There’s an angry wingnut in my town who writes furious letters to the editor of our local paper. Reading his rage-o-holic letters is like watching someone illustrate a Sean Hannity episode in cartoon form, drawn in poop. This guy is a big Trump fan, obviously, and before the election, the letters praised Trump and/or attacked his enemies.
When I moved back here a few years ago and discovered the anger-coot’s oeuvre, I submitted saucy, subtly insulting rebuttals that were often published. My husband told me that was mean because the letter writer is an angry, scared and probably lonely old fart. That’s undoubtedly true, but I think it’s unhealthy to leave bullshit unrebutted.
You can’t counter everything, but it’s important to speak up, IMO. Of all the “this is how we got Trump” takes, the one that rings truest to me is that too many people capable of rational thought believed that ignoring bigotry and lies would marginalize them. Tragically, it allowed them to flourish.
Anyhoo, my epistolary war with the anger-coot over Trump was short-lived: earlier this year, the paper’s publisher wrote an editorial explaining that he was specifically banning letters about national politics. My husband said this was probably due to my rebuttals.
As IF! It’s cowardice, IMO. Having failed to learn the lessons of 2016 or perhaps hoping for a repeat, the publisher has remained silent about the Big Lie, which is widely believed in this community. The national politics ban hasn’t throttled down the furious coot’s output. Now he rages about local issues and praises the Trumpian governor. The other day he wrote this about critical race theory:
I believe it is now time to have open and honest discussions on this movement. First and foremost, its core beliefs must be discussed. Here is a movement that believes that America is systematically racist and must be dismantled — that there is no absolute truth — and that individuals are either victims or an oppressors. These three beliefs are critical to the CRT message. After the smoke clears, their goal will become obvious — it’s simply about the destruction of western culture. Now, one must ask what do they plan to replace western culture with? You can be sure that whatever the replacement is, they plan to be in charge.
Anger-coot never defines who “they” are, but I think we can all guess. He praises conservative activist Christopher Rufo for alerting citizens to the danger of CRT. The CRT panic was ginned up by Rufo, whom The New Yorker’s Benjamin Wallace-Wells interviewed recently. Rufo openly admits he chose to weaponize a previously obscure framework for legal analysis because, quite apart from phrase’s meaning in context, the individual words — “critical,” “race” and “theory” — are potentially triggering to voters:
[Rufo] thought that the phrase was a better description of what conservatives were opposing, but it also seemed like a promising political weapon. “Its connotations are all negative to most middle-class Americans, including racial minorities, who see the world as ‘creative’ rather than ‘critical,’ ‘individual’ rather than ‘racial,’ ‘practical’ rather than ‘theoretical.’ Strung together, the phrase ‘critical race theory’ connotes hostile, academic, divisive, race-obsessed, poisonous, elitist, anti-American.”
Rufo teamed up with Tucker Carlson to create the panic around CRT, and Trump cultists like the letter writer responded on cue. But far more serious than a hysterical coot polluting a local paper’s opinion page, Trump clones like FL Gov. DeSantis and others have responded by explicitly banning CRT from K-12 public schools, where it wasn’t being taught. Here’s DeSantis’s description of CRT:
Florida’s education system exists to create opportunity for our children. Critical Race Theory teaches kids to hate our country and to hate each other. It is state-sanctioned racism and has no place in Florida schools. pic.twitter.com/ludv7ARgNP
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) June 10, 2021
As Wallace-Wells concluded, “mission accomplished.”
Trump wrote (i.e., had a minion like Stephen Miller ghostwrite) a hysterical, lie-filled screed denouncing CRT that was published recently. I’m sure the local angry wingnut was thrilled.
According to polls (which are dead to me forever, mostly), people outside the Trump cult are also buying the bullshit about CRT, and it’s no wonder because the marketing campaign is as slick as goose shit. The astro-turfed panic is affecting people’s lives already, at least in states like mine. It won’t ban the teaching of a critical framework that wasn’t being taught, but it will intimidate teachers.
Aside from jousting with big-mouthed jerks in local opinion pages, I’m not sure what us regular people can do to counter the hysteria. But when wingnuts in my orbit ask for my opinion, I steal this lady’s approach to explaining what “critical theory” is in general:
My favorite critical theory is historicism, where we focus on what was going on in the real world when a text was written. And pls believe racial injustice has been a part of that since forever. Anyway, see how we do this? I love it but it’s not crazy voodoo. It’s just learning
— Fakakta South (@FakaktaSouth) June 17, 2021
It’s relatable in a sense for the people who took English classes with me in Florida public schools. When we read “To Kill a Mockingbird,” we discussed the historical context. When we read “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” the fact that Tennessee Williams was gay came up. How could it not? Similarly, CRT is a lens to analyze U.S. law. How can you honestly examine U.S. law and leave white supremacy out? Most people who are reachable can understand that, I think.
But of course, this foofaraw has nothing to do with analyzing the legal system through the lens of race. As designed by Rufo and weaponized by Carlson, DeSantis, Trump, et al., it’s about scaring the shit out of white people so they’ll give Republicans power. That’s it. As Steve M. notes over at No More Mr. Nice Blog, the CRT hysteria, the plan to survey political views at Florida universities for funding purposes, and the push for “patriotic” K-12 education are straight out of the autocrat playbook.
What can regular people do about it, other than supporting the one viable political party that hasn’t been taken over by revanchist would-be autocrats? I think calling bullshit on the fearmongering is important, in whatever capacity.
Other than that, I got nothing. But I ask for understanding from folks who are living in blue states if those of us who are living in red areas with governors like DeSantis seem pessimistic sometimes.
Far from being chastened by Trump’s loss, governors like DeSantis and his ilk are emboldened and lashing out. So, life is changing for us in very real and frightening ways. If we seem panicky and impatient, well, we have our reasons.
The end.
Old School
So do you not submit rebuttals to Anger-Coot anymore?
Shakti
@Old School: I’m guessing Anger-Coot hasn’t discovered social media yet. There’s FaceBook, WhatsApp, Twitter, blogs…
I had to coach my dad through Baby’s First Flamewar last year because he decided to unleash a full tirade slash conspiracy theory in a WhatsApp group for international trips, where people discussed things like “Where do you want to go next year?”
Kay
It’s just the worst for me. The anti-CRT panic combined with the crack down on crime panic is too much for me to stand.
You feel like we’re making progress and then WHOOSH, it’s back to the 1990’s again. This is actually worse than the “secular humanism” panic and that was pretty damn dumb.
Alison Rose
“The destruction of western culture”
Oops, he misspelled white.
What a fuckface.
Hunter Gathers
I’m old enough to remember when Cancel Culture was the worst thing ever.
I’m thinking that they’ll move on from the current CRT panic fairly soon.
They are going to go back to Stop The Steal, when the Arizona ‘audit’ somehow proves that the election was stolen from TFG.
Kent
It’s not just red states. Here in Camas WA which probably went for Biden over Trump by 20 points we have crazies showing up at our local school board meetings shrieking about CRT. It has gotten so bad they needed to shut down public comment and arrest people. It is the same people who are preaching a toxic brew of anti-Vax nonsense, anti-mask nonsense, anti-CRT and diversity, and anti-LGBT. In fact, just yesterday my local school administration felt compelled to post a CRT-related news release:
https://www.parentsquare.com/feeds/7905618?key=i44ugvyyzcmIPI0qJnE9Tg&token=Qw2d8hMUzlYGUpb0UYq4-g
Kay
@Hunter Gathers:
I now expect Satanic Panic and Gang Member Panic to follow. Let’s just go right back to 1982.
Dupe1970
My only thought is to lie or exaggerate about what they actually want.
Say that Tucker and Rufo want to tarnish the legacy of Lincoln and not allow anyone to teach about how he freed the slaves.
Say they want to destroy the legacy for MLK and not let children learn about his heroic struggles for equality. Make them add to legislation that all the teachings and lessons from Lincoln to MLK must be included or we will know what they wanted all along.
Baud
What now?
Kay
@Kent:
Oh, it’s CLEARLY organized and deliberate. But we’ll all have to pretend these are all outraged public school parents.
