An open letter to Chloé Valdary
Dear Chloé,
First, thanks for responding to my comment on Twitter regarding Ibram X. Kendi. The sum total of our mutual interactions might be five times. Yes, my dollar figures of nearly $500K (much more with loss of retirement ease) were my financial wreckage as one of the first, and arguably the most, cancelled men in America. Others have interviewed me about my protracted downfall from teaching urban kids with disabilities, over 2016 to 2019, from the New York Times to Fox News to podcasters. I detailed it here: It Doesn’t Fit The Narrative.
Pissed or at peace, I’ve reaped the whirlwind in fortunes. You should have seen my homicidal and suicidal tendencies back in the mid-teens. Thank goodness I did nothing. I have softened and found mellowness in austerity. Best, I’ve kept making up fiction when some would have lost family, died, or hunted the perps who still waste earth’s oxygen. Rage, rage continues when they walk free, and no justice arrives.
Your creation of Enchantment Theory with its themes of bridging and healing toward outcasts and downtrodden while addressing our divisions as Americans, has always enchanted me. It’s ecumenical, lovely, and you’re a great ambassador to have established this venture.
I am so lucky to have found peace and love with my wonderful wife Karen and family. I don’t want rehabilitation any more than the average Joe needs.
I don’t read educational or anti-racist research anymore. I used to, for fifteen years up till about 2012. It’s always been happy tripe, the lowest research found in The Academy. I have been there, done that, seen Thinkers like Paolo Freire and Foucault spin power traps into edu-speak gold for mid-wit shysters like “intersectional” Crenshaw and later, “stamped” Kendi. I threw Robin DiAngelo’s shit essay on white fragility into my high school trash can in 2011, but the trash can fought back, and she regurgitated it into a damn book. She was just here on Zoom at Hamline University slinging her whiteness to help with the witch burning of Hamline art history professor Erika López Prater, who showed a 14th century painting of Muhammad, was called an Islamophobe, and paid for it with firing.
No one with a cortex needs the dribblings of Ibram X. Kendi. Pardon the fire; you weren’t defending Henry Rogers nor denying my anger; I get that; I’m not pissed. I get into my circumlocution, and a few sparks fly off the grinder’s wheel of my iPad. Your holistic, steady hand, driving at healing, is always admirable.
So who could snap at that hand? Not me. I appreciate your presence.
I’ve been given a great gift that opened my mind as all hellacious upheavals do. It’s a great come-about. I can keep writing stories, marketing a novel, excavating through our demi-tragedy, and having our extraordinary life here in St. Paul and Minne-hopeless.
But justice is scarce. Without our fourth branch of government, journalism, doing its job of holding the powerful accountable, and our third branch, Justice, sagging under lawlessness to do its part, the democrat leadership, especially Minnesota’s trifecta, has pushed past the purple zone into deep blue. We hope the pendulum swings back to the middle. And that’s what I think you’re all about: balance.
As for me and my household, though I wish we could retire and chill out, we were also given the great gift of sight thanks to having all of our comforts stolen. It’s fine. Revelations hit us every day, and we’re lucky to be here for them.
To invoke your approach, and as the French say, Enchanté!
All the best!
Theo Olson