The Pack Mule
Every week, I wait for my weekly essay to find me, and it always seems to do so. And sometimes a picture is better than prose to introduce a message. This is why memes are so effective.
My West Coast daughter and family were with us last week and, of course, this necessitated a trip to Dollywood. No matter that temperatures in the park were projected to reach 100°F.
The picture of me holding family “equipment” as the crew queued up for the log flume says it all. The younglings averred the need to get wet to cool off. I might have joined them, but I decided that I did not want to start the day wet. And someone needed to stay behind with their gear.
Crowd Watching should be listed as one of the “attractions” at America’s favorite park. Unlike the uniformity of ants’ appearance on a lump of sugar, the variety of human body types and outfits is stunning. Those who publish The People of Walmart should survey Dollywood in the summer.
I don’t pretend to understand tattoos, and especially so-called sleeve tattoos. I’m told tattoos are expensive and tats of an entire limb take a long time to execute and pay for. Additionally, I’m told the tattoo process is painful. Years ago, I asked a young patient if the delicate daisy chain design of her ankle had been painful. She hesitated while thoughtfully gazing upward, and replied, “It was just short of agony.”
Dollywood is a lovely park adorned with beautiful flowers. But last week, the park was awash in red as 7,200 members of Arise, a national Christian organization sporting identical T-shirts, mingled with the throng of other visitors.
Becky and I buy yearly Dollywood passes primarily to take grandkids, but we love the music shows and ambience. The heat is another matter, but we persevered chaperoning the Knoxville and Oregon grandkids to various rides and arcade kiosks.
I’ve never been a fan of roller coasters, but every year I pick a different ride to get my “man card” punched. Seventy-four-year-old necks should avoid the helter-skelter movements of roller coasters. This year, I managed to impress my 13-year-old grandson by accompanying him and his 10-year-old sister on The Dropline, which takes you to 250 feet above the park and literally “drops” you. I can now check that one off. Last year, I did The Screaming Eagle and joked to Becky that I lost a crown on the first of many upside-down loops.
Before the Dollywood diversion, my original topical question was, “Why do we still listen to so-called experts?” After all, they have been repeatedly wrong about the economy, inflation, tariffs and trade, Russian collusion, the border, illegals and crime, Iran and Ukraine, Covid vaccines, and I could go on. I understand journalistic errors because they never had any expertise to begin with. But the talking-head proclamations of titular experts are far more problematic. So often, they demonstrate that they are mere shills for politically motivated broadcast platforms.
I hate to quote myself, but I believe, “You should read widely, consider carefully and sift everything through your own observations and common sense. This will bring you closer to the truth,” which I said last week, is elusive. And this applies to my opinions as well.
Throughout my career as a doctor, I often dreamed of a position that would allow me time for researching topics of interest and for reflection. I never got a position analogous to a university professor. However, the Lord answered my prayers with a column at The Knoxville Focus and retirement.
In researching how we got in such a mess, I discovered the Frankfurt School. Communists from Germany’s Frankfurt University escaped to America in the 1930s as the Nazis rose to power. Herbert Marcuse and others of the “Frankfurt School” of Marxist thought settled at Columbia and the University of Chicago. They began training a cadre of elites for universities (Princeton, Harvard and Berkeley) and their devotees trained educators in “cultural Marxism.”
There are two principal ways to transform a society. One path is through violent revolution, as happened in Russia and later China with Mao Zedong. The other route is the “long march through the institutions,” as articulated by Antonio Gramsci of the Italian Communist Party. Cultural Marxism and the “gradual process of radicalization of cultural institutions” were adopted by the Frankfurt School refugees. Their teaching was considered “avant-garde” and had a “multiplier effect in other universities and teachers’ colleges in the 1950s and 60s.”
Today, we see the effects of Cultural Marxism on K-12 education and universities. If you doubt my research and analysis, consider the Cloward-Piven strategy of Columbia Professors Cloward and Piven. They advocated a policy of increasing government programs, ostensibly to feed the poor. Since Jean Jacque Rousseau of the 18th century, elitists have promised utopia by feeding and educating the masses. Obama lauded the neo-Marxists in a Rose Garden ceremony. Though I am sympathetic to such noble goals, they have never worked. Interestingly, the word utopia, coined by Sir Thomas More in 1516, translates as “nowhere.”
Predictably, the Cloward-Piven strategy has fostered increasing and unrealistic demands for public services. Our capitalist system is under assault as progressives further Obama’s promise to “transform America,” which will produce another failed socialist “utopia.”
The Democrat party now exists in name only. It has become a ship of dangerous fools with AOC and leftists at the helm. It is no longer the party of John F. Kennedy or even Nancy Pelosi. And the multiplier effect of neo-Marxism has spread through both government institutions and schools as progressive Democrat socialism. An example is the communist Mamdani, who is the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor.
However, you could say that the old, stodgy Republican Party also exists in name only. The GOP is now President Trump’s America First party or the MAGA party.
And it boils down to, who do you trust with the direction of the country? Do you trust the progressive socialist 60s radicals or the commonsense America first policies of President Trump? It’s that simple and operative at the local, state and national levels. Don’t be fooled by the political rhetoric.
