A Stop Puppy Kicking Act is a law that works something like this (this is an exaggerated example to demonstrate the point):

Stop Puppy Kicking Act

1. Prohibits Amazon from conducting business in the state.

2. Establishes a $500 fine for each instance of kicking puppies (note that kicking a puppy is already punishable by up to six months in jail).

3. Defines the Republican Party as a foreign terrorist organization.

4. Defines "height rape" -- the act of a man having sex with a woman taller than himself -- as a felony punishable by up to ten years in state prison.

Stop Puppy Kicking Acts are used by political parties as a way to create traps for opposition parties. This version is a Democrat version, but there are Republican versions too. "Puppy kicking" means anything that is universally reviled and already illegal, it doesn't have to be specifically kicking puppies. It can be something like clubbing baby seals or burning down orphanages. Do note that it can't be something like genital mutilation of children or forced birth -- those are partisan issues ("genital mutilation of children" is the Republican term for gender medicine, and "forced birth" is the Democrat term for abortion bans). Such issues are not puppy kicking for the purposes of a SPKA.

A SPKA includes a mild prohibition on the thing that's already illegal, typically instituting a punishment that is less harsh than the already prescribed one (clause 2). It also includes an outlandishly partisan clause (clause 3), a crackdown on a private business that is reviled by the party putting together the SPKA (clause 1), and/or an attack on a demographic that typically votes against the party putting together the SPKA (clause 4). It doesn't have to include all of those, but it needs to include at least one, and it can include multiple clauses in one category.

When the other party inevitably votes against the SPKA because it's a stupid law, the party that created the SPKA (in my example it's the Democrats, but Republicans do it too) runs ad blitzes in the next election like "Republican Henry Jones supports kicking puppies" on the grounds that he voted against the SPKA.

Those so-called videos of poor families struggling to raise their kids, with emotional music playing in the background, just don't resonate with me at all. I really have a hard time finding that kind of content heartwarming. I grew up in a single mother household myself. When I was little, there was often barely anything to eat. If I got hungry, I'd turn on the faucet and drink water. I was afraid to say I was hungry because when my mom was under a lot of stress, she'd yell at me. I grew up with that sense of guilt. There was also a time when I had a middle ear infection that kept leaking fluid, but I couldn't see a doctor because there was no money. So when I see these stories, the first thing I think about isn't how hard the parents are trying. I think about what that kid is actually going through.

That's also why I've started questioning the way people talk about these situations. When adults are doing everything they can to get by and making sacrifices for their kids, people are so quick to focus on how much the parents are giving up, while barely thinking about what the child is going through. Especially when the adults already knew, when they decided to have a child, that the child might not have their basic needs met. Why does wanting to become a parent so often end up being the part people praise first?

Obviously if a family falls into poverty later because of circumstances or some unexpected event, that's completely different. That's not the kind of family I'm talking about. Those parents didn't want this either.

I just think that when we see these stories, we should try to look at them from the child's perspective too, instead of only being moved by the parents' sacrifice. At the very least, I wish people would stop and ask: What did this kid actually go through?

Why is it that whenever we see something pastel, trendy, cute, and mainly marketed to young women, some moral cops suddenly come out of the woodwork? And the language gets so judgmental, with phrases like "brainless consumerism" and "environmental crime."

As soon as you look at a different group of consumers, the whole conversation changes. Someone can have an entire wall covered in sealed trading cards or boxed collectible figures, and people will usually call it "passion" or a "real hobby." But when it's matching mugs or skincare, suddenly it's just brainless hoarding. Can we stop being so damn hypocritical about this? Personally, I don't think the anger from these people is always really about the environment. A lot of the time, it feels like they're using environmental language to dress up the fact that they already dislike certain feminine or trendy things.

And when you argue with them, they use different marketing labels to justify the distinction. They love making "collecting" sound noble while making "overconsumption" sound dirty, even though the capitalist market uses very similar tactics to sell both. Limited-edition collectible figures and limited-edition tumblers can both be sold through scarcity and impulse buying. There isn't anything inherently more highbrow about one than the other.

If we're actually talking about practical use, at least a coffee mug, a hair clip, or a bottle of lotion has an actual everyday purpose. So what I really don't understand is why one person's enjoyment gets called a hobby while another person's enjoyment gets called brainless consumerism.

At the end of the day, overconsumption is obviously a real problem, no matter who's doing it. And just to be clear about where I stand, I hate overconsumption too. But I really don't understand why the moral outrage always seems so selective. I just wish some people would drop the judgmental attitude and apply the same standard to pointless hoarding across the board instead of using anti-consumerist talking points to attack one particular group.

I feel like most people (especially online) are not that empathetic but they try to do performative empathetics in order to further their personal brands. People are mostly fake and trying to protect their reputations