asked "Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?"

Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England, wrote this magnificent response:

"A few things spring to mind.

Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem.

For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace - all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed.

So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.

Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing - not once, ever.

I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility - for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman.

But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is - his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.

Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers.

And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults - he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.

There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface.

Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront.

Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul.

And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist.

Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that.

He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat.

He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.

And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully.

That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead.

There are unspoken rules to this stuff - the Queensberry rules of basic decency - and he breaks them all. He punches downwards - which a gentleman should, would, could never do - and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless - and he kicks them when they are down.

So the fact that a significant minority - perhaps a third - of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think 'Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:
* Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.
* You don't need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.

This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss.

After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum.

God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid.

He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart.

In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws - he would make a Trump.

And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish:

'My God… what… have… I… created?

If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set."

Ain't Life Grand?

If you're not watching Trump's nightly Coronavirus shitfest, here's the summary:

He started out by accusing nurses of hoarding or stealing face masks.

Trump: "There is something going on. I don't know if it is hoarding. It is maybe worse than hoarding ... for years, 10 to 20,000 masks. Okay. It's a New York City hospital. It's packed all the time. How do you go from 10 to 20 to 300,000? 10 to 20,000 masks, to 300,000 ... even though this is different. Something is going on. And you ought to look into it as reporters. Where are the masks going? Are they going out the back door? How do you go from 10,000 to 300,000? Uh, and we have that in a lot of different places. So ... somebody should probably look into that, 'cause I just don't see from a practical standpoint how that's possible to go from that to that, and we have that happening in numerous places..."

He then accused hospitals of "hoarding" ventilators.

He does this several times throughout the briefing, Suggesting New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, and medical personnel, specifically nurses, are conspiring to overinflate the number of ventilators and masks needed.

Again, he does this more than once.

Trump then admits there actually ARE shortages, but blames Obama. Saying that it's like how the military was out of bullets when he took over. None of this has any basis in reality whatsoever, but the toadies in the background are all nodding like this is fact.

This is beyond gaslighting.

This is a radioactive gas cloud.

This is like watching the Soviet government press briefings about Chernobyl, when the reactor was still burning and the Russians didn't realize we could actually SEE it from orbit and that radiation meters were sounding the alarm over half the planet.

Trump then talks about immigrants and how keeping them out of America probably prevented us from getting the plague and everybody behind him has this carefully practiced expressionless Soviet face on, and then bizarrely Trump randomly pivots to explaining how he didn't know until TODAY that 2.2 MILLION AMERICANS will likely die if we don't maintain social distancing -- even though that number was specifically briefed IN FRONT of him two weeks ago on national TV.

Naturally, now that Trump is suddenly aware of the probability of 2.2 MILLION DEATHS, he never said he was going to order America back to work by Easter. That was, uh, um, well, you see, um, just "aspirational."

The man who always speaks bluntly, is suddenly talking in metaphor and parable.

A QANN "reporter" asks Trump why his approval ratings are so high, is it because he's so awesome? Trump admits that he is.

Someone else asks about Americans facing eviction on April 1st. Trump says "I think landlords will take it easy."

Trump goes after reporter Yacmiche Alcindor for daring to ask about his repeated attacks on various governors. Trump angrily says, "We sent thousands of generators to New York ... the people in New York never distribute it the generators."

It takes a minute to figure out that when Trump says "generators" he probably means "ventilators." He does this repeatedly.

A reporter asks why Florida has 100% of their requests for supplies from the national strategic stockpile filled, but Massachusetts has not? Instead of answering, Trump says: "I was on the call yesterday with the governors and they were happy with the job we are doing."

The governors, who he noted the day before, he refuses to call. He was on the phone with them. They're happy he says, despite the fact that he was just this morning talking about how they're not happy and they should be.

Trump then segues into: "The biggest problem was the test didn't work. That was not from us. That has been there a long time" and suggests that the fault lies with Obama.

The tests in question were developed by the CDC, WITHIN THE LAST 3 MONTHS. Literally since the beginning of THIS year. Obama has been out of office for nearly 4 years now.

Then, bizarrely -- or not, given that this the new normal -- Trump says: "You will see drugs being used like nobody has ever used them before, and people are going to be dying all over the place."

