Defending merit and mocking "equity grading" (05-30-2025--Hour2)

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to vpetclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. I welcome all callers. I take all of them, except if you've been banned for really galactic levels of dumbassary. Let me go over or let me go a little bit more in depth on the caller at the end of the last hour, Melinda, who I take it doesn't like Vince Cochley, who is on ten to noon before I come on, and or at least is trying to score some points by suggesting that he doesn't belong in the WBT lineup or something, because because that's what she's saying when she says, could in Vince Cokeley be considered a Dei higher and as I told her that viewing everything through the racial prism is Dei prism or lens it has so warped the way she thinks in that she sees a black man holding a job on WBT for years and thinks he's only there because of his race. See that's what this way of thinking does to the leftist mind. And again I mentioned the woke right, it's doing the same thing over there. But with the Jews it's the same thing. Right. You cease to see the person as the individual because I can tell you without disclosing a kind of trade secrets here, but I can tell you if Vince Coakley's ratings were not good, consistently good, he would not be on the air any longer. See, this is a meritocracy. Being on the air on WBT is a meritocracy. You cannot be on the air for as long as Vince has been on the air. And dare I say also just in broadcasting. The man has been in broadcasting for what now forty years? Thirty or forty years? He was the lead anchor of the highest rated TV news, local TV News in Charlotte for years, for years. But see, Melinda doesn't see past Vince's skin color, and then she weaponizes the skin color to diminish his achievements. All to score some political point, because the issue isn't the issue. The issue is the revolution. So she may think Vince is just a perfectly fine person, he's good at what he does or whatever. But I have to now discard that for the moment because I'm trying to advance the revolution by making this argument that you, Pete, don't know what you're talking about on DEI or something, because Melinda, she wasn't asking a question. She's making an allegation, right, She's making an allegation of hypocrisy or something, and that maybe Vince doesn't belong on the lineup. But I can tell you once again that the ratings would not lie. If he doesn't have good ratings, he is out. Okay. So Melinda called back and said she loves Vince. You misunderstood her. I don't think I misunderstood you if you're suggesting he's a DEI higher. Also, I would point out that we are owned by urban I, so huh, yeah, I no, Vince deserves his spot because we are a meritocracy. The people who are on the air here are on the air because we produce content that advertisers want to purchase time during. Because a lot of people listen to the content. You like the content that the various hosts produce. We all do different things and we're not told what to say and what to think. We produce different content, we say different things, we have different opinions, and we do it in a way that people appreciate and they like to listen to, they like to engage with, And advertisers see that audience and they say, I would like my message to be in front of those people. That audience and the politics of it really don't matter so much. It's just that they want people to be aware of their product or service, and the moment a host cannot deliver the audience, then they're gone. That's it. It's as easy and as straightforward as that. So to suggest that somehow Vince doesn't belong in the lineup, or that he was hired for some other reason than his merit is offensive. But again, that's that's what happens when you when you go down this path of looking at people as as groups and classes, and then you start stuffing those classes into oppressor and depressed, and we have to try to squeeze the well. I was gonna say balloon, but that's not a good analogy. You're trying to You're trying to adjust the scales to make everything even for the out for the outcomes. For example, out in San Francisco, did you hear that they were going to implement equity grading? Equity grading? Equity is not equality. They are different. Right. As Gary pointed out, equality of outcome is not the same as equality of opportunity. I believe in equal opportunities. Anybody can be anything. You can do. What you set your mind to do, you can do it. And shame on those who tell kids, who tell other people, adults to that you can't because somebody is preventing you from getting your dream. They're blocking you. These are the evil people stopping you from doing this thing. If you want it, you can get it. Set your sights on it. Have a goal. Tell people what that goal is. You would be amazed at how simple it actually is. That's it. Have a goal, a realistic one, but have goals, put write them down. Write your goals down, and then tell other people what it is you want to achieve. That's what a job application is. I want this job. Communicating to the employer I would like that job. Have the goal, write it down, Tell other people, because when you tell other people, you would be amazed how many people want to actually help you achieve your goal, especially successful people. But we don't tell people that. We don't tell kids that. Have you ever heard that? In a K twelve education setting? To have a goal? Write it down and then tell people what your goal is so they can help you achieve it. Ask for help, seek out mentorship. Right, these are the things that make you successful. And you know who knows this, successful people, And you know what they will tell you exactly what I just told you, because they've told me. They write books about this stuff, seriously, how to win friends and influence people, how to what was the one drawing a blank on the name of it, Carnegie, think yourself rich or something like that. I forget what it was