School Shooting in Nashville today

[Opti]

Mar 29, 2023 18:04:00 GMT -5 Pink Cashmere said:

Mar 29, 2023 17:25:23 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

After each and every mass shooting tragedy in our schools, there is never any time to discuss legislation.

Nashville school shooting updates: Governor says now's not time to talk legislation

UGH!

I actually do believe in prayer, but I also believe that we are not supposed to just try to pray a situation away, or offer what I consider to be empty prayers, when there is something we can do about it. That’s not how that works Imo. You do what you can do that is within your ability and power to address a problem, and pray about the things that are beyond your control. 

I admit I may be misinterpreting it, but I believe that “faith without works is dead”. Which means to me, that faith is not just sitting back and waiting for what you pray for to fall down from the sky or magically happen. You do whatever is within your power to do, and have faith that what’s beyond your power to do, will make it all come together for the good.

And if you are in a position of power, like a politician, where you can do what is truly right for your brethren, and you choose to spread hatred instead of love, and pretend you can’t do anything to help the most vulnerable among us….. while calling yourself a Christian, shame on you. To him whom much is given, much is expected.

No surprise he doesn't want to talk legislation. However it is his state, at the very least shouldn't he suggest love, support and meals for those affected?

[Pink Cashmere]

Mar 29, 2023 19:15:12 GMT -5 djAdvocate said:

hope without action is also dead.
not keen on hope in the absence of action.

I try to be hopeful that my Grandchildren can grow up in this world and be okay. “Try to be” means I am not always successful with my hoping. 

So I am genuinely asking you or anyone else that cares to respond, what do I do to take action?

My Grandmother was so happy about being able to vote that she pretty much badgered me about voting once I was old enough. I didn’t really get it when I was a young adult, and mostly only voted back then just so I could honestly tell her I did. But I’ve been “getting it” for a couple of decades now, and I vote every chance I get, because I care about this nation and I care about what my Grandchildren will have to deal with after I’m gone. And every time I vote, I feel like my Grandmother is pleased with me, even though she’s no longer on this earth.

I encourage my children and their friends to vote. I had a long conversation with one of my daughter’s friends several years ago, because he didn’t believe voting mattered, and I tried to convince him that it does. But even then, I understood why he felt the way he did, because no matter how we vote in this little blue corner of our state, we are outnumbered by the people in the rest of the state. But for me, I vote anyway, even though I have been disappointed many times, that it seems like my vote doesn’t matter on the state or national level.

What else can I do? I work for the federal government and that is how I pay for my lifestyle. I can’t just go ham on being a community activist, because if I get arrested or even do something unseemly, I could lose my livelihood. And I already know, nobody is trying to pay for me to live and eat if I am capable of working, but not. I can’t even argue with that, because that’s how I feel about some other people.

If we really had to, Mister and I could probably move to another state and be okay, but we can’t afford to take our loved ones with us, so what, just leave them to fend for themselves? Whether it’s good or bad, I’m not built to do something like that.

So what do I do to take action? I do care about this raggedy ass country I live in, and I do care about my fellow citizens, and most of all I care about the world I leave my descendants to live in, so that is a genuine question. 

[djAdvocate]

Mar 29, 2023 19:56:40 GMT -5 Pink Cashmere said:

Mar 29, 2023 19:15:12 GMT -5 djAdvocate said:

hope without action is also dead.
not keen on hope in the absence of action.

I try to be hopeful that my Grandchildren can grow up in this world and be okay. “Try to be” means I am not always successful with my hoping. 

So I am genuinely asking you or anyone else that cares to respond, what do I do to take action?

. 

it works different in families.  a very small thing can make a large difference.

teach them right from wrong.  share your experiences.  love them as you love yourself.  open their eyes to the ways of the world, without making them cynical.

the public sphere is different.  and the bar is much higher.

