college classroom (public domain)‘Made from Scratch!’: A Poem by Mark Stellinga The Society February 15, 2025 Culture, Poetry 13 Comments . Made from Scratch! An ever-growing-number of our adolescent children are suckled by the biased breasts of prejudice and greed— born to persons steeped in hatred, keen to fashion soldiers built to fit in tightly with their anarchistic breed. Unaware their destinies are virtually preordained, raised by those who thrive on trashing eons-old tradition— all they know is what they’re taught by unrelenting cynics whose pathway to autocracy is garnered through sedition. Burning flags and storming buildings held by those in charge— with “crushing all resistance” as the only reason given— misinformed disciples wage their wars on even kin, unable to articulate by what it is they’re driven. Sworn to do their warlords’ will, strongly preconditioned by pseudo-fascist overlings to bring their foes to heel, just how far they’ll make it in their quest to “rule the world” depends on what they’re aiming for—and who’s behind the wheel. It’s “drivers” who determine their eventual destination, and, as indoctrination starts the day their lemmings hatch, what they’ve manufactured, by the time they’re fully grown, are nothing short of brainwashed co-conspirators… made from scratch! . . Mark Stellinga is a poet and antiques dealer residing in Iowa. He has often won the annual adult-division poetry contests sponsored by the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, has had many pieces posted in several magazines and sites over the past 60 years, including Poem-Hunter.com, PoetrySoup.com, and Able Muse.com—where he won the 1st place prize for both ‘best poem’ of the year and ‘best book of verse.’ NOTE TO READERS: If you enjoyed this poem or other content, please consider making a donation to the Society of Classical Poets. The Society of Classical Poets does not endorse any views expressed in individual poems or commentary. 13 Responses Roy Eugene Peterson February 15, 2025 Mark, this is a well-honed poem that reveals the essence of why wayward hate-filled unruly adolescents of this present generation are “driven,” as you say, with their antisocial conduct. The words are excellent as is the rhyme in so aptly describing what is happening. Reply Mark Stellinga February 15, 2025 Thank you, Roy, I so wish there were so much more I could do about it. I catch myself yelling at our TV 2/3 times a day when checking the latest news. 🙁 Reply Susan Jarvis Bryant February 15, 2025 Mark, your hard-hitting poem gets to the rotten core of a wicked world where family values are trashed and the vulnerable (especially the children) are being fed poisonous lies from many sources, including their own propagandized parents (as your poem points out). We are reaping the ills of the “new normal” now. However, I believe we can turn it around. There are voices out there trying hard to make a difference. We are all blessed with personal choice and a conscience, which is why it is so important to ignore subjective truth and to get the immutable truth out there. Thank you for keeping this subject in the spotlight. Reply Mark Stellinga February 15, 2025 Susan, your kind and understanding comment brought to mind a short piece I recently penned that complies well with your view on this matter. Thanks for your shrewd assessment – I was sure you, Mike, and I would see eye-to-eye on this matter: Avoid the Far-Left-Leanings’ ‘LITTER’! Whether having learned it from their father(s) or their mother(s), or teacher(s) or a left-wing babysitter, What we’re finding far and wide, and far too oft expectantly, are spewings from the Far-Left-Leanings’ ‘LITTER’ – Making it quite obvious, regardless who’s responsible, virtually every view their minions hold – Filled, since birth, with fallacies to shape each fledgling mind till old enough to break it from its mold — That failing to ‘indoctrinate’ the children that we spawn, we — ‘Slow-to-Learn Right-Wingers’ veil the cost For impotent resistance – while aware by doing so, their chance to live a ‘better life’ is lost. Sooooo… I, for one, am advocating — set your children down and set them straight — their futures are at stake, And guard them from commingling with the ‘Far-Left-Leanings’ ‘LITTER’, the most precarious risk a child can take! In conclusion — What some have INHERITED is pissed away on ‘WOKE’, trashing what their elders strove to build, Flushing countless millions down the stool because of that with which their infant minds had been instilled! Reply Linda Marie Hilton February 15, 2025 all parents indoctrinate their children somehow, even if they mostly ignore them, it is the way of all earth’s creatures. it is equally bad to teach your children to only wear denim or only wear shirts with the Izod alligator logo. both actions are jingoistic, and