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What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

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Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#401

Post by itronitron »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #388
chaostheory wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of this story https://expo.oregonlive.com/news/erry-2018/06/75f0f464cb3367... (audio) http://snapjudgment.org/no-one-calls-me-shooter-0 It's basically an autistic kid who was falsely accused by an Oregon public HS of being a potential gunman. All of this based on a vague offhand comment by a random student. The school and police refused to provide details until a few years later. When the school released t…

From outside the US, it's hard to avoid the impression that some non-trivial percentage of high school supervisors and support staff are fundamentally irrational and unable to think and act like stable, responsible adults. This is incredibly damaging for teens, because teens need to see adults modelling rational, fair, and effective boundaries, and dealing with problems in sane ways. Powerful adults acting like capri…

Unfortunately all it takes is one irrational adult to cause lasting harm, and over the course of 12 years each student is likely to come across several.

The common trait, based on my experience, is that the problem staff feel they have all the information, are the experts, categorize complex interactions into 'seen this before' bins, and feel they are the sole authority and report to no one. They are basically acting as judge, jury, and executioner.

They are a minority within the public school system however they have the overwritten rules and regulations to back up their actions.

Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#402

Post by woofie11 »

darpa_escapee wrote: post #242
woofie11 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The damning thing is the alt-right is very occasionally right. This one stuck out at me: > I trained myself to freeze my facial expression into something neutral so that when I countered Sam’s remarks—“Feminists keep divorced dads from seeing their kids” was a favorite—it would seem as if I’d actually considered his perspective. A big chunk of the alt-right is precisely divorced dads drawn in, or people drawn to thei…

> “Feminists keep divorced dads from seeing their kids” was a favorite—it would seem as if I’d actually considered his perspective. Except that feminism actively derides both the gender norms that say mothers are better caregivers and the US court system's bias against fathers in child custody rulings. There is literally decades of literature and other sources on these points. A old, common talking point and accusati…

As much as I appreciate the abstract, theoretical perspective, the reality on the ground is different:

1) Many courts assign default custody to women, almost no matter how bad a mom she is.

2) In liberal, feminist blue states, assuming both parents have equal incomes, the Dad will often pay about a third of his income post-tax to the mom in child support. Assuming the dad was a good parent, the de facto default custody split is quite often 4 nights mom / 3 nights dad, so expenses are essentially equal. The Mom has twice as much money as the Dad

3) If the Mom remarries, her household income will than be several times higher than the Dad. Dad keeps paying the same child support; spouse's/household income doesn't factor. The Dad, at this stage, is unlikely to be able to successfully remarry, given new socioeconomic bracket, or even be all that good a caretaker.

4) The Mom, for the most part, has almost all the tools to continue a pattern of abuse after divorce as before.

Like it or not, these laws came to be from a very active divorce lawyer lobby parading feminist groups in front of legislatures. Nice, abstract texts don't do much against actively lobbying for the opposite.

That pattern continues across the board. It's not abstract. We have a Violence Against Women Act. When men call in for domestic violence, they typically get arrested for having been assaulted. We don't have a Domestic Violence Act. Schools are incredibly sexist to parents -- the mom is the default parent. That's all thanks to very active work by women's groups.

As you might guess, that leads to a small surge of alt-righters, and a bigger surge of Trump voters. Want to know why Trump won? I know a large number of registered Democrats, otherwise as far left as you might imagine, who held their noses to prevent electing someone whose campaign was quite literally handing out "woman cards."

The author's son is far from unique here.

Separate-but-equal had a similarly nice theoretical perspective of equality, and a similarly not-so-nice reality of one side being treated well, and a second side getting the shaft.

Until and unless feminism can start to act for equality (rather than write nicely cited academic texts), it's likely the alt-right will just continue to swell.

I've never seen a feminist testify for equitable family law reform.

Ever.

Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#404

Post by woofie11 »

claudiawerner wrote: post #394
ddxxdd wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Except that feminism actively derides both the gender norms that say mothers are better caregivers and the US court system's bias against fathers in child custody rulings. There is literally decades of literature and other sources on these points. But a feminist was the originator of the idea that women should get primary custody of children[1], and the National Organization for Women opposes joint custody[2][3], an…

This reply or at least the first source cited is a little disingenuous; modern feminism (mostly third wave and left-wing) rejects the doctrine of essentialism used by second wave feminists. Most third wave feminists are highly critical of gender essentialism (for instance on trans issues which for them must deny essentialism) to the point where you and the person you're replying to are speaking of totally different m…

> If you don't believe me when it comes to what modern feminism actually believes I'd be happy to walk through a Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article to make the point. Most modern feminists do not support the tender years doctrine.

No need! Just point me to the testimony at any senate hearing where any major feminist group stood up for equality in family law or in domestic violence law. Or an endorsement of a reform law moving those towards equality.

Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#405

Post by itronitron »

thrower123 wrote: post #301
rayiner wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What drove me crazy about K-12 is that all the bullshit zero tolerance policies affected mainly the normal kids. The real problem kids didn’t care, and continued to wreak havoc. It’s the main reason I send my kids to private school, even though the public schools where I live are good.

I don't think I'd make it in the current age. We routinely drove snowmobiles to school in the winter, parked across the street in an empty lot during hunting season so that our bird guns were locked up technically off of school property, and carried leathermans and swiss army knives every day as a matter of course. Kids were frigging dipping Grizzly into soda bottles in the back of the class room most days. People wo…

I bet they respected the teachers at least.

Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#406

Post by cyberpunk »

tropo wrote: post #162
cyberpunk wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: can you give an actual example of this because I can't think of a single one. A lot of commentators without thinking seem to call the nazi's a 'left' party -- I assume because of the word socialist in the party name -- there are many books on the history of the nazi party, and reading any of them should be enough to clear anyone of this misapprehension.

It's not just about the word "socialist" in the party name. Policy actually fits, on that and more. They were into government intervention and social spending. They had gun control. (a prerequisite for hauling off the Jews) They shipped an ethnicity off to prison camps, just as FDR did. FDR is on the left, is he not? They had the Sturmabteilung to break up opponent's political meetings, rather like the violent protes…

> They were into government intervention and social spending.

How else could they recover from the punishment of Treaty of Versailles? The economic recovery of Germany before the start of WW2 is pretty interesting and a surprising success story even knowing what we now do of those involved. The Nazi's were famously and fanatically anti-bolshevik.

> They had gun control. (a prerequisite for hauling off the Jews)

I have no real opinion on this besides "gun control" being an American issue which seems to be used to split left/right there. Our left and right parties both support gun control here, as does most of the rest of the world.

> They shipped an ethnicity off to prison camps, just as FDR did. FDR is on the left, is he not?

"Shipped an ethnicity off to prison camps" doesn't really do the events of the Holocaust justice. By FDR I assume you mean the American president? What does he have to do with the Nazi party? Your argument for the nazi party having "leftist" policies is that some later US president who did the 'same thing' (he ordered the deaths of all these people did he?) was a member of a left party? That's pretty weak sauce my friend.

As a German, I have no desire to minimize or indeed maximize the 'distance 'to Nazi ideology for anyone, I'm not attacking you here -- I just don't understand how you can hold such views.

You've cherry picked some here which you think are enough to be able to present the nazis as a left party while ignoring the historical actions of this group (which are far-right in the extreme). It's quite ironic that on an article about bios-confirming echo chambers you seem to be hook-line+sinker in the same hole.

Please think carefully before throwing Nazi around or trying to align them with one side of the political debate wherever you are or the other -- the nazis were among the worst we have come up with so far in our history, and no one is aligned with them. While I think you're wrong to call them leftist; in the end it doesn't matter. We object to nazis because they are evil, not because of their supposed political leanings -- using them as ammunition in a discussion only ends it and offends people.

Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#407

Post by bigred100 »

lancefisher wrote: post #320

When my brother and I were in high school, he got into a discussion with the English teacher. At one point of disagreement, he asked her heatedly, “what are you on about?” We’d been watching a lot of Monty Python. She misinterpreted it as, “are you on the rag?” and proceeded to flip out. She went to the principal, and they began some Title IX paperwork along with extreme disciplinary action. This was a small rural sc…

I wonder why teachers and school administrators don’t simply interact respectfully with their students instead of engaging in such extraordinarily bad behavior. Is mental illness or social disability common in their profession?

Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#408

Post by toomanybeersies »

AnaniasAnanas wrote: post #372
klodolph wrote: post #53

What resonated with me is how impossible it is, as a kid, to make sense of being in the school system. The interaction with an administrator was school discipline gone awry... but it could have easily been something else. (Discipline is the most likely, there are tons of misguided zero-tolerance policies.) I'm lucky that my parents were advocates and organizers and that they knew people in the school administration.…

It really feels to me as if a lot of teachers join the profession only because they are power-hungry and want some powerless kids to abuse, something like an authority complex. We had teachers at our school print low quality invitations to an event for the students and high quality ones for the teachers. We also had a kid that was expelled from school for insulting a teacher after the teacher insulted him much more h…

I had probably 20 different teachers through the course of primary and secondary school. If I had 4 extremely crappy teachers in school, that would be 1 in 5.

Anecdotally, more than 1 in 5 software engineers I've worked with are extremely crappy. At least 1 in 5 people in any job will be incompetent and inept.

Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#409

Post by Knufen »

anigbrowl wrote: post #218
drak0n1c wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent comment was not equivocating "KKK and anti-KKK", it was simply pointing out the false equivalence on that guy's T-shirt. All-caps claims that Trump, the KKK, and Fascism are equivalent is part of the problem and exacerbating tribalism. The anti-Semitic terrorist in Powey wrote that he felt personally betrayed and furious at how friendly Trump is with Jewish people and his support for Israel. The media, and…

Yeah, he was angry that Trump isn't far right enough for his taste, a common trope among Nazis. I'm not sure how transfer any responsibility for his crime onto the people who are protesting against right wing extremism though.

[flagged]

Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#410

Post by wtdata »

b_tterc_p wrote: post #83
GreaterFool wrote: post #8

Why are Americans so obsessed with Nazis? I mean, I'm from Europe and I don't recall growing up worrying about everyone being a secret (or overt) Nazi, which, unless promptly punched in the face, would somehow take over. WWII and Nazis destroyed Europe. Are Europeans worried about Nazis? Not as far as I can tell. Yet all I see from American news is Nazis this Nazis that. Can someone explain?

I believe this is a lasting effect of the PR campaign to vilify Hitler and the Nazis. Don’t get me wrong, Hitler and the Nazis are obviously villains and deserve every ounce of contempt. But the US went to extra efforts to make sure people knew it was the work on Hitler and the Nazis and not the Germans so that we could quickly forgive the Germans and make them an ally. Fun fact, before Hitler, the worst person euphe…

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