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Introduction
“Let’s Pretend” used to be an innocent child’s game. It was fun, expanded imaginations and was harmless. And forgotten by dinner time. Now “pretend” means that men can be women, that certain bad behavior never happened, that achievement is racist, and so much more.
It is no longer just a child’s game; it is a dangerously distorted view of the world that is driving everything from personal interactions to the politics that run our lives. No longer forgotten by dinner time, “Let’s Pretend” is working to infuse itself into our society and government.
That is the subject of today’s 15 minute episode.
Continuing
Let’s go through some important examples of Let’s Pretend in the news and in our lives.
First, let’s pretend that men can become women. Much in the conversation today is the question of can men become women. No, of course they can’t. They can identify as women, and have every right to expect to be treated courteously and with some measure of dignity as they present themselves as women. But they are not women. For example, a biological man cannot give birth or nurse babies. Many, mostly on the left, are making the case that simply because a man identifies as a woman that he is indeed fully a woman. And that anyone denying that transformation is anti-trans, transphobic, or worse. No, no miraculous biological transformation took place. This man may very well yearn to take his place in society presenting himself as a woman, and I am happy to go along with that. Don’t we all know people who present themselves as different than who we know them to be? The retired Uncle who embellishes his career, or the friends who greatly exaggerate their prowess as drinkers or lovers? They want to be seen as different than they are, and in the main we go along with them. The underlying reality about their careers, drinking and life as lovers is fact-based, and unchanged by either how they present themselves or how we, in politeness and love, treat them. The danger comes when the person, or those supposedly supporting them, insist that, yes, the facts on the ground, e.g., sex, career path, and drinking and lovemaking abilities, have indeed changed because of a simple declaration. Nonsense, and dangerous nonsense at that. The Let’s Pretenders insist that we go beyond being caring and loving, that we go well beyond responding to this man as the woman he identifies as being. They irrationally pound on the table, insisting that he is fully and completely a woman, no different than if he had been born female, making a mockery of the third grade science that teaches about the birds and the bees. Like a bird can become a bee by, what, pretending to buzz around looking for pollen?
Now, let’s pretend that bad behavior does not exist. When bad behavior is observed as occurring disproportionately in minorities, especially blacks, the Let’s Pretend response is to claim that the bad behavior did not exist in the first place. The Dallas Morning News reports about the Obama administration’s “Dear Colleague Letter” on school discipline. “The letter, issued in 2014, advised school superintendents nationwide that racial disparities in suspension rates would be grounds for finding school districts in violation of federal anti-discrimination law, and therefore at risk of losing federal funding. The directive, cast as a ‘guidance,’ in fact formalized a fundamental shift in the Department of Education’s approach to civil rights enforcement.
“Prior to the Dear Colleague Letter, the standard held that civil rights are violated if students are treated differently because of race; for instance, if a black student and a white student both curse at a teacher, it’s wrong to suspend the black student and give the white student a warning. The Dear Colleague Letter expanded the standard from disparate treatment to disparate impact; now, if two black students and one white student curse at a teacher, it could be a civil rights violation to punish them all equally.”
We’ll take a break from the Morning News quote by reminding Revolution 2.0™ followers that ethnically disproportionate arrests and disproportionate academic suspensions are not proof of racism. The far more logical explanation is that there were disproportionate actions warranting arrest or suspension. And only by starting where things are where they actually are can a solution be found. The Pretenders claim that disproportionate arrests and suspensions are prima facie evidence of racism gets in the way of finding the real issues and implementing much needed solutions.
Back to the quote. “The school system of Broward County, FL led the nation in promoting and implementing this policy shift and served as the exemplar for President Barack Obama’s directive. Broward’s efforts to end the ‘schoolhouse-to-jailhouse pipeline’ by reducing in-school arrests for drug, assault and weapons charges were celebrated by racial-justice and criminal-reform advocates around the country. But it was precisely this preference for social justice over safety that allowed Nikolas Cruz, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooter, to avoid arrest in Broward County, despite years of criminal behavior on school grounds, and countless red flags regarding his unstable and psychopathic personality.”
And it is not just in our schools. For example, business owners and residents in New York City are expressing fury at the revelation that prosecutors have dropped looting and rioting charges against the hundreds arrested during chaos that swept the city last summer. After 603 were arrested in Manhattan and the Bronx during the most intense days of looting last June, 295 of the cases have been dropped completely. Now Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr and Bronx DA Darcel D. Clark are facing tough questions about why hundreds walked free after the looting rampage caused an estimated tens of millions in damages. Add Portland, Seattle, LA, Denver, etc., to this growing, dangerous trend.
T. Berry Brazelton was an American pediatrician, author, and the developer of the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (NBAS). Brazelton observed that infants had no memory of the existence of an object once it was taken from their view. In other words, once the object was out of sight it no longer existed to the infant. Infants have no concept of object permanence. The Let’s Pretend crowd is treating us all like infants. History, science and other facts do have permanence in the real world, just not the infantile pretend world where that kind of annoying reality, that kind of annoying–but quite real– permanence stands in the way of their agendas.
Here is a different example. We all love magic shows where the illusionist causes objects like full grown tigers and alluring assistants to disappear. Perhaps the performer will start with a coin, then graduate to a dove, then onto bigger things, like the tiger or the assistant. We are delighted with the illusion, and applaud. But no one believes that the object, a coin or a person, disappeared or changed in any way. Or that the tiger became the assistant, or the other way around. We are greatly entertained, but not fooled. We do not know how the trick was done, but we do know that it was a trick. With The Let’s Pretend crowd, it is the opposite. We know how the trick, the pretense, is done; lying, exaggeration and repetition. And many, oh-so many, still fall for it.
There’s more. The Let’s Pretend crowd seeks to do damage elsewhere by pretending that school choice defunds public schools and would result in a lower quality of education for the nation’s youth. And they pretend that parallels between voting laws in some states and the egregious Jim Crow laws are legitimate. And that drawing parallels between people and ideas they dislike and the horrors of Hitler and Nazism are equally valid.
Lust for personal and political power, and knowing that so very many people don’t know any better, is driving Let’s Pretend. Ignorance, self-satisfied ignorance, wilful ignorance, is allowing Let’s Pretend.
We have taken the time to tell you that we are not part of the Let’s Pretend crowd–and why not. It would be timely to remind you of part of what we are for, the core tenets of Revolution 2.0, which are:
Where do you stand? What are you going to do? Remember, it does not matter where you stand if you don’t do anything. You can start by subscribing to these episodes, and encouraging others to subscribe with you.
As always, whatever you do, do it in love. Without love, anything we do is empty. 1 Corinthians 16:14
Contact
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Will Luden, coming to you from 7,200’ in Colorado Springs.
