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The New Normal/Political Correctness Run Amok Thread


Muda69

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Knitting Group Offers Plush Prosthetic Penises Transgender Children Can Wear in Their Panties: https://redstate.com/alexparker/2021/05/18/knitting-group-offers-plush-prosthetic-penises-transgender-children-can-wear-in-their-panties-n382230

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In 2021, knitting isn’t just for the old and old-fashioned.

According to an online ad, knitting group Stitchbug Studio is offering items you may not have ever before seen.

Per the webpage, it’s selling soft, yarn-made genitals for kids.

Such is intended for, it appears, little girls who identify as the opposite of their sex; the plush versions of penises are made to be worn by the little tykes in their underwear.

From the official description:

Bitty Bug® soft packer is a custom prosthetic packer in youth sizes, made from soft durable yarn and polyester filling. It is easy to wear pinned to underclothes or tucked in a packing pouch, and can be felt by the wearer without being visible externally (shown in a pair of undies to demonstrate).

For those moms or dads who would rather their youngster have a firmer appendage, they’re out of luck:

Silicone prosthetics do not come in sizes appropriate for smaller bodies, and can create unsightly and age-inappropriate shape.

But also, they’re in luck:

The Bitty Bug® is lightweight, comfortable, low maintenance, and can be tossed in the washing machine.

The Studio ensures, “Each Bitty Bug® is handmade to order.”

And don’t let the presumption of size limitations put you off:

We also make the Lil’ Bug® and Lil’ Bug Jr.® in sizes suitable for teens and adults. If you need a Bitty Bug® in a different size or configuration, please reach out to us and we will make the necessary adjustments.

Considering our societal evolution, one might say it’s a natural occurrence.

In a relatively short time, the concept of binary sex appears to have been all but replaced by the notion of open-ended gender identity.

As I covered in March, per its official educational standards, Nebraska was eyeing instructing kindergarteners on sexual identity and schooling 11-year-olds on pansexuality and demigenderism.

For more on that last term, here’s Cosmopolitan:

Two-spirit is an umbrella term that encompasses all gender and sexual diversities outside the classic binary genders. The most appropriate gender identity to compare it to would be queer (which is also a generic umbrella term).

But because of the number two in “two-spirit,” the term is now often used (outside of the Indigenous community) interchangeably with demigender, bigender, and gender-fluid — aka how people identify when they experience themselves across multiple spectrums of gender.

In California, officials have decided insurance companies can’t deny transgender mastectomy based on age.

And as of April, New Jersey offers three options for “gender” on drivers licenses:

  • M (Male)
  • F (Female)
  • X (Unspecified)

As for educating children on the possibilities, Cartoon Network recently released a PSA explaining, “We can’t tell someone’s gender just by looking at them, and shouldn’t assume we know. There are many gender identities beyond ‘girl’ or ‘boy.’ Some people don’t identify as any gender!”

 

Here's to not only normalizing gender pronouns, but respecting them, too 💖 Whether you use he/she/them or something else, we acknowledge and LOVE you! Toolkit 👉 https://t.co/ZbhthybrdC

🎨: Steeeeevn/Instagram#Pronouns #YYAAC #NBJCOnTheMove #LetsGetFree #CartoonNetwork pic.twitter.com/koceQue1aF

— Cartoon Network (@cartoonnetwork) December 14, 2020

Knitted genitals seem par for the projected course.

Back to Stitchbug, it does make clear the intended age for its creations:

NOTE TO OUR CUSTOMERS: This product is not for infants or very young children. There has been some confusion for those who are not aware of what some trans youths go through and how prosthetics can help their experience. Thank you to the parents out there who support your trans youngsters, and we are honored to be a small part of their process.

The webpage also profiles its owners:

Ruth Rigney
Owner, Chief Designer & Digitizing Master (aka Mom)
Ruth has been sewing and designing for over 35 years both professionally and personally. She is our family’s Master Of All Things Crafty, and her long list of skills also includes porcelain doll making, cake decorating, photography, photo editing, and amazing Christmas cookie making.

B Amborn
Owner, Designer, Maker & Digitizer
B is the designer and maker of our soft packers, principle sewist, and does the digitizing and testing for our embroidery design artists. B is the business end of things here and runs the website, shops and social media. They comes by their crafting skills honestly, and has been sewing and crocheting for their two kiddos for many years.

 

Customers can pick from many colors (pink, barley, hummus, brown, chestnut, black, white, blue, purple).

Perhaps more notably, progressive parents can choose a length:

  • 1
  • 1.5
  • 2
  • 2.5

-ALEX

I'm speechless on this one.   This is basically child abuse, pure and simple.

 

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The Price of Conforming to Critical Race Theory: https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/the-price-of-conforming-to-critical-race-theory

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Paul Rossi used to work at Grace Church School in lower Manhattan as a math teacher to the city’s privileged children. On the Upper East Side, a former investment banker named Andrew Gutmann used to walk his young daughter past the security guards dressed in red cardigan sweaters onto the elite grounds of Brearley School. Both Rossi and Gutmann had never crossed paths before they wrote their letters excoriating their schools’ embrace of Critical Race Theory, a rebellion that severed their ties with these schools. These two men seemed to have little in common based on outward appearances, yet the names of Rossi and Gutmann will be yoked for the time being and perhaps into the distant future because of their refusal to conform. 

