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Laith 🔻🇵🇸's avatar

On this earth, what deserves life: the echo of April, the scent of bread

‏at dawn, a woman’s opinions about men, the writings of Aeschylus, first

‏love, grass on stone, mothers standing on a thread of flute, and the fear

‏of invaders from memories.

‏On this earth, what deserves life: the end of September, a woman leaving

‏her forties with all her apricots, the hour of the sun in prison, clouds imitating

‏a flock of creatures, the chants of a people for those ascending to their fate

‏smiling, and the fear of tyrants from songs.

‏On this earth, what deserves life: on this earth, the lady of

‏the earth, the mother of beginnings and ends. It was called Palestine. It has become

‏called Palestine. My lady: I deserve, because you are my lady, I deserve life.

Mahmoud Darwish

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Uaifo Ojo's avatar

To this I say “Isè”... Which means 'amen' in my local language of Edo Origin here in Nigeria ( more a response to prayers and platitudes that predates the Christian amen to be exact )

I swear I feel of a kindred spirit with you Palestinians and that's why I've been ranting and raving everywhere I can in support of you guys and if I could find a way to physically fight for you guys from here or anywhere else, I would have done that long ago

Just know you guys are not alone and most of the world 🌍 is on your side and before God and Man, before I depart from this earth, I swear to visit to visit Gaza and the West Bank and play and laugh with your peoples and exchange culture with you guys as much as one can. I swear it on my Soul 💝

With Love from Nigeria 🇳🇬🇵🇸

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Laith 🔻🇵🇸's avatar

Thank you, brother! It would be an absolute honor to show you Palestine, and insha’Allah, that day will come soon. 🇳🇬💚🇵🇸

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gypsy33's avatar

Laith, I’m coming too.

I was going to go with a group to the West Bank to help replant the olive trees destroyed by the squatters. The group welcomed me, as I’m a retired professional landscaper.

I was PSYCHED and excitedly told my brother about it on the phone. He called me in desperation the next morning, telling me he had dreamt I’d been shot and killed. ( He has the gift of prescience.) He made me promise not to go, and since he is the most important person in my life, I reluctantly agreed.

But SOMEDAY I WILL!

PS If Ansarallah would have me, I’d join them.

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Uaifo Ojo's avatar

Damn, that's really Deep

So why don't we have start a new group here with you, me and Laith plus whoever else wants to join us to visit Palestine and plant those Olive Trees and play with those wonderful people there?

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gypsy33's avatar

We WILL, Uaifo. We will. Is Laith already there?

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Uaifo Ojo's avatar

On his bio, he says he's a Palestinian that has yet to set foot home. I don't know if that has changed since though..

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Mary's avatar

I'm in. I feel the same as you both.

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Contrarian 33's avatar

IForor all of us, meeting up in Palestine could be the highlight of our lives.

Keep the movement going, folks.

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Chang Chokaski's avatar

❤️ Count me in!

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The Revolution Continues's avatar

I'd love to go to Palestine as well... To plant olive trees would be the most beautiful thing to do to help heal the land there.

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gypsy33's avatar

Chang, we’re gonna need a big hotel! 😁

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Laith 🔻🇵🇸's avatar

You warm my heart, dear. I promise to send it to you once I’m able to enter the West Bank or Gaza. 💚

I’m pretty sure it will be within a few months.

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gypsy33's avatar

I’m ready, Laith!

Here’s something you may find interesting. I once met Hanan Ashwari’s husband. He was here for his daughter’s college graduation and was staying with my sister’s Palestinian neighbor. What a kind, gentle and sweet man he was!

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Laith 🔻🇵🇸's avatar

💚💚

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Contrarian 33's avatar

Well, gypsy33. I am not a 'retired profession landscaper' but if you need an extra pair of hands on a shovel for digging in the olive trees, count me in. I'm available. Whenever.

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gypsy33's avatar

Con,

HELL YEAH! ❤️❤️❤️

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russian_bot's avatar

Excuses, excuses... You already adopted a Palestinian child though, as you promised, didn't you? That wouldn't involve a trip there so your brother could sleep well.

Americans have enormous mouths. And "gifts of prescience" to fall back on when mouths open just a bit too wide.

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gypsy33's avatar

Just shut the fuck up. Have you heard of any Palestinian children yet available for adoption? NO, ME EITHER.

As far as my brother: I don’t give a shit if I die or not, but HE DOES. And if he’s afraid for me, and begs me not to go, I ain’t goin’. You clearly have no one who gives two shits about YOU.

I’ll go some day and when I choose to go is none of your motherfucking business, shithead. Go suck some pond scum and stay the fuck outta my life.

