By Jenni White
Tonight I am angry. Not a passing emotion brought on by a single circumstance, this anger is a deep, knotted-up, abiding anger created by a mix of frustration, despair, hopelessness, and injustice.
As a public school science teacher in the late 90’s, I watched parents disengage from the learning process of their children and those students gain more and more power over the classroom. I saw the administration allow it to happen and even excuse bad behaviors (“She has a very hard home life, she just needs to blow off steam and we need to give her a safe place to do that. You don’t want her to feel unsafe do you?”). I saw good teachers leave the profession rather than fight the storm brewing on the horizon – the one that would make them constables instead of instructors, the kind that would rely more on technology than instruction. I saw it too, so I quit.
Hoping for the best, I enrolled my children in public elementary school. I watched a son be bullied so badly that he begged to be homeschooled. I watched a son be left behind in math to the point that he couldn’t add single digit numbers properly. I watched a daughter bring home papers about global warming and bad white people who hurt native Americans. I became involved in PTA only to find that fixing these issues couldn’t happen because there were no issues more important than selling wrapping paper to buy a new gymnasium and computers for computer lab to make sure we stayed competitive with other schools. I saw no future for myself or my children, so we quit.
Concerned about the way the Obama administration was taking control of public education and handing out stimulus checks, I helped start an organization called the OKC912Project and became its education coordinator. I helped bring in candidates for public office to interview, study bills and legislation, I worked with legislators to try and improve social studies curricula by mandating study of the Constitution and other important founding documents but the House wouldn’t pass the bill the first year, and the second – though it did pass in the House – it wasn’t heard by the Senate education committee and it died. I watched legislators talk to me and my fellow citizen lobbyists as though we were little more than gum on the bottom of their shoe. I watched them lie to my face about the status of bills, and why they wouldn’t vote for them. I became frustrated and disillusioned with legislators and the system, and quit.
Believing that becoming involved in party politics could help steer the direction of the type of legislator we elect, I joined the Oklahoma Republican Party. For years I dutifully went to every precinct meeting and county meeting and district meeting and even volunteered for the Platform committee numerous years. Every year a group of us tried to help create policies that would bind legislators and candidates to the party – to require them to follow the platform upon which they ran – but in six years I was never successful with that, or any other activity that changed a single thing about Republican politics. In six years, the same people ran the party as when I became involved. I became frustrated and disillusioned with the party system and I quit.
Though my children were being schooled at home, I found out about a national curriculum called Common Core that would focus coursework on the subjects of math and reading at the cost of other subjects. I began writing about the problems associated with Common Core and joined many other parents attempting to push back against such a destructive program, even helping to get Common Core removed from state law. After all my efforts, I watched nothing happen. I watched the state department of education continue to find ways to propel CC into classrooms and I watched there be no way to stop it from happening. I watched teachers become activists and use social media to tear myself and other parents down for having the audacity to care about their kids and other Oklahoma students, so I quit.
For years I sat quietly at home, teaching my kids and interacting in my home community.
Since that day, I’ve seen elected officials lie to the entirety of the American population as effortlessly as drawing breath. I’ve seen both legislators and judges allow wrong to be right as though no one could possibly notice or care about the difference. I’ve seen congressmen sit quietly and reservedly in the face of illegality and fraud, presumably too concerned about their long-held committee seats and donors to even croak out words in defense of a Republic that was the only one of its kind and that can never be again once tainted by illegality and fraud.
In just a few short weeks I’ve seen the results of all the efforts I’ve ever attempted to uphold my tiny little corner of the world crash into a million pieces. I can never trust a single elected official again. How can I when so many have sat quietly with their hands folded in their laps while the People have cried out in pain and confusion? How can I when – from November 4th – they should have been falling all over themselves to ferret out every single way in which the public trust was violated during this presidential election knowing that without FAIR and SECURE elections in this country, NOT ONE OTHER THING MATTERS A DAMN? Without FAIR and SECURE ELECTIONS, the people are not represented and a government of the People, by the People and for the People cannot be legitimate if the people CAN’T be represented. How could they? How could they possibly be represented by people who weren’t fairly elected by the People?
I’m angry because I can see that all my efforts on behalf of my tiny little corner of the world over the many years have amounted to absolute zero thanks to the officials we have elected to represent us – THE PEOPLE – in the PEOPLE’S HOUSE. The officials who don’t understand that their jobs aren’t to protect THEIR interests, but OUR interests. We elect Representatives to represent US in the PEOPLE’S house and we elect Senators to represent the best interests of the state. How is it in the best interest of ANY state to simply ‘move on’ from an election that has been fraught with as many questions, concerns and outright unconstitutionalities as this election?
I’m angry because, while I’ve been playing by the ‘rules’ – paying my taxes, being civil and tolerant of my neighbor, accepting the election of past Presidents with whom I didn’t agree without creating hateful hashtags, threatening physical violence, name calling, canceling careers, using government goons to unlawfully spy to invent reasons for impeachment, or using media to misreport, misrepresent or otherwise create dissention and anger during their presidencies – the other side has carte blanche to do all this and more without condemnation, conviction or retribution of any kind.
Yes, the world will continue to turn if this election goes to Joe Biden. Yes, Jesus is still on the throne. In my view, however, God blessed us with a nation unlike another ever created on this planet – one, that run correctly – allows individuals more freedom to speak and worship and live than in any other. It gives all the power to the people and very little to the Government, yet we’ve continually chosen government over freedom in our individual lives to the point where we’re now standing at the edge of a very deep precipice from which we may not return. It’s hard not to be angry when confronted with this earth-shattering truth.
Jenni White has a master’s in biology and has had careers in advertising, biology, epidemiology, and teaching. She is the former education director and co-founder of Reclaiming Oklahoma Parent Empowerment and has written for publications including The Pulse, the Heartland Institute, and American Thinker. She is a homeschooling mother of five currently serving as an elected official in the small town where she helps her husband run their microfarm.
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