both lead to the child, when an adult, being unable to make informed decisions about whatever issue is at hand. if you teach your children to be “woke” to whatever marginalization has been foisted on them, you must also teach them ways to constructively deal with the issue, just as you teach them how to wear clothing appropriate for the weather and how to cross a busy street. you must make sure they read a variety of stuff and not just inhale what is on the TV. you must make sure they somehow are able to experience variety as a good thing so that they accept differences in individuals as not a bad thing. it is a long list, but who ever said that parenting was easy? Joseph S. Salemi February 15, 2025 It is very true that left-liberals are obsessively concerned with raising their children to follow the dictates of left-liberalism fully and unquestioningly. Right from the cradle, a child is drilled and propagandized to adhere to precisely the kind of ideology the parents want their offspring to internalize. The flaw in the plan is this: no matter how well propagandized someone is, he will sooner or later have to face objective, external reality. The confrontation will either cause the person to double-down on his inculcated idiocy, and thereby come to eventual grief, or it will force him to question it and maybe break free of its shackles. Since left-liberalism is a religion for dreamers and fools, the odds for someone’s eventual conversion to sanity are quite good. Reply Mark Stellinga February 15, 2025 We clearly agree, Joe, and as we both know, most every Muslim child in the Middle East, boy or girl, is preconditioned from birth to thoroughly despise virtually every person of another faith. The next batch of soldiers has already been formulated and intensely trained – the masks are used for more than one purpose. Thank you for your comment. Reply Brian A. Yapko February 15, 2025 An excellent and observant poem, Mark, crafted with a number of well-considered choices. The first is the title, “Made from Scratch” which has layers of meaning — home-made, manufactured not grown and the word “scratch” itself which is abrasive but which is also slang for money. In three words you thus economically describe the problem as one home-bred, artificially manufactured and fueled by venality. I also admire your choice of septameter which lends the piece a relentless heaviness suitable to the theme but which also allows you to really express yourself with a deeper logic and a greater fullness than pentameter would have allowed for. As for the subject-matter of the poem, well… you’re preaching to the choir. The subject of children being conditioned by ideologically-obsessed parents is one of the great tragedies of our time, whether it yields the breeding of terrorist-worshippers or the hostile zealotry of vaunting gender=confusion. “Mere” drug addiction and juvenile delinquency seems positively quaint. “To rule the world” was one of the aims of the Hitler Youth back in the 1930s. Coincidence? I think not. Reply Mark Stellinga February 15, 2025 Brian – I knew you and I would share this perspective, my friend, and, in that same vein, here’s my way of agreeing with your second point – Avoid the Far-Left-Leanings’ ‘LITTER’! Whether having learned it from their father(s) or their mother(s), or teacher(s) or a left-wing babysitter, What we’re finding far and wide, and far too oft expectantly, are spewings from the Far-Left-Leanings’ ‘LITTER’ – Making it quite obvious, regardless who’s responsible, virtually every view their minions hold – Filled, since birth, with fallacies to shape each fledgling mind till old enough to break it from its mold — That failing to ‘indoctrinate’ the children that we spawn, we — ‘Slow-to-Learn Right-Wingers’ veil the cost For impotent resistance – while aware by doing so, their chance to live a ‘better life’ is lost. Sooooo… I, for one, am advocating — set your children down and set them straight — their futures are at stake, And guard them from commingling with the ‘Far-Left-Leanings’ ‘LITTER’, the most precarious risk a child can take! In conclusion — What some have INHERITED is pissed away on ‘WOKE’, trashing what their elders strove to build, Flushing countless millions down the stool because of that with which their infant minds had been instilled! Watching for your next piece, be well, Mark Reply Margaret Coats February 16, 2025 There’s a remarkable “drill sergeant” tone to your poem, Mark. Drill sergeants get compliance not only by unrelenting demands, but also by being “buddies” of a sort. Recruits are led to believe only the sergeant can get them out of a bad place where enemies or rival units are victimizing them. Slogans are used to reinforce the feeling (you use plenty of hostile slogans!), which recruits must not only absorb, but shout back. I was