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<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\nI first met Vivian in a tiny Honduran village in 2008. My wife and I had opened a little project for children of the village a year before and we were fortunate to have many volunteers, mostly young people from the US, Canada, and Europe. One of these had befriended one of teenage attendees, Myra, and visited Myra\u2019s house, a typical single room mud and stick hut with a dirt floor and without electricity. Our volunteer from Belgium asked me the next day if we knew Myra had a little sister who was dying. We did not, so I soon visited there myself and encountered 2\u00bd year-old Vivian, who was hairless, had lots of scars on her body, and weighed 11 pounds. Her beleaguered mother was holding Vivian and constantly shifting her from breast to breast in a largely futile attempt to feed her: mom was simply dry, and Vivian was simply starving to death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
I took her to the local clinic and was told by the physician that Vivian could not be salvaged. Nevertheless, it was not too big of a deal to purchase infant formula and obtain filtered water and baby bottles. With the help of our main local person, Miriam (barely educated and literate, hugely intelligent and talented, a devout Christian, and fiercely hard-working), Vivian not only survived, but thrived. Owing to the corona virus situation (I was \u201ctrapped\u201d there at the beginning) and some situations at home, I haven\u2019t been in Honduras since April 2020, but at that time she was a healthy teenager. I admit I am proud of what we did in relation to Vivian, and I think it was consistent with what it means to be proud of something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps the opposite of pride is shame, though an argument could be made, as mentioned above, that a counterpoint to \u201cpride\u201d is something just is.<\/em> Nevertheless, our culture is riddled today with claims (and accusations) of pride and shame. There is kind of a social media dance where, for example, an aging celebrity decides she (almost always a female) needs to release photos of her in a bikini or some other sexually flaunting attire. In response, people who seem to have nothing else to do \u201cshame\u201d her for being too old for such an exhibition. In counter-response our celebrity is hurt and offended and takes a strong stand against \u201cbody shaming,\u201d and likes and dislikes subsequently accumulate like packing material from Amazon deliveries in a landfill. Apparently this cycle satisfies an acute and dire need for attention by all parties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPride\u201d has become a version of participation trophies for the self-esteem generation, i.e. something completely disassociated with any kind of effort or accomplishment. Similarly, \u201cshame\u201d is no longer a motivating factor (at least for people with some level of a conscience) to correct a personal failing or make good an injury done to another, but a means to facilitate selfishness and narcissism, under the guise that \u201cshaming\u201d someone is a horrible thing horrible people do; the caveat that the behavior being \u201cshamed\u201d is in accord with a preferred fad of the moment. For example, any criticism or even observation of sexual promiscuity will be met with the accusation of \u201cslut shaming,\u201d which is not far behind \u201cracism\u201d on the metric of cultural faux pas. Pretty much all selfish hedonism is now shielded by the accusation \u201cYou Are ______ Shaming!\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course,no reasonably mature and considerate person is not going to \u201cshame\u201d someone for a maladaptive behavior if is a personal imperfection and doesn\u2019t effect others. For example, no decent person is going to go up to an obese individual and say, \u201cYou ought to be ashamed of yourself, fatty!\u201d On the other hand, discussing obesity in general and it\u2019s significant health consequences, with the hopes of \u201cflattening the curve \u201c(to borrow from the corona virus glitterati), is (or at least was) a responsible and compassionate thing: encouraging behavior of being active (or at least less sedentary) and making healthier food choices, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, the progressive sin of \u201cfat shaming\u201d has arrived with force and fanfare, meaning a sub-genre of obese celebrities has been put forth and they are to be celebrated. Even an observational mention of \u201cshe\u2019s really heavy\u201d can land someone on the pitchfork of progressive judgment. Of course the celebrity status itself is based <\/em>on being obese, which sets up the typical progressive conundrum: if you note and\/or react to the obesity you are a fascist, but if you don\u2019t<\/em> notice and embrace it you are also a fascist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Recently I came across an article by a conservative columnist named David Strom entitled Healthy at any size? No, it's better to be obese. <\/strong>It opened with three sentences: Eating yourself into an early grave is praiseworthy. Stunning and brave, in fact. We get flooded with propaganda about how being morbidly obese is actually healthy, and that women with layers of fat rolls should flaunt them and be proud of their curves.