As apologies go I'll take it

Apparently the National School Boards Association has apologized for a letter to the Biden Administration that likened concerned parents to potential terrorists.  Granted, the language of the letter only meant those parents threatening violence and death against school board members.  The problem was, no clear examples were given and the 'what constitutes threats and terrorism' seemed a matter of opinion.

Even the national press jumped on the story, though emphasizing the hellish terror that school board members were enduring at the hands of anti-vaxxers and opponents of fighting racism.  It goes without saying that the Internet lit up among leftwing sites and activists who cheered the move and were happy to label any parents bucking the vaccine or Critical Race Theory mandates as the terrorists they were.

The first chink came when questions arose about conflicts of interest for Attorney General Merrick Garland.  It was reported that he might have a vested interest in seeing CRT theory taught in schools. So ol'Garland will use the power of the federal government to hunt down parents who stand in the way of family book sales?   That was certainly the image presented. 

Whatever the actual facts and details, it was a bad look.  And the press hates it when it must break from bumper sticker news reporting and delve into details.  When that happens, then you get people asking for other details and facts, like just how many threats have there been, who made them, and so on. 

It also didn't have the desired effect.  For one of the first times in recent memory, it galvanized opponents of leftwing totalitarianism being hoisted on our nation.  Conservatives have done a lot of grumbling over the last few years, but often without teeth in their bite.  

This time there was an explosion of outrage.  So bad was it that I saw parents interviewed by local news outlets  who actually support the mask mandates and CRT, but who opposed parents being labeled so loosely as potential terrorists. I know in our neck of the woods, among the most passionate races in the upcoming election are those for school boards around the area.

So apologies given.  I'll take them.  But I'm also leery.  This is a popular trick, to make a statement or claim, and if it doesn't work, back off.  But the claim has been made and I'm sure many will run with 'uncooperative parents as terrorists' narrative no matter what.  It's been said, it can't be unsaid.  Like Pope Francis joking that everyone will be saved, but then taking it back.  It's been said, it can't be unsaid, even if you technically take it back.  I notice that trick a lot.

I wonder if that's the case here.  I don't know.   But watching this unfold, I'm pretty sure the apology comes because of the hot mess problems that came for the side making the claim.  More resistance than expected met with a jumbled tangle of questions and problems for those associated with making the claim were likely why we have this.  But we have it, so we can take it for what it's worth. 

Jackie Calmes comes out of the closet

And says it's time to officially and openly do what journalists have been doing for years.  That is, throw laughable notions of fairness and objectivity out the window and use any means necessary to destroy conservatives and the Republican Party.  

I've seen this pop up on multiple outlets.  Most responses have been negative.  Me?  I welcome it.  Honesty is in short supply nowadays, and she's merely being honest.  I've said before that there are only three types of people in the world: Liars, dupes and everyone else who knows the press has never been objective and sure as hell isn't now. 

The idea that the press just examines the information and data and then lays it out for us to make our own decisions should be right up there with believing the Earth is flat.  I hope nobody who reads this blog thinks otherwise. 

If Republicans can't win against this

Then they deserve to lose.  

It's almost vomit inducing to see leftwing Democrats all but piss on suffering Americans, knowing full well the media and cultural corps are firmly in their pockets (or they're in the corporate pockets, not sure which). I was shocked I found the few national stories I found calling this out (most were decidedly conservative or anti-left outlets). 

Fact is, most Americans aren't upset they aren't getting their treadmills since most in 2021 can't afford treadmills.  That's for the upper 1/3 of the country.  Most are seeing their ability to feed their families and afford basic needs for living severally compromised. 

But our elites don't care, any more than they give two swinging damns or a hell about blacks, women, Asians, Hispanics, or anyone for that matter (except the LGBTQ community, which is ever and always sacred, with exception).  When convenient, they care.  When the suffering can't be exploited, let them rot.  

Exactly what New Prolife Catholics will do to fight this snobbery and contempt for the suffering of the least of these - for it is the least of these who are suffering in this - I don't know. I'd like to think this would push them over and force them to call out such flagrant disregard for human needs.  We'll see. 

The right way and the wrong way for Christians to approach race

 The wrong way:

The whole 'black Jesus cares about skin color' is hardly unique to Fr. Martin.  It's actually not fair to pick on this, since many Christian leaders appear to embrace the idea that white Christianity is bad Christianity, versus black Christianity or other non-white Christianity that will always be the good kind.

It's wrong.  In fact, it's awfully 'protestant' in its 'white Babylonian captivity' mentality.  And it's racist to merely take the racist attitudes Christians may have had in the past regarding non-whites and apply them to whites today.

