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Major Announcement

Trump is set to make “a major announcement” tomorrow. “America needs a superhero,” he declares in his announcement of the coming announcement. He’s already said he’s running for president again. All of us with any sense realize a second Trump term is the worst possible thing for our country. What could it be? Is he re-announcing because the first announcement was such a flop?

And what the hell is up with the imagery in this clip?

Destruction

With Keri Lake taking Trump’s example to heart and refusing to concede an obviously-lost election, I’m afraid we’re seeing what will now be the typical Republican reaction to election loss: deny, deny, deny.

Trump did so much damage to our country, but this Republican denial of reality as a basic election operating principle is the most harmful. It tears at the very foundation of our democratic institutions, and it leads to previously-unthinkable insanities, like the ostensible leader of the party calling for the dissolution of the Constitution and the party saying nothing to condemn such dangerous rhetoric. Republicans have not rejected Trump even when he literally suggested destroying our country.

There is no hope for the Republican party. Just when I think it can’t fall deeper, it does.

Election 2022

It was a little after six when I realized I hadn’t gone to vote. I’d been putting it off all day, spending the day working on our yearbook for 2022, taking the kids on a bookstore outing, and learning that the $3,000 we spent to fix our outdoor HVAC unit was completely wasted. So, a mixed bag.

The line for voting stretched into the parking lot, but it was moving fast. Even if it wasn’t, I was going to stick it out: “Vote like democracy depends on it” has been an idea consistently popping up on social media, and I’m likely to agree. The radical GOP (which stands for Gaslight Obstruct and Project) seems determined to destroy our democratic institutions, and their traitorous support of a man who tried to overturn a fair election has made me say numerous times, “I’d vote for Satan himself before I’d vote Republican.” Besides, the Republican party of the past is just that: they are, by and large, a bunch of conspiracy theory anti-democracy grifters who take their supporters to be naive children who don’t remember what they said five minutes ago.

As I entered the voting booth, I clicked on the option to vote for the entire Democratic ticket, then clicked through the options to check each selection. It was only then that I realized how many races were one-person (usually one-man) races, with only a Republican running. In all of those races, I cast no vote, though I thought about writing in myself.

What an amusing situation that creates, though: so many Bible-belt Christians here are so anti-communist that they see communism where it doesn’t even exist. They equate anything left-leaning with socialism, which they in turn equate with the very worst version of it (i.e., the Soviet Union). However, elections in the USSR looked more like elections in South Carolina than Republicans here would probably like: one option, and one alone.

If the modern GOP had its way, that’s exactly what they’d enforce.

Day 65: Inferring in the Rain

Inferring

Authors often say a lot without saying much. A good author leaves a lot for the reader to piece together for herself, and that’s one of the things that can make a book engaging. But filling in those gaps is a skill that readers must learn. It doesn’t come naturally.

This is one of the things I spend a lot of time and energy teaching my eighth graders how to do. The honors kids are usually fairly adept at it, but the on-level students often struggle. I have to model it for them, doing think-alouds in which I say aloud all the inferences that are running through my head when I read. I infer; I predict; I connect to previous knowledge; I comment on what I read. I model, model, model, then turn it over to them to try as a class before they try it in groups and finally as individuals. Scaffolding, that’s called: model it, practice as a whole class, practice in groups, practice individually — the bread and butter of my teaching.

Tom Sawyer is providing ample chance for me to begin exposing the Boy to this kind of critical thinking.

Presently [Aunt Polly] stepped into the kitchen, and Sid, happy in his immunity, reached for the sugar-bowl — a sort of glorying over Tom which was wellnigh unbearable. But Sid’s fingers slipped and the bowl dropped and broke. Tom was in ecstasies.

I pause: “What do you think will happen?” I ask the Boy.

“Aunt Polly will think that Tom broke the sugar bowl,” he said after a moment’s thought.

“Right. That’s called predicting…” I begin.

“I know, Daddy. You tell me that every time we read something.” Perhaps not every time, but often enough.

We continue:

In such ecstasies that he even controlled his tongue and was silent. He said to himself that he would not speak a word, even when his aunt came in, but would sit perfectly still till she asked who did the mischief; and then he would tell, and there would be nothing so good in the world as to see that pet model “catch it.” He was so brimful of exultation that he could hardly hold himself when the old lady came back and stood above the wreck discharging lightnings of wrath from over her spectacles. He said to himself, “Now it’s coming!” And the next instant he was sprawling on the floor!

