Social Media's Cringiest Conservative Is Running for School Board -- As a Democrat
Social Media's Cringiest Conservative Is Running for School Board -- As a Democrat
Right-wing commentator and homeschool advocate Bethany Mandel talks with Rolling Stone about her campaign for school board.
Bethany Mandel, the controversial right-wing pundit, home-schooling advocate, and prolific social media poster, is running for county school board — as a Democrat.
Though the school board race in deep-blue Montgomery County, Maryland, is technically nonpartisan, Mandel’s campaign published a graphic on Tuesday listing her as a Democrat. The move quickly raised eyebrows online, and prompted a community note on X (formerly Twitter) stating, “Bethany Mandel has identified as a Republican numerous times on her personal Twitter account.”
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Those who know Mandel recognize her for writing molten-hot takes and far-right political commentary. The most infamous was a column, published in the wake of the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, titled “We Need to Start Befriending Neo Nazis.” (Mandel is Jewish.) Her content can be cringey, like her column defending Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ wife: “If Casey DeSantis is a Karen, she’s our Karen.” She’s posted dehumanizing rhetoric, too. “Not nuking these fucking animals is the only restraint I expect and that’s only because the cloud would hurt Israelis,” she’s written about Palestinians.
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Bro, put the thesaurus down. I have a Master’s Degree in English and a Master of Fine Arts Degree in creative writing and even I can’t take the excessive vocabulary shoehorned into your reply. Not to mention your sentence structure, punctuation, and feigned formalities. (Hence the “trying to sound smart” comment.)
And before you respond so aggressively like you have with other comments, I’m not doubting your education and how you believe homeschooling has its advantages. However, you’ve refused to provide evidence backing up your claims beyond anecdotes. I don’t care about the child abuse comment, because your insistence you don’t have to supply a source because they didn’t doesn’t help you make your case.
Also, chill the fuck out, dude. You’re all worked up over an internet conversation.
Buddy, if any of these are big words to you, then perhaps that public school education isn't all that it's cracked up to be. Otherwise, do tell if I'm misusing any words, alright? Let's go one-by-one and discuss. But isn't it absolutely remarkable that you have to commit an entire paragraph to make an Ad Hominem attack against me? To nitpick by fucking diction of all things...? With that Masters degree I guess I'd at least expect witty brevity.
Can't win with you folks... If I let loose my Appalachian roots you'd call me simpleminded and my vocabulary weak and a result of my homeschooled education; if on the other hand I respond with a tight comment that predicts arguments, you get defensive that I'm holier-than-thou and condescending. The bottom-line is you're looking for shit, obviously.
Please read the previous user's comment. They literally called what I went through and what I do for my kids, "child abuse." Fucking absurd. As you can imagine this isn't my first rodeo and I kind of figured what I was getting into making such a statement.
That you tell me to calm down as you decide to comment in a filled thread from hours ago just speaks to your own lack of introspection (is that a "thesaurus" word for you, too?)
Honestly, I'm just looking for good debate. I think most people here are far more worked up than I am. I just know how to fight fire with fire and some of you seem to take issue with that.
By the way, evidence was provided below. At this point, nobody gave evidence -- so why am I held to a higher standard than the dude who called it child abuse? lol.
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I've yet to hear exactly what was so controversial about my initial response to a comment that literally generalized child abuse across all of homeschooling... Again, where is your outrage over that? Where are you interrogating them for sources? I matched aggression at every point in these threads. Where you see those sources linked, I held a reasonable conversation with far less aggression -- did I not? You see it goes both ways.
Truly. I genuinely wish you could just reach your hand out and other users would reach a hand back out and we'd sing Kumbaya. In my experience that just doesn't work and you just get rolled over. I had to be assertive to dispel any notion of the original argument -- for which has not in conceivable way been addressed. In other words, this massive pivot to attack my character or how I said something is a clear deflection to the actual substance of the topic at hand.
