Alice in Wokeland

There has been a great amount of speculation, mostly within the American drug culture, as to whether Lewis Carroll used hallucinogenics while writing Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Even Grace Slick and Jefferson Airplane made allusion to that in their hit single White Rabbit. But most literary scholars have debunked that “wishful thinking” noting that Mr. Carroll lived in England during the latter half of the 19^th Century, prior to the advent of chemical based hallucinogenics and where peyote was for all intents and purposes non-existent. He was born into an Anglican family where such practices were disdained. You can speculate about whether opium was involved but there is no record or writings, including Mr. Carroll’s diaries, of any drug use.

A better explanation is that Mr. Carroll seized upon the fact that as you use a mirror everything is backwards. Your right hand becomes the images left hand; a turn to the right is a turn to the left for the image. A creative mind – a talented story teller – can stretch that observed phenomena into a rollicking tale.

Not so, with the emergence of the woke culture where everything that we have known to date is turned on its head. It may be drug induced but more likely it is simply an iteration of socialist losers who are compelled to explain their failures by attempting to change the norms of human behavior. Here are some examples:

1. For as long as I can remember we have been told by the medical community that obesity is an extraordinary health hazard. (For those of you forced to endure a teachers union led education in the Portland Public Schools “obesity” is the clinical term for fat men and women.) For those who are overweight losing weight is a very difficult process. Unless, of course, you embrace fad diets, chemical consumption and/or surgery and in such cases the weight loss is usually temporary while the underlying problems of obesity continue. And because it is hard and arduous work, it is unpopular and for many who have tried and failed, the woke culture has an answer. It’s called “body shaming” where criticizing one’s physique has become verboten. That’s a good idea but in woke culture you have to carry good ideas to ridiculous extremes. So now, it isn’t just impolite to criticize an other’s being, you have to celebrate their obesity. You have to glorify it. It has to become the standard for beauty. It has to be a superior way to live. An example is the glorification of hip hop artist Lizzo even to the point of publishing, to the avid applause of the mainstream media, a nude pictorial. The acres of cellulite on Ms. Lizzo thighs and derriere are cringe worthy. There is nothing beautiful about obesity. It is a health hazard and no amount of woke derangement can change that. Ms. Lizzo may be a talented hip hop artist but she is obese and obese is not beautiful. You may find that she has a welcoming personality, a beautiful soul and a warm heart but that does not change the fact that she is obese or that her obesity will likely lead to extraordinary health problems – high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes. neuropathy, renal failure and blindness. Good job you woke morons. Common sense would tell you that this is just upside down.

2. For even longer than the medical community has criticized obesity, mothers and fathers have told their children, immigrants have been told by those who proceeded them, and even teachers, prior to the takeover of our education system by the teachers union, would tell their students “Work hard, get a good education and you will succeed.” The history of labor unions is to make the least productive employee the norm for purposes of job expectation. The teachers unions looked at teachers and knew instantly that teaching is a difficult profession and that it takes significant work and dedication to succeed. At the same time they understood that the practice of social welfare has none of those requirements and so the unions turned the teachers in to social welfare agents whose days were so full of doing what parents would normally do that they did not have time to engage in the difficult task of teaching children – particularly in the areas of math, science and speaking a complete sentence without a “you know,” “like,” or “awesome.” The unions also understood that performance could be measured in gross terms by state and national testing regimens and rankings and individually by comparing progress with expected norms. They didn’t like that – it flew in the face of everything for which they stood – the worst performer would be the standard. Again, there are no comparable standards for measuring the performance of social workers and thus they emphasized such work as the critical part of a teacher’s duties.

But even at that, students were being graded and that simply could not stand. Grades separated those who were more intelligent or worked harder or both. And when the norm for the teachers is that the worst performer is the norm, they insist that the students be measured by the same standards. We now call that equity.

Recent stories of school districts in northern Virginia withholding awards as National Merit Scholars in the name of equity is an outgrowth of that policy. It wasn’t an isolated mistake or an oversight. It was deliberate and in the process they denied those more intelligent, and those who worked harder, the fruits of their skills and labor. It is the complete opposite of “Work hard, get a good education and you will succeed.” And a clear message to students and parents: why bother, let the government take care of you.

Yet another instance in which common sense – and the history of America – would be to reward those who perform. It is not a condemnation of those who are left behind but rather a recognition that while we are created with equal opportunity we are not created with equal outcomes. The teachers unions should hang their heads in shame but they won’t. When the lawsuits come – and they will – the judgments will be paid by the taxpayers, not the offending teachers unions or their politicians on the school boards*.

3. In the world of the woke, amongst the liberal/progressives/socialist, there is a defiance of the teaching of Dr. Martin Luther King who asked that men and women be judged by the content of their actions and not by the color of their skin. If you actually believe in the value of mankind you have to embrace that concept and never let it go. And as a reminder, there is no “but” or “however” or “except” in that admonition. Once you start down the road of perverting Dr. King’s words the results are inevitable. Let me give you a list:

Vice-president Kalamata Harris

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg

Deputy Secretary of Energy Sam Brinton

Assistant Secretary of Health Rachel Levine

And the list can go on and on at state and local levels as these progressives populate their administrations based on color, gender and sexual orientation and ignore the disaster that each proves in the administration of their duties.

4. The major cities of our country have been overrun with drugs. The response of the liberal/progressive socialists is to make drugs and drug paraphernalia more easily available and if that doesn’t work to decriminalize drugs beginning with marijuana and moving all the way to to cocaine and heroin. The same approach is made with regard to the homeless. Their solution is to build homes for the homeless despite the fact that the majority of those homeless want to be “on the street” because that’s where the drugs are. The end result is that every move these morons make to accommodate the drug addicts and the homeless, the more their numbers increase – more homeless, more drug addictions, more deaths, and more crime. And yet these same morons have the same response to the increase in crime – no bail release, no prosecutions of a variety of crimes and early parole, amnesty and commutations for those convicted.

Even the children in the tale of the Emperor’s New Clothes by Hans Christian Andersen knew a hoax when the saw it and it is doubtful that they are much fooled by the solutions by the morons running out largest cities. I say that with some hesitation because the teachers union, treating the public schools as their own personal madrassas, are busy indoctrinating our children in a world upside down – wrong is right, left is right, and failure is success.

For you – each of you – reading this column, it is well past time to stand up and echo the sentiments of Howard Beale in Network: ‘I’m mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore.” And for musical effect you may want to play Twisted Sister in the background:

We’ve got the right to choose, and
There ain’t no way we’ll lose it
This is our life, this is our song
We’ll fight the powers that be, just
Don’t pick on our destiny, ’cause
You don’t know us, you don’t belong

We’re not gonna take it
No, we ain’t gonna take it
We’re not gonna take it anymore

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* There was a time when government workers, including teachers, could be held personally liable for such acts when they are acting outside the scope of their authority. It should be given new breath.