Ep. 539 - Public School Teachers Are Afraid That You'll Hear Them Brainwashing Your Kids
Today on the Matt Walsh Show, a teacher admits publicly that he’s afraid online learning will interfere with this ability to brainwash his students. Many other teachers chimed in to agree with him. When the school system says this sort of thing out loud, we should listen. Also Five Headlines including more looting in Chicago, and a controversy over a Trolls doll that seems silly until you take a closer look. And in our Daily Cancellation, I will cancel NASA for putting social justice ahead of space exploration.
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, a teacher admits publicly that he's afraid online learning will interfere with his ability to brainwash his students, and many other teachers chimed in to agree with him.
When the school system says this sort of thing out loud, we should listen.
Also, five headlines, including more looting in Chicago and a controversy over a Trolls doll that seems sort of silly at first, until you take a closer look, which we will.
And in our daily cancellation, I will cancel NASA for putting social justice ahead of space exploration.
I don't want to have to do it, cancel NASA, but I have to.
And we will today.
All of that on the way.
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Okay.
In one of the creepiest yet most revealing Twitter threads ever to be posted on the platform, I think, a teacher recently fretted out loud that virtual classes might allow parents to hear him brainwashing their kids.
And he's very afraid of that.
Matthew R. Kay, an educator and author of a book called How to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations in the Classroom,
worried that quote, conservative parents would be able to interfere with the quote,
messy work of indoctrinating children into critical race theory, gender theory,
and other left-wing dogmas.
Here's the entire thread, which has since been set to private,
but here's a screenshot of it.
It says, so this fall virtual class discussions will have many potential spectators,
– in the same room.
We'll never be quite sure who is overhearing the discourse.
What does this do for our equity-slash-inclusion work?
How much have students depended on the somewhat secure barriers of our physical classrooms to encourage vulnerability?
How many of us have installed some version of what-happens-here-stays-here to help with this?
While conversations about race are in my wheelhouse and remain a concern in this no-walls environment, I am most intrigued by the damage that helicopter-slash-snowplow parents can do in the host conversations about gender-slash-sexuality.
And while, quote, conservative parents are my chief concern, I know that the damage can come from the left, too.
If we are engaged in the messy work of destabilizing a kid's racism or homophobia or transphobia, how much do we want their classmates' parents piling on?
That's what he had to say.
It's important to note that while some teachers responded to Kay's comments with the appropriate level of horror and disgust, many others chimed in to share their own strategies for brainwashing during a pandemic.
Apparently this is something that teachers have thought about and have come up with strategies for.
One teacher said that she'd also been, quote, thinking about the problem that Kay described and had decided that she'd ask her students about their preferred pronouns via survey.
Though she still worries that, quote, caregivers might see it and learn something about their children that they weren't supposed to know, apparently.
Another teacher said that students last semester would sometimes, quote, type secrets into the chat whenever the discussion turned to, quote, anti-racism and gender-inclusive content.
Another complaint that a white parent, she made sure to specify white, in her district recorded a Zoom class and then, quote, filed a complaint against the teacher for an anti-racist read aloud saying the teacher's commentary was inappropriate and biased.
And this, the teacher says, is going to be an issue.
A ninth grade teacher shared in the commiseration saying that her class required students to, quote, read and respond to a news article.
This is part of her class.
But that participation in this exercise is stunted now because, quote, outsiders are listening.
The outsiders, to be clear, are the children's parents.
And another teacher with pronouns listed in her Twitter handle, so you know what she's up to, said that she plans to use the chat function more than voice lectures because she wants children to, quote, share that information with her in a, quote, parentless way.
And a science teacher agreed with all the sentiments expressed here, but summarized it bluntly, saying, parents are dangerous.
And these are just the comments that were captured in screenshots before the tweets were all made private.
Presumably, there is more where this came from.
A lot more.
Now, I think several points should be made here in response.
First, this may seem like a side issue compared with the very large problems unwittingly or maybe not so unwittingly exposed by the thread, but it should be said that classrooms are certainly not safe places for children to be vulnerable.
