SOMETIMES I WORRY

The other night my wife and I were watching a special on the History Channel about what took place at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. I had missed the first part but came in halfway through when they’d reached the point in the program that they were talking about the attack itself. While watching it I was once again stunned by the bravery of those young men who were there during the attack.

I can’t recall their names at the moment but three of the stories they told left an impression on me. One was a black sailor named Doris Miller who had been assigned mess duty because at the time they didn’t think blacks were smart enough to learn how to do much else. Rather than focus on that issue instead this show mentioned it like the historical fact that it is and then proceeded to tell how when the ship he was on was hit, he jumped to one of the guns (the ones he wasn’t trained on how to operate) and he began shooting planes that were attacking them. He received the Navy Cross for his bravery, the first black man to ever have that honor.

It told the story of another man who was in charge of the electrical system aboard one of the ships (sorry can’t recall his name or that of the ship) that was damaged but still functional. He was keeping the electrical system operable because without it they couldn’t steer the ship. As they made their way to the opening to the harbor a fire broke out and the room flooded with smoke. He ordered the rest of his crew to go to the secondary electrical room while he stayed and kept things running until they could transfer everything over. He suffered from smoke inhalation but survived.

A third man they talked about (again I can’t recall the name) was on one of the boats that was severely damaged and sinking. This man had a wife and child who were supposed to be on their way soon to Pearl Harbor to be with him there. He went below decks to save his fellow seamen. They said that doing so more than once was far too dangerous to do. He made 4 trips below decks. Eventually he was overcome with smoke inhalation and died that day.

As I watched this show I kept thinking to myself how young all of these men were. They were all teenagers or just out of their teens. They had their whole lives ahead of them. Some of them had already begun to have families like the one I mentioned. And they signed up or were drafted and didn’t complain or protest or demand this or that. They served because that was what was expected of them as U.S. citizens.

Stay with me because I want to veer off into two other items before tying them all in together. Recently the Democrat Party has hailed the rise of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who claims to be a Democratic Socialist. In watching her interviews she seems to be in far over her head. She has no clue how government works in certain situations and has openly admitted so. Her views on socialism completely ignores the past where the system has never worked and has led to the deaths of millions.

It becomes a question of understanding and learning about history. And history is not something that need re-written but needs documented and then dissected with discussions about what took place. Instead those writing history now want to correct it, eliminate things from history books they disagree with and place the focus of history more on the social constructs they want to discuss rather than to simply document what happened.

In the case of those who push for socialism it’s an item that they know nothing about yet claim to know everything. And even current history would make things clear if they would simply listen. Look at Venezuela where people are dying just trying to find food to eat or fighting over something as simple and easy to find here as toilet paper. Look at the poverty level people are living in in countries like Cuba. To just ignore learning the reality of what is taking place or what took place in countries that tried the system that failed is showing a high degree if chosen ignorance.

I’ll never forget when my son who was in grade school at the time came home and told me he was learning about the civil rights movement. I asked him if he’d been taught about the bill of rights and the constitution and he told me know he’d not heard about either one. My thought was how can you learn about civil rights, where an amendment was passed that changed the law, without first knowing what was being amended to? That seemed kind of backwards. It was focusing the education of students on the social justice causes rather than on the history that led to that point. Where was the education of the basics being taught before it was directed into more recent history?

Again, history is a recorded document of what took place, not what you think should have taken place, not what you think was right or wrong about what took place but, as Jack Webb on DRAGNET used to sy “Just the facts”. I know, a reference that young people won’t get but it works. The right or wrong of history is something that should be focused on as a part of the education of history but not the main focus.

Which leads me to my third point. Education. While watching the Fourth of July spectacle taking place in Washington, D.C., this year I was listening to them play “The 1812 Overture” by Tchaikovsky. I’d grown up knowing the music and also playing it in band in high school. I knew the works, though probably couldn’t name a lot of the titles, of composers like Chopin, Mozart, Bach, Brahms, Mussorgsky and Copeland. No they weren’t something I listened to constantly by I knew them and enjoyed them. I knew about artists like Rembrandt and Picasso and Renoir and Whistler and Wyeth. I knew about authors like Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy, Mark Twain, William Faulkner, George Orwell, Franz Kafka, John Steinbeck, Edgar Allan Poe and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

I realized that I knew all of these people by things I had learned in school in classes I had taken. I’d also learned about them by reading about them or enjoying their works on my own. But I realized that in schools today they aren’t being exposed to these things, books and music and art that helped shape our culture over time. Kids are far too involved in the current culture but have no inkling of the culture that led us to this point or the contributions that were made by these people to bet us here. I asked those who are teachers and friends of mine on Facebook if kids were being taught these things and shockingly the reply came back no.

