Reposted: new link.
John Merrow recalls an anti-Semitic incident on the playing fields from his youth. He recently heard from the boys (men) involved and found that their views were unchanged, except that now the anti-Semite was now openly racist.
Remember the song in “South Pacific”? “You’ve got to be carefully taught” to hate. We aren’t born hating. At the time Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote that song, they were called Communists.
John’s post reminded me of an incident last week. I went to a splendid wine-tasting and dinner at Paumonok Vineyards on the North Fork of Long Island. I was sitting next to a very pleasant and intelligent young man. As we got into dinner, we inevitably reached the subject of politics, and he told me that he enthisuasically voted for Trump. He is certain that Democrats want socialism and the next step is Communism. I learned that he is the son of Italian immigrants and an engineer who went to a state university. He saw no contradiction in Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric or his contempt for public education. As we talked, he expressed resentment about the lazy people who were getting government benefits. Why should he be taxed to pay for them? The longer the conversation went on, the more I realized that he was expressing deepseated racism. When the subject turned to education, he made clear that in his view, teachers are ignorant, have an easy job, are overpaid, should not have unions or tenure or pensions. Nothing I said changed any of his beliefs. I wondered why he was so bitter. I never found out. He is a solid member of Trump’s base.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Often these people are contrarians who enjoy the negative attention. Currently I tend to ask them questions: “Teachers are lazy? How did you come to that conclusion? How many teachers have you known and how many were lazy? How do you know that a teacher’s job is easy? Overpaid? How do you know this? This gives them the attention they seek and it allows them to hang themselves with their own words, because their opinions are based upon other’s opinions and are not based on facts. Once frustrated, they will resort to phrases like “Well, everyone knows …” And I will ask, how do you know that?
Cognitive dissonance in action.
The GOP have been marketing geniuses in packaging and selling a narrative that privatization is better than government run. The people who get hurt the most by cuts in government programs are the very ones who vote for these grifters.
I know a several teachers who I work with like the young bigot you dined with, Diane. They voted for Trump, are public and state university educated, and fearful of socialism. The only differences I see are that they want their tenure and pensions, complain about their salaries, and constantly bitch about their union. Oh well, as Julie Andrews sang a few years back, it’s a Crazy World.
EVD,
I lost readers when I came out against Trump. I don’t care.
That engineer will be a right winger till he is 50 and his employer replaces him with two kids right out of school . Its like finding God on your deathbed . But there is something about Engineers that is like Rodney Dangerfield . Of course he hates teachers on long Island , they make more than he does.
EVD got it right ” It’s an earned benefit when I receive it , its socialism when someone else has the benefit. ” Which is why Medicare is so popular and Obamacare so disliked. The subsidy does not reach the middle class.. If you want to kill a good program means test it .
You also set a lot of us straight who made the mistake of being so ideological and stubborn that we engaged in false equivalence without realizing it at the time.
“As we talked, he expressed resentment about the lazy people who were getting government benefits. Why should he be taxed to pay for them?”
No doubt he has the image of “welfare queens.”
Intelligent? I think not, not about the reasons he can succeeed in life, enjoy the elegant dinner and wine. He has his “whatever” and to hell with everyone who cannot do the same. Competent as an engineer? Probably.
I attended a panel discussion last week where 4 female students spoke about the constant racism they face on a daily basis. They attend high schools in the Walnut Creek area and contend the Administration and staff do nothing after they report these incidents.
Those in attendance were disturbed and hopefully, their voices will be heard and they can attend classes and not have to tolerate these racist comments.
How do the grandchildren of immigrants learn to hate new immigrants? Empathy has to be taught. We, who know so little of the trials of our ancestors, find ourselves ignorant of the past and easy targets for manipulation.
I’m sure his family was different than today’s immigrants. First of all, they were legal. Second, they assimilated. Third, they were just better. In. Every. Way.
Never mind that until the 1920s, coming here “legally” simply meant they saved money for a boat ticket. There was no “legal” or “illegal.” You just had to pass muster at Ellis Island. Second, Italians were very slow to assimilate and some parents refused to send their kids to school for fear of losing the old ways. They lived in ethnic ghettos until well into the 50s and 60s. They were stereotyped as violent, lazy and stupid. And they were swarthy and Catholic.
But the truth is obviously of no concern to him.
