We’ve Lost the Culture War
I saw a message on NextDoor that really got to me. A local woman said her parents had taken her kids to a public playground to play, and that two boys came along, dressed in camo, and proceeded to play with plastic guns. They were horrified, complained to the parents, and they left. And the woman had reported the incident to non-emergency police. Those responding all seemed as horrified as she was. Inappropriate! Frightening! Those boys might pick up a real gun and use it! I said, you reported to the police that boys were playing with plastic guns in a playground. I don’t think my remark was appreciated.
This generation of adults would have swooned, and hidden away from our neighborhood play growing up in the 40’s and 50’s. We played with toy guns! Boys and girls alike! If there was a toy, it was likely a gun. We played cowboys and indians, cops and robbers, Nazi’s and GI’s and we kidnapped each other, tied each other up, held our buddies for ransom, played in the streets, in the local cemetery, threw balls at each other, and rocks as well. As a child, I saw a doctor once that I recall. There were no child psychologists, no shrinks locally, and doctors were for ear infections and broken bones. Except for the family down the street that all got TB.
None of the boys I knew back then grew up to shoot anyone else, except those that went off to fight wars in Korea and Vietnam. Some died fighting to protect our way of life, our liberties.
We didn’t get analyzed and labeled with this disability and that disability, and were largely something you don’t see anymore! Normal! Normal is now a minority!
We didn’t have Drag Queen Story Hour, and while folks shudder over boys normally playing war and with toy guns, in todays frightened society, we find Drag Queens displaying themselves for children to be utterly sick, and not “appropriate.” While folks in that NextDoor thread find boys playing like boys, preparing themselves to be MEN someday find that “inappropriate.”
Excuse me! We have a medical industrial complex, experts at finding a “syndrome” for us to suffer, turning the nations children into wimps, afraid of everything, labeled with every imaginable, and imagined “disability” crippling them from playing normal childhood games, and folks think this is progress? Who is going to defend our liberties? Who is going to fight the wars? What is going to guard the children in schools from the confused folks who think they are not the gender they were born as, who get upset and pick up an AR15? Why, who is going to wear the guns and police the neighborhoods you live in?
Todays children are deprived normal free range play. The type we experienced that actually goes a long way toward training them to be civilized, to know what to do when in threatening situations, how to live in a society that is varied and complex. Mommy isn’t going to be there when they grow up. How about letting your little boys grow a pair? Learn to fight? Learn to play?