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🖕FUCK THE Trump Regime!🖕

I’d feel bad for Pete Hegseth but he’s a MAGA white nationalist as well as a rapist, a fascist, a traitor, and just a complete asshole. Which is why Donald Trump picked him as Secretary of Defense in the first place.

Like most of Trump’s Cabinet, Hegseth was selected not only for being an ass-kissing sycophant but his utter lack of qualifications and future prospects.

This last bit is kind of important. Billionaires like Scott Bessent and Howard Lutnick and Doug Burgman will walk away from the smoldering wreck of the Trump regime and still be billionaires with an awful lot of power.1 But people like Hegseth? Patel? Gabbard? Kennedy? These are losers who will never again be this close to power of any kind and they know it. These are broken, delusional creatures who cling to Trump because he is their only chance to grab the brass ring and impose their cruel vision on the rest of us.

That’s what makes them so appealing to Trump. They will do anything he commands lest they be cast out. Trump loves bootlickers but bootlickers who are terrified of being fired are even better. It appeals to the wannabe tyrant in him.

This need to be surrounded by weak and spineless toadies is a problem, however.

Catch-22

So here’s the dilemma facing Trump. He needs Pete Hegseth because Pete Hegseth is weak. Trump needs a weak man who will obey his orders to corrupt the military and turn it into a fascist weapon to use against the civilian population.

This is a necessary step to cement Trump’s control over the country as an authoritarian dictator. More importantly, this needs to be done relatively quickly. The anti-Trump protests are growing larger, and Trump’s “beautiful” tariffs and resulting trade war are collapsing the economy at record speed. Add on top of that all of the economic destruction from the DOGE cuts, and you have the recipe for a nationwide revolt against the regime, as even loyal Republicans see their lives destroyed.

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It’s FAFO time for the GOP base.

To stop this, Trump will need the military. Even if he doesn’t try to have the protestors shot like he has so openly wanted to do for years, he has to keep the midterms from happening. He HAS to.

The devastating results in Wisconsin earlier this month and the overwhelming shift of the electorate to the left in every special election since November of last year point to the same kind of blue wave that annihilated the GOP’s hold on power in 2018.

That’s if the elections happened right now. What do you suppose they’ll be like after another 18 months of Trump shitting on the Constitution and the rule of law while bragging about it? Republicans are looking at an electoral wipeout beyond anything they’ve ever imagined. That means Trump will be facing an empowered and very energized House and possibly Senate, who will be out for his head.

Breaking things, including the law, gets harder without a compliant Congress. The impeachment hearings will last until the next election and will indict the entire Republican Party.

So, Trump cannot allow the midterms to happen. But again, he will need the military. He will need to send them in to certain cities in certain states to prevent them from voting. Or to seize the voting machines afterwards. But to do that, Trump will need someone in charge who is willing and capable of reshaping the United States military into a force that will obey flagrantly illegal orders.

Pete Hegseth is not man.

He’s certainly willing, of course. He’s a sycophant willing to obey any order he is given. But such a weak man is not capable. If Hegseth were capable, he wouldn’t be so weak. And here is the Catch-22.

Trump could replace Hegseth today with another sycophant. Another weak man willing to obey. But Hegseth’s replacement will also be incapable of reshaping the military into the weapon Trump is demanding.

Almost by definition, a bootlicking toady has no respect for the military and its centuries of tradition and honor. How could such a worm command the respect of the officers he would need to change the culture of the military into the dark vision of fascism Trump requires? Much less do it in less than a year and a half?

There are plenty of officers who would be capable of molding the military into something else. But they wouldn’t be the bootlicking toadies willing to obey illegal orders. You can have one, but not the other.

And in the unlikely event Trump were to find both? A fascist willing AND capable of reshaping the American military into a weapon to turn against the country? Even Trump wouldn’t be stupid enough to put that person in a position to do so. What kind of imbecile hands the most powerful military in the world over to someone more capable and then initiates a military coup?

So, yeah, Hegseth’s days may be numbered but Trump will still be fucked. He can either pick another ass-kissing clown and leave the Pentagon in chaos, or pick someone competent to get our military house in order, but then kiss his dreams of a military coup goodbye. He cannot have both.

