If you've done a little reading and know anything of fascist, phallocentric, women- and gay-hating regimes, such as in Iran, Afghanistan, and the Nazis, you'll see how this kind of shit taking place at New College is of a piece with those ideologies. The only difference is a matter of degrees. As I like to say, in response to this kind of crap, you can't be "sort of" a bigot; you can't be "only a little" fascistic. Once you start to climb that slope, it becomes not a slippery one, but one with clear footing towards the formation of the morality police, with all the heinous and disgusting coercions and punishments contained therein.
One of the skinny strays I feed made an incredible, ginormous hairball on my porch this am--I thought to myself, would Wonkers want to see this ambergris mass of a hair sculpture production?-- and I have seen some long OCD cat 8-10 inch hairballs--but lucky you I was like no way don’t post a hairball pic on the internet. Thank goodness there is also a stray dog who will soon be along to eat the hairball. So, no sentient hairball photo haha
Or the coffee cups in the new privately owned cafe, emblazoned with the misspelled Bible reference “Phillipians [sic] 4:13,” which the school paper reports is a verse reading “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” Yes, at a public college.
Higher prices, shittier product, shittier pay. But hey, you get some free bonus Jesus so Worth It!
Arron Hillegass, a writer and engineer who literally introduced a generation of learners to programming for Mac OS X and iOS, had been slated to join the faculty when this nonsense started going down, and withdrew a $600K donation and resigned very publicly. Arron was lucky enough not to need the job, just wanting to educate the kids, which, I know, very much brands him a commie. His decision, of course, brought the violent threats from right wing troglodytes, because, really, what else do they have? It also prompted an amusing tough guy callout from Rufo on Twitter. Seriously, fuck these pieces of shit, but man I do feel bad for the students.
If they must have Bible verses on the cafetaria coffee cups, and truckle to DeSantis and company, how's this idea? The smiling face of DeSantis on the coffee cups, above the reference Proverbs 11:29. ("He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind.")
I went to a catholic women's college when I got out of HS, due to cost and being able to be a dayhop student. While there were some ridiculous rules nothing was as oppressive as all this . If you made the mistake of revealing you were Catholic when you signed on which meant you were required to take some religion classes. And that statue of St Maria Goretti in the students' lounge was a tad excessive, but even my friend whose father was a Russian Orthodox priest never was badgered to convert.
I cried reading this. It's Taliban, it's Gestapo, it's fascism at the very core. Why? These folks could have made their own school. But nope. They did it only to be mean. To show the "liberals". These students may be going away somewhere else but they will always exist, just not at this school. And when it does burn to the ground, perhaps these Fascists will think they did a "good thing" but these people will still be free spirits. They cannot take that away.
I have been reading graphic books by Marjane Satrapi on living through, and escaping from, the Iranian revolution and Iran. This IS the beginning of that same thing.
Republicans are following the Viktor Orban playbook.
Orban's authoritarianism playbook is to be stealthy and petty. There's a rival Socialist politician who described the Fidesz method under Orban: Use the power of the state to capture institutions and incapacitate them. For actual government services, slash the budgets and eliminate civil service protections. Key decision-making posts are then filled by Fidesz apparatchiks, then budgets are increased. The public institutions are kept in a state of permanent austerity, and budgets are increased or reduced based on the managers' transactional relations with the elected Fidesz politicians.
The day-to-day interactions of workers like teachers and office staff are basically petty tyrant BS -- retaliate against political dissent by enforcing the most minor of rules: write-ups for any lateness, create a culture of suspicion through "just-in-case" accusations of impropriety, monitoring email and social media activity. The most aggravating are the bureaucratic "oopsies," such as in the licensing and taxation bureaus, that could either be because of mistake on the part of an under-resourced, underpaid agency or some active malice on the part of a staff member to get a constituent in trouble (like intentionally misspelling a name or miskeying an address to basically make someone fill out paperwork again or go through a cumbersome phone tree or appeals process).
Christopher Rufo is not an idiot. Christopher Rufo is the opposite of an idiot, but toward the opposite extreme into something markedly worse.
Christopher Rufo is a totalitarian. Aside from his authoritarian politics and personality, he has a totalized worldview. That means that he has a lot of ideas about everything. He wants to know everything about everything and connect it all into a coherent, cosmic arrangement.
History saw this same totalizing worldview in Goebbels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao. In the U.S., Newt Gingrich thought this way too. Today, the people dangerously close to power with this totalizing worldview are Rufo, Steve Bannon, Samuel Alito and Peter Thiel.
Don't be fooled by Bannon's slovenly appearance. He's been in the military, finance, entertainment and politics, all of which inform his thinking and bring him clearance into sectors of power. He's an autodidact who is one of those "read one book a day" guys, and he's also one of those who looks toward obscure, esoteric philosophers who were precursors to fascism or radical theocratic forms of Protestantism and counter-Reformation Catholicism.
Rufo has a totalitarian worldview and is having the time of his life. What motivates Rufo isn't merely culture war clout; the destruction of institutions fulfills his lurid curiosity and the teleology is a critical part of it. In plain English, Rufo is a completist and his mind needs to experience it through its end.
lol
That's cronyism on a level that would have made the Tammany Hall crew go, "Dude, wtf."
If you've done a little reading and know anything of fascist, phallocentric, women- and gay-hating regimes, such as in Iran, Afghanistan, and the Nazis, you'll see how this kind of shit taking place at New College is of a piece with those ideologies. The only difference is a matter of degrees. As I like to say, in response to this kind of crap, you can't be "sort of" a bigot; you can't be "only a little" fascistic. Once you start to climb that slope, it becomes not a slippery one, but one with clear footing towards the formation of the morality police, with all the heinous and disgusting coercions and punishments contained therein.
