Elite private school education: at least these parents won’t have to worry that their kids will need to be sent to re-education camp
Instead, their kids are getting their goodthink indoctrination very early in life.
Bari Weiss formerly wrote for the NY Times, but she got pushed out for being insuficiently woke, despite remaining a liberal. Here she meets with and reports on groups of parents who send their children to the most elite grade schools and high schools in the land, and are terrified at what’s going on there now. They all remain anonymous because of that terror:
The dissidents use pseudonyms and turn off their videos when they meet for clandestine Zoom calls. They are usually coordinating soccer practices and carpools, but now they come together to strategize. They say that they could face profound repercussions if anyone knew they were talking.
But the situation of late has become too egregious for emails or complaining on conference calls. So one recent weekend, on a leafy street in West Los Angeles, they gathered in person and invited me to join…
…[A] school that costs more than $40,000 a year—a school with Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s right hand, and Sarah Murdoch, wife of Lachlan and Rupert’s daughter-in-law, on its board — is teaching students that capitalism is evil.
For most parents, the demonization of capitalism is the least of it. They say that their children tell them they’re afraid to speak up in class. Most of all, they worry that the school’s new plan to become an “anti-racist institution”—unveiled this July, in a 20-page document—is making their kids fixate on race and attach importance to it in ways that strike them as grotesque.
“Grotesque” is one way to put it, although “hypocritical” would be another. One might consider calling it “evil” as well, because it is the return of racism in Orwellian guise, cloaked in woke virtue. And it is voluntary.
One might well ask why these people don’t just pull their kids out of school. Some do; witness Megyn Kelly (remember her?):
Journalist Megyn Kelly encouraged parents who have students at New York City’s Dalton School in their fight against the school’s shift toward an “anti-racism” curriculum.
“Parents at Dalton Sch. fight back against ‘anti-racist’ agenda: ‘Every class has had an obsessive focus on race & identity, ‘racist cop’ reenactments in science, ‘de- centering whiteness’ in art, learning about white supremacy in health…Many of us do not feel welcome any more,’” Kelly posted on Twitter.
Kelly attached a copy of an open letter addressed to the “Dalton Community” from a group of concerned parents and alumni, which highlights the way the group feels the school has abandoned its mission to educate students…
The letter argues that the school’s new curriculum is “extremely exclusionary,” while pointing out that many members of the community do not “identify as part of an oversimplified racial dichotomy in a beautiful and diverse world.”…
Kelly has previously expressed similar concerns in her own children’s school, pulling her two sons from their New York City school in November after a letter allegedly circulated and accused white people of “reveling in state-sanctioned depravity.”
Kelly is more brave and more activist than most. Here’s a description of their fears, from Weiss’ article:
The parents in the backyard say that for every one of them, there are many more, too afraid to speak up. “I’ve talked to at least five couples who say: I get it. I think the way you do. I just don’t want the controversy right now,” related one mother. They are all eager for their story to be told—but not a single one would let me use their name. They worry about losing their jobs or hurting their children if their opposition to this ideology were known.
“The school can ask you to leave for any reason,” said one mother at Brentwood, another Los Angeles prep school. “Then you’ll be blacklisted from all the private schools and you’ll be known as a racist, which is worse than being called a murderer.”
One private school parent, born in a Communist nation, tells me: “I came to this country escaping the very same fear of retaliation that now my own child feels.” Another joked: “We need to feed our families. Oh, and pay $50,000 a year to have our children get indoctrinated.” A teacher in New York City put it most concisely: “To speak against this is to put all of your moral capital at risk.”
It’s easy to ridicule these people and say they are cowards, and rich ones at that. But although I think they are indeed cowards, I have tremendous sympathy for them – a sympathy some of you may not share. I don’t know that I’d be more brave if I were standing in their shoes. I like to think I would – and in fact I do think I would, because I have spoken up long ago in circumstances only vaguely analogous. But I don’t know. These are people who were not necessarily born to wealth, who have built a life they thought would afford their children wonderful opportunities, and they are facing the crumbling of their world. It’s a shock. The vast majority of them are probably liberal Democrats who didn’t see this coming. They really don’t want to lose their jobs, and that’s a distinct possibility, nor do they want their children ridiculed on social media.