[Tennesseer]

[busymom]

Mar 29, 2023 18:04:00 GMT -5 Pink Cashmere said:

Mar 29, 2023 17:25:23 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

After each and every mass shooting tragedy in our schools, there is never any time to discuss legislation.

Nashville school shooting updates: Governor says now's not time to talk legislation

UGH!

I actually do believe in prayer, but I also believe that we are not supposed to just try to pray a situation away, or offer what I consider to be empty prayers, when there is something we can do about it. That’s not how that works Imo. You do what you can do that is within your ability and power to address a problem, and pray about the things that are beyond your control. 

I admit I may be misinterpreting it, but I believe that “faith without works is dead”. Which means to me, that faith is not just sitting back and waiting for what you pray for to fall down from the sky or magically happen. You do whatever is within your power to do, and have faith that what’s beyond your power to do, will make it all come together for the good.

And if you are in a position of power, like a politician, where you can do what is truly right for your brethren, and you choose to spread hatred instead of love, and pretend you can’t do anything to help the most vulnerable among us….. while calling yourself a Christian, shame on you. To him whom much is given, much is expected.

    VERY well said.  Ever consider running for political office?

[Pink Cashmere]

Mar 29, 2023 21:50:56 GMT -5 busymom said:

Mar 29, 2023 18:04:00 GMT -5 Pink Cashmere said:

UGH!

I actually do believe in prayer, but I also believe that we are not supposed to just try to pray a situation away, or offer what I consider to be empty prayers, when there is something we can do about it. That’s not how that works Imo. You do what you can do that is within your ability and power to address a problem, and pray about the things that are beyond your control. 

I admit I may be misinterpreting it, but I believe that “faith without works is dead”. Which means to me, that faith is not just sitting back and waiting for what you pray for to fall down from the sky or magically happen. You do whatever is within your power to do, and have faith that what’s beyond your power to do, will make it all come together for the good.

And if you are in a position of power, like a politician, where you can do what is truly right for your brethren, and you choose to spread hatred instead of love, and pretend you can’t do anything to help the most vulnerable among us….. while calling yourself a Christian, shame on you. To him whom much is given, much is expected.

    VERY well said.  Ever consider running for political office?

Never even had an inkling that it would be a good idea lol.

[happyhoix]

Mar 29, 2023 22:03:38 GMT -5 Pink Cashmere said:

Mar 29, 2023 21:50:56 GMT -5 busymom said:

    VERY well said.  Ever consider running for political office?

Never even had an inkling that it would be a good idea lol.

Yeah it would not work out well for me.

I’d start a news conference with ‘ok, listen up you idiots’ and I’d get bounced out of office.

A good politician requires a certain temperament- one I do not possess.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

Mar 30, 2023 7:16:57 GMT -5 happyhoix said:

Mar 29, 2023 22:03:38 GMT -5 Pink Cashmere said:

Never even had an inkling that it would be a good idea lol.

Yeah it would not work out well for me.

I’d start a news conference with ‘ok, listen up you idiots’ and I’d get bounced out of office.

A good politician requires a certain temperament- one I do not possess.

IDK you'd probably be celebrated nowadays for telling it like it is.

[andi9899]

Mar 30, 2023 7:16:57 GMT -5 happyhoix said:

Mar 29, 2023 22:03:38 GMT -5 Pink Cashmere said:

Never even had an inkling that it would be a good idea lol.

Yeah it would not work out well for me.

I’d start a news conference with ‘ok, listen up you idiots’ and I’d get bounced out of office.

A good politician requires a certain temperament- one I do not possess.

Same!

[happyhoix]

Mar 30, 2023 8:12:31 GMT -5 NomoreDramaQ1015 said:

Mar 30, 2023 7:16:57 GMT -5 happyhoix said:

Yeah it would not work out well for me.

I’d start a news conference with ‘ok, listen up you idiots’ and I’d get bounced out of office.

A good politician requires a certain temperament- one I do not possess.

