Neo-Puritan Feminism

This is nauseating: a grade 4 teacher “married” one of his students at the end of the year, in a playful, mock, playground ceremony. What kind of deviant mind would regard this as sinister? Well, lots of them, as it turns out (though not a single one of the students or parents of the students).

Sometimes America seems to be in the throes of some kind of wave of neo-puritanical zeal. This is an unholy alliance between radical feminists, hard-right evangelical “Christians”, and small-minded middle-managers (the school principal– maybe– in this case). Look at the controversy over characters in Harry Potter consuming alcohol– we must protect our children from the idea that something profane could enter their bodies– unless it’s a Big Mac and a bag of Doritos and a gallon of coke.

Beware them all, but, Scrooge might say, beware more than anyone the middle-managers. They have the power to do harm because they glide to positions of power on the lubrication of risk-less conformity and perception management, but are incapable of thinking clearly for themselves, or deferring to those who do. They are the kind of people who believe in consultants, appoint committees, and spend voluminous amounts of time developing mission statements and strategic plans. They are terrified that their fundamental incompetency’s will be revealed, so they take refuge in process and strategy and consensus and “current thinking”. These are the people who burn witches, and then, a decade later, when the consensus changes, pay them off and apologize. And then erect monuments to the witch-burners, to keep everyone happy.

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