Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Kids Get One Childhood and We’re Blowing It
Last night a friend told me that the Marine Corps band was playing the last concert of the summer outside at the National Harbor. He told me “This is my kids’ last chance to hear classical music live for the forseeable future.” And he was right, and I realized it was my kids’ last chance too. Our local Symphony Orchestra in Baltimore just emailed with the news that they would be banning kids under the age of 12 because they’re ineligble for vaccination. We used to go to the BSO a few times a year for their kids’ programming, but we haven’t been there since at least spring of 2020. I don’t know when vaccination will open up to kids under the age of 12, and at this point, I have no intention of vaccinating my kids, so there’s really no telling when they’ll go back, if ever.
When I bemoaned this situation on Twitter, I heard plenty of “It’s just a short time, and we’re in the middle of a pandemic!”
But let’s be real about the amount of time we’ve already sunk into this situation: It’s nearing a year and a half, with no end in sight. For my two-year-old, that’s basically her entire life. For my four-year-old, it’s all he remembers. For my six and seven-year-olds, they have hazy memories of the Before Times, when everyone around them was unmasked and mingling freely. When they could go to concerts or theatres, when they could go to their gymnastics or dance classes unmasked. Time is measured differently for kids: Two or three years is literally a lifetime for young children. And COVID is defining their entire childhoods and their entire lives.
A Twitter friend just tweeted about a similar situation at his synagogue in Washington D.C.:
Email from synagogue makes it official: Children under 12 not allowed into the building for High Holy Days, but they have a variety of outdoor services.
— Mike Madden (@MikeMadden) August 25, 2021
How are our kids expected to form connections to the arts, to faith, if they’ve been locked out of physical buildings for the majority of their childhoods? These are formative years, and they’re being lit on fire for the sake of making adults feel safer. They’re not being locked out to make anyone safer, but to make people feel safer. It’s senseless, and it’s going to change their relationships with all of these institutions forever. And as a result, it’s going to change these institutions forever. Why is it, then, that none of them seem to realize the effects of these policies, and more importantly: why don’t they care?
Published in General
“They’re not being locked out to make anyone safer, but to make people feel safer”…an awful lot of things in America today seem to be focused on feelings about things rather than the things themselves.
Shortly after 9/1, when the idea of arming pilots was first motivated, some woman on TV said it would make her “nervous” to know that her pilot had a gun…She wasn’t interested in objectively thinking about any pros and cons; it was just about her automatic feelings.
There is a lot of this kind of thing.
I just do not understand the absolute fear. Kids have a vanishingly small chance of being seriously ill, much less dying from Covid. And it can’t be because they might “give it to grandma” because we have been told over and over that even the vaccinated can pass it on…
Because virtue-signaling feels good. But also because a certain percentage of the population relishes the thought of life-altering change — the same segment of the population which thrills at the prospect of sex robots, pod cities, insect diets, or transcending the sex binary.
Interacting with left-wing people in comment sections elsewhere, I’m struck (though not surprised) by how blasé they are about parenthood and cultural transmission in general. Often, they have no particular vision of how their own children ought to live (beyond a fear that those children might “hate”). They’re not disturbed by massive changes to the social compact. Why don’t they care? Because they don’t. They’re missing the gene, I guess. They like change, and they will adapt to it, whatever form it happens to take. They’ll become whatever they’re expected to be.
There’s a major division, in our country, between those who think that normality is a thing to be cherished and preserved and those who think that normality is well worth throwing away for marginal benefit. I’m just glad I live in a place where normality is easy to find.
The Democrats have used COVID to divide this nation even further. Vaxxed vs. unvaxxed is the latest. If you want your kids to learn classical music a fun way, I strongly suggest old Looney Tunes cartoons . . .
They weren’t raised with any connection to the past. They barely have a connection to their parents. How can you be connected to the future and have a stake in it if you have no concept of your own family heritage?
Boomers raised millenials totally disconnected from the cultural anchors that raised the boomers. Largely because they hated the chains and their parents were too depressed and battle weary to pass on or communicate a love for the traditions that had sustained them. So boomers let their kids have the freedom to find their own way. And unsurprisingly, my generation has absolutely no understanding of past and future, only here and now. They don’t value the institutions and traditions, because they were not taught to.
I worry about how my grandchildren (age 2 and 4) are going to learn how to function in public settings. (They live in a state that has had very severe restrictions.) The 2 year old has NEVER eaten in a restaurant, and the 4 year old has no recollection of eating in a restaurant. Teaching them how to eat in public and do other such activities is going to be progressively more difficult the longer this nonsense goes on.
Until about 3 months ago, the only buildings the 2 year old had ever been in for her entire life were her home, her daycare facility, and the pediatrician’s office. She was not allowed to accompany her mother to the grocery store. No one was allowed to enter a restaurant. She saw no one other than her parents, her daycare staff, and her pediatrician. When some government restrictions were relaxed, our daughter discovered that our granddaughter had developed an intense fear of other places and other people. Fortunately, that fear seems to be dissipating as the months progress. Unfortunately, our daughter seems to have absorbed some of the fear attitude, and constrains our grandchildren more than I think is wise. But I’m not going to get into an argument over it at the moment.
This is true, but not universally true. I wasn’t raised with many cultural anchors (though I do have a loving and intact family, so that helps). But in my case, my inborn sense of nostalgia has given me a desire to pursue the sort of rootedness that so many of my peers reject. What’s the difference between me and the three girls down the street, also raised by loving and Christian and conservative parents, who’ve all embraced left-wing cultural politics? I don’t know. Psychology. That’s my best guess.
Then there are the hordes of people who seem both to live in the past and to repudiate the past. I complain about them every Tuesday, I know, but I still don’t understand them: people like the historical reenactor I run into on a dating app — the one who waxes lyrical about Victorian culture in one paragraph and calls herself “polyamorous” in the next. You’d think an institution supposedly dedicated to the conserving of culture — an institution like a museum or library — would have some cultural conservatives in it, but no. Not how things work. I just don’t get it.
Hmm. Seems to me maybe this redefinition of being human is part of the leftist plan of hysteria, isolation and masking.
These people creating this insanity are sick.
We are exceptions. There’s a societal impact that trends have on a large number of people. On the margins are those who can break the mold even while suffering some minor ill effects. I don’t think our experience can justify the whole lot.
We had a guy here for a while, I think before you came, who was closer to my age, maybe a young Gen X, who couldn’t grasp why family should be important. And he should be in the exceptional camp. I think his disconnect is closer to the cultural trend than we are.