IDK you'd probably be celebrated nowadays for telling it like it is.

Today it seems like you have to lean in to the idiots. ‘Yes there is a Chinese Jewish conspiracy to overtake the world with space lasers. And I am the only one who can save the world!’

Couldn’t do it. Can’t play to the chuckle heads.

[pulmonarymd]

Hooray for us! Gun deaths are now the leading cause of death for children and teens. USA! USA! USA!

[djAdvocate]

freedom to die at the hands of mentally ill kids.

(even though there is a federal statute in place designed to keep them from owning guns)

[Tennesseer]

?

Nashville school shooter ‘was hunting pastor who was counselling her’

The Nashville school shooter, Audrey Hale, was reportedly hunting down the pastor she was receiving counselling from but instead killed his daughter when she could not find him.

Hale, 28, had been having private sessions with Pastor Chad Scruggs before she embarked on a shooting spree at the Covenant school, according to former pastor Jim Bachmann.

Pastor Scrugg’s nine-year-old daughter Hallie was shot dead along with two other children and three staff members during the attack.

Mr Bachmann told InsideEdition that Hale “appeared to be searching the school” for Pastor Scruggs.

Mr Scruggs is the lead pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church, which is associated with The Covenant School. He had been at a presbytery planning meeting at the time of the attack when he received a phone alert about an active shooter, according to a fellow church leader.

Mr Bachmann speculated that Hale, a former pupil at the private school, would have “left his daughter alone” had she been able to find the father-of-four.

Hale was born as a woman but had recently begun using male pronouns, leading police to speculate she may have been transgender.

Rest of article here: Nashville school shooter ‘was hunting pastor who was counselling her’

[shelley413]

Inside Edition has updated their article stating that they had received a response from the school that Hale was not being counseled by Pastor Scruggs.  The New York Post also printed an article yesterday stating that Bachman had walked back his original statement. The only articles I could find were besides Inside Edition and New York Post were Daily Mail, The Telegraph and knewz.
There were not any articles from the main news sources.

I don’t post much, but it really irritates me when people spread rumors like this. (I’m talking about Pastor Bachman and Inside Edition, not you, Tennessee.)  These people are suffering enough without having to deal with articles (rumors) like this.

[Spellbound454]

 Mr Bachmann speculated that Hale, a former pupil at the private school, would have “left his daughter alone” had she been able to find the father-of-four.

That's an incredibly crass thing to say... It would have been ok if he was killed instead?

Seems like the media want to blame this terrible act on Christians.... and not the murderer.

Anyway, Its not even true, seems she was not receiving counselling from him.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11919801/Nashville-school-shooter-private-counselling-sessions-schools-head-pastor.html

There are monsters out there ...... best not to give them lethal weapons

[djAdvocate]

Mar 31, 2023 4:53:01 GMT -5 Spellbound454 said:

 Mr Bachmann speculated that Hale, a former pupil at the private school, would have “left his daughter alone” had she been able to find the father-of-four.

That's an incredibly crass thing to say... It would have been ok if he was killed instead?

Seems like the media want to blame this terrible act on Christians.... and not the murderer.

Anyway, Its not even true, seems she was not receiving counselling from him.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11919801/Nashville-school-shooter-private-counselling-sessions-schools-head-pastor.html

There are monsters out there ...... best not to give them lethal weapons

why are you blaming the media?  Mr. Bachmann is not part of the media.

and i am not sure that his quote is "blaming Christians".  he is a FORMER PASTOR.

it appears that the UK has also drunk the "liberal media" koolaid to me.
there is no "liberal media".
stop shaming them for telling the facts.

[happyhoix]

Mar 31, 2023 4:44:06 GMT -5 shelley413 said:

Inside Edition has updated their article stating that they had received a response from the school that Hale was not being counseled by Pastor Scruggs.  The New York Post also printed an article yesterday stating that Bachman had walked back his original statement. The only articles I could find were besides Inside Edition and New York Post were Daily Mail, The Telegraph and knewz.
There were not any articles from the main news sources.