But at a certain point my sympathy ends. Why is being called a racist more frightening than having your child’s mind and sense of self destroyed by being taught he or she is evil because of skin color? Is a child being ridiculed on social media really worse than that?
Why is courage in such short supply? Easy for me to say, because I’m not in their position, but why is it so hard to stand up to this form of institutional (and expensive) child abuse? Like Megyn Kelley did, they must pull their kids out of these schools – although, unfortunately, they may have great difficulty these days finding schools they don’t teach this sort of destructive “anti-racism” racism. Even red states are probably not immune.
What’s even more amazing to me is that so many parents are not “dissidents,” however clandestine. So many seem to meekly accept it or even buy into it, just as I’ve seen some friends buy into the self-abasement of White Fragility and the like. Apparently, self-loathing can only be alleviated by self-flagellation and virtue-signaling – and sometimes child sacrifice is part of the bargain.
I have to disagree with you about, “I’ve seen some friends buy into the self-abasement of ‘White Fragility’ and the like.” I don’t find people like this to be “self-abasing” at all, but rather indulging in a particularly preening form of self-glorification.
It is indeed institutional child abuse of the most grotesque kind imaginable, with millions upon millions of middle-class parents forced to subsidize the corruption of the teachers’ unions and the truly malicious and maleficent indoctrination of their children. Public education in this country has now become a system broken beyond the point of repair; unfortunately, the same could be said of almost everything else in our moribund republic (the recent passage of a nearly two trillion dollar, pork-filled so-called COVID bill being yet further proof of the worthlessness of Congress).
Joe Y:
It’s not either/or. Did you see my last sentence in the post?: “Apparently, self-loathing can only be alleviated by self-flagellation and virtue-signaling.” In other words, they go together like yin and yang, and the virtue-signaling is the ego boost that counteracts the self-abasement and feelings of guilt. They are actually a matched set.
“The vast majority of them are probably liberal Democrats who didn’t see this coming.”
That’s because they’re probably not liberal Democrats out of any particular thought or conviction. It was just the socially acceptable political affiliation.
And it just occurred to me that this is actually a manifestation of another big underlying problem in modern society. Are these parents actually afraid of school administrators and teachers? In an era when helicopter parents routinely make a fuss over every little pebble in their children’s shoe?
What these people are afraid of is they don’t have any actual friends. They have acquaintances and associates and names they read on social media and what they’re afraid of is those people turning on them.
Mike
The fear of loss of their jobs, I think, is the prime motivating factor. Given the present soviet style culture, if their protests get back to their employer then there is a real risk of being fired. It’s one thing to protest and just get called names and be socially ostracized, it’s quite another to have one’s income destroyed. The Left has worked it’s evil well by making sure they also have bullied the corporations into their cancel culture.
Rest assured that these parents will once again cast their votes for the most liberal- progressive politicians on the ballot; the Obama/DeBlasio/Newsom/Garcetti/Harris/AOC/Sanders type politicians.
It is unbelievable that they do not see the direct connection betwixt the Hitler-youth / Young Pioneers indoctrination programs their kids are coerced into believing (and they will, if history is any guide) – the soon to be inform on and turn in your parents for being enemies of the state- and the group think, political ideology of the politicians they vote for.
Sorry; I have zero sympathy for these uber rich leftist useful idiots. Unfortunately, it is folks like these, the useful idiots , that will destroy our entire Constitutional Republic.
I have a weird feeling that all of this leftist woke stuff will end very very badly; as in a sort of really violent shooting Civil War.
The left brooks no dissent and they mean to destroy those they identify as targets to be destroyed.
Sooner or later their target will shoot back with real bullets.
A friend (JCK) from my former neighborhood** posted the Bari Weiss piece on Facebook, with the following “teaser” annotation (annotation written by him and pasted in verbatim by me).
** I swear, JCK and and I were the only people for blocks and blocks around who did not reliably vote straight-ticket Democrat in every election. [So I migrated from there to California. Stoopidissimo? No, there were other factors in my decision to move.]
