Uppity Whippersnappers On My Electoral Lawn
The first thing that pops in my head when I hear one of these rants… which is ironic, because today’s 18-year-olds don’t really remember that episode and more remember the memes based on it.
Josh Gelernter, National GET OFFA MAH LAWN!!!:
Raise the Voting Age
At this point, do I even need to point out that conservatives despise actual democracy in the same way they despise an actual free market? I mean, whether it be all the attempts to quite literally reinstate the old voter disenfranchisement tactics against black and poor voters. Or the way that schools often have the least voting machine support for a populace their size. Or the attempts to argue that allowing homeless people to vote is somehow voter theft. Or the ways in which they’ve made it ever easier to outright buy elections. Or the gerrymandering, outright election theft, calls for the elimination of votes to women and minorities for “voting wrong”, and the outright masturbatory glaze they get for the days of feudalism.
And that’s before musing back in history and realizing that at every point, authoritarian right-wingers have been at the front of the push for rollbacks of rights and shrinking of the populace with power, while progressives have always been pushing against them for the greatest amount of equality and equal voice.
And it makes sense why. For a movement that is entirely about the fictional universality of a small clump of suburban white douchebags, the notion of even electoral equality with the filthy queer and brown masses must be like nails on a chalkboard. HWAT, my glorious vote is only as worth as much as some filthy tranny whore rotting in the street? THIS SHALL NOT DO!
Add in the fact that they are losing to all of that and may have to evolve and change to stay relevant and you have the recipe for an epic hissy fit of pissed off tomcats in an ever-shrinking box of their irrelevancy.
It also makes sense that they despise the young. After all, the young are the beneficiaries of decades of desperate progressive struggle that has gone before and as such, have no reference point to miss the same sort of shit that bitter old conservative men do and in fact, have many reasons to see such nostalgia as monstrous.
To the young, things like being against mixed race couples, criminalizing marital rape, treating gay men like human beings instead of corpses to be cackled over, and integration are as foreign as Estonia. Not only do the arguments not make sense, but they couldn’t make sense, because there’s no reference point available for them to put themselves in that time and see it as normal.
And that makes the young a very potent and dangerous reminder to conservative ideology. With each growing generation, there’s another one who expects that they’ll be able to pursue a full career as a woman. Who when screamed at about socialism thinks more of Sweden than Russian Bears trying to hit on you in the global hot tub. Who have close personal friends who are queer or a different race or are of a different gender to them. Who have no investment to the old ways of my daddy dun tol’ me, because they’re daddies didn’t or if they did, there’s was no reason to venerate and hold sacred those ancient grudges and bigotries.
Add into that mix the fact that the young are often despised by old people who have forgotten they are still alive and can like, do stuff and learn stuff, and be kickass elderly anarchists that everyone wants to call “mum”. And thus, see these youthful faces and see only a life of wasting one’s time cowering in fear of social bigotry and invisible abusers in the sky and a fresh target to vent all that hatred and rage at these young sacks of flesh for “stealing” one’s youth and wasting it on actually living closer to what they are, instead of imprisoning themselves in tiny barbed wire boxes for “propriety”.
And well, add all that together and it is basically inevitable that you end up with posts like this.
Verbatim (or the last port before Jungle):
- This is a good time, then, to talk about voter suppression. By and large, 18-year-olds know nothing and shouldn’t be voting. Let’s suppress them.
Yeah, I know, as a young person who spends my day job mentoring, educating, and harvesting the souls of even younger people, that I should be raging and shaking my fist at the sky in predictable fashion, but honestly, I’m at the point in the abuse cycle with these raging assholes where I’m just glad they’ve finally decided to be fucking honest for once.
I mean, yeah, the right-wing tactic right now is trying to suppress enough votes by any means necessary to keep the rotting zombie corpse of the Southern Strategy lurching for another few years of social delay in the hope that that’ll ensure they die before much needed social reform comes to pass (apologies to our undead-American readers for this analogy). And yeah, the arguments for this bullshit pretty much are, huh, which groups aren’t voting for us, let’s just not let them vote. So it’s nice to have them start banging their shoe on the table (older readers, that blast from the past is for you) and ranting about how they’re going to take their democracy and go home if people insist on using it for its intended purpose.
But hey, let’s put this panicked flail in context.
It’s September now, in a midterm year, and election season is going to suck up a lot of national attention over the next two months.
What? Do the Republicans seem worried what with their public image dipping ever further into the toilet and the fact they only have escaped asylum inmates for election options thanks to overabusing the free win button that was paranoid evangelical suburbanites and conspiracy theorists? And is this getting the paid hacks a bit angsty over possibly having to get real jobs instead of just selling overpriced yacht rides (yup, it’s that season again at National Review)?
We could hardly tell.
ot election topics will include voter IDs and voter suppression: In August, a federal judge declined to issue an injunction against a North Carolina law that requires voters to show photo IDs; this week a federal trial began of a voter ID law in Texas. The DOJ believes that requiring people to have photo IDs is an unreasonably onerous burden. This is a good time, then, to talk about voter suppression.
C’mmmmonnnn guyyyys, let us suppress the vote already!
By and large, 18-year-olds know nothing and shouldn’t be voting. Let’s suppress them.
Oh, I’m sorry, were you expecting some form of context for that? Even really terrible bullshit like “here’s an 18 year old taking a selfie, clearly she is a young whore and therefore all 18 year olds shouldn’t vote? Ha ha, have you forgotten where we are? This is the land that tried to resurrect the wingnut careers of Dennis Prager, Michelle Malkin, and Adam Baldwin. Logic and narrative causality have no place in these desolate and still waters.
Of course you can produce anecdotal evidence to the contrary, evidence of 18-year-olds who don’t know nothing. I’m sure everyone can find a thoughtful 18-year-old who ought to be voting.
Okay, okay, sure, so, there’s so-called “evidence” that 18 year olds aren’t actually empty-headed machines who survive on the stolen life essence of older men who foolishly drink water, but… er…
But if you go to any college campus and talk to the first thousand 18-year-olds you meet, you’ll find five who are qualified to vote and eight hundred who don’t know who Churchill was.
YOUNG PEOPLE! MY STRAWMAN SAYS THEY DON’T KNOW IMPORTANT THINGS LIKE STUFF THAT WAS AROUND WHEN I WAS A KID! THEREFORE NO VOTE FOR THEM!
