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I knew all along why it was taking Dan Carlin so long to do a new Common Sense episode [mp3], and I have to differ with Melissa on the matter of robbing children of their innocence "in the most heinous way possible". There are more heinous ways and they happen. There are seemingly much less heinous ways, but they accomplish similar outcomes.
Growing up in this world robs everyone of their innocence. In a real sense, innocence isn't great, except insofar as it contains the fundamentally real self who needs to run our lives, not be buried under the thousand boulders rolled down on it by parents and tv and school and movies and video games and peer pressure and circumstances and accidents and meddling psychopaths so far removed we are "lucky" to ever realize they exist.
What is more, you want these things for our kids. Our shiny barbarism isn't better than the grungy barbarism elsewhere. It's as deadly, maybe more, and, no, our striped toothpaste doesn't mean we are more civilized. All that shine does for us is blind us.
pipe up any time....
