A Dystopian Vision Of American Education

In the wake of the latest wave of politically-driven, mostly white, male supremacist terrorism that left at least 31 dead in El Paso and Dayton, Trump and the Republicans are scrambling to create a narrative that acquits them and their leadership of culpability and collusion in the bloody affair.

In the past few days, the GOP line has shifted blame away from Trump's demagogic violent appeals to his racist supporters, on to the mentally ill, video games, and "fake news".

That was exactly the imagery laid out in the El Paso shooter's "manifesto".

Their narrative portrays America as a holy battlefield in a war in defense of white, christian values and a future of Republican political power.

It now includes a dystopian vision of schools as armed camps with gun-toting teachers, cops and militia surrounding school buildings and waiting for the invading enemy of infidels to make their next move.

This represents a giant-step past their previous neoliberal vision of school "choice".

Their current line was best articulated by Trump adviser Sean Hannity yesterday. The Fox News host is calling for a volunteer army of armed ex-cops and soldiers that would be “everywhere.”

"I'd like to see the perimeter of every school in America surrounded, secured by retired police ... have one armed guard on every floor of every school, all over every mall, the perimeter and inside every hall of every mall."

“Every school,” Hannity said. “Secure the perimeter of those schools. Equip them with retired police and military, they should be on every floor of every school.”

There are close to 100,000 public and 35,000 private K-12 schools in the United States so a force large enough to “surround the perimeter” and be on each floor would require several hundred thousand people, if not more. -- Huffington Post

Aside from the fascist, police state implications, school safety and curricular issues involved in all this, Hannity's plan leaves me wondering how it matches up with veteran cops' view of their own retirement. 

I may be wrong, but I can't imagine that hundreds of thousands of veteran 1st-responders are dreaming about spending their golden years guarding the perimeters of schools and shopping malls for no pay, instead of fishing or hanging out with the grand kids. 

Deplorables are jumping for joy at the reports that the Dayton shooter wasn't a Trump-supporting white supremacist. But I don't see why they're so happy. Here's an early report on what motivated this 2nd-Amendment gun freak.

High school classmates of the gunman who killed nine people early Sunday in Dayton, Ohio, say he was suspended for compiling a "hit list" of those he wanted to kill and a "rape list" of girls he wanted to sexually assault. https://t.co/lEAGcCTOwW

— KTLA (@KTLA) August 5, 2019

Arm this guy with a military-style assault weapon? Great say Republicans.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

What Emma Gonzalez said without words.

Editorial

SPRING IS traditionally a time when schoolchildren come to the nation’s capital to learn about their government. But on Saturday it was the students — tens of thousands of them from all across the country — who did the schooling. --Washington Post

Republican pollster 

Jim Hobart, a Republican pollster, said the marches illustrated the enormous energy of the Democratic base and revealed generational changes in the electorate that Republicans will have to grapple with.

“As we have seen in special elections, Democratic enthusiasm is already very high and the gun issue just adds to that,” Mr. Hobart said, noting that students in his hometown Atlanta had traveled by bus for 10 hours to join the march in Washington. “These same students are much more likely to not just vote, but volunteer.”

Sen. Patty Murray (WA)

The top Senate Democrat for education, praised the Omnibus Bill as a "bipartisan agreement" to dismiss the "extreme ideas [from Betsy DeVos] to privatize our nation's public schools and dismantle the Department of Education". -- Washington Post

Political strategist, Joanna Klonsky

"There is a reckoning going on in Illinois, just like everywhere else. Many of the preconceived notions of the unshakeability of the power structures as it existed are breaking down. It's become top of mind for anyone who operates in politics right now. They know it's a ticking time bomb that can go off at any moment." -- The Hill

Cynthia Nixon

 “When I announced yesterday that I’m running for gov, one of Cuomo’s top surrogates dismissed me as an 'unqualified lesbian'. It’s true that I never received my certificate from the Department of Lesbian Affairs, though in my defense there’s a lot of paperwork required.” -- Twitter

Stormy Daniels

Trump told her: “Wow, you are special. You remind me of my daughter.” -- The Hill

Since Trump decided to get tough with China, the Dow has fallen about 1300 points

That’ll show 'em pic.twitter.com/17eMHkTzjH

— Daniel Lin (@danwlin) March 23, 2018

So glad to see all these black and brown kids given an opportunity to speak up too! Much respect to the Parkland students for using their privilege to give others space to speak and get some spotlight. #Hope #BlackLivesMatter  #MarchForOurLives  #VoteThemOut2018

— JJ Odelle (@JJOdelle) March 24, 2018

WEEKEND QUOTABLES 50 years ago, My Lai...