Students may say and do things when they're with their peers in school that they wouldn't say and do at home, but only a fool who doesn't understand the first thing about child psychology and the effects of peer pressure would assume that the child's at-school version of himself is the most authentic, much less the most healthy.
The pressure to conform to the values and opinions of your peers in the classroom is immense and overwhelming and often suffocating for these kids.
There's a reason why rejection and alienation by peers has contributed to a true epidemic of suicide among young people.
Suicide is skyrocketing among young people.
And in fact, the very same people who extol the classroom as a safe place for vulnerability will also tell us on different days and in different contexts That bullying is a major problem at school for today's youth, and many of them are driven to self-destruction because of it.
So, which is it?
Is the classroom a place for open and genuine dialogue, where children can safely express their truest feelings and beliefs?
Or is it a place rife with bullying and mockery, where rigid conformity is demanded, and those who fail to meet the demands are severely punished?
It certainly can't be both of those things.
And the answer is that it's much more the latter than the former.
Second point.
An adult keeping a secret with a child And helping the child conceal that secret from his parent, especially when the secret has anything to do with sexuality, is acting in a way that is nothing short of predatory.
Now, if you heard a strange man on the playground whisper to your child, this will just be our little secret, okay?
Don't tell your mom and dad.
You would assume that the man is some kind of sex offender and respond accordingly.
Does this behavior suddenly transform from disturbing to admirable if the strange man is a teacher?
No, it doesn't.
But this is a sort of license that society has given to teachers on the theory that they cannot do the work of educating unless they have more power over and intimate knowledge of their students than the students' own parents do.
Which brings us finally to point three, which is that a public school teacher is not supposed to be And should not try to be.
Educator, parent, shaman, spiritual guide, therapist, friend, confidant, and sex counselor all rolled into one.
He is meant to fill only the first role of educator, and only in the subject that he's been assigned to teach, so it's very limited.
A child's actual parents can only become to be viewed as dangerous and intrusive and outsiders when teachers begin to view themselves in the school system as the true guardians and conservators of the children that are temporarily in their care.
And that, ultimately, is the problem with the modern education system.
Children are not old enough to be emancipated.
They can't go out and live their own lives.
They can't make every decision for themselves or even most decisions for themselves.
They must belong to someone.
Not to say owned like objects, but cared for and protected like the vulnerable and relatively helpless human beings they are.
The fundamental question is who do they belong to?
Different cultures and different times and places have had different answers to that question.
Here in contemporary American society, there are generally two ways of looking at it.
Children belong to their parents, or they belong to the school system, which is to say, the government.
In one vision, a child is a son or daughter.
In the other, the child is a ward of the state.
Only one of these visions is healthy, natural, and humanizing.
Only one can properly facilitate a child's emotional, mental, intellectual, and spiritual growth.
The school system doesn't just have a wrong and harmful idea of what education is.
It has a wrong and harmful idea of what a child is, and what its fundamental role in a child's life is supposed to be.
And that is why I will not be sending my kids into the education system's clutches, and neither should you.
Let's move on to our five headlines.
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Okay, number one, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot was out this weekend serving and protecting
the citizens of Chicago.
And Lightfoot found a dangerous group of law breakers who she was sure must be brought
to justice.
And, well, let's just take a look.
Here's what she tweeted.
It's a picture of a bunch of shirtless guys in Speedos standing around in the grass near a lake, I guess.
And she says, it's called a pandemic, people.
This reckless behavior on Montrose Beach is what will cause us to shut down the parks and lakefront.
Don't make us take steps backwards.
And then she follows up, in case you were wondering, I stopped by to see for myself.
It's being addressed.
Yes, the shirtless Speedo guys at the lake, they're the problem here.
Take care of them.
Because that's the real issue.
It's them, and not this.
What you're seeing here is looting in Chicago, again, last night.
They were looting all over the city.
