It seems to me that one of those unethical means is marrying a Hindu woman and demanding the children be raised Christian and pressuring her to convert. But why should I expect ethical behavior from a Christian Nazionalist.
I get the sense Vance, like a lot of Christians, appears to think he proves his own point when he gets people to go to his church. The number of people who believe something, no matter how fervently, does not render that belief true. As happens so often with Christians, Vance's performative religiosity doesn't exactly qualify him as moral, and makes a compelling case for atheism.
Whew. How he has the cojones to actually say that in public is beyond me, considering what the current administration is doing with people who may be exercising their free will under the Constitution and its First Amendment. And the Hindu American Foundation was utterly on point in challenging Vance to consider Hinduism as he expected his wife to consider Christianity.
"All names belong in the hat, Ben." That's what Jubal Harshaw said to Ben Caxton in Stranger in a Strange Land, all names and all religions. Each deserves consideration and no one can rightfully claim a stranglehold on the truth, though some have tried. One of 'em may be right.
From what I understand as a non-professional, narcissists and sociopaths feel better when they lie. There's a woman on YouTube who talks about how she feels this intense build-up of anxiety that can only be release by lying, stealing, etc. And then of course the problem with Christian cultists is that they have to constantly try to convince themselves of things that deep down, they know is not true. I guess the lies help quell their cognitive dissonance, briefly, until they can't take it anymore and have to go sexually harass someone, go on Grindr, snort coke, get shit-faced drunk and fire half the military, etc.
I'm surprised that they don't mention the church leader between Foster and Short. My problem is that I can't remember his name, and I don't have access to my library yet, so I can't look it up.
Was it Digby? [TS indulges in some Googling...!] Yup, Digby.
Great point, they don't actually respect free will if they are constantly trying to coerce or force people to live the way they do. Also, I don't think you can truly accept and love someone if you think they are going to die because you are judging them in the back of your head constantly... Jeffrey Dahmer Vance is a performative charlatan with no backbone and its painfully obvious. The way he always tries to pretend he is an internet tough guy while being a low effort troll is just so annoying at this point too.
Thank you for recognizing that monogamy between a man and a woman is not traditional. But, does that applies to him ? After all, he has a second spouse. Couch Vance.
"how did they raise their kids not to think one was better than the other?"
Catholic great grandmother + Atheist great grandfather = boys raised Atheists + girls raised catholic up until the second communion (they were free to go to mass or not after that). AFAIK, my aunt is the last woman alive who is somewhat christian.
“In fact, when I met my wife, we were both… I would consider myself an agnostic or an atheist, … “
I doubt very much that he was either - especially not an atheist. But it sounds better to believers when he says he used to be an atheist but Jesus convinced him, etc, etc.
I do believe he was mostly irreligious. He jumped on conservationism when his book did well, it led to a political career, and so faith became a gravy train for him. But if life stopped rewarding him for being faithy, I bet most of it would go away.
The first thing to always keep in mind when it comes to JD Vance [not even his real name] is that he has no moral center, no deeply-held convictions, and no positions he won't throw over in a heartbeat if it means getting ahead. Example, in a 2016 interview with WaPo, he criticized the evangelical culture he grew up in for promoting 'cultural paranoia' which led to an us-versus-them worldview where everything outside their brand of christianity was suspicious. He admits that by the time he landed at Yale, he was agnostic or atheist, but had started exploring his religion again.
Why did he land on catholicism? Upward mobility, folks! Check out this quote, it's a doozy: "Mormons and Catholics at Yale Law School, who were really smart and successful, were engaged with their faith. There was a moment when I was like, “Maybe it is possible to have Christian faith in an upwardly mobile world.”
There's also a large cadre of elite catholics in republican conservatism. JD clearly wanted to fit in with that crowd, and he converted just in time to run for senate. There's NOTHING about Vance that's authentic. Everything about him is calculated. If he needs to embrace Christian Nationalism [and Charlie Kirk's wife] to get ahead in MAGA politics, that's what he'll do. He's as hollow a man as Donald Trump. He's suddenly talking about Usha converting because he's looking ahead to 2028, and his brown, Hindu wife will be a drawback with 'em good christian MAGA folks.
