Posts Tagged ‘irony’

Students Protest in Manner School Board Was Trying to Prevent Them from Learning About

Posted: January 11, 2015 in conspiracy, education, history, politics
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How’s that for a convoluted subject line? This is one from my archives from late September / early October of 2014, and it took place only a few 10s of miles from me. There were no less than three World Net Daily posts about it:

I think that, most objectively, one can state the situation as this: A school board decided to modify the AP US History curriculum (note: AP curriculums are strictly set by the College Board (for-profit company) and if you do not follow them, you can lose AP accreditation and the students will not get college credit). The modification was as such:

Tensions have run high in Jefferson County schools since three conservative candidates were elected to the school board. These new board members have suggested an extensive rewrite of the way history is taught to the area’s students to a model they believe is more patriotic.

The right-leaning board-members said they believe history teachers should teach nationalism, respect for authority and reverence for free markets. They should avoid teaching any historical events or acts that promote “civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law.”

As a consequence, teachers protested by calling in sick en masse, and then students held their own protest with over 1000 in three different schools simply walking out. In protest. The very thing that the school board was trying to prevent them from learning (civil disorder). I found that particular irony quite delicious. It’s also midnight and I’ve been up for 15 hours and got little sleep the previous night.

From what I can tell, the conservative members of the board succeeded in their proposal, but they also formed some sort of review board with student/parent/teacher involvement for some curriculum matters. Meanwhile, people are working to recall those board members and replace them.

With that in mind, can you guess how the WND commenters reacted? Top-rated on that first post is by “Pi10107” whom I’ve quoted a lot on this blog: “I don’t believe that these kids came up with this protest on their own. Of course, they are not patriotic and have been brainwashed, but behind the scenes were adult commies pushing this. I totally agree with Annolyze that these kids didn’t even know what they were protesting.”

Or “ratamacue76” wrote: “I suspect that this was started by some leftist teacher who is doing their part to make sure that the current “hate America” curriculum stays in place. The kids being saturated by the Leftist view of the nation know none the better and most probably don’t even know what they are protesting in the first place. This is a dress rehearsal for useful idiots who are still in training.”

WND Commenters Miss Irony in Laughing at Modern Beliefs in Norse Mythology

Posted: March 6, 2014 in religion
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Remember when the world ended on February 22, 2014? I do. I slept in. Otherwise, I was home, and it was like any other weekend day. But, according to a small group of adherents to old-school-style Norse mythology (Odin, Thor, etc.), Ragnarök was supposed to happen – a series of events that would lead to the end of the world.

Didn’t happen. But, it got some main-stream press, and WND did one of their two-paragraph snippets, entitled, “According to Norse Mythology, World Ends Saturday.”

A hackneyed response by atheists, when asked by a Christian why they don’t believe in “God” (the implication clearly being the Judeo-Christian deity), is “Which god?” And then going on to explain that the person who asked the question is almost as much an atheist as the person responding, the atheist just believes in one less god than the asker.

I personally have yet to use this line, but I’ve yet to really be in a situation where it’s relevant or would come up. And I tend to classify myself more as an apathetic atheistic agnostic rather than an atheist, but I’m digressing.

The point, as you might have guessed, is that most of us roll our eyes at the modern-day Norse believers (though I still need to see Thor 2 — that Chris Helmsworth is dreamy), concluding quickly that it’s silly superstition and mythology. And yet, somehow, Christianity gets a free pass from most of us. And, there is an inherent irony and display of cognitive dissonance whenever any religious person laughs at another.

One need look no further than the first of the 38 comments, by “John C” who wrote: “Yeah, anyone who believes in Valhalla and Ragnarok won’t need a sweater where they are going.” As in they’re going to the Christian version of Hell. Because they believe in Valhalla and Ragnarök instead of a 900-year-old man fitting two of every animal into a boat and managing it for a year or so while a vengeful deity full of love drowns everyone and everything by covering the planet with water.

“Well, when you put it that way …”

Blinding Opposition with … SCIENCE!!

Posted: August 8, 2013 in Republicans / GOP, science
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I’m starting to wonder what a “WND EXCLUSIVE” means because I keep seeing their “exclusive” stories posted elsewhere, or at least reporting of the issue posted elsewhere. This one has no named author and is headlined, “How Obama Blinded Romney with Science.”

