There's a big deal about rhetoric right now. But I don't think that is the issue. The people who do nothing but foment hatred of the other side are the problem. If your whole job is nothing but to paint the other side as evil and the enemy no matter how kindly you say it, you are partly responsible for violence against that side. If you twist facts to benefit your side you are partly responsible for violence in America. We have dozens of people who get filthy rich doing nothing but shooting hate into America's veins.
The other thing is the glorification of guns. I think people need to rethink how they treat guns around their sons.
This piece reminds me of how, back in 2017 when this constant vitriol against Trump ramped up, a continuation of an irrational and rather adolescent contempt for conservatives, I showed a documentary in my class called "Why Beauty Matters" by Roger Scruton. The students could agree with Scruton's polemic, or disagree, by curating examples of art, or designed objects. In other words, the documentary was presented as an object of curiosity, although I must admit that I find Scruton's argument in that documentary difficult to disagree with. Beauty DOES matter.
That semester I was awarded with the most scathing, hateful evaluations imaginable. It literally crushed my soul. I was a "right wing" bigot for showing that documentary. Holding students to academic standards made me a bigot. There was one group in the class who coopted my model argument for their own project, which compared popular songs to contemporary songs.
I also have reason to suspect that I was let go from one institution of higher learning because I would nudge them to question the dogma. They were like parrots. Capitalism bad! Stolen land! You are my white oppressor (said in all earnestness by a wealthy Japanese woman). Cultural appropriation! Imagine working in a place where other teachers are teaching students to be suspicious of your motives, to automatically see you as an enemy due to your skin color.
Add to this that when Trump won the presidency last fall, one of my colleagues showed up for her class an hour late in tears. One of our Chinese national students relayed to me her performance, how she passed out a loaf of bread saying it was the "last supper," that Trump hates foreigners, and this was the end of their invitation to study in the US, that her RIGHTS as a woman (she's in her 40s, unmarried, childless, and likely to stay that way, and these are the worst offenders in my observations) would be taken away. The student claimed that she went on and on, weeping and weeping.
Good student: during this he went to Trump's website and tried to talk her down by saying that according to the primary source, none of those threats she posited were even remotely expressed. He then showed me her grammar lesson, which required putting into reported speech Justin Trudeau saying, "Diversity is our strength."
Our program is supposed to be preparing students for studying ART AND DESIGN.
I have other colleagues who teach students that men are evil by mangling various works of literature.
When teaching The Odyssey a couple of years ago, a student insisted that it was a terrible story because the women were only shown as sex objects or housewives.
I had actually totally had it with being nice about this crap by that time. I shouted at her: PENELOPE IS THE GODDAMNED HERO OF THE STORY, ALL RIGHT? WHAT IF SHE HAD GONE TO TROY? WOULD THERE BE AN ITHAKA TO RETURN TO? WHO WOULD BEAR THE CHILDREN TO REPLENISH ALL OF THE MEN WHO WERE LOST? WHAT IF SHE GOT KILLED IN BATTLE?
SO NO, it's not THE PARENTS. It's the SCHOOLS.
The long march through the institutions has wrought these young people. Useful Idiots are teaching them this shit that masquerades as intellectual fodder. And if you dare question this hateful dogma -- THEY PUT YOU OUT TO PASTURE.
Ah, the educational kingdom, where costs have bloomed along with fat administrator salaries, is the first one to be assailed, and will, hopefully, fall out of its lofty position as Grand Inquisitor of our culture. Honestly, I saw this in 2016 when I was covering the New Hampshire primary in Seabrook, where I grew up years ago, to have some of my former high school teachers recognize me as they threw their votes to Trump. They saw what you describe firsthand.
And...in October 2024, driving to Washington, D.C. with three teenagers to see the sites, within 25 miles of the Capitol, there were Trump signs (not in the BosWash corridor, but going up 301 over the Potomac in eastern Maryland. Dogma only goes so far before the reactionary dogma kicks it out.
