Wednesday, March 21, 2007

What does it take to turn people into authoritarians?

The most annoying little kid I've ever run into always said "Why?" in response to anything anyone said. Inquisitiveness is fine, and if a kid is really interested in something he'll get as much of my time as I have. But this little pest really needed a chokechain. Mercifully he grew out of it. (I guess he would have had to escape it by the time he was a teen - by then he would have known everything and been telling all the rest of us "why").

Yeah, I suppose I'm getting older and crankier every year, and I'm either noticing things I didn't or reacting differently. Yet the world really has changed. Good grief, what kind of jerks have to sue a school district because they want to wear Tigger socks? Heaven forbid that she couldn't show "who she is" - the schools must be ruled by the whims of 14 year old girls and publicity-seeking attorneys.

I have a hint for you and your lawyer, sweetie. You won't be showing "who you are" until you stop wearing bottoms.

You might say that it's at least as silly to act as if permitting the changes would end civilization as we know it. If there were no need for any kind of dress code for schools I might agree, but this just shows that no matter what you might put in one, some jackass might take issue with it. Couldn't the judge who got this case sentence the girl to, say, write a twenty page single spaced report on good citizenship as opposed to being a narcissistic twit, and then to make a longhand copy of it for every one of her fellow students in the district?

Salespeople know that you want customers to say "yes". Crap like the above eventually forces us to start saying "no". And once we get started, the easier it becomes to be more restrictive. If we ever do become authoritarians, IMO it will have started in response to clowns like this who show no perspective or discretion.

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