Compared to that, there's this:

Note the comments if you go to the Youtube channel.  Multiple people, including self-proclaimed atheists (take it for what it's worth, it's the internet) are stunned and appreciate the candor and honesty of his point in the sermon. 

I won't quibble about how black or not Jesus was.  The point is to cut through the 'he's my Jesus, no he's mine' mentality today and remind us that Jesus belongs to the world - including to blacks as well as whites, who God saw fit to move the Church through in its many centuries of growth in the world.  

The Church is at its best when it proclaims truth to the world.  When it changes the truth in order to get along with the world, it seldom makes an impact.  

For generations the Church has been following the world around like a yap dog waiting for the master to toss a few scraps from the table.  I think it's time the Church get back in the driver's seat and not care what the world thinks of us, but simply proclaim Truth.  I think we'd be surprised at the results. 

The way my boys work

As good as any at the fair - and in those little holder bowls too!

I would say we're not a fuzzy, cuddly modern family.  That is, if you look on Facebook, you won't see a lot of posts from anyone - but me - singing each others' praises.  Only two of my sons even have an account (our youngest is too young), and they don't post 'super dad' or 'awesome mom' or even 'fantastic brother' type posts.  When they bother posting anything.  

I see some I know whose children will laud each other with endless posts telling of how much they adore their siblings, or their parents, or anything like that in the family.  My sons?  Nope.  

Not that they aren't affectionate.  After my dad's heart attack, he dropped some of that old Depression era distancing and became a bit more loose with his emotions.  I passed that onto my sons who, in their daily actions, will display words of affection in ways that would have made my pre-heart attack dad a bit unconformable.

But beyond that, there's not much in the way of 'social media era' fuzziness.  What they do, however, is this.  

Right now, two of my sons are in a 'being single' stretch in life.  Our third oldest, at the tender age of 21, is already a store manager eying an area manager position.  His goal is not to work in the food industry forever, but to learn the ins and outs of business, amass enough money so that if he must get a college degree it will be a side expense he can afford, and eventually move into entrepreneurship.  My oldest son is busy finishing college with an eye toward graduate school.  His studies and scholarships occupy his time.  Our fourth son being too young for that sort of thing.  But that's where their time goes. 

Our second son, on the other hand, is now graduated, and working to move up the corporate ladder as he contemplates continuing school or just moving more up the ladder. And his extra time he has now?  It has been filled by his relationship with a delightful young lady who is everything a Christian dad could hope for his son.  

They began dating earlier in the year, and it's been tough owing to the Covid pandemic.  Because of my mom and now my wife, we must be extra cautious.  We haven't gotten the vaccines, for reasons I have already discussed.  But we balance that by continuing to be more or less in lockdown/quarantine mode.  As I've said before, the years that led up to Covid with their endless trials and injuries and health crises more than prepared us as a family to be anchored to the homestead.  

But for him and his girlfriend, they've found creative ways to go out and about nonetheless, without putting themselves into large crowd situations.  Because of the uptick in the Covid cases, they chose not to go to our county fair this year.  They had hoped to, and I know my son was wanting to take her to where he went so many times as a child.  But they decided it wouldn't be a good idea.  She was as understanding as our son. 

So - and this is the point - my other sons decided to put on a fair for them.  The intent was to set up games and fun around the house and in the yard - complete with prizes - but weather did not cooperate.  Still, with the help of our oldest chef son, and money from our third oldest (who makes more than I made when the family moved to Ohio back in 2000) we also built a menu of homemade fair food:  Funnel cakes, fries and malt vinegar, corndogs, gyros, baklava, and sausage sandwiches.  The type of vittles we always got when we took the boys to the fair when they were little.

We then watched the old 1973 animated version of Charlotte's Web, since our youngest hadn't seen that yet. He read the book some time back, but we thought that would work because of the country fair emphasis at the end.  

That's how my boys do it.  They aren't the #Awesome Family types.  They simply - do things. When one needs something, the others are there with little fanfare or noise.  When one is in trouble, the others drop what they're doing and step up to the plate.  Even when there is some major crisis - like when my mom had hear near fatal health scare - they come together and display an amazing amount of instinctive teamwork.  

No, they don't rush off to social media to talk about it.  But they show it, and that's just fine with me.  I'm the one that does the lauding. 

From L-R: Son #1,#3,#4,#2

I don't know the answer

We were discussing things with the boys as we often do.  We were talking about my son's college classes that are fully immersed in Critical Race Theory and the 1619 Project approach to history.  Fair enough.  That's college.  They can teach what they will.  He doesn't have to go there. 