I don’t post much, but it really irritates me when people spread rumors like this. (I’m talking about Pastor Bachman and Inside Edition, not you, Tennessee.)  These people are suffering enough without having to deal with articles (rumors) like this.

I’m glad that wasn’t actually true, imagine the burden of guilt that pastor would carry, even if he’d done everything exactly right.

Trying to help someone with mental health issues can be so hard.

[happyhoix]

Mar 30, 2023 19:56:50 GMT -5 djAdvocate said:

freedom to die at the hands of mentally ill kids.

(even though there is a federal statute in place designed to keep them from owning guns)

Too bad there’s not a national health care system to provide free help for those struggling with mental health issues before they snap and do horrible, life altering things to innocent people.

[djAdvocate]

Mar 31, 2023 13:04:09 GMT -5 happyhoix said:

Mar 30, 2023 19:56:50 GMT -5 djAdvocate said:

freedom to die at the hands of mentally ill kids.

(even though there is a federal statute in place designed to keep them from owning guns)

Too bad there’s not a national health care system to provide free help for those struggling with mental health issues before they snap and do horrible, life altering things to innocent people.

....at half the cost....

[Tennesseer]

The GOP Embraces the Kyle Rittenhouse Approach to Kindergarten

In the futile and hopeless hours of familiar gridlock after the most recent mass shooting in Nashville, the social media meme war that serves as proxy for our political process launched again into overdrive. Some themes were familiar: Republicans love guns more than they love children; the party that purports to revere life seems unwilling to do anything to stop mass murder. But there was a newer, bitter twist to many of the posts, connecting the GOP’s 2023 war on books, education, sexuality, and teachers to its unwillingness to protect children in schools.

These complaints were doubly poignant, noting, as they did, that Republicans seem to believe that public school teachers who can’t be trusted to curate classroom libraries are fit to be armed with guns. Others commented that no child has yet died from reading a book about Rosa Parks, and yet the GOP maintains that the problem of mass school shootings is unfixable. The central thread was that Republicans are prepared to intervene in every last aspect of public education—from book bans to curriculum laws to surveillance of educators—but will never lift a finger to prevent or decrease mass murder of small children in places that are meant to keep their bodies safe, above all things.

The flaw in these arguments is that they assume there is hypocrisy at work when social conservatives set out to micromanage what children learn in public schools, yet evince not a lick of remorse or regret about the fact that children are being slaughtered there with military-strength firepower they want readily accessible throughout the nation. That alleged hypocrisy, however, is readily explained by larger and more chilling trends in conservative policymaking.

It’s not simply that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Rep. Thomas Massie and Sen. Marsha Blackburn and Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee and Rep. Andy Ogles all love their guns more than they love other people’s schoolkids (although that is abundantly clear). It’s not merely that in America, being in the pocket of the NRA and gun manufacturers remains a more vital political imperative for many elected officials than the health and safety of their constituents. (Also true). It’s not even the fact that empty “thoughts and prayers” has become such a necessary and sufficient political response to mass carnage that it is now teeming with meaning. No, the real reason conservatives can comfortably reconcile dead schoolkids with book bans is far more frightening.

It starts with the fact that these lawmakers don’t actually believe in public education in the first place. As my colleague Molly Olmstead has pointed out, when Rep. Tim Burchett was asked after the shooting how Congress ought to respond to the American carnage, he said both quiet parts out loud: “It’s a horrible, horrible situation,” the Tennessee Republican said. “And we’re not gonna fix it.” Then, when asked what could be done to protect his own little girl, he added, with a fatalistic shrug, “Well, we home-school her.” (Burchett generously acknowledged that “some people don’t have that option.”) Crucially, Burchett is not alone. As Olmstead reminds us, there is an “increasingly powerful force in American politics that is pushing home-schooling as the cure to any and all school problems: the parental rights movement.” Meanwhile, “government schools,” as they were rebranded in an op-ed in the Federalist after the Uvalde shooting last year, are not to be trusted by that same parental rights movement. As articulated in that same Federalist piece: “The same institutions that punish students for ‘misgendering’ people and hide curriculum from parents are simply not equipped to safeguard your children from harm.” You see, to the right-wing movement, it’s the schools that have failed across the board, and not the politicians. By these lights, for an elected official it makes perfect sense to both ban books ostensibly encouraging “critical race theory” in classroom pedagogy and also do nothing about the fact that your children might be shot dead in their classrooms: Both are arguments against the continued existence of public schools.

