#Blue States

[lilithism1848]

[contemplatingoutlander]

America has legislated itself into competing red, blue versions of education

This is an excellent article in The Washington Post about how our school systems have begun to reflect the political divisions in our nation, with many red states legally banning discussions on racism, sexism, and gender issues, and many blue states legally requiring those kinds of discussions. This is a gift🎁link, so anyone can read the entire article, even if the don't subscribe to the Post. Below are some excerpts:

Three-fourths of the nation’s school-aged students are now educated under state-level measures that either require more teaching on issues like race, racism, history, sex and gender, or which sharply limit or fully forbid such lessons, according to a sweeping Post review of thousands of state laws, gubernatorial directives and state school board policies. The restrictive laws alone affect almost half of all Americans aged 5 to 19. [...] The divide is sharply partisan. The vast majority of restrictive laws and policies, close to 9o percent, were enacted in states that voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, The Post found. Meanwhile, almost 80 percent of expansive laws and policies were enacted in states that voted for Joe Biden in 2020.

The explosion of laws regulating school curriculums is unprecedented in U.S. history for its volume and scope, said Jonathan Zimmerman, a University of Pennsylvania professor who studies education history and policy...states have never before stepped in so aggressively to set rules for local schools. [...] [A] nationally representative study from the Rand Corp. released this year found that 65 percent of K-12 teachers report they are limiting instruction on “political and social issues.” “What the laws show is that we have extremely significant differences over how we imagine America,” Zimmerman said. [...] In practice, these divisions mean that what a child learns about, say, the role slavery played in the nation’s founding — or the possibility of a person identifying as nonbinary — may come to depend on whether they live in a red or blue state. [...] Almost 40 percent of these laws work by granting parents greater control of the curriculum — stipulating that they must be able to review, object to or remove lesson material, as well as opt out of instruction. [...] Another almost 40 percent of the laws forbid schools from teaching a long list of often-vague concepts related to race, sex or gender.

[...] At the college level, among the measures passed in recent years is a 2021 Oklahoma law that prohibits institutions of higher education from holding “mandatory gender or sexual diversity training or counseling,” as well as any “orientation or requirement that presents any form of race or sex stereotyping.” By contrast, a 2023 California measure says state community college faculty must employ “teaching, learning and professional practices” that reflect “anti-racist principles.”

Some experts predicted the politically divergent instruction will lead to a more divided society. “When children are being taught very different stories of what America is, that will lead to adults who have a harder time talking to each other,” said Rachel Rosenberg, a Hartwick College assistant professor of education.

[whatareyoureallyafraidof]

Moscow Marge.

[mysharona1987]

[conurecc]

i have never met a group of people who hate America as much as conservatives do

[isaacsapphire]

The true believer in the leopards eating people’s faces party

There are locally powerful belief systems, which I will refer to as hegemons in this discussion. In a Red state, the hegemonic belief system might be Republican Evangelical Christianity. In a Blue state, the hegemon is probably Democrat liberal atheism/agnosticism. Within those states, there will be local and subcultural pockets of different hegemons: the liberal college town in a Red State, the small town rifle range in a Blue State, etc. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” kicks in too, as inevitably some hegemons have captured employers.

For the people embedded within a community with an overarching hegemon that extends through their education, work, and social life, their local hegemon sets the boundaries of thought, the terms and bounds of discussions, provides the shibboleths and catch phrases, as well as relationship norms and life-stage behaviors and rituals.

On one level, this phenomenon of apparent local agreement is driven purely by most people going along to get along, “when in Rome” self-interested behavior that doesn’t have any real meaning except that people are social animals and follow their crowd, parroting their leaders’ calls whether they be, “Jesus Saves!” or “I’m with her.”

But, there is some real ideological meat under the sports team social behavior; different political parties and ideologies/religions really do want to do different things, to change the world into different shapes. And those shapes will, at best, make some types of people’s lives more difficult. At worst, we’re talking genocide and death camps.

As to how “real” anyone’s personal beliefs are; if conversion at the point of a sword or as an alternative to swiftly becoming a refuge was being foisted on some portion of a society, or if their country becomes communist, how many of them will just be all “friendship with Odin ended, Jesus is my homie now” or whatever? The answer isn’t entirely consistent, but it’s a pretty high percentage. And the percentage of people who will find themselves converting to Mormonism if they’re a family that moves to Salt Lake City for work reasons, or became an SJW if their social circle becomes SJW or whatever transplantation happens to them is pretty high too.