The young man spouts all the toxic crap that can be heard on hate wing, right wing radio and Fox News 24/7/365 for the past 30 plus years. Fox News has not been around for 30 years but hate wing radio has. This is the nonsense that Hannity, Limbaugh, Savage, Mark Levin, Hewitt and all their clones peddle ceaselessly. So many ordinary people take all this venom as gospel or given wisdom. I really believe it’s one of the big reasons why this country still does not have true universal health care in 2017.
Yesterday, Thom Hartmann was interviewing a libertarian who defended price gouging. It’s A-OK to charge from $8.50 to even $42 for a bottle water during a flooding catastrophe. A few years ago, John Stossel made the same argument, that price gouging was good and a benefit to society during natural disasters. These people are shameless, sick and lacking in any human empathy or compassion.
From bangordailynewsdotcom: “One Houston resident sent me a pic of water he saw being sold for $42 at a nearby Best Buy. They were kind enough to offer $29 bottles too. – ken klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) August 29, 2017″
I thought I might be a libertarian when I was young. Then I grew up.
An excellent opportunity to witness the class and race-embedded misuse of language: when companies like Best Buy engage in profiteering over life’s necessities during a crisis, it’s called “the free market'” “price discovery,” or “competition for scarce resources.” When poor, working class and darker-skinned people do what they need to survive, it’s “looting.”
As to the topic of this post, The American Conservative recently had a piece – sorry, no title or link – about the demographic makeup of the Alt-Right, which contradicts the usual stereotype of it as rural, working class Southern males.
According to this piece, many of them are not working class, but are instead more like Frat Boys From Hell: often college-educated -Richard Spencer is a graduate of U Va. – raised in outer ring suburbs and, rather than carrying on the racism they were raised on, they’ve rejected their parents politics, which they see as insufficiently devoted to White Identitarianism. Thus, Alex Fields, the accused killer in Charlottesville, grew up in a suburb, and has had his virulent racism repudiated by his family.
The changing face of fascism in the country needs to be recognized, so that successful strategies and tactics to fight it can be devised. Assuming that it’s the same kind of people who fought against civil rights in the ’50’s and 60’s is a mistake.
Sorry, the article is “The Alt-Right Is Not Who You Think They Are” by George Hawley. It was published in The American Conservative on 8/25/17.
I fear the overboard Left helps breed these jerks. I teach in Trumpland and it surprises me how well-versed my unfiltered 12 year old students are in the jargon of the Left. When I use what was once an innocuous word like “trigger” in the context of a history lecture I will hear murmurs and laughter: the kids are already steeped in lore about ridiculous “trigger warnings” and “being triggered”. This is just one example. Amongst the households of this SF exurb, a lore is being created, and the extreme antics of Bubble-dwellers, which go unchallenged inside the Bubble for fear of excommunication, get noticed outside the Bubble and add to an atmosphere of contempt and ridicule toward liberals.
“Trigger”? “Trigger warnings”?
This is sad.
Do his parents get Medicare? Does he think it would be better if they had to find an insurance company willing to cover them at market rate?
They earned the Medicare, as they did the Medicaid they will receive when he puts them into a nursing home . Of course that will be after the trusts are in place.
Look what happened to public schools during the recession while all of ed reform was focused on charters and vouchers:
“As the Great Recession was sending economic shockwaves through the country, it was also hurting student learning, according to a new study.
Using a huge data set that included over 95 percent of the country’s public school students, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania found that each year students spent in school during the recession hurt their reading and math test scores.
The effects were modest in size — roughly equal to the impact of increasing class sizes by three to five students — but they applied to a vast number of students.”
This is why you need advocates in government. Public schools took the hit from the recession and no one bothered to intervene. No one was interested. This was going on while Michelle Rhee and Arne Duncan were touring the country bashing public schools and the DC response? Congress actually CUT public school funding in 2010.
This is worse than neglect- it’s deliberate sabotage.
Any analysis based on standardized test scores is bogus from the start. One can immediately reject the analysis (other than to read it and understand what the ignorant writer/analyst is attempting to do).
Falsehoods based on falsehoods net falsehoods.
Yep, that plain and simple!
So true, Duane, As they once said, ‘Garbage in, Garbage out’.