On a slightly more serious note, the whole argument of restriction of vote on supposed competence thing just makes me laugh. Maybe it is the fact that I know a hell of a lot of extremely empathetic, politically active, and genuinely curious about the world 18-21 year olds. Or maybe it is the fact that every time someone tries to make this sort of “young people dumb, shouldn’t be allowed to adult” argument whether it be in favor of restricting abortion or contraception access or dismissing problems like rape or entrenched misogyny, I just think of all the 30-somethings and older who are either completely lost in a maze of conspiracy theories and strawman talking points or are otherwise just dumb as shit.
All the MRAs who somehow have managed to have avoided any knowledge about nearly one-half of the human species and thus somehow think women are some form of cash-fueled lamprey, all the fuckers opining on immigration with all the breadth of knowledge of Yosemite Sam cursing varmits, all the dedicated conspiracy theorists who think Obama is a Kenyan Antichrist or that climate change is totally not happening because cultural depictions of hippies look dorky, or all the dedicated racists who still haven’t figured out that the Plantation days ain’t ever coming back.
And yet, no one, not even me, would take away their right to vote, no matter how cruelly and pointlessly tribalistic they waste it, because Bob-damn it we’re at least pretending to be a democracy.
Which I guess is the big thing that separates authoritarians regretting ever moving away from that whole monarchy thing from people who still retain vague hopes that our almost democracy can one day be saved from the sociopaths holding it hostage.
If you don’t believe me, I suggest you actually go to a college campus and talk to some students.
Please don’t. They never did anything to deserve that.
A lot of them won’t be able to identify the decade in which the Berlin Wall came down.
Heh…
1) It’s 2014. Someone entering college right now as an 18-year-old would have likely been born in 1996. The Berlin Wall came tumbling down in 1989, a full 7 years before those Freshmen were even born. Just saying, that to them, this critical moment of living history and relief from decades of fear and unnecessary animosity between two douchebag supernations might not have the same relevance and impact. In much the same way as I’m sure the First Great Depression hardly has as much impact to you as it did the people who tried desperately to survive that first great hell or Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” was ever more than a historic footnote despite the critically important role it played for those who lived through it. [edited by Provider]
I mean, that’s the nature of non-living history, it’s a snapshot, often robbed of its emotional impact and turned into meaningless facts of date and time by an education system with a vested interest in keeping history boring and obsessed with rote memorization lest it be a subversive tool of genuine education into the nature of oppression and repeating patterns.
Which is something you are clearly invested in, seeing as how you are not complaining about kids not appreciating the emotional impact of the Fall of the Berlin Wall (full disclosure, I also don’t give a fuck, seeing as how it happened long before I’d be someone able to be even aware of the world outside my neighborhood), but rather not having an on-the-spot memorized date to go with “historical moment X” you’ve arbitrarily decided was important because it was an important moment in your life.
Which on that note…
2) I absolutely love that the majority of his ideas of what is critically important knowledge that everyone should have is stuff that was important when he was alive or stuff that was emphasized when he was in school. Because how dare young people be born in a different era and have different things emphasized in their education! Gol darn it, the world is supposed to be a static tomb, drawing dusty empty breath until this bitter curmudgeon shuffles off the mortal coil safely protected from ever having to change or think about anyone other than himself like the sociopath he is.
I mean, talk about narcissism.
Many of them will have very firm opinions on politics,
Gosh, that sounds like the exact type of person who should be banned from political action. Those with well-defined political beliefs and well-crafted opinions. Oh wait, that’s right, they are the “wrong” opinions. Silly me, of course, it makes sense that you want to ban them from public participation now.
but won’t know the difference between the debt and the deficit.
…I… bu… you… you’re the ones who don’t understand the difference between the debt and the deficit. You. And you’re also the idiots who seem to think that a country’s finances work like a struggling poor family trying to figure how to ride it out to payday…
I’m not saying this is the worst possible example you could have opened up with, but it’s certainly in the top ten.
A lot of them will think the Civil War happened in the 18th century,
Um… which generation doesn’t have a good number who’ll get confused on how century categorizations work, especially if asked ambush style?
Also, since when is this a good barometer for whether one should be allowed to vote? Well, you see, living now in the 20th century-HA! It’s 21st, motherfucker, you just lost the right to vote! But… but I’m a sitting US Senator an- STFU, sit down and shut up you ignorant non-citizen!
and a lot will think the Revolution happened in the 1800s.
Heh…
A) I love how all of this is done in strawman “what I dun think” style. Why bother pointing to studies or actual reality, when you can just let your mind wander over with all the strawman ideas you have built up in your head about those pesky whipper-snappers that dun put a socialisty antichrist in your most Whitest of Houses? It’s so much easier and truthier than actually pertaining to the reality we live in.
B) Heh. So there’s this interesting thing where a number of modern historians are actually pointing to the early 1800s as the true end of the Revolution. Most often, the final date is around the end of the War of 1812 though some go later and point out the moments where America settled down and actually started being respected as a full nation by other political powers of the time. Anyways, the end of the War of 1812 is often the most popular modern endpoint for the Revolution because as the logic goes, it was the point where America asserted its sovereignty once and for all from its former colonial owners. Like, Britain lost an initial war to keep it, but then, regrouped and tried to reassert its dominance and was pushed back, thus beginning a new era where America could grow as a nation, rather than just fighting for the right of the nation to exist.
So yeah, someone answering that is more likely to be an actual history major with a nerdy obsession with that era than some clueless stereotype of the dumb sorority slut or dudebro part-harder that this fuckstain has in his head when he thinks “college student”.
They won’t be able to summarize five amendments in the Bill of Rights, name five presidents between Lincoln and Truman, or name 15 elements on the periodic table.
The presidents in the Gilded Age? The sort of sad lost era of corporate dominance where each elected figurehead was nearly meaningless to the grinding gears of Industrial corruption and the utter insanity of the rich?
And…
Actually, we need to hold up for a second and point something out. Sure, there’s the whole, why is this meaningless memorization of random crap (random crap I doubt he could actually answer given the way the right-wing has shredded most of the Amendments in the Bill of Rights and just how anti-science it has gotten in general) supposedly being thrown up instead of like, actual understanding of political reality as exists today and so on, as a supposed youth literacy test for the right to vote, but more importantly is this bit of irony.
People fresh out of high school know that random crap a hell of a lot better than some olds who’ve long since realized that literally no one cares what the Gilded Age presidents are called and if there was some reason to know it, there’s Google.
Because they had to memorize it for exit tests and AP tests and passing either their high school courses or general ed college courses.
