Where We're Going

 I didn't write this, but this is a very deep analysis on how greed and politics has failed our nation and may lead to its demise .Just an excerpt:

"...Sex and stable societies: Stable societies have to find a way to pacify young men, for the above mentioned reason that young men are THE only known cause of violent revolutions. If you piss off enough young men, your civilization doesn't survive. Throughout history, countries have found different ways of doing this: empires typically send their young men off to conquer foreign land - this is what the British did, and what the Japanese did after the Rice Riots of the early 20th century. Send the angry young guys to kill foreigners and take some land for themselves. Modern, non-colonial nation states don't usually have this option. They have to calm the guys down another way. One traditional way is marriage. Get the guys married, ideally in a 1:1 ratio, and things calm down a lot. Polygamy typically creates unstable societies: look at the constant strife in the middle east as an example. If 3 guys out of 4 can't get a wife, expect constant violence, suicide bombings, etc. Similarly, noncommittal relationships tend to be associated with very high rates of violence. Look at the West African matriarchal societies, where men don't stay with their pregnant partners, and instead form rotating circus of bandits, rapists, and murderers. These societies never invented the wheel, the plough, the sail, or a written script, and today enjoy the highest rape and murder rates on the planet. This is almost certainly because of the constant havoc caused by angry, unanchored, deracinated, alienated men, few of whom knew their fathers. Tragically, this pattern that has been nearly-identically reproduced in black communities in major US metro areas, see: Baltimore, East St. Louis, Detroit, etc.; communities that BLM is conspicuously silent about, because BLM is a managerial project for increasing the number of white-collar administrators in public and private institutions, NOT a project to improve the lives of black people..."

Read the whole thing HERE

Special

Our granddaughter is the light of our lives. She's giggly, funny and dramatic. In this strange era we're in, we are supposed to accept the acclamations of toddlers as valid. We're supposed to encourage and especially celebrate and AFFIRM their choices, even though they hold limited ability to reason and limited experience with which to compare. We have teens who claim to be the gender opposite of their birth or even choose to be a different species.

So it with all the pride in the world I tell you-

Our granddaughter is a cheeseburger.

She's told us this for a week now, so by the modern conventions, we should be slathering her with mustard and topping her off with onions and pickles. Don't be ridiculous, you say, and you would be right. She's two. She' s exercising her imagination, her sense of humor and her observations. A couple of weeks back, she was a ballerina. Before that she was a puppy. Next week? Who knows? But again SHE IS TWO YEARS OLD.

This is my point, All kids play with their identities as young children. The membrane between pretend and reality is very thin. The idea that we should honor the whimsical musings of a toddler is a great example of adults not being parents. Parents exist to confirm to the child that their imaginary ideas are not based in reality. It is wonderful for a child to make believe and mimic the world around them. What is not okay is adult projecting their own mental fragility on children for the same of self-gratification.

For example, if a child is given a doctor's play set, you certainly wouldn't demand they start writing prescriptions or operate on siblings. If a child has a toy cash register, you wouldn't send them out to work at the local Dollar Store at the age of four. So why are we letting these soft brained adults ruin children's lives by "affirming" things that simply are not true?

I predict in twenty years, the horror stories of gender reassignment will result in massive lawsuits against name universities, hospitals and individual providers. That American doctors are stubbornly clinging to the disproven theories on gender dysphoria when many other studies showing that gender dysphoria is much more about mental health than physical well being makes them appear they are only in it for the money. What is more, the medical damage done by faulty medication and drastic surgery of otherwise healthy young people will be viewed in the same light that the Chinese recall footbinding today.

We need to stop allowing a tiny minority of the population proselytize for a lifestyle by catering to kids who are already struggling. It's not a secret many of the children going under the knife for drastic surgical removal and alteration of healthy tissue are suffering from a variety of issues including depression, anxiety, autism and many have been sexually assaulted, adding to the trauma. It's time to stop being afraid of being called a bigot for protecting your children. I is also time for the role of parents, most of them mothers, who exhibit signs of mental illness before sacrificing innocent kids on the altar of transgenderism to be addressed.

Death of Debate

 As annoying as they were, debate students were some of my favorite students. They were smart. They were informed. They would argue with a wall, but their discussions would offer insight and clarity far beyond their years. Many of them sought to be lawyers and that's important, because we need good lawyers clarifying the strange, chaotic world in which we find ourselves.

Knowing all that, imagine my dismay at this story. The erosion of any sort of measured debate in regional and national debate competitions is tragic in ways I can't easily articulate. In many aspect, this is even more tragic  than the hideous atrocities of transgenderism as they are seeking to warp young vibrant minds into conformity to their ESG/DEI worldview. This is wrong on so many levels. But read it and decide for yourself.

Death To Debate

It's Time to Make Choices

 If you have elections tomorrow and haven't already voted, I have a strong suggestion to you. Go to Ballotpedia and look up your election. If it includes school bond issues, drill down and look at the testing. I knew it was bad, the district we live in usually had its ups and downs, but generally the kids tested out in the upper half across demographics. I was honestly shocked. For example in 2010 89% of Black kids passed, now it's 33%. For White kids 96% passed in 2010, now it's 67%. For AAPI kids it was 95% down to 68%, for Hispanic kids 89% down to 59%. Yet, graduation rates are 90% and up. How does THAT work? I don't know whether it is COVID, disruptions, distracting from academics for social justice issues or what, but this is not acceptable. I know how I'm voting.

I know right now someone is saying it is counterintuitive to give a struggling district less money. I disagree. Having taught for 20+ years, I know districts waste boatloads of money on things that have nothing to do with academic excellence. I've said for years that in every admin building in the nation entire layers of bureaucracy could vanish over night and nobody would know or care. We have administrators now that are more like politicians in that they mandate actions guaranteed to keep them in their jobs. That needs to stop.

Other things that need to stop is the Federal programs that have turned schools more into daycare centers than schools. Right now in every high school in the nation their are kids who can't read, write or walk who have one on one training all day long. In that same school there are forty kids crammed into an Algebra 2 class with outdated books and few supplies.

We break the bank to provide for EXTRAcurriculars and have administrations who swear those outside activities actually improve student achievement. Just try to get a football player out of practice to make up a test or a band member out of a 6A band to get needed tutoring during marching practice. We have kids who are going to be functionally illiterate and the scariest part of that is they will be able to vote.

When you look at elections, this is a chance to force a change in a system where the inmates think they have all the power and do not owe any sort of accountability to the people they serve (See also: Congress and White House). By forcing districts to make hard choices, maybe they will jettison they very woke and very expensive productions that have divided us as a nation. What is more, if we can force schools at the public school level to move out of the job of shaping opinions and back into the business of teaching academic skills, we can start chasing down the wokies at the university level so that ESG and DEI grievance offices, all of which must be lavishly funded, will be removed.

Most important of all...VOTE. You must vote. Even if in your heart you don't think it will implement change, you must vote. Do not give them the satisfaction of thinking they have tacit approval to poison the next generation with far Left, Marxist, Hate everyone dogma.