Public discourse has become a middle school lunchroom
I was a substitute teacher for two school years while switching careers and going back to college to get my teaching degree. Upon graduating as a qualified teacher, I went from making eighty bucks a day as a sub sandwich to…when I allow my emotions to take over it really feels like I made less because a lot more was taken from me. Subs don’t have to lesson plan or grade or really do much more than press play on the DVD player. Now I’m left with the painful reality of missing teaching every day of the week while I enjoy a comfortable salary and a drastically lower stress level. Life’s full of odd and unexplainable conundrums.
As a teacher, I’d often frequent the lunchroom, walking around and socializing with students because I can’t not be invested in their lives and them as people. One time, a typically friendly and outgoing young lady was giving me the cold shoulder as she entered my classroom. I asked her “why the beef?” and she responded “I saw you talking to a girl at lunch that I hate”. I asked her to reflect on the fact that while I was a friendly teacher, I was not friends with students and therefore not subject to their complex social structures and rules. She did and immediately returned to liking me as a person because kids aren’t typically as susceptible to long-term grudges as adults.
I’ve often said a few positive things that I’d like to think at least approximate wisdom regarding teaching. One is that I prefer teaching children in children bodies over being coworkers with children in adult bodies. There’s less pretense and subterfuge in the teaching world. What you see is what you get. Maturity is not so much conferred upon adulthood as the obnoxious traits of youth are honed to perfection. Another is that for an extrovert who despises routine, teaching gives amazing opportunities for emotional satisfaction as kids will throw something different at you every hour of the day. I can’t imagine how introverted teachers who crave routine work this job without copious amounts of drugs and alcohol. Also, you can be a friendly boss without being walked all over and taken advantage of.
And now for the negative. Kids don’t know nuance. They love or hate everything. Everything they see and experience is the best or the worst of something. You can’t be neutral or have no opinion about something. They are cliquish and tribal. Pettiness and snark are encouraged and rewarded. The way they break themselves into groups in the lunchroom show all of these statements to be true. The great thing about all this is that they are kids and have the excuse of being a kid. They can unlearn bad habits and develop maturity, so long as they steer clear of Twitter.
Other social media outlets have the same rottenness eating them alive as Twitter, but that little bird is the worst offender. Don’t believe me? Have you ever seen a CNN or Fox News anchor say “The President Facebooked today”? It really makes me feel gross for our culture that respected journalists are to be heard every day of the week saying “Here are some Tweets from our political leaders” but that’s where we are. Twitter is the place for public discourse. One wonders if an amendment to the Constitution will someday be written and officially codified into law by being Tweeted. With the devolution of our collective reading skills, 280 characters might actually be considered loquacious enough to change the law of the land at that point in time.
When a president, party leader, or otherwise self-important person takes umbrage at something another person with an equal to or greater than bloated sense of self-importance is saying or doing, they don’t reach for the telephone or have a face-to-face with that person anymore because healthy conflict resolution and treating others with the dignity due a fellow image bearer of God is like, sooooooo exhausting and we’ve all got important binge watching to do. So they symbolically turn from the face of the person with whom they’ve symbolically butted heads, literally search for a press microphone, or pull up Twitter on their phone, and say something to the masses of people watching the conflict and jonesing for a snarky rhetorical slam dunk that doesn’t really solve anything other than to satisfy their itch for a dose of sarcasm and egg on the other person involved in the conflict to respond in kind. It’s brave and courageous, really; facing away from your opponent and pulling a metaphorical “Can you believe dis guy ova heeere?” to people not part of the problem or the solution. Lewis “Chesty” Puller (look it up) would step aside and bow in deference.