As such, there’s no group of people in the fucking world who probably knows that sort of meaningless crap better than a current Freshman or Sophomore in college. I mean, I know I knew a hell of a lot more of that sort of memorization and trivia crap when I needed it to pass tests than X years out of my Master’s Program.
Oh, and since I’m just the kind of bitch that likes to get the boot in on a downed opponent, yeah, about that whole bullshit random memorization thing.
There’s no damn good reason to teach memorization style in this day and age.
I mean, maybe back in 1950, there was a reason. After all, it was a genuine chore to remember exactly what the thing you wanted to look up was called and then find the right encyclopedia volume and look it up. As such, it could be useful to have it in your head ready to bring up.
But here in 2014, we have google, we have wikipedia. Every bit of random useless crumb of trivia and names and dates is literally seconds away on a device most of us regularly carry in our pocket. There is literally no reason for students to waste their neurons on memorizing this shit when the phone in their pocket can reach the answer faster.
And this is a good thing. It means teachers can move away from wasting time teaching dates no one gives a damn about and actually focus on the connections of concepts and what they actually mean. Instead of making sure everyone memorizes the exact date that James Garfield got gunned down, they can focus on exactly why the Gilded Age was the way it was and the way that assassinations and attempted assassinations of presidents became more common after Lincoln and why that was. Things few other generations really got to explore because they were focused on shoving ten more key terms down their kids throats before the next batch.
And the education system has been slow to adapt to this and move away from the easy testing apparatus of names and dates, but it will result in far smarter and more adaptive students… hell, it already has, seeing as how the young do more work and more varied work than any other generation and receive the least amount of pay for it. I mean, pretty much every working young person these days would have been considered a polymath a century ago and it’s that easy access to information that makes that possible and common.
It’s not their fault; their schools (and parents) have failed them.
Well, maybe then, we should actually fund those schools half as well as we do our prisons… oh sorry, didn’t realize you were just blowing a “nigger parents don’t raise their kids to dodge our bullets good” dog whistle there. My bad.
Education in this country has gone to hell.
Gosh, I wonder if that has anything to do with the criminal underfunding of the public school system, the outright sabotage of the education of poorer children so as to artificially give a leg up to graduates of richer schools, and the fact that YOUR SORRY BATCH OF FUCKWEASELS HAVE WAGED A CONSTANT AND UNENDING WAR ON THE NOTION OF ACTUAL EDUCATION! Bob damn is it frustrating having the same fucks who try and get evolution banned from the biology courses and whine when the English or History classes actually try and teach what happened instead of delivering conservative propaganda turn around and decry our state of education like they haven’t spent the last 40+ years systematically trying to destroy it.
Some colleges will do some remedial blank-filling, some won’t, and some kids won’t go to college. But by the time they’re — say — 21, at least they’ll have a little more life under their belts. Some of them will — for instance — have learned what it’s like paying taxes, or paying for groceries.
Yes, clearly those 3 years are critical for the same vague, undefined reasons as alcohol use.
I mean, sure, an 18 year old can be charged as an adult for a crime, legally consent to sex with people over the age of 18, and can go off and get blown the fuck up for a country that couldn’t care less about them (is it even worth pointing out that a good portion of our All-Hallowed troops are between the ages of 18-21), but heavens forfend that they drain a beer bottle or be allowed to vote according to the rules of adulthood that Fuckleberry Hound here just made up…
And to go off on a wee bit of a rant here… eh, I’ll save it for when the douchenozzle makes the inevitable argument because it is literally the only thing he has other than… durr, I think 18 year olds are teh dum and hurgle gurgle, they vote wrong and I want to cheat to win.
Of course, the voting age will never be raised. That would require a constitutional amendment, which would require two-thirds of both houses and three-fourths of the states. And that would likely require 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds voting against their right to vote.
Yes, I can see how getting people to vote against their own enfranchisement might be a wee bit of a hard sell.
If only we had something to offer them in return.
Of course, it’s super easy to bribe people to just handing over their rights… wait, these are the chuckleheads who gleefully cheered on getting a tiny tax refund as a righteous bargain for the complete surrender of the Bill of Rights during the Bush years. They probably do think everyone can be bribed off their rights.
The age of franchise was lowered to 18 because 18-year-olds can be drafted. When the lowering happened, in ’71, 18-year-olds were being drafted and sent to Vietnam. It seemed fair to let people fighting a war help choose the people running the war. Though of course you could argue that people reach physical maturity before mental maturity, which is why you don’t get a driver’s license when you hit puberty.
Apparently, it is only fair to let the people dying on your country’s behalf vote, but only if they were forced there by government order. If they freely chose it, because that’s the only economic way to survive or have a shot at college, then they’re clearly dumb suckers and deserve nothing, other than the privilege of serving as masturbation fantasy material for homicidal conservative shitstains.
But anyway: At the moment, in the United States, the legal view is that if you’re old enough to fight, you’re old enough to vote — but you’re not old enough to buy liquor. The drinking age is 21. Why can’t someone buy liquor till he’s 21? Because, say the lawmakers, at 18, you’re not old enough to make mature decisions about issues as weighty as alcohol.
It’s true, the weightiest issue on the minds of 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds (by and large) is how to get alcohol. They may not know when the market crashed, but they certainly know which bars will serve them and which delis will sell them beer. (I know what I’m talking about; four years ago I was 20.)
And there it is.
Rant back on.
Okay, the whole alcohol restriction is fucking stupid, and I say this as someone who might as well be a teetotaler for all the booze that passes my lips.
In fact, the whole restriction and its arbitrary nature I think contributes the most to the shitty booze culture we have in the States and the near-mythical status it has gained in college parties and young adult social functions.
Because it is the one facet of adulthood just jangled like keys in front of young adults figuring themselves out and so becomes a taboo thing to not only seek out, but abuse like idiots, because if you’re going to risk breaking the law, you want to get the most out of it you can, even if that means getting blackout drunk or putting yourself at risk for alcohol poisoning.
And I’m not just saying that because I’m an introverted nerd girl with a learned hatred for party culture. I’m saying that, because I’ve hung around college kids in France and other countries where handing a 6 year old a small cup of booze is not out of place. And there’s not the same drink-to-excess culture and mythology there as there is in the States because there’s no taboo and there’s no restriction. Booze is boring and so is treated as the thing it is, something that can taste good in the right circumstances and can bring on a slightly pleasurable altered state for those into that.
That same casual nature to booze is what I credit for being the boring old stick-in-the-mud that I am with the devil’s brew. My parents did not abuse the liquor, nor did they hide it away as shame, instead it was a thing sometimes available at dinner and when I was younger it was freely offered. I was encouraged to take a taste and refine my palate as to what booze could taste like.