I’m watching some of the clips online and some of these people are full-on Trump nutjobs. It’s the whole toxic brew- anti-mask, anti-vacc AND stop the steal.
billcinsd
@Kay: If it were only the 1990s they wanted to go to that might be survivable, but they really want the 1590s attitudes
Baud
Betty Cracker!
Kay
Do the (alleged) CRT proponents “flash gang signs” and/or draw pentagrams?
Let’s combine some panics. It will save time.
Kent
Of course it is. People don’t just show up in mass at boring tedious school board meetings out of the blue to speak on topics that aren’t even on the agenda.
Around here some of the worst instigators are the evangelical churches. Washington isn’t what you think of when you think of evangelical megachurches. But we have them too, and they are deep inside Trump world and the local GOP. It is a near perfect circle-jerk of “deplorables”
Baud
@Kay:
See for yourself.
trollhattan
I presume it’s the one out of a dozen spaghetti strands Republicans tossed at the wall, that stuck. If it weren’t this it would be something else conjured from thin air. The one resource we know that exists in unlimited supply is conservative outrage. At Betty’s post illuminates, words and branding are far more important than substance. “Sporting rifles!”
A bit of good, if overdue news:
Kay
@billcinsd: ‘
If we give them school uniforms will they go away? Confederate gray, of course.
Are CRT proponents also “secular humanists”? Probably, right? But not gang members- as far as we know.
Betty Cracker
@Shakti: “Baby’s First Flamewar” — LOL!
Kent
They already are combined. The Venn diagram of people scared about CRT, BLM, rainbow flags, LGBT bathrooms, masks, and vaccines forms a near perfect circle.
The only issue that really seems to capture a wider net of wingnuts is the Covid vaccine. Where you get the Naomi Wolf and Robert F. Kennedy type of malicious dipshits as well.
Kay
@Baud:
You know, I think I’m a fairly conventional person and I sometimes have difficulty with change and uncertainty, like these people, but what I DON’T do when faced with those things is start a giant screaming fight at a school board meeting.
They make everything worse. Always. They’re not happy unless they’re fucking miserable and making everyone else miserable.
Schools have a lot on their plates right now! No one has time for another temper tantrum! We have work to do!
Shakti
#ItDoesntGetBetter
DeSantis had a morning press conference to yack about apprenticeship programs and surprisingly he allowed local news. I don’t think he said anything about that condo building collapsing in Miami overnight. But priorities!
Since all these amendments making it super hard to raise taxes (2/3 majority in both houses to raise or make new taxes) passed several years ago, they’ll use any excuse to siphon money from the public school system.
Omnes Omnibus
“As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.” As far as being ground down and dismayed by the right, remember that is what they want from you. So don’t give it to them. Stubbornness and cussedness can serve if optimism fails. Fuck ’em.
FTR: I am not writing from a blue state. I am in a very blue area of my state, but I get out enough to know what’s out there.
Cheryl Rofer
Betty Cracker:
It’s also possible that they are lashing out because they are feeling desperate. The multiple spaghetti strands on the wall also speak of desperation. Without the TFG’s big mouthpiece, there’s no driving Issue of the Day, so they keep flinging them at the wall. CRT stuck pretty effectively, but let’s see how long it lasts. The others haven’t.
They don’t want their people to see they’re losing. And getting sick. So they’re frantic.
I agree, it’s hard to tell one motivator of their energy from another. We can do our best to make it turn out in favor of democracy.
And here’s some good news –
waspuppet
This has been obvious since Rush Limbaugh. Anyone who didn’t see that then needs to be told to sit down and shut up now. Seriously.
Baud
@Kay:
It’s their twisted, perverted, wingnut version of a sit-in protest.
Baud
@Cheryl Rofer: I agree.
craigie
So do we get to see these rebuttals? I am sure they are up to your usual standard!
Martin
Jesus fuck. How does a 12 story building in the US suffer a partial collapse without a precipitating event like an earthquake?
<Insert Florida joke>
kindness
CRT pushes all the buttons for the Conservatives. It’s a perfect vehicle for them. Now….the media/MSM is once again doing their best to not explain it but to instead play up the anger and rage because they think it gets them clicks/eyeballs/ratings and hence money.
We’re doomed to a shitty system where our media is a happily captive prostitute that will only further the next fascist state right here in America. I’m sorry this screed was less positive than I like but….
Baud
I can’t disagree with Anger-Coot here.
Baud
Plot twist: Anger-Coot is Betty’s husband!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
A more cogent analysis than I would’ve expected from this second-tier wannabe Fox host. Along those lines, I saw a bit of Joy Reid’s interview with Rufo, and she had a short string of tweet from him announcing his fiendish plan to exploit this thing called “Critical Race Theory”, and besides being the political twitter version of the movie bad guy explaining his cunning plan to kill our hero, it reminded me of Kevin McCarthy smirking while he admitted BENGHAZI! was all a lot of squid ink to use the bodies of four dead State Dept officers to dirty up Hillary Clinton
@Martin: my first thought was some kind of sinkhole in a swampy area that wasn’t properly prepared for construction, but that is the first thought of a certified dumb guy who has never set foot in Miami
piratedan
have to agree that the CRT panic is stupid, the arguments are stupid, racism exists today and existed then. If we want to learn lessons and be better then we have to understand and try to improve.
I have no idea why that is controversial in any way shape or form.
seems like this is the result of 18 months of cabin fever and foreboding getting an outlet coupled with the latent racism we all know exists…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
this reminds me of when Boehner took over the House in 2011 and the seized on the cunning plan to do some perforative ‘patriotism’ by reading the Constitution aloud, and they forgot about the whole “slavery” things that are in there. I always pictured a staffer waking Boehner up after his mid-morning Scotch and him growling, “The three-fifths what?”
Just One More Canuck
@Kay: Panic at the Disco? Panic in Detroit?
Martin
@piratedan: White Christians don’t like being a minority. They’re afraid they’ll be treated like they treated everyone else the last 400 years.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Just One More Canuck: panic in the streets of Carlisle
Dublin, Dundee, Humberside
I wonder to myself
artem1s
@Kent:
same as it ever was. I am an old and can remember when the crazies just wanted to ban Catcher in the Rye and keep the libraries from having a copy of The Tin Drum in their video collection to lend out.
They will move on to something else to be enraged about sooner or later. They are wasting their energy trying to ban something that doesn’t exist this time so I’m inclined to let them wear themselves out tilting at windmills so they aren’t saving their energy for physically assaulting teachers.
Martin
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Possible. Geotechnical engineering is notoriously difficult. Still, it’s almost impossible to have a collapse like this without warnings. Wait for the reports that residents were reporting cracks and settling which engineers waved away (see FIU bridge collapse).
Florida doesn’t have bad building codes – they’re actually quite good for hurricanes. Guessing enforcement is lapsing.
Cheryl Rofer
Twitter thread in progress –
eclare
@Martin: I’m hoping Suzanne gives us her two cents. My guess is sinking ground.
Ruckus
@billcinsd:
This. They don’t want a little bit, they want it all.
They want:
Racial inequality. Whites only is the goal. Your skin is the arbitrator of your worth, not what you can do or earn.
Financial inequality. The billionaires have to be in charge, because…. well because they must be the smart ones, otherwise how would they be billionaires…..
Amazingly that’s about it. They don’t want to think or earn or allow anyone else to move above their pathetic existence.
Martin
House Select Committee on 1/6 has been approved.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
OT: details forthcoming, it seems
Biden to speak at the top of the hour
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Sinkholes are pretty uncommon in that part of the state. It’s a ritzy area (the building is right on the beach), so hopefully most of the residents were away for the summer.
piratedan
@Martin: and as such, the response to this revelation isn’t to reach down and try to be better people as per the New Testament but instead freak the fuck out and illustrate that their takeaways of the parables in the Bible are just a thin veneer of social cues rather than a moral and ethical coda by which to live their lives.
Kent
The problem is that it does real damage. It is hard enough to generate support for public education, pass bond measures, and keep the charter school grifters at bay without having to deal with this bullshit. This just makes it worse and you can’t ignore it.
VeniceRiley
@Cheryl Rofer: I understand it’s for the interim because he cannot be trusted to behave while proceedings , erm, … proceed.
https://www.mediaite.com/politics/breaking-rudy-giulianis-law-license-suspended/
Kent
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Is this on infrastructure or voting rights?