No cop in sight in many of these videos because Lightfoot has them focus, you know, on the speedo problem and not the looting and rioting problem.
You know, not the problem of anarchy and destruction raining down on the street again and again and again and again and again, night after night after night after night.
If you're curious, by the way, they're doing this ostensibly because police shot a guy who had a gun and had shot at them.
The guy didn't even die, as far as I know.
But there was a guy with a gun, shot at police, police shot back, he got hit, and now they're rioting because of it.
Because police, I guess, are supposed to, at this point, they're supposed to just drop their guns and just offer themselves up to be killed.
Just walk up to the bad guy and say, okay, I'm here, do what you will.
Anything less than that is oppression.
But you just look at these and you see the footage here.
This is a fascist dictatorship where cops murder people in the street and all of these poor protesters live in fear because of it.
Yet every night, people casually riot and loot and stroll aimlessly out of burned out retail outlets with armfuls of stolen shoes.
Does that make a lot of sense to you?
Does it make a lot of sense for a woman who's wandering out of a coach store with a box of stolen purses saying, I live in fear of the police.
I live in fear that the police will come any time and kill me.
Is that what you do?
I mean, if you're being oppressed and you live in a fascist dictatorship and you're worried about police who are prowling the streets just looking for an excuse to kill somebody, this is how you respond?
I mean, are these people who really seem to be afraid of authority?
No, it would seem like the problem is very much the opposite.
Number two.
Let me just give you the headline here from the Daily Wire.
It says, Hasbro pulls troll doll amid concerns that toy normalizes sexual exploitation.
That's the headline.
And I have to tell you, my wife informed me of this controversy the other night and said that there was some kind of thing about a Trolls doll, and my immediate reaction upon hearing that was to think this is just another example of people being hypersensitive and dramatic.
Not to mention, I thought, if somebody actually sees a Trolls doll and ties it into Anything sexual?
Well, that's just a reflection of their own perverse mind, okay?
That's like, get your mind out of the gutter.
That's what I thought until I saw the video of the doll in action, and it kind of changed my perspective a little bit.
In order to take it out of demo mode, you have to... The instructions say to sit the doll, so you put her legs out.
And you sit her down for five seconds.
Which, by doing that, he pushes the button.
But now... Oh!
Boop!
Oh!
Boop!
Wee!
Wee!
Ha ha.
Ah!
Boop.
Bye!
Like, I cannot believe that.
Like, this is insane.
Yeah, that's disturbing.
That is definitely disturbing.
Now, Hasbro claims that they placed the button there because it's supposed to make those noises when it sits down.
But first of all, why would it make those noises when it sits down?
Does that make sense?
Since Windows sitting down Illicit sounds like that from from anyone even a troll second Even if there was you know, even if there were innocuous intentions behind this how could it be that nobody at Hasbro?
Through the whole process of manufacturing and distributing this thing.
How could it be that nobody anywhere ever went?
Guys, this is a button in the dolls crotch area That causes it to squeal when you touch it.
That's weird.
How did nobody think of that?
How did nobody point that out?
See, here's the thing.
I'm never perplexed by individual people doing stupid things.
That doesn't ever surprise me.
And I'm also not surprised by whole groups of people doing stupid things all at once, like we've seen in our streets across the country and in Chicago last night.
So, none of that.
Like, stupidity and mass hysteria.
Neither of those surprise me.
I get it.
That's how people are.
But what always does surprise me a little bit is when you've got a succession of individuals making a considered choice, and that choice, right down the line, is horrendously, insanely stupid.
That's when I scratch my head because you don't really have the mass hysteria element and it's not just one person so there's a right there's checks and balances here and right down the line I mean literally down the conveyor belt nobody noticed anything wrong with that now some people are saying this was done to intentionally advocate child sex traffic or whatever I you know I think that theory is a little bit Intense.
I go back to Hanlon's razor, which is never attribute to malice what could easily be explained by stupidity.
And so I think that probably applies here.
But either way, it is very weird to say the least.
