Nonsequential Links III

Still more links of interest. (My comments in parentheses.)

It is hard for many white women - or black women, for that matter - to understand that many Latinas raised in modern America were, in fact, raised with gender bias and discrimination that would have seemed normal in the mainstream 150 or 200 years ago. (Well, my sister wasn't raised that way but then my sister wasn't raised in typical Latin fashion. Even the Anglo girls I knew in high school would often admit to being trained to wait on their brothers hand and foot while my father was more a believer in equal responsibilities for boys and girls. I'd like to think today's generation are raising their kids more like my father did but I don't know...)

“When faced with monsters, we have to be monstrous ourselves.” Well, no, but even if it were so, think one step deeper: What happens when the monsters are merely in your mind?

I'm the last person to deny the depth and irreconcilability of many of our conflicts, but neither do I want to give any credence to those on the left or the right who are determined to make enemies of people who are merely their opponents -- and their fellow Americans. (Yes, it’s tempting to dismiss this last two op-eds as so much conservative hypocrisy but they have a point. As much as I sympathize with the liberal cause, I really despise some of the more hateful things that have been said in the name of liberalism. That’s not what it’s meant to stand for.)

Imagine, for just a moment, that you could travel back in time seven years to the morning of September 11, 2001 - in an armed jet fighter. Say you should happen by Manhattan, around morning rush hour. A passenger jet -- no, two! -- are barreling towards the Twin Towers. (Why there hasn't been an alternative history novel written along these lines, I'll never know.)

Still, Ginger fascinated me. That tart tongue, that supreme self-confidence, the way she took any obstacle from the Depression to a catty costar and rolled right over it. (Yes, I've linked to this before, but hey, in light of my recent Ginger Rogers post, it only seemed appropriate to link to it again.)

The problem with ALL books about the robber-baron era, though, is that there's just no way to make any of these guys sympathetic. (Oddly appropriate this op-ed.)

Our world, crazed and vicious as it is, can't be entirely corrupt, disgusting, and unbearable -- not while it has minds like this in it. (I have always been a fan of Terry Pratchett but Ms. Charnas expresses my opinion of his work far better than I can.)

People should remember the dead for what they mean to them, not for the merchandise to be had after their demise.
(What Scalzi said.)

The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. (Had I known David Foster Wallace could write like this, I might have made more of an effort to read his writing while he was still alive. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.)