I�m going to feed them to hyenas. The prissy passive-aggressive do-gooderesses in the schools, I mean: The ones who think dodge ball is violence, and get their undies in a bunch over plastic ray guns. I figure to coat them with Spam to make them more appetizing to the hyenas, who might otherwise prefer a week-old dead zebra.

In the Wilmington (N.C.) Morning Star* a headline appeared a few months back: �Tempest in a toy chest: State rater deducts points for preschool�s �violent plastic soldiers.��

I�m going to get big nasty hyenas -- retarded ones, just to be sure. They�ll eat anything.

It seems there�s a preschool in Wilmington called Kids Gym Schoolhouse, and it was getting evaluated by the state. Now, this makes reasonable sense. You want to make sure the school wasn�t built around an open mine shaft, and that the owner isn�t a maniac who locks the kids in a basement and feeds them poisoned turnips, and that the building isn�t a fire trap, or full of hornets. OK. That works. Got it.

As it turned out, Kids Gym School was just fine, nothing wrong with it, except � one of the inspecting do-gooderesses, ever alert, noticed that the little boys were playing with green plastic soldiers.

Yes. Green ones. The horror.

�If stereotyping or violence is shown with regard to any group, then credit cannot be given,� wrote evaluator Katie Haseldon. �It was observed that nine �army men� were present in the block play area. These figures reflect stereotyping and violence, therefore credit can not be given.�

I understand her concern. You know how kids are: First it�s toy soldiers, then it�s human sacrifice. Studies show that kids who start with G.I. Joe, especially if he�s green, move on to vivisection of unpopular classmates, particularly orphans.

The labored English of the indictment puzzles. What has stereotyping to do with it? A stereotype is the aggregate observation of many people over time, which is why stereotypes are almost always accurate. Stereotyping means recognizing the obvious. In an academic context, or in the public schools, it means noticing that the wrong groups are better at things. This we must never, ever do.

But�stereotyping of what? Green men?

Anyway, do-gooders. Methinks that people who Do Good to people who don�t want it done to them are actually up to something else entirely. They�re playing �Gotcha!� Remember the class tattletale in third grade? Peggy would tell the teacher �Ricky�s got candy in his desk!� and watch with smug hostility as Ricky caught it. Little boys didn�t do this, not because some of them weren�t wormy enough, but because they knew they would eventually have to leave the schoolyard. For girls there was no accountability. There still isn�t.

The point is that Peggy wasn�t energized by an abstract concern for the rule of law, or solicitude for the future health of Ricky�s dentition. She was angry, she didn�t know at what, and had discovered that she could use the system to punish others in the name of virtue.

Gotcha.

A similar vague anger underlies today�s widespread animosity, ostensibly toward violence � little boys ejected from school for pointing a chicken finger and saying �Bang!� or for drawing a picture of a soldier. Are we to believe that the commissars of niceness really believe that drawing a GI is a punishable offense, or a sign of budding psychopath (who will be cured by a three-day suspension)? Of course not. They are not so stupid, nor are they quite crazy. They are hostile. They want the satisfaction of making others knuckle under. And they have learned to use the system to do it.

Mostly they are women. Why? Part of the obsession with imaginary violence may derive from the female drive for security, security, security. But the constant assault on little boys is, I think, an extension of The Chip, the snappish, distempered animosity toward all things male that characterizes American women. This ferret-like bad humor drives the feminization of the United States. In the schools it manifests itself in the opposition to rough boys games (violence), to competition of any kind (self-esteem might suffer), to grades (some grades are better than others). Performance has always been a male focus, niceness a female one.

Women are said to be more psychologically astute than men. I don�t think so. They know how to manipulate men � flash a leg, cry, look helpless, withhold sex, withhold the children. They seldom have the dimmest idea how men think, why they do what they do, or why they might want to. They don�t understand why males want to go faster, take things apart, fiddle with computers, see what would happen if.

They aren�t happy in a male world, and so work furiously to feminize it. And, being angry at they-aren�t-sure-what, they have decided that men are responsible for � well, whatever it is. Thus, among many other things, the desire to turn little boys into little girls.

Malignant feminization has consequences. After Ahmet and Mahmud got the World Trade Center, America took up hobbyist patriotism. Yuppies everywhere became willing to send someone else to fight wars. Yet at the same time, the schools punish children for playing soldier, for drawing soldiers, for playing with plastic soldiers, and for chickenstickery. How sensible: As the military desperately seeks recruits, the government of North Carolina, and apparently the public schools in general, teach little boys that being a soldier is Bad, Bad, Bad.

Note that it is the state of North Carolina. The owner of the preschool said, correctly, that the position of the raters was absurd. �But Anna Carter, supervisor of the N.C. Division of Child Development�s Policy and Program Unit, said authors of the Environmental Rating System consider toy soldiers inappropriate because they represent a violent theme.� It wasn�t just one distressed do-gooderess. North Carolina, by governmental policy, is hostile to the American armed forces.

In the military itself, the same feminization, powered by The Chip, has brought a focus on feelings and self-esteem, a drastic lowering of physical standards, the usual obsession with sexual harassment, and the conversion of the armed services into homes for unwed mothers. In none of this is there any comprehension of what militaries are for. Nor is there sympathy for the competitiveness of the military male, for the urge to push limits, for charging hard and taking chances, for the rough camaraderie of barracks and encampment. Instead, blank incomprehension.

Tell you what. Virulent niceness is going to turn us all into angry, confused semi-male women and repressed male milquetoasts living in fear of the vengefully good. Salvation, I say, lies in hyenas.

www.fredoneverything.net

*By Victoria Rouch, The Wilmington Morning Star, November 15, 2001. www.wilmingtonstar.com

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