The Litter Box, Or: WTF is Up With These Weirdos?

 

The Republican candidate for governor of Minnesota repeated last week a bizarre hoax claim which has been debunked that children are being allowed to use litter boxes in schools https://t.co/cgxDpN1Lo7

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) October 3, 2022

I know this is really far down on the list of story priorities, except it isn't really, not when Pizzagate morphed into Q and wankers are trying to storm libraries because gay people are reading stories while dressing in colorful costumes. 

So, when a handful of people try to tell a tale of kids using litter boxes in schools because they "identify" as an animal, wow.  These rubes are actually running for office. I'm not 100% on this, but I think the litter box thing was operant in a recent post of Matt Schlapp of CPAC when he began: 

"We go in the toilets and we believe God creates boys and girls and guns are legal and murders are rare."

In Kansas, they go in the toilets: in some weird dystopian metropolis, there are kids with bunny ears dropping their pellets in a sandbox set up in the gender neutral lavatory. 

Can real people think this is even a thing? That the sanitary concerns would not be something any reasonable institution would balk at? That parents whose children did their business outside of regular indoor plumbing would not be seeking psychiatric help?  

CNN Falls for Mommaganda, Again

How two Florida moms spearheaded a parent movement aiming to impact the 2022 elections https://t.co/kfCD4V7G9r

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) December 17, 2021

Oof, it feels like we just went over this. And yet, the journalists at CNN still haven't sorted out that the plucky mommies fighting the system are a front backed by dark money, no matter what kind of festive Xmas tchotchkes they're selling. They are the ones using COVID-19 as an opportunity, and there is nothing warm and fuzzy about people screaming at each other at school board meetings. 

JFC. At some point, it starts to look like they fall for it on purpose. 

 

Like Mom & Apple Pie

Just to get this off my chest--how did CNN find these ladies? Because Twitter figured out that they were activists of various shades. It shouldn't even be news to an outlet like CNN that when you see supposed "grassroots" movements spring up all over the country in the way school boards were hit by anti-mask, anti-shutdown, anti-CRT activism, like Tea Party activists swarming townhalls just about ten years ago over the ACA--maybe question what you're looking at?

Because while parents have great reasons to be frustrated lately, their anger is being deliberately shaped with outside help. 

Now, I feel extremely cynical writing about this. I'm the goddamn mirror image of the blonde ladies right there, except I'm more red-headed, and have no kids, and am atheist, and queer. But leaving all that aside, I'm culturally Catholic and damn-near white as nurses' shoes. So maybe I almost understand what kind of mistruths move these folks--but I don't. I can't. Lies are lies, no matter who tells them, and when they further marginalize people, I am not there for it. 

So anyway, back to the mom thing: remember this mom? Yeah, she was probably connected to Republicans too, and stuff, but you know what? McAuliffe could have blunted his "parents shouldn't determine what books" etc. soundbite with an ad with another white mom talking about freedom of speech. We don't have to assume all white moms are one way.

The 48-hour Quarantine

#BREAKING North Paulding High School will shut down for two days due to Covid-19. @wsbtv pic.twitter.com/zZrac2iUNG

— Chris Jose (@ChrisJoseWSB) August 9, 2020

So, North Paulding HS, whose crowded hallway scene demonstrated for many of us the futility of social distancing and returning students to in-person classes, has now had several students and staff test positive for COVID-19, after making a point of trying to silence the real concerns of students and staff who knew good and well that this set-up did not look safe.

So, what do they think is going to happen in 48 hours? Are all the kids and staff going to get COVID-19 tests, and get their results back, and all the affected folks will go for the long quarantine while the unaffected ones come back as safe as safe as well-insured houses? Or is saying they will go online for two whole days just a work-around to look like they are addressing the problem while making it perfectly clear that no, in fact, they don't give a fuck but also, shut up and fuck you?

See, 48 hours is bullshit. Not everyone is getting tested, or getting results, or making the decision to quarantine, or anything else in that period of time. None of that is happening. And even if a dozen or so more cases emerge--have they set any idea of when they will shut it all down?

Here's what we're finding out about kids and coronavirus--they are certainly testing positive, and that means they are not "immune". What we're seeing with school re-opening is not pretty. It isn't that schooling isn't important or can't be done, but people should be observing what doesn't work well, and what work-arounds might be beneficial. What is interesting to me is hearing conservatives appear to be slagging justifications for homeschooling due to the potential for child abuse or poor socialization, when they have previously been champions for it when it comes to religious reasons. Why the volte face?

