Mother Goose Stepping
Sylvia Shawcross
Here in the northern hemisphere winter mourns its way to spring with tears that sometimes freeze on the ground and crystallize on the white snow still high In the fields and along the roads. It has been a long winter—and do we welcome the longer days when every day seems long enough for us all?
Perhaps such later sunsets are earnestly celebrated now for those who live in the “other” narrative where life is beautiful mostly. The rest hardly notice. It is a place where children should be living—that beautiful place. It used to be that way. Once.
No matter what mad thing was going on in the world, the children played and laughed and sometimes cried. All that adult stuff was very far away and hardly more important than discovering tadpoles or playing hide-and-seek or scratching your name in the leftover winter frost on window panes. Never in cursive. They don’t teach that now.
And so it is time now to bring back child labour. It has to be, I’m afraid. Because those days are long long over.
If our children now can know the world is dying an environmental death without a future. If our children can now know how and when and what sex is all about before they know how to even count. If children can decide to mutilate themselves to the gender gods before they know what a pubic hair even is. If children can soon vote in most places at the tender age of 16. If they have nothing to learn now because ChatGTP will do that all for them. If they know what nuclear war is beyond hiding under desks. Then it is time to put them to work. They’re adults now.
Because they have no such a thing as childhood anymore. That was swept swiftly out the door with all the dust of yesterday’s dreams. Mother Goose was murdered in cold blood for being white. Cinderella kicked the Prince in the b*lls and went to the ball on her own. Black Beauty was murdered in cold blood for being black. Dr. Seuss was burnt at the stake for promoting eggs and ham instead of crickets and Nancy Drew has likely become a transgender vampire.
And the soft sweet innocence of tender minds learned fear and victimhood instead of courage for a world they wouldn’t have made if they had known. For a world they weren’t allowed to grow up in, but were mostly to learn not just to fear but to mourn and rage about. They were brought to a full boil in the heat of the sun instead of that sweet simmering anticipation.
And wasn’t life in games and videos so much more a place to be? If you wanted at least to laugh? Now and then. Instead of the endless political agendas they are forced to know and fight for? Who could blame a child for disappearing into a virtual world? For shadow-dancing with their friends on cellphones in the night? What does this world offer them anymore?
It isn’t as though parents don’t try. Don’t try to give their children a childhood but they are a small voice in a child’s very big world now filled with loud and insistent noise. A noise that drags them away… an evil Pied Piper world. The internet. The political agenda. The attention demanded for competitive emotional hurt. The placebo painkillers for the pain. The predators.
So let’s put the children to work instead of leaving them to such soul-destroying addictive preoccupations and emotional wranglings. They can do all the things the adults don’t want to do and robots can’t yet do. We’ll see soon enough what those things just might be.
What else are you going to do with these children? What purpose in a utilitarian world do they serve? Hope for the future? What can we say is hope now? Someone to love? Don’t be silly. Love is a construct. It is just as easy to hate. Certainly more profitable.
Ask the ones who spend so much time in victimhood hating in their belief in love and hating in their fight for equity and justice. They are all over the place and they are all the same. They bring hate almost to a new level in their sad screeching outrage as if to say “Look at me, I am here. I exist. Do what I say or I will die and it is all your fault.” They never knew love and cannot speak its real name. They will say it is never their fault. And it is in so many ways not their fault at all. If fault is to be laid.
It is just that the children know they’re missing something. They just don’t know what it is. It is a question of loss more than blame now.
But never mind all that. Winter is over here and the summer no doubt of our discontents will grow lush with the sunlight. Far better discontent than despair. Perhaps that is what the children teach us. We ourselves can’t teach them anything it seems. They cannot hear us for the noise.
Your earworm for the week:
Syl Shawcross lives in Canada.
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‘Mother Goose was murdered’ ? I hope not. Yes, ‘They’ are trying hard to kill her and ‘They’ may even succeed for a while. But ultimately she will come back because she is an instinct.
But I agree, the present noise is ugly and the neglect of children is real.
And people ask – just like Cat Stevens – ‘where do the children play’ ?
And yet you chose to live in Canada Sly.