But it is pure leftwing wing pro-communism anti-American and anti-Western propaganda.  The West is altogether evil.  Whites are all racist per their skin color, and privileged too.  America is a four hundred year old racist state based purely on genocide and slavery.   Today we live in one of the worst nations in history as minorities, blacks, women, and others live in constant terror and oppression by, well, those who are running the system and advocating for CRT and anti-racist education (well, they don't say that last part, that's me).

Anyway, during our talk and him showing us some of what they read that buttresses this narrative, one of my sons asked something I don't know.  He asked who, in the years when schools were segregated, taught the black children.  I mean, black children went to black schools, but who taught them?

Did white teachers teach them?  Or were they taught by black teachers? I told him I believe they were generally taught by black teachers, since I know the teaching profession was a big profession for blacks in the pre-desegregation days.  

He then asked what they taught.  By that he meant did they teach the black students in their black schools that blacks are a bunch of inferior reprobates?  That they are inferior to the white man?  That slavery is the black man's natural state of affairs? That blacks are mentally inferior?  And on and on.  Is that what they taught the black kids in all black schools? 

He wondered that because, as he said, white children are all but taught to renounce their heritage and their ancestors.  They're taught to be ashamed of their country, their religion, their civilization.  They're taught that no matter what their state in the world, they have privilege and should be ashamed of their role in systemic racism.  They're taught that whites are worth nothing but evil for the most part, and everything they have is because of the evil of their forebears.  And as often as not, they're taught this by white teachers and white professors in predominantly white schools. 

He wondered if blacks were hit with similar lessons in their  schools.  If so, then it's good desegregation came along.  Because how horrible would it be to tell an entire generation of children that they are reprobates who should be ashamed of everything they are and have due to their skin color and ethnicity.  He'd hate to think black kids ever went through such a thing in their schools.  

Donald Trump as savior of the world

In that, no matter what we do wrong in this life, we can always invoke the unprecedented evils of Trump as a deflection that taketh away the sins of the world.  

Case in point. Apparently President Biden's press secretary is being accused of violating ethics laws by speaking to Biden's support for Terry McAuliffe in the Virginia governor's race.  I can't see that being a problem, but CNBC says it is.  The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington group says it is. 

But here's the point that got me.  The story then says this:

But the group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, also said that Psaki’s alleged breach of the Hatch Act was nowhere near as egregious as the mountain of similar ethics complaints that piled up during former President Donald Trump’s administration.

Wait. What?  Who cares?  That's like saying Derek Chauvin may have killed George Floyd, but that's nothing compared to how many people Ted Bundy killed.  Or Charles Manson.  Or Jeffery Dahmer.  Or Hitler.  Or Mao.  Or, well, you get the point.  

The point is, who cares what Trump did?  This is the story now.  CNBC didn't need to add that since it adds nothing to the point of the story.  If the CREW said it, there was no point in saying it.  So what?  Are you that sorry for having to call out a democrat?  Did you think there was some surge of partisans insisting no individual had ever violated ethics before, and therefore you needed to point this out?  

Sorry, but that was a gratuitous swipe that says to me you - both CNBC and CREW - hate, and I mean hate, having to call out the Biden White House on anything.  So you did your job, and now feel the need to inject a gratuitous and pointless swipe to somehow mitigate the impact.  Which, to me, would have been mitigated without the swipe since I see it as a minor and trivial gripe to begin with.  

But now?  Now I don't.  Now because you've done this, it has my radar up and I'm wondering how trivial such an ethics breach actually is.  And is there more to the story?  And is that why the need to deflect my attention to Trump was so important?

That's what I think about.  Especially since I notice that Trump allowed the full evils and designs of the Left to explode upon the world since 2016.  And always, no matter how false, how evil, how destructive, how wrong, the Left ever and always invokes 'But Trump!' as the incantation that balances all things.  

So thanks CREW and CNBC.  Now I have every reason to be suspicious about this. I certainly doubt your objectivity and non-partisanship.  Had you just mentioned the case?  I wouldn't have cared.  Now I care, because I've seen what 'just focus on Orange Man! and pay no attention to anyone else' has gotten us. 

Teaching our students to praise the Holocaust

Is what you would think is happening if you read this "news" story on NBC.  It's continuing the hysterics and panic kicked off when a school administrator in Texas told teachers they would have to present "opposing views" on the Holocaust.  I mentioned that here, and noted it was already having the desired effect.

The desired effect is to fight any restrictions on the teaching (or, depending on who you ask, not teaching) of Critical Race Theory, the 1619 Project, and other leftwing anti-American  initiatives in our school systems.  Why the administrator said what she said is beyond me.  Even now, I've not seen details or exactly what was meant by opposing views or the context of those views.