in Company E for army basic training, and Company C was louder and stronger hollering “Charlie,” but we could last longer with “Echo, echo, echo, echo, echo!” Obedience to orders doesn’t come naturally to adolescents, but when they’re kept in group isolation, and convinced by threats that survival depends on following orders, they learn to denounce enemies and desire their destruction. What’s interesting in “Made from Scratch” is that the goal they’re taught to achieve is not to conquer the world for any purpose (justice or well-being even for themselves), but in order to wreck it. Mildly speaking, that’s “change” (as in 2008), or as you say, “sedition” amounting to revolution. You’ve also indicated (without saying so directly) what’s missing for the lemmings or children become soldiers. They are “unaware” of manipulation, and “unable to articulate by what it is they’re driven.” They do not know and cannot speak, I’d say, because of failure to listen for information and to process it should they receive any. This is what autocratic education has always done, most especially when parents and teachers cooperate in it. But as you recognize, such teaching formerly paid lip service, at least, to traditional ideals. For present generations ignorant in the midst of overwhelming information, this is a bad place drill sergeants cannot save them from. I’ll note one other level of meaning for “Scratch,” which is Old Scratch the Devil as military commander or school principal. Susan expresses hope that I share, and though we’re seeing worse than we thought possible in higher and elementary education, we’ve also had newly founded and re-founded institutions opposing the trend, operating under the radar, or struggling into the open. I’ve been amazed at how much individuals (including grandparents) have been able to achieve. It generally begins with perspectives like that you’ve provided here, so I’d love to know if you cautiously observe anything rising from the litter. Reply Mark Stellinga February 16, 2025 Thanks for asking, Margaret. Both my and my wife’s families are quite conservative and have always been strongly focused on what our kids are exposed to from day one. Only a few of the 21 have gravitated to what we’ve urged them not too. We’ve always tried to keep an open mind and encouraged them to do the same, and while the ratio of perverted people to ‘better people’ has so drastically increased over the past 20 years, we’re thankfully seeing strong evidence of a gradual return to what we like to refer to as ‘the gold old days’, like say, 1955. The fierceness of their strategies is what amazes and worries me the most! Thank you for your comment, Mark Reply Warren Bonham February 16, 2025 I’m reading this early morning over the first cup of coffee. It provided a better wake-up call than the caffeine did. Great job. Reply Mark Stellinga February 16, 2025 Thanks, Warren – being an extremely intuitive fella, and a damn ‘old’ one, I long ago learned how to quickly recognize a ‘nasty little, under-20 booger’ when I confront one. Piece o’ cake! Thankfully, for living in the upper Midwest, we see far fewer than folks living on either coast! 🙂 PS: As may still be the case, I accidentally placed my reply to Margret C. under your comment. I’ll see if Mike can fix it. Did I mention that I’m damn old!! Reply Leave a Reply Cancel ReplyYour email address will not be published.CommentName* Email* Website Δ This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Roy Eugene Peterson February 15, 2025 Mark, this is a well-honed poem that reveals the essence of why wayward hate-filled unruly adolescents of this present generation are “driven,” as you say, with their antisocial conduct. The words are excellent as is the rhyme in so aptly describing what is happening. Reply
Mark Stellinga February 15, 2025 Thank you, Roy, I so wish there were so much more I could do about it. I catch myself yelling at our TV 2/3 times a day when checking the latest news. 🙁 Reply
Susan Jarvis Bryant February 15, 2025 Mark, your hard-hitting poem gets to the rotten core of a wicked world where family values are trashed and the vulnerable (especially the children) are being fed poisonous lies from many sources, including their own propagandized parents (as your poem points out). We are reaping the ills of the “new normal” now. However, I believe we can turn it around. There are voices out there trying hard to make a difference. We are all blessed with personal choice and a conscience, which is why it is so important to ignore subjective truth and to get the immutable truth out there. Thank you for keeping this subject in the spotlight. Reply
