Dangerous People
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What these parents really wanted, as became obvious, was a taxpayer-funded near conventional school, where they could keep their kids away from “bad influences” such as hearing four-letter words, observing kissing in the hallways, and associating with gay children. ↩︎
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In retrospect. I didn’t need to create the forum. Just my threat would have been sufficient. But I’m glad I did, as I got to take the pulse of the culture. ↩︎
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Sigmund Freud based his entire psychoanalytic theory on that we carry our childhoods with us, but he thought it was all about getting stuck in some psycho-sexual age of development. Only the most hardcore psychoanalysts believe that today—about as many who still believe the earth is flat. ↩︎
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The famous family therapists, Jay Haley and Salvador Minuchin believed that families create parent and children alliances against the other parent and children. Sometimes, it’s siblings against siblings. ↩︎
How to Create Dangerous People, Part 2: Mean Boys
There was a time in my life when I was feeling worthless and unloved. I hired a prostitute solely to tell me that I’m a hunk and that she loved me.
That was fiction. Of what value could there be in flattery and declarations of affection that were bought?
Early in Donald Trump’s first term as President, in a Cabinet meeting, Trump directed the Cabinet members seated around the table to praise him, which they did with great enthusiasm. The press interpreted the incident as evidence that Trump values loyalty above all. I disagree. I believe that Trump craves praise and approval above all.
The authoritarians
What do Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Franco, and Pol Pot have in common? Besides being men, there are two commonalities: they all were oppressive authoritarian rulers of their countries, and they all had fathers who were described as cold, distant, authoritarian, emotionally abusive, and often physically abusive. The sons of these cold, abusive fathers scare, scowl, and emanate threat, but just want Daddy’s approval.
Hurt people
Hurt people hurt people
—Charles Eads (repeated without attribution by others)
As I write this, Elon Musk is in charge of gutting U.S. federal services that help the most vulnerable, while being supported wholeheartedly (an oxymoron) by President Trump. What do Musk and Trump have in common? The same sort of relationship with their fathers as did the above cruel authoritarian leaders.
Burn the ships
The tactic to “burn the ships,” which ensures there’s no way to retreat—moving forward is the only way to survive—may have been used by Alexander the Great, and later, famously by Hernán Cortés in 1519 to motivate his men to conquer the Aztecs in Mexico. The strategy being used by Elon Musk in service of the Trump administration is to apply burn the ships to the federal government: gut or eliminate the institutions that have maintained the U.S. as a democracy over time.
Burn the ships is not just a tactic to destroy the means to return to a previous geographical home. It’s also a way to burn the past, the past humiliation from an abusive father, and in Trump’s case, the past humiliation of losing an election and being tried and convicted of numerous felonies. What better way to leave behind all your shames than to burn the ships? Since I can’t get your approval, I will burn the past of when I was demeaned.
In addition to the above, Trump and Musk have scuttled trade and defense alliances and dropped the guillotine on the entire U.S. electorate: your head goes one way, your body goes the other—you’re all fucked.
Those who voted in Trump and his proxy, Musk, wittingly or unwittingly voted to burn the ships.
When I wrote about the metaverse, I contended that Mark Zuckerberg’s motivation was to level the playing field, that is, the social field where his and those of his fellow techbros' impoverished social skills could be hidden behind cartoon figures. Trump is also leveling the playing field to hide his impoverished personality. He’s good at only war: business as war, elections as war, all relations as war, but it’s war for cowards who play tough guys in front of the bathroom mirror as Robert De Niro’s character did in Taxi Driver: “You talking to me?”
The in-group for these boys wearing Daddy’s too-big suit is celebrity, external validation, and control. Their out-group is all the sources of their inferiority they fantasize they’ve left behind.
As Russian despot Vladimir Putin sacrifices the lives of his countrymen in attempts to annex Ukraine, Trump is making threats to annex Canada, the Panama Canal, and Greenland. Trump’s bizarre threats can be explained as Putin is the one daddy from whom Trump wishes to gain approval.
How to Create Dangerous People, Part 1: Mean Girls
“No one kidnapped and blindfolded you! You should resign from the forum!”
Sheesh, some people can’t take a joke.
Our homeschooled kids didn’t fit with the crowd that does so for religious reasons—the majority of homeschoolers—so our son and daughter were isolated from most homeschooled children. During their preteen years, their friends came from the neighborhood and from our Aikido dojo. Our son, Adam, was content to spend his spare time online or solo-waring in his tabletop and computer games. Our more socially inclined daughter, Bria, was impatient for her neighborhood friends to return from school.
