Last week, a 12-year-old’s life changed forever — and not for the better.
The student (I’m not going to use his name) was kicked out of his Colorado Springs middle school for wearing a Gadsden flag — of “Don’t Tread On Me” fame — patch on his backpack. The flag, according to the school, violated district policy “due to its origins with slavery and the slave trade.”
Our intrepid, Tuttle Twins-reading hero, as well as his mother, didn’t take too kindly to being reprimanded for proudly displaying a symbol of American rebellion and resistance. The Gadsden flag may have been appropriated by some unsavory alt-right groups, but the school’s assertion that it originates from the slave trade is patently false. Mother and son stood their ground, and the story was brought to the masses by Connor Boyack, the president of the Libertas Institute, and the author of the aforementioned Tuttle Twins series.
The story, understandably, immediately took off. Numerous journalists, conservative activists, the Libertarian Party, legal institutes, progressive congressmen, and Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, came to the family’s (and the Gadsden flag’s) defense. The school, realizing that they had massively overstepped, allowed the kid — and the flag patch — back into the classroom.
Victory was achieved, and this is where everything should have ended. However, the situation has started to get out of control. The Babylon Bee wrote a piece satirizing the school’s response. Conservative media provocateurs like Eric Bolling, Charlie Kirk, and Benny Johnson have invited the kid on their programs for interviews. In a conversation with the Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro, the student said he was now “Mr. Popular” at school, and that he hoped to one day run for governor of Colorado. He’s given some of these interviews wearing a tricorne hat.
If, in a few years, the kid decides that politics isn’t for him, and that he wants to go work for a bank, would that even be a possibility? He could go to college and get a finance degree, sure, but would a bank that isn’t “based” or “red-pilled” be willing to hire him? I’m not so certain. The internet lives forever, after all.
I remember being 12. Like the youngster in question, I was very politically aware for my age. I knew that if I had the ability to vote, I would have voted for Mitt Romney, and I could explain why (my reasons weren’t very good, but for a 12-year-old, they were legit reasons). I knew that I one day wanted to be president of the United States, but I would have settled for governor of Texas. I was also a bit of a rebel, and had the stars aligned a certain way, I could have very well encountered the same challenges as our protagonist. Perhaps even over the same symbol.
But I had also only read Diary of the Wimpy Kid for the first time two years prior. I was only one year removed from my first social media account (Facebook, to chat with friends and family). In other words, had I become an online celebrity in a matter of hours, it would have drastically altered my development, and not for the better.
There’s already evidence to indicate that the student’s “Mr. Popular” designation may be hiding something more disconcerting. Teachers, rightly or wrongly, are not happy with the student. A national news story makes teaching more difficult on any day, but a politically charged news story makes things even worse. Moreover, in a short video posted to Twitter, the kid makes reference to his new friends putting Gadsden flags on their lockers — “well, at least, my new-made friends, ’cause I’m big on Twitter and now they like me all of a sudden.”
That statement alone should raise red flags for anyone who is genuinely interested in the student’s welfare — especially in light of a tweet that claimed he played chess by himself at lunch. His entire life, at least in the near future, is going to revolve around his online popularity. Being 12, he is likely going to want to maintain that popularity, since that makes him “cool,” so he is going to lean into what made him famous even more. That is a recipe for turning him into the next Turning Point superstar.
I’m petrified that this is inevitable for the poor kid. Post after post permanently affixes his name and likeness online, and the more interviews he gives, the less likely it is that he can live a normal life after this. I don’t think he’s past the point of no return yet, but I do think he is at the stage where he and, more importantly, his family, have to consider the consequences of what is quickly becoming a kerfuffle. Young superstars often don’t turn into very good people. Others who remain true to themselves may nevertheless fall to Turning Point temptations — drugs, alcohol, sex, and virulent racism among them.
Consider what has happened to older Zoomers in similar circumstances. Daniel Schmidt, a University of Chicago student who gained fame for exposing a “The Problem With Whiteness” course at the university, now grifts for Kanye West and rambles about “white genocide” on X. Nate Hochman went from being a rising star on the right to someone fumbling to defend themselves from neo-Nazi accusations. Many more have no life or personality outside of their edgy, online personas. One wrong word could effectively end their lives and careers — and none of this even gets into what child actors go through.
