#dont you think its a little counterproductive to talk about antis this much

[scarycranegame]

the real profiction struggle is seeing 7 posts in a row on your feed that are all saying the exact same goddamn thing

[thoughts-and-gayers]

ive been thinking about civil rights recently, specifically trans rights, as thats a marginalized group im a part of thats actively being hurt. i see people talking about the awful things done to trans people, the hate speech, the bills signed into law that make it dangerous for us to even exist. its terrifying to me, to think that im going to be leaving high school and entering a world that actively wants to kill me.

i just watched jessie gender's multi-hour video on jk rowling, and it articulated so many of my thoughts about transness in our. current society that i had no idea how to say. one thing she emphasized was how talking about these specific people, these little one-off incidents, is counterproductive. obviously things like hogwarts legacy and "what is a woman" matter, but should we really be talking about them as much as we are when anti-trans bills are passed faster than we can keep track of?

the way our society is right now, short and snappy thoughts about those tiny 24 hour stories are the only thing that gets attention. when you talk about trans rights, youre saying "dont support harry potter", youre not saying "stop the us government from actively hurting trans people".

but people dont listen when you talk about the big stuff. talking about the latest drama is much more entertaining than talking about the actual horrors that people are facing. we're at a point where we can call pointing and laughing at bigots a form of activism.

its so much easier not to learn about the deeper issues. for non-marginalized folk especially, supporting the marginalized celebrity is a lot easier than addressing systematic issues. but we dont get that privilege. we have to go to bat for the big shit, with or without allies. we dont get the luxury, the privilege, of not taking the time to understand and address bigotry and its sources.

im so tired. its exhausting even just learning about everything thats happening. and im not out of high school yet, so theres not a lot i can actually do out there. im trying to learn everything i can about everything thats happening, and its just so exhausting, all the time. on top of that, i also spend my energy on educating other people, trying to get them to understand what's taken me hours of work to get to myself.

and as a white person, i cant even imagine how much harder it must be for POC, especially when they exist at intersections of queerness, womanhood, disability, and/or more. im trying my best to learn about specific struggles that don't necessarily apply to me, but theres so much that a lot of the time i dont even know where to start.

cis, straight, male, white, abled, allo; people who fall under these dont have an obligation to learn about any marginalized group theyre not a part of, especially if theyre not a part of any of them. but they can still go online and say "fuck celebrity x" and get lauded as the pinnacle of allyship. they can make short, snappy, performative displays of their helpfulness without putting in any of the work to actually help. they have the privilege to do so. i as a white person have the privilege to do so, even if i try not to.

im so scared to go out into the world after i graduate and face all these inequalities, to try and deal with the horrors that high school and the internet have only been a small taste of. the most i can do is learn as much as i can before then, but i lose the motivation to every day when theres so little i can do to help; when the people who can help choose to do nothing anyway.

and this post, the closest thing my hungover ass can get to an in-depth analysis, likely wont get any attention at all. its not short, its not snappy, its not entertaining. its just a teenage nonbinary lesbian ranting about existential dread for way longer than he probably should have. and no, this isnt me begging for a reblog otherwise youre a bad person. saying stuff like that doesnt help anyway, since people would just snuff it out of spite instead of looking at the overall message. its just the way things are, not just here but everywhere.

im just so scared, and tired, and sad, and angry, all the fucking time.

[somnilogical]

<<Over the past year, however, Google has appeared to clamp down. It has gradually scaled back opportunities for employees to grill their bosses and imposed a set of workplace guidelines that forbid “a raging debate over politics or the latest news story.” It has tried to prevent workers from discussing their labor rights with outsiders at a Google facility and even hired a consulting firm that specializes in blocking unions. Then, in November, came the firing of the four activists. The escalation sent tremors through the Google campus in Mountain View, Calif., and its offices in cities like New York and Seattle, prompting many employees — whether or not they had openly supported the activists — to wonder if the company’s culture of friendly debate was now gone for good.

(A Google spokeswoman would not confirm the names of the people fired on Nov. 25. “We dismissed four individuals who were engaged in intentional and often repeated violations of our longstanding data-security policies,” the spokeswoman said. “No one has been dismissed for raising concerns or debating the company’s activities.” Without naming Berland, Google disputed that investigators pressured him.)>>

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/02/18/magazine/google-revolt.html

<<“Of the five people that were fired, three of us are trans women,” Spiers said. “That is either an unbelievable coincidence or Google is targeting the most vulnerable.”

