Elsewhere (129)
Theodore Dalrymple on the values and inversions of the British underclass:
Certainly the notions of dependence and independence have changed. I remember a population that was terrified of falling into dependence on the state, because such dependence, apart from being unpleasant in itself, signified personal failure and humiliation. But there has been an astonishing gestalt switch in my lifetime. Independence has now come to mean independence of the people to whom one is related and dependence on the state.
Mothers would say to me that they were pleased to be independent, by which they meant independent of the fathers of their children — usually more than one — who in general were violent swine. Of course, the mothers knew them to be violent swine before they had children by them, but the question of whether a man would be a suitable father is no longer a question because there are no fathers: At best, though often also at worst, there are only stepfathers. The state would provide. In the new dispensation the state, as well as television, is father to the child.
See also this, especially the last two paragraphs.
Ed Driscoll quotes Daniel Henninger:
The IRS tea-party audit story isn’t Watergate; it’s worse than Watergate. The Watergate break-in was the professionals of the party in power going after the party professionals of the party out of power. The IRS scandal is the party in power going after the most average Americans imaginable.
See also Roger Kimball on de-unionising the IRS. Paul Caron’s exhaustive archive covering the scandal is of course still growing.
And somewhat related to this, Christina Hoff Sommers on sporting gender quotas and law gone bad:
Because of pressure from women’s groups like the National Women’s Law Centre and the Women’s Sports Foundation, Title IX evolved into a rigid quota regime that dictates equal participation in sports by both sexes regardless of interest… Schools are cutting back on male teams and creating new women’s teams, not because of demand, but because they are afraid of a federal investigation. [Feminist advocates] have persuaded courts that if there are fewer women than men on college varsity teams the only explanation is discrimination. [But] the evidence that women taken as a group are less interested than men in competitive sports is overwhelming.
As always, feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments. It’s what these posts are for.
“A few months ago I met a woman selling the Big Issue outside a supermarket in north London.”
What follows is comedy Gold…
I felt only anger and shame: anger because she was not grateful for my gift, as I wished her to be. Shame because – why should she be?
And lo, the gulf between the Guardianista mindset and the public it claims to speak for becomes apparent. It reminds me of another Dalrymple article, about how “dependency does not promote gratitude.”
Why does Theodore Dalrymple never mention something that he is well aware of: that blacks are the worst and most violent of the British underclass, particularly in their behaviour towards women? A Guardianista would applaud his failure to mention the “race” of the thug here (after all, goodthinkful folk know that it’s completely irrelevant):
Sounds like vibrancy in the Jamaican stylee to me. And why does Dalrymple fail to discuss the part played by mass immigration and low IQ in the problems of the British underclass? There are certain subjects he seemed curiously reluctant to touch, almost as tho’ he were liberal himself in certain ways. He has of course mentioned the genetic diseases caused by consanguineous marriage among Muslims, but that’s really ideology, innit? If we only got our ideas right, mass immigration would cause no problems.
The State must provide, no foreigner should go without a buggy.
To be fair to the writer, at least she did something out of her own pocket. The standard Guardianista would have gone straight to the conclusion, that it was a matter for the State.
“Independence has now come to mean independence of the people to whom one is related and dependence on the state.”
Many of the motley crew of liberationists believe exactly that. All human institutions are oppressive, except for the all-powerful, non-judgemental beneficent state, which liberates us from all those patriarchal, capitalist, racist, homophobic (etc etc) constraints on our freedom.
I like Dalrymple but he is a bit barmy. If you spend as much time with hardened criminals as he has done I think you get a pretty distorted sense of the world. In fact, the people who are most dependent on state handouts are those who work in the banking or insurance sectors, or in any engineering enterprise that depends on military contracts. Compared to them, the amount of spend taken up my single mothers is truly minuscule. Of course, we expect the poor to be ashamed of their state subsidy but not the rich.
