Neo-Jacobins

Image by Richard Duijnstee from Pixabay 

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids and my great-grandkids — the Stickies — to advise them and haunt them after they become grups or I'm deleted.

Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, and/or grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering

About 

Glossary 

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlerreader

"Terror is only justice: prompt, severe, and inflexible. It is then an emanation of virtue." -Maximilian Robespierre  


Dear Grandstickies & Great-Grandstickies (& Gentlereaders),

According to Wikipedia: "Today, the political terms Jacobin and Jacobinism are used in a variety of senses."

"...it is sometimes used as a pejorative for radical left-wing revolutionary politics, especially when it exhibits dogmatism and violent repression."

Just so.

[Wait-wait-wait. Let's try something new. State the point of this missive before circumnavigating the universe to get to your destination, the way they recommend in English 101. How's about a thesis statement?] 

Harumph! I can't tell you how disappointed I am that you don't appreciate the charming literary devices I employ to express the wit and wisdom of a garrulous geezer... 

[You don't actually have a point do you? You just start writing and hope that...]

My point is that the American Wokies aren't conservative, middle of the road, or progressive. They're not Republicrats or Depublicans. They are the Neo-Jacobins.

[What happened to liberals?]

Good question.

[Hold up a sec', I can't argue with dogmatic, but as for violent repression...]

If you're canceled and lose your job, perhaps your career, because the Intersectional Inquisition finds you guilty of heresy I'm guessing you're gonna feel violently repressed.

[Well, maybe, but it's not as if they literally... ]

Yeah? Talk to a small businessperson in downtown Wherever, USA. Someone that was working 16 hour days trying to make a buck when their dream was destroyed by a roving band of postmodern Hitler Youths claiming to be antifascists.    

Do you think they're grateful for all the free time they now have?    

The American Revolution, in my semi-humble opinion, turned out reasonably well. The French Revolution, which culminated in the dick-tatership of Napoleon, not so much.

America's homegrown (Neo)Jacobins don't think the American Revolution turned out well at all, that it's past time to burn everything down — metaphorically, literally, or both — and start over.

Some background for the historically/memorically challenged if you please. 

The French kicked their king to the curb shortly after helping us to kick the king of England's minions out of the colonies that were the beta-version of the USA.

The original Jacobins — the Society of the Jacobins, Friends of Freedom and Equality — was a gang political club that rose to power when France's fractious factions were fighting for turf.

Original Jacobins (OJs) were easily identifiable because of their gang colors. They wore blood-red capes and cloaks with guillotines embroidered on the back.

[You made that up.]

Yes, Dana, I did. But I am working on a business plan for a store called Guillotines-R-Us — heads will roll.

You've probably heard of the Reign of Terror and the Jacobin's most famous shot-caller, Robespierre? Eventually, even he was deemed unworthy of heading the club. 

According to Wikipedia, the final score was 16,594 executions and another 10,000 or so dead at the hands of their captors in the prisons they had been locked up in without a trial.

[Wait-wait-wait. The Neo-Jacobins have only decapitated a statue or three. How can you compare them to the OJs? And most Wokies don't embrace, at least officially, the break and burn strategery occasionally employed at the "mostly peaceful protests."]  

True, instead they like to blame the ongoing violence on Daffy Donald sending in forces to keep the mostly peaceful protestors armed with laser pointers, rocks, bottles, hammers, fireworks, Molotov cocktails — and lately, guns — from burning down federal facilities that the local gummits won't or can't protect.

I wrote a note seeking comment on the protests from Uncle Joe, who is still hiding from Covid-19 (and Chris Wallace) in his basement, and attached it to a rock that I tried to toss through a basement window in keeping with the spirit of the times.

[Nuh-uh! You're lying again.]

It bounced off, armored glass I'm guessin'. 

I also asked the IUPPPP&PPVTTOT for a comment (whose offices were recently burned to the ground by a splinter group) but they didn't respond. 

It's getting really hard to concentrate. There's a helicopter in Mr. Cranky's neighborhood that's so loud it sounds like it's hovering directly over my house so I'm going to close with a quote from an editorial written in the Washington Post by the Rev. E.D. Mondaine, president of the Portland, Oregon NAACP.

"Unfortunately, 'spectacle' is now the best way to describe Portland's protests. Vandalizing government buildings and hurling projectiles at law enforcement draw attention — but how do these actions stop police from killing black people? What are Antifa and other leftist agitators achieving for the cause of black equality?"

Well, gotta run, someone's at the door and I'm expecting an Amazon delivery from... 

CRASH!

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

Share this column or give me a thumb (up or in my eye) below. If my work pleases you you can buy me some cheap coffee with your debit/credit card.    