BEGIN JCK PASTE
The villains of this story are the parents. They know this is wrong and refuse to stand up and say anything. They refuse to do so not out of fear of prison or death or even losing their jobs. They cower our of the fear of not being accepted by their social circle.
The money quote of this article is the New York City teacher saying “To speak against this is to put all of your moral capital at risk.” Ah no, to speak against it is to preserve your moral capital. Not speaking against it is what puts your moral capital at risk. What you put at risk when you speak against it is your social capital. These people are so bereft of values and morals they confuse social capital with moral capital. When you don’t believe in anything higher than yourself and even question the existence of the truth at all, all you have to justify yourself is the acceptance of your peers. And that is about as debased and sad of an existence that I can imagine living. The people who debase themselves every day to the Castros or the Kims have more dignity than these parents. At least those people can tell themselves it is necessary to save their lives. What is these people’s rationalization? They might not get invited to the good book club?
END JCK PASTE
physicsguy beat me to it.
Imagine that you are a parent pulling down $200K/year and your kid is in Dalton, and you believe that he/she will eventually get into Yale or Harvard. One wrong-think word or maneuver on your part and poof; all gone.
Where is the justice in that kind of social justice? But how far do you stick your neck out?
M J R:
I disagree. They really do risk losing their jobs. Has the person writing that not been paying attention? Not just losing their present jobs, but being boycotted from many jobs. It depends what they do for a living, of course. But for many of them the threat is real. And it’s a threat to their kids, too – the bullying and ostracism. There are threats short of imprisonment or death that are still formidable – especially in people who are unprepared.
“Moral capital” is a very specific thing as distinguished from morality or ethics. You can retain the latter and lose the former.
I would never make light of the pain of social ostracism, for both parents and for their kids. As someone who has experienced some of it, it is very painful and difficult. Those who are natural loners may not feel it, or may experience it as relief. But most people are social.
It also disrupts close family relationships. This is not trivial. It is basic. When I underwent my change experience I was unaware of the costs. If I had been aware it probably would not have mattered. But those who think twice because of those costs are dealing with something very difficult.
The villains of the story are not these parents. They may be weak and cowardly, but they are not villains. The villains are the parents who would persecute them for objecting. The villains are the school administrators, teachers, and guidance counselors allowing this to happen. And the other villains are the people who are getting rich off perpetrating and disseminating this “anti-racism” racism.
“Imagine that you are a parent pulling down $200K/year”
Which gets at another problem. How many white-collar professionals today making six figures THINK they’re part of the upper class (elite adjacent) but their actual financial/economic status is closer to working class folks making far less money? The latest figure I saw was that the U.S. median salary was just under $50,000. What sort of talent and/or skills do you have when you’re making four times that but still live in fear of getting fired?
Mike
The current Democratic Party zeitgeist is:
You must NOT defend yourself (or your family) against your detractors because doing so is racist. (A corollary is that the more you attempt to defend yourself the more racist you are….QED. This is especially true if you question the corollary.) IOW you have no moral right to counter the Narrative…and soon you will have no legal right.
You must NOT defend your country against those attacking it. (It is counterproductive and against the wishes of “American” policy.)
https://twitter.com/omriceren/status/1369702856371142659
Antifa is a myth; an idea. Those who criticize Antifa must be, by definition, be fascists. Ditto for BLM; and those who criticize BLM must be, by definition, racists.
There is NO border crisis. Everything is under control.
America is under siege by Trump and his supporters. Therefore, the government is obligated to do everything in its power to protect the country, its citizens and its institutions from these violent, murderous, Trump-inspired insurrectionists.
Etc…
The only conclusion is that the Democrats have the 2nd Amendment in their sights, which is nothing new. But What is new is that they are urgently preparing the ground for this next offensive, which due to the “president’s” rapid deterioration must happen sooner rather than later.
M J R,
Great point about social versus moral capital. I’d like to believe that 99% of these people will not endanger their jobs with wrong-think. Maybe the anecdotes to the contrary are just the 0.1%. There is also the possibility that someone won’t get the next promotion. I don’t disagree with MJR’s overall point. Just that it isn’t an easy choice in many cases.