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Laith 🔻🇵🇸's avatar

I can’t even enter most of the Arab countries surrounding Palestine. I was only five years old when I was denied entry to Jordan. Imagine—they accused a five-year-old of participating in a terrorist camp. I still remember how angry my mom was when they turned us away, especially since her sister lived in Jordan.

That being said, I love your idea of a group visit to Palestine. I’m confident I’ll be able to enter the West Bank or Gaza in the coming months, and when I do, I’ll be sure to let you both know. 💚

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Uaifo Ojo's avatar

So sorry about what you went through at such a young age, especially from people who should be kin and family to you

That being said, we'll be awaiting the invite and Gaza and West Bank better get ready for some Nigerian high energy flavour coupled with a real life kickass Gypsy!😀😄

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Laith 🔻🇵🇸's avatar

Hahaha sounds like a great plan 👌🏼😃

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gypsy33's avatar

👍👍👍

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Uaifo Ojo's avatar

Once again, Isè! ❤️‍🔥🇵🇸🇳🇬

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Sam's avatar

Beautiful Uaifo

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Uaifo Ojo's avatar

Thank you Sam 😊

It was straight from the heart and I didn't know how it was going to develop beyond the "Isè" when I started

Guess the Universe and Spirits wanted to say something and I was the right vessel at the right time 😅

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Susan's avatar

May I borrow Ise from you please? It’s a beautiful word

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Susan's avatar

ISE Uaifo! I love your words and heart ❤️🇵🇸 🇳🇬

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Uaifo Ojo's avatar

Go ahead, we welcome all kindred spirits to utilize our language 😊

I'm glad it struck a chord with you Susan 💝

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@smokygirl2006's avatar

Beautiful! 😢☮️🇵🇸

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Lauren Seikaly's avatar

I love you, Caitlin. Thank you for writing this. I am in tears. As a granddaughter of the Nakba I am often told by Zionists how “lucky” I am that my grandparents were kicked out of their home and I got to grow up in America, wealthy and in luxury. (Where my grandmother developed diabetes from the processed food and my grandfather had to work two jobs and had a stroke and died at 65 - so lucky, right?!) I would give it all up in a heartbeat to have been raised in Haifa, Palestine where my family had been for 300 years, among the olive trees and fishing in the sea. Learning to cook from my grandmother with food from the market. We’ve all tried to keep that alive here in the States, of course. But it’s not the same. It is tinged with sadness of what was lost, stolen. Of what now only exists in the black and white photographs they were able to save. You really hit the mark on this one. Do Zionists ever say to you: “Well if you hate this country so much why don’t you go live in Gaza?!?!” If only I could. 😢

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Vin LoPresti's avatar

Your perspective is priceless. Thanks.

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gypsy33's avatar

Lauren

You express exactly what is in my own heart.

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Vin LoPresti's avatar

Your heart and Lauren's and those of so many Americans (first-, second-, whatever-gen) on this thread are so big and beautiful, and so loving toward these fantastically admirable oppressed people that it triples, quadruples, raises to the hundredth power the crimes this stinking government commits in our names -- regardless of which duopoly simps are in power.

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Lisa Dixon's avatar

Yes, Wealth and luxury are a poor substitute for connection to your homeland, that essential belonging and all it brings that nurtures the soul- and most people in the West can’t see it, we are so bombarded with capitalism and propaganda ( I am Australian )

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Indu Abeysekara's avatar

🤗❤️ Love and hugs to Lauren Seikaly and Caitlin.

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gypsy33's avatar

Dearest Caitlin

There are two videos that stand out in my mind that indicate the unbelievably positive attitudes of the Palestinians.

One was a little boy, perhaps three, with legs amputated up to his torso. An adult man, perhaps his father, was tossing a marble around for the boy to scoot along and retrieve.

The boy was SMILING.

Another was a group of beautiful young boys praying in the shattered remains of their mosque. The interviewer asked one of the boy’s mother what they were saying. She told him, THEY ARE PRAYING TO ALLAH TO FORGIVE ISRAEL.

If these circumstances aren’t enough to make you weep, you have neither heart nor soul.

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Vin LoPresti's avatar

Another I saw of a Palestinian man insisting that it wasn't hatred -- that Arabs did not hate Jews, that (still -- after all the slaughter) it was possible to live together in peace. It exceeds my ability to comprehend their capacity for forgiveness. Supposedly this is the attitude that Christians should follow in imitating Jesus, forgiving our enemies, but Palestinians are truly offering everyone a huge lesson in forgiveness.

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JennyStokes's avatar

It would not surprise me at all if many so-called Christians turn their faces away.

What Westerners do is: Bomb civilians. Do the Arabs do this? NO.

We have forgotten morals in the so-called white/Christian nations.

I am not a religious person: Spiritual? Yes.

"There is a gigantic HOLE in the West which can never be fixed".

