Cyberbullying and sexting are problems that continue to grow in our nation's schools mainly due to the ever-changing advancements in technology and thCyberbullying and sexting are problems that continue to grow in our nation's schools mainly due to the ever-changing advancements in technology and the inability for schools to keep up with it. It doesn't help that many adults---parents, teachers, and administrators equally---don't know how to recognize the problem and probably wouldn't know what to do if they did.
Sameer Hinduja and Justin Patchin's "School Climate 2.0: Preventing Cyberbullying and Sexting One Classroom at a Time" is a good reference for parents and teachers. Written more for educators, parents of students who may be being cyberbullied or are cyberbullies will find some useful information.
Bullying, which is still a serious problem in schools, used to be defined as the aggressive behavior and harassment by one person or a group of persons, carried out repeatedly over a period of time, involving a power differential. It's the power differential that's significant: generally the strong picked on the weak, the big picked on the small. With the advent of technological advances such as computers and cellphones, the power differential isn't as significant. Anyone can be a bully, and anyone can be bullied. Not only that, but traditionally bullying occurred solely on school grounds, during school hours. Home was a safe area. Not anymore. Cyberbullies can attack anytime, from anywhere.
Sexting, for those who don't know, is the sending or receiving of sexually explicit texts or nude or semi-nude pictures or videos via cellphone or other forms of technology. Recent studies have found that a significant number of teenagers have sexted, and that sexting becomes more frequent as teenagers get older. Those naughty little selfies teens send to their significant others can often be copied and disseminated to many other people. What many kids don't know is that, owing to the fact that most of these kids are underage, their sexts, if found, fall under certain child pornography statutes. Sexting could conceivably land kids in jail and have a "sex offender" status permanently attached to their record. It may not be fair, but it is the law, and it has happened.
One of the things that schools can do, according to Hinduja/Patchin, is take a proactive approach by implementing strategies for creating a more positive school climate, one in which students feel that teachers sincerely care about them, where misbehavior is monitored and dealt with in a fair and consistent manner, where students feel that they are being better prepared for the future, and where they feel safe and secure. Research has indicated that schools with positive school climates---as rated by students and teachers---have a marked reduction in incidents of cyberbullying and sexting.
While somewhat dry in its writing and overloaded with statistics (it is a textbook, after all), "School Climate 2.0" is nevertheless a useful resource for the latest research on an issue that probably won't be going away anytime soon....more
I never thought I'd be a true crime addict, but I've lately discovered some great true crime books and authors, and I wish I hadn't, because I can't sI never thought I'd be a true crime addict, but I've lately discovered some great true crime books and authors, and I wish I hadn't, because I can't seem to stop reading them.
Ann Rule is one of those authors. The Grande Dame of the true crime genre, Rule has written dozens of best-selling and award-winning books, including one of the definitive works on serial killer Ted Bundy, "The Stranger Beside Me". Many of her books have become movies.
In 1993, Rule published the first volume in her Crime Files series, "A Rose For Her Grave And Other True Cases". It is a compilation of nonfiction stories about real-life murder.
"Riveting" does not begin to describe her writing. Rule writes in a very straightforward manner. One could say that it is almost dry, kind of what one would expect from a thoroughly-detailed police report. (She was a police officer early in her career, which helps to explain that.) And yet she manages to capture the humanity and the deep psychological underpinnings of some of the most vile crimes one human can commit against another.
This book would be un-put-downable except for the fact that it deals with some extremely awful real-life cases. I had to set the book aside several times for mental and spiritual breathers.
Rule published about a baker's dozen more in this series, and I want to read them all....more
The downward spiral of the Republican party has its start (as most downward spirals do) with a lawyer. Lewis Powell Jr. would later become Associate JThe downward spiral of the Republican party has its start (as most downward spirals do) with a lawyer. Lewis Powell Jr. would later become Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States ('72-'87), but when he was just a corporate lawyer, he wrote a report commissioned by a coalition of businesses that famously became what is known as "The Powell Memo", which conservatives loved, as it stated that businesses should not compromise at all against such evil anti-business practices like offering workers good pay and following safety regulations. He also stated that the best strategy businesses could take was "exploiting judicial action", which primarily entailed stuffing the courts with pro-business/anti-labor judges.
This conservative doctrine of holding fast and firm in favor of tradition and "that's the way it's always been done" and against change of any kind laid the roadwork for politicians like Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, and Mitch McConnell: politicians who shamelessly turned the party of Lincoln into a party that no longer even pretends to do anything but accrue power for themselves, often against the majority opinion of the American people.
The Republican party has become a party of purposeful dysfunction. This is the basic and indisputable premise of Brian Tyler Cohen's book "Shameless". Cohen, a popular Youtube presence among liberal political junkies who like their political diatribes with a soupcon of nutrititional value (i.e. facts, statistics, levelheadedness, and a disdain for conspiracy theories on both the Right and Left), has written a short but succinct book about how the Republican party has tried to derail the democratic guardrails of our society by being as disruptive, oppositional, and inefficient (by design) as possible.
As Cohen writes: "We're not playing the same game. There is plenty of evidence that the two parties have their eyes trained on entirely different goals. Think no further than Republican efforts to wreck the government so that they can point at it and shout that it's broken, or the norms they have kicked to the curb. One party is seeking power and dominance by any means necessary. The other is attempting to see democracy flourish." (p.136)
Please remember that when you go to the ballot box in November. You are either voting for a dictatorship or a democracy. It's as simple as that. ...more
I haven’t been following the case. Not that there is much of a case to follow, as it has been continuously postponed. (A trial date has been set for JI haven’t been following the case. Not that there is much of a case to follow, as it has been continuously postponed. (A trial date has been set for June 2025.) To be honest, I didn’t know much about it until I read this book. And while Howard Blum’s book “When the Night Comes Falling: A Requiem for the Idaho Student Murders” is a concise encapsulation of the events and an attempt to answer some of the questions raised by the crime that happened on November 13, 2022, the book leaves much to be desired.
