the right has always had nothing but scary boogie men, and monsters under the bed to whip the lumpenproletariat into right-think. seems like that 'soon enough' has already happened. witness the idaho guy asking when 'we' can start shooting.
It’s revolting and infuriating, but I think most of us realized after Trump was elected – and was very nearly re-elected: Biden’s 7 million vote advantage gave the illusion of a landslide, but in the battleground states it really came down to only thousands of votes – that the resurgence of white rage wasn’t going to subside quietly.
With the GOP’s (narrow) win in Virginia it is absolutely correct that conservatives are encouraged and will continue to flog this particular horse. When you have no governing plan other than to line the pockets of the wealthy, and all your policies suck ass and are unpopular, fanning the flames of racism has unfortunately always proven an effective go-to electoral strategy.
Yeah, the Critical Race Theory is Being Taught In Schools grift was always ridiculous and was just a kneejerk reaction to the 1619 Project. But now it has morphed into “CRT is any statement, attitude, or behavior that makes any white person uneasy.” Try clearing THAT bar.
Blacks and race traitors are the new/old enemy. Just like commies, mooslims and fags, it’s always the “other.” Pure fascism. Also there isn’t an other 50% - they’re all racists. It’s critical RACE theory, not critical physics theory.
Lemme just spitball something here... if you read Beloved for the first time are NOT TRAUMATIZED (in some way) there is something absolutely wrong with your ability to empathize with others.
To create (or maintain) a nation & a hemisphere entirely built on pillage, piracy, rape, torture, & genocide, you need functionaries incapable of empathy, of mercy, of pity. I've wondered if classic models of the British educational system were designed to stamp out human connection & warmth so the Empire would be tidier to maintain. US systems have had a similar part to play, & it seems we're just at a crisis point at the moment: continue traditonal dehumanizations or think beyond them to actual franchisement & equity. This was the instigation that's made RWers gnash their teeves about "Leftist teachers" all those years ago, & here we are, still jumping when they gnash.
We might get caught up in a media cycle which thrives on disaster blaming "CRT" for McAuliffe's loss, but y'know maybe even he had been able to campaign on things he had actually accomplished, like incumbents have the advantage of doing usually, VA might have still a Dem Gov.
[Jury's still out on NJ, my state, where there could be a recount, & Murphy the blue incumbent as not yet been able to deliver on recreational MJ, allowed by referendum in 2020, and had only unsexy victories otherwise.]
Update: predictions of narrow win for Murphy but this SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN CLOSE. First task, change this g_dDamned off-year governor election rule. Fuck that shit.
The fact is was so close strongly suggests that CRT was at best a contributing factor in VA and not the driver the media narrative makes it. It looks to me like the same old boring thing that happens every (off) year: Dems don’t show up. In VA the republican got just 300k fewer votes than Orange Julius did last year while McAullife lost 800k relative to Biden. Same in Jersey: 700k fewer Republicans showed up this, but 1.4 million fewer Dem votes were cast. There are ways to address this, like (as you mentioned) consolidating elections and making Election Day a holiday, but that’s boring nuts and bolt shit the media can’t be bothered with.
In Wisconsin, Goobernatorial elections used to be in the same year as Presidential elections, but back in the early 70's they changed it to an off-year election. At the time, nobody thought this would give any particular advantage to one side or the other, it was just seen as a "reform" that would allow the voters to give greater attention to which Goober to vote for.
But that was years before Republicans embarked on their "the fewer votes the better for us" program.
The problem specific to this year is the Democrats have been screwing up again in congress and the media have been hyping this. It is nearly the same thing that happened between 2008 and 2010. The Democratic "moderates" (who are really conservatives) controlled what happened and they will never get punished for it.
As we say insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
Well, I don't want to let McAuliffe off the hook for not being a very good candidate, plus you had some Virginia-specific issues like the fact that Governors are term-limited to one term, and there were probably people who saw McAuliffe running again as somehow not legit (don't know how many, but it didn't need to be a lot).
As for D.C., seems to me it's been at least 4 years since we've had a governing party that actually tried to do some governing, maybe we've all forgotten what that looks like?
Periodic reminder that Virginia closed many of its public schools down and created seg academies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_resistance) rather than abide by Brown vs. Board of Education, and those children are now older voters. CRT, whether or not it's actually taught in schools, is a direct strike at their own history.
At this point I really do blame Manchin and Sinema. I think they're evil nihilists who discovered they could hijack the process and are using it to enrich themselves; there's no other explanation that begins to make sense. But I will also say it would never have come to this if the Democrats had done the right thing right after the Cornhusker Kickback and purged the party of blue dogs, who have been totally fucking useless since the 70s and are now an absolute disastrous liability.
"...campaign on things he had actually accomplished, like incumbents have the advantage of doing usually..."
Judging by the post-loss punditry, seems it was the job of the U.S. House and Senate to provide McAuliffe with something to run on, as if the poor man has nothing else he could possibly take credit for.
"if you read Beloved for the first time are NOT TRAUMATIZED (in some way) there is something absolutely wrong with your ability to empathize with others."
That's exactly why I haven't read it. Also why I've decided I really don't need to see any more war movies.
Well, yesterday I came out in support of the Progressive side of the party and today I'm all in for charter schools. I'm surprised at myself.
