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When were you there last?

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What? And leave show business?

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I just read that joke in Bullshit Jobs.

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My understanding is that it's trivial for anybody to view pornography as long as they have a smart phone or other internet connected device.

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How many kids go to school just for the joy of going to school? It's a mix of societal forces, ambition, and parental pressure. And that is even more true for cram schools that take place after regular schooling is over.

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Are you just trying to figure out how one *could* prevent kids from learning algebra, or are you in favor of the measures you specify?

I mean, if the former, we could install cameras in every home and execute anyone who is teaching algebra.

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As a STEM professor at a large public university, I could not agree more. Limiting access to knowledge in the name of "equity" is a fantastically stupid idea that will only hurt the kids it is (wrongheadedly) intended to help.

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Things were way better when these people just yelled about cartoons being problematic on Tumblr

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To quote Freddie deBoer, "It's madness."

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Yeah, there just aren't enough words to describe how crazy/dumb/counterproductive it is.

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Actively harming kids, for what exactly? You can’t learn math, because someone else can’t learn math. Ok.

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We are actively hurting children in so many ways. School closures and mask mandates. Education is just another thing in a long list. I can't help but feel we are living in an anti-child culture.

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If you think that mask mandates and school closures cause equal harm, you could get a job for the San Francisco school district.

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I never said they cause equal harm. My point is each each causes harm.

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Privatization with extra steps

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Genuine question, is reducing overly complex knowledge being taught before their appropriate levels a good idea in your opinion? Like linear algebra being compulsary in high school for example

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I think that's also a problem. Teaching concepts, in an abstract way, that is cognitively inappropriate for brain development at that age. Place value comes to mind.

No. I don't think all kids should be run through algebra in middle school, or even high school. Some people just don't have the ability to handle that form of abstraction.

That's different from not offering it to those who can.

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"is reducing overly complex knowledge being taught before their appropriate levels a good idea in your opinion?" Yes. IMO, in general K-12 schools try to cram in way too much stuff. Linear algebra should definitely not be compulsory. But it should be available to kids who are ready for it, as should a great deal of other stuff.

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Linear algebra is not compulsory in high school. But generally yes, I think school tries to push kids into math that they're not ready for. I see kids taking calc who still make basic algebra mistakes. A more tiered system would probably be better where there are different levels of math available for kids to choose from.

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I was reading Raj Chetty a while back and it struck me: how many years of training does it take to become a data scientist, or an engineer, or whatever?

Four years of college and two years of grad school to get a master's degree? Or is it more like 20? Six years of college level learning plus 14 years growing up in a house filled with books, where your parents read to you every night?

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The latter definitely helps a lot. But it's not so much training as it is discovering that you have an interest that others share and that can be developed. I would think that's easier in the age of the internet than it was for me in the 1960s, poking around libraries and bookstores.

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Autodidacts are still beloved by librarians.

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So autodidacts are people that learn without going to school. What's it called if you go to school without learning?

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someone who needs a library card!

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Or you can read to yourself every night, which is what I started doing at about age 8. It helped that my parents encouraged it, or at least did not discourage it.

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Porque no los dos?

(I was read to a lot as a kid, and it was more sophisticated literature than I would have read on my own — I did read a lot by myself as well)

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My mom read to me to get me started. I got my first library card when I was 4 and was already reading at a 2nd grade level when I started Kindergarten. This was back in the day when smart kids got tracked. When my K teacher found out I could already read, I got extra attention and read to her TA after school. I can't imagine that happening today. I also skipped second grade, which I wish I hadn't but it probably helped accelerate my learning.

I was reading serious science fiction by the time I was 10 or so. I think that is when I read the Foundation Trilogy.

My parents were kind of a mess. My mom dropped out of JC when she was 18 to have me and had three kids by the time she was 22. I got a lot of attention from her when I was younger but this quickly dropped off as my parents marriage fell apart. The early start from her definitely helped.

Maybe I should try and read to my 13 year old. She might like that.

