shame and patriotism

We are the United States of America. We support human rights all over the world. We are a moral high ground with a determined purpose to help end atrocities globally. We grant asylum to people who live in countries which do unspeakable things. We guarantee religious freedom, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, from police and government brutality, from cruel and unusual punishment.

I feel shame when our president won't sign declarations against discrimination because it would interfere with our ability to deny marriage rights to gays. I feel the same sadness and shame when we can't sign a pledge against genital mutilation because we want to be able to routinely circumcise boys. We won't decry atrocities because we want to continue to commit them. That makes me sad.

Stop the extremism, and then off on a tangent.

I hate extremes. Which is odd, since I guess technically I should just strongly dislike extremes, hate being an extreme and all. I'll have to ponder that moderately someday. But anyway....

I am in favor of gun control. I don't want to ban them, but I'd like to think there's a way of keeping psychopaths from buying guns on a whim. I think people should be able to carry concealed weapons, with a permit.

I am opposed to abortion. But I am in favor of keeping it legal because as long as I can see some circumstance in which I might want to get one I feel I have no authority to say anyone else should never be able to get one. That said, I do not think abortion is a right, or merely something a woman chooses to do to her own body. There is, at the very least, a potential for life other than hers involved and that discredits, to me, the "It's my body" argument.

I am opposed to circumcision. Or should I say, to routine infant circumcision. I think it's pointless, needless, cosmetic, and not in a child's best interest at all. But I don't think it's mutilation, because I don't think a circumcised penis has been mutilated. I think a penis that went through a meat grinder would be mutilated, or an amputated penis, or a scarred up with a switchblade penis, but not a circumcised penis. However, I do think that certain forms of female genital mutilation are very much comparable to circumcision, like the ones where they just remove the labia as opposed to removing the clitoris and then sewing the whole thing up. And I think that as long as we say it is horrific and terrible and abusive for Africans to cut the labia off their young daughters so that the girls can a) look like their mothers, b) look more attractive and normal because in their culture all they ever see are vaginas without labia, and c) prevent the formation of smegma later in life, and then continue to circumcise our own sons for the exact same reasons, we are hypocrites and we are idiots for not even seeing it.

I think that when people go all extreme in their arguments the first (and often the only) thing they accomplish is to convince the other side that they are the only rational side there is. As long as the intactivists keep screaming about people mutilating their sons and ruining them, the pro-circumcision side will continue to think that we are all wackos who take this shit wayyy too seriously and that we are too unstable to pay attention to. Also, maybe we should stop ranting on about how much sexual pleasure there is in the foreskin and all that. People don't generally like to think about their infant sons getting off; it makes it harder to deal with the tiny erections that tend to pop up in smiling babies' diapers. When they say they don't want girls to laugh at an intact penis later on, they aren't imagining sex as much as they are imagining 2 people seeing each other naked, which is an important distinction for a mother. When we are tasked with all the bathing and diaper changing, we need to separate the organ from it's future function, or else we can't manhandle it the way we need to. (Baby boys poop all up around their junk, you need to move it around and really get under and around everything to wipe it clean. Laugh if you will, but desexualizing our children is a vital parental coping skill.

My take on why so many Americans spoil their kids

I've read articles about this topic and I've agreed with a lot of what some of them say, but here's my take on it.

My grandmother's generation, raised in the Depression, had nothing. They were often hungry, wore old and oft-repaired clothing, and swore never to do that to their own kids. So the next generation, the baby boomers, were given everything they needed. They got new clothes and lots of food whenever they wanted (I think the invention of the snack, let alone specific snack foods, came at about this time), and luxuries like TV and record players.

Then the baby boomers had kids, my generation. And not only did they give us everything their parents gave them, but we also had cable and central air conditioning and other newly invented luxuries. Plus, divorce became popular in the 70s and 80s and our parents were busy having careers and getting divorced and remarried and doing all the dating in between. And they made up for their absence and preoccupation with gifts. Two families can mean two Christmases, and Mom working late or going out on a Friday night can mean pizza or fast food. So we got spoiled, and fat, as a generation. And now we have kids, and we add our own twist.

My generation, the people I know anyway, seem to fall into 2 main categories. The ones who see divorce as an inevitability (I once heard a woman in her 20s refer to a passing stranger as "my fourth husband", and those who swear never to do it themselves. Oddly enough, the ones who divorce most often tend to come from parents who never did. But the ones who are determined never to divorce often remember how parental divorce affected them or their friends growing up. They remember feelings of neglect and unimportance and don't want to do that to their children. And they remember parents who weren't home. I know more stay at home parents my age than I remember seeing when I was a kid. Our mothers were dating and flirting and finding us step-dads and we want to be there for our kids. And now you have , in addition to the cable TV and central air conditioning, cell phones and laptops. But also helicopter parents. Parents who remember what it felt like when they were bullied and Mom didn't care, so they will storm into the school and fight for their child over the smallest things. Parents who rush their kids to the doctor over any fever or rash or nausea. Parents who practically have Purell pumped into their house via water pipes. (I don't remember my mother ever sanitizing my toys in bleach growing up but now people talk about doing that all the time, and the moms I know who do it seem to be the ones complaining of sick kids the most. Causation or correlation?)

Somehow in the last 3 generations, we've gone from telling our kids to always dress nicely and be polite and respect your elders no matter who they are, to everyone only worrying about their own family and resenting any implication that there might be a greater good out there worth worrying about. It manifests in little ways all the time. A parent who refuses to vaccinate their kid because they think there are too many shots contributes to the diminishing of herd immunity. Germaphobe parents teach their kids specifically not to share. Kids are taught to mind their own business and later, witnesses to public crimes never come forward. There is less of a sense of responsibility to society than there used to be. There is also a growing sense of narcissism. An obese parent feeding their child high-fat high-sugar foods will say "I grew up on this stuff and I'm okay" and honestly believe it. A circumcised father, rather than looking at his perfect baby boy with pride, will demand an unnecessary surgery so that the boy's penis will look like his (which is, of course, the most glorious penis ever to exist). A mother who grew up with an absent and selfish mother will also devote her time to her own social and love lives and claim that, "If you don't take care of yourself, you can't take care of your children." The idea of parental sacrifice is either taken to extremes (Ever met that mother/martyr who refuses to let her husband help her with anything?) or ignored altogether under the guise of not becoming a martyr. Our mothers fought for the right to be mothers and career women, to have it all. And now a lot of women have to fight just to get it all done, and the children get spoiled, either by being given too much stuff or too much time. If your kid grows up learning that every slight, real or imagined, is worth Mom marching to the school to fight over, or that every sniffle is worth a trip to the doctor's office, they develop a sense of entitlement. They should never feel less than 100% and a doctor needs to fix it now. The school can't do anything less than beneficial for them and the policy and/or curriculum needs to be changed now. This translates later to the fry cook who demands more respect at work even though he has the lowliest and least respected job in the place. He's not going to work his way up to a job that gets more respect; he's just going to demand more respect and a cost of living raise where he is. I once heard a fry cook, after two weeks on the job, complain when he got fired for excessive absences: "I thought this was supposed to be a company that cared about its employees and here they are firing me for being sick."

Our kids (collectively as a generation) and we, to a similar extent, are spoiled and fat and I think the two are very closely related. Our grandparents ate turnips and could make one chicken last 3 meals. I'm not suggesting we return to that, but daily cookies and soda, and portions as large as our plates are completely unnecessary. As is demanding respect and concessions from everybody at every turn. I heard a great quote once. It said "You are special and unique, just like everyone else."