When the letters from these two men were featured on the Substack page, "Common Sense with Bari Weiss," the reaction was instantaneous and their names became known overnight to many Americans. In many ways, what they did was far from remarkable. They argued for a return to the principles of the Enlightenment that helped found America and for the rejection of Critical Race Theory that colored these very principles as white supremacist. What made the acts of Rossi and Gutmann remarkable was they took the step their fellow Americans feared.  They wrote their letters to confront an ideological force that threatened their dissent with the charge of racism, the modern-day scarlet letter that can lead to unemployment and ostracization of varying sorts. Indeed, Rossi and Gutmann were branded as racist. 

This battle began decades earlier. The academics behind Critical Race Theory had woodshedded their ideology for years, sharpening each branch of their belief system into buzzwords or mantras that could be introduced piecemeal into our brand-driven culture. "White Privilege" became the major flashpoint during the George Zimmerman trial. "Systemic racism" largely defined the town of Ferguson after Michael Brown was killed. It was not until the killing of George Floyd that Critical Race Theory, the mother ideology to all of these buzzwords, including antiracism,  was mainstreamed into the American public. 

What gave Critical Race Theory its vast power was that it offered Americans the moral absolution from the charge of racism in return for conforming to its tenets. It did not matter that this offer was illusory and self-serving.

During my interview with Rossi, he explained that the Critical Race Theory vision of America actually preserved the privileged WASP culture that sits on top of the American society and runs many of its elite schools. These American aristocrats had excluded blacks and Jews (like Gutmann’s family) from their institutions for countless years; they sought to escape this mark of shame by embracing the woke spirit of Critical Race Theory. 

Rossi then explained how this benefited the WASP culture in two key ways. The admission of "we are all white and we all suffer from these biases" allowed these WASPs to erase class distinctions and appear to be "more of a common man" as they achieved a sense of solidarity with the Americans beneath them. At the same time, this move allowed the WASPs to feel morally superior to other Americans who refused to submit to this ideology, especially the poorer and "racist" whites.

Put another way, this embrace of Critical Race Theory preserved the supremacy of the WASP culture while doing little to nothing to make lasting and transformative change in the lives of the American underclass. 

When one understands this, it is not surprising that the first major battles over Critical Race Theory began in the elite private schools in New York City. There was plenty of money and will to hire Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) companies to affect rapid change in the curriculum of these schools. 

When Gutmann’s daughter attended kindergarten five years ago, she was encouraged to express herself freely while painting her self-portrait. Today, kids in the same class are given flesh-colored crayons with the exclusive task of getting their skin color right. 

The true power of this elite class — parents, school officials, academics, DEI consultants — lies their willingness to use one of white supremacy’s evils to advance their agenda: racial discrimination. One of the key tenets of Critical Race Theory maintains that it is morally permissible to racially discriminate against another race as long as it racially engineers blacks and other approved minorities upward. 

In valuing racial engineering over development, these elites exposed Critical Race Theory not as a force for the good but as America’s latest racial ideology. And in the tradition of racial ideologies, Critical Race Theory has already produced racial absurdities, such as condemning the principles of Enlightenment as white supremacy while using the tools of white supremacy to racially engineer change.

When I interviewed Gutmann, he described how Brearley School wanted to impose Critical Race Theory not only into the classrooms but into the homes of the students as well. This overreach revealed that these elites knew that the strength of their racial ideology depended on their ability to force others to conform. They knew deep down that if enough folks began to question their use of race to advance their cause, their house of cards would fall.

These elites did not want the "compliance" type of conformity where individuals pay lip service to the ideology while leaving their private beliefs unchanged. Nor did they want the "identification" type of conformity where individuals embraced the behavior and beliefs of the ideology but only in the presence of the ideologues. What these elites wanted was the "internalization" type of conformity where the students and parents fully internalized the tenets of Critical Race Theory to the point of becoming true believers. They prized this level of conformity to the point that they saw no issue with ridding the school of a teacher as intelligent, insightful, and principled as Rossi. 

Both Rossi and Gutmann refused to conform to this ideology because they saw that the molding of minds into true believers came at the expense of educating well-rounded and independent individuals. There is perhaps nothing worse than hearing school children from Miami to Anchorage recite mindlessly the same ideological cliches over and over: "More work needs to be done," "We want to have difficult conversations," "Check your privilege," "Silence is violence…"

Neither Rossi or Gutmann would object to education reforms to reflect America’s diverse peoples; what they refused to accept was the reduction of timeless and, in many cases, universal education principles down to skin color. They also objected to the elites reducing the complex and rich humanity of Americans down to an over-simplistic dichotomy: racist and antiracist. They knew that this produced a distorted sense of reality that benefited only the few on top. After all, what can the rest of Americans do with a racial ideology that demands conformity in how they think, how they speak, and how they view themselves without offering any real solutions to the larger problems in society? 

