BY: ABE FROM VANKLA
Oba yo, I don’t normally agree with a woman, but this time I do. Candice Bergen is right! The young people these days. Diewel! I’m just glad someone was finally willing to say what we all already knew once yet such, that the young people are all totally brainwashed what with their literacy and access to the outside world and so on.
Us Mennonites are totally against brainwashing. It’s the basis of our entire faith. As you may recall, 500 years ago we separated ourselves from the Catholics because the Pope was telling people what to think and believe, but then we said, “enough of this brainwashing,” and now Corner Kroeker from over near Vankla somewheres is the one telling us what to think and believe and how long the women’s skirts should be and so on. Much better.
These days, though, the kids can read whatever and whenever they want and this is precisely how they get so brainwashed. Nah, junges! As the saying goes, the more educated, the more mixed up.
We need to return to how it was in the good old days, when fine upstanding Mennonites didn’t have any information that the church didn’t tell us. No TikTok, No YouTube; we weren’t even allowed to bring our own Bibles to church. How presumptuous it would be to read the Bible for ourselves. Ahh, that was the life. Not like all this brainwashing that happens these days.
And the universities? Ahh, what the schissjat are those good for? Why do we need doctors when we have a perfectly good trjachtmoaka? If we keep sending our children to college, next thing you know, we’ll all be speaking English and marrying a Lutheran or something. If you want to keep your children from getting brainwashed, you need to make sure they only understand an archaic unwritten dialect that none of their neighbours understand. That way, they won’t even be able to interact with people outside the community. That’s definitely how you prevent brainwashing. And besides, Jesus never spoke English, so why should we. Everyone knows that Jesus spoke Plautdietsch … and High German on Sundays.
All these young people these days say they’re trying to find freedom and dignity, but all they’re doing is getting their brains washed. They need to come back to the church and sit in our gender-segregated pews if they want to have true freedom in their lives. After all, what’s freedom without hundreds of arbitrary rules?
Some might say that our Mennonite aversion to education is all about power and control, but, oba, that makes no sense to me. I’ve never once felt the need to question the elders. They’re doing such a good job of telling us what to do, that there’s no need for them to brainwash us. I have full allegiance to their authority and I have nothing but respect for their ability to make up rules that they claim are in the Bible but probably aren’t. After all, who am I, a lowly church member, to question their ways? It wasn’t my name that was randomly chosen from a hat to lead the congregation; Corner Kroeker’s was.
Yes, indeed, there’s no brainwashing to be seen around here. That all just happens in the city somewheres.
(photo credit: QUOI Media Group/CC)