Well if they don’t want them counted for that, they should not be counted for anything which would not be in Alabama’s favor. I’m sure they realize. Sure.
Personal responsibility is only for brown people.
Well, if they want to decrease the number of seats Alabama has the House, that seems fine.
I don’t think that’s fair. I see nothing in there that paints that dad as a racist (I also didn’t see anything that pointed to him being Republican). I can very, very much sympathize with any parent put into these type of situations. I don’t know what this dad did or didn’t do to help his son before this tragedy, but as a parent, I’m keenly aware of the fact that you can have very little control sometimes. What you do after this happens is even tougher—do you expect the dad not to stand by his son?
I kinda wondered the same thing. No parent expects the worst from his child, and even when it happens, most stick by their kid. That in no way demeans the parent who quietly supports a monster like this. Parental love is pretty unconditional.
Exactly.
Parental love should be unconditional. .They’re just as devastated as the rest of that school I’m sure. I wonder how many have the position though but are part that alt-right ant-snowflake thing you see everywhere and if they realize that every child could be a snowflake in the right and unfortunate circumstance.
This is the weirdest sentiment to me, but I’ve got all sorts of weird-ass views on family.
Unconditional love does not mean you don’t hold your child accountable for their actions. it can mean while they’re in prison, you visit them in prison. You can also be horrified by what they’ve done and love them. And of course loving someone does not mean you’re expressing that love in a healthy way too so there’s… that.
I’m not sure this is true for me, in essence. I genuinely think less of my father knowing about his political views and activities to the point that it’s killed off the fondness I once felt for the man. I’m still grateful for the lifestyle he propelled me toward and the support he showed me growing up, but. . . I am unsure if I could call what exists between us now love.
I realize this is going in the other direction, but I often hear people say that love for parents is also unconditional, which strikes me as (exactly as ) absolutely ridiculous on its face (as the other way around).
One of the college application portfolios I reviewed this year included a personal essay about how the student was assumed to be a probable school shooter. Apparently he and some friends had written fan fiction inspired by the movie Clue (!) and posted it online. Years later, a concerned mom discovered the writing and sent it around to parents and the school administration as a possible ‘kill list’ (presumably he used real people in the story) and pretty soon he was ostracized in the classroom, lunchroom, and community. Ultimately his family decided to move.
I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, I don’t want any kid to unfairly be labeled as a school shooter type. On the other hand, I don’t want a kid who could be mistaken for a school shooter in my classroom! Not a great choice of essay subject, I decided.
I think of Parental love, aka from Father or Mother to child, not necessarily other way around. I am assuming that’s what Scuzz meant too. So I guess you would understand better if you have a child, maybe.
I think this is dependent on how you grow up. I might hate my dad’s political views, but he’s my dad. I love him. If I ever had to distance myself from him, I’d still love even if I never saw him… but I don’t expect that from everyone. I think it’s odder to not love a child…
Personally, I do not expect the parents of these mass murderers to stop loving their children. I might even understand if on some level they were blind or willful of events that led up to their crimes. All of these parents should be horrified by what their kids did, and no they should not be victim blaming, but bullying is a problem for a lot of kids I wish we could address, especially when Social Media allows them to keep going even after school which is terrible.
Something about that reasoning has always seriously rubbed me the wrong way, but I don’t want to turn this thread, or current topic of discussion, into “In Which Armando Tells Parents Why Liking Their Kids is Dumb and Also Bad Because Kids Suck” :)
I’m not going to belabor this, but you have no idea how much your parents love you until you have your own child and hold them in your arms.
It’s not the parents. It’s the Senator backing them up on it.
Of course this line of reasoning is true, but it’s also frequently overstated. Anyone you really love, you also kinda hate. It comes with the territory. My daughters are no exception.
That’s the right approach, in this or any other thread. Any discussion about child-parent relations always eventually comes back to “only parents can understand” so those of us without kids had best just stay quiet on the subject. Learned that lesson many years ago.
To be fair, that’s not me. I have two nephews though, and I can see no situation where I would ever stop loving either of them, but it would break my heart if they did something… awful. I am also first in line to take care of them as sons should happen to something which I told both my sisters, you had better not do anything to cause that.
I find it fun to fight about still, sometimes at least, because of how badly the dismissive tone cast towards non-parents bothers me… but noticeably less so in the context of discussing the moral merits of continuing to stick up for a sicko who gunned down a ton of kids.
Well I am hoping you hear me less as dismissive and more like… it is easier to understand forgiving parents of loving children who do terrible, terrible things if you understand the love and forgiveness is not exclusionary to responsibility.
I’m curious: it bothers you when people throw out the “you wouldn’t understand unless you’ve ” line? Is there something surprising about that? Would it bother you if someone was critiquing Indian food but had never eaten it or said X game sucked if they never played it or even watched a gameplay video?
I’m not talking about commenting on things that affect a person (e.g., taxes for schools or jail time for child offenders) even if they don’t directly have kids, but rather personal things like the feelings of a parent towards a child, as is being discussed here.
Or, are you simply talking about the manner/tone of how that’s conveyed?