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The Progressives’ Barbed Hook
As I contemplated drafting this post I was put in mind of the Creedence Clearwater song title “Bad Moon Rising.” How else to viscerally convey what’s coming our way — no matter what?
I see the bad moon a-rising
I see trouble on the way
I see earthquakes and lightning
I see bad times todayI hear hurricanes a-blowing
I know the end is coming soon
I fear rivers overflowing
I hear the voice of rage and ruinHope you got your things together
Hope you are quite prepared to die
Looks like we’re in for nasty weather
One eye is taken for an eyeDon’t go around tonight
Well, it’s bound to take your life
There’s a bad moon on the rise
What has prompted my discouraged optimism today? It is a published piece and interview with Madison Breshears. Madison is now a law student, but her account in Medium of her experience as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley and her interview with The Daily Signal describes a situation in higher education that is fueling the riots and disruptions in our society. As Madison puts it, the “university has become a seminary school for the left.” That thought is not something new, but one point she makes is:
I think there’s a mistaken assumption by, or at least there was a mistaken assumption by people on the right, that those kids who came out of college, who had been sold these ideas and who had eaten those ideas up, would be mugged by reality, as a lot of commentators phrase it.
That in a workplace, their intolerance and their sensitivity and their wrong views about the way the world works would be beaten out of them essentially by the more tactical way that the workforce runs, and by their bosses and by the real world, by things like that.
But I think that’s clearly not what we’re seeing. We’re seeing people being fired from major companies for taking relatively normal political stances according to the rest of the country. And we’re seeing companies send money to various far-leftist and postmodern conception societies.
To say that you are not comfortable with the political messaging of Black Lives Matter at a normal American company today is … I think people are scared to speak out about anything like that.
And so I think that unfortunately, conservative commentators might’ve been wrong about their idea that the real world would reform college students after they got out of school. I say it in my piece that they haven’t been mugged by reality, but they’ve set out on a mission to mug reality itself. And that seems to be what I’ve observed.
The ingenious design of the fish hook is that once the barb is set the fish can wriggle but not escape. That we have allowed generations of young people to be indoctrinated uncontested by the academy may mean that a force has been unleashed in America that no election will contain. We fear what progressives will do if they hold all the levers of power, but expect that the re-election of President Trump will at best slow the destruction while we figure out what to do next. If the “woke” political zombies manufactured by higher education are impervious to what we think of as reality, what next?
Published in GeneralDon’t go around tonight
Well, it’s bound to take your life
There’s a bad moon on the rise
It’s not just the colleges or businesses who are failing graduates. Families lost their moorings and didn’t take responsibility for educating their children in conservative values. So the belief that college kids would be mugged by reality assumed that there was something to which they could return. For many, that place was either missing or corrupted by different, or a lack of, values. The universities then took over the indoctrination. And the real world is reinforcing what they have learned. Thanks, rodin.
A national divorce, secession, whatever one wants to call it. If we’re lucky.
And don’t forget:
“There’s a bathroom on the right.”
What I think about this I am uncomfortable writing out because it sounds paranoid, but it’s what I saw twenty-five years ago with my own kids and their friends. Controlling the K-12 schools means controlling who gets promoted within those schools, who is considered smart or “gifted” and who is not, who gets the good grades and who does not. That controls who gets into the good colleges and universities and who does not. The colleges and universities control who gets into the professions and who does not.
And the professions–with their myriad licensing requirements–control the country.
I see no way out of this.
I have one glimmer of hope and that is the home-schooling and charter school movements. There is a chance that a child’s intellect could survive intact while still passing the tests necessary to make it into one of the professions. He or she, at this point, would probably have to lie about a few things (“Yes, of course the Iraq War was about oil”) to make it over the finish line.
I have believed for a long time now that the fate of the world rests in the home-school movement and that it will be a person who was home-schooled who saves western civilization someday.
In other words, relief is to be found by turning right.
Yep, couldn’t agree more Marci. The propaganda starts in K12 and is finished in the University.
The number one failure of Con Inc was to do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to hold big edu to account.
Why do not red states require fair and equal representation of political ideas in the schools that are under their control. ie, one sided ed gets 0 money. Proof must be provided for money to flow again. Why don’t red states audit their educational institutions for diversity of political thought and practices ?
All of this should have been done 30 years ago. There is no excuse why it is not being done now.
Answerable in two words. Federal Money. Even red states take federal funds for all levels of education. They would have to “go Hillsdale” and reject all government funds to get out from under the indoctrination regulations. The feds govern much of education policy at all levels.
Even Hillsdale has had a huge amount of work and frustration to avoid the government straitjacket.
I have read numerous times in the Wall Street Journal how companies are altering their policies and their office procedures to actually cater to the “snowflakes” coming out of colleges. I read article after article laying out how today’s young people require continuous (positive) feedback, frequent raises and promotions, on-site therapy for anxiety, etc….. Instead of advising them to “suck it up, Buttercup”, these companies are being advised to adjust to the kids!
A seemingly socially conscious corporate America is not a new phenomenon. It’s a revival of an old one.
That’s right. Even charities have an enormous amount of paper to keep and file with the Feds just to prove they’re “not for profit” . . .
“People dont have ideas. Ideas of have people.” You’re just a tool to the ideas that possess you – a puppet:
Its hard to become dispossessed of an idea, it requires a lot of thought and self-examination. Which is very difficult for someone who has never tried to think.
The whole purpose of identity politics is to remove thinking from the common man. Its turned “Cognito, ergo Sum” completely on its head. (I think therefore I am) Identity politics is “I am there therefore I do not think”…
LOL, that tune brings back some memories from stomping around the hills of Camp Pendleton fifty years ago. I trace our troubles today to the poisons released by that war experience and its tentacles.
These are both state and local politics matters. Both licenses and K-12 curricula are in the state voters’ hands if they will only pass consistent attention and force legislation and state courts in their direction against the left elite.
A lot of the grads will still be somewhat mugged by reality at work, because work will make it more obvious that (1) people don’t act in accordance with what they’ve been taught about people and (2) it’s costly to say so.
There’s going to be a lot of corporate Winston Smith types.