Kasia grew up on the other side of the Iron Curtain, in Warsaw. There was no coddling there. When she was in first grade, her teacher took her on a field trip to the site of a recent plane crash, where she stared at the charred sneakers of dead passengers. The lesson seemed to be: Bad things happen, and there is no point in pretending otherwise. Oh, yeah, and build better planes. That plane, by the way, was headed to Warsaw from — where else? — the United States. The symbolism went deep.
I have literally nothing for this. It's such an unfathomably bizzare thing to say.
The real problem with my approach, however, is that I was robbing my kids of a sense of urgency, a sense that the situation, in much of the world, is dire and that it demands their attention. So I’ve embraced the Iron Curtain response: Yes the world is broken, which is why you need to fix it. Lucian’s response to this, of course, is: We didn’t break it. You did. Touché. He also reminds us: If you can’t fix things, what makes you think I can? And I can only reply: Maybe you can’t, but you still have to try.
What a fucking asshole.
it’s pretty much Disney versus the Iron Curtain.
The iron curtain is when you respect your kids and answer their questions truthfully.
The iron curtain is when you respect your kids and answer their questions truthfully.
If you've known chuddy enough boomers, that isn't really an exaggeration of their worldview.
my polish wife — who, by the way, is polish! — is lucky that her mind will never be burdened by the uniquely American concept of safety. she grew up eating concrete for breakfast, and had to walk up-hills both ways to get to the school-gulag
Poland is a magical land of enlightened centrism and moral greyness where improving society somewhat is impossible and wrong, just like in the blessed CDPR treats.
Why does this read like a reddit AITAH post? The NYT Opinion pieces were never very good but this is a meandering bag of shit.
Kasia grew up on the other side of the Iron Curtain, in Warsaw. There was no coddling there. When she was in first grade, her teacher took her on a field trip to the site of a recent plane crash, where she stared at the charred sneakers of dead passengers. The lesson seemed to be: Bad things happen, and there is no point in pretending otherwise. Oh, yeah, and build better planes. That plane, by the way, was headed to Warsaw from — where else? — the United States. The symbolism went deep.
I don't know if that's supposed to be a dig at Communist Poland for something or a lament about how Americans were victims somehow. But glad to hear the US has always had a trend of crashing planes, makes me feel much better. Build better planes, West.
I think the symbolism he's trying to get at is that things are good in America, but bad in Poland, which is why that plane from America only crashed in Poland, because somehow, being in Poland made that plane bad
Son is most definitely, famously in the Bible. Also Dad and wife.
Aside from the reference to covid and the bay of chuds, this could have been published twenty years ago. It’s good to see that liberals are learning and not stuck in a time vortex.
