American School War Zone

Here's an incredible, and very telling, story from the San Francisco Chronicle: a Ukrainian refugee girl fleeing the war in her homeland is so disturbed by violence and anarchy in her San Francisco school that she wants to go back home -- to a war zone! More:
Everything Yana, a 13-year-old Ukrainian refugee, knew about public schools in the United States was what she had seen on television or in the movies, often idyllic settings where teenage conflict and angst ironed itself out by the end.
... It didn’t take Yana long to realize that real life in her eighth-grade classes at Marina Middle School was nothing like the scenes that played out on her screen.
More:
Students interrupted classes, jumped on desks, cursed at teachers. At first, Yana wondered what was going on, but then “nothing happened.” Students were not disciplined or prevented from repeat behavior.
“After one week, I understood that was normal,” said Yana, whose last name The Chronicle agreed not to publish in accordance with its source policy.
Not long after, Yana said, she became the target.
Her experience echoes what many parents and teachers have said is an escalating problem in the city’s middle schools, with bullying, violence and defiant students creating an untenable learning environment. While the situation has worried many students, staff and parents, for a girl already fleeing violence and chaos, it’s been particularly difficult.
And:
Yana’s mother and aunt, Mariia Moroz, said the teen would come home from school and describe the chaotic scenes in her classrooms.
“She would tell us, and we were terrified,” Moroz said of the verbal abuse, hallway conflicts and classroom outbursts, adding that they told Yana to avoid eye contact and try to avoid the students acting out.
Within a month at Marina, Yana said, someone stole her cell phone in the cafeteria and then a group of students, who she believed was responsible, threatened her. Yana knew enough English to understand the gist.
“They started yelling and cursing and moving toward her,” her aunt said of the early February encounter. “A counselor came and intervened.”
The next day, Yana stopped going to school. School officials offered her a security action plan to make sure she felt safe. They also investigated the report of theft, officials said, although there was no evidence to identify who took the phone.
School officials offered her a security action plan. For pity's sake! Now the poor kid says she wants to go back to Ukraine. Hard to blame her. Read the whole story.
I'm telling you, my fellow Americans, you have no idea how we look to foreigners. Here in Budapest, where I live, the city is a lot less well off than many American cities, but it is rich in one thing you cannot find in America, despite American wealth: social order. When my friends came to visit me here last year from Alabama, they were shocked by how safe it was to walk around at night in the Hungarian capital. They kept telling me how strange it felt. When I've gone to speak to Hungarian students, as an American I am astonished by the sense of order in the classrooms.
Don't get me wrong, Hungary has lots of problems. But when you experience how low crime is here, and how safe the streets are compared to back home, you wonder how it is that we Americans got into the situation we did. And you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the core of the problem is not poverty. And the solution certainly isn't because the Orban government has a heavy police presence on the streets. You don't often see police -- because you don't need to. Magyars know how to govern themselves.
Back in 2018, I published on my blog this testimony by Mark Bollobas, my Budapest-living friend who was born and raised in Britain, to parents fleeing Hungarian communism. He decided not to try to settle in the US, where had lived and worked (Memphis) for some time, because it was too violent, and felt like it was falling apart. Nor did he decided to stay in England, because it was so overwhelmed by migration that it was no longer the culture where he felt he belonged. So he decided to return to his parents' home city as an adult. Excerpt:
So, not England. The second choice was Hungary. True, it’s not a wealthy country, and true, it suffers many of the same problems that afflict other nations. And yes, salaries here are very low. As editor-in-chief for English language news at a national TV station, and ironically the only Hungarian TV station that was on the local Memphis cable network, I made $1,200 per month, before tax. And even on that salary in Budapest I could live and do things like dine out and take advantage of all the positive things a city like this offers: theatre, concerts, museums, sporting events, parks, nightlife, etc. Most of all, it was where I really felt at home.
