१७ एप्रिल, २०२०

"I’m hoping this moment launches a change in the way we raise and train all our young, at all ages. I’m hoping it exorcises the tide of 'safetyism,' which has gone overboard."

"The virus is another reminder that hardship is woven into the warp and woof existence. Training a young person is training her or him to master hardship, to endure suffering and, by building something new from the wreckage, redeem it."

Writes David Brooks in "The Age of Coddling Is Over/Learning what hardship has to teach us" (NYT).

That reminded me of a discussion here on the blog on April 5th. Excerpt:
Is there much of a chance that after this thing is over, we'll be more serious, more aware of what really matters in life...?...  We were just talking yesterday about whether the Coronavirus Era will spell the end of "wokeism." I said, I thought wokeism would survive, but maybe snowflakeism would succumb.
Is "snowflakeism" the same as "safetyism"?

Here's how Brooks introduced his term:
Over the past decades, a tide of “safetyism” has crept over American society. As Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt put it in their book “The Coddling of the American Mind,” this is the mentality that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you weaker. The goal is to eliminate any stress or hardship a child might encounter, so he or she won’t be wounded by it.
I've read that book, and I have it in searchable form. I can see that "safetyism" is used prominently, but do Lukianoff and Haidt ever say "snowflakeism"? No, they only use the word "snowflake" once, in their summing up paragraph at the very end:
As far as we can tell from private conversations, most university presidents reject the culture of safetyism.... From our conversations with students, we believe that most high school and college students despise call-out culture and would prefer to be at a school that had little of it. Most students are not fragile, they are not “snowflakes,” and they are not afraid of ideas. So if a small group of universities is able to develop a different sort of academic culture—one that finds ways to make students from all identity groups feel welcome without using the divisive methods that seem to be backfiring on so many campuses—we think that market forces will take care of the rest.... Entire towns and school districts will organize themselves to enable and encourage more free-range parenting. They will do this not primarily to help their students get into college but to reverse the epidemic of depression, anxiety, self-injury, and suicide that is afflicting our children. There will be a growing recognition across the country that safetyism is dangerous and that it is stunting our children’s development.

१०१ टिप्पण्या:

rhhardin म्हणाले...

Will child sexual abuse lose its ratings appeal, discovered suddenly in the 70s.

Expat(ish) म्हणाले...

Two Eagle scouts (boys) and a Venture Troop founder (daughter)(still mad she couldn't do boy scouts) because we believe in kids figuring out how do to stuff, how to keep going when you are wet and tired, and how to manage your sh*t because nobody cares if you're happy, they just want dry firewood.

I once saw a group of 20 very young boy scouts self organize and in two hours do an entire 8 hour shift. at the Food Bank in three hours. I was sitting with the other adults talking about whatever.

Let's hope millions of parents discover that kids can self supervise, ride bikes, own knifes, learn how guns work, play in the woods, manage their peers, manage their internal life, etc, etc.

/rant_over

-XC

rhhardin म्हणाले...

Things that were not public problem things in the 50s, when free range childhood reigned

1. Drunk driving
2. Child abuse
3. Loose dogs

All succumbed to the political method of discovering a new public problem and taking ownership of it, as the route to political power.

Owen म्हणाले...

It started with Ralph Nader. It’s embedded in our culture. Every ad for a personal injury lawyer on TV is a reinforcement of the idea that you are special, you are a victim, you deserve something from the world.

David Brooks points to the obviously-correct diagnosis, but no way is this going to change. Not without a whole lot more destruction over many years.

Sorry.

Shouting Thomas म्हणाले...

So, you’re ready to live free or die!!

Or, it’s going to be another day of bargaining away our civil liberties and surrendering to house arrest because everybody’s afraid they’ll get sick and die?

I already know the answer. I’ve been reading The Grand Inquisitor this morning.

I Callahan म्हणाले...

To the contrary, the fact that we're all still on lockdown, with nanny government telling us we must wear masks, not visit parks, and other stupid edicts, is proof that the horse already left the barn. Of course we're a snowflake / safetyist society.

gilbar म्हणाले...

Assuming, for the sake of argument; that there ARE people who listen to the NYT's
Does NOT mean, that there is Anyone Anywhere, stupid enough to listen to David Brooks?

stevew म्हणाले...

Silver lining seeking or is it wish casting? Or both?

Anecdotally, I have not come across or met any of these supposed "snowflakes" therefore I think they are a small minority of the age group. Vocal, so obvious, but small.

Lucid-Ideas म्हणाले...

Not a chance. This will make it worse. We live in a society where any suffering of any kind is a 1st world problem not to be tolerated and suffering that is encountered gives one a lucrative step up in social signaling if you can manage to do it right.

Mark my words, this will increase both 'hovering' and further mental health issues among the young. Men have allowed women in Western Civilization for the last 70 years to create a society where buttercup doesn't have to suck it up.

MayBee म्हणाले...