Either way, the clock is ticking before we the people come for this corrupt regime and there just are not enough Proud Boys and Nazis to keep them in power past their legally-mandated expiration date.

Breaks my fucking heart.

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Fascism hates organized protests. They fear the public. They fear US. Make fascists afraid again by joining Indivisible or 50501 and show them whose fucking country this is!

The Blue Wave has begun and the fascist fucks are scared. There are 194 days until it hits Virginia and Pennsylvania. If I were a billionaire fascist loser, I’d think REALLY hard about getting out of the way.

In its most recent World Economic Outlook report, the IMF includes a chapter on “The Rise of the Silver Economy: Global Implications of Population Aging” (April 2025).

Here are the big trends in a nutshell. The red line (measured on the right-hand axis) shows that the average age of the global poulation was about 27 years back in 1980, is now up to about 35 years ,and is headed above 40 years in a few decades. The blue line shows average annual population growth. From 1980 to the present, it fell from 1.8% to about 0.8%, and it’s headed toward negative population growth later this century.

Of cousre, this decline in population growth isn’t distributed equally. This figure shows the timing at which countries start to experience a decline in the “working-age” population, defined here as ages 15-64. As you can see, Germany, France, Italy, and Japan were already experiencing a declin in the working-age population before the year 2000. Since 2000, the US, Canada, China, Korea, and Brazil have joined the club. In the 2030s, India and Indonesia will start to experience a declining working-age population. By later in the century, the pattern is projected to reach countries across Africa, like Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Ghana, and others.

Does a decline in working-age population necessarily mean a corresponding decline in economic output? Maybe not. There will be more workers with greater experience. In addition, people seem to be maintaining their cognitive sharpness and physical health later in life, which is not only a good thing in and of itself, but also increases the chance that they will continue contributing to the economy as workers for a few years longer. The IMF rreport notes:

Alongside increases in longevity, the functional capacity of older individuals has improved over time. More recent cohorts of older individuals are physically stronger and cognitively abler than earlier cohorts at the same age. Notably, when cognitive capacities are the focus, “the 70s are the new 50s”: Data from a sample of 41 advanced and emerging market economies indicate that, on average, a person who was 70 in 2022 had the same cognitive ability as a 53-yearold in 2000. Over the course of a decade, this pace of improvement in cognitive abilities is associated with an increase of approximately 20 percentage points in the likelihood that individuals remain engaged in the labor market, either by working or actively seeking employment, along with an increase of about six hours in average weekly hours worked and a 30 percent rise in labor earnings, conditional on being employed.

Ultimately,the ability of economies to adjust to these demographic shifts will rely on a few variables: Is there at least a moderate upward trend in the number of people who continue working after age 65? Are people saving more, so that they will be ready for longer retirement? Will the skills of experienced older workers perhaps be an especially good complement with emerging AI tools, thus allowing them to maintain high productivity for longer? Are people planning for old age without too heavy a reliance on support from the smaller younger generations of their families? Is the private sector making the kind of investments in technology and physical capital that can raise the productivity of older workers? Will the public sector adjust old-age pensions to keep them solvent? Is a combination of the private and public sector making the kinds of investments so that homes, public spaces, and care facilities are available and accessible to an older population?

There’s an old line that “everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” One might say something similar about the monumental trend toward global aging. The IMF report sketches out a model of a future where various adjustments in labor force participation, technology, investment, and government policies helps smooth the transition to a “silver economy.” But in many countries, for many people, I suspect it will be a bumpy ride.

The post The Silver (-Haired) Economy first appeared on Conversable Economist.

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Deb and I have been watching Severance on Apple TV and it lives up to the hype. It’s like if “Lost” were set in an office. You have no fucking idea what is happening and everything is really fucking weird, but the characters are really compelling and you’re dying to find out the secrets while rooting for the protagonists to win. Also, you have zero idea what “winning” would look like.

Please don’t ask me to explain this show to you. It would take a very long time and you’d be worried about my mental health when I was done.

OK, so there’s a character named Seth Milchick who is a Bad Guy. He works for the Evil Corporation Lumon who is behind all the creepy weird crazy shit happening in the show. What they’re doing and why isn’t important for the purposes of this article. What is important is that Lumon appears to be very very White and Mr. Milchick is very very Black.