I thought at first he was talking about his repeated claims about untested drugs as a cure for the coronavirus. You know, aquarium cleaner. But, instead, he was talking about drug ABUSE. Not sure by who, but you can probably guess. You know what happens when "those" people stay home with nothing to do.

A CNN reporter tries to get Trump back to his comments about the governors of blue states having to be more "appreciative." Trump screams at him, "YOUR STATEMENT IS A LIE!"

The reporter was LITERALLY quoting Trump's own statement.

Literally quoting Trump.

Trump called those words a lie. I mean, he's not wrong, but still...

As proof of this, Trump starts bragging about how his press briefings are getting better ratings than The Bachelor and Monday Night Football.

"The enemy is death," declares Trump.

And we're done. Thanks for coming everybody. Hope to see you all tomorrow for another exciting episode of "Reality TV President!"

~Jim Wright
https://www.facebook.com/Stonekettle/posts/2885552571480127

RTFM

Last week was very rough. I was primary on-call. That means I can be, and am, called and notified over any software or hardware error across a couple of major product lines anytime of the day and night. Sometimes the systems are quiet, but not this time. The guy that had it last weekend had mentioned that one particular error was firing about every hour overnight.

And he wasn't lying. It would take care of itself, but it still paged me every hour overnight. We had looked at several fixes but it was still notifying. Considering how much trouble I have getting back to sleep after having been woken up, this was becoming a special kind of hell for me.

On the third night, at midnight, another alert came in. It wasn't the same issue as before. I laid there, hoping the issue would go away. Nope. It was still in an error condition. Great. I'll be shot because now I have to engage the brain and I was working off about 6 hours of sleep in the past four days.

OK. get into the environment, take a look at the graphs and see what the problem was. OK. we have a process to fix this. So I'll run that.
<20minutes> Nope. That didn't do it. So let's amp it up and restart the software one level up. I couldn't see anything in a particular instance of the software, so global reset.
<20 minutes> Still having issues. Let's look at the flowing logs of the lower software and see if there is something there. Ok, one of the 5 seems to be an issue. Let's restart that.
<20 minutes> No, it is now erroring over here. It looks like the upstream one is bad. Thing is, I don't know which of the four it is. Let's try restarting them selectively.
<20 minutes> Where is this freaking error coming from?! Google mentions this error is associated with network issues. Dang it's cold. Ok. let's look at the network traffic and see if I can find something there.
<10 minutes> Interesting. This server's network spikes and then went way low. I'm going to poke around with it.
<10 minutes> OK. the server is in an unstable state. So I have to announce this to my group and ask if anyone is awake. Let them know that I have to restart the server and that can be a shock to the entire system.
<10 minutes> Announce this to all the developers and admins. Restart.
<10 minutes> Verify that things have repaired. Check the processes. Announce the repair.

About 4:30, everything was done. Crawled back into bed. Normally, this is the time I take a shower and get ready for work. Too tired. Can't operate.

<7:00am> "Barry, I need you to wake up. There's no hot water. There's something wrong with the water heater." <swear, cuss, shake my fist at the sky>

My wife led me downstairs and told me all that she had checked. The breakers were all set. The furnace is still working so the gas is still on. I wandered aimlessly while Tracy was on her hands and knees looking at the bottom of the tank. At this time, I was having a few different thoughts. One, why did she ask me down here if she's going to do the fix. Two, why am I standing here? My wife is more than capable to fix this without me.
<5 minutes> Me: "The instructions are on the side of the tank."  Tracy: "Oh!"
<2 minutes, in a cold basement> "OK, did that. Got a blinky. Pressing the button....There's the pilot. Great! Looks like it is working again." She got up from the floor and told me to get back to bed.

As I walked back upstairs, awake with no hope of getting sleep, I mused that all I did was tell my wife to RTFM. "Read The F****** Manual." I won't tell her that until later. It seems to be all I do at work telling users what to do.

At 9:00 am, another issue came up and in the on-line meeting, I was asked what I was doing there, as I had been up all night. They'd take the rest of the on-call and that I should get back to bed. I work with great people. And my wife is awesome too. The day, however, sucked.

