When LBJ signed the Civil & Voting Rights Acts the white Racists were homeless - so Nixon prepared one, Reagan fluffed up the pillows, & Trump stood out front with a bullhorn & a “Whites Only” sign
It's obvious that America's depressingly large populations of racist parents, mostly centered in the South but also scattered across the rural areas in many other states, don't understand what "Critical Race Theory" even is, where it's taught, or why. And it's telling that they don't care. They don't care about intellectual arguments, moral imperatives, factual history, epic hypocrisy, or public shame. All they care about is maintaining white privilege from generation to generation.
And they care about power. CRT is just their latest battle cry of faux-outrage to whip the troops into a frenzy and drive them to the polls.
It works. Last time, 74 million fearful, hateful, small-minded bigots purposely and knowingly voted for the most openly racist asshole on the ballot -- even after witnessing four years of radical, in-your-face racist policies here at home and spanning the globe. These people are Trump's "good people on both sides" masqueraders who are only posing as good parents and patriots. Their attitudes and actions argue the opposite.
At all costs, the children of racist parents must never learn the whole truth of racism in America ...or in their own families, more importantly. The parent's lamest deflection of guilt is to blame their own children (shamelessness knows no bounds): "It might hurt their feelings." (Spit coffee out.)
Yeah right. Do they care about the little whelps' tender feelings when they drill fear and hatred of "others" into their malleable brains in their formative years? Do they care about all the little brown and black kids' feelings who've suffered persecution in all its disgusting forms for the entire history of this country at the hands of arrogant white pissants who think they are God's chosen race?
The real issue is the white feelings of racist parents. That's one of the biggest problems with public education in America, right up there with a lack of funding, which is also a direct result of institutionalized racism (CRT if you will; although, it's not just theory).
Racist parents won't be cheering on the elected members at school board meetings until Brown v. Board of Education is reversed and the members are replaced by the herd, chanting, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!" Sing along, kids -- follow the white bouncing ball.
Although abortion and guns can be effective wedge issues for rich sociopaths to manipulate our poorly educated, the greatest wedge of them all is still racism (if only because it’s such a versatile, (albeit specious) construct to exploit). The behavior of racists is much like that of any addicts-they have acquired the need to get a regular dose of hate to satisfy their fear and anger for whoever they were taught is the “other,” and the oligarchs pay their propagandists to supply that measure of rage and spice it up with a little hubris, lust, greed, envy and tribalism to reinforce the brainwashing. Just like addicts, racists’ decisions cause negative externalities to their family, friends and society, (and they pass along their racist/tribal beliefs to their children-a vicious cycle of reckless child endangerment). And just like addicts, they are not going to change their beliefs until they hit bottom. People who have learned to become racists are poorly educated citizens if only because what they were taught made them racists (and Trump and the other morbidly wealthy flimflammers love them because they are so easily controlled). Since Trump’s cult members still obey him, he will continue to use the threat of his monolithic voting base to make Congressional Republicans do his bidding and make them participate in his big grift.
The way they hit bottom is to lose election after election.
It really is a matter of reaching out to as many people as possible in this next year to vote Democratic. As partisan as as that sounds (it is), what other game in town is there that can beat the autocratic juggernaut? Like it or not, casting a vote is the best weapon the common folk can wield.
The Democratic Party can be fixed, the Trump Republican Party can't; it has to be reinvented almost from scratch. Good luck with that.
Meanwhile, the country and the world don't have the time or energy to waste on sheer idiocy.
I wrote the other day this is a new dimension of politics. As of this month, we have entered The Twilight Zone. First, the asinine racist attorney at the Arbery trial decided he could not abide any more Black preachers sitting in court with Ahmaud's grief-stricken mother while she suffers the loss once more listening to the gory details. Second, during the debate for the "big" Build Back Better bill, a Republican Representative actually used the term "Blue-State Yankees". The only things missing for effect were the Q-anon Shaman and the guy with the Confederate flag.