The corporate racism angle does not come into play until Milchick gets promoted and the powers that be at Lumon “gift” him a set of paintings of the Founder’s mythology (Lumon is a straight-up cult and Milchick is in deep) placing Milchick in the paintings. It’s very creepy weird crazy and extremely condescending. Milchick does not like it. At all.

Later, during his annual review, he is “put in his place” by an extremely smug and, again, condescending prick from upper management who is, naturally, white.

Now, this is the part that made me tense up and, I’ll be honest, I didn’t catch the racism the first time because I didn’t see Milchick, I saw myself (and I’m not Black, I’m an Ogre, hahaha.)

You only need to watch the first minute and a half.

OK, so why did this hit me so hard?

Once upon a time, when I was a little Ogre, I discovered I was different from the other kids in my neighborhood and most of the kids in my school. They were dumb. Alright, maybe not ALL of them were necessarily dumb, but they were not as smart as I was.

I found this out because they started to complain. Specifically, they complained that I was too smart. That I “used too many big words.” They didn’t like that. It made them feel stupid.

Mind you, this was elementary school in the 70s and early 80s. “Nerds” were despised. I probably would have been beaten up a lot but I was, well, an ogre, even as a kid. Being physically bullied was generally not in the cards for me. But the other kids really didn’t like the fact that I was so smart.

So I learned to hide it. I used smaller words. I stopped talking about nerdy stuff. I shied away from academics because what if someone noticed I was smart? I hobbled myself for a very long time. Back then, there were no Talented and Gifted (TAG) programs for kids like me to find other kids like me.

Regardless, I did well enough on the entrance exam to get into Brooklyn Technical High School, one of the top high schools in the country, never mind NYC. But years of downplaying academics and going to one of the worst middle schools in the city (fuck you, Roy H. Mann), left me laughably unprepared for the rigors of Brooklyn Tech. Being smart is useless if you don’t know how to be a good student.

Now, I don’t play the “If Only” game. As in, “If only I hadn’t had to hide being smart” or “If only I had better opportunities as a kid.” I wouldn’t be where I am now, and that would be a shame because I’m quite happy with my life and the people in it.

On the other hand, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of lingering resentment over having to dumb myself down to accommodate the fragile egos of other people. To this day, there are an awful lot of words I mispronounce because I only know them from books. You see, even though I know the words, what they mean, and how to use them in a sentence, I never spoke them out loud because I didn’t want to make other people feel stupid.

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The Ogre does more than grunt.

I actually had an argument with Lila about this a couple of years ago. She kept busting my chops about my mispronunciations and I finally got tired of it. I chewed her out because she had the luxury of going to TAG and never having to play dumb. She’s always been able to watch YouTube and hear the words she’d learned spoken out loud and repeat them to adults and other kids who didn’t shun her for being smart. She didn’t REALLY get it because it was so outside of her life experience but she stopped pestering me, so that was good enough.

Still, there’s that lingering resentment over having to use “small words” when I was growing up to appease other people. So it’s hard to explain how unbelievably satisfying this scene was for me:

I shouted “YEAH!” so loud, it sent my poor cat Chim-Chim scurrying out of the room like his tail was on fire.

Now, I know this scene is about racism at work, and by this point, I was quite aware of how Milchick (even though he’s a “Bad Guy”) was being treated. And, yes, his pushing back on that racism was absolutely part of my pleasure in this scene. But mostly, my reaction was pure wish fulfillment on my part. That younger me could look those kids in the eye and tell them to “devour feculence” instead of giving in to their fragile egos and petty need to not feel less intelligent.

Fortunately, my girls have never had to pretend to be dumb so idiots won’t feel threatened. They’ve had the chance to push themselves in school and that will give them the chance to do whatever they want later in life. Those doors will not be closed to them and if we’ve done our jobs right as parents, they will never see themselves in Milchick.

These are dark times but I will continue to tell the stories you need to hear in a clear (and usually profane) voice. If I entertain/anger/inform you, preferably all three, please consider becoming a supporting subscriber today for only $5 a month or just $50 a year.