This Has To Go

This isn't a great, feel-good post. I'm doing it for motivation and shaming myself. I'm tired of this stupid diabetes dance that I do with my doctor. I take the pills. I alter my diet for a bit. Then I remember how much I like potatoes. Then I circle the drain. I don't test my sugar. I know it is high. Ignorance is bliss.

This post is when I looked in the mirror and stated, "This has to go." while my hand was resting in my gut. A man shouldn't have a gut.

So that is where I was after the holidays. I get a backbone and take a weekend off up in a city I wanted to spend more time in, Winona Wisconsin. I don't eat carbs. Just veggies and meat. Get my mind right about carbs and what I need to do. After coming back home I talk to Tracy about things. I want to do things this summer. I didn't do much last summer. I have vacation time and I want to use it becoming healthy. I also look online to see some of the biking trails that I came across in my travels. Ok. Here's some goals.

1) Get bike into the shop. Fix some of the things that I'm having issues with.
2) Exercise daily. I can still watch TV but do it while riding a bike. I need to crank it up over time because I have to get ready for long rides.
3) Stop eating garbage. I know it is comforting but it is killing me. I need to lose at least 30 pounds.
4) Get time scheduled with Tracy so we can do this biking.
5) Do these paths. Most are 40-50 miles. I can do that in a day. One is probably 2-3 days.

• I&M Canal I wanted to do this last year. I didn't.
• Jane Adams and Badger Trail
• Glacial River Trail
• Glacial Drumlin Trail
• Wild Goose Trail
• 400 Trail
• Elroy Sparta Trail
• LaCrosse River Trail
• Great River Trail

I don't know if this will come to fruition. I have to try though.

CES Nonsense

Years ago when I was struggling with trying to understand my faith, I joined a group on Facebook with people that had similar issues. A whole bunch of people trying to come to grips with how they felt, what they had read or other experiences in their lives. One man in the group was also wondering on how to best understand his faith and had asked his father if he could ask him some questions. His father, IIRC, had determined that the questions were a bit more involved than he knew how to answer but he knew someone higher up in the Church Education System (CES) and if he could write up his questions, he would pass them on.

Thus the publication of the "CES Letter" was started. I didn't realize that I was witnessing something that would lead thousands out of the church.  As time went on, calls for references were made to substantiate the questions as well as any possible responses. The CES official never did respond to the letter, but it eventually was expanded and published and is freely available online for download. The author, Jeremy Runnels, was eventually excommunicated. His trial was covertly recorded and it and several other interviews are available on YouTube. He wanted others to know what asking uncomfortable but honest questions would lead to.

I've long since unsubscribed from that FB group. I do still have friends that I met there, but I no longer frequent those kinds of sites because my family has moved on. However, I was informed of this on a subreddit and I thought it was a great example of the kinds of people who leave the church and just how we treat each other generally.

What Do I Do Now?

EDIT: well, this blew up. I am blown away from all of the messages and comments that I have been receiving. They are filled with love and compassion. I wish I could message all of you back. Maybe I will another day. But for now, I have finals to study for. Also, I hold no grudges or ill-feelings to anybody that was involved in my post below. 