There was a piece 41 years ago in NR called “The True Horror of Soviet Internal Exile” by Victor Herman and Fred Dohrs. Our Left has innovated a new “kinder-gentler” version in the Woke-Cancel-Culture but the intent, the terror, and the results remain very much the same.
Glad I read through a thread once before shooting.
Because you just said almost exactly as “it makes no never mind” difference, as I would have said.
They have no higher value in life, than their membership badge which they must display and keep polished. Even a cushion of money sufficient to fund 40k a year for a private grade school, is not enough to stiffen their backbones even a little.
Yeah, they would throw their own children into the blazing arms of Moloch to keep their place in the herd.
I read Bari Weiss’ “City Journal” article yesterday and grew rather depressed by the end. It’s a very sorry state of affairs all around.
I’m not sure how to judge the parents; I do not know enough about them, or their individual circumstances. However, it does not bode well that most of the reasons for doing this were; “This is the direction of the Ivies and we are Prep schools.” They have a valid point. If you’re paying $50K/year to get your kids into the Ivy League and this is what the Ivy League recruits for, the school would be negligent not to include this nonsense in its curriculum. Unfortunately, this also means it will trickle down to the $40K/year schools, and the $20K/year schools and the Public schools in wealthy districts.
My nephew, son of a Marine who died in Vietnam, sends his daughter to a tres cher Quaker school in an east coast City. (Why? Analogously, his wife is George Conway, he’s Kellyanne, and is, up to a point, an accommodating husband.) No species of toxic racialism is overlooked at this place. Finally my nephew, forthrightly but never at all abusingly, began to complain to the male headmaster in a months-long email exchange. The emails leaked out, whereupon a coven of admins and teachers immediately demanded the headmaster kick my nephew’s daughter out; mounted a social media fatwa, branding him a vicious racist and multiphobe; and contacted the head of the major D.C. agency where he has worked for years, informing him that they had, in effect, a monster on their staff. (A monster with degrees from Columbia, UPenn and Oxford University.)
He retained his job, but not before stepping through the risible hoops ordered by the agency’s HR ninnies. These peace-loving Quakers tried their dark best to upend an innocent girl’s education, destroy her father’s reputation, and rob him of his livelihood.
neo (3:31 pm),
The way I read JCK’s introductory annotation to the article with respect to losing their jobs, what I took from that was that bottom-line-final-analysis, it was more a question of social standing than of economic standing, but that either would be in jeopardy. Without serious question, “they really do risk losing their jobs” — and with it, opportunities for replacing those jobs.
I see it as being analogous to whether the extreme Trump-hatred we’ve been witnessing is / was a question of socio-cultural class hatred or economic class hatred. You and I can disagree as to which of the two is bottom-line dominant, but I think both are significant. I’m guessing JCK would agree with the latter (both significant), and I’m guessing neo would agree as well.
I certainly agree with you when you write, “I would never make light of the pain of social ostracism, for both parents and for their kids.” Been there done that myself. “It also disrupts close family relationships.” Been there done that as well. Really.
Finally, you write, “The villains of the story are not these parents. They may be weak and cowardly, but they are not villains. The villains are the parents who would persecute them for objecting.”
The way I read JCK, “these parents” *are* “the parents who would persecute them.” That’s certainly the way I took it.
TommyJay (3:40 pm),
I appreciate JCK’s points (they were his rather than mine), and thanks for the response. Please see my response to neo (3:31 pm) above.
[JCK is a long time government lawyer and former U.S. Army lawyer (yes, the latter is a subset of the former). In spite of the “government” modifier, JCK is *extremely* right-leaning politically.]
DNW (4:36 pm),
I don’t want you to be right when you write, “they would throw their own children into the blazing arms of Moloch to keep their place in the herd.” But what I want / don’t want may not correlate well with what is.
“These peace-loving Quakers tried their dark best to upend an innocent girl’s education, destroy her father’s reputation, and rob him of his livelihood.”
