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Ye Olde Progressive Freak Show

This large pot of frothing progtard blather may be too much for you to watch in one sitting since the intellectual insanity on display is tsunamic in nature. Still, it does bring a number of ProgFreak types together in one frothing pot of blather so there’s a value in that.

“What value could that possibly be, Uncle Gerard.”

The value is in the numerous signals that we may well be approaching an end to the period in our history typified by Clair Wolf when she wrote: “America is at that awkward stage; it’s too late to work within the system but too early to shoot the bastards.”

Shop accordingly.

HT: Ye Good Olde Maggies Farm

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • captflee April 29, 2019, 5:43 PM

    Quite timely, Gerard! I just now returned from a book reading/Q & A/signing for a 25th anniversary re-release of a novelization of the events surrounding the 1898 riot/coup d’etat there, and I am about full of wokeness just now.

    The author is an academic at the local U_ _ campus, and a plurality of the audience of 50 or so appeared to be fellow gummint paid educators, leavened with a cadre of the usual maggoty suspects, each striving to outdo the other in self abasement and abnegation of their dirty, dirty whiteness. A precious few of my darker brothers and sisters were in attendance, though they looked a bit confused by the attitude and actions of the majority of the audience and visibly shrunk back, My favorite was the white on white retired shyster geezer in the Hawaiian shirt near me cranking up the emotion to eleven as he described the horrors of po’ black folk being subjected to a litany of indignations served upon them as late as the seventies, such as not dining with the (horribly, abysmally white) families who employed them. And this was, let me assure you, not a young crowd, with me a good generation younger than most, and even at my tender age I can well remember that pretty much everyone I grew up around had at least a black maid, doubtless including a majority of those present, scalawag and carpetbagger alike.

    Fortunately no Cultural Revolution Struggle Session was able to crank up, as the dingbats flirted a bit with reparations, but then the question session was brought to a screeching halt by that touch of the madness which inevitably attends any sizable assemblage of lefties; in this case a descendant of one of the 1898 instigators, a name famous throughout the state, emblazoned on a host of structures from stadia and auditoria to STEM Institutes, decided to launch into some borderline coherent spiel regarding the purported murder of Tennessee Williams, whose final secretary he claimed to be. I had arrived early, and feared greatly that this gent would choose to sit near me, as it appears that at some point in my youth, doubtless on some foreign debauch, I passed out, and my erstwhile associates had ,”Tell me your troubles.” tattooed on my forehead in an ink visible only to the deeply disturbed.

    Now, one might question why anyone in their right mind would subject themselves to this nonsense. Me, I try to keep up with what the comrades are up to, and keep my face somewhat familiar, the easier to move amongst them, to get to know the players and string pullers. Something tells me that Identification, Friend or Foe might just come in handy some day.

  • Joe April 29, 2019, 6:21 PM

    Decolonizing Mars????

  • Uncle Mikey April 29, 2019, 6:39 PM

    That is one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen.

  • Patvann April 29, 2019, 6:55 PM

    I watched the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon at age 9.
    My dad INSISTED that we all stay home from school those several days to watch it on his hand-build Heathkit 25 inch color TV.

    Our mom and school was OK with that.

    I weep.

  • jwm April 29, 2019, 7:45 PM

    I made it for a little more than thirteen minutes.
    All is flounces and frills in the intellectual fashion show from “The Emperor’s New Clothes”.
    sad
    very sad

    JWM

  • Jerry Greenhoot April 29, 2019, 7:59 PM

    Sorry….I couldn’t bear it. Actually, it’s all over the place now, and often worse….but there was one gem and that’s in your quote: “America is at that awkward stage; it’s too late to work within the system but too early to shoot the bastards.” If you believe in “progress” we’ll soon be advanced enough to save ourselves. Hoard ammo!

  • Bad_Brad April 29, 2019, 10:01 PM

    Turns out, the Zombie Apocalypse was real.

  • Lance de Boyle April 29, 2019, 10:25 PM

    captflee….

    I met that guy—whose last name is over the entrance to several buildings at the institution that I infest.
    He bummed a couple gallons of gas off me at a BP station on Market Street. Had all sorts of stories, delivered at manic intensity, about Mother Dearest. Sure did love him some T. Williams. Felt sorry for the man. Lost.

