This Week's Opening Thought: December 15, 2025

TW: Mentions of mass shootings, assault, murder, domestic terrorism.

This week's opening thought: how horrible does a person have to be for you to not back or support them?

How horrific does a person's words and actions need to be for you to not back or support them, even if you believe you'll receive some kind of benefit from backing and supporting them?

When does a person's words and actions become so vile, so repugnant, that you are unable to disregard, whitewash, or ignore their words and actions, even if ignoring their heinous behavior could lead to you getting some privilege or power you think you deserve?

What's your tipping point?

What is it that someone has to say or do that will make you decide it's something you can't ignore?

Is it when someone you've given your undying devotion to is willfully destroying employment opportunities in your town or city and making it harder to live? Is it when this person tells you that you saying that you're not able to afford to live, survive, and take care of yourself and your family with some comfort is propaganda, even though you know you're being gaslit?

Is it when the person you idolize goes out of their way to minimizie and disregard mass shootings, no matter how many people lose their lives?

Is it when the person you support relishes his ongoing, seemingly gleeful, pursuits of the mass kidnapping of hard-working citizens and their children?

Is it when your messiah openly uses language that empowers their most hateful and violent followers to unnecessarily terrorizing cities and immigrant communities?

Is it when your chosen leader constantly makes fun of people who have been attacked or murdered, especially those he believes are "deranged" for not being on board with his views, actions, and language?

Seriously - what's your tipping point?

And if you back the current president of the United States and you’ve witnessed everything he has said and done - not just in his life but over the past 11 months - and you haven't reached your tipping point yet?

Why does your tipping point have such a high bar?

On Fishback and the Morality Police

Image description: a screenshot of a news posting regarding Florida Republican gubernatorial candidate James Fishback and allegation of him having an ongoing statutory rape/assault situation with a 16-year old. The news clip tries to paint the situation as a "secret relationship", which multiple commenters immediately debunked and factually stated as statutory rape.

TW: Mentions of pedophilia, hebephilia, ephebophilia, rape, and sexual abuse.

It will forever frustrate and anger me that an entire political party in a country with an archaic two-party system is absolutely loaded with pedophiles, hebephiles, ephebophiles, rapist, sexual predators, hatemongers, and closeted gay, lesbian, and queer individuals who have been indoctrinated by "Christianity" to hate themselves so much they weaponize that hate to harm others.

I'm not even shocked anymore when these creatures are outed for the horrible things they've done or are still doing. This is so normalized in the Republican party, and politics in general, that I'm not as shocked about them anymore as much as I'm shocked about how they keep getting re-elected and how many of y'all - who always stand up as the morality police whenver these horrible people pop up in the news cycle - will defend these creatures when the truth inevitably comes out about who they are.

That part says a lot about how some of y'all are fine with the things these people do as long as you possibly receive a benefit from them being in office.

Just so you know, supporting creatures so you can maintain comfort and privilege? That's also some creature-level behavior.

I mean, you probably don't care, but I wanted to make sure your moral compass got the news so you could navigate through that.

[Image description: a screenshot of a news posting regarding Florida Republican gubernatorial candidate James Fishback and allegation of him having an ongoing statutory rape/assault situation with a 16-year old. The news clip tries to paint the situation as a "secret relationship", which multiple commenters immediately debunked and factually stated as statutory rape.]

What In The Hell Is Wrong With This Country?: December 2, 2025 Edition

TW: Transphobia.

In today's edition of “What In The Hell Is Wrong With This Country,” I give you Samantha Fulnecky.

From the Huffington Post:

““After Samantha Fulnecky, a University of Oklahoma junior, received a failing grade on an essay, she filed a report with her school alleging that she’s being discriminated against because of her religious beliefs. In response, the school put the instructor who gave her the grade on leave.

In a Thanksgiving Day post, the U of O chapter of Turning Point USA highlighted Fulnecky’s essay and her professor’s response to it. The assignment was to write a reaction to a psychology article on gender stereotypes in middle school students and how it affects their mental health.

In the paper, Fulnecky bases her argument nearly entirely around Christianity and the Bible, arguing that “Women naturally want to do womanly things because God created us with those womanly desires in our hearts.” The college junior went on to write that, “Society pushing the lie that there are multiple genders and everyone should be whatever they want to be is demonic.”

