I’ve been mulling over a Persuasion piece from a week or so ago. This piece, which is well worth a read, examines the growing problem of family estrangement.
One particular story, that of Cynthia, stood out for me. Cynthia describes herself as a “full-on extrovert” and she’s a 56-year old mum with 3 children. She’s been trying to avoid her middle child, a daughter, cutting off ties with her.
Now, families can be very difficult things to navigate, and I’m not going to pretend that there are not very serious problems in some families when it comes to ‘parenting’ styles - not to mention outright abuse.
In my view, there is no Circle of Hell deep enough for those who abuse children. I’m talking about the old-fashioned notion of abuse - serious sexual, physical, or emotional abuse. I’ve known survivors of such abuse, and the damage done, its persistence and its depth, is truly horrifying and heart-breaking.
It’s always difficult to get a truly accurate picture of what’s going on from a few select quotes in an article - after all, a life and all its myriad interactions and relationships can’t be summarized adequately in a paragraph. But let’s take Cynthia’s words and perception at face value. Here’s the relevant part of the Persuasion article
They live in a wealthy Connecticut suburb where social dynamics are complicated and Cynthia says “people will walk over your child’s dead body to advance their own kid.” During high school, Kiley was bookish and shy; her teachers adored her, but she had only a handful of friends. When the girls in her class formed a new clique during senior year, those remaining few friends finally abandoned her.
“Her longtime best friend just dropped her and was being really mean,” says Cynthia. “I ran into this girl in town and I told her she should shape up; they weren’t 13 any more. And that was it—my daughter was ostracized for the rest of the year. Because of me, she had nothing to do on graduation night.”
No, Cynthia, it wasn’t because of you - it was because your daughter’s friends weren’t friends at all. You tried to protect your daughter and, sure, it might have backfired a bit, but you actually did your daughter a favour. She may not be old enough, or mature enough, to have realized it - but you don’t need “friends” like this in your life.
You are not the “toxic” one here, Cynthia.
And yet we read further
This began a period of near estrangement. Mother and daughter lived in the same house but did not speak. Cynthia was afraid Kiley would leave for college in the fall and that would be the end of their relationship. So she found a therapist who helped her examine her role in the situation and take responsibility for her “toxic” behavior.
Now, with the proviso I’ve already noted, that you can’t know the detail of every interaction between mum and daughter, it seems to me, here, that the mum isn’t the one with the serious problem.
We can find evidence for this in the following part
But they had a setback just a few days later when Cynthia suggested that Kiley use the library rather than buying all of her books.
“The fight that ensued over that was so huge,” Cynthia recalls. “She said ‘I don’t know if I can live with this family, we have very different value systems. I feel like I’m going through everything alone.’”
“But what you said, suggesting she go to the library, wasn’t so terrible,” I interrupt. “I can’t think of a mother who hasn’t said something similar.”
Cynthia disagrees politely. “No. I was trying to change her, instead of respecting her for who she is. So I apologized and told her I was still working to change how I interact with her. I’m the adult. I have to take ownership of what I did.”
In the words of the Swedish chef from The Muppet Show :
Daughter, presumably, complains she doesn’t have enough money to buy books. Mum suggests she might use the library instead. Daughter throws a wobbly.
And this, this, is cause for a family estrangement?
Vert der actual Ferk?
Now, there’s more going on here that we’re not made aware of, or daughter has some serious growing up to do. And maybe a bit of both.
You weren’t trying to “change” your daughter, Cynthia, no matter what those expensive “therapists” might be trying to tell you - you were offering a simple, practical, and helpful solution.
What has happened to make us all1 so hyper-sensitive?
This article came to mind again as I try to piece together what went wrong with the horrific attack in Clapham, London UK, in the last few days.
On Wednesday night this last week, some piece of human excrement threw a corrosive, toxic, substance on a mum and her two children leaving them with what are likely to be permanent, life-long, disfigurements.
What has really got things frothed up, though, is that this piece of human shit came to the UK from Afghanistan in 2016, had his application for asylum status rejected twice - then commits a serious sexual offence against a woman, and, after this, went on to have his third claim for asylum accepted by the UK government.
