Wednesday's Most Active Threads

Yesterday's most active thread was titled, "How is it a close race?" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The original poster points out a number of flaws in former President, current cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump such as his frequent failure to pay contractors, his cheating with a porn star, his modifying a weather map with a Sharpie, the way he kowtows to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and his lies about election fraud, and asks how Trump supporters cannot see all of this. The original poster compares the situation to the "Emperor's New Clothes" fairytale in which everyone realizes the truth but is afraid to say it. The original poster is perplexed that this is even a close election given the numerous problems with Trump. Many Trump supporters respond by saying that they recognize Trump's personal flaws and don't really like his personality. However, they claim that they are supporting him because of policy issues. Frequently these posters cite immigration and the economy as areas where they belive Trump has better policies than Vice President Kamala Harris. A number of Trump supporters look back at Trump's previous presidency and suggest that he did a laudable job. Trump opponents point out that Trump accomplished very little as President. His legislative accomplishments were mostly limited to passing tax cuts which caused the national debt to skyrocket. He mishandled the COVID pandemic and never reached even 50% popularity. Given that all the posters in this thread participate in DCUM's political forum, they must have some interest in politics. Yet, many of the Trump supporters demonstrate that they are very poorly informed. Almost universally these posters are acting on the basis of "vibes". They perceive that things were better under Trump than they were under President Joe Biden and Harris but they struggle to support that perception with actual data. Their primary basis for this perception is higher prices and increased immigration. The fact that prices are higher as a result of the pandemic and that Republicans have repeatedly prevented immigration reforms is lost to them. During the Trump administration, Americans suffered shortages of toilet paper and other everyday goods. Automakers could not obtain chips to manufacture cars. The economy was on the brink of disaster. Biden and Harris turned this around and did it without massive unemployment. But Republicans still "feel" that things are worse now. In the face of the January 6th insurrection, Trump's admission that he will be a dictator on the first day, the anti-democratic Project 2025, and Trump's obvious infatuation with dictators, MAGA supporters have convinced themselves that Harris is a bigger threat to democracy. This is absolutely delusional. As the original poster stated, and I repeat almost daily, MAGA really is a cult.

Yesterday's next most active thread was the Lebanon and Israel thread that has been among the most active all week. But since I've already discussed that thread, I'll skip it today. After that was a thread that was posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. Titled, "Reminder to avoid offensive Halloween costumes", the original poster outlines several types of Halloween costumes to avoid in order not to offend anyone. The original poster argues that costumes should not be "culturally insensitive" or "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, sizeist, or ageist". I am fairly certain that the original poster is trolling but even if she isn't, the post was so heavy-handed that almost everyone responding considered it to be trolling. I didn't bother to read every post in this thread but based on what I did read, there is not a lot of deep thinking going on here. Rather, this thread consists mostly of posters simply taking the bait. Posters say that they are going to be offensive if they damn well please and nobody is going to tell them otherwise. Several actually hope that they will offend others which, in fact, is their goal. What did stick out to me in this thread was a belief that was fairly common among many posters that there was a period in the past in which the "PC Police" were all powerful and that free-thinking Americans were prevented from wearing the costumes of their choice. For example, one poster wrote, "it's clear that something has changed - her view is no longer the mainstream thinking anymore", suggesting that the original poster's point of view was once mainstream thinking. I simply don't agree that the original poster's thinking was ever anywhere close to the mainstream. What I remember is an almost annual ritual of posters like the original poster of this thread making a fuss about cultural appropriation and being sensitive toward others, but then being mostly ignored as everyone did whatever they had wanted to do in the first place. Those like the original poster have been a vocal, and perhaps irritating, minority at best. In fact, I would argue that the most sensitive posters are not those like the original poster — who is probably just having a laugh — but those posters who feel oppressed by a simple post from an anonymous poster. Are we supposed to believe that all those posters who are now claiming that they like to offend others spent past Halloweens unhappily dressing in mundane costumes out of fear of the "PC Police"? To the extent that those replying attempted to take this topic seriously, they mostly highlighted the futility of the whole thing. One poster argued that dressing up like an individual, let's say President Taft, is okay but dressing up like a "fat person" is not. Fair enough. But then when posters discussed their White children dressing up as Pocahontas, that was all of a sudden controversial. Not that dressing as a generic indigenous person would be any better. At any rate, this sort of a thread is an annual tradition on DCUM and the original poster was probably trying to get a jump on the others in order to achieve maximum impact. Plenty of posters were more than willing to go along for the ride.

