Harper Kingsley blog || Thinking of things

I look up words by typing "define the word" and I receive results from some dictionary site without having to go to the site myself. It’s very useful.

BUT sometimes I wish they would add a special little note to the definition for some words. "This word has been co-opted by whatever racially motivated terrorist group. Do not use as part of your brand. It will be terrible for everyone involved."

For reals: The person running the company. The people selling the product. The people buying the product. The people triggered by seeing the content.

Seriously: There’s nothing wrong with being triggered.

It’s the way you behave after being triggered that needs to be put under consideration.

AND there’s different ways that you get triggered. It’s another thing to be figured into any reaction a person might make.

Sexual assault is not funny to a lot of people. It’s triggering in that a person’s instant reaction will be anywhere from distaste and uncomfortable discontent to a completely ruined mood and flashbacks. Either way, it’s a topic that can completely change the vibe in a likely unhappy way.

It’s the same way that conversations that include topics such as "circumcision," "genocide," "vaccination," "the police," "prisons," "immigration," "homelessness," "gun rights," "toilets," and "sports ball" can completely destroy the peace between a disparate group of people.

In olden times, they would just be interesting things to talk about. But now, due to the podcastification of America, they have become triggering topics. And the shittiness of it all is only worsened because the loudest voices belong to people that don’t know the history of the topic they’re addressing. They’re just talking out their buttholes and their followers are listening and gobbling it up.

So here’s where I’m coming from on such triggering topics:

circumcision— Circumcision became popular in the United States after World War I. The implication of the most titillating story is that desperate dudes were rubbing genitals as a way to relieve the horrors of war. That or some dudes were so absolutely filthy after not being able to wash for such long lengths of time that smegma buildup was fusing their foreskins in place. But there’s also the story about how men desperate to escape from near certain death–even if only for a week or two!–were paying money to get access to cloths embedded with a curable STI.

Whatever a given circumstance, so many men had issues with their foreskins that the medics ended up performing enough circumcisions that when the war was over, circumcisions became a popular look for the American dick. To the point that so many male babies were circumcised that seeing an uncircumcised penis became a shocking experience for anyone born after 1970 and before 2000.

genocide— I think genocide is bad. Wrong. Untenable. Not to be done by ANYONE.

Before I knew the author was shitty, I read and enjoyed "Ender’s Game" enough to read "Speaker for the Dead" and like 20 other books by him. And I walked away from reading "Speaker for the Dead" with a sense of disquiet. Because the idea of someone feeling the guilt of causing a genocide, and living long enough to go from being revered as a hero to being reviled for wiping out a whole sentient species… it was a heavy topic for a like 14-year-old kid.

So right off the bat, I’m coming from a position of thinking that genocide is not the answer. That wiping out a whole species is wrong. And I know, the word "genocide" only applies if humans murder a whole group of other humans, but we don’t have a word with the same weight as "genocide" for wiping out non-humans. So genocide it is.

And like, in "Ender’s Game" and "Starship Troopers" and the Aliens-franchise, humans end up wiping out another species because they have no other choice. That alien species keeps attacking the humans, leaving them no recourse but to hit back.

And like, all that pro-genocide messaging has likely had a negative result on all of our minds. To the point that in America we’re like "If a genocide is happening, it’s happening over there and I can’t be bothered to take even a few seconds out of my day to let other people know that I don’t like it." And the people genociding their neighbors are so into it that their young people are willing to go on social media and be like "Yes, it is good that we murder every single one of them, including burning their children alive in their schools and hospitals. Every single member of their race should be put to death. They need to be exterminated!" And meanwhile, all the governments are like "You know, maybe that country committing genocide should be allowed to buy more missiles and drones from us" or "We would like to help those people fleeing genocide, but if we take them in there might be problems because the country committing genocide is politically powerful and they have members hidden all over the world ready to fly off the handle at any moment."

So yeah, I think that genocide is wrong. That it and everything else listed as a war crime is awful, and that those committing genocide should be held accountable for their crime.

vaccination— I think that vaccinations are good. They save more lives than they harm.

I think it’s great that because of vaccines we aren’t terrorized every few years by a popular book about someone having to shoot a dog that has rabies.

Just right there, vaccines have fully pulled their weight.

I’m also appreciative of vaccines because they’ve kept me from ever having experienced the measles, mumps, rubella, whooping cough, or the flu. (And I say the flu with a bit of a question mark in my heart, because I don’t think I’ve ever had the flu. I’ve had colds. I’ve had sicknesses where I had to take cough syrup and sleep in my bed for 3 days straight. But from descriptors provided by people that have for-sure had the flu, I have to question whether I’ve ever really had the flu in my life.) But I did have chickenpox when I was a toddler because there wasn’t a wide dissemination of the chickenpox vaccine yet, and concerned American parents were holding chickenpox parties where they purposefully infected their children.

Yes. Adults purposefully infected me with chickenpox. And the timing sucks because the vaccine became available shortly afterward, but I can’t blame them.

