Not much for name calling

I’m not an advocate of name calling, but it can serve a purpose. Palin has her "haters" for everyone who disagrees with her. (The overly simple translation she makes is that I hate her, not just her ideas. That’s not necessarily true but some people are very narrow in their thinking about the connection between belief and believer.)

There are the "birthers". That seems to quickly encompass the issue at hand and make people sound ludicrous at the same time. Convenient. It was ludicrous so that was justified.

To label those incapable of having a rational discussion of the issues, might we call these town hell criers the "shriekers"?

Is labeling a good thing?

Labels tend to lump lots of people into a big group without attention to the individual. It’s too easy to label someone who is not deserving of such a label. Easy to be served with a label – harder to shake it off.

However, I’m feeling favor towards dubbing these exhibitionists "shriekers" since this is a derogatory term that may discourage such behavior to continue. Plus, it’s pretty obvious to all if you are one or not.

I sure would like society to reject this kind of irrational, emotional, tantrum-throwing behavior over serious issues that affect us all. (Yo, buddy, it’s not just you paying taxes.) When I see shrieking, I immediately think, "Oh, this person has no reasonable opinion and is too easily swayed by emotion and fear-mongering." I don’t trust their judgment. But, that’s just me. Apparently, Congress finds it intimidating. They want to grease the squeaky wheel and soothe their anger. That’s bullshit. It’s like giving a toddler the biggest lolly in the store for embarrassing the hell out of you with his hissy-fit. For a healthy, respectable, functioning society, it should not be tolerated.

Skeptic meaning for the young

Many of today’s kids, at least my kid, seems to think it’s perfectly OK to have fun believing in ghosts, unicorns, witchcraft, demons, UFOs, vampires, and the like. They appear to understand that much of this is by choice and strictly for entertainment purposes only. It seems fair to think that childish things will eventually be discarded.

But, I’m concerned.

During a dinnertime discussion I pressed the issue about the lucky numbers that appeared in our Chinese fortune cookies. The concept of lucky numbers is silly. I got mad that my husband wanted to bait my rising irritation by saying how the restaurant lady must have been guided by destiny to pick our individual fortunes and lucky numbers in a mass produced, poorly tasting “cookie”. My older daughter (11) thinks of me as the party pooper on these topics by suggesting alternate ways of simply thinking about the issue that end up being the less mysterious interpretations.

Today, she said my skepticism “gets old”. Why don’t I just be open-minded and let people believe in unicorns if they want to? What’s the harm?

Well, she did need some schoolin’ on this point. Not being preachy but I did give her some less warm and fuzzy examples — the recent cases of children who died because their parents prayed and trusted their God to heal the sickness instead of doctors; how people still kill so-called witches in third-world countries; that people lose their life savings by giving it to psychics and astrologers instead of sound financial advisors; and of families torn apart by false memories of abuse implanted by therapists. Finally, I told her how mainstream parents are falling prey to the nonsense of the antivax promoters whose tactics allow for the resurgence of long-supressed childhood illnesses.

Would she rather believe in the truth or an interesting story? What about when it really counts?

This was the first that she made the connection between critical thinking and life-changing or life-ending situations. At least, I hope she did.