Silencing School Whistleblowers Through Social Media

February 12, 2022February 12, 2022 stevenmsinger academic freedom, Accountability, bloggers, capitalism, Censorship, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", COVID-19, Credibility, Education, Facebook, Journalism, Learning, Local Control, Media, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, privatization, Propaganda, Racism, Schools, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, Technology, Uncategorized #FreeGadfly, blog, bloggers, Censorship, economics, education, Facebook, Gadfly on the Wall, schools, Social Media, teacher shortage, teachers, Twitter, whistle blowers

I used to write a thriving blog.

A month and a half ago.

But as soon as the New Year dawned, my readership dropped to the tiniest fraction of what it had been in 2021.

I went from about 1,000 readers per article to a few hundred.

Overnight.

How does that happen?

I suppose it could be that people are sick of me.

Maybe my writing just isn’t what it was and readers are tired of hearing about the same old topics over and over again.

Education and civil rights. That stuff is just so 60 days ago!

Yet look at the reality. School boards are banning Holocaust narratives like Art Spiegleman’s “Maus.” State governments are passing laws to restrict what teachers can say in the classroom or make their jobs more untenable so even more leave the profession.

I just can’t believe that in light of such a flame dancing ever more quickly down an ever-shorter fuse that people aren’t interested in reading about how to stomp it out.

From conservative scholars supporting standardized testing to local athletic leagues saying racism is a matter of both sides. From the effect on education of constantly depriving teachers of planning time to the continuing trauma of Coronavirus raging through our schools as decision makers refuse to take necessary precautions to protect students and staff.

The readership is there.

It’s the method of distribution that’s the problem.

And that method is social media.

It’s been this way since I began the blog back in July of 2014.

I write an article then I post it to Facebook and Twitter.

The later platform has never been a huge draw for me. But until recently Facebook was my bread and butter.

My work was posted on message boards and in online forums and organizations’ pages focused on the issues I write about.

After the first year, the result was hundreds of thousands of readers annually.

But then as Facebook began trying to monetize the distribution of posts beyond a person’s local friend circle, those numbers started to drop.

I went from 446,000 hits in 2015 to 222,000 last year.

It’s demoralizing but not because of any need for fame.

I don’t need to have thousands of people hang on my every word. This isn’t about ego.

It’s about change.

I write this blog to get the word out about what’s really happening in our public schools. And to try to push back against the rising tide trying to destroy my profession.

Mass media is not particularly kind to educators like me.

Even when journalists are writing about schools and learning, they rarely ask classroom teachers their opinions. Instead, the media often turns to self-appointed experts, think tank flunkies, billionaire philanthropists or politicians.

It’s like they can’t even conceive of the fact that someone with a masters degree or higher in education who devotes her whole life to the practice of the discipline has anything worthwhile to say.

So many of us have taken to the blogosphere to circumvent the regular media channels.

We write out our frustrations. We tell our truths. We give a peek of what it’s like in our public schools, an educated opinion about the ills therein, and how to fix them.

But as time has worn on, more and more of us are leaving the field. We’re abandoning the classroom and the Web.

We’re giving up.

And even those like me who are still desperately sounding the alarm every week are being silenced.

Frankly, I don’t know what to do about it.

I know Facebook is trying to pressure me into paying the company to more widely distribute my articles.

If I give them $50-$100 a week, they promise to deliver my work as widely as they used to do when I didn’t have to pay for the privilege.

Actually, it wasn’t Facebook that delivered it. It was people on Facebook.

People who really cared about what I had to say would see it and share it with others.

But now there’s a strict algorithm that determines what you get to see on your page. And if it says you’re invisible, then POOF! You’re gone and the people who would most enjoy your writing and want to pass it on don’t get the chance.

It’s undemocratic in the extreme but totally legal because Facebook is a for-profit company, not a public service.

It’s not about the free expression of ideas. It’s about making money.

And so people like Joe Rogan make millions on their podcasts spreading science denial, vaccine disinformation and racist dog whistles.

A guy like me just trying to make the world a better place?

I get silenced.