I was told that kids today are being taught towards test rather than being educated. If these items were being taught to kids it wasn’t based on the curriculum approved by the board of education but by the teachers who worked it into their programs. One told me he played music before his class would start and at times the kids would ask about it and this would lead to discussions about the music. I found that incredibly wonderful but felt that it was too little. How can we expect children to grow up educated if the only goal is to get them past a test? Studying for a test is not absorbing knowledge. How can they be prepared for what lies ahead of them with no knowledge but plenty of test answers?

Diverse enough? I know a lot being talked about here. So let me try and bring my scattered thoughts together.

All of this made me think about what I’ve seen taking place over the last few years. I’ve seen students being taught valueless lessons on college campuses and paying through the nose for it. The basics that they need to learn to simply survive and to get a job are no longer the focus and social justices and feel good classes have taken their place. This will not prepare you on getting a job, knowing how to pay bills, knowing how to save money for the future or any of the day to day things that make up living in this world.

In addition to that the molly coddling of students has reached such a weird place that it seems they will leave college with expectations that will not follow them. I thought of the college where someone wrote te word “TRUMP” in chalk on a sidewalk and suddenly students felt that they need counseling because they had seen it. I thought about their need for safe spaces because they can’t cope with the political discussions in the world today. I thought about their sitting on sidewalks to scream at the sky because they weren’t happy with the outcome of the last election. I thought about the one college where by not calling someone by the pronoun they chose and instead calling them Mr., Mrs. or Miss could lead to you being kicked off the campus.

And while I was thinking about all of these things I combined those earlier items in my thoughts. While young people today are in need of counseling over chalked sidewalks, the kids of the past had to battle wars fresh out of college, travel across the ocean to this country in rooms packed with people or live in a wagon on the way west to deal with harsh land and harsh people. I thought about those who died at Pearl Harbor and what they went through, the sacrifices that they made and how they didn’t need safe spaces or counseling because someone disagreed with them. They truly suffered.

While our countries education standards continue to drop other countries are rising. And those countries are teaching those students the fundamentals of reading, writing and math and an appreciation of things like art and music. This is not the fault of the teachers but of a system that rewards with cash those schools that stick to the script and follow new social justice guidelines imposed by bureaucrats wanting to shape the minds of children for their causes rather than provide them with a well-rounded education. Indoctrination rather than education.

Seeing the results of this sort of education on display with people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez makes me fearful for what could come down the line in this country. When will someone stand up and say this is nuts, stop trying to mold our children with social items and teach them what they need to learn how to live in the real world. Teach them about budgets and mortgage payments. Teach them about culture of the past and how it led us to now rather than just about the here and now. Teach them how to read and appreciate the complexity of a well-crafted book rather than just the latest James Patterson novel.

I’m hoping that somewhere along the lines thing will change and that there will be some hope for future generations. At present I think there is more hope for those home schooled or sent to private schools than there are for those institutions that rely of federal funds to stay open. Those schools seem to be run by people less interested in education and more interested in tests. And the teachers at those schools, many who truly want to educate their kids, are suffering as well. They want to educate and not indoctrinate. But their hands are tied by the purse strings that fund those schools. Hopefully that will change but at the moment I’ll just continue to fear it won’t and do my part by teaching the kids I can have an effect one, those among my family members. I hope that the rest of you do the same.

YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO SAY ANYTHING ABOUT ME

I was told that the Parkland school kids protesting against guns were supportive of measures that have a broad appeal and then asked why I felt compelled to speak out against them. I was told about David Hogg “He doesn’t strike me as particularly radical, yet he seems to trigger many conservatives, for some reason.” I was also told that by saying anything about them it made those of us who disagree with them makes me “look like snowflakes” we accuse others of being. And then I was told that “They are TEENS”, as if that provides them blanket protection from being opposed or questioned.

Here’s the thing. If you choose to take center stage you place yourself on a pedestal from which you can be knocked off. If you go on national TV and blame a group like the NRA for the deaths at Parkland, an organization who had nothing to do with it, then you should be questioned. If you insult anyone different than you by saying "When your old-a** parent is like, ‘I don’t know how to send an iMessage,’ and you’re just like, ‘Give me the f*cking phone and let me handle it.’ Sadly, that’s what we have to do with our government; our parents don’t know how to use a f*cking democracy, so we have to" you’ve displayed the fact that you think far too much of yourself and don’t understand the way democracy works.

