It's still just me and Lil' S1 for another week. Well, not quite a week; S gets back Friday evening, so this is the last weekend day we are alone together. That's key. The weekdays are relative easy/boring. It's an hour or so in the morning mostly getting him ready for the day, and a few hours in the evening mostly getting him ready for bed. I'm in a time pinch when I have to go into the office because of my commute, but other than that it's not bad.
But the weekends are a whole 'nother ball or wax. Yesterday was long. I took him to get a haircut in the morning. Then we went to the Starbucks next door just to kill some time. Then we got back home, the clock showed 11:00 a.m., and I thought to myself, "Great, so what do we do for the next nine hours?" Usually we would go to the park, but it's too cold here right now. There are indoor play areas around and things of that nature, but I'm never sure whether he's going to take to them. If he's with a group of kids -- no problem. But if it's just him, sometimes he just doesn't want to play, and then you're in the weird position of trying to coerce your kid into an activity that's supposed to be fun for them, because you drove all the way there and paid the $15 to get in. You're like, "Enjoy yourself, goddammit! Jump into that big foam pit or I'll throw you in myself!" Actually, Lil' S1 would love it if I threw him in. That's the other thing that happens sometimes: If there are no other kids around his age, he wants me to play with him. This is problematic because I often physically cannot do the things he does (last time I tried to jump on a trampoline I damn near threw my back out), and because a big reason for us going is because I wanted a break. We can play together in our basement anytime.
These interstices of single parenthood really make me appreciate full-time single parents. It must be rough. I mean, if I was a single parent, I would structure my life differently to help relieve some of the burden. For example, I would move closer to my family, and I would become more involved with parent groups and play groups and things of that nature. A big part of the reason it's hard on us when S's goes away is because we are so accustomed to having her here. But still, I imagine there are many things that are just more difficult as a single parent, no matter how inured you get to them.
Today is nice because Lil' S1 went to some friends' house. When our friend A found out it was just he and I for a few weeks, she offered to take for him for a day, and I said "yes" without thinking twice. She has three young kids, and they play together nicely, so it all works out. I'm not exactly sure what "the day" means -- she said she will just text me when she wants me to come get him -- but I'm hoping it's closer to dinner time than lunch time. We shall see.
Anyway, I should probably go now -- I want to take advantage of this opportunity and get some stuff done around the house -- but before I do, I wanted to link to a post by Paul Krugman about an article by Matt Yglesias. They're about Trump's brand of populism, and how a big part of it is contrasting oneself with those snooty, lefty elitists. It doesn't matter that Trump is, at his core, a spoiled rich kid, who was born into the aristocracy, who has never had to do any "real" work in his life, and who opposes things like unions and minimum wage increases and government regulations that would actually benefit the proletariat. All that matters is that he says he likes fast food and guns and fossil fuels and speaking English ("this is America!") and factory jobs and even Christianity (the Bible is his favorite book, after all) -- unlike those effete coastal liberals who think they are too good for all this stuff.
It really is brilliant marketing, and while I think much of the "liberals should have seen this coming!" analysis about the election is 20-20 hindsight to the nth degree (Remember: millions more people voted for Hillary! We weren't that wrong.), I will say that people like myself probably underestimated the appeal of Trump to some extent, because we thought: Not that many people are stupid enough to fall for this, right?
And therein lies the rub. In many ways, the white working class is right about people like me: We do think we're better -- not that our lives are any more valuable or that our experiences are any more meaningful. We don't think we are more deserving of existence. But we do think that we're smarter, or at least that we have more knowledge, and we can leverage this knowledge into a better country for everybody, if we could somehow get through to people. We have good reasons for being the way we are. We don't like fast food, because it cause health problems; we like gun control, because the data show unfettered access to guns makes it easier to commit mass murders (especially in big, dense cities, where most of us live); we don't like fossil fuel, because we believe in the science of anthropogenic global warming; we like multiculturalism because we live in places where it works (for the most part) and because we believe the economists who tell us immigration is not the job killer it's made out to be; we like factory jobs, but we recognize that technology is moving the economy in a new direction, and we need to adapt; we're fine with Christianity, until it is used to justify discrimination or teaching pseudoscience like creationism in public schools. We feel this way not because we're on "Team Liberal," or because we have an innate disdain for working class whites, but because we, not you, have put in the time and the energy to study these issues from an objective, scientifically-minded vantage, and these are our conclusions.
Could we be wrong about things? Of course. Are there things we still don't understand? Yes, many. But that doesn't negate everything we have to say, just like a doctor's advice about how to cure a disease isn't useless, just because we haven't completely eradicated sickness. We are constantly walking a tightrope between being confident enough to put our ideas forward, and being humble enough to question our assumptions and conclusions. (And this humbleness often works to our disadvantage.)