It’s not necessarily Blum’s fault. He’s done an excellent job of compiling the facts of the case, assembling them in some coherent order, and providing a break-down of the arguments for both the prosecution and defense, but in some intangible way, it’s not enough. Maybe that’s the point.
How (and why) did four young people die so violently and pointlessly? Four college students, all with vibrant lives ahead of them. And the alleged perpetrator is a young man who seems to check every box in terms of an absolute slam-dunk sure thing, except for one thing: motive. Why the fuck did he (allegedly) kill these people? What is their connection?
Maybe there is no answer to “why?”
Maybe horrible things just happen, and they can’t adequately be explained. Maybe Madison Mogen, 21, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20, were simply fated to die that night in their off-campus apartment not far from the campus of the University of Idaho, where they were all students. And maybe Bryan Kohberger, the young criminology student with an awkward past, was simply meant to be there that night, with a knife. The stars simply aligned, and no other outcome would suffice. The gods demanded it.
The gods demanded a sacrifice, and those children were chosen.
The sultry swamplands of the southern states can be beautiful. Specifically, the swamplands of South Carolina—-especially the area known as the LowcouThe sultry swamplands of the southern states can be beautiful. Specifically, the swamplands of South Carolina—-especially the area known as the Lowcountry—-boast beautiful cypress trees that can be found only in the American South. The swamps can be beautiful, but they hide threats well: sweltering humidity, swarms of mosquitoes, and murky black waters where alligators lie in wait for their next meal.
Alex Murdaugh was a child of South Carolina. More than that, he was the fourth Richard Murdaugh (his middle name is “Alexander”), the fourth in a line of well-to-do South Carolinians who built a name and reputation for themselves in the state as lawyers, specifically elected prosecutors known as solicitors. His great-grandfather and grandfather had built a legacy of a powerful and influential family, well-respected and loved by the community. But, like the swamplands, the Murdaugh family hid a lot of dangerous secrets.
On June 7, 2021, Alex Murdaugh’s family legacy of deception and illicit behavior culminated in the brutal double murder of Alex’s wife, Maggie, and their youngest son, Paul. Despite being the person to call 911, Alex was soon arrested for the murders, due to inconsistencies with his story and strong evidence that he was the perpetrator. His trial began on January 25, 2023 and ended on March 2, 2023. The jury found Alex guilty on all counts.
Jason Ryan’s “Swamp Kings” is somewhat more than a true-crime story. It is a biographical sketch of a wealthy, powerful family that let their wealth and power give them the sense that they can get away with anything, including murder, and, for almost a century, it almost succeeded.
The Murdaughs’ legacy of corruption and deceit began during the Prohibition years, when the eldest Murdaugh, Richard “Buster” Murdaugh, as solicitor of the 14th Judicial Circuit, began to make private deals with illegal whiskey bootleggers. Bootlegging was a boon to the South Carolina economy in the 1920s, and everyone—-politicians, police officers, judges, lawyers, businessmen—-dreamed of a slice of that pie.
Over the course of four generations, while the Murdaugh cachet continued to grow as well-beloved members of the community, so too did the rumors and allegations of wrongdoing, including jury-tampering, mishandling and suppressing evidence in cases, and blatant thievery.
Alex, addicted to oxycontin and other opioids, tried to feed his habit by stealing money from his clients. In a separate trial, Alex was tried and indicted on 22 counts of money laundering and wire- and bank-fraud. He was later ordered to repay almost $9 million to the families that he bilked out of their legal winnings.
The story of the Murdaughs is a disgusting one, but it tells an almost-now-cliche narrative of rich people in this country being allowed to do things for which everyday Americans like you and me would be thrown in prison....more
Despite its length and occasionally monotonous long-windedness, William P. Barr’s memoir “One Damn Thing After Another” was, for the most part, an engDespite its length and occasionally monotonous long-windedness, William P. Barr’s memoir “One Damn Thing After Another” was, for the most part, an engaging glimpse into the mind of a modern-day conservative, one that actually possesses a virtue that many of his Republican peers seem to currently lack: integrity.
It must be stated that I vehemently disagree with nearly everything Barr stands for, politically. He states frequently in the book that he supports and agrees with most of Trump’s policies, and he also frequently voices the same talking points that I have heard many Republican pundits espouse, ad nauseam. That said, I can’t always fault him for his logic in his arguments. Unlike some of his Republican peers, he actually has logic.
Barr approaches the issues with a level-headedness and actual thoughtfulness that his job as Attorney General requires.
I may not agree with his particular political stances, but I don’t dislike him for them either.
There used to be a time when Republicans and Democrats could vehemently disagree with one another but still shake hands afterwards and behave civilly. I am of the (perhaps old-school) belief that disagreement does not equal dislike. That belief isn’t very popular nowadays, sadly.
Barr is a remnant of that old-school party politics. At age 39, in 1989, Barr was picked to be Assistant Attorney General by then-president George H.W. Bush, perhaps one of the last old-school “gentleman” politicians. A year later, he became Deputy Attorney General. During his watch in that position, a prison riot at the Federal Correctional Institution in Talladega, Alabama broke out, resulting in prisoners holding nine people hostage. His coordination of the rescue effort—-utilizing the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team (HRT)—-resulted in no loss of life, garnering him high praise among Republicans and Democrats alike.
In 1991, he was chosen by Bush the Elder to be Attorney General. He held the post until 1993. By all accounts, on both sides of the aisle, Barr was well-liked as AG. Even then-Senator Joe Biden was impressed.
In all honesty, a large portion of the middle section of the book droned on endlessly for me, as Barr waxed rather blandly but straightforwardly about his childhood in New York; his life-long devotion to Catholicism; his love of bagpipe music; his early career post-college in the CIA; his part in the Iran-Contra affair; his hard-line approach to crime (he is for harsher laws, more prisons, and pro-death penalty); his work post-AG for the telecom company GTE, which later became Verizon Wireless and where he became a multimillionaire as Verizon’s executive Vice-President; his brief stint at Time Warner.