“…the people who are most dependent on state handouts are those who work in the banking or insurance sectors, or in any engineering enterprise that depends on military contracts.”
All of which provide jobs (engineers, contractors, systems specialists). Which creates wealth.
Do single mothers provide jobs? Only, I would suspect, in the public sector (police, social workers). Which doesn’t.
“To be fair to the writer, at least she did something out of her own pocket.”
Rob, given she got a column out of it, she probably expensed it to the ‘Guardian’…
Why does Theodore Dalrymple never mention something that he is well aware of: that blacks are the worst and most violent of the British underclass, particularly in their behaviour towards women?
Trail after Darius,
Have you considered the possibility that the reason why he doesn’t include reference to ethnic origin here is that it might be irrelevant?
Obviously, as we are pseudonymous visitors to this blog, I don’t know what experiences you have had that may have lead you to that particular conclusion, but I can at least assure you that the behavior of the man described is not peculiar to young(er) black men, even if it may be true that a statistically higher proportion of the latter group – when taken as a whole – have a higher likelihood of becoming involved in (violent) crime when compared to other ethnic groups. But even should that be the case (as I understand it may well be according to prison population statistics), I sincerely doubt that it is ethnic origin that is the determining factor.
It is not necessary to have grown up in a specifically Afro-Caribbean model of patriarchal* machismo to become the kind of recklessly violent antisocial ‘ACAB’ wife-beating gold-toothed maniac described in that Dalrymple/Daniels extract – there are plenty of strands within white British culture that will produce exactly the same results even if the contributory factors which cause it are arrived at by another route.
Such violent maniacs are just as likely (and more thankfully, just as unlikely) to crop up in Swansea, Gipton or Paisley as they are in Brixton, Hackney or Peckham.
Was black Londoner Michael Adebolajo really more of a bug-eyed homicidal loon than white Mancunian Dale Cregan?
Besides, when ethnicity does seem to be relevant then Dalrymple/Daniels doesn’t generally shy away from mentioning it as in this extract from Our Culture – What’s Left of It:
Even among Indian heroin addicts (principally Muslim), the kind of malnutrition I have described is rare, because they do not yet live in the solipsistic isolation of their white counterparts, who live alone, even when there are other people inhabiting the house or apartment in which they themselves live.
*I’m using patriarchal in its more usual sense here and not in the capital ‘P’ Patriarchy found in the wilder shores of Marxist-Feminism
“All of which provide jobs (engineers, contractors, systems specialists). Which creates wealth.Do single mothers provide jobs?”
Bringing up a baby is productive labour. If we are OK with the idea of state subsidised industry, let’s go for it, but let’s favourr the poor rather than the rich.
Hi Minnow – Single mothers are usually bad mothers, and the children they raise are more likely to end up criminals and benefits claimants and bad parents themselves.
We should stop subsidising them, so we can have fewer of them.
Steve, we would need data to show that what you claim is true and also data to show that we don’t get worse outcomes without the subsidy. Notice that the banks we subsidise at an infintielyy greater costs also tend to be bad banks but they still get their bennies and always will.
Bringing up a baby is productive labour.
Arguably it is not.
While it’s true that the number of hours spent on the important business of raising a child can alternatively be spent in a workplace, I don’t personally care to be so reductive as to equate one’s private family life solely or mainly in terms of its economic productivity.
… let’s favour the poor rather than the rich.
To what end (in specific regard to having children that is)?
This statement appears to be implying that you think the state should pay for women to have children and pay them to care for those children at home full time.
Why would the state want to do that when it is essentially a decision for the parents to make?
See also this, especially the last two paragraphs.
Wow. That Madeleine Schwartz article is the wrongest thing I’ve read in a long time. Is she from the evil mirror universe?
To what end (in specific regard to having children that is)?
To the end of social justice. Let people who have had bad luck receive some money to improve their lives a great deal instead of giving that money to people who have had good luck and are already rich.