Like many children of immigrants, I was raised to know that I have to work harder, and be better everywhere than those who were “local” to get ahead. And it’s all true. But I was also raised in a Hungarian household. While my parents made every effort to assimilate, I was raised in a household that took pride in being Hungarian. I didn’t support Hungary in sports or anything tribal like that, but I was proud when Hungary did well. I appreciated the poetry, the folk music, the heritage, the history, and so forth. And every time I went back to Budapest, I felt so so comfortable. No one asks “where are you from?” because although I don’t sound like I am from here (I have a British accent in Hungarian), I am from here, and people recognize that.
My decision to move back here to Hungary — I say that even though I wasn’t born here — has been reinforced by this fact: Hungary understands that holding on to its cultural identity is essential to its existence as a society we can understand.
Culture changes over time, of course, but it normally does it slowly as we creep towards a more civilized future.
England doesn’t feel more civilized — quite the opposite. It feels more feral. And the UK has just accepted its fate.
The lack of an American culture means Hungarians don’t know what’s missing, because they never had it. But there is a gaping hole in America: something is obviously broken. America is collapsing on itself.
It’s been nine years since I moved back. I can’t count the number of days I’ve thought to myself, or told others, “It’s just great to be here.” It still is.
We can all laugh at that San Francisco school, and say, what do you expect from a school in liberal California -- but are we sure that it's all that better in red states? Almost twenty years ago, when I lived in Dallas, a friend of mine told me her husband, a young liberal idealist, taught public school in the Dallas system. They had decided that when it came time for their child to start school, they were going to leave the city if they couldn't afford private school. Why? Because of the chaos and hopelessness her husband saw every day at work. These kids who came to his school were not prepared to study, and had no intention of so doing. I remember her telling me once that the week before, her husband caught one of his middle school girls giving a male classmate a blow job in class. On another day, he broke up a scrum in which boys had gathered around a prematurely bosomy girl who had flopped out one of her breasts for them all to sign with a black marker. This was life in his school -- and he knew perfectly well that there wasn't enough money or other resources in the city to compensate for the fact that these feral children came from homes and communities that were internally lawless.
Today in Moscow, Vladimir Putin gave a warmongering speech, defending his country's aggression against Ukraine. Putin is a thug, no doubt about it, and he is not only ruining Ukraine, but also his own Russia. But this particular attack on the West from the speech is, to me, hard to answer. Very few of us would prefer to live in the Russian system than under the American or British one. But Putin is not wrong about how we in the West are determined to destroy the foundations for civilization. After Washington finishes helping Ukraine re-capture its territory in this proxy war, maybe it can turn its attention to re-capturing the lost territories of American schools from the thuggish youth who have made them scarier to this Ukrainian refugee girl than schools in her war-torn homeland. I mean, honestly, how are California schoolteachers supposed to teach gender ideology to these kids, and about their own oppression, if they won't settle down and stop jumping on their desks?
The response by the US and the Western press is predictable. "But, but, mass incarceration, human rights! LGBT in danger! Women's rights!"
But liberal democratic disconnect from real people and real problems is why El Salvador was bathed in blood under regimes that the US liked more. As the Latin left becomes less socialist and more progressive, lobotomized by capital with gay pride flags, its ability to talk to real people about real problems is falling apart, and over time I think there will be many more Bukele's. It seems that if you want to do right by your country, no matter if your country is Eastern Europe, Middle East, Asia, Africa, or Latin America, you pretty much have to piss off the progressives and their dodo cult religion, and the Davos types, sooner or later. What they want, is the opposite of what normal human beings want and need.
The future belongs to populist authoritarians, and in the case of weak states mafias and paramilitaries, and the like because nature abhors a vacuum, and that's all progressive liberal democrats offer now. Permanent crisis of authority. Their technocratic neoliberal "authorities" are classic emperors with no clothes, smart only according to their credentialed world, not the dictates of reality. And no less vicious and cruel.