I probably have the timetable wrong; we hit The Twilight Zone on January 6th! The "outliers" are waaaay out there in another dimension.
The media doesn't have to point out anything. They just keep endlessly playing the footage, and the Republicans, racists, misogynists, and gender biased a-holes speak for themselves. If you want a little media pick-me-up, look up the story on NBC KOBI TV titled "Hundreds of high school students walk-out after ‘I Resolve’ educators reinstated". These young people are beautiful inside and out.
Every day brings a complete and accurate historical analysis here. One could get an education just by following these essays. And the truth of these final statements summing up are compelling. “…we have an enormous amount of political and restorative work to do before we rest.” “Nonetheless, it will take a lot of involvement and work to overcome both our racist history and the forces (both domestic and foreign) that seek to exploit racial divisions in this country.”
We should all be writing letters to editors against the new laws being passed by the “ignorant savages” in the “Red states” to ban the teaching of CRT, The1619 Project, or anything about the documented history of slavery. History and science should never be subject to the whims of any partisan or ideological group. Let’s make a special request of Thom for a rant on that next. Let’s generate a list of the things that we want to be taught representing the truth and the liberal/progressive viewpoint, or of the obnoxious reactionary lies to be banned!
But you might say, that’s not how we operate. We oppose on principal the interference of outside parties in the judgments of professional academics or school administrators regarding what can and cannot be taught in their schools. History should have its bases in the documented and verified records and established facts irrespective of, or at least affected as little as possible by, opinion and personal bias.
These despicable laws do not apply to private schools however, do they? So then, how are they applied to public schools to allow these kinds of bullying tactics? If anyone dared to try to dictate to the administrators of a private or religious school what they could or must teach there, that would be a cause for outright war and lawsuits would be immediately filed and won.
There two means by which these faux politicians can get away with this outrage. One is that state laws are applicable because public schools are funded with public funds. The other much more compelling factor is that students are a captive audience, required by law to attend. Therefore, the state has been presented with an affirmative duty to interject itself in the schools it mandates and to oversee curricula, along with every other aspect of public schooling. The reason public schools are public is because laws were put in place to compel attendance, and once there is such a mandate, the state has bought the pig, the farm, and the whole pork industry.
I believe that the Supreme Court has greatly compromised the first weak argument about funding by allowing certain private religious schools to receive public funds or to benefit from public facilities. But in any case, the provision of funds to a school should not be used as a cudgel for dictating to schools what they can and cannot teach or as an excuse for favoring one political or policy orientation on curricula.
At least one person foresaw what kind of Pandora’s box would be opened by the passage of school attendance laws in 1862. Young Leo Tolstoy, who was the schoolmaster of a small school in Russia predicted with stunning accuracy the fiasco that was inevitable. The laws prohibiting the correct teaching of history in 2021 is just one more in a never-ending series.
The tack we must take is one which demands getting the state out of the business of propagandizing what and how children will learn and second-guessing historians, educators, and parents. If civil rights under the Constitution have any meaning at all, they should confirm that parents and not the government or its representatives determine the ideas, beliefs, and presentations of educational materials to their progeny.
Schools must answer to parents first. Children should be free to reject, or their parents on their behalf should be free to reject curricular materials which are offensive or objectionable, regardless of public consensus. You know; land of the free, home of the brave, and all that. In the spirit of "anything goes Friday", why not talk about this?
Thanks, Tom, for all the well written and researched information. In this episode, you mentioned that the Republicans want to return to the good old white days of the past, and to the narrow gender roles of that era. It strikes me that the current transgender movement I’d imposing those same gender role definitions, but no one is commenting on that. Also, by promoting the transitioning of nonconforming people to trans-versions of those gender identities, there is a written record of these people, should true fascists ever get complete control. This is very scary to me and I would think it would be for noon anyone who is not an alt-right Republican. Could you touch on the implications of the radical transgender movement sometime? Especially as it relates to right wing extremism in our time? I know the transgender movement is usually attributed to the radical left, but it strikes me odd that radical left people would promote radical right gender roles and identities.
