The DU Lounge
Related: Culture Forums, Support ForumsI am fascinated by how people change over time. I
just came across a picture of Ann Coulter when she was a teenager.
I find this picture of her as a teen much more appealing than she seems now. Maybe it's just that she comes across as more normal, more human and less arrogant and full of herself in the picture from her youth.
Sure, Ann is better looking now and she has very pretty hair (and the results of a fortune's worth of orthodontia), but the young Ann doesn't look smug. In fact, I think she actually looks sweet in the earlier picture.
Of course, that could just be because I like kids in general, and since she was a kid, she comes across as appealing to me.
When I see childhood or adolescent pictures of people who grew up to be seriously right wing, it always makes me sad, because I can't help thinking that if they had been given the right kind of attention as children, they would not have turned out the way they did.
rug
(82,333 posts)he was always creepy
DianaForRussFeingold
(2,552 posts)Look how nice his hair was. I think he was pretty cute...
Fla Dem
(23,666 posts)femmocrat
(28,394 posts)tblue37
(65,340 posts)ever properly treated and cared for as children. I can't help feeling sorry for that little boy--though the man he became is unquestionably creepy.
Response to tblue37 (Reply #4)
DianaForRussFeingold This message was self-deleted by its author.
pressbox69
(2,252 posts)rug
(82,333 posts)Tobin S.
(10,418 posts)My ego has gotten smaller, but my body has gotten bigger.
No telling what I'd be like if I hadn't become mentally ill with bipolar disorder when I was 20. I might actually be worse off as far as my soul is concerned, I guess. A ten year battle with psychosis and mood problems will either bring you to the light or put you in the ground.
DianaForRussFeingold
(2,552 posts)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_bipolar_disorder
Tobin S.
(10,418 posts)Ziprasidone and lithium took care of most of it. I still have a bad day every once in a while, but I feel normal most of the time now.
Lochloosa
(16,064 posts)Hassin Bin Sober
(26,326 posts)Orrex
(63,209 posts)LiberalElite
(14,691 posts)about a young blonde girl in braids who caused a lot of trouble. Can't remember the title...
pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)I knew exactly which one you meant when you mentioned the braids.
LiberalElite
(14,691 posts)DianaForRussFeingold
(2,552 posts)A very good little actress!
pressbox69
(2,252 posts)Orrex
(63,209 posts)If you'd asked me, prior to reconnecting with them, to predict their political affiliation based on my memories of them from high school, I'd have been correct 100% of the time.
femmocrat
(28,394 posts)I did some peeking at people I knew back when. Good grief.... they are a bunch of rabid trump supporters now!
One fellow (we used to be friends) has a fake identity just for the purpose of spouting his crazy right wing views and others "like" him!!!
lunatica
(53,410 posts)I believe it's a brain thing. Although I think that the way one is brought up is important, it simply doesn't explain enough about how people differ, especially in their empathic and sympathetic make up. Abuse is a good example. Some abused children pass it on to their children, yet others go the opposite way and never abuse their children, and both causal reasons are because they were abused.
And more and more studies are showing that the brain itself is very important in how one perceives and reacts to life.
I think what Donald Trump shows is that being rich is not a standard by which to measure one's humanity. Of course, the Koch brothers also show the same.
tblue37
(65,340 posts)conservative without being cruel, hateful, or bigoted. In fact, I live in an area where many people are conservative, but only because everyone around them has bought into that ideology, so that is what they have heard all their lives and what they experience as part of their "tribal" identity. Nevertheless, many of the conservatives I know are not nasty the way Coulter and Trump are.
Most people hold their opinions and their group affiliations not because they have thought carefully about them, but because they have never given them any thought at all.
Fish don't know they're wet. They just think that is "how it is." They cannot even imagine "it" being any other way.
I know many people, including a lot of my own relatives, who identify as as conservative Republicans, but they are good, kind people who have been raised in loving families. They are "conservative Republicans" and vote Republican in every election simply because that is part of their family and community (tribal) "identity."
True, being constantly subjected to RW propaganda from FOX, RW radio, and other such sources can eventually twist the perception and attitudes even of people who have always been decent and fair, but the sort of nastiness we see in a Trump or a Coulter seems to me to have deeper roots than that.
Unfortunately, a lot of kids who are raised by affluent, disconnected, and uninterested parents spend their lives trying to be or do what their inner child hopes will win the approval of their parents--even long after those parents are gone.
Or else in their insecurity, they devote all their effort to making themselves feel "good enough" by acting superior and putting other people down--especially if their parents had that attitude themselves, because the child tries to identify with the parents as a way of winning their approval.
So no, I am not saying people whose political pinions differ from mine were abused or neglected as children. But I am saying that unless something went very wrong in the wiring of a person's brain, wither genetically or during gestation, the physical and emotional environment that person experienced as a child will have a lot to do with whether he or she grows up to be kind, accepting, and fair toward others--or nasty, abusive, hateful, and viciously bigoted instead.
Tribalism is natural and instinctive, because in nature the "other" really is a potential danger, whereas those who belong to one's own family/tribe/community are the people most likely to represent safety and security. The more similar to us other people are, the more likely they are to trigger the "one of ours, and therefore safe" reaction.
That is why the pie-in-the-sky claim that racism must be taught and that little children don't see such differences or care about them is simply nonsense. Until the age when an infant starts exhibiting stranger fear, that is undoubtedly true--but stranger fear kicks in right about the time the infant is able to move around on his own and thus get beyond the protective reach of its parent/caretaker. Thus, if a mobile infant encounters a potentially dangerous "other," he screams for his parent/caretaker.
(BTW,when the "stranger," whether male or female, is taller than the average woman and has a deep voice, he or she is much more likely to trigger the squalling stranger-fear reaction in an infant--which makes sense if you think about it, because in nature, a strange adult male is usually more dangerous to an infant than a female, whether familiar or not.)
In nature, which is where we evolved in small, closely knit groups, if someone looks very different from everyone around you, then that person is more likely to be "not one of us" and thus a potential danger.
That is why children must be taught to be kind and tolerant of the other, to extend to those who are not just like themselves the same ethical concerns they would extend to members of their own group, and each new generation of children must be taught that lesson anew. It is not something that can be left to chance or to the idealistic belief that children are innocent of prejudice against or fear of the other.
If a child's social environment is diverse, and if the people around the child treat everyone with the same kindness and acceptance, regardless of difference, then the child's sense of "tribe" will include diversity. But even if children go to a daycare or school populated by a lot of kids and adults from different backgrounds, it is the home environment that will have the strongest influence for most children. So if their family and the people their family socializes with are bigoted against those who are not like them, then the child is likely to accept the family's bigoted attitudes despite being exposed to different people and different attitudes in daycare or at school.
TexasBushwhacker
(20,186 posts)Maybe that's why she's always pointing out how she and other Republican women are so pretty. She wasn't traditionally pretty (or blonde) when she was young.