Usha is expected to juggle three children during Mass. I learned in synagogue that it’s a challenge to worship with small children when the whole family shares a faith. Given that JD proposed marriage to Usha in the cemetery holding generations of his family, he’s trying to erase her. The flowery, Hindu-spiced biculturalism of their wedding lasted just one day.
Yes. Erasing a woman's identity is absolutely part of domestic abuse. It starts with love-bombing--telling that fellow law student how smart and helpful she is and how much you rely on her for everything--to negging--death by 1,000 cuts to the victim's self-esteem--and then progresses through gaslighting, isolating the victim (making her quit her job and leave her cultural community), to coercive control--like screaming at the president of another country in public on international television. Imagine how he screams in the privacy of his own home? Physical abuse is only the last resort and often never arrives if the abuser can control the victim through other means, such as threatening children.
Copy and paste this link so you can educate others who may be waking up inside the MAGA/ Christian nationalist/ cult dreamscape: E.g., chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.libertylane.ca/uploads/1/6/1/7/16174606/gender.inclusive_pc.wheel.pdf
JD Vance has been in national office for 289 days. Before that, his closest experience to statecraft was being a bestselling memoirist and occasionally remembering to water a house plant.
Meanwhile, the people he is supposedly “outmaneuvering”:
Putin: ~25 years running a nuclear state
Xi Jinping: ~13 years directing the world’s second largest economy
Ali Khamenei: ~36 years shaping Iran’s regional power network
Erdogan: ~22 years consolidating Turkey’s geopolitical reach
Kim Jong Un: ~14 years maintaining a nuclear deterrent under sanctions
Vance has not yet been in office one year.
And we are told he now negotiates from “strength.”
First, the word is REEKS, not WREAKS. Here’s the difference. Vance REEKS of Christian nationalist ideology, which WREAKS havoc on religious freedom and democracy. You would think a published author would know that.
Second, “even though the end result is that his religion takes priority in their family and there’s no indication her religion ever gets taken seriously at all.” Well, yes. What else would you expect? He’s a nationalist Christian.
Third— full disclosure— I don’t know the Vances, any more than I know the Trumps. Full disclosure again— and I don’t want to. I haven’t seen anything about either group that I find remotely attractive. But all I can say in both cases as those women married those men, for whatever reason they may have had. And those men associate with each other. And that tells me pretty much everything I want to know. What kind of woman would marry Donald Trump? The kind of woman that you could see naked on the Internet having fake lesbian sexand whose husband screwed a prostitute while she was pregnant with his fifth child. What kind of woman would marry Shay Dee? The kind of woman whose husband lied about Haitian immigrants and who said that it didn’t matter whether it was true.
“ How much respect can you really have for a partner whom you still think, years into a marriage, is lacking something VITAL to you?” and that is indeed the question about Shay Dee.
His remarks smack of a boyfriend pressuring the girlfriend to go down or do butt stuff all the time for years until she gives up and does it, despite speaking plainly in the early days that she is not interested in ever doing those things. This is not just Christian supremacy, it male supremacy, dominance and control. And as Sarah Longstaff mentions below, it’s typical abuse and death by a thousand cuts.
First, (pedant hat on) the word he should have used is "reek". "Wreak" is for causation. Second, he is predictably claiming that recognizing anything that privileges Christianity over any other beliefs is somehow "anti-Christian".
If you read Marlene Winell's book Leaving the Fold, she describes fundamentalists as actually developmentally delayed. They've never been taught emotional regulation. Only to project everything good onto a "good" supernatural being and everything bad onto a "bad" supernatural being. They are brain damaged. It's no surprise that they would project their own lies onto others.
As phony as the rest of JD Couchfucker's backstory is, I don't believe that "I used to be an atheist" guff for a second. If 𝘩𝘦 even believes what he's saying, then it's probably a case of "I consider myself a former atheist because I used to belong to a false sect, but now that I found 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑻𝒓𝒖𝒆 𝑪𝒉𝒖𝒓𝒄𝒉(𝒕𝒎) I'm finally a 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭 Christian." Because that's how these shitheads think (I know- I'm using that word rather generously): if they didn't follow the 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘥 of Christianity, then they weren't truly Christian at all. They play the bagpipes over their own personal history.
And the prospect of converting an 𝘦𝘹𝘰𝘵𝘪𝘤 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘯 (ugh, just threw up in my mouth a little there) is probably the only thing that drew him to his current wife in the first place, racist little skidmark that he is.
