HonoriaWinchester
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User ID: 3468
HonoriaWinchester
9mo ago
Conway "first, pop hits in the '50s" Twitty? I mean sure he later made a country turn but it's ooooooonly maaaaaaaaaake believe! :D (Sorry, it's just too apropos; I know he did actually always want to be country, etc.)
HonoriaWinchester
9mo ago
Hey, sacred values and taboo tradeoffs, it is what it is.
HonoriaWinchester
9mo ago
Problem: It's not good for artists and intellectuals to be worshiped. It's not good for their psychological health, and it's not good for their art or their scholarship either.
(Can't we have a culture that just lets them be ordinary people like everyone else? Just two of many normal variations of humanity who just like and are good at this type of thing instead of that, because different people are different and that's OK?
...the New Left tried to do that--see also Free to Be You and Me--but my experience was that this in the end was derailed by the movement's emotional need for blank slatism...partly due to this worship of intellectuals: "Intellectual is the best thing to be, so it just has to be equally accessible to every individual, it just has to...")
HonoriaWinchester
9mo ago
HonoriaWinchester
9mo ago
...uh...TW: Contains linked and quoted mockery of celebrity and celeb-adjacent deaths.
I'm reminded of Bob Rivers' "I Can't Ski Babe." Also "Oh God, I'm an Ocean Buoy."
Well it's hard when you're flyin' and you're sluggin' on a bottle
Flyin' in a plane that's an experimental model
Reached for Jim Beam but instead I grabbed the throttle...
Personally I'm a fan of both original songs (I liked oldies as a kid), and John Denver in general...which only makes these funnier IMO.
(Investigation found the latter was spreading misinformation, too! Like yes he did have multiple DUIs and was legally not allowed to fly at the time of the crash, but the autopsy found no sign of alcohol or other drugs. The problem was the difficulty of switching fuel tanks. That said, as an initial reaction, given the context it was a reasonable suspicion.)
(Sonny) I loved you and you dumped me
(Cher) I told you to watch out for trees!
:D
Juice walkin'
Yes indeed
I'm hopin'
He'll never be
Out stalkin'
His ex-wife number 3!Hello, 911? This is Mrs. Simpson.
Oh...yes, Mrs. Simpson, what is it now?
...this was mostly just a nostalgia trip for me, but yeah this was all on radio rather than TV.
I mentioned elsewhere how I was raised that freedom of speech was more important than anything...that was partly due to the times, and that and exposure to the above type of thing on radio have shaped my worldview. In my culture, mockery of celebrity and celeb-adjacent deaths isn't shocking and I probably wouldn't notice it much. (Celeb-adjacent does feel "worse" to me, like the celeb chose to pursue attention but their family mostly didn't...)
HonoriaWinchester
9mo ago
Great point!
This part
When the government denies your entry into a higher paying market, you are being told you aren't worth that.
is kinda what people are responding to with, "But a country is not an economic zone." Like: "It's not that you aren't worth access to that higher paying market. It's just that you are part of a different community, rather than that one."
HonoriaWinchester
9mo ago
He was in denial about his love for the other servant and hers for him (they could have married and had a happy life, but no); he was in denial about his employer's support for the Nazis. When he finally realized the depth of his sacrifices (see: other servant's love for him), he told himself they were justified because he had given good service to a great man (a stereotypical "blockheaded aristo" who had supported the Nazis along with the abdicator king).
(Looking it up after writing the above: Miss Kenton; Edward VIII.)
HonoriaWinchester
9mo ago
I'm from a traditionally AUA family. Always think about writing about it, never seem to find the time.
I left in the '90s, so I don't know if what @MayorofOysterville said is true about the UUs, but I can mostly agree with it about other old school liberal orgs:
Basically Boomer liberal organizations were actually liberal and boomer liberals did believe in principles such as free speech. However, they lacked the antibodies to deal with hardcore woke cadre because they could easily be manipulated by being called racist and out of touch with the youth.
My parents are Depression / war babies rather than Boomers. And I think I've said it before on here, but yeah I was raised that freedom of speech was our most important principle as liberals.
But UUs also had a previous problem that I grew up watching, where the uh "old believers" ;) were, basically, swamped by all the ex-other-denoms coming in in the '70s and '80s. It's hard to find the time to try to write about it though....