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Vin LoPresti's avatar

Well we certainly know that the US is chock full of so-called "Christian" Zionists advocating for insane biblical prophecies at the expense of everyone else's lives; mass extermination is prophetically necessary, no better, even worse really than the Israeli Zionists because they claim the "love they neighbor" credo of Jesus. How you going to fix a hole like that? You'd have to answer the question in many individual cases: what made this person's mind fall into the deep end of the pool?

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JennyStokes's avatar

Exactly correct: I think there is something here which many people are avoiding because it is dire. USA needs catastrophe (not in the biblical sense).

At the present moment we are seeing University students being 'disappeared' in the USA. When they have finished with the immigrants/students who will they come for next? It's a Civil War. NOT one person is immune....what you wrote years ago on some site (maybe when you were younger) will be scrutinised by the facists in place right now.

I personally do not know one person who is 'lillywhite!'

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Vin LoPresti's avatar

I agree -- Not one person immune. Whether or not it's true in practice (and it probably is, Jenny) it FEELS tight in my gut that totalitarianism has fully arrived in America, damnation.

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JennyStokes's avatar

In a Civil War petty revenges come to a head...people speak out against each other. I unfortunately have seen this happen.

No-one is safe!

Be safe Vin.

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Joy in HK fiFP's avatar

I wonder if there is a way to ask these so-called Christians, just what is it that the Anti-Christ would do to them that could be worse than getting them to support the mass slaughter of babies? Maybe they are already following that Anti-Christ? Time to wake up?

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musicbob's avatar

What you just wrote is also enough to make one weep. Thank you for adding this.

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HSMcKenna's avatar

I have never seen people in the middle of their worst nightmare praise god, until I started watching videos of the people in Palestine. It has changed me greatly.

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Vin LoPresti's avatar

Their resilience is mind-boggling, but terribly saddening because it's associated with the beatings that they endure. Gut-wrenching emotions.

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@smokygirl2006's avatar

I am reading this, Gypsy, and I’m weeping. Such a beautiful people are the Palestinians. No, the West just doesn’t get it. So sad. 😞😢☮️🇵🇸

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William Zannoni's avatar

Really beautiful piece, Caitlin. To you my sincere thanks.

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musicbob's avatar

Best article I have ever read. Caitlin (or someone else) may write one more meaningful (to me/us) in the future, but for now, this is the best. This will be shared with as many people as I can. Nothing else for me to add.

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JennyStokes's avatar

There will be a huge hole opening up in every person in the world when/if The Palestinians are genocided. I am not sure some people understand how disgusted, with ourselves, we will feel.

Imagine this world without the Palestinians. I cannot.

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Shaista Ali's avatar

The hole is already. “The loss of a loved one,” Caitlin describes is true… chronic grief for 18 months. 💔

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JennyStokes's avatar

18 months? The West will NOT recover.

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Chuck Nasmith's avatar

Make Palestine Palestine.

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gypsy33's avatar

Hi Chuck

We need green hats that specify MPPA

MAKE PALESTINE PALESTINE AGAIN

!!!

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Chang Chokaski's avatar

💯👍👌👏 Fantastic idea Gypsy!!! 🙏❤️

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Florence Brown's avatar

Such an interesting perspective. You know that Palestinians take care of children whose parents have been murdered. They don't let foreigners adopt them. They have such strong family ties. Israel is just a made-up country and is generating more anti-Semitism because of their cruelty. My closest friends were Jewish when I grew up but now I cringe at every yarmulke person I see in the streets. They have brought this on themselves.

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Bob Martin's avatar

Many, many Jews are anti-Zionists. It's crucial to remember that. Don't cringe at yarmulkes because you may be cringing at someone on your (and my) side.

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Susan Mercurio's avatar

I feel the same way

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Joy in HK fiFP's avatar

It's Zionism, not Judaism or Christian, or athiests, who are the ones committing these crimes. The Zionists want very much to get you to conflate them with Jewishness. Let us not do their work for them.

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Ellen In NC's avatar

I was fortunate to be invited to an Iftar dinner last evening. It was a beautiful experience.

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Donna Dallal-Ferne's avatar

Thank you for this. As a Palestinian American who was born and raised in the US and has had insufficient exposure to my people, I too have felt this envy. And, living in the midst of the anti-semitism that has consistently shut down the humanity of Palestinians (yes, Palestinians are Semites too!!!Dare I see we are more Semitic than our European-Israeli colonial neighbors), I have not dared to speak this, lest I be confused for a terrorist! Again,Thank you for this!

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Chuck Nasmith's avatar

I love Semites. Israel is a made up Terrorist State. Free Palestine

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gypsy33's avatar

Hi Donna

If I’m ever labeled a “terrorist” for standing for Palestine, it’s a badge I will wear with honor.

