The View from a Drawbridge

Tag: society

  • Personal Responsibility

    No one can make me do the right thing.

  • Civilians vs. Law Enforcement

    We have a completely different worldview. And that’s scary.

  • In Spite Of, Not Because Of

    I have heard a lot of amazing stories of survival over the years.

  • Salvator Mundi Indeed

    So, yeah, this happened: Some anonymous person paid 450 million for Salvator Mundi, a painting by Leonardo da Vinci. A painting of Jesus, Savior of the World. How outraged he would have been. To put it in context, that’s more than the annual gross domestic product of Tonga, Micronesia, Palau and Kiribati. If it were…

  • The Dark Shadow Cast by the Golden Rule

    Most societies seem to have some version of the Golden Rule. That only makes sense. It would be hard to live amongst one’s fellow humans without one. I really do try to do unto others as I would have them do unto me. I can’t imagine functioning any other way. The thing I struggle with…

  • Cooperation

    Once, I was crossing a very long bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway in Florida. Actually, I should say that I was trying to cross it. Traffic was backed up for miles. Ah well. At least I had a wonderful view. And then I heard the sirens. An ambulance was attempting to get by. My heart…

  • Checks and Balances

    Our Pussy-Grabber-in-Chief seems to be increasingly frustrated that he’s not able to run roughshod over the constitution as he planned to do once Putin got him into office. Poor him. Thank goodness the founding fathers had the foresight to put some checks and balances into the system, or we’d be in even worse shape than…

  • A Maternal Instinct for Benign Neglect

    I really have to hand it to my mother. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I was exposed to the idea that parents were capable of disliking their children. Ma never gave me that impression, so the concept never occurred to me. When I was in my early 20’s, my mother admitted to…

  • Aggression is the New Regression

    In the near future, when the leader of the free world is going to be someone who publicly declares “I’d like to punch him in the face,” and also condones waterboarding and other war crimes, can an uptick in violence be far behind? There is a thin veil between humanity and aggression. That veil is…

  • All in a Huff over Vocabulary Reserved for Women

    Recently I had a moral disagreement with someone, so I left. Later he told me that I “stomped out in a huff”. That kind of fascinated me. First of all, I would look rather silly, at the age of 51, if I “stomped” anywhere. And here I thought I was leaving out of respect for…