“Trans Googlers make up a very small percentage of Googlers,” she added. “They make up a slightly larger percentage of organizers, but not 60%.”>>

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/17/fifth-google-worker-activist-fired-in-a-month-says-company-is-targeting-the-vulnerable

i too am transfem and would "violate longstanding data-security policies" if my organization were being unjust. i wouldnt say that unless it were already obvious by what bits ive leaked to people about my life, because otherwise i could suppress this information and whistleblow more.

if you were an evil corp at this point youd probably try to avoid hiring any trans women in the first place because given this happens to you, its likely done by a transfem. not that this saved CFAR, who never hired a trans woman, from having a bunch of transfems whistleblow on them despite not being employees.

from what ive read from transfem google employees who are or were involved in activism, the degredation of google's culture. their complicity with ICE and weapons manufacturing mirrors CFAR's with OpenAI and DeepMind; authoritarianism and expulsion of transfems who object to this among a myriad of wrongs. to protect the territory of injustice and complicity with organizations like ICE, google needs to import "a consulting firm that specializes in blocking unions", CFAR needs to violate their whistleblower policy. if you once protect injustice, justice is ever after your enemy. morality isnt some modular thing such that you can be comitted to protecting injustice and not have this choice spiral into also invoking and protecting systems that protect injustice and invoking further things to protect those, recursively. all the way down to doing really dumb and obvious unjust things like transmisogyny (lots of future posts), changing your fundraiser after its clear its losing money, announcing that this year you got way below your donation target and claim to have no idea why.

well *i* know the compact generator for all of these things, and that makes me strong. unlike MIRI/CFAR who like the CDC rely on gaslighting the populace for myopic gains. i also wore a particle mask during the time that the CDC claimed that they were useless to preventing spread of disease, so it was really important to give them to doctors and nurses.

after so much gaslighting, *i* have built up general capabilities at arbitraging the difference between what agents claim and the truth. people who say:

<<Edit: This is a type of post that should have been vetted with someone for infohazards and harms before being posted, and (Further edit) I think it should have been removed by the authors., though censorship is obviously counterproductive at this point.

Infohazards are a real thing, as is the Unilateralists’s curse. (Edit to add: No, infohazards and unilateralist’s curse are not about existential or global catastrophic risk. Read the papers.) And right now, overall, reduced trust in CDC will almost certainly kill people. Yes, their currently political leadership is crappy, and blameworthy for a number of bad decisions—but it doesn’t change the fact that undermining them now is a very bad idea.

Yes, the CDC has screwed up many times, but publicly blaming them for things that were non-obvious (like failing to delay sending out lab kits for further testing,) or that they screwed up, and everyone paying attention including them now realizes they got wrong (like being slow to allow outside testing,) in the middle of a pandemic seems like exactly the kind of consequence-blind action that lesswrongers should know better than to engage in.

Disclaimer: I know lots of people at CDC, including some in infectious diseases, and have friends there. They are human, and get things wrong under pressure—and perhaps there are people who would do better, but that’s not the question at hand.>>

https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/h4vWsBBjASgiQ2pn6/credibility-of-the-cdc-on-sars-cov-2/comment/uDYbgf3QtEQirbsJk

havent. its easy to see how peoples minds are warped when its someone elses glowy thing, when its someone elses friends working for an institution that that someone else routed their hopes through.

its easier to recognize betrayal and see knowledge beyond the veil when its happening to someone else, instead of you.

until you build up general skills for recognizing it, this sort of betrayal isnt infinitely powerful. and like how you might expect that smart people who live for predation would do anti-inductive smart predatory things, but they end up converging on child sex rings; institutions that betray you, because justice is their enemy will start doing dumb unjust things like banning two people from speaking about their irl experiences with anna salamon, saying their first-hand accounts werent evidence and then citing anna salamon's first-hand account of the meeting as evidence. when i objected that this was a fucked up self-serving ontology of "evidence" they acted like i was objecting to "beliefs flow from evidence" and they acted as if what i was saying was obscure and beyond their ability to comprehend. their "incomprehension" was fake, downstream of a fear to dynamically compute things in front of other people that might end up outside the orthodoxy. the result of which is they display a blue screen of death and say “i just dont understand and aaa dont explain this to me!!!”. and then people agree that it "seems like it could be an infohazard" because when your goal is the preservation of the matrix, everything that tears it down looks like hazardous information.

or a cfar employee, in response to claims that anna's transmisogyny influences CFAR's hiring choices, claiming that anna salamon, head of CFAR, is not involved in CFAR's hiring. until i post proof from another CFAR employee pursuing personal vengeance against the org for hiring their rapist where its tangentially mentioned and they suddenly "realize" that anna salamon, head of CFAR, is involved in CFAR's hiring process.

or a thousand other injustices that have burned themselves into my brain during my months of talking with people under the assumption that they were simply mistaken in their path to saving the world. when they were actually un-mistaken in their path to having babies and a low chance of personal death. hoping and expecting someone else will take heroic responsibility for the planet.

like when you drill down to the base of injustice, it bottoms out in dumb and petty injustice. like the structure doesnt go infinitely high and complex, if you go down to the base level, you just need a bit of courage to not flinch away from what you see even if it seems that it means the ruin of something you ran your hopes and dreams through.