I'll treat anyone with the utmost respect if they bestow the same to me. Otherwise, I'm dishing it right back at you. So to be clear, the insults directed at me have fundamentally dwarfed anything I've said beforehand.
Should be noted that the original user who made that comment finally responded and we generally saw eye-to-eye.
My problem has been your approach. Straight up.
I never said you were wrong about homeschooling. I said you didn’t provide evidence outside of anecdotes. I was wrong about that. And I said I don’t have a problem with homeschooling. In fact, I acknowledged that I’m sure your experience was good, but was trying to imply that’s not the case for everyone, just as you were saying.
I said your vocabulary was indicative of a place of superiority and then the responses were rather condescending. I have a feeling that has to do with you being so defensive about your experience with homeschooling. And it seems to me you might have wanted to emphasize that you’re not a stupid, brainwashed religious product of the homeschooling system. In turn, your initial response was rather excessive in what seemed like an attempt to prove your point. I’m not a psychologist and I don’t know you, but that’s how it is from my perspective. But, I admitted that I’m also not having a productive conversation on the topic at hand.
However, I wasn’t trying to talk about the substance of your argument. I was pointing out that it’s flawed due to the aforementioned responses. And nothing was controversial, just needed evidence to back it up.
Fairest comment yet, and I recognize your attempt to rein the conversation back in — so thank you for that.
Well honestly, I think this is for better or worse just how I write. Feel free to look through my comment history but I didn't consciously go out of my way to write differently here any more than elsewhere except for maybe dot my i's and cross my t's a little more tightly, knowing that any low-hanging fruit I leave behind will be cannon-fodder for an attack against me (too dumb; too arrogant, etc.).
I enjoy a healthy written discussion. What really gets under my nerves are insincere double-standards when people are reading these threads.. When you write from a position of the minority, knowing what you're writing is unpopular but still have strong convictions about it, you recognize the uphill battle that is going against ingrained beliefs and bandwagon/ad-populum fallacies. I'm fully aware one should be on their best behavior when in these situations, but it can be difficult to maintain perfect composure when you're taking blows left and right and anonymous down-votes despite any substantive response to the points being presented. I just wish people cut me a little more slack when the user basically said I suffered child abuse and am committing child abuse to my kids without merit. I suspect most here wouldn't maintain composure either under such audacious claims.
I had the sources from the start but I figured (a) The initial user made an outlandish claim, didn't back it up, and nobody interrogated them for evidence, and (b) even when you provide sources against people who want to believe otherwise, they often just dismiss them outright or cherry-pick relentlessly. But duly noted that I should maybe just lead with that next time.
Ignore them. Some kids just do better homeschooled and it's the lesser of evils, either you sacrifice the benefit they get from socializing or you sacrifice how they do in school because they can't handle being around people like that.
I'm sure I'll get downvoted here too but fuck em. Way too many people are so full of themselves they think they know more about a situation than those who have or are living it.
To be fair though, the majority of homeschooled kids are likely being kept home and forced to learn some religious bullshit and the only socializing they get is with other religious nutjobs doing the same to their kids. Not saying that was your situation, just a statement of fact.
The most sensible comment yet, thank you.
I've mentioned in another comment or two the same thing: Obviously religious fundamentalism is a major problem. But that's its own problem, not homeschooling.
My upbringing was a little unique in that regard. I was raised in a Christian household but we weren't evangelical, really. By the time I reached my teens my entire family kind of went through a paradigm shift for various reasons away from religion and conservatism and went full-blown progressive-left. Some of that is thanks to the internet; some of that is thanks to my parents' reflection of the US invasion of Iraq and its parallels to the Vietnam War and their hippie days.
Either way I definitely don't see homeschooling as fitting the circumstances of every family, and it certainly has its cons that need addressed as well. For my kids (and with my wife's AP/Honors public school perspective) we think we can do better for our kids.