Of course it was that gusano Maria Salazar who introduced this bill.

Interesting to note that the text of the bill seems to focus on China and mentions Xinjiang in particular. Also how 1.5 billion people currently “suffer” under communism.

This actually seems like a bit of an own goal to me. Sure, tell a bunch of high school kids how China is an undemocratic totalitarian nightmare and that the Uighurs are currently having their organs harvested. Then those students can do literally 10 minutes of research to see that none of that is actually happening and that the people of China are pretty happy with the state of things (at least relative to US Americans).

I should point out for non-US Americans here, education in the US is decentralized. The federal government doesn’t actually have much authority. This bill just tells the Victims of Communism Memorial Fund (snicker) to create materials and make them available.

Death to America.

  • i remember being in fifth grade (aka age 10ish) and having to go through state/federal mandated curriculum on drugs. i had to read about how babies were born addicted to crack and if you did crack even once, even accidentally, you would probably die instantly. and if you didn’t die, you would do it again and again until you died because it took over your brain. and that all the dangerous things called “drugs” are like this: they make you addicted and ruin your mind until you do them so much you die.

    each of the kids in class had to get up and read a paragraph they wrote about how sad it is that drugs kill you and pledge not to ever do them and tell the police if you see them. this well constructed scene from Ozark gave me hilarious flashbacks to the absurdity of such initiatives

    i had never even heard of drugs, recreational or otherwise. but i sure as shit would hear about them constantly for the next decade and a half. every video game i played had a warning about drugs on it with the FBI logo and the name of the director (William Sessions, never forget).

    as an early adult, upon smoking weed the first time, i realized the government was just plain lying and wondered why. thus began an unraveling of an onion that probably would have been left alone if they didn’t spend years upon years and billions of dollars trying to make me and everyone else think a certain way.

  • plinky [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    I mean us-ians still think ussr was on constant gray-filter littered with gulags, so i wouldn’t be so dismissive.

  • BrezhnevsEyebrows [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    Then those students can do literally 10 minutes of research to see that none of that is actually happening and that the people of China are pretty happy with the state of things (at least relative to US Americans).

    Things that will not be happening

      • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        3 months ago

        I’m not convinced lessons in middle school are what shape an average American’s political stances. At most it just teaches them specific vocabulary. No one remembers shit from school. The propaganda is everywhere at once and totalizing.

        • bbnh69420 [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.net
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          3 months ago

          Your K-12 education absolutely plays a role in your political development. Not more than, say, your parents, but still absolutely narrows the frame of what you think about politics.

          • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            3 months ago

            Yeah you’re right there about your parents. Whenever I want to know someone’s politics without asking them directly I always ask “where does most of your money come from” and “what do your parents do for a living.” I have a 95% success rate with this tactic.

            I’m not convinced that Americans remember much from school at all though. Most Americans read at a sixth grade level and can’t even identify all 50 states. The primary political ideology for the average American is “I don’t give a shit, that’s boring and gay.”

            Actually I’m with you if you also think that widespread disinterest and alienation is the deliberate shape of ideology being pushed by K-12. Millions of people were confused about Harris being on the ballot in November rather than Biden. And they’re the ones who are more interested in the process since they show up to vote. That 50% of people who don’t vote are little islands of idiosyncracy whose ideology boils down to various slogans they might half remember, or they’ll state outright that they don’t care.

            Also don’t get it twisted, I’m not a liberal who looks down on people who don’t care about who the president is or reading theory. That’s probably a lot saner of an outlook than I have. The disinterested person at least realizes American is a scam and it doesn’t matter who gets elected.

            I wanna ask since I’m curious too, what do you think the primary messages in K-12 are? Like, jingoism and xenophobia? That would be my guess about deliberate propaganda. Do you think it’s something like that?

        • GnastyGnuts [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          3 months ago

          The propaganda is everywhere at once and totalizing.

          I believe this is the bigger factor in the effectiveness of capitalist propaganda. It’s so pervasive that is becomes the whole of reality, and you can comfortably take it for granted for your entire life if you don’t encounter the right people.

  • Anarcho-Bolshevik@lemmygrad.ml
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    3 months ago

    under communism, the government would take away all your freedom and take away your job and enslave you and take away your home and blow up your house then kill all the homeless and make education illegal and indoctrinate you into marxism and take away your family and force you to have children and take away your music and your art and your history and censor all books and steal your money then you have to make art the state wants and then they raise inflation really really high and then they invade other countries and massacre innocent people and make food illegal then youd have to mine all your food yourself but the government would take it away and through you in jail and execute you without trial and then fire judges for not executing enough innocents for the quota then youd be sick and have to join the army only you cant go to work because you have to wait 10000 years for a car and it doesnt work so you walk to work but you cant walk because the government made it illegal you got no doctors since they were brainwashed before being executed you go to them but you have to pay in vodka only the govertnmentn made that illegal so you got no healthcare and its expensive and then you have to stay in a gulag with your family but theres no food left so you starve and you cant have any friends and they execute you and make happiness illegal and censor your opinion and make the internet illegal and they ban video games and then the earth would explode!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!