I guess when money is speech, poverty is the real cancel culture.

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Facebook is Censoring Your Favorite Bloggers

May 7, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, bloggers, capitalism, Censorship, computers, Corporate Education "Reform", Credibility, Data, Facebook, Journalism, Media, Politics, Prejudice, privatization, Propaganda, Social Justice, Teachers algorithm, bloggers, capitalism, Censorship, Democracy, Facebook, freedom of speech, Internet, Mark Zuckerberg, network, Politics, Privatize, Regulation, Social Media

Have you seen me?

Probably not.

In fact, you’re probably not even seeing this right now.

Though you may have read and enjoyed my articles in the past, though you may still want to have the opportunity to see and enjoy my posts in the future, you probably aren’t seeing them anymore.

The reason? Facebook has employed a new algorithm to determine exactly what you’re allowed to see on your news feed.

Like a parent or a government censor, they are scanning your content for certain words, judging your posts based on interactions, and otherwise making choices on your behalf without your consent.

Unless someone pays them to do otherwise. Then they’ll spam you with nonsense – fake news, lies, propaganda: it doesn’t matter so long as money is changing hands.

So homegrown blogs like this one are left in the dust while corporations and lobbyists get a megaphone to shout their ideas across social media.

Look, I don’t mean to minimize what Facebook does. There’s a ton of information that comes through the network that COULD be displayed on your screen. The company uses an algorithm – a complex set of steps – to determine exactly what to show you and when. But instead of basing that solely on who you’ve friended and what you’re interested in, they’ve prioritized businesses and shut down the little guy.

Since Facebook made the change in January, my blog only gets about 40% of the hits it did in years passed. And I’m not alone. Other edu-bloggers and organizations dedicated to fighting school privatization and standardization are reporting the same problems – our voices are being silenced.

And all this is happening after a series of Facebook scandals.

After the whole Cambridge Analytica outrage where Facebook gave the data of 87 million users – without their consent – to a political analysis firm that used it to help elect Trump…

After Facebook sold more than $100,000 in advertisements to Russian bots in 2016 who used them to spread propaganda to help elect Trump…

After enabling the spread of hate speech in Myanmar which allowed the military to engage in “ethnic cleansing” of the Rohingya Muslim minority – which has forced 700,000 people from their homes and across the border into neighboring Bangladesh…

After all that, Facebook still pretends that changing its algorithm is simply a way to crack down on “fake news.”

It’s not.

They are controlling information.

They are policing free expression.

They are NOT cracking down on falsehoods and deception.

In fact, much of what they’re doing is completely devoid of ideology. It’s business – pure and simple.

They’re monetizing the platform. They’re finding new and creative ways to squeeze content providers to gain access to users’ news feeds.

This won’t stop propaganda and fabrications. It just charges a fee to propagate them.

It’s the same thing that allowed those Russian bots to spread Trump-friendly lies in 2016.

It’s pay-to-play. That’s all.

Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg characterized the change in January of 2018 as prioritizing content from “friends, family and groups.”

Zuckerberg admitted this means it will be harder for brands and publishers to reach an audience on the social media platform – unless they pay for the privilege. That’s significant because even though organic reach had been diminishing for some time, this is the first time the company admitted it.

Zuckerberg wrote:

“As we roll this out, you’ll see less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media. And the public content you see more will be held to the same standard—it should encourage meaningful interactions between people.”

What are “meaningful interactions”?

Apparently, what the company calls active interactions are more important than passive ones. So commenting and sharing is more important than just liking something.

In practice that means if you comment on someone’s post, you’re more likely to see things by that person in the future. And if they respond to your comment, their post gets seen by even more people.

Reactions matter, too, as does the intensity of those reactions. If people take the time to hit “Love” for a post, it will be seen by more people than if they hit “Like.” But whatever you do, don’t give a negative reaction like “Sad” or “Angry.” That hurts a post’s chances of being seen again.

I know it’s weird. If someone shares a sad story about their mother with cancer, the appropriate response is a negative reaction. But doing so will increase the chances the post will be hidden from other viewers. Facebook wants only happy little lab rats.

