A "Committed Activist" Feels Abandoned by Old Friends


Last Friday, uexpress published this agony column from a correspondent who claims to have been committed to various "good causes" for the last few dozen years, and to have seen old friends fall away from interest in the outcome of these political struggles.

My answer, with its usual bit of snark, is the following:

"In North America, building and maintaining a family, especially with the conventional suburban accoutrements, requires a house (which is a complex structure made up of many breakable, moving parts), at least one car (ditto), and ever-growing expenses and mounds of paperwork. Even a dog from the shelter [may] tie its happy new owners a lot closer to their little corner of the American Dream, and cause them to forget that the rest of the world still exists.

"Unfortunately, unlike people who stay in so-so walkable cities, (and our old-country cousins in Europe), suburban family-builders have to take on entirely too much busywork just to form workable households. One movement the LW might consider joining would be for public transit and day-care -- to say nothing of more education on the consequences of going the family route. Many of your old friends are eating crow over their life choices, LW -- and will not take kindly to having you rub it in by raising the issues they've neglected."

Any other takes on this problem?


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