On twitter a week or so ago, I saw a prominent young person say "Millenials literally have never lived in a time of stability"
And older (than millennial) people responded "who has?"
I think the idea some people have is that life's normal state is safe and risk free- or that is a goal. They think their parents or the government needs to guarantee that stability. That risks are the kind of of things you do for Instagram.

In reality, the American spirit has been to learn from the hardships and create new solutions. But maybe the generation that has grown up not knowing what it might feel like to run out of gas without a phone in your car can't really understand the little risks life is full of.

narciso म्हणाले...

odds brooks got anything right, nil

exhelodrvr1 म्हणाले...

No more safe places for college students when a conservative speaker is on campus?

wendybar म्हणाले...

Does that include 9 month old "fetus's"???, or is it still okay to kill them when they are born???

Craig म्हणाले...

I disagree with Althouse's and Brooks's hypothesis.

I have young children, and this virus (more accurately, society's reaction to it) is making them more scared of the world than they ever were before.

Society is now teaching them that if something goes wrong, the proper response is to cancel everything and shelter in place.

Won't that lead to an increase in snowflakeism/safetyism?

Ryan म्हणाले...

Isn't this making us all more snowflakey? Don't go outside anyone, you could get sick and die!

narciso म्हणाले...

he'd have the vapours

exhelodrvr1 म्हणाले...

No more irritation if someone gets closer than 6 feet on a walking path?

Calypso Facto म्हणाले...

I Callahan said... "To the contrary"

Exactly right. We're witnessing safetyism writ large, and subordinating our entire society to it.

Sebastian म्हणाले...

It's not the young who inflicted "safetyism" on the country to ruinous effect, but the old.

And safety from what?

"Of the 397 [homeless] people tested, 146 people tested positive. Not a single one had any symptoms.
Content Continues Below

“It was like a double knockout punch. The number of positives was shocking, but the fact that 100 percent of the positives had no symptoms was equally shocking,”"

A disease so bad none of the homeless people tested even knew they were infected.

Yeah, yeah, some people really are at risk, and for them Chinese Lung AIDS is nasty --isolate them. But most aren't at risk.

Shut down shutdown safetyism.

MayBee म्हणाले...

I will say, I see lots of people on Facebook doing a deep dive into Safety-ism right now. I have one friend who said she cried when she saw people protesting Gov Whitmer's safety measures.

Ryan म्हणाले...

Yes, I agree with Craig. I have two kids who need to be out looking for jobs for the summer. Instead, theu can't leave the house.

rehajm म्हणाले...

The money supporting the movement has to dry up.

rcocean म्हणाले...

People like Brooks always love to talk about "isms". Everyone they dislike and every idea they despise is labeled an "ism" or "ist". Its a moronic, propagandist way to discussing things and getting out of having real life, serious debates over ideas and the people who push them.

Nope, don't engage with their views, just label them a bad person - they're an 'ist" favoring an "ism".

narciso म्हणाले...

Eloi klaxons will probably be up to eleventy

Gretchen म्हणाले...

I think people on the left are much more prone to believing they can be safe and the government and others are responsible for that safety. They are driven on emotion.

Republicans on the other hand tend to rely on themselves and their families for protection, and realize there are factors they cannot control, and the loss of freedom isn't worth a false sense of security.

Dave Begley म्हणाले...

David Brooks is trending on Twitter. He was viscously attacked. I did, however, learn that his wife is 23 years younger than he is. Twenty three years!

Ryan म्हणाले...

Sebastian it might be that the old remedy UV rays of sunshine and fresh air actually does something.

Shouting Thomas म्हणाले...

This epidemic may not have been planned (actually I think it was by the CCP), but the Democratic Party has seized on it to throw you into a panic. The purpose of this panic is to Get Trump and to achieve Bernie’s dreams.

I’m living under house arrest in a county that has 15 virus fatalities out of a population of 184,000.

Althouse lives in a state of 8 million with less than 200 reported fatalities.

And, yet, even Althouse is encouraging us to be cooperative, hide indoors, accept house arrest meekly and “help.”

The CCP, and Bernie, have won. You meekly surrendered your civil liberties and agreed to house arrest to bail you out of fear.

I’m going to have to partially part ways with Trump, because out of political realism he’s caved into the economic planners. It’s every man for himself. I can only try to live free and die on my own and try to avoid the evil eye of our fucking experts and betters who are busy saving me.

Lucid-Ideas म्हणाले...

The modern technical USA is a society where you literally don't have to understand how to do anything for yourself. From Grubhub to Google's algorithm, we are all surrounded by an 'easy path' at any time, everywhere we could want one.

The young - even those that manage to become programmers, etc. - and learn to gain some control over that system are not immune from this.

Much of how humans beings once lived is now lost, for few now live who remember it.

Mike Sylwester म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
Mike Sylwester म्हणाले...

most high school and college students despise call-out culture and would prefer to be at a school that had little of it. Most students are not fragile, they are not “snowflakes,” and they are not afraid of ideas.

