topics deemed to be “political ideology” in schools
Don’t you dare pledge allegiance! Don’t you dare play the anthem! Don’t you dare promote capitalism!
I still very clearly remember reading Harrison Bergeron in school and having some idiot school teacher act like “that’s that socialism kids!”
How the hell is that socialism? A reference to income based taxation? If anything, following the big scary Soviet and PRC model, they’d have pumped Harrison full of roids and told him to rip a capitalist pig dog in half for his landing.
And, of course, Vonnegut agrees it isn’t about socialism, no matter what American school teachers have been ordered to teach.
https://www2.ljworld.com/news/2005/may/05/vonnegut_lawyers_could/
I mean you wanna be technical about it socialism is a much wider spectrum of ideas than Communism. There are definitely people who define it strictly by the presence of the worker co-op or as anti-capitalist but that’s one floating idea in a nebula. Market Socialism for instance is basically a blend of capitalism and socialism where things like capitalist incentives are still maintained but regulated and systems of social support are expanded to make up for the gap of the whole capitalist “not my monkey not my circus” washing of hands of social responsibility to be an active part of a community. It’s basically anti-capitalist in the same way putting up a privacy fence is anti-neighbor… So a wide spanning income based taxation could be construed as sort of Socialist but its basically the air we breathe as far as a norm goes.
But Harrison Bergeron is more like the Conservative satire of what “Cultural Marxism” looks like in practice. The strawman idea that is designed to make people clutch their individuality and random blessings like something someone wants to forcefully take away from them… It’s a metaphor for things like social programs and inequality conscious measures that lift up disadvantaged people to allow them access to participate in society but not a particularly good one as it pre-supposes that lifting someone up is the same thing as crushing persecution of the naturally gifted.
Your teacher was half right, the story is about Socialism but it’s a hostile framing of Socialism in complete bad faith using the conventions of science fiction to paint an overblown dystopia with hyperbolic absurd metaphors that underline the anxieties anti-civil rights advocates had when it was written.
The whole thing makes more sense when you consider that hardcore disability advocacy groups that started the path to creating the ADA basically was beginning to gain traction when the book was being written.
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Ah, I see I was unclear on some points.
I am not saying the author is a conservative making a bad faith arguement about Socialism. Quite the opposite. He’s a leftist making the strawman cold war anti socialist rhetoric and turning it up to 11 to be absurd. But this actually has nothing to do with the intention of the author. While Vonnegut was for the most part was known for his anti-war anti McCarthist bent not all of his catelog is cohesive. Harrison is one where his intentions, at least in his writing execution, were fairly grey. He was writing the Conservative conception of Cold War depictions of Socialism and civil rights advocacy but its one of those death of the author moments where the satire struck some perceived “truth” with a conservative audience. Knowing the author it is generally leftist is what allows you to unlock the actual possible intentions of the satire but that effect is sometimes negated due to an unfortunate habit of the polarized audience.
Think of it as a Steven Colbert Report effect of satire. You expect absurdism to be recognized in a work based on external knowledge of the author and the level of over the top tricks you employ but your audience… If they exist on the other end of the spectrum doesn’t recognize who you’re making fun of because you instead miss the mark and create a warped mirror that makes you popular on both sides. Colbert, in character, was extremely popular in conservative spaces because he essentially masqueraded as an over the top demagogue and they took his satire as their own “sticking it to the libs”. This particular story ended up being so on the nose to conservative belief at the time that they took it and literally and are using it as their own propaganda.
Yeah, definitely missed your meaning towards Vonnegut’s intent.
And you would think he made it a bit obvious when Bergeron rips off his weights and declares himself Emperor, but as you say the conservatives typically don’t see that as an unreasonable attitude.
It is my fault for being too ambiguous in my phrasing.
But yeah… Dude’s teacher going “and THAT’S Socialism” is essentially the effect at play. When you hit all the reinforced points of Conservative emotional reactive training with just a bigger hammer they don’t know to look for the cues that the author and the message are at odds. . A lot of the rhetoric of Conservativism is based more on vibe than on solid social or media literacy so if you just replicate the vibe the programming kicks in to stop thinking critically. They do recognize it as hyperbole… Most of the time. I have known some spectacular idiots
You’ve probably noticed but all but the absolute most obtuse satire does not work on conservative audiences.
In making the announcement on the Tony Kinnett show, livestreamed on YouTube, Rokita stated that investigators would pore over submissions and post any they believed to be credible onto a publicly viewable database.
In other words, they’re not going to act on the ones that don’t align with their own political ideology.
That’s called FREEDOM and A SMART USE OF TAXPAYER MONEY!
Can I get in trouble for this?
Ianal. Legally? No. It’s a tip line. There is no threat of harm. Just of being weird.