So Rossi and Gutmann embraced the long cherished American tradition of nonconformity. After withstanding the initial howls of racism, mockery, condescension, and after being placed on leave (Rossi), and after losing friends and colleagues, Rossi and Gutmann stand stronger than ever, unbowed. They knew that the act of conforming cut themselves off from their true selves and the only way to reclaim the purest of freedoms was to become a nonconformist. In doing so, they reminded me of a quote by Eleanor Roosevelt: "When you adopt the standards and values of someone else you surrender your own integrity. You become, to the extent of your own surrender, less of a human being." This is perhaps the most significant lesson that Rossi and Gutmann imparted upon the youths in their world and the rest of America when they decided not to conform to those who use the tool of race in the name of "progress."

 

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Head of AOS commits to ‘changing exclusionary or harmful bird names’: https://www.birdwatchingdaily.com/news/science/aos-commits-changing-exclusionary-harmful-bird-names/

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The president of the American Ornithological Society tells BirdWatching that the organization’s leadership supports the recent push to change the names of birds that are named for people and that he is forming an ad-hoc committee now to address the issue over the coming months.

“Ware in favor of taking any actions that would make ornithology and birding more diverse and inclusive,” says Mike Webster, the current AOS president. (He is also the director of the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and is the Robert G. Engel Professor of Ornithology at Cornell.) “That would include changing exclusionary or harmful bird names, where that’s necessary. I think the question is, how to go about doing that in a thoughtful way that maintains stability of bird names because that stability is important. But we absolutely are in favor of changing names where it will help increase diversity and inclusion. 

In the summer of 2020, as a movement to address racial injustice took hold nationwide, birders Jordan Rutter and Gabriel Foley along with Jessica McLaughlin and Alex Holt began a campaign called Bird Names for Birds. They posted a petition calling for common names of bird species in North America that are named for people to be changed to names that reflect something unique about each species.

The argument, simply put, is that the name Kirtland’s Warbler, for example, doesn’t tell us anything about the bird yet maintains a sort of living monument to a person who may or may not have had any history with the bird. A name such as Jack Pine Warbler, however, which is sometimes used for this species, gives people information about the bird – namely, that it relies on jack pine woodlands.

.....

Webster adds that the process the committee recommends for addressing eponymous names should be broad enough that AOS can use it to address other troublesome names in the future. He notes that the NACC list include French common names for Canada and that there are Spanish and Portuguese common names in Latin America, “so the hope is to develop a robust process so that we can deal with problematic names that arise in the future, not necessarily just those that are problematic today.”

During the Congress, Kaufman explained why he thinks all eponymous names need to go, and he argued for the kind of committee that Webster is setting up.

“If we try to parse all these historical figures saying, OK, well, Cassin was good, but Townsend was bad etc., that could go on forever,” Kaufman says. “And I know a couple of people suggested doing this in stages, but I think rather than nibbling away at the problem, I’d like to see a talented and diverse committee that would tackle all of these eponyms at once. They could come up with alternatives, spend a lot of time getting buy-in from the larger community, and then establish a long lead time to a date when we flip the switch and adopt all of these new, better names.”

Webster adds: “We’re looking forward to moving forward on this and making progress. I think it’ll be a good thing for ornithology and a good thing for birding, and again, any steps that the AOS can take to make birding and ornithology more inclusive and more broadly represented, the better. And we’re looking forward to having that happen.”

<rolleyes>

 

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USA Today Removes ‘Hurtful Language’ from Female Athlete’s Op-Ed on Sports Fairness: https://www.nationalreview.com/news/usa-today-removes-hurtful-language-from-female-athletes-op-ed-on-sports-fairness/

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USA Today edited an op-ed after its publication and without consulting its author after determining that the author’s use of the word “male,” which she used to describe the transgender athletes she was forced to compete against in high school track, was “hurtful.”

In the original piece, former Connecticut high school runner Chelsea Mitchell recounts losing four state championship races to biological males, and refers to her competitors as “male.” USA Today editors changed “male” to “transgender” on Tuesday without her knowledge or consent, and posted an editor’s note apologizing for the original phrasing.

“This column has been updated to reflect USA TODAY’s standards and style guidelines. We regret that hurtful language was used,” the editor’s note reads.

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a legal advocacy organization representing Mitchell, has published the unaltered version on its website.

“That’s a devastating experience. It tells me that I’m not good enough; that my body isn’t good enough; and that no matter how hard I work, I am unlikely to succeed, because I’m a woman,” Mitchell wrote of her losses to male runners.

The track star and three of her fellow female athletes filed a lawsuit with ADF last year against the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC), which currently allows transgender participants in women’s and girl’s sports.

Mitchell noted the number of awards won by these players in the last few years, referencing their “massive physical advantages” and “simply bigger and stronger” bodies.

A federal district court recently dismissed Mitchell’s case, Soule v. Connecticut Association of Schools, a ruling which she and her friends are appealing alongside ADF attorneys to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. She states that they were denied the right to fair competition that Title IX promises to girls and women.

“The court’s decision to do so tells women and girls that their feelings and opportunities don’t matter, and that they can’t expect anyone to stand up for their dignity and their rights,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell is suing the CIAC for damages, citing the uncounted scholarship and opportunities for college recruitment she may have never qualified for because of her record of losing four state championship titles to a biological male athlete.

As of February, at least 20 state legislatures have passed bills preventing transgender males from playing in women’s sports. Mitchell’s lawsuit update follows the Biden administration’s executive order that would force all federally funded entities to permit males to compete against females.