Bria’s life would soon improve. A teacher in our school district had a plan to open an online resource center to serve homeschooled students. While the original name “Cyberschool” survived for years, parents (not us) demanded in-person classes with schoolteachers.1 Over the next half-dozen years, the district moved us to a series of abandoned school plants.
Out with the old
After we were moved to the third abandoned school, the district renamed the resource center—wait for it—the Edmonds Homeschool Resource Center (EHRC). Once the building relic was cleaned and checked for zombies, the school district installed a new principal who, conflict avoidant, immediately offloaded his authority so he could devote his time to shuffling papers. In the authority vacuum, a parent committee was formed by the type of parents who form parent committees. First task: create a rules and regulations handbook. While in the right context, rules and regulations may be necessary, in the wrong context, rule makers must manufacture their reason for existence.
EHRC was a wink-wink, win-win agreement for the school district to reacquire school funds previously lost due to children not enrolled in traditional schools. All that was officially required at Cyberschool was for parents to meet Washington State law by filing an intent to homeschool and for a parent to meet with a supervising teacher once a semester to go over the child’s learning plan. The plan could include classes at EHRC, lessons at home, and contracted instruction as we did for martial arts classes.
This setup worked for our two children, who were able to satisfy their world language requirements to apply for college and worked especially for Bria, who continued for years enjoying Spanish language, American Sign Language, and musical theatre.
The EHRC plant was a ten-minute bus ride from our home; their time away from home gave Bria and her older brother respite from their parents' direct supervision. After Adam satisfied his world language requirement, he attended EHRC only to teach a computer programming class. That meant Bria traveled to EHRC on her own.
Mean girls
I want to be in the club that won’t have me as a member.
—Not Groucho Marx
All was fine until the parent committee discovered their cause: stretch their authority to other homeschooled children and their parents and enter the cool kids clubhouse they were shut out of in their school days. Finally, we’re the mean girls.
While the parents who nested in the EHRC gym all day were now the cool kids, there had to be uncool kids because every in-group requires an out-group. The parents who didn’t nest in the EHRC gym all day were dubbed the “drop-off parents.”
To corral the drop-off parents, the parent committee established a rule that children under 16 must have a parent present to supervise. This would affect 14-year–old Bria as well as me, so I created an online forum to actively oppose the new rule. Today, most would start a Facebook group, but this preceded Facebook and other popular social media. I chose forum software and installed it on a hosting service.
EHRC had no digital record of parents' email accounts, so I manually copied about 80 EHRC family accounts from a paper listing, a chore for this lousy typist. I invited parents, teachers, and the Principal to join. I included a manifesto with two major points. First, I stated that I did not recognize the authority of the committee; only the Principal and the Assistant Superintendent of the district had authority over EHRC. Second, nearly all the support staff who worked at EHRC were parents of the attending children. (They created and took jobs at EHRC without an official district process.) These parents claimed they were following the new rules by being present, but I contended that they could not claim to be supervising their children while being paid by the school district. I added (well, threatened) that I would schedule an appointment with the Assistant Superintendent to discuss the matter.2
I was pleased with the participation in the forum. Teachers as well as parents posted, and both sides were represented. To set a tone, I made it clear that if “drop-off” parents was used as a slur, I would counter with “hang-around” parents.
The spy who didn’t love me
Because I like to have fun when I write, on the forum, I posted a story inspired by the then popular TV series, Alias, starring Jennifer Garner as a spy who wears stylish clothing while kicking ass—the usual for women spies. I wrote that I was blindfolded and kidnapped by members of the parents' committee. Everyone took it with the humor intended, except for one participant who angrily insisted I resign from the forum. I gently pointed out that it was my forum and suggested that he or anyone else were welcome to create their own forum. Other than him, all were cordial to me in the forum and later in an all-hands meeting at the school.
In-groups and out-groups
No matter how old or accomplished we eventually become, we carry our childhoods with us.3 Many whose egos were injured because they weren’t one of the cool kids in their school days will never give up the pursuit.
School is the typical place to encounter mean girls (a generic term for any who form exclusive in-groups and bully manufactured out-groups), but even families have in-groups and out-groups.4 That’s for part two: Mean Boys.