Instructor Mel Curth gave the assignment a zero for not addressing the reading. Curth, who TPUSA and other news outlets identified as trans, opened their feedback note to Fulnecky by saying that they were not deducting points because of the student’s beliefs but rather because she did not follow the assignment, contradicted herself, made offensive comments, and did not provide empirical evidence.

The post also included feedback from another instructor, who said she agreed with Curth’s grading and that “[t]his paper should not be considered as a completion of the assignment.”

But what should have been a disappointing but not uncommon outcome in an academic setting turned into a referendum on trans people, attacks on the instructor’s gender identity, and higher education.

“We should not be letting mentally ill professors around students,” TPUSA said in a lengthy post. “Clearly this professor lacks the intellectual maturity to set her own bias aside and take grading seriously. Professors like this are the very reason conservatives can’t voice their beliefs in the classroom.””

So now Professor Curth - a person who was just doing their job (and was cosigned by another professor for their assessment of the raggedy-ass paper Samantha's fragile-ass turned in) - has been placed on leave and may lose their job or be forced to apologize and give Samantha a grade that she didn't earn. All while now being endangered by TPUSA's "call out" for the foreseeable future.

This is the future so many of y'all want, isn't it? To never be challenged, to believe you're "white and right" even when you're wrong, hateful, and harmful?

Well, it's a really violent and stupid future that benefits none of us.

And "none of us" includes willfully ignorant, thin-skinned, and devout "Christian" white supremacists like Samantha.

This Week's Opening Thought: December 1, 2025

This week's opening thought: When it comes to racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, ableism, body-shaming, white supremacy, and oppresive language and behavior, way too many of y'all accept the bare minimum from the people in your lives.

Y'all be out here ready to celebrate people for getting someone's pronouns right 1 out of every 20 times they talk to them, saying things like, "I can really see that they're trying."

A whole bunch of y'all be out here inviting people to the cookout because someone taught them how to dougie and they've watched a couple of episodes of A Different World.

Too many of y'all be a little too proud of the toxic people in your life for only bodyshaming or mocking a friend or family member's body or disabilities every other time they see them.

Your acceptance of the bare minimum from the people in your life is aiding and abetting harm by finding every opportunity to not hold people accountable or remove them from your life if they show you time and again how unwilling they are to do better and be better. And guess what? That means you aren't meeting the bare minimum requirements of the allyship you love talkin' about.

Most of y'all ain't about that life. You're ficitional allies.

To paraphrase Kendrick Lamar, I'd cut my granny off, if she won′t see it how I see it.

You willing to do the same?

On Genocidal Holidays, Pallor Fragility, and Willful Ignorance

I haven't wished people a "Happy Thanksgiving" for years. I don't think this federal holiday deserves well-wishes for obvious (terroristic, white supremacist, big colonizer energy) reasons. Instead, when people who celebrate the holiday wish me a Happy Thanksgiving or ask me what I'm doing for the holiday, I state that I don't observe the holiday - no extra context or nothing, because I expect most adults to get it without me spelling it out. I then mention that I hope they're celebrating this holiday with intentionality and an understanding of the historical context of the holiday and its branding.

And whew, y'all.

People of pallor do not like it when I say that. Not one bit.

You should see their reactions, y'all. They either say something like, "Well, I hope you have a Happy Thanksgiving anyway, Pharoah" with that Karen/Kevin energy with their face all contorted with derision or find a way to get away from me as soon as possible and end the conversation they initiated. And it's funny to me that they do this, because it proves that many people of pallor can only exist and operate in a space that caters to them willingly ignoring how harmful so many things in pallor culture, society, and history really are.

You know you can have some turkey on Thursday with your family while acknowledging how funky Thanksgiving as a holiday and concept really is, right? It doesn't have to take away from the meal.

You can be thankful for the blessings you have while also having the fortitude to digest and understand history and educate others on how harmful this week's festivities can be for Native and Indigenous communities and tribes.

It doesn't have to be one or the other.

Knowledge and empathy should always trump feeling cozy in ignorance.

Just sayin'.

And most of y'all's turkeys be dry anyway, so is being willfully ignorant and eatin' unmoisturized meat worth it?