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Yep. I actually pulled my kid out of a public middle school when they stopped offering Algebra in 8th grade and sent him to Catholic school. They’re not hurting anyone but the kids who really need a chance by doing this shit. My kids already have a chance.

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What we really must find out, though, is if you are a “nice white parent” and if so, sell you a lot of books and extremely bullshit solutions to the mild discomfort of generalized anxiety and guilt. Bringing up class is offensive unless the elite is defined as the middle class and not the capitalist class.

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That would have been me (the one who needed the chance). I was poor but gifted and lived rurally - far away from educational resources. Luckily, even in a rural Appalachian K-12 school (think boonies), I had access to accelerated classes and the NY State Regents tests (which basically gave the same test to all students regardless of school size or location).

I truly despise the direction of education currently. It won't produce the outcomes they are hoping for and it will hurt many kids in the process. These are supposed to be smart people. How can they do this? It's incredibly unfair - like public education has been hijacked.

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They don't care about those they say they want to help

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I accidently took a math education class in college instead of the math class I was supposed to take. The classes had the same name and the prof didn't show up til after the drop date. Anyway, I noted a stark contrast between the students in my actual Abstract Algebra math class and the students in my educational Abstract Algebra math class. The best and brightest generally aren't going into education.

From what I hear the low pay is less of a deterrent to being a teacher than administrative frustrations. Teachers have told me its worse than stress form the parents.

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There are private schools teaching linear algebra in high school and those kids will be competing against SFUSD students in college -- why would you want to put them at such a disadvantage? I took algebra in 7th grade, as did my kids and it was fine.

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But they won't be at a disadvantage, because more and more colleges will stop considering high school course work. It's already happening. When they say colleges are using grades, notice they don't say "grades and transcripts". There's not a huge mechanism that compares 4.0 GPA without linear algebra and 4.0 with linear algebra--much less 4.0 with geometry and 3.8 with linear algebra.

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Sorry, I didn't mean competing to be accepted, I mean that if you are taking higher level math in college your ability to keep up peers who had a much deeper education in high school will be impacted. They can get in, but they will feel at sea when they get there (in fairness I think it's pretty insane that linear algebra would be taught in high school, but at a minimum all kids who want to should be able to take some calculus in high school).

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Meh – I don't think linear algebra is as hard as calculus. I honestly think the decimal number system is way too hard-to-understand for most _adults_! I certainly had a hard time explaining it to anyone that doesn't already understand multiplication.

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You'd be wrong about that. The colleges won't do it obviously, but they will look at AP scores and whether the students took AP classes or the like; and the top schools know quite well which students attend various kinds of schools. They have prep schools where the school simply hands them a list of their top students to be admitted this year.

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Making sure to get on the upper math track in middle school really is a big focus of parental college scheming, this push didn’t come out of nowhere.

If you think of it as a pure relative status competition, and don’t care if anyone learns calculus, the policy kind of makes sense. It’s just removing a hurdle that better-resourced parents know how to help their kids over.

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A good chunk of the kids in my high school calculus course, if not the majority, went on to the school of engineering or hard science majors when they went to college.

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Right, it is actually important in itself that people learn calculus. But a lot of parents, students, and apparently school officials do have the idea that it is just a status hoop, and with that belief the policy is more reasonable.

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So why is Freshman year of college so much worse than senior year of high school?

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Calculus is a basic requirement for a lot of essential courses for most technical majors, so you’d have to find other courses to fill your time for at least a semester (or more if you factor in multivariable calculus which many students also cover in high school).

That’s a lot of wasted time and money, and it forces a more compressed schedule to get your degree requirements done.

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Apr 8, 2022·edited Apr 8, 2022

At The university I went to freshman and sophomore year were predominantly filled with random gen Ed courses and actual major activities were super backloaded in almost all majors.

I’m not sure if this is unusual but adding literally 1 semester of calculus doesn’t seem like that much of a distraction while the civil engineering students need intermediate comp and biology and art and foreign language anyways.

