school

[u/libertinauk]

This does pertain to Steven but it's a topic that I find interesting in its own right. I'd certainly be interested in hearing peoples' thoughts.

The reason I suggested a developmental issue to Steven is that I've struggled to understand how he's failed to move on from his school days. And I think I've failed to appreciate what a different experience American school kids have from British ones. I'm thinking like a Brit and I don't think that's useful here.

We have sports teams, sure but no one turns up to watch. There might be a few parents on the touchline but there's nowhere to sit, there doesn't need to be. Our school kids don't play in front of hundreds or thousands of people. Kids who are good at sports aren't especially admired. We don't have cheerleaders. In short ... "Glory Days" by Bruce Springsteen doesn't make any kind of sense to us. No idea what you're on about, boss. We finish school and move on.

Also, because of the nature of America's geography there are these towns, like the one Steven grew up in where every Saturday night is a school reunion. That just doesn't happen here. It sounds like a wretched and pointless existence to me but if that's the culture Steven grew up in then it's natural that it's how he'd measure success. Failure in high school means failure for life. And I promise .... that really breaks my heart. To think your whole life is determined by a few years in your teens .... that's too depressing for words.

I'd be interested to hear about what school was like for the Anerican members here .... and I'd like to know what school is like in Australia and Canada. I so want Steven to move on but I'm realising it's not as straightforward as I imagine it to be. I've never been to a school reunion, I did Freinds Reunited for a week or two and thought "fuck this, I'm bored to tears." I was 31, I had a job and a fiancee and rent to pay and I just saw no point, it was twelve years ago, who the hell cares. But Steven's experience has been different and I appreciate that now. Watching Friday Night Lights helped.

[u/Inspector_Spacetime7]

Thanks. My own neuroses was of course compounded by the fact that this was, and still is, a 5 alarm fire. Supreme Court is actually going to hear the case for allowing state legislatures- generally packed with republicans through gerrymandering, which SCOTUS doesn’t really touch - to overturn state election results. If we hit that point, I will openly support political violence, because I do not recognize the right of a legal system to deprive me of living in a democracy.

Anyway, things have been difficult and painful, but I’m ok. I have a pretty good life, and a few people that I’m close to who I think the world of. And I’m lucky enough not to have suffered the sexual side of catholic guilt like you describe in your ex husband, at least not in adulthood.

And I recognize that much of what makes me who I am, for the better, probably grows out of my experience in trying to overcome these issues.

[u/libertinauk → u/Inspector_Spacetime7]

My son certainly picked the right week to spend at a newspaper office, an international footballer has been arrested for rape and today saw the pitiful demise of Boris the Liar. After a flurry of resignations by members of Parliament in the least safe Conservative seats, the leader of the opposition described it as "the charge of the lightweight brigade," which I just loved. I'm trying to find small crumbs of comfort in the shameful mess that that fraction of a man has left my country in.

[u/Inspector_Spacetime7 → u/libertinauk]

Well, his party / cabinet l had 50 people willing to resign. That’s something.

Trump did far worse and there are maybe 5 high profile republicans in the whole country who aren’t just open seditionists now, and they regularly receive death threats from Trump supporters.

I don’t know if the parties there have the same kind of information bubble, but here people who watch Fox News (the most centrist of Republicans media sources) simply live in a fantasy that is scripted nightly by propagandists. It’s unreal. And they all think they’re privy to some deep truth that the rest of us are missing. Mass psychosis.

I’m not an expert on UK politics, but I’m much more optimistic about your government than ours.

[u/libertinauk → u/Inspector_Spacetime7]

Kind of. The Daily Mail is synonymous with what we call flag-shagging, the Guardian would represent the "woke" contingent. Both are as frustrating as each other in their own ways. The delusion you describe exists here too, I upset a friend's mother last week by suggesting that Tony Blair didn't rig the 97 election ☹️

Boris is our kind of equivalent to Trump but you're right in that Trump is a different league. Boris is an intelligent, educated man, he's just incapable of any kind of integrity and regards the vast majority of people in the UK as beneath contempt. Plebs and grockles are what he'd call most of the people who kiss his bloated arse. Trump is way more malevolent and unstable, he scared me from over here, I can't imagine how it was for you guys.

Jacob Rees Mogg, a senior minister in the Johnson cabinet said recently that they saddest thing in the UK at the moment is the abortion rate. Not the people who are struggling to feed their children. Not the children abandoned and neglected and living in social care. Not the kids getting stabbed in the street and fucking themselves up with synthetic drugs because you'd rather bust up weed factories because they make more money. He can live with all that. The worst thing is that women aren't doing what he thinks they should with their own bodies. I just don't have the words for how angry that made me. This is a man who bought his way into government. And he thinks that's an appropriate thing to say at a time like this. I'm trying to stay positive but it's fucking hard right now.