Journalist Seymour Hersh recounts the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam

Fifty years ago, on March 16, 1968, U.S. soldiers "went from house to house and killed and raped and mutilated, and that just went on until everybody was either run away or killed". -- Democracy Now

Ex-CIA chief John Brennan on Trump

“When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history." -- Guardian

J.B. Pritzker on putting $69.5 million into campaign 

“We simply are trying to make sure that we’re paying the bills in the campaign, and we’re very excited about the opportunity to simply get our message out.” -- Tribune

Vincent Warren, director of the Center for Constitutional Rights

Gina Haspel should be arrested, not promoted, and the Senate, if it has a single shred of respect left for the law, should not confirm her. -- Guardian

Gary Younge

The problem with Democrats looking on Donald Trump’s presidency as a slow-motion car crash is that it concedes they are spectators at a moment when they should be in the driving seat – and that, when we come to survey the wreckage, there will be many innocent victims. -- Guardian

Kate McKinnon doing Betsy DeVos

 Analyzing the merits of public schools and charter schools, McKinnon said: “I don’t like to think of things in terms of school. It should be up to the states. In Wyoming, for example, which has many potential grizzlies, there should be a school for bears. And in Louisiana, crocodile crossing guards. And in North Carolina, stop being trans, and that’s what’s best for them.” 

As for the school shooting issue, she added, “We are working hard to ensure that all schools are safe learning environments for guns.” -- SNL

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

 Father of a Stoneman Douglas shooting victim painting a mural in his son’s honor: abc7.ws/2tAsQPr

Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter, Jaime, was killed at Stoneman Douglas

“This time, the gun rights crowd messed with the wrong community, the wrong kids and the wrong dad...I have dedicated the rest of my life to fighting for the cause of gun safety.” -- Guardian

Betsy DeVos

 Lesley Stahl: Have you seen the really bad schools? Maybe try to figure out what they're doing?Betsy DeVos: I have not-- I have not-- I have not intentionally visited schools that are underperforming.Lesley Stahl: Maybe you should.Betsy DeVos: Maybe I should. Yes. -- CBS 60 Minutes

Jeff Biggers

As the son of a union teacher and the grandson of a union coal miner, I believe the West Virginia teachers have renewed a strategic call for other movements engaged in what we have called a “resistance” against the onslaught of policies decisions and regulatory rollbacks by the Trump administration. -- Guardian

Stable Genius on NBC's Chuck Todd

 “He’s a sleeping son of a bitch." -- At Penn rally

Megyn Kelly

“I would not say that Putin likes Trump,” she said. “I did not glean that at all from him. I did glean that perhaps he has something on Donald Trump." -- The Hill

Back from Parkland. A new student movement is born.

I'm back from Parkland where I got a chance to talk with some Marjory Stoneman Douglas students, parents and educators in the aftermath of another catastrophic mass school shooting.

Like most of the country, I shared grief with the mourners and cheered on the dozens of MSD students who boarded the buses to Tallahassee to offer their reasonable gun control proposals to the state legislature only to be ignored and insulted by state pols.

Florida happens to be the state most averse to gun control legislation with a majority of state legislators receiving big campaign donations from the NRA. In FL, for example, if municipal officials pass a firearms-related law, they must pay a $5,000 fine and lose their jobs. They can also be forced to pay up to $100,000 in damages to any “person or an organization whose membership is adversely affected by any ordinance” —such as, say, the NRA.

To show how deep the divide is, the old, white male Republicans who rule the state, after refusing to meet with Parkland students to consider a ban on assault rifles, passed a resolution declaring that pornography endangers teenage health.

