We executed children in this country until long after the rest of the world — except Iran — thought that was a good idea. Almost six million children live in poverty in this country. Almost six million of them are without health insurance of any kind, and that's reckoned to be an improvement. None of this is accidental. These children are expendable because the people we elect make policy decisions of which we approve — or, at least, of which we do not disapprove.
It's fascinating, too, reading this piece in light of my multi-year journey through Left Behind with Fred Clark. The question he keeps asking -- the central question to the whole thing -- is, "Why doesn't anyone care about the missing children?"
That is a question that I, a childless individual who isn't in a real hurry to change, imagine would be a central issue to the whole thing. I imagine that the disappearance of a child would involve panic and rage and depression and be the sort of thing that keeps the entire world distracted for a time. I can't escape that idea.
And yet the national representatives of my former religious siblings don't see things like that. Sure, they ask, "Won't somebody think of the children?" from time to time, but it's only when there are cheap points to be made about the evils of television, music, and liberal "indoctrination" in the schooling system. For them children are props, to be trotted out onstage at the right time and then put away when convenient.
Why does it take President Obama to point out the truth: Trayvon Martin was somebody's child. Trayvon Martin could have been anybody's child.
Well, not anybody's. I've been known to walk around in black hoodies without worrying about getting shot. Geraldo Rivera has never had to tell me that I deserve to get a bullet in the face because of my sartorial selections.
Funny, that.
Hoodies are the liability huh? Y'know, all those kids holding up liquor stores are also wearing pants and shoes... I'm sure if we dressed our kids in shorts and flip-flops instead, they would look less threatening. And would also be freezing their asses off in winter. Hence the hoodie. They're warm, y'know. And convenient. And cheap. I'm just a white girl, and I love wearing my hoodie. I dress my kids in hoodies, because a good mom doesn't let her children go out in the cold nekkid.
In my mind I have dubbed that, "Won't somebody think of the children?" appeal as OPC: the Other People's Children argument. Because when someone makes a stink over some corrupting influence, they aren't saying their own (possibly theoretical) children are subject to the threat, but that some other, less educated, less responsible, less socially acceptable parent would not protect their own children from this danger. As if. I can take care of my own kids, thanks. Why don't you tell us what really motivates you?
Posted by: Janet | 03/24/2012 at 02:12 PM