--

"isnt this a little... extreme?" i hear some people ask. ""dont protect regions of injustice?" that sounds like the end product of obsessive compulsive fixation on virtue at the expense of practicality."

well, assuming the algorithm seeding this response is a systemic reasoning tool, it should forkbomb when you consider if youd output ""dont protect regions of untruth?" that sounds like the end product of obsessive compulsive fixation on virtue at the expense of practicality." in response to eliezers essay. the principle behind both is the same such that if you hold by one you should hold by the other.

all of these things have parallels. if you want to see what is happening with MIRI/CFAR, theres a lot of mutual information with whats happening with Google.

[jellyfishdooter]

LISTEN

I HAVE VERY LOW IMPULSE CONTROL

In spite of the current community fire I give you this Rise of the Guardians AU

Character explanations/ mini story under the cut

So after watching Rise of the Guardians (one of my fav animated movies) I got the idea for an AU where the egos are like the Guardians of the JSE community.

Their designs are based off/ inspired by the characters in the movie but instead of just drawing the egos as those characters, I more so let them inspire re-creations of their outfits/ powers

Chase: Jack Frost- Guardian of Family

In the beginning he doesn’t see himself as a guardian. He’s a screw up, a washout. But even through his depression he tries to make others happy before himself. He does this by having fun and trying to get those in the community to join in with him! It’s later on that he realizes he has a part to play and that his is making sure everyone is still together as one big community. He’s here to remind us that in troubling times that we all have each other- that we’re all family.

JBM: Santa- Guardian of Hope

Being the super hero of the group, it’s JBM’s job to protect the innocent and give off the appearance of being something people can depend upon- someone who can protect everyone from danger. He helps the community become strong and makes them laugh along the way (even if he has to make a fool of himself to do it, he loves our smiles)- he gives them hope.

Marvin: Tooth Fairy- Guardian of Creativity (Sams: small Tooth Fairies)

Much like tooth fairy in the movie, it’s Marvin’s job to collect fanart/ fanworks and store them so when the community forgets all that they have built together, he shows them. Not only that, he inspires the content creators and represents their passion for their art. And it’s what he protects. (Along with the help of the little Sams who are the ones who actually collects and re-distributes it so everyone can see what they’ve made.)

Jameson: Sandman- Guardian of Positivity

Arguably one of the most important guardians of the community, JJ is there to remind people the importance of PMA. In his own quiet ways, he encourages the members to think on the bright side- or is just there to give hugs and be there for them. Whenever someone is in such a dark place, he uses his powers to show them that they still have so much potential and that they’re not alone. He give them a light in a dark place to hold onto. (Yes, he uses sign language AND the sand symbols for those who don’t understand sign)

Schneep: Bunny- Guardian of Health

Being the good doctor of the group, he’s there to remind the community to take care of themselves. Yes he may be a lil aggressive in the way he gives out advice, but for a lot of people they need their butts a little kicks to get them moving to help themselves. But not only physical health, he’s also willing to sit down and talk about mental health and analyze what the problem is/ works to help you understand how to improve yourself.

Anti: The Boogieman- “Guardian” of Fear and Chaos

And last but not least, our dear little firestarter. For so LONG he’s waited, waited to be in the spotlight. Before the other egos show up it was just him and it was delicious. He had so much power as he fed off of our fears, insecurities, and of course the headcanons and theories we made about him. But then Jack HAD to make more egos and fill the community with positivity and light. So he sunk back and waited for his opportunity- he waited for his powers to grow strong in the background. And with all of the hints being dropped and community fueling the fire in a continuous positive feedback loop, he gains more and more strength every day. He reminds the community not everything is peachy and rosy. That there are awful things in the world and how you’re just a tiny ripple in a storming ocean. Insignificant. He doesn’t want to stamp out the community- that would be counterproductive. No he just wants them to feel fear for the channel- that nothing is safe anymore- at any turn he could be there. And with that everything always comes back to him.

