Willie Brown made Kamala, gave her positions, introduced her to donors and moved her through the political system. It probably helped that Kamala, unlikely presumably Gavin Newsom, was his ‘side piece’.
Now with Kamala polling behind AOC in a hypothetical Dem presidential primary, Willie just dumped her. Politically at any rate.
Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, one of California’s top powerbrokers, told ABC News while it’s early to speculate, he believes the most “viable” between his two mentees would be Newsom, “because he would not be the most recent loser.”
“When you embrace somebody for the job, you really want to embrace a winner, and Newsom would be what you would have to say at the moment is a winner,” Brown said.
Brown said he was “surprised” that Harris decided not to run for California governor in 2026.
“I would have advised her to be elected governor, so that she would be in the same identical position, if not better than for electability nationally than Newsom. …. If she was in the category of being on January 8, 2027, the governor of California, the dialogue would be about her candidacy, not about anybody else’s,” Brown said.
ABC News, which I’m sure has no agenda, talks to a bunch of anonymous Kamala fundraisers and donors who basically expressed that they would be likely to use their money to roll joints than to donate to her.
But Willie twisting the dagger has to hurt and he has a point. Kamala could have been governor by just showing up. And plenty of people told her so, I’m sure. Instead she was egotistical enough to go for the brass ring that will never be hers.
Now even Willie, her first supporter, won’t stand with her.
What a farmer doesn’t know, he doesn’t eat,” a phrase I’ve heard often in my life. This applies not only to food but also to many other areas. It is often the basis for many prejudices but at the same time—to be fair—it can also be a good defense in certain situations. When does it apply and when doesn’t it?
The average casual visitor to our website may well raise their eyebrows. “What’s that? Noahides?” Some will know what it means, especially the conscious visitor. It is what I noticed earlier when, as a Reformed/PKN member, I eventually moved towards Messianism via an evangelical church. There, you could also feel the judgment of traditional Christianity towards those somewhere in between Christians who leaned towards Judaism.
Those same Messianics, who sometimes already consider themselves Jewish but are still truly Christians, often feel treated that way by traditional Christianity, but those same Messianic Christians can also be harsh when people from their circle make the step toward true Judaism. I was regularly reviled by those same people. I had denied JC, some said.
To all those people who are part of certain mainstream faiths, particularly Christian ones, who are full of judgment toward other groups, small faith groups with parallels and certainly differences, I now ask the following: Go back to the time when your religion was slowly taking shape. Would those early believers recognize themselves in your churches today? Were they exactly like you are now, with all the dogma and rules of today, with the Trinity and Sunday and churches with organs or praise bands of today?
Let this sink in for a moment. Many of you are Protestants, and Protestants are, by definition, seekers of truth. This began with all kinds of details filled in by the only church that existed here before Protestantism, the Roman Catholic Church. Well, you could also say that Noahides and even those messiahs are seekers of truth.
The term “Noachides” is open to debate. I prefer to call myself a righteous person from among the nations or, even better, a follower of Torah and Judaism who is not halachically Jewish and has a strong desire to continue as a gioer (another discussion altogether). But this is absolutely not a sect. My fellow believers and I come from all kinds of backgrounds, but we share one core value, which is the Jewish source in which we find our beliefs.
Was JC not a Jew? And what do I think of JC now? As a person, I have no problem with him. There is plenty of historical evidence that someone existed at that time—with a Jewish name, not a Greek one, by the way—but his fan club morphed everything afterwards. It went through a kind of Greek/Roman Christian filter.
The ONE God, HaShem, was changed by that fan club into a trinity, and the day of rest, which had been the Sabbath since time immemorial, was moved by one day, and the pagan names of months and days + also days from midnight to midnight, nowhere to be found in the Bible or in the Tanakh, took the place of everything.
Back to the beginning, “what the farmer doesn’t know, he doesn’t eat.” You can stay here and kick against everything you find here, even if you yourself are a Messianic Jew and receive similar treatment from mainstream Christianity. It’s easier if you’re Catholic or Protestant or Reformed. Then you can easily judge and condemn Noahism as a sect.
