U.S. Supreme Court: Post-Ginsburg Edition

We construct, you decide.

Fables of the strict construction

Specific memories have faded of my one terrible year in a non-denominational Protestant school but I was struck even then at how abhorrently racist the world history book was. (OTOH, entirely possible that 6th grade world history books at public school in 1993 were also super racist.)

anybody else read Weekly Reader in the 80s in school, and get pro-government propaganda delivered to your widdle grade school arms for fwee?

Yep!

The first year of Obama's presidency I had to remind Mom, freaking about kids singing that playground chant about him, that Weekly Reader ran a cover story on the day of Reagan's election. Anodyne stuff ("He is the 40th president. He will be the new leader of the United States"), but nothing is anodyne.

I had totally repressed the memory of the Weekly Reader until just now.

Luckily I grew up in a pretty liberal area, we learned about a lot of stuff that other kids didn’t, seemingly.

I was in a complete bubble of 80s conservatism so I lapped it up pretty uncritically. they made us sing Lee Greenwood's "Proud to Be an American" in 4th grade for assembly, and around the same timeframe, my brother and I were in the Methodist church kids musical, which was called "America" and was purely jingoist pro-military/imperialist shit.

Wow, definitely got propaganda-lite where I was!

I went to a quasi-Catholic elementary private school less propagandistic than my Catholic high school (run by Bah-ston liberal Marist Brothers). I'm delighted I survived.

Wow I’m admittedly slow on the uptake but I don’t have memories of weekly reader being shitty, and I was a little tween Reagan hater.

I went to a Catholic boys' school for two years — freshman and sophomore year of high school. When I returned to my public high school for junior and senior years, there was a rumor that I had been in juvenile detention (for selling drugs, I think, despite the fact that I had never been seen doing drugs or even drinking). The school was OK. Some of the priests had rather cynical/skeptical attitudes, it seemed to me. One of them eventually left the priesthood and moved to Las Vegas and years later, a guy he'd molested showed up on his doorstep and shot him.

I was radicalized by Mad Magazine anyway. They don’t get enough credit for being in the 80s extremely anti right wing and warping young minds like mine.

My Catholic High School was mostly lay teachers who were super liberal for the time. I have no idea how the diocese let it slide! I learned about Oscar Romero and right wing atrocities in Central America there!

I remember Weekly Reader but don't remember much about it. We were on a steady diet of NYT/New Yorker/NPR in our house, so that's what I considered "news." Wasn't there a puzzle page at the back of Weekly Reader? That may have been the only thing I paid attention to.

We had the Pledge, a separate pledge to the state of Texas and then once or twice a week had to sing a Texas song (anthem?). Not much propagandizing aside from that but maybe all three ate up too much time.

In fifth grade decided to stop saying the pledges at all but I have no idea why or what put it in my head (maybe it was reading A Connecticut Yankee somehow), my only political thought before that was playground campaigning for Ann Richards because my best friend's mom was volunteering for her. Never caused an issue with any of my teachers until high school when my AP government teacher flipped the fuck out.

The Christian school did not do the Pledge, weirdly, I guess they thought your heart should belong to Jesus and Jesus alone.

“And now boys and girls it is time to sing ‘Bury Me Not On The Lone Prairie’”

Because of the almost equal split between Catholics, Protestants and Jewish people in my school system, and the activism of Jewish parents and principled gentiles who agreed with them, we didn’t have the version of the Pledge of Allegiance with God in it, and most things previously labelled Christmas/Easter were rebranded Winter/Spring. It was fair and uncontroversial. Along with that, a pair of my high school’s teachers started the World Religions Curriculum Development Center and their course, developed because there were no good secular courses for teenagers, is still in use in thousands of high schools in the US and abroad.

I learned about Oscar Romero and right wing atrocities in Central America there!

same!

I lost out on playing the lead in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever because the parents of our lone Jewish student rightly pointed out that putting on The Best Christmas Pageant Ever was fucked up and exclusionary.

Ralph?

I was radicalized by Mad Magazine anyway

I picked up a copy of Hustler a couple years ago, and nearly every cartoon mocked Trump... pro-feminist interviews, etc. I was pleasantly surprised

When I was in 11th grade my History teacher brought in a Vietnam vet friend of his (one who was fairly well-off in retirement), he came in uniform and told us he didn't regret anything about the war and how he hated the whiners who asked "why?" and his whole reason for believing in the war was "that flag" that he melodramatically pointed to at least five times in his talk. Then he told us he shot and killed a 14 year old kid by mistake but "oopsie that's war".

We never had good speakers. Only good one I had was a Native American who came to our 8th grade class and rightfully told us what a piece of shit Columbus was for 20 minutes and then passed a fossilized squirrel's dick around the room but didn't tell us what it was til after.

I was extraordinarily lucky that my Marist Brothers high school offered a senior year class with the bland name "U.S. Foreign Policy" and...it was a history of American malfeasance in Vietnam. We learned about Ho Chi Minh, the Vietminh, Dien Bien Phu, Giap, Madame Nhu, Diem, the Great Society, and, well, Watergate. I couldn't believe we got away with this class, proudly liberal (our teacher would say "LBJ would've been one of the great American presidents on domestic policy alone") in that Miami environment.

I once yelled at Larry Summers when I was in middle school lol.

you posted that admission once and I loved it

I once yelled at Larry Summers when I was in middle school lol.

Unfortunately I wasn’t that tuned into what was happening to have yelled at like Alan Greenspan but I definitely would have yelled at, like, Ed Meese had I then chance.