called years ago, but you talked about visualization of the goal. They all do the same thing. It's the same model. And when you tell people that they cannot do that because the color of their skin, their economic background, their sexual identity, whatever. When you tell people that somehow or another, you can't make it like all these other people can, so you need help, you're instilling in them what's called a tendency for interpersonal VICTIMOODE or TIV. It's a psychological thing. You start stuffing their brains with that cancerous view, and then it affects every single thing in their life. It is so damaging that if you really want to help people, you tell them the things that make them successful, like I just did. Here's another one. If you want to stay out of poverty or get out of poverty. They know the answers to this. You know what the answers are. Nothing GOVC can do for you. Graduate high school right, graduate high school. Have a job, any job. Just have a job because it will lead to other opportunities and skills development. So graduate high school, have a job, and then don't get or don't have kids before you're married and before you are out of school. That was the Brookings Institution, a liberal think tank. They identified these things thirty years ago. I want to say, this is not rocket science. But if you don't tell people these things and instead stuff their minds with the idea that they are the victim, you are damning them to a life of poverty and grievance mongering, grievance collecting. It's just poison, absolute poison, and it comes from the Marxist ideology. I see the roots there. They talk about the same thing that that's the same. It's the class warfare. The only reason you don't have is because these other people are preventing you from having it. It's envy and it's a religion. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina. Just a quick drive up the mountain and Cabins of Asheville is your connection. Whether you're celebrating an anniversary, a honeymoon, maybe you want to plan a memorable proposal, or get family and friends together for a big old reunion. Cabins of Asheville has the ideal spot for you where you can reconnect with your loved ones and the things that truly matter. Nestled within the breath taking fourteen thousand acres of the Pisga National Forest, their cabins offer a serene escape in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Centrally located between Asheville and the entrance of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. It's the perfect balance of seclusion and proximity to all the local tractions with hot tubs, fireplaces, air conditioning, smart TVs, Wi Fi, grills, outdoor tables and your own private covered porch. Choose from thirteen cabins, six cottages, two villas, and a great lodge with eleven king sized bedrooms. Cabins of Ashville has the ideal spot for you for any occasion, and they have pet friendly accommodations. Call her text eight two eight, three six seven seventy sixty eight or check out all there is to offer at Cabinsofashville dot com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. Let's head over to the phone lines and chat with Richard. Hello, Richard, welcome to the program. How are you? Hi? Very good. I'm an American and I happen to have black skin, and I'm so glad you're covering this because from my perspective, people like me, what you would call the African American community, have been destroyed by what I would call this government heroine, which is packaged in socialism, communism, and Marxism. So when Joe Biden's going around saying build back better, I said to myself, well, they want to destroy and then build back into this ideology of this Marx Marxism. Yeah, at the core of that is the is the uh well Obama called it the fundamental transformation. It's the tearing down of the existing institutions by any means necessary. And that's where you get the systemically this and inherently that in order to what to tear them down and then to quote rebuild them, as you said, to build them back better. It's a it is the it's the project of the left. Yes, and they're very savvy, and everybody has to watch the language, and you have to understand the content of what they're saying, because they package these things in a very nice little envelope, but when you taste it, it's heroin, it's poison. And they were trying to do that. Not only they've already done to the African American community, but they wanted it to do to the whole country. And everybody should remember because they'll try to go to the middle now and they'll try to mask themselves. But everybody has to remember going forward, who did this, because they came very close to destroying this country with their open borders in this DEI crap. Well, they still might, Richard, they still might. We are not we are nowhere near past the impacts of the the illegal immigration crisis, and the and the DEI and CRT and all of that garbage, all that Marxist garbage. We're still in that. We're still in the thick of it. Yes, and I'm very I'm from New York, I'm retired cop. And god forbid, the next thing that blows up or some building comes down, just remember who opened up those borders. Who's gonna have blood in their hands? Yeah there, Yeah, No, I appreciate it, Richard. I appreciate the call too. Thank you for your service also, And that's the concern that I played the clips a couple I guess two weeks ago. Yeah. From Tom Holman, head of the board's the borders are And that's one of the things he said that keeps him up at night, is like, we know there are just by numbers, hundreds of thousands of people that got away. We don't know how many more got away. The two hundred thousand is that's just the number we know of. And even if it's like one percent of the two hundred thousand that we know of, like that's enough to cause a lot of damage and kill a lot of people. It was a decision that was made by President Auto pen whoever that was. Yeah, it's it's very concerning to me because the purpose is