George Rebane

Correlation is the gateway to causality.

Nationally and locally the corps of our loyal Lenin’s lads and ladies continue their anti-American drumbeat.  Locally we read a stream of revisionist lies and TDS-powered diatribes in The Union.  An example is the vituperation heaped on Barry Pruett for his recent piece illustrating the parallels in student indoctrination practiced in Nazi Germany with what has been going on in America’s public schools under the heel of our radical left teachers’ unions.

All of this decidedly woke curriculum is flatly denied by everyone with even a tinge of Democrat Party affinity.  Re Pruett’s disclosure, they claimed that he presented no documented evidence for pointing out the obvious in the skill sets and behaviors of students blessed with a socialist education.  In each case, nationally and in Nevada County, a dismally inadequate percentage of students are able to exhibit grade level literacy and numeracy.  Approximately 35% of U.S. high school seniors demonstrate grade-level proficiency in reading/literacy, and about 22% do so in mathematics/numeracy, according to the most recent 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results for 12th graders.  These percentages are replicated in Nevada County.

The correlation between this downward spiral and the ever greater inclusion of woke DEI indoctrination in classrooms is undeniable.  The causal link is established through elementary reasoning given the data and observable behavior of our young people.  They come out of school spouting Marxist dogma and overwhelmingly believe that America should give socialism a chance.

Today is May Day, and it serves to illustrate the above observation.  Modern May Day observances focus on collectivist themes.  The day highlights group interests (the working class) over individual ones, international solidarity across borders, and organized labor as a counter to market-driven individualism. Demonstrations often feature calls for social equality, wealth redistribution, and collective bargaining—core tenets of collectivist thought.  It remains an important national holiday in communist countries.

With America’s recent leftward lurch led by the Democrat Party, there are hundreds (thousands?) of May Day celebrations planned and ongoing.  Many schools across the country are letting students take the day off to attend local May Day demonstrations.  In Chicago the city’s school district has even provided buses to gather students and take them to the various celebration and demonstration venues.  The students have all been taught the significance of May Day.  To argue that leftwing indoctrination does not take place in our schools ranges between socialist perfidy and plain ignorance.

As a codicil to the proposition of the Left’s onslaught on America’s culture and governance, we consider the whole fiasco of catastrophic climate change and global warming that has been thoroughly foisted on world populations, and most fervently embraced in the EU countries and the US.  One of the prime falsehoods output by its propaganda factories is the catastrophic economic impact that will result from unmitigated and/or ignored climate change.

A recent report on this predicted effect was published in the April 2024 issue of the prestigious Nature.  It was titled ‘The Economic Commitment of Climate Change’ and authored by Maximilian Kotz and colleagues from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.  The report projected severe global economic damages from climate change. It estimated substantial losses, including a roughly 19% drop in global income by 2050 and up to 62% by 2100 under high-emissions scenarios, with annual costs reaching trillions of dollars. The paper gained significant attention and influenced policy discussions.

After people began a more detailed look at the report, they found “substantial errors in the underlying data and analysis” to the extent that it could not be readily corrected and maintain its claimed economic impact in tens of trillions of dollars by 2050.  So, in December 2025 Nature retracted the paper.

But the damage had already been done on its effect on adoption of public policies in the interval and its use and further corroboration of the Big Lie of climate change.  But the story doesn’t end there.  We now ask, how was the retraction of this major scientific publication reported in the lamestream media and acknowledged in the legislative halls across the country?  The simple answer is that the error has been totally ignored and swept under the rug, while allowing its erroneous conclusions to echo in our ‘public knowledge’ and beliefs in the drastic effects of climate change.

And with little response from the feckless rightwing and Republicans, our Left marches on toward a brave new world of compassionate collectivism while rejecting the cold rugged individualism of the free market capitalists.