Number three, I'm going to play this for you with no setup.
Just just watch.
If you look at like the 1990s and the way that Rush Limbaugh and others sort of sharpened their teeth on Bill Clinton.
This has been the way they've built audiences for three decades now.
Yeah, I don't want to claim it's new.
I just am arguing that it's getting worse.
It's getting more severe.
Erin, your view of this?
You know, when you see entire media companies essentially exist to tear down Joe Biden, is there an equivalent to that on the left, tearing down Trump?
There really isn't.
And, you know, what I would say, it's really a diet of this type of information that a lot of these voters are getting.
A lot of the voters that I talk to, I can, you know, when I interview them, I do hear them saying a lot of the talking points that sound very familiar from some of these shows, which I try to listen to when I'm out on the campaign trail or when I'm at home, you know, watching TV.
You know, you can hear these comments being echoed.
by voters and you know that this is the diet that they're on,
you know, AM radio, you know, conservative talk.
Also social media.
I mean, the Trump campaign is running a full blown campaign on social media that is completely off the radar
for a lot of, you know, regular media is not covering this.
But I mean, you have folks, Laura Trump, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Katrina Pearson.
The campaign is running, you know, kind of a parallel campaign online.
And if that's all they're getting, you know, to the exclusion of kind of the more traditional legacy media, you know, then it really is no surprise kind of of what their understanding is of this country and of our politics.
Such an important point, though.
Simply amazing that they could keep a straight face throughout that exchange is astounding.
I mean, this is really, this is like a guy dumpster diving naked, chowing down on like a soiled diaper, maggots all around, old banana peel on his head, comes back up and says, you know, when you see people in drive-thru lines at Sonic, I mean, that's really unhealthy.
That's, that's, that's gotta be the most unhealthy diet in the world, right?
Takes another chomp of the diaper.
The self-awareness level here is Arctic levels.
This is sub-zero self-awareness.
Number four, CNN is trying to whip up a race controversy, and I know that you hear that statement and it's rather evergreen.
Okay, you hear that and you think, oh, so it's Monday.
Okay, but let's be more specific.
Here's the latest fake race controversy from CNN.
Reading now from their article, it says, a black student was forced to take off his Black Lives Matter face mask in order to graduate, his family says.
Dean Holmes, a student at York Catholic High School in York, Pennsylvania, put on a Black Lives Matter mask under his face shield at his July 28th graduation ceremony.
As students lined up before the ceremony started, the school's principal pulled him away in front of the other students and told him to take off the mask.
Holmes had previously been told by by another school official to take the mask off, so he eventually relented for fear of not being able to walk across the stage, he said.
Holmes said, quote, I was so mad.
I was shaking during the graduation, tapping my leg on edge.
When it was over, I couldn't believe it.
Your Catholic had opted to give every student a face shield instead of a mask for the ceremony.
Holmes's father, John, took to Facebook on Saturday, saying that the school stifled his freedom of expression and jeopardized his health.
This is John now.
The capricious action taken against my son demonstrates that York Catholic High School has miles to go before they can put the ugliness of unconscious bias and racism to sleep.
As a parent, I will not stand for my son being humiliated publicly, having his basic human dignity crushed on what should have been one of the happiest days of his young life.
Okay, a few things to cover here.
First of all, John Holmes, calm down, you drama queen.
Basic human dignity crushed because he couldn't wear his favorite face mask to graduation?
His human dignity is crushed because of it.
That's how you crush a person's dignity, really?
Well, if your sweet, precious child's dignity is hinged on something as superficial and weird as his face mask, that's a different issue.
He needs counseling for that.
Also, Dean Holmes, calm down, you drama queen.
You were shaking, really?
You were so sad and upset you were shaking because of this?
Because you couldn't wear your favorite face mask?
What kind of man shakes when he's upset, much less admits it publicly?
You're the one crushing your own dignity.
I agree your dignity's been crushed, but by you, not by the principal.
Also, most importantly, just so you know, The school has a policy.
