A Twisted Tale of Woe

Back in February, my son had a medical emergency and wound up in the hospital. He couldn't remember anything and assumed that he'd had a car accident. It turned out that he had actually collapsed on the sidewalk, and was not near his car. He had a similar event a few days later at a store, after which he finally was diagnosed with a serious but curable condition, was put on medication, recovered quickly and has been fine ever since. However, he made the mistake of telling his ex-wife that he'd had a car accident before he found out the truth, with the result that she went into a rage and told him he could never again be alone with their son, and made him sign a document giving up virtually all his rights as a father. Although by then he had a doctor's note saying that he was fit to return to work, to drive and to care for his son, she refused to accept it, and made him sign the document anyway before she would let their son get into our car. Since then he has been honoring her demands even though there never was any need for them, but it is getting harder and harder to find people willing  to drive all the way out to Simsbury to pick up the boy, and to have people stay in our house when we are away as she also demands.  Then a day or two ago she learned that my son's car was damaged, but instead of calling him and asking what happened, she immediately accused him of having had nine accidents in three years and will never, never, ever, be allowed to drive Connor anywhere. The truth is he hasn't had any accidents since being involved in a small fender-bender at a traffic light last winter, has had only two minor accidents in his whole driving career, and the recent damage to his car was caused not by an accident but by a deer which ran into it one night. Just to be clear, insurance companies differentiate between an accident and an animal strike and do not charge the usual deductible for the animal strike, since it is not an accident. She is completely unhinged with no evidence to support anything. We have no idea where she is getting this supposed data, since there were no car accidents at any time, but she still insists on punishing my son relentlessly in texted abusive words and actions. This situation, of course, is partly his own fault, since he refused to correct his initial statement even though I emailed her that there were no car accidents, therefore no police reports, no suspension of license, no insurance claims, no nothing, and we were not going to support this intrusion into our lives. I guess he was afraid to tell her the truth because he feared more retribution from her, but he still should have refused to sign that document, as he was advised by his attorney and by me not to sign anything. If she doesn't end this delusion on her own, I'm afraid he will have to take her back to court again to get it nullified. She reacts to everything with anger and derision.

 I learned recently that she might be aware of this blog, as she was furious over what she called slander that I am supposed to have written. I have said nothing about her in Facebook for at least two years, so it must be this blog, although I have written very little about her here either until now. In any case, I hope she reads this one.  Maybe she will learn something and try to be a more reasonable person. Miracles can happen.

Politics and Parenting

I don't know which bothers me more: watching and listening to all these Democrats acting like petulant children throwing temper tantrums over the President's opportunity to appoint another Supreme Court justice by vowing to stop it at all costs, or watching and listening to those in the media who diligently report all this as though it was serious adult behavior. They don't even want to wait until they hear the actual name of the nominee before they stamp their collective verbal feet and dig in their heels. Their predictions about criminalizing women and putting them in jail would be laughable if I didn't fear that there are those who are woefully ignorant of reality and actually believe these diatribes.  So far, the only person even approaching any semblance of rationality has been Senator Elizabeth Warren, who actually said she would have to wait to see who the nominee was before voicing her opinion. This is the first time I have applauded her stance on anything. If these other legislators and media types were my children, they would all be sent to their rooms until they could behave in a civil manner.

Reflections on Love and Respect

I have been thinking about the difference between love and respect, and I have come to the conclusion that one can love another but not respect them, while one can also respect another without loving them. Love is a feeling: an  attraction or connection to another person, on a purely emotional level. It is a reaction that we can either ignore or embrace, but other than that we don't have much, if any, control over it.  On the other hand, respect is a choice: the approval of a characteristic or set of characteristics displayed by another, and is based solely on what we hold in our own minds to be worthy of that approval. It explains why families of convicted felons can profess to love the convict while at the same time disapproving the crime they committed.  Implicit is the notion that they have no respect for the convict; or maybe it's just that they are actually respecting (or not respecting) the action and not really the person who did it: "He has my respect because he acts in a certain way." That would explain the conflicted feelings we have when we love someone but do not respect them, for whatever reason. Personally, I have decided that it is a much more rewarding feeling to have respect for someone than it is to love them.  Ideally, it would be nice to have both, but when that is not possible, I find that it is painful to have no respect for someone you love. I wish it were not so.

My Sweet Boy

I have three grown children, but the youngest one has always had the most difficult time holding on to  happiness. As I write this he is divorced, single, unemployed and living in our in-law apartment. This is the third time he has needed to live at home, the second time since his divorce, and it has been a struggle for him to resist the despondency and depression that comes with losing a job, losing a fiancee, and having to take whatever job comes along just to be able to make enough money to pay child support to an ex-wife who has nothing but contempt for him, and is relentless about making him pay, no matter what his circumstances. However, things may be starting to turn around for him. He has a son whom he adores and who absolutely adores him, in spite repeated attempts by his ex-wife to poison their son's feelings for him. It stuns me that anyone could be so cruel while insisting that she is only trying to "protect her son".  I won't go into the things she does to undermine the relationship, except to say that in spite of them, my son is starting to regain his health and emotional strength. I am cautiously optimistic for the first time in years.