I confess to zoning out occasionally during his long-winded chapters in which he defended his views on abortion, religious freedom, military spending, and desire to build more prisons; largely because I didn’t agree with his views, but also because he wrote like a lawyer laying out a closing argument.
It wasn’t until the latter part of the book, where Barr writes about his second tenure as Attorney General under President Donald Trump, that the book picked up a little bit more steam.
While I had a hard time with his defense of Trump’s policies, it is clear that Barr did not necessarily like Trump as a person. That dislike gradually grew into stronger castigation during the last year of Trump’s presidency.
Trump’s mishandling of the global Covid-19 pandemic, his narcissistic obsession with campaigning for re-election, his ridiculous and disastrous performance during the presidential debates, his misguided beliefs of a stolen election and voter fraud perpetuated by his idiotic team of lawyers led by Rudy Giuliani, his out-of-control Twitter feed that helped to fuel January 6, and his petty dismissal and horrible treatment of Vice President Mike Pence all led Barr to the conclusion that any potential positive legacy that Trump could have left was ruined by his last few months in office.
Barr resigned as Attorney General on December 14, 2020.
I read this as an Audiobook on CD, read by Mark Deakins....more
Sometimes, a good idea can go too far. Good intentions can, sometimes, lead to unintended negative consequences.
Case in point: Wokeism.
Being “woke” usSometimes, a good idea can go too far. Good intentions can, sometimes, lead to unintended negative consequences.
Case in point: Wokeism.
Being “woke” used to be, in my opinion, a good thing. It still can be, if it’s referring to its original intent and meaning, which is simply a consciousness of social injustices such as racism, sexism, homo- and transphobia. It has come to encompass an awareness of a whole range of other “-isms” today.
Unfortunately, wokeism has been usurped by some people who simply wield it as a weapon of mass distraction. They use it as a way to feel morally superior and to justify actions motivated mostly by emotional reasoning, not logical reasoning. Anymore, being “woke” isn’t just being outraged, it’s a competition with other woke people that one is way more outraged.
Nellie Bowles, a “woke” journalist formerly with The New York Times, in her book “Morning After the Revolution”, began to notice that the honeymoon was over with wokeism when she started to piss other woke people off by simply asking questions. Not the “wrong” or “inappropriate” questions. Any questions.
When she began to question why Patrice Khan-Cullors, the co-founder of the Black Lives Matter organization, had just bought a $1.4 million mansion—-her fourth house—-and with what money, she was accused of being racist.
When she began to ask how and why suburban white housewives were inherently racist simply because they were white, she was accused of being a white supremacist.
When she began to question whether parents should be allowing their children to have gender reassignment surgeries at age three, she was accused of being transphobic.
When she began to ask involuntary celibates (incels) why they thought that women didn’t find them attractive, she was accused of being sexist. Against men.
While the book is occasionally humorous—it’s almost impossible to not laugh at the absurdity of some of the ridiculously “woke” people she encounters—-it is mostly just sad and disturbing.
Sad that those of us who do strive to be anti-racist and LGBTQ+ allies and fight for social justice issues are often lumped together with these people by conservatives who view everyone with progressive views as nut jobs.
Disturbing that these Uber-woke people honestly can’t see that their attempts at helping people that they supposedly care so much about are, in the end, actually hurting them. ...more
8/30/2024 addendum: the title kinda says it all...
Deep down, we know the answer to the question. And the answer isn't "Trump" or "Biden", as much as o8/30/2024 addendum: the title kinda says it all...
Deep down, we know the answer to the question. And the answer isn't "Trump" or "Biden", as much as our gut response wants it to be. Because our gut response is a product of a whole slew of factors that have hardened each of us, politically, into the people we have become.
The answer to "How America Lost Its Mind", according to Thomas E. Patterson, is a complicated one. It's a finely-constructed combination of a political atmosphere predicated on stonewalling rather than compromise, a media that has become so hyper-politicized that true objectivity is non-existent, a populace that has become so enflamed with nationalism and anti-intellectualism, and a rampant demagoguery on both ends of the political spectrum. In a nutshell.
It's a big nutshell, though, as Patterson points out in his 2019 book. And it's full of nuts.
It's a tough one to crack, too, but Patterson does offer some solutions.
Elect more moderates in both parties, as the Far Right and the Far Left have essentially taken over the majority of the GOP and the Dems. As Patterson points out several times in in his book, the least liberal of any Democrat currently in Congress is still far more liberal than the most liberal Republicans. Compromise simply can't exist under these conditions.
Bring back the Fairness Doctrine. In case you've never heard of this, it was created by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1949 as a way of making sure that two sides of any issue were given fair and equal time in the media. It was abolished in 1987, which ushered in a new era of politically-biased and propagandistic media such as FOX News.
Read a book. People are stupider. (Okay, so that's my own conclusion, not Patterson's.) Too many are too easily led to believe the bullshit and lies that are spoon-fed to them by their respective political leaders and media sources, and they don't do their own research. Fact-checking used to be something everyone did if they questioned something someone said on the news. Nowadays, most people aren't even asking the questions....more
In 2015, NBC correspondent Katy Tur was given the unlikely job of following Donald Trump in the early days of the presidential campaign. Trump was a lIn 2015, NBC correspondent Katy Tur was given the unlikely job of following Donald Trump in the early days of the presidential campaign. Trump was a long-shot and wasn’t expected to go far on the campaign trail. He had a history of running in past years and dropping out early. Tur wasn’t expecting this assignment to last long.
Little did she—-or anyone else—-know.
“Unbelievable” is her memoir of that hellish assignment. Starting with an hour-plus-long interview with Trump after which he angrily screamed at Tur for “stumbling” over three questions during the interview and then threatened her and NBC to air the interview in full, unedited, or he’d sue, Tur’s experience with Trump along the campaign trail was anything but pleasant.