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Fascism hates organized protests. They fear the public. They fear US. Make fascists afraid again by joining Indivisible or 50501 and show them whose fucking country this is!

The Blue Wave has begun and the fascist fucks are scared. There are 195 days until it hits Virginia and Pennsylvania. If I were a billionaire fascist loser, I’d think REALLY hard about getting out of the way.

These are dark times, but I will continue to tell the stories you need to hear in a clear (and usually profane) voice. If I entertain/anger/inform you, preferably all three, please consider becoming a supporting subscriber today for only $5 a month or just $50 a year.

💩EAT SHIT, YOU REPUBLICAN SCUMBAG!💩

RFK Jr. is 71, a junkie, an abuser, a rapist, and a murderer. Oh, yes. He’s a murderer. He’s directly responsible for killing dozens of children in American Samoa and now he’s hard at work killing children here in the United States. There is no limit to the rage this piece of filth inspires in me. I had to physically put my phone down last week while I was on vacation in NYC to keep myself from just digitally screaming a long stream of profanity.

But I’m not vacation now so let’s get into why RFK Jr. can fuck all the way off and why I pray to a god I do not believe in that he spends the final decade of his life crippled by disease and in agonizing pain.

First, we’re going to skip over his ongoing measles murder spree in Texas. There are over 600 cases in Texas alone and 800 nationwide and now that the CDC is not really tracking and certainly not trying to prevent further spread? Go get a booster shot if you’re over 50. Absolutely vaccinate your kids and protect them from the Republican death cult. I’ll get back to the anti-vaxxer shit some other time because we all fucking KNOW Kennedy is not done killing children yet.

Instead, we’re going to focus on his disgusting comments about autism last week. Now, I’ve made my feelings about Kennedy and autism known back in February. Hence, the reason this article is “Fuck You, RFK Jr.: The Sequel.”

Ready for part two? Let’s go.

OK, in case you somehow missed it, Junior forgot to be all compassionate about the autistic community and let his Nazi mask slip. Funny how that keeps happening in this regime, isn’t it?

Last Wednesday, Kennedy spoke at a press conference staged in response to a report about apparently rising rates of autism published by the US’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And out it all came: an insistence that autism is an “epidemic” and a “preventable disease”, and – in complete defiance of the science – that the root cause lies with “environmental toxins”. A range of new studies, he said, will begin reporting back in September: with the same banality that defines his boss’s promises on international conflict and global economics, he told his audience that answers would be presented to the public “very, very quickly”.

OK, so first up, you ignorant sack of shit, autism is not a “disease.” You can’t catch it, and it cannot be “cured.” It cannot be “prevented” because children are born autistic. Now, there may or may not be environmental toxins that trigger the genetics involved in utero, but that may or may not occur while the brain is developing as a fetus, certainly not AFTER the baby is born.

Second, when Kennedy says “the studies,” which are being run by lunatic liar scumbag quacks and not actual scientists, are going to report back by September with the “cause” of autism?” That means one thing and one thing only: Kennedy and his gaggle of serial killers are going to fabricate the results and say vaccines cause autism after all. And no, you can’t fucking double check our results. It’s all very top secret and national security and fuck you, real doctors. You’ll just have to take our word for it. We’re very trustworthy.

And then Captain Brainworm the rapist made it even worse:

“These are kids who will never pay taxes. They’ll never hold a job. They’ll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted,” Kennedy said Wednesday.

There are so many levels of “Please eat a fucking bullet” to this, it’s hard to know where to start. Just as an aside, if Kennedy dies of a stroke or a heart attack or is beaten to death by the parent of a child he murdered, is it REALLY too much to ask for that to happen on live TV? Preferably in front of a high-definition camera with full sound so I can hear the gurgling? Please?

ANYway, let’s address each one of these mortal insults:

• These are kids who will never pay taxes. - They’ll pay more fucking taxes than most of the billionaire leeches you’ve surrounded yourself with, you dumbfuck. Now that your good friends in the regime have killed the IRS, they’re not going to pay anything because they know no one will come after them. Where’s your fucking outrage over that? Nowhere? Nothing? Then shut the fuck up.