“What does ‘sprawling’ mean?” the Boy asks.

I explain, then ask, “Do you understand what happened?”

There is a lot going on in that passage, particularly in the final two sentences: “He said to himself, ‘Now it’s comin!’ And the next instant he was sprawling on the floor!” Missing from this is the fact that Aunt Polly slaps Tom so hard that it knocks him off his chair.

I explained it to the Boy. He thought it was horrible that someone would slap a child so hard that it knocks him out of his chair. I think that’s a fairly reasonable concern, to say the least. Why do we adults find that passage funny, though? I think it’s because of all the work Twain makes us do, all the thinking, all the blanks we fill in. Twain is a master of implication.

In the Rain

It rained all day today. K and I were concerned that it might turn out to be enough to threaten our basement again. Granted, I have filled all the termite treatment holes with hydraulic cement: those holes shouldn’t let any more water into our basement, let alone the geysers and fountains that were gushing in during our last storm. And the crack by the fireplace? I drilled it out completely and patched it with more hydraulic cement.

So part of me was thinking, “Okay — bring it on. Let’s see if I’ve got you licked” (to employ a usage from Tom Sawyer that still tickles the Boy).

But most of me was just hoping that it didn’t come to that. When the Boy and I headed out in the morning to see how much rain had fallen, things were looking bad but not dreadful.

We went back out in the afternoon after more rain. We went ahead and crossed the creek at this point like usual: the water was only a few inches above our feet. I held the Boy’s hand, and we ventured up a bit further. The rain continued, and by the time we made it back to this point, the water was waist-deep for the Boy. I held his hand firmly, and we made it across easily, but it was a lesson: “See how quickly the water can rise?” That’s the epitome of flash-flooding.

Scare Politics

I noticed this particular meme this evening on social media:

I find it hard to imagine what kind of simplistic thinking could lead to something like this. Surely no one so naive as to believe that it’s as simple as this meme suggests. To think that we could go from Trump-istan to this worst-case-scenario, utterly exaggerated vision of progressive ideas run amuck in one election cycle — I just don’t get it.

What I do get is the fear buttons this kind of meme pushes. The left has their own versions of these memes, of course. I could probably browse the tweets of friends who lean much further to the left that an avowed centrist (don’t we all see ourselves as centrists? no — we certainly don’t) like me and find the equivalent: we’re one step away from living in a real-life Handmaid’s Tale. (Come to think of it, I believe there was a protest with women dressed as handmaids from the novel/movie/series.) Making decisions from fear is bad enough, but making them from a sense of fear that might very well have been intentionally manipulated — that in itself is terrifying.

The Dog

Two things: how can a dog get that dirty in a matter of seconds? And how can it seem to disappear as soon as she’s dry?

Observing and Inferring

Of the many things I have to teach my students, one of the most difficult is the art of inference. When we read, we infer, but I try to show students that we infer constantly: about people’s body language, about who’s walking behind us, about the mood of our mothers and fathers — simply everything. But as we begin working with it at a visual level, inferring from photographs, I find that students often think an inference is merely an observation. In other words, they look at a situation, make a generalization about it, and think they’re merely reciting facts.

For example, take a look at the picture below.

It’s tempting to say that one observation is simple: this is in a store. After all, there’s plenty to indicate that:

  • in the foreground there’s a display case with meat;
  • in the background there’s what looks like a refrigerator display case; and
  • there are people who appear to be client and salesman.

However, the very verbage of the description belies the fact that it’s not an observation (after all, I used the term “indicate”) but instead an inference. It might be an inference with a very high degree of probability, but an inference it is.

I think that this might be a source of political friction between the liberals and conservatives. They’re both making inferences that they assume to be mere observations, and when the other side calls them on it, the discussion often slides into ad hominem arguments. Anyone who can’t see the obvious inference — which to the speaker is just an observation — is an idiot. After all, it’s as simple as seeing that the woman in the picture above is clearly shopping for Christmas dinner.

Warsaw Winter

Hungary had its 1956 uprising, when it appeared that the Soviet satellite might gain its independence. The USSR moved in and reasserted control by force.