At rallies, he consistently called her out as “the enemy” and a “terrible” journalist, which riled the mobs to shout horrible insults about her and journalists in general. The hostility from Trump and his rally-goers was palpable and dangerous. Then, inexplicably, Trump would congratulate her later, one on one, about what a good job she was doing.
Schizophrenic didn’t begin to describe Trump’s weird, completely unpresidential behavior.
Tur writes about it all, in a humorous and rapid-fire delivery that is reminiscent of Hunter S. Thompson’s gonzo journalism (minus all the illicit drug use, of course). Indeed, her book could almost be subtitled “Fear and Loathing on the Trump Campaign Trail”. It is, like Trump, crazy and scary.
The book ends on the days following the election, where the four-year nightmare for the country began....more
Narcissism (noun): 1) excessive interest in or admiration of oneself and one's physical appearance. 2)PSYCHOLOGY selfishness, involving a sense of entNarcissism (noun): 1) excessive interest in or admiration of oneself and one's physical appearance. 2)PSYCHOLOGY selfishness, involving a sense of entitlement, a lack of empathy, and a need for admiration, as characterizing a personality type. 3)PSYCHOANALYSIS self-centeredness arising from failure to distinguish the self from external objects, either in very young babies or as a feature of mental disorder. —-Dictionary.com
I’m guessing that Donald Trump has never been, and never will be, a pet person. One has to be able to think beyond one’s own narrow self-interest in order to take care of a dog or a cat or even a lizard. I’m pretty sure Trump’s initial thought upon seeing any domesticated animal is “Can I eat it?”
But why pick on just Trump? After all, even his biggest fans know that Trump’s narcissism is merely a symptom of a bigger problem within our society. They would say that we’ve become too lazy, too soft, too apathetic as a society. Our ridiculous self-love is the least of our problems. Or is it?
Despite its publication date of 1979, Christopher Lasch’s now-classic “The Culture of Narcissism” could just as easily be read and appreciated today. If it’s not already on required reading lists for college psychology courses, it probably should be.
Lasch, in ’79, couldn’t have fathomed the level of self-indulgence in 2024. He couldn’t have foreseen the Internet and the subsequent generations of children addicted to an isolated virtual world. He couldn’t have foreseen the dangerous anonymity of social media where people can “speak” to millions of people but really only be speaking to themselves. He couldn’t foresee a political divisiveness that went beyond just a disagreement between Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, but a hyper-dangerous mentality of “My opinion is the correct one, and anyone that disagrees with it is evil.”
Whether it’s the epidemic of depression and anxiety of young girls so obsessed with smartphone selfies and trying to be as beautiful as those AI-generated supermodels or the sharp rise in white Christian nationalists or the uptick in violent incidents perpetrated by young men who dub themselves “involuntary celibates”, a.k.a. incels, or elected politicians who deny the values they supposedly hold so dear in order to align themselves with a megalomaniac that allegedly has the power to end their political careers if they don’t agree with him, narcissism is at the root of most problems. We all want to look good, get ahead, keep up with the Joneses, regardless of whether we are making a better world. That doesn’t matter anymore. Today, it’s all about making a better world for ourselves.
It’s really all about “optics”. You’ve heard the word, ad nauseam. It’s the buzzword in entertainment, sports, politics, law enforcement, business, education. It’s no longer “How can we fix this?” but rather “How can we spin this to make it look good?”
“For all his inner suffering, the narcissist has many traits that make for success in bureaucratic institutions, which put a premium on the manipulation of interpersonal relations, discourage the formation of deep personal attachments, and at the same time provide the narcissist with the approval he needs in order to validate his self-esteem. Although he may resort to therapies that promise to give meaning to life and to overcome his sense of emptiness, in his professional career the narcissist often enjoys considerable success. The management of personal impressions comes naturally to him, and his mastery of its intricacies serves him well in political and business organizations where performance now counts for less than “visibility”, “momentum,” and a winning record.” (p. 91-92)
Trump, as the archetypal narcissist, is all about “winning”. To his credit, Trump’s brilliance lies in his ability to convince a wide swath of Americans that he actually gives a shit about them, that he actually wants to help them. In truth—-and his own track record shows this—-Trump’s only out to help himself. For a narcissist, that is the end-all-be-all:
“The pursuit of self-interest, formerly identified with the rational pursuit of gain and the accumulation of wealth, has become a search for pleasure and psychic survival. Social conditions now approximate the vision of republican society conceived by the Marquis de Sade at the very outset of the republican epoch. In many ways the most far-sighted and certainly the most disturbing of the prophets of revolutionary individualism, Sade defended unlimited self-indulgence as the logical culmination of the revolution in property relations—-the only way to attain revolutionary brotherhood in its purest form. By regressing in his writings to the most primitive level of fantasy, Sade uncannily glimpsed the whole subsequent development of personal life under capitalism, ending not in revolutionary brotherhood but in a society of siblings that has outlived and repudiated its revolutionary origins.” (p. 131)
In a narcissistic society, all the trust-worthy institutions that we once turned to for help and security are no longer trust-worthy. The media is “fake news”. The government is “broken”. The family is “broken”. Our teachers and professors are “spreading liberal propaganda”. Businesses are “price-gouging”. Hospitals are “in bed with insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies”. Churches are either “too political” or “not political enough”.
“The superego can no longer ally itself, in its battle against impulse, with outside authorities. It has to rely almost entirely on its own resources, and these too have diminished in their effectiveness.” (p.342)
The end result? We’ve stopped caring. About our own families, about our friends, about our community, about our government, about our world.