But would you also call Judaism a cult? Perhaps you would reject it just like Islam, or perhaps as a Christian, Jew, or Muslim you would reject all other religions, which is your right. But Noahides are seekers of truth with very good arguments and a study of what God says and teaches. Nothing less than you and perhaps… Perhaps closer to the source and detached from rules and dogma devised later.
Take off your glasses of prejudice, become aware of these prejudices. Go searching and discover that “we” are not so crazy.
In April 2024, a 73-page secret report landed on the desk of France’s President Macron. It said the Muslim Brotherhood (once aligned with Nazi Germany) had spent forty years (yes, four decades) secretly infiltrating French neighborhoods, schools, and city halls. And all of it was bankrolled by Qatar and Turkey. Emmanuel Macron read the report. He understood it. Then he locked it in a drawer. And full credit for this story goes to Behind the Narrative 📣.
This is the story he tried to bury.
The report had a name: “The Muslim Brotherhood and Political Islam in France.” It laid out a step-by-step plan — recruit the lost with job offers, build a parallel society with its own schools and banks, then get loyal operatives elected to school boards and councils. For months Macron said nothing. Then in May 2025, Le Figaro got the whole thing and printed it. The secret was out. And Macron was pissed.
None of this is free. Turkey’s religion ministry, the Diyanet, runs a $3.5 billion budget. It picks the imams in French mosques, pays them, and writes their Friday sermons back in Ankara. Qatar pushed about $102 million across Europe for mosques and schools. Qatar also owns the Paris soccer club, big stakes in French energy and construction, and piles of French real estate. Nine days after Qatar promised Macron €10 billion, he announced recognizing a Palestinian state was no longer “taboo.” You connect the dots.
Two Reports, Zero Action.
The strangest part is who helped. French progressives and Green politicians waved it through. Anyone who pointed at the problem got branded a racist or “Islamophobic,” so people stopped pointing. 90% of French citizens wanted the Muslim Brotherhood banned.
‘Nude isn’t lewd’: World Naked Bike Ride returns to Madison this June.
The 12-mile ride is a protest against oil dependency — and a statement that every body has a place in public.
MADISON, Wis. — Whether you love it, hate it or just tolerate it, the World Naked Bike Ride will return to Madison later this month.
Organizers said the ride will begin at 11 a.m. on June 20. Madison is one of dozens of cities holding a ride worldwide. Organizers expect 160-200 people to join this year’s event.
The annual ride serves as a protest against oil dependency as well as a celebration of nature and body positivity.
You don’t have to take your clothes off to join the ride. Organizers have implemented a lonstanding “go as bare as you dare” policy. Participants are only asked to be courteous and not judge other riders.
While it’s a naked bike ride, bikes are also not a must-have. Participants can join in using any for of human-powered transport, provided they respect other riders, follow traffic rules and hold to the spirit of the event.
Registered participants will be told the gathering point for the ride at least one day advance. The route will not be publicized, by organizers will announce a designated viewing area at a later date.
There is certainly a new flavor of socialism emerging amongst the younger generation. The updated addition to the socialist dogma is tinged with what is called the Me-First perspective, the current rallying cry for a new batch of socialists attempting to upset the economic apple cart. This latest flavor is not too far from the traditional utopian idea that socialism could work somehow if all that is tweaked are price controls, the elimination of private ownership, slowing down market forces, and stifling entrepreneurial incentive and motivation. In other words, the new age socialists’ prevailing cry for a socialist fix to the economy is to upset the apple cart for their own subsidization and effectively taxing everyone else. Put another way, it is about satisfying their wants using your means. Why do they use capitalist means of production to establish a socialist economy? Why doesn’t the new age socialist have a socialist means of production?
The problem with the Gen Z new age socialist frame of thought is that they have no means of production of their own. Put plainly, there are no such things as socialist means of production or economic market tools; if so, what are they? To Gen Z, putting private property in someone else’s hands and tweaking the economy to their benefit sounds workable, but the basic reality is very scary: they are under the impression that a socialist economy will solve their problems, and everyone else’s for that matter, because in their minds all you have to do is control prices, increase minimums, put a cap on this, overtax the other, overregulate this and that, confiscate wealth, and so on. Yet here is the red pill: the previously listed points are capitalist means of production for a market economy; without a socialist means of production, none of the utopian ideas are workable.
