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Only a Leftist Would Say This and Not Understand What It Means
In Seattle, on KIRO Radio, there is a broadcaster who has had a show there for at least 40 years. He is reliably on the left, more than ever these days. The title of the story is: When your kids have you under grocery store surveillance. In order to maintain their privacy, his kids use his phone number on their grocery store loyalty account, so they get the discounts, and he gets the points. That’s not so bad an arrangement, since everyone wins.
Except that his grown kids get to see everything he buys, and sometimes they don’t approve of his grocery store choices. His reaction to that?
I now find myself buying much healthier stuff because I have an audience. I’m being judged by somebody I helped raise.
Imagine how much healthier we’d all be if we all had grocery buddies, watching everything you buy, and gently scolding you when you stray.
He sees nothing wrong with being judged and scolded by his children on his grocery choices. He gives his kids control over a very important part of his life, quite willingly. Yes, let’s be ruled by the choices of our children, who always know better than we do. Well, if you’re on the left, that might be true (they want to let 16-year-olds vote). Dave Ross is quite happy to hand his health decisions over to his children. If the federal government offered to make all his grocery decisions for him, I predict that he wouldn’t object much.
Published in Culture
Fine by me if his kids watch him. Clearly somebody should.
I’d just as soon the government left me alone, though.
Interesting bit of synchronicity. @freeven has a post today ( promoted to the Main feed ) titled Peace in the family where he talks about “the wisdom of children“…
My knee jerk reaction is that Lefties, like children, are governed largely by emotion rather than reasoned argument and rational thought. So I suppose it’s natural for them to hold children in high regard. Their emotions run pure and untrammeled by reason or history.
I have tech-obsessed friends who want an internet connected refrigerator that can tell what it’s contents are and prepare a shopping list. And probably email your doctor and insurance company about just how much mayonnaise and ice cream and butter you eat. And let them know how often you go to the gym and the liquor store … which it got by linking to the nav system in your car.
Hmmmm
Dave Ross in 2004 took a leave from radio to run as a D (duh) for Congress. Happily, he was defeated by former King County Sheriff Dave Reichert (famed for finally catching up with the Green River Killer), and sent back to the studio.
Reichert was a moderate R, and had a bipartisan voting record, but he pretty much reflected the then-8th District, annoying both parties by voting his own views on an issue. Much better for our (my) district than Ross could ever have been, as I doubt he took his cues from children.
I can’t imagine being told, chided or scolded about what I eat.
In fact the government has been doing this for decades and it always seems to be they were wrong all along.
Added: They were wrong that poly-unsaturates were healthy for you. Wrong that Crisco solid vegetable shortening (hydrogenated vegetable oil) is good for you. Wrong that butter and bacon grease was bad for you. Wrong that high cholesterol is a cause o atherosclerosis. Wrong that coconut oil was bad for you. Wrong every time they say coffee is bad for you (in between saying it’s good for you). Wrong that eggs are bad for you, or that high-cholesterol foods like shrimp lead to heart disease. Wrong that meat and meat fat leads to heart disease. Wrong that skim milk is better for you than whole milk. That’s just off the top of my head.
By the way, locusts and meal worms cause indigestion.
No wonder those poor countries are always fighting each other.
You can see what’s being purchased under your grocery store loyalty account? I thought that information was only available to the store…
I think you can look up your own purchase history on the store web site, and if he’s sharing his loyalty account with others, and they have the login etc to use “digital coupons” etc, then they would be able to see it too.
I guess I’ve never cared enough to try. I just take the discounts.
Me too. But I’m not sharing my loyalty account with anyone else. The “gas points” usually aren’t worth it anyway. I had a neighbor in Phoenix who thought it was smart to spend $100 at Kroger to save less than $2 on his next fillup, rather than saving maybe $10 or more to buy the same items at Walmart. Somehow, that he wasn’t saving $2 ON GAS, was more important to him than actually saving $10.