It’d be one thing if this choice was purely on the family. Choosing fame would be, I think, the wrong decision, but at least it would purely be their choice. The problem, however, is that all the adult right-wing influencers are nudging this poor kid towards a life no 12-year-old is ready for. They’re parading him around the internet like an idol, and giving him every incentive in the world to soak it in. Benny Johnson made the student a Gadsden flag cake (and had him pose with it for Twitter, of course). Connor Boyak has been tweeting non-stop about him for days, encouraging him to monetize his fame.
This type of instantaneous glory isn’t healthy for a 12-year-old — heck, it isn’t healthy for adults either. I know some of the people who have been pushing the story, and while I don’t think any of them are intentionally trying to break this child, who can really say in this culture war click-driven Year of Our Lord 2023?
I would love to be proven wrong, but I don’t think this story will have a happy ending. Conservative media world forgetting that this whole thing happened would be the best possible outcome, but I doubt that’s going to be the case. I keep seeing tweets, posts, and articles about this poor kid, with no end in sight. As things stand, he’s a hero. If the school comes down on him, he’ll become a martyr. This is grooming of a different sort.
Shouldn’t all the parents in the conservative movement know better? Where are this kid’s parents in all of this hubbub? Whatever those answers are, we should collectively stop feeding the monster that’s about to break its chains. A child’s future is at stake.
“Drugs, alcohol, sex, and virulent racism” actually sounds like what both sides are into these days, although one of them involves more crossdressing.Report
this made me laughReport
Are you worried about the Greta Thunbergs and David Hoggs of the world as well? Shouldn’t the parents in progressive movements know better?Report
I may have misread this, but I inferred that the author expects better parenting from conservatives because they’re wiser.Report
Slight misread. It’s more that with all the talk about parent’s rights, which I broadly support, I would (naively) expect more people to put their money where their mouth is.Report
Hardly. The conservative parents here in College Station aren’t playing with a full bag of marbles. In fact, a lot of them are playing with an empty bag.Report
Honestly? Yes. If you’re throwing your minor child into the maelstrom of culture war and politics you are making the wrong decision, whatever the cause.Report
Yes, I am. I said much the same about Greta Thunberg. Hogg was two months away from being 18 when he became famous, so it’s a little different. Still destructive, but he was making an informed choice as a near-adult.Report
Also, he was faced with a situation where he could have ended up dead, and he is trying to prevent other kids from facing the same situation. The kid with the patch wasn’t facing anything even close to the same. If the school hadn’t made an issue of it, nothing would have happened. There is a big difference between a 12 year old wearing a patch and an 18 year old surviving a school shooting. As for Greta, she’s way more mature than the vast majority of the people criticizing her.Report
Fair points!
Greta has turned into a mature activist (though I do not agree with her at all), but I did not like the way adults were using her when she first started (age 15/16).Report
I’m remembering a great comment from a few months back.
“Quit making wild pitches and they’ll quit stealing bases.”
The teachers were dumb, the administration was dumb, and the kid pushed a point and got what appears to be a pyrrhic victory. Well, for himself. He got minor (non-phrrhic?) victories across the nation and, I’m sure, started a trend for Middle School backpacks everywhere.
This part: “Teachers, rightly or wrongly, are not happy with the student.”
This strikes me as where the problem is likely to fester. I mean, assuming they can’t be trusted to put any prejudices aside. They probably can, though. Professionals would.Report
It’s funny how parents are supposed to believe that teachers with clear political agendas posting TikToks about how they love indoctrinating their students are absolute professionals who would never ever let their feelz affect their in-class behavior and yet somehow the author of this piece is wringing his hands about whether the teachers can set aside their prejudices because a kid stuck a sticker on their backpack.
Which is it? Are teachers impartial, impeachable professionals who would never let their personal opinions affect their ability to teach, or are they lunatics who cannot control themselves when faced with a tiny piece of cloth??Report
The kid did something much more unforgivable than “wear a patch after being told not to”.
