Tag: woke

Two years later

By Steve Woodward

While generally skeptical about so-called resolutions prompted by one month bleeding into another, I nonetheless resolve to torment hypocrites and Marxists (Democrats) as never before in 2023.

What other choice do we have? Anthony Fauci is retiring but his legacy — gain-of-function, fear, masking, boosters — is not going away. In fact, it is going to places heretofore uncontemplated. Vaccinated sheep (citizens) we are told now are more vulnerable to upcoming “variants” of the Wuhan virus. And pay no attention to vaccinated healthy young adults becoming ill or dying “suddenly”. 

The blank canvas that is 2023 should not be frittered away at the hands of status quo Republicans. The battle in the U.S. House of Representatives to name its speaker reinforces a pressing need to deflect establishment forces. Our Founding Fathers did not create their framework to limit conflict within a party; they envisioned a battlefield upon which bold ideas and deep passion would overwhelm hypocrisy and political fraudsters. 

Were we to summon a fraction of the determination that drove the Founders just think what we might accomplish. Locally, we would create a coalition to insure that a drag show never would darken our community again. We would direct our school board to eradicate gender grooming and race theory from public education. And we would challenge our county commissioners to marginalize the county board of health — over which it presides — so that it never again intrudes on public education by recommending school closures, masking and subjecting children to experimental mRNA injections.

But we also must stand resolute against purveyors of revisionist history as we approach the second anniversary of the unity rally of January 6 in Washington, where your correspondent traveled to chronicle what would unfold. We know many brothers and sisters who came and went without so much as raising their voices an octave, while raising objections that D.C. government chose to limit rest facilities apparently in an effort to disperse the “mobs” of seniors, families and young Republicans. The choice was clear: urination or defend the nation. 

Apart from the planted, scripted disrupters who raged into the Capital two years ago, those who merely showed up are now, two years on, still sobered by what our nation looked like after the crowds went home and the Biden Administration ascended. Where we are in 2023 affirms that our motivation to assemble in Washington on that fateful January day in 2021 was prescient.

To the extent that a few hundred people swelled into the Capitol we now see how that modest demonstration pales in comparison to the trampling and burning down of societal norms in the aftermath. We might ask, where was the outrage on that January afternoon amid news that the lone fatality was an unarmed military veteran (Ashli Babbitt) who was gunned down in cold blood by a Capitol police officer? Why does January 6 merit a “commission”? Where are the commissions denouncing violence on America’s streets that, by comparison, make that citizens’ rally look like a county fair? Innocents who participated that day still rot in D.C. jail cells charged with taking selfies. But who was doing the plundering of our democracy in reality? Facebook and Twitter, of course. When will those digital accomplices be shackled and sent away?

Two years on, the Left is waging its own insurrection. Look no further than an essay I endured in a recent, Dec. 31-Jan. 1 weekend edition of The Wall Street Journal. It is worth noting that, in order to fill up the sections in weekend Journals, editors give voice to authors who would prefer to be published in The New York Times. The Journal helps them audition. 

Zachary Karabell, who is the founder of the ominously named Progress Network, wrote to praise 2022 as as year in which “far more went right … than most of us recognize”. One can only imagine from which penthouse or city brownstone the author was perched as he typed fervently to remind us that 2022 was the year “climate technology was supercharged” by $400 billion allocated through Biden’s absurd Inflation Reduction Act. (In China, the equivalent would be the Oppression Reduction Edict). 

Mr. Karabell is positively giddy in reminding readers that voter suppression laws failed (but misses the point that no such laws existed). Without a hint of irony, he claims “voters surged to the polls in (2022) despite fears (expressed only by left wing media) that laws passed in states such as Georgia and Texas would lead to voter suppression.” 

The illogical Mr. Karabell goes on in his rambling essay to praise wage gains for citizens he disparages as “workers” — up by 6% in 2022 — “that did not (emphasis added) for most of the year keep pace with inflation.” Not to worry, he writes, “inflation moderates”. Just as urban crime waves sweeping our nation moderate. Some nights are less deadly than others. 

2022 was a train wreck but, apparently, Mr. Karabell blissfully travelled on a parallel track.

The reliably moderate Gerard Baker, in his weekly Journal column, tried to ease into a new year by calling for an ideological truce. “Can we start to work to eradicate the binary mind-set that has seized our thinking about the kind of society and world we think we should live in?” Baker asks.

He answers his own question near the end of the column — as if the more he kept typing the more he was talking himself out of the premise. (As editor emeritus, Baker should impulsively have send the column back for a re-write). 

Baker continues: herein is “the great conundrum for the more skeptical among us: Advances in the lot of humanity have rarely come from calls for moderation and humility, but from true believers — zealots who convinced enough people that the choice they faced really was a binary one between good and evil.”

Citizens who endure wages ravaged by bad economic policy, and law and order dysfunction driven by the “woke”, deserve our fierce defense of their liberties, no matter the cost.