Mark Stellinga February 15, 2025 Susan, your kind and understanding comment brought to mind a short piece I recently penned that complies well with your view on this matter. Thanks for your shrewd assessment – I was sure you, Mike, and I would see eye-to-eye on this matter: Avoid the Far-Left-Leanings’ ‘LITTER’! Whether having learned it from their father(s) or their mother(s), or teacher(s) or a left-wing babysitter, What we’re finding far and wide, and far too oft expectantly, are spewings from the Far-Left-Leanings’ ‘LITTER’ – Making it quite obvious, regardless who’s responsible, virtually every view their minions hold – Filled, since birth, with fallacies to shape each fledgling mind till old enough to break it from its mold — That failing to ‘indoctrinate’ the children that we spawn, we — ‘Slow-to-Learn Right-Wingers’ veil the cost For impotent resistance – while aware by doing so, their chance to live a ‘better life’ is lost. Sooooo… I, for one, am advocating — set your children down and set them straight — their futures are at stake, And guard them from commingling with the ‘Far-Left-Leanings’ ‘LITTER’, the most precarious risk a child can take! In conclusion — What some have INHERITED is pissed away on ‘WOKE’, trashing what their elders strove to build, Flushing countless millions down the stool because of that with which their infant minds had been instilled! Reply
Linda Marie Hilton February 15, 2025 all parents indoctrinate their children somehow, even if they mostly ignore them, it is the way of all earth’s creatures. it is equally bad to teach your children to only wear denim or only wear shirts with the Izod alligator logo. both actions are jingoistic, and both lead to the child, when an adult, being unable to make informed decisions about whatever issue is at hand. if you teach your children to be “woke” to whatever marginalization has been foisted on them, you must also teach them ways to constructively deal with the issue, just as you teach them how to wear clothing appropriate for the weather and how to cross a busy street. you must make sure they read a variety of stuff and not just inhale what is on the TV. you must make sure they somehow are able to experience variety as a good thing so that they accept differences in individuals as not a bad thing. it is a long list, but who ever said that parenting was easy?
Joseph S. Salemi February 15, 2025 It is very true that left-liberals are obsessively concerned with raising their children to follow the dictates of left-liberalism fully and unquestioningly. Right from the cradle, a child is drilled and propagandized to adhere to precisely the kind of ideology the parents want their offspring to internalize. The flaw in the plan is this: no matter how well propagandized someone is, he will sooner or later have to face objective, external reality. The confrontation will either cause the person to double-down on his inculcated idiocy, and thereby come to eventual grief, or it will force him to question it and maybe break free of its shackles. Since left-liberalism is a religion for dreamers and fools, the odds for someone’s eventual conversion to sanity are quite good. Reply
Mark Stellinga February 15, 2025 We clearly agree, Joe, and as we both know, most every Muslim child in the Middle East, boy or girl, is preconditioned from birth to thoroughly despise virtually every person of another faith. The next batch of soldiers has already been formulated and intensely trained – the masks are used for more than one purpose. Thank you for your comment. Reply
Brian A. Yapko February 15, 2025 An excellent and observant poem, Mark, crafted with a number of well-considered choices. The first is the title, “Made from Scratch” which has layers of meaning — home-made, manufactured not grown and the word “scratch” itself which is abrasive but which is also slang for money. In three words you thus economically describe the problem as one home-bred, artificially manufactured and fueled by venality. I also admire your choice of septameter which lends the piece a relentless heaviness suitable to the theme but which also allows you to really express yourself with a deeper logic and a greater fullness than pentameter would have allowed for. As for the subject-matter of the poem, well… you’re preaching to the choir. The subject of children being conditioned by ideologically-obsessed parents is one of the great tragedies of our time, whether it yields the breeding of terrorist-worshippers or the hostile zealotry of vaunting gender=confusion. “Mere” drug addiction and juvenile delinquency seems positively quaint. “To rule the world” was one of the aims of the Hitler Youth back in the 1930s. Coincidence? I think not. Reply