Unless there’s some disclaimer prior to submitting saying it’s the state equivalent of submitting a false police report or something… Even then, good luck trying to arrest you in a different state.
I would love to be banned from Texas or Florida if I could lol.
Join the fun!
Who ever heard of a sad clown?
I legitimately lol’d.
I’m doing my part
This is the comedy police: You are under arrest for being funny without a license!
You’ll never take me alive! I’ve got hostages, and they are dying of laughter!
I’d like to submit a report to your unit
No idea but holy fuck that’s amazing. I’d be happy catching a charge for this.
I brought enough for everyone
Oh hey that second one is probably real.
There’s no louder way to telegraph that you are in the closet except by creating an anti-LGBTQ hotline. This is going to be the new Grindr.
…It’s entirely possible for straight people to be homophobic. In fact it’s shown time and time again
Yeah but it’s fun to think about and given no other information in such a vacuum, I’m going to concoct some amazing theories. Fuck em.
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This? This is persecution of marginalized people by hateful shitbags, that’s what this is.
Fear is the path to the dark side
From my point of view the Jedi are evil.
Top tier writing
May the power of memes and the Internet trip the damn boomers.
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This fuckin’ boomer puke whut lives in Asswipe, IN approves.
No, you.
Can someone try to “Little Bobby Tables” them? Just put some SQL injection shit to make the servers more of a dumpster fire?
I’ve worked with a bunch of government agencies and the chances of a SQL injection are low. Not because they’re good, but because they’ll use some kind of framework to speed up development which will have injection prevention baked in.
Ctrl+c ctrl+v strikes again!
😔 Damn.
I imagine sending memes is not illegal, SQL injection attacks might be.
And targeting a group of people is unconstitutional, fuck the laws that harm the citizens and protect the state.
But what if a meme just happens to be a SQL injection?
It is almost certainly illegal under the computer fraud and abuse act. Don’t hack, kiddos.
*don’t get caught (have good opsec)
If you want to generate some random shit for the comments:
- For email: https://maildrop.cc/
- For address: 200 W. Washington St. Indianapolis 46204
- For text: If you use linux:
head --lines=99 /dev/urandom > random.txtthen copy and paste. Or just use copypasta
https://hipsum.co/?paras=5&type=hipster-centric&start-with-lorem=1
/dev/urandom can be filtered by a machine (entrophy), this should at least pass the entrophy test.
Oh good shit!
Trolled with the following image.
https://www.stripersonline.com/surftalk/uploads/monthly_07_2015/post-14892-0-63234200-1435938263.jpg
Psst… just post it with link markup but no descrioption and an ! in front like this
for it to show up in the comments:spoiler
Gratzi.
anyone got a link? I have… quite the meme library…
Use tor before they start filtering it. That’s usually what they block first. Submit from multiple IPs to make it harder to filter. Be realistic - there are websites that’ll help you generate fake names, addresses. You can even use ChatGPT to write time wasting comments. Try to avoid using real people’s names so you don’t get innocents harassed.
I’m looking at some of the “legitimate” complaints on that page. Someone complained about inappropriate content… in Orwell’s 1984.
https://www.in.gov/attorneygeneral/files/4_11_Parental-Concerns-Required-Reading-Sexual-Content.pdf
Flood it with Chat GPT-3 content, super easy to generate, and it would probably create more unique content that would be harder to filter out.
Ask it for objectionable stuff in Bible lol
Man, that form doesn’t verify any contact information. It sure would be easy to flood it with genuine concern in picture format.
No captcha, no contact info verification not even an old school forum “What’s your favorite color” lmao
Does it sanitize user inputs? Or is a 90s style SQL injection possible?
Bobby Table, do it!
After our office consistently heard from student, parents, and teachers about objectionable curricula, policies, or programs affecting children, we launched the Eyes on Education portal.
Our kids need to focus on fundamental educational building blocks, not political ideology - either left or right.
Eyes on Education is a platform for students, parents, and educators to submit and view real examples from classrooms across the state.
The Office of the Attorney General will follow up on materials submitted to the portal that may violate Indiana law using our investigative tools, including public records requests, and publish findings on the portal as well.
To view examples or submit to the portal, select the school corporation and name of the school and upload your documents.
Upon submission, someone from our office may contact you for additional information or clarification.
Submissions to the portal will be reviewed and published regularly.
this is the most ridiculous rhetorical doublespeak I’ve seen in a while. kids need to focus on education, not political ideology, so let’s shove some political ideology down their throats? And, of course, the ass-covering BS logical absurdity that anything “objectionable” must, certainly, be unsafe for children.