Sharing a post helps it be seen, but sharing it over messenger is even better. And just sharing it is not enough. It also needs to be engaged in by others once you share it.

Video is also prioritized over text – especially live video. So pop out those cell phone cameras, Fellini, because no one wants to read your reasoned argument against school privatization. Or they may want to, but won’t be given a chance. Better to clutter up your news feed with auto-playing videos about your trip to Disneyworld. I suppose us, social justice activists, need to become more comfortable with reading our stuff on camera.

And if you do happen to write something, be careful of the words you use to describe it. The algorithm is looking for negative words and click bait. For example, if you ask readers to like your posts or comment, that increases the chances of Facebook hiding it from others. And God forbid you say something negative even about injustice or civil rights violations. The algorithm will hide that faster than you can say “Eric Garner.” So I guess try to be positive when writing about inequality?

Do you happen to know someone famous or someone who has a lot of Facebook followers? If they engage in your posts, your writing gets seen by even more folks. It’s just like high school! Being seen with the cool kids counts.

One of the best things readers can do to make sure they see your content is having them follow you or your page. But even better is to click the “Following” tab and then select “See First.” That will guarantee they see your posts and they aren’t hidden by the algorithm.

I know. I know.

This is all kind of silly, but Facebook is a private corporation. It should be allowed to control speech however it likes. Right?

Wrong.

The social media giant collects a ton of data about its users and sells that to advertisers. As a user, you have to make that Faustian bargain in order to gain free access to the platform. However, as we’ve seen, that data can be used by political organizations for nefarious ends. Private business cannot be trusted with it.

Moreover, there is the echo chamber effect. Facebook controls what users see. As such, the company has tremendous power to shape public opinion and even our conception of reality. This used to be the province of a free and independent press, but after media conglomeratization and shrinking advertising revenues, our press has become a shadow of its former self.

In order to maintain a democratic system that is not under the sway of any one party, faction or special interest group, it is essential that social media providers like Facebook become public utilities.

It must be regulated and free from manipulation by those who would use it for their own ends.

The way things are going, this seems more unlikely than ever.

Our democracy is a fading dream. Fascism is on the rise.

But if we want even a chance of representative government, we need to reclaim social media for ourselves. We need control over what we get to see on Facebook – whether that be a school teacher’s blog or your cousin’s muffin recipe.

In the meantime, do what you can to take back your own news feed.

If you want to keep seeing this blog, follow me on Facebook and click “See First.” Hit “Love” on my content. Comment and share.

The only thing standing in our way right now is a brainless computer algorithm. We can outsmart it, if we work together.

Hope to be seeing you again real soon.

I Was Blocked From Facebook for Criticizing School Privatization

October 7, 2017 stevenmsinger Badass Teachers Association, bloggers, Charter Schools, computers, Corporate Education "Reform", Education, Journalism, Media, Opt Out, Politics, privatization, School Choice, school vouchers, Schools, Social Justice, Teach for America, Teachers, United Opt Out #FreeGadfly, bloggers, blogs, Censorship, charter schools, Competency Based Education, Education Bloggers Network, Facebook, Facebook Jail, Politics, School Choice, school vouchers, Social Media, teachers

“Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.”
-George Orwell

I have had many strange experiences as an education blogger.

People have adapted my writing into a play.

People have written to express a sincere desire for my death.

I’ve had a teacher send me pictures of essays his composition students wrote in response to one of my articles.

And I’ve had people email my workplace demanding I be fired.

I guess Internet fame is a mixed bag.

But after more than three years of blogging about education and social justice issues while teaching in the public school system, there’s one thing I’ve never experienced before: censorship.

This is social media, after all.

I’ve got no advertisers to please, no editor breathing down my neck. I can write whatever I want.

That’s the benefit of being a blogger. No one can stop you from telling the truth.

Well, no one except Facebook, apparently.

For the first time in my blogging career, I was blocked from Mark Zuckerberg’s social networking platform because I had the audacity to post my blog to it.

Now keep in mind I’ve been doing just that every week since July, 2014.