Woodrow/asim
I’m going to quote what I commented yesterday:
The above is why we need to build systemic, long-term infrastructures in Progressive circles to combat –or just bypass — this crap. The ability to weaponize terms was built over decades, and although there are ways to defang individual attacks, you’re burning daylight doing that…which is part of why they do it.
Eyes on the Prize is useful to remember, and hard to hold fast too when you feel like you’re not doing anything, like your contribution means nothing in a sea of horrors. And yet, that term — and the implications of collective action that it brings to the table — are the only way out of this mess, long term.
I mean, look. You don’t see Abrams or Harrison spinning Twitter thread after thread about this stuff. That said: If you have the capacity and spoons to fight it’s spread it amongst friends, family, and social media followers, do so, please!
Just…remember that the reason we ended up like this is that Conservatism has been building infrastructure and alliances for a long assed time. It will take patience, much patience, and hard shared work to overcome. Burning yourself out over anger and rage only helps the other side.
Be good to yourselves, y’all, OK?
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
I live in CA, a very blue state overall. But it in no way is 100% blue. There is a lot of more rural areas in CA that are as red as it gets. They might change over time but I doubt it in mine. Hell look at some of what Mary G writes about Orange county. It has finally gone blue politically but there are still a lot republicans living there and it was red in a sea of blue for a long time. This is a divided country and the red side has been exclusionary for a long time. This has led to it’s losses and will continue to but not at a fast (enough) rate. We still have work to do to speed that up.
HeleninEire
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That made me LOL.
It’s funny cuz it’s true!
WhatsMyNym
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
@Martin:
Built in 1980. I doubt they had pilings going to bedrock, so easier to be undercut in the sand.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kent: infrastructure
I hope he’s saving his burn for the more covered event
Delk
Narrow minds plus short attention spans equals outrage du jour.
Steeplejack (phone)
Teaching Juneteenth post-CRT.
Baud
@Woodrow/asim:
Good comment.
Woodrow/asim
Manchin is all-in on the “bonus round” reconciliation infrastructure approach. From Talking Points Memo:
Mike in NC
A dozen years ago we lived in NoVA and subscribed to the Washington Post. Now we live in the boonies and get two fairly crappy local daily newspapers. How they’ve changed over the past several years is that they are much smaller than before, and they’ve virtually stopped with the publication of Letters to the Editor. I think mainly because they were getting inundated by crackpots whose main source of information is FOX News and lousy social media. I’ll take that as a minor win.
Major Major Major Major
CRT panic is dumb, the name they picked for it is dumb, that doesn’t mean there isn’t some pernicious nonsense out there, which is of course evergreen in education. Most of the “scandals” that I’ve seen fall apart with some very brief googling/just reading the screenshot they’re howling about, of course. Jeez I wish I could find some of the real ones but the google results are all insane right-wing bullshit now. The gist is that you occasionally see the bad-corporate-diversity-training-style “all you white students are racist” stuff pop up in pre-college education. Of course, you see creationism and abstinence-only sex ed too.
Baud
@Woodrow/asim:
?
Chip Daniels
The weakness of moral panics is the Streisand Effect of drawing attention to something that no one would have heard about otherwise.
And although many people will come away with mistaken ideas of what CRT is, they will in the process hear a lot about structural racism and institutions.
They will hear about this, if we step up and push back on the nonsense by talking about actual things, like Tulsa, redlining and the Indian schools which were intended to indoctrinate Native children.
Baud
@Kay:
CRanTifa!
Benw
Maybe we can just put stickers on all the elementary school doors.
PARENTAL ADVISORY:
CRITICAL RACE THEORY
dmsilev
@Woodrow/asim: According to some news reports (I saw it on TPM), Nancy Pelosi has said that she will wait until both the alleged bipartisan infrastructure deal _and_ the passed-through-reconcilliation companion bill have passed the Senate before taking up either in the House. Which I think is very very smart on her part.
schrodingers_cat
@Shakti: Indian whatsapp groups are the worst. I have exited all my family and extended family groups. Who needs the daily BP spike.
Captain C
@Dupe1970:
These don’t appear to be inaccurate.
schrodingers_cat
Isn’t it a tad late for a Cathode Ray Tube panic?
dmsilev
@schrodingers_cat: I dunno, it’s kind of bad when people leave them on the street instead of properly e-wasting them.
VOR
I have a favorite example of an uniformed, but loud opinion on something. We have a local news columnist who claims to be the voice of common sense. Has a talk radio show too. He spent years raging about all the school buses. Everywhere he went there were school buses, and sometimes they were empty. Clearly the school districts were wasting all of his taxpayer money on fleets of buses. Liberals wasting money.
Finally someone from the school district’s transportation group brought him in for a talk. He was seeing buses everywhere because they were so busy. They had to stagger start times at schools because there weren’t enough buses or drivers. So buses would do a route for one school, then drive empty to start a route for another school, etc. Then repeat it all in the afternoon. Plus field trips and special events. Basically, their fleet was just busy as hell. The transportation department was always struggling to find enough staff and to keep their fleet in service. Evidently they managed to get through to him because I don’t recall seeing any more columns raging about the school buses.
Ruckus
@artem1s:
The problem is that they are tilting at nothing. Not a book they don’t have to read, or a food they don’t have to eat, or anything that actually is even remotely, possibly in any way harmful to them. The issue exists only to rile up the fucking idiots who think they are being prosecuted because their political “leaders” tell them to be riled up for their own good. It stops all political discussion about anything real. They get to have an army of really pissed off people to make noise and redirect any attention from their actual bullshit. And a non targetable reason is far better than a actual real reason, because there are no limits on the defense of the not real, while not reading a book is an option.
TomatoQueen
@WhatsMyNym: As I have pointed out elsewhere and as a full link to the NBC piece has already been posted, the key word is “pancaked”, as in how the building fell. It means the building was constructed using old methods before building codes were changed as a result of the L’Ambiance Plaza disaster in Bridgeport, CT, a building under construction when it collapsed, killing 28 workers. L’Ambiance Plaza collapse – Wikipedia is one link among many.
In addition, the building in Surfside has been facing the ocean for 45 years, and that is the side of the building that fell.
Kay
Perhaps someone call tell me how “compressing the suspect’s diaphragm” cures a 35% murder clearance rate.
Perhaps if we’re going to have a crime panic – and it seems we are, regrettably- we could actually talk about solving crimes. Why can’t we solve any? Not enough police brutality?
dnfree
@Major Major Major Major: I have been informed that I don’t understand Critical Race Theory. I have been brainwashed by Marxists. I’m just so gullible that I don’t recognize how diabolical it is, disguised as promoting racial understanding.
lowtechcyclist
I like the third bullet in DeSantis’ summary of his bill:
“PROTECTS students from being influenced or indoctrinated to think a certain way”
They’re planning to take the Pledge of Allegiance out of the schools, then?
patrick II
@trollhattan:
In an interesting bit of irony, Roy Cohn was disbarred in New York on June 24, 1986 — 35 years ago today.
Martin
@WhatsMyNym: Wait, the county requires that the building be re-certified every 40 years and 24 hours before collapse an inspector just coincidentally was on site doing that work – and didn’t observe any problems? Bullshit.
Baud
@patrick II: That is fascinating.
Betty Cracker
@Major Major Major Major: This is true; I’ve seen some cringe bullshit like that too, though you make a great point that it’s probably impossible to find examples online now that the zone has been flooded with hysterical backlash. I think there’s often a kernel of truth to these complaints, but it gets so blown out of proportion that the molehills are forgotten as we try to figure out how to beat back the fascist assault from the fictitious mountains.
Kay
@lowtechcyclist:
My public school has a program where they tell kids what to do if a family member overdoses on opiates in front of them. The idea that using the word “equity” too often should be the focus is insane. It’s the insanity of people who have no earthly idea what is going on and no one has time for it.
SpongeBobtheBuilder
in my day job, I teach teachers, and every fall, I teach a class to future history teachers on planning a curriculum, structuring assignments, and assessing skills and knowledge in the social sciences. This fall I only have 5, but here they are: A CPAC-attending, thin blue line flag-wearing Catholic school boy, a very evangelical Christian young man who is interested in the idea that the US is founded on Christian doctrine, an activist Indigenous woman, a woman who is a double major in special ed who is a champion Water Polo player, and a male lacrosse player and frat bro.