I think you hit the nail on the head. It is all a big show of how he converted a vile heathen to the true faith. The show of converting someone is more important than the person themselves. I willing to bet my pocket lint than if the wife doesn’t convert you will see couchfucker divorce her so fast that the noise will be heard in Antarctica.
𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑖𝑠 𝑎𝑙𝑠𝑜 𝑎 ℎ𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑠 𝑑𝑒𝑛𝑖𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝐻𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑢𝑠, 𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑚𝑝𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑡 𝐻𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑢𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒𝑠 𝑢𝑛𝑒𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑛𝑠.
It seems to me that one of those unethical means is marrying a Hindu woman and demanding the children be raised Christian and pressuring her to convert. But why should I expect ethical behavior from a Christian Nazionalist.
I get the sense Vance, like a lot of Christians, appears to think he proves his own point when he gets people to go to his church. The number of people who believe something, no matter how fervently, does not render that belief true. As happens so often with Christians, Vance's performative religiosity doesn't exactly qualify him as moral, and makes a compelling case for atheism.
jesus is the most sadistic tyrant in the iniverse
Having read the Bible, I’m actually glad I’ve never met a “true Christian”, if I ever do, I’ll run….
There has been a stabbing on a train here in the UK, with 10 people injured (yeah, I know, this would be a minor incident in the US).
An employee of the train company blocked the alleged attacker, preventing him from stabbing a young girl.
The name of the alleged attacker was Anthony Williams. The name of the employee was Samir Zitouni.
Just think of the outrage from the right if the names had been reversed.
((hugs))
𝐴𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛, 𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑡 𝑖𝑚𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑛 𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑖𝑝𝑙𝑒𝑠 𝑖𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑡 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝑒 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙.
Whew. How he has the cojones to actually say that in public is beyond me, considering what the current administration is doing with people who may be exercising their free will under the Constitution and its First Amendment. And the Hindu American Foundation was utterly on point in challenging Vance to consider Hinduism as he expected his wife to consider Christianity.
"All names belong in the hat, Ben." That's what Jubal Harshaw said to Ben Caxton in Stranger in a Strange Land, all names and all religions. Each deserves consideration and no one can rightfully claim a stranglehold on the truth, though some have tried. One of 'em may be right.
Then again, all of 'em may be wrong.
From what I understand as a non-professional, narcissists and sociopaths feel better when they lie. There's a woman on YouTube who talks about how she feels this intense build-up of anxiety that can only be release by lying, stealing, etc. And then of course the problem with Christian cultists is that they have to constantly try to convince themselves of things that deep down, they know is not true. I guess the lies help quell their cognitive dissonance, briefly, until they can't take it anymore and have to go sexually harass someone, go on Grindr, snort coke, get shit-faced drunk and fire half the military, etc.
Whoa. Far-freaking-OUT!
How long until we have to deal with Fosterites?
We're sure as hell dealing with their precursors NOW!
"Special disadvantages: An inflexible belief that they were right!"
Sounds like someone here. Source : https://trekcreative.fandom.com/wiki/Church_of_the_New_Revelation
I'm surprised that they don't mention the church leader between Foster and Short. My problem is that I can't remember his name, and I don't have access to my library yet, so I can't look it up.
Was it Digby? [TS indulges in some Googling...!] Yup, Digby.
Is Foster still twanging his halo?
Oh, yeah ... and it annoys the daylights outta Digby!
Great point, they don't actually respect free will if they are constantly trying to coerce or force people to live the way they do. Also, I don't think you can truly accept and love someone if you think they are going to die because you are judging them in the back of your head constantly... Jeffrey Dahmer Vance is a performative charlatan with no backbone and its painfully obvious. The way he always tries to pretend he is an internet tough guy while being a low effort troll is just so annoying at this point too.
"he handled his non-traditional marriage."
Thank you for recognizing that monogamy between a man and a woman is not traditional. But, does that applies to him ? After all, he has a second spouse. Couch Vance.
"how did they raise their kids not to think one was better than the other?"
Catholic great grandmother + Atheist great grandfather = boys raised Atheists + girls raised catholic up until the second communion (they were free to go to mass or not after that). AFAIK, my aunt is the last woman alive who is somewhat christian.
"𝐴𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛, 𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑡 𝑖𝑚𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑛 𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑖𝑝𝑙𝑒𝑠 𝑖𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑡 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝑒 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙."
