The View From 1776

The Fallacy of Teaching Tolerance, Or Can You Unbake A Pretzel?
By Melanie K. Wooten

During prom season one year, I heard a commentator asking where was the outrage over homosexual prom dates, and my mind leapt back to a 2002 show when he asked me where was the outrage over occupation of the Church of the Nativity?  Now, you would think that these are two entirely different issues, but they are not.  There is no difference between the lack of outrage over Islamic fundamentalists occupying a Christian symbol and the lack of outrage over same sex prom dates. On the same subject, the lack of outrage over the ludicrous measures taken to make our skies safer makes absolutely no sense when we all know who the culprits are, and they are not little old ladies or elderly white men!  So, I ask you to follow along with me for a while.

There is a commonality to these issues and that common denominator is we Americans have been taught to be tolerant of everything and everybody, so what’s to be upset about, right?  I mean, we have been taught we must find a reason to understand anyone’s actions or beliefs that offend us. If you are under fifty, there is no such thing as aberrant or abhorrent behavior anymore, no good nor bad; we are all just different and we have to understand/accept those differences.

That mindset is precisely why there is a line of demarcation between the thought processes of the over-fifties and under-fifties. Courtesy of our wondrous public school system, our citizens under fifty have been totally indoctrinated in the belief that we MUST understand EVERYTHING, even it if is illegal, immoral or fattening, even if we turn our brains into pretzels in the process. The end result is we are all so confused we cannot object, even if we can find a reason to do so, because we have been told the reasons we have for objecting are INTOLERANT.  So, we bite our tongues and slowly implode --- which brings me to making pretzels.

The recipe for making pretzels is fairly straightforward.  In fact, the recipe has the same ingredients, basically, as bread without yeast.  So, why is bread such a marvelously malleable, chewy, bury-your-nose-in-its-smell, wrap-your-tongue-around-its-texture creation of good bakers, and pretzels, also marvelous I might add, are crunchy, not too much smell, rather bland and requiring cheese or much salt to make them something you want to eat?  The reason for the difference is how bakers handle the dough.

Bread requires firm hands, loving hands, not angry ones, so that the dough will rise, and a gentle touch to put the loaf into a medium oven. Bread requires patience because the best breads are an all-day process.  Pretzels, on the other hand, require high heat and much plying to get the dough into those loops we are all so familiar with.  The smell of the rising bread, quite different from the baking, fills the kitchen and brain with thoughts of what is to come.  The smell of the baking bread will waft across an entire neighborhood, bringing friends, two-legged and four-legged, to your door and your table.  Sorry, but pretzels don’t cast such a spell, despite being baked in shopping centers in large quantities.  So too with brains, which should not be baked in a philosophy of tolerance as taught in our school systems until said brains are rock-hard and totally lacking in independent thought processes.

Just as pretzels cannot be unbaked, I have no idea what to do with this entire generation whose brains have been turned into pretzels and guts tied in knots because what they have been told is true ain’t natural.  It is not wrong for me to get upset if someone is trying to ram something down my craw I will never agree with or to in my wildest dreams.  It is wrong to punch that same someone in the nose as a reaction to the attempted stuffing.  So I have come up with a solution to save wear-and-tear on my brain that permits me to lounge in a hammock rather than a jail cell.

I have a favorite saying and I am going to pass it on to you and anyone else who will listen. When I am told I MUST understand something or ACCEPT something I know in my gut is illegal, immoral or fattening, even if I can’t think of the logical argument against it, I say: NO, I DON’T.  I say this nicely and firmly. And I keep repeating it.  I refuse to argue with whoever it is about whatever it is that s/he feels (not believes) I should understand and/or accept.  They are not right and I cannot win.  You should try it.  Use it in good health.  It beats being a pretzel.