It was simply thrown out as a panic phrase meant to achieve what it is achieving.  Like beating a jack-ass with a whip, it's had the desired effect on parents, pundits, activists, and journalists running around with hair on fire, wailing over the assumption that our kids will have to sing praise songs to Hitler.  

This is how you do it, and why the modern news media is one of the greatest forces of evil, lies and oppression in the world today.  With few exceptions, it exists to defend the Left at all cost, and hunt down and silence or eradicate any opposition to the Left by any means possible.  I would believe the world is flat before I'd believe something the national press says today, especially if it's framed as a media firestorm of panic and fear. 

Again, why the administrator did what she did is beyond me.  Was she that ignorant?  Does she get all of her information from Twitter posts?  Does she know it's BS and she did this on purpose to gin up hysteria and opposition to limits on leftwing agendas in our schools?  

I don't know.  I just know the press has run with it and has had a field day.  And I've come to realize when I see the press run with anything and have such a field day, there's a 99% chance the story itself is as false as a Paul Bunyan sighting. 

Trying to make sense of leftwing punditry is often a waste of time

In keeping with my momentary purgatorial run through the horror of New Prolife Catholic Twitter posts, I found another gem:

I don't get it.  Well, I do get it, and that's the sad part.  The point is to make fun of the fact that the wife is in a different bedroom.  You know.  Some old puritan fundi hacks sleeping apart because crazy puritan fundi hacks are the only types who would celebrate Columbus Day!  Bwa ha ha ha ha!

But what of it?  First, maybe they sleep better apart.  Or there could be medical reasons.  That does happen.  My sister had to sleep in a different room than her late husband in the last years of his life.  Or there could be other reasons.  Maybe the wife has a separate bedroom while a newborn lays in a crib beside the bed because their master bedroom won't work. 

There are literally dozens, if not hundreds, of reasons a wife might be in a different bedroom.  Some may be reasons they have no control over.  We don't know.  Even if it was their choice just because, who are we to care?  Dare I say, who are we to judge?  

Or is this the type of thing New Prolife Catholics love to judge in order to avoid judging things like the mass extermination of undesirables by the tens of millions in order to sustain a blasphemous sex and drugs culture during the AIDS pandemic?  Could be.  You never know.

Nonetheless, the thing more stupid than the stupid of the Twitter post is that those involved with posting and sharing it seem to think they just spotted that landing of rhetorical awesome.  The only thing worse than an arrogant person is an arrogant fool surrounded by like thinking fools.  And the above Twitter post demonstrates that nicely. 

Twitter is where Catholics go to dance with the Devil

Really.  So Dave Armstrong and Scott Eric Alt got into a spat.  I'll leave them to it.  But that made me look for more of Alt's take on Armstrong.  Exactly why Alt felt the need to unload on Armstrong is beyond me.  It could be that Armstrong, a passionate and supporter of Pope Francis, still isn't properly leftist enough.  For most on the Left, being 99.9% leftist is as good as being 100% white MAGA conservative racist Nazi deplorable after all.  But who knows. 

In any event, I did a Lenny and Squiggy's bathroom moment, held my nose, screamed, and went over to Alt's Twitter feed, which also had shares from other New Prolife Catholics.  I'll get to some of the other fantastically bad, ignorant, and downright apologetics for evil I found from others.  This is what leapt out at me on Alt's Twitter (again, I'll leave his clash with Armstrong to others to care about):

Wait.  What?  Please tell me just how Fr. Pavone is wrong.  I get that he's playing on words and I'm not sure emphasizing that abortion is killing a baby delivers much punch today. After all, the big pro-abortion tactic nowadays is to be pro-abortion, and not just pro-choice.  Admit it's killing a baby, boast in the fact, and rejoice in the fact that the divine vaginal does give you power over life or death, or those sexist men ain't getting any tonight (which appears to keep most men in their place where saving babies is concerned, ahem). 

But how is Fr. Pavone wrong?  I read that, read it again, read it a third time, and finally read it once more, and I can't see how he's wrong to the point of dumb.  So please dear readers, comment below and tell me what I'm missing. It might be so obvious I'm missing it.  Perhaps my deep suspicions about anything Alt writes is blinding me to the obvious.  But I would dearly like to know

Dr. Fauci explains the problem with people who don't like him

Yep.  The reason people don't like him is because he follows the science and is right.  We can't handle the truth he articulates, therefore we don't like him.  It isn't hard people.  Like all Science*, except for when he's wrong, he's always right.  And if we understood that, we'd like him because we would also be right.  It's our fear of the truth that messes with things.