Nobody is allowed to wear anything to graduation that has any kind of message on it.
Nobody.
That's been the rule at the school since always.
And it makes sense.
They don't want graduation to turn into an event to advertise political viewpoints, or any other viewpoint.
And they want uniformity.
That's every graduation I've ever been to, and I've been to quite a few.
That's how it is.
Everybody looks exactly the same.
There was a hubbub, I don't think it was at this school, but at some school a couple of years ago,
when a student, I think it was at a college, wasn't allowed to wear his military dress blues
across the stage at graduation.
And even there, I would say, I mean, obviously it's a wonderful thing
that he has the uniform and that he serves his country, but at the graduation, it's a different uniform
and everybody's supposed to look the same.
That's the point.
So there's a dress code, is the point.
and everybody is held to it.
No exceptions.
It's a dress code.
You have to just follow the dress code like everybody else.
You're not special.
Why should Dean have gotten an exception?
Because he is?
Is he special?
Why is he special?
I know he's Daddy's special boy, but why should anyone else care about that?
Give me one good reason why this particular person should be exempt from the dress code that everyone has always been expected to follow.
That's what Dean's father, that's what John Holmes is saying here.
What he's saying is, yes, there are rules and there's a dress code, but my son is special!
He shouldn't have to follow the rules!
This is my special son!
Oh, shut up.
This is, this is, I mean, among other things, this is terrible parenting.
You're the father.
You should be the one.
Your son is crying and shaking because he had to follow a dress code.
As the father, you're supposed to be the one smacking some sense into him.
Instead of going to Facebook.
You'll never believe what happened to my boy!
Number five.
Finally, the National Park Service posted to Facebook a couple days ago giving advice on what to do if you come across a bear.
And they say, if you come upon a stationary bear, move away slowly and sideways, and this allows you to keep an eye on the bear and avoid tripping.
Moving sideways is also non-threatening to bears.
Do not, they say, run, but if the bear follows, stop and hold your ground.
Like dogs, they will chase fleeing animals.
Do not climb a tree.
Both grizzlies and black bears can climb trees.
Do not push down a slower friend, even if you think the friendship has run its course.
Now, I know this last comment about the slow friend was meant to be a joke, right?
But I just want to say this, you know, this is not a joking matter, and they shouldn't be making light of it.
Yes, obviously you absolutely should not push down your slow friend.
If you come across a bear, that would be an awful thing to do.
Because if you push him down, then he'll be in a submissive pose and the bear might not attack him and may keep pursuing you instead.
And this is really the point.
If your friend is slow, there's no reason to push him down.
Let his slow dumb ass keep running.
You go off in the other direction and the bear's gonna go for him.
I mean, this is just basic.
Now, if there's something you can do to slow your friend down further without stopping him from running.
So let's say, for example, you're in a lake or something and you come out of the lake and there's a bear there.
So one thing you could do is grab his shoes and run off.
And now that's gonna slow him down, hinder him a little bit.
And then when he gets mauled and killed by the bear, the bonus is You also now have a new pair of shoes.
So, I mean, these are things you could do.
I just, I was really disappointed that the National Park Service had an opportunity
for a real teaching moment here, but instead they went for the joke.
And that is, as I said, just really, really disappointing.
We're gonna go to our daily cancellation now, but first I wanna tell you about
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our daily cancellation we're gonna be canceling NASA.
It seems that with Elon Musk and other private entrepreneurs taking over the job of actual space exploration, NASA has had to find other things to do.
Rather than explore the vast unknown of space, going where no man, woman, or non-binary person has gone before, and expanding humanity's understanding of its own place in the cosmos, NASA now has plunged itself into a different sort of Lethal vacuum, and that is far-left activism.
Two examples of this shift.
One hilarious and stupid, the other even hilarious-er and stupider.
First, a far-left professor, Ibram X. Kendi, who wrote a book about systemic racism called How to Be Anti-Racist, which that teacher also wrote a book just like that.
