There was never a time when I attended public schools that I wanted to be there. There has never been a time since graduation when I wanted any child to ever be compelled to attend. I have college and graduate degrees from Ivy League schools earned on academic scholarships and I have no interest in the public schools continuing to exist. Your country went down a terribly evil path by forcing children to attend and enforcing truancy laws. You think you can compromise with evil and have just enough communism to feel comfortable without it going to extremes. But it was already burdensomely extreme fifty years ago in Kansas let alone any of these commie coastal cities. Compulsory schooling is evil and furries are merely the latest symptom.
The school system today employs the worst moral dregs of society. Even when I was in school decades ago the majority of them fell into this category. The principal was a holy-roller secret binge drinker - extremely conflicted. Many teachers were having affairs with each other, some were having affairs with the students. A lot had liberal opinions so stupid that even high school students knew they were full of crap. The few competent teachers left the school quickly, while others bolted when their pensions became vested. My favorite physic teacher took a job with the Post Office because he was so sick of public education - the Post Office! I think these people choose education because they need an uneducated, compliant, and obedient audience to make them feel validated. When I meet someone new who tells me they are or were a teacher, I always prepare to deal with a whackjob. Most of the time I'm right.
"I think these people choose education because they need an uneducated, compliant, and obedient audience to make them feel validated."
Yup. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that schoolteachers as a group have the most authoritarian tendencies of any occupation. They get to spew their propaganda to a captive audience, and the audience is in no position to push back since their grades and their future depend on the good graces of these Hugo Chavez types.
There's a variety of reasons people choose education. That definitely could be one of them. But do you honestly think all teachers are like this? This was never my experience growing up in school, but maybe things changed since the 70's.
Some teachers just love kids. They just do. You could feel it come off of them. If they didn't teach, maybe they'd work at a children's hospital. My first and second grade teacher was like that.
I think other teachers thought they really were preparing us for adulthood, and they were. the harder ones. The ones that gave no quarry on mistakes. They wanted to show in a safe environment of school, that actions had consequences, that you could fail, if you didn't try.
Another set of teachers would exploit their children. A fourth grade teacher was like that. She'd have kids brush her hair and do chores for her and they got special priveleges for doing so.
I think though, a great many techers are there because it was the job they could get. You've heard the whole adage "Those that cannot do, teach." Well I think it holds true. These teachers do what their told, they follow orders, and they become part of the system. And this is who the vast majority of teachers are.
John Gatto who was a New York school teacher, unlike many, actually understood the purpose of "education." And yes, it very often involved indoctrination. Like the whole aspect of spewing "facts" and memorizing rather than understanding anything. History was all about learning dates and events and people, but did we ever know why they did what they did?
I hope some of these kids understand the importance of what they are doing. And if they do, that is a good sign indeed. They are seeing the double standard and pushing back against it. They are seeing the arbitrary and capricious and saying "no." And they should film and document as much of this as they can. It would make a heck of a documentary.
I also think of how much they endured over the last four years.
School choice would help, but we would still be left with the attractiveness to dictatorial types of a job where they get to preach their views unchallenged to a captive audience. With school choice, the difference would be that it'd be easier to do something about it.
To my mind, any solution would include school management screening prospective hires for authoritarian partisan tendencies.
The authoritarian tendencies! All the time! There are hundreds of books about how important appropriate autonomy is in creating happy, cooperative and respectful humans, but instead it seems that schools are moving towards the opposite and wondering why children hate school and are disrespectful.
After 6 years our elementary school has updated their snack policy limiting options to fruit or vegetables four days out of five instead of 1/5. My daughter doesn’t eat fruit, much to my chagrin, so she will be fasting I guess. I’m just so tired of pointing out to a bunch of lard asses that they don’t have a monopoly on how to live and how to raise children. They can’t even produce competitive results for the job I hired them to do. But they are making it their business to police the eating habits of my perfectly healthy, stick-thin child. They even told the kids they will be searching lunchboxes “so don’t try and sneak anything.” Completely forgetting that the brain runs on glucose, clearly parents are the ones packing the lunches (or at least buying the food), and lastly children are not uniform little widgets.
I believe you had this experience. My niece was a teacher, and sacrificed a lot of her personal time in concerns for her students. I've known a different kind of teacher for myself, but met a few you have described.
That is absolutely the case. In college I had a buddy in the teaching program, rated best in the state. He said it was a known thing that dumb people were attracted to teaching because they felt if they could be the person in the front of the room, they'd become smart and all the students would see them as being smart. Which is why this program ruthlessly weeded out stupid people, even if they managed to grind out good grades.
when I was a little kiddo, about 9 years old, my family had just moved to the US from Europe. (my parents are dutch, came to US after they got married in 1947, then my dad got a job with the US govt as an auditor/CPA and we left the US for european US military bases mostly though we were not military, okay, that all said) The first US elementary school I went to the principal called all of the kids into the auditorium/lunch room and we were scolded for something (can't remember) but this statement shocked me, he said that if such and such ever happened again, there would be "heads rolling"
I pulled my two daughters out of a public elementary school after hearing a teacher berate a 4th grade student as a "dumb ass". I complained to the administration; they did absolutely nothing. I sacrificed a lot to send them to private Christian schools after that.
Teachers and administrators say some horrific things to children. I volunteer in the school library and I hear them. It’s not all of them and it’s not all the time, but I find it incomprehensible. I used to have so much respect for teachers but now that we are almost out of elementary school my respect has really crumbled.
I so hope you are right that the situation is truly turning. I still cannot believe what moral breakdown has been allowed to even happen. 10 or 20 years ago we laughed at or ignored the lunacy but here we are.
It's within the realm of human possibility that they're protesting something else entirely, something unknown even to them. There should be a term similar to "strawman", in which a person projects an inner hidden crisis onto something else? To co-opt the term, the Israel-Hamas conflict might be a "strawman" crisis for an entirely different crisis raging in their subconscious. The human psyche is more than capable of such a paradox. If this is what's happening, we should not expect it to subside, but to eventually move to something else, but with escalating desperation.
These are the same organized and paid protesters as BLm and ANtifa. There is something very insidious behind the masterminds who perpetuate these riots. This is but one part of a larger plan.
You're giving these idiots way too much credit. The human design is far more complicated than our thinking. I'm betting on the complexity of the human psyche over the human ability to plan and implement something so diabolical.
Actually we saw firsthand just how much humans have the ability to plan and implement something so diabolical when we look at what happened with Covid over the past four years, and it’s still going on today full steam ahead. Our government, medical institutions, billionaires, and big pharma most certainly planned and are still planning by appointing and imposing supposed “misinformation experts.” As if one persons judgement of the validity of information is any more accurate than another’s. Show it all, we are smart enough to come to our own conclusions and wisdom, (which is what they don’t want.) But withholding access to information and to all arguments on all sides of an issue to control a narrative is diabolical to the core. So many hard earned careers and reputations have permanently been smeared and damaged by all of their plans and actions. Those idiots are craftier than you’re giving credit for. And many just like them plotted over the years in other social venues for their chosen causes. Maybe for some youth and young adults it’s just plain idiocy, or some adults that never really matured and learned how to analyze and think more critically, then chose to raise kids, but there are also among them those skilled in very insidious tactics in a long term progression. I remember back in the 70s in grade school and middle school there were a couple girls in my class that were very, very good at planning and crafting how to hurt others continuously, and how to pit people against each other over silly reasons. You could see it in their eyes. And if they felt threatened by your ability to see things your own way, it all became very clear just how much they knew how to manipulate the masses. It was scary how clever and crafty they were. No, I think too many aren’t giving enough credit for the human capacity to plan diabolical things and that’s why we are where we are today.
I'm sure that sort of grade school stuff is very prevalent in congress. The interplay between the conscious and subconscious is very fascinating. Actions can be motivated by one or the other, but also a mixture of the two, and it's impossible to know for sure where the motivation is coming from. When it's primarily subconscious, then their reasoning is always lacking, but they remain convinced that their reasons are sound. I think this's the crux of our disagreement. You think it's fully conscious with definitive goals. I suspect it's more subconscious, motivated by something else, something they're not fully aware of. Human beings, even elites, are fully capable of such self-deception.
Mike, I respectfully disagree. We’ve seen it in real time w/ OWS, George Floyd-BLM (that actually started earlier w/ Rodney King, Michael what’s-his-name, Trayvon Martin), “climate change, abortion, defund police, trannies, Ukraine, Gaza-Hamas & more.
Jeff Childers w/ C&C referenced a “rent-a-mob” ad the other day. There is no end to mindless morons-flying monkeys-useful idiots - including many of our “betters” in politics, entertainment & other influential positions - who don’t even know or understand what they’re protesting; they either love creating mayhem & crime or are so pathetic, they just want to be part of “the next big thing”
Ok, but keep in mind that if we settle on "they're being paid" or "they're a bunch of idiots" (or both) we could be overlooking a real and unsustainable crisis. If this is the case, we'll see their methods become increasingly extreme and destructive.