  • walt reed April 30, 2019, 3:41 AM

    I lasted about 30 seconds after the first moron began her “presentation.” Elders and binary, in the same paragraph, is a tip off for a soulless search for not much. BTW, Mars has been warming slightly. Surely only electric rockets and rovers should be permitted. Hopefully the unhappy ladies covered that angle later in the presentation.

  • H April 30, 2019, 4:28 AM

    Academia: Nuked too much or not enough?

    I’m leaning toward the latter………

  • Jack April 30, 2019, 6:28 AM

    Man, what a mess. My first thought was this is a scene from a feminist re-write of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest with Nurse Ratchett off the set.

    Then I thought, nope, just seething lesbian feminist academia in an empty room, trying to be heard.

  • captflee April 30, 2019, 7:24 AM

    Lance,

    Assuming that your screen name is a nom de plume, my compliments on choosing well! If not, I intend no dishonor to your family, so please accept my apology.

    Please tell me we’re not talking the Forest Hills BP. Maybe it’s a small world…for sure it’s a small town.

    Regarding the gent in question, following a good night’s sleep I am rather more inclined to look upon him with compassion, if not pity, than I did last night. As you so pithily said, lost.

    Given my talent for attracting the unsound, I am shocked that his path and mine had not crossed earlier. One does not often encounter characters of NBA center height, particular of such vivid mien, so one would think that such an encounter would be memorable. Perhaps T.W. had decamped from the French Quarter prior to my arrival. God knows, I met more than my share of remittance men there, no doubt an artefact of my louche, near vampiric lifestyle, although by comparison to what went on in certain segments of society, my doings would bore a Mormon to tears.

    If you, in your travels about the campus, encounter harbingers of unrest, do sound the tocsin, if only by posting here, a Committee of Correspondence for the digital age. Thanks for the reply, and keep your head down over there at the Dub, unless you are Mike Adams, in which case, continue beating the bastards in court!

  • Rob De Witt April 30, 2019, 9:18 AM

    I can well remember that pretty much everyone I grew up around had at least a black maid, doubtless including a majority of those present, scalawag and carpetbagger alike.

    Then you were rich, and undoubtedly so were the inhabitants of that room. Sixty years ago I watched in astonishment the burgeoning complaint of the Boomy Babers, five or less years younger than me, who took for granted all that I hoped to achieve, and then bitched about it.

    None of this is a recent phenomenon. There have been spoiled brats since antiquity, just as entitled and just as stupid. The only thing to do is ignore the little snots and enjoy the best life you can manage. As my favorite Albert Einstein quote has it, “The majority of the stupid is invincible, and will be with us always.”

    Illegitimi non carborundum.

  • ghostsniper April 30, 2019, 11:04 AM

    “…had at least a black maid…”

    Only 2/3 human but they let them in their house.
    I’ve never understood that concept.

  • Dave J April 30, 2019, 12:45 PM

    I will not watch it but I will wonder if they would consider approving of illegal immigration to Mars by non whites in order to escape the oppressive privilege inherent within our own colony on this third stone from the sun.

  • Eskyman April 30, 2019, 1:02 PM

    That was unbearably sad to watch, and the learned panelists were so incredibly brainless that I weep for their students. Like a slow-motion trainwreck I couldn’t tear myself away from it, and now whenever I think of the future those highly educated morons will come to mind.

    Apparently we white men didn’t colonize well enough; we should have done away with their forebears, to prevent their descendants from haunting us with their lack of abilities and the fact that they are hopeless losers. Give me cowboys in space, not painted scalp merchants!

    As Instapundit often says, “this is not the future we were promised.” I want the future that Heinlein wrote of, not Kornbluth’s Marching Morons!

  • mushroom April 30, 2019, 1:24 PM

    These rejects couldn’t find their way to Tulsa, let alone the Moon or Mars without the people they mock and despise.