<\/em> It mentioned an article in the Washington Post that declared there is a common desire among teen-aged boys is to look muscular (I well recall my weight-lifting phase, but never in my life did I remotely achieve \u201cmuscular\u201d). The article concluded that teenage boys engaging in healthy diets and exercise could be<\/em> a \u201cred flag\u201d for obsession. Wow, who could think at such a profound level! Strom also referred to predictable article in Time magazine entitled The White Supremacist Origins of Exercise\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The ultimate thesis of his writing is that the more elite (wealthier, educated, etc) one is, the less <\/em>likely they are to be overweight, yet the (leftist) elite are largely the force behind normalizing and \u201caccepting\u201d obesity. He asks the question, \"Why this is?\" And answers it as follows: \u201cNo, I think it has more to do with maintaining their own social power by promoting indolence itself in the lower classes. A fat and lazy lower class is unlikely to displace the current occupants of the halls of power, and lazy people tend to prefer having things handed to them rather than exhibiting ambition to get ahead. Such people are easier to rule and to perform social experiments upon. And when they fail the Elite don\u2019t pay the price.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n An interesting and probably correct argument from a political-societal-economic standpoint, but I think he missed the personal aspect, which is many people, perhaps most, have a need to feel superior <\/em>to others. As far as obesity goes, if you are in good physical shape, it might well be fun and satisfying to compare yourself with the failings of an obese person, especially if you are a weak person with a tenuous self-concept, which in many ways characterizes the leftist elite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Throughout the bastions of the leftist elite- politics, media, technology, academia, corporations, government, \u201cnon-profits-\u201d we find lots of people with impressive credentials but little accomplishment, lots of wealth that was gained at the expense of others as compared to the benefit of others, experience within their insulated salon <\/em>but not within reality. It must be frustrating to live in privilege not really earned, but it can be reconciled with meaningless virtue signaling complemented by feeling superior to others, not just in association with obesity, but all sorts of things- educational levels, financial and residential status, types of preferred entertainment (they like NASCAR!), and so on. The key here is to pretend you have compassion for your inferiors, but with the overriding (and never stated) concern to maintain your<\/em> superior and privileged status.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The elite certainly relish shaming their perceived inferiors, they just need to be selective. In terms of hedonistic\/lifestyle behaviors, the only one left for them to shame is tobacco: people who smoke cigarettes have been an object of elite contempt for decades; smoking dope is, of course, hip and cool. It is in the realm of culture, religion, and politics that their really sharp knives of shame and scorn are revealed, and the greater the swath of their disdain the better they feel about themselves. Hence, we have people such as Joe Biden characterize 10\u2019s of millions of fellow citizens as fascists, with essentially no \u201cHe really shouldn\u2019t have said that\u201d response from his political bedfellows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In fact, at this moment we are approaching the time of deepest Republican shame as the current debt limit ceiling is about to expire, and it\u2019s time to increase the amount of money we don\u2019t have that the government can spend. As it stands, the Republicans want to hold expenditures to last year\u2019s massive deficit spending of $6.272 trillion, whereas the Biden admin wants to increase it to $6.8 trillion. Of course, in either case it transfers even more money to the pockets of massively wealthy people. Typically the Republicans \u201cmake a stand\u201d at the beginning, but are accused of wanting people to die and flirting with financial ruin, so they bow their heads in shame and give in. The shame stakes are higher this year, however, because the Biden admin is not just predicting the usual government \u201cshutdown\u201d and starving old people, but that without another increase, \u201cIt would make it easier for oil companies to use toxic chemicals that cause severe burns, damage people's eyes, and quite<\/em> literally<\/em> melt bones...and poison the lungs of our children.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And wanting to literally <\/em>melt people\u2019s bones and poison the lungs of children is, you have to admit, pretty shameful. Yes, the Republicans who want minimally<\/em> less deficit spending are Just Like Hitler! Shame on them...and us. In closing:<\/p>\n\n\n\n by Reid Fitzsimons I\u2019m a white male, so I have white male pride. I\u2019m taller than average, so I have taller than average pride. I\u2019m a white male raised in the suburbs, so I have taller than average white male suburban pride. I demand \u201cpride months\u201d and that people chant \u201cwhite male suburban taller than ...continue reading <\/a>
\"body shamed\" according to Elle magazine.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/a>
\"Nice to meet you! I'm a fat artist, activist and unicorn friend.\"<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a>
women; sports bras starting at $69<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"