Once all individual incentive and motivation tools are defunct, no one will want to or need to do anything for their fellow man and neighbor. Who will be motivated to do anything for anyone else? How will you eat dinner? You cannot destroy incentives for some and expect prosperity for all. They do not know that they eat dinner every night, not because of the benevolence of the butcher; rather, the butcher is incentivized every day to produce meat for us to consume via the market forces and the butcher’s means of production. Take that market means of production away and install overtaxation, kill the profit motive, and decree price floors and ceilings — then we are in trouble. We will all need to resort to eating grass and carrots.
The big problem with both the new and the old socialist doctrines is their attempt to upset the apple cart without having their own socialist means of production to replace the current system. That is when you get crickets. I would love to hear what they would put in place, let us say, if “capitalism” ended tomorrow. Would everyone own everything? How would that work? What would be the method of distribution? How would property renters know how much to reinvest in a property or what the going rates are? Perhaps I am missing something. The problem, as we already know, is that socialism has no productive means to replace this system other than to usurp the capitalist means of production and expect a third party to control it, as if the third party would not pursue its best interest.
The reality is stranger than fiction. What makes the third party less human than anyone else who wants economic ease and prosperity? Would the third-party economic controller want to eat filet mignon instead of chuck steak every night for dinner? Absolutely. And, yes, they want to pay chuck steak prices for filet mignon; who would not? Who does not prefer being subsidized rather than taxed to death? No one. Here is the kicker: in a capitalist system, prime ribs are produced, yes, at a higher price; in a socialist economy, filet mignon would not be considered a real option. But the third party knows very well, and the butcher and the grocer manager know as well, that there’s just not enough of anything to go around, so the fair “capitalist” thing to do is signal to everyone via prices that is shared with millions of people as what they should buy or should not buy, and this is with everything from homes to cars to everything else. People own the means of production and use them for themselves and for everyone else, and consumers’ demands are met by bidding up or down. So, to me, and probably you too, the new age socialists want to upset the apple cart, but without the tools and means of doing so, it is just plainly unworkable. There are no socialist tools for the means of production, at least that I am aware of, so they can demand reform all they want. Really, it is just hot air.
Now more than ever, the ability to speak our minds is crucial to the republic we cherish. If what you see on American Thinker resonates with you, please consider supporting our work with a donation of as much or as little as you can give. Every dollar contributed helps us pay our staff and keep our ideas heard and our voices strong. Thank you.https://givebutter.com/embed/c/WhA2EO?goalBar=false&gba_gb.element.id=gkx27p
Thank you for making American Thinker part of your routine
Reader support keeps American Thinker independent and accountable only to its audience. Join now and receive 25% off membership in honor of America’s 250th anniversary.
The White House is actively considering a plan to purchase the Chagos Islands, potentially undermining the UK’s agreement to transfer sovereignty of the strategically vital territory to Mauritius, according to reports.
US officials have prepared proposals to bypass Britain and negotiate directly for control of Diego Garcia, the key Indian Ocean atoll that hosts a major joint US-UK military base. The idea forms part of broader options being developed by the Trump administration as alternatives to Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s plan to cede the islands to Mauritius, which has close ties to China and Iran.
Strategic Importance Diego Garcia’s location makes it critical for long-range operations. It enables round-the-clock bomber missions, including potential strikes on Iran using B-2 Spirit stealth bombers, and places key areas within striking range. Amid ongoing conflicts involving Iran and China’s expanding naval presence, US and UK officials stress the need to maintain a robust chain of global military bases.
Senior Trump administration officials worry that transferring control to Mauritius could expose the base to espionage or interference. One former adviser to UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy, Ben Judah, told the Telegraph that the base has “super secret, super sensitive facilities” that are vital to British and allied capabilities, noting they would be difficult to replicate elsewhere.
Background on the UK-Mauritius Deal The UK had agreed to hand sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius while securing a long-term lease for the military base, reportedly involving around £35 billion ($46.7 billion) over 99 years. However, the deal requires US consent due to longstanding agreements governing the base, and Britain has since placed it on hold.
President Trump initially appeared open to the arrangement but later strongly opposed it, particularly after the UK reportedly declined to allow strikes on Iran from Diego Garcia in the early stages of the Iran war. He publicly denounced the deal as “great stupidity” and criticized Starmer for weakening the special relationship, calling him “no Winston Churchill.”