Because universities enroll too many students who cannot and will not read at the university level, the universities have to justify those students' academic failures.

A major justification is that students' hurt feelings impede their studies. Students' feelings are hurt by buildings' names, by statues, by micro-aggressions, by guest speakers, by sombreros at fraternity parties, and so forth. Because of such factors, marginalized students fail academically.

Of course, the real reason for their academic failure is that they cannot and will not read at the university level. However, the university administrations cannot admit that reality.

The universities are developing snowflake attitudes and exporting those attitudes to larger society.

The universities are developing intellectual justifications for the suppression of free speech and are exporting those justifications to larger society.

Bob Boyd म्हणाले...

At the risk of my own safety I will observe, the rise of "safetyism" tracks with the rise in the number of women wearing shoes and not being pregnant.

Sebastian म्हणाले...

"maybe snowflakeism would succumb"

It is not snowflakes that drove the WuFlu fiasco, but senior entitlement--aided and abetted by public panic, of course. The snowflakes are taking it on the chin: they are finding out who has the real power.

Politicians CYAed to placate old and sick people. We refused to rationally discuss the cost of saving the lives of obese, sick 80-year-old people in nursing homes--too "callous." Isolating other seniors was too hard, too "ideal," as we've been told on this very blog.

Of course, I am not at all saying that all old people feel that sense of entitlement. Many have made their peace with mortality, and are as outraged at the insanity as I am.

Will economic ruin make us rethink the politics of old age, already the key factor in government expansion and overreach for decades? A topic for Brooks's next column.

traditionalguy म्हणाले...

Defending your life is a fittest Darwinian trait. Finding yourself a peaceful place is a great blessing, but the courage to fight is a necessary part of finding that.

Ralph L म्हणाले...

the rise of "safetyism" tracks with the rise in the number of women wearing shoes and not being pregnant.

But some have been forced back into the kitchen.

Levi Starks म्हणाले...

Death is certain

Dust Bunny Queen म्हणाले...

I've thought about the effect that all of this hysteria or extra safety precautions (if you disagree about being an over reaction) might have on young kids. My grandchildren in particular. My Daughter has become obsessed with sanitation. Would wear a hazmat suit if she could find one. (Weird from a kid who wouldn't ever clean up her room or put her folded laundry on the floor to walk on)

Are they going to take away from this experience the fear that everything in the world is dirty, contaminated, dangerous and that they must obsessively disinfect every item that comes into their cocoon of a home? Worry about being anywhere near people? Become germaphobes? Turn into little germ nazis. Become a generation of harping, critical Greta Thunbergs? Yelling at people who don't wear masks or aren't property sanitizing!!!!!

Maybe they will look back on this as a sort of weirdo vacation where they got to spend a lot of time at home. With their parents and siblings. Recalling the good times and fun and also the boredom that they had. Learning how to make cookies at home and missing all of their friends. Not understanding "social isolation". A strange moment in an otherwise, so far, good childhood.

Other families are likely experiencing deprivation in food and lack of 'entertainment', My grandkids and family are pretty well set for now and the parents are doing their best to make the best of this. Other families are not as well off OR are very DISfunctional families, where there are going to be some bad interactions, drinking, drugs arguing, fighting, emotionally scarring moments.

We don't know the effect of this. Make you stronger. Make you weaker. Too many variables.

I think the Greta Thunberg fate is the most likely.

narciso म्हणाले...

brooks is in the stewpot

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves म्हणाले...

comfort is life's booby prize.

robother म्हणाले...

Teaching everyone that every person you meet on a sidewalk, in a grocery store aisle, on a trail is a potential threat will end safetyism for kids? More like spreading it to every other age group in society.

Jersey Fled म्हणाले...

I hope what my granddaughter learns is to be very wary of "experts" and politicians who want to "help" her.

Fernandinande म्हणाले...

I have young children, and this virus (more accurately, society's reaction to it) is making them more scared of the world than they ever were before.

I've been wondering if this "shutdown/cower-in-place" nonsense would've been possible without the internet and cable TV, where (many) people are bombarded all day long with click-bait fear porn, a lot of quite dishonest, rather than just an hour of evening news and some articles in the newspaper (see Lileks for some plague-like death reports in the older newspapers...on e.g page 53, not in blaring headlines).

It’s embedded in our culture.

I think that's because it's embedded in human brains. But we don't have to worry about starvation, attacks by wild animals or invasions from the neighboring tribes, etc, so that propensity to worry is directed elsewhere.

iowan2 म्हणाले...

David Brooks?
The only people less aware than Brooks, are the people that give him any veneer of legitimacy.

Brian म्हणाले...

Some rules I've taught my daughters. It really helped them to overcome some stressful situations with school work.

Combat Rules:
1. Nobody is coming to save you.
2. Everything is your responsibility.
3. Save who needs to be saved.
4. Kill who needs to be killed.
5. Always be working.

The rules work for almost any stressful situation. They focus the mind to concentrate whats important, release the distractions and fix the problem.