If parents with children in government run indoctrination centers (schools) must become zealots to reform the system, let them do so boldly. If mechanical ballot tabulation presents a binary choice between integrity and fraud, we must go full binary to expose the Left. If U.S. border security is de-emphasized even as Ukrainian border security is funded by an American Congress to the tune of $100 billion; if medical tyranny advanced by thinly veiled lies threatens livelihoods, mental health and the well being of healthy young adults; if we observe the normalization of transgenderism and the rejection of Judeo-Christian values in our communities; if the very foundation of American exceptionalism is crumbling under the iron boot of the Left’s Great Reset in pursuit of a one-world order; well, then what?

With grudging apologies to Mr. Baker, the task is not to eradicate a mind-set. The task is to eradicate enemies within. 

Run, if you dare

By Steve Woodward

Many citizens have in recent months found themselves grappling with unusual impulses. Such as: an overwhelming desire to punch Anthony Fauci.

Among these widespread urges, one in particular has caught many off guard. “By golly, I’m running for school board.”

Some in Moore County have thought about it simply because a board seat is reserved. You do not have to wait in line for it. In intense heat. Bone-chilling cold. Soaking rain. If you’re just some taxpayer with a piece of your mind scribbled on paper, you have grown weary of being told to line up, mask up and shut up. You figure a school board position might also grant immunity from the threat of physical removal by Moore County Schools security officers (although, I’m guessing, a few thought about dragging out David Hensley by the ankles after he recently outed their woeful lack of active-shooter training).

Beyond avoidance of harassment, many citizens across the nation have thrown their names into the ring as school board candidates. Others have enlisted hundreds to form community watchdog groups to monitor board activities, call out hypocrisy and, when necessary, tee up lawsuits.

For the rest of us now awakened to the ill intent running deep within the bowels of public education, we know that, short of running for a board seat, we must become more vigilant, ask more questions, demand greater transparency. That starts with paying attention to who is running in this very election cycle.

But I contend it must go further than that. Whether we support or oppose a particular candidate, what really matters is that citizens force these candidates to put an end to the platitudes and start talking straight, laying out detailed solutions to problems, both readily solved and complex.

Because once elected, some board members become masters of evasion, half-truths and data manipulation and, worse, they get better at it as time goes by. Exhibits A, A, A and A are named Caldwell, Carter, Dennison and Thompson.

But let’s say we give them the benefit of the doubt for a moment. When they were candidates did anybody ask them the questions I want to ask them, or the questions I will continue to ask the latest roster of candidates vying for two at-large seats in the May primary?

Probably not. We settled for, “We can do better and we will,” when queried about declining student performance scores on the fundamentals — reading and math. We settled for, “Why, won’t you just look at those graduation rates!”

But who is asking: Are we hiring the right teachers? Are we ever firing some of them based on tepid student performances? Who is responsible for learning outcomes if not teachers? Or, are the teachers caught in the middle?

Were they handcuffed by Moore County Schools and its dictatorial superintendent, the infamous and now departed Dr. Bob Grimesey? Or by the state Department of Instruction and feckless Superintendent Catherine Truitt? Or by the radical Left dominated state Board of Education, led by a Black Lives Matter militant?

None of the aforementioned wish to elevate your children. They desire to own your children. This being the reality of our time, I have no choice but to make candidates uncomfortable. In fact, I have a responsibility.

Rollie Sampson, “unaffiliated” at-large candidate: During a March 19 forum you said Moore County schools are declining because we have defunded essentials such as teachers’ aids. Who defunded them? The answer is, the defunders are the current and past board members supporting your candidacy. This suggests you have an ulterior agenda. What is it?

Robin Calcutt, “Republican” at-large candidate: Your time employed as a Moore Schools administrator saw you overseeing planning, accountability and research. That’s a lot of responsibility. Yet, this time frame aligns with a breathtaking decline in student performance scores. As a school board member, would you undo what you did as an administrator?

Ken Benway, lifelong Republican and retired active duty military: You have noted that security on high school campuses, particularly Pinecrest High School, is marginal, that students eat lunch in their cars with doors locked. What steps would you take to dismantle the Moore County Schools team of school resource officers (aka, a private police force answering to the Superintendent)? And then what?

Shannon Davis, Republican, Moore County parent and novice candidate: You are a staunch opponent of inappropriate books in our school media centers, and “woke” curricula. Please explain your game plan to systematically cleanse libraries of gender dysphoric content and a curricula of lesson plans that trample Christian values and American exceptionalism. How do you overcome the establishment as one person?

Pauline Bruno, longtime Republican Party volunteer, and retired career school teacher: You advocate for eliminating digital learning for young grade schoolers, and returning textbooks and paper-and-pencil activities. It is a noble but challenging goal. Please propose a blueprint that would activate this transition, addressing the inevitable costs of unwinding the digital programs and restoring traditional learning tools to classrooms? If this is desirable but not cost effective, there will be pushback.

Class dismissed.