At the k-8 school I teach at attracting and retaining an extra math teacher, and purchasing extra curriculum is non-trivial. We’ve had 3 people fill the position this year and currently have someone reaching out of field in the math job.

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FInally, someone who gets it!

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Apr 7, 2022·edited Apr 7, 2022

Worked at Mathnasium for a few years. The curriculum provided by them doesn't go beyond like 7th-grade-ish. We usually helped with homework, so we wouldn't be teaching calculus unless a student had it as homework.

Doesn't undermind your point just wanted do contribute some of my extremely limited knowledge

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Apr 7, 2022·edited Apr 7, 2022

On the other end of things, I once worked as a math tutor for a rich high-school girl at a private school who wanted to prep in late summer for her point-set topology class in fall. So I brushed up on point-set topology, because hey, I was the mathiest person at the tutoring company and $40/hour is $40/hour.

I am fully aware that this sounds like a setup for a terrible anime show. Nonetheless, it really happened.

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Yeah, Mathnasium isn't for rich people, and it's not for Asian immigrants. Asians use test prep centers run by and for Asian immigrants. Rich whites use tutors.

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No. Parents that value education invest in good tutors to remedy inadequate public schools offerings. I have Eastern Europeans, Indians, Greeks, Americans, Vietnamese & South American students - very few of them from rich families.

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In short, you have white and Asian immigrants mostly. There's a shock. And I should have said that rich families use private tutors. I was one for years--and mine were rich whites for the most part. Not the super-rich, just rich.

I always think it's odd that people talk about how immigrant families with no money pay for tutors. Like oh,look, they care! When it's hey, folks, they get money from home.

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The racial make up of my students mirrors very closely make up of the area I live in: I have around 20% of Latin kids, 25% of Asian kids & the rest is white - European & American. It would be strange to expect heavier representation of one group or another. Almost none of them are rich or even well off. I provide discounts when necessary, however for majority of my families education truly is a priority & they see value in it. I don’t think they are paying from the “sent money”, it seems parents are employed & can budget educational expense in. Interestingly though unsurprisingly, usually both parents are heavily involved in activities of their kids & my main contacts are almost 50-50 split between “mom figure” & “dad figure”.

I never advertise, but always booked with a wait list.

I make sure that all students are well versed in school curriculum & work with stronger, gravitating to STEM students, on more challenging concepts, going well beyond school curriculum.

Over last 5 years my whole business has changed. Before I was mainly working with weaker students with all kinds of learning difficulties, very strong students who weren’t challenged in schools, as well as tutoring test prep. That was almost all one-on-one work. Now majority of my students are in small groups (up to 5, usually 4) and I work on what schools should do but are failing spectacularly. No matter what schools do or not do, students are aiming for colleges - they need to have a strong math foundation to not only get admitted, but to succeed in a much more rigorous environment then the one they experience in schools. That’s why parents find value in my work. I can also tell you, that I have quite a few high schoolers who work & pay me from their own wages - because they know what they want & how to get there. My latest example - a very bright kid I worked on SAT tutoring, got from 660 to 780 in 4 month & is now admitted on a full ride to WPI.

No matter what schools in CA do, decent colleges still need and do find strong cohorts of future engineers, researchers, IT workers, scientists, etc. Kids are competing with their brightest peers from all over the world for spaces in these programs. What CA school system does is takes away a chance to participate from the underprivileged part of the population, because “pass-fail” won’t work & students without strong foundation will flunk out of rigorous programs even if admitted based on their “holistic criteria”

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I am pretty sure that if math beyond grade 7 level were to be eliminated, some private company would start offering enrichment classes for those parents who were ready, willing and able to pony up.

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I was reading about the SF School Board President who was recalled and all I could say was - she’s a left wing Marjory Taylor Greene - a certified loon. I don’t really understand how people A. Become that political and B. Become so nuts.

Maybe the nuts comes first?

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Because so much of education politics is intensely local and intensely boring, you get the perfect conditions for highly-motivated strivers who dominate the conversation and the elections simply by caring far more about it than anybody else.

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Like reddit mods

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Great comparison.

