Entry tags:
podcast friday
Well, my benighted province once again chose "swift and repeated kicks to the balls for four years" over...basically anything other than that. Oh joy. This government wants me first unemployed, then homeless, then dead. Good times.
What's in some ways even more dispiriting is the results of the CIVIX Student Vote. This is a province-wide mock vote carried out across elementary and high schools. To my knowledge, it's never failed to elect the NDP. This year, for the first time, it went Tory.
A Grade 12 student today was in Grade 5 the last time a government pretended to care about their education, and even then, the public education system was in slow decline under a neoliberal regime. They simply do not remember what a well-funded public school system looked or felt like. Nor do they remember what it was like to go to a hospital ER and not have to wait 12 hours and emerge with two new infections. Short memories have doomed this province to eternal fascism and corruption. It makes me despair for the future.
You know who else despairs for the future? It Could Happen Here. This week in "Text Books and Holy Books," guest hosts Steven Monacelli and Dr. Michael Phillips talk about the two largest textbook markets in the US, California and Texas, and in particular how Texas' market share determines educational standards for the entire country.
I used to work in textbook publishing and there's a similar problem here, where at least back then, all textbooks had to conform to the standards of Alberta (the most conservative province with an economy that runs entirely on burning down the planet) and Catholic schools (the problem is obvious). I've been out of the game too long to know if that's still the case, but it resulted in materials that erased genocides, queer bodies and histories, and Indigenous peoples, promoting instead the accomplishments and worldview of white, Christian men. Obviously, the problem is way worse in the US where they just straight-up rewrote history so that the Confederate slaveholders were the good guys, but it's always the most extreme result of the same problem, which is the whiniest little bitches get the most say in what your kids are learning.
Oh, there's also quite a bit about the role of Hollywood in shaping the rather unique way Americans view the Ten Commandments, so also fuck you very much Charlton Heston.
What's in some ways even more dispiriting is the results of the CIVIX Student Vote. This is a province-wide mock vote carried out across elementary and high schools. To my knowledge, it's never failed to elect the NDP. This year, for the first time, it went Tory.
A Grade 12 student today was in Grade 5 the last time a government pretended to care about their education, and even then, the public education system was in slow decline under a neoliberal regime. They simply do not remember what a well-funded public school system looked or felt like. Nor do they remember what it was like to go to a hospital ER and not have to wait 12 hours and emerge with two new infections. Short memories have doomed this province to eternal fascism and corruption. It makes me despair for the future.
You know who else despairs for the future? It Could Happen Here. This week in "Text Books and Holy Books," guest hosts Steven Monacelli and Dr. Michael Phillips talk about the two largest textbook markets in the US, California and Texas, and in particular how Texas' market share determines educational standards for the entire country.
I used to work in textbook publishing and there's a similar problem here, where at least back then, all textbooks had to conform to the standards of Alberta (the most conservative province with an economy that runs entirely on burning down the planet) and Catholic schools (the problem is obvious). I've been out of the game too long to know if that's still the case, but it resulted in materials that erased genocides, queer bodies and histories, and Indigenous peoples, promoting instead the accomplishments and worldview of white, Christian men. Obviously, the problem is way worse in the US where they just straight-up rewrote history so that the Confederate slaveholders were the good guys, but it's always the most extreme result of the same problem, which is the whiniest little bitches get the most say in what your kids are learning.
Oh, there's also quite a bit about the role of Hollywood in shaping the rather unique way Americans view the Ten Commandments, so also fuck you very much Charlton Heston.
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Somewhat related, at least the Catholic School Experience is so bad that it's negatively polarizing. A paradoxical win for the left...
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Control the narrative.
You can't. "They" control the media*, the media feeds anti-social media.
At some point, maybe now, maybe 100 year from now, the underclass will mobilise and force change.
Same as it ever was.
(*I, who am nowhere in the comments, see this constantly. I see it all the time at work too.)
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eta: To be a bit less harsh: If you think there's no hope building meaningful political power in this generation, then the question is rather: how do we build the communities that can survive on the margins and be ready when the time is right? Basically, I'm not letting you off the hook, no matter what. :p
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Historically, it happens in cycles.
My point (obtuse as it might be) is that, currently, THEY will absolve their god king of any responsibility, even as he trashes the economy and kills, say, cancer treatments.
You can't flip a narrative like that easily, even if, say, Medicaid is rerouted to tax cuts for billionaires.
I don't know how to solve the issue. What I do know is how it can gone before. It's a generational shift.You can argue it will be quicker now, but the means of dissemination are as controlled now as ever.
I have no strategy for the US problem. I'm trying to solve it too. Our leaders are not criticising China, nor Trump and... I say: blow it up.
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It's not like I'm trying to be See You Next Tuesday, mind.
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In our modern world, your public spaces are own by oligarchs (Twitter, FB). People can mobilie, but it won't happen like it did in the 1990s, much less the 1890s.Unions are dying, and workers are struggling. Depending on where you are, we've been given enough rope.
My GenX peeps were the last to get property in any meaningful way, for example. The youngs are progressively less likely to enjoy stability.
As to what do do? Sabs is the activist! I'm an angry peep on the internet.
I hope *hope* the general strike movement takes off in the US and spreads globally.
It's the best tool we have*.
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First year students called, they're upset you're plagiarizing them
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He has gotten lucky, first with a worldwide pandemic, and now with Trump. Were it not for crisis, I think he'd have been far more fucked by the Greenbelt and the Science Centre.
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