One of my earliest posts back in the day was about the movie 300 and how teaching, in some ways, wasn’t so different from the Spartans throwing themselves into impossible odds at Thermopylae. It was probably a bit overdramatic, but for years it was one of my favorites – even if it clearly didn’t resonate with others as strongly as it did with me.
A decade later, the basic sentiment remains, but the specific analogy no longer feels as true. I was a bit younger then, and far less tired. I was in a teaching situation where there were more small victories – maybe we were losing the war, but there were individual moments of “look at us changing the world one life at a time.” Or so it seemed
I was still leading workshops back then, and blogging regularly, and campaigning for state and local candidates for office. (The “good guys” rarely won, but still…) Perhaps most importantly, the nation as a whole was certainly in a weird place, but it hadn’t yet, um…
There was still a tiny bit of hope, we thought. There were some messed up things happening, but surely most people weren’t that ignorant or that malicious, right? Besides, students would still need a few basic skills and some foundational knowledge just to function successfully in their lives, probably. Even the most advanced computers would always need someone to operate them, right? If nothing else, kids should learn to code. Those programs can’t code themselves!
We were so cute back then.
And it’s not like those in power at all levels were actively seeking to destroy both democracy and hope in a mad scramble for temporal power. That would be crazy, amiright? Self-defeating? At least our own Constitution was designed so that ambition would counter ambition. It’s not like a core of ideologues and fundamentally ignorant sociopaths could sway the balance of power in all three branches at the same time and dictate terms on multiple levels at once, from state legislatures to county election officials to local school boards.
That’s just paranoid and irrational – or so I was assured (not always nicely) many, many times on social media and in person.
As we move into the second half of 2025, our proverbial glasses are becoming a tad less rosy. I’m personally convinced that whatever happens in the next few years, there’s certainly no going back. We’ve talked a good game about the changing needs of students in different generations, but I don’t think any of us truly fathom just how true that’s starting to be. Our forebears may have panicked disproportionately over television, rock’n’roll, video games, and the like, but the most skeptical among them never anticipated the hell that is TikTok or the nuclear potential (good, bad, and unknown) of AI.
And even if there are elections in 2028 and beyond, the social and political norms on which our entire system is founded have been broken and discarded. We can debate the pros and cons of this (if we’re still allowed to at that point), but do any of us actually believe a Congress with a few different members can magically “reclaim” its constitutional role in legislation? In the national budget? As a check and balance on the executive? Do even your most conservative friends believe the Supreme Court can easily dial back multiple declarations that the President can pretty much do whatever they want without consequences? A more educated, ethical, or rational Chief Executive could conceivably choose to kowtow to the Bill of Rights and such, but such things only hold sway if we all believe they’re essentially unbreakable. Inherently true. Self-evident. Unalienable.
Our foundational ideals and collective vision of a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to a proposition may still have merit, but they’re no longer self-evident and they’ve proven far too alienable to simply pretend it’s all been a bad dream and Abraham Lincoln’s in the shower waiting to pick up where he left off.
It’s terrifying. Discouraging. And – probably most of all – exhausting. It’s impossible to tune it all out for very long, and somehow worse when we do.
So… time for the inspirational part, right? The big “BUT” that gives us all hope and calls us to action? Not exactly – at least, I’m not sure it will be received that way.
My foundational allusion this time around is not to a historical film (however loosely interpreted), but to any number of science fiction television shows and movies. The moment in question is practically a trope – the Big Bad is moving towards Earth (or some essential equivalent thereof) and the protagonists have so far been thwarted in their efforts to stop it or even slow it down. (I usually picture the Borg in Star Trek: The Next Generation, but you’ll no doubt have similar examples from your favorite space opera.)
While Picard and Riker and Data and anyone else who’s going to survive scramble to come up with solutions, the Borg or their ilk confronts other planets or galaxies or whatnot which are far less advanced than even our hopeful heroes. Inevitably, however, these most minor of minor players send up their handful of tiny ships to attack the Big Bad.
“Hey! Invader-types! Stop!” they warn. Pew! Pew!
That profound bit of onomatopoeia represents their sad little lasers trying to shoot down the world-eater about to consume all they’ve ever loved. It’s really rather pathetic most of the time. The shots are predictably and entirely ineffectual, and without so much as a bemused pause on the part of evil incarnate, our Pew! Pew! guys are vaporized. There’s no monologuing or buildup or even an evil cackle The Pew! Pew! guys simply don’t merit the effort.
And that’s it. Another planet absorbed. Another species eliminated. Endless stories never again to be told. Even if our fictional protagonists come up with something truly brilliant at this point, for the Pew! Pew! people, it’s over – there’s no more story. No redemption. No memorial.
I confess that I’ve always had a soft spot for the Pew! Pew! guys. I get emotional – which by itself is probably no surprise to anyone who knows me, here or in real life. But in the past few years I’ve come to embrace the Pew! Pew! people not just as inspiration, but as role models. And I’m not even kidding.
Sure, it would be better to be a Captain Janeway – or a Luke Skywalker, Starbuck, John Sheridan, or the like. Honestly, I’d take Frodo Baggins, Ron Weasley, or Squirrel Girl in a pinch. And if that’s you, go for it. Do your thing – we’re all rooting for you. Seriously. If there’s a way through, an outcome you could reasonably count as a “win,” we’ll need you to make it happen. With great power comes great responsibility, after all.
For many of us, however, our mission is far less glorious – at least on the surface (but also in reality – it’s not even a little bit cool). Our job is to go down fighting. To rage against the dying of the light. We’re the Pew! Pew! guys.
I’m pretty confident at this point that we’re not going to win the larger struggle – against ignorance, against apathy, against cultural decline, against evil. I’m not even sure we can slow it down. But we can fly out to it and call it what it is. It’s not about literal violence, of course – not in this analogy. It’s about refusing to go down without –
Pew! Pew!
So we show up at another protest with our scribbled signs and we cheer the nervous speakers and join the awkward chants.
Pew! Pew!
We focus on our students and keep trying to figure out how to engage, challenge, and encourage them with whatever tools we have and despite the ever-evolving distractions.
Pew! Pew!
We keep calling our representatives and leaving those voice mails their interns presumably delete, knowing that their allegiance is not to us and unsure whether or not they actually even need our support to stay in power at this point.
Pew! Pew!
We speak truth in love even when it loses us friends or costs us jobs. We refuse to resort to distasteful tactics no matter how often they seem like the only way to win or how persuasively we rationalize the compromise.
Pew! Pew!
We encourage each other, even when it makes us tired. We read, even when we’d rather be numb. We find little things that bring us joy and marinate in them for energy and hope. We support local theater. We compliment people’s shoes, dogs, or landscaping. We wear our annoying slogan t-shirts in public and radiate grace and confidence just to defy the new normal. Just to show we’re not afraid, even if we are.
Pew! Pew!
We accept that we may lose but refuse to accept defeat before it’s here. There’s so much we can’t control. TOO much we can’t control. But we can control our tiny little ship. We can use our tiny little voice. We can assert our tiny little stand against the inevitable.
Pew! Pew!
Maybe Data will come up with a roundabout solution. Maybe Jyn Erso will get the secret plans to Leia. Maybe the Reavers will turn on the Alliance long enough for the truth to set a few people free. Heck, maybe Gollum bites off someone’s ring finger and things end up working out even if we’re not sure who the “heroes” were. I hope things turn out well. I’m not sure I’ll ever know, and that’s going to have to be OK.
Pew! Pew!