Next was a thread titled, "School Board is Failing – Central High with 80% Poverty is Blowing McLean and Langley Out of the Water" and posted in the "Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)" forum. The original poster has gathered data from SchoolDigger showing average test scores, spending per pupil, and the poverty rate for four Fairfax County Public Schools high schools and Central High in Wise County. The data shows that FCPS spends more per pupil at the four high schools than is spent per pupil at Central High. However, even though Central High has a poverty rate higher than any of the four FCPS schools, it has a better test score average than any of them. The original poster concludes that the FCPS Board of Education is "failing miserably" and "funding failure". If there is one thing that I have learned from the FCPS forum, it is that anything even remotely negative about either McLean High School or Langley High School is not going to be well-received and likely to result in multiple reports. Because both of those schools were included in this comparison, it is not surprising that the original poster received considerable pushback. The original poster was called a troll in the very first response. Posters argue that the FCPS schools are in areas of higher cost of living and, as such, dollars don't go as far. Therefore, the cost per pupil is misleading. There is also a significant size difference between the FCPS high schools and Central High. Central High has less than 700 students while the FCPS school all have over 2,000. Wise County also has two vocational high schools and posters suggest that students who are not college bound may not attend Central High. Another explanation is that, while it has a higher poverty rate, the poor kids at Central High are native English speakers while those in FCPS often are English as second language students. Posters also argue that average test scores don't show the entire picture regarding academic achievement. They post statistics regarding national merit scholars, advanced placement test passage, and other academic ratings to show that the FCPS schools do better than the test scores alone suggest. For instance, Central High doesn't offer advanced placement classes at all. Other posters question the original poster's school spending numbers. They provide other per-pupil spending amounts that narrow the differences between FCPS and Central High. The conclusion of many posters is that Central High does a great job of providing an average education. The FCPS schools, however, educate students at a variety of levels and high-achieving students in FCPS receive a better education than the Central High high-achievers. Also, there are questions about the validity of the test score data used by SchoolDigger. SchoolDigger relies on Standards of Learning (SOL) scores. Apparently students who pass AP tests don't always have to take SOLs. As a result, this distorts the average SOL score because many high-achieving students don't take the test. One poster provides data showing that the number students counted by the state went way down at schools that offered AP testing as an alternative, likely because those students didn't take the SOLs.

The final thread that I will discuss today was posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum and titled, "Most social, fun and extroverted selective schools". The original poster wants suggestions for the most "social, fun or extroverted" top 25 university or top 10 Selective Liberal Arts College (SLAC). The first two posters to respond noted that answers would depend on the original poster's child's idea of fun and asked the original poster to provide her definition of "fun". I looked through the thread to see if the original poster provided such a definition, but did not find it. Instead, I discovered that the original poster sock puppeted a number of responses to her own posts and posted in other cases as a 3rd party, claiming to have children attending various top universities. Looking at the original poster's other threads, it seems that she has previously posted variations on this theme and seems fixated on getting her child into a top 25 university. As such, I would guess that this poster is not so much a troll hoping to stir up controversy, but rather a bored parent who is obsessed with college choices at the moment. Sadly, with the college application season running as long as it does, we will probably have to put up with her for several more months. Because the original poster doesn't appear to have explained what she means by "fun", posters are left to their own accord. Several list what they describe as "traditional party schools" which often involve having many parties with heavy drinking. Other posters describe campuses with more sedate social scenes, but they are derided by other posters — including the original poster — as having kids who are nerds. The original poster provides a detailed description of the social scene at Cornell University, a school to which she probably has no connection despite her — I assume imaginary — kid who goes there. It would be pretty funny if the other posts were equally fictional. However, if the original poster's definition of "fun" is posting fake stories on anonymous websites, it is not going to be difficult to find a school whose social scene will be completely overwhelming to her child.