And that’s largely the reason I rarely partake. Because when I do, I’m mostly drinking for taste and well, there’s no mystique or fascination that makes me seek it out more than other tasty beverages like homemade iced tea.
Which isn’t to claim some form of morality for that. It’s simply a thing that often happens, hell to most, as they grow older and more used to legal alcohol and the desperate abuse just loses its allure for all but those prone to addiction. It’s a thing to have with friends or a fun Friday outing or a delicious tasting instead of pouring 8 ounces of everclear down your gullet because you need to get drunk fast if you’re going to enjoy this brief and possibly final experience with the drug.
There’s no damn good reason for that random blip to exist other than the booze companies want it to exist, because it allows the makers of cheap, shitty booze to profit with the least effort.
Hell, it’s the reason why this dick doesn’t even try to argue for why booze and apparently voting should be so high other than trying to allude that they are “good reasons” about “maturity”. Because there isn’t one.
But hey, how can we make this uninspired and insipid bit of what the heck even more insultingly dumb?
So, I propose a trade. Raise the voting age to 21 and lower the drinking age to 18, all in one tidy amendment. Surviving three years of being able to drink legally is a good test of fitness to vote, anyway, and maybe this deal could get a little momentum.
Ah, there we go. Peak stupid… Ha, I wish.
Or maybe, no matter how much a thoughtful electorate might like the voting age raised, they won’t accept the drinking age being lowered.
Because traditionnnnnn! Tradition!
After all, drinking is serious business. We don’t want people who aren’t supposed to drink drinking. That’s why you can’t do it without a photo ID.
Ha ha ha ha ha, go fuck yourself and your bullshit attempts to openly try and suppress voters.
I mean, for fuck’s sake dude, you could at least try and have a little bit of shame and not try to pull a “I’m a sneaky little weasel who is totally got a point about how not supressy our suppression campaign is” at the end of an article which is literally ranting about suppressing the right to vote for a wide swath of people for no damn reason other than strawmen and fear of democracy.
Your gravy train is crashing into the gorge. Deal with it.
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. You know, when the Whigs fizzled into political obscurity, I don’t think they put up nearly the level of angry thrashing… It’d be even sadder if this wasn’t a thing you could prevent by adapting to the times the bare minimum possible. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™
One measure of just how self-centered the Baby Boomer generation is.
These are the people who got the drinking age lowered so that they could drink, and then raised it so that their kids couldn’t drink.
Wasn’t this Geller’s schtick a while back? If people were going to stay on their parent’s health insurance under ACA they shouldn’t be allowed to vote because they’re just wittle babies.
Oh dearie, dearie me. Please don’t get people riled up and writing their CongressCritters. If that happens we’ll have at least one Republican fuckhead championing this cause (looks at Gohmert), and then the liberals will be FURIOUS. Grrr. Rar.
But that right here is why being a conservahack is the easiest fucking job on the planet.
Step 1: Come up with some stupid fucking idea that no one would touch in a zillion years.
Step 2: Continue to complain because your stupid fucking idea hasn’t become reality.
Step 3: Repeat Steps 1 & 2.
Wasn’t this Geller’s schtick a while back?
I thought it was “Eeek! Kill all the Muslims!”
I didn’t realize she had more than one.
First, pedantry:
UpTON Sinclair wrote The Jungle. Lawn, vacate, etc.
Secondly, giving those going to war the right to vote on their leaders? Blah blah maturity, but this from a party who’s been shilling the American Revolution and yet forgetting that while taxation was part of the complaint against Britain REPRESENTATION was the other part. I dunno, maybe they just went to shitty American schools.
Thirdly, the mendacious whining about “maturity” in the context of elections while, again, being a member of the subculture that sees NOTHING FUCKING WRONG with handing a 9 year old an Uzi or giving an 11 year old their own shotgun and the like etc. etc. usw. world without end amen. So yeah, kid, you’re physically and emotionally too immature for another ten years to be allowed to drink this beer Daddy had you go fetch, or to understand our complex electoral system (read: vote for the shriveled up white guy who spent the most money on attack ads), but here, here’s your own AR-15 and a coloring book on gun safety. Have fun!
Fourthly, oh, yes, Mr. Gelertner, let’s indeed play “You Don’t Know Jack” as a test for suffrage. Please describe, with dates, please, the context of the following subjects: Shay’s Rebellion, the Paris Commune, Wounded Knee, the Pueblo incident, Quemoy Island, the Killing Fields, boat people, Unit 731, and KAL Flight 007. Be specific!
Pere, you forgot Ludlow. Re: Pedantry, if Cerb doesn’t get to it, I will, after I get to the nearest wifi joint…
…
Mr. Gelertner: I hate to do this, but please add the following to the previous list. Use the back of the sheet if necessary.
United Fruit Company, Ngo Dinh Diem, Air America (NOT the radio station), INSLAW, the Zoot Suit Riots, Bloody Kansas, the bombing of Royan, Mohammad Mossadegh, Dark Alliance, Serratia marcescens, Holmesburg Prison, and Stanley Milgram.
(This is fun!)
Oh, Mr. Geleeeeeeeeerrrrrtner!
The Belgrano and the Sheffield, the demon core, the Garbage Barge, “white flight”, the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, Vladivostok 1918, Checkpoint Charlie, Gary Powers, and Satanic Panic.
For some reason, that passage reminded me of Pap Finn talking about why he stopped voting.
On a good day, I think we might start making some progress toward allowing an actual left in this country sometime around 2034, when it’s been longer since the Cold War ended that it was between the start and the end.
Other times, I think it’ll take until all of us who remember the Cold War have died off and there’s nobody living who has actual memories of the International Communist Conspiracy and how it came close to being as much of a threat to the American Way of Life as it thought it needed to be (though still nowhere near as much as the Military-Industrial Complex needed it to be in order to justify their imperial overreach).
And on really bad days, I think we won’t be sensible as a nation until nobody remembers that there was such a thing as the Cold War and the phrase leaves anyone alive with a baffled expression and a desire to ask “‘Cold War’? What was that, some kind of war on weather?” Like Odysseus slinging an oar over his shoulder and walking inland until he passes somebody who says “That’s a funny-lookin’ threshing fan you’re carrying, neighbor.”
(And FYWP, I spent five minutes working on this comment and hadn’t posted anything to this entire site since a time yesterday at least. How the helling ass is that “posting too fast”?)
