Kaboom.
Just what I need on a Sunday morning: a head explosion.
Some background while I gather my thoughts and brains…last night, among the various freakouts and huzzahs after Bernie Sanders lapped the field in the Nevada Caucus, was this observation, from conservative pundit Paula Bolyard:
“It’s breathtaking to contemplate that a socialist—again, I remind you that Sanders is not a member of the Democratic Party—could be a legitimate contender for the presidency. It seems unthinkable that millions of people who lived through the Cold War, and remember the fear and loathing of all things Soviet, will march to the polls in lockstep in November to pull the lever for Sanders, and yet here we are. Thousands upon thousands of Baby Boomers, who should know better, have already voted for the aging bolshie in Iowa, Nevada, and New Hampshire.
Make no mistake: the Democratic Party is in thrall to socialism, if not communism. Those in the younger demographic, in particular, are increasingly demanding free everything—and the younger you go, the more stuff they’re demanding….They’ve been mal-educated in our public schools and universities and believe they are on the right side of history by supporting socialism.”
It’s hard to think about, but these kids aren’t going to stop until they get socialism—good and hard…Only then, when the quality of life they’ve become accustomed to as privileged Americans has become a distant memory, will they see the light.”
Bingo. Among the many groups accountable for a fantasist like Bernie being a factor in the 2020 Presidential race are multiple generations of lazy parents who paid little attention to what their children were being taught in elementary school s and high schools, and the textbooks they were reading. The anti-American Leftists bred in the campus uprisings of the Vietnam era took over faculties up and down the educational system, leading to curriculum (and worse, editorial comments) that opposed core American values rather than explicating them. The process continues, and could not continue without widespread parental apathy.
Now on to what exploded my head. During a history lesson in an advanced placement class at Loch Raven High School, a powerpoint presentation included a slide that featured a photo of President Trump above a swastika and hammer-and-sickle.
Over the President’s image are the words “Wants to round up a group of people and build a giant wall.” Below, the words “Been there” mark the swastika, and “Done that” appear under the picture hammer-and-sickle. A banner on the side reads “Oh that’s why it sounds so familiar!”
I’d pull my child out of that class until the teacher was removed, the school’s administrators apologized and a remedial presentation was prepared and presented. And that would be just the beginning.
The article about this nauseating episode had several smaller head-explosion triggers, like,
“Parents are questioning whether… the teacher was spreading political ideology.“
Gee, I wonder whether a teacher who shows that slide is spreading political ideology. Huh. That’s a real puzzle! Who is dumber, a parent who asks that question after a res ipsa loquitur like that, or the teacher who puts up a such a slide without being deterred by its analogies being factually and historically dishonest?
How about,
The parents didn’t want to be identified because they’re afraid of negative repercussions for their children at the high school.
Why are parents allowing their children to attend a school where pointing out irresponsible, misleading, purely political propaganda presented in a history class will result in “negative repercussions”? What turned American parents into terrorized weenies incapable of standing up to an unethical bureaucracy? If you can’t trust a school and its teachers, then get your children out of that school as fast as you can, and go to war.
This is the epitome of a duty to confront situation. Why is that a difficult concept for Baltimore parents to grasp?
This one caused an explosion that knocked over my coffee mug. A Baltimore County Public Schools spokesperson said:
“This slide was used as part of a lesson in an AP History course. The topics being discussed included World Wars and the attempts by some leaders to limit, or prevent migration, into certain countries. In isolation and out of context with the lesson, the image could be misunderstood. In our Advanced Placement (AP) classes, which are college level courses, we expect and encourage analysis and discussion around historical and current events even if they are considered controversial. This lesson was not intended to make a political statement. If a student has concerns when discussing a controversial issue, schools have the tools to address the concern and support the student.”
How stupid does a parent have to be to hear that and think, “Oh! All right, no problem.” Of course that slide is a political statement; it’s “Resistance” Big Lie #3. The statement is a Jumbo: “Elephant? What elephant?”
And this phenomenon, my friends, duplicated in schools and classes all over America for decades, is why my Facebook feed is crawling with supposedly educated people who think Bernie Sanders is wonderful.
Ethics Alarms 
” ‘It’s hard to think about, but these kids aren’t going to stop until they get socialism—good and hard…’ ”
Toilet paper isn’t such a big deal and isn’t really necessary if you haven’t any food.
If the issue was about limiting migration of of people into their countries I dont comprehend why pictures of DeGaulle, the Polish and Chech presidents were not shown. I believe they were actually killing people who transgressed their borders..
You seriously think that whoever made up that slide show knows anything about WWII?
A USAF F-16 Fighting Falcon, mainstay of the last 12 years of the Cold War, launches to fly a patrol. In those years it could have been anywhere from Italy to Spain to Turkey, while throughout Europe squadrons of the same under allied flags kept watch. A USAF F-15 Eagle, older still (they entered service in 1976) takes to the air. In the Cold War they kept watch further north, in Germany, in England, and even at Keflavik in Iceland. Every day they drilled, every day they patrolled, every day they were ready to go into battle on command, to stop the tyrannical scourge of Soviet communism or die trying.
We’d made a deal we wished we hadn’t had to with them, because the alternative was the genocidal tyranny of Nazism. We’d either looked the other way on, or not asked and not been told about, or accepted their lies about the worst things they’d done then like the Katyn Forest Massacre. However, we’d also seen them try to starve and freeze West Berlin out, and we’d seen them roll right over Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 when they dared to try to move toward greater freedom. We would be damned if we were going to let them bring that tyranny to the Rhine or past it. We’d heard from those who escaped what the conditions were like on the other side of the Iron Curtain, and we wanted no part of them.
