GOP Kills Border Deal They Asked For & Trump's Plans for the Environment Are Truly Scary
GOP Kills Border Deal They Asked For & Trump's Plans for the Environment Are Truly Scary
FL School Wants Parental Consent to Teach Black History, MTG's Unhinged Bathroom Accusation, SC Wants to Bring Back Electric Chair, Trump's "Horrific" Plan to Gut Environment, Joni Mitchell Sings
What I’m Discussing Today:
Kareem’s Daily Quote: A character named Action from West Side Story tells adults what not to say to youth.
G.O.P. Backlash to Border Deal Reflects Vanishing Ground for a Compromise: This is the border bill they asked for, now they don’t want it out of fear it will make Biden look good. Your representatives looking out for you.
South Florida School Demands Parent Consent for Black History Month Events: Florida treats learning about Black Americans as some sort of history porn.
House Dem Brutally Hits Back at Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Gross Bathroom Claim: Greene fights against accusations of incompetence by claiming her accuser spends a lot of time in the bathroom. Another moment to make America proud.
South Carolina wants to resume executions with firing squad and electric chair, says "instantaneous or painless" death not mandated: SC governor brings us one step closer to normalizing torture.
‘In a word, horrific’: Trump’s extreme anti-environment blueprint: Trump insiders warn that if Trump is elected the environment will become one giant dumping ground to be exploited until there’s nothing left.
Kareem’s Video Break: This opening scene of Guardians of the Galaxy always makes me laugh. Coincidentally, his moves are the same ones I make every morning on my way from the bedroom to the refrigerator.
Joni Mitchell sings “Amelia”: Last week, Mitchell won her tenth Grammy. This heartfelt and poetic song about searching for one’s true self shows us why she is one of the greatest songwriters of all time.
Kareem’s Daily Quote
Doc: Why, when I was your age—
Action: When you was my age? When my old man was my age, when my brudder was my age. You was never my age, none of ya! And the sooner you creeps get hip to that, the sooner you'll dig us!
West Side Story
In this scene from West Side Story, convenience store owner Doc tries to talk the Jets out of a rumble with the Sharks. Like most oldsters, he makes the classic mistake of trying to compare his life experiences with theirs. Action, rightfully, isn’t having it.
Human progress is driven by the ability to record history and pass it along to subsequent generations. That way each generation can build off that accumulated knowledge. This is true whether we’re talking about science or human relationships. The problem is that, while we are eager to accept factual knowledge in order to build bigger and better things, we are openly hostile to advice about personal choices.
The reason is that facts don’t have an agenda and personal advice does. Attempts to mold the values of the young are thankfully met with skepticism by them because they know that the advice is usually about trying to mold them in the image of the advisor. Even advice with the best of intentions comes with strings and judgment, even if unconsciously.
The thing we adults have to remember is that we are the product of a specific time period and specific experiences. Those influences aren’t always relevant to subsequent generations. Gen Z has grown up with online dating, pandemic isolation, global warming, a rise in right-wing efforts to legislate their morality, and a lot of other social nudges we aren’t yet even aware of.
My featured song today is Joni Mitchell’s “Amelia,” which coincidentally has a stanza that addresses my quote:
People will tell you where they've gone
They'll tell you where to go
But till you get there yourself you never really know
And where some have found their paradise
Others just come to harm
The other day I was watching a show and there was a twenty-something struggling to make a choice about what to do in a relationship. I started to mentally formulate my sage advice when it occurred to me that I don’t remember how I felt or thought back then. My choices then were made by the person trapped in a particular time capsule. I don’t remember that guy as well as I’d thought.
Parents may want to protect their children from heartache, but that is not always possible. They are on their journey in their own time stream. We can’t bring in Alexander Graham Bell to fix our broken cell phones. We are all products of our times and the times are always a-changin’.
It’s easy to issue forth proclamations from the Olympian heights of age when we are no longer at the mercy of rampant hormones, parental expectations, and peer pressure. Every generation embraces their own slang and music, while harshly dismissing the slang and music of the subsequent generations. The warm cocoon of nostalgia makes them forget the pettiness and drama that dominated their lives.
We have to accept that we have reached an age when true wisdom is realizing that our advice must remain unspoken unless directly solicited. In The Catcher in the Rye, Holden spends the entire novel trying to protect innocence, especially in his younger sister Phoebe. Only at the end when he watches her on a carousel precariously trying to grab the gold ring does he realize the futility of his quest and the damage he might be doing to Phoebe’s journey:
All the kids kept trying to grab for the gold ring, and so was old Phoebe, and I was sort of afraid she’d fall off the goddam horse, but I didn’t say anything or do anything. The thing with kids is, if they want to grab for the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off, they fall off, but it’s bad if you say anything to them.
The hardest part of any sport is knowing when to take the shot and when to bide your time. Turns out, that’s also the hardest part of parenting.