It's obvious that America's depressingly large populations of racist parents, mostly centered in the South but also scattered across the rural areas in many other states, don't understand what "Critical Race Theory" even is, where it's taught, or why. And it's telling that they don't care. They don't care about intellectual arguments, moral imperatives, factual history, epic hypocrisy, or public shame. All they care about is maintaining white privilege from generation to generation.
And they care about power. CRT is just their latest battle cry of faux-outrage to whip the troops into a frenzy and drive them to the polls.
It works. Last time, 74 million fearful, hateful, small-minded bigots purposely and knowingly voted for the most openly racist asshole on the ballot -- even after witnessing four years of radical, in-your-face racist policies here at home and spanning the globe. These people are Trump's "good people on both sides" masqueraders who are only posing as good parents and patriots. Their attitudes and actions argue the opposite.
At all costs, the children of racist parents must never learn the whole truth of racism in America ...or in their own families, more importantly. The parent's lamest deflection of guilt is to blame their own children (shamelessness knows no bounds): "It might hurt their feelings." (Spit coffee out.)
Yeah right. Do they care about the little whelps' tender feelings when they drill fear and hatred of "others" into their malleable brains in their formative years? Do they care about all the little brown and black kids' feelings who've suffered persecution in all its disgusting forms for the entire history of this country at the hands of arrogant white pissants who think they are God's chosen race?
The real issue is the white feelings of racist parents. That's one of the biggest problems with public education in America, right up there with a lack of funding, which is also a direct result of institutionalized racism (CRT if you will; although, it's not just theory).
Racist parents won't be cheering on the elected members at school board meetings until Brown v. Board of Education is reversed and the members are replaced by the herd, chanting, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!" Sing along, kids -- follow the white bouncing ball.
Although abortion and guns can be effective wedge issues for rich sociopaths to manipulate our poorly educated, the greatest wedge of them all is still racism (if only because it’s such a versatile, (albeit specious) construct to exploit). The behavior of racists is much like that of any addicts-they have acquired the need to get a regular dose of hate to satisfy their fear and anger for whoever they were taught is the “other,” and the oligarchs pay their propagandists to supply that measure of rage and spice it up with a little hubris, lust, greed, envy and tribalism to reinforce the brainwashing. Just like addicts, racists’ decisions cause negative externalities to their family, friends and society, (and they pass along their racist/tribal beliefs to their children-a vicious cycle of reckless child endangerment). And just like addicts, they are not going to change their beliefs until they hit bottom. People who have learned to become racists are poorly educated citizens if only because what they were taught made them racists (and Trump and the other morbidly wealthy flimflammers love them because they are so easily controlled). Since Trump’s cult members still obey him, he will continue to use the threat of his monolithic voting base to make Congressional Republicans do his bidding and make them participate in his big grift.
The way they hit bottom is to lose election after election.
It really is a matter of reaching out to as many people as possible in this next year to vote Democratic. As partisan as as that sounds (it is), what other game in town is there that can beat the autocratic juggernaut? Like it or not, casting a vote is the best weapon the common folk can wield.
The Democratic Party can be fixed, the Trump Republican Party can't; it has to be reinvented almost from scratch. Good luck with that.
Meanwhile, the country and the world don't have the time or energy to waste on sheer idiocy.
I wrote the other day this is a new dimension of politics. As of this month, we have entered The Twilight Zone. First, the asinine racist attorney at the Arbery trial decided he could not abide any more Black preachers sitting in court with Ahmaud's grief-stricken mother while she suffers the loss once more listening to the gory details. Second, during the debate for the "big" Build Back Better bill, a Republican Representative actually used the term "Blue-State Yankees". The only things missing for effect were the Q-anon Shaman and the guy with the Confederate flag.
I probably have the timetable wrong; we hit The Twilight Zone on January 6th! The "outliers" are waaaay out there in another dimension.