“The narcissist feels consumed by his own appetites… He longs to free himself from his own hunger and rage, to achieve a calm detachment beyond emotion, and to outgrow his dependence on others. He longs for the indifference to human relationships and to life itself that would enable him to acknowledge its passing in Kurt Vonnegut’s laconic phrase, “So it goes,” which so aptly expresses the ultimate aspiration of the psychiatric seeker.” (p. 342-243)...more
If you are a parent of a child between the ages of 0 and 18: please do yourself the favor of reading Jonathon Haidt’s book “The Anxious Generation: HoIf you are a parent of a child between the ages of 0 and 18: please do yourself the favor of reading Jonathon Haidt’s book “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness”. It may save yourself much frustration, fear, and grief down the line.
Haidt’s book is the inevitable endpoint of research and knowledge that started in 2010 with Nicholas Carr’s book “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to To Our Brains” and followed, in 2022, by Johann Hari’s book “Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t pay Attention—-and How to Think Deeply Again”.
Haidt’s book provides conclusive (or pretty damned near) evidence of what Carr could only hypothetically predict would happen 14 years later and substantiates, with further studies and statistics, what Hari was saying in his book.
The basic premise is this: Sometime around the years 2010 to 2015, something drastic and worrisome started happening to children born in the late-1990s (a demographic of children often referred to as “Gen Z”). Rates of childhood depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation began to skyrocket across the country. This was across racial, ethnic, and gender lines, although it seemed to effect girls more.
Haidt and his researchers believe that a combination of factors are the reason for these high rates of mental illness among children.
One factor is a type of parenting called “helicopter parenting” that became prevalent, which essentially involves an extreme overprotection of children, out of an irrational sense of safety, that does not allow—-or over-regulates—-certain childish activities that children of the ‘70s and ‘80s engaged in quite regularly: climbing trees, walking unsupervised to the park or school or store, playing on a playground, skateboarding, staying in a house by him or herself.
Another factor is the prevalence of devices that allowed children a preponderance of “screen time” that far exceeded previous norms in previous generations. Haidt directly links this rise of device usage to the introduction of smartphones (specifically, iPhones, which were brought to market in 2007) and popular social media platforms like Facebook (launched in 2004).
A third factor is an inexplicable “underprotection” of children from the Internet and, specifically, social media sites. So-called helicopter parents were fearful of their children playing on a jungle gym, but they seemed to have a complete lack of worry about their children being vulnerable to cyberbullying or on-line sexual predators. One explanation for this—-given by parents themselves in studies—-is the parents’ own distractedness and addiction to device usage.
Haidt’s solutions—-based on the advice of mental health professionals, educators, and social scientists—-is weirdly simple: Don’t give your kid a smartphone until they are about 16-18; Limit kids in both time and access to the Internet; allow kids to do more activities unsupervised; increase the amount of playtime for kids.
According to almost every scientific study, playtime has been shown to be vitally important to a child’s development. Despite this fact, many schools have limited or eliminated playtime and replaced it with more academics, such as testing, to detrimental results. Thankfully, there is a swing back towards more playtime during school hours, especially more unsupervised playtime.
Even Haidt acknowledges that it goes against every fiber in one’s being to let your kid walk to the grocery store in town by him or herself. On the same token, it’s hard to give up the “babysitter” benefits of the iPad or iPhone.
I’ll be honest: I get a shitload of laundry and house-cleaning done when my daughter is curled up on the couch playing God-knows-what on her iPad, and while I trust that my daughter is playing appropriate games and not browsing Youtube for porn, I realize that it’s not the healthiest thing for her.
Seriously, Haidt’s book is an important resource for parents, teachers, and health care providers. We need to be more aggressive advocates for the health of our children, but if healthier children means loosening the reins and letting our kids engage in more risky activities by themselves while simultaneously limiting—-or forbidding—-access to stupid shit like Snapchat, Instagram, or Facebook, then we need to do some serious soul-searching as parents....more
I’m often confronted by people who are Trump supporters who ask the question, “Who would vote for Biden?”, as if it were rhetorical, as if—-the implicI’m often confronted by people who are Trump supporters who ask the question, “Who would vote for Biden?”, as if it were rhetorical, as if—-the implication being—-nobody in their right mind would vote for Biden. I always seem to throw these people off when I answer, “I would. I voted for him in 2020, and I will vote for him again this November.” More often than not, they don’t know how to respond, or they respond in the only way they know how: dumbfounded, they walk away, not knowing how to engage in a civil conversation that won’t result in them calling me a “socialist” or an “idiot” or a slew of other derogatory terms meant to shut down the conversation before it begins.
I understand and appreciate the age argument. Biden, at 81, is the oldest presidential candidate ever. Trump, at 77, is the second oldest candidate. It’s worrisome. It’s a serious flaw in the system that both parties can’t seem to find any viable candidates under the age of 60.
What’s more worrisome to me is that Trump supporters, and Trump himself, have made it clear that the idea of an autocratic dictatorship is perfectly acceptable, as if they fully understand and appreciate what that means. Most if not all Americans have had it pretty easy under our democratic republican system of government, which is the closest that any nation in history has ever come to a successful true democracy. True democracies don’t work. We know that. What we have works, but a growing number of people seem to think that Trump-as-dictator would solve a lot more problems than it would create. This is, according to George Orwell, how totalitarian systems start.
Michael Wolf, in his book “Landslide”, which is the third book of his Trump White House trilogy, astutely documents the final chaotic year of Trump’s presidency, starting with the global Covid-19 pandemic and Trump’s catastrophic response to it and ending with the horrific events of January 6, 2021.
Essentially, what Wolf is describing is eerily Orwellian: a powerful elected official who is coddled by sycophants afraid to say “no” to him and that is unsullied by facts or any attempt to conform to physical reality but, rather, creates his own version of reality that everyone around him conforms to, out of pure fear of retribution.