I don’t think there’s any question but that methods will (are) becoming increasingly extreme & destructive. The left is increasingly delusional & desperate & cornered animals are very dangerous. The rioting, mayhem, destruction of property & lives á la BLM are “sooooo last season”. Just wait til the election. There will be a cluster f€%# no matter who “wins” although I believe much more dangerous if LGB-FJB or whoever is substituted for him loses
Your theory makes a lot of sense to me, Mike. After all, these are the same people who shifted their attention to supporting Hamas from prior support of BLM violence and, prior to that, Occupy Wall Street nonsense.
Most have no concept of the ideologies they "support." They only know these are facades behind which they can apparently "get away with" whatever they want.
This is what happens when society ignores warnings about what happens when we start down a "slippery slope."
It is emblematic for sheeples to follow “the next big thing”: raaaacism, wuflu, Ukraine, Hamas, “climate change”, LGBTQ-trannyism, anti-cop, anti-family, anti-formalized religion, anti-patriotism, anti-freedom, ad nauseum + absolute intolerance & hatred of any who disagree w/ all of it
I don't know if that's true or not. I suppose it depends on your definition of "sheeple." I think the vast majority of those who see this in society only appear to go along with it by not saying anything against it. Do sheep seem that invested in the direction they are going? Whereas those that follow "the next big thing" don't look to be sheep, but active participants in something.
Those that subscribe to Racism, #Metoo, Covid, Ukraine, Hamas, climate change, the growing alphabet game of alternative lifestyles, anti-cop, anti family, anti-religion, anti patriotism, anti-freedom, anti establishment, are not sheep, but actively pushing against something. I can speculate. On Loveline, a lot of these issues stem from abuse or a broken family.
The social justice they feel entitled to is tied to something personal. And of course it also is the result of experiences as well.
IDK, even w/ those useful idiots (for current “thing”, I bet most of them couldn’t find Gaza on a map & parroted the covid-mask-lockdown bullshit as gospel w/out researching for themselves) actively pushing something, it’s because bigger powers behind the scenes are the ones covertly pushing it.
Everybody has personal shit to one degree or another, so that’s really no excuse. I had my share of it growing up & never felt entitled. I just pushed through & got on with my life.
You may be right. There was a video I saw recently of a woman walking amongst a throng of protestors. And as she rose her voice, they repeated everything she said back to her. It was very sad to hear this. But to be one of the many making such repetitions, there must have been a dopamine hit from it. "Ah good, we are doing something, we are chanting."
Incidentally there was one funny part when she was yelling:
"One step forward!"
(One Step Forward)
a huge pause, then finally...
"Another step forward."
(another Step Forward)
You could tell her mind was cranking "Two steps back."
In the eighties I looked at protesting as ridiculous. I thought it was a whole lot of nothing. But I suppose that's how you feel when you believe you have the freedom to do it anytime you want. But I also thought "they will just ignore whoever it is is protesting and do whatever they want." I still believe that.
The veneer here is that these people are protesting something that isn't already establishment. Maybe the purpose is to give the appearance of "many people believe this, therefore we should fight for this." Or for those who push back it is meant to demoralize us. I cna't tell you how often I have heard news reports giving us poll numbers of what we are supposed to believe. The bandwagon logical fallacy as a news report.
I agree it is no excuse, but it is an explanation other than "sheeple."
Sheeple are simply people who follow the herd (e.g. “the next big thing” mainly because it’s “fashionable”) in sheep-like or bovine fashion. No thought process at all other than they follow whoever is actually pulling the strings / setting the agenda. Sheeple, lemmings both seem appropriate to me
Back when cell phones were first becoming ubiquitous, about 2010 or thereabouts, I was on top of the mountain at Squaw Valley sitting in a cafe there, surrounded by the most incredible views, and I saw a group of fairly young people come in and sit down...late teens and twenties mostly. Instead of looking around and chatting together and having a good time, every single one of them was staring silently down at a cellphone screen, and no one was talking. It struck me as incredibly weird so I've never forgotten that moment, and I wondered where all this was going even back then.
The most deranged or amoral people that you cannot argue rights, ethics, or mores with are - in the liberal West - people either in or have emerged from its Leftist sheep-dips; its monasteries of groupthink ....otherwise known as universities. Gato's post raises (for me anyway) a long-overdue question........how can these SJW blots on our civilisation be suitably be brought to account. For 50+ years we Western liberals have indulged them and indulged them and, in effect, encouraged more of same. Now it's time to ask how can they be brought to account for:
* their gall and presumption in thinking they have any rightful place in institutions of 'higher learning.'
* their ignorant trashing and dismantling of our culture...and at the taxpayers expense!
* their passive-aggressive spite and bile towards their fellow man dressed up as virtue.
It may seem very non-pc but one can't help feeling that some kind of retribution (punishment even) - something akin to the stocks of former times - is what this kind of academia wokerati behavior richly deserves....I wish I knew how it could be brought about but I've no idea.
Perhaps the economic hard times we are just beginning to face will be the cleanser that will bring "the worst of these SJW blots on our civilization suitably to account". Nothing like poverty and struggling to survive to wash the colored dyes out of ones hair and the smug expressions off ones face. And I doubt they will be able to count on a welfare state to help when that state is 40 or 50 Trillion worthless dollars in debt. Those useful idiots are expendable.
Yes and if that time comes, the sound of their deleting of their social media posts will be deafening. Or maybe there'll be a woke-to-anti-woke quote rewriter AI app by then. Once a groupthinker; always a groupthinker.... so I'll be "#MeToo, I was always against this mad wokeness"..... you'll see.
Unfortunately a lot of those suffering the hard economic times remain clueless and stupie and demand that the government that caused the problem fix it by providing more bread and circuses.
I've heard a similar refrain my entire life, "Just wait till they get out into the real world". It turns out they took over the real world. We have a defective society that will produce an endless supply of useless dim-wits that believe they are entitled to the product of your labor. This problem will not solve itself.
Crushing the woke mob is just treating the symptom. There is a disease, and it is the hollowing out of our country and culture by the inexorable forces of fiat. I don’t know how we recover, but I know it involves fun, truth, beauty, meaning.
Everything is artifice. I scroll instagram thinking, “there’s nothing here. There’s no here here. We are lost.” I love a good cat video, but what are we doing?
A return to gold and silver money would be welcome. There is too much corruption and too much concentration of power in that collection of counties around Mordor on the Potomac.
A good cat video brings beauty into the world. There is something to be said for that. At times, beauty is its own reward. And it certainly can be a great balm to ugliness. There is a lot of ugliness in the world.
Part of dealing with wokeness is to show the absurdity of it by being absurd.
Furries. The absuridity is that if they want to live like animals, offer them the reality of what that means. I doubt very much they will call your bluff. Imagine having to be fed kibble, having to pee outside, and of course, how many restaurants and businesses allow dogs? Okay, maybe way too many. But what about flea baths? spay and neuter? becoming outside pets? Or the sheer fact that pets have almost no autonomy. You as a parent, have every right to dress up your pet in ridiculous clothes.
Whereas the woke answer is to create artifice to combat marginalization, the truth is the answer is to rejoice in the differences.
I think that’s accurate, to a point, but there has to be a susceptibility to corruption of thoughts and ideals, and that needs to be addressed in order to truly heal. Otherwise we’re just suppressing.
I believe that you are correct, and I see this happening to the most susceptible, the children in the schools – where this philosophical freakshow began and also where it must end.
The old morality was replaced by the new morality, but the new morality is destroying itself. Except the practitioners of the new norality reflexively hate and stifle any return to the old morality. What's left is empty narcissism.
Decent men brought up by moral mothers should seek out like-minded women who understand the importance of raising their own children in the Judeo-Christian tradition. (And vice versa.)
Without guidance at home to develop a healthy conscience, children are rudderless and susceptible to depraved groomers and communists.
"i suspect the reason that so many on the left dislike "libs of tiktok" so much is that she has flipped their own script on them.
they are accustomed to being the ones who get to shame people and pile on moral opprobrium while being immune from criticism in return."
--------------------------------
Nobody likes to see what's really in that damn mirror.
Me, I'm really glad these people have stripped down to the bare skin now. Ilhan on her little victory tour of Columbia said (and I paraphrase since ain't it funny I can't find the actual quote reported anywhere) "we should not harass the Jewish students whether they support genocide or not."
But I guess the courage to say "no" to bullshit is lacking even in MMA fighters. Tamikka didn't have the guts to forfeit the match and walk away, knowing in her bones that she was up against a man. Even middle school girls are starting to walk away from sports competitions where they're asked to play against boys doing girlface.
Ah, the old cliches. They're cliches for a reason because they express truth in all its reasonableness. "Would you jump off a roof just because someone told you to?" These days yer ma might be the one pushing you off the edge and onto the surgeon's table. I hope conservatives will stop hosting the "they maimed me!" tours of little moron girls and boys who took the fashion of the moment too far. Let 'em take themselves out of the breeding pool. Better to focus on creating legal assistance funds and new scholarship streams for the kids with their natural brains intact.
“But I guess the courage to say "no" to bullshit is lacking even in MMA fighters. Tamikka didn't have the guts to forfeit the match and walk away, knowing in her bones that she was up against a man. Even middle school girls are starting to walk away from sports competitions where they're asked to play against boys doing girlface.”
I totally understand what you’re getting at here, but have you been following the backlash that some have been getting when they do walk away?
