Unpopular opinion:
I DETEST the movie Love Actually. I've seen it several times, because like everyone else who's seen it, I was told how lovely it was, and how much I'd like it, and like a glutton for punishment, I kept watching it year after year during the holiday season TRYING to find the good in it, and since this is my year I'd radical truth-telling, I'm coming out as a Love Actually hater.

It's a visual metaphor for everything wrong in our culture, and should have been a giant red flag to us when it came out that horrible ideas had become so normalized, we stopped noticing, and even celebrated them.

Where to begin... 1/The relationships: we are meant to see them all as testaments to the power of love, but each and every one stands out to me as a testament to something toxic.

No, I don't think it's cute that the PM of England has a thing for a staff member at #10 the instant he sees her, to the point where he has her reassigned.

No, I don't think it's funny or cute that Colin travels to the USA to have sex with random "hot chicks."

No, I don't think it's touching and sweet that the Hobbit finds love as a stand in for graphic sex scenes in other movies.

No, I don't think there's ANYTHING healthy or heartwarming about Laura Linney's relationship ship with her on-screen brother. That is pure altruism at its most self-harming.

No, I don't think it's normal or healthy to rebound from being cheated on by falling head over heels with someone with whom you literally can't communicate (Colin Firth's Jamie), and no, I don't think night classes in Portuguese gives you sufficient language skills to build a marriage around. It's pure wishful thinking, and kind of creepy too as he's so obviously damaged.

No, I don't think there's anything uplifting about watching Emma Thompson's marriage come apart because her husband, Alan Rickman's character, allows himself to be seduced by an obvious harlot (who should have been fired in the first scene).

No, I don't think there's anything winsome about watching a stalker obsess over his best friend's wife to the point of showing up at their door, telling her to LIE about who it is, and then professing his undying love to her. Her kissing said stalker was the poison icing on that cake.

No, I don't think Bill Nighy and his manager are cute either. Giving up going to Elton's place on New Year's Eve so you can sit and get drunk with your manager isn't "love." I'm not sure what that is...Loneliness? Realizing the women hanging all over you are young enough to be your GRANDDAUGHTERS? Being tired and bored maybe? But it's not "love."

Finally, as lovely as the relationship between Liam Newsom and his stepson is, and as much as I commend the kid for learning to play the drums so fast, this emphasis on love-at-first-sight OBSESSION is a big part of what's wrong with people's expectations of real life relationships. It's cute, until you realize how mainstream it is to believe this is as one SHOULD feel, and it's just not.

If you wanted to create vignettes of all the seemingly "normal" relationships that are NOT "love, actually," you couldn't do a better job.

🤔So the AFT (Randi Wiengarten's Union) has a website called "Share My Lesson," and teachers, parents, anyone really can subscribe to it to download lesson plans. They emailed a friend of mine today about a lesson plan for teaching about the debates between Biden and Trump. Let's take a look...1/
2/The lesson plan says it can be used for high school students in "media literacy" civics and social studies.

Wonder what "modernize them for today's voters" might entail? Cage match? The audience screaming at the GOP candidate so they can't be heard? Just spitballing here...

🤬I hardly know what to say. Reading what the New York DOE put out yesterday about Israeli history, the conflict and "what students should know," I want to scream.

The government is now officially teaching lies, and aiding and abetting a *officially classified terror org* (Hamas).

What's more, a rabid antisemite and Hamas supporter is now teaching this narrative (amongst other lies, see posts below) 600 public and private TEACHERS per week.
I feel absolutely sick.

If you don't know which are the lies, I'll be happy to explain, but many of you will spot them immediately.
1/

2/Paulo Freire would be proud...No sides? Liars! This entire thing clearly takes the side of the Arabs/Muslims. Clear as day!

Let me introduce you to WestEd. It's an education research and consulting firm that shows all by itself how there is far too much money in the government monopoly right now if these people all have enough to pay for all of this garbage.