US Position and Ongoing Talks A US official told Reuters:
“President Trump has been consistent in his position that the United Kingdom should not give away the British Indian Ocean Territory, which includes our joint U.S.-UK military facility on the Diego Garcia atoll. Diego Garcia’s strategic location in the Indian Ocean makes it a vital and indispensable military installation of significant importance to the national security of the United States.”
The US continues regular discussions with Britain to preserve the base’s viability.
Purchasing the islands outright would likely involve waiting for the UK-Mauritius sovereignty transfer before negotiating with Mauritius. No specific price has been discussed, according to sources.
In February, Trump said that he had retained the right to “militarily secure” the Diego Garcia air base after calling the UK’s decision an “act of total weakness.”
UK Response A UK government spokesperson defended the original agreement, stating it was necessary to protect long-term interests and prevent adversaries from gaining a foothold:
“Diego Garcia is a key strategic military asset for both the UK and the US, which has protected our shared security for nearly 60 years. Maintaining long-term operational control and security of Diego Garcia is the entire basis for the UK-Mauritius agreement.”
In May, UK minister Hamish Falconer stated there was “no scenario” in which Washington could purchase the islands, reaffirming commitment to the deal. Downing Street has not commented on the latest US proposals.
ALBAWABA- Unconfirmed reports circulating on social media and in several regional media outlets claim that Ahmad Vahidi, commander-in-chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), was killed in recent Israeli airstrikes targeting sites in or around Tehran.
On Sunday afternoon, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) carried out an airstrike allegedly on a Hezbollah command centre in the Dahiyeh district of Beirut, following earlier rocket fire launched into northern Israel by Hezbollah.
In response, Iran declared that Israel had “crossed all red lines” in Lebanon and launched multiple waves of ballistic missile strikes targeting Israeli territory late on Sunday, June 7 and continuing into Monday morning. Air-raid sirens sounded across northern, central, and southern Israel, including the Tel Aviv area, forcing millions of residents to seek shelter.
Within hours of the Iranian barrage, Israeli forces launched a large-scale counteroffensive. Dozens of Israeli warplanes struck 12 military and strategic sites across central and western Iran. Targets reportedly included radar installations, truck-mounted missile launchers, and a major petrochemical facility in Mahshahr.
Following the Israeli strikes, Iran fired additional missile salvos toward Israel before its military command announced a temporary pause in operations, while warning of more severe retaliation if Israeli strikes in Lebanon continue. As of publication, neither Iranian authorities nor the IRGC have confirmed the reports. Israeli officials have also not commented on the claim.
Vahidi, a brigadier general and prominent hardline figure within Iran’s security establishment, assumed command of the IRGC in March 2026 following the deaths of senior commanders, including Hossein Salami and Mohammad Pakpour, during the early stages of the ongoing Iran-Israel conflict.
Before becoming IRGC chief, Vahidi served in several senior positions, including deputy commander of the IRGC, interior minister, and commander of the Quds Force during the 1990s. He was also the subject of an Interpol notice linked to the 1994 AMIA bombing in Argentina. Widely regarded as a close ally of Iran’s leadership, Vahidi played a significant role in shaping the country’s regional military strategy and missile program.
Israeli operations in recent weeks have reportedly focused on degrading Iran’s remaining missile capabilities and targeting senior military and security figures in Tehran and other strategic locations.
Vahidi’s death, if confirmed, marks another major setback for Iran’s military command structure and could further weaken the IRGC’s leadership at a critical stage of the conflict. However, given the absence of official confirmation and the prevalence of misinformation during wartime, analysts caution against concluding until credible evidence emerges.
Iranian officials have repeatedly warned that any assassination of senior military leaders would be met with retaliation, while Israel has maintained that it will continue striking what it describes as threats to its national security.
The situation remains fluid, with regional observers closely monitoring for official statements from Tehran and further developments on the battlefield.
Roseanne Milburn, 61, of Winnipeg, had a routine procedure turn into an amputation — not because the surgery failed, but because Canada’s government-run system couldn’t find her a bed.
A surgeon at Winnipeg’s Health Sciences Centre removed dead tissue from her knee, then sent her to Concordia Hospital with the plan to bring her back that same day so a specialist could stitch the wound (CBC News). She was never brought back.