Aviation has a similar list for emergency situations. Order is important.
1. Aviate. (Keep the dirty side down)
2. Navigate. (Get closer to safety).
3. Communicate. (Find other resources).

I hope as a society we can get to a place of individuality embodied by these statements, but I fear we've been coddled to long.

The resistance to opening the economy back up is prevalant in those that aren't following these rules.

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves म्हणाले...

I think all of your points are good, DBQ. Humans are social - up to a point. It's a strain on parents who are used to kids at school. It's a strain on partners who need space from each other and going off to work each day offered that daily distance. Domestic abuse it up, and it's not hard to imagine why. Close proximity, financial strain, stress in all directions. Bill are piling up. (add alcohol and drugs) and on and on. You made those points already.

Lurker21 म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
Brian म्हणाले...

I've been wondering if this "shutdown/cower-in-place" nonsense would've been possible without the internet and cable TV

It's coming. We can't stay shutdown for long before the distractions that are available to us in isolation won't be there anymore.

I'm more afraid now of the effects of this drive to cower in place and enforce control than I am of the virus.



Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves म्हणाले...

I've always been a weirdo with hand washing. Not full-on OCD - but a few step under.
Now - my hands are a barren wasteland from over-washing. I must say this experience has had the opposite effect. In some ways, It's cured me of the OCD hand washing. I'm so sick of washing my hands. I dream of being stranding on a tropical island - with humidity - and not washing my hands for several weeks!

Lurker21 म्हणाले...

He's not right, of course. Right now people are more safety-conscious than ever. But if any trend lasts long enough, you can bet on its ending someday. At some point, "free range parenting" will come into vogue, maybe because parents get tired of supervising everything, maybe because they have even more serious things to grapple with. But it won't be now and and it won't be as a result of coronavirus. The general trend in modern Western societies does seem to be towards ever more bureaucracy and regulation, and while there will be periodic rebellions against that, will the trend ever be seriously reversed by anything short of catastrophe? It would have to be a serious breakdown, because crises like the current one increase government power and the nanny state.

David Brooks was always the runt of the journalistic litter, always the piglet who couldn't find a teat or the hatchling running around with the shell still on his head, straining his meager mental resources to survive. It was hard not to feel sorry for him. Plus, he was hated by both the left and the right, and nobody in that position could be all wrong or all bad, eh? But he's so annoyingly wrong and cloying and insipid so often that one's sympathies wear out. Dumping his wife for somebody his children's age and writing the same preachy, moralizing books was the last straw.

David-2 म्हणाले...

> Is "snowflakeism" the same as "safetyism"?

The distinction seems clear to me.

"Safetyism" is the fear of and protection against perceived (and very overhyped) physical danger: E.g. fear of stranger abduction, fear of complete spinal cord injury on the playground. The danger is real - there are some stranger abductions of children, there are children who have become paralyzed due to a playground accident - but it is massively overestimated due to a combination of media attention and general innumeracy.

"Snowflakeism" is the fear and protection against perceived (and very overypted) mental danger: E.g., fear of hearing the "n-word", fear of hearing wrongthink (typically conservative thought), fear that someone somewhere might disagree with you. The snowflake conflates that fear of mental "anguish" with terrible physical pain and believes (or claims to) that the perpetrating speaker is doing physical violence to them. The danger is completely imaginary, and nothing will ever make be non-imaginary. Furthermore, the vast vast majority of people have been subjected to such wrongthink in the past and, though not liking it (generally), have survived without much mental distress (and without any physical symptoms beyond those associated with anxiety or other conditions of the mind, such as fear itself).

Brian म्हणाले...

The universities are developing intellectual justifications for the suppression of free speech and are exporting those justifications to larger society.

An excellent point point, Mike. Grade inflation is just a symptom of that as well.

And along with its high price it's going to lead to the destruction of the product.

Levi Starks म्हणाले...

I would like to explore the reactions to quarantine orders and abortion.
I’m getting the impression (from my social media feeds) that those who favor strict social movement control are the same people who favor safe abortion on demand.
Those who favor abortion certainty value newborn babies just as much as pro lifers, the problem comes in that in order for these babies to make it out of the womb in one piece someone (almost 100% of the time a woman) must be inconvenienced in order to make that happen. And they judge that inconvenience be too great to bear. Conversely those who flout the quarantine orders value the aged and medically compromised just as much as abortionists, but they find the inconvenience of quarantine to be too great to bear.
They’re hardly aware of it, but the latter have been conditioned by the former to place greater value on convenience than life.

iowan2 म्हणाले...

Raising kids is not difficult. You wouldn't know it from all the self help books, and proffessions that are in place the "help"parents.

How kids today react to this event, is dependent on how they were raised. If they were raised in an environment where every want is catered to, ever fit rewarded, dreams granted, being told now, no, is not going over well. Negotiating with 4 year olds is always a loser, for the kid, the parents, the family, and the community. From birth forward, humans need to understand desires full filled are rare, not usual. Parents that stunt that understanding are actively practicing child abuse.