  • captflee April 30, 2019, 2:38 PM

    Rob DeWitt, and to a lesser extent, ghostsniper;

    Rich? If only… Perhaps it was a matter of time and place, the 50s and 60s in a booming sunbelt city, but my distinctly middle class parents (he the son of mill hands, who by dint of god given intelligence, hard work, and service to our nation pulled himself up from barely working class to the middle class, she the daughter of a barber and a secretary at the General Assembly, was always a member of that numerous group) scrapped and scrambled for what they had, as did everyone else we knew. As the sixties rolled on and the wars that LBJ started and lost (Viet Nam, Poverty) had to be paid for, off to work went the women, and in came the maids. Rest assured that it was not necessary to raid the black neighborhoods and press gang domestic help, as those jobs seemed quite attractive and eager applicants numerous.

    I suppose that the folks at the book reading were rich (if broadly defined), but that would hardly be surprising, given that Social Justice Fanaticism is the highest of positional goods these days, so one would expect to see present a disproportionate number of those who advocate lunatic policies for others while dwelling in gated communities. To observe the looks of annoyance on the faces around me as the retired attorney practically wept over the lot of long dead domestic employees let me know that I was not alone in having transgressed against the numinousness of the African by my ten year old self ask for a sandwich and a glass of milk. The town where I now dwell was nowhere near as much of a boom town back then, so the wages required for domestics would have been lower yet. As for the sainted northerners at the meeting, I would hazard a guess, based on the usual outward manifestations of speech, dress, physical appearance, comportment, etc., and their having been children during the depression, that most of them were not unfamiliar with the presence of paid help in the house, albeit more likely of a lighter hue, that conjecture based on Dick Gregory’s apposite remark, “Personally, I’ve never seen much difference between the South and the North, Down South white folks don’t care how close I get as long as I don’t get too big. Up North white folks don’t care how big I get as long as I don’t get too close.”

    Having been on my own since age 17, you gentlemen had best believe that I make a pretty poor entitled, ungrateful boomer, having tried to live my life by wisdom gleaned from the ages, in this case from the Sage of Jackson, TN, Brother Dave, to wit: “Gratitude is riches and complaint is poverty and the worst I ever had was wonderful.”

    ghostsniper: You sure you don’t mean 3/5 of a person, the fraction demanded by those at the North as a means to dilute the voting strength of the “Slave Power”? You know, that might not be a bad thing for our age, but I would apply that proportion only to those now illegally residing within our borders, who presently count every bit as much as you and I for census purposes, resulting in numerous “rotten boroughs” . How’s this sound, California with 45 electors, and Indiana with 15?

    While I cannot see myself taking on domestic help, ever, I will stipulate that the American of 2019, irrespective of race, creed, or national origin, is a very different creature to that of 1960, which would at least partially explain my reluctance.

    I can with no reservation state that my childhood was graced and immeasurably enriched by the presence of as gentle and loving a Christian soul as I have ever encountered, over whose too early grave, and in the presence of whose many “children”, black and white alike, I cried many sincere tears.

  • ghostsniper April 30, 2019, 8:17 PM

    “While I cannot see myself taking on domestic help, ever,….”

    Same here. If I won the powerball I’d become the ultimate isolationist.
    Being around people wears me out man.

  • Lance de Boyle April 30, 2019, 8:29 PM

    captflee…
    The BP in Ogden, heading to Le Jeune. By Smithfields.

    Here’s a tale of how the ever-confident “constructivists” (flighty, uncritically-liberal, whole language, constructivist math, discovery learning) at collitches of education harm kids and teachers by mistaking their gaudy visions for reality.

    A certain c of e recently took over a local middle school whose students were only 18% likely to pass the end of grade tests in math, and 20% likely to pass the end of grade tests in reading. What do you suppose happens to these kids?
    An elementary school was added, because, when you haven’t done a large project before, it’s always a good idea to make the project as large as you can. What could go wrong? Since you won’t be taking any sort of data—not even classroom observations—you’ll never know that anything is going wrong.

    They had a design committee on which served no one who was an expert on curriculum and instruction. The committee was packed with persons who call themselves constructivists. “Teachers should be guides on the side as students construct knowledge through a process of inquiry. Don’t worry. They’ll learn math and science and reading WHILE they do inquiry projects.” Learn to swim by diving into a rip current.

    Instead of visiting and copying what successful area schools do, and instead of getting help from successful principals, and instead of making a simple plan of concrete actions implemented in small steps, they had no plan at all. Instead of being guided by research on what works with disadvantaged kids and how best to reform failed schools, they were guided by their philosophy (“Inquiry”)—virtue signaling via a mission statement loaded with treacly blather about equity, justice, and school-community partnership.