And sooner or later, the others will fade away...

Extra Headcanons/ Tidbits:

Before they were all guardians they were other people. (TW: death and suicide mentions) -Anti was a reckless criminal and one night his “friends” betrayed him, leaving him behind which wound up being the end of him. They were running from the police and were trying to jump a tall fence when his comrades left the struggling man behind to take the fall. He did in more ways than one. -JBM was just a regular dude, but he sacrificed himself to save a kid getting hit by a bus in the city. Even though he was about to die he kept asking if the kid was okay. The medics told him he saved them and that’s all he needed to hear. -Marvin was a street magician in his time. He did tricks to cheer up people sitting on the sidewalk/ sitting alone and talked to them about their passions. Later the same people would come back and tell him about the new job they got or the current project they were working on. He pulled a teen off the side of a bridge and a local cop mistook it for him attacking her and.. well.. things escalated quickly -Henrik was an upstanding surgeon. He saved lives every day in his career. Even though his wife and child left him, he worked every day to become a better doctor and continued to save people. And after the surgeries he would personally counsel the patients to make sure they were okay physically and mentally. But one day.. they didn’t have a matching organ for the patient on standby.. and he knew he matched the credentials. -Jameson was a small movie star in his time. And when he wasn’t filming he went down in quiet to lift the spirits of homeless children and teens. He would put on small performances and then go around to each of them and comfort them if they said it was okay. He made sure by the end of his visit they were all in high spirit. But one day the filming studio caught fire. The smoke damaged his lungs so he couldn’t call out before the building collapsed. -And Chase... He had a loving wife and two kids who he cared for with his life. He vowed to himself to protect them, even though his wife turned into a bitch as the years went on. One night they were walking home from a day at the amusement park and Chase got jumped with his kids nearby. The criminal threatened to kill the kids if Chase didn’t comply. So to protect them, he did as the criminal said, handing over his wallet and watch and phone. And when the criminal was about to kill one of them anyway, instinct took over and Chase knocked the man down and knocked him out- but when he fell the gun went off

The lights on the globe are the septiclights, each one representing a person in the community

Instead of holidays, the guardians help in the background of charity livestreams and videos to give them that little extra spark.

Sean is the equivalent of the Man in the Moon

The extra fan-made egos (like Robbie, Shawn, Angus, and Bing) are still around, they just aren’t the big guardians.

If they were tho... Robbie- Guardian of Innocence, Shawn- Guardian of Voice, Angus- Guardian of... idk, Protection? Or maybe head cannons lol, Bing- Guardian of Online Connections

When too much of the community becomes afraid/ depressed, the guardian’s form changes (like in the movie) before they disappear -JBM: Becomes weaker, probably needs his glasses to see again, basically turned into a comicbook nerd -Marvin: Loses a lot of his color, magic goes away, turns into a cat? -Henrik: Hands continuously shake, gains a stutter so people can hardly understand him, becomes super paranoid/ closed off -JJ: His colors fade to black and white, it’s really hard to summon his powers, always about to cry/ wants to scream -Chase: Goes into a low state of depression, isolates himself a lot -Anti: His bravado diminishes- basically turns into an edgy teen with spasms instead of actual glitches, wound on his neck closes.

Like in the movie there’s a point where Anti takes over (like right now) and everyone’s powers start to fade

To make this angsty(er) he manages to kill JJ and he disappears, along with the light of positivity in the community.

Chase blames himself for not being fast enough to save him

To turn thing around Henrik suggests a charity livestream to promote a mental health organization. So they all work together to prep

A young community member somehow gets into Henrik’s realm

Memes and shenanigans ensue

“We spend all our time trying to protect the community, we don’t HAVE TIME-... for the community..?”

Chase runs off after young familiar voices calling out for their daddy

Chase ends up in Anti’s realm of fear(the opening is in the woods under an abandoned computer desk). It’s a series of twisted hallways bathed in red light and entire walls of glitching computer screens that cast weird shadows

When Chase gets out he realizes all the equipment is destroyed and he wasn’t there to help

Henrik blames Chase and sad dad runs off.

The community is plunged into a state of fire and fear and there’s no positivity anywhere to be found.

Except one last light...

A fan is talking to a Sam plushie, saying that yeah they understand why the stream COULD have been cancelled.. but everything in their life is just so dark they were really looking forward to it.

Chase finds them and uses his powers to make images of septic lights and funny moments in Jack’s videos

They realize it’s Chase who’s doing it and can see him

All the egos fight Anti with the help of a few community members beside them- giving them power to fight back.

