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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025

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They will be kept in their classrooms with the doors locked and the windowshades drawn.

At all times? Have you ever been near a child?

I'd agree if it were an active shooter drill but you're saying the random childcare workers are immediately going on DEFCON7 every time somebody pulls up in the driveway?

At bare minimum a functional childcare would have some sort of outdoor play area as is literally state-mandated, generally I'd expect to see stroller parking and the building being noisy and active.

The higher the defcon, the less the concern (or defcon 1 is the highest risk; defcon 5 the least).

And the red tribe/blue tribe split shows itself again.

When I lived among the blues... honestly some childcare institutions were this paranoid, deranged as it seems. Loudoun County Schools called the police on a father who showed up to collect his raped daughter because he was a little too upset that his daughter was raped. I believe they didn't even allow him in the building, locked down classrooms, and sent out an email that a parent had caused a disturbance.

I don't live among the blues anymore. That level of neuroticism and inverted priorities is just too cruel for me to live under. But though you may scoff and think he's exaggerating, depressingly he may be describing how childcare institutions actually behave around him.

They really are completely different from us.

I live in a low population red-tribe town surrounded by farms and our elementary school and preschool are locked and no unauthorized adults are allowed in. If one tried to force their way in it would be treated seriously.

Let me clarify.

The allegation is that, when this amateur reporter comes to the door of a supposedly not at all fake daycare, the children are placed on lockdown such that they cannot be heard or seen at all. As if he were an active shooter. Right out the gate, just as soon as he shows up, because they don't know him.

I'm not saying red tribe daycares/schools let any random person have free reign of the place. If they aren't an obvious threat though, at least into the lobby to have a discussion about why they are here. You'll be able to hear kids around at least. Maybe see one bring a note up on some errand from a teacher.

In a preschool? No, preschoolers are not given independence to go about the halls.

I am surprised that everyone assumes that we would be able to hear kids from outside a preschool/daycare. I cannot hear the kids in my sons' daycare when they are inside the building. We have insulated buildings here on account of the cold winters. When they are all lined up in front of the main doors for drop off I can't hear them. When I come early to pick up a kid for a doctor's appointment I can't hear them.

If there's a part of the video where he actually gets inside for a few minutes, then that would be better evidence. But most of the examples are him standing out in front of a door, trying to open the door and then suggestively saying "This door is locked" as if that isn't the most normal thing in the world.

The one time he actually did get his eyes inside for a brief moment he saw a kid. Just one kid, but we don't know why that is. Is that kid being seen in the office and the other kids are in a classroom? We don't know - the camera doesn't follow him so we have little in the way of evidence.

Another time a woman answered the door and held it open for a while, and we heard nothing. Suspicious right! Except she readily admitted there were no kids there at the time, because all the kids were expected at 2 PM. It's an after-school care facility! Or maybe they were on a field trip, that can happen. The point is, there are many explanations before jumping straight to fraud.

If you go in with different assumptions, this video is simply evidence of anti-white racism. An ethnic conclave refusing their services to a white dad because they only want to look after Somali kids.

Shirley states, "No footprints in the snow outside" as evidence that there are no kids playing there. Well guess what? My kids aren't allowed to play outside at their preschool either for a while due to the cold. On days when it looks like the temps are above 25 degrees F, we get a text that we can send in snow pants. But if it's below 25 with wind chill, they aren't allowed to send the kids outside.

There are just so many things that make me roll my eyes. It's entirely possible that these places are committing fraud! But people jumping on this video as the one true proof just makes us all look foolish.

Exactly. I'm not against the daycare operators barring the strange men from the premises, but young children are noisy and leave a lot of traces that should be immediately apparent from just approaching the childcare. I've got a 2 year old and she's very hard to miss if you're on the same block as her.

When I lived among the blues... honestly some childcare institutions were this paranoid, deranged as it seems. Loudoun County Schools called the police on a father who showed up to collect his raped daughter because he was a little too upset that his daughter was raped. I believe they didn't even allow him in the building, locked down classrooms, and sent out an email that a parent had caused a disturbance.

I'm not saying people can't lockdown a childcare center, my point is more that an active childcare center tends to be quite obvious on account of the accoutrements and noise of children. Unless the presupposition is that they immediately shuffled everybody into the bunker as soon as these guys got out of the car.

I have never seen a school, preschool or day care in which it was not painfully obvious if there were kids around.

Relatedly, I know for a fact that one of the ones my kids went to had a ton of fraud going on. Employees paid partially under the table to maximize government benefits. There was a system where some of the parents got this card from the state where they were supposed to swipe in to prove they dropped the kid off, but most of them just left it with the employees to bill the government for extra days. Owners were a pair of rich Indian women who bought the place as a net-loss vanity project - and still ran it as a scammy money laundering front.