BTW, I've seen variations of this over the decades and this is a liberal distinctive.  Whenever liberals don't get what they want from the electorate or population at large, it's because we're dumb or ill informed or misinformed or something.  It's never because we've done our homework, run the numbers, laid out the info, and concluded that the liberal in question is wrong. Nope.  It's always because of some deficiency on our part.  Always. 

*To clarify, when I capitalize Science like that, I usually mean science misused and abused in our society for reasons that have little to nothing to do with actual science. 

Pope Francis praises the George Floyd protesters as true Good Samaritans

Sure, apparently some bad players can get in and manipulate or exploit such a noble cause by political machinations.  But the racism of Floyd's death (made obvious by Derek Chauvin's skin color - Pope Francis approves this message) calls for radical and extreme measures to be celebrated by Catholics the world over.  

Like anyone beholden to the leftist state, when things done for the left go sour, it's always someone else's fault.  When bucking the Left, for even the best of reasons - like worried about feeding your family - it's because you're a selfish devil who likely doesn't care about starving people in the developing world.  Pope Francis can obviously tell the difference. 

Oh, and Pope Francis also says shorten work days.  With production and transportation grinding to a halt and even items of necessity becoming scarce, that's a bit like telling the Titanic to avoid the iceberg instead of hitting it head on.  

Nonetheless, he's the pope God has seen fit to allow for our time.  Rather than cheer him on blindly as the Catholic left will no doubt do, I prefer to wonder what the Church has done to warrant this period in its history. 

No, Pope Francis does not mean this is the Good Samaritan.  He simply means it's irrelevant  compared to the greater cause of rising up against racist macho cops killing black Americans.

We must invoke the glorious censorship for tolerance and diversity

So a Michigan University professor has been canned for showing 1965's Othello, starring Lawrence Olivier.  

The retaliation was swift and merciless, as befits the modern Leftist State in which we live.  Instead of rejoicing in the censorship of such offensive pieces of art or literature, he dared show the film in which Olivier uses makeup to portray an individual of non-Caucasian ethnicity.  Apparently the prof had never watched it before, possibly thinking since it stared the greatest actor of the 20th Century known for his celebrated work with Shakespeare, it was worth seeing.

Immediately following the showing, he groveled apologized for having shown such an outdated and offensive piece of art.  But his groveling fell on deaf ears, as those who fail to conform 100% to the Left 100% of the time often discover.  Our universities increasingly seem like leftwing tent revivals more than institutions of learning and education.  And that's almost an insult to tent revivals.  

Thus is the world in which we live.  It's not cancel culture.  It's not wokeness.  It's leftist fundamentalism with all the intolerance and self-righteous judgmentalism associated with the worst stereotypes of fundamentalism imaginable.  And in keeping with the stereotypes of fundamentalism, it can also include condemnation based on a host of intolerable factors, including ethnicity or religion. 

Thus, if you convince your society that all Jews are wretched and evil and the cause of the Fatherland's problems, it becomes nothing at all to declare anything done by Jews to be wretched and evil and all of your nation's problems a result of those rascally Jews.  Just scratch out Jew and replace with White and you've got modern Leftwing America in a nutshell.  If it's White, it's evil, and there is no tolerance for the existence of evil in the era of the new Leftist State. 

Anything done by Caucasians in any way considered racist or offensive is now subject to immediate censorship and eradication.  All such art, literature, music and film must be banned and eliminated.  Anyone caught even thinking of showing such unacceptable fare will immediately be punished to the fullest extent of possible retaliation. 

Again, we are not longer a free country.  We haven't been for some time, at least free as defined by post-war liberalism.  That ship has sailed.  We are now a secular pagan society able to change standards on a dime and retroactively eradicate dissenting thought accordingly.   And woe be to those deemed the unacceptable in the  last swivel by the powers that be.  I hope we enjoy the ride.  

Liars and the Left

Too honest for the modern Left

I'm sorry, but I'm throwing a Five Rotten Eggs Stink rating on this story.  It's an NBC story (right there a warning flag), in which a teacher in Texas claims to have been told to balance a book about the Holocaust with an 'opposing view.'  Of course, all because of that horrible anti-CRT legislation going on.

Now, I read the article, and it unpacks a somewhat rambling set of interviews and accounts that is clearly meant to suggest anything hindering the liberal agendas in our schools could lead to insisting any book that says raping children is bad will have to be balanced by 'opposing views.'  Which as sane people, we know to be false. 

In fairness, the article does interview proponents of the anti-liberal indoctrination legislation who make it clear such gibberish is just that, gibberish.  But in classic journalism form, you have to delve into the mid-section of the article to find the substance and the pertinent information from those who actually oppose CRT and other leftwing indoctrination moves in our schools.