There was a girls high school volleyball team in Vermont that opted to forfeit a match against another high school with a trans-identifying male on the team who had injured several players at other schools. That high school was subsequently banned by the district from participating in a single extracurricular activity at all - not only no more girls volleyball, but no other sports, no debate team, no marching band, no nothing. Pure insanity and heart-wrenching for those girls to have to receive the ‘blame’ for their logical actions.
The most egregious situation in my opinion of late is Bethany Hamilton - professional surfer who lost her arm in a shark attack at the age of 13. The type of phenomenal athlete you have to be to be missing an arm and still compete at the highest level in a sport like surfing is fairly mind boggling. So she has been sponsored by Rip Curl for years, but Rip Curl dropped her sponsorship when she spoke out saying that it was fair to let trans-identifying males participate in women’s surfing competitions. But then Rip Curl went a step further: they brought on a new trans-identifying male to sponsor in her place. If these big name companies will discriminate like that against a disabled female who is one of the most incredible athletes of all time, who else stands a chance?
It’s so incredibly awful to be witnessing a time like this, particularly for a woman for whom sports played such an important role in my life (and still do). I’m not sure what I’ll have to do for my daughters if this madness persists in ten years, but it’s possible that I’ll have to form my own leagues or something - because the backlash issued by the woke is so severe. And yet sports can be such an important thing for so many reason in so many girls’ lives, we need to find a way around it all if reason does not prevail soon.
I've followed all of it. Too few are willing to pay the costs of their consciences. Just like our little Isra who wanted her tantrum and her continued student privileges too.
Aren't we all against participation trophies? Stand up and be applauded but no consequences?
This particular little road to hell was paved with sports scholarships. Women who care about girls' sports need to fund girls' sports outside of the captured institutions.
And you know what? Nobody needs an Olympic medal. If you love sports, love them for the joy of using a beautiful instrument to the best of its capacities and don't dream of making millions from the Cheerios Box. Otherwise someone is always buying your integrity.
So your response is that women should never pursue professional athletic endeavors? Or aspire to Olympic medals? I disagree. You’re no better than the woke taking away possibilities of being the best in your sport.
I do agree that we need to fund women’s sports outside of the captured institutions. Undoubtedly.
Kat; As Gato said, the Overton window is slowly changing. Have you followed the Riley Gaines situation? She recently had a huge victory. Too long to explain here, but I'd encourage you to look her up.
Yes I have been, my admiration for her and what she is doing knows no bounds! Very inspiring. Thanks for the reminder that the pendulum is starting to swing back!
Riley Gaines is making lots of money whining about having been forced to share a locker room with a guy now that her college career is over and she risks nothing.
What if she and her likeminded teammates had gone to the media and said the university was trying to hold them hostage to their scholarships by forcing them to swim and share with "Lia?" Surely all of conservative law would have sprung to their sides, right?
"(Bethany Hamilton) has been sponsored by Rip Curl for years, but Rip Curl dropped her sponsorship when she spoke out saying that it was fair to let trans-identifying males participate in women’s surfing competitions."
I'm confused. Did she say it WAS fair or WAS NOT fair?
Free speech is allowed here, so let's stir the pot a little just for fun. The family has been broken up and fathers forced out. Women raise children, but men raise adults. That's why we're dealing with a generation of perpetual children.
Plenty of the deranged young women who became the deranged academics now in their '60s and '70s were raised with fathers in the home. Fathers didn't start failing yesterday. Good parents of either sex are discouragingly rare.
I know people mock Wikipedia but it's great for when you're watching an old movie and decide to look up the bios of the actors, and it's quite remarkable how many, even in the '20s and '30s, went into performing as kids/adolescents either to help (or were forced to help) a family abandoned outright by the father or where the father was an alcoholic etc. etc. Or the later-star ran away from an abusive/neglectful home.
Or the young women from the 19th century onward who wrote gothic novels/mysteries/all sorts of pulp fiction for similar reasons.
Every group that ever immigrated to this country experienced abandonments by men who found it easy to disappear into a new country, and that's why so many immigrant groups founded mutual self-help societies and orphan homes--often a mother and sometimes a father would park the kids there for awhile because they had to earn a desperate living and couldn't care for the kids, either temporarily or permanently. Much of this desperation came not just from poverty but because of an absconding spouse.
And for all of history, men who've survived wars and make it home sometimes find home and the burden of family too much to cope with after the horrors of conscripted carnage. Or they just feel they deserve a little fun and freedom after having done their bit for faith and country etc.
The excuses change with the times but there's never been a time of perfect happy families as the majority condition.
“… the problem arises from the erection of "protected classes" that are allowed infinite license without repercussion or responsibility, whose "violence" is treated like "speech" while any who speak against them get their speech treated as violence.”
Wow, THIS! Spot on. I was just sharing with a friend the other day how I leave my house less and less these days, and I find myself more lonely, because interaction with the community as well as the online world has become difficult for me. I have been demonized more times than I care to remember and had social supports and friendships ripped from me for holding opposing views. Few know how to have a respectful, intellectual, and thoughtful debate anymore while showing kindness to the other regardless if they disagree with you, not having it modeled properly in over 30 years. And those of us who do know how get eaten alive and publicly shredded in the first two minutes in the current climate. The sheer nonsense and aggravation of it all makes me ill, and you just found the best quote to explain it.
Women vote for, and ensure the election of, ALL of this shite. When enough of them stand up and say "enough" almost all of this will end. Look for the charts that show election results controlling for sex. Yes, I know that not all women are like this... my own DW is not. But the arithmetic is clear. The world would be a much better place without women voting.
I’m a woman and I told my husband the same thing. Lazy suburbanite women didn’t bother to read FJB manifesto. If they had, they would’ve KNOWN, paying their grocery bill, light bill, gas bill, etc, would have them struggling. Instead they voted for that walking moron, to appease their virtue signaling masters. And where their 10 abortions are more important than the children they allowed to live. Voting card needs to be pulled, we as a body, are to effin stupid to vote.
I am afraid the "powers that be" are de facto pulling all of our voting cards. I think most presidents have been installed. Pre-selected for us and the illusion of our votes made us think we actually elected the what? Lessor of evils? I think Trump slipped in because nobody thought he could win and they didn't rig hard enough.
I think it's cute when people on THESE boards, of all places, pretend voting and it's attendant statistics are absolutely for reals when it gores their favorite ox. Face it, we have absolutely no fucking clue about how anyone voted for the last 2 decades at least.
And, people, stop with the 'women shouldn't vote' crap. I thought Donald Trump got elected because white women, LOL.
I appreciate that. I am the ultimate pragmatist. As far as I can see, evolution has wired women to look for security, as well as to try to be "compassionate". [of course many
pundits have said this as well]. If I were a woman, I would rather have a sane, free, and economically successful world [for my family, especially kids, grandkids, et al] than allow the other majority of women to vote for FJB and his totalitarian paradise on earth. Thanks again!
Your premise here is that voting one way or the other makes any difference. If that were true, things would turn around when "your" party was in power. But they don't. Each party follows the masters' dictates, they just have different methods of degrading society and leading us down the path towards neo-feudalism. If that weren't the case, things would even out in the end. But they don't. They continue to get worse.
Politics is two wings of the same bird, my friend. You can blame women if you want but we're only half the population. Half the problem. The other half is the blame game ... dividing us when we need to unite.
If women stopped voting, or more realistically, started voting like men and completely wiped out the Democratic party’s electoral prospects, things might change. We’d (maybe) no longer have the tired tug of war between two opposite poles with little common ground. Parties may have to reform if they couldn’t reliably count on getting the keys back every 4-8 years.
Well, I understand there are still people who believe one party is better than the other and that dissolving the opposition would dissolve the problem. I'm just not one of them.
I don't believe we can vote our way out of tyranny because the powers that control politicians control both sides. That can't be reformed. It has to be gotten around, which is where the idea of parallel communities comes from. It'd be easier if we could just vote and forget every few years which is why the idea is so appealing. But we've been doing that and this is where it's gotten us, sorry to say.
Yes, I don’t mean to suggest GOP good, Dem bad. The problem is they can both do nothing to appeal to voters since they each safely hold almost exactly 50% support, so winning is an inevitability. If the landscape become lopsided and one party faced the prospect of never being re-elected, change would become necessary to survive as a party.
Still might not help much considering how deep the problems go, but it would be a shake up at least.
I see what you're saying, but you could ask why, since both parties are closely tied as far as support goes, don't they create meaningful change to ensure a win and hold onto power? There's just too much money changing hands and too much going against the good politicians.
By this point, they've stopped even pretending to enact the will of the people. Otherwise billions of our tax dollars would be used to solve problems at home instead of funding money laundering wars elsewhere.
Thanks for the discussion! I appreciate being able to voice opinions and hear different ones without it resorting to blame and name calling.
I guess I’d say they don’t try to be more appealing because they only need 51% support. Any effort beyond that point is wasted when they could settle to just be barely better than the opposition, and spent the rest of their effort satisfying the whims of lobbyists. Even an electoral defeat is only a temporary setback. They know they’ll be back in 4-8 years.
Recent events have certainly shown they’re barely willing to keep up the facade of representing the will of the people, in both parties, which shows just how comfortable they are with being widely disliked.
I appreciate the chat as well. Civil discussion is always refreshing.