If I had kids who thought it was more important to shop at Safeway and get “gas points” rather than save a lot more at the risk of someone maybe seeing them at Walmart, I’d tell them they deserve to pay more.
“Oh please, Big Brother, do all my thinking for me.”
Do you believe something different?
I was not being truly fair to the tech-obsessed: Many of them merely love toys to the point where they cannot see when they are useless or even harmful.
But for every person on the left who longs to rule over others there is another who longs to be ruled:
A knee jerk reaction. Define. That’s all.
I believe Gad Saad talks about that in his latest book, The Parasitic Mind.
For anyone who isn’t familiar with Gad Saad and his work, here’s a great place to start (interview with Jordan Peterson).
I liked that book and gave it a positive review. I think he has the best explanation of Never Trumpers ever.
Imagine how much better life would be if we were accompanied by physical manifestations of someone else’s conscience. Feh. Now and then I go to the grocery store with my friend the Giant Swede, and note with awe as he throws half a cow in the basket, along with four gallon bladders of whole milk. The idea that either of us would remonstrate the other for their choices is preposterous.
Ah, but since we don’t have grocery buddies, we should have something that gently scolds us. And when we don’t respond to gentle scolding, well, sterner measures must be taken. They tried to play nice, but did we listen? We’ve really only ourselves to blame.
Remember, this is Seattle.
They could chip our brains to provide a quiet constant conscience, and the wires wouldn’t even show.
I can’t find a video clip now, naturally, but there’s an episode of Big Bang Theory where Amy says to Raj, “If you let me pierce your brain with a hot needle at the right place, you’d be happy all the time!”
CarolJoy has a very amusing and elegantly-written short story about this.
The Man Of La Mancha, to Absurdity And Back – Group Writing
And the video that inspired her was a Russell Brand youtube piece with embedded videos of Elon Musk speaking about how great chipping people’s brains will be. https://youtu.be/hpcam2IQ1h8
“And the wires won’t show” :)
I’m thinking more of Clockwork Orange.
I am guilty of nagging my older brother about his shopping habits. In my defence we’ve just spent the last few years of our lives caring for our father who couldn’t mind himself so it seems sensible to be trying to stay as healthy as possible for as long as possible.
That said I probably do drink more than I should myself so maybe I should give him a break.
People often behave differently if they know someone may be watching.
I recall a hospital that started having surgery videos reviewed by doctors not involved in the surgeries. This was on an audit basis, so the surgical team didn’t know if they would be reviewed, or not. The result was a significant reduction in mistakes, & later infections. Plus there was improvement in the metrics which measure patient recovery. Turns out even surgical teams tended to deviate from best practice protocols when they knew no one would know. It was not the case of them not wanting to give the patient the best care. Usually they just thought some protocols were a waste of time and didn’t really matter.
That’s also the logic behind “share your goals with other people”. If you tell other people about your plan to lose weight/quit smoking/whatever, you’re more likely to succeed.
There is a way to leverage the Kroger system. When I find the need to buy something on Amazon (too often as I am a real book guy) I go to Kroger and purchase an Amazon gift card during the double points days($50 gift card gives you 100 gas points which is 10 cents a gallon off). Do the same for Home Depot, McDonald’s(what can i say, I like McDs…), Chick Filet and other vendors…rarely buy anything else at Kroger these days but usually get 20 to 50 cents off a full tank of gas…
Unless you’re certain – probably by checking – that Amazon has the best price on whatever it is you’re getting, it’s quite possible that both Kroger and Amazon are leveraging YOU.
I usually find that if I do some “window shopping” on Amazon for items offered by third-party sellers, and then find the seller’s own web site to do my actual buying, I get significant savings. Because Amazon isn’t taking a cut.
I do something similar with Speedways loyalty card. I “prepay” my gas purchases by buying a Gas gift card, which earns points in their system for every $50 you buy (and bonus points during certain months). Then when you use the cards at the pump, you also get points for that. When I was doing my pre-covid commute, I’d get enough points to get $100 merchandise cards about every 9 or 10 months.