Day 5: Numb

Day Five

 

I am feeling uncomfortably numb today. It hasn’t anything to do with the hectic schedule I’ve had all week. It has to do with the daily news.

The ridiculous Battle of the Budget continues to drag on.

Two-thirds of SCOTUS is corrupt, and no one is doing anything about it. The proper person to begin to act would be Senate Judiciary Committee chairperson Dick Durbin, but he seems paralyzed. Crooked Media helpfully provided his phone number.

We must worry about going to school, to the store, to a church or synagogue, to a concert, to a club, and now to our front yard. Neighbors had the NERVE to ask a man to stop shooting his gun off outdoors in the middle of the night because it was waking the baby. The neighbor paid back this insult by invading the house and killing nearly everyone in the family with a gunshot to the head.

So much for asking a neighbor to turn down the music. Now we must worry about that too because, of course, no one is going to do a damn thing to stop the gun violence.

Rethuglican legislatures across the country continue to put the lives of trans/LGBTQ kids and adults at risk with their outrageous so-called ‘protect the kids’ laws. Not only that, but they also continue to put the lives of pregnant women in danger with their strict abortion laws.  Doctors are afraid to intervene and perform an abortion even when the woman’s life is at risk. This morning I read an article about obstetricians wanting to leave Idaho and about two of their hospitals shutting down obstetrical/maternity care.

It's obvious they want to keep their voters and future voters ignorant and stupid with the book banning and restrictions on what can and cannot be taught. Here’s a link to a study showing how poorly students are doing in their knowledge of civics and history. Yes, let’s keep everyone stupid and voting for Rethuglicans like lemmings falling over a cliff.

Their other plot to get rid of us god-awful liberals and Democrats is to have us thrown out of legislative bodies for disagreeing and for limiting where, when how and how old we can be to vote.  Rethuglicans are scared to death of Gen Z, powerful young people who THINK and ACT with their votes.

So why am I feeling numb? It’s overwhelming. It’s too much. My heart breaks when there are needless deaths due to gun violence. I get angry at Rethuglicans’ evil shenanigans. I am outraged when I read about women who nearly die trying to get decent obstetrical care to save their lives.  I am frustrated about having to wonder whether I’ll get shot if I ask my neighbor to stop driving so damn fast down our street.

I am numb because there’s only so much, I can take before my brain steps in and says: enough.  Time to detach.  Time to turn off the emotions.  Time to not care for a while.

I must do it to save my sanity and my physical health.

I am participating in the American Cancer Society’s challenge to write for thirty minutes each day in May. I do a lot of writing and I can meet this challenge. What I plan to do is make a blog entry each day with what I’ve written.

I wanted to participate in memory of loved ones who fought cancer bravely but succumbed:

My brother-in-law Jeff

My sister-in-law Ann

My dear friend Kay

My Uncle Bob

My Uncle John

I also wanted to help raise money to support research and a cure for all those who are currently fighting this vicious disease.

My Facebook to the fundraiser is here.

 

Bullying

 An 11-year-old middle schooler committed suicide in a bathroom stall at her school on February 6^th. I’ve only begun to see stories about it here on Friday and here today. The child went to a middle school here in Burlington County, not terribly far from where I live. How could this happen? I know how: nothing seems to effectively stop bullies, especially if the adults in the picture don’t act.

Why do children and adults bully? Is it a result of growing up in a home where they, themselves, are or have been bullied? I don’t know and I really don’t care. It’s never okay to be a bully.

Many of us have been bullied and have different ways of responding to get through it. I was bullied in junior high school. I was socially naïve when I entered seventh grade in 1967. My bullying began with a childish story I wrote for a creative writing assignment in English. The other students were brutal and continued to be throughout the year.

I had one friend, a quiet student who probably would’ve caught the brunt if the class hadn’t descended on me first. We were all in the enrichment track because of how we’d performed academically the year before.

It got so I didn’t want to go to school. Every morning, my stomach began to hurt. I couldn’t eat. I was filled with dread. At first, my parents thought I might have a virus and that saved me for a blessed week. After that, they realized it wasn’t a virus as I continued balking about going to school. It got to the point they’d have to literally drag me to the car and drive me to school.