Statement contradicted by +1600 years of history.
> "𝐴𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛, 𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑡 𝑖𝑚𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑛 𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑖𝑝𝑙𝑒𝑠 𝑖𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑡 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝑒 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙."
> Statement contradicted by +1600 years of history.
My thoughts exactly lol. Like how many wars did they fight or how many cultures did they force to their own religion lol...
“In fact, when I met my wife, we were both… I would consider myself an agnostic or an atheist, … “
I doubt very much that he was either - especially not an atheist. But it sounds better to believers when he says he used to be an atheist but Jesus convinced him, etc, etc.
I do believe he was mostly irreligious. He jumped on conservationism when his book did well, it led to a political career, and so faith became a gravy train for him. But if life stopped rewarding him for being faithy, I bet most of it would go away.
He swings towards anything which will improve the grift.
The first thing to always keep in mind when it comes to JD Vance [not even his real name] is that he has no moral center, no deeply-held convictions, and no positions he won't throw over in a heartbeat if it means getting ahead. Example, in a 2016 interview with WaPo, he criticized the evangelical culture he grew up in for promoting 'cultural paranoia' which led to an us-versus-them worldview where everything outside their brand of christianity was suspicious. He admits that by the time he landed at Yale, he was agnostic or atheist, but had started exploring his religion again.
Why did he land on catholicism? Upward mobility, folks! Check out this quote, it's a doozy: "Mormons and Catholics at Yale Law School, who were really smart and successful, were engaged with their faith. There was a moment when I was like, “Maybe it is possible to have Christian faith in an upwardly mobile world.”
There's also a large cadre of elite catholics in republican conservatism. JD clearly wanted to fit in with that crowd, and he converted just in time to run for senate. There's NOTHING about Vance that's authentic. Everything about him is calculated. If he needs to embrace Christian Nationalism [and Charlie Kirk's wife] to get ahead in MAGA politics, that's what he'll do. He's as hollow a man as Donald Trump. He's suddenly talking about Usha converting because he's looking ahead to 2028, and his brown, Hindu wife will be a drawback with 'em good christian MAGA folks.
Bingo!
I bet those "good christian MAGA folks" will be eager to forgive Vance for making a youthful mistake.
Usha is expected to juggle three children during Mass. I learned in synagogue that it’s a challenge to worship with small children when the whole family shares a faith. Given that JD proposed marriage to Usha in the cemetery holding generations of his family, he’s trying to erase her. The flowery, Hindu-spiced biculturalism of their wedding lasted just one day.
Yes. Erasing a woman's identity is absolutely part of domestic abuse. It starts with love-bombing--telling that fellow law student how smart and helpful she is and how much you rely on her for everything--to negging--death by 1,000 cuts to the victim's self-esteem--and then progresses through gaslighting, isolating the victim (making her quit her job and leave her cultural community), to coercive control--like screaming at the president of another country in public on international television. Imagine how he screams in the privacy of his own home? Physical abuse is only the last resort and often never arrives if the abuser can control the victim through other means, such as threatening children.
Copy and paste this link so you can educate others who may be waking up inside the MAGA/ Christian nationalist/ cult dreamscape: E.g., chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.libertylane.ca/uploads/1/6/1/7/16174606/gender.inclusive_pc.wheel.pdf
This worked for me: https://www.libertylane.ca/uploads/1/6/1/7/16174606/gender.inclusive_pc.wheel.pdf
JD Vance has been in national office for 289 days. Before that, his closest experience to statecraft was being a bestselling memoirist and occasionally remembering to water a house plant.
Meanwhile, the people he is supposedly “outmaneuvering”:
Putin: ~25 years running a nuclear state
Xi Jinping: ~13 years directing the world’s second largest economy
Ali Khamenei: ~36 years shaping Iran’s regional power network
Erdogan: ~22 years consolidating Turkey’s geopolitical reach
Kim Jong Un: ~14 years maintaining a nuclear deterrent under sanctions
Vance has not yet been in office one year.
And we are told he now negotiates from “strength.”
I dont see what the problem is! :-)
The problem is what JD sees when he looks in a mirror. 😝
A couch fucker who wears too much mascara?
And is entirely too full of himself.
First, the word is REEKS, not WREAKS. Here’s the difference. Vance REEKS of Christian nationalist ideology, which WREAKS havoc on religious freedom and democracy. You would think a published author would know that.