Pere Ubu, point taken, and we could really go on for days and days and days, BTW feel free to camp out here in the comments as much as you like. I know that we have been like ships passing in the night, but it has been a while since I have seen you on the Intertrons…glad to see you hanging here and at Roys.
Austin, I have spent some time attempting to deal with that FYWP bug, yet to no avail. There is a .php file I need to modify, but I have yet to figure a way to get at it. Attempts to ftp into the site have been unsuccessful.
Work in progress…
…
Also too, Pere Ubu, you forgot Salvador Allende and Jacobo Árbenz. Gelernter needs to learn the hell out of those two names.
As Prov points out, you could do this shit all day. Christ, sit down with just a copy of Zinn’s People’s History of The United States and Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Taught Me and you’ve got hours of fun for the entire family right there.
I admit I had to look up Serratia, Holmesburg Prison and Royen, but I knew the idea and had to look up the details. I even had to check Flight 007 and Mossadegh’s name (kids – enjoy your memory now while you have it).
I am ashamed to admit I ragequit the Internet last year, taking my blogs down with me. Not a good time of my life. Hopefully getting better, though still rough.
Too, also:
But here in 2014, we have google, we have wikipedia. Every bit of random useless crumb of trivia and names and dates is literally seconds away on a device most of us regularly carry in our pocket. There is literally no reason for students to waste their neurons on memorizing this shit when the phone in their pocket can reach the answer faster.
I made a snark on Disqus the other day on an article at ThinkProgress; the article was discussing the present ISIS thing and referred to the AUMF, to which someone complained that you needed, according to journalistic standards, write out the whole phrase and only use the acronym after, and TP was being lazy and poorly edited for ignoring the standard.
I pointed out that, being on the Internet, one could, if one was unfamiliar with the acronym, just highlight it and hit “Search for…” in the right-click menu. I was roundly denounced for it, “why should I have to” and suchlike, and when I pointed out that other countries’ media were written at a much higher level of comprehension where one was assumed to know beforehand from context what the AUMF was and who Obama was, I was told I was being silly and over-sensitive and should just chill out.
So there’s that to consider.
But if you go to any college campus and talk to the first thousand 18-year-olds you meet, you’ll find five who are qualified to vote and eight hundred who don’t know who Churchill was.
He means Ward Churchill, evil socialist.
BENGHAZI!!!
oof…the comments over there are roundly advocating for some sort of test to be taken and passed before one gets to vote…which i find highly ironic being as they are of the party for small government…and who would compile, administer and evaluate such a test? hmmmmmm…
Utes is dum?
Takes one to know one, bro!
LOLOLOLOLOL
BURN
On the more serious side–do these fuckwits not realize that their base is undereducated, semi-literate dimwits who not only have no grasp on history but an actually completely false view of it?
That question answers itself, but wow–if dumb people don’t vote, no Republican party.
I posted on it–asking if he’s suggesting that we raise the minimum age for military service, unless he’s suggesting that those who fight for the right to vote should get the right to vote.
Talk about a silly bluff. I can’t imagine that NRO writer would fare to suggest that stupid people who are ignorant of history should be excluded from voting. As per usual I’m guessing that they figure the game would be rigged in their favor.
And in the additional tests for suffrage, please explain the differences and similarities of the Haymarket Martyrs, Lucy Parsons, Walter Reuther, Asa Philip Randolph, Cesar Chavez, Eugene Debs, Mary Jones, Emma Goldman, John Lewis, Helen Keller, and Bl. Dorothy Day. This is an easy one so 100% is required as is specificity. Besides it’s a list of names, perfect for a conservative view of great [person] history and one of them is on a literal sainthood track (very long one I imagine).
Drop me an email if you want to, I might be able to help, who knows.
(also, too: hello everybody, I’m not dead, etc.)
O.M.G.
[doomsday music] or [dramatic chipmunk]
freshly delivered to my inbox:
Hey
You may think you understand what is is happening to our nation but what you really know is far form the truth.
-Obama’s hidden agenda-
http://www.aptwhen.com/cnbc/watch/Vid-234645.plans
Six months form now your whole world could be turned upside-down.
Thanks
Alec Deacon
and who would compile, administer and evaluate such a test? hmmmmmm…
Well, once the program got started I’m sure the Republicans could get that privatized for ya.
Mary Jones and Lucy Parsons are the bomb; at a time when conventional wisdom (something the wingnuts rely heavily on) has folks becoming more and more conservative as they get older, those two were progressive firebrands! Mother Jones was still recruiting workers for unions in the mines when she was in her 80s, when Teddy Roosevelt called her “the most dangerous woman in America”.
And Lucy… well, I’m going to butcher this story, but I hear tell that she was at a rally and got called up front to speak. Advanced age, think something like in her sixties. She got up there and said something on the order of “I want every hobo, every bum, arming himself with a knife or gun, to station themselves outside the homes of the wealthy and, as they emerge, shoot or stab them”.
On a slightly more serious note, the whole argument of restriction of vote on supposed competence thing just makes me laugh.
Relevant. Also.
Well, I survived the massacre that Ted Nugent predicted for yesterday, even sans guns.
Sing it with me, children:
Voyez, voyez, la machine tourner
Voyez, voyez, la cervelle sauter
Voyez, voyez, les rentiers trembler…
Hourra ! Cornes-au-cul ! Vive le père Ubu !
http://youtu.be/I96ZEXDSwHc
Well, I survived the massacre that Ted Nugent predicted for yesterday, even sans guns.
Yes. I’m surprised we are all still here, what with all the attacks that the terrorist attempted. I mean they must have been attempted, all those wingnut bloggers couldn’t have been wrong, could they? I haven’t checked, but I’m sure they are all singing the praises of the Obama administration today, since managed to protect them all from those terrible attacks.
Pere Ubu,
Most of the people on my list didn’t get noticeably conservative when they got older (except for those who couldn’t get older because a packed jury decided they should hang). Emma Goldman arguably could be said to have been more conservative since she repudiated the Bolsheviks (a sign of good sense really) Reuther and Lewis weren’t busting heads in their old age, but they were still fighting the fight. Everyone else was the same at the beginning as the end.
I only recently got into Lucy Parsons, but she was the bomb. I suppose you could say she got more conservative with age since she argued with Emma Goldman over free love. I have to admit I always imagine that being a Victorian-age woman of color telling that young Jewish whippersnapper to be respectable for goodness sake.
Well, I survived the massacre that Ted Nugent predicted for yesterday, even sans guns.
wait, what?