Dust Bunny Queen म्हणाले...

I've been wondering if this "shutdown/cower-in-place" nonsense would've been possible without the internet and cable TV

We thank the Internet and Satellite TV daily because without we would be bored and UNinformed. We rarely watch TV news. Tucker once in a while and an occasional glimpse of some "news" but it is Covid Covid Covid hysteria 24/7.

Most of our real news comes from blogs, links to articles, where we get multiple opinions and takes.

Our boredom level is pretty low because we have so much to do around the property and Dumbplumber is busy working almost every day. We "record" shows to watch on the Satellite system. Rent a few movies. NETFLIX and AMAZON and ROKU stations are the best. We can watch old shows, new to us shows from all parts of the world. Movies galore. Video gaming is something that that I love to do and am breaking out some of the older games I've already played. Dungeon crawling. Killing dragons. Building cities and civilizations. Screwing the Sim's lives up because why not.

Our biggest "entertainment" gap is that our local library is closed and we cannot get books to read....for FREE. We are avid readers...several books a week each. Having read EVERYTHING in the house we both are starved for new books. Unfortunately I like a certain genre and hubby likes something else. We try to read each other's books and occasionally find one that is OK. Just OK.

Wandering around the house like zombies moaning for brains. Booooks....we need boooooks.

Howard म्हणाले...

I'm seeing parents spending time with their kids in neighborhood, walking around and hiking.

The kids are having a ball from what I see. Might just be center Mass Yankee spirit of America going on. You negative Nancy's are weakly and sick. You people obviously don't believe in American eceptionalism when it counts.

Sad

Magson म्हणाले...

Mike Rowe puts it as "Safety Third" -- https://mikerowe.com/2015/01/safety-third/

Fernandinande म्हणाले...

We thank the Internet and Satellite TV daily because without we would be bored and UNinformed.

Uninformed might be better than misinformed; and for many people "the internet" also includes facebook/twitter where people trade scare stories.

We rarely watch TV news.

Other than glimpses of a few seconds, I haven't watched it for over 20 years; my disgust with the MSM and its fake news didn't start with their treatment of Trump.

Our biggest "entertainment" gap is that our local library is closed and we cannot get books to read

#metoo! I wish I had checked out more and better books than I did.

pacwest म्हणाले...

Will economic ruin make us rethink the politics of old age, already the key factor in government expansion and overreach for decades?

I'm suprised the conversation on this hasn't widened into the discussion that we spend too much on end of life care, spending small fortunes to extend life by a few months, or even just days. Call them death panels if you will, but we don't have unlimited resources. Emotion.

Dust Bunny Queen म्हणाले...

Howard I'm seeing parents spending time with their kids in neighborhood, walking around and hiking.

That's nice. You must not be in Californiastan in the Bay area then. My daughter cannot take her kids to an open air park (one without playground equipment) to run around, fly a kite or go to the high school football field in their neighborhood with out being threatened with arrest. They are "allowed" to walk their dogs but only in certain designated areas. They are not supposed to take their kids shopping either. Stay at home you little crumb crunchers!!!!

Many hiking trails have been closed because they don't want people to walk outdoors I guess. You can't go to the ocean and walk on the beach. If they catch you driving somewhere UNessential like to a wilderness area to just sit on a rock, you can be fined or arrested.

Fortunately they do have a nice suburban fenced in back yard where the kids can play...alone or with Mom and Dad. See that there really IS an outdoors. Like prisoners in jail who get their half hour of outside time.

Shouting Thomas म्हणाले...

@Howard

The grandkids are happy to be home with mommy.

We might be demonstrating that school is more a baby sitting service than a necessity.

The problem is that mommy and me are imprisoned. That’s not really part of the ideal of American exceptionalism.

Fernandinande म्हणाले...

NETFLIX and AMAZON and ROKU stations are the best. We can watch old shows, new to us shows from all parts of the world.

Watching Netflix on our Roku TV consistently makes the modem reset (!??!), so we ditched it. (Plus their apparent role in funneling bribes to Obama). I've been spending more internet time giving out free advice on politics-free computer forums; it's nice to have "right" answers, maybe learn some stuff in the process, and have resolutions that end with "SOLVED".

Kevin म्हणाले...

without using the divisive methods that seem to be backfiring on so many campuses

Were these the same divisive methods Pelosi tried to nationalize through the stimulus bill?

Brooks doesn't say.

I'm Full of Soup म्हणाले...

Howard obviously has no direct contact with any families with kids. Kids and teens and college kids are actually going nuts trapped in the house away from their school mates and neighborhood pals.

Kevin म्हणाले...

Society is now teaching them that if something goes wrong, the proper response is to cancel everything and shelter in place.

Won't that lead to an increase in snowflakeism/safetyism?


We're only halfway through the novel.

In the second half, the people come out and regain their lives even though the virus is still present.