I think the state paying mothers to look after their children at home, if that is what they want to do, would be a very good thing. Don’t you? If it is affordable I mean. What are the objections?
Single mothers are usually bad mothers
I’m not trying to take your statement out of context, but it is still worth pointing out that single mothers do come from quite a wide range of economic and social backgrounds.
I’m thinking of three women I know, one a marketing manager and the other two both senior sales directors, who are currently single mothers who it would be hard pressed to say are bad mothers and whose children are bright, articulate and well-behaved.
On the other hand, they are full-time working professionals so likely pay more into state coffers than they take out …
Minnow – there’s reams of data proving what I say is true. Look it up if you’re interested.
Of course we’ll get better outcomes when we stop financially incentivising single motherhood as a lifestyle choice for chavs: we’ll have fewer chavlets running around.
I’m less worried about feral bankers hanging around street corners in my town.
JuliaM – Brilliant!
A few months ago I met a woman selling the Big Issue outside a supermarket in north London. Her name is Anna; she is from Moldova, the poorest country in Europe. She was wearing a headscarf and sitting on a crate.
Ever wondered why the indigenous British tramp has been driven off his Big Issue pitch by all these young Eastern European women in headscarves?
Obviously nobody at the Guardian does. Spoiler alert: distribution of the Big Issue has been taken over by criminal gangs of gypsies from Eastern Europe. They use their women as the sympathetic public face of their operations.
They don’t actually care about the pittance they get from selling magazines. Being a Big Issue vendor means they count as employed, which unlocks all the goodies of the British welfare system to them.
What fear drove away the British men you used to see selling the Big Issue? The fear of being beaten to a bloody pulp by Roma gangsters.
I’m less worried about feral bankers hanging around street corners in my town.
That is because the small amounts of damage those poor people do (‘chavs’ as you call them)is visible to your eye, but the great deal of damage those bankers do (destroying livelihoods and industries etc) isn’t.
I have seen no data at all that shows single motherhood is a serious social cost in any sense.
On the other hand, they are full-time working professionals so likely pay more into state coffers than they take out …
Depending on where they work and at what level.
Nikw211 – yes, but usually.
And this isn’t just Crazy Steve being crazy: on all manner of statistics, from educational attainment to future criminality, substance abuse, mental illness, suicide, you name it – the children of single mothers in general do far worse than kids brought up with both parents. Even when adjusted for income.
Minnow – “I have seen no data at all that shows single motherhood is a serious social cost in any sense.”
I bet you’ve been looking, too.
Noob,
Welcome aboard. Help yourself to nibbles and liquor.
That Madeleine Schwartz article is the wrongest thing I’ve read in a long time.
It is a tad perverse.
Is she from the evil mirror universe?
I think she’s from the same corner of creation that produced Laurie Penny, whose excited endorsement of the New Inquiry brought Ms Schwartz to my attention. Though when it comes to pretentious contrarianism, Ms Schwartz was given a run for her money by several other contributors, among them Ms Kendra Salois, who tells us that she went to Casablanca to work on her “dissertation on Moroccan hip hop and neoliberalisation,” before mulling the inevitable question: “Is rap the battleground between Muslims?”
Minnow – “That is because the small amounts of damage those poor people do (‘chavs’ as you call them)”
Don’t try to tar poor people with the chav brush.
I grew up in a council flat on a not-very-nice estate. Working class people hate chavs. It’s middle class latte-sippers who make excuses for them.
Interesting that Dalrymple mentions France. In my cultural training course that I took when I arrived, I was told that the French don’t pick up their dogs’ shit because they feel it’s the government’s job. The French are collectivists at state and departmental level, but selfish individuals at the personal level.
To the end of social justice … If it is affordable I mean. What are the objections?
