Pretending Makes It So

The ACLU sued.  The Department of Justice threatened to withhold millions of dollars.  Why?  Because a school district south of Chicago was treating a transgender student unequally.  This teenager had been unfairly branded by authorities who would not to be reasonable.

What did these officials do?  Well, they had refused to allow this genetically male student equal access to the girl’s shower.  Meanwhile, they did permit cross-dressing.  They also permitted him/her to use the girl’s bathrooms, as long as these had separate stalls.  They even constructed a curtained off area in the girl’s locker room.

This, however, was not enough.  As long as he/she was being treated differently in any way, this constituted unlawful discrimination.  Such conduct was ostracizing and hence prejudicial.  What is more, it singled the student out as distinctive, which was stigmatizing and thus an identity threat.

But does this make sense?  Suppose that the school district had capitulated and allowed showering in the same communal stall.  Would the girls fail to notice the still male genitalia?  Would they regard him/her as the same as themselves just because of “her” self-identification?

My question is: Wouldn’t this still be stigmatizing?  Of course it would.  There is no way to make a transgendered person exactly like the other female students—especially before a surgical procedure removed his male parts.

So what do the ACLU and Obama administration want?  Apparently they expect us to pretend that he/she is fully female and act accordingly.  They essentially ask us to make believe there is total equality when there is not.

This, in fact, is symptomatic of what has happened to contemporary liberalism.  Progressives have come to believe that pretending can always make it so.  The more frequently their policies fail, the more regularly they make believe that they have succeeded.

The way liberals tell it, there are no significant differences between males and females so let’s pretend there are not and eliminate separate bathroom facilities.  Let’s also put women on the front lines of the military.

As for violence, this sort of injustice can likewise be eradicated by making believe.  Thus, when a six year old in Illinois pretends to shoot another student with an invisible bow and arrow, we must treat this as the real thing.  Zero tolerance requires us to place the child on a three day suspension.

An Ohio eighth grader must also be suspended for hugging another student.  This is a violation on two levels in that it is a sexual assault.  Never mind that neither of the students regarded it as such.

What other things do liberals demand that we treat as real?  The list is exceptionally long.  We can begin by observing that we are asked to believe that the police are systematically killing blacks.  On the other hand, we must not notice the carnage occurring among inner-city minorities.

Nor must we recognize that the national debt has gotten out of hand.  Our entitlement programs are in imminent danger of going broke, but they have not yet collapsed so let us close our eyes and fantasize that they won’t.  This way we can keep spending money like drunken sailors.

Nor need we do anything about the Middle Eastern threats.  Neither we, nor the Israelis, are in any real danger.  Besides the Russians are being helpful and the Iranians will never develop an atomic bomb.  And, oh yes, we are in the process of defeating ISIS.

As for Hillary, she didn’t lie.  She was only confused.  With regard to our southern border, it is totally secure.  And those sanctuary cities; in preventing us from arresting “undocumented” aliens, they are really protecting our freedoms.  Meanwhile the economy is expanding nicely.

Liberals, who claim to be sophisticated intellectuals, are only able to promote their nonsensical dogmas by convincing us to regard these as “common sense.”  In reality, they are the ravings of ideological failures who have gone completely around the bend.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Three Wrongs

You probably saw it.  The video was everywhere.  A senior deputy in a South Carolina public school apparently lifted a student out of her seat and tilted her so violently that she tumbled to the ground.  Then he “threw” her across the room and held her down while he handcuffed her.

The uproar occasioned by this incident was immediate.  It was obviously a case of child abuse.  No adult man, especially a police officer, should ever handle a minor is this manner.  As one television commentator put it, “I would never treat my own children that way.”

The county sheriff quickly intervened.  He promised to investigate the episode and make sure justice was done.  Then the very next day he fired the deputy, opining that two wrongs don’t make a right.  The student’s behavior might have been wrong, but so was the deputy’s.

It strikes me that the sheriff added a third wrong to this unfortunate sequence.  In jumping to a conclusion and punishing the deputy as harshly as he did, he too over-reacted—probably in order to quell the intense political pressure he was under.

Let us take a step back and examine what occurred.  By all accounts the student was disruptive.  She refused to control herself despite the teacher’s many requests that she do.  The student similarly defied the assistant principal.  No matter what was said, she would not move.

Only after this was the deputy called in.  Yet he too was disobeyed.  Eventually, in his impatience, he went to remove the girl from her seat.  Once again she resisted.  What followed is in dispute.  Some say he intentionally dumped her onto the ground.  Others, including me, believe that she accidently fell in the process of being picked up.

In any event, she was then forcibly moved across the room.  Here, some maintain that she was thrown.  It looked to me, however, that she was dragged.  Either way, she continued to protest and at one point struck the officer.