I only recently got into Lucy Parsons, but she was the bomb. I suppose you could say she got more conservative with age since she argued with Emma Goldman over free love. I have to admit I always imagine that being a Victorian-age woman of color telling that young Jewish whippersnapper to be respectable for goodness sake.
my reading list has been sorely lacking…
Now I’m torn. I love Lucy Parsons’ attitude, but Emma probably would have been more fun; I think she’s the one who said “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution!”. Plus being an anarchist she probably would have been fun to argue with while drinking.
Calling Ms. Parsons “the bomb” is kind of tasteless of me, though, considering one reason she was so pissed off was that her husband got lynched as part of the Haymarket Bombing kangaroo court.
Some of what I know about Mary & Lucy comes off the collaboration album Utah Phillips & Ani DiFraco did. Can’t remember the title, but pick it up if you get a chance, along with Utah’s “We Have Fed You All For A Thousand Years”.
From last post:
You have to understand, this MRA thing is fairly recent (only in the past month) and my therapist doesn’t approve of it either.
On topic:
I don’t think knowing who Winston Churchill or James Garfield are is relevant to voting unless their zombies somehow make it on the ballot.
Also, it’s ironic that this guy brings up knowing about the fall of the Berlin Wall as vital knowledge when most US conservatives seem to have forgotten the Cold War is over (we won! – adult swim)
I don’t think knowing who Winston Churchill or James Garfield are is relevant to voting unless their zombies somehow make it on the ballot.
Now I’m thinking of the episode from “Masters Of Horror” about the zombies of American soldiers killed in Iraq, who came back to cast votes to defeat the assholes who got them killed by starting the war.
You have to understand, this MRA thing is fairly recent (only in the past month) and my therapist doesn’t approve of it either.
i’m assuming you and mra-man have both given permission for therapist to talk about each of you to each other?
also, too…if mra-man is just working through some stuff and isn’t truly going mra, then that is a whole different story…also, are you interested in mra-man platonically or romantically?
Also, it’s ironic that this guy brings up knowing about the fall of the Berlin Wall as vital knowledge when most US conservatives seem to have forgotten the Cold War is over (we won! – adult swim)
they’ve also seem to forget that lots of things have happened since they were learning history/civics in school and that today’s kids aren’t necessarily going to learn all of what older people have learned (in great detail anyway) because, duh…more history has been made! reading the comments over there (well done, tsam and nice pic!) is a boggle of ‘we nro commenters are so smart and all the kids today are dumb/lazy/obamalovers…you should have to own land to vote…oh, wait, what? you’re a republican who rents…oh, well, okay…maybe not property owners….how bout tax payers? oh, poors pay sales tax? hmmmm…okay FEDERAL tax payers…oh, what? it’s a right to vote? well, okay then…you should have to show an i.d. to vote…and it would be super simple to set up a national registry of all citizens who have passed the citizenship tests to get a federal card…and it will have all their info on it…yeah, that’s the ticket!’
oy…it’s a big bargleboggleclusterfuck over there…
it would be super simple to set up a national registry of all citizens who have passed the citizenship tests to get a federal card…and it will have all their info on it…yeah, that’s the ticket!
National GUN OWNER’S registry = one step away from Stalinism.
National VOTER’S registry = perfectly reasonable!
Because all the people killed every year in voting-related incidents would want us to do it.
Advanced age, think something like in her sixties.
…I just know you mean “advanced” as in “sophisticated…civilized…not primitive…..”, as opposed to …the other thing
(60’s R US!)
It’s entirely platonic between me and MRA-man.
No, my therapist doesn’t have permission to tell me what he said and vis versa and I doubt we could even give permission. So things are very awkward.
If it’s platonic, then don’t go beyond what you feel comfortable doing with him.
He isn’t entitled to a relationship with you because that’s what he wants, and you are entitled to decide who you will or won’t have a romantic relationship with, regardless of what your therapist or anyone else thinks.
You have the right to your own decisions and your own personal life without worrying about anyone who might disagree with you.
Welp, I did it – first post at my new digs on WordPress.
Here’s seeing if I can keep it from falling apart again.
I never said he was romantically interested in me. This is all about our platonic chemistry.
My therapist want me to get with him so I can finally have sex with someone other than a hookup.
These are the people who got the drinking age lowered so that they could drink, and then raised it so that their kids couldn’t drink.
In NZ at leaet, se’re also the generation who enjoyed the benefits of free university education and promptly changed the rules to ensure that our children would have to pay, and pay, and pay.
a coloring book on gun safety
I ran out of red pens and I want my money back.
Nice theme and nice post, Ubu. (Nice title too; I have an aesthetic preference for “disembraining” as the translation, but I have to admit that “debraining” is a more literal rendition of the original décervelage.)
Nice, Pere, good to see you back in the saddle. OBS, will get in touch next week…
…
I don’t think your therapist has any business telling you who you should have sex with, let alone being one of your fellow clients, as that’s a conflict of interest. I think that it’s an unethical suggestion coming from your therapist.
I think the goal of having you socialize outside your home with other people in order to make friends and possibly find someone who you can have a romantic relationship would be a better one for you to have.
If this guy has been talking about MRA stuff, I wouldn’t date him, and I certainly wouldn’t sleep with him if I were a woman(or even if I wasn’t)
She’s not being that pushy. It’s more in general she wants me to have a lover who is also a friend.
I am really annoyed you all assume this has to do with him making romantic and/or sexual gestures to me when I said nothing of the sort. I hate that stereotype.
FA –
As a married, middle-aged, white guy, giving advice is part of my culture but I got nothin’
Of course, the voting age will never be raised. That would require a constitutional amendment, which would require two-thirds of both houses and three-fourths of the states. And that would likely require 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds voting against their right to vote.
So the purpose in your writing this hit-piece is….what?
I think you should be friends before being lovers with someone, but your therapist shouldn’t be your matchmaker as well, especially with another client. If things don’t go well, she’d have to deal with the both of you and any hurt feelings from either of you.
I wouldn’t date an MRA even at the risk of lifelong celibacy or a lifetime of no romantic involvement in my life if I were a woman, but that’s just me.
Bottom line is that you should do what is comfortable for you, not what your therapist or I or anyone else says you should do.
How do you feel about that?
So the purpose in your writing this hit-piece is….what?
Speaking for Cerb, I would say to illustrate the stupidity of right-wing punditry along with the anti-democratic (small d in this case) streak inherent in the modern conservative movement.
Who the hell is Josh Gelernter, anyway? All I can find is that he writes for the conservative latrine known as National Review, and the IQ-lowering Weekly Shitstain/Standard, he attended NYU, and is 24. What qualifies him to be writing anything at all? Anywhere?
