The Perfect Automatons
Listening to the high school teacher’s indoctrination session, I was swept back into the 1980s and in my mind’s eye could see myself standing before the huddled, dazed, half frozen students deep in the forested mountains of Maine aboard the U.S. Navy’s remote and secretive Redington Training Facility. My uniform hat was adorned with a red and gold crest, in the middle of which was the hammer and sickle of the Soviet Union. Thinking for a moment at the time that I was a Marine Corps gunnery sergeant, I considered how odd a job I had at the moment, playing the part of a communist military officer.
I was giving an indoctrination speech at one of the four Department of Defense Survival-Evasion-Resistance
Returning to March 2006 and the comfortable confines of my library, I noted how Jay Bennish, a supposed geography teacher at Overland High School in Aurora, Colorado, was using precisely the same indoctrination techniques on his students that I used nearly 20 years earlier, except I was teaching my students how to recognize and defend against propaganda as a tool of indoctrination, whereas Bennish was using the techniques to actually indoctrinate his students. Speaking as if what he was saying were undeniable facts, he accosted his students with demonstrable falsehoods, half truths, misinformation, disinformation and a smattering of truth to work over his mostly hapless charges.
But a noted difference was how I was feeling sorry for Bennish’s students and had not felt sorry for mine.
Why?
My students were in the practical application and testing phase of their training. They had already been taught how to recognize indoctrination techniques and were now expected to use those skills to defend themselves against this insidious process, which American military men first experienced as prisoners of war during the Korean War. And they were men, not children.
Conversely, Bennish’s students have not been trained to recognize the ruse and have not been given tools and techniques to ward off the tactic. Defenseless, most would be putty in the man’s hands. And they are children who tend to be naturally rebellious and believe anything their teacher says because they are taught from Day One that the teacher is always right. Perfect victims, in other words, which was what Bennish was counting on.
On the "Gunny Bob Show," students at Overland High School and teachers there and at other schools called in to say how such goings on are commonplace in our schools. One teacher told of another teacher who attempts to indoctrinate his 3rd grade class with leftist thought.
Sean Allen, the student in Bennish’s world geography class who recorded the anti-America rant, said on FOX News Channel that Bennish’s class consists of 20% geography and 80% Bennish’s political opinions.
When I interviewed Cherry Creek School District public information officer (PIO) Tustin Amole, she assured me that the schools monitor classrooms and teachers to make sure they are teaching properly, sticking to the approved syllabus and not abusing their students. But she also said, "We can’t fix what we don’t know is broken."
If the teachers were in fact being effectively monitored, the district would have known what Bennish was up to. The reality of the situation is that teachers are not being effectively monitored and now the district is scrambling for cover.
As expected, a Denver Post editorial lavished praise on Bennish. Would the paper have done this had Bennish been ranting that had Christianity been successful in spreading through the Middle East and displacing Islam, the region would not be in as much turmoil? (A silly notion.) No. The Post would have seen it differently and been calling for Bennish’s head on a pike in the middle of the ACLU’s front lawn. The editorial intentionally and transparently failed to mention the many claims of fact Bennish made are demonstrably false, such as:
(1) The United States using chemical weapons in Bolivia and Peru
(2) Bolivians and Peruvians not using coca
(3) The U.S. being the world’s largest producer of tobacco products
(4) The U.S. selling tanks, planes and guns to Iran and Iraq during their war
(5) That North Carolina produces most of the tobacco in the United States
(6) That millions and millions of Chinese, Iranians and Peruvians die each year of tobacco-related illnesses
(7) That the U.S. killed 75 innocent Pakistanis in a missile attack
(8) That the U.S. perpetrated 7,000 terrorists attacks in Cuba between 1960-62 killing thousands of people
(9) That the U.S. killed thousands of Afghan and Sudan citizens in missile attacks in the 1990s.
Why didn’t the Post mention these lies? Because the Post didn’t want you to know about them. The Post wanted to deceive you with a lie of omission and misdirected emphasis. (The Post hates it when I dismantle their arguments and reveal their complicity in the lies of leftists, and the Post’s editorial board has refused to accept my offer to debate the entire board simultaneously. Go figure.)
I have offered to give a fair and balanced, 20-question world geography test, using the course’s stated standards, to the student’s in Bennish’s class to determine what the class really knows about the topic, but the Cherry Creek School District will not allow me to do so, even though I am certified in Instructional System Design (ISD) and have 10 years of formal teaching experience.
The children are not to blame here because as such, most don’t know any better. Bennish, his alleged supervisors at Overland High School, and Dr. Monte C. Moses, superintendent of Cherry Creek School District, are responsible for this abusive outrage. Overland High school principal Jana Frieler demonstrated reprehensible dereliction of duty in allowing Bennish to get away with such disgusting behavior. Moses failed to make sure Freiler was doing her job. The total lack of leadership demonstrated by Moses and Freiler reveals two people in charge who couldn’t lead a Marine private to a free six-pack of beer.
And all the while, the children pay the price as Bennish builds his radical’s resumé.
Gunny Bob Newman can be heard on newsradio 850 KOA in Denver.