My homeroom teacher noticed something was wrong and brought me out to the hallway to discuss it. I told her what was happening. She had me meet with my guidance counselor, who tried to convince me that it would be different next year. The thought of having to go through my junior high school years with this group of students made me burst into tears. I wanted off the track.

The counselor couldn’t believe his ears.  Didn’t I realize that I would be bored if I left this enrichment track? I didn’t care. I preferred boredom to the daily torment of one classmate after the other. Reluctantly, he agreed to switch me to the next track down the following school year. I just had to get through the last few months of seventh grade.

The following year, I made friends with the other kids in my class. I was happy the rest of my time in junior high. I wasn’t bullied there anymore, nor in high school. I am very happy that I dropped that track because whenever I encountered any of those students in the halls during 8^th and 9^th grades, they attempted to insult and intimidate me. But I was confident, surrounded by friends who accepted me and so I laughed at them.

What would have happened if I’d stayed with that group? It might have been different later, as we got older. But what would have happened to me, emotionally? I don’t credit that counselor for saving me. I think it was the homeroom teacher who saw how unhappy I was. The rest of it was me, saving myself.

Two of my children were bullied. My son is on the spectrum, high functioning and brilliant. He was successful in elementary school but encountered bullies in middle school. His initial response was to humiliate them in the classroom by exposing their ignorance of topics. That didn’t endear him to some students. In shop class, one person got his revenge by throwing sawdust into my son’s eyes. Another vandalized his jacket and backpack. I went to the school and made a big stink and then something was done. In high school, my son took to practicing martial arts moves and successfully kept the bullies away during lunch.

My youngest daughter got bullied in elementary school. And why? Because she had a pixie haircut, the girls in her class told her that she must be a boy because her hair was short. With very straight hair, my daughter preferred to keep the length short and so this kind of thing followed her throughout high school. Then her sexuality was questioned in earnest. My daughter did have a group of friends she was close to throughout and so she ignored her tormentors as I did.

But it still hurts.

It’s terrible that bullying still runs rampant in schools, even when the parents and victimized students speak up. It’s not dealt with adequately or is minimized or, at worst, completely ignored. That seems to be what happened in the case of this young student from Mt. Holly.

Her mother has become very vocal about what’s happened.  Both she and her daughter attempted to have the issue addressed and redressed, but complaints were ignored. And now that mom is without her child.

As for the bullies, do they feel any guilt for the death they caused? I’ll bet they don’t. They’ll have somehow put the blame on the child they victimized, leaving themselves free to torment the next student they want to bully.

When did Missouri become part of Iran or the Taliban?

It's not just Missouri. This has been happening over the past year in the red states. Fascism. Control of anyone not a white male Protestant.

Focusing just on the Missouri House for a moment, there is a new dress attire just for women. I don’t think it has become the rule yet, but it was proposed that female legislators would have to make sure their arms are covered. I mean, WTAF? Women must be controlled and not allowed to make choices in dress for themselves now.  This is still the United States, right? Well, for white misogynistic men, but wait! A woman introduced this. Now my mind is truly blown.

This was the total rotten cherry on top of toxic icing on a poisonous cake called GQP Gone Wild.

Look at all the red states that have restricted or outlawed a woman’s right to choose. They were champing at the bit to do it even before the corrupt Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. I just read a heart-breaking story of a pregnant mother who, learning that her baby was going to be born without a skull, was told she could not end the pregnancy. She was sent home to endure a heart-breaking pregnancy and to bid her baby goodbye at birth because he or she would either be born dead or die within minutes.  She’s not the only one that has to endure a pregnancy with the outcome of delivering a dead or dying baby. It’s cruel and inhuman.

And what about the mothers who begin to miscarry, but it’s not completed? In these red states, doctors’ hands are tied, and they are unable to help these mothers. Many of them develop life threatening complications and the doctors are still not supposed to intervene. Inhuman. Cruel.

