Monday's Most Active Threads

As expected, the new thread about the Gaza war continued to lead as the most active thread yesterday with over 750 new posts. The next most active thread was somewhat related. Titled, "If things get worse for Jewish people" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum, the original poster describes himself as not Jewish, but living in an area where lots of people have safe rooms. He doesn't have a safe room, but wonders if people are constructing them due to recent events. The course of this thread may have been predicted by the first two responses. The first response simply said, "Move to Israel". Ignoring, as that poster obviously did, that the original poster is not Jewish, the state of things today is such that it is impossible to tell whether this is meant in the "go back to where you came from" sense or the "Aliyah would be wonderful" sense. Either way, it wasn't particularly helpful. The second response, posted by a poster describing herself as Jewish, was simply, "What on Earth...". Again, it is sort of hard to know the cause of this poster's astonishment. The thread is 35 pages long and I haven't read much of it, but from what I did read things didn't really improve all that much from these two posts. It is clear that many Jews do feel threatened right now. Nobody can, nor should, deny those feelings. There are many posters in the thread who describe their current fears and actions they are taking to deemphasize their Jewishness (for instance, removing mezuzahs from doors). Still, there are posters who don't hesitate to "goysplain" that things are not really that bad. "You are being overly dramatic", claims one poster. Other posters point to events that have impacted non-Jews in order to show, well, frankly I don't know what they were trying to show. There are any number of posters — both Jewish and non-Jewish — in this thread who want to speak for Jews. This doesn't go over well. If there were one piece of knowledge that I would want to leave to the world, it is that groups are collections of individuals. There are obviously characteristics that bind members of the group, but ultimately the members are all different in many ways. A considerable amount of effort is wasted in this thread on debates caused by generalities that may be broadly true, while having a lot of exceptions. Just about the only outcome of these debates is lots of hurt feelings. There is also a dispute that I've found very frustrating about which end of the political spectrum presents the greatest threat to Jews. Is is the White nationalists on the right who chant that "Jews will not replace us" or the progressive leftists waving "Free Palestine from the River to the Sea" banners? I have little faith that any posts of this sort are based on any real concern for the safety of Jews.

The next most active thread was posted in the "Tweens and Teens" forum. Titled, "No Halloween plans", the original poster is disappointed and upset that her six grade son doesn't have anyone with whom to go trick-or-treating. Many other posters report having children in the same situation. Several of those responding suggest activities other than treat-or-treating such as watching a movie on television together or having the child hand out candy at the door. Others describe last-minute efforts either they or their kids are making to find trick-or-treating partners. Perhaps it was due to my lack of interest in the topic, but I found reading this thread to be a bit of a chore. Responses were sort of all over the place with some posters commenting on the nature of Halloween celebrations and saying that they are either much bigger now or that kids that age often stop trick-or-treating. There were discussions of the planning abilities or lack thereof among middle school aged kids. Posters debated whether children are properly being instructed to be inclusive of those being left out and/or whether children are being raised to advocate for themselves. It looks like there is somewhat of a fight about the idea of inclusiveness with some parents arguing that they don't want their kids to include a child who is troublesome and may ruin their night. There are several posts by parents whose kids have been left out who describe how bad it made them feel. Quite a few posters recommend discussing the topic with their kids to see whether trick-or-treating is even important to them. At any rate, the thread just seems to me to be just a hodgepodge of posts, but might be helpful if your kid is in this situation.

Third for today is a thread titled, "Fairfax county middle school ranks dropped" and posted in the "Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)" forum. I don't live in Fairfax County and my kids have outgrown k-12 education. Nevertheless, I have to read so many threads about Fairfax County Public schools in order to write this blog that I've become somewhat of an expert on the topic. Almost every thread in the FCPS schools forum can be summarized as "FCPS sucks and it is because of the left-wing school board". For that matter, the Montgomery County Public Schools forum can be summarized almost exactly the same way. Even more, the same summary basically works for the District of Columbia Public Schools forum except that the Council is to blame rather than the school board. This particular installment of the "FCPS is failing" genre is based on the original poster's perusal of SchoolDigger.com which showed that a number of FCPS middle schools had dropped in the rankings. The original poster understands that the COVID pandemic caused a lot of disruption in schools but says the pandemic affected everyone and wonders why FCPS schools have been slow to recover. The immediate response, of course, is to blame the left-wing school board and "equity". But other posters question the validity of SchoolDigger ratings, with one poster claiming that school ratings in general are a "marketing scheme run by the real estate industry". Another poster points out that SchoolDigger uses a very simplistic methodology that is not particularly meaningful. The thread almost immediately gets bogged down in political bickering with those concerned about test scores being called "MAGA trolls". FCPS critics, on the other hand, fixate on "equity" and "wokeness". A number of posters in the FCPS forum are convinced negative threads of this sort are part of the election campaign and they, therefore, are very suspicious of them. They see these threads as a repeat of Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin's playbook in which he ran against progressive influence in schools. The FCPS critics do seem to be inordinately fixated on "equity" which makes these threads very predictable. Given the current state of the FCPS forum, you can basically throw a dart at the first page of the list of topics and hit a thread that mostly duplicates the discussion of this one. Maybe things will settle down next week after the election, but until then, to quote a certain former president it "will be wild".

The final thread at which I'll look was posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. Titled, "Can we stop crapping on UMCP", the original poster says that the University of Maryland College Park is an excellent and affordable option for many kids. As the father of a current UMD student, albeit out of state, I might question the affordability part but I otherwise agree. However, like many of those who responded, I haven't noticed much UMD bashing. This thread, predictably, invites criticism however. The two main complaints seem to be that many posters consider UMD to be the only strong option among Maryland public universities and that College Park is not that great of a college town. For many who have grown up in this area, their only issue is that they want to move away for college and UMD is too close. The tread gets somewhat embroiled in the Maryland-Virginia rivalry with many posters blaming University of Virginia supporters for any criticism of UMD and those from Virginia promoting their universities over UMD. One of the early responders was a poster who currently lives in California and who compared UMD to universities in that state. This led to considerable discussion that really wan't particularly relevant such as whether earthquakes and wild fires make California less desirable than Maryland. Another poster insisted that top athletes avoid UMD. True or not, it is really not an important factor to DCUM posters who tend to be fixated on academic performance. There is also a big discussion about the beauty of UMD's campus in which a bunch of posters who appear never to have set foot on UMD's campus participate. To be sure, there are lots of proponents of the university in this thread and its qualities are amply promoted. But, many posters really seem to reach for criticism. One poster is avoiding it because his dad had a bad experience there. Another poster popped up out of nowhere to sing the praises of George Mason University. A poster who reminds me very much of the notorious "roll tide" dad discounts UMD because the students "are notoriously not good looking". One of DCUM's OG trolls was a poster we named "Terp Boy' who used to post long lists of UMD graduates and their achievements. I had some fear that this thread would summon him from whatever bridge is currently living under, but, so far at least, he hasn't made an appearance.