The Politics Thread

[Juliajms]

Please register in order to view this content

That name.

I've never been sure at what age the Holocaust should be brought up. Industrialized murder on that scale is just so grim. I think it can cause a lot of existential angst. With my children I don't get a choice. Their Hebrew school just digs right into it from kindergarten on. One thing I've noticed is that children's minds tend to only absorb what they can process. Nate understands his teacher's grandparents were killed, but he doesn't seem to understand that millions are people were killed because they were Jews. The older they get the deeper the understanding becomes.

As for slavery, I think kids can understand that starting around 2nd grade. I don't see any point in hiding the facts and reality from them. I don't understand why parents want to hide what their ancestors did from kids. Hell, I don't even know the names of my great grand parents. I don't feel the least need to protect their reputations.

[Ponds]

I would like us to commit to a year long time zone, but I'm old and think Standard time is the way to go. 

[Khan]

I remember when I was still a teenager in the '90's and I would hear all the what-about-the-children jive coming from certain quarters.  Even THEN, I knew what these so-called concerned folks were REALLY saying.

Again, ladies and gentlemen, let's hear it for us Gen-X'ers, the only generation who knows horse manure when they hear it!

[Juliajms]

I didn't realize it was this bad. Damn.

 

[DramatistDreamer]

Maybe because I have nieces and nephews, I have empathy for those kids, to a certain point. I have had conversations with them about critical thinking and discernment, but mostly I have taken them to the library very early on in their lives encouraged them to read books, the way I was encouraged to read books. It's odd to hear of parents wanting to censor and ban books because I always read whatever I wanted. JMO but many of the parents of the millennial and Z generations are at the root of the problem. Different times, I guess?

Reading the paper and watching the news with a critical eye was a must in my household but today even the New York Times has a markedly lower standard than what it once had been, so in a sense , I can see how some people might get caught in the wrong lane of the information superhighway when there is a vacuum.

 

[Khan]

At the risk of overgeneralizing, I think most millennials and Gen-Z'ers have this tendency to be not even remotely interested in anything that occurred before their time.  In their minds, the world is [!@#$%^&*], and it's all our faults, so anything the rest of us have to say about anything is not worth paying attention to.  At all.

Edited March 17, 2022 by Khan

[DramatistDreamer]

It's been very bad. I have talked to a few close friends and at least two have expressed self-consciousness being out in public during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, actually before it was declared a pandemic. And one has expressed fear for her parents. 

Interwoven with all these, there have been attacks on homeless men and each time it has been a formerly homeless man. Another tragic issue getting entirely too little attention. It's weird how homelessness has just become a peripheral issue when it once absorbed quite a bit of the national attention, at least once annually on HBO.

I wonder where that tendency comes from? Is it something they were taught by helicopter parents or were they socialized to think this way over time?

When I went to college, I met kids who lacked the ability to even wake themselves up in the morning I was shocked. As a latch-key kid who was traveling by bus to take myself to music lessons by age 11, I couldn't fathom not being able to get myself where I needed to b, especially when money and time were involved. And some of those students that I attended college with (the ones who who would wail if reprimanded by a professor, usually after they said something ignorant) became parents and raised some of these Gen Z kids, lol.

[Khan]

I tend to think it's the former.  People joke all the time about "participation trophies," but they're real, and who do you think "earned" them?  It certainly wasn't the Gen-X'ers!  We were conditioned to live in a society that didn't give a [!@#$%^&*] about us, lol!

[DRW50]

The amoral  Franklin Graham is over there too, which also concerns me.

[Vee]

 

[DramatistDreamer]

^^Oh Lord, so now add the spectre of child exploitation and human trafficking to the list of perils in Ukraine.

On the Russian side of things, or the Russian people side of things, this is a thoughtful Op-ed piece despite it appearing in the NYT.

[DramatistDreamer]

For anyone wondering about the status of WNBA star Brittney Griner's detention in Russia, this has to be somewhat discouraging news. Perhaps the one less distressing aspect is that, at the very least, physically, she looks unharmed. Mentally, may be something else entirely.

One can only hope that she can maintain her well-being for another two months while her release is secured. 

[dragonflies]

 

[Gray Bunny]

 

Agreed. I'm for Daylight Savings year-round. I wouldn't mind the sun coming out late in the morning during the dead of wintertime, and I'd much prefer coming home from work while there's still a bit of daylight left. 

[janea4old]