I’m not exactly old.
Only old enough to continue to check my email. From time to time…
For reasons outside my knowledge, this morning I’d found – in the ‘promotions’ section’ a link to a ‘common sense with Bari Weiss’ article. The title was apealing, the name rang a bell – even though I had no idea about who the person was, so I read it.
My reaction was intense enough to start writing.
Not before looking her up…
The point being that she is basically right. Enabling is a powerful phenomenon.
But she is also basically wrong.
Powerfull it might be, only enabling is not necessarily malignant. As she implies.
Enabling is done by people with means. Powerfull and or resourcefull enough for their actions to be effective.
What the enablers choose to enable… is something else.
And the consequences of enabling depend on the enablers’ choices!
Things might come up right. Or wrong.
The kind of enabling curently predominant in America has been detrimental to the society at large. Leading to the enablers becoming irrelevant.
Just as Weiss advertised. Trump has been supplanted by those who had occupied the Capitol – after being enabled by him, while on the other side of the political divide things aren’t going any better. Cultural cancellation isn’t going to end up well.
But enabling can lead to different outcomes. Depending, of course, on what is being enabled.
Take Germany, for instance.
Yes, nobody knows who its President is. Only the country, as a whole, functions far better than many of those whose Presidents are on everybody’s lips. Simply because the German enablers had chosen to enable the ‘right’ kind of behaviors.
PS
Frank Walter Steinmeier
nicichiarasa 