Encounter with Progressives on April 3, 2021

Yesterday, in 45F weather, (we always get a cold spell the week before Easter), we were in Colonial Williamsburg for the purpose of taking pictures of blooming tulips, daffodils, cherry trees, lambs, and other simple and beautiful corners of nature waking up from its winter slumber. Hubby was kind enough to drive us a few hours coming and going through heavy traffic. People are tired of masks and lockdowns and seem to be going places in larger numbers.

Among the azaleas, cherry blossoms, shuttered stores, and larger crowds than we have seen before, two older, Caucasian women in the market square caught my eye.  They were manning a BLM booth, offering free lemonade above a large Black Lives Matter poster, and the simple words, “Can We Talk?” The implication was that they wanted to have a conversation about BLM and race, further causing division among Americans to promote the progressive Marxist agenda of “the white race and patriotism are bad, black and anti-Americanism are good.”

It raised my ire immediately; they were William & Mary college professors trying to indoctrinate visitors into their racist and Marxist hatred. I asked one of them what she wanted to talk about? ALL lives matter, in my opinion, not just black ones.

One of the ladies, no doubt a tenured professor, asked, “Are all cancers equal?” My immediate reply was, “cancer is a life-threatening disease and it’s a horrible analogy to make.” I continued with my own question, “How do you feel about the killing of black babies in the abortionist Planned Parenthood?” Silence and a smirk of superiority from the two college professors.

“I won’t listen to you because you are irrational liberals promoting Marxism, racism, and hatred.” One said, “I’m not calling YOU irrational.” “That’s because I am not a nutjob, I am a rational person, fighting communism, racism, division, and genocide promoted by academic ‘progressives’ like you.”

My husband, who was already crossing the street and did not stop at the booth, overheard only my calling them “irrational.” He said, which is true, “when you call people names, you’ve lost the argument.”

It seems to me that, at this point, I have lost more than the argument, I have lost my country to Marxists who used fascistic methods to gain control. We are way past debates as Marxists are not using rational dialogue to make their points. It is a “my way or the highway” takeover, with Marxists in full power of government.

Marxists like these professors are not rational, do not make cogent arguments, they use indoctrination to push their agenda and therefore cannot win something they never had, i.e., rational thoughts.

Within a few steps, still stewing from my encounter with the radical leftists, I saw a man with a Colonial Williamsburg cap on who was replenishing the hand-sanitizer station.

I asked him why so many businesses have closed or are moving away from the Colonial Williamsburg property. His answer was, “The Democrats have decided to lockdown small businesses and the American people, and to keep them masked and six feet apart like sheep. That is why. And greed. When things opened a bit and people started visiting again, small businesses were levied higher rent and an additional larger percent of their profits which were small or non-existent at that point.”

My wise best friend and daughter Mims replied to my commentary with the following:

“Well, you knew you weren’t going to get anywhere with them. What you should’ve done was tell them where you came from and what you have experienced and ask them if they had any idea what they were promoting? Meaning, asking them to define what it is they think it is so glorious about communism and socialism. I agree that calling them names no longer validates an argument. But I completely understand why you would call them that.

Furthermore, I probably would not have said all lives matter, but I would have asked them why only certain black lives matter. This would have been cited to ask what you mean and then you could have interjected the constant abortions performed in the black community. I would have stood there calm as a cucumber and asked them to define what it is that they were promoting. I would have made them squirm.”

While I agree with Mims assessment, the painful reality is that scams, fraudulent and deceptive ideas, and philosophies, are easy to promote and pass for three important reasons:

1.    Masses are easier to deceive than convincing them that they have been deceived.

2.    People seem hungrier for hope, any hope, even when it is a patently false hope.

3.    Most people are not looking for the truth; it is too hard to search for the truth because people are basically indolent. Humans want constant reassurance that what they believe is the Truth, even when the truth is disinformation, indoctrination, or a lie.

Marginalized or Successful Indoctrinator

Photo Credit: Marijane Green

If you’ve ever been marginalized by progressives for your conservative views, for your anti-communist teaching philosophy and other divergent opinions, you were not alone. 

