Dialog with a progressive. Russia. Covid. Mental accuity.
20220119
My strep test came back negative. My voice is still gravelly but I feel pretty good. The answer now is time. What have I learned? Through my reading and your comments I learned that I should gargle with vinegar to chase a sore throat away, rinse my nose with Betadine to keep viruses at bay, and continue to take zinc and vitamins even after Covid goes away. Since a four-year-old should be sleeping by herself anyhow, this is a good time to tell Zoriana I don't want nightly exposure to a little kid's bugs.
News and opinion about Russia is totally schizophrenic. Russophiles can see no wrong, the US press can see no right. This American living in Moscow takes a more nuanced view, asking people to describe the good and the bad. An opinion I love is that the very corruption and incompetence of the place gives you a kind of freedom that you don't have in the West. That's how I feel about Ukraine.
My intent is not to beat everybody over the head on this Covid thing, but to make about one comment per day. Yesterday it was about handcuffing, dragging away and drugging an old man for asking uncomfortable questions. Today this graph comparing the death rates of vaccinated and unvaccinated working age people in Great Britain shows up in my mailbox.
The numbers come from the British Office of National Statistics. Huge numbers – all 320,000 deaths up through October of last year. The vaccinated are dying of all causes at twice the rate of the unvaccinated.
Eddie observed that he was beating his grandfather most of the time in chess. I had noticed the same, and played a couple of games with Eddie just to see if it was him getting better. I told him that the brain uses about 25% of your metabolic energy. When you get old or sick you make mistakes. Several of you noticed that I had mistakenly written 2016 for 2006 yesterday. I find myself looking things up, like the name Judith Rich Harris below, that should be at the tip of my tongue if I were feeling well.
It is a race. As I get older I get worse at catching my grammatical errors, repetitions and such. On the other hand, the more I do this the better I am at applying automated tools to find my mistakes. The Grim Reaper will win in the end, but I want to hold him off as long as possible.
The only relative from my former family who still talks to me wrote to take me to task yesterday. It is a good opportunity to discuss my beliefs about child rearing. Not incidentally, it is a classic, predictable dialogue between a contemporary liberal and a conservative skeptic. With his permission, I am including his comments in bold and my reply in normal font.
I am sure glad the measure of my success is not whether my children have grandchildren. And if they do it, they are not doing it for me
You have never stated your own criteria for success in life. My conclusion would be that one measure is the esteem of other people who believe the way you do – people who observe your signaling and consider you virtuous. Another measure appears to be enjoyment: skateboarding, mosh pits, European vacations, good meals and so on.
It would be mighty self centered for me to believe that my genes or bloodline are so valuable that their sole purpose in life is to make grandchildren for me
An unfair characterization. I see it as a responsibility to my children and our society. I'll ask, what is your purpose in life?
I will be happy if they choose to make a happy, satisfying life for themselves making their own life choices to their own (not my) satisfaction
We, like our primate ancestors, are social animals. We are intensely attuned to what the other animals think and are doing. The idea that we control our own life choices is a fantasy. See Stephen Pinker, Robert Trivers, Dan Ariely and Tvorsky and Kanneman's writing on the subject. To name five prominent goyim.
You come from a Jewish background. While all Jews are certainly not alike, your liberal bent, your tendency to champion underdogs (whether or not they invite your help, and whether it benefits society overall), and your disdain for rednecks I would attribute to both genetic and environmental influences.
The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Herman and Rose, your parents, were intelligent, articulate people. Your thinking reflects a Jewish childhood in Washington D.C. Except for the above-cited goyim, most of us are not independent minded. I'm being facetious – all five above are obviously Jewish. Just willing to think.
Both Christianity and Judaism abandoned literal belief in the Bible and strict adherence to custom centuries ago. I think people were happier when they believed. We did not suffer as much isolation, anxieties and anger such as that to which Mattias Desmet attributes the mass formation underlying our current madness .
It is beyond dispute that we are not as prolific. Leaders of all religious faiths, especially the rabbinate, are distressed that their people are dying out. Those who are holding on are ultra-Orthodox, the Amish, the Mormons and such.
Oksana and I flirted with Mormon a couple of years ago. They are the most healthy, well-balanced people as you will find. I ultimately could not accept Mormon doctrines I didn't believe, but I find their way of life very appealing.
My daughter Naomi described her public and private school brainwashing. Typical was A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. The simple message was that white people are bad. Consistent with your view of rednecks. Which I am sure you extend to us deplorables when we aren't part of the conversation.
My daughter Susie became the president of the GLBT club at Walt Whitman High School. It was fashionable. She became a member of a belly dance troupe, insisting that it was pure exercise. The party line was that there was nothing whatsoever erotic about it. The other members were older women who had a decidedly jaded opinion of men. I was dragooned into attending her performances. Susie and her mother knew I hated it. But… everybody also knew that my objecting would have led to an argument that I would've lost.