3 Comments:
(1) “The United States using chemical weapons in Bolivia and Peru”
Bennish is substantially correct. In Bolivia, Columbia, and Peru, herbicides based on glyphosate, a chemical the EPA lists as a category one toxin, that is, the most toxic chemical category, has been sprayed on communities where coca growers and insurgents live. If there is a war on drugs, and it involves toxic chemicals, then that’s using chemical weapons. You can spin it how you wish, but its chemical warfare. (By the way, the chemical is manufactured by US-based companies.)
(2) “Bolivians and Peruvians not using coca”
This is taken out of context. Bennish's point is valid. Do Bolivians and Peruvians use more coca than North Americans? I seriously doubt it. This is Bennish’s point. It’s not coca users in Bolivia and Peru driving the market, but users in the United States, whose demand for drugs and the enormous profits motivate coca growers. Why is cocaine such a lucrative market? Because of the drug war. (By the way, have you read Dark Alliance by the late Gary Webb?)
(3) “The U.S. being the world’s largest producer of tobacco products”
Bennish has made a technical error. This may have been true at one point, but it’s no longer true. So Bennish is wrong. But is he lying? An error of fact is not a lie unless the intent is to deceive. One makes a leap of faith to attribute deception to Bennish’s claim. Moreover, quibbling over this fact obscures a very important point Bennish is making: Why is it okay for the US to organize a war against coca farmers in Peru but not okay for Peruvians to organize war against tobacco farmers in the United States? This contradiction demonstrates the reality of US imperialism and the hypocrisy of the drug war.
(4) “The U.S. selling tanks, planes and guns to Iran and Iraq during their war”
Bennish is substantially correct. The US and its allies funded both sides during the Iraq and Iran war. The US openly supplied weapons and organized weapons sales to Iraq, including the sale of chemical and biological agents. The US apparently even covered up Iraq’s chemical weapons attacks on Iraqis, blaming them on the Iranians (either that, or it was the Iranians who gassed Iraqis and not Saddam Hussein). At the same time, the US secretly provided weapons and weapons technology to Iran in part to fund death squads in Central American who murdered tens of thousands of Nicaraguans. There’s some geography for you. See how regions around the world are linked together through US foreign policy?
(5) “That North Carolina produces most of the tobacco in the United States”
Bennish is technically incorrect. But people make too much of this error. He used NC as an example of a tobacco-producing state. Again, he’s pointing to the hypocrisy of our drug policy that permits and even supports the production of a drug that when used correctly causes illness and death (indeed, that appears to be its only purpose), but criminalizes the production of, say, marijuana, which has several medicinal purposes.
(6) “That millions and millions of Chinese, Iranians and Peruvians die each year of tobacco-related illnesses”
Bennish is substantially correct. Nearly half a million persons die from tobacco-related diseases every year in the United States alone. Around the world the number surpasses three million, many of these in China.
(7) “That the U.S. killed 75 innocent Pakistanis in a missile attack”
Bennish is possibly technically in error but substantially correct. The US has killed many Pakistanis in a repeated military attacks on Pakistan. This has occurred three times this year alone (that we know about) with at least 28 persons killed. Saying that Bennish is lying about the US killing Pakistanis in military raids is like denying that Pol Pot killed lots of his fellow Cambodians because the CIA estimated around 120,000 killed and not the millions reported by the media.
(8) “That the U.S. perpetrated 7,000 terrorists attacks in Cuba between 1960-62 killing thousands of people”
Again, maybe Bennish is technically wrong, but the United States has engaged in terrorism against Cuba on more than one occasion and lots of people have been killed as a result. The point Bennish is making is that the United States pursues a violent foreign policy and engages in terrorism. That is most certainly true. (Have you read Killing Hope by William Blum, by any chance?)
(9) “That the U.S. killed thousands of Afghan and Sudan citizens in missile attacks in the 1990s.”
Bennish is substantially correct. The United States did attack Afghanistan and the Sudan with missiles in 1998. Several sites were bombed in Afghanistan and, in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, the El Shifa Pharmaceutical Industries factory was destroyed. The attacks involved 75 cruise missiles and many people were killed and injured. He may be wrong about the exact numbers, but he is right on substance.
Andrew Austin
Green Bay, WI
Bennish is teaching children, not full formed adults who are capable of arguing with his idiocy. He posits no facts. He asks children to argue with his opinions which stem from his basic Marxist philosophy,or more specifically his Marxist belefs. His Marxism is an article of faith. His criticism of Capitalism is classic Marxist dogma. Did he ever once discuss other altenatives to his definition of Capitalism.
Did he ever mention enlightened self interest, the Law of Supply and Demand or ever support any of his assetions with a single FACT.
Nice of him to get a haircut for the Today Show.
My Latin may be a little rusty, but I think hat his pedagogical method derives from "Anus holocastus, non dis
putandum",freely translated to the vernacular, never argue with a flaming asshole.
I doubt that any of his students have learned any Latin, but some how managed to grasp the concept and realized, despite his supposed
desire to stimulate "discussion", that it was futile to argue with a flaming asshole.
On the tobacco issue, wasn't this a gift to the New World from the Indians? Why don't we bomb their Casinos or better yet, send in a cavalry unit of class action lawyers?
Good work Andrew Austin, nice to see someone looking rationally at all of this.
Dennis, if you want to send the lawyers over to the Indians for introducing you to tobacco you have to be prepared for them to send back lawyers charging you with genocide and attempted genocide.
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