Malicious Compliance Options for Opt-out Lessons

 Politico reported on June 27th that the Supreme Court had ruled "that Maryland's Montgomery County Public Schools violated parents' First Amendment rights to religious exercise by not giving them advanced notice or an opportunity to opt their children out of certain lessons."

Over at tumblr, nodynastyforus responded with a rather snarky post suggesting what malicious compliance might look like: Notify the parents of everything conceivable, and be as petty as possible.

• A lesson on a particular country will mention what the majority religion there is -> Notify parents that their children will hear that not everyone has the same religion as their family.
• Women are equal citizens to men -> Notify parents, because some of them cite Bible verses against equality.
• People of all skin colors are equal citizens -> Notify parents, because some are against this, in every part of the country.
• Meat will be discussed as a food -> Notify parents, because some are vegan for religious reasons.
• Languages other than English are taught or even just explained -> Notify parents, because some of them genuinely believe that God dictated the Bible to King James in English.
• A social studies lesson about the industries of California says that wine is one of them -> Notify parents, because some of them have religious beliefs against alcohol.
• Tobacco in North Carolina -> Notify parents, because some object to smoking for religious reasons.
• A music class is illustrated with a picture of an organ in a church -> Notify parents, because some don't believe in instrumental music in church.
• Teaching evolution, because some fundamentalists believe that all dinosaurs drowned in the Flood after trying to sink Noah's Ark.
• Blood transfusions, because one sect thinks they are immoral.
• Medical care in general, because some parents believe diseases can be cured by prayer alone.
• Holidays observed by various religions and cultures--someone is going to claim those observations are demonic.
• Interfaith marriage, because you can find Bible verses against this.
• Interracial marriage, because of the curse of Ham or some such vile nonsense.
• In fact, you better not mention any religion, because an atheist parent could conceivably object.
• Weapons, because some sects are strict pacifists.
• People dressing in conventional everyday clothing, because some religions have rules about modest dress. (Of course this is mostly but not entirely used against women.)
• Gambling, which some people oppose for religious reasons.
• Geometry and trigonometry, because some say π = 3.

Mountain Climbing

 

Carrots are a vegetable

 

Grooming

 Extremely dangerous how "grooming" in the context of child sexual abuse went from being a very specific pattern of isolation and trust-building with the aim of abusing someone to "telling children anything that contradicts their parents' ultra-conservative worldview is grooming" to "selling rainbow flags in a store is grooming" to "literally anyone I don't like is a groomer".

These days the word seems to most often be used by people who don't care about what it actually means and just want an easy "this person is irredeemably evil, kill them now" button.

self-loving-vampire

snagged from tumblr: Empathy

 

“In my work with the defendants (at the Nuremberg Trails 1945-1949) I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”

—

Captain G. M. Gilbert, the Army psychologist assigned to watching the defendants at the Nuremberg trials

Quoting two Redditors:

“Conservatives attack empathetic people all the time. They invent new slurs just for empathy every 15 years, like “politically correct”, or “bleeding heart”, or “woke”, etc.Restricted or nonexistent empathy is a prerequisite for conservative ideology.”

“The entire conservative ethos, everything they say and do, is completely consistent when your starting point is: no empathy.The bad part is that a lack of fundamental empathy is a somewhat innate quality, established in your first few years.  It’s very hard to acquire later in life.  So a lot of conservatives are beyond redemption.“

Written by one of the Uvalde victims moms:

 "The chicken soup in her thermos stayed hot all day while her body grew cold.

She never had a chance to eat the baloney and cheese sandwich. I got up 10 minutes early to cut the crust off a sandwich that will never be eaten.

Should I call and cancel her dental appointment next Wednesday? Will the office automatically know?

Should I still take her brother to the appointment since I already took the day off work? Last time Carlos had one cavity and Amerie asked him what having a cavity feels like.

She will never experience having a cavity.

She will never experience having a cavity filled.

The cavities in her body now are from bullets, and they can never be filled.

What if she had asked to use the bathroom in the hall a few minutes prior to the gunman entering the room, locking the door, and slaughtering all inside?

Was she one of the first kids in the room to die or one of the last?

These are the things they don’t tell us.

Which of her friends did she see die before her?

Hannah?

Emily?

Both?

Did their blood and brains splatter across her Girl Scout uniform?