• They’ll never hold a job. - Spoken like an imbecile who knows quite literally nothing about the autistic community. Worse, spoken like someone who is so fucking out of touch with the average American, they haven’t stepped foot inside of a grocery store in decades. If Kennedy were the “man of the people” he pretends to be, he would know that autistic adults have jobs all throughout the economy. My son Jordan is being trained in school to do unskilled labor1 so he can contribute AND PAY FUCKING TAXES in his community when he graduates.
  
  And this completely ignores high-functioning auties, of which their are literally fucking millions, who are perfectly capable of holding the same kinds of jobs as anyone else. But I guess they don’t fucking exist in Kennedy’s swiss cheese brain.

• They’ll never play baseball. - Allow me to introduce you to The Miracle League, you obnoxious cockbite. The Miracle League has been around for over 25 years, giving special needs kids, including ones with autism you sack of shit, the chance to play baseball. Jordan got to play twice a week in his after-school program in Alexandria six years ago. I still have the hat. I will have that hat until the day I die because Jordan fucking LOVED to play baseball and his little sister Anastasia loved to help him run around the bases.

  

  You’d think a guy whose family created THE SPECIAL FUCKING OLYMPICS would know better before saying something so fucking stupid. But I guess not.
  
  Now, Jordan doesn’t play baseball these days. He plays basketball. And while he’s never going to dribble his way to fame, he can sink a basket way more often than not. Some of the kids in his class who are also on the spectrum? They’ll run your ass into the ground, Junior, you fucking steroid-pumping lab rat. What the fuck do YOU know about what austic kids are capable of?

• They’ll never write a poem. - There are literally autistic poets and you sound like a fucking moron. Can YOU write a poem more sophisticated than “Roses are red. Violets are blue. Vaccines are bad because of autism. Boo hoo.”? No. No, you cannot. Sit your bitch ass down and shut your fucking mouth.

• They’ll never go out on a date. - I’m sorry, is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. the rapist trying to talk about dating? Kennedy the sex pest? Kennedy the sexual predator who cheated on his first wife so many times she fucking killed herself? Who cheated on his second wife so many times she won’t let him out of her sight because she knows he’ll stick his dick in any warm hole with a pulse? You don’t get to talk about other people’s love life until you learn how not to rut like a fucking animal, you lowlife deviant.

• Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted - You mean like Donald “Diaper Don” Trump? No, seriously, I have never wanted someone to spend the last several years of their life crippled and suffering more than RFK Jr. I want him incontinent and in pain until he begs for death because he’s too much of a coward to end it and face his eternal reward in hell.

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The Ogre would like RFK Jr. to fuck off.

There have been many times I have said “Fuck autism!” I will continue to say that because, you know what? Fuck autism. Autism has stolen Jordan’s future from him and left us with a constant fear of what that future will be when we’re gone.

If we lived in a humane country that took care of its people, this would not be a concern. We do not live in that country. We live in the United States and that country has Republicans who think a good place for the mentally ill is prison. In a sane country, adult autism of the kind Jordan has would not be a life-threatening issue. But here we are so fuck autism.

But I get to say that because I am responsible for Jordan. His struggles are my struggles (our struggles, actually. Mine, Debbie’s, and Anastasia’s). You can speak your truth. No one gets to police mine, TYVM.

When Kennedy says autism is a scourge, though? He’s not speaking from personal experience or with empathy or from a place of fear for a loved one. He looks at the autism community as something to be erased and that only leads to bad places.

Listen to how he speaks about them. They can’t hold jobs. They can’t pay taxes. They can’t take care of themselves.

Translation: They’re a burden on society. A problem needing a solution. Possibly a final solution.

The Nazis called it “the T-4 program”:

Many Germans did not want to be reminded of individuals who did not measure up to their concept of a "master race" and were considered "unfit" or "handicapped." People with physical and mental disabilities were viewed as "useless" to society, a threat to Aryan genetic purity, and, ultimately, "unworthy of life." At the beginning of World War II, individuals with mental or physical disabilities were targeted for murder in what the Nazis called the "T-4," or "euthanasia," program.

They murdered over 200,000 people, including “defective” babies who were either injected with poison or left to starve to death. Think about that. They let babies starve to death because they were “unfit.”

Absolutely impossible that something like that could happen here, right? Because America is a land of kindness and caring, and the American right is “pro-life” who would never do anything so sadistic and evil, yeah?

