Two stories from yesterday illustrating just how fucked we are.
1.
Girl who works for me said she was a member of the communist party. Thomas Jefferson? Entitled white dude who made up arbitrary rules that violate basic human decency. Capitalism? The greatest evil facing the world. Global warming? REAL and the reason for COVID because this is what happens when you kill the earth. Her "vision" and what she's "fighting for" is a society where everyone has exactly the same thing and people aren't valued for their ability to earn, but for contributions to art, music and literature. As soon as we can get rid of the capitalistic values and overthrow this archaic form of government for true communism, the world will be a better place.
This girl is incredibly intelligent. Educated. But when I asked her why she thought communism would work here when it has failed repeatedly she said the failures "didn't count" because they weren't properly applied. Russia? Capitalist tyrants took it over. China? Capitalist tyrants. Venezuala? Capitalist tyrants. Cuba? Capitalist tyrants. I asked her if it wasn't telling that in every instance where it had been attempted "capitalist tyrants" took it over and it crashed? That's because they did it wrong and it wouldn't happen here, they would do it right. I asked if she'd ever read Animal Farm. Sure, but that's capitalist propaganda. I asked her if Nancy Pelosi's $15,000 fridge and $1000 ice cream stock wasn't the perfect representation of a pig that was more equal than other pigs. She said that Nancy was just "living in the system" and if we could get rid of the capitalists, Nancy would gladly give all that up to live like the rest of us.
2.
My almost-daughter participated in a protest to get three professors at South Alabama fired. Their offense? A decade ago one dressed in a rented Confederate soldier costume, one dressed as Judge Roy Bean and the other posed in a photo with them at an on-campus Old South Halloween party.
She thinks they should be stripped of their jobs and branded as racists. She's adamant and passionate about it.
So I asked her if a photo of her mom surfaced where she was in blackface (there is one in her mom's high school annual where she was in a school play) or a picture of me came up from years ago where I was draped in the rebel flag (there are several from my teenage beach days in Gulf Shores, PCB, Ft. Walton) would she advocate for us to lose our jobs?
She said it would make her sad, but if photos like that were out in public she would. Because there's no place in the world for people "like that."
She's forgetting that she herself dressed as Pocohontas for a school function about nine years ago... that she herself painted swastikas on her forehead 'as a goof' after watching a Manson documentary.... that she herself put her hair in pigtails and sang Al Jolson's 'Mammy' when she was about five. But of course that's HER, so she can't be canceled. She doesn't think that way any longer, of course so I'm sure that doesn't count. She's also forgetting that she, herself, dressed as a confederate nurse and her dad came to school dressed as Robert E. Lee when she was in fourth grade for another school event.
Even still, she's petition for me and her mom to be fired from our jobs if we ever did anything in the past she found offensive.
That's why we're FUCKED. My generation understood that people were going to have different viewpoints and that we tolerated them and looked for compromise. Hers? You don't go along with whatever shifting norm they deem acceptable, you must be banished from society.
We are on the highway to hell. And the road is burning.