In the 1970s, while attending the University of Michigan, about 30 Jewish kids rented the building of an inactive fraternity and we started up a kosher coop. The frat house was immediately next door to the local Quaker Friends’ house. Our dining room was in the basement and on Friday nights we’d have a traditional Shabbat dinner, including singing Z’mirot, traditional Sabbath songs. The Quakers would complain that our singing disturbed whatever they’d be doing on Friday nights.
The fear of job loss is hugely real. By decision makers who also fear losing their jobs – due to higher up, richer (thus better!) decision makers who fear social costs.
Losing social status is the top basic issue; losing jobs is the larger, wider, but derived fear due to CEO top decision makers not wanting to lose social capitol.
Maybe like Barr not wanting to support Trump due to excess social ostracization were he be “too supportive” — almost all of his friends and family’s friends hate Trump, like 95% college educated DC workers.
All Americans could make $100k in consumption, BUT there’s only a max of 10% of folks in the Top 10%.
Anti-American cancel culture is upstream of both social fears and job fears.
I’m in Slovakia – I was working in multinational corporations. I feared for my job due to my politics; and believe my career was stunted because of it. (Happily married tho! OK trade-off for me).
Most of the kids of these parents are NOT getting into Harvard, tho the likelihood of some Ivy is much higher from following all the steps.
Best chance for a non-violent revolutionary change is huge restructuring of US colleges by cutting off US Federal funds for those colleges that discriminate against Republicans in hiring.
More standardized computer-evaluated testing, including credentials, to allow more students to get degrees & knowledge without the indoctrination would be good.
Why can’t 6 of these rich families hire 2 great teacher-tutors for private “home-school” lessons? Fear of social status loss, fear of job loss.
MJR – the social costs for CEOs is the dominant, but job loss fear is very real for all bureaucrats lower down.
All mergers are bad for this, with fewer CEOs and more VPs afraid of their almost-top jobs.
Tom Grey (5:38 pm) writes, “the social costs for CEOs is the dominant, but job loss fear is very real for all bureaucrats lower down.”
A good way of delineating the distinction.
@physicsguy has it right. Fear. The kind of fear that Tom Wolfe would have painted in his trademark purple prose — and even a primer plus three coats of his best wouldn’t get near the raw gut-churning truth of it.
Loss of job, irretrievable loss of *Caste*, loss of house, wife, family. The works. I’m not going to say all women are followers; certainly not the case in present company, but generally the case is that women drive much of this madness and others go along with it. A dissenting husband is a dead duck in the current social morass.
@DNW re throwing their own children into the arms of Moloch. Bingo. Better yet, they’d happily geld their prepubescent sons to score some likes on Instagram and Twitter.
Back to The Fear. Sorry folks, but the only antidote to this is a bigger Fear. You know what that entails. We’ll have to go there sooner or later.
From Saul Alinsky’s bio on Wikipedia: “Alinksky’s idea was to apply the organizing skills he believed he had mastered to the worst slums and ghettos, so that the most oppressed and exploited elements could take control of their own communities and their own destinies . . . This, and other efforts in the city’s South Side . . . turned scattered, voiceless discontent into a united protest.”
Parents need to organize – with well thought out and articulated goals backed up by legal muscle.
Eva Marie:
Won’t work. Education Unions outgun you. And not just them. Entire apparatus of state lined up on their side. Alinksy was like Gandhi’s Evil Twin: both relied on essential humanity and tolerance of the then dominant powers for their corrosive, subversive strategies to succeed. (Oh, and Gandhi was a piece of work too, but story for another day.)
Transplant either strategy to 1938 Berlin or Stalin’s Russia and what do you get? A very large pile of corpses.
A little Reverse Alinsky here and there is fun. Great if you’re a Meme Lord $#@% Poster online. But not much use when the stakes are real.
If parents want to make changes, they’re going to have to single out ringleaders amongst teachers and administrators and start looking into some real world gentle persuasion options. Very carefully and very anonymously. This is not a fairy tale. They have to be made to fear Us.
Everyone has made very cogent points. To not have your kid in the nomenklatura is a fear for all of these people. These are upper middle class people whose position is precarious. Hence they do anything to cling to where they are. I was there until my company shipped my job overseas. I am happy now in a job I enjoy though making significantly less. It helps that my kids are past college age.