And...in the business community, the politics is money, and making lots of it. So Jamie Dimon (who claims to have never heard of Jeffrey Epstein before it hit the newspapers despite the fact that Epstein had red carpet access to JP Morgan's C-Suite for years), Mark Zuckerberg, Satya Nadella, Jeff Bezos et. al, all throw their weight and businesses toward Trump, after throwing it into the maw of the progressive liberal woke kingdom for a decade.
Why? Because normal people with families, lives and kids, who want the best for all three, want stable homes, good education (real learning), unencumbered money, property, and choices, and some kind of future for their kids. Progressive dogma is self-hating, anti-human, luxury belief, like Elon Musk's trans son fell into, cutting herself off from him (but not the opportunity his money brought) forever.
The trans movement, as a religious cult of self-harm and identity denial, is the faddish end of the educational system that produced it. It's not that they intended to create it, but organically, it crawled out of that soup, evolved from the stuff it had been fed and soaking in for decades.
The dogma people must go, and though it's sad to see their inhumanity manifested this way, that's really the only way it could happen. Otherwise they'd just continue pretending they don't live in the nihilistic, paranoid, and self-contradicting world they inhabit.
“Cancel culture is when someone is fired for saying a thing that does not offend ME. Firing someone for saying something that does offend ME is not cancel culture.”
Watching all these guys who lie about anything against their side go about destroying the lives of anyone who won't pretend Kirk wasn't a dirtbag is just crazy. I don't get why people don't see through it. They still pretend the Minnesota killer was a democrat. It's gross.
Charlie Kirk being a “dirtbag” is your personal opinion of his character. What is not opinion is he was a father of 2 and a husband whose wife is clearly devoted to him. Opinions are irrelevant. Kirk committed no crime. He was an innocent man gunned down because people didn’t like what he said.
Do people deserve to lose their jobs because they think Kirk is a racist? Of course he didn't deserve to be murdered. Just don't expect me to join the right in fantasy land pretending he didn't say the stuff he said. And getting people fired for it will just lead to more violence. Then again if there is more violence they will just lie about that as well. It's a self fulfilling prophecy at this point. If I wasn't already dying I would be packing up for Canada about now because the country is doomed.
There's a big deal about rhetoric right now. But I don't think that is the issue. The people who do nothing but foment hatred of the other side are the problem. If your whole job is nothing but to paint the other side as evil and the enemy no matter how kindly you say it, you are partly responsible for violence against that side. If you twist facts to benefit your side you are partly responsible for violence in America. We have dozens of people who get filthy rich doing nothing but shooting hate into America's veins.
The other thing is the glorification of guns. I think people need to rethink how they treat guns around their sons.
This piece reminds me of how, back in 2017 when this constant vitriol against Trump ramped up, a continuation of an irrational and rather adolescent contempt for conservatives, I showed a documentary in my class called "Why Beauty Matters" by Roger Scruton. The students could agree with Scruton's polemic, or disagree, by curating examples of art, or designed objects. In other words, the documentary was presented as an object of curiosity, although I must admit that I find Scruton's argument in that documentary difficult to disagree with. Beauty DOES matter.
That semester I was awarded with the most scathing, hateful evaluations imaginable. It literally crushed my soul. I was a "right wing" bigot for showing that documentary. Holding students to academic standards made me a bigot. There was one group in the class who coopted my model argument for their own project, which compared popular songs to contemporary songs.
I also have reason to suspect that I was let go from one institution of higher learning because I would nudge them to question the dogma. They were like parrots. Capitalism bad! Stolen land! You are my white oppressor (said in all earnestness by a wealthy Japanese woman). Cultural appropriation! Imagine working in a place where other teachers are teaching students to be suspicious of your motives, to automatically see you as an enemy due to your skin color.
Add to this that when Trump won the presidency last fall, one of my colleagues showed up for her class an hour late in tears. One of our Chinese national students relayed to me her performance, how she passed out a loaf of bread saying it was the "last supper," that Trump hates foreigners, and this was the end of their invitation to study in the US, that her RIGHTS as a woman (she's in her 40s, unmarried, childless, and likely to stay that way, and these are the worst offenders in my observations) would be taken away. The student claimed that she went on and on, weeping and weeping.
