Sometimes—though I will admit it’s rare—serious policy discussions can turn into comedy gold.
In my recent op-ed, I discussed the capture of social-emotional learning (SEL) by DEI as I experienced it while in the Stanford Teacher Education Program, where I received my Master’s in Education. Apparently, my critique didn’t go over well with one of my progressive former classmates, who sent me the following mix of condescension and condemnation. Here is the text of our exchange:
Text from a fellow Stanford teacher candidate:
“Kate, I saw your post on the Cannon. I am very disappointed to hear this is what you took away from STEP… I think you need to take a long look in the mirror and think about how you are betraying yourself as a woman, STEP, and all other teachers with this piece. If you are afraid to look at your own privileges and strive for equality, then you should not be a teacher.”
Given the hyperbole expressed in her text, I decided to goof on her.
My response:
“Always great to hear from one of my fans. But I have a serious bone to pick with you. You referred to me as a woman?? Are you a biologist?”
If you think my response was serious, you should probably stop reading. I thought my mild tweak would send her back to her mommy’s basement. Instead, something profound happened. In the midst of what I was laughing off as an unserious conversation, I learned a serious truth: The progressive left is tone deaf to humor because they are tone deaf to the truth about human nature.
Her reply:
“So, last time we talked you identified with being a woman. I apologize if that has changed, and you wish to be referred to differently. I don’t need to be a biologist, just a thoughtful person to ask gender.”
I decided to double down on the left’s embrace of doublethink.
Me again:
“I will consider your apology, but I am deeply wounded.”
Readers from Orwell’s “1984” know well what doublethink is. It is the ability to hold two contradictory beliefs simultaneously and accept both as true. It is the price of admission for membership in the progressive left.
In “1984,” Orwell illustrates the terrifying power of doublethink through a moment when Winston Smith, the freedom-fighting protagonist, under intense torture, is forced to deny the truth that two plus two equals four. At first, he resists, even writing in his journal that “freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.” But eventually, after brutal beatings, he breaks. When a Party official holds up four fingers, Winston sees five.
This passage reveals that doublethink is the ability to genuinely believe two contradictory beliefs at once, because the Party’s orthodoxy demands it. In Orwell’s dystopia, truth is whatever the Party says it is. That once-fictional logic has crept into our institutions. In fact, the Harvard School of Public Health echoed this mindset on Twitter promoting research claiming that two plus two can equal five, a nod to the ideological conformity that Orwell warned against.
Today’s most glaring examples of modern doublethink are expressed in the left’s assertion that men can have babies, trans women are women, and that then-President Joe Biden was as sharp as a tack during his presidency. Belief in these lies is the prerequisite of totalitarianism success.
So why didn’t this poor woman know I was playing with her? Why was she unable to recognize the humor in my over-the-top reply?
Because adopting the social justice ideology forces individuals to adopt claims that are steeped in doublethink, where contradictory beliefs are simultaneously embraced as truth. My response to her challenged her deeply held belief of “fluid gender identities.” Truth—such as, first two plus two equals four, and a man cannot become pregnant—has been sacrificed, and must be sacrificed at the altar of social justice.
To be sure, the woman I had this exchange with is, truly, a nice person. In fact, most people are. Unfortunately, niceness isn’t enough when the truth is neglected. Alan Bloom addressed this in the best-selling “The Closing of the American Mind”: “Students these days are…not particularly moral or noble.” They are simply “nice.”