Eloquence of the Light

Notions of American kindness during and after the pandemic have expanded far beyond the Golden Rule.

A friend from Eastern Europe told me she learned about our obsession with “being nice” during her senior year in high school while living in the Midwest as an exchange student. In order to be well-loved in the United States, above all else, you must be kind, she observed. When she makes plans with Americans, she questions if they are asking her to “grab coffee” just to be nice, or if they actually want to meet.

I was skeptical about her observations at first, but then I considered the way we describe the people we like. “She is so nice,” we say. You never hear, “She is honest and direct.” It often seems we prefer being nice over being genuine.

Manipulating Americans en masse is simple if we can be convinced that something we are doing — or not doing — is unkind. Video rental businesses understood this well in the 1980s: “Be kind, please rewind.” So we did.

But during the pandemic, corporate media inundated the public with messages dictating what to do in order to be “kind” — directives much more intrusive and disruptive to life than simply rewinding videotapes or returning grocery store carts to the corral. Many in power pointed to “the science” to argue we had to isolate ourselves, maintain an arbitrarily determined six-feet social distance, keep our children out of schools, wear masks, and take an experimental shot. If we did not comply, we likely were killing someone’s grandmother. And really, what could be unkinder than that? 

Even asking questions became socially unacceptable. When we scrutinized the effectiveness of these policies and vocalized concerns about citizens’ freedom under what was basically martial law, we were called selfish. When some raised concerns that the Covid shot was understudied and could cause severe health complications, they were chastised as “anti-vaxxers.”

President Joe Biden informed us just how unkind it was not to get the shot when he referred to Covid-19 as “a pandemic of the unvaccinated.” Repeatedly, we heard messages from the president and many others that we needed to be kind — Americans must do what they are told, wear their masks, and get vaxxed.

The propaganda to weaponize American kindness was overwhelmingly effective. Meanwhile, the media largely ignored early reports of myocarditis as one of the side effects of the shot. Big Tech even joined the “kindness” crusade by creating algorithms that prevented social media users from seeing vaccine skepticism.  

Many believed Biden when he said Covid-19 was not transmissible with the jab, and many Americans felt comfortable mingling after months of isolation. At certain social gatherings and venues, guests were required to show vaccine cards — few things say “celebration” more than “Show me your medical documentation.” Ironically, this pervasive social requirement was in an effort to seem “kind.”

However, it is clear that one side of these debates has a monopoly on what constitutes kindness. When the students of Fairfax County, Virginia, were allowed to enter schools maskless in March 2022, many were afraid of retribution from teachers and peers.

My son, one of the few maskless students in his school at that time, was bullied for his choice. Another student told him to “mask up and cover your ugly face.” On the same day, my son’s classmate called her mother during school because she was terrorized in the cafeteria for not wearing her mask. This is the type of “kindness” associated with virtue signaling.

As we’ve moved past Covid, many commentators have highlighted the policy mistakes and crackpot “science” disguised as “kindness” throughout the pandemic. One suggested “amnesty” is needed to move forward together. In order to grant a pardon, though, we have to reach a public agreement on what was said and how it was wrong. It’s impossible to offer forgiveness to policymakers who refuse to acknowledge wrongdoing.

I am still waiting for an apology from our school district for illegally suspending my sons for 39 cumulative days on “dress code” violations for not wearing masks. Despite my appeals, the school district refuses to expunge the suspensions from my sons’ records. School board members should know that kindness includes apologizing for mistakes.

Because of our “unkind” advocating for equal opportunity, social justice activists call us “white supremacists.” When we stand up for equal opportunity in admissions to colleges and to Fairfax County’s magnet Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, followers of the ironically racist “anti-racist” doctrine ridicule Asian Americans as “allies of white supremacy.” The insult is false and manipulative — there are few more effective ways to say someone is “mean” than to call him a “white supremacist.”

Some, such as Fairfax County’s school board members, also believe “kindness” means denying biological realities, or at the very least, staying quiet in their dissent. Males claiming to be women are entering female locker rooms and bathrooms regularly. Many female students in secondary schools feel unsafe using facilities during school hours. Even after the 2021 sexual assault incidents in public schools in Loudoun County, Virginia, American politicians continue to uphold so-called “transgender rights” over female safety.