I've been wanting to post on here, but I just needed time to process all of the new information that i have received the past couple of weeks (which have felt like months).
I am one of the sons of the stake president that excommunicated Jeremy Runnels. So, I have a unique perspective that I would like to share with this community. First off, I love my dad with all of my heart and he and my mom have been my rock and support for all of my life. I had a great childhood, even though my dad was gone a lot of Tuesdays/Sundays for church meetings. I went on a mission, Temple Marriage, the whole enchilada. After I got home from my mission in 2014. I went away to go to college at a small college. I was at this college when the whole Jeremy thing was happening. So, what did they say about the church court?
Nothing, absolutely nothing. I didn't hear anything about this till months and months later. And even then, it was through my mother. who talked about it very briefly and with no details. She told me that my dad held a church court. It was on the news, and my dad was going through a really difficult and rough time. It weighed on him heavily the decisions he had to make. and the night of the church court, my mom went to stay with other family just to be safe. (The church also sent security or something to protect my dad) not clear so don't quote me on that. My mom later found that someone had spray painted a swastika underneath our backyard doormat. So that just solidified my belief in the church and how exmo's are bad people wanting to hurt the church.
But, why am I writing this post in 2019 and not back then when it was relevant? Well I got curious a couple months ago about why that excommunication happened. So, I googled my dad and the church. That sent me down down down the rabbit hole. I read news articles about the trial, I watched the video Jeremy released of his church court. I read all of the demeaning comments about my dad. I found this subreddit because it linked to Jeremy.
Then, I found the CES letter. Holy crap. I couldn't stop reading it. I would look at the sources, stay up all hours of the night just reading the letter. I then read Letter for my wife, Then the gospel topics essays. I couldn't believe it! I remember learning a little bit about polygamy and Joseph Smith and the peep stone. But, definitely not to this extent. I was devastated. Also, I found all of this during the last couple weeks of the fall sememster. So, whenever I wasn't working, going to school or studying, I was glued to finding more Information.
I found John Dehlin and his Mormon Stories podcast and that has helped me so much. because he has just a loving approach to everybody and doesn't bash the church like a lot of posts on this subreddit do.
So, I came out to my wife and said I'm having trouble with my testimony. I gave her high level basics of what was going on. About my dad, the CES letter and the gospel topics essays. She said I shouldn't look at that stuff anymore. I let it go. And whenever I try and bring up something about the letter or anything controversial about the church. she says that she would rather be left in the dark.
I also tried to talk to close friends about my issues vaguely and they just changed the subject. So i left it. But, now I don't know who to talk to. I don't want to talk to my dad because I feel that it would crush him if one of his children fell away because of the actions of someone he excommunicated. and the rest of my family is so devout that I would like to think they would love me and talk me through this, but, I don't know if that would happen.
So, I'm having a faith crisis with nobody to talk to and crying in church because i'm still feeling all of the good the church does and provides but also cant deny facts. and ALL DURING FINALS WEEK. RIP my concentration.
I wrote this for two reasons.
just to get it off my chest and to put it all in words.
Just be nice to everybody. Everybody has their faults and mistakes. And many people that we criticize and demean within the church have families and loved ones that are devastated when they hear all of the bad and derogatory things they hear about them.
We don't win with fear and hatred, we win with love.

And who was the one I found at the top of the list of responses?

 Jeremy Runnells here. It's an understatement to say that I'm surprised to see this post. A friend texted me telling me about this just now.

First of all, thank you for your vulnerability and for sharing this. I know it takes a lot of courage and I applaud you.

I see your faith crisis (I prefer to instead refer it as "Discovering the Church's Truth Crisis") is just weeks old. I remember how disorienting and insane my early weeks were and what a shock it was to my system and model of the world. You have my compassion and sincere concern.

I agree with your post. I think your dad is a decent man at his core. He was caught in the middle of something that he was unprepared for and just couldn't process. I'm not surprised by your words that it weighed heavily on him as I believe it did. I met with him about a year before the court thing went down in 2016 and he offered to consult with his historian friends about the questions and wanted to help. He disappeared for about a year after that and I can only speculate that perhaps it was because it was too scary for him to go down that road so he just left it on the shelf.

I don't see your dad as the instigator. I see LDS, Inc. in Salt Lake as the instigator. The first time I heard back from your dad after that year of silence was in January 2016 when he called me. One of the first things he said was, "I need to hold a court on you." It wasn't "I'm going to hold a court" or "I've decided I'm going to hold a court"...it was "I need to...". What this told me was that there was an outside force putting pressure on him to do this and it fits with what I've seen in my interactions with him. I don't think he wanted to go after me but had no choice as he had to obey the Brethren.

I never wanted to hurt your dad and have never wished him ill. I'm sorry to hear about the hardship he and his wife went through and the whole swastika thing is outrageous and unacceptable.

You're not alone and you shouldn't feel alone. There are so many good people here and in this community who can help you through this. This includes myself and John Dehlin. If there's a good time to have a faith crisis, 2019 is it as there are so many excellent resources and wisdom. You've received a gift but it will take time to fully appreciate the gift. It's not going to look like a gift in the coming weeks and months but it's a gift.

Hang in there and keep your chin up. You've done nothing wrong. Keep asking questions and keep climbing. The mountain is hard to climb but it's gorgeous at the top.

I just think this is how people should support each other. People go through challenges. We need support.