Quote of the Week

“We are not all in the same boat, but we are in the same storm” – anonymous

The Mother’s Day Myth

Two women with wide smiles embracing each other…you know they love each other. Revelations by the daughter as to how her mom helped her through her childhood years. Daughters who credit their moms with all their successes and positive mindsets. Oh what a Hallmark time of the year!
And that is just what it is. A holiday created by a greeting card company. So why do I want to puke every Mother’s Day when I have to tolerate these photos and news broadcasts about mom as the saint in someone’s life? Because my relationship with my mother did not come close to these wonderful, joyous myths!
When I first started to admit to these negative feelings on this sacred day, I thought it was because I no longer have a mother. She passed away decades ago. Then I thought it was jealously to see these happy mother and daughter couples that I was forced to view (week before and overloaded on the day). But then the darker side of my memories reared its ugly head.
My mother was like a thousand others who were not “Hallmark” moms. She was flawed with psychological problems, selfishness, and the baggage of being an unwanted child born illegitimately in an era when illegitimacy was like having a scarlet letter branded upon her. I have very few positive memories of her from my childhood or when I tried to be the “good daughter” as an adult.
She didn’t beat me but believed in the old European adage that “spare the rod and spool the child” so for many minor infractions of her rules I’d get a paddling on the you know where. She also believed that too much praise didn’t form character and that what she wanted me to become I should be because she knew what was good for me…and of course she “loved” me in a self-centered, smothering way.
But that is my personal perspective on Mother’s Day. Upon thinking this through, finally after 72 years of life and 23 years without her presence, I realized I was also revolting against a made up stereotype of the Holy Mother Mary that each of these Mother Day moms represents. I have seen too many really broken children, read too many articles about bad mothers, listened to friends and neighbors talk about their mothers’ failures in their lives all resulting in making me feel sad that we must mythologize mothers. What about all the poor girls who were beaten to a pulp by their angry, drunk or drug addicted mothers? What about the women who now in adulthood don’t have any sense of self-esteem or hate their bodies, or hate themselves totally because of the script their mothers put in their heads? And God only knows what today’s daughters will grow into under the mothers who didn’t want them but couldn’t get an abortion, or who punish them for their sexual orientation.
At least my memories of mom aren’t that beastly.  So, I would like to create a “Dark Mother’s Day” where we reach out to all the hurt, broken daughters and give them a Hallmark moment that would help start to repair their lives instead of promulgating a myth that destroyed theirs!

Old Age

We are the newcomers to this block.
You were here before us.
From your vantage point
You watched the school being built,
The children coming and going.
The school passed into rubble
So that our house could be built.
Some of the children
Live here now in this “senior housing”;
Some have passed away.
Like those children you grew
Strong and tall.
Weathered storms,
Saw the town change.
But old age
Catches up to us all.
We become knurled and withered;
Disease takes its toll.
Over my time here
I’ve watched you age.
Watched you lose your bloom.
Soon it will be your time
To pass from this earth.
I can hear the chain saw’s noise
Approaching from the distance.

Is Banning TikTok Really a Good Idea?

I don’t use TikTok except to view other people’s postings. I don’t have the ap on my phone and don’t plan to. However, my choice is not based on fear of China getting my private information. I just have no use for it! But I am “creeped out” whenever I hear of a piece of software that could track my whereabouts, discover enough private information that it could hack into my bank accounts, or that would open the doors to stalking.
Our government believes that the only solution is to put a “ban” into affect.
I don’t trust China or for that matter most foreign countries as to what they can do and what they promise not to do in the software/cyberspace realm. On the other hand, our government also isn’t sinless in this aspect. We all know that if they want to spy on someone they can, laws be damned! And if China wants our information, they currently can already get it through other channels, not just through the TikTok ap.

So what’s a really good reason to ban it? What Ezra Klien puts forth in his Opinion Piece: TikTok May Be More Dangerous Than It Looks
New York Times May 8, 2022 (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/08/opinion/tiktok-twitter-china-bytedance.html) is more convincing to me: that the Chinese could use TikTok to manipulate a false narratives that millions of users would buy into:

“But it [a ban] does not address other ways that China could weaponize the platform, like tweaking TikTok algorithms to increase exposure to divisive content, or adjusting the platform to seed or encourage disinformation campaigns.

Let’s call this the manipulation problem. TikTok’s real power isn’t over our data. It’s over what users watch and create. It’s over the opaque algorithm that governs what gets seen and what doesn’t.”

“TikTok has been thick with videos backing the Russian narrative on the war in Ukraine. Media Matters, for instance, tracked an apparently coordinated campaign driven by 186 Russian TikTok influencers who normally post beauty tips, prank videos and fluff…”

“Imagine a world in which the United States has a contested presidential election, as it did in 2020. If one candidate was friendlier to Chinese interests, might the Chinese Communist Party insist that ByteDance give a nudge to content favoring that candidate? Or if they wanted to weaken America rather than shape the outcome, maybe TikTok begins serving up more and more videos with election conspiracies, sowing chaos at a moment when the country is near fracture.

But that would make it all the more powerful a propaganda outlet, if deployed. And because each TikTok feed is different, we have no real way of knowing what people are seeing. It would be trivially easy to use it to shape or distort public opinion, and to do so quietly, perhaps untraceably.”

He ends with:

“In all of this, I’m suggesting a simple principle, albeit one that will not be simple to apply: Our collective attention is important. Whoever (or whatever) controls our attention controls, to a large degree, our future. The social media platforms that hold and shape our attention need to be governed in the public interest.”

On the other hand…

Fareed Zakaria’s Opinion piece, Why banning TikTok won’t do any good,
Washington Post April 7, 2023 at 7:45 a.m. EDT nicely summarized all the arguments against a ban:

“And when I look at the legislation being proposed that would enable the U.S. government to ban TikTok, I see a frightening, Orwellian law that should send chills down every American’s spine.”

“If we ban TikTok, will we also ban Chinese media companies from distributing pamphlets or books in the United States? Will we ban all Chinese video game companies, which are giants in the industry? The premise of an open society is that people should be free to consume what information they want — and that we are stronger for it.”

“A bipartisan group of senators has put forward legislation… This law would give virtually unlimited powers to the U.S. administration to prevent or punish any company that has tech or information products or services that — in the administration’s view — pose an ‘undue or unacceptable risk to U.S. national security or the safety of U.S. persons.’

We are living in times when state governments are banning books by the hundreds, when speech is considered a weapon and when politicians openly talk about shutting down dangerous ideas.”

“But the key to the United States’ success and dynamism, decade after decade, has been its openness, innovation and belief in the vigorous contest of ideas, products and services. …We should not lose that confidence in a panic over one Chinese app.”

“There is a much better way to solve this problem — a comprehensive data privacy law that would protect all Americans’ data and give people the right to stop companies from using, misusing and selling it. Unfortunately, taking on Big Tech is a much more difficult battle than bashing China.”

There you have it, point and counterpoint. Now it’s for the government and the legal people to hash out what is best for our nation. Sadly, the users of TikTok, us common citizens, will have no input in this processes or the final decision. But you can bet that if there is a ban, the lawsuits will be flying!

But maybe really why our government wants to ban TikTok is because it’s the “eye in the sky”. Millions of people have this ap on their smartphones, millions of people take photographs that show government failures or things like police beatings. Millions…you ban this and it becomes impossible for your or me to share what is going on. It’s the “share part” that probably scares the bejeezus out of our politicians, not what China could do!