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I didn't know my distaste for these people could increase.

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"people"

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Sadly, I think it's _way_ too easy to notice the few mods (on any site/forum) that are terrible and _never_ notice all the others that performed a thankless job invisibly.

If anything, it's somewhat miraculous that mods everywhere aren't universally terrible!

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I mean, I wouldn't *forbid* algebra, but I do think schools emphasize it too much. If they wanted to replace algebra and calculus with more statistics, I think that would be better for everyone.

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Well when you put it that way, teaching it as an occult art sounds pretty badass

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Not really. Quite a lot of stats is teachable using just algebra. The different distributions etc. are not the part most students have trouble with. It's more basic concepts that hang people up, including people who can do the integrals.

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I basically got stats as am occult art up until probably my junior year of college. It's still pretty useful, even if the tests are a black box - just getting the idea that "group A is different than group B, but we need to do a test to see if that difference is likely real or just random noise" goes a heck of a long way to developing critical thinking skills. And in my experience, stats remains a magic black box for many biologists and medical researchers, the only academic fields I can really speak for.

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For that last 8 years I've been helping a medical residents' journal club with stats. My experience agrees with yours. The aspects they have trouble with are not generally calculus-related.

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founding

I took statistics in university without ever taking calculus and I did just fine.

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As a math-major, all math education (that isn't for math majors) is equivalent to 'teaching math as an occult art'!

(Hell, even theoretical physicists annoy mathematicians with their 'bad' math!)

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The abstract thinking necessary for algebra is the foundation of all higher math, including statistics at anything above the most basic level.

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I’m not saying *no* algebra, just less of it. I had three years of algebra and zero years of stats, and stats would’ve been more useful for me today.

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OK, that I understand. Once the basic concept that this here letter "x" stands for a number (but not any particular number, just SOME number), and an intuitive understanding of the meaning of a formula like y=ax+b is grasped, branching out into other areas like statistics is certainly doable.

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To underline others’ points, virtually all math, science, and engineering require algebra. Restricting algebra is like restricting who’s allowed to learn to write.

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I mean, they all require stats too.

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Maybe – it depends on what you mean by "virtually all math, science, and engineering", except math.

If you mean stats is required by 'virtually all MSE _education_', I don't think that's true.

If you mean 'virtually all MSE, in both education and professional practice', it's still not true of math. (There _are_ interesting academic results in non-stats fields that DO use stats, but that seems to be relatively uncommon.)

It IS _very_ true for 'science' and 'engineering', tho maybe less so for the latter. I know there's _some_ amount of statistics in many engineering disciplines, but I'm not sure any kind of deeper-than-shallow knowledge of stats is 'required' for most professional engineers. Certainly engineering practice is heavily _informed_ by statistical knowledge, but then that's arguably 'science' and not 'engineering'. I could be very wrong about that tho!

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I, too, think algebra is fundamental for many basic adulting skills, even blue-collar stuff like figuring out how much grass seed you need to buy.

But a big point of Freddie's book is that algebra is just too much for many kids.

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Funny enough, I think most people probably handle the 'how much grass seed do I need to buy' pretty easily.

That seems pretty similar to how other math subjects are _much_ easier when they're framed in a way that activates our 'social intelligence'. There is no 'word problem language' to parse and you won't get in trouble if you, e.g. draw a picture, to help calculate a solution.

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If all cannot succeed, then none can succeed.

“Cutting out algebra, and in doing so making calculus a much less pragmatically achievable goal, is a perfect scenario for leaving poorer kids behind!“ 100%. This is segregation in the making. Meritocratic parents devote immense amounts of time to scheming how to help their kids climb the slippery pole. They know to do math in college you need calculus in high school. They can do the math, so to speak: that in turn requires algebra previously. It’s lockstep, formulaic. So if you remove the possibility from public schools, that omission will be circumvented — by those with the means to do so.

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Some children like to learn. That includes mathematics. There is a sense of wonder and marvel at all this new learning. At least that is how I experienced it.