I have some ideas about how to approach this fall, but welcome yours! I am thinking of starting with Title IX and examining education through the before and after lens of Title IX. That will hook the two athletes, for sure.
rikyrah
@Martin:
YEAH :)
gratuitous
DeSantis wants schools to teach that communism is evil, but he doesn’t want schools indoctrinating the impressionable tiny tots. Anyone else seen this movie before?
Hop: Expressing support for or insufficiently critical opinions about communism will be grounds for punishment for student and faculty alike.
Skip: Failing to report a student’s or professor’s insufficiently critical opinions about communism will make that person’s failure to report grounds for equal culpability.
Jump: In order to be sure that all forms of communism – no matter how small seeming – are rooted out of the university system, students and faculty will be called before a committee to testify to any opinions they may hold or that they may have heard from others. Uncooperative witnesses will be expelled or terminated.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
There’s a lot of bad corporate style training and a fuck ton of grifters selling shit. Why the intense, over the top response to THIS bad corporate style training? Where does the RAGE come from? Why does JUST THIS have to be so aggressively policed?
Soprano2
I swear it gets dumber and dumber. I listened to what I thought would be an illuminating program from On Point this morning. It was Jonathan Rauch talking about his book “The Constitution of Knowledge”, which is a defense of the truth. So, what did they spend half of the hour talking about? The liberal suppression of thought on college campuses, “cancel culture”, and crap like that! They spent barely any time at all talking about how one of our two political parties has been almost completely captured by conspiracy theorists who are spinning wilder and wilder tales about the Big Lie. Little time was spent talking about the lies about CRT (which is really anxiety about diversity training). No time was spent talking about the 1/6 insurrection, and the lies those people used to justify doing it. I swear, this impulse to act like both sides are exactly the same, and exactly as bad as each other, is going to be the death of democracy. I think about 10 minutes would have been the right amount of time to spend talking about what’s happening on college campuses, not half the damn hour!
rikyrah
@Betty Cracker:
I don’t understand. It’s June. Why would someone who lives at the beach be away for the Summer?
Steeplejack (phone)
germy
Major Major Major Major
@Kay: I mean, it’s okay to be opposed to like, teaching kids bad things.
Booger
@Kay: Curtis Sliwa is tanned, ready and rested.
Cameron
@rikyrah: Come to Florida and find out…….it’s basically a sauna outdoors all summer. The snowbird season is over.
Kay
@gratuitous:
Junior Achievement puts on school programs all over the country. It is absolute rah-rah for business. They go around the room and ask the kids where their parents work. I saw one- absolutely hysterical- this boy (I loved) said about a girl who bragged that her family has a concrete company “is she allowed to brag?” Guffaw. IMO? No, she’s not allowed to brag. Shut that shit down :)
Been going on for decades. They REGULARLY hold “abstinence rallies” in red state and county public schools. Just pure distilled religion, held at a public school.
Not a word from the anti-indoctrination crowd all these years. So, I’m suspicious.
Raven
@rikyrah: Many people who live in Miami Beach are there for the winters. One lady on the news said she hoped there were a lot of snowbirds gone.
Baud
If you teach that the end of slavery and segregation were good things, are you loving or hating America?
Cacti
More people need to tell their local right wing blowhards that they’re full of shit.
Make stupidity shameful again.
Baud
@Kay:
I’m glad they’re giving pregnant teens something to do.
Raven
@SpongeBobtheBuilder: Have em do self-directed leaning using “Savage Inequalities.”
Martin
@WhatsMyNym: Ok, here’s how this almost certainly went down. County is concerned about building based on a recurring history of cracking and settling. Residents are reporting increased activity. County decides to initiate their 40 year recertification and fold that activity in with investigating resident concerns. Inspectors are sent out, and observe the structural damage, but don’t feel its an imminent concern because a 1-inch crack over 40 years means things are moving slowly, and they don’t want to deal with the hassle/questioning of overreaction of an evacuation, or they kick it up to their bosses with an evacuation recommendation, meeting scheduled for next week because that’s first availability around meetings for that new WalMart going in. But half of that settling happened in the last month, not the last 2 decades and things aren’t moving slowly at all.
Tell me if anyone has heard this one before, because I have – many times.
Honestly, one of the biggest things holding this country back is the fierce urgency of next month.
schrodingers_cat
Did you guys see George Packer’s Atlantic article? It is Friedmanesque without the cab drivers
WhatsMyNym
@TomatoQueen: @Martin:Here’s a link to a local article which includes the security camera video of it collapsing KHOU-11. It seems that the center bit connecting that wing of it to the rest collapsed first.
MCA1
The funniest thing to me about this particular moral panic is the way in which the Right’s chosen to combat it – top down, State dictated educational requirements. I know there are a million and one ways in which the GOP has lost all touch with actual conservatism in its radicalization and rush to nihilism over the last few decades, and that the culture wars always tempt them to abandon republican decentralization. But it’s kind of startling to see them just toss out “education should be left to local authorities” so quickly, just to make sure that no one’s teaching 9 year olds about an esoteric theory about the intersection of bias and legal sausagemaking. They might as well pass legislation dictating that elementary school teachers are forbidden from instructing children in how to murder one another, or that following automobile safety laws is stupid.
The moral panic is real, though, even if the bullshit’s piled a mile high. Fox and Rush and whoever else primed their people for it by harping on the dangers of overreaching “wokeness” for the last couple years, so now they think they’re seeing it everywhere. I was just told recently a friend of a friend sort of story about some high schoolers who came home and told their parents they’d been informed that they should feel ashamed about being oppressors. When I asked for specifics, who told them that, etc., I was given nothing that could be tied back to an actual event. There’s a group at my own kids’ high school that published a screed calling for balance in teaching inclusion and celebrating diversity so as not to demonize any one group (their upper middle class white kids) or foster rivalries, alluding specifically to the same sort of messages of intolerance and shaming. When read to our daughter, she said “I don’t know what they’re talking about. No one’s been saying anything like that to us.”
As major*4 mentions above, there is some ridiculous nonsense occasionally spewed out there, but no one’s buying it and it will naturally die on the vine or go away with a little common sense pushback. There’s no need for a nationwide anti-CRT campaign, but of course that’s not the aim here. It’s just to inflame the culture wars to distract everyone from 1/6, the failures of Drumpf during COVID, and Biden’s popularity.
Raven
@Martin: Man, I thought it was just front section of a building. CNN is showing an entire building going down.
Cacti
By the by, has anyone seen that genius piece of video done by a gun control group to a pair of high profile gun humpers?
John Lott and a former NRA President were tricked into giving a graduation speech to a sea of over 3,000 empty chairs, representing the Class of 2021 kids killed in gun violence nationally, who didn’t live to finish high school.
Brutal.
CaseyL
Florida has a history of pulling dumb academic censorship shit.
When I was in high school, back in the 1970s, there was a law on the books dating from the Red Scare era that high schools had to teach an “Americanism v. Communism” course, and it had to (again, by law) teach that “Americanism” was better.
I’m not sure how well the law was followed; I suspect it depended a lot on the teacher. My class was lucky: the Watergate scandal had broken and was being investigated, so our classes all turned into current events discussions. The teacher made a point of noting this kind of self-examination would never happen in a communist country (and she was right about that), and then never brought the “Americanism v. Communism” subject up again.
So there are ways around dumb laws like this, even ways to subvert them altogether. But the teacher needs to be careful and canny about it. Particularly nowadays, when organized RW organizations are poised to attack en masse, and school administrators are scared of their own shadows.
Raven
@Cacti: Everyone who woke up today.
A Ghost to Most
@Cacti: Please. I’ve been doing it for fifty years, and I would welcome the company.
trollhattan
@Martin:
Will bet all the quatloos that structural steel has corroded to the point of failure. It fronts the ocean and also receives copious tropical rainfall, leading to saltwater and freshwater penetration across four decades. Similar mechanisms at work with bridge failures.
Everybody else living on that waterfront is doubtless awaiting the State of Florida stepping in and demanding intensive inspections of all highrises, pronto.
Kidding
Cacti
@schrodingers_cat: Is it one of those mewling, “rascists need hugs” pieces?