Minnow,
Well, to begin with there’s this:
Among the many arguments without arguments, none is more pervasive or more powerful than that of what is called ‘social justice’. Yet it is a term with no real definition … All justice is inherently social, since someone alone on a desert island cannot be either just or unjust. What seems to be implied by adding the word ‘social’ to the concept of justice is that justice is to be established among groups, rather than just among individuals. However, the term does at least signal a dissatisfaction with conventional notions of formal justice, such as applying the same rules to all. (Sowell, 2011)
And Sowell is right, I think – Social justice is just an empty phrase, a useless shiny bauble to decorate over the patches in weak arguments.
And it’s true here too – even you have queried whether or not it’s affordable despite not actually being very clear about what ‘it’ is.
Why should the state pay women to stay at home to raise children? At what point does the state demand that women do this? How would such a policy take into account changes in circumstance (positive as well as negative) during the years of childcare? Just how massive a bureaucracy would be needed to administer such subventions from the state?
More interestingly, what would the Feminist and Social Justice Warrior reactions be to such a policy? Would they decry this as being just another example of the Patriarchy rewarding and privileging biologically female cis-women or applaud it? What about women who want careers and children? How would they be affected? What about childless women?
I could go on of course, but in short while it may sound ‘nice’ I’m really more interested in the hard practical outcomes of such a policy – from the evidence of similar social programs it would likely result in the opposite of what its aims were and on those grounds it’s a non-starter for me however shiny and attractive it might sound as an ideal.
That is because the small amounts of damage those poor people do (‘chavs’ as you call them)is visible to your eye, but the great deal of damage those bankers do (destroying livelihoods and industries etc) isn’t.
I’m trying to think of an industry which bankers have destroyed, and all I’ve come up with is loan sharking.
In fact, the people who are most dependent on state handouts are those who work in the banking or insurance sectors, or in any engineering enterprise that depends on military contracts. Compared to them, the amount of spend taken up my single mothers is truly minuscule. Of course, we expect the poor to be ashamed of their state subsidy but not the rich.
sub·si·dy [ súbssədee ]
1.money given by government: a grant or gift of money from a government to a private company, organization, or charity to help it to function
We can quibble about individual decisions made by certain governments, but in general government payments to businesses are not gifts or grants, but payment for services rendered. The government pays money to people that provide the equipment that keep it safe, whether that equipment be a weapon system or a computer network.
To the end of social justice. Let people who have had bad luck receive some money to improve their lives a great deal instead of giving that money to people who have had good luck and are already rich.
“Social justice” is a meaningless term. I don’t think anyone has a problem with handouts to people that truly have bad luck, although we can argue that the government is not the best way to do it. The problem comes with people that would deliberately keep having “bad luck” rather than try to achieve good fortune. It’s one thing to help someone that had their house burn down, it’s another to help someone that purposely burned down their house.
If you spend as much time with hardened criminals as he has done I think you get a pretty distorted sense of the world.
Ah, the irony…
Steve 2: Steveageddon
Yes, I think you may well be right – I’ve only seen a few reports which look at the effects of single-parent households tracked over time but it does seem on balance likely that stable mum-dad (and mum-mum) family units do seem to do better long term than single parents.
But even so (and not to go all social justice warrior on you or anything) I think it’s worth remembering that there quite a few successful single parents out there, such as the ones I mentioned, who buck the general trend.
Very OT
Suarez related
The problem comes with people that would deliberately keep having “bad luck” rather than try to achieve good fortune.
And I think that’s sort of the point of Dalrymple’s article – he’s describing a shift in expectations and values (if such they can be called) among a significant number of people. A shift that tilts towards a kind of generational moral squalor.
Nikw211 – this is the thing. The fear of stigmatising the good parents has stymied serious discussion of what to do about all the bad ones we’re creating through government policy.
We’re – what? More than 6 decades along since the founding of the British welfare state? High time we evaluated how it’s doing against its stated objectives.
See also Heather Mac Donald, here, here and here. As you’ll see, the correlations and statistics are hardly encouraging.