Israelis are the terrorists. The groups Amerikkkans label “terrorists” are FREEDOM FIGHTERS.

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Chuck Nasmith's avatar

*"We can't afford to lose Palestine"*. Help wanted.

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Eileen Gibson's avatar

Agree absolutely. When Palestinians in the videos that I have seen, are at their lowest in the terrible moments after a death of a loved one such as a mother mourning her child, the common typical reaction to the pain of loss and shock, is not vengeful but one where they call out to God saying it is his way and that he is the dispenser of justice. This shows the depth of their faith which I think truly helps them bear what is happening to them by believing that their lost ones are in heaven.

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Vin LoPresti's avatar

You're so on the mark here. Palestinians are models of cultural nurturing. I've been searching for the nurturing immigrant culture of the lower east side of Manhattan that my dad experienced as a five-year old off the boat in 1912. Because he saw it as an authentic nurturing womb from which he jumped into a new world, and I never felt that way about the America I experienced as a child.

Instead here's what we now offer new immigrants in America: Magic Protoplasm — that’s the ticket. Let us not make the mistake that the eugenics movement has disappeared or gone underground. It has instead taken occupancy in the bedrooms of the billionaire and hundred millionaire oligarchs (note how Musk drags along a mini-exemplar of that magical stuff like an animated golem).

Education — whether via esteemed institution or via oneself is meaningless; not to my father, but seemingly to anyone of my gen or later A list of prestigious degrees and publications? Poo! One grandpa was a fabricatore di scarpe (shoemaker), the other a contadino (peasant farmer). Hence, any acquired erudition is meaningless — wrong genes, not Magic Protoplasm.

Believe it. They do!

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Devra's avatar

What a beautiful thought, what depth of feeling. Gaza was on the map thousands of years ago. That small area was called Philistia, which of course transmuted into Palestine. Then the Hebrews (they weren't Jews then) arrived, and fairly soon, apart from fighting other groups in the area, fought each other. The Hebrew Israelites, in a small area Israel, fought the other main group of Hebrews, the Judeans, in their bit called Judea. The Judeans won so by the Roman times, the area was dubbed Judea. But that was then. The Temple went, the Hebrew religion had matured, the now Jews scattered. It's culminated in the second genocide. One by the Nazis, now by the Israelis.

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Sarah Hawkes's avatar

I totally feel and agree with what you say.So beautifully expressed.

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Richard Parker's avatar

It's the Anglo-White affliction.

The individual is set above the community. This leads inevitable to "I have MY rights", entitlement and "I can do what I want".

Asia, Latin America, Africa, even Europe, all set the family, community and living in harmony above the individual disruptive asshole.

Kids are socialized from an early age. You will almost never see a brat running rampant in those regions. They are taught to respect their elders and grandparents.

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Sam's avatar

This is so true

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Chang Chokaski's avatar

>>"It's the Anglo-White affliction."

I'm not so sure about that. There are many reasons for the slow shift from a sharing, communal, and sometimes even traditional cultures towards individualism and what the philosopher Hans-Georg Moeller calls "profilicity" - some major ones being CAPITALISM (especially neoliberal capitalism).

I've lived in several cultures (in the east and south AND the north and west), and it seems to me that socio-economic conditions and the systems running many nations seem to have a huge impact on this move towards INDIVIDUALISM.

>>"Asia, Latin America, Africa, even Europe, all set the family, community and living in harmony"

That is a FALSE narrative. If you study the history of all the above continents, you will see more evidence than you bargained for to the contrary.

First and foremost - human nature is intrinsically (at its core) the same for all humans. Above and beyond that, much can be said about sociological conditioning, socio-economic conditions, indoctrination, revisionist history, believed narratives and belief systems, etc. that feed into such narratives.

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Megan Baker's avatar

"...brat running rampant..."? Wow. Bigoted against kids much?

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Richard Parker's avatar

Hardly.

Didn't read and understand my post, but got instantly triggered.

Calm down, you might end up being a Karen.

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Megan Baker's avatar

You seem to believe your comment was more complex and sophisticated than it was. You also seem to believe that calling children "brats" is not the least bit bigoted, indicating that you're likely an American, and yes, that characterization triggers me. The deep bias to be found everywhere in the U.S. against children and teens contributes directly to making childhood and adolescence a minefield. It's also pretty rich when adults express contempt for children since the former enjoy all the rights available to human beings while the latter enjoy none. Your attitude was perhaps understandable decades ago, when little to nothing was understood about children, but most folks today at least try to appear to think of children as deserving of respect (of which calling them "brats" is the opposite). I suggest that you were so triggered you had to bring up the specter of "Karens" instead of just saying, "Yes, I think kids are brats who need to be put in their place. Is there something wrong with that?"

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