Although I'm not crazy about social media (too cranky) please feel free to comment/like/follow/cancel/troll me on my Facebook page.

Cranky don't tweet.

         

 



















       

Fireflies

Image by ĐÔ NGUYỄN from Pixabay

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids and my great-grandkids — the Stickies — to advise them and haunt them after they become grups or I'm deleted.

Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, and/or grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering

About 

Glossary 

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana —  A Gentlereader

"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter - 'tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning."  

                                                                                              -Mark Twain

Dear Grandstickies & Great-Grandstickies (& Gentlereaders),

What does a columnist and beloved grandfather write about when he/she/they is/are suffering from GNT (grim news fatigue)?

Fireflies.

[Fireflies? Why?]

So I'd have an excuse to write that flocks of flaming fireflies are fitfully flitting through the fields of my fiefdom this fine year.

[You don't have a fiefdom, and flocks...]

But I do have a poetic license and a song in my heart.

[Right.]

Anyways, Dana, here in the mountains of Ohio the fireflies are so numerous this year that at first I thought the IAFF-NAR (International Association of Fireflies, North American Region) was holding their annual convention in the thriving metropolis of Cleveland. 

I'm embarrassed to say that it didn't occur to me, till I did a bit of googlin', that this year's convention was canceled due to the Wuhan flu.

[Racist!]

Are you familiar with the Spanish flu, Dana?

[Are you referring to the 1918 influenza pandemic, actual origin unknown?]

I am indeed. The one that according to the CDC killed at least 50,000,000 H. sapiens while a world war was going on. But we know where our somewhat wimpy by comparison pandemic started, even the current emperor of China admits that.

[I see what you did there...]

Yeah, me too, I got sucked into talking about grim news again. Let's get back to lightning bugs...

[Hold up a sec', a bit of column housekeeping has to be dealt with. We're getting letters from people wanting to know what's up with your latest bizarre literary device, he/she/they.]

Diversity and Inclusion, of course.


When I was taught the fundamentals of reading and writing by Sister Mary McGillicuddy back in the Black&White Ages when the Patriarchy reigned virtually unchallenged, I was told that...

Well, here's a quote from Wikipedia. "The generic he serves as a pronoun whose antecedent is any noun denoting a social category under which both sexes fall: A good student always does his homework."

S'ter Mary, not woke, and thus unaware that this convention had been concocted by the Illuminati's Committee For the Suppression of Women Through Language Control, Subcommittee For English (CFSWTLC-SFE), taught us this was just a way to keep things simple.

Also, that they was reserved for plural uses. Thus: Good students always do their homework.

Once the women's liberation movement of the sixties picked up steam all sorts of people began substituting she for he to protest "male chauvinism," an oft-heard phrase at the time.

"Activism" — of minimal effort and minimal consequence — was just as popular then as it is now.


Now that the Wokies have set the college campuses on fire and the fire is spreading rapidly, pronouns have become a hooge deal because of pronoun perpetrated verbal violence inflicted upon the LGBTQ (+ this, that, and even that other thing) community.

However, many of my fellow geezers and geezerettes find that using they/them instead of he/him just looks and feels... wrong. (I'm tempted to point out that old people can be such a pain in the bum but that would be ageist.)

But with the exception of Satan's minions — white, heterosexual, cisgender, male geezers — we have to include even the Boomers in a healthy, tossed salad of diversity and inclusion to replace the high-fat, melting pot of patriarchy.   

Thus, he is for the traditionalists, she is for the formerly hip and everyone that identifies as a woman, and they is for everyone else. Hence, he/she/they. No one's left out; no one's self-esteem takes a hit.

[Wait a minute... aren't you one of Satan's minions?]

Could we get back to fireflies, please? My word allocation is running dangerously low.


I realize that my dear Stickies and gentlereaders will find this hard to believe but when I went a-googlin' to try and find out why there are so many fireflies in the Ohio mountains this year I was presented with contradictory information.

Bottom line: I found nothing about Ohio specifically but I discovered that nationwide lightning bug populations are in decline — unless they're not.

A couple of quotes from Christopher Heckscher, an epidemiologist at Delaware State University in a USA Today article, Fireflies are dying out because people are destroying their habitat.

"If fireflies are disappearing..." My emphasis.

"...the quantitative data isn't there yet to express population decline in terms of numbers of the insect..."

Since the article was published, Dr. Heckscher has accepted a position at the World Health Organization.

[Fakes news! You made that up!] 

Yup, I sure did.

Hey, I'm outta here. I'm going for a walk, lots of fireflies out tonight.

Poppa loves you,
Have an OK day

Share this column or give me a thumb (up or in my eye) below. If my work pleases you you can buy me some cheap coffee with your debit/credit card.    

