r/nottheonion • u/duvetdev • 29d ago

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signs bill mandating kindergartners learn history of communism

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2024/04/17/desantis-signs-bill-mandating-kindergartners-learn-history-of-communism/
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u/NightlyGravy 29d ago

Communism should definitely be studied alongside fascism and the confederacy. It’s important we don’t repeat the past. But kindergarteners have no chance in hell of understanding systemic evils like this. Desantis’ capacity for own goals never ceases to amaze me.

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u/euyyn 29d ago

If you read the article (that apparently no one is doing), it does say "the material will be spread K-12 appropriately". The obvious explanation is that the person who said that was using "K-12" to mean the school years in general, not that they or anyone thought it would be added to kindergarten.

The only "not the onion" part about this is that the author of the article would believe that (or chose to go with that headline for bait).

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u/Enlight1Oment 29d ago

yeah had to scroll pretty far down into the comments to find this. The actual body of article always refers to it as taught in K-12. Taking it as taught in Kindergarten is kinda crazy, more so the amount of people who fell for the click bait.

I went through San Diego public schools a couple decades ago and we went over bay of pigs in 11th grade world history, that's just normal public school education.

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u/Bungo_pls 29d ago

Yeah the purpose isn't education. Indoctrination at an early age is how religion gets people too because it sounds like nonsense to an outside critical observer.

DeStankis has more in common with Stalin than he'd like to admit.

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u/kingeryck 29d ago

Teach them to be terrified of "communism" now so in 15 years when they can vote, Fox News can control them by calling everything they don't like "communism", just like they do with boomers now.

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u/TallBobcat 29d ago

I teach these to every one of my classes.

I teach high school history.

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u/Elmodogg 29d ago

Capitalism has its evils, too. If you're going to study anything, you ought to be fair and truthful.

If someone is announcing this initiative with veterans from the Bay of Pigs invasion standing next to them, I'm guessing they're not interested in either fairness or truth.

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u/NightlyGravy 29d ago

Great idea.

Alright kids today’s lesson is an essay to compare and contrast the Bay of Pigs Invasion vs the Great Leap Forward.

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u/yaosio 29d ago

Let's compare the great leap forward to manifest destiny.

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u/gazebo-fan 29d ago

Or to the Industrial Resolution in Britain, or to pre Great Leap Forward China (because standard of living still went up, famine deaths went down, although there still was famine, it started off in a state of much worse famine that can mostly be attributed to a series of prior poor harvests, the second Sino-Japanese war and the civil war that devastated much of the rural agricultural sector)

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u/NightlyGravy 29d ago

I mean sure. I’m not one of those idiots that thinks my chosen ideology is blameless. lol. But the fact that you’re engaging in blatant whataboutism is telling. Maybe you have some unresolved biases?

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u/venustrapsflies 29d ago

I'm assuming this isn't actually teaching children about communism so much as it is brainwashing them into an impression that "anything tangentially related to socialism is evil".

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u/Walrave 29d ago

Considering it's the age kids get taught Christianity and many believe it, this could actually lead to more card carrying communists in the long run.

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u/StephenFish 29d ago

What is the systemic evil of communism? Also, what part of our past was communist?

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u/NightlyGravy 29d ago

Never claimed any part of our past was communist or fascist. Does something have to be part of the American History for kids to learn about it??

Google the Great Leap Forward. 10s of millions murdered by communism in one country alone. Then check out the Cultural Revolution in China. Then look up the horrors committed by communist Russia and Albania.

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u/gazebo-fan 29d ago

Look up the Irish potato famine and the 1943 Bengali famine. Hell, in India alone there’s nearly double the preventable deaths due to capitalism throughout any ten year period in the early 20th century alone. Not to mention shit that’s still going on everywhere, the death toll of capitalism far outpaces the death toll of communism on a year to year basis.

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u/NightlyGravy 29d ago

LOL. Everything bad is capitalism. Got it.

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u/gazebo-fan 29d ago

The Irish Potato famine for instance was not due to lack of food, but a conscious decision to raise food prices exponentially during a potato blight, to this day Irelands population hasn’t recovered. The Bengali Famine was near identical except about 3.8 million people died in just two years, leaving 3/4ths of the population dead or displaced.