I have to imagine that the majority of you reading this know for a fact that we as a country are explicitly capable of this. That the American right is not just capable but eager. These are evil people, and we are not a kind and gentle country. We punish the poor for their poverty. Even liberal cities would rather put the homeless in prison than spend a fraction of that money to give them a home and get them off the street.

We are hurting trans kids because they make us uncomfortable and we just wish they would go away. And, hey, look at that, we’re banning the hormone therapy these kids need to live in their own skin. We’re also starting to ban it for adults because it was never just about kids. It was about erasing all trans people because they make us feel weird.

Autistic people also make the general public extremely uncomfortable. They don’t understand it. They don’t know what they’re looking at. Autistic people don’t “look” different. They just act in ways that disturb people. I’ve been watching it happen firsthand for fifteen years.

Police interactions with autistic individuals frequently end in disaster because the police have no fucking idea what they’re doing. We used to keep the autistic community hidden. Do you think for one second Kennedy and the Trump regime won’t do that again?

And once they’re pushed out of the public’s sight? Well, then we can get to work telling the public how dangerous they actually are. How much of a drain on society they actually are. How much better off they would be in institutions and away from the good, God-fearing people of these United States.

Stephen Miller is raring to build his concentration camps and murder millions. Do you honestly believe autistic people won’t be among his victims?

What would be one of the first steps to America’s T-4? How would that start? Probably by identifying all of the people with autism. And wouldn’t you know it? That’s exactly what Kennedy wants to do:

The NIH is also now in talks with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to broaden agreements governing access to their data, Bhattacharya said. In addition, a new disease registry is being launched to track Americans with autism, which will be integrated into the data.

Of course, this information is just to STUDY autism and find out what’s causing it! It’s 100% benign! But of course, Kennedy thinks autistic people are a drain on society. A curse on their families. A burden to all those around them. With all of this information, how long until he decides to “help?” God forbid any of them be allowed to have children! The sterilizations will be “for the good of the nation.” That’s how eugenics programs always start.

Kennedy pretends to care about the health of America, but the longer he speaks, the more the evil oozes out of his mouth. He’s already spewing the hate of eugenics and he’ll escalate. Evil always does. The victims will be, as is the way of fascism, those least able to defend themselves.

One wonders how MAGA families with autistic children and relatives will respond when the government they so ardently support tells them that their loved ones are a burden to society or a danger to be contained. Will they smile when the Proud Boys come to collect them for the regime? They’ll have to kill me before I let them take Jordan but will MAGA parents fight for their children or hand them over? I honestly do not know. I want to believe this is a line they will not cross, but these are soulless, evil people who long for a new Holocaust. I’m not sure they won’t be willing to pay that price if it means they can finally see the smoke from American crematoriums rising in the distance.

But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe RFK Jr. will step on the toes of one too many parents who love their children more than they love their cult. Maybe Kennedy’s cruelty and stupidity will help drive enough people away from the regime to bring it down. Maybe, if we’re all very lucky, the public pressure will get to Kennedy and he’ll have that stroke I’ve been dreaming of and live the rest of his days as the drain on society he imagines all autistic people to be.

A man can dream, right?

This is it. This is Germany in the 1930s and what you do will be recorded in the history books. Your children and grandchildren will look back and ask what you did. Will you be able to look them in the face?

Fascism thrives on fear. It wilts under scrutiny. Never look away. Never stop fighting. Hold them accountable and make them pay for every cruel thing they do. It’s the only way we get through this. Support this newsletter for just $5 a month or $50 a year and we’ll get through together.

🪱RFK Jr’s Brain worm Says Subscribe!🪱

Fascism hates organized protests. They fear the public. They fear US. Make fascists afraid again by joining Indivisible or 50501 and show them whose fucking country this is!

Moms for Liberty, through M4LU seeks to be the go-to resource for parents to learn more about the issues and ideologies facing their children in the classroom, and to gain practical tools to navigate those issues.

Punctuation errors in the original.

The program director is Melissa Karwowski. She is touted as having "a diverse background in marketing, operations, data analytics, and tech consulting." Her sister-in-law started the M4L chapter in Washington County, PA (southwest of Pittsburgh) where Karwowski lives. 

