Legal & Politics – Page 2 – The Wayward Willis Podcast

Hanging Out The Walsh – Persecution

May 2, 2017 No Comments

This “Hanging Out The Walsh” series will be an ongoing critique of Matt Walsh’s blog posts and podcast in an effort to highlight misinformation, blatant lies, and misapplication of religious ideas to the real world.

Mr. Walsh published an article decrying the political persecution of David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt of the Center for Medical Progress due to charges being brought against them for having misrepresented themselves, filmed discussions without consent and heavily edited them before release in order to present an argument that Planned Parenthood murders as many babies as they can in order to sell fetal tissue to research companies and, I suppose, make a bajillion dollars in order to fund their Satanic cult.

Entertainment, Politics

Poor Baby Drumpf

January 9, 2017 No Comments

In what appears to be a never-ending toddler tantrum, Drumpf again lashes out at a critic and attempts to hand-wave away his awful behavior. I’m posting this not because I want to give a crap about Donald Drumpf’s Twitter feed or his feelings, but because this man is our next President. The American electorate put this man in office. As such, I feel it’s important to make sure we understand who and what this guy is.

Politics, Social Commentary

Why Not My President

November 16, 2016 No Comments

Since Drumpf was elected as our next President I’ve used the #NotMyPresident hashtag a few times. I realize that this hashtag, in the wake of the Portland and Oakland protests that turned violent and resulted in property damage and at least one life lost, has become somewhat marred with irrationality, “cry-baby” entitlement, and unjustified anger. This is obviously not representative of my views on #NotMyPresident as an idea. This post is intended to clarify why I still use #NotMyPresident.

Politics

Congratulations, President Drumpf

November 10, 2016 No Comments

I woke up Wednesday morning to the news that Donald J. Drumpf will be the 45th President of the United States of America. This news is historic on so many levels. I can’t think of many good things that will come out of this Presidency. My thoughts follow:

NOTE: I’ve now had a full day to process this information and am still having trouble with the reality of the situation. This post has been written over the course of two days and may not even fully describe the potential threat to America Drumpf’s Presidency poses.

1. Drumpf’s Presidency legitimizes the worst in us

Throughout his campaign, this man has done everything he could to scare the living crap out of the American people, using phrases like “third-world country” and “war zone” to describe our infrastructure and cities. While this sensationalism is obviously false, and (for example) numerous reports – based on actual data over the past few decades – show that crime is down nationwide, the anxious, frightened voter base he’s garnered takes it as confirmation that they’re in real danger and cements the wrong-headed idea that our government has failed us. In short, he has bolstered intellectual laziness over honesty with the words, “Trust me.” And his voter base did. You don’t have to scour social media very thoroughly to find more examples than you want of expressions of these ideas.

Politics, Social Commentary

Mike Pence: Not a Victim

October 26, 2016 No Comments

As egregious as Donald Drumpf’s missteps in this election have been, few people have really drawn any real attention to the following fact: Mike Pence is worse. Sure, Drumpf may be the one spouting all of his nonsense, inciting fear and hatred, and generally being a bigoted asshat but Mike Pence is still his Vice Presidential running mate who waves away, justifies, or adopts Drumpf’s harmful rhetoric. It’s one thing to “just be yourself” and be an outwardly awful person but another thing entirely to pretend to be a man of principle while refusing to take a stand and distance yourself from the awful person. You’ve always heard that you’re judged by the company you keep and, in this case, Pence is an awful person.

Pence has had ample opportunity to stand on American values and make what would be an enormously historic statement in American politics by simply saying, “I cannot in good conscience back a man who would undermine American democracy with abandon” and formally remove himself as Drumpf’s running mate. Think of how Pence would be remembered for decades – maybe centuries – just by making a single gesture of patriotism and moral fortitude! He could be one of the most famous politicians of all time!

Politics, Social Commentary

Grabbing Some Pussy

October 11, 2016 No Comments

On Friday, October 7, 2016 the Washington Post released audio of Donald Drumpf on an open mic bragging to Billy Bush about his rich, white privilege in relation to his sexual behavior toward women. Drumpf said that he could grope and kiss women whenever he wanted because when you’re famous “they’ll let you do anything.” The release of this recording fueled a national debate on social media and television in what seemed to me a surreal division of people who thought it was “no big deal” and those who were deeply troubled by it. I fall into the latter category, not because I’m offended by words but because I look at the bigger picture and evaluate the environment in which this occurred.

If this were simply about words I would most likely say, “Well, that’s not very Presidential. It seems to me that someone running for office should conduct him/herself in a more professional, adult manner.” I would then move on and worry about actual issues that will affect the country, both short- and long-term. As previously stated, though, this isn’t about words.