If you’ve worked in highly progressive academic environments and were not re-hired as adjunct, granted tenure, or were not even considered for tenure unless you belonged to organizations such as the NEA, AFT, or other Democrat-supporting organizations, you were not alone.

If you’ve worked in secondary education and were told that your opinions did not matter because the entrenched Democrat bureaucracy did things entirely different from what you perceive as common sense and logical in supporting an American education, you were not alone.

If you taught full-time or part-time and the Dean, Director, or Principal told you that you must use a certain textbook that you found offensive, or that you must teach or grade a certain way, dumb down the curriculum in order to allow everyone to avoid failure and pass students who otherwise did not deserve to pass but their parents were threatening to sue the school, you were not alone.

This is how the politics in education work today and have worked for quite some time. Incisive parents who were involved in their children’s education understood the schemes and fads early on and took measures to protect their children by home schooling them or putting them in private schools.

Other parents who were seldom seen at school or PTA meetings were oblivious, did not care who influenced their children’s world views, or were too trusting of those empowered to shape their children’s minds eight hours a day. Television, Hollywood, violent video games, alcohol and drugs did the rest.

And a small percentage of parents were only concerned that Johnny received free tuition and free meals, thus they did not have to be responsible or participate in the education of their progeny. Why bother if the state provided free education, free meals, and paid teachers?

Everybody knows that children see teachers as the ultimate authority and respect them. Some teachers are truly exceptional, others speak with authority in their subject area, and yet others are highly respected for their scholarship or as influential role models.

But all teachers are not created equal or driven by the same desire to promote American exceptionalism and to shape tomorrow’s American leaders and thinkers. Most of the students shaped today will be America’s busy bees and compliant followers who believe everything they are told without asking pertinent questions.

Parents blame their children’s problems on teachers and administrators. Administrators blame everything on the lack of funding or the “low” teacher salaries when compared to the private sector. But the private sector does not get three-month vacations each year. Unionized teachers strike because their salaries are deemed inadequate even though they are the best paid teachers in the country.

Corrupt politicians and dishonest bureaucrats who retire from government or are fired receive cushy and well-remunerated teaching assignments in private colleges around the country, tasked with teaching ethics in general, political ropes, or social justice.

Democrats and some Republicans in higher positions of power receive millions in book advances, idolized by the press and book reviewers. Students flock to their classes so that they too can learn how to lie and cheat their way to the top in the name of social justice.

Teachers say that parents are the problem, their lack of involvement in their children’s education. Parents are not teaching their progeny manners, respect for authority, how to get along with other children without throwing a temper tantrum, lack of modesty in clothing and shoes, obscenely priced when compared to a teacher’s entire outfit, but expect teachers to provide pencils, pens, crayons, glue, scissors, writing paper, and other classroom supplies to their students.

Teachers find fault with parents who never show up at school regularly, who never help their children do homework, or check their homework every night. Some of their questions are:

-          Do parents help their children prepare for the next school day?

-          Do they punish their children for being disruptive elements in the classroom or do parents   complain to the principal that the teacher is unfairly singling out their child and thus she/he is the source of the problem?

-          Do they blame the teacher when their child cheats on a test instead of making their child responsible for their behavior?

-          Do they teach their children to listen in class and behave properly, respecting authority?

It is certainly difficult for a teacher to be both educator and parent to someone else’s child, especially when young teachers don’t have children of their own yet, are not allowed to discipline students in any way for fear of lawsuits, and must provide justification in writing for their lesson plans every day.

Using their students as pawns, public school teachers and administrators have nominated themselves the socialist political compass of our country and have allowed students to walk out of the classroom several times in order to protest the Democrat cause d’jour instead of doing the jobs they were hired to do, teach our children.

Teaching is an art and cannot be taught by the College of Education or by the latest education fad but it can be forced in a certain direction. Unfortunately, in order to keep their jobs, most teachers use all the prescribed lesson plans, worksheets, and textbooks provided by Common Core or whatever orders come down from the administration via the Department of Education which attaches their orders to school funding and grants.