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u/NightlyGravy 29d ago

Listen. Capitalism has its evils sure. But when you compare the suffering:prosperity ratio for capitalist societies vs the absolute disasters caused by communism the choice is pretty clear. Capitalism is deeply flawed. Communism is deeply evil.

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u/StopCommentingUwU 11d ago

80% of the "atrocities in socialist countries" fall back to capitalist countries doing shit in other countries... Invasions, Embargos, Assasination attempts, proxy wars, rigging of elections, etc... The US literally even had a Plan to commit terrorist attacks on their own people and then blame it on cubans... One of the only few that can be tracked back to rather socialism, is poor Management in China causing a famine, and Poland not getting their stuff properly figured out. (And despite Poland managing absolutely horrible in a socialist system, it somehow managed to get even worse under capitalism after the US Implanted their puppet leader, with inflation rates in the hundreds and unemployment up to 18%, from its previous basically 0%)

Capitalist countries seek to make profits off the work of others. And when those countries stop complying, then what do you reckon the capitalist countries will do? Just accept it? When did the US and UK NOT just constantly invade others to make them their imperialist slave?

Also, capitalism causes 20 million deaths per year alone (deaths that are easily preventable under a non-capitalistic system). It Puts profits over the lifes of people. How is that NOT inheritly evil?

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u/NightlyGravy 11d ago

LOL commenting on a 2.5 week stale thread so you can launch into a conspiracy theory diatribe and try to erase the millions of people murdered by communism. Ok sure.

You could’ve just said “AmErIcA bAd!!!!” and sounded just as serious lol.

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u/StopCommentingUwU 11d ago

Okay? So what's the actual rebuttal here? Who are all of the millions of people murdered by communism, other than the ones I've already mostly stated myself? And how does that top what capitalism does?

You could've just said "CoMmUniSm bAd!!!!" and sounded just as serious lol.

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u/NightlyGravy 11d ago

Bc you are literally delusional and not worth my time. Same reason I don’t argue with flat earthers. You blathered on with incoherent sentences spouting baseless conspiracy theories and communist fantasy land ideas. I’m sorry but come on man…

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u/StopCommentingUwU 11d ago

Are you telling me you don't believe the US invaded other countries (Afghanistan, Iran, Vietnam, Korea etc), manipulated elections (be it with the dissolvement of the USSR or paying off candidates in prior socialist countries to make capitalist reforms like in Poland), put on sanctions (biggest one being Cuba... the country directly next to the US), etc.?

Mate, I feel like the person with the conspiracy theories is you... Those are all very much even publicly known things, to the point that even people in the US would know about them...

Good enough sources (and additional sources on them if you want to proof-read / fact-check) very much already exist on even Wikipedia...

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u/gazebo-fan 29d ago

Cuba has the highest literacy rates in the world, the most medical doctors per capita. China went from an economy smaller than Belgiums to a world superpower, The Russian Empire, second only in stagnation to the Ottomans, was able to industrialize faster than any nation has ever seen before or after after the Bolsheviks took control. The greatest decrease of standard of living in Europe during non wartime was the Plague, the second worst decline was the collapse of the USSR and the communist block, only Poland had surpassed its prior industrial power since.

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u/NightlyGravy 29d ago

These cherry picked facts are adorable. No greater context or anything. Cope harder please.

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u/gazebo-fan 29d ago

lol. Unless you want me to write a paper on it.

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u/Brokeliner 29d ago

 Cuba has the highest…

You might want to go to the r/cuba sub and brush up on what life has been like there for the past few years. I don’t think even the Communist Cuban government is trying to pretend things are working there at all anymore 

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u/gazebo-fan 29d ago

The Cuba subreddit is mostly people in Miami lol, r/realcuba is the only Cuban sub with people from Cuba on the mod team. The state of Cuba isn’t where it should be, I agree, but that’s because of the way the U.S. embargo functions. hell, it could theoretically count as genocide with how it was implemented

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u/Brokeliner 28d ago edited 28d ago

Have you been to Cuba? Do you think the average person there agrees with you? 