Baud
It was CRT that took down that building.
schrodingers_cat
@Cacti: 4 Americas. Complete erasure of anyone who is not native born and white. He is playing the white people whisperer.
Soprano2
Oh, and our state legislature was called into special session to pass the tax that funds Medicaid. Normally that’s done easily in the regular session, but this year some state senators decided they want to prohibit Medicaid from spending any money with Planned Parenthood (I think this has been litigated before and they can’t do it), and they want to specifically prohibit Medicaid from paying for certain kinds of birth control, like IUD’s and Plan B. What I’m wondering on Facebook is why the state legislature wants to cause more abortions, because that will be the result if they manage to pass this insane law.
Suzanne
Too many people don’t want to lose friends by being “uncivil” and pointing out that people are stupid. I don’t think anyone really thought that this was a good strategy for combatting shitty behavior. But it is the most comfortable.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay:
A couple of years ago, on her old morning program, Joy Reid had a never-trump type on, and everything was very genial until one of the other panelists used the words “white privilege”. This guy’s jaw started to clench, his face turned red, his eyes started to do that weird quivering thing like Ann Coulter’s. The next time he spoke he informed everyone in clipped, angry words that he had grown up in a trailer park, he was first member of his family to attend college, he worked his way through always have two jobs and sometimes three, so he didn’t know what all this “white privilege” was supposed to be. His whole self-image was based in the idea that he was a self-made man who had triumphed over adversity. The suggestion that he had any advantage in life was deeply offensive to him.
A downscale, and probably less deluded version of Mitt Romney fairly hissing that he had inherited nothing, being the son of a major corporate CEO, governor and plausible presidential candidate had given Our Willard no leg up on the road to Bain Capital. I always thought that was the underplayed moment of the 47% tape. He was pissed.
Also, America is a virtuous nation, and jingoists are virtuous because America is virtuous. We (they) are God’s chosen people, in a shining city on a hill.
Cacti
After it was manufactured in a Chinese lab, and launched via the Secret Jew Space Lasers.
sdhays
There’s been a lot of sneering at Chinese “tofu construction” (not unjustified, although sneering is seldom wise), but it seems become clearer every year that US building standards aren’t that great either. Newly constructed metro stations in Northern Virginia (i.e. less than 5 years old) are having to be partially rebuilt due to the contractor using substandard concrete that’s already cracking and leaking. Bridges collapse every now and then and there’s a disturbing lack of urgency for replacing aging infrastructure nationwide. And now it’s clear that private infrastructure, at least in places like Miami, isn’t safe either.
I’m glad that there’s finally a bipartisan infrastructure bill (or, at least, some concrete confidence that one will be finalized shortly) because it seems that we’re going to get a lot of good stuff in the twin-package. But it’s galling that we’ve had to waste another few months wrangling with these Republican shitheads who did fuck-all about infrastructure when they held the trifecta or when the Democrats took the House.
Shakti
@schrodingers_cat: It’s like Tumblr for assholes. Very religious assholes. Every day my mother calls me to ask how to transfer stuff from her eleventy billion groups or to forward some umpteen minute video by some swamiji saying some nonsense. The pandemic has made my parents Very Online and it is not an improvement. In about 15 months neither of them understand file systems. Or the cloud.
Sometimes I think I’m too online, but my mother bought an IMac, a Zoom laptop, a green screen, a portable microphone and a ring light phone stand in addition to upgrading her phone.
TriassicSands
So, let me get this straight — Jim Crow laws were for the good of African Americans who were only 3/5 of a human being (each) anyway? No racism there.
CST is now in among Republicans — Critical Stupidity Theory, which holds that the dumber you are, the more likely it is that Americans will vote for you. (See Marjorie Failure Greene, Louis Gohmert, Paul Gozar, Lauren Boebert, et al.)
@trollhattan:
Actually, DeSantis will be doing surveys in all such buildings to determine if CRT is being discussed, since it is widely suspected of causing structural corrosion especially if the building is inhabited by white people.
We are doomed.
schrodingers_cat
In my experience speaking up hardens people into their bigoted positions. That has been my experience among my family members who are BJP supporters. I have spoken up against India’s RW turn since BJP started gaining ground in the early 90s. It has been mainly to tell them where I stand and that I won’t stand for gratuitous minority bashing in my presence and I will call them out on their lies. I don’t know if I have necessarily changed any minds.
JoyceH
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The world would be a better place is these guys could be made to understand that when they get pulled over for speeding or a tail light and it never so much as crosses their mind that they might not survive the encounter, THAT is white privilege.
Starfish
This “critical race theory is whatever makes white people mildly uncomfortable” thing is going to get culturally responsive pedagogy killed.
What we have been working on with respect to these issues are things such as “Hey, assign a book that is by an author who is not white maybe once a year.” Diversify Our Narrative is a student-led initiative that is basically trying to diversify the high school literature curriculum just a tiny bit.
Other things we have been working on is “Let’s not have elementary school students sing minstrel songs.”
Perhaps, the history curriculum should not be about how sad the white woman who owned 150 slaves was after her father died.
catclub
Unlike Obama, Biden has zero reluctance to say THE ECONOMY IS BETTER WITH ME AS PRESIDENT.
This seems unfair to them.
Fair Economist
@schrodingers_cat: Totally understand the desire to avoid the crap but I worry about decent people in India abandoning all the family chat groups to the nutcases.
schrodingers_cat
@Fair Economist: I talk to them individually. At least the ones that I am close to. I can’t cure them all of their bigotry and conditioning. I don’t need to wake up to a daily onslaught of BJP lies.
catclub
@sdhays:
Joe Biden would like to have a word about his infrastructure plan and legislation.
Martin
@Raven: Yeah, that’s what I thought too at first, then I saw the Google Map 3D view showing it was an L shaped building that is now an I shaped building.
germy
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-says-deal-reached-infrastructure-plan-2021-06-24/
germy
WASHINGTON, June 24 (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday said a deal had been reached on an infrastructure spending plan as he emerged from a meeting with a bipartisan group of senators.
“We have a deal,” he told reporters at the White House after meeting with members from the so-called Group of 21, who have been seeking a bipartisan agreement on an infrastructure bill.
Cameron
@Baud: ‘Twas CRT that killed the beast?”
Martin
@trollhattan: Could well be. Again, not something that shows itself immediately in a catastrophic ways. There are lots of signs before the failure that are either being ignored or downplayed.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@catclub:
Right. Obama never used the bikini graph to show job growth under his administration, or mentioned that he had saved the auto industry, or talked about ARRA…..
ETA: this some people have lately to shit on the Obama presidency is weird to m
ETA, A: I guess I should say: to shit on Obama
Elizabelle
@WhatsMyNym: Shocking. It’s like watching a demolition. And yes, collapse did occur in two phases. At least.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: My father is a member of a service organization that does very good work, but many of his fellow members are quite right wing. When they start talking politics, he simply reminds them that he is a lifelong, flaming liberal and asks if they have a problem with that. It usually shuts down the conversation. He knows he won’t convince them of anything, but reminding them that he is who he is isn’t a bad idea.
VeniceRiley
yeah that’s a lot of these ypipo to a tee. That’s my family. You can shove reality in their face and they’ll forget it by tomorrow to keep this opinion of themselves. Reality being anyone black from their same circumstance probably had trheir brother pulled over and convicted on a trumped up felony, their grandmother’s chuch burned down. their trailer tipped over… and a general hostility to endure from any local whites that would keep them away from a library or community pool, and on and on and on. And if you manage to make it through university and accept an exciting new job in Texas, you’ll get pulled over and die in some racist nightmare sheriff’s jail. etc … etc.
MattF
OT. A long Twitter thread (of which I’ve read only the first chunk) about the NY decision that suspended Giuliani from the practice of law. The author appears to be expert, and says repeatedly that his flabber is gasted and it is an extremely big deal.
Cameron
@germy: I don’t trust Senator Yertle. He might just be saying “yepyepyep” until the moment the bill comes up for a vote. Good faith, he has none.
Suzanne
@eclare: I have no idea about the building collapse at this point. Differential settlement of the foundation on the soil seems unlikely at this point, as that’s not a fast process. Damage would have been visible for a long time. I am sure we will find out more. Apparently it collapsed from the middle, which would make me think that there was something like a fire.