Her mother put her on birth control pills at the age of 13 on the pretext it would help her acne. Another obvious deception that I had to allow to pass without comment. These were obviously not her free choices. Social animal that she is – like all children – she took the prevailing advice.
They know this and hence we have about as good a relationship as a father and mother (My wife feels this way too) could have with their kids. A good relationship and that they have strong moral values is what Is important to me and My wife
What you call strong moral values I would call strong adherence to liberal dogmas. I doubt it would pass muster with their traditional Jewish and Christian ancestors. It isn't "Love thy neighbor" so much as Isiah's command to be a "Light unto the Gentiles" and burn their butts with the torch if they don't pay attention.
I have no need to control my kids about marriage, progeny, occupations or most other things as long as they are decent, caring people I will be happy and satisfied
An echo of the above. Decent, caring people by your definition embrace the liberal dogmas that I do not. Those who believe as I do about climate, the realities of race and so on are not included in your universe of decent, caring people.
I know you love your children and hope for the best for them but your need to control them has led to great dissatisfaction with the kids from your first marriage (I think they are just fine Human beings even though they may have some issues as do my kids and all of us) and you should give some thought as to how you will handle it if the children in your new family don’t turn out the way YOU want them to be and (God forbid) decide not to get married or have children or (God Forbid) are gay
I would propose that you have controlled your own children insofar as they pretty much adhere to your worldview. You are raising them in Silver Spring, where your neighbors think like you. You sent them to schools where people think like that. You may not consider it control, but it has the same effect.
They could have developed a South Philly outlook on life from their mother and the grandparents to whom they are closest. However, you are materially successful. You have placed them in a world of people who think like the people you grew up with.
Loving my children for what they are and what they have chosen to be has served me well
Accepting them as they decide to be, being their friend, certainly avoids arguments. The Old Testament notion of a parent's obligation to their children is more work.
You might get lucky and they will do as you please they might rebel or think differently and become something other than what you want
Children certainly do tend to rebel. In every age. I love this quote from Mark Twain: “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” His point is that children do need guidance from their parents, and not providing it is a disservice. Moreover, it takes time to appreciate parental wisdom.
We as parents can try to influence these things but most parents I know realize that kids sometimes turn out differently than we had hoped and we may not be able to control these things
They are shaped by their parents, their friends, their neighbors and their schooling. Pinker's protegee Judith Rich Harris says that the parents' choice of an environment for their children weighs heavier than the good advice to parents themselves provide.
What has worked for me is to try to understand these differences a d where they come from and to love them nonetheless
You use the word love repeatedly. I'm convinced already. We all love our children. To return to the Old Testament, the best expression of that love is to put in the hard work it takes to raise them to be real people. In Yiddish or German that would be a Mensch. In Ukrainian it is a chilovek.
They know this and hence they have a very satisfying, loving relationship with My wife and I
It is all of a piece – your family, your environment, everything fits together. In my view, similar things fell in place to elect the current US president. As with Biden, we will see how it works out.
I wish that for you as well with your new family and wish you could be as accepting of your earlier children so that some day your breach could possibly be healed
That is gratuitous. You know perfectly well that they rejected me rather than the other way around. Progressives assume that their mantle of moral superiority gives them the right to ignore inferior people whatever their arguments. My former family canceled me as a matter of convenience. They didn't argue – it's not their style.
Here's a case in point today. None of you progressives are going to argue with the graph above showing excess mortality in Great Britain. None of you will step forward to defend the Mounties terrorizing an old doctor. You assume the right to ignore unwashed people such as me who would pose inconvenient questions.
My children started in junior high school, on the basis of the fact that I didn't believe what everybody around them did. As they were stacked on the sofa like Homer, Marge, Bart and Lisa, I, who despise television, would overhear and talk back to Connie Chung on the nightly news. Sacrilege! But they would never engage in a discussion of why Connie Chung was right.
I still reach out to my ex-wife and children a few times a year. I never hear anything in response. I am an outcast for my deplorable opinions. So be it – I am here if they want to. The morbid thought crosses my mind that they may, consistent with the British graph above, develop medical problems and want to say goodbye at some point. We will see.
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This long post touches on points that a great many of you from the progressive contingent of my past bring up. They are the issues that I will address in more detail as I write about raising my family. Writing on this question today is not whatsoever tangential – it is central to what I'm up to.
That's the news from Lake WeBeGone, where the men are strong, strong enough that the women are looking irresistibly good once again, and the children are bouncing off the walls just like normal children do when they are cooped up on account of some stupid virus instead of with other children where they belong.