About Last Week…
Bladeless Helicopter Parenting
Typically, we don’t usually start off with a picture/meme, but this one is too good to pass up:
This is funny, true, and more important than you think.
Kids back then were raised with a greater sense of independence, a hint of self-reliance, and an understanding that not everything will automatically turn out okay for them.
And then came the cult of safety.
Over the past two decades or so, raising kids has meant removing any potential obstacle, any impediment, any challenge from their lives. They were told over and over that they were perfect the way they were and anyone who told them differently was bad.
They – exactly like everyone else, ironically – were made to believe they were uniquely amazing beings that should – and now could – never be challenged about anything, never has to change.
How’s that working out?
Well, at least she’s not wearing a fucking covid mask.
But the direct progression from having a broken-bladed helicopter parent to DEI to woke to anti-semite is impossible to deny, let alone ignore:
If a person only sees what things are like now for Israel and Jews (well, actually before October 7 to be exact,) then it is possible for someone not terribly bright to use an intersectional/DEI “wheel of privilege” to decide that Jews are oppressors and, since nothing existed before you were born, always were and always will be.
Jews are labelled by the progressives as white, rich, capitalists who are doing terrible things to the oppressed Palestinians and therefore they must be opposed and even destroyed.
Without a sense of history and access to facts such as 3,000 years of being oppressed and subjugated themselves, the diaspora, the Holocaust, and the simple fact that, if you want to play the unconscionable and childish “they were there first” game so popular with progressives, when it comes to “Palestine” the Jews have been there pretty much as long as anyone else. Rome conquered Judea, not Palestine.
So with no mooring to the reality of history, students and progressives and wokerati are perfectly able to apprise the current situation through a “lens of oppression.”
And since that lens is the DEI lens and DEI can never be racist itself, let alone wrong, that line of thinking continues and continues to grow typically unchallenged by other people, lest they themselves be labelled racist and, therefore, a social pariah.
Therefore, the sadly predictable result of intersectionality and DEI and progressive and woke and contextualism and relativist thinking – unleavened by any other meaningful education - is the antisemitism the nation sees today on campuses and elsewhere.
And if you throw a lot of money at people who have no historical bearing, as Goerge Soros is doing now with the pro-Hamas protestors, it exacerbates the problem a thousand fold.
I can be stupid and rich and perfect and yell and get paid? Neato!
Speaking of race and politics, it seems that the Biden administration has dropped its plans – for now – to outlaw menthol cigarettes.
California, of course, has already done so and the state assumed the nation – especially with Biden in office, um especially with Biden’s progressive staff in charge of the country – would follow suit.
And it almost did, until the Biden campaign team was told that black people smoke menthols.
As of last year, of the black people who smoke 81% smoked menthols, helping make Newport the second best-selling brand in the country (Marlboro is first, then Newport, then Camel, and then by some counts and rather surprisingly, light blue American Spirit – my brand.)
The percentage of white menthol smokers is only about one-third, but that has grown in recent years (does that mean society is becoming less racist?)
Facing a very difficult election and already seeing his support slip among black voters, Biden decided this past week to drop the ban.
So, is banning menthols racist? Since I’m not an expert in critical race theory, I can’t answer for sure, but since “black people only smoke menthols” has been a racially-charged trope for decades it has very odd overtones of at least racial distinction, and is definitely basing public policy on race.
And votes.
Go figure.
There will be “no thank” you epigram this week because I have a new idea and if anyone reading this is a TV producer, let me know what you think in the comments:
From the minds at the History Channel and the Game Show Network comes a compelling new docudrama series:
Yahtzee Hunters!
Join us as we go into the shadowy world of Yathzees to find out what makes them tick, why they enjoy themselves in that manner, why they believe in the five sixes, and how they handle the public adversity of being a dedicated Yahtzee!
If it’s a hit, there are a couple of spinoffs I’ve thought of:
Yahtzee Sympathizers!
They don’t play Yahtzee themselves, but understand why it could be played – they’re Yahtzee Sympathizers! See how these people who occupy the netherworld between ardent Yahtzees and anti-Yahtzees handle the pressure and navigate their personal relationships.
Neo Yahtzees!
Meet the children of Yathzees and learn how it impacts their lives. From the dice mobile above their cribs as babies to being forced to watch “Full House” over and over again, to practice roll after roll after roll after roll, find out how they cope with the pressure and learn if they will become committed Yathzees themselves.
We always need a bit of fun – thanks for subscribing!!
Tried to heart this post. My heart is broken! It wouldn’t work.