Who the hell is Josh Gelernter, anyway? All I can find is that he writes for the conservative latrine known as National Review, and the IQ-lowering Weekly Shitstain/Standard, he attended NYU, and is 24. What qualifies him to be writing anything at all? Anywhere?
The fact that wealthy reactionaries are willing to pay him to shill for horrible, retrograde policies.
My question has been, is he at all related to the equally toxic Todd Gelertner, who thinks the 1930s were the high point of Western Civilization (and by “western” he means “American”, natch)?
Do you mean David Gelernter? That’s Josh’s dad.
Ah, yes. The rotten mango does not fall far from the tree.
I think I was confusing him with Todd Gitlin.
Do you mean David Gelernter? That’s Josh’s dad.
Ah, another meritocracy hire… now tell us how Affirmative Action stifles competition.
Ah, another meritocracy hire
More like “anmeritocracy”.
Disappearance of PENIS.
She’s not being that pushy. It’s more in general she wants me to have a lover who is also a friend.
and that is a super good idea…
I am really annoyed you all assume this has to do with him making romantic and/or sexual gestures to me when I said nothing of the sort. I hate that stereotype.
sorry for the assumption of it being a romantic relationship, you mentioned there was no ‘spark of chemistry’ or some such which…
anyhoo, i got nuthin’ else to offer…
thanks to a comment thread re: adrian peterson, i have now learned that us lefties hate football:
you will also be surprised (no, not really) to learn that peterson beating his kid also is because obama…the. things. you. learn.
Oh.
So if Peterson decides to torture his kid, or, presumably, if Ray Rice punches his wife and knocks her out, that’s merely a little personal thing that we have no right to inquire into… yet let someone do something unconventional with their genitals and all of a sudden it’s OMIGOD WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS COUNTRY WHAT OF THE CHILDREN ARGLE BARGLE.
Just wanted to clear that up.
Pere – I’d say that about sums it up.
So if Peterson decides to torture his kid, or, presumably, if Ray Rice punches his wife and knocks her out, that’s merely a little personal thing that we have no right to inquire into… yet let someone do something unconventional with their genitals and all of a sudden it’s OMIGOD WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS COUNTRY WHAT OF THE CHILDREN ARGLE BARGLE.
hate to break it to you, but people NOT beating on their kids is the reason today’s youth is spoiled, whiny, lazy, disrespectful and won’t amount to anything…in fact, the kids nowadays just need to get their asses whipped on a regular basis and this country will be great once more…***
***sad to say, this is nearly verbatim of mangoes…
Anyone who thinks hitting children is OK needs to be curb-stomped by several huge bikers so that they can understand what it feels like to be small and defenseless.
that’s merely a little personal thing that we have no right to inquire into
If professional sports performers wanted to retain some privacy in their personal lives — in which their choices of whom to beat up as stress relief would be a private family matter — then it was probably a mistake for them to let the pimps of the sports industry promote their status as role models, as one reason why they are entitled to large amounts of money.
Cerb, I usually just lurk and learn here, but I have to say thanks. Thanks for writing so passionately, and eloquently, even when your back is up against the wall in your personal life. I do hope you’ll continue.
Anyone who thinks hitting children is OK needs to be curb-stomped by several huge bikers so that they can understand what it feels like to be small and defenseless.
For full effect, the bikers should force them to pick out the location where the curb-stomping will occur.
I had to retrieve the wooden spoon. I had issues with wooden spoons for years thanks to my father.
I’ll say this again–spanking kids is shitty parenting. Fear and pain don’t teach valuable lessons.
I was spanked as a kid. What I learned from that was ‘don’t get caught’. Which is a kind of lesson, but maybe not the wisdom my parents were hoping to impart.
Josh Gelerntet nicht.
Its been too long, it should be something like Josh hate keine Gelerntet or something but all the declensions and shit have dribbled out of my head over the years.
Hatte. FYautocorrect.
Hatte. FYautocorrect.
And now we can double post?!? Wow, FYWP is really ill.
I was spanked too. But I also never wore a seatbelt and frequently rode in the back of a truck on state highways.
The point is that you’re trying to educate your kids. Spanking causes two problems with that. 1) Violence isn’t how you respond to bad behavior, and 2) you’re trying to teach ethical behavior. The spanking may teach you not to do certain things, but it doesn’t teach you why you shouldn’t do those things.
Parents and home are supposed to be a safe place for kids. The world will impose plenty of pain and fear, they don’t need it from mom and dad.
The point is that you’re trying to educate your kids. Spanking causes two problems with that. 1) Violence isn’t how you respond to bad behavior, and 2) you’re trying to teach ethical behavior. The spanking may teach you not to do certain things, but it doesn’t teach you why you shouldn’t do those things
i am amazed at the number of people who proclaim that a ‘whooping’, a ‘whupping’, a ‘whipping’ and (my personal favorite) a ‘whopping’ are the reason they are good people today…and how many are saying, ‘kids need to be disciplined and that’s what’s not happening anymore in this country’ and by discipline they mean smacking your kid with an object…consider my mind boggled…i gave both my kids a couple of whacks on the butt with my hand only a few times…i just don’t think spanking (or worse) is a good method of discipline…i found talking, time out, consequence fits the crime discipline to work better for me and my kids…and that there is a shit ton of people who equate NOT beating your kids as ‘no discipline’ makes me feel ill.
but, what’s even more interesting, is the ‘well, this is how we do it in the south’ and the ‘well, we parents have to beat on our kids to teach them respect and how to become good negroes when they are in a situation where they are interacting with cops’ (it’s actually been put as ‘i would rather beat you now than have the cops beat you later’…yikes) and even ‘it’s comes from being descended from slaves…it’s what we/you black people know’
I was spanked too. But I also never wore a seatbelt and frequently rode in the back of a truck on state highways.
several commenters on this particular thread pointed out that, yeah…we did a lot of dumb/bad shit in the past, but we’ve learned and that makes things better for everyone…but to no avail…they were always answered with ‘but beatings worked on me and they work on my kids and kids have been being beaten on since the dawn of time, so why change what works?’ one guy even brought the founders into it, claiming that all our founders had been whipped as children and look at the great things they accomplished! when he was asked to provide a citation that all the founders had been whipped as children, he got quite snippy and asked that person to show him some court documents showing that any of the founders or their parents were ever brought up on child abuse charges…sigh. it’s quite a mindset…
several posters also opined that if the pro-beaters were so convinced that beatings work, why did they and their children need more than one beating to learn the difference between right and wrong? wouldn’t one have sufficed?