Moreover, the article I posted was in no way different from my previous work.

The article is called “School Choice is a Lie. It Does Not Mean More Options. It Means Less.” You can read it HERE

But almost as soon as I posted it to the Facebook page I keep for my blog, Gadfly on the Wall, I got a message saying I was blocked for a week for “violating community standards.”

What community, exactly, is that?

My article contains no hate speech. For once I even managed to control my own potty mouth.

This is just an examination of why charter and voucher schools reduce options for parents and students – not increase them.

It’s an argument. I lay out my reasons with reference to facts and make numerous connections to other people’s work and articles.

I don’t understand how that “violates community standards.”

A blogger friend of mine tells me that someone probably saw my article and reported it to Facebook as spam. That’s happened to him multiple times, he says, especially when he criticizes groups like Teach for America.

Perhaps that’s what’s happened here.

Some folks get so furious when I criticize their charter and voucher schools.

Maybe they saw my latest piece and just wanted to silence me.

I don’t know.

I suppose another option is that it came from Zuckerberg, himself.

He’s a big fan of school privatization. Perhaps he changed Facebook guidelines to crack down on people like me who throw shade on his pet school reforms.
Or maybe my work was targeted because I’m critical of President Donald Trump. I did, after all, write an article this week called “Donald Trump is a Pathetic Excuse For a Human Being” that includes a picture of the chief executive as a poop emoji.

Or maybe it was the National Rifle Association (NRA). The article before the school privatization piece was called “Guns and Profit – Why We’ll Do Absolutely Nothing New After This Las Vegas Shooting.” It was picked up by Commondreams.org, the LA Progressive and other left-leaning sites. Perhaps the firearms lobby had had enough.

Who knows? I’ve pissed off a lot of people in three years.

But I find it hard to believe I was actively targeted. I mean, this is still America, right?

Right?

Another option might be a rogue algorithm.

Facebook is known to use various processes or sets of rules to govern calculations about what should and should not be allowed on the site. After all, they can’t leave all these decisions to living, breathing, human beings. That would cost too much money. Better to leave it to bots and computers.

Perhaps something in my article tripped their robotic alarm bells. (ROBOT VOICE: He’s against Competency Based Education! EXTERMINATE!)

I guess I’ll probably never know.

In the meantime, Twitter is still open for my business. I can still share links in 140 characters or less – with hastags. And, the best part is that Trump might see it!

But what about friends not on the Twitterverse?

How do I even let people know what happened to me? Send a million separate emails!? Pick up the phone and – yuck – talk to people!?

I sent a note to friends through Facebook Messenger about what happened, but that soon stopped working on me. I can’t message anyone else now. Still, the story seems to have leaked.

People who know what’s happened have been kind enough to share the article. It’s being read and appreciated.

I don’t know if my Facebook imprisonment has had a major effect on its distribution. But it’s probably had some dampening effect.

I have to admit, it’s kind of frustrating.

After all this time, many of us rely on Facebook for so much. I’m a member of the Badass Teachers Association, a group of more than 64,000 members who use the social media platform to discuss, plan and engage in various actions against corporate school reform. I’m also in United Opt Out National. It’s increasingly difficult for me to help plan our protest in Washington, DC, without Facebook.

It never really hit me before how much of our lives flow through this one network.

If someone wanted to disrupt political organizations dedicated to reforming the status quo, censoring people and posts on Facebook could be very effective.

I haven’t been silenced, but I’ve been effectively muted. Most of my readers see my work through Facebook. Without it, my writing is out there, but much fewer people probably are in contact with it.

So I suppose that brings me to you, intrepid reader.

Somehow you found this article.

Assuming Zuckerberg and his bots don’t change their minds, I probably won’t be able to post this article to Facebook. So if you saw it, you found it somewhere else. Or perhaps a friendly radical took a chance and posted it on Facebook, themselves, defiant in the possibility that the social media gestapo might crash down on them.

Will you please do the same?

Share my story.

Let the world know what happened to me today.

It’s not the most important thing that’s happened this week. And hopefully it will all be settled in seven interminable days. 168 hours. 10,080 minutes. But who’s counting?