So, I mean, there are a lot of books, a lot of books on this subject.
And he was invited by NASA to give a talk to its employees.
Just to be clear, Kendi is an expert on critical race theory, which is like being an expert on the Greek gods or any other mythology.
But he is not an astronaut, nor does he appear to have any expertise on subjects that astronauts would really need to know, unless they happen to encounter institutional racism on the moon, I suppose.
Here's the email that NASA sent around to its employees.
The email was obtained by the Daily Wire, and it says, this again was sent by NASA to its employees, it says, The only way to undo racism is to consistently identify and describe it, and then dismantle it, writes Professor Ibram X. Kendi.
That is the essence of anti-racism, the action that must be followed, both emotional and intellectual awareness of racism.
Ibram X. Kendi is a renowned historian and author of How to Be Anti-Racist.
Professor Kendi will speak to the NASA workforce on Wednesday, October 12th, or August 12th, rather, from 1230 to 130 via Ustream.
Now, if you're wondering how these anti-racist strategies will be employed, well, here they are in action.
NASA tweeted, I guess, kind of, you know, practicing what it preaches.
NASA tweeted this over the weekend.
Here's the tweet.
It says, and this, by the way, is not a joke, okay?
Just so you know.
This is not Photoshop.
As we work to identify and address systemic discrimination and inequality in all aspects of the scientific community, we are re-examining the use of unofficial terminology for cosmic objects, which can be not only insensitive, but actively harmful.
The link brings us to an article on the nasa.gov website, which we'll go through a little bit of this article here, because like I said, it is hilarious.
It says in part, distant cosmic objects such as planets, galaxies, and nebulae are sometimes referred to by the scientific community with unofficial nicknames.
As the scientific community works to identify and address systemic discrimination and inequality in all aspects of the field, it has become clear that certain cosmic nicknames are not only insensitive but can be actively harmful.
NASA is examining its use of unofficial terminology for cosmic objects as part of its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
And then it continues.
As an initial step, NASA will no longer refer to Planetary Nebula NGC 2392, the glowing remains of a sun-like star that is blowing off its outer layers at the end of its life, as the Eskimo Nebula.
Eskimo is widely viewed as a colonial term with a racist history imposed on the indigenous people of the Arctic regions.
Most official documents have moved away from its use.
Yes, okay.
Sidebar here for a second.
You notice the phrase widely viewed as.
They didn't say that Eskimo actually is a colonial term because, well, it definitely isn't.
It is, according to the Alaska Native Language Center, an Inuit term which means netter of snowshoes.
It is not offensive.
It is not a slur.
It is not colonial.
It is not racist.
But it's widely viewed as racist and therefore we're told it is racist.
But this is not how reality works.
Okay?
Look at it this way.
There are two adults and four kids in my family.
It would be accurate to say that, in my house, ice cream is widely viewed as a magical food source that you could eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day, forever, and still live a long and healthy life.
Those who hold that opinion outnumber the alternative perspective by two to one.
Yet, despite how it's viewed, If my kids were able to live according to their views on this point, or frankly on any other point, they'd be dead in a month.
Okay?
Because that's how reality works.
Doesn't matter how it's viewed, the reality is the reality.
In any case, the name of the nebula has been changed, and so now finally those who have been traumatized by the existence of an Eskimo nebula 36 quadrillion miles away can rest easy knowing that the sky above them as they sleep is a little less racist.
Other changes are also being made.
Going back to the article, because, you know, there's a lot of offensive, bigoted names in space, apparently.
It says, NASA will no longer use the term Siamese Twins Galaxy to refer to NGC 4567 and NGC 4568, a pair of spiral galaxies found in the Virgo galaxy cluster.
Moving forward, NASA will use only the official International Astronomical Union designations in cases where nicknames are inappropriate.
Okay, another sidebar.
How is this offensive?
Siamese twins is a name that comes from a famous set of conjoined twins in the 19th century, Siamese referring to their land of origin.
What's offensive here exactly?