She appears to be the same Melissa Karwowski whose LIinkedIn profile shows her working the tech side of multiple industries, most recently working as Director of Operations for IndeVets, an outfit that appears to provide floating employment for veterinarians. It appears that she was also a Mary Kay lady at one point. She's a military spouse (there's a nice piece in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about her welcoming her husband home in 2018). They have three children. She has a couple of degrees from Robert Morris University--one in business administration, and one in data analytics, both from 2021.

While this very much appears to be the same woman who is program director, her LinkedIn does not mention the M4LU job at all.

So the program director seems a bit more qualified to manage digital resources than an actual university, which seems about right. But she also doesn't appear to have been the first person in the job. January and February lecture videos are hosted by Robin Steenman, who introduces herself as M4LU director. Steenman may be familiar as the M4L leader in Tennessee who led the book banning charge there. 

The "university" launched in January. As Jennifer Vilcarino noted at Ed Week, M4LU is not actually accredited. Karwowski describes the goal a little more specifically:

Radical ideologies that have been building for decades are being daily inculcated in our children’s minds. What are the seeds being sown in our children today in America? If we as parents are to combat these efforts, we must understand the ideology. We must become experts ourselves. That is the goal of M4LU.

The website lists two "semesters" for 2025, but the format seems much more like a "topic of the month" structure. January-- Social Emotional Learning. February-- Critical Race Theory. March-- Restorative Justice. April-- Gender Ideology. May-- Comprehensive Sex Ed. In the fall, things get a bit more esoteric. August-- Generative Curriculum. September-- Graphic Content in Libraries. October-- Ethnic Studies. November-- Marxism.

For each topic, there's a group of resources. There's a "smart book" that provides a history and background of the topic from the far right perspective. This includes talking points arranges according to the points to which one is responding. The resources include presentation slides, and a set of videos. There is also a set of "white papers" and some books for recommended reading, plus a whole laundry list of related links (CRT gives links to videos that Williamson County M4L created when they were trying to ban the Wit and Wisdom books series, including a Riby Bridges bio-- that was three years ago).

The "experts" cites are the usual crew. James Lindsay, Chris Rufo, Parents Defending Education, the American Enterprise Institute, and plenty of Heritage Foundation stuff. There are also "watch parties for films every month or so.

As mentioned, there's a live lecture with each month, apparently filmed at a studio in Nashville (for $25 you can be part of the studio audience)

I could get into the specifics, but-- okay, just one. To respond to the argument that restorative justice is a good idea because children who commit offenses do so because of social factors beyond their control and punishing them just makes matters worse, the resources suggests you say that "Bad social circumstances caused by government policy make it more likely that members of certain groups will commit crimes."

The newly made materials for this endeavor are slick and professional looking, the website also slick and easily navigated. However, you can't squint hard enough in a million years to make this look like a university. What it is is a deep resource library being rolled out a month at a time. It is a library of all the usual complaints and grievances of the culture panic crowd, presented in an academic-looking form that should be welcome by the "I'm not trying to stir up trouble, I just want to answer some questions" crowd.

M4LU told EdWeek that it includes counter perspectives, and that's true, though it's also clear that those perspectives are there in a Know Your Enemy function and not to be engaged as ideas that reasonable people might hold. M4LU frequently credits itself with an "academic" approach, but I'm not sure that they know what that means. Granted, it's a vague sort of term, but I've never understood it to mean "we have already decided the conclusion and we will now just build a scaffold to support it and discredit all others." I think maybe they think "academic" means "not screaming," and M4LU does seem to clear that floor-level bar. 

M4L remains far more interested in using culture panic to stir up political activism than it is interested in actual education or, for that matter, liberty. M4LU is one more aspect of that mission to outrage and agitate MAGA ladies. If you want to get a picture of what the current talking points and arguments are, this website is just the thing. But a university it is not. 

Pope Francis is dead at 88, and is already being remembered as an uncharacteristically progressive Pope. I’ve always hated the “progressive Pope” moniker; I think it gave Francis too much credit, and indicted his institution too little. Because it truth, Francis’s politics were conservative ones. He was anti-abortion. …

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