That sounds hopeless. I don't necessarily disagree, but what system do you propose, realistically, to put in its place? Or, what do you personally do to get us out of the hell we are heading towards?
I think all we can do is get involved at the local level (school boards, local gov't, water boards, community gardens, etc) and create communities we want to live in. That's the only level at which we can make any real difference. If we don't want to run for office, we attend meetings and hold the elected accountable.
If everyone does that everywhere, we have a better world made up of well functioning communities.
That's the only way I can think of to get the woke and the WEF out and common sense back in.
We spend less time on social media and grow gardens instead, feed ourselves and our neighbors.
We make our small patch of earth better and encourage others to do the same.
But many of us have tried this and for many years suffered extreme consequences to ourselves and our children at the hands of our communities we live in, who rally around the politically correct opinions of the day and support the social isolation and canceling of anyone speaking against it. We need better models at more visible levels if this is going to change. For the first time in my 58 years of life I’m actually seriously considering voting independent to see if we can’t fix this damn thing. Those who say I’m wasting my vote doing that are rude, because every vote counts and matters no matter where it is placed. I’m sick of both parties scaring us away from voting independent as if it’s the most irresponsible thing to do. Really? Why? Because an independent can’t win and can only take votes away from the dems and repubs? That’s fear mongering and shaming to remain in control. What would happen if enough of us stood up together and literally cleaned [the] House? I no longer identify with either side as they both have alienated my values. I’m looking for a leader who represents us and our values, who doesn’t use the same old bashing tactics, who speaks the unpopular truths, and I’ll cast my lot with that candidate with my head held high and ability to sleep well.
And it's even deeper than this at a state level where elections are really held for national office... the TWO parties have colluded to LEGALLY keep out other parties and thus opposing ideas... Because in the end they believe they have a monopoly on ideas which we know is inherently wrong...
I have voted "3rd party" for decades... When someone tells me that I have "wasted my vote" I politely ask them what their vote for one of the TWO established parties has gotten them... You can see the bewilderment on their face when they realize the answer to my question...
I hear you about consequences. That's why most don't want to get involved. It's hard. Impossible without a group of like-minded people to back you up. But there are more like minded being "born" every day.
I agree that we're trained not to vote independent. But I can no longer believe in politics, in leaders coming to save us. The system itself is too corrupt, even if a decent person managed to make his/her way to the top which isn't likely. One way or the other, we have to save ourselves.
I agree. But saving ourselves requires we change the current system that impacts our lives, and that can only happen with enough people voting for it. I can’t save myself under the present political regimes no matter how hard I try. And believe me, I have tried valiantly and it has all been for naught. They control too much of our lives down to the smallest of details and what we have to do to stand up for our rights and fight unfair laws is beyond reasonable for any person to have to endure. They don’t play fair or respectable anymore, they make it overly burdensome to fight back or be heard knowing you will give up, and they have become too corrupt on either side for us to improve anything on our own. I couldn’t afford the steep legal costs to fight and save my disabled children’s educations or to fight the IRS when they blatantly broke their own tax laws with us. I had great attorneys I paid about $7,000 each to before we could no longer afford the fight. They said our cases were solid, and we could win given the egregiousness of both situations and the incredible amount of documentation we had, but they wouldn’t do it pro-bono. It would have cost way more beyond our means to finish the fight. So we had to walk away and suffer all the damage.
Would we tell citizens of an oppressed country controlled by a dictator that it’s up to them to save themselves? How do we recommend they do that? We recommend that they get rid of the leadership oppressing them. It’s the only chance that they have. Or move if they are even allowed to. Maybe Americans need to move to a new country to save ourselves? But I’d rather stay and try to help make our country something we can be proud of again. And that requires the courage to vote against what is currently in power.
My high school chemistry teacher was a ex Marine that was in Korea. My grand dad’s neighbors farm survived the Bataan death march and my mentor in undergraduate school flew B17 over Germany. All great men. It’s pretty much been downhill since Vietnam.
"Greatest generation", and all that. They served, died, for an idea that they believed was worth defending. JFK's assassination and Vietnam exposed the illusion for the following generations. By the 80s it was Grenada, Panama, followed by two Iraq Wars and Afghanistan. Wars of choice driven by the MIC and cynical politicians for their own gain. The common denominator is that people still die.
My uncle was in Vietnam and came back screwed up for life. My dad was in the Navy and was deeply proud of it. However, even he recognized that something fundamental had changed in our society. Basic beliefs that defined being an "American" were disappearing. The current generation of teachers reflect these disappearing beliefs and cynicism. They happily convey the current ideology and the end-result is a generation of 'furries' with unrecognizable beliefs. (I'm grateful that my two sons did not fall for any of this but we suffered for it),
The post-Vietnam descent has been rapid and America is not the country it may have appeared to be pre-Vietnam. We were too busy being distracted for decades by material pursuits, voting for imbeciles like George W. Bush and Barack, and more recently by Taylor Swift worship to see that we were on the losing end of a Fifth Generation War.
Woke will continue as long as parents tolerate it.. Why on Earth would you keep your child in a school where a Trans boy is allowed to shower with girls?! The day that Woke Insanity sanctions boys competing with girls is the last day my daughter would attend that school..
Parents must demand the Insanity Stop from their respective schools.. if the school board turns Intransigent - Woke.. move.. It's better to be a trash man in a NO WOKE city than a rich fool in one that is. Most of us know The Woke Social Contagion spreads first on the net then to children's school..
Parents must know what their children are exposing themselves to online.. NO EXCUSES...
O tolerance of a school Board supporting Woke Transgender madness...
A trans boy is a biological girl. A trans girl is a biological boy. You mean trans girl in your comment. I know because my grandchild was lured into this evil at 14.
Back in the 80s, I was a student at UC Berkeley. White males were the Bad People even then. There was this phrase "self-aggrandizing white males" that they liked to use to inform people of the badness of the white male. This was normal and accepted generally on campus. That was more than 35 years ago. I never imagined that this could go on for so long.
I was a teen in the 1960s but observed all the craziness closely. Even back then so many of the troublemaking participants were rich elite kids. Anyone remember Patti Hearst? Also, a lot of the unrest about the war had to do with the draft. Once the draft was eliminated, no more protests.
It was so much simpler when I was in High school (65- 69) It was hood vs. colleeje, beatle boots and mop tops vs. grease and duck tails, Jocks vs. nerds. The rivalry was superficial and performative.
The basis of this mania seems to be an over correction to the progressive complaint that rich white people felt entitled to whatever they wanted in the US. It seemed to be mostly a class complaint based on watching Downton Abbey. Somehow, the correction to this complaint was to encourage any person who could claim some type of minority status to act as privileged and entitled as possible. No matter how this ends, everyone is going to have a rude awakening.
As a retired public high school teacher I can attest that there are both good and bad teachers, just as in any profession. The biggest difference from public schools today and what I experienced as both a student and in the start of my career is administration. Principals today do not have the will or power to discipline both students or teachers who are out of line. They are afraid to death of social media and school boards who care more about their own power and reelection than educating kids. That is why the good ones leave as soon as they can leaving the dregs in charge of the asylum. Administration today gives too much power and voice to delusional parents who scream loudly on social media. This is why many parents who do care about their children’s education are opting out of public schools and are seeking other options.
This isn't going to stop until there is bloodshed... It's just going to depend on who gets who first...
Will a biological male participating in female contact sports have to kill one of them for the proper attention to be brought to light? Right now, I am teaching my young granddaughters how to physically defend themselves from one of the mentally-ill "pretenders" and we'll see just how much biology matters when they have a testicle kicked up near their adams apple...
The vast majority of people I have run across just simply do NOT care how other people conduct their lives... The problem is the "movements" have made us care by directly invading ours... F that... Call me whatever name you want... "cancel" me... WHATEVER... but no more... it's time for the "normies" who want to live peaceful, productive lives to fight back... And when I say fight that's what I mean... The Overton window needs to be smashed and we need to wise up...
There was never a time when I attended public schools that I wanted to be there. There has never been a time since graduation when I wanted any child to ever be compelled to attend. I have college and graduate degrees from Ivy League schools earned on academic scholarships and I have no interest in the public schools continuing to exist. Your country went down a terribly evil path by forcing children to attend and enforcing truancy laws. You think you can compromise with evil and have just enough communism to feel comfortable without it going to extremes. But it was already burdensomely extreme fifty years ago in Kansas let alone any of these commie coastal cities. Compulsory schooling is evil and furries are merely the latest symptom.
The school system today employs the worst moral dregs of society. Even when I was in school decades ago the majority of them fell into this category. The principal was a holy-roller secret binge drinker - extremely conflicted. Many teachers were having affairs with each other, some were having affairs with the students. A lot had liberal opinions so stupid that even high school students knew they were full of crap. The few competent teachers left the school quickly, while others bolted when their pensions became vested. My favorite physic teacher took a job with the Post Office because he was so sick of public education - the Post Office! I think these people choose education because they need an uneducated, compliant, and obedient audience to make them feel validated. When I meet someone new who tells me they are or were a teacher, I always prepare to deal with a whackjob. Most of the time I'm right.
"I think these people choose education because they need an uneducated, compliant, and obedient audience to make them feel validated."