Former NCAA swimmer Riley Gaines talks about how NCAA officials pressured swimmers to be “kind” to Lia Thomas, the “transgender” swimmer born a male, who was allowed to share women’s locker rooms. Meanwhile, some school districts are changing scientific words in public schools’ sex education curricula from males and females to “assigned males/females at birth.”

If we publicly assert that we have problems with any of this, activists are quick to disparage our character. They call us bigots, or even transgender children killers. Activists manipulate emotions by claiming that if transgender teens don’t get everything they want, they or their transgender friends will kill themselves. In Fairfax County’s school board meeting speeches, we have been told this ad nauseam — nice people don’t kill transgender children. Kind people stay quiet and allow males to enter female spaces.

This is the ultimate weaponization of kindness.

Undoubtedly, we are better served when we scrutinize what kindness entails — and it has far more to do with virtue than niceness. For example, preserving freedom for future generations of Americans is virtuous; protecting civil liberties for our children is the right and kind thing to do. Our kindness in practice must be based on such virtue if we are to remain pensive and discerning.

Clear waters dancing

Demure yet sleek summer kimono, with tiny embroidered patterns (sakura flowers and seigaiha waves) over an ivory ground.

Embroidery is made with silk thread which gently catch light, this kimono must be so lovely irl in sunlight!

like, he takes in this kid who’s lost everything and was barely saved by people who sacrificed themselves for him, and shreds his last connection to his family by changing his name.

And he teaches this kid, and loves him and raises him, and sure they fight but Hiko would move the earth for kenshin and the kid knows it 

(right?)

and then Kenshin is fourteen and full of damn-fool idealistic notions and they’re fighting (they always fight, and kenshin always falls asleep in the woods and Hiko always brings him back home).

But when Hiko goes to find his student, Kenshin is gone. And Hiko hears the stories of Hitokiri Battousai, of Himura Battousai, of the assassin, and it’s Kenshin, it has to be, but it sounds nothing like the child Hiko trained.

He’s yelling at this man, this man who had been the little boy he once knew, hoping to wound him, but wounding himself at the same time…

Maybe it was a mistake to teach you at all…

He should have taken that little boy and found a family to raise him, let him heal from his losses and grow up a normal person, he should have never inflicted this burden of such overwhelming power on him, power that meant he would never… be truly happy… 

But then… three children burst through the door, two of them yelling how dare he say that about Kenshin, Kenshin was the greatest fighter and best man. 

The third… well, the third was quiet, but Hiko saw everything he needed to see in the way Kenshin looked at her… and how this girl–no, young woman– looked back.

He sat this young woman down, and he saw the strength in her, hidden behind her fear of Kenshin’s rejection. But… but not of Kenshin’s rejection of her, Kenshin’s rejection of himself… Her love for him was that strong.

So there may not be love of living in his pupil’s thick skull… but there was love. There was no way a man without hope for life would create that kind of emotion in this girl.

Well, maybe he didn’t screw up Kenshin so completely, that he couldn’t be turned right. And there really was only one man who could fix him.

She has this that he doesn’t, though: unyielding faith that Kenshin will pull through; she’s followed him all the way to Kyoto so he’s going to have the decency to survive, thank you very much, or else. 

So maybe Hiko comforts the Kamiya girl, but maybe her love and faith in Kenshin comfort him, too. 

He leaves as soon as he hears Kenshin will be alright, but it doesn’t matter. The fool is in good hands, and Hiko’s point has been made. 

A year later, it is Kaoru that makes Kenshin send an invitation to their wedding, because she has seen first hand that the swordsmaster cares a lot more than he lets on. On the big day, Hiko’s congratulations are sincere, even as he ignores Kaoru’s “I’ve seen through your act” smug look. 

Rekindling the relationship between the two is easier after Kenji’s birth: Kenshin is bursting with joy and willing to share it with everyone, and Hiko takes a real liking to the toddler anyway - he just has so many stories to tell Kenji about his father.

It is still a bit clunky, and a bit awkward at times (or downright infuriating, too), but both men are older, perhaps a bit wiser, and they both know better. They’ve long since forgiven each other.

SHINING, SHIMMERING, SPLENDID

TELL ME, FANGIRL, NOW WHEN DID