Because while children suffering from chickenpox don’t have a fun time, catching it as an adult can have devastating consequences. So giving their children chickenpox was the only lifelong protection parents could provide AT THE TIME.

And while I regret the risk I face for experiencing shingles in the future, that’s just the bad luck of having been born within a certain time span. I’m still super glad the varicella vaccine was invented, as it has saved generations of children born after me from catching chickenpox, an experience that left me with a couple of pockmarks and was miserable enough that I have memories of it.

I’m glad that my mom ensured I got every single childhood vaccination that was available to her. Like, she came from a country where "there were no people suffering from polio," because "those people" just quietly disappeared. The same with babies born deaf or blind or with any kind of disability; there were no helpful programs and everyone was poor, so chances were that a disabled child would disappear. And a lot of the diseases we worked so hard to make vaccines for could cause lifelong disabilities if they didn’t just outright kill the infected.

There was a time in history where someone with a fever would be put in their bed and covered with blankets. "Feed a cold, starve a fever" was something people said, and did! even though there was no logical reasoning behind it. Nothing but what "someone" once said to do. And then years later, studies show that eating chicken noodle soup when you’re sick is good for you. Why?

Because chicken noodle soup contains nutrients from the chicken, the noodles, the carrots, and the celery, and there’s plenty of salt and water to help rehydrate and replace lost electrolytes. Cupping a steaming bowl under your nose while you’re breathing in can help loosen up a stuffy nose. There’s so many benefits from chicken noodle soup, which helps a sickness weakened body to regain enough energy to fight off the sickness and produce antibodies. Which is why leeches and bleeding were so detrimental to a person’s overall health and could become deadly if a person was already ill.

Which is a long way to say that sometimes people do things "because that’s how we’ve always done it," and there’s no rhyme or reason behind it, just traditions. And most times it’s better that people reassess the options available to them and logically think through why they do the things they do.

Vaccines are a better alternative than a child suffering from a possibly debilitating disease. Especially when it’s a couple of shots that may result in a little bit of discomfort and a tiny fever, but otherwise have no other result than to keep a child from catching polio, chickenpox, mumps, measles, rubella, whooping cough, hepatitis, or tetanus.

Harper Kingsley

Ko-fi: HarperWCK
Paypal: HarperKingsley

"But what about the autism?!?"–STFU. Everything connecting vaccines to autism were a lie created by a man named Andrew Wakefield. A grifter and a fraudster that faked medical results in a kind of "I’ve done a scientific study that proves that gingivitis causes hair to grow"-idiotic way. (Because the two things have nothing to do with each other!) He was quickly debunked, but early antivaxxers continued to spread his lies to the point that talking to current antivaxxers is both frustrating and worthless because all of their blood has been replaced with Kool-Aid.

Vaccines are a miracle. The history behind vaccines is interesting and worth learning. And anyone that lets their unvaccinated child wander around without a mask and hand sanitizer is a shitty parent that cares more about optics than the life and safety of their own child.

the police— I think that rather than spending massive amounts of money on military grade weaponry, police departments should be funding training programs for police officers. And not the programs from that one guy that’s basically just "Police Brutality 101."

I don’t think there should be "a thin blue line," because that’s just a means to peer pressure other cops into not reporting their coworkers when they steal stuff or commit depravities. I mean, if the police were more integrated into society like in other countries where police officers actually help the public and are seen as good people… The police would be more like the stars on the flag, beautiful and essential, rather than a disruption cutting through the middle of the flag.

I don’t know. The thin blue line metaphor seems confrontational to me. It comes with the expectation that "Everyone else is out to get us!" and gives a very "us against them"-vibe that seems very unhealthy for a successful society.

Because when a group of people are provided with military grade weaponry, are given qualified immunity, and are taught to see everyone else as enemies that can attack at any moment, there’s a more than good chance that needless tragedies are going to take place alongside all the casual brutality and law breaking.

We’re not currently living in Judge Dredd, and if we were, the judges in Judge Dredd are highly trained professionals. And a lot of the police out there are not.

prisons— I don’t believe that there should EVER be for-profit prisons. There should be rules and regulations, and because we are keeping people imprisoned against their will, all the basic needs NEED to be met. Otherwise that prison should not be allowed to exist.

And seriously, if a state or a county or a warden has a financial interest in keeping a certain number of people imprisoned, then there NEEDS to be heavy oversight over everything, including whether a person even should be imprisoned.

And that some people can literally pay money to keep themselves out of prison, an option that’s not available to people that don’t have millions of dollars, then that should not be an option. Or if you’re going to have a pay-to-play prison plan, then it should be on a sliding scale. Rich people should pay more money and poor people should pay less. Otherwise, on pretty much all levels, the prison industrial complex is doing things wrong, and prison is basically existing to punish poor people for their lack of money.

