Prepares to be stoned... (with rocks, not that other type)

So recently there have been a number of things flying around, like Holder calling us a "nation of cowards", etc, etc... which were well summed up in this article by Jeff Adair. After several weeks of pondering and secretly thinking, "gee, they're right, and I've thought that all along," I feel that we currently live in a nation of people afraid to speak what they truly feel... perhaps for fear of "offending someone else." Should we blame the Political correctness movement of the 90s? Dunno. All I know is that I had thoughts this morning, thoughts that I will share in just a moment, and feared that if I voiced them I would be either flamed online or publicly stoned... Am I really scared of what others think of me? No - if you know me well, you know I have very little regard for that. There's still something about the atmosphere of our country that makes me feel like I shouldn't say certain things. So here're my thoughts of this morning...

Last night I was talking to my mother in law about how parents don't give kids much outside time anymore (she was suggesting creating a fenced "secure" area that was just purely nature with a place off away where parents could sit & still watch, but childrens could run free without fear - kinda reminds me of a dogpark) and this led to a discussion about whether kids are really less safe today than when I was growing up in the early 80s, or is it all a reaction due to media fear-mongering that if you let your kid out of your sight for 1 second they will be scooped up & stolen and or you'll get the rotten-parent of the year award. This got me to thinking... Maybe kids are somewhat less safe these days if left to their own devices to play in neighborhoods because not many people are home anymore. It seems like a double-income household is more the norm these days, and so not many people are ever home. If fewer people are home, there are fewer eyes in any given neighborhood to watch out & make sure everything is ok. I've felt for a while that double income families are what have led to the decline of a "neighborhood" as it was stereotypically defined in the 20th century.

This led me to think this morning that maybe, inadvertently (and this is the part that will get me stoned), part of this economic meltdown can be linked to and blamed on the feminist movement. Don't get me wrong.... I am glad that I can drive a car & not be arrested, unlike in Saudi Arabia.... but ok, so women used to predominantly stay home, take care of the house, raise the kids. I've spent some time staying home between jobs. It sucks. You know why it sucks? Nobody else is home. None of my friends or neighbors are around during the day & I feel isolated. I can easily imagine that if one person of every household was home during the day, we'd all go stir crazy, talk to neighbors, go over to "borrow a cup of sugar" and end up staying for an hour chatting over a cup of coffee or keeping each other company while doing the laundry. I know that not everyone in a neighborhood would get along or be friends, but there might be more cohesion and more of a community interest in knowing what's going on outside your four walls. OK, so feminist movement gets into full swing... big push for women in the workplace. The push gets so big that eventually, socially, you feel like you're a martyr if you're female & don't have a job. So it starts slowly, double income families start popping up more and more. Double income means more money free to spend. More money leads to some people upgrading the American dream from a house & a car to a nice house and an expensive car. Americans have been ill-disposed to the "keeping up with the Jones'" demon, I think since this country began... so now more normal people have more stuff, and more normal people feel like they need more stuff because other people have that other stuff. So we turn into a consumer economy. Then, it's not enough to have a job as a woman, but now the new status thing is the power-jobs in the 80s & 90s. MORE MONEY! But since we make more money, we need to look like we have more money to impress other people or because at this point we feel like we're entitled to it. So then people start pushing to get more stuff or bigger stuff or better stuff and the credit companies feel like it's not risky anymore, credit cards begin getting more prevalent and we're now able to EASILY buy stuff we can't afford. YippEE!!!! MORE stuff! And then we're not happy with the nice simple house when we can buy a big mansion-looking thing, that has dropped into our price range because builders figured out where they could cheap out on materials. And so it got to be a thing for normal middle-class people to go in for the faux luxury stuff that's out of their price range because we got too far away from the reality of hardship and too used to the money of double income, so people were more willing to stretch to get that better thing and more companies were willing to stretch and extend risky credit because they're also too used to the money.... Then Boom. So I'd really like to see a socio-economic study done to see how much, if at all, any of this really stemmed from the feminist movement and the huge push for women in the workplace. OK, begin the rock throwing now.

In other news, I strongly believes that Teavana's tea called Matevana, should be renamed to Crack-vana.

Peace out. If you don't hear from me again, you'll know the raging feminist mobs have gotten to me. It's not that I don't like being able to work or think that women should stay home.... but if one person from every household worked and the other would stay home, then it would be interesting to see how much companies might scream that "there aren't enough workers available".... hmmm...