Is the name racist because it refers to a place?
Is that all it takes for it to be racist now?
Or is it offensive to actual Siamese twins?
Why would it be offensive to Siamese twins for them to be acknowledged in this way?
I thought it was offensive not to acknowledge marginalized people.
So which is it?
Should we honor the marginalized by taking their names off of stuff?
Or should we honor them by putting their names onto stuff?
Or both?
Or maybe we employ one strategy on even days and another on odd days.
I mean, how does this work exactly?
But it gets even more ludicrous, if you can believe it, okay?
It gets even worse.
Listen to this, it says, Nicknames are often more approachable and public-friendly than official names for cosmic objects, such as Bernard 33, whose nickname, the Horsehead Nebula, invokes its appearance.
But often seemingly innocuous nicknames can be harmful and detract from the science.
Okay, wait a second.
It's not clear to me here exactly, but are they saying that Horsehead Nebula is offensive too?
Is that... I'd like to say no, they're not.
They're clearly saying that it's approachable and friendly.
But I just... I don't know anymore.
You can never assume.
You can't assume any ounce of rationality or common sense when it comes to leftists.
You just can't.
So it seems that they might be saying that Horsehead Nebula is offensive to... Who, exactly?
Deformed freaks with horse heads?
Is it offensive to them?
Or actual horses?
Or is it offensive to the nebula itself because it's body shaming?
I don't know.
Well, all we know is that Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator of NASA's Science Mission Dictoriate, or Directorate Dictoriate, I can't speak, but you can't point that out because that's offensive to me, at headquarters in Washington says, our goal is that all names are aligned with our values of diversity and inclusion, and we'll proactively work with the scientific community to help ensure that science is for everyone, and every facet of our work needs to reflect that value.
And you see, this is the rub right here.
NASA's values are diversity and inclusion.
Why?
I mean, I know why.
I ask why rhetorically as a figure of speech.
So, I mean, why?
In what way does diversity and inclusion help NASA to fulfill its proper function?
It's proper function, which is, according to its own website, to quote, drive advances in science, technology, aeronautics, and space exploration to enhance knowledge, education, innovation, economic vitality, and stewardship of Earth.
That's a good function, if you ask me.
It would be great if NASA did that stuff.
I remember when NASA did do that stuff.
And if that, that being exploration and innovation, is its mission and its goal, then in what way precisely does diversity and inclusion advance it?
In what way does a greater focus on political correctness advance it?
In what way is it advanced by a commitment to social justice?
All of that only interferes with proper functioning.
It certainly doesn't aid it by any stretch of the imagination.
But just think about it.
What sort of attitude do you need to go out into the great unknown and explore?
Well, just look at Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin.
These were brilliant, highly skilled men, but they were also extremely tough men.
And men who, especially in Armstrong's case, didn't care much for other people's feelings.
This is the profile of pretty much every explorer ever in history.
Brilliant, courageous, tough, even at times brutal, ambitious, single-minded, perhaps obsessive.
This is the kind of attitude and approach that's necessary to achieve great things and to do what has never been done and to go where no one has gone before.
What about innovation?
I mean, what do you need in order to innovate?
What sort of people do you need for that?
Well, you need, again, brilliant, skilled people.
Also, you need courage.
Different kind of courage often, but you need courage.
You need people who are focused, who are driven, people who think differently, people who can look at problems from an entirely new perspective.
So, once again, if you're NASA, How does a focus on diversity and inclusion help you find those kinds of people?
It doesn't, at all.
If you want to find those kinds of people, you look for those kinds of people.
Whatever they happen to look like.
Whatever of the 198 genders they happen to be.
You find people who can do the job, and that's it.
I can't think of any arena in which diversity and inclusion matter less than in the arena of space exploration.
It is the most irrelevant and ridiculous consideration.
As it always is.
In all contexts.
But especially in this one.
So, NASA is cancelled.
And that's the end of the show today.
Thanks for watching, everybody.
Thanks for listening.
Godspeed.
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