Prague had its Spring: reforms and liberalizations in 1968 by the puppet Communist regime that eventually warranted a full scale invasion by the Soviets to settle things down.

Poland never experienced such a “corrective” invasion, though there was always the thought that the Soviets might have invaded had Jaruzelski not imposed martial law on December 13, 1981. Lech Wałęsa’s Solidarity party was gaining too much influence and there was concern that unrest might spread throughout the nation.

The conventional Polish wisdom (as I understood it) has been that Jaruzelski imposed martial law in a bid to preempt a Soviet invasion. Antoni Dudek, a Polish history professor, has published on his blog contents of a note Jaruzelski said to Viktor Kulikov, a Soviet general,

Będzie gorzej, jeżli wyjdÄ… z zakładów pracy i zacznÄ… dewastować komitety partyjne, organizować demonstracje uliczne itd. Gdyby to miało ogarnąć cały kraj, to wy (ZSRR) bÄ™dziecie nam musieli pomóc. Sami nie damy sobie rady”.

It will be worse if [the protests] spread from the workshops begin devastating the party committee, organizing street protests, etc. If it were to spread throughout the country, you (the USSR) would have to help us. We couldn’t manage it alone.

And so the possibility for a Polish Winter to match the Prague Spring was very real.

WałÄ™sa, in the meantime, has suggested that Jaruzelski might be brought up on charges of treason. Dudek admitted that while WałÄ™sa usually likes “strong words,” these words might indeed be “adequate.”

Jaruzelski of course denies all of this. Words were taken out of context. Shades of meaning have been applied that were not intended. It seems to be just the beginning, and given the generally closed nature of the Polish archives (compared to the open archives of the former East German government), it seems a resolution is distant, if not impossible.

Dudek’s blog is available here. The Onet story includes information about WałÄ™sa’s reaction. Hat tip to the beatroot.

Intellectual Walls

Mis (Teddy Bear)
Mis (Teddy Bear)

Many people were concerned about Obama’s speech, and some conservatives were voicing fears that Obama would try to indoctrinate the youth. Concerned conservative groups urged parents to keep their children at home, to shield them from the insidious message of socialism. “Parents have a right to decide what their children hear!” they protested, “And we’re only trying to protect our children.”

The irony is, in trying to shield their children from a perceived socialist threat, they were engaging in behavior that historically has been most commonly exhibited by — surprise! — socialist regimes.

One of the most frightening features of the Soviet Union and its satellite states was the complete control they had over information. Orwell’s 1984 had the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth, which altered historical documents to create the appearance of Big Brother’s omniscience. The Soviet Union, in many ways, did the same thing.

More importantly, though, anything and everything from the corrupt West was censored. The capitalist message was so insidious that it might indoctrinate the happy citizens of the Soviet Union and lead to the downfall of the the most perfect civilization on Earth. Capitalism was bad, so bad that even to think about it was deadly.

The Polish cult classic Mis (“Teddy Bear”) has a scene dramatizing what surely happened each and every time a sports team from a communist country traveled West for a competition. The director of the sports club gives the standard speech before getting on the bus:

You’re going to a capitalist country, which might have it’s own, well, advantages. Take care that those advantages don’t overshadow the disadvantages.

The advantages could be so seductive that they could cast their spell even in the midst of post-war destruction: Stalin imprisoned many of the Soviet soldiers who’d been on the far Western front. They’d seen too much; they’d been contaminated. Indoctrinated.

The Soviets didn’t want informed citizens who could weigh the advantages and disadvantages of socialism and capitalism and choose wisely. Big Brother knew very well how seductive the dark side could be, and he took great pains to shield his younger siblings’ eyes and plug their ears.

Confusion

Some weeks seem intent on confusing the sense out me. Students say things that literally leave me speechless, wondering whether or not the kid is joking. Parents and pundits around the land fall into spasms of paranoia about a presidential speech intended to encourage students to take their studies seriously. An odd, high-pitched whistle begins drifting into the house through the back windows at various times during the week leaving everyone wondering what the devil that sound could be.

A long weekend away from all the confusion and nonsense hopefully will help. At the very least, L will experience and hopefully enjoy her first camping trip.