I live in one of Trumps shitholes, but I am certain it a million times better that Canada… South Africa, Natal South Coast, pretty much paradise. Went for a two hour walk late this morning and the Sun was out the sea air refreshing and met a multitude of people waking their dogs sans leashes and life was great.
Although we are on schedule 6 (which translates into approximately 10 – 12 hours blackout) from our “power” utility Eskom, I felt sorry for Canadians and Americans and all those living under the illusion of democracy in supposed 1st world countries.
What will be my fate here, I’m not sure, but at least we are relatively free to say what we want and we do express ourselves explicitly.
Had some expats here (they spend 5 moths of the year in sunny SA) and we met their children and grandchildren and were horrified.
As I said above: whatever happens after the 2024 elections, I am certain that there will be many of us who will fight to bring sanity to this madness that now prevails around the world.
Africans are generally conservative in nature, so the ANC’s flirtation with all the woke rubbish will be brought to book and count for nought. I and most have nowhere else to go (not that I would want to) so it’s probably going to get ugly. Our pandering to each other “sensitivities” was a dismal failure.
Let the chips fall where they may.
that’s honest.
(sud) Efrica breeds hard bastards, methinks.
seems like constant frontier-life.
It does.
Admin., my comments here a day ago went pending
Technocrats don’t believe in love because they don’t know it and they are jealous of anyone who does. I can’t think of any other reason a person would choose to inflict so much intentional harm in the world. Maybe their painful upbringing of being scuttled off to boarding schools, of substituting shopping sprees for love, of proper elite miseducation as to their role as “leaders”, etc., caused them to dream of a world where we would someday say “Once a upon a time, there were people called moms and dads…”
Children don’t have to be taught love. It’s their very essence. As long as we surround them with it, humanity will survive the Hollow Ones.
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
Ephesians 6:12
what we now need is a space trip to jupiter … and another go at the moon … that’ll keep everyone happy
All so sadly true, Sylvia.
I love Cat Stevens and always had a soft spot for this more rare of his tracks. When I listen to the astonishing things he does with his voice here it can make me weep for a lost world.
…- This might be a little cliche, George (or not), but ‘Vincent’ still makes me bawl like a bairn…
He was really open minded during Covid.!!!!!
https://twitter.com/YusufCatStevens/status/1546533166483214344
Ah well – another one bites the dust. Notice the photo of the mug: the Tea for the Tillerman cover transferred to outer space. Seems kind of fitting.
We are in a war for our existence as biological beings. If they get their way, they will create sentient machines they can turn on and off. Eternity would have new meaning. The psychological prison runs very deep. The virtual fake reality they have create exist only in the brain, including your body and all your relationships. We are one in consciousness. When people become distracted it sucks them deeper into the illusion of life. The illusion of life belongs to us. We do not create human sacrifice, sexual perversion, and evil. My children and grandchildren don’t speak to me. They are woke and vaccinated. The virtual simulation creates a psychological war between humans. Nothing new here. our children are not younger then we are. It appears that way in the simulation. Consciousness does not age. Our relationship is with all humans. The only family one has is the human race and we are at war! I am in love with you…they need us to destroy us. You are unpredictable, individual critical thought, deterministic creative will. Their greatest fear is: You remember you are apart of the most powerful force on Earth…’The Law of One’.
“children and grandchildren don’t speak to me. They are woke and vaccinated.”
Sad, so sad. With my children and grandchidren there is contact per WhatsApp und -rarely – phone, but we have to avoid all these topics.
Nearly every topic has become political. Even the weather.
And, as nutshells go, that’s the big lie nutshell right there.
It is entirely the fault of parents, 100%.
At every step of the way, from parents in governments to parents in households, no reasonable attempts have been made to restrict corporations having direct and unfettered access to children.
How many “parents” have, and continue to, use “media” of all sorts as a baby sitter?
And of course it’s not media, it’s corporate propaganda that’s been the baby sitter.
