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Celerity
Celerity's Journal
Celerity's Journal
August 29, 2024
Cheers
I have decided to take a long break from most all American politics before the election.
I also, quite frankly, need a break from this board.
Only time will tell if that becomes permanent.
It all is doing my head in, and I find myself far too often filled with hate and dread.
I will not allow that to continue to fester.
I am going to move other facets of my life to places of far more centrality.
This has been building up for ages, and I am sure this all comes as little shock to many here.
A deep thank you to all the wonderful people I have met here over the past 6 plus years.
Many of you have enriched my life.
Hugz,
Cel
August 28, 2024
https://prospect.org/politics/2024-08-28-election-story-nobody-talks-about-neiwert-qa/
Members of the Proud Boys rally in front of the Ohio State Capitol building in Columbus, Ohio, January 6, 2024.
Rick Perlstein: What are the basic outlines of this story no one wants to talk about?
David Neiwert: We’re once again faced with a situation where a substantial bloc of American politics is talking about committing acts of violence and bringing down the government. We saw this before, in 2020, in the run-up to that election and the aftermath. A lot of us held back; obviously, these guys have a long history of blowing off a lot of steam, talking, and wildly exaggerating their actual ability to carry out a threat. But I think we saw on January 6th, that was probably not the wisest view to take. We should have been paying more attention to what these guys were saying amongst themselves online. And what they’re saying amongst themselves right now is probably disturbing. Because they’re talking about shooting their neighbors.
Let’s talk about what exactly we saw before: Was the system blinking red in the run-up to January 6th?
Absolutely. I was trying to warn in my columns that they were really gearing up for violence.
The response of a lot of people to warnings like those is that you’re crying wolf.
Sure. I’m used to that. And that’s the thing: It does come from this contingent that has a track record of just laying out a deluge of bullshit. But it’s getting frantic and ugly enough that we’re getting to the point where I don’t think it’s just hot talk. I suspect that there’s guys involved in militias, particularly with Kamala Harris taking the lead in the polls, running paramilitary training operations. Some of these guys are actually well-trained veterans, some of them with combat experience.
I know, in part from your work, that these things tend to come in waves. Do you tend to see them coming?
To some extent, mostly because I keep a finger on the pulse of what these guys are saying online amongst themselves. But it’s incredibly hard to predict; we’re talking about unstable people, acting out. Except in the case of January 6th, when it wasn’t just that; it was that the unstable people were being ginned up.
So let’s talk scenarios. What if Trump wins?
There are two components. One is the immigrant front, the whole Minutemen ethos is going to come into play here, where these guys armed with AR-15s will claim we’re just supplementing the government; we’re just rounding people up and serving them up to the Border Patrol. Which is what they did in Arizona for quite a few years. But this will spread to the national scale. The second component, it’s pretty obvious that Trump and his minions basically hope that they can work the electoral count to a point where they can force the outcome of the election to either go through the Republican Congress or the Republican Supreme Court. But either way, it will be a de facto installment of a dictator. Then there will be massive protests—I think quite deservedly so. And the Three Percenters, militias, the Proud Boys, who have all been gearing up for this, are going to come out to play, not just defending the Trump administration but attacking the protesters. And doing so with reckless abandon. They’ll just call them “antifa”—[they] have a ready-made excuse. If we’re talking about the kind of rhetoric we’re seeing in right-wing Telegram spaces, they’re basically talking about how it will be “decided by the bullet box, not the ballot box.”
What happens if the Democrats win?......................................
snip
The Election Story Nobody Wants to Talk About
https://prospect.org/politics/2024-08-28-election-story-nobody-talks-about-neiwert-qa/
Members of the Proud Boys rally in front of the Ohio State Capitol building in Columbus, Ohio, January 6, 2024.
Rick Perlstein: What are the basic outlines of this story no one wants to talk about?
David Neiwert: We’re once again faced with a situation where a substantial bloc of American politics is talking about committing acts of violence and bringing down the government. We saw this before, in 2020, in the run-up to that election and the aftermath. A lot of us held back; obviously, these guys have a long history of blowing off a lot of steam, talking, and wildly exaggerating their actual ability to carry out a threat. But I think we saw on January 6th, that was probably not the wisest view to take. We should have been paying more attention to what these guys were saying amongst themselves online. And what they’re saying amongst themselves right now is probably disturbing. Because they’re talking about shooting their neighbors.
Let’s talk about what exactly we saw before: Was the system blinking red in the run-up to January 6th?
Absolutely. I was trying to warn in my columns that they were really gearing up for violence.
The response of a lot of people to warnings like those is that you’re crying wolf.
Sure. I’m used to that. And that’s the thing: It does come from this contingent that has a track record of just laying out a deluge of bullshit. But it’s getting frantic and ugly enough that we’re getting to the point where I don’t think it’s just hot talk. I suspect that there’s guys involved in militias, particularly with Kamala Harris taking the lead in the polls, running paramilitary training operations. Some of these guys are actually well-trained veterans, some of them with combat experience.
I know, in part from your work, that these things tend to come in waves. Do you tend to see them coming?
