"And they resolve things on their own"

Taunting Tiny with a shaking Swiffer Duster as photographer's birdie in one hand and aiming for the "Decisive Moment" with our camera in the other, we missed Tiny's ears, above, but caught that look of cats concentrating on the jugular of potential prey.

"Animals that escape from the wild to take advantage of the relative ease and safety of living with humans may not be able to do math, but their ability to survive in the wild when necessary shows they still possess talents lost to the human animal," wrote Goomp in the comments to our previous post, giving us an opening quotation to revisit yesterday's post about that "Obama in 30 Seconds" video with some final thoughts.

The video -- one of several touted by MoveOn as "downright addictive to watch and rate" -- presented two competing teams of children, the reds and the blues [get it?], playing the classic schoolyard game "Red Rover," where the teams line up, facing each other and holding hands with their teammates. By turns, each team taunts the other to send one of their players over to try to break the line, and "whichever side has the most players at the end of the playing time wins the round." In the MoveOn version, "a thoughtful bi-racial boy with prominent ears" uses Obama Magicthink to psychologically disarm the opposing red team, who then -- zombie like -- join the blues en masse, "form a circle and begin a new kind of game."

Another object irresistible to cats, packaging -- in this case the box our Pope Benedict XVI Teddy Bear mugs came in -- just barely big enough for a sweet tiny girl to fit into, but the place of choice atop the dining room table this afternoon.

Which brings us back to Goomp's comment about survival skills "lost to the human animal" in this high-tech, multi-culti, politically-correct day and age of ours. Let's look at the schoolyard "out there" first and then return to the irony of MoveOn's use of it as a metaphor for "Obama in 30 Seconds."

You may remember the story of school administrators' banning the game of tag during recess at a Massachusetts school a couple of years back. "Now 'tag' is being deemed too dangerous [as it may] cause injury or the dreaded liability that the school will meet in a lawsuit," wrote Scared Monkey in a typically commonsensical blogospheric reaction at the time, quoting the mother of one of the children affected by the ban:

“I think it’s a little bit silly," she said, adding that she was not aware the rule was in place. “The kids love to play pick-up football games that they organize themselves. It’s great for their social skills, and they resolve things on their own. It’s good for them."

She was not aware the rule was in place. We wonder how many busy parents caught up in the controlled frenzy of their many-faceted lives are unaware of not only what goes on outside at recess but, perhaps even more importantly, inside the classroom, where zombies teachers inculcated with the Marxist talking points of influential anti-capitalist propagandists like Obama neighbor Bill Ayers are, as Sol Stern wrote, assiduously working below the radar to "turn the little ones into young socialists and critical theorists." And critical-pedagogy types like Ayers acolytes aren't the only ones trying to turn the nation's younger generation into pod people. The self-esteemsters who ban the award of valedictorian to the highest-ranking senior because it might hurt someone's feelings come to mind, not to mention the textbook publishers with their eye on the bottom line. All are complicit, for different reasons, in the politicization and dumbing down of the nation's curricula. As we wrote in our post "Stealth education" four years back:

It isn't just infidel-hating Wahhabists who are trying to brainwash our children, of course, but interest groups of every stripe.  We've blogged about these issues before, here and here and here, noting that textbook companies and educators take the path of least resistance, responding to the squeakiest wheels.

Isn't that what identity politics is all about, ceding center stage to the squeakiest wheels? Appeasement is always a mistake. The more you give in, the more they demand. Now back to the unwitting message of that "Obama in 30 Seconds" video we were talking about at the top of this post. Beyond the unself-aware irony of setting their essence-of-Obama statement in an elementary-school playground, the MoveOn folks embrace the utopianist "why can't we all be friends" agenda of those who would deny the competitive dynamic -- the tragic view -- of human nature. Two competing answers to our google search for "Red Rover" perfectly illustrate the difference between those who get it and those who don't. Gameskidsplay.net doesn't get it:

Note that since all the players are on the winning team at the end, there really are no losers in this game.

FamilyFun.com gets it:

Players can devise sneaky running strategies and use psychological tactics to spice up the game. Whichever side has the most players at the end of the playing time wins the round.

Sneaky running strategies and the use of psychological tactics -- doing whatever it takes to win [just ask Bubba] -- are what politics is all about. That Obamaniacs long to "form a circle and begin a new kind of game" betrays a profound cluelessness of pathological proportions.

Update: No one knows better than our feline companions that the more you give in, the more they demand. But in their case, we wouldn't have it any other way. Lots of sneaky running strategies and psychological tactics in play at House Panthers' Carnival of the Cats #215.

Comments

[goomp]

Sisu, you are right on in your description of the ignorant commie-fascist supporters of the MoveOn generation.

[gewinnspiele kostenlos]

nice read. Thanks for the post.

[Teresa]

I can guarantee that not a single Moveon preacher lives their life in the way they think the country should be run. I know a number of liberals, some of whom I am on friendly terms with *grin* and I'm constantly amazed at how intolerant they are of others. Yet they want everyone else to live in a way they can't even do for themselves... how's that again?

[Gayle Miller]

Brilliant analysis.

Bottom line here? Liberals are "do as I say" not "do as I do" practitioners. The other word for that is phonies!