Pop Quiz
What iconic political activist wrote: “Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.”?
What President said: “The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.”?
What military leader said: “Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.”?
What world leader said: “I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.”?
Answers at the end of the post.
In 1944 Bing Crosby recorded the Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer hit song Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive. The perfect song for the emergence of the world from the Great Depression. Despite 16 years of worldwide anguish post-war America was marked by great hope and optimism.
That optimism has been replaced by intolerance and hostility. The renowned historian Alec Baldwin has opined, we are close to a pre-Civil War situation. He is emblematic of the wedge that has been driven into the body politic…and no doubt a contributor to the Luigi Mangione GoFundMe tin cup.
IN THE BEGINNING
It is difficult to identify a specific date that society replaced rose colored glasses with half-empty glasses. Nonetheless it is painfully obvious that we are living in a world overrun with pessimism and dystopia. We are afflicted with politicians, as well as social and “news” media, that are uniformly divisive, spreading fear and loathing and pitting demographic groups against each other.
The present Hatfield-McCoy mentality may have achieved lift-off in the Frankfurt school in the 1970’s. What emerged from those anarchists is a Marxist inspired “intellectual” movement known as critical theory. It was argued by the nihilist theorists that “scientific knowledge must not be pursued as an end in itself without reference the goal of human emancipation.” It was based on the argument that society is divided between the oppressors and the oppressed, the haves and the have-nots.
A subset of critical theory is known as Critical Legal studies. This destabilizing concept was officially introduced at a 1977 conference in, not surprisingly, Wisconsin and migrated post haste to the DEIvy League law schools including, again not surprisingly, Harvard. When Harvard embraced the concept it gave it a certain cachet based on the widespread misconception that the Crimson faculty is the paragon of legal scholarship, all evidence to the contrary. The law could now be used to liberate the “oppressed.”
AND SO IT CAME TO PASS
At warp speed the negativity infected the administration of Jimmy Carter. His fatalistic “Malaise” speech was an attack on the “self-indulgence” and “consumption” of Americans. He asked for individual and collective sacrifice to help solve America’s problems. He used words like “crisis” and “sacrifice” throughout and provided a litany of tragedies that had befallen the US. While in office he also predicted that the world would run out of oil by the year 2000. The only good thing about his Chicken Little tenure was the decisive election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Reagan was the polar opposite of Carter and there was an eight year return to optimism.
In 2008 the American people did something that many thought might never happen…we elected a Black President. It was a collective national effort to restore the high ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence. Sadly Obama was neither intellectually nor experientially qualified to hold high office. He ran on the theme of “Hope and Change” which was never adequately defined. Shortly before his inauguration he told his supporters that we were seven days from the “fundamental transformation of America”. As this promise/threat came with no grand policies and programs it was merely his vainglorious vision of the world according to Barry, but the tone suggested strongly that America circa 2008 was fundamentally flawed.
It became clear early in his term that closing the racial divide in our country was not a priority…in fact he made it worse. It was clear he viewed American Blacks as “oppressed.” In addition he worked to destabilize the Middle East and he foisted Obamacare on our already overburdened healthcare system. Obama’s third term, under the uninspired leadership of his Charlie McCarthy, in the person of McCarthy’s pal, Mortimer Snerd, aka Joe Biden was equally divisive. Biden was critical theory on steroids.
Polls taken during the 2024 election cycle found that voters believed that America’s future was likely to be worse than the current state of the country. What drove this pessimistic view was the fact that the people had been bombarded with depressing stories about the climate, white supremacy, fascism, police violence and the scourge that is MAGA. The world has been divided between the oppressors and the oppressed as critical theory took hold in our educational institutions.
AND BEHOLD
Critical race theory (CRT) officially debuted in 1989, at the first annual Workshop on Critical Race Theory. It suppresses any suggestion that we have made progress since the passage of the 13th Amendment. Rather CRT practitioners indoctrinate young Blacks with the now debunked 1619 Project, would have them believe that the entire American experiment was based on slavery and that white supremacy is alive and well across the land. CRT is based on the premise that Whites are oppressors and have been for centuries. The “murder” of George Floyd was seen as the logical conclusion of the disingenuous CRT teaching. Reactive riots, mostly peaceful or otherwise, were excused by our self-identified illuminati.
The LGBT community plays the “oppressed” role early and often. This has been exacerbated by the growing transgender issue. 80 percent of Americans oppose biological men competing in women;s sporting events. Yet this majority has been gifted a made up word to describe their oppressive behavior…transphobia. There is no evidence that oppressive straight Americans have assaulted or murdered transgender people. But there are a number of cases where transgender individuals have engaged in murder complete with word salad manifestos defending their behavior. The drumbeat of perceived transphobia may have triggered such violence. The Matthew Shepard murder was perverted to suggest that gay men were “at risk”…until it was determined that he was the victim of a drug deal gone bad. It is an article of faith that the entire LGBT community is oppressed.
Another group of oppressed Americans is those people who are described as MAGA supporters. Let’s Make American Great Again had been introduced by Ronald Reagan during the 1980 election. There is no evidence that his use of the slogan caused any mostly peaceful rioting. Or even attacks on automobiles. The only similarity is that Reagan was shot by a deranged Jodie Foster fan and Trump was shot by a deranged Democrat. People wearing MAGA hats are attacked and denied service at restaurants because we are now a society that has embraced intolerance and hatred, driven by a self-imposed pessimism about the future. A recent poll found that over 50% of young Democrats believe that killing Trump would be politically justified. Taylor Lorenz has been publicly swooning over Luigi Mangione, calling him a “morally good man.” Any suggestion that she has a functioning brain has been kicked to the curb.
The oppressor/oppressed paradigm is a staple with our news and social media and the Democratic Party Our nation has been turned into an ignorant mob of intolerant name callers and, in many cases, that mob has resorted to violence. However, any suggestion that our Jewish citizens are oppressed is greeted with AstroTurf rent-a-mobs with preprinted signs compliments of Soros funded groups.
At a recent event three senior citizen protestors were carrying an impressive sign demanding that we “End the Kakistocracy”. Some snarky reporter had the temerity to ask what the sign meant. In a confirmation that they were products of American public schools they admitted that they had no clue what the sign meant. But they did have a printed document explaining the meaning of the word Kakistocracy which they read metronomically with no comprehension. Visitors to this site are well acquainted with the word.
No one is more oppressed than those who refuse to learn.
Answers to the pop quiz
What iconic political activist wrote: “Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.”? Helen Keller writing with crystal vision
What President said: “The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.”? Franklin Roosevelt
What military leader said: “Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.”? Colin Powell
What world leader said: “I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.”? Winston Churchill