Then there are the women and children who are raped and are now forced to carry their rapist’s child. Nowadays, said rapist can sue for visitation. That adds insult to injury.

“It’s a man’s world.” That’s the Rethuglican point of view. We are stuck with them for the next two years.

It isn’t only women the Rethuglicans seek to oppress. It’s also children, people of color, members of the LGBTQ community, non-White-Anglo-Saxon-Protestants, the elderly, and the physically/mentally challenged.

Children? They are being denied correct knowledge. They are forbidden to learn the country’s true history. This is ridiculous and pathetic: Gov. Ron DeSantis of FL had math books scoured for anything that might remotely be related to CRT. CRT isn’t taught in any public school anywhere in the country, yet Rethuglicans yell and scream about it all the time. Death Santis proudly proclaims that CRT comes to Florida to die.

Not just Florida. In Ohio, a third-grade teacher was reading Dr. Seuss' book The Sneetches to her class. Do you remember that story? The star-bellied Sneetches were elite. They got the best of everything and looked down their noses at the plain bellied Sneetches. The two groups were the same except for the stars. Plain bellied Sneetches suffered bigotry and discrimination from their star bellied brothers and sisters.

And so, the plain bellied Sneetches began to wear stars on their bellies so that they could be treated equally, with respect. Did that happen? No, the star bellied Sneetches had theirs removed and continued to ostracize the others. A gentle lesson in what racism can do.

One of the little ones figured it out. He raised his hand and when called on, saw this is how the white people were treating the Black people. This kid was astute and totally right on. If only his little mind continues to expand with exposure to books like this and classes taught with true history, not whitewashed, he would grow into an open-minded young man.

But no. There was a school district official sitting there, and now she jumped up and stopped the discussion. What was she afraid those kids would learn from an open discussion? Her excuse for stopping the discussion was because the teacher was supposed to focus on the economics in the story. Who decided economics and racism couldn’t be discussed together? I think the students of Ohio are about to be as cheated as the ones in Florida and the other red states that moved to have any discussion of slavery, Jim Crow, Japanese internment, and so many other topics removed from school curriculums.

That’s not what America’s about. Presidents from Abraham Lincoln to John Kennedy to President Joe Biden have emphasized the importance of a quality education. But the Rethuglicans would like to keep everyone stupid and swallowing their Kool-Aid. Now the GQP-Rethuglicans are running the House.

In addition to some of the most ridiculous posturing and vindictive bills they’ve been introducing (which won’t pass the Senate or President Biden and so are wasting time), they have no legislative agenda other than to force the US to the brink of defaulting. Why would they do that? They want to extort the Senate and President so that they can make massive cuts into Social Securityand Medicare.

It doesn’t matter that those dependent on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security can barely support themselves. It doesn’t matter that they want to take away money we’ve been putting into the system for years and years. It doesn’t matter that seniors already are on the verge of losing their homes because prices have gone so high, they have to decide between paying the rent or mortgage or food. The gas and electric bill or prescriptions. Once again, it’s cruel and inhuman.

I feel a heavy weight on me. Every day the news is full of just awful stories. If it’s not this, it’s about the corrupt tRump, unscathed and living the life of Riley, thumbing his nose at justice. It’s more white cops killing more innocent black men. 2023 seems to be a continuation of 2022, a year filled with GQP evil. Now I must go lie down and pull the covers over my head.

 

Why Are So Many People Dumb?

 

Lately I’ve only scanned headlines from Daily Sound & Fury because they give me agita.  Many of the articles are filled with capitalized paragraphs and that makes me feel like someone’s yelling at me.  The other reason I don’t read through articles anymore is because there’s a sense of hysteria to them.  It’s pretty clear they want their readers to get riled up.

Having said that, I was intrigued by one of their articles and followed the link to the website.  The article didn’t shout at me and didn’t do anything more but give more information about why so many people are dumb.  Check it out.  It’s pretty enlightening. Made Stupid.