Why cut these children off from one of the great joys of life -- learning? Why force them into repetitive and boring drills of stuff that they already know, when you could have them developing naturally as their curiosity is awakened and slaked?

This is the best way to kill the love of learning.

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I don't know why either. I was lucky enough that my parents insisted that I be allowed to learn at my own pace even a little. I can sympathize with the school's resistance, at least a little, if them agreeing had required some kind of onerous administrative activity on their part, but I doubt that was the case. Maybe the most charitable interpretation is that, being a special case, they just didn't want to have to even entertain any exceptions to their standard policy?

I still can't wrap my head around them missing the _glaring_ irony of the whole situation tho.

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^^^^This!

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It's the great Vonnegut story "Harrison Bergeron" come to life. I didn't think I'd live to see it.

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First thing I thought about. Wish that story were mandatory reading in schools.

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I teach it every year! It resonates very, very strongly with students actually raised around this stuff, which gives me hope.

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No one is allowed to read it because some kids won't understand it.

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Always cracks me up that people think Vonnegut, a leftist, was skewering affirmative action in 1961. Vonnegut had tremendous sympathy for the "handicappers", and hated the talented. He reluctantly agreed that "equalizing" was a bad idea.

When you read HB, understand that Vonnegut was deliberately enacting his daydream, then sadly agreeing that it wouldn't work. But don't for a minute think he was mocking affirmative action.

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I believe you, but this raises some questions for me, to wit:

1. Does Vonnegut's ambivalence shine through in the story? I don't remember the story that way but I only read it once, a few years ago.

2. Why did he write a story where his daydream turned out not to work? Is it just that he was an honest guy and was willing to show, to himself and everyone, that something may be wrong with some of his most fundamental beliefs?

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I don't know. Here's what I know:

1) He wrote a letter:

"I can't be sure, but there is a possibility that my story "Harrison Bergeron" is about the envy and self-pity I felt in an over-achievers' high school in Indianapolis quite a while ago now. Some people never tame those emotions. John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald and Mark David Chapman come to mind. "Handicapper Generals," if you like."

2) Later, in a commencement speech, he said, "It isn't moonbeams to talk of modest plenty for all." Diane Moon Glampers. (Although he did use the name more than once). But he sees "moonbeams" as a bit of an impossible dream.

3) Before I knew any of this, when I first read HB and saw the publication date, I was confused. No one was skewering affirmative action in 1961. That was when Affirmative Action just meant the goverment would ensure no discrimination. "The contractor will take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin."

Complaints about lower standards and diversity didn't arise until the late 60s, at the earliest. No one even envisioned what would happen, no, not even Vonnegut.

So long before I read the paper by a guy who wondered similar things and wrote Vonnegut about it, I thought it was odd.

Past that, I can't be sure. But it makes more sense as some kind of wish fulfillment ("wouldn't it be cool if all the heros suffered") coupled with acknowledgement of the pain and unfairness that would cause.

It reads great as satire today. But if someone read it in 1961, they would have no frame of reference to think of it as we do, and there's literally nothing contemporaneous at time that is akin to what we think now. And if there was, Vonnegut would almost certainly have supported the opposite side.

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Maybe what you say is true, but the world he depicts is so self-evidently ugly and the policies in it are so clearly impractical that if he wanted to make the case for enforced equity, he didn't do a very good job.

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Exactly. I read it in 1990, I think, when there still wasn't anywhere near the level of "enforced equity" that there is now, and there is not a *hint* of wish fulfillment there. It's more the recognition that the envy and self-pity he felt is bad, and coming from a bad place.

That said, it doesn't read as a shot against affirmative action either.

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Thanks so much for your comment. Very helpful.

I certainly never read it as skewering affirmative action in particular; just egalitarianism in general. Wasn’t there a lot of “cut the tallest poppy” behavior in communist countries by 1961? Or maybe all that happened later, with Mao and Pol Pot…

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But Vonnegut was a socialist and very sympathetic to Marxism. He wanted equality of outcomes.

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Ah, I didn’t realize he was a socialist. Just figured him for a New Deal Democrat.