The bookends of the article, however, are filled with 'we'll have to teach the Holocaust is good, and that's going to make wonderful teachers quite and we're all going to die!' hysterics.  Which, combined with the headline, is all NBC cares about.  After all, NBC knows the vast majority will read either the headline only, or the first couple paragraphs at best, with a few more reading the last couple paragraphs.

Again, it's the press's famous 'how to be honestly false' trick.  It's meant to gin up hysteria and panic and divisions.  And it taps into those people - in this case teachers - who are willing to shovel endless BS and lunacy, if not lies, for the cause.  The cause being turning our schools into leftwing indoctrination camps that bar and ban any opposing views.  And that's not hysterics.  That's a fact. And it's a fact demonstrated by the slick and duplicitous ways in which CRT and other measures are being supported and advanced by educators and the press. 

UPDATE: As if on cue, Deacon Greydanus jumps in with the requisite hysterics that our precious children will be forced to learn the Holocaust was good!

This is actually a copy from Mark Brumley's FB page, which seemed to join in the panic.  Several commenters jumped in and wailed in great mourning over this development where our wonderful teachers will be forced to teach the glories of the Holocaust.  

This is how it happens.  This is the power of the narrative the press wields.  Any sane, thinking person knows that nobody is going to demand the Holocaust be given equal time and consideration.  And yet an accusation can be made, the press runs with it (again, couching the details that minimize the story in the middle of the story), and hysterics commence, even among people I wouldn't expect it from.

Note Deacon Greydanus's invocation of 'not them', in that this is a school administrator who, apparently, would never lie or exaggerate.  Or the teacher wouldn't?  Just like no woman ever lied about being assaulted during #MeToo, now we can assume no school administrator would ever embellish on the truth for partisan gain?  See the amount of rubbish, dumb and stupid needed to keep up with modern times?  And again, not just from hardcore leftwing advocates.  We all can fall into the pit. If we think our large number of diploma wielding graduates protects us from the mob insanity of past ages, we need to think again. 

UPDATE II:  So I've done some digging, and as the news feeds begin to pile up with the hysterics inducing headlines, it's easier to find more information.  I discovered the administrator who sent out the message that we'll need to teach 'opposing views.'  Because of her position, she doesn't seem to be too political on Social Media one way or another.  I can't say she's some frothing at the mouth leftist, or righty.  She doesn't seem too critical of the latest educational agendas and strategies, but that's about it.  Did she send this out because she bought into the usual partisan handwringing?  I mean, I've heard those who support the 1619 Project or CRT say if you oppose those, you're as good as saying slavery was awesome and there's nothing better than the smell of genocide in the morning.  Did she merely run with that assumption?  Was she being purposeful in such a vague directive?  Did she do this to trigger the media firestorm that is commencing?  A stealth partisan perhaps?  Or was it naiveté or carelessness in wording?  Hard to say. 

After all, the phrase 'opposing views' is vague, perhaps purposefully so.  For instance, if the curriculum says the Holocaust happened because Germany was a Christian country and it was a very Christian directive, there are views that say otherwise.  There are some who suggest the Holocaust had bupkis to do with Christianity, and that it was in fact driven by other ideologies and agendas.  That would be one example of 'opposing views.'

But again, we have a vague phrase with nothing to go on but the vague phrase, and the clear desire by the press to frame this as a 'your kids will have to learn that raping teddy bears is good' narrative.  And as the good Deacon Greydanus demonstrates, that's already having the desired effect. 

Reflections: The deep need for haunted houses

In that school year in which we fulfilled our obligation of reading To Kill a Mockingbird, I remember a discussion about the Radley house.  Our English teacher mentioned the omnipresent haunted house that every town and village in the history of American towns and villages had to have.  In our rural county seat, the official 'haunted house' was this little gem:

This is a picture I took some years ago when I drove through my old stomping grounds.  When I was young it was abandoned, and remained empty until long after I graduated high school.  Being abandoned, the yard was overgrown with weeds and undergrowth.  An old iron fence surrounded the yard then, with cracked stone pillars on each corner of the grounds, each with a small gargoyle on top.  The iron gate was padlocked.  

It was a common 'dare' to get kids to do what every kid in every town with a haunted house ever did, and just what Scout and Jem did: find a way through the fence, run up and touch the front door.  Since we were perhaps more sophisticated, however, we didn't stop at touching the front door, since even in the 1970s we didn't imagine some spectral hand would reach out and grab us.  Instead we looked for some clue about why the house was empty.  For ease of access, we imagined that clue might have been in the cellar.  We would crawl about the weeds along the sides of the house, trying to see through the basement windows that were caked with dust or boarded up.