Biden also recently issued a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) notice of enforcement that it will start pressuring states to cover gender transition surgeries and medical procedures in their Medicare programs in a new ‘non-discrimination’ rule that redefines sex.

 

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https://100percentfedup.com/dem-councilman-who-voted-to-defund-police-is-carjacked-dragged-for-a-block-behind-his-mercedes-video/

A Democrat councilman and mayoral candidate in Atlanta found out the hard way that “defunding the police” may not be such a great idea after all.

Daily Mail reports – Atlanta Councilman Antonio Brown, who backs the ‘Defund the Police’ movement and voted to cut the police budget by $73 million, was dragged from his car while it was being stolen Wednesday.

Antonio Brown, who is running on a platform of ‘reimagining public safety,’ was the victim of a carjacking months after he voted for an ordinance that would’ve withheld tens of millions of dollars from the police. That ‘Defund the Police’ ordinance – which would’ve reallocated $73 million of the police budget – was rejected by the city council.

The incident happened as Atlanta deals with a crime surge, with murders up 59 percent and car thefts up 25 percent from a year ago, as of May 22. There have been 54 murders in Atlanta compared to 34 at this time in 2020 and 284 shootings, up 46 percent from a year ago.

Meanwhile, the national ‘Defund the Police’ movement is facing pushback as the murder rate soared by an average of 30 percent across 34 major cities last year and continues to rise in many cities this year. In response, some cities are looking at restoring and even increasing the police budget in response to the soaring murder rates.

Brown was attending a ribbon-cutting in northwest Atlanta when four people hopped into his car as he was getting out to speak to someone just before noon – and took off.

76,815

The councilman told WSBTV that he was on hold with 911 for five minutes after the incident. Brown also claims it took 45 minutes for police to arrive because it was assigned as a low-priority dispatch.

‘Several males entered his unlocked car and drove away with it,’ police stated. Brown was driving a Mercedes Coupe, which has a push-button ignition.

Brown said he held onto the car and was dragged for around a block before letting go.

He did file a police report, according to FOX 5. His car was located hours after the incident, but no arrests have been announced. Brown said he doesn’t intend to press charges against the culprits.

And who did the Councilman call first?  THE COPS.

 

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1 hour ago, swordfish said:

https://100percentfedup.com/dem-councilman-who-voted-to-defund-police-is-carjacked-dragged-for-a-block-behind-his-mercedes-video/

A Democrat councilman and mayoral candidate in Atlanta found out the hard way that “defunding the police” may not be such a great idea after all.

Daily Mail reports – Atlanta Councilman Antonio Brown, who backs the ‘Defund the Police’ movement and voted to cut the police budget by $73 million, was dragged from his car while it was being stolen Wednesday.

Antonio Brown, who is running on a platform of ‘reimagining public safety,’ was the victim of a carjacking months after he voted for an ordinance that would’ve withheld tens of millions of dollars from the police. That ‘Defund the Police’ ordinance – which would’ve reallocated $73 million of the police budget – was rejected by the city council.

The incident happened as Atlanta deals with a crime surge, with murders up 59 percent and car thefts up 25 percent from a year ago, as of May 22. There have been 54 murders in Atlanta compared to 34 at this time in 2020 and 284 shootings, up 46 percent from a year ago.

Meanwhile, the national ‘Defund the Police’ movement is facing pushback as the murder rate soared by an average of 30 percent across 34 major cities last year and continues to rise in many cities this year. In response, some cities are looking at restoring and even increasing the police budget in response to the soaring murder rates.

Brown was attending a ribbon-cutting in northwest Atlanta when four people hopped into his car as he was getting out to speak to someone just before noon – and took off.

76,815

The councilman told WSBTV that he was on hold with 911 for five minutes after the incident. Brown also claims it took 45 minutes for police to arrive because it was assigned as a low-priority dispatch.

‘Several males entered his unlocked car and drove away with it,’ police stated. Brown was driving a Mercedes Coupe, which has a push-button ignition.

Brown said he held onto the car and was dragged for around a block before letting go.

He did file a police report, according to FOX 5. His car was located hours after the incident, but no arrests have been announced. Brown said he doesn’t intend to press charges against the culprits.

And who did the Councilman call first?  THE COPS.

 

Irony is my favorite literary device. This is great.

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Toward A Critical Woke Theory

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/toward-a-critical-woke-theory/

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As Americans become increasingly concerned about the extent to which so-called “woke” ideology has spread through the nation’s schools, businesses, government offices, and other institutions, the time is long overdue for a clear understanding of why this is happening. It was one thing for late Millennials and Gen-Zers to spend their college years discovering clever ways to measure their social privilege, listening to their professors’ lectures on intersectionality, and shouting down any conservative thinker who somehow managed to land a campus speaking gig. But as the leading edge of this progressively educated cohort entered the job market, something alarmingly unexpected happened.

Instead of finding more mature ways to channel their youthful idealism, many newly employed graduates became intoxicated with just how easily they could intimidate their superiors with supposed evidence of institutional racism. Not that every young hire prioritized pushing a social justice agenda on his or her organization, but enough did to turn hundreds of HR departments into speech police, to cow major corporations into taking progressive political stands, and most detestably of all to sanction the shaming and ideological indoctrination of innocent school children.

