Now that the election is over, the amygdala-based lifeforms are having to find other existential perils to fuel their daily crisis.

Here’s one mother who has gotten creative in her efforts:

Homeschool mom crushed by ‘moral dilemma’ after son sees male CoverGirl wearing makeup

Oy, as we say in my neck of the woods.

The problem with all this is not that she thinks it’s weird or icky that a boy is wearing makeup.  That’s fine.  Chacun à son goût, and all that.  There’s more than one hippie with whom I camp whose choices, impulses and/or pleasures cause me to raise my eyebrows and/or purse my lips.

The problem is that for her, this is a “moral dilemma.”  A moral dilemma?

Of course it is.  The amygdala-based lifeform requires that life be a certain, specific, and unalterable way.  This guarantees an eternally renewable source of energy: newness is to be feared.  Change is to be feared.  Ambiguity is to be feared.

They cannot allow themselves to recognize that life might have been different before this and will be different after this—and the idea that life is changing even as we live it is enough for them to get their daily dose of panic.

So this lady is having a great day.  She is so fearful of a boy wearing makeup (and all that this might mean) that she cannot take her eyes off her son “for a second.”  She cannot bear the thought now of even allowing him to “go over to a friend’s house,” where he might encounter something different than the walls she and her husband have built for him.  She feeds off this fear.  If she were a vampire, she wouldn’t have to dine for a month.

Finally, every parent’s rueful truth—that their six-year-old is growing up so fast—becomes in her world another source of tasty, delicious fear.  I’m sure she’s looking forward to the teen years with slavering anticipation.