She just earned a Fire Safety patch.

What if it got ruined?

There are no patches for school shootings.

Was she practicing writing GIRAFFE the moment he walked in her classroom, barricaded the door and opened fire?

She keeps forgetting the silent “e” at the end.

We studied this past weekend, and now she doesn’t need to take the spelling test on Friday.

None of them will take the spelling test on Friday.

There will be no spelling test on Friday.

Because there is no one to give it.

And no one to take it.

These are the things I will never know:

I will never know at what age she would have started her period.

I will never know if she had wisdom teeth.

(Or if they would have come in crooked.)

I will never know who she spoke to last. Was it the teacher? Was it her table partner, George? She says George is always talking, even during silent reading.

Did she even scream?

She screamed the lyrics to We Don’t Talk About Bruno at 7:58 AM as she hopped out of my car in the circle drive.

She always sings the Dolores part, her sister sings Mirabel and I’m Bruno.

“And I wanted you to know that your bro loves you so

Let it in, let it out, let it rain, let it snow, let it goooooo……..”

Did the killer ever see Encanto?

Could we have sat in the same row of seats, on the same day, munching popcorn?

What if Amerie brushed past him in the aisle? Did she politely say, “Excuse me,” to the boy who would someday blow her eye sockets apart?

Was he chomping on bubble gum as he destroyed them all?

If so, what flavor?

Cinnamon?

Wintergreen?

Was the radio on as he drove to massacre them? Or did he drive in silence?

Was the sun in his eyes as he got out of the car in the parking lot?

Did his pockets hold sunglasses or just ammunition?

These are the things I will never know.

There is laundry in the dryer that is Amerie’s.

Clothes I never need to fold again.

Clothes that are right now warmer than her body.

How will I ever be able to take them out of the dryer and where will I put them if not back in her dresser?

I can never wash clothes in that dryer again.

It will stand silent; a tomb for her pajamas and knee socks.

Her cousin’s graduation party is next month and I already signed her name in the card. Should I cross it out?

That will be the last card I ever sign her name to.

The dog will live longer than she will.

The dog will be 12 next month and she will be eternally 10.

What will the school do with her backpack?

It was brand new this year and she attached her collection of keychains like cherished trophies to its zipper.

A beaded 4 leaf clover she made on St. Patty’s Day.

A red heart from a Walk-a-Thon.

A neon ice cream cone from her friend’s birthday party.

Now there will be no more keychains to attach.

No more trophies.

Surely they can’t throw it out?

Would they throw them all out?

19 backpacks, full of stickered assignments and rainboots, all taken to the dumpster behind the school?

Is there even a dumpster big enough to contain all that life?

These are the things someone else knows:

The moment the semiautomatic rifle was put into his hands--was “Bring Me a Higher Love” playing in the gun store? “Get off my Cloud” by the Rolling Stones? Maybe it was Elton John’s “Rocket Man.”

Did the Outback Oasis salesperson hesitate as they slid him 375 rounds of ammunition?

not my problem my kids are grown and out of school

Or I don’t have kids, so I don’t have to worry about their skulls getting blown across the naptime mat

Or fingers crossed there’s a good guy with an equally powerful gun that will stop this gun if needed

Did they sense any danger or were they more focused on picking that morning’s Raisin Bran out of their teeth?

My Nana used to say, “Pay attention to what whispers, and you won’t have to when it starts screaming.”

But now I know there is a more deafening sound than children screaming.

More horrific even, than automatic rifles on a Tuesday morning.

I beg the world:

Pay attention to what’s screaming today, or be forced to endure the silence that follows."

Ethan Grey on the pandemic through a caste lens

 

You’ve no doubt mused at some point why the logic of “If we all just got vaccinated, the pandemic would be over. We wouldn’t have to wear masks anymore!” didn’t work with Trump’s base. For starters, you’re projecting your rational desire to see the pandemic end onto them.

The most important thing to Trump’s base is not ending the pandemic. The most important thing is ensuring the pandemic cannot be used as a pretext to alter the rules of society, and this is based on an awareness of who COVID-19 significantly affects. The moment that it was understood that COVID-19 disproportionately affects communities of color, the immunocompromised, and other vulnerable populations, Donald Trump’s base decided that the viral pandemic was acceptable.

