2 commentsKids and politics
A picture from the 9/12 protests in DC:
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The look on this kid’s face is pretty scary to me. It looks like rage and determination, and there’s no way he really has a meaningful understanding to justify it. I’m fairly certain he doesn’t really understand what his shirt is saying.
Kids as political props are nothing new, on the right or left, and it’s almost always bad. There are a few exceptions of really smart kids who have read and learned enough to have a meaningful understanding, including one I think I saw at the Republican convention on TV, but that’s rare.
A while ago, a coworker was talking to me at lunch about raising kids while dealing with politics. He wanted to be teaching his kids what he thought was right and wrong, but he also wanted them to form their own opinions. This is rather difficult, especially for people with strong political opinions. People with strong opinions often like to convince others to have the same opinions, and kids (of certain ages) are pretty easy to convince.
I remember hearing from my Republican cousin’s son (not sure of his age, maybe 6?) that he supported ‘the guy with white hair’ for President last year. It seemed rather silly to me for someone so young to support a candidate, but to be honest if I had a kid the same age, I wouldn’t be surprised if they became an Obama supporter.
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As a personal aside, some of those protestors were very rude that day. I didn’t go to the protest, but I took the metro that day to go to the Kennedy Center, and there were certainly some very mean-spirited people in that group. I’ve ridden the metro with several different protest groups, and this was the only time I can remember hearing foul language and seeing rather mean-spirited behavior. For example, it is traditional in our nation’s capital that you stand on the right of an escalator and walk on the left, and some protestors really didn’t like that rule, and were very vocal about their displeasure. Of course, this was likely just a few rotten apples, but it is what I remember most from that day (with the exception of the bipolar performances I saw at the KC)— basically, in my limited experience, conservative protesters are less polite than hippie ones.
Interesting. Well, part of the premise of the protest was “we’re mad about this!”, so I guess it’s not surprisingly that people were generally angry. I’ll bet they had the feeling that they were in “enemy territory” as well.
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