Twitter is the forum for public discourse now. It’s not even the town square because people who had beef and took it to the town square when town squares, stocks, horse carts, and tuberculosis were a thing would actually talk face-to-face in the town square. They might have occasionally gotten a little rowdy to pass the current hair bun and skinny jeans vibe check but they also got things done and I have a lot of respect for people who went through life without indoor plumbing. Twitter and its owners are, I’d imagine, tickled pink by the power their medium wields. Some goober with a halfway clever handle who doesn’t like what a creator of content they don’t consume that wasn’t meant for them can find said content problematic, cancel that other person, and remove their ability to get a job, go out into public and buy food without being hassled, or sign up for so much as a library card before the news day has finished its cycle. Politicians recognized this power and had to get into the mix. It’s insane. I’m not a Republican or a Democrat because I am a man of integrity and conviction and thereby refuse to believe that political party affiliation confers intelligence and moral righteousness. Republicans and Democrats are just as guilty as the other guy at using Twitter to add to the divide and aggregated hatred that’s turning this country into a tragic caricature of itself. Here’s just one example that came on my radar and will serve until the next one comes along in t-minus thirty seconds.
She of the mighty caboose; Mrs. Nicki Minaj ran afoul of the Left by Tweeting that you should pray and think on the decision to get the vaccine and not be bullied into it. She included an unverified story about a cousin’s sister’s friend hearing about a guy in a different country getting elephantiasis in his testicles and losing his bride to his newfound struggle with impotence. Her anecdotal and outlandish claim notwithstanding, you really should think for yourself and pray, even when a government is harassing you to not think about aforementioned decision in terms of it being about freedom, but about safety. Ben Franklin is dead and that quote about essential liberty in trade for a little safety died with him, I guess.
Tucker Carlson agreed with her that you should pray, think for yourself, and not be bullied, saying as much on his show. Nicki appreciated his agreement and Tweeted the clip from his show. Well, the Left doesn’t like being called bullies, particularly when they’re busy bullying you into a decision you’re too stupid to make for yourself. So the Left had a Twitter meltdown. Seems like they’re working the Twitter meltdowns in shifts at this point. So they decided to bully Nicki..
Besides wielding imbalanced power wildly discordant with their numbers, one wonders what their remuneration is for damaging and destroying lives. One user responded with a satisfactory non sequitur he probably heard in his echo chamber and parroted out because watching Tucker’s show and discerning for himself would be too traumatic by stating that Carlson is a white nationalist. Just being accused of racism by a Democrat is the worst transgression one can commit nowadays, so he probably walked around the rest of the day with a well-earned feeling of moral superiority.
Nicki “clapped back” because “clapping back” is what you do to anonymous and inconsequential losers nowadays because the world is crazy. She told him black people would shove marbles up their ass if the Democrats told them to, and allow themselves to get hit by a bus if Republicans told them to watch out. It was hilarious and salient and epic and a bunch of other hyperbole. But can you see what that guy did and its connection to my time spent describing the student who didn’t want me associating with someone she hates? He believed that Carlson is a white nationalist. That belief forever wipes out Carlson’s ability to make a solid and truthful point. You ever break up with someone and they lose all ability to be happy or funny in your eyes ever again? This is that same emotion at work. Even were he to say something like “white nationalism is a bad thing” the Twitter user would spin it to mean not that when it comes out of Carlson’s food-hole. And that’s where we are. Forgive me for offering criticism without simultaneously offering a solution. The solution is simply “Don’t do stuff like this” but that makes too much sense to work. Excuse me while I check out of the adult world, get back into teaching, and resume struggling financially.
Hey there, beloved reader! Don’t stop reading yet. I enjoy writing and creating content for you. Recently, I took on the Herculean task of fixing America and wrote a book on the subject; the very literal-titled “I’ll Fix America Tonight”. There is a a link where you can conveniently add the book to your Amazon cart (if you’re flush with about $20 in cash right now) or your wish list (if around $20 in cash is a little too much right now, but hypothetically not too much in the near future). Buy it, and help end poverty (namely my poverty). Thanks for reading!
Image taken from:
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/no-more-fake-news-twitter-will-label-tweets-that-contain-harmful-misleading-content-on-coronavirus/articleshow/75688104.cms