Or – who knows – perhaps I’ll be cleared of all charges, write a new article and the same thing will happen when I try to post it.

I don’t know.

In the meantime, I’m going to spend some time off the computer.

Maybe I’ll open the doors and windows, let in some natural light and see what this “outside world” is like that people used to talk about.

See you in a week.

Live from Facebook Jail,

The Gadfly on the Wall

#FreeGadfly

The Arrogant Ignorance of Campbell Brown: Education Journalism in Decline

May 26, 2016 stevenmsinger Accountability, Bill Gates, bloggers, California, Campbell Brown, Charter Schools, Corporate Education "Reform", Credibility, Education, Journalism, Media, Politics, Prejudice, President, privatization, Propaganda, Schools, Seniority, Teach for America, Teacher Tenure, Teachers, union busting, Unions, Writing #LetTeachersTeach, #StandUpForPublicSchools, Bill Gates, bloggers, blogs, Campbell Brown, charter schools, corporate, Corporate Education Reform, education, Education Advocate, Education Bloggers Network, education reform, Eli Broad, Gates Foundation, Journalism, media, Politics, Privatize, propaganda, public schools, Social Media, teachers, The Seventy Four, unions

Apparently facts don’t matter much to Campbell Brown.

Though her latest “fact” about public schools has once again been shown to be more truthiness than truth, she refuses to retract it.

During an interview published in Slate where she gave advice to the next president, she said:

“Two out of three eighth graders in this country cannot read or do math at grade level. We are not preparing our kids for what the future holds.”

It’s a scary statistic. The problem is it’s completely unsupported by evidence.

And when education experts called her out on it, she complained that SHE was being attacked.

When pressed, Brown admitted she got this figure from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) a test given to random samples of students in fourth and eighth grades every two years.

However, Brown either misunderstands or misinterprets the scores. If one were to interpret the data in the way Brown suggests, the highest scoring countries in the world would be full of children who can’t read at grade level. Hardly anyone in the world would be literate or could add and subtract. It’s beyond absurd.

And when she was notified of her error by authorities in the field including Carol Burris, Tom Loveless and Diane Ravitch – who, by the way, served on the NAEP Governing Board for seven years – Brown responded by likening her critics to Donald Trump.

She wrote:

“That the people who disagree with my characterization would react by attacking me personally… speaks volumes. Those feigning outrage over the difference between “grade level” and “grade level proficiency” are the people who profit off the system’s failure and feel compelled to defend it at all costs. Sadly, in the age of Donald Trump and Diane Ravitch, this is what constitutes discourse.”

I especially like the bit where she attacks experts, teachers, and PhDs because they “profit off the system’s failure.” It’s pretty rich stuff coming from Brown who makes a pretty penny retelling the fairytale of “failing public schools.”

Once upon a time, Brown was a respected reported for NBC and anchorperson for CNN.

Now she’s a paid Internet troll.

I’m sorry if that sounds harsh, but it’s true.

She co-founded and edits a Website called The Seventy Four – a reference to the 74 million children across the country who are 18 or younger.

It might be more honest to call it The Four, instead, for the $4 million she receives annually from the mega-rich backers of school privatization to bankroll the endeavor.

She claims her site is “nonpartisan.” Funny. I guess that explains why she continually backs every cause and campaign championed by her donors.

Change all public schools to private charter schools? Check.

Block teachers unions from collectively bargaining? Check.

Ignore the overwhelming preponderance of stories about charter schools cheating the public and their students? Check.

When called out on her bias, she proudly proclaimed, “I have learned that not every story has two sides… Is The Seventy Four journalism or advocacy? For 74 million reasons, we are both.”

Pithy. Yet it remains unclear exactly how the nation’s school children will benefit from Bill Gates and the Walton Family having an even larger say in education policy.

Brown has sold her image and rep as a journalist so it can be used to purposefully mislead the public into thinking she is still dedicated to those endeavors. She’s not. What she’s offering these days is not News. It’s bought-and-paid-for public relations meant to destroy our nation’s public schools.