He made the teachers and the administration look bad.
Worse than a crime. It’s a mistake.Report
I don’t think they needed any help from him.Report
You have a point. In my schooling through grad school, the teachers and professors who were most emphatic about indoctrinating us were right wing to far right wing. One of the worst was one who spent the whole semester lecturing about how going off the gold standard was going to destroy the country and if that didn’t happen, the protesters against the Viet Nam war would destroy us. This was a course in science.
The others were less obvious, but it was still there.Report
There was a great deal of Discourse back in the Covington Catholic thing about how that one kid was Very Clearly Smiling Smugly Because He Knew He Was Making The Grownups Mad.
And, y’know. Looking at the pictures of this kid? That is a kid who is Smiling Smugly Because He Knows He Is Making The Grownups Mad.Report
HA! True.
The school folded quickly, though. The news stories wandered toward “telling both sides”. Unlike the Sandmann story, though, the pictures helped the kid a lot more than the grownups.Report
It was a charter school.
Seems to me like the parents could simply have chosen to enroll their kid in a different school if they didn’t approve of the current one.Report
“If you don’t like it, move” is but one option of many.
We see one of the others has played out predictably here.Report
Greta Thunberg just absolutely LOVED this article! So brave! So insightful.Report
In this case, I side with the kid.
There isnt anything inflammatory about the Gadsden flag that warrants such a response. For the record, I’d say the same if it was a rainbow flag.Report
Completely agreed. It’s the lionization I have a problem with.Report
Agree 100%.Report
Cosign.Report
The teacher in this story seems particularly dumb. Truth be told, I have always had a soft spot for the Gadsden Flag and dislike that it has become associated with right-wingers. It should be noted that Colorado’s Democratic Governor defended the flag and the kibosh was put on this very quickly: https://www.cpr.org/2023/08/29/gadsden-flag-vanguard-school-colorado-springspolis/Report
If you look at the pictures, you see that the kid’s backpack is covered with right-wing-Online references, so what’s happening here is that the teacher was trying to squelch a shit-starter (an important part of classroom management, and one which I fully support) but felt like school policy required that there be an objective reason to do it, and they weren’t smart enough to game out the rubber after playing the Racism card.Report
Completely agreed. It’s the lionization I have a problem with.Report
Sigh.
Everything is stupid, all the time.Report
I agree with your observations that being at the center of this is not good for kids in general but it is going to be more common in our increasingly negative partisan driven future. Kids make great political theatre unfortunately. The teacher here was being incredibly dumb with her reasoning.
Interestingly, I did not hear about this particular tempest in a teapot until your post.Report
I can see how at least some liberals are going to be turned off by the Gadsden Flag since it is being adopted rapidly by the Right as a symbol of limited government or whatever. Since college educated liberals tend to be very skeptical about the meaning of symbols and ceremony, they are also often too quick to concede them.Report
Fifteen years ago, there was a large yard I used to drive past that had five flags flying: two current American, one Confederate, one Gadsden, and one Israeli.Report
I’m wondering if association the Gadsden Flag is indirectly something that comes from the 1619 project. There is a growing but erroneous pop culture idea that the American Revolution was all about preserving slavery in certain quarters of the online left. Therefore, anything related to the American Revolution is a de facto symbol of slavery and white supremacy because reasons. It is basically Bearded Spock American Exceptionalism.Report
As with so many things, The Onion saw this one coming…
https://www.theonion.com/patriotic-teen-fails-spanish-1819594986
https://www.theonion.com/join-the-campaign-against-laura-miller-spanish-teacher-1819572464Report
OK, but in real life it was the school that was ignorant and preventing learning.Report
This finally motivated me to look up something that I’ve often wondered about.
Turns out the flag Gadsden was the grandfather of the purchase Gadsden.Report
A report about the situation from a news source not invested in inflaming culture war:
https://www.koaa.com/news/covering-colorado/colorado-springs-mom-says-son-kicked-out-of-class-over-gadsden-flag-patch
The mistake made by the school is easier to understand in the context presented here, though it was still a mistake.Report