Vert der Ferk, indeed.
What the hell was this useless and vile man still doing in the UK after having committed a serious sexual offence for which he was put on the Sex Offenders Register?
Human rights are all fine and dandy, but when are we going to accept the principle that someone who commits a serious criminal offence has, to some extent, voluntarily given up some of those rights?
There is no way this nasty man from Afghanistan should have the ‘right’ to remain in the UK. As far as I’m concerned, he voluntarily gave up those rights when he committed a serious sexual offence.
So, what has all this got to do with the Persuasion article?
Before I (probably) launch into a rant, you may want to take a peek at a more level-headed, but still hugely critical, examination of subsequent events.
What happened was that BBC Newsnight invited two people onto their show to discuss the whole asylum issue, particularly in regard to this evil man and his evil actions. One was the Tory (conservative) MP Caroline Nokes and the other was Labour (socialist) MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy in whose constituency this appalling attack took place.
What happened next was completely off-the-scale. It broke every “vert der Ferk” metering device in the country.
After some comments about how it wasn’t about the asylum process and not being able to comment on the legal processes involved, Nokes went full-on “me”.
She turned everything round to the microaggressions she had faced as a woman.
A mother and her two young kids were in some hospital somewhere, in pain, and facing a life coping with disfiguring injuries, and this fucking Nokes idiot wants to talk about herself? And about microaggressions?
I cannot write what I actually want to say here.
Apparently, “microaggressions” (whatever the fuck they are) are like some kind of gateway drug to acid attacks according to Nokes, who said
It may start with a microaggression . . . but it can end up with something incredibly serious
What in the everloving fuck is wrong with our politicians?
Don’t answer that one - I think we know.
The kind of entitlement that Cynthia’s daughter (seems to have) exhibited is writ large in the egregious, and synthetic, ‘concerns’ of Nokes. Nothing matters unless it’s all about themselves to these broken people, does it?
And then we have the odious little moron who is the Mayor of London piping up. Sadiq Khan, in one of the most spectacularly stupid comments of the millennium so far, said we need to
educate young people about the dangers of these things
in reference to this attack. I’m not sure how we would have ‘educated’ Abdul Ezedi, the attacker, who received his education in Afghanistan, but Khan’s statement is even more stupid than this.
Ezedi didn’t think “Oh shit, I thought I was throwing a safe substance on them” did he?
No, he threw the stuff on them precisely because he knew it to be toxic, corrosive, and dangerous.
Ezedi is dangerous, but so, too, are people like Khan and Nokes, in my view. Our politicians have their priorities completely fucked up - and that’s dangerous for the country.
It’s probably too much to ask politicians to care more about the people they are supposed to represent, to serve, than themselves, but they’re not even pretending to are they?
This whole pandering to the “me” culture is toxic - truly toxic. This rise of the illiberal under the guise of liberty is corroding our societies from within.
There is one, and perhaps only one good thing in all this. The attacker, Ezedi, appears to have managed to splash himself with the toxic substance he used, leaving a nasty burn mark on his face
Good. It’s the least he deserves.
One can only imagine the pain and suffering that mum and her two young children are going through, right now.
And what do our fucking appalling politicians serve up?
Look at me - I’ve been the victim of microaggressions
I don’t have enough swearwords at my disposal to describe my utter contempt at this useless twat of a politician.
Well, obviously not all - but you get my meaning
The good thing is that this kind of buffoonery can’t continue, and whatever is built on top of it is doomed to collapse with it.
The bad news is that there’s an awful lot that has been. “Weak men make bad times” and all that. It’s coming— the madness is approaching its crescendo. It won’t be long and such ludicrousness will be an unaffordable luxury. Hard times ahead. Get to know your neighbors — you’re going to have to look after each other.
The Clapham attack: I am (nearly) lost for words at what this says about the sheer lousiness of 21st Britain....saddled as it is with the most contemptible chattering class in the entire Western world (which is quite something). The Spiked article you linked says that "a clip of the [Newsnight] exchange has gone viral ". Well I Have a Dream....just imagine if there actually was a decent political party on the ballot paper at the forthcoming election and they made all their party political broadcasts just a re-showing of that clip. They'd win!