In the third link, a podcast, she describes various “community organisers” pretending that Chicago’s poverty and crime stats have nothing whatsoever to do with those “diffused” family arrangements advocated by Madeleine Schwartz, Laurie Penny et al. The idea that sub-optimal family arrangements might often have sub-optimal outcomes was, she discovered, practically taboo. As Mac Donald points out, “The sky-high illegitimacy rate meant that black boys were growing up in a world in which it was normal to impregnate a girl and then take off. When a boy is raised without any social expectation that he will support his children and marry his children’s mother, he fails to learn the most fundamental lesson of personal responsibility.”
Which doesn’t sound like a recipe for “one of the most exciting things to happen to the American social pattern since sexual liberation,” as Ms Schwartz would have us believe.
The problem comes with people that would deliberately keep having “bad luck” rather than try to achieve good fortune.
I grew up alongside people who had a mixed bunch of aspirations. One guy went to the local college to learn washing machine repair. Another got an apprenticeship as a sparky and now runs his own business. Another was a bit of a Del Boy salt of the earth wheeler dealer type, who now owns a couple of florists.
But there were others too – the guy who got into booze and drugs in a big way and is now a professional layabout with four illegitimate kids he doesn’t support. The other chap who achieved his career ambition of being declared medically unfit to work by the age of 26, and now pootles around in his free disability car, fetching his fish supper dinners and crates of beer from the supermarket.
Worst of all: the girl who became a junkie and then a prostitute and was found dead near the canal, at the age of 22. At one time, she was a mischievous tomboy with a cheery big smile.
What separated the first group of kids from the second? There wasn’t much difference in income, we were all at the lower end of the working class. We all went to similar state schools. We all lived in the same housing estate.
The first group wasn’t noticeably cleverer than the second when we were teenagers hanging about, smoking and drinking cheap booze under orange sodium street lamps on bleak autumn nights.
What the guys who did well have in common is that they came from families that expected them to work for a living. Families that didn’t tolerate people dropping litter on their doorsteps and who were upset if their teenagers came home drunk: bourgeois families.
The other group grew up in dysfunctional families, usually without a Dad. All of them grew up in households where permanent dependence on the State was the norm.
This is the human cost of the welfare state. This is what they tell us is “social justice”.
You know, I am very hesitant to use the word troll and I may be pushing the envelope of my own limited definition, but the following pains me for reasons I don’t fully understand (I usually blame these things on being an engineer). I’ve disengaged myself but I can’t help watching as cycles of wit and intelligence and wordsmith talents of which I am often in awe are wasted on the disingenuous deceptions, obfuscations, implications of reducto ad absurdum, yaddas, yaddas, yaddas of the one called Minnow.
In that regard, I’d like to put forward the following challenge. Since that same urge every seven year old has to toy with a loose tooth causes me to read through the argumentations, if anyone here can get Minnow to admit, without qualification, to being wrong about even the most absurd of his claims (thinking specifically here of single mother subsidy == engineering work on govt contracts specifically, but anything concrete will do) I’ll wager 20 of those pound-thingy’s y’all use for wompum (too lazy to google the £ symbol that ain’t on my keyboard) to be donated to the Noble Cause of The Rickety Barge. Any takers?
I think that this summarizes one of the inherent flaws in leftist thinking:
The idea that sub-optimal family arrangements might often have sub-optimal outcomes was, she discovered, practically taboo.
Because some single parents manage to get along just fine, we can’t stigmatize single-motherhood in general, despite the fact that single-motherhood is often a cause of sub-optimal outcomes. Because some welfare recipients are victims of truly horrible luck, we have to give all welfare recipients vast leeway with our tax dollars (and then wonder why despite spending massive amounts of money on people “down on their luck” poverty never goes away).
“Let people who have had bad luck receive some money to improve their lives”
There is so much comedy in those words. Such cluelessness would be cute if we did not know what evils it leads to.
You will always get more of what you subsidize and less of what you don’t.