If you say “…the more stress and work I put on me, the more stress and work I can deal with" and then whine when someone talks about you not being able to get into the college you want by calling on advertisers to boycott that person’s show you’ve shown that you don’t deal well with the stress and feel that anyone who has a differing opinion should be silenced by your actions. If you say about a sitting Senator "What about the $176,000 you took for those 17 people’s blood?" you’ve changed your attack once more from the person who did the shooting to someone not involved and an organization (NRA) that had nothing to do with the shooting or shooter and thus has no blood on their hands; it’s political posturing and nothing more.

When safety issues are put in place for YOUR protection and you complain about them, things like clear back packs, and you complain that "Many students want their privacy” and then say "It’s unnecessary, it’s embarrassing for a lot of the students and it makes them feel isolated and separated from the rest of American school culture where they’re having essentially their First Amendment rights infringed upon because they can’t freely wear whatever backpack they want regardless of what it is" while ignoring the fact that your goal is to infringe on the Second Amendment right of others, you show you are a tool.

When you demand safer schools and then say now your school is "like a prison" since the shooting last month, with "hundreds of police officers" patrolling the campus and follow that up with "When you have all these new police officers and resource officers coming into schools, what I'm worried is going to happen is we're going to increase the school-to-prison pipeline, which disproportionately affects students of color and lower social status," and follow that with "What happens is politicians like Gov. Rick Scott are lobbied by the private prison industry, that are private prisons paid for by the government essentially to keep these people in. That's not how we're going to fix this situation" you’re showing you’re more of an activist than dismayed teen.

In using someone involved in a catastrophe of any kind to be your spokesman you put them into something long used by the left and described as the doctrine of infallibility. What this means is the person being used as a spokesperson cannot be questioned or their opinions discussed because to do so automatically results in your being called heartless, unsympathetic to their situation or unopen to dialogue…as you are shut down from speaking. Notice how we shouldn’t be saying anything about them because “They’re TEENS” or because they were traumatized by what happened to them.

I wondered about this traumatization. In the days following the shooting we were told how traumatized they were. Raw footage of a major media group (I think CNN but I’m not sure) coaching Hogg in what to say and allowed to repeat answers was released but explained away that it wasn’t coaching, that he was nervous about being on camera and upset about what had happened. At the same time we were provided footage shot inside the school in a closet done by David Hogg where he calmly questioned fellow students about what was going on and they discussed their thoughts on gun control. No one seemed upset. Later we were told that once he was released and home, he grabbed his camera and rode back to the school on his bike in order to shoot footage of what was transpiring there. Am I the only one who doesn’t think that sounds like someone traumatized?

Here’s another question to ponder. With the exception of one person, none of those who have come out at the marches and spoken on TV repeatedly were confronted by the shooter. Where are those who were shot and survived? Why are they not getting attention? Why aren’t we hearing from them? And why are those who disagree with Hogg and his fellow activists provided the same amount of media coverage? Or are they “just teens” who no one should bother to listen to? But the reality is that maybe, just maybe, they actually were traumatized. They were the real victims both that day and now that they're being forced to relive it over and over again because of fellow students who are basking in the spotlight.

One would think that these vocal gun opponents represented the majority of those teens at their school. Except that that isn’t the case. One teacher came forward and said that “I’ve had some students approach me privately to talk to me about it, but I should note that those student activists none of them were ever in any danger during this whole thing…none of them except for the one girl Samantha Fuentes.” She went on “But I have students in my class that were shot, but you don’t see them. They have the most personal experience of anyone except for that one girl.” She also said “There have been a lot of my students that have spoken to me about it privately, and they’ve told me word for word as well as paraphrasing that these kids don’t speak for all students.” And here’s one last thing, something that no one in the media is considering or talking about that she said: “Every single day since we’ve come back to school, I have kids out in the hall crying because of the emotional toll that it’s taken, and we haven’t started to heal yet, because we’re in the news every single day, and every single day there are helicopters circling overhead.” So the kids in the school are actually traumatized and reminded on a daily basis of what occurred as much because of their fellow students grabbing that spotlight as they were by the events that took place.

What about other protests? On Friday, March 30^th, students staged a walkout at Rockledge High School in Florida. Where were the cameras? Where was the big pocket money folks who paid for the march in D.C.? Where were the adult organizers who planned out the entire event from the loudspeakers to the stages to the press coverage to organizing celebrities to setting up hotel accommodations and the rest? Or did you think “just teens” set all of that up? That it was actually “just teens” that were able to pull all of that off even though most aren’t old enough to rent a car. Another group of teens planned a staged walkout in California in support of anti-abortion activists. How much attention did that garner?