Good student: during this he went to Trump's website and tried to talk her down by saying that according to the primary source, none of those threats she posited were even remotely expressed. He then showed me her grammar lesson, which required putting into reported speech Justin Trudeau saying, "Diversity is our strength."
Our program is supposed to be preparing students for studying ART AND DESIGN.
I have other colleagues who teach students that men are evil by mangling various works of literature.
When teaching The Odyssey a couple of years ago, a student insisted that it was a terrible story because the women were only shown as sex objects or housewives.
I had actually totally had it with being nice about this crap by that time. I shouted at her: PENELOPE IS THE GODDAMNED HERO OF THE STORY, ALL RIGHT? WHAT IF SHE HAD GONE TO TROY? WOULD THERE BE AN ITHAKA TO RETURN TO? WHO WOULD BEAR THE CHILDREN TO REPLENISH ALL OF THE MEN WHO WERE LOST? WHAT IF SHE GOT KILLED IN BATTLE?
SO NO, it's not THE PARENTS. It's the SCHOOLS.
The long march through the institutions has wrought these young people. Useful Idiots are teaching them this shit that masquerades as intellectual fodder. And if you dare question this hateful dogma -- THEY PUT YOU OUT TO PASTURE.
Ah, the educational kingdom, where costs have bloomed along with fat administrator salaries, is the first one to be assailed, and will, hopefully, fall out of its lofty position as Grand Inquisitor of our culture. Honestly, I saw this in 2016 when I was covering the New Hampshire primary in Seabrook, where I grew up years ago, to have some of my former high school teachers recognize me as they threw their votes to Trump. They saw what you describe firsthand.
And...in October 2024, driving to Washington, D.C. with three teenagers to see the sites, within 25 miles of the Capitol, there were Trump signs (not in the BosWash corridor, but going up 301 over the Potomac in eastern Maryland. Dogma only goes so far before the reactionary dogma kicks it out.
And...in the business community, the politics is money, and making lots of it. So Jamie Dimon (who claims to have never heard of Jeffrey Epstein before it hit the newspapers despite the fact that Epstein had red carpet access to JP Morgan's C-Suite for years), Mark Zuckerberg, Satya Nadella, Jeff Bezos et. al, all throw their weight and businesses toward Trump, after throwing it into the maw of the progressive liberal woke kingdom for a decade.
Why? Because normal people with families, lives and kids, who want the best for all three, want stable homes, good education (real learning), unencumbered money, property, and choices, and some kind of future for their kids. Progressive dogma is self-hating, anti-human, luxury belief, like Elon Musk's trans son fell into, cutting herself off from him (but not the opportunity his money brought) forever.
The trans movement, as a religious cult of self-harm and identity denial, is the faddish end of the educational system that produced it. It's not that they intended to create it, but organically, it crawled out of that soup, evolved from the stuff it had been fed and soaking in for decades.
The dogma people must go, and though it's sad to see their inhumanity manifested this way, that's really the only way it could happen. Otherwise they'd just continue pretending they don't live in the nihilistic, paranoid, and self-contradicting world they inhabit.
Thank you for your note!
Excellent. “The Abolition of Man” is my second favorite Lewis book. I hope we find our way out of this.
“Cancel culture is when someone is fired for saying a thing that does not offend ME. Firing someone for saying something that does offend ME is not cancel culture.”
I'll get to other thoughts later.
Watching all these guys who lie about anything against their side go about destroying the lives of anyone who won't pretend Kirk wasn't a dirtbag is just crazy. I don't get why people don't see through it. They still pretend the Minnesota killer was a democrat. It's gross.
Charlie Kirk being a “dirtbag” is your personal opinion of his character. What is not opinion is he was a father of 2 and a husband whose wife is clearly devoted to him. Opinions are irrelevant. Kirk committed no crime. He was an innocent man gunned down because people didn’t like what he said.
Do people deserve to lose their jobs because they think Kirk is a racist? Of course he didn't deserve to be murdered. Just don't expect me to join the right in fantasy land pretending he didn't say the stuff he said. And getting people fired for it will just lead to more violence. Then again if there is more violence they will just lie about that as well. It's a self fulfilling prophecy at this point. If I wasn't already dying I would be packing up for Canada about now because the country is doomed.