Nuroatypicals are likely to end up as True Believers in a local primary or secondary hegemon for multiple reasons. One is that they literally can’t lie to save their lives so their subconscious drives them into method acting, another reason is that they’re too socially awkward to realize that nobody else is taking the party line at face value. The attraction of a set of clear rules and black and white thinking is another factor.

This is an attempt to describe reality, but I need to be honest that it owes a lot to marxist theory. I don’t particularly like Marxist economics, but I believe that any ideology that gets substantial uptake closely matches the reality observed by some people and hence is worth considering.

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

[ma-warriors17]

#Bluestar and her little ones 💔

#Bluestar e seus pequenos 💔

I get a little sad when I remember their story and that's why I decided to make this art from my AU, even though in the AU itself Bluestar still loses his son #mosskit

He also has a not very good relationship with his children #miststar and #rockpelt , due to his relationship with #oakheart

____

Eu fico um pouco triste quando lembro da história deles e por isso decidi fazer essa art da minha AU , mesmo que na própria AU Bluestar ainda perde seu filho #Filhotedemusgo

Tendo também uma relação não muito boa com seus filhos #estreladebruma e #pelodepedra , devido seu relacionamento com #coraçãodecarvalho

[itisiives]

Hey, I still have this Twitter thread of Minneapolis resources for any Red State Refugees

https://x.com/itisi_ives/status/1736386682344137182

Not for TE/RFs or LGƁ ✂️ ṬQ folks

[fuckyeahnewmexico]

Pride around New Mexico.

From top to bottom: Santa Fe pride on the plaza, Las Vegas NM pride festival, Albuquerque's rainbow crosswalk

Happy pride yall

[mightyflamethrower]

[nodynasty4us]

The author, Asli Aydintasbas, looks at the decline of democracy in Turkey, Hungary, and Poland, and concludes:

As someone who lived through the birth and growth of authoritarianism in Turkey, I’m something of an expert on the subject — and no, another four years of Trump is not enough time to turn America into a dictatorship.

What I saw in Turkey over the course of two decades of Tayyip Erdogan’s rule — working as a journalist for much of that time — is that building a dictatorship takes a long time.

...

Even in an imperfect democracy like Turkey, it took a full decade from 2007 to 2017 for Erdogan to gain full compliance and transfer media ownership to his cronies. Similarly in Poland, the recently ousted Law and Justice Party tried to reshape the media landscape after they took power in 2015 by turning state broadcasters into partisan hacks — but made only incremental progress during their eight years in power. That kind of takeover is doable in the U.S. too, but it would take longer than four years.

...

In a country that prides itself on checks and balances, “cleaning up” the hundreds of active judges and prosecutors who are not loyal to him would present a challenge for any burgeoning autocrat, since judges have long tenures and plenty of independence. The U.S. Constitution says federal judges may hold their position “during good behavior” — meaning, lifelong.

...

Bringing cities and blue states to heel takes a long time — and demands a real social and institutional consensus, which Trump, in a second term, will not have. Trump’s problem during the Jan. 6 insurrection was that while his MAGA base wanted him to retain power, he had not built an institutional consensus within the U.S. bureaucracy or the GOP that supported his allegations of election denial — and he was therefore unable to galvanize Republicans or bureaucrats. During the four years of a possible second term, Trump will work hard to build the type of social consensus that would allow him to remain in power for a third term, but the example of other countries, even those with less robust democracies, suggests that four more years is not enough time for him to do that.

...

So my message to America is, do not panic — but organize. The most successful method of fighting creeping authoritarianism is alliance building and effective opposition — preferably before the election. After the election, it will be more costly to stop it.

[hushedlover]

Because of the horrible things America has continued today.

[mysharona1987]

[jerseydeanne]

Companies are leaving Blue States! Yee Haw!

[mooretoons]

Division

This whole cartoon is a response to a single article in the New York Times, “Two Families Got Fed Up With Their States’ Politics. So They Moved Out.” Well, and taking a potshot at David Leonhardt, whose bloodless newsletter appears in my inbox every morning, like a turd on my doorstep. I moved to Portland in 1995, when housing was still affordable and employment was easier to find. Yet the seeds…