The members bring back JJ

JJ kicks the ever living shit out of Anti with the help of the others beside him Okay I think I’ll stop here XD If you read all this... wowie!

[uniteordie-usa]

It’s Time to Rethink Education – Part 1 (Indoctrination)

http://uniteordie-usa.com/its-time-to-rethink-education-part-1-indoctrination/ http://uniteordie-usa.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/We-dont-need-no-education-pink-floyd-the-wall.jpg It’s Time to Rethink Education – Part 1 (Indoctrination) Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned. – Mark Twain As a father of two young children, my thoughts have increasingly started to center around their young lives and the future world they’ll inhabit. Such considerations quickly lead to stressful questions such as, what are the best s...

Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned. – Mark Twain

As a father of two young children, my thoughts have increasingly started to center around their young lives and the future world they’ll inhabit. Such considerations quickly lead to stressful questions such as, what are the best schools in the area? Which option can provide the best environment in which to thrive? If the best options aren’t public, can we afford them? Is it worth the money? All these questions and more have filled the minds of my wife and I over the past couple of years, but lately we’ve started to ask even bigger questions; such as whether the compulsory education system as it exists in the U.S. in 2017 makes any sense in the first place. I’m increasingly starting to conclude that it doesn’t.

Before I get into that, let’s take a step back. A lot of what I do here at Liberty Blitzkrieg is highlight what’s perverse and destructive about human behavior at this time, and how things can be made dramatically better in the future. If I had to summarize my worldview concisely, I’d state that human beings at the moment are living under highly centralized, hierarchical power structures which are gamed by unethical, greedy and corrupt people at the top who exploit the masses ruthlessly.

Since the worst of humanity will always work hardest and most violently to attain power (this will always be the case), the only way to achieve lasting, positive change is to systemically move to a different model for human activity. Trying to get decent people at the top of a highly centralized power structure is counterproductive and merely a short-term solution if it can even be achieved in the first place. What we need to do is tear down and reduce centralized power as much as possible in the first place. If power becomes distributed far more widely across the planet, the ability for mass control and consolidation becomes much more difficult, if not impossible.

The most significant theme of the next hundred years (at least) will be a dramatic shift toward decentralized networks in nearly all aspects of human affairs. We’ve already seen its profound impact in a dramatic decentralization of information/media content creation and distribution, and we’re starting to see its impact when it comes to currency/monetary systems. Without the arrival and viral adoption of the internet, none of this would’ve been possible. More importantly, only 50% of the planet is currently online and massive social media networks have only been going for a decade or so. If we assume the internet isn’t going anywhere, we’re only in the very, very beginning stages of how it’ll ultimately shape human affairs.

As I noted in the recent post, Bitcoin, Terence McKenna and the Future of the Internet:

I remain in awe of the implications of people across the world easily talking to one another in real time and forming global networks. We’ve become so accustomed to social media at this point many of us already take for granted how extraordinary and revolutionary it really is. Nothing like this has ever happened before in human history, and it’s hard for me not to be extremely optimistic about its impact on life here on earth over a longer time horizon.

One of the most remarkable things about humans across the world talking to one another, is it becomes increasingly difficult to manipulate distinct populations into hating each other and rallying around wars that only benefit elite sociopaths in the first place.

As things stand now, people from all over the planet are examining the way the world functions and coming to the conclusion that it’s completely insane and anti-human. We live in a world where we’re told to be slaves to authority and expert judgement, despite the fact that such figures are consistently and spectacularly wrong, with their proclamations often leading to massive levels of death, destruction and economic collapse all over the world. To summarize, the world as it’s currently organized is transparently insane and cannot stand up to even the slightly degree of scrutiny. As more and more people wake up to this reality, the world will change in unimaginable ways. The earth as it stands today will be unrecognizable in 25 years.

Although I’ve discussed what this means when it comes to governing institutions and monetary systems frequently this year, one area that I’ve only begun to explore is education. As our kids creep toward the age where most children enter the school system, my wife and I have started to examine what this system looks like, and if it’s as insane as everything else about the world today. The answer seems to be, yes.

Earlier this year, I came across a 1990 speech given by famed teacher and author, John Taylor Gatto, and it completely and totally blew my mind. I highlight a few excerpts below, but cannot stress enough how important it is to read the entire thing. It’s one of the most powerful pieces of information I’ve ever shared.