Yup. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that schoolteachers as a group have the most authoritarian tendencies of any occupation. They get to spew their propaganda to a captive audience, and the audience is in no position to push back since their grades and their future depend on the good graces of these Hugo Chavez types.
There's a variety of reasons people choose education. That definitely could be one of them. But do you honestly think all teachers are like this? This was never my experience growing up in school, but maybe things changed since the 70's.
Some teachers just love kids. They just do. You could feel it come off of them. If they didn't teach, maybe they'd work at a children's hospital. My first and second grade teacher was like that.
I think other teachers thought they really were preparing us for adulthood, and they were. the harder ones. The ones that gave no quarry on mistakes. They wanted to show in a safe environment of school, that actions had consequences, that you could fail, if you didn't try.
Another set of teachers would exploit their children. A fourth grade teacher was like that. She'd have kids brush her hair and do chores for her and they got special priveleges for doing so.
I think though, a great many techers are there because it was the job they could get. You've heard the whole adage "Those that cannot do, teach." Well I think it holds true. These teachers do what their told, they follow orders, and they become part of the system. And this is who the vast majority of teachers are.
John Gatto who was a New York school teacher, unlike many, actually understood the purpose of "education." And yes, it very often involved indoctrination. Like the whole aspect of spewing "facts" and memorizing rather than understanding anything. History was all about learning dates and events and people, but did we ever know why they did what they did?
I hope some of these kids understand the importance of what they are doing. And if they do, that is a good sign indeed. They are seeing the double standard and pushing back against it. They are seeing the arbitrary and capricious and saying "no." And they should film and document as much of this as they can. It would make a heck of a documentary.
I also think of how much they endured over the last four years.
The problem to solve is not the teachers. It is the parents who either agree with the propoganda or dont care. One starting point is school choice.
School choice would help, but we would still be left with the attractiveness to dictatorial types of a job where they get to preach their views unchallenged to a captive audience. With school choice, the difference would be that it'd be easier to do something about it.
To my mind, any solution would include school management screening prospective hires for authoritarian partisan tendencies.
Half the country favors authoritarians.
They already do that, but not in a way you would want.
The authoritarian tendencies! All the time! There are hundreds of books about how important appropriate autonomy is in creating happy, cooperative and respectful humans, but instead it seems that schools are moving towards the opposite and wondering why children hate school and are disrespectful.
After 6 years our elementary school has updated their snack policy limiting options to fruit or vegetables four days out of five instead of 1/5. My daughter doesn’t eat fruit, much to my chagrin, so she will be fasting I guess. I’m just so tired of pointing out to a bunch of lard asses that they don’t have a monopoly on how to live and how to raise children. They can’t even produce competitive results for the job I hired them to do. But they are making it their business to police the eating habits of my perfectly healthy, stick-thin child. They even told the kids they will be searching lunchboxes “so don’t try and sneak anything.” Completely forgetting that the brain runs on glucose, clearly parents are the ones packing the lunches (or at least buying the food), and lastly children are not uniform little widgets.
I believe you had this experience. My niece was a teacher, and sacrificed a lot of her personal time in concerns for her students. I've known a different kind of teacher for myself, but met a few you have described.
I think a lot of good dedicated teachers are beaten down by the system. It seems to self-select for the worst.
That is absolutely the case. In college I had a buddy in the teaching program, rated best in the state. He said it was a known thing that dumb people were attracted to teaching because they felt if they could be the person in the front of the room, they'd become smart and all the students would see them as being smart. Which is why this program ruthlessly weeded out stupid people, even if they managed to grind out good grades.
Right there with you, JIm.
Ditto
Ditto the Ditto.
It felt like prison because it was a form of it.
when I was a little kiddo, about 9 years old, my family had just moved to the US from Europe. (my parents are dutch, came to US after they got married in 1947, then my dad got a job with the US govt as an auditor/CPA and we left the US for european US military bases mostly though we were not military, okay, that all said) The first US elementary school I went to the principal called all of the kids into the auditorium/lunch room and we were scolded for something (can't remember) but this statement shocked me, he said that if such and such ever happened again, there would be "heads rolling"
I was shocked and horrified
I pulled my two daughters out of a public elementary school after hearing a teacher berate a 4th grade student as a "dumb ass". I complained to the administration; they did absolutely nothing. I sacrificed a lot to send them to private Christian schools after that.
Teachers and administrators say some horrific things to children. I volunteer in the school library and I hear them. It’s not all of them and it’s not all the time, but I find it incomprehensible. I used to have so much respect for teachers but now that we are almost out of elementary school my respect has really crumbled.
I love this
I so hope you are right that the situation is truly turning. I still cannot believe what moral breakdown has been allowed to even happen. 10 or 20 years ago we laughed at or ignored the lunacy but here we are.
It's within the realm of human possibility that they're protesting something else entirely, something unknown even to them. There should be a term similar to "strawman", in which a person projects an inner hidden crisis onto something else? To co-opt the term, the Israel-Hamas conflict might be a "strawman" crisis for an entirely different crisis raging in their subconscious. The human psyche is more than capable of such a paradox. If this is what's happening, we should not expect it to subside, but to eventually move to something else, but with escalating desperation.
These are the same organized and paid protesters as BLm and ANtifa. There is something very insidious behind the masterminds who perpetuate these riots. This is but one part of a larger plan.
You're giving these idiots way too much credit. The human design is far more complicated than our thinking. I'm betting on the complexity of the human psyche over the human ability to plan and implement something so diabolical.
Actually we saw firsthand just how much humans have the ability to plan and implement something so diabolical when we look at what happened with Covid over the past four years, and it’s still going on today full steam ahead. Our government, medical institutions, billionaires, and big pharma most certainly planned and are still planning by appointing and imposing supposed “misinformation experts.” As if one persons judgement of the validity of information is any more accurate than another’s. Show it all, we are smart enough to come to our own conclusions and wisdom, (which is what they don’t want.) But withholding access to information and to all arguments on all sides of an issue to control a narrative is diabolical to the core. So many hard earned careers and reputations have permanently been smeared and damaged by all of their plans and actions. Those idiots are craftier than you’re giving credit for. And many just like them plotted over the years in other social venues for their chosen causes. Maybe for some youth and young adults it’s just plain idiocy, or some adults that never really matured and learned how to analyze and think more critically, then chose to raise kids, but there are also among them those skilled in very insidious tactics in a long term progression. I remember back in the 70s in grade school and middle school there were a couple girls in my class that were very, very good at planning and crafting how to hurt others continuously, and how to pit people against each other over silly reasons. You could see it in their eyes. And if they felt threatened by your ability to see things your own way, it all became very clear just how much they knew how to manipulate the masses. It was scary how clever and crafty they were. No, I think too many aren’t giving enough credit for the human capacity to plan diabolical things and that’s why we are where we are today.
I'm sure that sort of grade school stuff is very prevalent in congress. The interplay between the conscious and subconscious is very fascinating. Actions can be motivated by one or the other, but also a mixture of the two, and it's impossible to know for sure where the motivation is coming from. When it's primarily subconscious, then their reasoning is always lacking, but they remain convinced that their reasons are sound. I think this's the crux of our disagreement. You think it's fully conscious with definitive goals. I suspect it's more subconscious, motivated by something else, something they're not fully aware of. Human beings, even elites, are fully capable of such self-deception.
there are diabolical organizations managing and exploiting these idiots. https://crowdsondemand.com/
Mike, I respectfully disagree. We’ve seen it in real time w/ OWS, George Floyd-BLM (that actually started earlier w/ Rodney King, Michael what’s-his-name, Trayvon Martin), “climate change, abortion, defund police, trannies, Ukraine, Gaza-Hamas & more.
Jeff Childers w/ C&C referenced a “rent-a-mob” ad the other day. There is no end to mindless morons-flying monkeys-useful idiots - including many of our “betters” in politics, entertainment & other influential positions - who don’t even know or understand what they’re protesting; they either love creating mayhem & crime or are so pathetic, they just want to be part of “the next big thing”
Ok, but keep in mind that if we settle on "they're being paid" or "they're a bunch of idiots" (or both) we could be overlooking a real and unsustainable crisis. If this is the case, we'll see their methods become increasingly extreme and destructive.
I don’t think there’s any question but that methods will (are) becoming increasingly extreme & destructive. The left is increasingly delusional & desperate & cornered animals are very dangerous. The rioting, mayhem, destruction of property & lives á la BLM are “sooooo last season”. Just wait til the election. There will be a cluster f€%# no matter who “wins” although I believe much more dangerous if LGB-FJB or whoever is substituted for him loses
Your theory makes a lot of sense to me, Mike. After all, these are the same people who shifted their attention to supporting Hamas from prior support of BLM violence and, prior to that, Occupy Wall Street nonsense.
Most have no concept of the ideologies they "support." They only know these are facades behind which they can apparently "get away with" whatever they want.
This is what happens when society ignores warnings about what happens when we start down a "slippery slope."
It seems to me that they grasp at anything that is against America.
It is emblematic for sheeples to follow “the next big thing”: raaaacism, wuflu, Ukraine, Hamas, “climate change”, LGBTQ-trannyism, anti-cop, anti-family, anti-formalized religion, anti-patriotism, anti-freedom, ad nauseum + absolute intolerance & hatred of any who disagree w/ all of it
I don't know if that's true or not. I suppose it depends on your definition of "sheeple." I think the vast majority of those who see this in society only appear to go along with it by not saying anything against it. Do sheep seem that invested in the direction they are going? Whereas those that follow "the next big thing" don't look to be sheep, but active participants in something.