There was no bed at HSC. So she sat at Concordia with an 𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐠𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐞𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐝𝐚𝐲𝐬, waiting for the system to make room.
As the video narrator put it: “𝘌𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘥𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘢𝘯 𝘰𝘱𝘦𝘯 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘊𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘥𝘢. 𝘕𝘰𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘊𝘶𝘣𝘢, 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘔𝘢𝘥𝘢𝘨𝘢𝘴𝘤𝘢𝘳, 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘧𝘢𝘳-𝘧𝘭𝘶𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘳𝘥-𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘺. 𝘕𝘰, 𝘯𝘰, 𝘯𝘰, 𝘪𝘯 𝘊𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘥𝘢.” By the time a bed opened, the wound had rotted past saving. The doctors told her the leg couldn’t be salvaged. On a Friday in December, Roseanne Milburn lost her 𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐥𝐞𝐠 — over a missing hospital bed. This is not a freak accident. It is the predictable output of a system that rations care by making people wait.
In 2025, the median Canadian waited 𝟐𝟖.𝟔 𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐤𝐬 from a GP referral to actual treatment (Fraser Institute). For orthopedic surgery — the exact category Milburn needed — the median wait is 𝟒𝟖.𝟔 𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐤𝐬. Nearly a full year. By design.
That is 222 percent longer than the 9.3-week wait Canadians faced in 1993 (Fraser Institute). The system isn’t getting better. It’s getting slower — and the waiting list itself becomes the rationing mechanism. Defenders call it “𝘧𝘳𝘦𝘦”. It is not free. Roseanne Milburn paid for it. She paid with her leg. Every politician selling “𝘔𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘈𝘭𝘭” is selling this — the bed that never opens, the specialist who never comes, the wound that turns black while a bureaucrat shuffles a list.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the universe had just…always been here?
Don’t get me wrong. I love the Big Bang. It has lots of drama, good action, a dying inflation field flooding the young cosmos with light and particles, and the grand central mystery of the singularity sitting right there at the start of everything. It has it all. And it is all so deeply, profoundly annoying. How exactly did it go down? What is inflation, really? Why did it switch off precisely when it did? And the singularity, well, anchoring your entire model of creation on a giant question mark is not what I would call a compelling opening move.
There is a different kind of comfort in imagining a universe that simply always was. Even if it repeats. Even if it runs in cycles. Maybe this particular version of the cosmos isn’t doing so great, and you know what, that’s fine, because we’ll get another shot. Sure, the next one might not come around for another 14 trillion years, but the point is that it comes around at all. And the past stretches back the same way, generation after generation of stars lighting up and burning out in some endless grand wheel. That is a genuinely comforting thought, if you let it be.
The Big Bang offers none of it. The Big Bang is relentlessly, almost rudely linear. This is it. This is the one and only chance the universe gets. It was born, it has already sailed past its glory days, and from here on out there is nothing but expansion into the deepening cold of the vacuum. No encore. No second act. Just a long, slow fade to black.
This linearity is a big part of what made the Big Bang so aggravating to so many people when it first arrived. Plenty of traditions, ancient and modern, religious and philosophical, build their cosmic history out of cycles. Even Christianity has a sort of cycle tucked into it: the flood and Noah and humanity getting handed a clean slate (yes, most people drowned in that story, but it’s the thought that counts), and the promise that however miserable your life is right now, a reset is coming. The Big Bang has nothing like that on offer. Just a beginning, a middle, and a cold, quiet end.
So it is no surprise that in the century or so since it was first scribbled down, people have kept trying to bend our cosmology back into a circle. The first person to really go for it was Richard Tolman, working all the way back in the 1930s, right as the standard Big Bang picture was itself just swimming into focus.
Tolman pictured a universe of big bangs followed by big crunches followed by more big bangs (nobody was using those names yet, but it’s the same idea). The cosmos expands, slows, stalls, and then falls back in on itself, squeezing down to something unimaginably small and dense before rebounding into a fresh expansion. Over and over. Forever. No first one, no last one, just the eternal heartbeat of a universe that breathes in and breathes out.
It’s a beautiful picture. And it falls apart almost immediately, for a reason that has haunted every cyclic model proposed since: entropy.