By coming to a clear understanding of today’s woke activists, I do not mean achieving a firmer grasp of the Critical Race Theory they claim to believe in. Any political philosophy that starts off by saying that no worldview can be proved true, then detours into prospecting ancient legal statutes for evidence of long-ago discrimination, then concludes that objectivity and logical reasoning are dispensable “white” skills, and finally ends up embracing neo-Marxism, almost begs not to be taken seriously by serious people.

What is really needed at this point is what the self-described woke only pretend to possess: a credible explanation for their own behavior. For if we pursue what the progressive professors themselves say we must seek—remedial insight into the causes of contemporary discord—then our goal must be a Critical Woke Theory.

One observer who believes he has found it, at least as far as young African Americans are concerned, is Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Shelby Steele. While acknowledging that vestiges of racism still linger, Steele believes that white society has made a remarkably sincere and historically unprecedented effort over the last half-century to end discrimination. Indeed, he notes, “almost every modern American institution practices racial preferences” to such a degree that any black person going up against an equally qualified white person for the same job or honor is almost guaranteed to win it.

According to Steele—himself a black American—the real problem his race faces today is not external but internal. Having spent so many decades being treated as hapless victims by well-meaning liberals, many “have lost faith in their capacity to direct their lives” and “are reluctant to take responsibility for their own success.” For young black Americans, the underlying appeal of woke ideology—and especially of its case for systemic racism—is the very opposite of the freedom it pretends to seek: an excuse for not having to be responsible for one’s own success or failure. “We keep inventing racism even as it declines,” Steele laments.

This theory of black wokeness is arresting enough all by itself. But it becomes even more interesting when we realize that black Americans are not the only demographic group that seems to be having trouble with personal freedom. For over a decade, adolescent psychologists like Madeline Levine have warned that America’s educational system is diabolically crippling middle and upper-middle class white children with the belief that success comes, not from being oneself, but from projecting an image that others find acceptable.

In her book The Price of Privilege, Levine describes in depressing detail how today’s students are taught from an early age exactly what hoops they must jump through to land on a desirable campus—in other words, how to fake the enthusiasms most likely to impress the admissions officers at prestigious colleges. Busily chauffeured from one socially favored activity to the next, they gather ever-more impressive credentials while simultaneously learning to mistrust whatever their true selves are naturally drawn to.

The result is that by the time they finally get to college many are so ill-prepared to make internally grounded decisions that they manifest serious psychological problems. According to the most recent surveys conducted pre-COVID, a full third of college students struggle with a depression-related disorder, 57.7 percent confess to bouts of “overwhelming anxiety,” and 50 percent admit to having suicidal thoughts.

Granted that the social conditioning of upper-middle-class white students is quite different from what most black Americans experience growing up, both groups have in their own ways ended up suffering from the same malady: an abnormally high level of self-doubt, even for late adolescents. This debilitating state has unfortunately been amplified by a succession of national economic traumas—from the dot-com bust through the subprime real estate crisis to the recent coronavirus pandemic—that together have left any age group born after 1981 significantly less well-off than previous generations. Whether measured in terms of homeownership, retirement savings, or student debt, Millennials and Gen-Zs have failed to progress nearly as far the Baby Boomers, when they were the same age. Indeed, data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis suggest that they may well be the first cohort in modern times to start poorer than their parents did.

Add to this psychological mix the growing incidence of fatherlessness among all demographic groups—a social condition that tends to foster feelings of both inadequacy and resentment—and the appeal of a utopian ideology which at once promises more entitlements while simultaneously targeting those who are better off becomes a lot easier to understand. The white contingent may claim to be motivated only by an altruistic desire for social justice, but their willingness to confess ancestral racism conveniently guarantees their own share of a more redistributionist state. According to a recent Pew study, two-thirds of millennials and 70 percent of Gen-Zers would happily surrender more of their personal freedom for the assurance of a comfortable future.

What our colleges and universities should be doing to bolster the confidence of today’s morbidly self-doubting undergraduates is to remind them that whatever the coming challenges, they will certainly prove no more daunting than those faced by many previous generations. The early American colonists endured famines, deadly diseases, and, in northern settlements, often brutal winters. Later came the War for Independence, then a bloody Civil War, and in the late 1800s a massive migration from the nation’s farmlands to coarse and crowded industrial cities. The 20th century began with a world war so traumatic that surviving soldiers came to be known as “the Lost Generation.”

More importantly, professors should be alerting their students to the importance of learning to rely on the guidance of what Apple founder Steve Jobs called the “intuitive voice”—the inner wisdom one can always turn to when neither the data nor social convention provides convincing answers. Some cultivate this spiritual resource by participating in one of the country’s many religious traditions; others—most famously Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Jobs himself—find it through some combination of philosophical study and self-experimentation. But if modern psychology has demonstrated anything over the last decade, it is that people who develop a more spiritual orientation, however understood, are far more likely to enjoy long-term physical, emotional, and even financial health than those who do not.

Sadly, the modern university has instead used the insecurity of today’s late millennials and Gen-Zers to advance its own economic interest—that is, to encourage students’ dependence on the institutional realization of a collectivist ideology which, by its nature, guarantees perpetual employment to academic fine-tuners. Once more, the professoriate has done this knowing full well that it has no demonstrated capacity to perform that task consistently, objectively, or reliably.