Through it all there are several facts that are completely ignored. The homicide rate in the US has dropped drastically since the 1970s as this graph using FBI statistics shows. 

Research by James Alan Fox at Northeastern University shows there is not a growing trend in school shootings. His research states:

“Mass school shootings are incredibly rare events. In research publishing later this year, Fox and doctoral student Emma Fridel found that on average, mass murders occur between 20 and 30 times per year, and about one of those incidents on average takes place at a school.
“Fridel and Fox used data collected by USA Today, the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Report, Congressional Research Service, Gun Violence Archive, Stanford Geospatial Center and Stanford Libraries, Mother Jones, Everytown for Gun Safety, and a NYPD report on active shooters.
“Their research also finds that shooting incidents involving students have been declining since the 1990s.
“Four times the number of children were killed in schools in the early 1990s than today, Fox said.
“There is not an epidemic of school shootings,” he said, adding that more kids are killed each year from pool drownings or bicycle accidents. There are around 55 million school children in the United States, and on average over the past 25 years, about 10 students per year were killed by gunfire at school, according to Fox and Fridel’s research.”

http://news.northeastern.edu/2018/02/26/schools-are-still-one-of-the-safest-places-for-children-researcher-says/

Fox also stated that the activists demand to outlaw certain guns would have little to no effect saying “The thing to remember is that these are extremely rare events, and no matter what you can come up with to prevent it, the shooter will have a workaround,” adding that over the past 35 years, there have been only five cases in which someone ages 18 to 20 used an assault rifle in a mass shooting.

A February 22 article in NEW YORK MAGAZINE said:

“Schools in the United States are safer today than at any time in recent memory. Criminal victimization in America’s education facilities has declined in tandem with the nation’s collapsing crime rate. Meanwhile, as of 2013, the year after the Newtown massacre, mass shootings accounted for only 1.5 percent of all gun deaths in the United States, or 502 total fatalities.”

Leah Libresco at the Washington Post, a newspaper that tends to lean far left, after doing research said:

“…my colleagues and I at FiveThirtyEight spent three months analyzing all 33,000 lives ended by guns each year in the United States, and I wound up frustrated in a whole new way. We looked at what interventions might have saved those people, and the case for the policies I’d lobbied for crumbled when I examined the evidence...
“I researched the strictly tightened gun laws in Britain and Australia and concluded that they didn’t prove much about what America’s policy should be. Neither nation experienced drops in mass shootings or other gun related-crime that could be attributed to their buybacks and bans. Mass shootings were too rare in Australia for their absence after the buyback program to be clear evidence of progress. And in both Australia and Britain, the gun restrictions had an ambiguous effect on other gun-related crimes or deaths...
“By the time we published our project, I didn’t believe in many of the interventions I’d heard politicians tout. I was still anti-gun, at least from the point of view of most gun owners, and I don’t want a gun in my home, as I think the risk outweighs the benefits. But I can’t endorse policies whose only selling point is that gun owners hate them.”

There is also the fact that while gun ownership has dramatically increased gun homicides have rapidly fallen. Consider this graph that shows the factual difference between the two.

  

So why do people talk about David Hogg and the other teens who are supposedly just speaking their mind about gun control? Perhaps it’s because the things they are saying aren’t based on facts but on political sloganeering. Perhaps it’s because most of us have enough common sense to realize that it isn’t just a group of grass root teens who suddenly know how to do all the things needed to stage an organized march in D.C. Perhaps it's because it's all about activism and not about real concepts that could help. Instead maybe these teens are being used as pawns by someone else with a different agenda. Someone who knows that by saying anything against these teens they can portray you as being insensitive to their traumatized personas, at least the traumatization they portray. Just because you’re a teen does not provide you free reign to call others name, to insult people, to attempt to destroy a person’s career or to silence those who disagree with you. If you step onto the public stage know that there are some who will call you out.

No one is speaking out against common sense solutions to the problem of gun violence or disagreeing with those who ask for it. But those aren’t the issues that we hear anyone talking about. Speaking out against the NRA and gun owners gets better and more press coverage. You may make a comment somewhere about mental health issues but that’s not spotlight material and you know it. And if you choose to take center stage know that it makes you open to disagreement or to be called out on your claims. So feel free to focus more on creating slogans, raising your fist and chanting. It will allow you your 15 minutes of fame and when it’s all said and done you won’t be fanning the flames of revolution but just be another spark in the pages of history that died out once the controversy ended and the cameras stopped rolling.