Entropy, the physicist’s bookkeeping for disorder, only ever climbs. It does not reset on its own. So each cycle is forced to inherit all the accumulated mess of the cycle before it. Every bounce starts dirtier than the last, which means every cycle runs a little bigger and a little longer than its predecessor. Now run that movie backward. The cycles get shorter. And smaller. And tidier. Until, inevitably, you arrive at a first one. A beginning. The exact thing the whole scheme was invented to avoid. Tolman worked through the math himself and saw it plainly. His eternal universe still needed a ground floor, some starting point to set the initial entropy, and the moment you concede that, you have quietly let the singularity back in through the side door.
There is a second problem, too. In a crunch, all of that entropy gets crushed back down into a tiny volume with absolutely nowhere to go. You can’t hide it. You can’t dump it. It just piles up, cycle after cycle, until the books no longer balance.
So for decades it really did look like the Big Bang would have the last laugh. A one-and-done cosmos. Beginning, middle, end, lights out. And every clever attempt to make it cyclic kept smuggling a beginning back in through some unlocked window.
And then, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, something genuinely new walked into the room and scrambled the entire board. A theory so strange that some of the very people who built it would later argue it isn’t even a theory at all.
One of my most memorable experiences as a college student was an insult I received from my professor. I had missed an exam due to work, and I asked him if I could make it up on another day. He reluctantly agreed. But when the day for the make-up arrived, I forgot about it. I needed an excuse: if I got a zero, I’d fail the course. I should have told him the truth and asked for mercy. But I lied. I told him that I had to work again. To my surprise, he looked at me and said, “If your work interferes with college, then you shouldn’t be in college.”
I was offended (which is ridiculous, since I had lied). His remark struck me as “classist” and “exclusionary”—words I wouldn’t have used at the time. How much students are required to work in college depends on their family income. Should people be excluded from higher education because they can’t afford to study full-time? What an elitist!
The thing was that I didn’t have to work much in college. My parents made sacrifices to pay for my tuition, room, and board. They didn’t give me any discretionary money, so I had to work some. But about ten hours a week at the library was enough to keep the drinks flowing and a pack of cigarettes in my pocket. I was a budding scholar! A student of promise!
In truth, my anger at Dr. Johnson’s quip was a way to ignore the humiliation I felt. Humiliation for lying, yes. But more for the assertion that I shouldn’t be in college. Me? I was a budding scholar! A student of promise!
“I’ll show him,” I thought.
His rebuke played a small role in transforming me into a very serious student. Ten years later, I had a tenure-track job as a professor. My run-in with Dr. Johnson happened in 1999. And the intervening time has vindicated his position.I have resisted teaching online courses.
Since the explosion of online education in the wake of the pandemic, I have resisted teaching online courses. Even at the peak of Covid hysteria in 2020, I insisted on teaching face-to-face. I thought that many students took online courses because they assumed they would be easier. These assumptions put pressure on professors: one must choose between lowering standards to satisfy student expectations or insisting on as much rigor as the digital medium allows (thereby risking negative evaluations from frustrated students who felt their online course was “too hard”).
Scheduling constraints have occasionally forced me to teach online. Sometimes, these have been successful courses. But it’s always the case that those courses would have been better if we had been in the classroom together. The prerequisites for a good online class are low enrollment and strong students. Often, though, it is the weaker students who choose online classes. They assume virtual courses will be easier: they don’t want a challenge. Other students choose to “attend” online because they have many competing responsibilities. They have jobs, children to look after, ailing fathers, and appearances in divorce court. For them, school is an afterthought —the time they devote to it is whatever time is left after all the important obligations are satisfied.
If you’re a serious student, it ought to be a priority.
These are the students who remind me of Dr. Johnson’s insight. His point was that school shouldn’t be an afterthought: if you’re a serious student, it ought to be a priority. And if it isn’t a priority (or if you’re not a serious student), then why do it?
This semester, scheduling forced me to teach the Freshman English course online. We met two days a week on Zoom. The first-year composition course is a critical one. It aims to equip students to effectively manage the writing demands of college—demands for which many are ill-prepared. Such a course probably shouldn’t be offered online. The students who need it the most often arrive with the expectation that the “left over” time will be sufficient for the class. This jeopardizes their prospects for success in the course—and in college at large.