Yes, children learn things at a young age. But remember: As they get older, they, too, learn from people they admire. May be a good role model, may be a bad one. Artists, athletes, politicians, teachers… Each of these will leave an indelible mark on us.
Not all young people learn stories about teachers etc. from adults. They SEE what happens in their classrooms, and not all teachers are good role models. They look at football players, and see men who beat their (female) partners. They hear politicians (whatever side!) make promises – and then break these promises as easily as they were made.
The old African saying, “It takes a village…” is even more the case in a time where our kids have access to an enormous flow of information, without having been taught be teacher or parents how to differentiate. Our “village” has expanded significantly!
And each voice a child hears, makes an impression.
Some Americans still hate the Japanese for the “sins of the forefathers.”
They SEE what happens in their classrooms, and not all teachers are good role models….boy is that a slap in the face to teachers. As a parent , when my kids come home from school complaining that their teacher is mean, stupid, doesn’t explain the material etc., I give them a schooling about how their teacher doesn’t want to teach this garbage either (common core scripted lessons). That teachers are unhappy about what has become of their profession. That teachers have become bitter about being the scapegoat of everything wrong in education. That teachers aren’t the ones pushing the stupid BS tests.
I asked for the teacher’s side of the conversation – gave me the perspective I needed. I am very much aware of my childrens’ shortcomings, but I also very much aware that EVEN teachers come to school with baggage.
And I’m sorry that you consider the statement a “slap in the face to teachers.” It is a reality of life. Or should I start listing the teacher who sexually abuse children (both male and female teachers), teachers who verbally abuse their students? Or teachers that just should not be teachers?
Unless you live in a different reality, the teaching profession has the same problem as any other profession: Some are just not good at their job, and should not have that job.
Cops? Nurses? Fire fighters? Doctors? Mail deliverers? Mothers, Fathers? Bosses? Principals? Superintendents? EACH of those professions has a segment that does not serve as good role models.
But my children spent more time with teachers than with any of the other professions mentioned, so they have a greater impact.
L. Kinyon: All humans have baggage or flaws. Sexual abuse and verbal abuse are more than baggage, they are criminal and as you say, can be found in any profession. Should we condemn all Catholic schools because of the crimes of the priesthood? Sexual abuse goes on in some private schools and charter schools, does that invalidate all private or charter schools? In fact, there have been instances of home schooling parents who abused their children.
the link to Merrow is invalid!
Try this one:
Fixed
Diane
My experience has been exactly the same when speaking with Trump voters for the same or similar reasons.
There is no changing their minds
It’s upsetting to see how many people feel this way and nothing can sway their beliefs, not even truth and valid explanations.
My experience is the same, exactly the same, when talking with Hilary voters, Democrats who are the same way. When you try to show them the “error of their way,” they just won’t listen to reason! Not even plain facts, supported by undeniable evidence will sway them! Not even truth and valid explanations help – just like you!
And I know a lot of Republicans who are as mystified with the election outcome as many here.
So, if you don’t want me to make general statements about Democrats (which I try to avoid), please give me the same courtesy. Not all Republicans (not even the majority!) are trump supporters or likers!
Many I know did not vote for him. Like, obviously, in some states not enough Democrats bothered to come out to vote in enough numbers to help their party “win.”
I consider neither one of them worthy of the office of President…Be interesting to see what former vice-president Biden will do…
Many Republicans I know despise Trump as much as I do. They think he will destroy the party. They think he is a fool and a racist. They are embarrassed by his coddling of white nationalists and Putin. They are embarrassed by his refusal to release his tax returns and his promotion of the Trump brand. They know he is a congenital liar. I am sorry for them. I share your concern about this miserable lout and his grifter family.
L. Kinyon: When the choice comes down to Hillary or the incipient fascist, in my opinion, you have a duty to vote for the much more competent, intelligent and capable person, HRC. Voting for Jill Stein is an exercise in futility in the general election.
Carla never mentioned Republicans. She said Trump voters.
Data from the election shows that, contrary to L. Kenyon’s anecdotal claims, the overwhelming majority of registered Republicans loyally voted for Trump.
Indeed, one of the key strategic blunders of Clinton’s campaign is testimony to that, whereby Hillary tried to appeal to “moderate” suburban Republicans, especially women, rather than concentrate on turning out the Democratic base.
