This is like your boss finding shit to do when there's nothing to do.

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[–] 79 points 11 months ago (9 children)

The BSA wasn't Hitler Youth outright while I was in, but there is definitely a "God, Duty, Country" vibe that other scouting organizations around the world left behind or never adopted in the first place. Conservatives liked that, and they hated that they had been making a slow march towards more progressive and less nationalist policy that I bet only hastened after the sexual assault lawsuits bankrupted the national organization.

Hegseth is probably doing this to either pressure Scouting into regressing, or to weaken Scouting in order to spin up a Trump Youth later. There is no shortage of conservative dads unhappy with modern Scouting that would love either outcome.

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  • [–] 19 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    Yeah that's why I never really got into the scouts - it felt culty (not that I could articulate that back then.)

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  • [–] 13 points 11 months ago* (1 child)

    I know from seeing videos of other Scout troops over the years compsred to my own experiences as a Scout that it really depends on the place and the people. All my troop leaders were moms, and it was more or less just after school activities to keep you from being idle and getting up to trouble out of boredom that were also educational.

    We didn't do much of the "culty" things like pledges or whatever. We just did arts, crafts and went camping. Learned how to cook, sew, survive in the woods, first-aid, etc. 🤷‍♂️

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago*

    This was really dependent on your troop. My troop did that stuff in a “yada yada yada, anyway let’s go play outside” kind of way. Yes it’s in all of the official shit, but I think our troop was mostly an excuse for my scoutmasters to take us along camping with their buds. They did their thing, and we basically went around terrorizing everyone and everything.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago*

    Yeah, BSA was still real weird when I was in it (90's-very early 00's). The martial aspects, Christianity, and nationalism were sort of the assumed values. And there was a very disturbing I'll just say Neo-confederate Mormon flavor to the top level national organization. It was built by straight white conservative men so that their sons would have a safe space, in other words.

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