The moonbat teacher controversy reminds me of the first time I learned about “teacher brainwashing.” I remember distinctly, we read this poem in eighth grade, in Mrs. Lawless’ class. It’s stuck with me since then, as a Quaker pacifist, how far we’ve come in terms of not being brainwashed compared to the WWI era. I don’t think I’ve ever posted it in FPB.

I’m fairly certain Malkin and the neocons would like us to return to a world where teachers spend most of their time beating the drum and calling kids cowards for not joining the military. (Except, of course, the neocons’ own, who will be as far from the public schools as possible…)

Dulce et Decorum Est - Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!– An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.–
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Outrageous. Just disgusting.

When Malkin first “broke” this “story” - of a teacher who made some pretty strong anti-Bush comments - I told another blogger that the teacher’s real sin was being an extremely bad lecturer. From the transcript Malkin posted while stuck in Denver, Jay Bennish’s comments consisted of a few good points - for example:

There are plenty of countries that are controlled by dictators, where people have no freedom, where they have weapons of mass destruction and they could be potentially threatening to America. We’re not invading any of those countries!

and

[W]hy does Mr. Bush think that other countries that are democracies won’t wanna be like us? Why does he think they’ll just wanna be at peace with each other?! What makes him think that when the Palestinians get their own state that they won’t wanna preemptively invade Israel to eliminate a potential threat to their security just like we supposedly did in Iraq?!

I’m not sure how a transcriber determines when a speaker is ending a sentence with “?!” - but I digress. Which is kind of what Bennish does. A lot. From the transcript, he’s not using very good judgement - by making so many inflammatory statements with no overall theme or support structure; his flouting of Godwin’s law, he’s over the top and unfocused.

But Malkin has a lot of nerve talking about “brainwashing.” It’s really a disdain for learning that she displays here. It’s a lack of trust in students - to consider what they hear rather than absorb it. And I know, I know, in this day and age, you can’t trust your average high schooler to think critically - which opens up a huge indictment of the state of the school system. Especially No Child Left Behind - but I digress again. Product of the public schools myself, y’know.

But Malkin has a lot of nerve, as I said, talking about “brainwashing.” In her exhaustive (and exhausting) transcript - the “whole, crazy screed” - she leaves off a very important part:

I’m not in anyway implying that you should agree with me, I don’t even know if I’m necessarily taking a position. But what I’m trying to get you to do is to think about these issues more in depth and not to just take things from the surface.

Argue all you want about whether this disclaimer suffices - although considering how many of Bennish’s points are more valid than a neocon would ever give him credit for, it just might. It’s true that, despite his claims to the contrary, he’s clearly taking a position. But at least he says “think for yourself.” That’s what the neocons are really afraid of.

Seriously, who the hell is brainwashing here? Again and again Malkin selectively cuts or misrepresents “official sources” for her own purposes…and again and again her army of trackbackers take forth the message into the world. And again and again Malkin’s take becomes the conservative zeitgeist.

If that isn’t brainwashing, I don’t know what is.