Mark Stellinga February 15, 2025 Brian – I knew you and I would share this perspective, my friend, and, in that same vein, here’s my way of agreeing with your second point – Avoid the Far-Left-Leanings’ ‘LITTER’! Whether having learned it from their father(s) or their mother(s), or teacher(s) or a left-wing babysitter, What we’re finding far and wide, and far too oft expectantly, are spewings from the Far-Left-Leanings’ ‘LITTER’ – Making it quite obvious, regardless who’s responsible, virtually every view their minions hold – Filled, since birth, with fallacies to shape each fledgling mind till old enough to break it from its mold — That failing to ‘indoctrinate’ the children that we spawn, we — ‘Slow-to-Learn Right-Wingers’ veil the cost For impotent resistance – while aware by doing so, their chance to live a ‘better life’ is lost. Sooooo… I, for one, am advocating — set your children down and set them straight — their futures are at stake, And guard them from commingling with the ‘Far-Left-Leanings’ ‘LITTER’, the most precarious risk a child can take! In conclusion — What some have INHERITED is pissed away on ‘WOKE’, trashing what their elders strove to build, Flushing countless millions down the stool because of that with which their infant minds had been instilled! Watching for your next piece, be well, Mark Reply
Margaret Coats February 16, 2025 There’s a remarkable “drill sergeant” tone to your poem, Mark. Drill sergeants get compliance not only by unrelenting demands, but also by being “buddies” of a sort. Recruits are led to believe only the sergeant can get them out of a bad place where enemies or rival units are victimizing them. Slogans are used to reinforce the feeling (you use plenty of hostile slogans!), which recruits must not only absorb, but shout back. I was in Company E for army basic training, and Company C was louder and stronger hollering “Charlie,” but we could last longer with “Echo, echo, echo, echo, echo!” Obedience to orders doesn’t come naturally to adolescents, but when they’re kept in group isolation, and convinced by threats that survival depends on following orders, they learn to denounce enemies and desire their destruction. What’s interesting in “Made from Scratch” is that the goal they’re taught to achieve is not to conquer the world for any purpose (justice or well-being even for themselves), but in order to wreck it. Mildly speaking, that’s “change” (as in 2008), or as you say, “sedition” amounting to revolution. You’ve also indicated (without saying so directly) what’s missing for the lemmings or children become soldiers. They are “unaware” of manipulation, and “unable to articulate by what it is they’re driven.” They do not know and cannot speak, I’d say, because of failure to listen for information and to process it should they receive any. This is what autocratic education has always done, most especially when parents and teachers cooperate in it. But as you recognize, such teaching formerly paid lip service, at least, to traditional ideals. For present generations ignorant in the midst of overwhelming information, this is a bad place drill sergeants cannot save them from. I’ll note one other level of meaning for “Scratch,” which is Old Scratch the Devil as military commander or school principal. Susan expresses hope that I share, and though we’re seeing worse than we thought possible in higher and elementary education, we’ve also had newly founded and re-founded institutions opposing the trend, operating under the radar, or struggling into the open. I’ve been amazed at how much individuals (including grandparents) have been able to achieve. It generally begins with perspectives like that you’ve provided here, so I’d love to know if you cautiously observe anything rising from the litter. Reply
Mark Stellinga February 16, 2025 Thanks for asking, Margaret. Both my and my wife’s families are quite conservative and have always been strongly focused on what our kids are exposed to from day one. Only a few of the 21 have gravitated to what we’ve urged them not too. We’ve always tried to keep an open mind and encouraged them to do the same, and while the ratio of perverted people to ‘better people’ has so drastically increased over the past 20 years, we’re thankfully seeing strong evidence of a gradual return to what we like to refer to as ‘the gold old days’, like say, 1955. The fierceness of their strategies is what amazes and worries me the most! Thank you for your comment, Mark Reply
Warren Bonham February 16, 2025 I’m reading this early morning over the first cup of coffee. It provided a better wake-up call than the caffeine did. Great job. Reply
Mark Stellinga February 16, 2025 Thanks, Warren – being an extremely intuitive fella, and a damn ‘old’ one, I long ago learned how to quickly recognize a ‘nasty little, under-20 booger’ when I confront one. Piece o’ cake! Thankfully, for living in the upper Midwest, we see far fewer than folks living on either coast! 🙂 PS: As may still be the case, I accidentally placed my reply to Margret C. under your comment. I’ll see if Mike can fix it. Did I mention that I’m damn old!! Reply