It's just astounding to me that people are approaching this as a binary : Do or do not, instead of trying to think of ways to do things as thoughtfully and well and with success in mind as possible. People are prioritizing individuality instead of working as a community. Is it so hard for people to get on the same page and work together?

What Year is This, Again? Suburban Housewives?

Trump tweeted to an interesting demographic--"Suburban Housewives of America" to let them know that Joe Biden would kill their American dream of a little single home with a white picket fence and 2.5 children playing ball in the yard with their dog, Rusty, by letting the poor urban folks move into their neighborhoods and go to their schools and I don't even know what next!

Anyway, he linked to an article by Betsy McCaughey, and regardless of what year it is, she's the worst. But she does get to the nut of what all this is about, all right:

The president won the suburbs in 2016, but polls show Trump trailing in the suburbs largely because of opposition from women. They need to focus on what’s at stake for their families.

Sure, he might botch a pandemic response, kill millions of jobs, sue to end the ACA which would separate millions of American from health care (which we know McCaughey has concerned herself with like a busy little bee in her time, yes?), and has sent camo-wearing paramilitary forces to, for now, Portland to teargas moms, but he won't ever, ever....have apartment buildings put somewhere near your vague geographic vicinity, which is what I am sure this is actually all about.

Because the American Dream, is why.

What Good is This Practice Violence?

Last year was apparently the worst year for school shootings in the US, with 23 incidents which left 113 people killed or injured. Because our relationship to firearms in this country is what it is (unlike, say, in Australia, or in Scotland, or in New Zealand) we have addressed mass shootings with training in the schools to habituate students to the idea that school is a place where they can die, and that it is pretty much on them to try and do something about it. 

That might sound like a cold and biased interpretation of what some people surely believe could be a lifesaving education in survival. I just think that there are reasons to believe this security theater is innately harmful. What is this telling kids about their world and themselves? What is it telling them about what school is when this stressor is added? School should be a place of safety and learning, but this demonstration not only informs them that school is an unsafe place, but fear interferes with learning, and the lesson plan is revelatory about one's own stress-reactions, and not in a helpful way. The "Hide, Run, Fight" recommendations don't always address how human nervous systems respond to confrontations, which naturally tend to "fight, flight, or freeze", leaving kids feeling inadequate when they react with natural fear and surprise in the ways their bodies were almost hard-wired to do.  The scenarios don't address how marginalized students might uncover how much worth the school system thinks they have in the cruelest possible way.

But the most unconscionable story I have heard regarding this conditioning experiment in getting teachers and students alike to assume that schools should necessarily be a place of violence as well as learning, was this story from an Indiana school where teachers were taken in groups to be shot "execution-style" with Airsoft guns, causing bruises and even drawing blood. And potentially setting up the psychological PTSD hellscape where these teachers now view their job as a place where they were violated and no longer feel safe, because their school system did this to them. And their students may very well draw a similar conclusion.

The trauma that school shootings do lives long after the event has passed. Just this week, a student from Parkland who survived the mass shooting killed herself because she found the classroom setting too fraught to keep up in, and felt survivor's guilt.

You can't drill that away.  Why in the world would we be going out of our way to create better victims, when we could be trying to prevent shooters at all?

What the Hell Are You Doing? 2: Scholastic Edition

"Grab that record": How Trump’s high school transcript was hidden https://t.co/SeXZBTL2jN

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) March 5, 2019

The important takeaway from this is that Donald Trump sent folks out to make sure his grades and SAT scores and all that did not get out and about just after he made the silly demand to know about President Obama's grades. I would have to believe this is because, in retrospect, it occurred to him that just maybe, his own academic achievements would not stand up to a comparison with Obama's own. Which makes one wonder about the potential projection that made him crack on about Obama's school records anyway.

There's something very specific about a detail that seems very intentionally buried, though--it makes people curious.

I'd have to say Trump's proprietary guarding of his tax returns and the possible lie about whether he's under audit with the IRS are perhaps the same kind of potentially unnecessary guarded behavior that stems from a fear of comparisons more than a cover-up of any truly embarrassing thing. We know from photos that high school Trump was a capable athlete. But there are some open questions about his academic history.


To which I, not a snob, would say, "So what?" I went to a school that my parents could afford and that was one public bus away from my house. I'm not living in fear that people will think I'm a dope because I could have gone to a better school, or because people will know I changed my major a few times (I started in Biology, ended up in English Lit. These are not similar disciplines, which says a lot about my understanding of my interests and capabilities when I started college versus when I graduated.) Of course a person who is 18-20-something years old is going to be a little flexible about what they want to experience from life versus what they want to achieve academically, and their interest and efforts can shift depending upon their circumstances. And not everyone is really cut out to be an intellectual and deal with the theoretical or lab sides of their chosen work--if their passion is business, why not just go and do the work? I'm super-prepared to not deride 20-something Donald Trump from either half-assing his undergrad years or even give him a lot of shit for his several draft deferments. He had those opportunities to do academic things or business things instead of war things, which others of his generation did not have. He lived a life that he seems to prefer to cover up about rather than defend.