Something there to think about. Parents today — I mean parents in their 20s and 30s — were themselves raised as this was already underway and were themselves being indoctrinated, and being rendered largely mindless and heartless. To what extent can they be held responsible for the disaster now becoming fully manifested. Their parents (by that I mean, alas, people my age) let this happen, if anyone is to blame. Obsessed with … well, various things: accumulating possessions, fashion and fitting in, or even — sorry to say — desiring radical change on the societal level (good but abstract) while ignoring the real, immediate and ongoing needs of those closest to them. Oh my, what a great sadness sweeps over me. I should say of course I here mean people in the West, especially middle class and up, I don’t presume to generalize about the hearts and minds of people in Bangladesh or Central Africa. I mean those of us in the so-called civilized world; God help us.
And – I know I keep harping back to this medicalisation-as-a-crime thing – but this and the previous generation is being and was bombarded with a constant barrage of pharmaceutical propaganda. I mean “every mum knows” that at the tiniest sign of discomfort from your baby or toddler means you can “fix it” with paracetamol / tylenol, right?
Well, studies have long since shown that this drug given during the developmental stages of childhood “causes long-term alterations in the brain and is manifested as problems with social function and substantially alters brain chemistry and temporarily impairs awareness of social issues in adult humans.”
“Acetaminophen attenuates individuals’ evaluations and emotional reactions to negative and positive stimuli alike. These results build on recent psychological research illustrating that acetaminophen can blunt the intensity with which individuals experience negative events that originate from physical, social, or cognitive sources.”
In other words: People using the drug Tylenol become psychological zombies. Not only that, other studies go so far as to say that this drug causes loss of empathy.
Precisely what I’m noticing in the younger, heartless generations.
is that like calpol, or cure-all-for-“parent” i would lol, but it ain’t funny.
ochone.
Humanity has never progressed beyond the point of considering children the property of their parents. When parents ask “What do you want to be when you grow up?” what they’re really doing is making sure their child’s goals align with their goals for the child.
“As long as you’re in my house you’ll live by my rules!” is just about the most tyrannical thing any human can say to another.
Not sure what is in the minds of my 4 grandchildren. Don’t see them nearly as much as I used to (thanks to the scam emergency). The oldest is in 7th grade while the youngest is in 2nd.
I am dying to find out what they have been taught about racism and climate change, etc. Touchy subjects with their parents who are clearly trying to isolate me from what they are being taught. I sense that it is not good.
I have this overpowering urge to provide an “opposing editorial” where mom and dad are not in earshot. Throughout their childhoods, I have never had a good thing to say about government. Especially the one I worked for. Driving a garbage truck for 5 summers as a kid taught me to tolerate anything. There is a close correlation.
Basic messages I want to get across: The world is not going to end because we use gasoline cars. Having white skin does not make you bad. There are only 2 sexes that were predetermined by God and only bad people want to try and change you into something you aren’t. Our teeth were designed by God to eat meat AND plants. Not insects and vat grown scum. Government cannot be trusted. EVER. Stuff like that.
Gotta get’em when they are young before ignorant radicalized teachers get a hold on them.
You know the agenda spewing from the minds of radical leftist college professors who think they can create Utopia by poisoning the minds of their students. Because that is where this BULLSHIT is spewing from.
I give those professors and their administrations an “F-“. Some say it’s intentional divisive propaganda to help achieve their radical goals. Then they get an “A+”. For that we need to need to root them out because they are EVIL.
Given what is happening in our society today, it is much easier to understand why they were burning “witches” in Salem early in our early history. That would make a professor think twice about pushing his or her utopian ideas. Maybe add Big Pharma, the Biden Administration, Democrats (in general), Fauci, CDC and FDA heads, etc. to that list of those who need a wake up call by being tied to a stake.
Maybe a side event at the Burning Man celebration.
Just thinking out loud………….
Cat Stevens and the Moody Blues on my old worn out 8-track player got me through college chemistry.
https://youtu.be/p6xMOTjLIaY
But what got you through college calculus?
…- Why, visualizing interesting sets of curves to analyze, of course, syl…
Not an engineer. So no, did not have take it or physics. Thought about it. High school calculus and physics burned me out.
burning man another load of clique bs
Did you have your awakening happen conveniently when your government pension started?
Don’t lecture us.