to destroy. That's the point, right, And I mentioned Obama's catchphrase fundamental transformation. You know, you don't fundamentally transform something that you love, that you think is good. The only the only reason you would fundamentally transform something is if you didn't like it, if it was bad, if you, you know, wanted to make something else. That's why you would fundamentally change it. So over in San Francisco, apparently you can push those people too far on this equity stuff. I did not think that was possible full disclosure, but apparently it is a proposal to experiment with changing the grading system in the city's high schools quickly crashed and burned. They called it grading for equity because that's going to prepare kids for their future as an adult. Right is to grade them on such a curve that they don't actually learn anything, but they still get their diploma, and then they'll be really prepared to make a comfortable living for themselves and be productive members of society. Because they'll have the high school diploma. They won't know how to read, they won't know how to do any arithmetic. They won't know really anything else except probably you know, queer theory and such. But at least they got the diploma. Homework and classroom participation were no longer going to influence final grades. Instead, your grades would be primarily determined by a final exam that students could take multiple times. Attendance and punctuality, which remember, I think is racist according to this Smithsonian from a couple of years back where they put out that big chart about what is racist and you know, white oppression and stuff, the DEI. It's one of those other anecdotes when the Smithsonian puts something like that out and they said, being on time is whiteness. Punctuality is whiteness. A score of eighty percent, you get an A. A score as low as forty one, well that's a C. And if you got a twenty one, well that's a D. This was equity grading. Yeah, and apparently the parents they were like, whoa, now you've gone too far. All right, So spring is here a time of renewal and celebrations. You've got graduations, weddings, anniversaries and the special days for mom and dad. Your family's making memories that are going to last a lifetime. But let me ask you, are all of those treasured moments from days gone by? Are they hidden away on old VCR tapes, eight millimeter films, photos slides? Are they preserved? Because over time, these precious memories can fade and deteriorate, losing the magic of yesterday. At Creative Video, they help you protect what matters most. Their expert team digitizes your cherished family moments and transfers them onto a USB drive, freezing them in time so they can be enjoyed for generations to come. I urge you do not wait until it's too late this spring. Celebrate your past. Visit Creative Video today and let them preserve your legacy with the love and care that it deserves. Creative Video Preserving Family Memories since nineteen ninety seven, located in mint Hill, just off four eighty five. Mail orders are accepted to get all the details that createavideo dot Com. National Review editorial headline, san Francisco's equity grading would end education. I went over some of the details of this dumbass idea. Instead of educating kids, the San Francisco equity play and would have effectively instrumentalized the children the school system is supposed to serve, making them an object lesson for educating the rest of society on what equality should look like. In this upside down reconception of schooling, instilling knowledge, virtue, and habits for lifelong learning becomes a scandalous distraction from the political project of making students equal equally uneducated. I put that last part in equally uneducated. That is the thing about communism. Everybody ends up equal, well except for the guys, the elites that are ruling over everybody else. But everybody else is equal, equally poor, equally terrified, paranoid about all their neighbors and family members that snitch on each other and then get hauled away to gulags and such. They go on to say that in some ways we should not be surprised that schemes like this the progressive overclass guards its privilege to rule through meritocracy on one side, while on the other defends its moral right to rule through its commitment to equality. Some level of cognitive dissonance must be expected, they say. Trying to change the definition of a work to include b work, so they were making the grading system they're talking about a score of eighty percent would still get an A. Now in my day, you only got an A if it was ninety and above. Right. B's were in the eighties, c's were in the seventies, and then D was only like five points from like six sixty five to seventy, and then everything else was an F. You had to get like two thirds of the stuff right just to be considered passing with a D. In this equity grading system, you could get a twenty one, and that's a D for dumb assery. Right, So, trying to change the definition of what is a work to incorporate all the B work just obscures the achievements of the best students and teachers. Passing work that fails is an even worse thing to do for the middling and poor students and teachers who might otherwise be roused to do better, Like if you fail, then you should try to do better to pass. It obscures the need for dramatic interventions and remedial learning. Right, Oh, look at you, you got a twenty two. Oh you pass You got a D. Oh, I'm so proud. Now you don't have to do any kind of corrective action. The best thing schools can do for kids is to raise standards and then build a culture of support that helps children achieve to the best of their abilities. Right, the soft bigotry of low expectations. They scrapped this plan. They did scrap it. They got such backlash from I know San Francisco parents. They will not be implementing the equity grading yet. I say yet, because these things never they never truly die, these types of ideas, they don't