Back from a worthwhile read?  I wonder what everyone thinks about the points made in the article?  I think about my exposure to TV/radio ads when I was a child (say from 1957 until adulthood) and compare it with that of my children who are millennials.  Luckily, during their toddler and preschool years, Rich and I worked opposite shifts so that one of us was always home caring for them.  They had play-outside time and play-inside time that involved toys and for short periods, TV or gaming.

When I was a kid, I was outdoors right after breakfast.  When the streetlights came on, I knew it was time to go home.  I did watch some TV like the Mickey Mouse club and I remember that it did influence me.  I needed to be a Mouseketeer and I sure needed those Mickey Mouse ears.  I must have been somewhere between 3 and 6.  My parents did get me a pair of ears and I wore them every time I watched the show.

I was lucky.  I wasn’t exposed to as many ads because I didn’t watch a lot of shows.  One big reason is that the TV was rarely on.  My parents were Deaf, and there was no such thing as closed captioning then.  They didn’t watch TV because it was too difficult to read speakers’ lips and was a frustrating experience.  However, we did watch Walt Disney, Ed Sullivan, and Combat whenever they were on TV.  My dad had a little residual hearing and enjoyed the performers on Ed Sullivan.  Combat was action packed and easy to follow.  Disney? Classic.  I don’t remember any of the commercials.

As I got older, the jingles and other nonsense went in one ear and out the other.  I’m like that now.  I prefer streaming TV with no commercials.  If I watch regular TV, I read through the commercials.  I didn’t get into the cosmetics, shampoo, cleaning supplies, clothes, cars and any of that other stuff that gets pushed.  The ads are dumb.  They promise the viewer or listener some wonderful things will happen if you don’t buy blah-blah.  It’s all hype.

I am proud that my kids aren’t dumb because of ads they’ve seen.  I am sure it’s because they had a parent with them to help them discern what was true and what was just a come-on.

The article points out that millennials and Gen Z kids probably didn’t have a parent at home with them.  Nowadays in a traditional family, both parents have to work to stay afloat with rapidly rising food and gas prices.  Single parents might have to work two jobs.  Who knows what kind of guidance they get from child care workers or babysitters?

My kids escaped this but some Gen Z kids are growing up in states that regulate what a teacher can and can’t teach.  The curriculums are dumbed down and, as a result, these kids being protected from “offense” don’t learn all the topics they need to know.  Books are banned from libraries and schools.  Many of those books are excellent reads and are banned because ultra-right-wing politicians and parents don’t like certain words or concepts in these books.  If kids are lucky and interested enough, they may find some of these titles at their local library.

Schools fail many students because of restrictions and a lack of funding.  The Rethuglicans never seem to want to adequately fund education.  I learned civics in 8^th grade.  Students today don’t get much civics; it doesn’t seem important.  The article said that half of our citizens can’t name the three branches of government.  How can you make a good decision as a voter if you don’t know how the branches of government work?

Other dumbness that people pick up:

Vaccines prevent disease.  Some vaccines eradicated a disease.  They’re required to attend school.  Yet many adults refuse the vaccine against covid.  Why?  Vaccines are effective.  But it seems these dumb ones believe the misinformation they hear and see.

I’ve been surveying voters in three different states.  More than half support TFG.  I want to ask WHY?  I can’t.  I have to be impartial and just read the questions verbatim.    They are supportive of all the good things the Democratic candidate has done but they would still go with the Repub candidate. Why?  I think it’s because they swallow TFG’s Kool-Aid and become numb to facts.  They’d vote for this clown even though the things he & the Rethuglicans want to do would hurt them.  Duh?

I’ve come to the conclusion that too much media exposure is bad.  I think it kills thinking brain cells of little ones who begin watching TV at such young ages.  They are manipulated to need “this & that” and believe what they see is real.  Growing up, the strong influence of commercials can surely change the thinking process of people exposed to them for long periods of time—like sitting in front of the TV for hours.

The article lists way to reduce the stupidity level of kids in school now.  It’s a nice list but it means that people need to care and get involved.  Do they?  How many adults aren’t swayed by all the BS on the air and on the Net?  I wonder.

Next time I want to focus on anxiety: life happenings, politics, aging, and etc.