Those that subscribe to Racism, #Metoo, Covid, Ukraine, Hamas, climate change, the growing alphabet game of alternative lifestyles, anti-cop, anti family, anti-religion, anti patriotism, anti-freedom, anti establishment, are not sheep, but actively pushing against something. I can speculate. On Loveline, a lot of these issues stem from abuse or a broken family.
The social justice they feel entitled to is tied to something personal. And of course it also is the result of experiences as well.
IDK, even w/ those useful idiots (for current “thing”, I bet most of them couldn’t find Gaza on a map & parroted the covid-mask-lockdown bullshit as gospel w/out researching for themselves) actively pushing something, it’s because bigger powers behind the scenes are the ones covertly pushing it.
Everybody has personal shit to one degree or another, so that’s really no excuse. I had my share of it growing up & never felt entitled. I just pushed through & got on with my life.
You may be right. There was a video I saw recently of a woman walking amongst a throng of protestors. And as she rose her voice, they repeated everything she said back to her. It was very sad to hear this. But to be one of the many making such repetitions, there must have been a dopamine hit from it. "Ah good, we are doing something, we are chanting."
Incidentally there was one funny part when she was yelling:
"One step forward!"
(One Step Forward)
a huge pause, then finally...
"Another step forward."
(another Step Forward)
You could tell her mind was cranking "Two steps back."
In the eighties I looked at protesting as ridiculous. I thought it was a whole lot of nothing. But I suppose that's how you feel when you believe you have the freedom to do it anytime you want. But I also thought "they will just ignore whoever it is is protesting and do whatever they want." I still believe that.
The veneer here is that these people are protesting something that isn't already establishment. Maybe the purpose is to give the appearance of "many people believe this, therefore we should fight for this." Or for those who push back it is meant to demoralize us. I cna't tell you how often I have heard news reports giving us poll numbers of what we are supposed to believe. The bandwagon logical fallacy as a news report.
I agree it is no excuse, but it is an explanation other than "sheeple."
Sheeple are simply people who follow the herd (e.g. “the next big thing” mainly because it’s “fashionable”) in sheep-like or bovine fashion. No thought process at all other than they follow whoever is actually pulling the strings / setting the agenda. Sheeple, lemmings both seem appropriate to me
Back when cell phones were first becoming ubiquitous, about 2010 or thereabouts, I was on top of the mountain at Squaw Valley sitting in a cafe there, surrounded by the most incredible views, and I saw a group of fairly young people come in and sit down...late teens and twenties mostly. Instead of looking around and chatting together and having a good time, every single one of them was staring silently down at a cellphone screen, and no one was talking. It struck me as incredibly weird so I've never forgotten that moment, and I wondered where all this was going even back then.
Or we would have thought that the adult in the room would say "cut it out" rather than "you need to let Rosebud here really explore their insanity."
“whose "violence" is treated like "speech" while any who speak against them get their speech treated as violence. “
Spot on!
Two sides of the same coin, we should have seen this coming.
The most deranged or amoral people that you cannot argue rights, ethics, or mores with are - in the liberal West - people either in or have emerged from its Leftist sheep-dips; its monasteries of groupthink ....otherwise known as universities. Gato's post raises (for me anyway) a long-overdue question........how can these SJW blots on our civilisation be suitably be brought to account. For 50+ years we Western liberals have indulged them and indulged them and, in effect, encouraged more of same. Now it's time to ask how can they be brought to account for:
* their gall and presumption in thinking they have any rightful place in institutions of 'higher learning.'
* their ignorant trashing and dismantling of our culture...and at the taxpayers expense!
* their passive-aggressive spite and bile towards their fellow man dressed up as virtue.
It may seem very non-pc but one can't help feeling that some kind of retribution (punishment even) - something akin to the stocks of former times - is what this kind of academia wokerati behavior richly deserves....I wish I knew how it could be brought about but I've no idea.
Perhaps the economic hard times we are just beginning to face will be the cleanser that will bring "the worst of these SJW blots on our civilization suitably to account". Nothing like poverty and struggling to survive to wash the colored dyes out of ones hair and the smug expressions off ones face. And I doubt they will be able to count on a welfare state to help when that state is 40 or 50 Trillion worthless dollars in debt. Those useful idiots are expendable.
Yes and if that time comes, the sound of their deleting of their social media posts will be deafening. Or maybe there'll be a woke-to-anti-woke quote rewriter AI app by then. Once a groupthinker; always a groupthinker.... so I'll be "#MeToo, I was always against this mad wokeness"..... you'll see.
Membership in the French Resistance quadrupled after June 1945. Retroactively.
Oh yes....a murky story of history re-written.
Unfortunately a lot of those suffering the hard economic times remain clueless and stupie and demand that the government that caused the problem fix it by providing more bread and circuses.
"Those useful idiots are expendable."
As are you and me and everyone else.
Yup, but you and I and everyone else that understands what is happening have to work to make sure that does not happen.
I've heard a similar refrain my entire life, "Just wait till they get out into the real world". It turns out they took over the real world. We have a defective society that will produce an endless supply of useless dim-wits that believe they are entitled to the product of your labor. This problem will not solve itself.
Ugly people, ugly ideas. We must guide the zoomers away from that darkness into fun, truth, and beauty. No one wants to end up in a struggle session like Uri Berliner: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/uri-berliner-npr-ceo-redguard-struggle-session
Yuri, nobody is entitled to a job with "national pubic radio" which is an entity that should not exist.
To be sure, everything seems to be pubic these days.
Spelling is fun! 🤪
I love typos. They brighten our days.
Yes, and once it becomes public, only the select few will benefit from it.
Read my comment again, and the one I replied to.
I did - so what?
If you're asking you didn't read it so hard.
Crushing the woke mob is just treating the symptom. There is a disease, and it is the hollowing out of our country and culture by the inexorable forces of fiat. I don’t know how we recover, but I know it involves fun, truth, beauty, meaning.
Everything is artifice. I scroll instagram thinking, “there’s nothing here. There’s no here here. We are lost.” I love a good cat video, but what are we doing?
A return to gold and silver money would be welcome. There is too much corruption and too much concentration of power in that collection of counties around Mordor on the Potomac.
And I'm guessing the US has long been pilfered of our silver and gold...
A good cat video brings beauty into the world. There is something to be said for that. At times, beauty is its own reward. And it certainly can be a great balm to ugliness. There is a lot of ugliness in the world.
Part of dealing with wokeness is to show the absurdity of it by being absurd.
Furries. The absuridity is that if they want to live like animals, offer them the reality of what that means. I doubt very much they will call your bluff. Imagine having to be fed kibble, having to pee outside, and of course, how many restaurants and businesses allow dogs? Okay, maybe way too many. But what about flea baths? spay and neuter? becoming outside pets? Or the sheer fact that pets have almost no autonomy. You as a parent, have every right to dress up your pet in ridiculous clothes.
Whereas the woke answer is to create artifice to combat marginalization, the truth is the answer is to rejoice in the differences.
Sarah, the "disease" is Post Modernism".
I think that’s accurate, to a point, but there has to be a susceptibility to corruption of thoughts and ideals, and that needs to be addressed in order to truly heal. Otherwise we’re just suppressing.
I believe that you are correct, and I see this happening to the most susceptible, the children in the schools – where this philosophical freakshow began and also where it must end.
The old morality was replaced by the new morality, but the new morality is destroying itself. Except the practitioners of the new norality reflexively hate and stifle any return to the old morality. What's left is empty narcissism.
Decent men brought up by moral mothers should seek out like-minded women who understand the importance of raising their own children in the Judeo-Christian tradition. (And vice versa.)
Without guidance at home to develop a healthy conscience, children are rudderless and susceptible to depraved groomers and communists.
"i suspect the reason that so many on the left dislike "libs of tiktok" so much is that she has flipped their own script on them.
they are accustomed to being the ones who get to shame people and pile on moral opprobrium while being immune from criticism in return."
--------------------------------
Nobody likes to see what's really in that damn mirror.
Me, I'm really glad these people have stripped down to the bare skin now. Ilhan on her little victory tour of Columbia said (and I paraphrase since ain't it funny I can't find the actual quote reported anywhere) "we should not harass the Jewish students whether they support genocide or not."
But I guess the courage to say "no" to bullshit is lacking even in MMA fighters. Tamikka didn't have the guts to forfeit the match and walk away, knowing in her bones that she was up against a man. Even middle school girls are starting to walk away from sports competitions where they're asked to play against boys doing girlface.
Ah, the old cliches. They're cliches for a reason because they express truth in all its reasonableness. "Would you jump off a roof just because someone told you to?" These days yer ma might be the one pushing you off the edge and onto the surgeon's table. I hope conservatives will stop hosting the "they maimed me!" tours of little moron girls and boys who took the fashion of the moment too far. Let 'em take themselves out of the breeding pool. Better to focus on creating legal assistance funds and new scholarship streams for the kids with their natural brains intact.