 

Honor thy Father and thy Mother

I've been thinking about the Fourth Commandment lately.  Of my three children, the one I am closest to is my daughter. She lives about 500 miles away, yet manages to call home at least two or three times a month. Truth be told, I wish it were more: one of my aunts had a daughter who called her every day, and another of my aunts had a son who called home every Sunday night like clockwork. My daughter and I get along very well, and have similar views on most things, including politics.  Maybe that makes a difference. At the moment I am not particularly pleased with either of my two sons, although for different reasons.  My focus right now is on my oldest son, who years ago adopted the attitude that birthdays and other holidays don't mean anything to him, and so should not mean anything to us as well. I can't remember when the last time was that he gave anyone in the family a birthday present, and cards, when he sends them, are usually late. He hardly ever calls us, and never comes down or offers to help us get projects done like other people we know. I guess he just doesn't like us. He lives about 100 miles away, and we could see him  more than we do, but he almost never invites us to his home, and always seems to be too busy to accept our invitations to visit here.  He and his wife have two delightful children, and we would love to see more of them but I feel uncomfortable asking them if we can visit them.  On those occasions when we do, we always offer to bring lunch, and they always accept our offer.  Occasionally they are late with their rent, and have had to borrow money to pay it. They don't have to be poor: they both have multiple degrees and are very intelligent, but neither of them seems to think that supporting the family should be the first priority; work should be something they love to do. Our son insists on working to create an entrepreneurial music business online, which nobody seems to want, while his wife prefers to stay at home with their kids rather than work even part-time outside the home so that they can pay their bills on time. We put them on our EZ Pass account so that they don't even have to have toll money when they visit, but they still don't come down unless it's a major holiday.  What really ticked me off recently, however, is that during Thanksgiving we celebrated the birthdays of his father, brother, and nephew, all of whom have birthdays a day apart around then, and he couldn't even give them birthday cards to mark the event.  His wife is an artist who is trying to start a business that includes designing cards, and it never occurred to him that maybe his father or his brother or his nephew might like to have a card specially made for them. Unbelievable. He is so hurtful to everyone in the family, all the more so because I doubt that he even realizes how much his lack of attention is noticed and felt. He appears to be totally self-absorbed, and oblivious to all of us.He has told me that when his sister was born, he resented mightily that we had more than one child; he coulldn't understand why he wasn't enough.  I wonder if he would have treated us with more respect if he had been the only one.  I guess we'll never know.

Incentive vs. Punishment

Greed is a flaw in the human character, not a function of any political or socioeconomic philosophy. No matter what form of governance operates in a particular country, there will always be people who try to take as much as they can from the available wealth. In autocratic societies like Socialism and Communism, those people are mostly concentrated in the ruling class, while the non-ruling population usually struggles in poverty from which they cannot free themselves, because the government controls what they can and cannot have.  In a free-market society, those who control the economic output are usually those who have the most wealth, and generally control only what their employees can and cannot have, at least financially. In a free-market society it is the Law of Supply and Demand that operates in business, such that if an employing entity does not provide its employees with sufficient reward for the work provided, those employees are free to seek employment elsewhere. A business without sufficient employees cannot survive for long.

In any economy, wealth is generated by the entities who provide products and/or services needed or wanted by the general population. Wealth is not finite. The more there are entities providing products or services, the more wealth is generated. Government does not generate wealth, it takes it from those producing it. In autocratic societies under Communism or Socialism, the government owns most of the means of production. History has yet to show that these systems are in any way beneficial to the population: universal poverty and chronic shortages of materials are the usual result. In an ideal society, there should be incentives to encourage more people to generate wealth (ie, create new businesses), not punishments in the form of stifling regulations that prevent this from happening. The objective is to make use of the natural tendency toward greed so that all people who want to rise economically can do so. The more people who are generating wealth, the more the government can take if it so chooses, but there, too, the government has to weigh the benefits of taking wealth from those generating it against taking too much, which will cause the wealth generators to stop producing. It is the free-market system that has resulted in the greatest expansion of upward mobility and wealth generation in the history of the world. We need to nurture it and protect it, not punish it.

Media Bias: Yes or No?

Here are two headlines, both of which appeared atop an above-the-fold article in our local newspaper:

"Trump Attacks Senator on Twitter" and "President Responds to Blumenthal's Criticism.."

Which one do you think was the big headline on top, and which one was the small sub-headline underneath it?

If you want to convey a headline that accurately summarizes the story, you would use the second one on top.  If, however, you want to convey a negative meme about our president, without regard to the truth, you would put the first one on top, and ignore the fact that the incident was a retaliation, not an instigation.  Given that many people never bother to read the actual story, what do you think happens when they only read the headline? If you guess that they would come away with an image of a combative, irrational leader, I think you would be right, even though this was not the case here. Oh, and by the way, Senator Blumenthal didn't just "criticize" Mr. Trump, he accused him repeatedly in print and on air of having spurious and nefarious motives for firing FBI Director Comey, without any evidence whatsoever.  Mr. Trump, in retaliation, brought up Mr. Blumenthal's repeated statements during his 2010 election campaign that he had "served in Viet Nam" when in fact he didn't, but the good people of Connecticut elected him anyway.  Seems they don't care if someone lies just to get votes, as long as he's a Democrat. Just so you know, the screaming headline was the first one, and the small sub-headline was the second one. And yet, the media insist that they are not biased.