Dr. John Ioannidis, co-director of Stanford University’s Meta-Research Innovation Center, has shown that up to half the social science studies published in even the most prestigious academic journals has been corrupted by experimental bias and slip-shod controls, an opinion he shares with the Lancet medical journal’s respected editor-in-chief, Richard Charles Horton. National Association of Scholars President Peter Wood believes that many of today’s woke organizational policies, established on the presumption they reflect rigorous research, have no real scientific basis.

In his 1976 Nobel address, novelist Saul Bellow anticipated the psychological dilemma of today’s woke generations, torn between the seeming security of a materialistic ideology and yet retaining some sense of a deeper wisdom. They would be reluctant to talk about this split, Bellow said, “because there is nothing we can prove, because our language is inadequate and because few people are willing to risk talking about it. They would have to say, ‘There is a spirit’ and that is taboo.” So, they would all keep quiet about it, especially amongst each other, but the nagging doubt would never go away.

That so many Millennials and Gen-Zers have a historically low tolerance for due process, free speech, and other protections for dissenting opinion would hardly surprise Bellow, for he would see in their aggressive narrow-mindedness not true belief, but an almost fanatical desire to blot out the psychic split. With little educational preparation for the inevitable conflict between academic ideology and the sense of a deeper reality, Critical Race Theory is clung to with a ferocity that any genuine conviction would never require.

The good news for the larger society is that wokeism’s march through its institutions may have finally met its match at the K-12th grade schoolhouse door. It has been one thing for American parents to read about some company forcing its staff to undergo racial sensitivity training or a city attorney refusing to prosecute minority criminals, but quite another to have their own children judged in class by skin color, deprived of “white” courses in math and science, and subjected to other measures designed, ultimately, to snuff out their true selves.

As for those Millennials and Gen-Zers still in the early stages of their careers, one can only hope that the experience gained from successfully coping with real-life situations, combined with a growing confidence in their own intuitive wisdom, will gradually diminish their need for an ideological security blanket. For the question is not whether Critical Race Theory will fail its believers, but how: by diverting their attention from the superior guidance within or by keeping them agents of an ideology which holds back the very people they thought they were helping.

 

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“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”

Politick_Rick™ 🇺🇸 on Twitter: ""The Party told you to reject the evidence  of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." "And if  all others accepted the lie which

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Loudoun County Teacher Suspended for Refusing to Bend the Knee to Gender Pronouns in Classroom: https://redstate.com/kiradavis/2021/05/31/loudoun-county-teacher-suspended-for-refusing-to-bend-the-knee-to-gender-pronouns-in-classroom-n389270

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Loudoun County, Virginia has become a hotbed of protest in recent months. You may remember the video of an impassioned mother delivering a scorching takedown of Critical Race Theory in front of the school board. That school board happens to be the subject of a mass recall launched by Loudoun County parents this spring. Parents are vying to remove six of the ten board members in protest of egregious COVID policies and the incursion of CRT into their curriculum without parent approval.

 

In yet another disturbing incident in the Loudoun County public school system, a Leesburg teacher was removed from his position last week after he refused to refer to students by transgender pronouns.

Byron “Tanner” Cross, a physical education teacher from Leesburg Elementary attended his latest school board meeting to lodge a formal protest against the county board’s draft legislation on “gender pronouns” and “gender inclusion” in the classroom.

From The Loudoun County Times:

He criticized the school system’s draft Policy 8040, “Rights of Transgender and Gender-Expansive Students,” which the School Board’s Pupil Services Committee is in the process of drafting.

The draft policy says “LCPS staff shall allow gender-expansive or transgender students to use their chosen name and gender pronouns that reflect their gender identity without any substantiating evidence.”

Cross came before the board last Thursday and calmly addressed the proposed policy, explaining that it violated his religious principles and constituted “lying” to his students.

My name is Tanner Cross, and I am speaking out of love for those who suffer with gender dysphoria. “60 Minutes” this past Sunday interviewed over 30 young people who transitioned, but they felt led astray because lack of pushback, or how easy it was to make physical changes to their bodies in just three months. They are now detransitioning. It’s not my intention to hurt anyone, but there are certain truths that we must face when ready. We condemn policies like 8040 and 8035 because it was damaged children, defile the holy image of God. I love all of my students but I would never lie to them regardless of the consequences. I’m a teacher, but I serve God first. And I will not affirm that a biological boy can be a girl and vice-versa because it’s against my religion it’s lying to a child. It’s abuse to a child and it’s sinning against our God.

 

Loudoun County School Board just put a school teacher on administrative leave for stating he would not teach LGBTQ because it violates his Christian principles. pic.twitter.com/QCwzIYdNNw

— Michael S. Miller (@imichaelsmiller) May 27, 2021

 

Cross’s penalty for telling the truth as a teacher and Virginia taxpayers? An unceremonious email from the school principal announcing his involuntary and indefinite leave of absence.

E2a7qSNXoAgR6qY-215x300.jpg

It should not be lost on us that school administrations typically take years to fire or suspend teachers accused of sexual abuse. Cross gave a calm, reasoned, and personal appeal and was suspended for simply expressing his religious (and scientific) beliefs. So a teacher can be suspended for religious expression but children are to be revered for “gender expression.”