Never saw that one coming. I do have a pension. 9% off the top of every paycheck went into the fund. Social security exempt. Medical plan is not free and I don’t get dental. The government manages the pension fund. Think about that one. Budgets are in trouble everywhere. Would I have burned you at the stake in my imagination?
It’s April 19th and I just came back to this because a brother of mine just sent me a link to another break down in the governing body I once worked for. Misappropriation of stimulus funds. I have dozens of stories I could tell.
It’s the people in charge.
One day, several years before I retired, a large group of us were hauled down to general headquarters. Over a hundred of us. No explanation was given. All levels of people. Common laborers, middle level managers and department heads. Roughly 20% of the workforce was forced to attend this meeting. We had to drop everything and go.
We were noisy as we discussed what the commonality amongst us was. Once we were quieted down, the county’s District Attorney stated that we had to verify the signatures on copies of our paychecks. We were all witnesses to fraud committed by the organization’s comptroller. For decades, he was printing duplicate checks and cashing them. He was moving money around to cover his tracks and there was no accountability system in place. It was incredible.
It’s the people.
With the pension system you are vested after 10 years, whether you like it or not. You can’t just withdraw your money and put it in an IRA on your own. If you do withdraw your money before you are vested you get a 1% return on your contributions.
Only way to get out of it is to transfer the money into the pension system of another governmental body. Or, get convicted of a felony. Then you are screwed.
You don’t qualify for Social Security even if you are an old person who paid into Social Security as a youngster. In such a case, your pension is reduced by the amount that the Social Security Administration pays you. In other words, all that money you paid in when you were young was just lost.
A older brother of mine retired from a public utility. They gave the options of a pension or a one time payout of contributions made by the utility. The company’s contributions. Not his. He did not trust them to handle the money. He took the payout and invested it on his own.
The MSM loves to vilify people who get pensions.
The whole purpose of creating the pension system was to reduce the number of retirees dependent on Social Security. The assumption was that most people would not have the discipline or the capability of investing on their own.
401K programs have largely supplanted the pension systems because pension managers tend to skim. 401K programs are only designed to supplement Social Security and not replace it.
Private pension systems have a tendency to go broke and regularly do. Intentional mismanagement by big business, mostly. The result of conflicts between labor unions and management.
The MSM tends to overlook the real story behind retirement programs. Their job is to sell newspapers. Creating division by vilifying segments of the population is an easy way to increase circulation.
Just like now with wokeness.
Oh, the stories.
It’s the people.
Once you are sucked in, you have no place to go.
Like playing a low percentage poker hand and all your money is in the kitty and you can’t afford to fold.
Sucked in.
The social explosion of the 60’s decade became known as the Love Generation. The 70’s produced some of the most beautiful love songs ever created. Then the 80’s came, headed by the Material Girl herself, McDonna, queen of the fast food music. Kids were fed a toxic aural diet of angst, superficiality and misogyny ever since. The anti-love agenda was on. Many of today’s youth, submerged in greed-is-good neoliberalism, are rediscovering and connecting to the songs of that era of love. I have faith that love will save the day.
Des’ree – You Gotta Be
‘It isn’t as though parents don’t try.’
Before or after taking their kids for their covid shots?
‘It is just that the children know they’re missing something. They just don’t know what it is.’
Yes they do. Life’s gone from being a great adventure to staying safe.
There it is in a nutshell Nick. And as I wrote that about your astute observation I wondered where the expression “in a nutshell” came from? hmm
Where to look for the goods, maybe?
By the by, did you know it was “champing” at the bit, not “chomping”?
Now i do.
…- Who here remembers making camps/forts/etc. in the woods with your little gang of mates?…
…- High time me brought that back, I reckon… – And *Many Other* alike things, besides…
…- *’we’… – *Doh!*… 😖
Bud Light loses $3B in stock value in 12 days
cuz it partnered w Brian Dulvaney (He’s had penis-ectomy, or maybe it’s only a pseudo-ectomy; anyway, he’s a pseudo-woman)
Seems real men don’t want to drink Bud anymore.
I don’t care what adults want to do in bed or to their own bodies, but it does get tiresome to be propagandized that it’s “normal.”