Thus, you had the deluded efforts to seek Republican votes in the Mainline suburbs of Philadelphia, while completely ignoring the small industrial cities of Southern Wisconsin – Janesville, Kenosha, etc. – where the UAW had been strong, and Democratic votes were once reliable. Hillary didn’t set foot in Wisconsin.
The Clinton/Obama wing of the Democratic Party largely ignored the interests of its working class supporters for decades, arrogantly believing that they had “nowhere else to go.” Over the years, that created a void that was filled by Trump, who gave just enough of them “somewhere to go.”
That they, along with the rest of us, are going to Hell in a handbasket, is a topic for another thread.
If the Liberal/Left cannot or will not defend the interests of the working class, the Right will step into that breach, and pretend to. Thus the “Socialism” in “National Socialism,” and the resonance of Trump’s (obviously dishonest) campaign rhetoric about trade and military intervention overseas.
Actually, Jimmy Carter started that ignoring of working class voters.
I know because I supported Ted Kennedy in the primary to oppose him. I was so blinded by hate for Jimmy Carter who represented all the Democrats who had sold out that I voted for John Anderson and made sure Reagan got into office.
You keep acting as if there was some wonderful time when progressive Democrats won. When was that?
What you wrote could have been written back in 1968 (and was!) to convince voters that Humphrey was the sell-out and corrupt “Party Boss” candidate. Good thing Nixon defeated Humphrey who was as corrupt as Hillary in “stealing” the primary.
When were these halcyon days when you think Democrats were different? LBJ? FDR? If they ran today the progressive left would destroy them a corrupt corporate sell-outs.
Just like they convinced me that Jimmy Carter was the most corrupt and dishonest candidate that it would not be any different if Ronald Reagan won. Now that I look back at how gullible and judgmental I was, I realize that it was me who was played for the benefit of the right wing. Maybe some day progressives will look back and realize how gullible they are.
Michael Fiorillo
Bravo
^^To be clear: Jimmy Carter DID oppose all the most progressive ideas that Ted Kennedy had for health care. He WAS just as conservative as the progressives told me he was.
But he was NOT the evil corrupt sell-out that they said he was. He was — is — an upright man who had a far more conservative view of economics than any Democrat I had ever seen at that time.
Was it a good thing that Carter never had a chance to do all the damage that he would have done to the country if he had been re-elected? There are certainly many people on the left who thank me for standing up and preventing Carter from winning and making sure Reagan did instead. Are you one of them?
NYC public school parent
I’ll take that chance on an FDR or LBJ running today .
The one thing the Democrats have not done since Clinton led them to the promised land, is put the interests of the American people over the interests of their Corporate donors. But they do put on quite a good dog and pony show. Providing cover for quite a few office holders .
What happened to EFCA. among other things. Number 2 or 3 on my 95 theses . Being that we are the Party of Americas working class . Being that we are the party of Americas poor , Being that we are the party of reduced income inequality , of CORPORATE DONORS
Oh it was defeated in committee by:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-is-diane-feinstein-stiffing-labor/
And you might have been foolish enough to vote for John Anderson . But most of us who voted for Kennedy in the primary knew better . Just like most Bernie supporters knew better . So I see you have a long history of empowering the right.
But wake me up when corporate America isn’t picking Democrats they like almost as much as they like Trump and Mitch McConnell .
Joel,
Is your point that Jimmy Carter was dishonest and corrupt and sold out Democratic ideas but I should have voted for him anyway?
Lots of people were telling me that back then. I specifically remember a college classmate telling me how stupid I was not to vote for the corrupt and dishonest tool of Wall Street Jimmy Carter.
Aren’t you shocked that I wasn’t convinced by his argument? I’m just like those white working class voters who rejected Hillary Clinton and voted for Trump or stayed home. I just KNEW I was right.
I thought you were supposed to blame CARTER for being such a lousy and corrupt candidate, not me.
NYC public school parent
You really are losing your grip on it . I would hope it is just the Trump effect . No , I am telling you that when given a primary challenger to Jimmy Carter in the form of a far more progressive pro labor Kennedy. Kennedy deserved my vote not Carter . But when faced with the threat of Reagan only a fool would let that happen .
Those working class voters who voted for Trump in the Mid West or much more likely stayed home, were not fools. They were tired of being fooled . Of course you might have to ask Pete Townshend about that one . If your stumped ask Duane for some help.. It might divert you from another long tirade.
