Erik Haugen @ech@qoto.org

@freemo @PBruce @olives in my defense I did say I'm not buying the struggle session story. As we discussed a while back also I'm not buying the rumors about male strippers for children either.

@freemo @olives Well I'll be the first to admit the right wing can go too far at times. Which is why I'm wondering if DeSantis has going too far in this respect.

Book bans, for example, is an adjacent issue. On one hand, for all I know pearl-clutching conservatives are in fact banning all books that give any kind of insight into what life is like as a person of color in America today. But moving a book that depicts child rape from the children's section to the adult section isn't a "ban", and it seems like every time I look into a specific ban, it's more like the latter, not the former.

For what it's worth, I checked my local library in conservative suburban Texas and it still carries Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye.

@freemo @PBruce @olives this is a Shiri's Scissor kind of a thing? I have no idea what in that post triggered that. Interesting🤔

@freemo @PBruce @olives I would love to be "corrected": are any school districts banning teaching Jim Crow anywhere in the US? (Or how else is this playing out in problematic ways? I don't know.)

Thinking back to my education decades ago, I think overall it could have been a lot better: I didn't learn about the Tulsa massacre until just a few years ago, for example. The Mexican–American War I think should be presented critically – US actions/motives were far from pure, and I don't I think our curricula back then was great in that regard. (Is it today? I don't know.) Those are just some examples.

@freemo @PBruce @olives did somebody block me for objecting to humiliating 6-year-olds?

@PBruce @freemo @olives I've read some of the laws from some states, and IANAL but it seems the things that are being banned specifically are e.g. teaching that white people are inherently racist by virtue of being white, or that some races have inherent moral superiority over others. etc.

There were rumors of struggle sessions where, for example, white 6yos were being humiliated in class for being evil white people. I am assuming such events are super rare or never happened (i.e. they are lies), but there's this hysterical reaction to the rumors, and I think the laws we're seeing are directed at that sort of thing.

Then, lefter-leaning media describes those laws as banning teaching Jim Crow, which is, as far as I have seen, also a lie.

I'm wondering what these regulations are doing *in practice*, if anything.

@freemo @PBruce @olives Bush & Obama built hundreds of miles of border walls, with bipartisan support. 🤷

I think you're right that it's idiotic; it doesn't really address today's immigration problems IIUC.

I'd rather the money was spent on "smart walls" i.e. drones to patrol the border areas to make sure e.g. nobody is stranded/etc. (It's a dangerous trek!)

@PBruce @freemo @olives But *how* exactly are they limited?

Is there a school that is literally not teaching about Jim Crow? (Honest question – sifting through the rhetoric has proven quite a challenge for me on this kind of issue.)

@PBruce @freemo @olives Similarly, "Banning history" means a certain thing that isn't banning history.

@freemo @PBruce @olives Can you tell me more about how Florida is not allowing people to tell others that they are gay? I thought "don't say gay" had more to do with education curriculum etc.

@PBruce @freemo @olives Make sure you understand what Pat means by those phrases, though, Dr. Freemo. 'Banning "Gay"' *of course* doesn't actually mean "banning gay". And so on.

@dclr42 @freemo altho Vermont has a Republican governor 😂

@TruthSandwich @freemo @freepeoplesfreepress @alecui I wouldn't worry too much about fascism? (Although I suppose people mean different things by that term.) I don't think Biden is quite as bad as Freemo does, but I did think it was ironic that Biden and Harris won in the wake of BLM & defund the police.

What's the thinking behind replying to someone to let them know you blocked them? I've noticed this quite a bit.

Today someone replied to let me know I had made an "obnoxiously cishet" comment about how any service that isn't e2e has to divulge secrets when subpoenaed and that I would now be blocked.

I mean, I guess I can try to be less cishet going forward; was that the goal?

@AnCuRuadh @OutOnTheMoors @crowgirl (To be clear, this post was a response to the question "And?")

@AnCuRuadh @OutOnTheMoors @crowgirl Then use e2e encryption so such snitching is impossible, or don't use services. Sad to say those are your choices, as far as I know.

@OutOnTheMoors @crowgirl Really important to keep this in mind: any US company, at least, will and must pretty much freely hand over all information they have to law enforcement upon request. Any data the company has access to is *not* secret in that sense.

@freemo @admitsWrongIfProven Oh I assumed "centralized power" meant centralized into the hands of the state. I see your point.

@freemo @admitsWrongIfProven Regarding centralized power, I don't think of left–right this way. (I'm in US, FWIW) Here, at least, the "right" party, Republicans, are the party of deregulation and lower taxes – at least that's the brand: I know a lot of times they vote for higher taxes and control, but to the point here it's what they talk about and sell themselves as. I know, we want to think of Trump as "authoritarian" because of his statements about controlling media and so on, but even his administration is known for focusing on deregulation. (Whether they did so successfully is an interesting question, but not the point here.) The "left" party, Democrats, have instead branding about more about sensible government doing sensible things, yes? Regulating where needed and so on.

Of course, we think of right-authoritarians like fascists etc. Worth noting though even those often keep businesses privatized at least (Pinochet, Hitler, etc)

Additionally, as noted here, left-anarchists are anti-statist as well, so clearly correlation between what people talk about as left-right and being statist/anti-statist is not so great.

@GhostOnTheHalfShell maybe they have and the thing they want isn't the thing you think they want?