Fernandinande म्हणाले...

We might be demonstrating that school is more a baby sitting service than a necessity.

Remote Teaching. I don't understand it, but it was funny.

"Relationship between climate change (a)looks like a fish (b)weird beak" from a paper which was actually published in a scammy "science" journal: "What's the Deal with Birds?"

Guildofcannonballs म्हणाले...

The Law is a Ass. It has become the go to: Can't do that, we might get sued.

Boom: freedom over in 3.2.1.

Thank your local law-involved persons today, for this was learned by watching them, and you may not be around tomorrow to show your appreciation.

Trump broke China, so the Democratics broke America as payback. Democratics are dominated by law-involved persons. Biden/Hillary/Obama/Kerry/Gore*/Clinton/Dukakis/Mondale.

American Law is the problem. Powered by gangs both foreign and domestic, the country is ruled for the benefit of cocaine and meth traffickers called politicians via three letter agencies.

The odds are amazingly low Trump can defeat these evil-doers. God compels us to pray and trust only in Him for all that separates Him from Caesar.

*Didn't graduate but attended law school

Bay Area Guy म्हणाले...

I'm not sure it's a good idea to rely on David Brooks for manly pointers on how to live a life of bolder adventurism........

Dust Bunny Queen म्हणाले...

Fernandistein: Watching Netflix on our Roku TV consistently makes the modem reset (!??!), so we ditched it

We have a 60" plasma NOT SMART tv and use a Roku stick to get wi fi signal from the modem. High speed DSL (business class internet account). Never have a problem. We were using a DVD player that had Roku built into it but that sucked and the software was horrible, so we only use it to play DVDs and went back to the stick.

I don't want or trust "smart" appliances.

Right now we are re-watching Blacklist on Netflix. Some Russian show about a 19th century policeman and a young medium (as in psychic) girl. Subtitled and very interesting because Russian language is so different. Detective Anna. Australian shows are pretty good. I recommend Rake. Not the British version...Australian. Sean of the Dead is in our movie line up, my turn to pick!...Now all I have to do is force my husband to watch it.

So many good choices.

Owen म्हणाले...

Sebastian @ 8:17 (and pacwest @ 9:07) : “Will economic ruin make us rethink the politics of old age, already the key factor in government expansion and overreach for decades? A topic for Brooks's next column.”

Word. This is the big struggle going on behind the fog and clutter of events. Old people are often infirm, and closer to death. We spend a boatload of their and our money taking care of them, with acute-care end-of-life heroics and with the whole nursing home industry thing. Boomers are worn ragged caring for aging parents even as they try to get their children launched in a weird new economy. The Wu Flu has exacerbated this inevitable tension. The old people are consuming a huge portion of society’s resources —and that’s not wrong, but it’s very expensive. And it will fall to the young to pay the bill, both with impossible Social Security tax burdens and with delayed or ruined careers due to enforced idleness as we all freeze in place to protect —who, primarily? Yes, that’s right: old people. Simplistically put, Wu Flu is a disease that picks on old people. Because “old” means “lots of stuff isn’t working well anymore.”

We aren’t having that conversation in a direct form because we’re kinda busy, and because it’s a painful conversation. It is necessarily callous. The only consolation is that it isn’t personal, it’s not the young wanting to kill off the old; it’s just about Time and how we face up to it, and not burn up our future by trying to protect what is now the past.

Meade म्हणाले...

At the risk of my own safety I will observe, the rise of "safetyism" tracks with the rise in the number of women wearing shoes and not being pregnant.

Ah, yes, but is it an exponential rise or is it just your regular everyday non exponential rise, like, you know, a sunrise?

Inga म्हणाले...

I’ve noticed that the families that are doing better with the stay at home restrictions are the ones who are doing the best they can. They realize that they aren’t the only ones going through this. Their issues are common to their peers. They have friends who they can commiserate with and bounce ideas off of. There are so many good ideas being shared online on how to entertain kids with fun and educational projects, books, group texts with friends.

Imagination and positivity helps too, yeah sounds Pollyanna-ish, but what is the alternative? I understand it’s not as difficult for seniors to cope with with the isolation, I understand that young families are struggling, but I also have seen young families who are doing well considering the circumstances. Attitude has a lot to do with going cray-cray or coping with grace. If you have a bad day, put it behind you and know that there is a tomorrow, be thankful you’ll have a tomorrow, some people won’t be having one.

J. Farmer म्हणाले...

Before we get to down on "kids these days," consider that the generation under discussion, those born in the second half of the 1990s, grew up in a radically different America to the one even I grew up in, being born in the early 1980s. The America of these kids lives has been 9/11, failed wars in the middle east, deindustrialization, the Great Recession, decreased social mobility, declining life expectancy, the opioid crisis, a mountain of debt, the glibness of the Obama hope and change era, and the accompanying disillusionment at the gulf between what was promised and what was achieved.