Donald Trump himself best channeled how his base views the pandemic when he said this: “if you take the blue states out, we’re at a level that I don’t think anybody in the world would be at.” From Adam Serwer’s book “The Cruelty is the Point.”

Donald Trump did not see himself as being under an obligation to act as a President for all Americans, and his base was with him that regard. In him, they saw their own desire to ignore the issue if they perceived it was just Democrats being significantly impacted.

Obviously, wanting to conceive of the pandemic as a Democratic problem is not rational. But this calculation to not take the pandemic seriously was not being made with rational considerations in mind. It was made with notions of caste in mind.

The reality: Donald Trump’s base has a sense of occupying the dominant caste, they want to think of COVID-19 as a lower caste issue, and the dominant caste being forced to go out of its way to protect people perceived as lower in caste is a supreme violation of caste rules.

All subsequent discussion of how caste intersects with the pandemic will be based on this summary of the temperament of dominant caste behavior from Isabel Wilkerson’s book “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.”

These two paragraphs make no mention of the viral pandemic, and yet I contend that they contain everything you need to explain the behavior of Donald Trump’s base throughout the viral pandemic.

Bear in mind the priorities of the dominant caste as you read ahead: to see itself as most correct. To refuse instruction from people outside of it. To ensure it has the power to put people in their places. To deny shared basic human experiences with anyone perceived as lower.

When the pandemic started taking off, the most heated debate was over having to wear masks. Why was there a debate? See this through the lens of caste: the dominant caste was being told to wear masks to protect themselves and potentially people outside of their caste. But according to caste rules, the dominant caste does not get told what to do. Not when it comes to protecting themselves, and most *definitely* not when it comes to protecting people perceived as beneath their station.

You’ve been rationally approaching the pandemic as a threat to your health & to the health of the people you care about. Trump’s base has approached the pandemic with a paranoid suspicion that the pandemic will be used as a pretext to upset a caste order that privileges them. For if those perceived as occupying the dominant caste are forced to go out of their way to protect people perceived as being outside of it, then their sense of dominance is a lie and their humiliation as seen through the lens of caste is complete.

We’ve also had debates over social distancing measures, suspending large indoor events, temporarily closing down indoor dining, etc. to control the spread of the virus. Why did Donald Trump’s base freak out when these were proposed?

See this through the lens of caste: the dominant caste, viewing itself as the zenith of society, is the one endowed with the power to put people in their places. To decide where people can go. Nobody is allowed to usurp this power from the dominant caste for any reason. What you see as rational measures to control the spread of the virus, they see as people outside the dominant caste attempting to seize their sense of power with respect to being able to put other people in their place.

Donald Trump recklessly holding rallies throughout the viral pandemic was precisely what they wanted. Because it was about reasserting the power that comes with being in the dominant caste: you can go where you want, do what you want, and behave how you want without consequences.

Their sense of identity is tied to being able to impose upon others and celebrating invulnerability from being imposed upon. That is why they view everyone who is laser-focused on following measures to reduce the spread of the virus as beneath their station.

When they speak of “freedom”, they speak of the “freedom” to not bear any responsibility in controlling the spread of the virus. Any responsibility to act better. The virus is beneath them. Therefore, the people who care about the virus are automatically viewed as beneath them. …

Furthermore, the dominant caste will immediately find the idea that people among other castes have the correct strategy for dealing with COVID-19 to be absurd. To view yourself as a member of the dominant caste is to view yourself as unassailable in knowing what should be done. …

Not acknowledging shared human experiences is the entire point of caste. Not acknowledging shared vulnerabilities is the entire point of caste. Because shared vulnerability ruins the entire point of feeling invincible, unassailable, compared to other human beings.

So let’s name the precise reason the pandemic has played out as it has: it’s because a society that responds to the viral pandemic with an earnest desire to protect the most vulnerable is a threat to caste, and that alarmed Trump’s base way more than the threat of the virus.

That’s the calculation Trump supporters made, and you know what it ultimately means: they chose caste over their own lives. They chose caste over the lives of their own children. They chose caste over your lives and the lives of your own children.

So that’s it. No more wondering what’s ultimately driving the behavior of Trump’s base during the viral pandemic. Their behavior during the pandemic is completely synonymous with their behavior before the pandemic. They are upholding America's caste system: white male supremacy.