Betty Cracker
@CaseyL: The “Americanism vs. Communism” class was still a thing in Florida public schools in the 1980s. I had to take it during the Reagan years.
Fair Economist
@Kay:
I think your comment is rhetorical, but the rage comes from the fear of exposing the brutality of racism in this country as people start to look at things like the Tulsa massacre, the Rosewood massacre, the Wilmington massacre, the end of Reconstruction, etc. White supremacy is a profoundly evil doctrine, and the interest in the Tulsa massacre in particular is driving the American public as a whole close to realizing just *how* evil it was. It wasn’t just petty things like segregated water fountains. It was mass murder and expropriation, over and over again.
The point of this is to keep those massacres out of the schools. The white supremacists desperately need to keep the schoolchildren of American ignorant or their own profound evil will be exposed.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@VeniceRiley: also, the very weird, to me, ancestor worship. From Clint Smith’s book excerpt in The Atlantic, involving his time exploring the lingering Confederate myths in the South
One of my grandfather died ten years before I was born, my dad didn’t talk about him much. The other died when I was three. My mom talked about him a lot (my dad, who wasn’t fond of his FiL, would quietly roll his eyes). I have written down somewhere the first names of my great-grandparents, a couple of whom died in the 19th century. Their parents, I could guess at, especially the men. Odd are they were either Michael or Patrick. But having an emotional investment in their character? I can’t imagine it.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: My experience as well. It usually shuts down the conversation, unless one is dealing with a zealot which is relatively rare.
germy
@MattF:
At comment #88, I linked to Rudy’s son Andrew giving a statement.
Andrew made sure to recite the names of the five people who decided against his father.
Maybe I’m paranoid, but Andrew gives me the impression he’s trying to incite a campaign of harassment against these five.
“Here are their names… all democrats…” etc.
catclub
@Captain C:
I also liked Dupe1970’s approach.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cameron: If he fucks up the deal, that should kill the bipartisan urge in at least Manchin.
eclare
@Suzanne: Thank you!
germy
@Suzanne:
Cohen said he raised concerns years ago about whether nearby construction might be causing damage to the building after seeing cracked pavers on the pool deck.
eclare
@germy: That was my thought as well, by his reading their names.
Raven
@Betty Cracker: I took a couple 67-69 on a McNamara Scholarship.
Betty Cracker
@schrodingers_cat: Here’s where I closed the excerpt of Packer’s book published in The Atlantic:
I mean come on!
Cameron
@Omnes Omnibus: I hope it goes through, and I think it was a good idea to make the agreement very public. Sort of a BFD-type thing.
Baud
@Betty Cracker: I didn’t know protesting paid so well.
MattF
@Betty Cracker: ‘Disproportionately’ is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
Omnes Omnibus
And yet we make progress. Congrats to Judge Candace Jackson-Akiwumi.
VeniceRiley
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yep. Then … Your neighbors, your friends at church, your local law enforcement , they’re all still in on it NOW. that’s what this is all about.
Like this white lady personally attacking over 30,00 total strangers: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/6/24/2036848/-Greg-Palast-confronts-a-Georgia-operative-getting-legal-voters-thrown-off-the-rolls
Cameron
@Betty Cracker: WTF? They were all out there doing the lefty equivalent of the Brooks Brothers riot?
Fair Economist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The reality, of course, is that almost anybody who owned slaves was a monster. Maybe a few were just evil. I have plantation ancestry on both sides of the family, and I know they had to have been awful people, just because they owned slaves. It might help me personally in recognizing that that all the ancestors I actually knew weren’t monsters. They were racist, sure, but at least they didn’t kill, maim, kidnap, or rape. Low bar, I know, but it’s important to realize few white Southerners in the history books could clear it.
JoyceH
Building collapse – 99 people unaccounted for.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: These white male journalists are the prime T demographic. Packer is 60 year old white male, they think they are the default and it is reflected in their writing and the media CW
I was too sick to travel to DC for the first march but the biggest contingent in group of Ds in my town went to DC were older white women who were retirees. The Orange clown offended their sensibilities and they weren’t active in politics before save a couple of exceptions.
Kent
Yes, he completely vanishes non-white people. His framing only makes any sense if you are just talking about white people. If you start taking about things like black factory workers in WI or Hispanic construction workers in TX or Black home health care workers in SC his framing all falls apart.
trollhattan
@JoyceH:
Wow, horrible. Wonder how many lived there in total?
Cacti
Regarding the building collapse, I doubt we’ll ever know the actual death toll once DeSantis gets involved.
And somehow, Republicans will blame this on black people, transgenders, or both.
schrodingers_cat
@Kent: And immigrants too. Of all colors. Also women get a short shrift.
Elizabelle
@JoyceH: ??? CNN website and other sources saying 51. To what do you refer?
Kent
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Obama talked constantly about his administration’s goals and accomplishments. The press just rarely ever covered it. Benghazi! Fast and Furious! IRS-Gate! Terrorist Fist Bumps! , Tan Suits! and Emailz! were just a lot more fun to cover.
JoyceH
@trollhattan: Don’t know but it sounds as if 55 units collapsed. In the collapsed photos, it looks like just one little corner collapsed, but over at the Post, they have a diagram showing the original shape of the building and indicating what part collapsed. It’s sort of V shaped and one whole side of the V went down.
Elizabelle
@schrodingers_cat: I see that The Atlantic, why yes, edited by a white male, has a screaming headline up amidst its “popular” fare:
The Democrats are Already Losing the Next Election.
Be askeered. Be very askeered. Losery losers!
Will not click. Author is Elaine Godfrey.
Kay
@Fair Economist:
I feel the same way about this as I do (some) religious people. How strong is the thing if you have to keep propping it up? It’ll stand! It doesn’t require constant marketing and promotion.
It’s the not trusting the audience that gets me. Why so controlling? And why just this? Have any of these people ever bothered with a public school curriculum before? This is a brand new passion for them and only in this one area? I don’t buy it.
JoyceH
@Elizabelle:
@Elizabelle:
The Post article says 50-something, but the red breaking news banner at the top says 99. I also notice on the diagram, there are several other buildings right beside it that look quite similar. If I lived in any of those other buildings, I’d be packing up the dog and the cats for an unscheduled vacation.
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker: They were Soros bucks millionaires, too!
No words. WTF, Packer?
JoyceH
Here’s the Post article with the very informative diagram
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/06/24/surfside-building-collapse-miami-dade/
Elizabelle
@JoyceH: Thank you. I will check that out.
Am wondering if the surrounding buildings have already been evacuated?? It seems a nearby hotel was …
Elizabelle
@ MattF: thank you for the informative twitter feed.
I see the Court referred to June 25, 1969 as the date Rudolph William Giuliani was admitted to the NYS bar.
Happy almost anniversary, Rudes. How’s that working out for you??
Redshift
@MCA1:
My experience in the several decades I’ve been following politics is that the conservative principle of favoring “local control” is that they’re in favor of things being left to states or localities unless they decide the wrong thing, and then the federal government should override. So I don’t think they’ve lost touch with anything they actually practiced. Also keep in mind that local control became a conservative principle during the period when the federal government (other than the presidency) was solidly under Democratic control.
And the third thing is that they’ve always been stronger, even rhetorically on things being left to the states (y’know, “states rights”) than on actual local control.
Ruckus
@Kay:
Yes.
Police brutality is the only way for the police to stop peaceful assembly and protesting against police brutality. I mean back when police beat up people with nightsticks and blackjacks and brass knuckles, the law was enforced, by god. We’d have complete control of the streets if cops were allowed to use the weapons most effective for keeping people from doing any thing whatsoever that police think they shouldn’t be doing, like walking or waiting for a crossing, or eating in public.
I’ve just written down the basics there, of policing in decades past, and I left out the proliferation of guns that make a rather startling change in police/public attitudes.
Peale
@Elizabelle: Biden needs a sister souljah moment condemning CRT and all those people who support it or all is lost. He’s being altogether too cozy with Satanists as well.
Ruckus
@Redshift:
And look what many of the red states are doing right now, laws they are passing. They like government just fine when it helps them be bigger assholes, it’s when that control reverses and they have to not be assholes, which goes against their very nature.
