IS THIS THE GENERATION OF ARROGANT CRYBABIES?

Very often I find myself thinking how not many things make sense anymore. For instance when I'm standing in line at CVS waiting to use the self-checkout machine and wondering, when did I sign up for an unpaid job at CVS? Especially when there are more than enough employees standing idly around simply keeping an eye on customers as they bag their purchases, after the machine malfunctions and the whole process of buying some gum and vitamin water – once a smooth and simple procedure – becomes a disruptive operation.

Reading about Hollywood celebrities being touted as possible candidates to run for the US presidency is also bizarre. George Clooney, Oprah Winfrey, The Rock – these are the people that should run a country in the minds of many liberal Americans. Nevermind if they're just as unqualified as Donald Trump and his offspring, as long as they have more fans than Trump and have acted in a few successful films. It's as though the US has dug themselves deeper and deeper into a hole that they're grasping at anything now to feel better. 

Or when stating the obvious on a show becomes a radical stunt that leaves white Western audiences upset. Here I am referring to the season two premiere of The Grand Tour I was watching on Prime a few months ago, in which Jeremy Clarkson said at one point, "I still can't believe that Switzerland banned motor-racing because of an accident in another country."

Richard Hammond then says, "It's like Britain banning railways because a train crashed in India."

And Clarkson replies, "Or it's like America invading Iraq because some Saudi Arabians destroyed the World Trade Center."

The last statement of course drew an uncomfortable pause and a smattering of confused laughter from the studio audience (and groaning, as the subtitles indicate), similar to how a classroom of students would react if someone suddenly made a joke about the rich, petulant teenager with the sense of entitlement sitting in the back who makes the other students do her homework, but they do it obligingly because she supplies them with drugs in return. So they refrain from laughing lest she remembers that day and withholds the drugs to those who dared slight her, while demanding that they continue to do her homework anyway.

You'd have thought Clarkson had just made a vulgar remark about God or something, which, strangely enough, probably would've been better received, going by the many offensive jokes made on Top Gear when it was hosted by Clarkson, Hammond and May.

And then I read an article a few days ago – Professor cancels hate speech course after student's object to use of racial slur. Professor Emeritus Lawrence Rosen at Princeton University had students walk out of his Anthropology class after he used the word "nigger" in order to provoke critical thinking and debate. What the students took from it instead was offense, completely missing the point, and demanded an apology from the professor, to which he refused. Hats off to him for not complying with the demands of crybabies perpetuating the extreme politically correct culture today even within educational spaces that have long explored difficult subject matter when doing so outside is almost always controversial.

An African American colleague of Rosen's had to actually release a statement in which she wrote, "I feel bad for the students who left the class not trusting the process. Rosen was fighting battles for women, Native Americans and African-Americans before these students were born. He grew up a Jew in anti-Semitic America, and recognises how law has afforded him rights he would not otherwise have."

I think that's an important fact that young people today fail to acknowledge when it comes to those of a different generation who actually fought the fights. Yet with the whole "me, me, me" mentality today the concept of exercising some bloody humility is now just another obsolete practice too reminiscent of the old-world. Showing respect for those who have actually lived through true barbarism is anti-modern or something. Instead you have halfwits who spend their time posting their feelings of outrage on Twitter thinking they know everything.

I'm reminded of an episode of the Doha Debates I watched years ago where the topic was about the Israel-Palestine conflict (this particular episode is not available on YouTube). One of the Palestinian panelists who had lived his entire life in Palestine, fighting the helpless fight expressed his and many other Palestinian's exhaustion and defeat, saying that they were ready to come to a compromise with Israel. A Muslim high schooler in the audience proceeded to lecture the man, possibly in his fifties, and who had seen more blood and suffering than most of the people in the room, saying that it was time for the younger generation like herself to take over the negotiations, and then the outcome would finally be more successful for Palestinians.

Maybe a dinner of falafel and hummus with leaders of rogue states is the solution. (Photo: Moshe Milner)

I was amused by her teenage arrogance, because in her mind it would be as simple as sitting down with tea and falafel with the Israeli government and demanding that they comply with international law and retreat from the occupied territories and justice and stability would be restored. Since a lot of the young audience members expressed their disapproval of violent protest that some Palestinians had had to resort to over the decades, talking forcefully with the Israeli's and their American sponsors and boycotting them is their best bet, regardless of the fact that there never was a peace process on Israel's part to begin with.