“But I guess the courage to say "no" to bullshit is lacking even in MMA fighters. Tamikka didn't have the guts to forfeit the match and walk away, knowing in her bones that she was up against a man. Even middle school girls are starting to walk away from sports competitions where they're asked to play against boys doing girlface.”
I totally understand what you’re getting at here, but have you been following the backlash that some have been getting when they do walk away?
There was a girls high school volleyball team in Vermont that opted to forfeit a match against another high school with a trans-identifying male on the team who had injured several players at other schools. That high school was subsequently banned by the district from participating in a single extracurricular activity at all - not only no more girls volleyball, but no other sports, no debate team, no marching band, no nothing. Pure insanity and heart-wrenching for those girls to have to receive the ‘blame’ for their logical actions.
The most egregious situation in my opinion of late is Bethany Hamilton - professional surfer who lost her arm in a shark attack at the age of 13. The type of phenomenal athlete you have to be to be missing an arm and still compete at the highest level in a sport like surfing is fairly mind boggling. So she has been sponsored by Rip Curl for years, but Rip Curl dropped her sponsorship when she spoke out saying that it was fair to let trans-identifying males participate in women’s surfing competitions. But then Rip Curl went a step further: they brought on a new trans-identifying male to sponsor in her place. If these big name companies will discriminate like that against a disabled female who is one of the most incredible athletes of all time, who else stands a chance?
It’s so incredibly awful to be witnessing a time like this, particularly for a woman for whom sports played such an important role in my life (and still do). I’m not sure what I’ll have to do for my daughters if this madness persists in ten years, but it’s possible that I’ll have to form my own leagues or something - because the backlash issued by the woke is so severe. And yet sports can be such an important thing for so many reason in so many girls’ lives, we need to find a way around it all if reason does not prevail soon.
I've followed all of it. Too few are willing to pay the costs of their consciences. Just like our little Isra who wanted her tantrum and her continued student privileges too.
Aren't we all against participation trophies? Stand up and be applauded but no consequences?
This particular little road to hell was paved with sports scholarships. Women who care about girls' sports need to fund girls' sports outside of the captured institutions.
And you know what? Nobody needs an Olympic medal. If you love sports, love them for the joy of using a beautiful instrument to the best of its capacities and don't dream of making millions from the Cheerios Box. Otherwise someone is always buying your integrity.
So your response is that women should never pursue professional athletic endeavors? Or aspire to Olympic medals? I disagree. You’re no better than the woke taking away possibilities of being the best in your sport.
I do agree that we need to fund women’s sports outside of the captured institutions. Undoubtedly.
My response is that one should always cherish one's integrity and trust one's instincts.
Kat; As Gato said, the Overton window is slowly changing. Have you followed the Riley Gaines situation? She recently had a huge victory. Too long to explain here, but I'd encourage you to look her up.
Yes I have been, my admiration for her and what she is doing knows no bounds! Very inspiring. Thanks for the reminder that the pendulum is starting to swing back!
Riley Gaines is making lots of money whining about having been forced to share a locker room with a guy now that her college career is over and she risks nothing.
What if she and her likeminded teammates had gone to the media and said the university was trying to hold them hostage to their scholarships by forcing them to swim and share with "Lia?" Surely all of conservative law would have sprung to their sides, right?
Lol. You sound vaccinated. 🤪
Don't I though!
She had a great interview on Joe Rogan's YouTube.
You may appreciate this interview and the new org being started to protect women's sports:
https://naomiwolf.substack.com/p/gymnastentrepreneur-jen-sey-reacts
Kat, you posted:
"(Bethany Hamilton) has been sponsored by Rip Curl for years, but Rip Curl dropped her sponsorship when she spoke out saying that it was fair to let trans-identifying males participate in women’s surfing competitions."
I'm confused. Did she say it WAS fair or WAS NOT fair?
She said it was not fair! Terrible typo by me 😬
Did you know you can edit your comment to add the word "not'?
(By clicking on the 3 dots to the right of the words "Like Reply Share.")
But, but, you are talking common sense. I am triggered! :)
I'm marinated in it. Seeps out of my pores. Natural preservative.
Free speech is allowed here, so let's stir the pot a little just for fun. The family has been broken up and fathers forced out. Women raise children, but men raise adults. That's why we're dealing with a generation of perpetual children.
Plenty of the deranged young women who became the deranged academics now in their '60s and '70s were raised with fathers in the home. Fathers didn't start failing yesterday. Good parents of either sex are discouragingly rare.
I thought I'd get more of a rise out of people and spark debate. I wholeheartedly agree with your last sentence.
I know people mock Wikipedia but it's great for when you're watching an old movie and decide to look up the bios of the actors, and it's quite remarkable how many, even in the '20s and '30s, went into performing as kids/adolescents either to help (or were forced to help) a family abandoned outright by the father or where the father was an alcoholic etc. etc. Or the later-star ran away from an abusive/neglectful home.
Or the young women from the 19th century onward who wrote gothic novels/mysteries/all sorts of pulp fiction for similar reasons.
Every group that ever immigrated to this country experienced abandonments by men who found it easy to disappear into a new country, and that's why so many immigrant groups founded mutual self-help societies and orphan homes--often a mother and sometimes a father would park the kids there for awhile because they had to earn a desperate living and couldn't care for the kids, either temporarily or permanently. Much of this desperation came not just from poverty but because of an absconding spouse.
And for all of history, men who've survived wars and make it home sometimes find home and the burden of family too much to cope with after the horrors of conscripted carnage. Or they just feel they deserve a little fun and freedom after having done their bit for faith and country etc.
The excuses change with the times but there's never been a time of perfect happy families as the majority condition.
“… the problem arises from the erection of "protected classes" that are allowed infinite license without repercussion or responsibility, whose "violence" is treated like "speech" while any who speak against them get their speech treated as violence.”
Wow, THIS! Spot on. I was just sharing with a friend the other day how I leave my house less and less these days, and I find myself more lonely, because interaction with the community as well as the online world has become difficult for me. I have been demonized more times than I care to remember and had social supports and friendships ripped from me for holding opposing views. Few know how to have a respectful, intellectual, and thoughtful debate anymore while showing kindness to the other regardless if they disagree with you, not having it modeled properly in over 30 years. And those of us who do know how get eaten alive and publicly shredded in the first two minutes in the current climate. The sheer nonsense and aggravation of it all makes me ill, and you just found the best quote to explain it.
Women vote for, and ensure the election of, ALL of this shite. When enough of them stand up and say "enough" almost all of this will end. Look for the charts that show election results controlling for sex. Yes, I know that not all women are like this... my own DW is not. But the arithmetic is clear. The world would be a much better place without women voting.
I’m a woman and I told my husband the same thing. Lazy suburbanite women didn’t bother to read FJB manifesto. If they had, they would’ve KNOWN, paying their grocery bill, light bill, gas bill, etc, would have them struggling. Instead they voted for that walking moron, to appease their virtue signaling masters. And where their 10 abortions are more important than the children they allowed to live. Voting card needs to be pulled, we as a body, are to effin stupid to vote.
I am afraid the "powers that be" are de facto pulling all of our voting cards. I think most presidents have been installed. Pre-selected for us and the illusion of our votes made us think we actually elected the what? Lessor of evils? I think Trump slipped in because nobody thought he could win and they didn't rig hard enough.
I agree.
I think it's cute when people on THESE boards, of all places, pretend voting and it's attendant statistics are absolutely for reals when it gores their favorite ox. Face it, we have absolutely no fucking clue about how anyone voted for the last 2 decades at least.
And, people, stop with the 'women shouldn't vote' crap. I thought Donald Trump got elected because white women, LOL.
I appreciate that. I am the ultimate pragmatist. As far as I can see, evolution has wired women to look for security, as well as to try to be "compassionate". [of course many
pundits have said this as well]. If I were a woman, I would rather have a sane, free, and economically successful world [for my family, especially kids, grandkids, et al] than allow the other majority of women to vote for FJB and his totalitarian paradise on earth. Thanks again!
Your premise here is that voting one way or the other makes any difference. If that were true, things would turn around when "your" party was in power. But they don't. Each party follows the masters' dictates, they just have different methods of degrading society and leading us down the path towards neo-feudalism. If that weren't the case, things would even out in the end. But they don't. They continue to get worse.
Politics is two wings of the same bird, my friend. You can blame women if you want but we're only half the population. Half the problem. The other half is the blame game ... dividing us when we need to unite.
If women stopped voting, or more realistically, started voting like men and completely wiped out the Democratic party’s electoral prospects, things might change. We’d (maybe) no longer have the tired tug of war between two opposite poles with little common ground. Parties may have to reform if they couldn’t reliably count on getting the keys back every 4-8 years.
Well, I understand there are still people who believe one party is better than the other and that dissolving the opposition would dissolve the problem. I'm just not one of them.
I don't believe we can vote our way out of tyranny because the powers that control politicians control both sides. That can't be reformed. It has to be gotten around, which is where the idea of parallel communities comes from. It'd be easier if we could just vote and forget every few years which is why the idea is so appealing. But we've been doing that and this is where it's gotten us, sorry to say.
Yes, I don’t mean to suggest GOP good, Dem bad. The problem is they can both do nothing to appeal to voters since they each safely hold almost exactly 50% support, so winning is an inevitability. If the landscape become lopsided and one party faced the prospect of never being re-elected, change would become necessary to survive as a party.