Refusing to be demoralized or turned around, not even by death threats from the right, the students are turning their grief and anger into militancy, organizing an NRA boycott, two national student walkouts against gun violence and lobbying for a ban on assault weapons. The shootings have sparked a new national movement with students taking the lead.

Students have traditionally been the igniters of larger and broader progressive social movements. That was true of the Civil Rights Movement (SNCC) anti-war and anti-imperialist youth revolt (SDS) of the '60s and the student uprisings here and in Europe 50 years ago.

The power of the youth movement rests in its embodiment of a vision that transcends the immediate demands and aims at reshaping the world in which the next generation will live, work, and lead.

But the emerging militant student movement alone, even with liberal supporters cheering them on and donating money, is incapable of carrying this struggle through to the end. But as it was in Paris, Berkeley, and Columbia University in '68, there is a basis for united action between students, communities of color (who are feeling the brunt of gun violence), and organized labor, now fighting the Janus decision for its very existence.

The current student protests may never approach the scope or depth of the '60s protest movement. It's impossible to predict. But hopefully, a unifying strategy will emerge from this new vital movement so that the students won't have to go it alone. 

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Mourning through militancy

Columnist Steven Thrasher

But when death has come through great injustice, mourning through a militancy aimed at stopping similarly unjust deaths is not just healthy, but righteous and ethical. Mourning through militancy is one of the more noble sides of America’s history. -- Guardian 

 West side Chicagoan Eric Smith

“It’s sad out here. There was so much blood.” -- Tribune

AFSCME Pres. Lee Saunders on Janus case

“This is the place, sisters and brothers, where we make a stand today.” -- At rally Saturday in New York City.

Claremont Prof. Charles Taylor Kerchner

"Could [Janus] put teachers' unions out of business? No. Not close. Unions can go to grass roots and get back to constant organizing fairly quickly. It might drive unions to get closer to their core, to get closer to their members, and to be sort of more in touch with what's going on." -- EdWeek 

Republican Congressman Brian Mast

 I have fired tens of thousands of rounds through that rifle, many in combat... We used it because it was the most lethal — the best for killing our enemies. And I know that my community, our schools and public gathering places are not made safer by any person having access to the best killing tool the Army could put in my hands. -- New York Times 

Arturo Sarukhan Former Mexican Ambassador to U.S.

“Even from the get-go, the idea of Mexico paying for the wall was never going to fly... It could end up with the U.S. asking itself, ‘Who lost Mexico?’ ” -- Washington Post

#VetsForGunReform

I also renounce my @NRA endowment membership as it is clear that their idea of “responsible gun ownership” means only to line their pockets and sow persistent fear. We went to combat. Combat does not need to come to us.

cc: @iAmTheWarax

— Space Cowboy (@Strike_Williams) February 18, 2018

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Emma Gonzalez, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School

“If the president wants to come up to me and tell me to my face that it was a terrible tragedy and how it should never have happened and maintain telling us how nothing is going to be done about it, I’m going to happily ask him how much money he received from the National Rifle Association."  -- Student protest rally in Ft. Lauderdale

Flint Taylor, Hampton family attorney

“When I told him I needed a recess to come to Bill’s funeral, the judge sent his respects." -- Village Free Press

Maria Thorne, 5th-grade Florida teacher to Paul Ryan

 She then told [Ryan] she was a teacher and a resident of the area, to which he responded, “Nice.” That set Thorne off. “Nice? You’re here celebrating the death of 17 children,” she admonished.Ryan weakly replied that he “didn’t want to talk politics” — an odd statement to make at a political fundraiser. Thorne persisted in her critique, and was escorted out of the event as she chanted “no more guns!” -- Ryan caught raising campaign cash in Florida

Arlie Hochschild

...if the Democratic party is to pose a magnetically attractive alternative to Donald Trump, it must address the grievances, the life experiences, the sense of losing ground, of people like those I met and describe in my book, Strangers in Their Own Land. Millions of Trump voters saw the Democrats as beholden to corporate interests as the Republicans, and I believe they are right. -- Guardian