If anyone thought Brown retained even a shred of journalistic integrity left, she should have removed it when she called herself, “a soldier in Eva’s army.” This is a reference to Eva Moskowitz, the founder and CEO of a New York City charter school chain – Success Academy – where children are put under such pressure they wet themselves during testing and kids in first grade are shamed and berated for math mistakes.

As a public school teacher, myself, this makes me sad.

John Merrow, one of the elder statesmen of education journalism, recently proclaimed that we live in the “golden age of education reporting.”

I must respectfully disagree.

Yes, there is more being written about education policy and public schools than ever before.

But most of it is just paid advertisements from the standardization and privatization industry.

Look who’s funding these stories.

TV Networks such as NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo have broadcast various education segments on “Nightly News” and “Today” underwritten by Bill Gates and Eli Broad.

The Education Writers Association – which boasts more than 3,00 members – receives money from Gates and Walton. The L.A. Times receives funds from Broad for its Education Matters Digital initiative.

On-line publications also have been infiltrated. The Education Post took $12 million in start-up funds provided by Broad, Bloomberg and the Waltons. The site focuses on “K-12 academic standards, high-quality charter schools and how best to hold teachers and schools accountable for educating students,” according to the Washington Post.

Even well-respected education blogs including Chalkbeat and Education Week are funded in part by the Waltons (in the latter case, specifically for “coverage of school choice and [so-called] parent-empowerment issues.”) Education Week even tweets out paid advertisements for Teach for America as if they were news stories!

We’ve all seen “Waiting for Superman,” the infamous union bashing, charter loving propaganda film packaged as a documentary. Its popularity was helped with outreach and engagement funds by the Waltons and a host of other privatizers. It’s far from the only effort by market-driven billionaires to infiltrate popular culture with corporate education reform. They tried to sell the parent trigger law with “Won’t Back Down,” but no one was buying. Efforts continue in Marvel Studios television shows.

A plethora of teachers, academics and other grassroots bloggers have taken to the Internet to correct the record. But they are often ignored or drowned out by the white noise of the same corporate education reform narratives being told again-and-again without any firm footing in reality. In fact, after blogger and former teacher Anthony Cody won first prize from the Education Writers Association in 2014 for his criticism of Gates, the organization banned bloggers from subsequent consideration.

We bloggers are almost completely unpaid. We do it because we care about our profession. Meanwhile the so-called “news” sources are funded by corporate special interests, yet it is bloggers that are looked at as if they were somehow reprehensibly compromised and biased.

Education journalism is not going through a golden age. It’s a sham, a farce.

When we allow our news to be funded by private interests, we lose all objectivity. The stories are spun to meet the demands of the big foundations, the billionaires bankrolling them. And the real experts in the field are either not consulted or left to quixotically do whatever they can on their own time.

Education journalism isn’t about what’s best for children. It’s about how best to monetize the system to wring as many taxpayer dollars out of our schools as possible for corporate interests.

It goes something like this: reduce the quality to reduce the cost and swallow the savings as profit. But it’s sold to the public in propaganda that we call journalism.

As famed cartoonist and counter-culture figure Robert Crumb wrote in 2015:

“You don’t have journalists [in America] anymore. What they have is public relations people. Two-hundred and fifty thousand people in public relations. And a dwindling number of actual reporters and journalists.”

Nowhere is this as obvious as with Brown.

Just as Broad was initiating a plan in February to double the number of charter schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, Brown’s site, the Seventy Four, was given control of the LA School Report, an on-line news site focusing on the second largest district in the country. Brown was expected to run interference for the takeover. She was running the propaganda arm of the privatization push.

And that’s really what’s happening with our education journalism.

I’m not saying there aren’t actual journalists out there trying to tell unbiased stories. But they are few and far between. They are beset by corporate interests. And anyone who wants to tell the truth is silenced or marginalized.

As we’ve seen, when you actually try to point out errors like Brown’s ridiculous assertions about eighth grade students, the media treats it as a he-said-she-said.

They say, “Wow! Teachers really hate Brown.” Shrug.

