All Does Not Mean All for Far Left, Far Right

At the birth of our country, “all” meant only straight, binary white males. This was a vast improvement from before then, when “all” meant only those white males born into royalty or nobility. Over our history we slowly made that “all” more and more inclusive until the last several decades when eddies in the stream took us back in many respects. This backwards stream got totally out of hand with Trumpism which gave racists and homophobes license to spew their hate publicly. But “all” is not much more inclusive on the left. There, “all” means people who meticulously dot every “i” and cross every “t” of the extreme left politically correct dictated dogma. If you deviate one iota you are labeled a racist or a transphobe and “cancelled”. One recent example of this here in CV was our Jewish community feeling utterly disrespected and ignored by the CV school board, resulting in Jewish organizations buying a full page ad in this paper to air their outrage. Another example in SF is Asians being excluded from discussions regarding “dummying down” Lowell high school; they then made their presence felt at the ballot box. For “all” to really mean “all”, it needs to include people of all races, ethnicities, religions, gender identities, etc., not just straight white males; “all” needs to also include political opinions from the various shades of right, center, and left; and for those opinions to be listened to, respected, and taken seriously- not just those from the extreme left, which is what we seem to have in places such as CV and SF at the moment.

–Mark Perkins, Castro Valley