It will probably gets worse before it gets better, unfortunately, but places like this are becoming ripe for their own Bukele's. The long term left wing ruling party is widely loathed now - there just needs to be a clear alternative force. It's becoming more common to hear people wishing for a return of military government.
Brazil is further along the process in this, they have full-fledged paramilitaries, linked to right wing politics, now which act to establish authority where the state will not.
Merchant and warrior castes need each other, for the healthy functioning of society. Western modern ideology aims for permanent primacy of the merchant caste, via technocracy, with its profit orientation, rootlessness, perpetual self-reinvention, and disconnected from everyone else.
Liberalism itself could easily start to use authoritarian mechanisms, and really is, that is what its emerging censorship regime is. Free speech has to go, to preserve the freedoms that liberals most care about - perpetual rule of the "very smart" people and their freedom to do whatever they want without criticism. Technocracy has ample room for authoritarianism. Of course authoritarians who are divorced from reality are the worst authoritarians.
One of the things that folks are missing is that the lack of any meaningful peace movement is because now that the Woke control the military, the current Left find it useful to propagandize against non-Woke, non-Communist nations in pursuit of forcing their Woke ideology on the whole world. And the Left Woke sees its enemies in places like Hungary and Russia, while the warmonger Right is obsessed with ramping up for war with China, ostensibly because of its Communist Party. Which rules as a thoroughly capitalist trader.
Go figure. We're suicidal and anti-life now, and even NATO was hijacked.
And cheering for Washington's supposed attempt to help Ukraine "re-capture" its so-called "territory" is foolhardy in the extreme, and betrays a shallowness of thought almost shocking for someone who was once an actual journalist, as opposed to whatever is practiced under the name of that profession today. The consequences of us 'helping' Ukraine the way Dreher advocates will be WWW III at minimum, and the probability of it ending in nuclear war is high, higher than it has ever been before. What the west is doing is so dangerous, reckless and stupid it beggars belief. Fortunately, the goal of Washington has never been to 'help' Ukraine, a fact clearly demonstrated by that infamous 2019 Rand Report which I can only assume Dreher has not seen, because if he has and yet continues to blather on the way he does about Putin and Russia and Ukraine I must conclude he is, after all, an irredeemable fool.
Here, you can freely and ignorantly yak away, criticize your government and your leaders, shit all over your society, and life pretty much goes on. Nobody is poisoning you with radiation for running your big dumb mouth.
Your valiant hero Putin does not frequent TAC, probably, but Rod Dreher reads these comments. The worst possible consequence to your actions is that you will be deleted as a commenter, maybe, but don't worry, if that happens there's always Reddit. You can go there and complain with the rest of the anklebiters.
Probably you can't "think" at all. If you could, you wouldn't be listing Putin's living critics, but the dead ones.
Meanwhile, you list consequences that you are unafraid of personally suffering. We can imagine anything, sure, but there are no real life consequences to your dissents.
Peddling idle fantasies about Russia, you are freely blabbering on an on, and are demonstrably at more liberty to make a complete fool of yourself publicly in America than you would be in Mother Russia. I don't even suggest moving there. You would be in for a rude awakening. Unless of course your single-minded mission is to stoke Russian nationalism like Putin's lapdog, gently critiquing him for not being vicious enough on the Ukrainians. In that case, you might receive a heroine's welcome.
There's nothing wrong with being fair about the Russians. They have pluses and minuses. However, that is one society not famous for tolerating lots of dissent. On the plus side, I give Putin credit for recognizing that Russia is a multiethnic state and civilization. Killing his political opponents, on the other hand, is a bit difficult to overlook.
Putin is a stone cold murderer, however you slice it. Rooting for him is obscene. Just another sign of moral rot in the good old US of A.
Regardless, my point was that dissent is not tolerated in the United States today any more than it is tolerated in Russia. I do not doubt that enemies of the Russian state will suffer consequences, but the same is true in America, and Canada for that matter, just ask the truckers who tried to stand up to the COVID mandates there.