Meanwhile the truth is left murdered on the floor as our schools are pillaged and sacked.

I Was a Radical Republican – For About a Week – And I Didn’t Change a Single Progressive View

March 17, 2016 stevenmsinger Arne Duncan, Bernie Sanders, Charter Schools, Common Core, Congress, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Education, Election, John King, Local Control, memes, NCLB, New York, No Child Left Behind, Obama, Opt Out, Pat Toomey, Pennsylvania, Politics, President, Race to the Top, Republican, School Funding, Schools, Standardized Testing, standards, Teachers, Unions #LetTeachersTeach, #StandUpForPublicSchools, Bernie Sanders, bipartisan, charter schools, common core, Corporate Education Reform, Democrat, Democrats, education, education reform, Election, John King, Politics, public schools, Republican, Republicans, Social Media, standardized testing, teachers, Twitter

I do not like Ronald Reagan.

I own no guns.

Back in high school I won a debate arguing for pro-choice.

Trickle Down sounds more to me like a bladder condition than an economic theory.

So why was it that last week so many right wingers were retweeting me on Twitter?

Did I say “retweeting”? They were taking my words and memes and sending them out to the Twitterverse as their own thoughts with a reference to my account.

I’m a little ashamed to admit it, but I think Michelle Malkin pushed down the new heart emoticon on something I wrote.

She may have retweeted me, too. Heck! I may have retweeted her back!

“What new Hell is this?” I thought. “Why am I getting so much love from people who – if they met me in person – would probably try to give me a wedgie and scream, “NERD”?

It turns out I was caught in a maelstrom of political events. And his name is John King.

President Barack Obama named the former New York Education Commissioner as his pick to replace Arne Duncan as US Secretary of Education.

As a public school teacher, this really pissed me off. It pissed off just about every public educator in the country.

Are you kidding, Obama!? John-Freaking-King!? The guy whose only previous experience was teaching for three years at a “no excuses” charter school!?

This is the guy who oversaw the systematic destruction of schools in one of the most populous states in the country all the while pointing his finger at teachers. He approved an obviously fraudulent charter school run by an obvious conman. He ignored and dismissed parents at various education forums. The people of New York hated him so much, he sparked the largest opt out movement in the nation.

And THIS is the guy you’re nominating as Secretary of Education!?

It’s not like he’s even pretended to change his stripes. After New Yorkers booted him out of their state, he was offered a job at the US Department of Education – a prime example of falling upward. Soon afterward, his wife took a job at a corporate education reform company, Bellwether Education Partners!

Isn’t that a conflict of interest? I mean – through her – Bellwether will have the ear of the highest education official in the land. And the rest of us will just be supplicants sending letters, making phone calls hoping for an audience with the King.

THIS was why I was upset. THIS was why I was writing angry blogs and pounding out my rage on Twitter.

And I wasn’t alone.

The usual gang of educators and far left progressives gave me the usual support.

But we were soon joined by a tsunami of social media activists from the other side of the aisle.

Very soon someone made a popular hashtag, #StopJohnKing, and I started seeing hundreds of retweets, restatements and messages of support.

Two of my tweets were particularly popular: one about the conflict of interest of King’s wife working for Bellwhether, the other a seemingly unrelated message about the need to fund public libraries.

That’s when I started to notice the Twitter accounts of the people joining in. There were folks proclaiming their love for Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. They described themselves as libertarians and refused to speak to “libtards.” And the pictures on their Twitter accounts were often famous conservatives, racist cartoons of the President, pictures of themselves packing heat or just the darn guns, themselves.

“What the heck have I gotten myself into?” I thought.

That’s when I questioned why they were supporting me. For many of them I wondered if it had less to do with how terrible King would be as Education Secretary than with who nominated him in the first place.

Ever since Antonin Scalia died, many Republicans have sworn a blood oath not to approve any of Obama’s nominees – for the Supreme Court or ANY office.

For them this wasn’t about opposing a terrible Presidential pick. It was about blocking everything Obama did.

I had to face it. I had become a radical Republican, and I hadn’t even needed to change one of my positions to do it. The GOP came to me.

