I don’t think this is a slippery slope at all. This is the logical reaction of a culture conditioned over generations to think of liberty as the absence of personal inconvenience.

We can’t mask ourselves during a global pandemic. We can’t consider some people’s bathroom preferences. We gotta keep buying bigger cars because everyone else keeps buying bigger cars. We stand our ground. And why not? It’s our ground we rightfully stole from indigenous people. This type of myopic, anti-social brain disease to so ingrained into the American psyche it’s surprising we’re not dedicating a holiday for the guy.

My my my, those oil pipelines are looking awfully explody.

We did it folks. The system succeeded in ensuring justice for this man. It only cost him his entire adult life.

Neat journal. I haven’t read your other posts, but if this one is anything to go by then I’m sure the rest will jettison me right back to my college days. Especially the bit about no one in your history class wanting to participate. I’m sure you’ve started to notice this is par for the course in most lecture classes. Welcome to higher ed.

I think what strikes me most about your post is the sense of newness these classes and interactions have on you. I’m not saying you’re naive or anything. No, I appreciate how earnest you are about your feelings. Even though you’re posting to internet strangers, it shows more bravery than I had first year of undergrad. And talking about nervousness, apprehension, but also excitement and anticipation so readily, like it’s all very new to you—that’s something I miss. As you age you realize more and more that there’s very little that’s truly unique about your experiences. Everyone has done everything, and there’s always someone you can relate to. It’s a notion that can fill your with a sense of community. Sometimes it make you feel like one little droplet in the ocean.

I have two masters degrees. I’m a teacher. Each year I see the same expressions. The bemused to the ecstatic on that first day of school. You get a sense, over time, of who’s who from these little insights. I have to fight that urge to put my students in little boxes, predefined roles that they must adhere to based on years of watching the same, unique children wander into my classroom.

And here I am digesting your work, your honesty and courage—and trying to put you in a little box too. I read your words and feel so many of the same emotions echoing in my head from years ago. I think of my far off memories of college as banality. Like time somehow flattened my unique experience. Crushed and press-molded it into a carbon copy of my colleagues’. And that it’ll happen to yours. But those thoughts, intrusive as they are, don’t actually reflect reality. They’re just the unconscious bitterness that remain as youth ripens into middle age, I guess. Hopefully your professor with the hot garbage Dilbert take isn’t going to be my future.

Anyway, thanks for putting me back there. It’s good to remember. These are good times to be who you are and to live as you are. Be well.

And the follow up American question, “No really, where are you FROM?”

Anime vs Cartoon

It appears you have chosen violence.

I’d still categorize burning police stations as harm reduction.