I just like to call out your hypocrisy, Joel.
You blame me because I ignored all the progressives telling me the same thing about Carter during the 1980 election that you said about Hillary Clinton in 2016 — that Carter was a corrupt, lying sell-out tool of corporate and financial interests but I should vote for him anyway. It is NOT Jimmy Carter’s fault for being that corrupt, lying politician progressives like you kept telling me he was as you encouraged me to vote for that corrupt candidate. It is MINE!
But you do NOT blame the white folks in Wisconsin and Minnesota who ignored progressives like you telling them that Hillary Clinton was a corrupt, lying sell-out tool of corporate and financial interests but they should vote for her anyway. They are blameless. Unlike me. It is all Hillary Clinton’s fault!
Got it. Your double standard speaks for itself. Next time I vote I’ll check with you to find out if I can cast my vote against someone and have it be my fault or theirs.
NYCpsp,
There’s good news, and there’s bad news.
The good news is that you can stop blaming yourself for electing Ronald Reagan in 1980: Carter would have lost even if John Anderson had not run. A five-minute review of the election demonstrates that, so you’re off the hook on that one.
The bad news is that you continue to argue ineffectively and illogically, insisting on the use of fallacies and misdirection to simplistically blame leftist straw men for our predicament.
Finally, though guilty of many things in my life, I can’t be blamed for helping elect Nixon in 1968, since I was twelve years old.
People deprived of the promise they were given they could be successful and comfortably fixed financially if they just followed the rules and got the right education and worked hard are going to want to know what happened. It’s easier to blame some formless “they” than admit they were gullible; and the neoliberals have perfected the method of encouraging that mindset. The only way we’ll get through to them is to wean them off the corporate media—one side of which tells them the [fill in minority or other target population] are responsible and the other essentially telling them they’re (a) failures and clearly didn’t work hard enough/go to the right college/move to the right place for a job and (b) should be ashamed for feeling angry and frustrated when so many other people are worse off.
We’re in the hands of propagandists who’ve had most of a century to perfect their methods. The only solution is to understand we have been and continue to be brainwashed and fight back.
The Koch brothers, ALEC, the Walton family, etc. have been programming a growing segment of the population with this mixture of fear and hate based on conspiracy theories and alternative facts for decades and spending huge sums of money to do it. They have built massive organizations designed to churn out misinformation and when there are some facts they can cherry pick, they throw those in with the lies.
Once programmed to believe this crap, the odds are heavily against changing what this segement of the population thinks. From what I’ve been learning, there are between 20-million to 32-million of these people in the U.S. – about 10 percent of the total population.
And because of Trump, it’s getting easier identifying the deplorables among us, because many of them think that their messiah has arrived to lead them to their promise land.
Those ignorant, racist, hating deplorables don’t know that Trump’s is a demon and that promised land will be a hellish place to live until the planet will not support life as we know it.
I suspect I’ll be gone before it gets that bad. Imagine what life will be like on the planet for the few oligarchs and the minions they allow to live in their underground shelters when the rest of the world outside of their sealed fortresses is unlivable. All the forests burned away. The atmosphere unbreathable. Desserts swallowing the land. The ocean dead without much life in it and acidic.
The Alt-Right oligarchs, in their deep, sealed shelters, will be sharing the world they built with cockroaches and jelly fish.
“They have built massive organizations designed to churn out misinformation and when there are some facts they can cherry pick, they throw those in with the lies.”
Gee I wish that was only limited to the right .
The evidence is overwhelming that they are playing both sides of the field and driving every politician that still thinks for themselves and can’t be controlled out of office.
I do love the citation of that song. It should be far more popular.
Agreed
I have learned how to hate, just by paying attention to politics:
I hate DeVos, Obama, Cuomo, Walker, Duncan, Klein, Bloomberg, Gates, Powell Jobs, Moskowitz, Trump, Bush, DFERs, King . . . . The list is VERY long.
I HATE them. Yes, I hate their guts and wish them and their families cursed, horrible lives. They have managed to destroy public education, a pillar of any decent democracy, and they dare to push their opportunism under the guise of civil rights for children.
I have learned to hate, and I have no issues with it whatsoever.