Even though President Trump had expressed his intent to end Common Core in our public schools, the current Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, a wealthy business woman and educational activist with no experience in public education, has made no effort to end Common Core which is very much alive and well in most of our public and private schools.

Whether the teacher is marginalized or a successful indoctrinator protected by the teacher’s union or by tenure, at the end of the day they must do as they are told in order to stay employed.

Nanny State of Mind

It does not matter how many weeks of vacation (Europeans get five), often paid by the nanny state, leisure time and holidays are not enough for the socialist-minded, entitled liberals.  In these five weeks of vacation, employees have the choice to go to spas abroad, often in five star hotels, where pampering, massage, physical therapy, mud baths, sulphur baths, excellent food, and strolls in the most beautiful resorts of Europe are all subsidized by the generous employers “nudged” by socialist policies or by the government.

Years ago, one of my South American colleagues who hailed from a socialist state and spent high school years in France, had the temerity to ask Justice Scalia during the Q & A session of a speech on liberty, why does the Supreme Court not give Americans 2-3 years paid maternity leave and more holidays to spend time with their families? Americans work so hard and look at all the successful countries around the world that place so much emphasis on family and leisure time.

As I know quite well, Europeans place so much emphasis on family that they are committing demographic suicide by having less and less babies, in some countries way below the population replacement value, including countries with Catholic values. But then again, European churches are more or less museums, visited by foreign tourists and frequented by older people who fervently believe in God. The young and the socialists are generally atheist or agnostic. Many of them use churches for convenient traditions such baptism, marriage, and funerals.

I found my colleague’s comment amusing because I knew how broke the European socialist states were in spite of the large revenues from confiscatory income taxes; socialist technocrats had taxed their citizens to death in order to pay for welfare to their own and to the hordes of Muslim invaders who were placated because the customs of the countries they flooded into were offensive to them.

My colleague, a green card holder, had no understanding how a Constitutional republic functions, and did not understand that the Supreme Court is not supposed to legislate from the bench. Unfortunately they do, as was the case of the very expensive and unaffordable Affordable Care Act, deemed a “tax” by a Supreme Court Justice, when in reality it is medical insurance.

Academics work on the average about nine months out of the year and have generous paid leave and numerous holidays. The answer Justice Scalia gave was memorable, “Where is your work ethic? You don’t like to work, Madam? Stay at home with your family. But if you do, who is going to pay the bills?” The embarrassing silence was followed by a low murmur.

I had no idea then that a few years later, during the most transformational administration in U.S. history, fifty percent of Americans would become the “envied” Europeans, the egalitarian socialist welfare dependents seen in movies so fashionably dressed, so much smarter and refined than the loud Americans, never leaving cafes, smoking, discussing art and literature, and sipping on a bottomless glass of wine.

I never thought that Americans, with their strong work ethic, would become the happy beneficiaries of generational welfare and would perfect a way to game the system to their utmost advantage.  Even those out of a job, thanks to the disastrous Democrat economic policies, would receive generous two-year unemployment benefits while working off the books.

The lavish and lucrative cradle to grave nanny system worked well for Europeans for a long time in spite of the fact that their governments are broke. Employees are quite adept at receiving their pay under the table in cash. The underground economy that pays no tax is thriving.

Having lost its moral compass, the nanny state U.S.A. has become a society reeking of greed, envy, hate, corruption, lawlessness, and promiscuity. The takers and the entitled, legal and illegal, have outnumbered the givers.  

The takers, who repeatedly vote without an I.D. because they are too dumb to procure one but smart enough to produce an I.D. for welfare benefits and free healthcare, will guarantee that our society will become and remain a socialist nanny state.

While those accustomed to sloth are on permanent vacations, free to find themselves and play guitar, thanks to those who still get up and go to work every day, they have the audacity to complain and demonstrate vociferously against those “greedy rich” who do not pay their “fair share.” How did we get here, who bred such a nanny mentality? The answer appears simple – government, the main stream media, Hollywood, television, feminists, liberals, progressives, teachers, and professors.