The strangest conclusion one can draw from these five crucial minutes of that shortest day--though it would have been perfectly clear, had one bothered to read the signs--is the fact that the refugee horde seemed so blithely unaware that this land it was about to make its own could possibly belong to others already....
all those determined to see it through to the end come pouring from the villas, and cottages, and gardens, down to the beach...to welcome the refugees and guide their first steps. They will. They must. For their own self- fulfillment. Life is good. Life is love, and all men are brothers....
Panama Ranger scans the surging mob, almost close enough to touch him, trying to find a smiling face, a glance to grasp the friendship in his eyes. But he looks and looks. No smile meets his. No one even seems to see him.... He's finally seen the light. "They don't need me," he murmurs. "They'll just take what they please. I can’t give them a thing ..."
As for his pals, they disappeared too, absorbed and digested in much the same way... Only a handful were adopted, as it were, yet lots of them did their damnedest to be helpful... But they soon got discouraged. Though the horde often listened and took their good advice...they no sooner gave it than they felt themselves rejected. The brightest among them were quick to understand: the more helpful they were, indispensable in fact, the more hateful they became.... No one wants to have to remember the masters and mentors from the opulent past. They're just in the way.
You could say: they didn't seem to join thinking they were you know joining a church. They seemed to join thinking "Here's what I can call myself while doing whatever the hell I want." From my biased perspective.
And then before that there was the AUA-Universalist merger. (Which arguably opened the door for the problems I saw growing up...but both--the merger and the problems--could just as easily be attributed to the times.)
And then there's the snide attitude most people here take to Unitarians. I would suggest that people apply the "write like everyone is reading (including Unitarians)" rule. And of course it's hard to write about people you don't know. But then that applies to me too these days wrt the UUs.
My parents haven't attended a church since the '90s. They don't like the one where I grew up, they don't like the one where they now live. They have a lot of Congregationalist friends, so they're thinking of joining their local Congregationalist church. (The AUA was formed by Congregationalists who were dissatisfied with Calvinism. Problem: So are my folks...)
The AUA was not "created to be a liberal denomination of [implied by the quotes: fake] 'Christianity.'"
To get a better understanding of what it was for, I suggest reading Harriet Beecher Stowe's roman a clef Oldtown Folks (Ellery Davenport is basically Aaron Burr, except that he dies instead of Hamilton). Guess I could summarize as: It was invented by and for a certain type of person, who (at least in a Christian context) needed it. It does not work well for anyone else.
HonoriaWinchester
9mo ago
Jawboning is 100% fine per Murthy v. Missouri, Jimmy Kimmel will never again face firing over his reaction to specifically Charlie Kirk's death, so he has no standing to complain. :bland smile:
HonoriaWinchester
9mo ago
For two months everyone had been told the most important thing to do was slow the spread of the virus. People sacrificed immensely in those two months to do so. And then, suddenly, no, the most important thing is for people to protest, and riot, and loot.
As much as I sympathize with literalists getting annoyed with that, I also sympathize with officials who said that, because (I feel) "come on": You could not say anything was more important than fighting racism, anything at all, or else you'd be canceled, "of course." "Nothing is ever more important than fighting racism" just was...part of the "religion" of the time. You just have to say it, so you can continue doing your job rather than being removed (some might assume or even hope "most people" really know that and thus know to ignore it--see also Kolmogorov complicity, I know--like I said, I feel sorry for officials in that position). (I said so on the sub at the time.)
Suddenly gave me a visceral (not just intellectual) understanding of Jared Diamond's point (from Collapse; yeah I know, thinking anything good about him has become uncool; still) about societies that didn't do the obvious thing that would've saved them because it was against their religion or values. Because yeah...you could not say anything was more important than fighting racism, you just could not, "of course." To the point that (I suspect) some wouldn't even bother thinking much about how much good it might do to be able to discourage protests because "we just can't, of course" so no point upsetting ourselves thinking too much about how we should (or to put it another way, their "CrimeStop" would kick in). :facepalm:
HonoriaWinchester
9mo ago
Yeah, it's now to such an extreme that (unless you interpret it as intended to deceive) it's incoherent. It's not plausibly sincerely mistaken; it's not open to interpretation; it's straight-up constructed to deceive.
It's like, there's such a thing as implicature, folks--and it's part of speech. (IOW: Using implicature to deceive is lying; implicature is speech, you are speaking an untruth.)
HonoriaWinchester
9mo ago
See also Aesop's fable about the kid on the roof.
HonoriaWinchester
9mo ago
I disagree. Smart people are especially good at making inferences, so they get into the habit. Being selective with which facts you share and arranging them deliberately to mislead--to encourage people to infer an untruth--is actually especially likely to succeed with smart people. They're especially used to their inferences being correct.