But there’s another more pernicious layer, beyond just a long game to end public education and push families toward home-schooling and religious charter schools. This further wrinkle is deeply connected to the war on women and girls that is now playing out grimly and purposefully around the country. The aims are actually the same when tween girls in Florida can be barred from mentioning their periods while also being abandoned to the whims of a mass shooter: that is to ultimately return women and girls to what the Christian nationalist movement views as their rightful place, the home. Hence the proposed laws that teachers should use pronouns that correspond with a student’s gender assigned at birth, bans on abortion and birth control, bans on sex education, and the absence of any safety nets for when those children are born, all of which will inexorably result in more young women finding themselves pregnant, poor, and consigned to taking care of babies. This, too, was always the long game. As Tressie McMillan Cottom tweeted this week in response to Burchett’s home-schooling comment: “In case you haven’t completely guessed the Republican game, their school shooting solution is women. At home. In the private sphere. And charters but mostly women at home. It’s all reproductive justice.” The more you think about the response of social conservatives to mass shootings in school, the more you come to realize that the creeping vibe here is that young women of childbearing age don’t really belong in public schools in the first place, and that to the extent that they are there, they’re only really welcome until it’s time to be re-confined to the home.

The third aspect of the social conservatives’ education agenda is the most frightening of all. It’s not simply to ensure that public education is a poor and diminished alternative to home-schooling and religious schools. It’s not just to message that girls should stay home. It is to incorporate the right’s wider embrace of vigilantism directly into every aspect of American life, especially schools.

To the extent that DeSantis’ school agenda in Florida stands for anything, it’s clearly connected to the Texas-style S.B. 8 bounty system allowing vigilante punishment of those deemed by a jury to be abortion helpers. In the DeSantis version, any one parent is empowered to adjudicate, enforce, and punish forms of public education they do not approve.

Examples of this new parental vigilantism abound. For instance, earlier this month, a lone parent in St. Petersburg, Florida, objected to a child’s exposure to a 1998 Disney film about Ruby Bridges, the 6-year-old girl who was the first Black child to integrate a New Orleans elementary in 1960, and so the film was not shown to the entire classroom. Or, in another case brought to national attention by Charles Blow at the New York Times, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye was banned from all district high schools at the whim of one objecting parent. (This was the same district where The Wonderful World of Disney: Ruby Bridges, featuring Chaz Monet and Kevin Pollak, was banned.) Or the principal forced to resign in Florida because three parents found their children’s exposure to Michelangelo’s statue of David threatening, because at least one of them deemed it “pornographic.” Once again, the memes wrote themselves, but claims of hypocrisy or irreconcilable motive actually obscure the larger trend. The parents who say their parental rights allow them to censor and even veto what every child learns in the classroom are the very same folks who make arguments about putting more guns into classrooms, into the hands of teachers, and indeed into the hands of children themselves. These arguments are not in tension with one another. They are perfectly consistent: Government cannot keep your children safe from inevitable “woke” ideologies, and “government schools” cannot keep your children safe from inevitable gun violence. If this is true, then only parent vigilantism is the cure. This is Kyle Rittenhouse in kindergarten, nothing more and nothing less.