Allow me a brief interlude: I am definitely of the mind that there is a clear trend of a “Republican War on Science.” As in, conservatives are far more likely to reject global climate change, reject evolution in favor of creationism, reject medical avenues of research based on their religion, and so on. That’s not to say that liberals have their own pet things that they fudge numbers on, but in general, I think there’s a pretty clear divide. So I thought this headline fairly ironic when I read it.

Keeping in mind, of course, that this is referring to soft political science and statistics rather than more a hard physical applied science. (“Hard” and “soft” don’t refer to their difficulty, but more how “fundamental” the science is or the firmness of observations, such as particle physics versus human psychology.)

Anyway, the article is lengthy but is an advertisement for “Birther in Chief” (I think that’s the Joe.My.God blog term) Dr. Jermoe Corsi’s new book, “What Went Wrong?” which is his analysis of the 2012 election. BTW, Corsi is a real Ph.D., earning it in political science at Harvard. He’s no dummy when it comes to that, but he’s one of the more obtuse conspiracy theorists I’ve seen in the political science field. But that’s incidental. This was supposed to be a short post.

The article could be summarized by these three paragraphs, or at least the main point shown:

Corsi noted, in contrast to the Republican’s old-school approach, the Democrats had “highly effective computer scientists, political scientists, communications scientists and psychologists” working for them. The Obama campaign even had physicists crunching numbers and doing statistical mapping.

“For the political scientists running the Obama campaign, it wasn’t about winning all of the country, it came down to eight states. And in those eight states it came down the cities and Cuyahoga County in Ohio,” explained the author to the Eagle Forum.

Corsi described how the Democrats narrowed their targets even further to just 50,000 voters in Ohio and another 50,000 in Florida, and the necessity of getting the African-American and Hispanic communities actively involved.

I really wanted to post about this not for the article, but for the responses. In that the voting makes no sense based on what I’m used to. Yes, the top-rated vote (5 up, 0 down) is a short rant about Obama. And so is the second. But the third, with 7 up and 2 down votes is from “this2shallpass” who states the following:

It is simple for the republicans to win in 2016. If science is what caused Romney to snatch defeat from the jaw of victory, then we should outlaw science. Science is for the elitist liberals, not true American. It may take a while to do it at the country level, but we can pursue it at the state level, especially those states who have been successful in passing laws to keep the undesirables from voting, and enacting other conservative principles..

Based on “this2shallpass”‘s previous comments (you can click his name on the thread and see ’em), this is as tongue-in-cheek as it sounds, especially given the second paragraph of my post. Yet it has 7 up-votes and only 2 down-votes.

Then there’s this reply to “John” (who wrote, “Obama won both elections simply because of the low-information (stupid) voter.”) by “Joe Cogan:” “Don’t FOX News and talk radio listeners usually vote GOP?” Joe’s comment has two up-votes and only one down. The snarky me wants to say that’s because the “stupid” voters on this site don’t understand Joe’s implication.

I’m surprised about these two comments being as highly rated as they are, especially that first one. I give him or her props for posting this kind of stuff to WND — I’ve sometimes considered making a fake account and being as conservative as possible and seeing how the readers vote me. Maybe I will at some future time…

To close out this longer than expected post, here’s a doozy from “Lamar Carnes”:

This is all true outside of the real decider of the election of any human being to an office. By the way that is God Himself, HE is the absolute decider of the elections because HE creates the various things which place people in office. He is in control of the nations and places kings, dictators, Presidents, Monarchs, etc., on the thrones or in the chairs of Government. He decides the outcome for HIS purposes and that is the final point! If you dn’t believe HIM – He really states this in His word, then you have to deal with that. But it doesn’t change one thing if you don’t believe it! It happens! He judges nations, or He blesses nations.. Currently most are being judged on planet earth! You must have enough sense to know that these things don’t happen by chance, since chance is actually NOTHING! And nothing is nothing because when it is consider nothing it becomes something! So drop nothing and chance form you vocabulary. God is in charge and HE is the CAUSE of all things either directly or indirectly.