Whenever I hear about elitism, I'm reminded of my favorite Isaac Asimov quote:
Until next time...
But the weekends are a whole 'nother ball or wax. Yesterday was long. I took him to get a haircut in the morning. Then we went to the Starbucks next door just to kill some time. Then we got back home, the clock showed 11:00 a.m., and I thought to myself, "Great, so what do we do for the next nine hours?" Usually we would go to the park, but it's too cold here right now. There are indoor play areas around and things of that nature, but I'm never sure whether he's going to take to them. If he's with a group of kids -- no problem. But if it's just him, sometimes he just doesn't want to play, and then you're in the weird position of trying to coerce your kid into an activity that's supposed to be fun for them, because you drove all the way there and paid the $15 to get in. You're like, "Enjoy yourself, goddammit! Jump into that big foam pit or I'll throw you in myself!" Actually, Lil' S1 would love it if I threw him in. That's the other thing that happens sometimes: If there are no other kids around his age, he wants me to play with him. This is problematic because I often physically cannot do the things he does (last time I tried to jump on a trampoline I damn near threw my back out), and because a big reason for us going is because I wanted a break. We can play together in our basement anytime.
These interstices of single parenthood really make me appreciate full-time single parents. It must be rough. I mean, if I was a single parent, I would structure my life differently to help relieve some of the burden. For example, I would move closer to my family, and I would become more involved with parent groups and play groups and things of that nature. A big part of the reason it's hard on us when S's goes away is because we are so accustomed to having her here. But still, I imagine there are many things that are just more difficult as a single parent, no matter how inured you get to them.
Today is nice because Lil' S1 went to some friends' house. When our friend A found out it was just he and I for a few weeks, she offered to take for him for a day, and I said "yes" without thinking twice. She has three young kids, and they play together nicely, so it all works out. I'm not exactly sure what "the day" means -- she said she will just text me when she wants me to come get him -- but I'm hoping it's closer to dinner time than lunch time. We shall see.
Anyway, I should probably go now -- I want to take advantage of this opportunity and get some stuff done around the house -- but before I do, I wanted to link to a post by Paul Krugman about an article by Matt Yglesias. They're about Trump's brand of populism, and how a big part of it is contrasting oneself with those snooty, lefty elitists. It doesn't matter that Trump is, at his core, a spoiled rich kid, who was born into the aristocracy, who has never had to do any "real" work in his life, and who opposes things like unions and minimum wage increases and government regulations that would actually benefit the proletariat. All that matters is that he says he likes fast food and guns and fossil fuels and speaking English ("this is America!") and factory jobs and even Christianity (the Bible is his favorite book, after all) -- unlike those effete coastal liberals who think they are too good for all this stuff.
It really is brilliant marketing, and while I think much of the "liberals should have seen this coming!" analysis about the election is 20-20 hindsight to the nth degree (Remember: millions more people voted for Hillary! We weren't that wrong.), I will say that people like myself probably underestimated the appeal of Trump to some extent, because we thought: Not that many people are stupid enough to fall for this, right?
And therein lies the rub. In many ways, the white working class is right about people like me: We do think we're better -- not that our lives are any more valuable or that our experiences are any more meaningful. We don't think we are more deserving of existence. But we do think that we're smarter, or at least that we have more knowledge, and we can leverage this knowledge into a better country for everybody, if we could somehow get through to people. We have good reasons for being the way we are. We don't like fast food, because it cause health problems; we like gun control, because the data show unfettered access to guns makes it easier to commit mass murders (especially in big, dense cities, where most of us live); we don't like fossil fuel, because we believe in the science of anthropogenic global warming; we like multiculturalism because we live in places where it works (for the most part) and because we believe the economists who tell us immigration is not the job killer it's made out to be; we like factory jobs, but we recognize that technology is moving the economy in a new direction, and we need to adapt; we're fine with Christianity, until it is used to justify discrimination or teaching pseudoscience like creationism in public schools. We feel this way not because we're on "Team Liberal," or because we have an innate disdain for working class whites, but because we, not you, have put in the time and the energy to study these issues from an objective, scientifically-minded vantage, and these are our conclusions.
Could we be wrong about things? Of course. Are there things we still don't understand? Yes, many. But that doesn't negate everything we have to say, just like a doctor's advice about how to cure a disease isn't useless, just because we haven't completely eradicated sickness. We are constantly walking a tightrope between being confident enough to put our ideas forward, and being humble enough to question our assumptions and conclusions. (And this humbleness often works to our disadvantage.)
Whenever I hear about elitism, I'm reminded of my favorite Isaac Asimov quote:
“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”If being an elitist means thinking highly of the acquisition of knowledge so that you can make the best decisions possible, then I am a proud elitist. And I only want elitists running the country. My question is, why doesn't everybody? It always comes back to this: Why can't everybody think like me?
Until next time...
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