I’ve always thought it’s dietary– you can’t make normal hormones out of those seed oils; need to consume animal fats. And of course you need sufficient thyroid hormone to initiate the other hormones. Decades ago they changed the normal dough conditioner in our bread so it no longer contains a little iodine; bromine is so much better at producing hypothyroidism.
Interesting premise.
Mark Starr– his book “Hypthyroidism Type 2” talks about the dough conditioner and other insults to the thyroid gland.
The theory about increasing loss of masculinity leading to sexual deviation in some men is my own– especially the dietary part. Many men in their 20s today don’t look as mature as 20 year olds in the 60s & 70s. There are of course many insults to development besides the ubiquitous Omega-6 fats of the vegetable seed oils. There are, for example, the “forever chemicals.” If you search “forever chemicals” on the internet it’s quite horrifying.
…- The really tiresome thing about this, Penelope, is that *Evidently* someone(s) is pushing alla this tosh deliberately, with the clear and explicit intention that supposedly I should ‘get annoyed’ about it… – *That*, in and of itself, *Is* the thing I find (mildly) ‘annoying’ (irritating, i should in fact say) about the whole contrived mess, in addition to being a *Massive* ‘tell’… – So then I remember my media/psyop cheat codes and just tune it all out…
…- Presto!: – No more annoyance, so media/psyop: – *FAIL*…
…- Seriously, it’s like some goddamn petulant toddler finger-flicking you in the face non-stop for attention, otherwise… 😎
I just watched a great documentary on Netflix called Game Changers. Marketing has done a great disservice to people, pushing cigarettes from doctors themselves, pushing a meat-based diet for manly men, when reality tells us otherwise. Everything is marketing to sell a product. Whatever is being heavily pushed is most likely not good for us.
excellent article, ; ) even got a chuckle and a grin.
spot on and chiming.
Wow Syl, when you get down to it you hammer it home don’t you?
Brava! Wonderful article.
As I read I wondered what earworm will she propose? Well of course I cried when I saw it! A good wish your way.
Yes. Consider me the humour writer that brings people to tears. 🙂 TY Owen
One of your best, Sylvia.
TY Gallinaazo
Great one. And the earworm: exquisite. One of the finest songs of all time.
But there’s a secret world just out back: the world of lower middle class children, where romping and screaming and running through a little stand of trees and sliding down the hill on a bit of broken wood they found God knows where or riding their bikes down that hill is still the norm.
I know of this world because my little dog goes nuts when he sees them out back; and his screeching makes me cry out “Why don’t they go back down the hill where they live!” But I wouldn’t chase them away for anything.
But they only do this when school’s in session. They don’t come around in the summer or on school breaks. I always wonder: where do they go? where do they play?
Just don’t be going and following them to find out where they go Howard because we don’t want to be having to start a Go-fund me campaign to bail you out of jail for suspicious activity eh? 🙂
I suspect they spend their summer indoors on their cell phones making up for all they missed when they were outside playing. Even the poor are allowed to lose themselves in the technocratic maze.
I remember getting lost in albums like Genesis’ Trick of the Tail, Led Zeppelin (all) and Pink Floyd’s The Wall. That was our equivalent of gaming, letting our imaginations run wild. But that came after the experience of playing outside. Childhood has to include exploring the real world.
Awesome live version of Carlos Santana’s classic cut “Let The Children Play” endorsing freedom for the little people. The whole section is a work of genius. Satan’s children – such as the Westminster Cult of Pure Evil who worship all that is evil on Earth – hate the power of music. This is the spirit these scumbags want to kill, to be replaced with jabbed, brainwashed, drone minded morons. They are succeeding and it is our job to to expose them, expel them, arrest them and sentence them.