And that's the problem. See, if someone like, say, John McCain, knew that he wasn't exactly scholastically gifted, but knew he had other qualities, he'd just rest on his life record and admit that experience and a sense of duty made him who he was. Trump's life record, his business associations, practices, and those of the children he introduced into his business is potentially dodgier than his scholastic one. All are under investigation. And he is willing to delay or impede all of these inquiries. Which only would, in practice, make everyone wonder the more whether the secrecy means there is something worth hiding.


This is very much a "what the hell?" if you suspect Trump hasn't anything dodgy to hide. Why then, any elaborate cover-up attempts? Are bad grades or a poor SAT score even relevant to his current functions as C-in-C? It becomes a little more clear when you consider that malignant narcissism might motivate him, and simply make a requirement for his basic functioning that he only or mostly hears only good things about himself.

It becomes downright troubling when it extends to his sense of accountability regarding his conduct as the US world leader and how he conducts himself under our flag and in our name. What the hell is he doing? Do we even feel sure we know?

Police Brutality Litmus Test

Based on some of the information I can gather about what had happened, this particular cop strikes me as a likely roid-rager who had no business being a resource officer in a school, where his particular brand of excessive force is used on naughty kids as opposed to, I dunno, hulking out all over miscreants on the streets.

He could have broken that child's neck. I just watched this video over and over and thought, she has to have a neck injury or a back problem or something like that now. I don't know why no one ever nudged this problematic officer aside before and recommended he get his excessive-force-using self under control once warning signs he was going to throw a young girl around like a sack of flour emerged before he actually did that thing. Many workplaces have an employee hotline to connect them to services for getting counseling to work their shit out so they don't have an episode that results in nearly killing a child. I can't imagine this isn't true for police officers, but just because I can't imagine it doesn't mean that's not so.

But I have seen on cable news and on Twitter people who have watched this very graphic tossing of a girl and come up with reasons why she had it coming to her. That's my litmus test. He dialed it from "come with me" to "tossing a girl on the floor" in under a minute. If you can't think of any other way (or several other ways) he could have handled that, there's nothing I want to hear from you. Because that was clearly excessive.

Update: This girl was a recent orphan, living in foster care. And no time was taken at all to wonder if her "disturbing the school" wasn't stemming from her personal difficulties? That's just heartbreaking. How is "humanity" becoming so inhumane?

This is a thing in 2015

 

A teacher trained a kid to use his right hand because left-handers are "evil". This isn't really Biblically-supported, but I wonder if she would say teaching this way is her deeply-felt religious rights? I'm left-handed myself. I'm not evil--erasable ink is.

Clocks and Nonsense

Of all the silly stories I could riff about, this one about the kid who built a digital clock for a science project and was subsequently arrested for making a "hoax bomb" completely takes the pudding. It's kind of hard not to suppose that the doofus teacher who added the name Ahmed Mohamed and the idea of "clock parts in a case" and came up with "Eek! A bomb!" is the only person here who perpetrated a "hoax bomb"--because the young man never told anyone he had a bomb. He had a clock. He was the victim of a dumb misunderstanding, but what gets me is--he got suspended for three days and is apparently still suspended even though everyone by now knows this was not a bomb. Is it that hard for the school to end his punishment and offer up a good apology?

Wow. Also, his parents got a pretty stupid letter from the principal at his school, basically blaming him for the misunderstanding and implying that building a clock was somehow a kind of misconduct because you shouldn't give dumb people any reason to believe you might be doing something they could in any way hopelessly misconstrue into an act of terrorism. (The community this kid and his family live in seems to be "special" regarding Muslims.)

Anyway, the young man has gotten support now from the President and from Rep. Ellison of MN and a lot of science-minded folks as well. There's also a Kickstarter to get him to MIT.

I'm not going out of my way to say I think this looks like profiling. At that age, I think if I was building a clock, I'd have half-assed it with one of those pre-set potato clock kits (just add potato!) Clearly, there could be suspicion that I was carrying the latest in IRA bomb technology. Luckily my tastes in the sciences ran to biology experiments (although my collection of assorted moldy, yeasty and fermented things I brought in to discuss beneficial and less-beneficial microbes in 8th grade should definitely have counted as small-scale biowarfare development).

