CSotD: Taking a Midweek Break
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Prickly City addresses Dear Leader’s concentration camps, but whatever its lead time, it also sweeps in a few related issues, like the White House cutting off Associated Press access because they haven’t knuckled under to the “Gulf of America” nonsense.
That seems petty and silly, but punishing the press for disobedience not only shows contempt for the First Amendment but for the principle behind it, of keeping the public informed. Jefferson’s belief that a well-informed public could govern themselves better than one kept in the dark is being tested.
The camp at Guantanamo reportedly houses 200 but Trump is expanding it so he can put 30,000 people there. It makes me think of an apocryphal story of Thoreau being jailed for opposing the Mexican War and Ralph Waldo Emerson asking, “Why are you here?” to which Thoreau replied “Why are you not here?”
If you think they’re going to stop at picking on trans people and undocumented immigrants, you need to read a little more history. Ask not for whom the jail door slams.
But even in the camps — physical or metaphorical — we’re going to need to laugh. Perhaps even more, in the camps. So let’s take a day off and practice.
We’ll ease in slowly with this Super-Fun-Pak Comix, a feature cropped from Ruben Bolling’s frequent larger spoofs of the medium, which suggests that this cynicism is not a completely new development. But he’s right that there has been a coarsening of attitudes, such that while seeming to care was a virtue a half century ago, it’s considered laughable today.
Point being that while it may not be shocking that bigots don’t like “wokeness,” there are plenty of people who ought to be allies who are also contemptuous of such efforts.
By coincidence, Carpe Diem brings up Robocop, which was the first time I forbade my boys to watch something. I objected to its hi-tech contempt for civil rights and the notion of innocent until proven guilty and felt it celebrated fascism.
Yes, it puts me in partnership with the grandfather from Boondocks, and I’m perfectly comfortable with that. I knew the boys could easily find that sort of stuff at their friends’ houses, but I wanted them to at least watch it knowing I disapproved.
When we were expecting our first, the OB told us that kids turn out the way they do as much despite our efforts as because of them. But that’s no reason to give up.
It’s also no reason to sell out, but that’s another issue in our changing world. The people who mock Social Justice Warriors are also happy to say that the hippies and peaceniks of the 60s all sold out, which mostly tells you they didn’t know any of those people.
The people I know who cared then became teachers and local politicians and medical workers and social workers and so forth. Like the superhero in the rumpled jumpsuit here, they turned to somewhat less ambitious battles, but that’s how it has always worked.
Not that elders don’t have moments of horrified self-awareness. I was admittedly taken aback the first time I saw a high school history book that included Vietnam. But then you start doing the math: When I was a sophomore, World War II was 20 years in the past, and I saw the textbook in 1995 so that’s about right.
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Juxtaposition of the Day
I don’t think I’d have enjoyed the Flying McCoys half so much if it hadn’t come after Free Range, and also a few days after I’d cited the Aesop’s Fable about the dog and the wolf, in which lean freedom is declared preferable to fat slavery.
A major Darwinian element of domestic animals, and particularly dogs, is that they are stuck in a state of perpetual childhood. Any number of wild dogs may have gathered near the fire to feed on whatever scraps they could score, but there was a self-selection of those who decided to stay and to become helpers and partners.
30,000 years later, perpetual childhood is hardwired into our pets.
The reason you shouldn’t try to keep a wild animal as a pet is that they hit an age at which they no longer want to be told what to do. In the wild, they would leave their parents, and even if they stayed in the herd, it would be as an independent adult.
So they do not expect to be confined by their human parent. Even a deer or kangaroo will kick your ass to make the point. Are there exceptions? Sure. And sometimes a lottery ticket pays a million dollars, but that doesn’t make lottery tickets a good investment.
Juxtaposition of the Day #2
Mike Baldwin sets up a dubious parallel, because there are plenty of feral cats and dogs who live nasty, brutish and short lives out in the wherever, and any number of people who go through homelessness, encounter compassion and re-enter mainstream society.
Adrian Raeside is on solid ground with his inquisitor dog. I know a lot of dog owners who adopted, and they’ve often been put through the mill not just to prove they would be a good owner but to make sure they have a fenced yard. Taking the dog for a long walk twice a day doesn’t count with some agencies: You have to have a fenced yard and they will send someone to your house to make sure you do.
But then there are other places that will let you adopt over the Internet and will meet you in a parking lot to hand over a dog you’ve never met.
Come to think of it, we do seem to have roughly the same system for homeless people and homeless dogs: Either too many rules or none at all.
Robin Hood experienced homelessness in Sherwood Forest, but, as Dave Whamond suggests he eventually found domestic bliss.
Or a reasonable facsimile thereof. Your mileage may indeed vary.
Personally, I’d rather lie under the greenwood tree, but maybe that’s not as you like it.
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