Anyway, Bill Burr touched on this whole PC crybaby thing last week when he described how he got into trouble for making fun of the military. He made a great point about the past and the present day, in which criticizing certain persons, practices and issues has become disrespectful and controversial. Using reason can only disrupt the herd mentality after all. Let them be arrogant or whine, but don't let them think they are not free.

ADULTS ARE BULLIES, TOO, AND SOME OF THEM BECOME TEACHERS

   

Earlier this month Malaysian news reported that M. Vasanthapiriya, the 13 year old Penang student who attempted suicide back in January after being accused by her teacher of stealing her iPhone had died.

Having followed the story these past few weeks I was, and still am consumed with grief at the news of Vasanthapiriya's death. While police investigations haven't revealed much of the details as of yet, what the case tells us clearly and undeniably is that a teenager took her own life after a teacher (with the help of colleagues) drove her to act on the guilt and shame she was made to feel in a way someone still in the prime of their innocence would.

All else is irrelevant, including the missing iPhone, which, as Vasanthapiriya's father had had to point out, embarrasingly enough is replaceable. What this whole case shows, along with last year's death of 11 year old Mohamad Thaqif Amin Mohd Gaddafi as a result of being physically abused by his teacher – or, "disciplined" as some would call it – resulting in his limbs being amputated, is that a) a lot of people end up in the wrong profession, b) corporal punishment as enforcing discipline in the school – another great legacy of European colonialism which sought to "broadcast authority" over natives – is still perpetuated by some retarded Malaysians today, and c) many adults are just bullies looking for someone to pick on.

I don't come to that conclusion lightly. My conclusion is in fact informed by years of experience in the Malaysian public school system. From the sixth grade to the twelfth, I had my school experience forever blighted by some of the worst, dark-hearted bullies who called themselves teachers. I'm not about to go off on a revenge rant, or share some sob story, but what makes the tragedies of Mohamad Thaqif and Vasanthapiriya so sickening is how these issues are only now coming to light, and after damage has been done.

Nevermind the many students who were often too vapid to be around, as the school as an institution for learning can become too much like a factory priming the subervient herd. But with teachers abusing their authority and leaving permanent psychological scars on the student with smug satisfaction, the world becomes a dark place. So dark in fact that at age thirteen, and feeling the true torment of depression as a teenager for the first time, I wrote a poem about it. It was a cry from my soul. And it was published in a 1999 edition of a Chicken Soup book.

I stand by that poem, despite its mediocrity. Because over the years I still hear from strangers around the world – high school students – who had come across the poem and expressed gratitude and relief for a little poem having helped them feel less alone in a difficult time, much like how I had felt at that age.

School became a demoralizing place for me. So some mornings, after my father dropped me off at the school entrance, and attendance was taken at assembly, I broke from the crowd of students and headed to the back entrance. And I walked the two miles back home, where, with my parents both at work, I'd sit in my room and read. Books like The Catcher In the Rye by Salinger, Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, Golding's Lord of the Flies, and Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. To me, I could finally be in the right company, and educate myself through the best teachers. Because cutting school became a necessary habit of mine to escape an unbearable environment, it only gave teachers more opportunity to ridicule and verbally abuse when I was present in the classroom.

I never forgot a single one of them, and truth be told, if there's a reason why I teach now when I can it's because of all of the sadistic teachers I've had, who picked on the defenseless because it gave them pleasure or a sense of dominance. Everything that they were, I am not. No doubt these sort of situations go on constantly in Malaysia, and elsewhere, but the normalcy of it all makes change seem almost like an incredible notion. A distinction between a strict teacher, and someone with wickedness in their heart needs to be acknowledged.

Vasanthapiriya and Mohamad Thaqif are just the two victims we've heard about, and only because their lives ended in tragedy. It's time for more of these adult bullies to be exposed as the uncivilized brutes that they are in failing to do their jobs responsibly and professionally as teachers. If you can't conduct yourself in such a way then you don't belong in the most honorable profession there ever was.