The Paragraph Stacker

I’m a coward.

There are a lot of issues before the Iowa State Legislature and the U.S. Congress that directly or indirectly affect me.

Some laws have been passed in Iowa that I absolutely despise.

Other laws under consideration make my stomach tumble like Simone Biles during a medal-winning floor routine.

I say nothing.

This is an odd choice for me as I operate a website where I publish my writing.

My friend Steve Woodhouse is kind enough to publish my column once a week in the Marion County Express.

Yet, on most issues of political importance, I remain silent.

Why?

I’m afraid.

I’m a middle school teacher.

I serve the children of people from a wide range of backgrounds with parents who fall across the political spectrum.

I don’t know what the crossover is between the people who read my blog and columns and the people whose children I teach.

I, however, believe if I said something that irritated the wrong person, they would try to get me fired.

They would dig through every mistake I made in my life, of which there is a plethora to choose, and ultimately try to either humiliate me into quitting or put so much pressure on my employer that I didn’t get my contract removed.

My opinions might well run afoul of my employer.

I learned a long time ago that the First Amendment protects me from the government infringing upon my right to express my idea but offers no protection from an employer giving me the hook for some hair-brained idea I decided to publish.

For example, let’s say I wanted to write about the bill that just passed the Iowa House that would allow people to have guns locked in their vehicles at schools and universities.

I absolutely don’t want to write about that issue.

This is all for the sake of argument, or as the case, non-argument.

If I were to write against the bill, the people who believe they should be armed everywhere and at all times to defend against a tyrannical government would be angry with me.

If I wrote in favor of the bill, the people who think anyone who owns a gun are a giggle and sneeze away from committing a mass shooting would be angry with me.

I have a point of view on the bill, but I’m not going to share it with anybody I haven’t known for at least 25 years.

Gov. Kim Reynolds signed into law a bill that restricts bathroom usage in public schools to the sex assigned to a person at birth.

If I write against that new law, people are going to accuse me of supporting child sex crimes.

If I write for that bill, people are going to accuse me of contributing to the suicide rate of transgender and non-binary children.

So, even though I’m a teacher and, at least in part, charged with enforcing this new law, I have nothing to say about it in public, anyway.

I could go on, but it’s the same refrain: When it comes to politics, my anxiety about backlash beats down my desire to stack paragraphs on the issues.

This is where I find myself at age 47: afraid to speak my mind.

I’m not one of those guys who believe the nation is more politically divided than ever.

I believe we have the same number of angry and dumb people per capita as we always have.

However, those people have access to louder bullhorns through social media and regular media than ever before.

Smart people use chaos to push their agenda and dumb people repeat the meanest things they hear because it makes them feel like they’re a part of something when they’re just unpaid parrots of the power elites.

The power elites, by the way, use all this as a distraction from what they’re really doing, which we won’t find out about until years after it’s too late to stop and the damage has already been done.

This is the kind of thing I wanted to fight when I became a journalist. I thought if you told people the truth, they would look upon it as being enlightened and then work to change society for the better.

I quickly learned people are really only interested in the things that entertain them, such as sports and food trucks.

If you write something that crosses up their previously held beliefs, they will be angry with you and accuse you of being a part of a conspiracy to take away their right to unlimited pro football and tacos.

By the time my journalism career ended, I was mostly concerned with driving up page views on my stories just to keep my job.

Now I’m only a part-time journalist but I rarely talk about big issues.

I’m disappointed in myself.

I never envisioned becoming the kind of person who shied away from controversy.

I am now.

I am suspicious of everyone I haven’t known for at least half my life and for some of them I just smile and nod when they say something with which I disagree.

I was unemployed for most of two years before I became a teacher full time.

It just doesn’t pay to say what you think. It pays to repeat what people what to hear.

I hate to say that, but it’s how the world feels to me.

This isn’t how I was raised.

When I was a boy going to Methodist youth group, we would sing “I’ll Tell the World That I’m A Christian.”

Would I have enough faith or courage to sing that song today?

I don’t know.

I just know things are happening and a lot of them don’t seem very positive to me.

And I’m afraid to talk about them in public because I might lose my job or be smeared by people who make their way smearing others.

So, I truly am a coward, and this column is just me dying one of my 1,000 deaths.

Middle school teacher Daniel P. Finney is a Marion County Gazette columnist.

Daniel P. Finney wrote for newspapers for 27 years before being laid off in 2020. He teaches middle school English now. He writes columns and podcasts for ParagraphStacker.com, a free, reader-supported website. Please consider donating $10 a month to help him cover the expenses of this site.
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