We wanted no part of a system where there was one political party and only one. We wanted no part of a system where those who deviated from the party line either died or disappeared suddenly. We wanted no part of a system where faith was officially disapproved of and suppressed. We wanted no part of a system where the individual was just a cog in the government machine and had no hope of doing better. The system they offered was simply antithetical to what the Founding Fathers set up for this country, and we weren’t letting them bring it here. We’d fight to prevent it, and we’d die fighting rather than surrender to it. That’s why there were these patrols, that’s why the 41 for freedom were at sea at all times, but no one knew exactly where, and that’s why the 2nd Armored Division was always ready to go and the 82nd and 101st had battalions ready to fly out on minimal notice.
Now one of our political parties is likely to nominate a man who not only went behind the Iron Curtain, but did it willingly, for a honeymoon, when most of us head to someplace with a lot of sun and sand, or a lot of palazzos and palaces if the beach isn’t our thing. Not only did he go there, but he praised what he found there, in the place where those who dared speak out vanished and a refrigerator was a luxury item, saying it was a better system than we had here. Not only did he go there and praise what he found, but he did it while Ronald Reagan was finally arm-wrestling the Soviets to their final defeat, which would lead to their dissolution 3 years later. Not only all this, but he wants to bring that failed system here, on speed, and his followers say damned be anyone who stands in his way, because cities will burn otherwise.
I don’t know what’s more ironic (though not in an amusing way), that this system no longer exists in the nation where it originated (which also doesn’t exist anymore), or that the party that’s about to nominate this man is the same party that produced Thomas Jefferson, architect of the American brand of freedom, Andrew Jackson, who decisively stopped the first attempts to tear this nation apart, FDR, who many still count as third in the great trinity of US presidents with Washington and Lincoln, and Harry Truman, who was the first president to stand up against this system that party now wants to bring here.
Then again, when that party has repudiated its own history, and much of the educational establishment seeks to repudiate that history, it should come as no surprise that many do not know that history and can’t put this in any kind of perspective. It should come as no surprise that they can’t grasp the significance of Thomas Jefferson as the force behind the Bill of Rights, when all they hear about is his affair with Sally Hennings, and they think that’s all they need to hear. It should not come as a surprise that they have never heard of the nullification crisis, when all they have heard about Andrew Jackson is that he owned slaves, so next! It should not be odd that they don’t understand what FDR was all about when all they hear about is his heavy-handed treatment of Japanese-Americans, so nothing else need be known. It also is no surprise that they don’t know thing one about Truman and the beginning of the Cold War when they think only the last President to come out of their party matters.
History is the crucible that burns away failure, the mirror that shows bad ideas for what they are, the candle that stops the darkness of lies from closing in. That’s why the left hates it so much. They want to break the crucible, shatter the mirror, snuff out the candle, so no one will grasp what they are trying and say “no!” before it’s too late.
They rant at what happened in Charlottesville and curse that we let the cancer of neo-Nazism grow in our midst when the Greatest Generation defeated them. Strangely, no one holds up the mirror and reminds them that that generation, and two that came after, defeated the equally deadly plague of Communism, and asks “why do you want to inject us with this deadly plague?”
Don’t be fooled. Light the candle, look into the mirror, then ignite the crucible and make certain this failure is burned away before it can destroy this country.
Riveting post Steve as usual.
Thanks – or so the frog said… 😀
Bravo, Bingo, and thanks. Comment of the Day.
Steve-O,
Please send this response to the President and tell him to read it at his next rally…better yet, have him address the nation with it. Awesome!
“If you can’t trust a school and its teachers, then get your children out of that school as fast as you can, and go to war.”
Careful, talk like that will get you a Red Flag order (I’m actually serious about that).
Truly, what do you expect the parents to do? I mean, if they all sued, what would a judge do? No judge is going to issue an order that would harm the public school system. The only remedy a judge is going to give them is to order the school to review their curriculum. They aren’t going to pay that school district to pay for those student’s tuition at a private school. Most parent have no options but the public schools and the public schools are run by the teacher’s unions. You want to take on the teacher’s union, they will strike. When they strike, parent’s can’t work because they have to take care of their kids. They can’t get paid, they can’t afford their mortgage, their car payments, etc. So the politicians and the parents cave and the teachers get a raise to boot. Then they punish the children of the parents involved. As shown in the West Virginia teacher’s union coverage, even the mafia isn’t as ruthless as the teacher’s unions.
The only option is to totally destroy our current public education system. We need complete school choice and we need the teacher’s union gone.
Well, what we did–four times—is pull or son out of schools and home school him.
I pulled mine out as well. I am just pointing out that most parents don’t have that option. We have created a dichotomy where the masses get a terrible education and indoctrination and only a select few get the priviledge of an education. I just don’t see a way out as long as the government can ignore the people and the courts won’t do anything to stop it.
People have bee re-flagged for boogaloo memes. This guy was red-flagged, thrown out of his college, and arrested.
https://news.unclesamsmisguidedchildren.com/sharing-memes-man-ends-up-red-flagged/
If fear that if you pulled your child from school — because of this! — you’d have child services at your door. It’s almost as if the cost of participation is indoctrination.