Schadenfreude can be delightful, but like chocolate, should be taken in small doses. There’s work to be done; "Election-mas" is over and while we’re still unwrapping presents in the form of cabinet appointments, we still need to look closely at the damage that’s been done. It must be fixed.

This week has brought story after story of “influencers” becoming unglued either online or on TV, or in front of classrooms. It’s evidence of the psychological malaise that permeates our media, our culture, our schools -- K-PhD. The blowouts I saw were spewing worry about being raped, about dying, about their daughters’ health being in danger. These poor folks didn’t directly address who was going to do all this raping and murdering, but they seemed to think it would be Trump.  

We expect in any election a certain amount of name-calling and verbal attack, but the sickness we’re seeing is way beyond energetic persuasion. For one thing, it’s illogical. How can a president, one who champions law and order, cause mass sexual assault from the Oval Office? For another, it’s evidence of ignorance of our national history and basic civics. These folks don’t seem to know anything about how our government functions. Do they not know that our Constitution is designed to prevent the installation of a dictator? Is Trump going to issue an executive order to impregnate every available woman? He’s not even threatening to outlaw abortion, the Left’s religious sacrament. It’s also irrational -- these people were alive during Trump’s first administration and nothing remotely Nazi-ish happened, so why do they think a holocaust is pending?

Fear has been rotting their brains for a very long time. I know it has because I have been fighting the in-school propaganda for a very long time. The curriculum my children were exposed to was, even in the early 70s, way out of line -- anti-parent, anti-clergy, pro-evolution, pro-occult. So we must find a cure.

It’s not, of course, only the leftist-trained teachers and far-Left pundits, but a good third of our population that has succumbed to the terror and hatred they were being fed. I know many remarkable, intelligent, caring people who were convinced that loathing this one man was the noble thing to do. They were convinced that he was a “convict” and a rapist and a serial liar. How can smart people not ask, “What crime was he convicted of?” How can they take the testimony of a porn star as gospel truth?  Why can’t they see figurative hyperbole as just that and not a literal prevarication? Why, on God’s green earth, can’t they remember the prosperity and peace of four years ago?

We need to figure out how this mental illness came about so that we can undo the damage. I have some thoughts on that:

1. Most importantly, we tried to build our schools on neutral political and religious ground, but that’s an illusion; there is no middle ground. For generations we’ve tried to leave God out of education, which has effectively taught students that He isn’t -- at all. For generations we have pretended that political discussions were not to be had, which effectively emasculated argumentation and left our students unable to express a logical point. Nature not only abhors a vacuum in itself, but also in thought. One day after school one of my students exploded into my room and, in an accusatory tone, exclaimed, “I just heard that you’re a conservative!!!” That was unheard of -- a conservative English teacher. I had lost my cool status. We cannot pretend that school is neutral. Ideas aren’t, so schools can’t be. Enter school choice.
2. We can look to Hollywood and the entertainment media for part of the cause. I don’t know how it is that being “cool” became such a necessity, but it did. It started in the 50s and 60s with Elvis, the Pill, the removal of God from our schools, though it was more subtle than that, perhaps, looking back, more demonic than that. One needed to be cool. I remember that push and the white suede oxfords I was so proud of. They made me 7th-grade cool. The boys’ cigarettes had to hang from the lips at just the right angle, the girls’ skirts had to end in just the right spot, the lyrics from the right songs had to pop up on demand. Cool. That hasn’t gone away. It got Bill Clinton and Barack Obama elected and their legendary sexual peccadillos were CV enhancements because they were cool. Look where cool got Diddy.  Perhaps enough of the Hollywood elite will flee the country that this influence will cure itself. Dare we hope?
3. And then there’s technology. It has multiplied the pull of coolness by many levels of magnitude. Not only do adults (including teachers) spend too much time in front of the TV, but we’ve given our children miniature versions they can have with them always. The strength of cool can be measured by the number of young people who have killed themselves over what they believed was their failure to attain that precious label. Some school districts are now banning phones in classrooms; that’s a step in the right direction.
4. The Left has completely ignored (until now) the fact that elections have consequences. The cool agenda has denied that for over 60 years, but here it is -- right in their faces. Those of us on the right are enjoying the prospect of justice, truth, and prosperity. The Left doesn’t know or doesn’t care that the ideas they love cause death, mental and physical illness, financial collapse, and moral decay. Their ideas are so sweet, so compassionate that they never face the facts that history shows us. In the left’s mind their ideas are way too cool to be discarded. Let us pray (and I mean that literally) that the stark contrast between the Trump and Biden administrations will paint an undeniable picture of truth.
5. Lastly, coolness has replaced truth, has replaced honor, has replaced God. Coolness is, after all, much easier to attain than godliness. All one has to do is turn off one’s natural conscience, lean into tolerance and quit differentiating. We recently saw the Pope bundle all the world’s religions into one big lump -- never mind the fact that some of these religions advocate killing off the members of other religions. Just tolerate (code for accept) indiscriminately and you will be cool. Concepts like obedience or sacrifice or decency are not cool and therefore must go.

Elections come and go. Results vary. I do have hope that we’re returning to loftier goals than mere coolness, that God may again be welcomed into our public square, and that we can go back to expecting the best of each other. Let’s make that the measure of being cool. Let’s not just aim for coolness and work toward honor and excellence.

Deana Chadwell is an adjunct professor and department head at Pacific Bible College https://pacificbible.edu in southern Oregon. She teaches writing, logic, and literature. She can be contacted at 1window45@gmail.com

Image: AI