Enjoy:

Our school crisis is a reflection of this greater social crisis. We seem to have lost our identity. Children and old people are penned up and locked away from the business of the world to a degree without precedent – nobody talks to them anymore and without children and old people mixing in daily life a community has no future and no past, only a continuous present. In fact, the name “community” hardly applies to the way we interact with each other. We live in networks, not communities, and everyone I know is lonely because of that. In some strange way school is a major actor in this tragedy just as it is a major actor in the widening guilt among social classes. Using school as a sorting mechanism we appear to be on the way to creating a caste system, complete with untouchables who wander through subway trains begging and sleep on the streets.

I’ve noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my twenty-five years of teaching – that schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions. Although teachers do care and do work very hard, the institution is psychopathic – it has no conscience. It rings a bell and the young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and move to different cell where he must memorize that man and monkeys derive from a common ancestor.

Our form of compulsory schooling is an invention of the state of Massachusetts around 1850. It was resisted – sometimes with guns – by an estimated eighty per cent of the Massachusetts population, the last outpost in Barnstable on Cape Cod not surrendering its children until the 1880’s when the area was seized by militia and children marched to school under guard…

Here is another curiosity to think about. The homeschooling movement has quietly grown to a size where one and a half million young people are being educated entirely by their own parents. Last month the education press reported the amazing news that children schooled at home seem to be five or even ten years ahead of their formally trained peers in their ability to think.

I don’t think we’ll get rid of schools anytime soon, certainly not in my lifetime, but if we’re going to change what is rapidly becoming a disaster of ignorance, we need to realize that the school institution “schools” very well, but it does not “educate” – that’s inherent in the design of the thing. It’s not the fault of bad teachers or too little money spent, it’s just impossible for education and schooling ever to be the same thing.

Schools were designed by Horace Mann and Barnard Sears and Harper of the University of Chicago and Thorndyke of Columbia Teachers College and some other men to be instruments of the scientific management of a mass population. Schools are intended to produce through the application of formulae, formulaic human beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled.

To a very great extent, schools succeed in doing this. But our society is disintegrating, and in such a society, the only successful people are self-reliant, confident, and individualistic – because the community life which protects the dependent and the weak is dead. The products of schooling are, as I’ve said, irrelevant. Well-schooled people are irrelevant. They can sell film and razor blades, push paper and talk on the telephones, or sit mindlessly before a flickering computer terminal but as human beings they are useless. Useless to others and useless to themselves…

It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to sit in confinement with people of exactly the same age and social class. That system effectively cuts you off from the immense diversity of life and the synergy of variety, indeed it cuts you off from your own past and future, scaling you to a continuous present much the same way television does…

I could name a few other conditions that school reform would have to tackle if our national decline is to be arrested, but by now you will have grasped my thesis, whether you agree with it or not. Either schools have caused these pathologies, or television, or both. It’s a simple matter [of] arithmetic, between schooling and television all the time the children have is eaten away. That’s what has destroyed the American family, it is no longer a factor in the education of its own children. Television and schooling, in those things the fault must lie.

What can be done? First we need a ferocious national debate that doesn’t quit, day after day, year after year. We need to scream and argue about this school thing until it is fixed or broken beyond repair, one or the other. If we can fix it, fine; if we cannot, then the success of homeschooling shows a different road to take that has great promise. Pouring the money we now pour into family education might kill two birds with one stone, repairing families as it repairs children.

Genuine reform is possible but it shouldn’t cost anything. We need to rethink the fundamental premises of schooling and decide what it is we want all children to learn and why. For 140 years this nation has tried to impose objectives downward from the lofty command center made up of “experts”, a central elite of social engineers. It hasn’t worked. It won’t work. And it is a gross betrayal of the democratic promise that once made this nation a noble experiment. The Russian attempt to create Plato’s republic in Eastern Europe has exploded before [our] eyes, our own attempt to impose the same sort of central orthodoxy using the schools as an instrument is also coming apart at the seams, albeit more slowly and painfully. It doesn’t work because its fundamental premises are mechanical, anti-human, and hostile to family life. Lives can be controlled by machine education but they will always fight back with weapons of social pathology – drugs, violence, self-destruction, indifference, and the symptoms I see in the children I teach…

Independent study, community service, adventures in experience, large doses of privacy and solitude, a thousand different apprenticeships, the one day variety or longer – these are all powerful, cheap and effective ways to start a real reform of schooling. But no large-scale reform is ever going to work to repair our damaged children and our damaged society until we force the idea of “school” open – to include family as the main engine of education. The Swedes realized that in 1976 when they effectively abandoned the system of adopting unwanted children and instead spent national time and treasure on reinforcing the original family so that children born to Swedes were wanted. They didn’t succeed completely but they did succeed in reducing the number of unwanted Swedish children from 6000 in l976 to 15 in 1986. So it can be done. The Swedes just got tired of paying for the social wreckage caused by children not raised by their natural parents so they did something about it. We can, too.

