My natural inclination is toward black gallows humor in situations like these, but I have to keep reminding myself that a lot of people are going to get harmed and laughing is an unacceptable faux pas.
I also have to remind myself that “not knowing what to do with all these feels” may result in unhelpful reactions.
Yet I still want to stand on DeSantis’ head and shout “what the hell did you damn well expect you fucking troglodyte”. Feelings are tricky.
correct, but now you’ve just identified two separate types of tearing, both happening at different times. put them together and the perceived frequency will be significantly worse than it was prior.
being able to zero one of those out and only worry about the other means you can hopefully optimize a better solution - as much as one can when you can’t realistically atomically update the entire display from top to bottom.
I don’t use this word often, but I’m going to now.
Heinous.
some states don’t have primaries; they have caucuses. which means you get to spend an entire day in a room with a bunch of other people arguing.
if you’re conflict avoidant, that’s the equivalent of a root canal without anesthesia.
Sure, that parent is failing that child. I’m not disputing that. It doesn’t matter whether the parent has an intent or capability to do right by their child, only whether they are. In the end, the child is being failed, and I don’t think for a second that the right call is to sit back and do nothing.
But jailing the parent is simply not going to make it any fucking better. It’s like trying to fight a house fire with a flamethrower.
It is simply and solely because of this incredibly poor lack of reasoning and judgement that I don’t have a positive opinion of her. If I had to say anything nice, I would say “she was able to identify a problem”, but her solution was so astoundingly and obviously counter-productive I’m not inclined to have even a neutral opinion of her, much less a positive one.
(Edit: And where I say “her solution”, I mean the one she championed; I have no insight as to whether it was her brain-child or just something she threw her political muscle behind)
Nothing screams “my kid is going to turn away from truancy” like having a parent in prison.
When your cure only hastens and reinforces the bad behavior, your cure is bad and you should feel bad.
I would have no issue at all with child protective services being engaged, but sending an overworked single mother to jail isn’t helping anything, it’s just slaking bloodlust for punishment when people don’t do as you’d wish.
If the goal is ensuring every child is equipped with an equal opportunity for education, then there are always better choices than hauling mom or dad off to jail. Can you seriously not see how patently absurd that is? It’s a boneheaded move from top to bottom and she should feel shame for the rest of her life for putting her political muscle behind it. Educating every last child is important, but this proposed solution only makes things worse.
And that’s what the issue is. It’s not that there was intervention, it was this specific intervention is stunningly short sighted and entirely punitive.
For me, it’s strictly because of this. I’m not suggesting truancy isn’t an issue worth combating, but going at it this way showed a shocking lack of sense - to the degree where I’m not sure I could trust any grown-ass adult who would go along with such an idea for more than 2 minutes.
such an appropriate name, then!
The whole situation reminds me of a water balloon battle I had as a kid. I kept getting some really good tosses in and one kid really didn’t like that. I didn’t have the wherewithal at the time to realize I was distressing him, assuming he was having the same fun I was having. Anyway he spent like 10 minutes trying to get the world’s biggest water balloon created while he got soaked constantly and balloons broke like mad as he overfilled them.
Eventually, he managed to fill a particularly massive balloon. This thing was absurd sized, to a 9 year old. Properly absurd. I don’t even know how he lifted it. But once he finally achieved his goal, he finally staggered to his feet with the balloon, roared a mighty 9 year old battlecry, and charged at me, only to trip on his own feet and tumble to the ground with his face impacting the balloon just as it exploded, soaking him. The meltdown was legendary; we all stopped playing, most of us just watching with bemusement at his misfortune. It was a huge own-goal, a massive self-own, and while I was certainly the motive, I had nothing to do with how it all played out.
I bet Greta feels a similar way, though she probably has way fewer conflicted feelings about the justice behind it, though.
i literally respect the uwu speaker more than the people crying cancel culture/woke
My own experience in life makes it reek a lot like mental health issues in those who are antinatalists.
I mean, is that not a good enough reason not to have kids?
Assertions I’d like to make, in no specific order:
These problems are all solvable. These problems are also not plausibly going to be solved, as those who have will do their level best to turn away from those who have not. We have literal centuries of evidence neatly showcasing just how selfish our systems are, and how resilient to change they are.
You can absolutely have as many kids as you want. I personally think it’s myopic, as you’re forcing someone else to deal with these problems and you didn’t even give them an option - and by the time they’re old enough to understand the magnitude of the problem, they’re in too deep to get out. It just screams of selfishness and duplicity to me. But, I mean, I’m still friends with omnivores - hell, I’m one myself - being selfish and inconsistent is kinda fundamentally what humans are, so it’s not like my shit doesn’t stink too.
Edit: I should also note that the one reason I allow myself to eat animal products is because I’ve said “well, I’m not having kids, so I’m just a temporary problem, not an ongoing one”
Growing up without ubiquitous cable or satellite tv, I just did the world’s biggest double take when I read “TV has always been a subscription model”.
Just saying. We had 3 channels. 3. And on Sundays, every one of them was TV church. It was the fucking worst.