No doubt about it – car seats for kids have gotten way out of control. To the point where it is detrimental for the country as a whole! (i.e., lost productivity, expenses).
Birth Control and Enstupidation
by Eric Peters
One of the things that shied me away from having kids when I could have had them was the knowledge that if I did have them, I would be forced by the government – and armed government workers – to buy “safety” seats.
Plural.
As in several – as the child transitioned from baby to toddler to kid to almost-adolescent.
Many states force kids to be strapped in until they’re almost old enough to drive themselves.
This means probably five or six “safety” seats per kid. If you have two kids, the cost of all those “safety” seats probably would have been enough to put one through his freshman year of college.
Add in the cost of a stupid-huge vehicle (another huge and unnecessary expense) since kids can’t legally sit in the front passenger seat of a regular cab pick-up, say – because the got-damned government-mandated air bag is dangerous.
It’s also forbidden to pile in half a dozen kids – because half a dozen “safety” seats won’t fit in one vehicle. So now you need several vehicles since you can’t carry your kids and your kid’s friends in just one.
This gets into money. It also takes much of the joy out of being a parent – and of being a kid.
And you don’t even see your kid/veal calf much – except in the rearview mirror. No sitting beside mom, where she can see – and talk – to her kid. Which when you think about it is probably less “unsafe” than mom having to crane her neck around (fighting the seatbelt she is forced to wear) in order to see – or talk directly – to her kid. It’s certainly less alienating.
No sitting in dad’s lap, holding the wheel.
Parent and child separated – by force. Because the government (which is to say, the busybodies who control the apparatus that is the government) forced airbags on them.
And then “safety” seats to Band-Aid the threat of the dangerous airbags.
All of this crammed down everyone’s throats because the busybodies who control the apparatus of government decided to impose their neurosis on everyone. Somehow, over the past 30 years, they acquired the power to impose it.
Result: We now live in Clover America.
A quick run to the store is impossible, a memory from halcyon days that seem almost phantasmagorical.
Instead, a ten minute ordeal of strapping the kid in first. Then unstrapping the kid when you get to the store. Then strapping him in again when it’s time to leave the store.
It ruins the spontaneity of just going for a drive.
Jump in! Let’s go!
No more.
It makes my teeth ache to see parents going through the drill. And the kids suffering through it, who will never see a car as something other than a kind of privatized paddy wagon.
I see the parental SUVs lined up around the block at the elementary school down the road. The kids no longer walk to the elementary school – even if their house is literally 200 yards down the road. It’s not ssssssssssssssaaaaafe for a 5th or 6th grader to walk home. Or even down the driveway. Except it was until fairly recently, before the rise of Clover America and its congenital/hysterical fear of . . . everything.
The result of which is a combination of government-imposed exasperation upon the adults – and enstupidation performed upon the children.
The parents become tired drones after six or seven (or more) years of strapping them in – and unstrapping them again. Over and over.
They are expected to be at their child’s side at all times. They drive the kid everywhere – even to the end of the driveway, to await the school bus because kids – almost-teenagers – can’t be allowed to find their own way there.
Even Halloween is now a strap-’em-in and haul them to the school gym thing. Walking around the neighborhood is dangerous!
When was the last time you saw a bunch of kids riding their bikes around the neighborhood – by themselves?
The result – probably intentional – is that the child remains a child, psychologically if not biologically.
Enstupidation proceeds from enforced infantilization.
A kid who is never permitted to progress toward adulthood by learning how – by being expected to handle – the 200-yard walk to school – or even the 20 yards down the driveway to await the school bus without waiting inside mommy’s SUV – is on the path to tap/swipe meatsackhood rather than adulthood.
A kind of chrysalis that never becomes a butterfly. Because wrapped in cellophane, to prevent the butterfly from emerging.
Which explains why socialism is popular again – among the youth, reared this way. What was dreary and suffocating to prior generations – who grew up with almost unimaginable personal freedom vs. the micromanaged unfreedom of these days – is normal and appealing to the generation that grew up strapped in, never out of sight of mom or dad.
They are ready to exchange one parent for another. They fear the idea of being responsible for themselves because they never learned how and so don’t want to know-how.
Future generations may look back on the wreckage of this time and divine its beginnings – ironically enough – in the ascension of the Safety Cult. Which turned out to be very dangerous – as well as a very sad – development.