Having grown up in Norway, where my family was in the slim minority of my country’s 2.4 percent Catholics, I remember my pious mother telling me, “You should never want to use the word ‘hate’! Hitler hated the people he killed. Do you want to be like that?” My poor mother meant well, but she was far too Catholic for her own good. She believed in turnign the other cheek in most situations.
Well, I don’t!
But you can’t stew in your own hatred. You have to use it to be pro-active and get involved in politics, plain and simple. Hatred alone is not enough. But hatred it is, calling a spade a spade and recognizing that hatred is not always evil, impure, or unhealthy.
Yes, I hate those who have weakened and compromised public education.
Hate them!
Hate . . . .
And how does one get on your hate list? Does one have to have power or is disagreeing with you enough? I can’t say that I am a fan of any of those people, but I find your comment disturbing. I see a group of people who travel in their own little privileged, power bubble mucking around in the lives of “little people” under the pretense of helping them. They have forgotten that we all put our pants on one leg at a time. Judging from the division in this country (and others), that seems to be a problem we all have to some extent. When a sense of community breaks down we are in trouble. The outpouring of support for those effected by Harvey leaves room for hope.
I do NOT believe in hatred that motivates violence, as had happened in Charlottesville and other places in this gun-ridden country. That type of hatred is unacceptable, as was the kind perpetrated in Newtown, for Matthew Shephard, at the church in South Carolina, the hatred directed toward the police who were executed by civilians in a few states in the last year, etc.
And I certainly don’t wish anything remotely like that upon the politicians and officials and billionaires who wish to destroy education. But let’s just say that I don’t miss Steve jobs and his views on charters and public education. I’m glad he’s out of the picture (although now we have to contend with his stupid wife). I don’t miss Roger Allies, who built Fox News into an empire. Yes, I hated those people, and have no qualms with it. Hatred can mean that you propel yourself and those around you to do better in life and to think and act collectively to change society politically for the better. America can use a dosage of class warfare hatred that is peaceful and should lose the ever “polite” tone that has dominated for decades its average citizens’s passion and awareness of politics and has penetrated its ability to think critically.
We don’t put our pants on one leg at a time. Bill Gates and Reid Hastings have far more access to Congress than the average person does, as does ALEC and the Waltons. And when they put their pants on, they have hundreds of perfect white diamonds stitched in as beading into the fabric of each pant leg. Uh-uh! I’m not buying that they pick their teeth as I do mine. Being of the same species does not mean being of the same quest for justice and fairness, and man has been known in the past to dominate the masses in unsavory ways. As public education gets destroyed, so too does the critical thinking capacity of children growing into future adult generations, and that serves the overclass as well. they deserve, therefore, basic hatred and opprobrium from the masses.
You imply that I am an isolated snotty elitist, but don’t you have the the other way around with regard to who is on a “hate” list. Great schools with the arts, balance, whole child approaches and small class sizes are for the policy makers’ and influencers’ children, but NOT for children of the poor or working class. Who is the elitist in that scenario? Charters and voucherizations are for other people’s children. Public schools are little by little becoming a venue for those who are left over in the competitive, rat race of privatization, and good luck to those children returning or slated for those drastically underfunded schools. Hmmmm. . . .Sounds a little like Central and South America to me.
Yes, “hatred” is befitting here to those who caused the schools in LA or Michigan to fall into heinous disrepair and wither away in even basic resources. Hatred for those who allowed the public waters of of Flint, Michigan to contain lead and poison unpseakable numbers of children.
It’s not elitist or bubble minded to hate those who ignore democracy and oppress the middle and working classes or hoard the wealth at the expense of the public commons and public good; it’s called “motivated”. Please don’t conflate the two, and I do apologize if I was not clear enough in my first statement or caused confusion.
“They have forgotten that we all put our pants on one leg at a time.”
I’m not sure how you reduced that to what you did. I am implying that they think very highly of themselves.
“You imply that I am an isolated snotty elitist…”
Huh? How did you get that? I had no intention of implying that your position is elitist or bubble minded. All I meant to say is that we all form opinions based on our own experience and are shaped by the environment in which we live, and that we seem to be having real difficulty coming to terms with differences of opinion especially looking at the dysfunction we have seen in government in recent years.
“…but don’t you have the the other way around with regard to who is on a “hate” list.”
I’m sorry, but I really don’t understand what you are trying to say.