Family is the main engine of education. If we use schooling to break children away from parents – and make no mistake, that has been the central function of schools since John Cotton announced it as the purpose of the Bay Colony schools in 1650 and Horace Mann announced it as the purpose of Massachusetts schools in 1850 – we’re going to continue to have the horror show we have right now. The curriculum of family is at the heart of any good life, we’ve gotten away from that curriculum, time to return to it. The way to sanity in education is for our schools to take the lead in releasing the stranglehold of institutions on family life, to promote during school time confluences of parent and child that will strengthen family bonds. That was my real purpose in sending the girl and her mother down the Jersey coast to meet the police chief. I have many ideas to make a family curriculum and my guess is that a lot of you will have many ideas, too, once you begin to think about it. Our greatest problem in getting the kind of grass-roots thinking going that could reform schooling is that we have large vested interests pre-emptying all the air time and profiting from schooling just exactly as it is despite rhetoric to the contrary. We have to demand that new voices and new ideas get a hearing, my ideas and yours. We’ve all had a bellyful of authorized voices mediated by television and the press – a decade long free-for-all debate is what is called for now, not any more “expert” opinions. Experts in education have never been right, their “solutions” are expensive, self-serving, and always involve further centralization. Enough. Time for a return to democracy, individuality, and family. I’ve said my piece. Thank you.

This above excerpts are from a speech by John Taylor Gatto accepting the New York City Teacher of the Year Award on January 31, 1990. Please read the entire thing and share it with the following link: Why Schools Don’t Educate.

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The Unexpected Trump

While Donald Trump certainly had a momentous first full week on the job, none of it really should have been all that surprising. Plenty of people were downright outraged by his first actions as president, but few should have been as shocked as they seemed to be. Its finally sinking in, to put this slightly differently, that there simply will never be a pivot to some different, more presidential Trump. The Trump you see is the Trump you get.

The pivot theory was espoused by many (trapped inside their Beltway-centric thinking) at various points over the past two years. Trump would surely pivot when he began leading in the polls. Or winning primaries. Or during debates. Or surely after he won the nomination and had to run a general election campaign. Since the election, this theory should have been buried beyond all resuscitation, but even then there were those who kept pathetically insisting that as president-elect, hell surely now pivot or even after he is sworn in, hell have to act more presidential. Last week proved this is never going to happen, and those who are still hoping for it should now be looked at with loving pity, as you would an adult who insisted the Easter Bunny was real. Delusional, but largely harmless to others, in other words.

What worries me most about Trump (to get back on subject), though, is not what hes been doing last week, nor what hes got planned for this week. Because almost without exception Trump has only been doing what he said hed do while campaigning. While I certainly dont condone much (if anything) that Trump is now doing, Ive been expecting it ever since he got elected. His big signing ceremonies have been teed up for him for his first few weeks in office, so he can take care of the low-hanging fruit of his campaign promises. His executive orders and memoranda may not all ever take place (for instance: he can sign a piece of paper saying were going to immediately start building a wall, but until Congress provides money it wont happen), but he has already scored big political points with his base just by signing affirmations of what he promised them he would do as president. If it doesnt come to pass at a later date, he can just conveniently blame Congress, the courts, the media, or the swamp of Washington.

Trump said hed build a wall. He said hed ban Muslims and institute extreme vetting. He said hed crack down on sanctuary cities. He said hed restart the pipeline projects. He said hed withdraw from the T.P.P. trade agreement. He said hed dismantle Obamacare. On all of these items (and many others) Trump is merely doing exactly what he promised hed do. Hes trying to build up credibility with his base that his administration will be nothing but winning so endlessly that people would actually get tired of winning, as he told us all on the campaign trail.

So I havent exactly been surprised at his initial actions. This week (and possibly next week as well), I expect well have another slew of executive order signings and proclamations at least giving lip service to fulfilling his campaign promises. This is all what might be called the expected Trump. At this point, it wouldnt even surprise me if he ordered Rosie ODonnell sent to Gitmo to be waterboarded. Well, maybe thats a wee exaggeration, but what Im saying is that the expected Trump isnt what really scares me. Its the unexpected Trump that does.

No matter how long his initial agenda rollout period lasts (two weeks? three?), at some point the easy stuff will all be done. Trump will have checked off all the boxes on his list, at least in his own mind. You can picture him kicking back and telling himself: This presidenting thing is easy! But at some point, external events are going to intrude on his complacency. Thats when things could get truly frightening.