This is the wokest org I've ever seen, and I could spend all day going through this site with you. Here are some highlights. Their "about" and diversity statement. 1/


2/ The focus on entity and cramming it into every aspect of school is evident, as is the focus on "transformative" change.

It makes me unbearably sad to see people here insist they MUST be dual income rather than have a parent at home with their kids JUST to pay for private school. This is madness. Why did you have kids? To work like dogs and never see them? To hand them over to strangers? 1/ 2/Do you realize your kids need an education, not "schooling?" They need and want YOU. They need and want to know the world and all its beauty and wonder, and I'm sorry but very few schools can do that job HALF as well as you can.

🚨IMPORTANT THREAD, especially for parents. If you are genuinely concerned about your child's mental and physical health, you MUST read this and consider what I'm about to say seriously:
Education, as an institution in America, is operating like a cult. Let me explain: 1/

https://twitter.com/TaniaAMarshall/status/1726928270191644969

1/"Individuals are often attracted to cults due to promises of belonging, purpose, or a sense of community."
"Community schooling" ring a bell? How about "belonging" or "inclusion?" "Belonging" is what everyone from Cardona, to the NEA, to your Principal prioritizes and PROMISES.

Let me see if I can follow the "logic..."
They say: "Hamas is a legitimate resistance force, fighting for the Palestinian people!"
We say: "Ok so the Palestinian people on average agree with wanton slaughter of civilians?"
They say: "Of course not! Hamas is a dictatorship! 1/ 2/We say: "Ok, so it is likely that Hamas is using them as human shields, cynically putting them in harm's way to use their deaths as PR against Israel?"
They say: "No! Hamas official death tolls are truthful and accurate!"

Understand something important: Islamism IS collectivist/statist/communist in nature. Aside from Jew hatred, the reason college kids support Hamas is they get this on an instinctive level even they don't fully understand, but are just "conscious" of. 1/ 2/That's "critical consciousness." Like the Bolsheviks before them, they are over educated, but historically illiterate. They have either been taught lies or nothing about how things got to be so "wretched" for the "wretched" of the earth, all they know is they feel powerful

Dear @ThisWeekTonight fans (who are so enamored of this pompous ass, you'll spend your time commenting in his defense without having watched the video about which you're commenting: 1/ 2/You keep pointing to the statistic that kids are most likely to be abused by a parent, but nowhere in the stats does it say that abuse most likely takes place during school hours, or on school days, or even during the school year.

I can't decide which is more disturbing information for me to process: the threat of annihilation at the hands of people under the age of 34 anywhere my daughter and I go if people know we are Jewish, OR the realization that 1/ 2/people with kind faces and affects who seemed to pose no threat to me in the past, could now be gleefully cheering at the prospect of my death. There is NO way to know just by looking at someone who is no better than a Nazi.

I'm curious, all you anti-Zionists who claim that Jews are "colonizers" from Europe who "stole land" and should give it back...How is it that Jewish REFUGEES, rescued from concentration camps by the allies, who not only didn't invite them to resettle in allied countries 1/ 2/but also relocated these Jewish REFUGEES to camps (that's right, camps) surrounded by walls and barbed wire in the British Mandate of Palestine, suddenly morph into "colonizers?"

While we're on the subject...

I just fired a student, a first for me. 55 minutes into our THIRD session on his college personal statement, I started seeing lines get crossed out in the Google doc, and EDITED by a third person. He said "I have someone else looking at my essay now, I'll tell her to wait. 1/ 2/I asked "Who is this other person?" He said "She's a friend of the family, a professional grant writer, and she helped her son get into University of Chicago."

I'll BET she did...

So I told him I would not participate in this activity any longer b/c it's cheating.

Let's get something straight:
* Islamic extremism wasn't manufactured by the west;
* Islam IS extremist by word and deed, the west tempered it;
* Western elitist control freaks (not dissimilar to the WEF and UN of today), forgot that, and tried to use extremists. 1/ 2/But to sit there and say the west "made" Al Qaeda, or ISIS, or Hamas, like ordinary religion was made medieval BY us, is lunacy.