The media doesn't have to point out anything. They just keep endlessly playing the footage, and the Republicans, racists, misogynists, and gender biased a-holes speak for themselves. If you want a little media pick-me-up, look up the story on NBC KOBI TV titled "Hundreds of high school students walk-out after ‘I Resolve’ educators reinstated". These young people are beautiful inside and out.
Every day brings a complete and accurate historical analysis here. One could get an education just by following these essays. And the truth of these final statements summing up are compelling. “…we have an enormous amount of political and restorative work to do before we rest.” “Nonetheless, it will take a lot of involvement and work to overcome both our racist history and the forces (both domestic and foreign) that seek to exploit racial divisions in this country.”
We should all be writing letters to editors against the new laws being passed by the “ignorant savages” in the “Red states” to ban the teaching of CRT, The1619 Project, or anything about the documented history of slavery. History and science should never be subject to the whims of any partisan or ideological group. Let’s make a special request of Thom for a rant on that next. Let’s generate a list of the things that we want to be taught representing the truth and the liberal/progressive viewpoint, or of the obnoxious reactionary lies to be banned!
But you might say, that’s not how we operate. We oppose on principal the interference of outside parties in the judgments of professional academics or school administrators regarding what can and cannot be taught in their schools. History should have its bases in the documented and verified records and established facts irrespective of, or at least affected as little as possible by, opinion and personal bias.
These despicable laws do not apply to private schools however, do they? So then, how are they applied to public schools to allow these kinds of bullying tactics? If anyone dared to try to dictate to the administrators of a private or religious school what they could or must teach there, that would be a cause for outright war and lawsuits would be immediately filed and won.
There two means by which these faux politicians can get away with this outrage. One is that state laws are applicable because public schools are funded with public funds. The other much more compelling factor is that students are a captive audience, required by law to attend. Therefore, the state has been presented with an affirmative duty to interject itself in the schools it mandates and to oversee curricula, along with every other aspect of public schooling. The reason public schools are public is because laws were put in place to compel attendance, and once there is such a mandate, the state has bought the pig, the farm, and the whole pork industry.
I believe that the Supreme Court has greatly compromised the first weak argument about funding by allowing certain private religious schools to receive public funds or to benefit from public facilities. But in any case, the provision of funds to a school should not be used as a cudgel for dictating to schools what they can and cannot teach or as an excuse for favoring one political or policy orientation on curricula.
At least one person foresaw what kind of Pandora’s box would be opened by the passage of school attendance laws in 1862. Young Leo Tolstoy, who was the schoolmaster of a small school in Russia predicted with stunning accuracy the fiasco that was inevitable. The laws prohibiting the correct teaching of history in 2021 is just one more in a never-ending series.
The tack we must take is one which demands getting the state out of the business of propagandizing what and how children will learn and second-guessing historians, educators, and parents. If civil rights under the Constitution have any meaning at all, they should confirm that parents and not the government or its representatives determine the ideas, beliefs, and presentations of educational materials to their progeny.
Schools must answer to parents first. Children should be free to reject, or their parents on their behalf should be free to reject curricular materials which are offensive or objectionable, regardless of public consensus. You know; land of the free, home of the brave, and all that. In the spirit of "anything goes Friday", why not talk about this?
Thanks, Tom, for all the well written and researched information. In this episode, you mentioned that the Republicans want to return to the good old white days of the past, and to the narrow gender roles of that era. It strikes me that the current transgender movement I’d imposing those same gender role definitions, but no one is commenting on that. Also, by promoting the transitioning of nonconforming people to trans-versions of those gender identities, there is a written record of these people, should true fascists ever get complete control. This is very scary to me and I would think it would be for noon anyone who is not an alt-right Republican. Could you touch on the implications of the radical transgender movement sometime? Especially as it relates to right wing extremism in our time? I know the transgender movement is usually attributed to the radical left, but it strikes me odd that radical left people would promote radical right gender roles and identities.
Is the root of the problem not malice, but stupidity? Bonhoeffer‘s Theory of Stupidity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww47bR86wSc