It’s not in any way hypocrisy to suggest that as long as public education exists in America, any one parent, under color of “parental rights,” can demand that Toni Morrison never glances off the brain of any child in the room while also ensuring that a bullet may someday lodge in their brain. The solution in both cases is to buy and use more guns, with a side of prayer, as what once passed for concern for the vulnerable is replaced by ever more subjective—and ever more violent—self-help.

The GOP Embraces the Kyle Rittenhouse Approach to Kindergarten

[happyhoix]

Mar 31, 2023 18:30:42 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

The GOP Embraces the Kyle Rittenhouse Approach to Kindergarten

In the futile and hopeless hours of familiar gridlock after the most recent mass shooting in Nashville, the social media meme war that serves as proxy for our political process launched again into overdrive. Some themes were familiar: Republicans love guns more than they love children; the party that purports to revere life seems unwilling to do anything to stop mass murder. But there was a newer, bitter twist to many of the posts, connecting the GOP’s 2023 war on books, education, sexuality, and teachers to its unwillingness to protect children in schools.

These complaints were doubly poignant, noting, as they did, that Republicans seem to believe that public school teachers who can’t be trusted to curate classroom libraries are fit to be armed with guns. Others commented that no child has yet died from reading a book about Rosa Parks, and yet the GOP maintains that the problem of mass school shootings is unfixable. The central thread was that Republicans are prepared to intervene in every last aspect of public education—from book bans to curriculum laws to surveillance of educators—but will never lift a finger to prevent or decrease mass murder of small children in places that are meant to keep their bodies safe, above all things.

The flaw in these arguments is that they assume there is hypocrisy at work when social conservatives set out to micromanage what children learn in public schools, yet evince not a lick of remorse or regret about the fact that children are being slaughtered there with military-strength firepower they want readily accessible throughout the nation. That alleged hypocrisy, however, is readily explained by larger and more chilling trends in conservative policymaking.

It’s not simply that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Rep. Thomas Massie and Sen. Marsha Blackburn and Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee and Rep. Andy Ogles all love their guns more than they love other people’s schoolkids (although that is abundantly clear). It’s not merely that in America, being in the pocket of the NRA and gun manufacturers remains a more vital political imperative for many elected officials than the health and safety of their constituents. (Also true). It’s not even the fact that empty “thoughts and prayers” has become such a necessary and sufficient political response to mass carnage that it is now teeming with meaning. No, the real reason conservatives can comfortably reconcile dead schoolkids with book bans is far more frightening.

It starts with the fact that these lawmakers don’t actually believe in public education in the first place. As my colleague Molly Olmstead has pointed out, when Rep. Tim Burchett was asked after the shooting how Congress ought to respond to the American carnage, he said both quiet parts out loud: “It’s a horrible, horrible situation,” the Tennessee Republican said. “And we’re not gonna fix it.” Then, when asked what could be done to protect his own little girl, he added, with a fatalistic shrug, “Well, we home-school her.” (Burchett generously acknowledged that “some people don’t have that option.”) Crucially, Burchett is not alone. As Olmstead reminds us, there is an “increasingly powerful force in American politics that is pushing home-schooling as the cure to any and all school problems: the parental rights movement.” Meanwhile, “government schools,” as they were rebranded in an op-ed in the Federalist after the Uvalde shooting last year, are not to be trusted by that same parental rights movement. As articulated in that same Federalist piece: “The same institutions that punish students for ‘misgendering’ people and hide curriculum from parents are simply not equipped to safeguard your children from harm.” You see, to the right-wing movement, it’s the schools that have failed across the board, and not the politicians. By these lights, for an elected official it makes perfect sense to both ban books ostensibly encouraging “critical race theory” in classroom pedagogy and also do nothing about the fact that your children might be shot dead in their classrooms: Both are arguments against the continued existence of public schools.