Santana – Carnaval / Let The Children Play / Jugando (Live “Moonflower” Version) – YouTube
I try to believe that they might actually think they’re enhancing and not destroying but ultimately they’re destroying. You know that. I know that. They don’t know that. Magnificent music, thank you. 🙂
hmmmm…
Yusuf / Cat Stevens’ endearing cover of ‘Here Comes The Sun’ commemorates what would have been George Harrison’s 80th birthday on Feb 25th 2023.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iCF7opEbEw0
Thank you, Sylvia, for shining YOUR light, and brightening the day with your wonderfilled, child’s play…
Well that one made me cry. Thank YOU too Matt. We were never given time to mourn were we? All that we are losing in this world now. We have a right to tears for the loss of what we love and loved. THEY who would change the world forgot to put that in their agenda for us. There is no time for tears when you’re in a battle for the global soul. And I’m tired today and ranting incoherently but anyway… thank you for the song.
Always make time for tears!
UK government stats.
Wonder when they’ll appear on the nightly news:
https://rudolphrigger.substack.com/p/the-onset-of-doom?utm_medium=email
Thanks Sylia, I enjoy your satirical musings. Joking aside, its heartbreaking to think that millions of children are working in the sulphur mines and the sweat shops of the world today.
I think its also worth pondering the increasing infantilization of society. These days we are ALL treated as though we are children by our would be rulers. Every government and institution commissions childish cartoons to explain nuanced policy concepts and ideas to adults and every political or social debate is reduced by them to two seemingly opposing, simplistic talking points which are both designed to lead to our demanding the same solution.
As much as I think its valuable to stay in touch with one’s inner child its also important, when facing the menace of global totalitarianism, to put aside childish things and act like an adult.
*Sylvia.
(Sorry, autocorrect changed the spelling of your name.)
hahahaha
One can only hope there are still some adults in the world.
If you’d like to add me to the list, I do have my moments…
I knew that about you wardropper 🙂
Colin Powell presented drawings of weapons labs to the UN as evidence of Iraq’s WMDs during the fraudulent campaign to start war in the Middle East and fulfil the objectives of the war criminals running the US and UK. A simple sketch was all the evidence that was required to enact a 20 year long murder and destruction rampage upon innocent people, fully endorsed by all the usual treasonous pieces of dirt in government and media:
Nothing to do with this, of course:
A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm – Wikipedia
Or this gem from the Pentagon occupying Neocon warhawks penned in 1998. Only a crazy tin foil hat wearing conspiratard would draw such a conclusion:
Opinion | Bombing Iraq Isn’t Enough – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
…- The railcars on the right were eventually discovered, 20 years later in East Palestine, OH…
Big pHarmer and the MIC must share that goose that lays golden eggs:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/biden-spend-5-billion-new-coronavirus-vaccine-initiative-supported-gates-fauci-republican-lawmakers/5815807
Yes, but childhood serves no productive economic purpose. How, therefore, can the unproductive, false notion of ‘childhood’ ever be a good thing to encourage?
Like many things, not least a non-pharmaceutical, protective immune system, it’s a concept that doesn’t fit in with the modern world.
Why do I think this? His holiness, Klaus Schwab, and all his acolytes told me.
Praise-be the capitalism-controlled market!
“Yes, but childhood serves no productive economic purpose.”
Au contraire. Children are top tier consumers, whether with their own disposable income, or with Mommy and Daddy’s.
Last month I saw a mother with a boy near a tree. She was encouraging the boy to climb the tree. When the boy got to a meter height, she picked up the boy and left. I guess the “climbing trees” part of the youth curriculum was done.
It is no wonder kids run to video games, were you can have fun and learn, team up or solo out, be hurt and hurt.
You know you might be right. They might have found the only place they can actually be free to be children… hmmm….
My elementary school playground — and I bet every single one of my classmates remembers it: the jungle gym, aka monkey bars, was three levels high, pure metal, and over the hardest packed dirt I can ever remember. No injuries that I can recall.
As for the 10-ft-high diving board at the summer club….
Someone has beat you to it Syl:
‘250 million children between 5 and 14 are forced to work in sweatshops in developing countries.‘
https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/people-and-poverty/slavery-and-sweatshops/sweatshop-workers-conditions
Yes it is tragic. The terrible thing about the “reset” is that they throw the baby out with the bathwater. Child labour laws and their enforcement were one of the good things we enjoyed in developed nations for the most part. Exploitation. It is just taking a different form here now I guess.