The America of these kids' lives has mostly been one of decline, with a leadership class more insulated from the concerns of the working class than ever before. Is it really any wonder that they may turn to "safetyism" in their personal lives?

Michael K म्हणाले...

The old people are consuming a huge portion of society’s resources —and that’s not wrong, but it’s very expensive.

I wonder if that is true. Back when I was still doing academic research, I worked up a proposal to try to rationalize the care of the very elderly in those assisted living homes. It never got funded but I did a lot of research on health care spending on the elderly. The peak of Medicare spending in the elderly was at age 70 and it declined after that. That was 25 years ago when I did the research but I doubt it has changed much. Old people just want to be comfortable. Maybe the retired Baby Boomers are more demanding but I wonder.

Inga म्हणाले...

Last year around this time I and my family had to learn to cope with something that is far far worse than this forced isolation. My family and myself have been talking about how this devastating event that happened last year almost makes this stay at home and pandemic upheaval look like a minor event in the scheme of life, as long as ones loved ones are safe. This event will pass, some events will never pass.

Fernandinande म्हणाले...

Never have a problem.

Netflix started breaking the modem (even with ethernet!) after an update to the Roku TV software, but it kept working on a Firestick, and everything else works on the TV. You're right, it's better to have a monitor + internet gizmo, rather than "smart" TV where it's built in.

Fargo season 1 on Hulu...

Michael K म्हणाले...

The America of these kids' lives has mostly been one of decline, with a leadership class more insulated from the concerns of the working class than ever before.

I agree with this but the working class kids may be doing better than those kids with huge student loans and worthless degrees. My wife has three sons from her first marriage. None went to college and the oldest has a construction business that is going great guns in Oregon. He has three sons that worked for Dad in the construction business and one is now working for his uncle rebuilding classic Porches. They are all doing very well.

ALP म्हणाले...

When I was young, the Russians were going to nuke us out of existence. My Brownie troop spent meetings covering nuclear war in minute detail: radiation sickness, living in bomb shelters. THEN the local Mafia started a bombing campaign of churches and synagoges. For a couple of years in my youth I assumed I'd be blown up any minute.

I'll bet every generation has a similar story: there was **that thing** you feared could come along and change life as you knew it.

MayBee म्हणाले...

put it behind you and know that there is a tomorrow, be thankful you’ll have a tomorrow, some people won’t be having one.

Nobody knows if they'll be having a tomorrow.

Temujin म्हणाले...

Maybe Nancy 'Antoinette' Pelosi can show them the way to deal with hardships.

Inga म्हणाले...

‘Nobody knows if they'll be having a tomorrow.’

Yes, so when you have a tomorrow, don’t waste it. As I said, some people won’t be having a tomorrow.

“...some people won’t be having one.”

J. Farmer म्हणाले...

@ALP:

I'll bet every generation has a similar story: there was **that thing** you feared could come along and change life as you knew it.

I think there is certainly a degree of truth to that. But you also lived through "it's morning again in america," Cold War triumphalism, and the unipolar moment of the US being the "world's lone superpower."

h म्हणाले...

David-2 answers the question: David-2 said...
> Is "snowflakeism" the same as "safetyism"?

And he says exactly what I came here to comment. And he says it better than I could. "Safetyism" says, "don't let your children walk a few blocks to school unaccompanied." Snowflakeism says, "don't let the words of a Trump supporter invade your safe-space."

Owen म्हणाले...

“h” and David-2: props on the excellent description of safetyism and snowflakeism. Yes, the first concerns physical threats and the second concerns sad feelings from imagined threats. So IMHO the latter is pretty clearly pathological, and people invest in it because it reflects or feeds some narcissistic disorder, with the bonus of being able to bash others promiscuously for having triggered the sad feelings.

But I think it also feeds back into safetyism. One way to indulge your passion for victimhood is to obsess about physical safety. Unless I have 47 airbags and lane departure warning I am going to be too traumatized to leave home, and anybody who disagrees is throwing into major PTSD!

Sam L. म्हणाले...

I have learned to ignore David Brooks.

Calypso Facto म्हणाले...

MichaelK said ... "one is now working for his uncle rebuilding classic Porches"

I'm envisioning the classicTara porch, and it definitely needed a rebuild ca. 1959.

Michael K म्हणाले...

The classic Porsches are on wheels.

Here is the uncle's web site. Their clients include Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno.

One of their cars sold for a million dollars. They are doing VERY well.

Yancey Ward म्हणाले...

Probably written by Brooks from the home that he hasn't left since early March, getting all his groceries and other goods delivered to the front door.

Richard Dolan म्हणाले...

If only it were so. But those running these universities, including NYU where Haidt is a professor, are heavily into intersectionality and all its many forms of safetyism. I suspect, but don't know, that the faculty, is fully on board with that approach. And it is quite clear that neither university administrators nor faculty care whether some, many or most students object.