go away. There was a movie I think it was called Ghost Chip with the dude from Fight Club that wasn't Brad Pitt, but Edward Norton. I think he was in it. And yeah, pretty sure he was in it. And it's been out for a long time, so I'm going to spoil it for you. But it's basically a ghost Chip. It's a boat and it's out there and it's like this boat that like the history. The history is that it sank and it was like a luxury liner. So there were all these riches on it, and they entice these scavengers to try to go find it. He's like, I know where the boat is, we can go get it. And basically it's a ship that lures people in and it's satan just trapping souls, luring them in with riches and greed and all of this other stuff. And it's just a cycle. And it never ends. This argument it's called the Great Debate. It never ends because it is inspired my opinion, only it is inspired from Hell. Then I know how that sounds. I absolutely know how that sounds. But if I were to construct a religion dressed up in any different form of economics or equality, right, you can just take the parts and put them into anything, this would be it because it breeds the very kind of chaos and animosity and envy and greed. It creates all of these things that destroy people's bonds and their civility and their societies. So yeah, that's why I call these things as I see them. I say that this is what I think it is because I know of no other word to describe what I'm seeing. Let me see here. This is from Philip. In all of the hubris over DEI I have yet to see a list of characteristics that qualify for diversity. Well, I think it's like porn. You know it when you see it. Short, fat, bald, blonde, facial jewelry, long fingernailed, shoe size, country of origin or any other items that might be in the human race. Tell me, do you know of any visually impaired commercial pilots? I do not? Why not? What's the limit on diversity? Right? Yeah? I mean this, This is part of the problem. When you implement these things, you start down this road of replacing merit with some other false metric, and that can get people killed. Jan says, you don't understand DEI. I have to disagree. I started listening to you in Ashville and have been listening to you for years. Thank you. Jan. There is a long list of things you obviously don't understand, but you seem to have a very good grip on DEI. Thank you, Thank you very much. I appreciate that. On a completely separate note, I had no idea Vince was black, and I couldn't care less even if I were willing to try. I enjoy his show, and that pretty much sums it up. So yeah, Dennis says, as a unc Charlotte alum from sixty seven to seventy one, I remember a history course whereby we studied that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engel's book The Communist Manifesto preached against capitalism and the working class was to revolt and to overcome back. Then we were taught basically that philosophy was a bad thing. Fast forward fifty five years to the present, and it seems like our institutes of higher learning are teaching just the opposite. Yeah, yeah, I mean when you start injecting this stuff in, or you're smuggling it in under different ideas, you know, masquerading as you know, morally superior, and then you get no pushback because you've cleansed all the ranks of anybody that would say whoa, whoa, whoa. Let me tell you what the other side of the story is, you know. Yeah, this is why people call K twelve education and you know, colleges and universities what they call it indoctrination. Bill says, wasn't mistreatment of slaves anecdotal as well? I just heard your call with your socialist buddy Mike. He could apply his reason to about any situation. So only a few women get raped, So is it really that bad? Like, don't get me wrong, I enjoy my calling up and you point him back in the other direction. You're right, it's all to tear down society. Thanks. That's from Bill in uh Huntersville. Yeah, that's look. I welcome challenges to my ideas. I say it all the time. Unchallenged ideas are easy to hold. Right. Resistance to pressure build strength. And it's one of my criticisms of the left and the media, which is because the media doesn't challenge the left like it does the right, the left has gotten intellectually flat and they are unable to defend their ideas because they don't have to. And so I offer that service. I'm a giver. You're welcome, all right. If you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events, and I know you do too, And you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources. Why well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app and it's a website and it combines news from around the world in one place so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check dot ground, dot news slash Pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check dot org, dot news slash Pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. Let's talk with Dave now. Hello Dave, welcome to the program. Hello Pete, Hey, thank you for taking my call. Sure, I just had a few comments. One is, if you really want to know what this lops like down the road in regard to socialism or communism, take a look at the book called Atlas Shrugged. Oh I've read it. Yes, if you. Reread that really is a picture of where these people want to take you. Yeah. You have the productive that the productive that are beaten down and restrained at all in all manner of ways in order to not make others feel bad about not contributing, and so you end up with the moochers and the looters and you know, versus the producers. And the society crumbles. And none of the ills of the regular non communist society still remain because it's part of human nature. Additionally, hit the nose on the head there regarding the responsibility side of this, Nobody who is a member of the Communist party jumps up front and tries to take control or be responsible for anything. That book also points that out. Yep. Yeah, well it's also like the person I forget who it was