To some extent, mostly because I keep a finger on the pulse of what these guys are saying online amongst themselves. But it’s incredibly hard to predict; we’re talking about unstable people, acting out. Except in the case of January 6th, when it wasn’t just that; it was that the unstable people were being ginned up.
So let’s talk scenarios. What if Trump wins?
There are two components. One is the immigrant front, the whole Minutemen ethos is going to come into play here, where these guys armed with AR-15s will claim we’re just supplementing the government; we’re just rounding people up and serving them up to the Border Patrol. Which is what they did in Arizona for quite a few years. But this will spread to the national scale. The second component, it’s pretty obvious that Trump and his minions basically hope that they can work the electoral count to a point where they can force the outcome of the election to either go through the Republican Congress or the Republican Supreme Court. But either way, it will be a de facto installment of a dictator. Then there will be massive protests—I think quite deservedly so. And the Three Percenters, militias, the Proud Boys, who have all been gearing up for this, are going to come out to play, not just defending the Trump administration but attacking the protesters. And doing so with reckless abandon. They’ll just call them “antifa”—[they] have a ready-made excuse. If we’re talking about the kind of rhetoric we’re seeing in right-wing Telegram spaces, they’re basically talking about how it will be “decided by the bullet box, not the ballot box.”
What happens if the Democrats win?......................................
snip
August 26, 2024
Label: American Recordings – 501534 2, American Recordings – 5015342000, Columbia – COL 501534 2
Format: CD, Album
Country: Europe
Released: Aug 2001
Genre: Rock
Style: Alternative Metal, Nu Metal
System of a Down - Toxicity (2001)
Label: American Recordings – 501534 2, American Recordings – 5015342000, Columbia – COL 501534 2
Format: CD, Album
Country: Europe
Released: Aug 2001
Genre: Rock
Style: Alternative Metal, Nu Metal
August 26, 2024
Full album:
Label: Asylum Records – 7E-1051
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Stereo, SP - Specialty Pressing
Country: US
Released: 1975
Genre: Jazz, Rock, Folk, World, & Country
Style: Acoustic, Fusion, Contemporary Jazz
Joni Mitchell - The Hissing of Summer Lawns (1975)
Full album:
Label: Asylum Records – 7E-1051
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Stereo, SP - Specialty Pressing
Country: US
Released: 1975
Genre: Jazz, Rock, Folk, World, & Country
Style: Acoustic, Fusion, Contemporary Jazz
August 25, 2024
https://x.com/Number10cat/status/1826997198648717513
Larry the Cat @Number10cat: Trump looks like a dish sponge just before you throw it away
https://x.com/Number10cat/status/1826997198648717513
August 25, 2024
https://prospect.org/culture/books/2024-08-09-chicago-public-schools-worst-to-first-bryk-review/
A public school in the Cabrini Green neighborhood in Chicago
Across the country, the war against public education proceeds apace, and in many states the anti’s are winning.
Forty-one years ago, in “A Nation at Risk” (1983), a blue-ribbon national commission decried “the rising tide of mediocrity” in public schools. The report’s rhetorically masterful opening salvo drew widespread attention to what otherwise would likely have been a file-and-forget document: “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.” “A Nation at Risk” made education a hot-button issue on the nation’s political agenda and turned the bashing of public schools into a national pastime. As James Harvey, a senior staffer on the commission, pointed out years later, “The argument of wholesale school failure has been an essential bulwark of the effort to privatize public education by diverting public funds into school vouchers and unaccountable charter schools, particularly the scandal-plagued for-profit charter sector.”
Fast-forward to 2024: “Public Schooling in America,” a survey of state policies nationwide, concludes that seemingly distinct attacks on public education—through expanding charter and voucher programs; cutting funds for public schools, while providing added support for homeschooling; censoring what educators can teach and students can learn—are in fact intertwined, as “Christian nationalism and the extreme right have become mainstream in many states.” The report grades states according to how well they safeguard public schools. Seventeen states, almost all of them solidly Republican, received a grade of F. An increasing number of states (seven, in 2023 alone) have launched new voucher plans, often with little if any oversight. Money that previously went to public schools is being siphoned off to vouchers. Count Donald Trump among the public-school haters. In his 2017 inaugural address, he blasted “an education system flush with cash but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge.”
The drumbeat of criticism has generated widespread lack of confidence in public education. A 2023 Gallup poll found that, while just over three-quarters of parents report that they’re satisfied with their oldest child’s education, 41 percent believe the schools are doing a good job—that’s fewer than at any time since 2000. HOW A CITY LEARNED TO IMPROVE ITS SCHOOLS, a deep dive into Chicago’s public schools, delivers a powerful rejoinder to the naysayers. A district that used to be ridiculed has evolved into a model for big-city school systems. In autumn 1987, Bill Bennett, then the U.S. secretary of education, paid a whirlwind visit to Chicago. He didn’t like what he saw: “You’ve got close to educational meltdown here in Chicago … Is there a worse case? You tell me.” The fact that Chicago’s public schools were a disaster area wasn’t news in the Windy City—half of the district’s high schools ranked in the bottom 1 percent nationwide; nearly half of the students dropped out before graduating. Some schools were danger zones: “When I took my oldest daughter to school,” Florence Cox, Chicago PTA president, said in a documentary, “I actually felt that if I left my daughter there that day I would not see her ever again alive.”
