Letters to the Editor
SB
Published Letters: 367 Editor's Choice: 18
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Your big mistake..
[Read the article: I'm so damned judgmental!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]..is (supposedly) not making any mistakes. How on earth do you learn anything about life? You'll be reincarnated back exactly where you started! Your fate will be like the inverse of the movie "Groundhog Day". You'll have to keep coming back again and again until you screw up!
I hope the teaser "I made all the right decisions while others screwed up" was written by Salon, because if you wrote it yourself, you'd be one hell of a snot. And your letter doesn't describe you making any decisions, just living life like you were told you're supposed to. "I don't believe that I'll ever make that huge mistake because I'm just too sensible." Afraid might be the word you're looking for, there.
Really, it must be a shame to have no real understanding of compulsive or addictive or self-destructive behavior. Have you ever read Shakespeare or any Russsian novelists? If you indeed "always lived life on the straight and narrow" and "can't understand why other people make the mistakes they do" you would appear to have missed out on 98% of what the rest of us think of as the human condition. Understanding something of which you have not the slightest experience is a pretty tall order, but maybe literature (or cinema) will help.
I'm plenty judgemental too, but having suffered from my own bad decisions makes it easier to see how people act in ways that are not in their own interest, or are anti-social, or pathological, or whatever. Many of us have deep reserves of unhappiness, fear, emptiness, or self hatred to draw upon when making these bad decisions, you know. It doesn't usually happen because we're simply fools. I envy people who make a few bad decisions and then seem to learn quickly from them, but to have done everything 'right' without first having done something 'wrong' seems more than passing strange to me.
I suppose it's funny that I'm responding to your letter, because I'm having a hard time empathizing with your problem! My best guess is that you're afraid. Actually, a good friend of mine says that everything about the human condition is rooted in fear and love. So maybe you have the fear part, but "I think you're a fool" doesn't sound very loving.
I dunno, people who fake compassion, sympathy, and understanding are kind of scary to me. I think that's worse than getting into debt or getting sucked into a bad relationship or something. I understand how people outgrow that stuff; developing empathy when you're lacking it is much harder. Sounds to me like maybe that's your problem.
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Hitlery?
[Read the article: Ari Fleischer: It gets worse]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What the fuck is Hitlery?
Seriously, what is up with that?
You do realize that EVERYONE thinks you're a contemptable fool, don't you?
Even the other contemptable fool.
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Crazy!!
[Read the article: How can I love my Republican parents?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I know a number of people whose parents have turned into rabid reactionary 'conservatives', there's simply no reasoning with them at all, they just rage if you try to engage them in discussion. It reminds me of people who've bought into an abusive relationship for many years, to now admit that something is wrong would destroy them. Stockholm syndrome is perhaps another analogy. The same thing happens to some dyed-in-the-wool 'liberals', they simply can't admit that they're no longer being rational about something that requires rationality. The difference seems to be that old trotskyites are few and far between and relatively harmless, there just hasn't been much of that kool-aid around for a while. I think of these people as simply crazy and deluded, afraid of what our political system offers (in theory more than in practice these days) so they've reverted to believing in 'safe' authoritarianism where God/GOP lay down the rules AND DON'T YOU QUESTION IT! One can trace the psychology of it, but it still qualifies as crazy to me. So, how do you love the mentally ill? That's a tough one. You visit them, placate them, and don't burst their bubble; it's dangerous. Would you cough on someone whose immune system had failed?
I'm not hearing that these parents are thinking, small-c conservatives; those people have long since started doubting GWB. And I'm not hearing that the LW is a reactionary marxist college kid; are you, Bad Son? I'm not, I'm basically a progressive. I've developed a few more conservative positions over the years since my early 20's but I'm still willing to discuss them. You'd still have a hard time convincing me that unregulated corporate power is a good thing, though. That doesn't seem to be a well thought out position to me. My mom is 80 and still mostly rational about politics, thank goodness. One of her dear friends is an aneurysm Republican though; if the friend drives them somewhere the discussion needs to be limited so her friend's head doesn't explode.
Anyway, your crazy parents - would you visit them if the were schizophrenic, or depressed? You probably would. Just try to ignore the Jesus/GWB thing like the tinfoil hat it is, and thank your mom for dinner. Hopefully she's old fashioned & patriotic enough to have a vegetable garden instead of just buying fake ADM processed food, but that's another question.