What’s really surprising to me is that there are a number of supposedly-liberal commenters over at a thread at LGM about this making the same “a few good whoopings did me good, what’s the big deal if I do it to my kids?” claim.
W. T. F!?
It’s shit like this that makes me want to like the Montessori parents and their freaky-ass uncontrollable kids, and that is simply not cool.
There’s a balance between beating the shit out of your children and letting them run wild in the streets. Learn that balance, or don’t have any fucking kids!
But no, I’m not angry about this at all, why do you ask?
Please comment more–glad to have you here.
I was spanked too.
Spanking I could have lived with. It was the fists, the being picked up by the hair and the being bounced off walls parts that I had issues with.
Oh, and then there was the getting bashed in the face with a toilet plunger – because that’s what he happened to have in his hand at the time.
I guess I should have been glad it wasn’t something heavier.
major…holy shit…sorry, man…
What’s really surprising to me is that there are a number of supposedly-liberal commenters over at a thread at LGM about this making the same “a few good whoopings did me good, what’s the big deal if I do it to my kids?” claim.
W. T. F!?
ikr? how you crack that mindset is beyond me…along with thinking severe corporal punishment is a-okay in this day and age, i also think we should be beyond boots on the ground war, but perhaps i expect too much…i just think as civilized beings, we should know how to behave better…
Football is a violent sport so it is no surprise that people who play the game are people who tend towards violence. I’m just not sure that suspending these players will have that big an impact. It won’t stop them from being violent husbands and fathers, it will just make them unemployed violent husband and fathers. We should be putting pressure on the league to institute programs for these players and others like them as well as an awareness campaign to reach all those fans who can’t see any problem with this behavior. Now I know the NFL is just a lowly non-profit organization that might have trouble coming up with the cash to institute such a program, but I figure they can start by cutting the commissioner’s salary in half. This would give them about 15 million to get started with.
a number of supposedly-liberal commenters over at a thread at LGM about this making the same “a few good whoopings did me good, what’s the big deal if I do it to my kids?” claim.
One of my ambitions in life is to be less of an asshole than my father was, just as he tried hard to be less of an asshole than his father. One aspect of this project is “Less whacking kids to make yourself feel better”.
One aspect of this project is “Less whacking kids to make yourself feel better”.
That’s what cats are for. They can’t get back at you later in life. Dogs too but only small dogs are useful for such purposes.
Yep, the more defenseless the animal, be it human or otherwise, the better to abuse it to make one feel better about one’s own numerous and remarkable shortcomings.
Next up, how firecrackers and frogs can turn boys into men.
son has been sending me reverend horton heat videos…what to do with such a child? also, passed his orals for police academy! also just accepted job offer at pbs…
how firecrackers and frogs can turn boys into men.
Been reading your James Dobson, eh?
son has been sending me reverend horton heat videos…what to do with such a child?
Congratulate him on his excellent taste in music.
Been reading your James Dobson, eh?
ha!
Congratulate him on his excellent taste in music.
he’s a chip off the old block, he is…
It really saddens me to read stories of parental beatings- my childhood was pretty idyllic, all things considered. My mom had a reputation as a strict disciplinarian, but her secret was explaining why she had high standards and inculcating her values in us. She also made sure we had plenty of constructive activity do we didn’t get into trouble.
All of my ass-kickings were strictly voluntary, in the context of learning how to kick ass if necessary. If you regularly get thrown around by a six-six bear of a man who doesn’t even break a sweat, you don’t sweat an ordinary schmuck telling you he’ll kick your ass.
I was beat with regularity by my mother, whose tool of choice was her sorority paddle (1/2-3/4 inch thick piece of seasoned oak.) I was also grounded all of the time (for less than perfect grades, late to dinner, coming home after dark…[if I can still see and catch a thrown football then it aint dark].) What I learned was how to pass the bar exam by the age of12, (not entirely hyperbole) as it was the first time I had been able to slip a bysantine extemporaneous lie past her. Pretty sure she was suspicious, but probably fell into the who could make that shit up, on the fly. Probably saved my ass at least for six weeks in the hoosgow.
I also never told my parents about getting bit by a dog, as that would have revealed a breaking of the rules leading to disciple…I sweated the possibility of rabies for a couple weeks…there was also the tetinus shot not taken, same reason. So yeah that worked out well.
I think I know what my next will be about…
…
The post home self administered beatings have usually taken place in the context of training or competition. Though I am surprised sometimes that I have managed to go unscathed while breaking up the 5 or 6 barfights I have broken up. During the last one after I separated the combatents and was explaining to the guy who was gonna go to jail that he needed to gtfot. He locked my eyes and said ” you’re a peacemaker aren’t you” I said “yes I am, now lets get the fuck outta here.” Just as we are about to turn the corner the other antagonist shouts some shit in an attempt to rekindle things which sets other dude off again, fortunately i was able to get the dude round the corner to an ally or three and to the cab stand.
I was just planning on meeting a friend for a beer at said bar in which said other antagonist was supposed to be tending bar.
Fucking machismo is a fucking waste of time…
…
Of course, there’s always the emotional/mental abuse as well, which doesn’t leave any scars but can fuck you up just as bad as any beating. Especially when you start repeating it to yourself…
I was beat with regularity by my mother, whose tool of choice was her sorority paddle
My stepmom used a belt, as did my dad, but Dad didn’t do it very often — only for the most egregious violations. Stepmom spent a couple of weeks at her mother’s after my dad returned and saw the bruises. That was a bad scene.
.
Post. New.
And fuck Provider, that’s horrifying.
Oh, so late to the party, but I want to comment anyway.
Ahem. So, fuck that guy and his Churchill strawman; I’d be surprised if he could correctly identify every event in Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire”.
especially Sally Ride.
I was hit by my Dad when I was a child. Far from being a method of punishment, it was often completely out of the blue, and almost anything I said could provoke a hard slap across the face (always across the face). I forgot the name of a flower once, on the same day I had learned the name of the flower; slap to the face. And on, for almost 15 years. It took my second husband’s awareness and support for me to be able to admit that my father’s “temper” was child abuse.
Fuck the pro-physical punishment crowd; just fuck them all, hard, and with a baseball bat. All it does is make a child timid of talking honestly, and terrified of authority figures.
For the Repubs, it’s made them conformist nightmares. I, on the other hand, have only a slight terror of people who have control over my health and well-being, and a certain amount of diffidence about picking up the phone and ordering a pizza.