We live in very weird times. It shouldn't actually be a handcuffing offense to do one's homework.

Bearing False Witness to History

The ony currently valid way to display a Confederate Flag.  On a doofus.

Students, teachers, parents and other concerned community members turned out to protest what I'd call a value-subtracted, controversy-redacted version of American History. They want to be engaged, not indoctrinated. They want to learn, not be dictated to. They want to think, not have their lesson plans so curated that they have only so much to think about.

There's a problem with conservatism and history and the study thereof. Here's an example:

A member of Colorado's state Board of Education argued that the fact that the United States voluntarily ended slavery proved "American execptionalism" and this perspective should be taught to students in a recent Facebook post about the AP U.S. History curriculum. 

Businesswoman Pam Mazanec, who was elected to represent Colorado's 4th Congressional district on the board, jumped into a discussion about the AP History course framework Saturday on a Facebook page that describes itself as "a place where teachers and parents are encouraged to speak freely about their issues, questions, and concerns in the Douglas County School District." The Colorado Independent flagged her comment on Thursday.

Holy shit. Shades of Rep. Michele Bachmann and her dumbass claim that the Founding Fathers worked tirelessly to end slavery--but maybe slavery wasn't such a bad thing anyway. That isn't even a little bit true. Many of our Founding Fathers were slave-holders and remained so until the day they died. They didn't lift hardly a finger on behalf of the enslaved. The idea that the Founding Fathers set a bargain with the slave-holding states that was on the verge of being broken by abolitionists, especially with the election of presumed slave-grabber Lincoln, was the straw the broke the back of our comity during the Civil war.  The South Carolina Declaration of Seccession uses some pretty 'states' rights' words, but let's get to the quick of the issue:

What is the World Coming to?

I remember when the Columbine massacre happened, people were stunned for weeks and months afterwards because school shootings just didn't happen all the time. But here we are, at 74 school shootings since Sandy Hook. About one a week. And one solution suggested is for kids to hide under bulletproof blankets in case of an assault on their schools.

There is something terribly wrong with this picture.

Chuck Norris would probably brand my meddling liberal backside.

I'm not linking to Townhall:

As I wrote in my newly released and expanded paperback version of "Black Belt Patriotism," if you want to join me in stopping educational corruption, gridlock and tyranny, then consider doing any of the following:

--Stay active in your child's education, homework, classroom, PTA, school board, etc.

--Get familiar with how academic curriculum is reviewed and chosen in your state, and then e-mail your thoughts on it to your state's education board.

--Get involved in local, state and national politics, and make your voice heard. The time for passivity is over. As Thomas Jefferson once said, "All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent."

--Learn your state's laws on education, and understand your parental and educational rights. Then teach them to others. To quote Thomas Jefferson again, "Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. ... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty."

--Petition your representatives to support a constitutional amendment protecting the child-parent relationship from unreasonable government intrusion.

--Consider petitioning your state's education board, school district and local school to adopt the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools' curriculum about the influence of the Bible in history, civilization, law, literature and the founding of America.

My personal warning to educational tyranny and tyrants is this: It's best not to test or mess with Texas. If you thought we fought hard for the Alamo, wait until you see what we can do for the right to educate our children. You can hide behind your No. 2 pencils, but our branding irons will find your tail sides.

Mr. Norris' Christian god has no more place in the public classroom than a bronze furnace in the shape of a horned Elder God with a maw just the right size for accepting children. The National Council on Bible Curriculum is advocating--duh--a Bible curriculum. What Mr. Norris might be unaware of, which is astonishing given his familiarity with the martial arts and the variety of faiths of the eastern variety which originated those disciplines, is the sheer number of American students who are simply not Christian and have no desire to be.

Surely he is not unaware that many other people come from strong and honorable faith traditions that are not based in Judeo-Christianity? Surely he is not unaware that many people also are quite familiar with his own faith tradition of choice and reject it completely? And perhaps, he should also be aware that physical punishment actually only temporarily compells compliance, but doesn't compell agreement, and is probably exceptionally offensive in the light of espousing a faith surrounding one brutally abused and wretched opponent of the orthodoxy whose example he affects to embrace, in the person of a humble teacher who said, "Love your enemy?"

Also, is he thoroughly ignorant of the place that the bloody conflicts in Europe that specifically concerned religion held for the Founders, who genuinely wanted to keep such conflicts rigorously separate from their democratic experiment? In exactly the same manner as other conservative icons, like Sarah Palin, are?

I'd say, yes, but that is no reason school children ought to be.