The lesson isn't "Don't make extremists" it's DON'T THINK YOU CAN CONTROL CHAOS, and people who believe destruction = glory are chaos personified.

Is ANYONE else seeing a pattern?
"The 'oppressed' are pure as the driven snow; I have been oppressed, and I was innocent, ergo anyone claiming to be oppressed is too! I must DEMONSTRATE to the 'oppressed' how deeply sorry I am to have triumphed while they have not. 1/

https://twitter.com/deb_fillman/status/1712098855854989470

2/"In fact, I owe my LIFE to the 'oppressed,' ergo it would be WRONG for me to follow my base survival instinct to deny you entry to my physical space. No, I should walk TOWARDS you, and invite you INSIDE, no matter how you are behaving towards me, b/c I am the threat to you!"

"But not everyone in Gaza supports Hamas!"
And your point is what?
Do you think all the people of Tokyo supported the attack on Pearl Harbor?
We firebombed them anyway, and it didn't turn the Japanese people into barbarian rapists for the next 75 years. 1/ 2/When did we become a people who bought into the idea that defending yourself AFTER you've been threatened with annihilation creates a justification for the people who attacked you to start with, or their agents, to "hate" you and target you forever?

Parents, if I had ONE piece of advice -- JUST ONE -- to give you, it would be this: START ASKING MORE QUESTIONS of the adults in your children's lives! Whether they are in the education or medical professions, for the love of those babies, STOP blindly trusting credentials! 1/ 2/When they tell you there is a "mental health crisis" in schools, ask them how they know? What metrics are they using, and how do they define:
"Mental health" and "crisis?"
If they derive MONEY AND POWER from the crisis =⚠️

Libertarians have lost the plot and are calling for suicidal levels of mass delusion. Anti-war doesn't mean anti-self defense and yes, sometimes responding to assault that represents an existential threat requires OVERWHELMING force.1/ 2/With whom should Israel negotiate for peace? Define "peace" for Israel??? More decades of random kidnappings, rocket barrages, and terror attacks, like the ones they've been expected to endure in the name of "peace" for the last 20+ years from Gaza?!

I can't begin to tell you how dangerous this is, in particular to the parent:child relationship!!! Can you imagine telling your TEEN "Hey! We are gonna head down to your school, and in front of who-knows-who, get you screened for MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEMS!"
1/

https://twitter.com/highergroundut/status/1710545937582698776

2/What's the commercial for this: "Is adolescent peer pressure not creating enough stress for your kids? Have we got an event for YOU! Tell your child you want to expose them to scrutiny, data-mining and ridicule by taking them to their school for a 'screening' for mental health!

You'll never hear me say "Homeschooling is easy," especially if you had to pull your child OUT of school (any school today, even private). What you will learn about what they never learned will shock and sadden you. It may (likely will) put you at odds with your child if you 1/ 2/do what you SHOULD do, and correct teacher mistakes, try to fill gaps in their learning, or give them work that should have been done or covered in ELEMENTARY school when they're in middle school or above. I face this daily, so I know firsthand.

As of today, I am no longer offering advice to parents frustrated with lack of transparency or "woke"
curricula. In fact, I am advising against it. If you don't understand something being done at your school, or don't like it, leave. I'm very serious. 1/ 2/I will not contribute to what could potentially be a justification for the government to interfere in your marriage, or with your custody arrangement with a partner, or ex spouse, your ability to earn a living, or your physical safety.

Dear "progressive" Jews: until you wake up and realize that progressivism is your problem, and that antisemitism and progressivism go together like two peas in a pod, you will be contributing to, not fighting, Jew Hatred. A thread: 1/ 2/Progressivism is collectivism. It's poorly named actually because it's anti-progress. Once upon a time maybe, when it was about getting women the vote, or eliminating Jim Crow laws, ok I can see why one would call it that, but it has long since become just a code-switch for socialism.