While he usually has a sharp if not cynical perspective, during the last two weeks he has published two snippets that have absurd perspectives.
23 November 2014
LEAD STORY — Weird Patriotism
Millions of immigrants want to migrate, get a job, and then send money home to the people that helped them to migrate. Shepherd would call this “Weird Families.”
November is tax-publicizing season in Finland, where, starkly unlike America, the government releases all individuals’ tax records to help build public support for the country’s vast welfare state. Thus, reported Foreign Policy magazine, Finnish society gets a “yearly dose of schadenfreude” … “opening the door for a media frenzy of gossip, boasting and fingerpointing” about “fair share” and who’s more worthy. A few, however, proudly pay high Finnish taxes as a “badge of patriotism,” rejecting common tax shelters. “We’ve received a lot of help from society,” said one homegrown (and wealthy) entrepreneur, “and now it is our turn to pay back.” [Foreign Policy, 11-5-2014]
The logical-opposite of the final quote is “We’ve received a lot of help from society, and now we should tell our society to go to hell.”
Which statement is more “patriotic”? Expressing a desire to give back to society or the typical American response of turning away from helping the system that helps you?
The “weird patriotism” here is not found in Finland: it is the self-destructive, short-sighted, hate-filled, arrogant “patriotism” of American society.
— “Santa Muerte” (Our Lady of the Holy Death) might be described as a cynic’s unauthorized byproduct of Roman Catholicism currently festering in drug-cartel-roiled Mexico and Central America and is, according to Vice Media, “the world’s fastest growing” religion. “Saint Death” first appeared only 12 years ago, in the Mexico City barrio of Tepito, and is now a first line of protection for worshippers in danger zones. (Almost 80,000 Mexicans have been killed in drug-related violence since 2006, Vice reported.)
As many as 1,958 domestic violence‐related suicides occur annually in the US.
Perspective?
80,000 people have died since 2006 in drug related violence in Mexico, so Shepherd wrote, Roman Catholicism [is] currently festering in drug-cartel-roiled Mexico.
Is the United States “automobile-accident-roiled?” More importantly, in the the US, we have the perception that Mexico is a dangerous place because it is “drug-cartel-roiled”, but we do not talk about the epidemic of domestic violence–we do not talk about the fact that our country is “festering” in domestic violence.