I looked up hate in the dictionary. It defined it as intense dislike, which surprised me. I equate the word with racism and people like Hitler, so my reaction to your comments was related to my own bias.
Perhaps I am influenced by my work as a high school special ed teacher. I dealt with some pretty messed up kids, kids that society might want to wish away. If I was going to help those kids, I had to separate what they had done from who they could be. Their experiences and environment played a large role in their behavior. Along with my role as a teacher I hoped to help them make better choices or even to see other choices.
I’m glad to have had this exchange. It has made me think about how and why I respond to experiences the way I do. I am sorry if I offended you. I did not intend to do so.
I am not offended; you made me think deeply. Thank you.
Speduktr,
You have a great heart and conscience.
I pose this question: did the French necessarily hate Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI, and their royal court. If so, why?
I am going to cop out and say if you mean “intensely dislike,” then yes. I am sure there were many people who felt a visceral hatred for them or at least what they represented. How much can a body take? What does it take to get someone used to being compliant and/or subservient to fight back with rage? Human history is full of brutality and still is. I hope I never feel the visceral hatred that eats at your soul. I can’t say I would blame someone who did necessarily; that hatred could have come out of great pain. I think it might be necessary to see those one hates as “other” if you know what I mean.
Not on topic, but important:
The Dept of Ed, is promoting Islam in public schools! see
https://clarionproject.org/u-s-dept-of-education-promoting-islam-to-schoolchildren/
Some people claim that the current SecEd is taking the public school establishment on a path to fundamentalist Christianity. I dispute that.
Here is another reason to abolish the federal Dept of Education.
Charles, you support direct funding of Islamic schools so why would this bother you, even if it were true?
If Betsy DeVos is promoting Islam, she should stop at once.
I support school choice, true. I support the right of parents to direct the education of their children. And this includes the right of parents to redeem school vouchers at a Madras. But I must add this caveat: If and ONLY IF, the parents make the choice to send their children to the Islamic school.
The same applies to parents choosing to send their children to a Roman Catholic school, or an evangelical Christian school.
What I am opposed to, is utilizing public (tax) dollars to indoctrinate children in publicly-operated schools into Islam (or any religion). On this point, even the most rabid opponents of school choice, should be supportive. You yourself have indicated that you would not want your tax money going to a school which teaches creationism.
Schools cannot post the ten commandments on the wall, but they can be required to teach the five pillars of Islam. Insanity.
(For the record, I do NOT support the direct funding of any religiously-operated school. )
Publicly-operated schools should teach comparative religions, and teach the Holy Bible as literature. (This is permitted under Abingdon v. Schempp, 1963).
How would you like it, if a publicly-operated school distributed prayer rugs, and copies of the Holy Koran, and required the children to face Mecca, and pray five times a day?
Charles,
It is a contradiction to support direct government funding of religious schools and oppose a program that you think promotes religion in public school. I oppose both.
I stated this in my posting:
Q (For the record, I do NOT support the direct funding of any religiously-operated school. ) END Q
I state unequivocally, that I do NOT support the direct funding of any religiously-operated school.
It is not a contradiction, to oppose the religious indoctrination of children in publicly-operated schools.
For the record, I plan to contact the federal Dept of Ed, and register my opposition to having Islam (or any religion) promoted in any publicly-operated school.
Charles, you confuse me. You have written here many times that you support vouchers for all religious schools. All.
I oppose government funding of religious indoctrination and religious schools. Are we agreed now? I hope so.
Please, Charles, contact Betsy DeVos and tell her to stop promoting Islam and not to fund any religious indoctrination whatever.
I wonder what teacher(s) taught him all that hate?
That’s right. I bet it was his kindergarten teacher. Every day for a couple of hours she spewed forth racial and ethnic hatred. Or maybe his first grade teacher made him practice the alphabet with racial slurs. I hope you just forgot to add the snark alert. I don’t know about you, but my values were learned at the feet of my parents.
Yes, speduktr, I had the same reaction.
If it was snark, he needed a snark tag (and it really wasn’t funny, anyway, even if it was snark).
If it wasn’t snark, then…………I don’t want to say what I think for fear of violating blog standards.
Since parenting is teaching, parents and guardians are also a child’s teachers and learning hate usually starts at birth. It doesn’t start in kindergarten.