Second, “even though the end result is that his religion takes priority in their family and there’s no indication her religion ever gets taken seriously at all.” Well, yes. What else would you expect? He’s a nationalist Christian.
Third— full disclosure— I don’t know the Vances, any more than I know the Trumps. Full disclosure again— and I don’t want to. I haven’t seen anything about either group that I find remotely attractive. But all I can say in both cases as those women married those men, for whatever reason they may have had. And those men associate with each other. And that tells me pretty much everything I want to know. What kind of woman would marry Donald Trump? The kind of woman that you could see naked on the Internet having fake lesbian sexand whose husband screwed a prostitute while she was pregnant with his fifth child. What kind of woman would marry Shay Dee? The kind of woman whose husband lied about Haitian immigrants and who said that it didn’t matter whether it was true.
“ How much respect can you really have for a partner whom you still think, years into a marriage, is lacking something VITAL to you?” and that is indeed the question about Shay Dee.
I guess VP Couch Fucker should keep his book's editor on retainer for all his writing.
Assuming any author knows anything is a huge mistake. Religion is filled with apologists trying to somehow prove the imaginary is real.
His remarks smack of a boyfriend pressuring the girlfriend to go down or do butt stuff all the time for years until she gives up and does it, despite speaking plainly in the early days that she is not interested in ever doing those things. This is not just Christian supremacy, it male supremacy, dominance and control. And as Sarah Longstaff mentions below, it’s typical abuse and death by a thousand cuts.
𝑊ℎ𝑒𝑛 ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑐𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑧𝑒𝑑 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑟𝑜𝑤𝑖𝑛𝑔 ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑤𝑖𝑓𝑒’𝑠 𝑓𝑎𝑖𝑡ℎ “𝑢𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑏𝑢𝑠,” 𝑉𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑐𝑡𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑦 𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑝𝑜𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑑 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑖𝑔𝑛𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛, 𝑚𝑎𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑐𝑐𝑢𝑠𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑐𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑠𝑚𝑠 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑠𝑒 “𝑤𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑘 𝑜𝑓 𝑎𝑛𝑡𝑖-𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑛 𝑏𝑖𝑔𝑜𝑡𝑟𝑦”
First, (pedant hat on) the word he should have used is "reek". "Wreak" is for causation. Second, he is predictably claiming that recognizing anything that privileges Christianity over any other beliefs is somehow "anti-Christian".
Christian nationalists LOVE to deal out the criticism, but they don't TAKE criticism worth a good fuck.
To be fair... they don't take criticism worth a 𝘣𝘢𝘥 fuck, either.
If you read Marlene Winell's book Leaving the Fold, she describes fundamentalists as actually developmentally delayed. They've never been taught emotional regulation. Only to project everything good onto a "good" supernatural being and everything bad onto a "bad" supernatural being. They are brain damaged. It's no surprise that they would project their own lies onto others.
Yes, I believe that JD was atheist because his messiah had not risen to the office of President yet.
JD is whatever Peter Thiel tells him to be...
As phony as the rest of JD Couchfucker's backstory is, I don't believe that "I used to be an atheist" guff for a second. If 𝘩𝘦 even believes what he's saying, then it's probably a case of "I consider myself a former atheist because I used to belong to a false sect, but now that I found 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑻𝒓𝒖𝒆 𝑪𝒉𝒖𝒓𝒄𝒉(𝒕𝒎) I'm finally a 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭 Christian." Because that's how these shitheads think (I know- I'm using that word rather generously): if they didn't follow the 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘥 of Christianity, then they weren't truly Christian at all. They play the bagpipes over their own personal history.
And the prospect of converting an 𝘦𝘹𝘰𝘵𝘪𝘤 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘯 (ugh, just threw up in my mouth a little there) is probably the only thing that drew him to his current wife in the first place, racist little skidmark that he is.
I think you hit the nail on the head. It is all a big show of how he converted a vile heathen to the true faith. The show of converting someone is more important than the person themselves. I willing to bet my pocket lint than if the wife doesn’t convert you will see couchfucker divorce her so fast that the noise will be heard in Antarctica.
The Couch used to be his god.
Vance does love to make a show of his faith. Something his own savior told his followers NOT to do.
Couchfucker is an enabler of child molesters and now he wants his wife to join him in that.