Legal & Politics

Facebook Affirmations, Vol. VII: Transgender

July 27, 2016 No Comments

In my news feed on Facebook I will be served a daily dose of Christian affirmations from friends. In this series of posts, which I call “Facebook Affirmations™,” I will post and discuss some of these gems.

Today’s Facebook post doesn’t come from my own feed, but it inspired such grotesque feelings that I wrote a response that likely wouldn’t ever have seen the light of day and I want to share it here. The Facebook post in question had these points to make (paraphrased and summarized by me):

The military has changed its stance on transgender service members to where, like homosexual service members, they can openly serve without fear of being persecuted or kicked out of the military
Transgender service members will have access to healthcare needs via the normal service members’ healthcare system, which may include gender reassignment and/or hormones
This country doesn’t do enough for veterans (MY NOTE: I have no idea what this had to do with anything because it’s completely unrelated to transgender service members unless the context is the support of transgender veterans…but it wasn’t)
Transgender people and their medical needs are just gross

Politics, Religion

You Cannot Defeat Terrorism

June 15, 2016 No Comments

With violence erupting anew and the controversy over bans on Muslim immigrants and terrorism, I feel it’s important to comment on the state of things and a fundamental misunderstanding of terrorism on the part of our elected officials. To whit:

Terrorism isn’t a person. It isn’t even a people. It’s an ideal.

This is where things get sticky. Our government officials have stated that we will “defeat terrorism” and that we’re already doing a pretty decent job of it. But what’s the measure being used? How can you tell how many people – ordinary, disenchanted, naturalized citizens of the country – are being influenced by this ideal and how they’re responding to our attacks on a vague notion of the “perversion of the religion of Islam?” The answer is, you cannot. To prove that, look at the recent attack in Orlando where, at what seemed to be the last minute in a seemingly uninformed statement by the killer, a natural-born United States citizen pledged allegiance to ISIS and murdered 49 people. He’s not alone.

Politics, Religion

Beliefs Are Not For Voting

March 18, 2016 No Comments

If I could summarize this post in one sentence it would be this:

Your personal beliefs are not what’s good for the country.

Let me clarify. A belief system is personal, subjective, and evolving. The things you believe aren’t necessarily the things your neighbor believes. Often, the things you believe aren’t the same as the person sitting next to you in your church, mosque, temple, or support group. You may feel strongly about a topic or issue but it would be incredibly arrogant for you to assume that everyone else does – or should. When you hold a personal belief it’s virtuous for you to live your life according to that belief but it’s evil for you to try to force others to do the same, regardless of your intentions.

Merriam-Webster defines “belief” as follows:

a feeling of being sure that someone or something exists or that something is true

a feeling that something is good, right, or valuable

a feeling of trust in the worth or ability of someone

Notice the word “feeling” used in all of these definitions? Feelings are personal and cannot be objectively shared across an entire population. Your feelings are fine when they stay inside of your personal bubble but you should not attempt to extend that bubble to other people – especially when they don’t want to be inside your bubble, no matter how safe and warm you think it is.

Your beliefs are formed by your personal experiences in life (or opinions you’ve adopted from other people with or without justification), which shape your feelings about the things you encounter. It’s easy to see that other people have lived different lives with different backgrounds, different family dynamics, and different experiences than you. Knowing that, why is it so hard to see that your beliefs don’t apply to them? It doesn’t matter that you feel your beliefs are correct and it doesn’t matter whether you think your beliefs make sense. There will always be someone out there who disagrees because they’ve formed their own (often incompatible) beliefs on their own life experiences and most likely feel that theirs are correct and make sense.

The things you believe now aren’t the same as the things you believed when you were five years old or 15 years old because you’ve matured and learned more about how the world works since then. 15 years from now it’s entirely possible that your belief system will have changed – sometimes in drastic ways.

Your vote doesn’t just affect you. Think about that when you think about voting. If your primary concern is which candidate shares more of your personal beliefs than the other, you’re using the wrong criteria for your decision. You should be worried about which of the candidate’s beliefs are going to make it into his or her policy and how that policy will affect the citizens (not just the religious ones) of this country and people around the world.

Stop being selfish with your vote.

Legal & Politics, Random Thoughts

Nonsense Laws: Window Tint

June 3, 2012 No Comments

This has nothing to do with religion but I’m kind of worked up over it and wanted to share some thoughts. Last night I was pulled over by a very courteous and friendly police officer who was (a) admiring my Mustang and (b) wondering if my windows were tinted too dark. They are, and I’m fully aware of this. However, I’ve chosen not to rectify the situation because I feel that the law makes no sense. I’ve essentially agreed that any tickets I may receive for my tinted windows are a tax for keeping my window tint. That aside, I’ll detail all of my thoughts on the law below and would love to have some feedback from my readers (if any are still hanging around).