Yesterday, a teacher in Texas was forced to pay a massive amount of money to
a former student, $90,000.
Because he forced the student to write down the pledge of allegiance at
threat of getting a zero grade in a class.
Now this happened back in 2017 and
we wanna catch you up on what led to this incident.
So Mary Oliver had for
years refused to recite the pledge of allegiance at a Texas high school.
Then in her senior year, her teacher gave the class an assignment, she and
the other students would have to write the pledge.
Those who didn't would get a zero is according to sociology
teacher Benji Arnold, according to a federal lawsuit Oliver filed against it.
Is a sociology class just bear that in mind.
Then he compared to people who refused to recite the pledge, quote, to
soviet communists, members of the Islamic faith seeking to impose Sharia law,
and those who condone pedophilia.
Which in 2017 was probably a crazy set of things to accuse people as being.
Now it's just any random show on Fox News,
they talk about those three groups of people.
So Oliver did not recite or write the pledge instead,
the 12th grader drew what was described as a squiggly line and turned it in.
She claims that as promised Arnold gave her a zero, something he has disputed.
But based on an audio recording of the incident,
Arnold went on an extended tirade offering to pay for
students to move to Europe if they didn't like living in America.
But they would have to pay him back double if they ever returned to the US.
And so look there's more to this, but you get the idea of who this teacher is.
And the teacher apparently had thoughts about American politics and
American society and wanted the students to conform and
is now paying the price for it, and the price is $90,000.
>> Right, so, first of all, I wanna be clear, of course he's not paying for it.
No one who ever does anything wrong ever pays for it.
If you didn't do something wrong and you got screwed, then you'll pay for
it, okay, that's a general rule of law here.
It's a risk pool funded by the school district across the state that's
paying for it.
But now let me get into the heart of the story.
So, okay, she doesn't wanna say the pledge,
it's her constitutional right not to say the pledge.
But I get it it's Texas and in Texas,
they don't really believe in the constitution too much.
And then they'll go around being like, we're real Americans, man.
Real americans don't believe in the American constitution.
Real Americans force speech on the top of other people, and
then make it their whole campaign theme to do free speech.
Free speech except for you, little girl.
Okay, you have to say what I say otherwise you get zero, okay?
All right, that's all standard fare for right wingers.
But do we really live in this country?
I mean, wait, I know we're in two different planets,
because if somebody says to my kid, you're not reciting
the pledge that makes you like ISIS and communist and a pedophile.
We're gonna have a lot of issues.
And that school district is gonna have a ton of issues.
Now, the lawsuit charges and they won that it was the students and
the teachers who were bullying the student.
The bullying was so bad she had to step out from school for a long time and
then she came back in and they started bullying her again.
See here in free America, right, we're in Los Angeles that would not be tolerated,
that would be an outrage, all the parents would be livid, right?
In Texas they're like, You're bullying a poor girl cuz she
exercised her free speech rights and our constitutional rights, atta boy.
You called her a pedophile, yeah.
In free America, that guy would be fired instantly.
You can't bully kids, you can't say insane stuff like that to your students.
But in Texas never fired, no consequences.
The administration had glowing things to say about him, the lunatic that he is.
>> Exactly, yeah, and look, honestly this is coming from 2017 sure,
it's in the news again.
So, in theory, one could expect that the right, which has spent the past year and
a half focusing so much on what happens in schools and
lying about what happens in schools to get their base all fired up.
To go to school board meetings and freak out and threaten people and everything.
In theory, if they were gonna be consistent,
they would have to have a problem with this.
I mean, it is the clearest example of trying to force your dog by
your propaganda on a student and then contributing to this culture of bullying
against the student who refused to comply with it.
But we know that if this story broke, like it happened, it made news today,
it wouldn't matter.
It wouldn't get through Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson and
Dave Rubin and all of them just wouldn't engage with it.
They're so fundamentally dishonest that they wouldn't acknowledge that this sort
of thing was even happening.
This would be effectively canceled culture but they've never once actually engaged
with a case where the right was engaging in this behavior.
So I have no expectation that they will in this case either.
>> Yeah, and in this case they're canceling a little kid.
They're like, Yeah, we don't like your exercising your constitutional rights.
So it will drive you out of school by having the teachers bully you,
sick people.
Look, there's gonna be more mass migration in the country because
there's gonna be the political refugees from the red states.
Or as they're banning abortion, and they're targeting parents with trans kids,
and breaking into their homes and doing all this gestapo behavior.
No person in their right mind wants to live through that kind of tyranny.
And now look, I would never have my kids live in an area
where a teacher can bully kids and call them pedophiles and
fundamentalist, terrorists and all these insane things.
I would never subject my kids to that.
So I wanna live in a free country, not Texas.
And so we're gonna all start to separate ourselves out and
it's really really sad for the country, but
I'm not gonna live under conservative tyranny.
They won't let us control our own bodies, they hate freedom.
They hate this country that now they hate our democracy and if they lose,
they just wanna install an authoritarian leader like Trump instead anyway.
This is a giant problem for the country.
We just don't agree, not around the edges, not unlike, Hey,
what should be the tax raid, how much regulation?
No, we don't agree on philosophy.
We believe in America, we believe in the U.S. constitution and they don't.
>> Yeah, I disagree slightly.
Not in the end goal, it is producing this tribalism.
But, when you look at like Missouri's abortion law, or Texas abortion law,
what's happening with the demonization of trans parent and the issues around.
Their position is actually popular even in their own states,
even in conservatives in their own states, the abortion bans are not popular.
These are not things that the right is doing because there's this
overwhelming desire for it in red states they're just doing it anyway.
Partially because they understand that they're never gonna get a majority of
the country to support them, but they also, in a lot of cases,
don't need a majority of the country to support them.
They need a really committed group of 20 to 30% of the biggest
whack jobs in America to give them tons of money to run Ads and all that.
And so they push for
these policies that even republicans in red states aren't big fans of.
And while I agree that we're probably gonna see some of the migration that
you're talking about,
the issue is that there's tons and tons of people who are not gonna be able to.
Even if they wanted to,
they don't have the economic situation to be able to move to a different state,
whether it's to get access to the rights they have come to expect or whatever.
It's just they're really screwed and forced to stay in these terrible areas.
And that is why it is so important for the democrats actually wake up and
do something on these different issues, whether it's abortion or
protecting the trans community.
A lot of these economic issues, access to the ballot.
There's so much that I would just love to see the democrats at least pretend that
they're in power in regards to.
>> Yeah, no, that's why it's worse cuz the democrats are hopeless.
I mean, they're not tyrannical like the right wing so
you at least live in a free place.
But their corruption isn't much better.
They have no fight in them, they won't fight for
their voters of their life dependent on it.
They think they've been trained to believe that fighting for your side is uncivil and
impolite and unacceptable.
You should all bow your heads as they put it on the chopping block.
So, yeah, democratic leadership disgusts me,
but I'm not gonna live under tyranny.
I don't know if we're just gonna get to a point where we're gonna have to Berlin
airlift some people out of red states when they pass these draconian laws.
And because they're saying now, Hey, we're gonna pass these laws and
you're not allowed to leave the state.
We're gonna punish you if you live the state.
Well no, we're not gonna let you take Americans as hostages in your red states.
We're gonna get him to Freeland.
But that's what this is devolving to because in Texas,
stuff like this is not frowned upon, it is celebrated,
that teacher is totally celebrated in that community nut job that he is.