HonoriaWinchester
10mo ago
Hi! I also enjoyed The Black Cauldron. :)
Welll my first reaction to your OP, before I even scrolled down to see "AuDHD," was, "Another day, another 'gifted kid is unhappy, must be autistic'" soo... And warning, treating for autism with a kid who isn't actually autistic just makes things worse / the child angrier.
But that said, individuals I've known who were both gifted and actually autistic have been helped by Good Intentions Are Not Good Enough by Winner and Crooke (for adults about the workplace), and The Asperkid's (Secret) Book of Social Rules by Jennifer Cook. Winner and Crooke also wrote Socially Curious and Curiously Social: A Social Thinking Guidebook for Bright Teens and Young Adults, which I haven't seen but hey, same author and for teens.
In particular, Winner and Crooke have a thing about "People have an idea of what counts as a big deal and what doesn't, and if you react super strongly to what they think should be a small deal, they'll see you as unpredictable/crazy and treat you badly."
Which is true. But oversimplified. And doesn't account for like actual differences and justifiable stronger reactions. After all, different people are different and how is it fair that one group gets to just dictate what is and isn't a big deal? (As many of your responses pointed out.) (I'd add that giftedness can be the sole cause of "over"reactions. Or can just be a partial cause with autism and/or ADHD as the other part(s).)
Enter idiosyncrasy credits / "weirdness points".
Idiosyncrasy credits are increased (earned) each time an individual conforms to a group's expectations, and decreased (spent) each time an individual deviates from a group's expectations. Edwin Hollander originally defined idiosyncrasy credit as "an accumulation of positively disposed impressions residing in the perceptions of relevant others; it is… the degree to which an individual may deviate from the common expectancies of the group".
--once established as a generally trustworthy person / good friend, then you can stand up for your interpretation of the situation where it is so a big deal. (Being innately different, even solely due to giftedness, means you just are disadvantaged in this. It forces you to use up more idiosyncrasy credits on basic needs. Unfair but true fact of life.)
Based on your description, he's stuck in the opposite situation: He's already established as "the one who always overreacts." Uphill battle there; from a solely social perspective would be best to switch schools. The new dx will, socially, operate as a "well he's defective so he gets a pass for his constant overreactions." Might or might not make the situation tolerable for him ("You see, the autism means that X thing that doesn't bother most people really bothers him, so be kind to the defective and don't do it"), but that's never gonna be as healthy a situation as a new school where he started off on the right foot (and got established as "the overall good guy who cares weirdly a lot about X, we like him so we'll respect that").
See also Stephanie Tolan's A Time to Fly Free (about a preteen but still). And Grace Llewellyn's The Teenage Liberation Handbook.
(Ran this by one of the diagnosed AuDHD+gifted people I know and he cosigned it.)
If only the party that historically supported those two things would treat their country like a community rather than an economic zone.
There's been a realignment. Trump (a pretty standard '80s New York liberal) reunited the FDR coalition. It started with Bill's (sold as "temporary, for the sake of winning") economic "triangulation," and evolved into this.
It is OK to think a community's culture needs time to adapt to change; it is OK to think this means immigration sometimes needs pauses; it is OK for a country to control immigration; it is OK for a country to decide how much immigration it wants right now; it is OK for that amount to be different at different times. (Runaway "none of that is OK, all of it is racist" is what led to this; but I'm sure you've heard that before.)
People have repeatedly voted to control immigration and had politicians not act on that. Members of the political class will sometimes allow that they are unshakably convinced that the economy needs immigration, needs more and more immigration, or else it will crash, period--and that's why they ignore the will of the people. Thus complaints about treating the community like an economic zone.
Not to mention the repeated "This will economically help more people worldwide than it hurts, and we'll have social programs to help out those it does hurt." Reality: We got the "giant sucking sound," we did not get the social programs. I'm old enough to have seen that happen over and over. I know that's frustrating when the party intended to do both, but there comes a point where intent doesn't matter. Right-wing (libertarian) economics without the left-wing social programs to ameliorate their effect is just...right-wing economics. Thus, again, complaints of treating a community like an economic zone.
We are in a predicament: We have an economic system designed around constant growth, yet actually, constant growth is not physically possible (see, you know, The Limits to Growth?). The political class' attitude has been to accept the former but not the latter. And to hope that immigration can prop up continued growth. Regardless of any negative externalities it...becomes clearer and clearer it does have (Bowling Alone etc.) Because if not, well, then what?
It still has those negative externalities, so.
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