Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
My Kingdom for a Safe Zone: Kids Playdates Edition
Several weeks before COVID hit, I decided to get serious about getting my (homeschooled) kids more playdates and getting them out in nature more. There was a conversation in a local branch of a nature-based national playgroup organization about looking for a homeschool meetup and I decided it was perfect: I would start one. We had exactly two gatherings in the woods before they were canceled indefinitely due to the pandemic. I remained in a number of the Facebook groups dedicated to the national organization and our local branch and soon watched them become arms of BLM after the killing of George Floyd.
The women doing this “educating” are all white, middle-class women. In the facilitator group, I asked (paraphrasing), “Is this a social justice organization about racism or is it a nature-based playgroup for our kids to get out into nature? Are we ever going to do the latter again, or just have struggle sessions about race from here on? There’s a lot of places I can go to get lectured on race on the Internet, I’m not sure why it’s happening here.” I’m not sure exactly what I said, because I left the group after — you guessed it — being labeled a racist.
The above screenshots were sent by someone in the Director’s group, the national organization’s Facebook group to organize local chapters. I told the woman who sent me the screenshots (who was sympathetic and in agreement with my position) that I would be bowing out of the group if this is what it’s about. She told me she likely would as well, and that in one branch in a red state, the director had tried to kick out Republican members. This is, I remind you, a nature-based playgroup for toddlers and primary-aged children!
The title for this post came from a 2009 post on National Review’s blog by Jay Nordlinger entitled, “My Kingdom for a Safe Zone.” He wrote,
They can’t help themselves, can they? They can’t help preening, saying, in effect, “See how virtuous I am? My politics are correct. I am a fully paid-up member of the herd — nothing independent-minded about me.” I have seen this in Carnegie Hall before (as elsewhere): The conductor, or someone else, makes a partisan political statement, releasing a little stink bomb that smells up the entire evening, no matter how good the music is.
At least it’s that way for some of us.
Politics aside, where are manners? Where is consideration for a minority of audience members? Where is a sense of public space, and what is appropriate and not? The guy was uncouth, as much as anything. And the sad thing is: There’s no one to call him on it.
It’s not just impoliteness, now. It’s not just ruining nights out at concerts. Now they’re ruining all of our kids’ social lives for the sake of… what? They’re not accomplishing their goal of “reeducation” or “restorative justice.” They’re just sending people uninterested in their brand of hectoring packing.
When we lived in New Jersey, we noticed that the friends we had made over the course of my kids’ lives stopped inviting us to playdates and birthday parties. I tried not to be paranoid until someone clued me in that this wasn’t a mistake, it was because the parents of my kids’ friends didn’t like my politics (which were still solidly in the NeverTrump camp). My kids didn’t get to play with their friends because these parents were just too tolerant, and they took that tolerance out on my kids.
This is how the “open-minded” are raising their kids. This is why our national breakup is only going to get worse as our kids grow up. It’ll be thanks to mothers like this, who care more about curating a bubble of people who believe the “right” things instead of practicing what they preach on tolerance.
Published in General
This is the very definition of mind control and then sanity. What has happened to our country and this world? Are these the attitudes before George Floyd? This reminds me of @she getting kicked out of the on line knitting group because she didn’t want to participate in the blanket race statement. Wow! I hope you can take your kids to play and enjoy life – it’s too short to put up with this malarkey. You might read The Family and the New Totalitarianism by Michel D. O’Brien. He had to battle the Canadian school system and ended up homeschooling his brood – Parents have it tough today.
Bethany,
We are being gas-lighted from two different directions at once. Fauci keeps screaming disaster disaster the COVID-19 sky is falling even though the actual data says it is not. Cases are going up because of increased testing and the idiot demonstrations. Meanwhile, the psychotic BLM/Antifa (with help from the idiot MSM and liberal pols) screams their incessant absurd nonsense about endemic racism. About 7,000 “people of color are killed by other people of color every year. Meanwhile, in confrontations with cops (most of which are perps pulling guns on cops) only about 200 “people of color” are killed. If you actually were concerned about Black lives would you defund the police or increase the funding of police?
There is no endemic racism only endemic Marxism. Fauci isn’t worried about the virus, he is worried that his cronies won’t be able to make a fortune on the vaccine if everybody realizes that herd immunity is the only real solution. BTW, Jonas Salk donated the patent rights to his vaccine. Maybe somebody ought to ask Fauce whoever is going to get the green light for the vaccine would they be willing to do the same. Ask about donating the patent rights to the vaccine and you will see a song & dance from Fauci that belongs in a Broadway musical.