Nonetheless, despite such a prime haunted location, our county had houses aplenty that could qualify for haunted houses - some of them inhabited.  I've written before that when we first moved to that area, we lived in a house my dad built on 20 acres a half dozen miles outside of town.  Beyond the cornstalks and hay bales, you would see no end of houses in the area that could fall under the category 'haunted looking.' 

The setting was Northcentral Ohio farmlands.  Not the endless stretches of grain and corn you see in Nebraska or Kansas.  They are smaller, a few hundred acres at a time, separated by brooks and lines of unkempt trees and woods.  Also, back in the day, you would see no end of broken down machinery and abandoned buildings.  You don't see those as much now, so I'll assume the tax laws changed at some point. 

Sometimes the houses that were abandoned didn't look much different than the houses that were lived in.  Especially among older denizens, the houses could be almost Gothic.  This picture here looks like any one of a dozen houses that were scattered about the area we lived in back in the day:

Fix the windows, get the door patched up, a few minor repairs, and that's the house my mom had to go to the night our car broke down coming home in a midnight thunderstorm when I was four.  An added bonus to that story was the elderly woman who answered the door, with nothing but a single table lamp lighting a room decorated in early 20th Century Victorian.  According to my mom, she actually had a shawl on and everything.  How straight out of Adams Family Halloween can you get?

That's why my parents moved, by the way.  Given that was the style of neighboring households as often as not, my mom just couldn't take being home by herself when dad worked overnight.  She had spent her whole life in cities and towns, and that was a bit much.  So in to town we moved, and began a new phase among many phases of my childhood. 

And yet, it was also fun.  There was something about that feeling of 'haunted' I got as a kid.  It's the same feeling I likely looked for running around that old abandoned house in town, trying to peer in the basement.  I think it's the feeling we still try to get when we watch horror movies, or go into haunted houses around Halloween.  There's something about a place that looks haunted that strikes a primal chord in us, a chord too many have likely lost due to an age obsessed with STEM and all things digital and technological. 

With each passing day, I'm more convinced we've lost something in our modern age.  No matter how many angels we talk about on Sundays, or how much we kick around the hereafter, the easy relationship with the Invisible side of Creation and our five physical senses remains at arm's length, blocked by endless wires, processors and digital tech.  Not that it had to drive a wedge between a secular and a spiritual grasp of the world, but somehow it did. 

An abandoned schoolhouse just around the corner of our country home - still there, and still spooky

Could liberals stop comparing the January 6 protests to 9/11

Just saying.  There's a sudden spate of editorials screaming about people comparing Covid vaccine mandates to the Holocaust.  Now, in fairness, most I know are not saying it's the same as the Holocaust as much as this 'sit down, shut up, and obey the State or face punishment' is what leads to the Holocaust.  But point taken. Such comparisons can be a bit over the top. 

So could we stop hearing liberals compare anything and everything done by anything not-liberal to the worst evils in history?  Or to terrorism?  Or to genocide?  Could we stop hearing liberals say our nation is a 400 year old genocidal, racist Nazi state?  That our Constitution is a racist slave document?  That parents objecting to their children being indoctrinated in our schools and threatened with removal by the authorities are the same as terrorists?  That hundreds of protesters breaking into the Capital is as bad as the 9/11 attacks? 

Can the LGBTQ community stop saying they're living in a homophobic terror state even while my wife is told to glorify the gay rights agenda or face termination?  Where blacks insist they're living in the Holocaust redux despite the fact that a black student can try to mass murder his classmates and is let go to return home to a welcome home party, or wanted criminals are made millionaires because of their skin color?  Where women are increasingly overtaking men on almost every level and yet we act as if Saudi Arabia is a paradise for women compared to the brutal sexism of American Handmaid's Tale culture?  

Could liberals please stop doing that?  Then, and only then, I'll say conservatives should stop with the Holocaust comparisons.  They can still make a point that 'sit down, shut up and obey the State or else' can lead to things like loss of freedoms or worse if we're not careful.  But I'll be first in line to say dial back the rhetoric. 

If liberals won't stop, however, with their ages old 'be liberal or by Nazi' style discourse, then shut up and stop your hypocritical whining and try just once to have even the slightest inkling of consistency of principles and standards in your own discourse.  Just once. 

If you are shocked by Katie Couric's revelation about the Ginsberg interview

You might be shocked to learn the Earth isn't flat.  Again, I'm not sure when we developed this idea that journalism is some objective source of information.  It's never been that. From the beginning of journalism, journalists were about their own perspectives and designs and agendas.  

