What MAGA does to Education

On the one hand, this is sort of funny, in a depressing way: the MAGAts took over New College in Florida because it was "too woke," and have been spending tons of money turning it into a failure. (H/t Nicole and Maggie.)

For example, the new trustees decided one of the problems was that too many women were attending the college. (Because women = woke.) So they recruited unqualified men to enroll in the college, with exactly the result anyone might have predicted. 

Retention has fallen off a cliff, as qualified students leave to get a better education elsewhere and the unqualified students flunk out, or just quit attending.

DeSantis wanted this all to work so badly that New College got a blank check from the legislature, and Josh Moody at Inside Higher Ed reports that the school has been using that check and loading it with zeros. Annual cost per student at other Florida state system schools = $10,000. At New College it's more like $134,000. No, that is not one my typos.

(Snip)

Nathan Allen, who was VP of strategy at New College for 18 months after the takeover told Moody that he thinks legislators may be running out of patience:

“I think that the Senate and the House are increasingly sensitive to the costs and the outcomes,” Allen said. “Academically, Richard’s running a Motel 6 on a Ritz-Carlton budget, and it makes no sense."

The real punchline, of course, is that this is what Trump supporters want to do -- and are doing -- to universities all over the nation. They are destroying what had been a flawed but world-class educational system in order to piss off liberals. Oh, they claim it's because they don't want students "indoctrinated," but what they mean is, they want to indoctrinate students. (Actually educating students is far too likely to lead to those students becoming progressive.)

Meanwhile, MAGA is still doing its best to make the deification of Charlie Kirk (Charlie Kirk! FFS!) a litmus test, firing those who won't whimper about what a great guy Kirk was, or recite the correct catechism about his wonders and miracles. This raving over-reaction, which reminds me of the Satanic panics of the 1980s, may have gotten at least one young black man killed.

Meanwhile, the GOP has shut down the government because the Democrats in government won't cave in and allow Medicaid to be funded by the very poorest of Americans. If you can't afford healthcare, you should just die -- this has been the GOP "healthcare plan" all along.

And, meanwhile, they are also driving the economy off a cliff. Why? Apparently because someone who knew nothing about economics told Trump how he could make American manufacturing great again, and now everyone around Trump is too terrified to explain to him what a stupid idea tariffs are.

Meanwhile, Trump want to use the US military to invade "woke" cities and destroy "the enemy within." What enemy would that be? Not just liberal or progressives or immigrants or trans people, though yes, all of that group. No, the "enemy within" is anyone who won't lick Trump's boots, or won't lick them enough.

Meanwhile, Trump already using his federal forces to attack cities he sees as enemy cities, most lately Chicago. Portland is apparently next on his list. In Chicago, doors were broken down and men, women, and children ripped from their beds, zip-tied -- some of the naked -- and hauled away to undisclosed holding areas, where they are going unfed, unwashed, and uncared for. People were pepper-sprayed. People were beaten. Some of these people were immigrants, and some were US citizens. Your status doesn't matter. If Trump sees you as an enemy, you're an enemy. (Bear in mind that he sees all immigrants, all brown people, all LGBTQ people, as enemies, or potential enemies,)

Meanwhile, the GOP is doing everything they can to stave off their defeat in the midterms, including redrawing voting districts to disempower non-white people. 

Does any of this matter? Not to conservative Americans. So long as trans people are suffering, that's all they need to make them happy.

It's been a long time since I was naively proud of my country, but more and more lately, the nation just makes me sick.