One of the skinny strays I feed made an incredible, ginormous hairball on my porch this am--I thought to myself, would Wonkers want to see this ambergris mass of a hair sculpture production?-- and I have seen some long OCD cat 8-10 inch hairballs--but lucky you I was like no way don’t post a hairball pic on the internet. Thank goodness there is also a stray dog who will soon be along to eat the hairball. So, no sentient hairball photo haha
"strengtheneth" ???
It soundseth so Bibleth, doesn't it?
Hahahahaha
"Having so many more women than men, he said, turned New College into “what many have called a social justice ghetto.”"
I guess that explains why they view women's restrooms as some kind of terrifying Temple of Doom.
Or the coffee cups in the new privately owned cafe, emblazoned with the misspelled Bible reference “Phillipians [sic] 4:13,” which the school paper reports is a verse reading “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” Yes, at a public college.
Higher prices, shittier product, shittier pay. But hey, you get some free bonus Jesus so Worth It!
Arron Hillegass, a writer and engineer who literally introduced a generation of learners to programming for Mac OS X and iOS, had been slated to join the faculty when this nonsense started going down, and withdrew a $600K donation and resigned very publicly. Arron was lucky enough not to need the job, just wanting to educate the kids, which, I know, very much brands him a commie. His decision, of course, brought the violent threats from right wing troglodytes, because, really, what else do they have? It also prompted an amusing tough guy callout from Rufo on Twitter. Seriously, fuck these pieces of shit, but man I do feel bad for the students.
And this is what Rhonda is promising to do to America.......learn how to read a room buddy.
If they must have Bible verses on the cafetaria coffee cups, and truckle to DeSantis and company, how's this idea? The smiling face of DeSantis on the coffee cups, above the reference Proverbs 11:29. ("He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind.")
As if leftists and LGBTQ people don't know what it's like to be shunned. JFC
I went to a catholic women's college when I got out of HS, due to cost and being able to be a dayhop student. While there were some ridiculous rules nothing was as oppressive as all this . If you made the mistake of revealing you were Catholic when you signed on which meant you were required to take some religion classes. And that statue of St Maria Goretti in the students' lounge was a tad excessive, but even my friend whose father was a Russian Orthodox priest never was badgered to convert.
I cried reading this. It's Taliban, it's Gestapo, it's fascism at the very core. Why? These folks could have made their own school. But nope. They did it only to be mean. To show the "liberals". These students may be going away somewhere else but they will always exist, just not at this school. And when it does burn to the ground, perhaps these Fascists will think they did a "good thing" but these people will still be free spirits. They cannot take that away.
I have been reading graphic books by Marjane Satrapi on living through, and escaping from, the Iranian revolution and Iran. This IS the beginning of that same thing.
It’s not just New College that rightwingers are dismantling. There’s a whole war on public universities brewing.
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/wvu-cuts-higher-education/?custno=&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Weekly%208.18.2023&utm_term=weekly
Republicans are following the Viktor Orban playbook.
Orban's authoritarianism playbook is to be stealthy and petty. There's a rival Socialist politician who described the Fidesz method under Orban: Use the power of the state to capture institutions and incapacitate them. For actual government services, slash the budgets and eliminate civil service protections. Key decision-making posts are then filled by Fidesz apparatchiks, then budgets are increased. The public institutions are kept in a state of permanent austerity, and budgets are increased or reduced based on the managers' transactional relations with the elected Fidesz politicians.
The day-to-day interactions of workers like teachers and office staff are basically petty tyrant BS -- retaliate against political dissent by enforcing the most minor of rules: write-ups for any lateness, create a culture of suspicion through "just-in-case" accusations of impropriety, monitoring email and social media activity. The most aggravating are the bureaucratic "oopsies," such as in the licensing and taxation bureaus, that could either be because of mistake on the part of an under-resourced, underpaid agency or some active malice on the part of a staff member to get a constituent in trouble (like intentionally misspelling a name or miskeying an address to basically make someone fill out paperwork again or go through a cumbersome phone tree or appeals process).
Christopher Rufo is not an idiot. Christopher Rufo is the opposite of an idiot, but toward the opposite extreme into something markedly worse.
Christopher Rufo is a totalitarian. Aside from his authoritarian politics and personality, he has a totalized worldview. That means that he has a lot of ideas about everything. He wants to know everything about everything and connect it all into a coherent, cosmic arrangement.
History saw this same totalizing worldview in Goebbels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao. In the U.S., Newt Gingrich thought this way too. Today, the people dangerously close to power with this totalizing worldview are Rufo, Steve Bannon, Samuel Alito and Peter Thiel.
They all have a fastidious need for completeness.
The personal appearance of Steve Bannon, for one, makes me question any use of the word "fastidious" in connection with him.
Don't be fooled by Bannon's slovenly appearance. He's been in the military, finance, entertainment and politics, all of which inform his thinking and bring him clearance into sectors of power. He's an autodidact who is one of those "read one book a day" guys, and he's also one of those who looks toward obscure, esoteric philosophers who were precursors to fascism or radical theocratic forms of Protestantism and counter-Reformation Catholicism.
I anticipate it will lose its accreditation in 3, 2, 1....
It will close within 2 years...
I’m sure they’re okay with that
At the rate detailed here, that may be an optimistic time frame.
It's also likely exactly what DeFascist wants to happen.
Rufo has a totalitarian worldview and is having the time of his life. What motivates Rufo isn't merely culture war clout; the destruction of institutions fulfills his lurid curiosity and the teleology is a critical part of it. In plain English, Rufo is a completist and his mind needs to experience it through its end.