Steve in the ATL
@schrodingers_cat: The Atlantic has become extremely shrill, worse than Vox, which has gotten almost reasonable. I had to remove it from my Apple News feed.
Cameron
@Ruckus: Being an asshole = FREEDUMB!
Redshift
@artem1s:
I disagree. The specific thing they’re shrieking about doesn’t exist, but that doesn’t mean they’ll have no effect. What they (and the people feeding them propaganda) are trying to do is intimidate schools into lying to students to avoid them learning any ideas that right-wingers disagree with. Just as with the godawful textbooks that infest schools nationwide because of avoiding mention of anything that offends Texas lawmakers.
It may be a lost cause in deep red areas, but the same screaming mobs are showing up at school board meetings in blue areas (like the DC suburbs), and the one thing we can do is show up ourselves, or at least make sure our school boards know that we’ve got their backs and the mob is a minority.
Steve in the ATL
@Elizabelle: I keep my saving in Venezuelan bolivars, so I’m a millionaire. Net worth in USD is around 31 cents. Hmmm…my plan to buy a private island is not working out.
Suzanne
@germy: There will be some forensic analysis. I did some small work some years back on a building that was having settlement problems. It was built near a lake and about half the building was settling differentially, probably due to the lake. There were vertical cracks visible in multiple places — interior drywall, exterior sheathing and façade, roof, interior millwork. It had been going on for years and the whole thing was caught up in litigation. Structural engineer (hired by the architect) said that they designed the foundation and superstructure in accordance with the geotechnical report (geotechnical hired by Owner). So.
This is not something I can diagnose from photos or news reports, but I am interested. If it did fail first in the middle, as early reports indicate, that might not be a geotech or rusty steel issue.
Redshift
The book The Other School Reformers: Conservative Activism in American Education was referenced in a recent Twitter thread about this, and I found it quite interesting:
zhena gogolia
I have known about Critical Race Theory for years. I have never seen it referred to as CRT until a few days ago. CRT means, even for me, cathode-ray tube.
texasdoc
@MCA1: About Republican state governors/legislatures rushing to ban teaching of CRT–decentralization is a hypocritical contingency value for Republicans. When Republicans are not in charge, then the cry is ” that power is best which is closest to the people”. When Republicans are in charge, they are quick to throw that principle out with the bath water. It has always amazed me that more voters are not as outraged by the hypocrisy as I am.
Betty Cracker
Horrifying video of the building’s collapse:
Kay
@Ruckus:
I just don’t think restraints that are allowed or not allowed are the issue, unless the claim is they have the shooter and then he got away. If it’s about the officer’s safety then just say that. It doesn’t make anyone else “safer”.
gvg
@WhatsMyNym: Florida doesn’t really have bedrock. We are on limerock, which erodes over time. This is one reason why we will never have really tall buildings like New York.
Our limerock is also partially supported by the water in our huge aquifers. sinkholes are when the roof of a cavern breaks. My uncle worked most of his life for the Florida Department of roads. He tells stories about highway pylons being inserted into the ground and just kept going. If the ground swallowed 3 they had to try things like radar and sonar to figure out if they were going to have to reroute a road. He had some funny stories…..but those were as the road was being built, not 40 years later in an occupied building.
JoyceH
@Redshift:
This reminds me of something I’ve been thinking lately. It does seem to me like things are going in our direction, but a lot more slowly than many of us would like to see it. I DO think that the instigators of 1/6 will eventually get what’s coming to them, but building the case from the ground up is a hella slow process.
But there’s one simple thing the DOJ and FBI could do to make a clear point about rule of law and mob violence will not be tolerated, and that is to go out there and ARREST some of these jackasses who are threatening election workers.
Think about it – you just know that these guys are too unsophisticated to get themselves burner phones for their threats, so identifying them should be a snap. Might take a week at most, mostly for regional coordination, identify a couple dozen of the perps who left clear death threats and then one day, all on the same day, FBI agents from coast to coast swoop down and arrest them for terroristic threats.
Think about the advantages. The guys who maybe didn’t threaten but called these folks up and left a screaming rant on the answering machine – they’re going to be trying to remember exactly what they said, and they’ll be looking over their shoulders for a while. It certainly ought to curtail the threats going forward, and send the message to election workers that ‘gov’s got your back’. And it ought to halt or at least slow the exodus of election volunteers – a lot of these people are retirees who’ve worked the elections for years or decades, and what’s made my blood run cold is the thought – if they leave, who will replace them? Probably not the sort you’d want to be manning elections.
So anyway, I think that’s something that would do a lot of good with moderate expenditure. Does Merrick Garland have a suggestion box?
MattF
@Betty Cracker: Yikes.
Elizabelle
WaPost reader commenters are suggesting corrosion caused by king tides; years of saltwater exposure on the foundation and perhaps erosion of the land underneath. Complex was built on reclaimed land. There’s also heavy work underway on a nearby building.
This is going to be an interesting “how buildings fail” case, and maybe this is the first of several.
Per WaPost article, building is full of people from South America — several family members of Panama’s First Lady — and Surfside has a large presence of Orthodox Jews.
Seems to be a luxurious building. Two roughly 1,600 sf apartments on the market at present, asking $600 to 650K. No AirBnB allowed.
https://www.miamiresidence.com/surfside/champlain-towers.htm
Redshift
@texasdoc: One thing I have learned over the years is that nobody cares about hypocrisy by people on their side. It was a sad realization, but what people really care about (and vote on) is whether politicians deliver, not whether they’re pure and consistent.
Steve in the ATL
@Suzanne:
Until we know otherwise, I am assuming that the collapse was caused by removing God from public schools.
rikyrah
@Fair Economist:
truth
Chip Daniels
@Kay:
Looks like a normal teen’s bedroom, right?
Guess again!
Find out what YOU need to know to find out if YOUR teen is experimenting with Critical Race Theory!
Elizabelle
@rikyrah:
Odd phrasing.
But the ongoing gun violence in the schools is fine. Schools just gonna have to deal. Second amendment, libtards.
Chip Daniels
@Chip Daniels:
“Show me on the doll where CRT touched you…”
misterpuff
@Steeplejack (phone):
Chinese
Release
Terror
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
I’m not taking that bet. I’ve seen steel with the paint intact and underneath it’s all rust, the paint is all the structural strength that’s left.
Redshift
@JoyceH:
Agree, agree.
From the discussion on one of Preet Bharara’s podcasts, that’s what Garland’s announcement a week or two ago was all about. There are provisions in the Voting Rights Act that didn’t need to be used much until Section V was struck down, but that can provide other ways to protect elections.
MattF
@Elizabelle: Google says it was built in 1981 so, 40 years old.
Chris Johnson
@Kay:
Do we though? I’m not sure we do. At some point we gotta start dealing with stuff as it is.
It’s a straight up alt-right Nazi tactic to make people have to engage on intentionally distorted grounds. It’s become such standard practice, I think we’d better take note of it as a society.
Redshift
@Chip Daniels:
Agoners
@Starfish: You are exactly right. It will also kill the growing movement to include Ethnic Studies courses in K-12. Spaghetti Monster forbid that our precious white children learn about the experience of folks of color in or country from the perspectives and voices of folks of color.
Redshift
@Chris Johnson: It all reminds me of the health care town halls during the ACA debate. Pure intimidation.
Betty Cracker
@gvg: Yep. A friend’s brother was a diver hired by the DOT to inspect underwater pilings, etc. He told us we would never cross half the bridges in Florida if we had any clue about the condition of those structures below the surface. And that was 20 years ago.
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
That tells me all I need to know.
Kay
@Chris Johnson:
Last night Tucker Carlson interviewed “a parent” who was removed from a school board meeting- arrested. Coincidentally he had also organized a “Stop the Steal” rally and an anti-mask rally, and then just developed a passionate interest in 6th grade social studies curriculum.
It’s also interesting how it’s centered on Virginia, where they just happen to desperately want to win a governor’s race.
James E Powell
What’s infuriating is that even though Republicans in half the states are openly working to keep black people from voting, ginning up a race-inflamed “crime wave” panic, and making Critical Race Theory – code for Black people are coming for your children! – but the press/media will not call this racist. The Republicans could hold meeting wearing white hoods while the crowd chanted about the N! words and the press/media would not call them or their voters racist.