Still might not help much considering how deep the problems go, but it would be a shake up at least.
I see what you're saying, but you could ask why, since both parties are closely tied as far as support goes, don't they create meaningful change to ensure a win and hold onto power? There's just too much money changing hands and too much going against the good politicians.
By this point, they've stopped even pretending to enact the will of the people. Otherwise billions of our tax dollars would be used to solve problems at home instead of funding money laundering wars elsewhere.
Thanks for the discussion! I appreciate being able to voice opinions and hear different ones without it resorting to blame and name calling.
I guess I’d say they don’t try to be more appealing because they only need 51% support. Any effort beyond that point is wasted when they could settle to just be barely better than the opposition, and spent the rest of their effort satisfying the whims of lobbyists. Even an electoral defeat is only a temporary setback. They know they’ll be back in 4-8 years.
Recent events have certainly shown they’re barely willing to keep up the facade of representing the will of the people, in both parties, which shows just how comfortable they are with being widely disliked.
I appreciate the chat as well. Civil discussion is always refreshing.
That sounds hopeless. I don't necessarily disagree, but what system do you propose, realistically, to put in its place? Or, what do you personally do to get us out of the hell we are heading towards?
I think all we can do is get involved at the local level (school boards, local gov't, water boards, community gardens, etc) and create communities we want to live in. That's the only level at which we can make any real difference. If we don't want to run for office, we attend meetings and hold the elected accountable.
If everyone does that everywhere, we have a better world made up of well functioning communities.
That's the only way I can think of to get the woke and the WEF out and common sense back in.
We spend less time on social media and grow gardens instead, feed ourselves and our neighbors.
We make our small patch of earth better and encourage others to do the same.
But many of us have tried this and for many years suffered extreme consequences to ourselves and our children at the hands of our communities we live in, who rally around the politically correct opinions of the day and support the social isolation and canceling of anyone speaking against it. We need better models at more visible levels if this is going to change. For the first time in my 58 years of life I’m actually seriously considering voting independent to see if we can’t fix this damn thing. Those who say I’m wasting my vote doing that are rude, because every vote counts and matters no matter where it is placed. I’m sick of both parties scaring us away from voting independent as if it’s the most irresponsible thing to do. Really? Why? Because an independent can’t win and can only take votes away from the dems and repubs? That’s fear mongering and shaming to remain in control. What would happen if enough of us stood up together and literally cleaned [the] House? I no longer identify with either side as they both have alienated my values. I’m looking for a leader who represents us and our values, who doesn’t use the same old bashing tactics, who speaks the unpopular truths, and I’ll cast my lot with that candidate with my head held high and ability to sleep well.
And it's even deeper than this at a state level where elections are really held for national office... the TWO parties have colluded to LEGALLY keep out other parties and thus opposing ideas... Because in the end they believe they have a monopoly on ideas which we know is inherently wrong...
I have voted "3rd party" for decades... When someone tells me that I have "wasted my vote" I politely ask them what their vote for one of the TWO established parties has gotten them... You can see the bewilderment on their face when they realize the answer to my question...
I hear you about consequences. That's why most don't want to get involved. It's hard. Impossible without a group of like-minded people to back you up. But there are more like minded being "born" every day.
I agree that we're trained not to vote independent. But I can no longer believe in politics, in leaders coming to save us. The system itself is too corrupt, even if a decent person managed to make his/her way to the top which isn't likely. One way or the other, we have to save ourselves.
I agree. But saving ourselves requires we change the current system that impacts our lives, and that can only happen with enough people voting for it. I can’t save myself under the present political regimes no matter how hard I try. And believe me, I have tried valiantly and it has all been for naught. They control too much of our lives down to the smallest of details and what we have to do to stand up for our rights and fight unfair laws is beyond reasonable for any person to have to endure. They don’t play fair or respectable anymore, they make it overly burdensome to fight back or be heard knowing you will give up, and they have become too corrupt on either side for us to improve anything on our own. I couldn’t afford the steep legal costs to fight and save my disabled children’s educations or to fight the IRS when they blatantly broke their own tax laws with us. I had great attorneys I paid about $7,000 each to before we could no longer afford the fight. They said our cases were solid, and we could win given the egregiousness of both situations and the incredible amount of documentation we had, but they wouldn’t do it pro-bono. It would have cost way more beyond our means to finish the fight. So we had to walk away and suffer all the damage.
Would we tell citizens of an oppressed country controlled by a dictator that it’s up to them to save themselves? How do we recommend they do that? We recommend that they get rid of the leadership oppressing them. It’s the only chance that they have. Or move if they are even allowed to. Maybe Americans need to move to a new country to save ourselves? But I’d rather stay and try to help make our country something we can be proud of again. And that requires the courage to vote against what is currently in power.
Agree 100%. Well said
My high school chemistry teacher was a ex Marine that was in Korea. My grand dad’s neighbors farm survived the Bataan death march and my mentor in undergraduate school flew B17 over Germany. All great men. It’s pretty much been downhill since Vietnam.
Great observation.
"Greatest generation", and all that. They served, died, for an idea that they believed was worth defending. JFK's assassination and Vietnam exposed the illusion for the following generations. By the 80s it was Grenada, Panama, followed by two Iraq Wars and Afghanistan. Wars of choice driven by the MIC and cynical politicians for their own gain. The common denominator is that people still die.
My uncle was in Vietnam and came back screwed up for life. My dad was in the Navy and was deeply proud of it. However, even he recognized that something fundamental had changed in our society. Basic beliefs that defined being an "American" were disappearing. The current generation of teachers reflect these disappearing beliefs and cynicism. They happily convey the current ideology and the end-result is a generation of 'furries' with unrecognizable beliefs. (I'm grateful that my two sons did not fall for any of this but we suffered for it),
The post-Vietnam descent has been rapid and America is not the country it may have appeared to be pre-Vietnam. We were too busy being distracted for decades by material pursuits, voting for imbeciles like George W. Bush and Barack, and more recently by Taylor Swift worship to see that we were on the losing end of a Fifth Generation War.
Some people and countries don’t do well when they are on top they just turn into bullies.
And we have.
Woke will continue as long as parents tolerate it.. Why on Earth would you keep your child in a school where a Trans boy is allowed to shower with girls?! The day that Woke Insanity sanctions boys competing with girls is the last day my daughter would attend that school..
Parents must demand the Insanity Stop from their respective schools.. if the school board turns Intransigent - Woke.. move.. It's better to be a trash man in a NO WOKE city than a rich fool in one that is. Most of us know The Woke Social Contagion spreads first on the net then to children's school..
Parents must know what their children are exposing themselves to online.. NO EXCUSES...
O tolerance of a school Board supporting Woke Transgender madness...
A trans boy is a biological girl. A trans girl is a biological boy. You mean trans girl in your comment. I know because my grandchild was lured into this evil at 14.
Back in the 80s, I was a student at UC Berkeley. White males were the Bad People even then. There was this phrase "self-aggrandizing white males" that they liked to use to inform people of the badness of the white male. This was normal and accepted generally on campus. That was more than 35 years ago. I never imagined that this could go on for so long.
I was a teen in the 1960s but observed all the craziness closely. Even back then so many of the troublemaking participants were rich elite kids. Anyone remember Patti Hearst? Also, a lot of the unrest about the war had to do with the draft. Once the draft was eliminated, no more protests.
Thanks for this excellent clarity article.
It was so much simpler when I was in High school (65- 69) It was hood vs. colleeje, beatle boots and mop tops vs. grease and duck tails, Jocks vs. nerds. The rivalry was superficial and performative.
Breaking Away
The basis of this mania seems to be an over correction to the progressive complaint that rich white people felt entitled to whatever they wanted in the US. It seemed to be mostly a class complaint based on watching Downton Abbey. Somehow, the correction to this complaint was to encourage any person who could claim some type of minority status to act as privileged and entitled as possible. No matter how this ends, everyone is going to have a rude awakening.
As a retired public high school teacher I can attest that there are both good and bad teachers, just as in any profession. The biggest difference from public schools today and what I experienced as both a student and in the start of my career is administration. Principals today do not have the will or power to discipline both students or teachers who are out of line. They are afraid to death of social media and school boards who care more about their own power and reelection than educating kids. That is why the good ones leave as soon as they can leaving the dregs in charge of the asylum. Administration today gives too much power and voice to delusional parents who scream loudly on social media. This is why many parents who do care about their children’s education are opting out of public schools and are seeking other options.
This isn't going to stop until there is bloodshed... It's just going to depend on who gets who first...
Will a biological male participating in female contact sports have to kill one of them for the proper attention to be brought to light? Right now, I am teaching my young granddaughters how to physically defend themselves from one of the mentally-ill "pretenders" and we'll see just how much biology matters when they have a testicle kicked up near their adams apple...
The vast majority of people I have run across just simply do NOT care how other people conduct their lives... The problem is the "movements" have made us care by directly invading ours... F that... Call me whatever name you want... "cancel" me... WHATEVER... but no more... it's time for the "normies" who want to live peaceful, productive lives to fight back... And when I say fight that's what I mean... The Overton window needs to be smashed and we need to wise up...