Sure, by the 1980s, it was becoming more obvious that the media had axes to grind with certain views and beliefs and agendas.  But according to polls, many Americans still clung to the idea that the press was a reliable source of information.  By the 1990s, however, where the media lined up agenda and bias-wise was pretty clear. If Rush Limbaugh accomplished nothing else, he was able to display the press's increasingly naked partisanship on a national stage for all to see.

Now journalism is not even pretending. During the Trump years, almost every major news outlet could have printed the disclaimer 'Here to defeat Trump at all costs' under their headlines.  They didn't even hide it.  Nor do they report in most cases.  They openly advocate.  

For instance, I didn't see a single news story about BLM in 2020. I saw cheerleading and celebrating and praising and supporting.  I saw no major news outlet actually look to see what BLM was and if it was actually correct in its premises.  Now the press exists to walk that fine line of not letting Biden destroy too much of the country while making sure his disastrous presidency doesn't taint  the Left's reputation.  

But the idea that what Couric and company did with Ginsburg's interview - censoring Ginsburg's criticism of St. Kaepernick's NFL protests - is just business as usual for the press.  Always has been, always will be.  Please don't act like this is some freakish fluke that probably never happens normally.  It's time we are honest about reality, because lying about it has gotten us here.  And the last thing any sane or competent person should ever want is to be here, where we are today. 

Brown Sugar banned

Either they were liars or never had stones to begin with

It finally happened.  Took approximately 50 years, but it happened.  The song Brown Sugar, a staple for rock stations because of its rousing introduction - not to mention its suggestive and offensive lyrics (offensive lyrics were all the rage back then) - is being self-censored by the Rolling Stones, that paragon of slavish thralldom to the [Leftist] Machine.

I'm old enough to remember when the Stones, like all rock artists, were cutting edge non-conformity, rebellion against the establishment, and finger in the eye against social norms.   Now, like all who would maintain a life of celebrity and wealth, they are slaves to the whims of the Leftist State.  

When I was in 2nd Grade, our classroom had a record player.  Students were allowed to bring in their singles (singles only kids) of songs that could be played during indoor recess.  There were only two songs specifically named that we were not allowed to bring in: Bad, Bad Leroy Brown, and Brown Sugar.

Of course liberalism was all about putting an end to such puritanical intolerance and judgmental based censorship.  By the 1980s, my college professors were joining the Crusade of St. George Carlin to say the only way to enlightened civilization was the unchecked and unhindered complete freedom of all speech and expression.  As long as you said police person instead of policeman, and African American instead of black. And didn't say retarded or disabled.  Or American Indian.  Or any derogatory term for homosexuality.

But other than those and a few hundred others, it was Brown Sugar and cussing and all manner of blasphemous and vulgar expressions in the name of complete freedom and liberty and enlightenment. Whew.  Thank goodness that's over.  And we have such bold and courageous crusaders for freedom as the infinitely talented Rolling Stones to thank for it. 

Heh

 It would be funnier if it wasn't true.

Deacon Steven Greydanus is appalled

Appalled I tell you, that Catholic Answers takes the traditional Christian and Western understanding of the world of Christopher Columbus, rather than the leftwing anti-Westernism that spends its days and nights condemning the reprobate sins of the reprobate West as some narcotic of modern righteousness. 

Here is a link to the offending piece.  In a manner meant to shock, it flips the Left's Columbus as Hitler-Nazi narrative on its head and posits Columbus instead as a human rights champion for the ages.  OK, I get that's a bit of a stretch. But the good Deacon Greydanus should be no more offended at that than the iconoclasm and erasing of Columbus based on an equally egregious and wicked interpretation of him as Himmler for the fifteenth century. 

People who continue to get their underwear in a knot over those trying to defend the contributions of the Christian West against its clear and obvious enemies, while shrugging shoulders and yawning at the enemies who are making their desire to destroy the Christian Faith and its heritage known beyond doubt , are as worthless as Flat-Earthers in a modern debate.  At some point such virtue signaling becomes nothing more than surrender or cowardliness, and nothing more. 

UPDATE: I was directed to this piece that Deacon Greydanus apparently linked to.  It looks like a 'let's be fair to Columbus' article, but it isn't.  It's basically a back handed way of agreeing with Hitler Columbus. It just says he shouldn't be singled out since all those Europeans were a bunch of mass murdering racist thugs raping and slaughtering their way through a world that, apparently per the article, had never seen such things before.  I don't know if that's the piece's point, since it makes no attempt to frame the world of Columbus in context of the greater world at that period in history.  So no, this doesn't make the 'death to Columbus movement' any better.  It suggests strongly that the long term goal of erasing Columbus is the death of the Western Tradition and Christian heritage.  If Deacon Greydanus thinks otherwise, he can meet me in St. Louis. I have a Brooklyn Bridge there to sell him.