I don’t need to ever ask the question, “Who would vote for Donald Trump?” because I already know the answer. These are the people who are afraid of the changing world around them and the feeling that they are losing their place within that world, and they are perfectly okay with someone on high telling them what to do, especially when what this person is telling them to do is feeding those fears....more
Musically, my life has been a series of phases. In middle school, I was mostly into Top 40. In high school, I started listening to “alternative/progreMusically, my life has been a series of phases. In middle school, I was mostly into Top 40. In high school, I started listening to “alternative/progressive”. In college, it was all about grunge. My senior year, I started listening to a lot of jazz and blues. I listen to more blues than jazz nowadays, but my tastes, at age 51, are pretty eclectic. My CD collection in my car (and, yes, I am well aware of how old that statement makes me) runs the gamut: 311, the Killers, Taylor Swift, Childish Gambino, Muddy Waters. This is just in my car, mind you.
My point? I am always changing, and my tastes are always changing. True growth, I believe, only happens if you’re willing to evolve. The person who listens to nothing but Jimmy Buffett or Bob Dylan or gangsta rap their whole lives may know what they like, but I can guarantee that they’re pretty boring to talk to at a dinner party.
James Kaplan’s book “3 Shades of Blue” is a biography of three extremely talented jazz musicians: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Bill Evans. It’s also a “biography” of a particular album. In 1959, “Kind of Blue” hit record stores. It is, according to virtually all music critics, one of the best jazz recordings ever recorded. How it came to be, and the legacy it left behind is what the book is about.
My main takeaway from the book is how the three main musicians at the heart of this book each pushed themselves to change and evolve. They were never satisfied with where they were, musically and in life. While this was, in some ways, pathetic and sad, it was ultimately beneficial for them musically. They were always looking for that next big step. They were always trying new things, some of which worked, some of which didn’t. If they happened to lose their audience occasionally, it didn’t matter: it was all part of the process.
Kaplan’s book isn’t all a cheery and nice account of musical innovation. Part of each musician’s evolution involved a lot of hard and, in some cases, self-destructive life choices. The prevalence of abuse from heroin and other substances seemed to be almost a natural albeit horrible choice for jazz musicians. Accompanying that was the shattered relationships and financial problems that followed many of these musicians to their death.
Their legacy, though, is a rich and wonderful oeuvre of fantastic music. It’s not for everyone, of course, but then again, it was never really meant to be....more
I knew nothing about the late Charles Krauthammer before reading “Things That Matter”, a collection of hand-picked essays and columns he has written oI knew nothing about the late Charles Krauthammer before reading “Things That Matter”, a collection of hand-picked essays and columns he has written over the course of his 30-plus-year career as a syndicated columnist at The Washington Post, political pundit, and a psychiatrist.
The only thing I had heard about him—-indeed, what initially attracted me to his writing—-was the fact that he was a conservative who, in his few final years before his death in 2018, continually maintained a loathing and disgust for Donald Trump. (https://whyy.org/articles/rip-charles...)
That alone was enough for me to give him a try. And I’m glad I did.
While I don’t think I agreed at all with a majority of his politics, I nevertheless found him to be intelligent and humorous and compassionate in his writing. Even when excoriating people he didn’t like, such as Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, he was never mean-spirited, and he always made it clear that he disagreed with and disliked the policies and not the person.
His was a spirit of true old-fashioned gentlemanly political criticism that is not seen anymore, certainly not amongst his other conservative pundits and bigmouths like Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and the late Rush Limbaugh.
I think it’s important to read books by authors that you may not agree with or are not aligned, politically, with. It helps to broaden one’s political viewpoints and promotes intellectual growth. To my fellow liberal friends: if you are looking for a differing viewpoint, reading Krauthammer may be a good place to start....more
I don’t read the newspaper. I have three very specific reasons for this:
1) I don’t have the time or money, which I know sounds like a cop-out, but whI don’t read the newspaper. I have three very specific reasons for this:
1) I don’t have the time or money, which I know sounds like a cop-out, but when you exist in a comfortable yet careful middle-income bracket where you limit yourself on “luxury” items like going to the movies, eating at restaurants, or buying books and music (thank you, local library!), you have to make sacrifices somewhere, and not subscribing to a daily paper was one that my wife and I decided early on, mainly because
2) Newspapers aren’t what they used to be. I remember when the daily paper—-even a Wednesday paper—-was thick with sections like sports, arts, business, recipes, and comics. Nowadays, papers are, like, six pages, with three or four stories in them. Of course, there is also the fact that
3) Reading the news—-world and local—-depresses the shit out of me. I already have anxiety issues with my job and child-rearing, I don’t need more in my life.
Notice that none of my reasons includes “fake news”. Mainly, because I think the whole “fake news” thing is bullshit.
I have a great respect for journalists. Anybody who devotes their lives to uncovering the hidden truths about any given subject is deserving of respect. Do I think there are bad journalists? Of course, there are journalists who are lazy, some who are blatantly biased, and a few who claim to be journalists who aren’t journalists (Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson) but are, rather, propagandists in journalist’s clothing. But these, I believe, are the exceptions to the rule.
Jonathan Karl is the White House correspondent for ABC News. He’s one of those people who sit in that little press pool room at the White House and ask questions of the people at the podium, people like Sean Spicer and Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
I truly believe that journalists are the real heroes in this country, and they are, especially now, deserving of our respect. Their job, as it has been for decades and as it hopefully continues to be for the next decades ahead, is a bulwark against the forces of anti-intellectualism and fascism.
Karl’s 2020 book “Front Row at the Trump Show” joins the legions of books about Trump that seem to be pouring out on the bookshelves at bookstores and libraries (and for which I seem to have an addiction).
Karl’s book is different in that it looks at the Trump White House from the very specific viewpoint of the press. It is a thorough look, through a journalist’s eyes, into one of the most hostile presidencies to the free press in recent years, if ever.
Trump, so thin-skinned and narcissistic that any article that made him look bad or that he simply didn’t agree with, shouted “fake news!” to the heavens. Rational-minded people saw through this bullshit.