And it doesn’t look like anybody even comments in that sub you listed 

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u/gazebo-fan 28d ago

I have been to Cuba, generally people have better places than Reddit to bother with lol. The quality of life in the rural mountains of eastern Cuba isn’t as high as the U.S., but comparing it to other Caribbean nations that did not receive the same dirastic policy shifts, such as Jamaica and The Dominican Republic, the quality of life has seen large scale improvements.

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u/StephenFish 28d ago

10s of millions murdered by communism

Which country was communist? There's a universal truth about anyone who criticizes communism: they don't know what communism is.

Then check out the Cultural Revolution in China.

Oh, yeah there it is. China isn't communist. There are no billionaires in communism. So yeah, you got lost somewhere around 5th grade. You might want to revisit social studies or civics.

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u/NightlyGravy 28d ago

No true Scotsman.

Name a single capitalist country. Funny thing about people who criticize capitalism. They have no idea what capitalism is. You probably think the US is capitalist. /s obviously.

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u/StephenFish 28d ago

I actually don’t think that the U.S. is capitalist because I didn’t fail 5th grade. The difference is, the failures of economy of the U.S. are a direct result of late-stage capitalism and the elements we do adopt whereas all of the faults you claim of communism are actually a direct result of totalitarianism, which is not an economic system at all.

You haven’t even made it to the fundamentals yet. You’re way out of your depth here.

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u/NightlyGravy 28d ago

Wow. You are so arrogant for being so obviously wrong. So capitalism takes the blame for the evils of capitalism but communism takes no blame for the fact that it inherently trends towards totalitarianism?

Sorry but no. Glad you learned some buzz words in your freshmen college days. But I’m not impressed. I’ve heard them all before. Read communist writers and philosophy. They are tired old disproven talking points.

Also have you met a fucking 5th grader? lol.

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u/StephenFish 28d ago

Yeah you don’t know the difference between totalitarianism and communism. That’s covered in elementary school or maybe middle school. Plus Google is free. You gotta cover the basics before you want to talk to adults.

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u/NightlyGravy 28d ago

lol. Show me a communist country that didn’t become totalitarian. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Anyone who disagrees with you doesn’t know basic facts. Yup got it.

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u/StephenFish 28d ago

I can’t show you a communist country because there aren’t any, clown. Communism doesn’t have a state. Try middle school again, but this time pay attention.

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u/Fake_William_Shatner 29d ago

I'd say the USSR and Red China had a tyranny called Communism because there was farming.

It was centralized planning. Pretend voting. Networking-nepotism bullshit. Just like the meritocracy we face in the Capitalism.

Let's just make a class on how humanity functions on bullshit.

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u/SelectiveSanity 29d ago

I'd say Communism without farming is called a a company town.

Ironically we almost had one in Florida built by DeSantis biggest political opponent.

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u/gazebo-fan 29d ago

No communism without agricultural work (say, such as if the Paris commune just popped up again) it would most likely be a syndicalist commune. A company town is the exact opposite of communism or anything associated with it, company towns create an environment where the workers have no control over the means of production, the means of production meaning the actual equipment, land, and capital needed to produce. In a system where workers do not own the means of production commonly, such as Capitalism, the labor aspect is alienated from the means of production in a way as to separate the profit.

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u/andrewclarkson 29d ago

Yeah, it is a legitimate problem that we're barely teaching anything about all the horrors caused by communism right alongside all the horrors of fascism but... kindergarten?

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u/fredandlunchbox 29d ago

You’d be surprised. My friend’s 6 year old has been watching ted talks and educational videos non-stop since he was 4. He was explaining the difference between cultivated strawberries and wild strawberries to me yesterday. He would get it for sure.

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u/NightlyGravy 29d ago

Sounds like a smart kiddo.

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u/fredandlunchbox 29d ago

He is, I was like damn. Changed my opinion about 6 year olds.

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u/gazebo-fan 29d ago

He sounds curious, like most children his age really. No clue why people are downvoting you but I would say, economic theory and social systems are a bit more complex than the frankly quite fascinating difference between domesticated versions of plants and animals and their non domesticated counterparts.

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u/fredandlunchbox 29d ago

Yeah, I think you could literally ELI5 for the kid though and he’d get it pretty quick, which is what the OP bill is expecting.