Sorry to derail this to school issues but I’m seeing first hand the damage Obama did to local public schools. My kid goes to the catholic daycare that is across the street from the public elementary school. It’s literally a couple blocks away. My kid will be the only one in his class of 12 or so to attend that school. The rest are going to the charter immersion schools that require taking a bus.

OTM. And on a related subject, while ok on social issues, I often find Obama-appointed fed district judges are extremely pro business.

A Democrat being a relentlessly pro-business, pro-corporate shill to enrich himself and his friends? Ya don’t say.

Don’t forget the drone-bombing of kids, too. That’s another central part of the Dem platform.

I’m pretty disappointed in some friends parents too. Everyone talked the talk before school registration started and then ghosted us.

This thread has taken an interesting turn, in a good way.

I went to catholic schools from grades 6-12. Can’t remember the experience being particularly right or left, probably in part because my focus was very much on friends/girls/figuring myself out.

My high school teachers and administrators did have a distinctly stiff, ‘50s style, though - it was in the way teachers carried themselves, the eyeglasses they wore, etc.

A few stray memories:

- One of the religion teachers was, in retrospect, just shy of flamboyantly gay, which must have been obvious to his colleagues. And I think he knew that *we* knew and couldn’t have cared less. It was in his class that I first heard NWA (who I hadn’t even really been aware of - I kinda lived in my own weird world), when a white classmate brought in a tape and played a song as some kind of assignment and tried to explain it. Wish I could remember the teacher’s reaction to that.

- My senior year English teacher was a fan of the Beats and had probably been through the doors of perception a few times, wasn’t afraid to confirm for us that the school was full of shit and that sometimes we were. He also ran the (tiny) poetry club, which I was a member of, so I got to know him fairly well.

- My sophomore year English teacher (who also taught the Creative Writing/Journalism course I took) was a super, super religious dude who rode his bike to school every day, proudly didn’t own a TV, and had us pray at the beginning and ending of every class. (It was normal to pray at the START of each class, any class. Mr. Hooper kicked that up a notch.) He kinda scared me. I can remember, vividly, exactly where in the building all of these courses were held. My best friend in high school - who is still one of my best friends - was deeply rebellious, and his decision one week to apply clear appliqués featuring grapes, pineapples, and other cartoon fruits to his fingernails was not accepted well by this teacher.

I’ll add that it’s been startling to reconnect with/graze high school classmates on social media, and to find that many (though not all!) have tumbled into right wing rabbit holes.

I drifted left economically based on my dad's own hardships in high school (plus I was always the type to give homeless people money - never was the "you made your bed" guy). but was still right wing socially, pro-life, pro-death penalty, believed in trying kids as adults, etc.

a friend of mine named Justin that I met on mIRC of all places, in the #metal channel, was kind of the genesis of my liberal rebranding. he turned me to things I hadn't been exposed to previously.

by my second year of college I was in speech class giving anti-death penalty speeches.

gay-bashing was the one thing that accelerated my leaving church and thus leaving my exposure to right-wing indoctrination, because I had a gay cousin, and also I couldn't figure out why they were obsessed with gay people.

Sorry to get off subject. Was doom scrolling twitter

What SCOTUS is about to do is say if we want gun control, climate action or privacy/bodily rights, we need a Constitutional Amendment or filibuster-proof legislation, knowing full well both those paths are rigged to impossibility by overrepresenting rural white reactionaries.

— David Atkins (@DavidOAtkins) June 23, 2022

x-post -so anyway I attended public schools and do remember being part of a protest in elementary school with two fellow Jewish kids against having everyone including us sing a religious Christmas song. That song got dropped.

In catholic middle school we did some sort of parking lot rally to support the troops in Iraq

We also (I think) sent letters to the troops

This is a sidebar, and obviously middle school sucks for most people, but middle school for me was brutal. I was coming from a progressive school - more focused on art, nature, etc - that I’d attended for elementary, and the work was suddenly way harder, classmates were crueler. It was awful. (High school was less awful.)

oh cool

If a police officer fails to give a suspect his Miranda warnings, and the gov't uses the suspect's un-Mirandized statements against him in court, can the suspect sue the officer for violating his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination? In a 6-3 ruling, SCOTUS says no.

— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 23, 2022

The Supreme Court STRIKES DOWN a New York gun-control law that required people to show "proper cause" to get a license to carry a concealed handgun outside the home. The vote is 6-3. https://t.co/jA2Gl7lTiG

— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 23, 2022

Now when they don't Miranda you after arresting you for getting an abortion in a state where it is legal, it will be all gravy! And if someone shoots you along the way, all the better!

Lawyers making a lot more work (and money) for lawyers. Shoulda seen it coming.

Alito's concurrence to Alito at Breyer is Peak Alito:

"[T]he real thrust of today’s dissent is that guns are bad and that States and local jurisdictions should be free to restrict them essentially as they see fit." pic.twitter.com/zZ2m6PQwme

— Mike Sacks (@MikeSacksEsq) June 23, 2022

For the second time this term, Thomas cites Dred Scott to illustrate the rightness within Taney's racist wrongness https://t.co/IyAsExQ5ie pic.twitter.com/LrkaMA5DHI

— Mike Sacks (@MikeSacksEsq) June 23, 2022

perhaps Clarence, Ginni, Samuel, Kav, Coney, and the 'Such can all be in the same vehicle as a monster truck rolls over it.

One of Thomas' obsessions, written about quite well in Corey Robin's bio, is how frightened southerners were in antebellum times and during Reconstruction about Black men carrying guns.

Maybe I should be comforted knowing that we're all going to die in random shootings long before the slow, torturous death from climate disaster.

I don’t think a Civil War is random, pretty sure most of us here would die in that first if we’re being honest, and that’s what’s coming whether we like it or not, it seems