Villago delenda est!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kent: it’s not “the media” on twitter, and often in these threads, retconning the Obama presidency to a state of, at best, “Well, bless his heart, he tried”
James E Powell
@germy:
I mentioned in an earlier dead thread that the responses to Junior Giuliani’s tweet are hilarious. I doubt he reads them.
Cameron
@Steve in the ATL: “Stop the Steel!”
gvg
@gratuitous:
The Catholic church and others is basically Communist. Property held in common, not
@Betty Cracker:
So did I. Weird experience. Mine was taught by a very former CIA agent who didn’t seem that bright, possibly due to age and senility. He had us read stuff from readers digest which seemed simplistic to me, however his actual stories were much more to the point and simple stuff about laws were repressive and everything was inefficient in Russia. China always got less attention. He also didn’t hide some American screwups…….I don’t know, I found it kind of interesting. We got more about American civics structure and how things work at the different level too. On the other hand, it was pretty clearly made up by the teacher and not the same everywhere.
In hindsight, Russia overthrew communism and doesn’t seem to have changed much. Maybe it wasn’t communism that caused their problems?
Elizabelle
@Kay: Friends in NoVA have been sharing a link. Apparently Trevor Noah did a segment on one of these meeting interrupters, white guy now passionate about schooling. (Gist of it; still haven’t watched.)
Loudoun County. Former red county — horse country with a view of the Blue Ridge; now turning purple, and blue in many areas. Home to the Dulles area tech and government community. Loudoun County is electing more Democrats [women!!] now. Current state attorney general Mark Herring hails from a state senate seat that was partially Fairfax, partially Loudoun County.
Trevor Noah tweet: https://twitter.com/thedailyshow/status/1407696034688536577
It happened. Angry white guy, yelling about his First Amendment rights. Guessing this is who Boy Carlson had on??
James E Powell
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It’s not fair, but President Obama gets blamed for what are seen as a number of missed opportunities. He has acknowledged this himself, so I wouldn’t call it shitting on him.
And the misses weren’t his alone. It seemed like the Democratic Party failed to appreciate the rigidity of Republican opposition, the size and intensity of the racist reaction to his election, and the press/media’s refusal to do anything but “some say” and “both sides” everything.
Saying that Biden apparently learned from his work in the Obama administration and is making different moves is not shitting on Obama.
Elizabelle
Interesting website. https://sealevelrise.org/states/florida/
Elizabelle
NO PETS allowed in the tower that collapsed. I guess that’s good …
Agoners
This anti-CRT stuff is part of the systemic racial issues that CRT is specifically built to analyze. I live in a blue town in a blue state, and for years we have had a group of well-organized and well-funded “community members” showing up to board meetings screaming about how any equity work that our district (an almost 50/50 split of folks of color and white folks) undertakes is “anti-white, anti-male, and anti-Christian”. Of course, the reason that our district is attempting equity work is that the outcomes for white students in our schools are great and for everyone else, not so much. Our classrooms are segregated through tracking and we have lots of Academies (little segregated schools within schools) but that is not enough. These parents and community members want to make sure that their precious Johnny and Sally don’t have to compete with anyone named Juan or Selena and they will keep suing and electing and protesting to make sure they get their way. They are also the group, of course, who wanted to make sure that teachers risked their lives in the midst of a pandemic by having all the kids back in the classroom (because teachers were just being lazy and collecting a paycheck for nothing) and are trying to stop modern sex-Ed because they think kindergarten teachers are going to be explaining bjs and anal to 5-year-olds. Sorry. They really piss me off. End of rant.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@James E Powell: here is the very specific comment I was responding to
do you really think Obama never talked about his accomplishments wrt the economy? You don’t remember the “bikini graph”? “Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive”?
Obama went as far left on most matters as the most conservative members of the Senate (mostly) and House (often overlooked) would allow. That’s pretty much the same as we have seen, and will see, in the first two years (I hope longer) of the Biden administration.
Green-Lanternism, whether current or retrospective, leads to bad politics and bad political outcomes. See “Look out the window, Mitch” and “There. Is. NO REASON!”
Betty Cracker
@gvg: Our A vs. C class was interesting too. The thing I remember most from it was learning about the Solidarity movement in Poland, which had been crushed and was underground at the time. You’d think since we were in Florida they’d harp on Cuba more, but they didn’t, at least not in my class. It was mostly about Russia and Eastern Europe. I don’t remember hearing anything about China, but surely they covered it at least a little.
TriassicSands
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Time changes perceptions. For some presidents it enhances their standing and reputations as events unfold. For others things turn the other way. It’s still much to early to know what the responsible consensus on Obama will be. He may always benefit from having been succeeded by the worst president ever or…?
NOTE: Or he may be blamed 100% for Trump because he made fun of him at the Correspondent’s Dinner and drove Trump to run for president. I don’t blame Obama for that at all, but I have wondered if Trump would have run if Obama hadn’t humiliated him (100% deserved humiliation). Life is often jyst plain weird.
Cameron
@James E Powell: I think part of the problem that Democrats in the legislature have had is that they’ve had working relationships with Republicans since pre-Gingrich, and were slow to pick up on the fact that their old friends across the aisle had been taken over by the wingnut pod people.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@TriassicSands: but time doesn’t change facts
Again, on the very specific issue raised in this thread, Obama talked a lot about how the economy was better under his watch. “Missed opportunities” is gossamer to me.
Other concrete issues: he could not have gotten a bigger stimulus if he tried
he could not have gotten a better health care bill if he called Chuck Grassley an senile old fucknozzle, or shouted a lot, or whatever the retroactive Rose Twitter/Do Something/Bernie/Warren would’ve fantasy is
I am open to the argument that Obama could have done more on relief to homeowners, but those who make that argument rarely, never that I’ve seen, want to explain the what and the how
and this isn’t just retroactive or about Obama. I’m seeing a lot of “We need new leaderships in Congress!” and the endless blather about “younger” people. Fucking tell me what Majority Leader Warren (who’s not much younger but whatever) or Speaker Jayapal would do differently (besides never be elected to those positions by their colleagues)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
also, again getting back to original comment: Obama won re-election in 2012. What exactly is this criticism @catclub: ?
James E Powell
@Cameron:
I think another part of the problem, usually overlooked, is that the Democratic caucus was filled with blue dogs.
That the short lived 60 vote majority included Baucus, Nebraska Nelson, Begich, Pryor, Lincoln, Conrad, Dorgan, Bayh, Tim Johnson, Landrieu, and McCaskill.
All of those have been replaced by Republicans.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@James E Powell:
Webb, Florida Nelson, Pryor, Byrd, Tester, and the old Spite-Monster himself, Joe Lieberman. Feinstein is far more conservative than is generally recognized, and she, Levin and Leahy were all defenders of the filibuster and “Senate tradition”
Redshift
@Kay:
Virginia Republicans have been telegraphing for a year that they’re going to run on “evil Democrats did your kids terrible harm by keeping them out of school for no reason!”
And the Fairfax County “Open the Schools!” group, which of course bills itself as a grassroots group of concerned parents, is entirely created and run by veteran Republican political strategists.
MCA1
@rikyrah: It might, but it’s an inaccurate characterization, in my humble opinion. The subsequent criticism that his theory kind of misses minorities is mostly right, but Packer’s not nearly the worthless intellectual lightweight that Friedman is. For the most part, his framework and the inevitable conclusions a reader is driven to draw in The Unwinding were pretty spot on. He does have a tendency to come off as sort of both sides’ing things. But he’s also pretty quick to clarify that while neither party is without any blame or blind spots, only one of them has turned into a malignant, nihilistic force that needs to be burned down or significantly reformed else the republic may be doomed. He accurately fingers Newt Gingrich as the accelerant. Not a country club Republican like Friedman, in other words.
schrodingers_cat
@James E Powell: BS and his crew tells me that the country is secretly socialist and the DNC is the sole impediment to socialist nirvana.
The Pale Scot
@schrodingers_cat:
Yep, so I have dumped most of my family and friends, life’s too short.
I’m So Ronery
“Whys is everyone so fucking stupid?”
The Pale Scot
@Elizabelle:
That’s a pittance for a beachside condo on the Atlantic coast. Gulfside sure