COVID has shown many that homeschooling is a good option. Here in Michigan there is an established co-op infrastructure that helps too thanks to Engler time where the Republicans passed laws allowing you to do so.
It will take a brave set of parents to stand up, run for the board and boot the administrators and teachers. They will come to this at some point. I think it will come from the Asians or immigrants when they realize the dreck their kids are being taught.
The next administration needs to get ahold of the Education Department and start enforcing its civil right regulations. And the student loan spigot has to stop. I believe that since the Federal Government makes the loans they negotiate the tuition level. Cost of instruction plus 20%. Anything over that the school has to chin from their endowments. You will see a whole hell of a lot of administrators become instructors in a hurry. Also any unpaid student loan balance after 10 years is transferred to the college and it has to pay from it’s endowment. You will see a lot of schools find meaningful jobs for students especially after year 6.
I feel sorry for these bitter clingers.
I think the parents in this story are not all that different from the same echelon of parents from 20, 50 years ago. Upwardly mobile, urban/suburban, nouveau riche – that is to say, modestly wealthy mostly through their own efforts, not through inherited wealth. Having worked hard for their credentials, they are hungry for status, hungry for recognition, but mostly hungry for acceptance within their peer group so they can advance. This kind of aspirational thinking occupies a lot of their time – maybe this is where they are different to the regular working and middle class, who might think of them as materialistic and shallow; and different also to the wealthy, who would think of them as crass and gauche.
What has changed are the stakes in their game. There’s a lot riding on a simple misstep that could have devastating consequences, even multi-generational ones. But cowardice or acquiescence is the wrong approach. Working class and even middle class people understand that confrontation and being disagreeable is sometimes the correct answer. And now that these people have declared themselves unworthy, little do they know that they have set themselves up for the next step, which is even worse. They have to find their courage, which will be difficult because it will interrupt their desire to ascend the ladder.
Hearts and Minds, People…. Hearts and Minds:
https://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2021/03/unconventional-warfare-hearts-and-minds.html
“Most American Schools Are Damaging Your Child”
https://townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/2021/03/09/most-american-schools-are-damaging-your-child-n2585928
Sparticus,
“The next administration needs to get ahold of the Education Department and start enforcing its civil right regulations.”
“The next administration”…? With the passage of HR-1 and dominance of the Dominion Voting Software, plus the certainty in future elections in ejecting republican observers in the ‘counting’ of votes and the S.C. having set the precedents of a pre-inauguration ruling of “lack of standing” followed by a post-inauguration ruling of “moot”… what basis do you offer in support of your optimism?
Re “Next Administration”:
Everybody and my Dog tells me I must try to mellow out and be more reasonable and understanding…
So, in the interests of promoting Virtue and all that other good stuff, I propose a comment thread Eagle Scout Award. We can’t call it the Polyanna Prize because that just wouldn’t be Nice… and I must work on my niceness. Eagle Scout sounds so much better.
Then the final recipient before we all get dragged off to the pits will go down in history as The Last Boy Scout. Now there’s a prize to strive for!
I’m not a liberal, so I can’t relate to them on that aspect. Nor am I rich, either. And if my life were more or less uncomplicated, I wouldn’t be afraid to speak up. However, I share custody of my son with my ex-husband. And his new wife has transformed him into an extreme BLM-supporting, white-hating “anti-racist.” And since that seems to be the only “approved” viewpoint currently, I’m too afraid that if I speak up against this train of thought, he could use it against me in court some day. And I know that sounds extreme and paranoid. But we have a tenuous coparenting relationship at best, and he is spiteful man. And while I’ve yet to hear of anyone winning or losing custody for supporting or not supporting the “White Fragility” mindset, to me it seems that we are full-steam ahead heading toward that being a possibility. Look at parents who lost custody for not wanting to give their gender-dysphoric children puberty blockers. Parents are slowly losing the right to raise their children in any way that differs from the “Correct” way. So I keep my mouth shut, and let this shit continue.
I don’t like it. But I can’t judge others for doing the same. Maybe they similarly have much to lose.