As Karl writes, “[T]here’s nothing more fake in the Trump era than Donald Trump’s attack on “fake news.” Donald Trump rails against the “failing New York Times,” for example. Don’t believe it. He doesn’t. Spend time with the president and you won’t have to wait long to hear him marvel at how often he dominates the front page. He loves seeing his name on the front page—-whether the stories are negative (as they usually are) or positive (a rarity). Occasionally he admits he still loves The New York Times. He often lies about the paper losing money, but sometimes he acknowledges it is actually thriving, not failing (circulation is up, and so are profits, since he was elected president), and he takes full credit for its success. (p.xxi)”
The problem is that Trump is not railing against “fake news” for the majority of the general public who know bluster and BS when they see it but rather focusing his fake tirades at the deepest of his followers, many of whom are not rational-minded and accept his word as gospel. They are the people who lap up his lies unquestioningly and blindly. They are the dupes who were incited by Trump to believe that the 2020 election was stolen and that they needed to “take back” the country by storming the U.S. Capitol illegally.
Trump, according to Karl, is not stupid, despite all evidence to the contrary. He’s calculating in all his lies and “alternative facts” and deliberate denial of Reality. Karl, who has followed Trump for 25 years, back when Trump was just a real estate developer in New York City, is well aware of this calculating side of Trump. It is precisely what made him the self-promoting playboy billionaire he has always played—-and still plays—-on TV....more
The frat-boy hijinks of the Trump White House—-especially the ridiculously disgusting love triangle between Rob Porter, Hope Hicks, and Corey LewandowThe frat-boy hijinks of the Trump White House—-especially the ridiculously disgusting love triangle between Rob Porter, Hope Hicks, and Corey Lewandowski—-highlighted how Trump—-a human SpongeBob Squarepants minus the charisma—-surrounded himself with a coven of assholes and idiots.
The Trump Administration was basically “Animal House 2”: hilarious, except for the fact that Americans suffered tremendously for it. Trump was, like John Belushi in that film, a human zit that popped himself onto everything and everyone wherever he went, and we are still cleaning the mess.
Michael Wolf, who introduced the world to a new journalistic genre called Presidential Shitshow Verite in “Fire and Fury”, which covered the first 100 days of the dumpster fire that began with the “yuge” inauguration and ended with the divorce of Trump and Steve Bannon, continued his reportage of the madness in his follow-up book, “Siege: Trump Under Fire”, which essentially answers the question: Is Rudy Giuliani really that crazy?
The answer is “yes”, and also “and always drunk”, apparently. Also, when Bannon comes across as one of the few voices of reason in the book, it’s quite clear that the U.S. has entered one of the nine circles of Hell.
From Paul Manafort to Jared Kushner to Trump’s seven minutes in heaven with Vladimir Putin to being “exonerated” by the Mueller Report, Wolf’s book reads like Hunter S. Thompson riffing on David Halberstam, a “Fear and Loathing in Mar-a-lago” meets “The Worst and the Dumbest”.
Seriously, you could make a fun drinking game based on how many times Sean Hannity violates every code of ethics in journalism (which is funny, since nobody in good conscience can call him a journalist) or how many times Bannon expresses actual shock at anything that happens anytime with anyone in the Trump White House.
This was an audiobook, read completely straight-faced and with not a hint of laughter by Holter Graham....more
I love history, but I have, lately, had the sneaking suspicion that many of the history books I have been reading are unfairly one-sided and biased. MI love history, but I have, lately, had the sneaking suspicion that many of the history books I have been reading are unfairly one-sided and biased. Most, if not all, of the history books I have read have been written by white men. This is not to say that the information in them is wrong. It simply means that it’s not always all the information. There are perspectives that, historically, have, for whatever reason, been dismissed, ignored, or forgotten.
The fact that a large percentage of human beings in this country, until the middle of the last century, have never experienced the same freedoms and opportunities that a majority of Americans have experienced is not a new fact. It is, however, one that, within the past fifty years, is finally being voiced.
Elementary, middle school, and high school textbooks are slow to catch up with this trend. In many textbooks (especially some in Texas), the Civil War was a war fought over state’s rights. Period. It’s only half the truth. The Civil War was fought over state’s rights; specifically, the state’s rights to own slaves.
Slavery was a vile institution that white people in this country—-whether they owned slaves or not—-benefitted greatly from, economically. This is a fact, one that can’t be erased from history.
But slavery wasn’t the only horrible thing for which white people in this country are responsible. There’s the genocidal campaign against Native Americans (“Indians”, as Christopher Columbus mistakenly called them, as he brutally massacred many of them), the subjugation of women, the vilification of Mexicans, the mistreatment (and, in the case of the Japanese during WWII, internment) of Asian people.
Michael Harriot’s “Black AF History” is an eye-opening, humorous, and brutal exercise in historical revisionism, and a necessary one. It’s not revisionism in the false sense that most conservatives view revisionism. In other words, it’s not an alteration or an attempt to twist history to conform to modern standards. That’s the kind of bullshit backlash arguments that white supremacist historians make. This is a “re-vision” of history, or an attempt to add to the existing story through the addition of voices and perspectives that have historically been left out of the story.
For example, the Revolutionary War has always been taught as colonial America fighting back against the King’s unfair taxation, which is true. What isn’t mentioned is the role slavery played in the war, as Britain was toying with the idea of abolishing slavery (they finally did so in 1833), which worried the colonial leaders as slavery was a vital part of the economy. If slavery was abolished, a large percentage of the colonial workforce would suddenly have to be financially compensated. Plus, free slaves meant they could choose not to work, which means white people would have to fill those jobs, and no white person really wanted those jobs. Some historians argue that slavery wasn’t an issue in the revolution. Some agree that it was a minor issue. Harriot’s take is that, if you know white people, it’s not hard to see that many white people wouldn’t like the idea of giving up their slaves. Sure, taxation without representation was the main issue, but it’s silly to think slavery—-and the potential loss of a vital money-making institution—-didn’t play some part in the decision-making.