It is rather simple once you take to phoney compassion out of the equation.
Fact: Everything is getting worse in the Western World. That is sign that what we have been doing is wrong. We need to do something different or go down with the insanity of wondering why things aren’t doing what we want.
Start by rolling back immigration and stop with the welfare state … stop subsidizing everything. And get government snout out of my face.
WTP: “You know, I am very hesitant to use the word troll…”
You can’t call Minnow a troll, because they don’t exist, except in your fevered, swivel-eyed neo-liberal neo-patriarchal mind. And anyway, Minnow defines troll differently, and correctly. Unlike you or me.
Anyway, I came across this yesterday:
http://classicalvalues.com/2014/06/the-world-explained-whether-i-like-it-or-not/
The last sentence seems particularly apposite.
he’s describing a shift in expectations and values (if such they can be called)
And incentives.
Steveageddon: “Working class people hate chavs.”
John West: “Everything is getting worse in the Western World.”
Two truths, simply stated.
Headline of the day?
Social justice is indeed a term with no real definition- unless one adds an “-ist” to “social”.
@Steve: What separated the first group of kids from the second? There wasn’t much difference in income, we were all at the lower end of the working class. We all went to similar state schools. We all lived in the same housing estate.
Absolutely- it’s those much-derided bourgeois values that win it every time, especially when adopted by single parents. Diane Abbott for instance…
Saw two t-shirts on the street yesterday:
“Party all night, sleep all day”
“Thug forever”
I’m sure that “bad luck” explains any economic difficulties these American chavs may suffer.
@Minnow
“Let people who have had bad luck”
Since you’re all about the data, what’s this thing called ‘luck’ and how exactly do you measure it?
And vis a vis benefits/corporate welfare (both of which I’m against) how can you – with a straight face – argue that because X exists it is not right or proper to discuss Y?
“what’s this thing called ‘luck’ and how exactly do you measure it?”
Undeserved good luck is when you study hard in school, foregoing parties and luxuries in order to get a good career without going into debt. Undeserved good luck is avoiding luxuries and travel, and saving for retirement and emergencies.
Undeserved bad luck is partying every night, never studying, drinking and taking drugs, never learning enough (in technical skills or social skills) to become employable, never trying to be a valued employee, having babies at age 15, and hanging out with low-lifes and criminals.
Clearly the lucky ones must help the unlucky ones to live in comfort. I mean, like, it’s obvious, dude.
John West: “Fact: Everything is getting worse in the Western World.”
You are, of course, absolutely right. Unless you compare life in the Western World to life ABSOLUTELY ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD.
Seriously. Read some history. Trace your family tree, anything. Those of us in the modern west are more free, more prosperous, safer from violence, healthier better informed and with loads more access to cool shit than about 99.9999999999% of all the human beings who have ever lived.
Annoying people exist, bad people go unpunished, politicians are on the make. That was just as true, probably even more so, when you could be hung for stealing and had a close to even chance of dying before you reached adulthood, and it’s just as true, probably even more so, in Iraq or Pakistan or Sudan or Nigeria, to pick four countries that have been in the news for utter barbarism recently, right now.
Not saying there aren’t things worth complaining about or campaigning against here and now. But for Christ’s sake, a bit of perspective please. Western capitalist democracies with sustainable social democratic safety nets are about as close to paradise on earth as our species has yet managed.
Patrick, your point is good, as far as it goes. We do indeed live in good times. However, you may not appreciate how far all that we have is under threat.
My background has some overlap with Steve’s. We both, I think, understand how fine the line can be between civilisation and barbarism, and how prosperity depends on the first, and how the second can kill it: we have seen both at close quarters. I think we both appreciate that essential components of free civilisations are liberty and opportunity.
We probably both know the truth of the observation: Clogs to clogs in three generations. As an accountant, I have seen it more than once. It can happen to nations and civilisations.