Hate on Putin all you want, but what he says is largely true. America and its European vassal states do want to destroy Russia. America has absolutely destroyed Ukraine by installing a client regime there and allowing the most despicable political ideologies imaginable to fester.
"When Ukraine gets its territory back, as you so ardently desire"
What Dreher actually said:
"I believe that Ukraine surrendering the Russian-owned areas of Donbass and Crimea and accepting Finlandization in exchange for peace -- a peace that can somehow depend on far more than Russia's word -- would be an acceptable price to end this war."
To be clear, Dreher is bound to catch copious incoming flak for this position, which asks for the aggressor to be rewarded by letting them have much of what they want. But he does make it clear that realistic peace can only come at a price, and it is a price Ukraine should pay. Accepting some losses in order to make gains elsewhere is the essence of wisdom.
I don't wonder about why you not only seek to distort this position, but to actually paint it as its opposite. The answer is clear: you lie as a habit, often and comfortably. Am I wrong?
As far as the why of it -- who cares?
It's morally and mentally disturbed behavior, and can lead to no good outcome. Don't let the dark clouds overwhelm you, I beg. Find some humility, for your very soul is at stake.
By the way, welcome to the debate! Enjoy yourself... the carnival can always use another barker.
Perhaps Dreher does not "ardently" desire such an outcome and he was just being flip, but he does support Ukraine without bothering to ascertain anything about the reality of that country's history, behavior and goals. Ukraine's stated objective is a return to its borders of 1991, not February 24, 2022. To support Ukraine is to support its suicidal and Quixotic quest to regain all the territories it has 'lost' to Russia. I am quite certain that Rod knows next to nothing about modern day Ukraine. Do you?
Personally, I pray for humility often. I am always aware that I can be wrong, and welcome the instances when I have been proved so. My views on the conflict in Ukraine are the result of a lot of study prompted by my Ukrainian heritage. I have been diligent in finding sources of information from both sides, despite the imposition of censorship by the west of many Russian sources. I don't know, and can't know, exactly what is occurring in Ukraine, but I can attempt to cast the widest net possible in terms of sources of information.
Do you have a plan for peace? What do you think of Odessa, should Ukraine have a Black Sea port or be landlocked? Any opinions on Moldova and Georgia, is Russia correct in all those circumstances, as well? Do the Russians have a valid historical claim on any of the Baltics, in your view?
I personally agree that removing Russian media from YouTube is a sign of weakness on our part. I also agree that we have provoked a set of reactions.
Finally, I agree that besides all his realism and gallantry, Putin might be capable of not only reacting rationally, but overreacting irrationally, actually. It probably results from a vicious cycle he has established by not allowing any meaningful political opposition, since the suspicious mind does tend to close in on itself after a while.
Orbán just said the NATO alliance is a core Hungarian interest. Did you miss that? All these countries sought out the West against Russia. Yes, unfortunately, the uncomfortable facts run in both directions, and no, not equally. No, sir, allying with America isn't the same as allying with Russia. There is copious evidence only a dedicated nutter could ignore. Not one of those former satellites was forced to choose the West.
They still aren't forced. They are willing clients, very happily under our protection, even including Viktor Orbán, who can't wait for Republicans to come to power. He certainly appreciates America a lot more than he does Russia, and by his own words and actions he effectively chooses Joe Biden over Vlad Putin as European Lord Protector. Do you guys not know this?
Otherwise, if you insist on being woke about Russia and their terrible reputation, how unfairly oppressed they are, then maybe Russia is better than America, isn't it? It might be. Anything is possible in a world of pure relativism.
We just don't know, but here is one rule that's a universal: anyone who can dish it out can also take it. Calling people names is the modus operandi around here, and I'm fine with it. I'm Hungarian, after all. We don't take it easy.