    They didn’t train teachers to work with children living in poverty.
    They don’t have a school-wide reading and math curriculum, with well-tested materials.
    They don’t have much equipment for teaching science.
    They expect teachers to invent a curriculum and make their own materials. This is called experimenting with children.
    They hired teacher assistants who had no idea what they are doing.
    No discipline policy or procedures.
    When someone pointed out that poor and minority kids start way behind advantaged kids in language and reading (pretty much what disadvantaged means), and therefore need powerful, teacher-directed instruction at least to start, or else they will learn nothing, they were publicly “called out” by their grievance-machine colleagues for being racist—for challenging the insane notion that kids are equal in every way, except maybe Sickle-cell anemia.

    Within one day, teachers realized that they made a poor career move; kids were fighting and saying “Go %$#@ yourself,” when teacherx asked them to stop dancing and hooting in the spaces between desks; teachers had no idea how to manage a classroom, except by nagging and threatening to remove snacks (“Go ^%$# yourself and your snacks.”); Black teachers told white teachers that they did not understand the Black experience; only a few colleagues from the collitch ever come by to help (and not a single grievance mongering social justice fraud).

    Predictably, the collitch took NO data on students’ entry skills or progress.

    When the end of grade tests show that kids still can’t read or do math,and many teachers speak of transferring, here’s what will happen.
    1. Administrators will give themselves awards.
    2. Someone will read anecdotal comments on how much they like the school.
    3. Teachers will go to workshops, to think of creative ways to teach. Anything but methods that have a 50 year track record of effectiveness.
    4. Administrators will want more money.
    5. Everyone will agree that “The kids are coming along.”
    6. Parents will be so in the dark that they will not know enough to ask, “What the f%$#?”

    Ed schools run by progressives are largely pageantry.
    Ed schools with significant numbers of grievance mongers are evil cults.

    I’m convinced that maybe seven courses—logic, reading, math, science, history, classroom management, instructional design—and 2 years working with mentor teachers in excellent schools, would do a better job than most ed schools. Except a small Catholic school in Baton Rouge.

  • ghostsniper May 1, 2019, 4:31 AM

    “Ed schools run by progressives are largely pageantry.”
    ===========
    You seem to misunderstand the purpose of public schools.

    “…only 18% likely to pass the end of grade tests in math, and 20% likely to pass…”
    ===========
    That was the intent all along.

    Public education – where you attend a flawed and damaging service for 12 years and pay for it for the rest of your life. Such a deal.

  • Dan Patterson May 1, 2019, 5:22 AM

    I am stunned but not surprised at the flagrant stupidity oozing between the seams of the AI robots in the video presentation; I only made it through a very few moments, and now I have hives. That sort of thing is what happens when a society has an abundance of luxury and time – idle minds begin to feed on themselves and then, well, we get this “circle of life” bullshit.
    Nature cares not a little bit about any of that, and will doom those unprepared to a painful early ugly death. Unless there is a rich vein of prosperity to draw from, and that is precisely what is happening now. And we get to watch the sad parasites as they consume instead of produce, eventually killing the host and meeting their inevitable end, though it does take a while and that while is far too long.
    And the comments in here! The Heathkit color TV, 3/5 compromise, public education commentary, LBJ wars, all excellent!

  • captflee May 1, 2019, 8:16 AM

    Lance;
    Wow! That’s gonna take some time to mull over and digest. In the meantime I need to go downtown to the library to pick up a couple of holds, so will prolly wander over to wherever the appropriately red clad teachers are protesting. Had I thought to prepare in advance by printing out lyric sheets, obtaining a suitable sound system, etc., I could lead all and sundry in {their} national anthem…

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-6CesO8YPs

    ghost:
    Regarding the purpose of education, here I present Mr. Evans. Bet THAT movie couldn’t get made today!
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0asSaCVDzw

  • Fooi May 7, 2019, 12:18 AM

    I still cant believe there were people in that room buying the manufactured nonsense. Even some of the panel seemed to be aware they were insane, or posers.

    Obama’s NASA Muslim Outreach and Warmist scam legacy, I guess.