I have to admit, my right wing supporters were mostly very nice. I felt like I had a stronger group behind me than during most progressive campaigns.

There was some strain, however. A few times I could tell they were choking back anti-union rhetoric. “Why don’t we fund our libraries? Because unions,” apparently. “Who needs libraries – I home school.” That kind of thing.

And unfortunately, my progressive buddies were starting to notice the right wing support and take offense.

I got trolled by several lefties demanding I support Common Core.

“How can you be against it?” they’d ask. “Rand Paul hates Common Core. Do you agree with Rand Paul?”

I’d respond politely that even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Card-carrying Democrats refused to listen to any criticism of the Obama administration’s education policies. Little did these progressives realize, they were the exact opposite of the GOP activists they hated.

Many Republicans hate Common Core because Obama touched it. Many Democrats love it for the same reason.

The majority of teachers throughout the country hate it because we’ve read it, tried to use it and seen what a load of bullshit it is. We know it was developed with very little input from classroom teachers or child psychologists. We know it has no research behind it to show that it works. We see how it erodes our autonomy in the classroom and increases the amount and difficulty of high stakes tests for our students.

But my progressive friends refused to accept that anything Saint Hope and Change approved could be so terrible.

I’d turn to my newfound Republican posse only to find many of them hated Common Core beyond reason. It wasn’t just bad practice – it was going to turn our kids gay. It was a liberal plot to make children progressive atheists.

Oy vey.

The week just flew by. Eventually the Senate voted to approve King, both Democrats and Republicans – though the opposition was almost entirely in the GOP.

In my home state of Pennsylvania, the Senator I can usually count on to have my back (Bob Casey) stabbed me in the same place. And the Senator who usually only votes for things that are officially endorsed by Lord Satan, himself, (Pat Toomey) was my boy.

What kind of a topsy-turvy world am I living in!?

Elizabeth Warren – the liberal lion – said she wasn’t going to vote for King but ultimately gave in. Oh, Elizabeth. They got to you, too?

There were two points of light though. First, there was one Democrat who actually voted against him: Senator Kirsten Gillibrand from New York – the sight of King’s last catastrophe. Second, my Presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, didn’t vote at all. Fwew! I can irrationally justify that – he was too busy, that’s all. Bernie would never have voted for King. Tee-hee!

So once again we see the two major parties as mirror images of each other. Where Republicans made the right choice for the wrong reason, Democrats made the wrong choice for the right one. Progressives were circling the wagons around the President. They were making a point that they weren’t going to let the evil GOP block his nominees – even if one of those nominees was an absolute pathetic failure.

This is politics in 2016, folks.

Decisions are rarely made because of logic, experience, or sound judgement. It’s all political maneuvering, personal gain or both. Meanwhile, the world goes to Hell.

After the vote, I got a smattering of conservative retweets and then… nothing. As quickly as they had come, they were gone.

My tiny caucus of teachers, academics and other ne’er-do-wells are still there. We shout our truths into the wind hoping someone will hear.

On days like today it seems impossible.

But perhaps there is a silver lining in there somewhere. If people from such opposite sides of the political spectrum can agree on something like how terrible John King is, maybe there’s hope. If we can shake hands over the fatuousness of Common Core, maybe we can find other points of agreement.

Maybe these brief moments of concord are opportunities for understanding. Sure my GOP compatriots supported me for the wrong reasons, but maybe some of them were exposed to the right ones.

I know I’ve learned from them. I consider myself an FDR Democrat with an abiding faith in a strong federal government. But even I can see how both the Bush and Obama administrations overstepped their power with No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.

I don’t buy any of that baloney about Big Government vs. Small Government. But I do think that some things like education policy don’t belong at the federal level. The federal government should ensure public schools are funded properly and maybe regulate outright abuses, but local communities and districts should be deciding how to educate the children in their care.

If those ideas rubbed off on me, what rubbed off on my brief Twitter followers?

Will there come a day when we meet again, join hands and fight for our common good?

Can we overcome the blinders of party and politics to build a better world?

#IHopeSo