Once my child turns 18 though, I’ll be done keeping my mouth shut. Assuming America still exists and were even allowed to speak our minds. But maybe we won’t, since cowards like me are allowing this madness to grow and continue.
NS: You make sense. Hang in there.
NS You are making the right decision for your situation. Here is a thought. Take it with a grain of salt as I do not have kids. Is it possible for you to find an activity that both you and your son enjoy (examples: setting up a hamster habitat, hiking, building LEGO models, going to car shows, raising chickens) that the two of you can do and talk about that has nothing to do with current events. A complete respite for the 2 of you from all of this stuff. If the 2 of you can find a common interest that you both really like, maybe that will build a strong foundation for later on.
Ran into a good article from 2017 about the “Blue Church.” It reinforces my point that much of our current Democrat behavior is driven by human pack behavior:
____________________________________________________
Life in the Blue Church
Going deeper, the actual playing out of the Blue Church control structure is influenced by three characteristics of human beings:
* We are a pack animal constantly trying to make sure we have high status within the pack;
* We have a really hard time distinguishing between “having attention” and “deserving attention;”
* We principally learn by doing and emulation (not by thinking).
The first characteristic leads to one of the most important reinforcement functions that maintains the Blue Church: social signaling. In Blue Church society, to hold and express good opinion means that you are part of the pack, in the tribe, on the team. Holding and expressing good opinion brings social benefit. More importantly, failing to hold and express good opinion can be ruinous.
This social dynamic means that good opinion is self-reinforcing. There is no need for a top-down thought police or such. Once enough people are coherent around good opinion, natural human social dynamics will kick-in to maintain that coherence.
–https://medium.com/deep-code/understanding-the-blue-church-e4781b2bd9b5
____________________________________________________
I would emphasize point 3, that people learn by doing and emulation (not by thinking). Democrats have not, for the most part, reached their positions by thinking, which seems to confuse some conservatives.
However, this topic’s concern is about those who have seen through the Blue but are still trapped in the Blue Church.
Anyway. Back to studying for midterms.
The anti-racism and anti-capitalism screeds are bad enough, but if reports are accurate many schools, including public schools, have bought into the LGBTQ+ movement and are pushing their offal into the heads of very young children.
I am a little nonplussed over what those parents fear? If there are clandestine dissidents you would think that they would band together and confront the schools. After all the people who run those schools and practice their black arts in them are dependent on parental funding. How many threatened withdrawals would it take to get their attention?
Besides, what is the worst that could happen? Would their Darlings have to settle for a lesser school? Would it jeopardize their chances of getting into an Ivy, or Stanford, or USC? . What if they had to attend a public university such as Berkley, Virginia, or UCLA? Horrors.
The Service Academies are always an option for bright kids. Kidding of course.
People who are criticized forever and don’t feel guilty eventually push back and find that it is easy to become exactly that for which they were criticized, namely actual racists. A race comprising 13.4% of a population is not thinking if it believes such an outcome is impossible. People who feel innocent are not going to submit forever. Americans have too much individualism and populism [and testosterone] to remain servile listeners to this rubbish. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote such.
Geoffrey & Zaphod – I will take the appellation “Boy Scout”. No problem.
Politics are not static. This is their high water mark. After France fell in WWII, there was a surrender group (Halifax) in Winston’s cabinet. He turned them down flat. Even though it was Britain’s darkest hour.
But like Churchill, I will work tirelessly, I will move forward and I will fight. I have confidence we win in the end because these doofus’s eat their own. The reign of terror lasted a year. The Thousand Year Reich lasted 13 years and the Soviet Union lasted for 75. I bet this will be shorter than that. The people will suffer and no matter what gaslighting is given by Legacy Media they will see through it. This feeling of anger and betrayal that we currently feel is much more intense then when the Tea Party started. It is sustainable over several election cycles.
So if I take the appellation of “Boy Scout”, will you take the appellation “cheese eating surrender monkeys”? You have earned it.
So I set my face to stone. Girded my loins for battle and act with purposeful cold anger.
I am Sparticus:
Well said!
We have a whole troop of fromageaphillic primates oot and aboot today.