This could take a number of different forms, but the common thread would be something happening which Trump is completely unprepared to deal with. The most obvious might be titled the swamp fights back either the federal courts or Congress refuses to go along with some Trump policy. Were already seeing the beginnings of this on Trumps new Muslim ban, as federal judges issue stays on implementing the policy. When actual court rulings (instead of just stays) start to go against him, how will Trump react? Will he personally vilify the federal judges involved? Go on a Twitter rant? What happens if he starts losing key votes in Congress (which could only happen if a group of Republicans decided that Trump had gone too far)? Will Trump start attacking sitting Republican congressmen personally for their votes? The swamp of Washington is permanent (Washington, historically, was actually built on a swamp), and it has many ways of fighting back. Trump cant stand such challenges to his authority, so how he will react is a very large and open question.

The second form it could take is an unexpected domestic problem: some police shooting (either direction) in an inner city, a major economic downturn, continued massive anti-Trump demonstrations outside his window, some sovereign citizen showdown out West, whatever. Presidents can never see these things coming (for the most part) and are expected to react appropriately when they pop up. Will Trumps propensity for knee-jerk action lead him to do something wildly inappropriate (and wildly unpopular), when taking the time to get everyones counsel would have prevented such a ham-fisted mistake? Without knowing the details of the unexpected event, its impossible to predict exactly how Trump would react, but at this point its pretty easy to predict that he might make what would (to most people) be a regrettable decision in haste, without anyone around to talk him down from flying off the handle. The potential for escalation is the most worrisome aspect, though, because Trump doesnt regret much that he does and he has a propensity to double down no matter how untenable his position may be. This could cause a spiral of more and more out-of-control decisions in quick order, in an attempt to salvage the initial bad call.

Theres one danger that Trump will likely just brush off, if past is any prologue. If one of Trumps bright ideas backfires in spectacular fashion in some way (the possibilities are endless, really), Trump will not be taking any blame himself you can count on that. Hell explain the failure away as somebody elses failure, since he (by definition, in his own mind) cannot fail, at anything. So itll be inept federal workers who botched the implementation of his wondrous plan, itll be a cabinet secretary who has to fall on his or her sword, itll be Democrats (somehow) or even Barack Obamas fault, itll be those dastardly liberal judges, itll be any number of scapegoats who bear the blame rather than Donald Trump. So if reality ever proves his agenda items to be woefully misguided and counterproductive, it certainly wont be his fault that, at least, we can all count on him telling us.

However, the final danger is the most frightening (at least to me, personally). What happens when President Trump is faced with a dicey foreign policy crisis? This could be anything from getting in a war with (take your choice) Iran, China, North Korea, or Russia. Or it could just be the scenario that currently worries me the most. What would Trump do if one of his namesake properties worldwide were to be the target of a terrorist attack? This seems to be a pretty obvious danger, since Trumps name is emblazoned on golf courses, hotels, and any number of other projects worldwide. Some of these are going to start looking like pretty soft targets to terrorist groups, since a terrorist attack on some random hotel in a foreign capital might be a big propaganda victory for them but an attack on a Trump hotel would be orders of magnitude more impactful on the world stage.

If a Trump property is attacked, Donald Trump may take it very personally. Who wouldnt, with your name in big gold letters, out front? Will Trump react disproportionately if he feels himself personally under attack? Its hard to see any other reaction possible, really. Hell instantly claim that because Trump is president and the president represents the country, an attack on a Middle East golf course with his name on it is the equivalent of attacking a U.S. embassy. At this point, Trump could do just about anything in response. Which, as I said, is what worries me the most.

The expected Trump all the executive orders of the past week, his Supreme Court justice pick tomorrow, and all the upcoming rollout events of the next few weeks is bad enough. But weve had months and months to prepare ourselves for this part of his presidency, so little of it should have been all that surprising. What concerned me most about the Muslim ban rollout this weekend, though, is how it showed that Trump doesnt bother much with what members of his own administration think about things. The order was reportedly hastily implemented, without any time for feedback from important cabinet members or federal departments including those who were tasked with carrying the new policy out. Maybe it was just a rookie mistake, and maybe Trump will improve on this over time. But that sounds an awful lot like wishing for the pivot thats never going to take place. If the Trump administration can stumble this badly on a policy that theyve been preparing for quite some time, then the frightening thing to contemplate is what theyll do when a surprise crisis hits and there are only hours to react. The unexpected Trump could be a lot more dangerous than the expected Trump, thats for sure.

Chris Weigant blogs at:

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

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