Whatever the case, the critics insist that this was a vicious, and totally unnecessary, intervention.  But I ask, what was the deputy supposed to do?  Was he to spend the next several hours pleading with her?   Was he to beg, “pretty, pretty, please—with sugar on top?”  Should he have walked away?

Had he done the latter, would all learning have been suspended in that classroom?  Might it not also have been discontinued the following day by a student who discovered that no matter what she did, she would not be punished?

And what of the nearby classrooms?  Might not other students have recognized who had the upper hand?  And what of students at other schools?  Might doing nothing have been a prescription for anarchy?  It was in Baltimore and Ferguson.

The commentator who insisted that he would not deal with his children this way almost surely has relatively obedient children.  As a good middle class parent, he undoubtedly taught them right from wrong and how to regulate themselves.

But what of children who do not acquire these internalized controls?  Are they to be allowed to run rampant because utilizing force is ruled out of bounds as uncivilized?  Wouldn’t this undermine the whole notion of civilization?

The fact is that our society functions as smoothly as it does because most of us restrain ourselves most of the time.  We are the beneficiaries of firm, but tolerant, parenting and of reliable policing.

Back in the bad old days, hunter-gatherers dealt with numerous transgressions by killing the offenders.  As a consequence, their death rate was many times higher than it is today.  Are these the conditions to which we wish to return?

Social order is not automatic.  It must be dependably enforced.  If we go down the road of insisting that coercion be totally defanged, the result will be disastrous.  Yes, limits need to be drawn—but they must not be so unreasonable that force is no longer forceful.

Melvyn. L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

The Hillary Cover-Up

“What did the president know and when did he know it?”  That was the central question confronting the Watergate Committee.  The answer was that Nixon did not know about the Watergate break-in until after the fact, but then he participated in the cover-up.

The question today should be “What did Hillary Rodham Clinton know and when did she know it?”  The answer to this, however, is now known.  She was aware that the assault on the American Consulate in Benghazi was a terrorist attack even as the violence was being perpetrated.

How do we know?  Well, we have a “smoking gun.”  With Nixon we had his tapes.  With Hillary we have cables and emails.  Hillary plainly told her daughter and Arab officials that an Al Qaeda affiliate—and not a video—had triggered the premeditated strike that killed our ambassador and three others.

So what was the former Secretary of State’s response to being caught with her pants down?  It was outright denial.  Now she tells us that there was confusion and hence she could not be sure.  She also says that she still believes the video had “something” to do with the attack.

Why then didn’t she say so at the time?  She could have declared, “We don’t know what happened.”  Or argued, “There were many factors, including a video.”   But no, the cause—the entire cause—was attributed to an insulting movie.  Indeed, she stuck with this story for weeks and never corrected those, such as ambassador Rice, who over-stated the case.

This was cover-up: period.  So what was the difference between her and Nixon?  First, she is a better liar.  Nixon could not help sweating when he insisted that he was not a crook.  Hillary was much smoother in her delivery.

Second, the Republicans refused to provide Nixon a defense.  They too participated in the Watergate Committee and it was a Republican who asked—and demanded an answer to —the fateful question.  Contemporary Democrats are far more concerned with defending Hillary than with discovering the truth.

Third, the mainstream media engaged in honest-to-God investigative reporting with Nixon.  With Hillary reporters and editors did not have to be told to “move on.”  They did so in their own.  Their attitude was, “No smoking gun here.  Just us chickens.”

Then there was the dog that did not bark in the night.  Part of the problem lies in what Hillary did not do.  She did not order additional protection for ambassador Stevens or his staff.  According to her testimony, she had been briefed on the dangers, but now blamed the security professionals for not doing their job.

Hillary essentially argued that protecting the consulate was below her pay grade.  And, oh by the way, Chris Stevens was a big boy who understood that he was placing his life in jeopardy.

Hillary also says that she accepts responsibility for what happened.  But when you accept responsibility doesn’t that mean that you accept some of the blame?  Shouldn’t she have intervened when she realized that security was lax and the dangers great?

A president of General Motors who said that he did not know about an ignition problem in millions of cars would not be granted immunity.  If he proclaimed, “I did not know,” we would say, you should have known.  That was your job!

Wasn’t it Hillary’s?  Why then was she derelict in her duty?  We know the reasons for the cover-up.  She was protecting Obama’s presidential campaign and her personal reputation.  Currently, of course, she is protecting her own campaign.

As for the lack of consulate protection, her mind seems to have been elsewhere.  The Libya intervention was falling apart, so perhaps she was looking for glory further afield.

But the biggest mystery is why so many liberals continue to defend Hillary.  Do they expect someone who is this dishonest—this irresponsible—will do a better job than Obama?  Or will a Clinton presidency further discredit the progressive agenda?

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University