Alito flags yes, Algebra no!

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 5, 2024

C-bombs light the way to a dusty political death: Back on May 22, the New York Times ran a front-page report about the teaching of Algebra 1 in middle school—or in some cases, about the decision not to teach Algebra 1. Today, the report appears online beneath this dual headline:

The Algebra Problem: How Middle School Math Became a National Flashpoint
Top students can benefit greatly by being offered the subject early. But many districts offer few Black and Latino eighth graders a chance to study it

Kevin Drum wrote about the Times report ("The algebra wars are pure insanity"). At roughly that same time, we did a hurried post about alleged "segregation" in New York City's schools, but we never got back to the Times report about the teaching of Algebra 1.

In our view, the topic is very interesting. But in our view, almost everything is being blown off the map by our own tribe's growing insanity.

For the record, we took Algebra 1 in eighth grade, at Borel Junior High, a very long time ago. We continue to think about that report in the Times—in part, about what that report has to say about the aforementioned inanity of a great deal of modern-day Blue Tribe culture.

That said, we still haven't written about that report—and, Drum excepted, neither has anyone else. On cable, our Blue Tribe stars don't care about topics like that—about topics affecting millions of kids.

Our blue tribe has never cared about topics like that. Our blue tribe cares about Justice Alito, and about his C-bomb spouse.

Question:

When's the last time you dropped a C-bomb on a 75-year-old woman? As far as that goes, when's the last time you dropped a C-bomb on anyone at all?

Ideally, the answer to both questions is never. But then, along came an impassioned member of our impotent political tribe and somehow, through some provocation, that second worst of all such bombs managed to pop out.

Has there ever been as silly and inept a political tribe as our own tribe is today? Before we could know how to vote in 2016, we now say that we had to know if Donald J. Trump had engaged in consensual congress, on one occasion, back in 2006!

According to our hapless tribe, we the people needed to know that before we could know how to vote! To appearances, our tribe has lost the ability to see how stupid that idea really is.

At this point, here come the Alitos! Defeated parties will often want to believe the worst about the parties by whom they stand defeated, and so we've engaged in a truly stupid cartoonization concerning the reason why those two flags flew over the Alitos' two homes.

We know that Justice Alito was part of the deal. We know he's lying in the things he has actually said.

We've even said that Justice Alito should learn to "control his wife!" Yes, it actually reached the point where one of our thought leaders offered that thought! With a bit of an F-bomb thrown in!

Defeated peoples often resort to demonizations of this kind. With that in mind, the most interesting thing we read this morning was a report by the Washington Post's Eric Wemple about this cartoonized, low-IQ mess.

Wemple says the Washington Post should have reported the upside-down flag back in January 2021, when the Post, acting on a tip, actually checked it out. We don't hugely agree with that—we can teach it flat or teach it round—but for our money, these are the two most interesting passages in his lengthy report:

As noted in Kantor’s reporting, Emily Baden, an actor and restaurant server, moved in with her mother in 2020 along with her boyfriend (now husband) down the street from the Alitos. After Joe Biden was declared winner of the November 2020 election, the couple displayed a sign that used Trump’s name alongside an expletive and another saying, “BYE DON.” Another pair of signs—“Trump Is a Fascist” and “You Are Complicit”—went up after the Jan. 6 riots. The signs helped to ignite some unpleasant verbal encounters between Martha-Ann Alito and Baden. In a statement, Justice Alito claims, “I had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag. It was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.”

[...]

The upside-down flag, for example: This particular symbol originated as a signal of distress on the high seas and these days serves as a signal of figurative distress by political actors, including by opponents of President Barack Obama in the tea party movement. As the Times noted, the flipped flag is fashionable among Trump supporters who believe in the lie of a stolen 2020 presidential election, and it popped up at the Jan. 6 riots. But at the time that Barnes showed up at the Alitos’ house, just how common was the knowledge that the inverted flag was a symbol of election denial? Both CNN and the The Post published inventories of flags and symbols used by the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, neither of which featured the upside-down flag. According to Barnes, the tipster didn’t make this connection, noting only that there was an upside-down flag outside the Alitos’ home.

In that first passage, we were struck by the way Wemple almost seems to sanitize his account of the yard sign which devoured Washington—the yard sign which apparently triggered this incident.

According to the New York Times, the sign in question "said 'BYE DON' on one side and 'Fuck Trump' on the other." No one seems to have disputed the claim that the sign appeared within sight of a bus stop for neighborhood school kids.

To the extent that anyone can ever know what actually happened, serendipity took over from there. We were struck by the way the verbal bombs seemed to get excised from Wemple's report—the F-bomb which was on that sign, along with the C-bomb which was eventually dumped on Mrs. Alito's head.

The highlighted passage in the second paragraph struck us as more interesting still. 

Wemple starts by saying that the inverted flag "popped up at the Jan. 6 riots." That's a key part of the demonology our hapless tribe has concocted. 

Until this morning, we assumed that claim was true. But later in that same passage, Wemple links to photo reports by CNN and the New York Times—photo reports which show a bevy of flags at the January 6 riot, with nary a single upside-own American flag in sight. 

We were struck by that revelation because, as part of our blue tribe cartoonizing, it has come to be believed that the upside-down flag was all over the January 6 insurrection. As best we can tell from Wemple's report and from a series of links, no one, to this very day, is able to show a photo of even one such flag on display at that violent, gong-show event.

Why did either of the two flags in question fly at the Alitos' homes? We don't have the slightest idea, and neither does anyone else.

In the absence of anything resembling real knowledge—also, in the absence of any ability to win political fights on the ground—our defeated tribe has decided to create a cartoon in which we invent the answers to such questions. 

(Also, Donald J. Trump had sex on one occasion in 2006! We voters needed to know about that, and he should be frog-marched to jail!)

We're silly and stupid and nobody likes us! For better or worse, this seems to be the last thought that will ever penetrate our blue tribe's remarkably self-impressed heads.

Bringing it all back home:

The culture war stars we love on TV will never talk about Algebra 1. It's just a few million American kids! Why would anyone care about that?

We're silly and phony and nobody likes us! As with all human tribes, it's hard for us to comprehend this plain, elemental fact.

For the record, we blues don't know why those flags went up! Nor is it clear that it matters.

From there, it's the anger of a defeated tribe, pretty much all the way down. If we manage to lose the White House this year, we can at least say we earned our way out.