Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/05/28/klan-leaders-kid-charts-their-journey-from-white-nationalism-to-coming-out-as-trans.html
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Truer words were never spoke. Gotta keep them isolated to maintain the very transparent fallacy. It falls apart under the most casual examination.
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That had to have been a long hard road.
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Right-wingers typically find it easier to blame the school rather than acknowledge their kid’s own agency and/or their own crappy parenting. For example:
This is why right-wingers hate colleges.
Another reason is that they always believed they should be limited to the county’s gentry and aristocracy like in the “good old days”. Some conservatives and Libertarians seriously believe that wider access to a university can raise the hopes of the undeserving poor for economic and social advancement, and is therefore a “moral hazard”.
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I can’t help but notice that Musk does use the correct pronouns when referring to his daughter. I’m also pleasantly surprised to see the Post get in this appropriate dig at Musk’s use of the word communist:
Tuition for the alleged “communist” K-12 school, ironically, costs up to $50,000 per student annually.
Are they under new management or something? Or do they just hate Musk now for some reason?
ETA: The Post is not under new management. I guess they’re on the outs with Musk, then, for some reason.
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Had this exact argument with my Ayn Randian sister at Thanksgiving a few years ago. Ironic, considering all 4 of us went to college on scholarships, as our parents would never have been able to afford even state schools without it. But, of course, the problem is “those” folks who just have no business in college and need to “understand their place.” I don’t get it, we are all very liberal Dems, as was she until she married a Republican lawyer. I guess it’s contagious.
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And those who use the ‘need to understand their place’ phrase need to understand theirs.
Oh, ok, we’ll give them a choice: (a) on the end of repeated anti-fascist punches to the face or (b) well, I’m not saying guillotines would definitely be involved, but …
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The school has always had a reputation for being progressive despite the high tuition, especially since a lot of the parents are influential members of the entertainment industry (which means right-wingers sometimes take the opportunity to slip in some anti-Semitism and racism when they gripe about it).
Wealthy conservatives, like most wealthy parents, desperately want to send their kids to prestigious private schools. What Musk didn’t understand is that an education at such a place – secondary or post-secondary – by its nature is frequently going to involve teaching students critical thinking skills, questioning authority, and a reality-based curriculum.
That’s also their attitude toward workers and employees. It’s why they hate unions so much.
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talk about a personal journey. also, how strong are they go through all that? incredible.
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this story was boinged before, back in 2016, before they came out as trans. The article linked back then did a deep dive into the process of leaving the racism behind and was a great insight into what it took to break down everything that had been built up over a lifetime of being fed lies.
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In short, actually meeting the people from diverse groups helps you to understand that we are all human and have much in common with each other universally. I think that a lot of the conservative attitudes of rural areas come from not having met people different from themselves. When you live in a larger population center or travel or go to college with a diverse base of students you realize how much we are the same, despite our different backgrounds.
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They went to New College in Florida - it’s not remotely a coincidence that DeSantis etc. have targeted it with the explicit intention of turning it right-wing.
The other bit, besides meeting people of different backgrounds, that right-wingers hate about college is that all the indoctrination they fed their kids at home, at church, etc. doesn’t survive contact with reality. I know so many people raised in conservative Christian environments who ended up rejecting all of it - including Christianity entirely - because of the realization that science, history and even the history of Christianity itself was at odds with what they had been taught. They had been fed so many outright falsehoods in the weird cultural folk religion that is white evangelical Christianity to support that worldview, that it made it really easy to reject the whole thing as obvious bullshit once a few facts started creeping in. White supremacy works the same way - being exposed to people who are different in college goes hand-in-hand with learning the “facts” you were taught… aren’t.
The irony is that I’m sure their families blamed college for rejecting their worldview, when it was their own churches/teachings that did it.
I thought that in particular was more a dig at the school - i.e. “they’re communists, but look at how much money they charge - what hypocrites!”
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Randian types would get slapped upside the head at a Mangochin family event.
My grandparents never got past high school, but achieved lower middle class existence and had decent pensions thanks to government service, veteran’s benefits and union membership. My parents were the first of their families to graduate college. Civil service, the GI Bill, and heavily subsidized public universities helped with that.
My folks were able to pay for my undergrad at a state university and my older brother’s attendance at an Ivy League thanks to my parents working as city teachers and my father’s service in the Army Reserves. Gulf War I meant for a little over a year my father was collecting both teaching pay and double reserve pay while he never left the NYC Metro Area.
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