McCullough is an insane conspiracy theorist that’s no different than a 9/11 truther or someone who believes the moon landing is fake. You can oppose excessive restrictions and government actions without promoting crazy people.
Anyone who recognizes how conspiracies theories work sees what is happening. People are rightly upset about the actions of those in power and these crazy grifters are taking advantage of them.
This is the guy they are talking about. This is no different than 9/11 truthers selectively using planning documents about planes crashing into buildings to claim US government instead of Al Qaeda was behind 9/11. Only here it’s Pharma and world governments instead of China.
That’s become the standard mode on every issue. Tax cuts were going to kill people, opposing the Green New Deal was going to kill people, voting laws that expanded voter access relative to all pre-pandemic elections were just like Jim Crow etc. etc.
And no one talks about the environment that this rhetoric creates and we don’t get any press lectures about how it could incite violence against political opponents. It’s just accepted as the norm at this point.
Ajit Pai faced racist harassment, threats to him and his family, and even a bomb threat due to the net neutrality hysteria:
Yes, because the biggest issue over the last year was teacher burnout. They definitely earned more breaks and there is no need to keep kids in school to make up for the enormous learning loss.
Everyone has burnout from the pandemic. Most professions had to adjust to how they did business and deal with enormous strain. But no other profession had their unions insist and receive constant special treatment to the point where they actively harmed their customers.
Teachers' Unions spent all of 2020 fighting to keep schools closed while extorting concessions like insane funding levels and vaccine preferences. Those closures were not scientifically justifiable and did enormous harm to children. They didn't seem to care.
Implication here that education is underfunded is wrong. The amount we are spending on "education" over the next 5-10 years is obscene and indefensible. Shortage of supplies is purely based on waste and misallocation of funds.
Here is a comparison of how much countries spent per student on public education (K-12) in 2017. The US was already third. Then during the pandemic, we added the equivalent of another ~10K per active student to school budgets (purely based on teacher union lobbying)
And if you want to understand where the money is going, much like why college tuition rates skyrocketed while spending on actual teaching has stayed consistent, it's on administration costs. Number of administrators that drain the system has skyrocketed while adding little value.
I think a lot of non-political people are slowly waking up to the fact that left-wing radicals have become a dominant force within several major institutions and are now using those positions to dictate a lot of our political and cultural conversations.
That's why a term like latinx, which is still only being used by ~2% of Hispanic speakers and that ~40% of Hispanics find offensive, is now regularly featured in news headlines and among academic discussions.
It's why neo-racism has become mostly normalized to the point where you now have major media figures writing and promoting obviously bigoted nonsense without consequence. It's why a morally bankrupt bigot like Kendi has become a prominent speaker and author.
The problem with these people is they believe this alternate reality they have created for themselves and their colleagues, which thus allows to them justify almost anything in service of what they view as a just cause.
Anyways, the Milbanks of the world are going to keep throwing these tantrums and get even louder/more extreme as they lose their influence because most people recognize their version of this fight doesn't match reality.
Milbank is upset over negative coverage of Biden this year as his administration has created and failed to deal with multiple crises. Americans don’t approve of Biden performance, but Milbank believes the press should only say good things re him bc of these hypothetical enemies.
Enes Kanter didn't suddenly start speaking out last week. The guy has risked his personal safety and his family by actively and continuously standing up against one of the most brutal dictators in the world. @EnesFreedom 's dad spent 7 years in prison because of it.
@EnesFreedom He has shown more courage than all his critics could ever dream to have. And now he is rightly calling out the hypocrisy of those that exaggerate the issues here while profiting from much worse abuses elsewhere. That makes those who promote such selective outrage uncomfortable.
People who experience life elsewhere and know the reality outside the US also know that America is the freest and most tolerant country on earth so it bothers them when others ignore that context and make it seem like our problems are much worse than they actually are.