Almost a decade before Bennett’s visit, fiscal corruption prompted state lawmakers to fire the school board and create a body to oversee the system’s budget. These failures had been the city’s dirty little secret, but the “worst in the nation” label went national. Naysayers pointed to Chicago as exhibit number one for the miseducation of America’s children. Bennett’s “gotcha” infuriated Chicagoans, catalyzing a reform effort that had already been ticking along, and since then Chicago public schools have become markedly better. Black and Latino third graders from low-income families have been, at least according to 2017 data, outperforming their counterparts elsewhere in the state. Graduation rates rose to 84 percent in 2023, within hailing distance of the national average. In 2022, three-fifths of high school graduates enrolled in college immediately upon graduating high school, an increase from previous years, countering the national trend of declining college attendance during COVID; more of them are earning degrees than in the past. This track record is among the best urban school systems in the nation.
snip
Chicago Public Schools--From Worst to (Almost) First
https://prospect.org/culture/books/2024-08-09-chicago-public-schools-worst-to-first-bryk-review/
A public school in the Cabrini Green neighborhood in Chicago
Across the country, the war against public education proceeds apace, and in many states the anti’s are winning.
Forty-one years ago, in “A Nation at Risk” (1983), a blue-ribbon national commission decried “the rising tide of mediocrity” in public schools. The report’s rhetorically masterful opening salvo drew widespread attention to what otherwise would likely have been a file-and-forget document: “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.” “A Nation at Risk” made education a hot-button issue on the nation’s political agenda and turned the bashing of public schools into a national pastime. As James Harvey, a senior staffer on the commission, pointed out years later, “The argument of wholesale school failure has been an essential bulwark of the effort to privatize public education by diverting public funds into school vouchers and unaccountable charter schools, particularly the scandal-plagued for-profit charter sector.”
Fast-forward to 2024: “Public Schooling in America,” a survey of state policies nationwide, concludes that seemingly distinct attacks on public education—through expanding charter and voucher programs; cutting funds for public schools, while providing added support for homeschooling; censoring what educators can teach and students can learn—are in fact intertwined, as “Christian nationalism and the extreme right have become mainstream in many states.” The report grades states according to how well they safeguard public schools. Seventeen states, almost all of them solidly Republican, received a grade of F. An increasing number of states (seven, in 2023 alone) have launched new voucher plans, often with little if any oversight. Money that previously went to public schools is being siphoned off to vouchers. Count Donald Trump among the public-school haters. In his 2017 inaugural address, he blasted “an education system flush with cash but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge.”
The drumbeat of criticism has generated widespread lack of confidence in public education. A 2023 Gallup poll found that, while just over three-quarters of parents report that they’re satisfied with their oldest child’s education, 41 percent believe the schools are doing a good job—that’s fewer than at any time since 2000. HOW A CITY LEARNED TO IMPROVE ITS SCHOOLS, a deep dive into Chicago’s public schools, delivers a powerful rejoinder to the naysayers. A district that used to be ridiculed has evolved into a model for big-city school systems. In autumn 1987, Bill Bennett, then the U.S. secretary of education, paid a whirlwind visit to Chicago. He didn’t like what he saw: “You’ve got close to educational meltdown here in Chicago … Is there a worse case? You tell me.” The fact that Chicago’s public schools were a disaster area wasn’t news in the Windy City—half of the district’s high schools ranked in the bottom 1 percent nationwide; nearly half of the students dropped out before graduating. Some schools were danger zones: “When I took my oldest daughter to school,” Florence Cox, Chicago PTA president, said in a documentary, “I actually felt that if I left my daughter there that day I would not see her ever again alive.”
Almost a decade before Bennett’s visit, fiscal corruption prompted state lawmakers to fire the school board and create a body to oversee the system’s budget. These failures had been the city’s dirty little secret, but the “worst in the nation” label went national. Naysayers pointed to Chicago as exhibit number one for the miseducation of America’s children. Bennett’s “gotcha” infuriated Chicagoans, catalyzing a reform effort that had already been ticking along, and since then Chicago public schools have become markedly better. Black and Latino third graders from low-income families have been, at least according to 2017 data, outperforming their counterparts elsewhere in the state. Graduation rates rose to 84 percent in 2023, within hailing distance of the national average. In 2022, three-fifths of high school graduates enrolled in college immediately upon graduating high school, an increase from previous years, countering the national trend of declining college attendance during COVID; more of them are earning degrees than in the past. This track record is among the best urban school systems in the nation.
snip
Profile Information
Gender: FemaleHometown: London
Home country: US/UK/Sweden
Current location: Stockholm, Sweden
Member since: Sun Jul 1, 2018, 07:25 PM
Number of posts: 46,154