Regards,
Jim
Our pastor this morning noted how much more anger he is seeing in people. Possibly projecting my own reactions onto others, but I am becoming more certain that social isolation is a major contributing factor in the anger we are seeing around us. Interacting with people only through online comments, as two-dimensional images on Zoom or Skype, from behind Plexiglass shields, as faceless blobs behind masks narrows our perceptions. With narrowed perceptions, small issues take on outsized importance, making us more likely to get angry.
I think a large portion of the recent and current riots, the overthrowing of history, “cancel culture,” and other violence is a consequence of the efforts taken in the name of controlling the Wuhan virus. Thus, the deaths and the destroyed lives should be counted as a cost of the efforts to control the virus.
This is why I (a 64 year old man) and my wife (63 years old) are willing interact with people in settings that many are not – we consider the risks to human flourishing (individually and societally) caused by social isolation to be greater than the risks associated with the virus. Isolation is helping to turn the mothers described into the narrow-minded bigots that they are becoming.
In the case of children and playdates, I think it is nearly certain that keeping children apart is causing far more damage to those children than would any contact with the virus. The sooner we get children together and interacting in the real world, the better off those children will be.
I am trying to give my kids a semblance of religious education at one of the American Anglican institutions in France. While it’s more left than I’d like, they have managed to keep most of the junk out of the sermons and Sunday school. However after George Floyd and the riots I got some ominous emails. We kept our kids out of the subsequent zoom meetings and I have my eyes peeled, ready to get out of yet another US institution here. If it goes south, I sign them up for good old Catechism at the (extremely serious) French Catholic institution literally next door. I am a newcomer to organised religion so I hesitate, but I have a feeling we’ll end up there.
Having churches closed has been a blessing right now since we walk such a tight rope at American institutions. I am sure we’d be subsumed in George Floyd/BLM.
Our US institution (it has a lot of Brits, Philippines, Aussies too) already becomes totally unbearable in June for gay pride. We’ve learned to avoid the church on Sundays in June. Of course in late May they start talking about LGBT festivities and in early July, they reminisce about their June LGBTing.
THERE IS NO ESCAPE. Don’t let me get started on the American Library. We quit that ages ago.
Some of it is due to the virus – we all wanted to do the right thing for the sake of others, but I do believe we are witnessing a serious social engineering. As the Mayor of Chicago, once part of the Obama – Biden team, said, “Don’t let a good crisis go to waste”. It’s been underway for some time, and the virus and the unfortunate George Floyd death has put the engineers of reinventing the world as we know it – to push the pedal to the metal. The death of one lack man by a violent officer should not have caused a worldwide upheaval – the decimating of history, statues, symbols of western civilization. Think about it….powerful people are controlling the strings behind the scenes, and unless we stand firm in our moral convictions, this takeover will be swift and we’ll be left in the dark with no matches for light.
If you have to be on high alert for your children’s religious education, you’re wasting time – get on to the next door place.
We have a community at the church: families we like that we only see on Sundays. My mom tells me Tucker Carlson is an Episcopalian and he endures the leftward current because he is attached the community. It’s a tough call. Also the Sunday school is in English and gives the kids a little American culture (in the worst sense these days).
I have to say that given the option of picking my poison, I would choose *very limited* doses of BLM propaganda over anything “trans.” We got trans & Gender Neutrality at the American Library of Paris’ kids section and I was out like a flash, not before sending a letter copying all members of the board.
@tocqueville – I hear you. I don’t mean to bash Episcopalians – good people – and probably many parishes are different. My story in a nutshell: My old next door neighbor was the parish priest at our local Episcopalian church – in fact the founder. His wife also very liberal, and I became good friends and I started going with her. This was after going to a Methodist Church. I loved the more traditional service and very nice people. When he retired and they moved back to their original town in FL, a new guy and his wife took over, but I stopped going. I’d heard good things about him, and his wife became our county’s chaplain – both younger with small kids.
I planned to go back, then COVID-19, so I started watching on line. I was shocked at the change. He was almost depressing, very apologetic about being white, making comments that our area is not an inner city, just a disappointment and resentment that came through. His preaching was on liberal issues. He also did not take communion – went through the ritual, then put it aside. Maybe he was told to because of virus? His wife never present, he had an assistant. Each week, I gave it a chance – it got worse. Then his computer was hacked so I deleted the church emails. Then the bishop, the head honcho came to preach (planned event) and I understood the liberalism. He made a flippant comment regarding Episcopalians avoiding talking about the Holy Spirit, he was rushed like he couldn’t wait to get out of there (this was before the church opened up again which was very recent), then the pastor’s wife gave a sermon. It was also very liberal, feminist in tone and content – so I am shocked because this is not anything like it once was.
I know that he died. There is confusion about how he died (competing autopsy reports will do that).
I am unable to say unequivocally that he “was killed”.