Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Friday, 28-Nov-2025 13:30:50 JST Adrianna Tan

   in reply to

   • Alexander Karn

   @xankarn was his wife embarrassed this whole time? It sounds embarrassing

   • Embed this notice
     Alexander Karn (xankarn@mastodon.online)'s status on Friday, 28-Nov-2025 13:30:51 JST Alexander Karn

     in reply to

     I said Rousseau was a Deist, but not a traditional, practicing Christian.

     “Well, there’s the problem,” he said. You can’t mix that kind of stuff into a Christian nation.

     I said that Jefferson modeled the DOI in large part after Rousseau’s “Social Contract.”

     Reader, he did not appreciate this gentle correction.

     7/

   • Embed this notice
     Alexander Karn (xankarn@mastodon.online)'s status on Friday, 28-Nov-2025 13:30:51 JST Alexander Karn

     in reply to

     I’ve not been up close and personal with this kind of formless certitude for a while.

     It was like looking into an abyss.

     He said that people used to call him a conspiracy theorist, but now they call him “THE TRUTH.”

     People actually call you the truth?

     They WILL.

     8/

   • Embed this notice
     Alexander Karn (xankarn@mastodon.online)'s status on Friday, 28-Nov-2025 13:30:52 JST Alexander Karn

     in reply to

     At one point, he said that people have to use their brains. They have to THINK. People are led by their emotions, and emotions make truth indecipherable.

     I told him about Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the book he wrote, Emil, in which he said that a man who lives according to pure intellect would be a of monster.

     He asked whether Rousseau was a Christian.

     6/

   • Embed this notice
     Alexander Karn (xankarn@mastodon.online)'s status on Friday, 28-Nov-2025 13:30:53 JST Alexander Karn

     in reply to

     I told him he was thinking of Columbus Day.

     He did not appreciate this gentle correction.

     The whole MAGA thing came spilling out of him for the next 25 mins.

     Founders wanted a Christian nation. Immigrants no longer assimilate. They elected a communist in NYC. People don’t know what bathroom to use. COVID was a hoax. COVID was a Chinese bio-weapon. COVID was used by dem governors to scare Americans into compliance. Trump is God’s agent.

     Etc.

     4/

   • Embed this notice
     Alexander Karn (xankarn@mastodon.online)'s status on Friday, 28-Nov-2025 13:30:53 JST Alexander Karn

     in reply to

     It’s been this way for 100 years, he said.

     We’ve lost our country. The culture is degenerate. Both parties did this. Trump will undo it.

     Etc.

     I asked him how long he’d been inclined to see things this way.

     Always.

     I asked him if his views had made any of his relationships difficult.

     Never.

     5/

   • Embed this notice
     Alexander Karn (xankarn@mastodon.online)'s status on Friday, 28-Nov-2025 13:30:54 JST Alexander Karn

     in reply to

     I could have said nothing. Could have smiled and nodded and kept things agreeable.

     But I thought I caught a whiff of something below the surface.

     So I told him that Canada has their own Thanksgiving in October. Same basic thing. Harvest celebration.

     Not a real country, he replied. Going to be the 51st state anyway.

     Wife gave him a look: Not here. Not today.

     But he was clearly ready to launch, and you could tell that his wife’s request for self-restraint wasn’t going over well.

     2/

   • Embed this notice
     Alexander Karn (xankarn@mastodon.online)'s status on Friday, 28-Nov-2025 13:30:54 JST Alexander Karn

     in reply to

     And, boy, did he launch.

     “You heard they’re trying to take it away, right. Turn it into something negative. Indigenous Peoples’ Day, they want to call it.”

     I could have said nothing.

     14 yo daughter looked me dead in the eye and said through clenched teeth: “Dad, shut this down.”

     Reader, I did not shut it down.

     3/

   • Embed this notice
     Alexander Karn (xankarn@mastodon.online)'s status on Friday, 28-Nov-2025 13:30:55 JST Alexander Karn

     This year, instead of making a Thanksgiving dinner at home, we went to the Salvation Army, to serve a meal to families staying at the shelter.

     Besides our family, there was a couple there, who seemed very nice. Guy and his wife, around 40, I’d guess.

     Waiting to clean up after dinner, the guy tells me that the United States is the only country in the world with an entire holiday dedicated to gratitude. “One of the things that makes us the greatest country in the world,” he added.

     1/