I have nothing whatsoever to say about any of these things that has not already been said.
1. It goes without saying that violence against women, like violence against anyone, is vile unless in defense. My feelings about a man inflicting violence on a woman are the same as a woman inflicting violence on a man.
Years ago I was sitting in a cafe and my friend Veronica was watching a French movie, Irréversible, essentially a rape revenge story with some brutal and, frankly, loathsome scenes. I looked over her shoulders in fascination and horror.
It made me think about how some things truly are irreversible, truly irrevocable. About how a second can change lives forever.
Guns are serious matters, they have the capacity to destroy, obliterate, smash, and ruin another person’s life – and the lives of those who love that person – irreversibly.
2. I like guns.
And I’ve had my share of being at wrong places at wrong times.
Realizing the potential of guns and people who may use them unwisely, I try to avoid places and parties frequented by drunk belligerent guys with a history of making threats to others and displaying youtube videos of himself, drunk, admitting to handling guns in a forgetful manner.
Readers are advised to do the same.
3. Actually, I do have something to say on the Asian Mother thing, everyone is missing half of the point – commensurate with their own inner preoccupations. Looking at mutually extreme modes of child rearing and making normative judgments is not wise. Looking at many modes and methods of child rearing, and extracting what seems to be wise in each, and rejecting what seems to be neurotic in each, is wiser.
The standard modes of child rearing among working class Americans, or middle to upper middle class Americans – be they classic conservatives OR progressive liberal ‘SWPL’ types – often in many ways seem dysfunctional, and in other ways seem admirable.
The stereotypical ‘Asian’ mode of child rearing referred to by the author, Amy, in that silly ‘Superior Chinese Mom’ article she wrote for the WSJ, also are highly dysfunctional and produce emotionally stunted kids, while also having many admirable outcomes as well. Do you value order, or creativity. Do you value efficiency, or supreme competence, or emotional breadth, or depth.
There is no Exclusive Or operation at work here.
All cultural child rearing approaches, to varying degrees, seem to often generate worker drones of various types. It’s a matter of the type of drone behavior displayed, and the specific emotional pathologies gravitated to.
Best to take from each what seems sane.
But in the mean time, also in the news..
Death toll tops 500 in Brazilian floods
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2011/01/14/Death-toll-tops-500-in-Brazilian-floods/UPI-35821295006219/
Also in the news, Billy Milano is playing bass somewhere in Texas,
Australia is still flooding, but Melbourne is dry,
in Breckenridge Minnesota the windchill factor is 40 below,
and spooks are openly recruiting naive hackers to serve as gov leak website hacktivists (hah, just kidding).
More news at 11.
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