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this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2025
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Leopards Ate My Face
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This right here can not be overstated.
We ought to be teaching civics every year of school, not just one year hopefully mandated by the state board of education.
Stop romanticizing it and teach what it is and how it works.
Then so so so many of the things people think they might know or believe in because of vibes that some talking head generated over the course of years would be refuted easily by common knowledge.
They’d give the class to a coach who would use it to push right wing ideology, like they already do for the single required class now.
Mandating that something be taught isn’t a blind fix - it’s more that our culture has a distinct anti-intellectual bent. I’ve taught and tutored a little civics, and I have had students that didn’t want to think about what they believed at all, just “I’m a Republican because my parents are.”
We need a culture shift back to recognizing and valuing competence and critical thinking.
But then you wouldn't have a population of useful idiots, easily manipulated by distinct emotional triggers implanted from an early age.
I feel like a tinfoil hat person typing that, but I've been able to befriend a few former MAGAs and it has been insightful. They have no ideological consistency and no idea what they believe as an individual, just as a member of a group following a father figure. They're starting to learn, though.
What has been most surprising is how incredibly emotionally broken they are. Now that they're opening up, I've never met such sad, scared people before. The entire culture seems purpose built to produce people like these. The US has a lot of generational trauma to unpack if we ever want to improve.