Although I'm not crazy about social media (too cranky) please feel free to comment/like/follow/cancel/troll me on my Facebook page.

Cranky don't tweet.

   

Defund the Teachers!

Image by Roy Harryman from Pixabay 

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids and my great-grandkids — the Stickies — to advise them and haunt them after they become grups or I'm deleted.

Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, and/or grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering

About 

Glossary 

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlerreader

"We keep hearing that black lives matter but they only seem to matter when that helps politicians to get votes... The other 99% of black lives destroyed by people who are not police do not seem to attract nearly as much attention in the media." -Dr. Thomas Sowell


Dear Grandstickies & Great-Grandstickies (& Gentlereaders),

Defund the Teachers! I don't really mean it but since hyperbole rules nowadays a cranks gotta do what a cranks gotta do to get a little attention. 

After all, in an era of "alternative facts" (HT: Kellyanne Conway) wherein defund the police doesn't necessarily mean defund the police who am I to resist substituting slogans and sound bites for substance?

While I admit that Defund the Teachers! is hardly in the same league as a world-class slogan like Black Lives Matter it's (hopefully) an attention-getter and might snag me an extra reader or two.

[So you're admitting the title of this week's column is clickbait?] 

Is it, Dana? Is it just manipulative clickbait or is it clever SEO? Potato or potahto? Low road or high road? After all...

[What's SEO? No wait, we'll come back to that. Are you saying black lives don't matter?]

Of course not, black lives obviously matter. That's one of the reasons the slogan is a work of genius. Who in their right mind can argue otherwise? Who is arguing otherwise? How can you argue with a statement that any sane person accepts and simultaneously means different things to different people?

Even the international organization called the BLM Global Network has an agenda of sweeping generalizations bereft of specifics.

For example: "We disrupt the Western prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and villages that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable."

Alrighty then... But what, specifically, should The Fedrl Gummit, the state and local summits, and non-black fellow Americans do to improve the lot of African-Americans?

[That's not the point! The point is that...]

My point is that protests and taking down monuments, legally or by the mob, is a lot of "sound and fury, signifying nothing." I repeat myself, what, specifically, needs to be done?


As to clickbait and SEO: one man's/woman's/person's clickbait is another M/W/Ps search engine optimization. 

If you're not familiar with this term it simply refers to the tricks, tools, and techniques used to get you to find and/or click on one of the literally billions of choices available.

For example, low-rent techniques like the feeble ones I sometimes use, such as clickbatish title above (Defund the Teachers!) that's repeated in bold early on in the column and then sprinkled throughout the column to get the attention of the Goog.

As I've mentioned previously, and I'm mentioning again because the Crank is all about public service, a small but lucrative industry exists whose purpose is to find ways to get you to click on links and/or get the Goog to offer up said links when you go a-googlin'.

The Goog always wins by monetizing the data it's always collecting. The Goog never sleeps but you get some free software and services. That's fair, right?


Now, as to the title of this column, Defund the Teachers! Ever wonder how the Wokies have managed to turn American English into Newspeak (see Orwell, George: 1984) and place brainwashed, smartphone addled, whiny tattletales in every profession and on every corner so quickly?

America's education system, which consists of:

Overpriced colleges and universities, top-heavy with "critical" social justice administrators and compliance officers, as well as fake scholars teaching fake subjects.

"Mom and dad, I've decided to major in Feminist Geography." (If you only click on only one link in this missive, click on this one.)

And the schools of education staffed with "activists" cranking out woke primary and secondary school teachers for America's, um... slightly less than world-class public school system.

Which brings us back to Black Lives Matter.

[Huh? Has your brain always worked like this?]


With all due respect, and given the following, I'd like to make a specific suggestion.

BLM has been criticized because of how it spent 1.8 million dollars worth of donations in 2019.

(25% went to salaries, benefits, and payroll taxes, 46% to consultant fees, and the rest went to small grants, accounting, bank fees, information tech, insurance, and legal fees.)

Since the murder of George Floyd, BLM has received a flood of donations from both personal and corporate sources that are still pouring in.

Given that nationwide there are better than 1,000,000 kids on waiting lists for charter schools, many of which are located in underserved, poor/minority neighborhoods, why not spend some of that money on supporting or opening charter schools in neighborhoods where black kids are trapped in failed public schools?

Poppa loves you,
Have an OK day

Share this column or give me a thumb (up or in my eye) below. If my work pleases you you can buy me some cheap coffee with your debit/credit card.    

Although I'm not crazy about social media (too cranky) please feel free to comment/like/follow/cancel/troll me on my Facebook page.

Cranky don't tweet.