Spartacus:
I don’t think there are too many Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys here.
Also: Be sure you’re not 1915 Dardanelles Campaign Churchill or 1940 Norwegian Fiasco Churchill…
I’m a bit of a bore about Churchill, but for a more nuanced view of his strategic thinking capabilities, see Alanbrooke’s Diaries. For drumming up morale, nobody was quite like Churchill; separate issue.
OTOH, if you can manage to channel Mers El Kebir Churchill, that’s more like it.
NS – hang in there. Your battle is about your son’s well being and future. The bigger battles will have to be fought by others. Life is centered on faith, family and friends. Keep close to God and he will help you with the family part. Friends is society at large. You cannot win in the context of friends if you don’t have Faith and Family squared away. You have your priority straight.
God bless you.
Zaphod – point taken
As someone who went to the Harvard School when it was just stopping being a Bircher right-wing Southern California Military prep school, I can tell you it was just as unbearable the other way round. I left after one year of hazing and bullying. Prep schools serve to select the elites—then Southern California Republicans, today woke Progressive Democrats. They ape those at the top of the pecking order and change with the times. School uniforms were replaced by blue jeans in my generation, for example. But the leadership caste remains the same, despite the change in costumes and political posturing. They are conformists. The only way to change such institutions is to change the leadership and principles of the top tier of society. Schools will follow the leader, as they did Henry VIII, Napoleon et al. Top-down system.
Prep schools serve to select the elites
They encompass a low single digit share of the secondary school population and many and perhaps most of their graduates are quite ordinary people.
Secondary schooling of select persons:
1. Bill Gates – local private academy
2. Elon Musk – state school
3. Steve Jobs – local public high school
4. Jeff Bezos – local public high school
5. James Dimon – local private academy
6. Lloyd Blankfein – local public high school
7. Rex Tillerson – local public high school
8. Gordon Gee – local public high school
9. Elizabeth Dole – local public high school
10. David Petraeus – local public high school
11. John Roberts – boarding school
12. Ted Cruz – evangelical schools of recent foundation.
I am Sparticus,
“cheese eating surrender monkey”? Not hardly. Leverage is maximized when timing is optimal.
Outstanding.
Now there’s a word that needs to be brought back into active use: “conformists”. The subjective fears, excuses, and sociological explanations for the craven behavior of these cowardly parents aside, “conformists” is exactly the right, if not sole descriptor.
I recently used the term “counter culture” to describe the general alignment, or at least presentation of, a particular pop musical group. A commenter or two had issues with the term itself, as inadequately encapsulating a coherent movement. If I even recall the objection correctly – having just glanced at it.
But sometimes these quasi-obsolete terms from another era, just do exactly the work that needs to be done in that specific instance …
“conformist” => “member of human pack/tribe”
Conformists are overwhelmingly normal humans being normal. Society could not function without them.
Group descriptors based on positions in a continuum quickly become meaningless because the continuum doesn’t hold still because the people involved don’t hold still either.
The counterculture stopped making sense almost immediately.
Even terms which seem to be based on specific qualities lose their meanings quickly too, e.g. fascism.
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It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless.…
Yet underneath all this mess there does lie a kind of buried meaning. To begin with, it is clear that there are very great differences, some of them easy to point out and not easy to explain away, between the régimes called Fascist and those called democratic. Secondly, if ‘Fascist’ means ‘in sympathy with Hitler’, some of the accusations I have listed above are obviously very much more justified than others. Thirdly, even the people who recklessly fling the word ‘Fascist’ in every direction attach at any rate an emotional significance to it. By ‘Fascism’ they mean, roughly speaking, something cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class. Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come.
But Fascism is also a political and economic system. Why, then, cannot we have a clear and generally accepted definition of it? Alas! we shall not get one — not yet, anyway. To say why would take too long, but basically it is because it is impossible to define Fascism satisfactorily without making admissions which neither the Fascists themselves, nor the Conservatives, nor Socialists of any colour, are willing to make. All one can do for the moment is to use the word with a certain amount of circumspection and not, as is usually done, degrade it to the level of a swearword.
–George Orwell, “What is Fascism?”
https://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/efasc