It's going to take much more than a virus to puncture the reigning academic monoculture that created the problem, especially at the leading academic institutions (you know who you are!). It's going to take a concerted effort over the long haul to fix what's broken, and if that's to happen, will require a lot of sacrifice and pain on the part of players (boards of trustees, dissenting faculty and the many students who just want to get through and get out) who so far have shown little interest in doing anything other than tut-tutting.

Caligula म्हणाले...

"Every ad for a personal injury lawyer on TV is a reinforcement of the idea that you are special, you are a victim, you deserve something from the world."

That was my thought: it's not as if liability law can be rolled back. Not so long as lawyers need to make a living, and so long as America's legislators are mostly lawyers.

Playgrounds with hard surfaces? Jungle Gyms, and swingsets with those flat, smooth stainless-steel seats to serve as a top-of-trajectory launchpad? Children playing without adult supervision? Riding a bicycle without a helmet?

What's more likely is the use of facemasks long after the threat has receded, hand sanitizer dispensers everywhere, permanent shields at the grocery checkout.

And as cubicle farms and open offices become intolerable, work-at-home and virtual everything. It's not as if the idea is new: "The Machine Stops" by E. M. Forster was published in 1909 (wherein everyone has become so totally dependent on "the machine" that we're as helpless as infants as it begins to fail).

MadTownGuy म्हणाले...

"Safetyism" is about controlling your kids. "Snowflakeism" is about controlling other people's speech. "Wokeism" is about controlling people who are not your kids. See a pattern?

Owen म्हणाले...

Caligula @ 12:55: “The Machine Stops.” Props to you! I read (and re-re-read) that masterpiece in about 1963. Haunting. I think of it these days, too often and too easily.

Narr म्हणाले...

Is it just my magination . . . or is the Lucas/Duvall movie THX 1138 (1971) a redo of Forster?

Narr
It's been a long time

Rosalyn C. म्हणाले...

Snowflakism is an extreme form of safetyism imo. If there is even a hint of a lack of safety, a snowflake has a melt down.

Before Covid it was hard to imagine college aged students at an elite university having a screaming emotional meltdown over not receiving guidance on their Halloween costumes, not to mention demanding that their dean be fired over not providing those sensitivity guidelines. But it happened.

After Covid it is absolutely impossible to imagine any response to that level of nonsense besides STFU. We'll see.

This pandemic might even make the safetyists more adament because, after all, the virus may have been unleashed to the public by a sloppy and careless lab worker in Wuhan.

Kirk Parker म्हणाले...

"Sean of the Dead is in our movie line up, my turn to pick!...Now all I have to do is force my husband to watch it."

Can This Marriage Be Saved???

Kirk Parker म्हणाले...

I Callahan, Craig, Ryan, May Bee:

I agree with your take, but comfort myself with the following: IF people like this really are going to increasingly shelter in place at the slightest provocation, won't that just make it easier to push them out of the way on our path to getting something accomplished?

Owen म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
Owen म्हणाले...


Kirk Parker @ 3:53: “IF people like this really are going to increasingly shelter in place at the slightest provocation, won't that just make it easier to push them out of the way on our path to getting something accomplished?”

Doesn’t your question assume they will shelter somewhere other than the traffic lane? Many of them are, or have influence with, the “leadership” which issues these insane “cower in place/ban everything” orders. Until we can peel (or chop) their fingers off the levers of power, they are a positive danger not only to themselves but to all the rest of us.

IMHO.

MadTownGuy म्हणाले...

Kirk Parker said...
"I Callahan, Craig, Ryan, May Bee:

I agree with your take, but comfort myself with the following: IF people like this really are going to increasingly shelter in place at the slightest provocation, won't that just make it easier to push them out of the way on our path to getting something accomplished?
"

Not much comfort. I've observed "snowflakes" turning into raging maniacs when they notice their snowflakey tactics aren't working in one of their 'conversations.'

MadTownGuy म्हणाले...

Kirk Parker said...
"I Callahan, Craig, Ryan, May Bee:

I agree with your take, but comfort myself with the following: IF people like this really are going to increasingly shelter in place at the slightest provocation, won't that just make it easier to push them out of the way on our path to getting something accomplished?
"

Not much comfort. I've observed "snowflakes" turning into raging maniacs when they notice their snowflakey tactics aren't working in one of their 'conversations.'

Christy म्हणाले...

“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”
― G.K. Chesterton

Modern educators and Disneyfication have taken the scary old tales out of our culture. Kids no longer know that N----- Jim was the hero of Huckleberry Finn. They have no clue

I have to wonder if gentle life-affirming lessons teach children Strength. Tattling on bullies is the solution kids have been taught. Do they know how to deal without relying on government/authorities? What happens when governmental cough/Whitner/cough types know not what to do?

Forgive my disconnected rambling. The subject is far too big for a blog comment. Basically all I want to say is that we all seem to have been taught to be risk averse and I don't know the solution.

Kirk Parker म्हणाले...

Yes, they do have some influence. But I guess my assumption is that they will seem increasingly unhinged, and thus easier to pry off.

I sure hope I'm more correct than you guys...