Got it.

Loudoun County parents continue to gather signatures to trigger a recall of the offending school board members. They represent a larger battle that is beginning to sweep through counties across the nation as average Americans begin to push back on a harmful progressive agenda that they did not vote for. In a video that any person of faith who struggles with the balance between protest and evangelism should watch, Cornerstone Chapel pastor Gary Hamrick deftly explains why he chose to distribute the recall petition in his congregation, using Cross’s testimony as an example.

If you live in Loudoun County and want to help with the petition drive or you’re just motivated to support the fight from where you are, Fight For Schools has information on petition drives, which school board members are being targeted, and ways to donate to support the effort.

 

Justice for Mr. Cross.

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42 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

Loudoun County Teacher Suspended for Refusing to Bend the Knee to Gender Pronouns in Classroom: https://redstate.com/kiradavis/2021/05/31/loudoun-county-teacher-suspended-for-refusing-to-bend-the-knee-to-gender-pronouns-in-classroom-n389270

Justice for Mr. Cross.

Referring to students the way they request “violates his personal religious beliefs?” What a loon! The only point he has is the one normally covered by his hat.

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12 minutes ago, Bobref said:

Referring to students the way they request “violates his personal religious beliefs?” What a loon! The only point he has is the one normally covered by his hat.

You do realize most Christians only recognize two genders, male and female?  One can understand why Mr. Cross would have issues referring to students as "ze" or "hir".  

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5 hours ago, Muda69 said:

It should not be lost on us that school administrations typically take years to fire or suspend teachers accused of sexual abuse.

This is a lie. 

4 hours ago, Muda69 said:

You do realize most Christians only recognize two genders, male and female?  One can understand why Mr. Cross would have issues referring to students as "ze" or "hir".  

Then he can render unto Caesar what is Caesar's... which is, in this case, his paycheck. 

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5 hours ago, Muda69 said:

You do realize most Christians only recognize two genders, male and female?  One can understand why Mr. Cross would have issues referring to students as "ze" or "hir".  

And that’s why we have employment at will. He’s allowed to have his issues on his own time.

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Where do we draw the line here?  Let's say student Jenny comes to you, a high school math teacher, one day and says "I no longer identify as a human female, instead I now identify as a female canine.  Therefore I would like you to refer to me in all our future interactions as "bitch" instead of "her" or "she".   

Is this a reasonable request an adult high school teacher should automatically acquiesce to? Would doing so help to preserve the fragile young psyche of Jenny?

 

 

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13 hours ago, DanteEstonia said:

This is a lie. 

Proof please.

13 hours ago, DanteEstonia said:

Then he can render unto Caesar what is Caesar's... which is, in this case, his paycheck. 

So I take it you have no issues taking requests from your students to call them whatever personal pronoun they choose to identify with at that point in time?

 

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Hypothetical — I made this up.

The SF Giants will be wearing “pride colors” on their uniforms this weekend, to celebrate “Pride Week.” One of their top pitchers, Johnny Cueto, is scheduled to start Sunday. He has informed Giants’ management that this amounts to tacit approval of the LGBTQ lifestyle, which is expressly contrary to his sincerely-held religious beliefs.  MLB rules require all players on a team to participate wearing the same uniforms.

You’re Giants’ management. What do you do?

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8 minutes ago, Bobref said:

Hypothetical — I made this up.

The SF Giants will be wearing “pride colors” on their uniforms this weekend, to celebrate “Pride Week.” One of their top pitchers, Johnny Cueto, is scheduled to start Sunday. He has informed Giants’ management that this amounts to tacit approval of the LGBTQ lifestyle, which is expressly contrary to his sincerely-held religious beliefs.  MLB rules require all players on a team to participate wearing the same uniforms.

You’re Giants’ management. What do you do?

Allow Mr. Cueto to wear the standard Giants uniform, not the Gay Pride version.  Simple.

 

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On 6/2/2021 at 7:42 AM, Bobref said:

You’re Giants’ management. What do you do?

Don't dress him for the game. 

On 6/2/2021 at 5:38 AM, Muda69 said:

So I take it you have no issues taking requests from your students to call them whatever personal pronoun they choose to identify with at that point in time?

No, and I've had two transgender students, so it's old hat for me. 

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The Woke J.R.R. Tolkien: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/woke-jrr-tolkien/

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The reader who sent this in cites it as an example of O’Sullivan’s First Law: “All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing.” The Tolkien Society has announced its summer seminar — and hoo boy, is it ever woke!

We are extremely excited to invite you to our upcoming Tolkien Society online seminar on Saturday and Sunday 3rd-4th July! The schedule is now live on the website and can be viewed here.

With sixteen speakers coming to you live in your own home, the day promises to be full of new and fascinating insights into ‘Tolkien and Diversity’.

What is even better is that the event (to be hosted on Zoom) is free to attend. If you would like to attend then please sign up here. The Zoom link and further details will be shared closer to the event only with those who have registered.

