How unfortunate that I'm going from describing the pure joy of walking the US Naval Academy grounds to recounting the pathetic display seen on the Yale campus of late.
I cannot even believe what I'm hearing or seeing in these videos. And yet, I can, because this is where politically correct, "progressive" ideology leads. It's so predictable, but still surreal.
Okay, for the backstory on the Yale... thing (I cannot for the life of me think of a word to describe it), you can go here. But essentially, there's a big controversy about Halloween in liberal America (of which I was blissfully unaware, since I live in regular America), and costumes must conform to politically correct standards.
At Yale this year, that dictate took the form of an email from the "Intercultural Affairs Council", which includes many culturally sensitive "centers" and "offices" (including the Office of LGBTQ Resources and the Office of Gender and Campus Culture, which makes me wonder, why does Yale need two offices to cover sex-and-gender needs? But I digress...). This email stressed the "growing national concern on campuses everywhere" [!!!!] about "culturally unaware or insensitive choices" of Halloween costumes by "some" college students.
Apparently, a few students who still possess the actual ability to access their human reason expressed frustration about the email to Erika Christakis, associate master of Yale’s Silliman College, and she wrote a response email that was about as inoffensive and innocuous as a fluffy kitty, agreeing with the calls for "cultural sensitivity" in Halloween costumes, but also gently suggesting that it's an issue for the (presumably mature and capable) students to work out amongst themselves, and that perhaps it was not the place of university officials to tell the students what they should wear for Halloween.
And then, after this reasonable, polite, friendly, and non-threatening email came through, all hell broke loose, apparently (and this is just a guess) because the cultural elites of the left (including these privileged Ivy League kids) have lost their ever-loving minds.
The terrible, horrible, no good, very bad email from an obviously very bad lady (who is married to Nicholas Christakis, the very nasty, mean, and unsafe man in the videos you are about to see) is linked at the end of this paragraph. I wanted to give you fair warning so that you can be prepared and get your smelling salts, or perhaps your best friend (or your mommy) and lay down. The evil email led to the man practically emasculating himself trying to appease the distraught offendees, although the very bad man refuses ultimately to apologize for his wife's evil, hateful words, which have decimated the students' "safe space". The violent wrenching away of the students' "safe space" prompted the very Dean of Yale to come out to where the students had "chalked" (yes, chalked!) their "affirmations", and he listened lovingly "for almost two hours" to their "profound pain", watching "every tear that was shed". Yes, the offending email was that bad. Are you ready for it? Are you sure? Okay, but I warned you, it shocks the conscience!! Read the evil in its fullness, here.
I know, right? Like, <<shudder>>. Who can bear it?
And if you can't believe how offensive and monstrous was that letter, please turn now to the actual videos of the victims themselves, who were so callously trodden upon by those big, bad, mean words, and watch how the bad lady's husband was summarily
Video #1, wherein the professor, who had already talked with the students for over an hour, defends himself against charges of racism for failing to remember one of his 500 students' names:
As we continue on our cringeworthy adventure at Yale, a seemingly intelligent student is mourning the loss of her "safe space" as others snap-snap-snap their approval, supporting one another with caresses and hugs. Many seem on the verge of despair. This very bad man is not "hearing their pain", after all:
This one is super painful to watch, since I'm guessing that this liberal professor is actually a bit freaked out by how completely unreasonable these students are, how they are unable to grasp his very basic and logical points. Oh the irony, as these kids were raised up on leftist ideology, and somehow the professors never saw this coming? [UPDATE: Looks like this video has been removed and is no longer available. Sorry!]
Aaaaand we get to the climax, where this young woman (pray for her), loses it completely:
At this point, I think it's the Yale student-victims who have violated my safe space! My brain will never be the same.
Even The Atlantic got it right:
In “The Coddling of the American Mind,” Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt argued that too many college students engage in “catastrophizing,” which is to say, turning common events into nightmarish trials or claiming that easily bearable events are too awful to bear. After citing examples, they concluded, “smart people do, in fact, overreact to innocuous speech, make mountains out of molehills, and seek punishment for anyone whose words make anyone else feel uncomfortable.”
What Yale students did next vividly illustrates that phenomenon.
According to The Washington Post, “several students in Silliman said they cannot bear to live in the college anymore.” These are young people who live in safe, heated buildings with two Steinway grand pianos, an indoor basketball court, a courtyard with hammocks and picnic tables, a computer lab, a dance studio, a gym, a movie theater, a film-editing lab, billiard tables, an art gallery, and four music practice rooms. But they can’t bear this setting that millions of people would risk their lives to inhabit because one woman wrote an email that hurt their feelings?Read the rest of the brilliant piece, here.
While it may be hard to distinguish the Yale videos from an SNL skit, here is an actual parody that someone showed me just hours before I'd even heard of the Yale incidents. I think you will appreciate the similarities:
If you liked that parody (even if it did terrify you at the same time it amused you), then you will like the one that came before it:
Folks, we either have to laugh or we will cry.
My advice to those of you who are as disgusted and horrified as I am: Be courageous. Speak up. Never stop exposing nonsense, because in the end, your voice of reason will help to rescue the nonsense-makers themselves, who will almost surely spiral down to a pit of despair if they keep on the road they're going.
Pray for them all to regain their spines and their guts and their sense, and then for your own sanity, go back and read about Annapolis, or read the heroic life of a saint, and feel better.
God's got this.