The point about making fun of Rand makes a lot of sense. I recall there being a kind of Uebermensch figure ho gets killed on the TV by the government; that always struck me as strange. If it’s a parody of Randian fever dreams, that would explain things.

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He may have wrote the story to inspire others to support his desire to equalize people, but readers don't always take away the lesson from a story that the writer intended. Some will read the story and come away horrified that we'd punish people for their talent our of envy, resentment and angry. Others will read it and support efforts to cut down the talented, like in SF.

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Sure, but "Vonnegut agreed with the people I think he's mocking" is kind of a facer for those pushing the story.

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Well then I was wrong and you enlightened me. Thank you.

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Apr 7, 2022·edited Apr 7, 2022

I think in "Harrison Bergeron" Vonnegut was less interested in stating his own position on egalitarianism than in mocking the childishly simplistic writings of some anti-egalitarians.

Specifically, I read it as a parody of Ayn Rand. The story was written just a few years after _Atlas Shrugged_, and the central conflict between heroic talented individualists vs collectivist bureaucrats is straight out of Rand. And details in the story feel like (mild) exaggerations of Rand's writing.

So while I don't think the story is clearly pro-egalitarianism, those who read it as against affirmative action or similar policies are missing the joke.

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That's a good observation about a Rand parody. Although that, too, suggests he's more in favor of equalizing outcomes than not. Again, his own letter suggests that he understands the pathology at the heart of his preference!

I see it as combination wish fulfillment and honest acknowledgement that such wish fulfillment would be dystopian. But not as cultural commentary on the US and definitely not as political commentary against leftist egalitarianism (which wasn't that developed at the time, anyway).

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Apr 7, 2022·edited Apr 7, 2022

Oh, I certainly don't think my reading of the story contradicts your larger point that Vonnegut favored efforts to equalize outcomes, and strongly agree that HB is not intended to mock affirmative action.

And I agree that he was likely ambivalent about his beliefs here, if only because he considered complete commitment to any abstract ideology as an enabler of evil in the world. There's a bit at the end of his _Mother Night_ that is wallpapered inside my mind:

"There are plenty of good reasons for fighting...but no good reason to ever hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty hates with you, too. Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side."

But HB itself doesn't read to me as motivated by that ambivalence, or as Vonnegut describing his ideal world and concluding that it would be unworkable. The characters are so cartoonish compared those in his other writing that I don't think he's trying to comment on the real world in any way.

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I know, right? Surreal.

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Terrible thought: It’s being promoted, not in spite of, but because it has all of the negative effects you cite. Putting a skill ceiling on public school graduates indirectly increases the value of private education and therefore directly benefits the rich parents who can afford it. In this terrible and nihilistic thought, the follow-on would be that everything claimed about racial equity is either a lie or a delusion promoted because it makes it harder to criticize the policy.

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"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

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I have a friend who works in local government for the GOP and this is basically how he describes a lot of political decision making. It's easy to assume people in government are trying to make life worse for everyone, but the actual answer seems to often be widespread incompetence.

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I recommend the Slate Star Codex article Mistake Theory vs Conflcit Theory

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It’s a good quote, but if the same stupidities keep coming up decade after decade, there’s either active individual malice or a memeplex/egregore/systemic racism/whatever trying to push it.

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Defining “privilege” as essentially middle class aspiration and then coming up with fantasy ways to restrict that instead of taking on capital is basically what standard liberalism has become.

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Liberalism, or left activism?

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Apr 7, 2022·edited Apr 7, 2022

I think left activists have a language and power map of class that often helps them choose the right battles in local contexts (and obviously supporting Bernie was the right call). But I have actually had the experience (pretty often and in actual activist contexts with neighbors) of offending liberals by just standard class analysis. They want to blame poor white people, or white people in their class position who aren’t crippled by guilt, for everything wrong in America, and they are certain that the primary engine of change is better schools so that people (not them) aren’t so stupid. As annoying as the left can be, it isn’t the Resistance. That’s for sure.

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