As this semester progressed, I imagined Dr. Johnson rolling in his grave. My class started at 11:30 am. Some students were routinely arriving as late as 12:15 pm—halfway through the session. They had things to do, after all: flat tires, job interviews, moms who needed help moving. At the start of the course, most of the students had their cameras off. Our university has a policy that requires students in online courses to have their cameras on. I tried for weeks to get everyone to comply. It’s harder to teach a sea of black squares. Is anyone even there?
I contacted the leadership in my department to see what I should do about students who refuse to turn their cameras on. The answer was “nothing.” After all, some of them might be embarrassed for people to see the interior of their house. Allow them their dignity. I ignored this advice and told the class that I’d begin imposing penalties on their participation grades if their cameras were off.Some students were driving during class.
Most of the cameras finally came on, and I’m glad Dr. Johnson wasn’t there to see it. Some students had clearly just awakened—close to noon. Some students were literally still in bed. Some had posted a photograph of themselves as they sat in front of their computers to make it appear that their cameras were on and that they were present.
Some students were driving during class. One was in a classroom serving as a substitute teacher. Others were clearly conversing with people off-camera. Courteously, they had their microphones turned off. Some participants were dealing with small children. When I (repeatedly) asked an individual with his camera pointed at the ceiling to answer a question about the class material to make sure she was paying attention, I got no response. She wasn’t in earshot of the computer. One student who missed half of the semester (and handed in none of the assignments) showed up in Week 9 and was surprised when I informed her that she would fail the class. When I asked what had kept her away from the course for two months, she explained that her dog had surgery.
Remember, this is a writing course. On some days, I expect students to write during class. How does one write while driving an automobile? How can one compose while being intermittently interrupted at her desk by the children she substitute teaches? One student informed me that he wasn’t able to write because he was using his phone to attend class—long-form composition was impossible. Why would you use a phone to “attend” a class?
Questions continued to dart across my mind. Why would you use a phone to “attend” a class? Why would you sign up for a class that starts at 11:30 if you have “things to do” that keep you from logging on until 11:45 every session? Why would you enroll in a course that meets every Tuesday and Thursday if you can’t attend on Thursdays because of work demands? Why would you think substitute teaching can be done while participating in an online course? Why does the school you are working at allow it? Why is the federal government loaning (and in many cases, granting) students money for this?
The answers to these questions don’t matter. The class was an afterthought. That’s sad, but doubly so, since it means that education as a whole is an afterthought. It’s just something to fill the “in-between” time. Some students seemed mystified that I expected any learning to occur at all.
For so many American students, “college” is just another consumer item. The time they spend in class is a service. I am the “server.” They’ve paid for the class. My job, like any waiter, is to ensure customer satisfaction. If the patron of a restaurant orders a filet mignon, it’s his prerogative to watch the Yankees game while he eats it. And if the chef implores him to turn off the game and really enjoy the steak, it follows that the guest will see this as an imposition. Nevertheless, if the game is turned off, the patron still gets the enjoyment of eating the steak. But what happens when the waiter asks him to do something he doesn’t enjoy— like washing his dishes? That’d be an outrage. School can’t be reduced to an exercise in customer service.
This is why school can’t be reduced to an exercise in customer service: a serious education requires students to do many things they don’t want to do. Adding insult to injury, it’s not enough just to do those things: students are expected to do them well. In short, education is a job. Trying to maintain academic standards in this environment creates a lot of dissatisfied customers. The customer isn’t always right, but he always thinks he is. This transactional mindset now dominates our colleges and universities.
This was the “future” we chose for education when we forced all schooling online in 2020. The resulting decline in student performance is well documented, but the damage done to the vocation of education is less noticed. What was lost is what Dr. Johnson wanted to preserve: students for whom the pursuit of education is a spiritual commitment. He wanted (and deserved) students who would put learning first because they saw it as an end in itself. He didn’t want students who were in it for a diploma, for an increase in pay, for this or that job, or for something to occupy their extra time. Simply put, he wanted students in the true sense of the word.
It took almost three decades, but man…he showed me.
Adam Ellwanger is a full professor who studies rhetoric, writing, and politics at the University of Houston-Downtown.
THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 