I live in a place where a great civilisation grew, rotted, and died. Later, it recovered, but I only have to step out of the front door to see some remaining evidence of an ancient death. Before the Barbarians arrived, this place rotted from within (Yes, I too read history) and some of the forces working to weaken Western civilisation were at work 1,800 years ago. Principally, the cynicism and Trahison des Clercs which so often figure here at David’s. Also, mass parasitism within the State and among the people, to touch on the current topic.
The Barbarians have outposts in the West, as they did in the old civilisation. The Clercs encourage them.
I am too old now to do anything much about it, though if I ever return to Britain with an army at my back – preferably the British Army – there will be a few changes. Meantime, you should perhaps know that the wit often displayed here is frequently a cover for anger.
Pulling a number of observations together . . . . .
Theodore Dalrymple . . . but the question of whether a man would be a suitable father is no longer a question because there are no fathers:
JuliaM: Do single mothers provide jobs?
Minnow: Bringing up a baby is productive labour.
Nikw211: single mothers do come from quite a wide range of economic and social backgrounds.
I’m thinking of three women I know, one a marketing manager and the other two both senior sales directors, who are currently single mothers who it would be hard pressed to say are bad mothers and whose children are bright, articulate and well-behaved.
And also . . .
I’ve only seen a few reports which look at the effects of single-parent households tracked over time but it does seem on balance likely that stable mum-dad (and mum-mum) family units do seem to do better long term than single parents.
But even so (and not to go all social justice warrior on you or anything) I think it’s worth remembering that there quite a few successful single parents out there, such as the ones I mentioned, who buck the general trend.
Steve 2: Steveageddon: What the guys who did well have in common is that they came from families that expected them to work for a living.
Civilis: Because some single parents manage to get along just fine, we can’t stigmatize single-motherhood in general, despite the fact that single-motherhood is often a cause of sub-optimal outcomes.
. . and so on . . .
An easy aid here is a fact that I’ve noted for years from my background and the backgrounds of others. Very simply, that A) any common animal can breed, whether the animal is four legged, no legged, or two legged. In Addition: B) A parent is the one who raises a child and at no time ever is being the donor of the DNA related to the raising of the child. B1) Barely being present or involved in raising a child is not being a parent.
And no amount of vehement screaming denials from anyone will ever change these facts.
In my case, I was bred by a pair of extremely malevolent psychopaths so that they could collect the social benefits of being parents, and thus being able to collect was the entirety of their interest in me or anything I did. The only reason I even made it to college was so that they could point at the resulting diploma.
More recent conversations with cousins wound up confirming that the cousins could tell that there was something amiss, but they could not quite figure out exactly what was going on. One cousin remembers that among her immediate family, a common reaction when she was growing up was Gee, there’s something repeatedly odd with that branch of The Family. I have a pair of uncles who wound up as alcoholics, one a drug addict, both dead sometime in their thirties, forties. What I and the cousins have sorted out is that I was very clearly bred to be the next dead alcoholic. . . . except that I have a brain, and, while I did get very thoroughly conditioned for failure, I find the taste of alcohol to be horrible . . . . So I’m still alive, and have been able to slowly sort through what was done to me and finally piece together what the expected result was.
At this point what my cousins and I have established and remain quite aware of is that there are parents, that rather a few of my cousins are parents. Several of my cousins had children, and they actively raised those children and only in raising their children, caring for their children, proactively being involved in the best interests of their children as the children grew and developed, are those cousins—or anyone else—able to claim to be parents. And then by contrast there are the monsters that bred me and at most are IDed as being breeders, and that description also applies when reading any of the headlines in the news of children assaulted, abandoned, denied, Etc . . . .
There is an interesting exercise that I’ve noticed when reading the news. Find a story where something happens to a child, and read of the adults around the child. Based on what the adults do and not any claim by the story of being “parents”, see if the correct word is indeed parent—or if the more correct term is breeder.
I like Robert Heinlein’s definition of “bad luck”.