that called you know nobody shows up and is selling communism with you know, one hundred million deaths. But that's not the pitch, right, The pitch is always you. To exactly and it is far from it. Right, you're mentioning about it coming from hell, You're absolutely spot on. It absolutely is because in every way, shape and form, it is a contradiction to Judeo Christian values. Yeah. Yeah, it's a there's a book. Uh, And I've watched an interview with the authors The Devil and Karl Marx, and I have I have the book. I have not read it because I'm kind of scared to because like it's one of the things I don't like entertaining. What's like, like like Vince Cochley is all into the horror movies. I don't watch any of that stuff. I don't like. I don't even want any of that stuff in my head. I just I don't. I don't want to give it any kind of an opening. And absolutely, yeah, So it's I kind of worry about trying to read the book, but I wanted to. I wanted to learn about it. So I watched an interview with the author and he outlined, he outlined, like the book and these connections and they are they are quite quite strong. Oh boy, well, Marxism has proven itself to be an end a rotten man. Nobody who practices Marxism is a strong country. Everyone is mediocrity. And that's what they're selling is mediocrity. Every one is equals. Therefore everything is mediocre. Well, and that's but it's always being sold by people who are either the useful idiots to quote Vladimir Lenin, or they are they they they are of the belief that they will be the ruling class, that they will be the elites. So that's why they want everybody to buy into this beautiful system where everybody you know, gets, you know, seven days a week off, nobody has to work somebody else will do everything else for you, and but they will rule and they sell it to you one way. But of course that's not possible. You can't have a society where nobody does anything. It will collapse. And so then they then force everybody to do stuff, but obviously not themselves because they know better than everybody else. But you are all over this subject, man, you are all over it, and I really really appreciate it. Well. Thanks. We have to get an education out there for everyone to know what it is they're dealing with. Yeah, well we're not getting. That, no, I agree. I think anybody who watched the fall of the Berlin Wall, like, yeah, and I'm gen X, so I saw it. I was in high school at the time, and I remember like, we thought we had beaten Communism and that was such a great thing because communism was so evil. And give it a couple of decades and people turned over the institutions to the Marxists. And this is precisely and has been precisely the plan for a very long time. This is the long march through the institutions. You're talking media, law, academia, government, right, And when you control the culture, politics is downstream of that culture. That's what Graham she talked about. And so that's how you end up in a position where people grow up never knowing that this this ideology is really bad and there's a reason why it has been defeated and people fight against it because it is so evil. Absolutely, I couldn't agree with anymore, sir. Yes, sir, I appreciate your call. Good chat. I have a great weekend, all right, take care. This is from good Wahoo who says Marxism and by extension is I don't know, is nothing more than envy with power behind it to exact revenge by force. Right, This is the whole in Marxism. You know, power dynamics is always sent because that's how you gin up the envy and whether you're talking power dynamics between economic classes, right. And what Graham she realized was the economic class warfare that Marx was pitching wasn't terribly well received in capitalist nations because they had the opportunity to actually advance. People want to be rich, people want to succeed, right, and so that wasn't something that was particularly useful as a messaging tool. And so this then turned into the cultural side of things, where It's like, Okay, take control of these institutions, and you will then teach the proletariat to be envious of the oppressor and to overthrow the oppressor. But you have to do it through these institutions. You have to deconstruct through that, through those cultural institutions. Back to the tweet here from Goodwahoo. Just take a look at Carl Marx himself. He was from a wealthy family living in London. Oh, he was a freeloader too. Do you know that the dude was a freeloader. He abandoned his wife and kids, and he had like some really disgusting medical thing going on. But yeah, he was by all accounts, a lazy glutton who desperately wanted to be accepted into the English higher class system. And when he was rejected, he dreamed up communism with the influence of Hegel, who saw the state as the highest moral authority. Hegel did oh by extension dei Marxism and by extension Dei's nothing more than envy. Right, So the power dynamics always central. You see this in the CRT stuff when it was you know, blown starting probably what a decade ago, and when that was being used to infiltrate everything. The power dynamic. Who has the power? And this remember the old blind you know, Uh, black people can't be racist because they don't have the power. It's Marxism, right, because that's not true. Everybody could be racist. Every single person can be a racist. That's not something to aspire to. I'm just saying everybody can be a racist towards somebody else. Have you ever seen some of the ads that they have on TV in China, Holy Smokes racist on their state run Commy TV Racist. Anybody can be racist, but Marxism frames everything through power dynamics, oppressed versus a presser. I don't I didn't make this up. Marx did. Maybe Satan I didn't make it up. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and this support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, So if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to dpetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.