There is a person that is doing this with Nonviolent Communications. Edwin Rutsch. So far I haven’t heard that much that really goes across the aisle as he intends, but I have my eye on his work.
You can see his videos on YouTube.
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Converting avowed white supremacists is a neat trick, but requires a lot of luck and a lot of skill. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but it shouldn’t be the go to strategy.
Stopping the flow of misinformation would be better. This includes checking one’s privilege.
I’d make a comment about parenting, but I don’t want to tell others how to parent. Parenting is hard enough without my $0.02.
The one thing that got me about the Nazi thread was the insistence that they’re not real Nazis but scared children, or economically disadvantaged. The first rule of surviving an autocracy is to believe the autocrat. I think this also extends to the supporters of autocracy. If they say they’re Nazis, they’re Nazis, believe them.
Not that I’m saying it’s impossible to convert avowed white supremacists, but if it can be done, one has to accept the fact that they’re white supremacists.
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It can sound temptingly urgent to try fighting tribalism with tribalism, but it seems to me to reenforce the status quo rather than attaining fundamental liberation. “But OUR tribalism is The Enlightened One, so it’s justified!” leads to many regressive, reactionary paths for the unwary.
Pejoration/labelling always needs to be far less of a priority than actual negotiation of social realities between people. Besides, trying to shame them only fuels their misguided persecution/martyr complex. Most people have poorly rationalized ideologies, inherited from others rife with internal contradictions which can be collapsed, and Nazis are definitely on the really weak side of ideological coherence. They may be certain of their identity as a Nazi, but are probably far less certain about what that means or why it matters. It takes a lot of shrewdness to resist reactionaries in ways that don’t play into their existing narratives about you. The left also needs to fight at least as hard to be pro-active, to provide viable alternative systems of social organization, instead of only complaining about the right and petitioning them for the right to exist.
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What I’m saying is if they say they’re Nazis, we should take them at their word.
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Thanks for asking for our input. Who knows when the skills any of us bring to bear might be precisely what somebody else in the cluster needs?
The Harry S. Truman quote from “Plain Speaking” - I found it:
"Mr. President, do you think those were better times, when you were a boy?
‘Oh, I don’t know about that. Comparisons like that. They’re so easy to make, but I’m not sure they’re ever right.’
"He thought for a moment, and then he said, ‘The only thing I’m sure of: People weren’t so nervous then. All these things people have now that are supposed to entertain them and all. They just seem to end up by making everybody nervous.’ "
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I’ve been thinking lately that Toffler was right in Future Shock, he was just a bit premature.
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Another book I read 25 years ago then forgot about.
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Ever read the classic it inspired?
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Nope, but it looks interesting
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FWIW I have enjoyed watching you actively listen to people, more and more and more. 
Very engaging to see you so engaging. Hope that’s fair to say!
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Didja know they made a documentary out of it?
NARRATED BY ORSON WELLES?
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Yeah, revolutionary France and revolutionary Russia - Terrible times to be alive. The tribes, having won a victory, then set on each other for lack of opposition.
We wrestle not against flesh and blood but against stupidity. Fear not those who can give you a bloody nose - fear those who can gerrymander you into irrelevance.
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Just look at it! I grew up loving this sort of thing, which is why I actually live in uncanny valley.
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Here’s another one that hits a little close to modern day. In it, everyone has an internet feed implanted in their brains to constantly monitor their thoughts, build a consumer profile, and suggest products to them wherever they look, whatever they do. They go to School™ mainly to learn how to be good consumers and keep up with the trends.
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my professional life is currently dominated by three things–
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a group of kids who are about as nice as any group of 6th graders i’ve ever had. they have certainly given me one of the best starts to a year that i’ve ever had.
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getting used to being on a new team of teachers for the first time in 10 years. i’ve known both of them for several years now and i’ve always felt they were nice but now that i’m teamed with them i have also learned how supportive and professional they are. it has made the change so much easier than it might have been.
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a new principal who has determined to change everything about the way we have done things at my school for the past 8 years. i can understand overturning last year’s disastrous ineptitudes caused by the principal we had last year who had no idea how to be an administrator, changed his practices every 3-5 weeks, and then got a job as a superintendent for a private district in dallas 3 months before school let out and was the very definition of phoning it in but our new principal is determined to overrule every practice good bad or indifferent (unfortunately mostly good) of the past 8 years and when someone who has been there since the campus opened tells him that what he is doing represents a change from former good practices he acts like that person is nakedly lying to him for some kind of sleazy advantage. additionally i seem to have acquired a nemesis who is either my new principal or is higher up than my new principal and has been coaching him on ways to make me miserable. examples of that are splitting me off from a team of teachers i have been happy with for 10 years; moving me to a new classroom which is not set up for science from the science room i have been in for the past 8 years; requiring me to teach social studies in addition to science which i hate teaching and which will cause me to be unable to complete the curriculum by the end of the year or to skim over important and interesting parts of the curriculum so that i can finish it; forbidding me from wearing my vibram 5-finger shoes for reasons of “professionalism” while a majority of the other teachers wear either athletic shoes or flip-flops (yes, flip-flops) on a daily basis; being forbidden to wear any of my tie-dyes or infinitees on dress-down days for which i have paid money or collected boxtops for education in order to earn; as well as acting as though he were in pain or sniffing a turd every time he does a walkthrough in my class. he has also ducked every meeting i have tried to schedule with him to discuss any or all of the above issues. and all of that is just in the first three weeks of school, just 33 to go O_O
edited to put a three in front of item three.
edited again to correct a multitude of spelling errors due to my haste to complete the above so i could go talk to my wife who had been sleeping when i got in from work.
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Reminds me of a colleague who came back from a PD day and declared in the staff room: “Everything we’re doing is wrong!”
When we got her to unpack the “everything”, it turned out to be something we didn’t do much anyhow. She’d just got swept up by the charisma of the seminar presenter.
I hope not too many babies get tossed out with your bathwater. I am always suspicious of admins who want teachers to present themselves as Stepford robots and not functioning adults (which would surely be a better role model for young minds, no?).
The Vibram ban, I suspect, is because they are Weird, and Weird will not be tolerated.
I hope things clear up and get better soon.
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they’ve tolerate me for 20 years and my vibrams for 5. really, there are all the signs of having acquired a nemesis.
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I have been falling behind here and at the other place… on the plus side I have been working and I am getting added to 2 other accounts for my work which is good cause really if the account I am on wasn’t such a mess and I think I got the ball rolling to work with the customer to get it cleaned up it would be maybe 1/2 a head at most for the work. Looking forward to being told I am good to work remote permanently cause small town Iowa is deadsville.
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