Don’t worry: most of Harriot’s book isn’t this controversial. A lot of it is just fascinating and heretofore unknown people and incidents that have been left out of history books, mainly because they were black. For example, a gospel singer named Rosetta Tharpe is credited for inventing Rock & Roll music, which is why she was inducted in the R&R Hall of Fame and Museum in 2017. Don’t take Harriot’s word for it, though: Little Richard, Johnny Cash, Chuck Berry, and even Elvis Presley at some point in their careers acknowledged the major influence that Tharpe had on their music.
Harriott is also a foodie, like me. His description and histories of South Carolina cuisine such as chicken bog and chicken perlo—-both dishes created by slaves based on their ease of availability and the fact that it could easily be made into batches that could feed dozens—-is mouthwateringly delicious in his detail.
“Black AF History”, besides being enlightening and educational, is also just fun as hell. Harriot incorporates a lot of his own childhood, being home-schooled by his parents and a slew of aunts and uncles, as well as a huge record album and book library where he discovered the works of Earth, Wind, & Fire and W.E.B. DuBois, “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”, and lots of science fiction.
This should be required reading for every high school AP History class....more
“Black Rednecks and White Liberals” is a collection of six long essays by Thomas Sowell, an economist and philosopher. Each essay is an examination of“Black Rednecks and White Liberals” is a collection of six long essays by Thomas Sowell, an economist and philosopher. Each essay is an examination of certain racial/ethnic groups as seen through the lens of economics.
To people who are not economists, this may sound like a dry, boring textbook. At least, this was my initial thought going into it, as I am not an economist and, to be honest, have always thought economics to be a dry, boring subject.
Surprisingly, Sowell had me engaged right away. His style of writing is far from dry. While professorial (He was a professor, having served on the faculties of Cornell, Brandeis, and UCLA), he writes with an enthusiasm that demonstrates his fascination for his subject matter. He loves economics, and it shows.
He also has a unique perspective, and one that I am ashamed to say that, going into it, I was afraid that I would find problematic.
Sowell is a conservative. (This is the part in the review when my liberal friends shout, “Egad!”)
I jest, of course, but I am familiar enough with some of Sowell’s reputation. He is a black conservative who is—-like other black conservatives Allen West and Candace Owens—-highly critical of governmental assistance for black people (such as affirmative action), as he believes that it has created a dependency that doesn’t actually help, and may actually hinder, the intellectual and emotional development of black people. While there may be some validity to this argument, I don’t necessarily agree with it totally.
That said, I went into “Black Rednecks and White Liberals” with as open a mind as I am capable. I honestly didn’t know what to expect.
To my delight, I actually enjoyed the book far more than I expected. I found Sowell’s essays to be enlightening and thought-provoking. They introduced me to concepts and ideas that I have never heard before.
For example, in the first essay, “Black Rednecks and White Liberals”, Sowell writes about how much of “bad” Southern black behavior (laziness, drunkenness, misogyny, violence) as well as mannerisms (saying “I be” instead of “I am”) that contributed to many negative stereotypes that are still around today actually comes from identical bad traits exhibited by specific white immigrants that settled in the South from an area west of England. These white immigrants—-often referred to as “crackers”, “rednecks”, or “poor white trash”—-literally rubbed off , behaviorally, on many of their black neighbors in antebellum and postbellum Southern states.
I found this fascinating. As I did the essay, “Are Jews Generic?”, in which Sowell writes about the historical mistreatment of “middleman minorities”, which are, historically, ethnic groups that often found success as bankers or merchants between the wealthy producers and the lower class consumer groups of another ethnic group, Jews perhaps being the most familiar within European countries. Being “middlemen”, these groups often felt the brunt of irrational anger and hatred during economic downturns and were often scapegoats.
Every essay in this collection intrigued, shocked, and enlightened me in some way. They challenged some of the liberal “truths” that I have held for a long time, and helped to reconsider some things that I have always considered sacrosanct. It reminded me of what the late Allan Bloom (another conservative philosopher) said about how having prejudices was a good thing, because when those prejudices are challenged or overturned, it is in that moment when true learning happens....more
“Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could.”—-Abigail Adams
I don’t like guns. I do not own any guns, I refuse to have guns in my home, and I wi“Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could.”—-Abigail Adams
I don’t like guns. I do not own any guns, I refuse to have guns in my home, and I wish I could live in a world where I wouldn’t have to worry whether the person standing next to me in line or the person driving the car behind me on the highway is packing heat and having a bad day.
I am for stricter gun laws, and I am also for gun bans, especially guns that serve no useful purpose other than killing the most amount of people in as short amount of time. I realize that saying those words aloud will automatically piss off some people and, not ironically, make them want to shoot me.
It wasn’t always like this. Or maybe it was, and maybe we’re just deceiving ourselves. Maybe a majority of us are just violent brutes who have always lusted after bloodshed and have this deep desire to watch the world bleed from gunshot wounds. I feel, though, deep down in my soul, that it wasn’t always like this.
Historian Dominic Erdozain’s book “One Nation Under Guns” puts the issues of gun violence and gun control in their proper historical context, starting with what our Founding Fathers actually meant when they wrote the Second Amendment (spoiler: it absolutely did NOT condone ownership of guns by private citizens) and ending with the ridiculously out-of-control pro-gun lobby led by the NRA that has created a gun culture which literally threatens the health and safety of every American.
Erdozain illustrates an American culture that was founded on violence and a machismo in which men were only real men if they used brute force. It is a culture that has been bolstered by violent TV shows and movies that created a fairy tale portrait of the Old West full of gunslingers and outlaws and savage Indians that never actually existed. It is a culture that has been perverted by a political system, backed by the gun lobby, that was once a system that promoted gun safety and is now a system that promotes gun worship. It is a culture that not only ignores scientific evidence that overwhelmingly proves that cities and states that have lots of guns and fewer gun laws have rates of higher gun violence and gun death, but it also works to keep researchers from conducting further studies of gun violence and deaths.
This nation has a gun to its head, but Erdozain manages to remain somewhat hopeful, because history—-American history—-has shown that we do, occasionally, do the right thing. ...more
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