The full list of speakers are as follows:

Cordeliah Logsdon – Gondor in Transition: A Brief Introduction to Transgender Realities in The Lord of the Rings
Clare Moore – The Problem of Pain: Portraying Physical Disability in the Fantasy of J. R. R. Tolkien
V. Elizabeth King – “The Burnt Hand Teaches Most About Fire”: Applying Traumatic Stress and Ecological Frameworks to Narratives of Displacement and Resettlement Across Cultures in Tolkien’s Middle-earth
Christopher Vaccaro – Pardoning Saruman?: The Queer in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings
Sultana Raza – Projecting Indian Myths, Culture and History onto Tolkien’s Worlds
Nicholas Birns – The Lossoth: Indigeneity, Identity, and Power
Kristine Larsen – The Problematic Perimeters of Elrond Half-elven and Ronald English-Catholic
Cami Agan – Hearkening to the Other: Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth
Sara Brown – The Invisible Other: Tolkien’s Dwarf-Women and the ‘Feminine Lack’
Sonali Chunodkar – Desire of the Ring: An Indian Academic’s Adventures in her Quest for the Perilous Realm
Robin Reid – Queer Atheists, Agnostics, and Animists, Oh, My!
Joel Merriner – Hidden Visions: Iconographies of Alterity in Soviet Bloc Illustrations for The Lord of the Rings
Eric Reinders – Questions of Caste in The Lord of the Rings and its Multiple Chinese Translations
Dawn Walls-Thumma – Stars Less Strange: An Analysis of Fanfiction and Representation within the Tolkien Fan Community
Danna Petersen-Deeprose – “Something Mighty Queer”: Destabilizing Cishetero Amatonormativity in the Works of Tolkien
Martha Celis-Mendoza – Translation as a means of representation and diversity in Tolkien’s scholarship and fandom

We look forward to seeing you at the Seminar,

WIll Sherwood
Education Secretary of The Tolkien Society

I, for one, cannot wait for the destabilization of cishetero amatonormativity in the works of Tolkien. I figure it’s going to be about Sam pitching and Frodo catching.

 

Good grief, is this ever stupid. Wokeness ruins everything, doesn’t it?

It sure does Mr. Dreher, it sure does.

 

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On 6/1/2021 at 9:06 PM, Bobref said:

And that’s why we have employment at will. He’s allowed to have his issues on his own time.

Virginia's Loudoun County to appeal court decision reinstating teacher who spoke out against gender policies: https://www.foxnews.com/us/lcps-appeal-tanner-cross-decision

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Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) in Virginia said Friday that it intended to appeal a federal judge's order that the district reinstate Tanner Cross, the physical education teacher who was suspended after making controversial comments about gender.

In a statement, LCPS said it would bring the issue to the state Supreme Court.

"LCPS respectfully disagrees with the Circuit Court’s decision to issue the injunction, and it is appealing this ruling to the Supreme Court of Virginia," the statement read.

"Leesburg Elementary School and Loudoun County Public Schools experienced – and continue to experience – significant disruption since the May 25 School Board meeting during which Cross addressed the board. Many students and parents at Leesburg Elementary have expressed fear, hurt and disappointment about coming to school. Addressing those concerns is paramount to the school division's goal to provide a safe, welcoming, and affirming learning environment for all students. While LCPS respects the rights of public-school employees to free speech and free exercise of religion, those rights do not outweigh the rights of students to be educated in a supportive and nurturing environment."

 

LCPS declined to comment further but its statement struck at some of the arguments made by Twelfth Circuit Judge James E. Plowman, who not only doubted the claims of disruption but argued Cross' constitutional rights outweighed school concerns.

He said Cross' "interest in expressing his First Amendment speech outweigh the Defendant's interest in restricting the same and the level of disruption that Defendant asserts did not serve to meaningfully disrupt the operations or services of Leesburg Elementary School."

Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing Cross, was confident it would succeed.

"Judge Plowman’s opinion ordering Tanner’s reinstatement was a well-reasoned application of these facts to clearly-established law," said Tyson Langhofer, Sr. Counsel & Director of the Center for Academic Freedom with Alliance Defending Freedom. "We are confident that, if the Virginia Supreme Court hears the appeal, it will affirm the circuit court’s decision."

Cross sparked an uproar last month when he told LCPS' school  board that he wouldn't "affirm that a biological boy can be a girl and vice versa because it's against my religion. It's lying to a child, it's abuse to a child, and it's sinning against our God."

He had specifically referred to draft policy 8040, which required Loudoun staff to use preferred pronouns.

"LCPS staff shall allow gender-expansive or transgender students to use their chosen name and gender pronouns that reflect their gender identity without any substantiating evidence, regardless of the name and gender recorded in the student’s permanent educational record," it read.

"School staff shall, at the request of a student or parent/legal guardian, when using a name or pronoun to address the student, use the name and pronoun that correspond to their gender identity. The use of gender-neutral pronouns are appropriate. Inadvertent slips in the use of names or pronouns may occur; however, staff or students who intentionally and persistently refuse to respect a student’s gender identity by using the wrong name and gender pronoun are in violation of this policy."

Tuesday's school board meeting exploded with parents and educators irate at the county for its actions towards Cross. 

Many complained that LCPS was exceeding its authority and chilling speech. Some educators also spoke in support of Cross and his ideas while others backed the county's position.

 

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