And if a business is dependent on prison labor to keep from paying employees a fair and livable wage, then that business is not successful. It is not to be looked at with admiration. It is a scam.

immigration— I don’t know enough about immigration, either legal or illegal, to carry an intelligent conversation.

To me, the whole "Illegal immigrants don’t pay taxes so they shouldn’t be allowed to use roads!" thing seems like nonsense to me because I live in a state that has sales tax. So like, they’re out there buying stuff, using services, tipping their waiters, and so they are paying money into taxes.

They are working, and their employers are underpaying them, but rather than some rich asshole keeping a fortune locked up in a vault like a poor man’s Scrooge McDuck, the illegal immigrant is buying food, paying rent, buying clothes and shoes and dishes and all those things necessary for everyday life.

So while illegal immigrants are breaking the law and I don’t think they should do that, I mind my own business because it has nothing to do with me. They are more helpful in keeping the economy moving than the like 99% of rich people society could do without.

I’m not going to report someone because I think they might be an illegal immigrant. I’m going to mind my own business because they have nothing to do with me.

gun rights— Shooting guns is fun. But guns are not toys. I can understand having a gun to protect your home from break-ins, as the police collectively seem to only want to protect the property of the wealthy while eschewing the safety of the non-rich, but I am honestly very uncomfortable with random people carrying guns around in public.

And the more someone wants to show off the fact that they’re carrying a pistol or rifle, the less comfortable I feel. Because that doesn’t seem to be a person that treats a deadly weapon with the weight and care that it deserves.

Images of people displaying their "collection of guns" by laying every single gun out across every surface in their living room disgust me. I’m not afraid of them, because having 300 guns while only having two hands means that if the police want to do their jobs, that gun nut won’t be out shooting up the local movie theater, but I do think that they are very foolish people. ESPECIALLY if they ever start talking about how they don’t have any money or are too poor for this or that, since guns are like $1000+ a pop.

If you have enough guns that you could have used that money to buy a brand new house… you’re not poor. You’re just bad with your money.

toilets— A toilet is a toilet. I have more problems with people not flushing a toilet after using it or pissing all over the seat trying to squat-hover than I do over someone with different genitals using the stall next to me.

People go into the bathroom, use the toilet, flush, wash their hands or face at the sink, then leave the bathroom. That’s the purpose of the bathroom.

The self-proclaimed Bathroom Police are more of a problem to me than some stranger using a toilet in the way a toilet is intended to be used. And I don’t care what genitals anyone has as long as I’m not expected to look at them or they’re not expected to look at mine.

And that’s my biggest complaint about the Bathroom Police, those transvestigator weirdos that proudly proclaim that they harass people in the bathroom and urge people to commit violence on people that just want to use a toilet. I mean, they’re in there peeping at people. Lurking around. Making annoyances or outright threats of themselves, and why? Because they’re fucking weirdos and I wish they would go away.

That they want to "protect women!" by calling likely male security guards into a women’s bathroom to examine someone else’s genitals just makes them dangerous weirdos. All around gross people that should not be allowed out in public because they don’t know how to behave in society.

sports ball— I have very little interest in sports. When I was younger, I watched a lot of sports movies and they are interesting, but the sports themselves? Meh. I can take or leave them, but either way sports are completely non-essential to me.

I believe that college athletes should be paid money because their likenesses and names are being used to generate massive amounts of money for their college. They are risking their health and lives during "the best years of their lives," and there’s a chance they could end up either physically or mentally disabled.

They push themselves beyond their physical endurance, and even the most successful athletes face debilitating conditions when they are older due to the strain they put their bodies under when they were young. So they should be paid good money when their career is active.

And those colleges should have to provide every student (not just the athletes) with at least a basic financial education because too many people are living from credit card to credit card with each paycheck only being enough to let them keep juggling non-existent money until some life-ruining disaster strikes. Like, 90% of people are one medical emergency away from poverty, and that’s not a good way for a society to work.

In conclusion, there are a lot of issues that need to be discussed and considered and if your first triggered response is "Penis!" then you need to self-reflect.

You need to figure out why you respond the way you do BEFORE you enter public conversations and start SCREAM!plaining at strangers whose point-of-view you never bothered to consider.

There are people out there professionally trolling to create triggered responses in other people without ever considering that their trolling is ALSO a very triggered response.

Nobody is born an asshole. That’s learned behavior and you can change.

Just like how the meaning of words can change with time and usage, so can the way people think and feel about everyday things. I used to HATE corn and peas, and now I kind of like corn and I can eat peas without noticing them. I’ve grown up. So should some other people.

~Harper Kingsley

https://paypal.me/harperkingsley.

https://patreon.com/harperkingsley.

https://ko-fi.com/harperwck.

https://amazon.com/shop/harperkingsley0.
https://www.harperkingsley.net/blog.
https://kimichee.com.

https://www.youtube.com/c/HarperKingsley.

https://harperkingsley.bsky.social.
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/HarperKingsley.

Some sports movies I watched as a kid (there’s more I can’t remember off the top of my head):