There is a longstanding but probably apocryphal story about the time a rash equerry told an off-color joke in the presence of Queen Victoria of England. She drew herself up and invoking the royal lingual prerogative said in a chilly tone, “We are not amused.”

The queen’s use of the royal plural pronoun indicated her aristocratic rank and authority over the people of England. The sovereign was “We,” whereas the commoner was something else -- something lower. Throughout the height of aristocratic rule, we find the regular use of the plural term by people holding very high position. Czar Nicholas II still used the royal “we” in his abdication speech, saying, “In agreement with the Imperial Duma, We have thought it well to renounce the Throne of the Russian Empire and to lay down the supreme power.”

The last czar’s brutal death was accompanied by the demise of aristocratic nomenclature. “We” was dead. The Bolshevik revolutionists who finished off the 400-year-old Romanoff dynasty ushered in a new way of speaking. A new socialist language indicating the “equality” of all human beings rose up. From about 1917 onward, everyone was to be called “comrade,” much as men and women were to be called “citizen” during the time of the French Revolution.

But as the Communist Soviet Union was to discover, aristocratic tendencies linger on. As it always turns out during and after revolutions based on the ideal of absolute equality, no matter what the ideological system advocating the leveling of a hierarchical class system, some will declare themselves to be more equal than others.

Perhaps the rise of a new aristocracy is increasingly evidencing itself in the USA even as the demands for equality increase.

In an apparent resurrection of hierarchical aristocratic nosism, a teacher here in the Republic of America recently commanded her subjects to call her Mix Bressack. The hapless fifth graders were to use gender neutral pronouns when referring to zi hirself, queen of the classroom.

According to USA Today:

“A new fifth grade teacher at Canopy Oaks Elementary is asking students to use gender-neutral pronouns in the classroom. 

Math and science teacher Chloe Bressack sent the request home in a letter to parents headlined “About Mx. Bressack.”

“... my pronouns are 'they, them, their' instead of 'he, his, she, hers.' I know it takes some practice for it to feel natural,” the letter reads, “but students catch on pretty quickly.”

The letter also asks that students use “Mx.," (pronounced 'Mix') when addressing the teacher rather than Mr. or Ms.”

Mx. Bessack, who doubtless was teaching the new, tedious, and ultimately incomprehensible mathematics utilizing labyrinth mental procedures to determine 2+2=4, later noted it would take time for the fifth graders to learn how to address her as she preferred to be addressed. But she would forgive errant pupils, who would receive a special dispensation of grace for the first few sins against her.

Mx. Bressack has since been transferred to adult education -- aren’t her new students fortunate in that they get to learn a new language! -- but we of the lower case “we” still are not amused.

There will be more Mx. Bressacks. Her number is legion.

The fact is that her and others’ attempts to establish gender neutral terminology go way beyond mere amusement to a deadly serious reconstruction of language and consequently thinking, as language is inextricably linked to thought. The danger is worse when the new lingo is backed by state power.

The case of Professor Jordan Peterson of the University of Toronto is illustrative of the dangers involved in allowing the new aristocracy to demand the non-royal use their new language of self-identity.

As he puts it, the Canadian legislation that ostensibly “extends protection against hate propaganda in regard to gender identity or expression” actually is stating, “Be it resolved that people should have the legal right to insist upon by force pronouns by which they will be addressed.”

What the new laws mean in reality is that the rest of us commoners must use the language demanded by the new aristocracy or face the wrath of the almighty state, which now puts its power behind the ideology and language of the new upper classes.

The new one percenters believe what few of the rest of us believe. They think the definition of a human being is a matter of personal choice, not a scientific or metaphysical reality. For them, biological differences are totally subjective; in fact, reality itself is subjective, a mere matter of personal choice.

The problem is that any person who believes in the subjectivity of reality now has the backing of state power, the use of which leads to persecution of dissenters like Peterson.

Professor Peterson, who has been warned by the university administration and who has refused to undergo re-education, asks a simple question to those who believe their subjective choice of identity is infallible: “What if your identity is wrong?”

He adds he retains the right to disagree: “No one has the right to impose their interpretation of identity on someone else…You can’t force me to respect you.”

Apparently, for the gender-neutral crowd, idolatry of one’s self is not enough. Everyone else must idolize them, too. We of the lower case “we” must worship them, too, especially since they belong to the new state religion.

To put it another way, state coercion amounts to forced conversion to transgenderism and its accompanying doctrines eliminating any differentiation between male and female.

To be forced to acknowledge the latest chosen identity as reality and to be forced to speak the language of a sex cult is as persecutory as being ordered to make sign of the cross or die; or to be forced to say I acknowledge Allah is the one true God or be decapitated. It is to be placed in the position of Daniel, Shadrack, Meshack and Abednego, who were told by King Nebuchadnezzar that when they faced the music of the sackbuts and the trumpets, they were to bow down and worship the god or be thrown into the fire. The fire these days takes forms of being sued for hate speech, being forced into bankruptcy, or being fired from your job.

What we are looking at is essentially a religious war, with the power of the state on the side of a leftist cult which, if undeterred, will continually seek to crush opposition to its views of reality. The most targeted are and will continue to be Christians.

As many have pointed out in the case of the Soviet Union and other countries seized by leftist ideologies, putting the power of the state behind an ideology inevitably involves brainwashing resistors.

Brainwashing involves training the mind so it cannot think in the old ways, but only in the new, approved way. While Ms./Mix Bressack probably would not put it this way, the ultimate purpose of her decrees is to get the students to think in terms of her view of reality. She and others of her world view are targeting the young in order to remold young minds to accept unreality as reality; good as bad and bad as good; to cease thinking in terms of things as they are in themselves vs. things as they are in fantasy. Ultimately the goal is the erasure of the old identity in order to create a new one, as Robert Jay Lifton pointed out in his study of brainwashing in the late 1950s.

Ms./Mix Bressack and her ilk were brilliantly portrayed in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, in which the newest generation were taught by the World Director to regard words like Mother and Father as pornographic; to embrace sexual promiscuity as normal and fidelity as outrageous perversion -- in short, to assume the identity the New World Order approved and made use of.

But Ms./Mix and those who are the new royalty are the equivalent of fake Anastasias or Louis XVII’s. Impersonator Anna Anderson tried to convince the masses she was the Grand Duchess Anastasia, claiming to have miraculously escaped the Bolsheviks’ hail of bullets. Mathurin Bruneau and others claimed to be the real son of the decapitated Louis XVI. Oh yes, they were the great pretenders; and were they not thoroughly discredited as being charlatans and nut cases, they may well have been entitled to all the perks of royalty.

The new pretenders to royalty belonging to the latest permutation of the ideological cult that is the American Left are fake persona as surely as Anderson and Bruneau were pretenders to thrones.

Americans are usually good at spotting nonsense and pretense; and equally good at rejecting it. Most are inclined to say “Nuts to you,” to those who aspire to be the new royalty deserving to be addressed by the new equivalent of the royal “We.”

Hopefully, even Ms./Mix Bressack’s fifth graders will have seen the new empress is an imposter who has no clothes.

Fay Voshell is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. Her thoughts have appeared in many online magazines, including CNS, Fox News, National Review, Barbwire and Russia Insider. She may be reached at fvoshell@yahoo.com