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by the time I was in school - the age we were reading Silverstein - was the mid-late 80s. he’d a had couple banned by then, but my teachers were in love with him, so I got to read most of his books as a kid. what books of his weren’t assigned were to be found in our school’s library and were often fought over. we had a school that really pushed a curriculum that relied heavily on using both the school and local public library for research, even in elementary school. I remember my parts being annoyed at how often they had to take me to the library for even basic schoolwork.
I loved it.
I really lament that, today, with the internet, there isn’t a central public repository of trustworthy information for research. the closest is Wikipedia, and, for what it is, it’s pretty fucking great. It’s a great jumping-off point for anyone to start learning on any subject, and I’m super-glad it’s there.
bringing it back around, Shel Silverstein was a wry observer of humanity but poked his finger in the eyes of too many powerful critics. He had a way of opening the minds of people - especially children - that made people who would like to manipulate the weak scared that Silverstein’s message would make their efforts more difficult. It’s no wonder the would wish to silence him.
The theater adaptation of Where the Sidewalk Ends was one of our middle school plays at our decidedly “rural” school.
One mom had a problem with it, and it was only with the “rebellious” bits. She shut up when every other parent rolled their eyes at her. It’s crazy how attitudes shift.
Shel was a known cannabis user and a bit of a hippie. That’s probably why.
Fun fact, he also wrote the Johnny Cash song, “a Boy Named Sue”
They want objectionable Shel Silverstein? Because that can be arranged.
(I don’t want them banning Shel Silverstein or anyone else, I just think it’s funny that they want to ban the only non-dirty stuff he ever did.)
He (Shel) was published a bunch in Playboy (the above is an example) and he was a great illustrator.
Kurt Vonnegut and a ton of other authors were also published in Playboy.
Including Isaac ‘3 laws’ Asimov
I submitted this.
I sent them a copypasta
Title
BBBBBBBBBRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPsnnnnniiiiiiffffffffffff…oh yes my dear…sssnnnnnnnnnnnniiiiiiiiffffffff…quite pungent indeed…is that…dare I say…sssssssnniff…eggs I smell?..sniff sniff…hmmm…yes…quite so my darling…sniff…quite pungent eggs yes very much so …ssssssssssssssnnnnnnnnnnnnnnniiiiiiiffffff…ah yes…and also…a hint of…sniff…cheese…quite wet my dear…sniff…but of yes…this will do nicely…sniff…please my dear…another if you please…nice a big now…BBBBBBRRRRRRRAAAAAAAPPPPPPPFFFFFFFFLLLLLLLLLPPPPPPPPPFFFFFF Oh yes…very good!..very sloppy and wet my dear…hmmmmm…is that a drop of nugget I see on the rim?..hmmmm…let me…let me just have a little taste before the sniff my darling…hmmmmm…hmm…yes…that is a delicate bit of chocolate my dear…ah yes…let me guess…curry for dinner?..oh quite right I am…aren’t I?..ok…time for sniff…sssssnnnnnnniiiiiiiiffffffff…hmmm…hhhmmmmm I see…yes…yes indeed as well curry…hmmm…that fragrance is quite noticeable…yes…onion and garlic chutney I take it my dear?..hmmmmm…yes quite…BBBBBBRRRRRRRRPPPPPPFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFTTTTTTTTTTT Oh I was not expecting that…that little gust my dear….you caught me off guard…yes…so gentle it was though…hmmmm…let me taste this little one…just one small sniff……sniff…ah….ssssssnnnnnniiiiiffffffffffff…and yet…so strong…yes…the odor….sniff sniff…hmmm….is that….sniff….hmmm….I can almost taste it my dear……yes….just…sniff….a little whiff more if you please……ssssssnnnnnniiiiiffffffffff…ah yes I have it now….yes quite….hhhhmmmm…delectable my dear……quite exquisite yes……I dare say…sniff….the most pungent one yet my dear….ssssnnnnniiiifffffffffffffffffffffff….yes….
Massive Salad Fingers vibes coming from this. You, Internet Stranger are a god damn legend and hero that we need.
I wish I could take credit, but I don’t even know the origins of that copypasta!
Oh my word
This is like when a little boy has a crush on a girl but pretends they’re disgusted by them and their cooties. I suspect there’s more projecting going on here than a voice-throwing competition.
Everything that a conservative does is in the name of their own, personal insecurity. It’s all projection of their internalized fear and self-disgust.
Excuse me, but as a Hoosier, I expect you to always use the full title when discussing Mr. Rokita: Attorney General, Colossal Shitrag and Future Governor Todd Rokita.
Why yes, it does suck here.
There’s an old Ohio saying: “at least it’s not Indiana”
Our choices for governor are embarrassing.
In Oklahoma we have Kevin Stitt who is an anti-vaaxer corporate shit who owns gateway mortgage company, which also just opened a new line of banks… This guy is a clown worthy of Barnum.
Texan here. I’m in hell.