But there’s another more pernicious layer, beyond just a long game to end public education and push families toward home-schooling and religious charter schools. This further wrinkle is deeply connected to the war on women and girls that is now playing out grimly and purposefully around the country. The aims are actually the same when tween girls in Florida can be barred from mentioning their periods while also being abandoned to the whims of a mass shooter: that is to ultimately return women and girls to what the Christian nationalist movement views as their rightful place, the home. Hence the proposed laws that teachers should use pronouns that correspond with a student’s gender assigned at birth, bans on abortion and birth control, bans on sex education, and the absence of any safety nets for when those children are born, all of which will inexorably result in more young women finding themselves pregnant, poor, and consigned to taking care of babies. This, too, was always the long game. As Tressie McMillan Cottom tweeted this week in response to Burchett’s home-schooling comment: “In case you haven’t completely guessed the Republican game, their school shooting solution is women. At home. In the private sphere. And charters but mostly women at home. It’s all reproductive justice.” The more you think about the response of social conservatives to mass shootings in school, the more you come to realize that the creeping vibe here is that young women of childbearing age don’t really belong in public schools in the first place, and that to the extent that they are there, they’re only really welcome until it’s time to be re-confined to the home.

The third aspect of the social conservatives’ education agenda is the most frightening of all. It’s not simply to ensure that public education is a poor and diminished alternative to home-schooling and religious schools. It’s not just to message that girls should stay home. It is to incorporate the right’s wider embrace of vigilantism directly into every aspect of American life, especially schools.

To the extent that DeSantis’ school agenda in Florida stands for anything, it’s clearly connected to the Texas-style S.B. 8 bounty system allowing vigilante punishment of those deemed by a jury to be abortion helpers. In the DeSantis version, any one parent is empowered to adjudicate, enforce, and punish forms of public education they do not approve.

Examples of this new parental vigilantism abound. For instance, earlier this month, a lone parent in St. Petersburg, Florida, objected to a child’s exposure to a 1998 Disney film about Ruby Bridges, the 6-year-old girl who was the first Black child to integrate a New Orleans elementary in 1960, and so the film was not shown to the entire classroom. Or, in another case brought to national attention by Charles Blow at the New York Times, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye was banned from all district high schools at the whim of one objecting parent. (This was the same district where The Wonderful World of Disney: Ruby Bridges, featuring Chaz Monet and Kevin Pollak, was banned.) Or the principal forced to resign in Florida because three parents found their children’s exposure to Michelangelo’s statue of David threatening, because at least one of them deemed it “pornographic.” Once again, the memes wrote themselves, but claims of hypocrisy or irreconcilable motive actually obscure the larger trend. The parents who say their parental rights allow them to censor and even veto what every child learns in the classroom are the very same folks who make arguments about putting more guns into classrooms, into the hands of teachers, and indeed into the hands of children themselves. These arguments are not in tension with one another. They are perfectly consistent: Government cannot keep your children safe from inevitable “woke” ideologies, and “government schools” cannot keep your children safe from inevitable gun violence. If this is true, then only parent vigilantism is the cure. This is Kyle Rittenhouse in kindergarten, nothing more and nothing less.

It’s not in any way hypocrisy to suggest that as long as public education exists in America, any one parent, under color of “parental rights,” can demand that Toni Morrison never glances off the brain of any child in the room while also ensuring that a bullet may someday lodge in their brain. The solution in both cases is to buy and use more guns, with a side of prayer, as what once passed for concern for the vulnerable is replaced by ever more subjective—and ever more violent—self-help.

The GOP Embraces the Kyle Rittenhouse Approach to Kindergarten

For the life of me I can’t figure out the objection to Ruby Bridges. 

I guess it goes back to the ‘we never had slaves, we had servants that were well loved members of the family, and were happy, singing negro spirituals in the fields all day as they cheerfully worked’ bullshit some people try to pass off as ‘history.’ 

No one living today remembers how it actually was, so we can pretend how we wish it was and dare anyone to say otherwise. 

[djAdvocate]

the anti-awareness campaign continues unabated.