I've always been a good socialist at heart but I'll be honest- I never much cared for the Dem Progressives. Seems like they talked down to me in the same way Conservatives did. Yesterday made it pretty plain though- Same Old White Guy from the Clinton Years ain't gonna cut it. We need young people and minorities to get through this.
Can I wear my Taylor Swift "Squad T-Shirt or do I have to buy a new one for AOC?
If righties want to fuck up schools let's just open our own. They got the Charter School scam already set up. Evidently you can open a school to teach any kind of dodgy shit you want and get fat government checks for it.
If they're gonna fuck up public schools use the same system to open up places where kids can actually learn stuff. Won't take long before the white folks are working at Jiffy Lube and the kids that someone cared to teach are in charge of the accounting department and IT.
I'd argue there's nothing wrong with charter schools except their intended use as a destroyer of public education for reasons you can guess. But it's an ill wind, as they say, and I hope some poor kids get advantages from it; as a poor kid who had such advantages, how can I not? Glad you liked the joke.
You know, one would like to believe the unhinged, deranged cohort — the part of the GOP that’s the target of their leaders’ bullshit — would snap out of it and revert to something of a sane norm and one would clearly be wrong.
Minor quibble: McCarthyism (at least implicitly supported by Truman) can’t be the OG attack on the commie symps — the OG attacks on the reds were ca. 1919. And actually predated the Russian Revolution in the late 1800s.
And I dunno; I’m enamored of the commies calling us decadent. If we weren’t back then, we clearly are now. And Xu’s crackdown on zillionaires, well, I’m jealous. I guess I’m becoming a commie symp in my old age. Gonna have to start tracking down red Depends soon…
Conservatives like to say that Facebook being liberal (I know, I know, but that's their story), the social credit scheme in Red China is likely to be replicated by left wing social media corporations. That's always been ridiculous, but the anti-CRT movement shows that the American social credit scheme will actually hinge on identifying race traitors.
What that left wing social media corporations? That said, I’m sooo anxious to join Truth Social.
And to be clear, I was referring to Xu putting zillionaires on relatively short leashes Ma, for one), making companies behave Didi for one) and making zillionaires pay for their greed-fueled bad acts (the pig that mismanaged Evergrande (?)). None of which would fly here, in the greatest oligarchy the world has ever known.
Not an endorsement of the commie system, just things I appreciate about it. Well, envy.
Didn't China execute someone over corruption a few years back? Can you imagine the volume of pea soup spitting out of spinning heads that would entail, if such a thing was considered here?
Lol as the youngs. I’d settle for equitable taxation instead of where the obscenely wealth live highly on debt which is tax-free or deductible.
My point is that this is an area in which the godless Chinese commies put to shame which, of course, we’re incapable of feeling because we’re exceptional.
Agreed. The over the top "thou protest too much" of the wealthy class speaks volumes, though. I'm convinced wealth causes insanity because 1. you are surrounded by a$$ kissers and it goes to your head and 2. you lose sight of what kind of money it *really* takes to survive.
Add to that insanity: the drive to accumulate an obscene amount of wealth and the greed that rots empathy and generosity. Every one of those pigs should be grateful they’re living here and, being grateful, pay their equitable share of taxes.
You couldn't pay me to read that, but I'm going to make a wild guess that someone has discovered there are certain - ahem - disparities in the delivery of health care, and someone else decided we might try to do something to address that, cue the racist panic attack from Commentary.
Well, now that Virginia's AP Literature teachers have been scared off of ever assigning Toni Morrison, I'm sure the lives of the people of Virginia will improve immeasurably.
That's what gets me about people who actually base a vote on this shit, just like the folks who voted for Trump because that wanted store clerks to stop saying "Happy Holidays", they've got no idea what government actually does, so they don't even know what to ask for.
Democratic voters, God love 'em, know how to act like an actual interest group, demanding practical things that could materially improve their lives, but I suppose that comes from believing government can actually do stuff.
True, but I also think he's been trained to think that asking the government for stuff is just fundamentally wrong (and something "those people" do) so he never connects any of the problems that he or his kids are having to anything the government can do. Maybe he's got a daughter who's being bankrupted by child care costs or health care costs (or maybe his kids are being bankrupted by elder-care costs) but he's never going to think of that as something the government could do something about.
So what's left to base his vote on? Racist bullshit like this, of course.
"Now that there’s some heat over that, school officials are claiming Whitfield was ousted for being bad at his job"
I often think we let this sort of change in narrative slide far too easily.
Wouldn't changing their story like this mean they were either lying initially or they're lying now? Both can't be true. And it's a bit too self-serving to write off as an honest mistake if you ask me.
And Iowa is out here circling the drain. 3 Qanon freaks were elected to the school board of an ex-urb just north of Des Moines. I know a high school Social Studies teacher there, he has been vocal about his progressive views of teaching and he's developed software to support that. He spoke at school board meetings as a union rep, as a teacher and as a parent and has written op-eds. He's young and eloquent and passionate, and now he's a target. He woke up yesterday to several abusive and threatening messages on his personal Facebook page. I was actually reading about them in a Twitter thread at the moment he deleted it. The FBI has been contacted. He's worried about his wife and two young children and they are seriously thinking about leaving the state. In the neighboring ex-urb anti-maskers won the night. I think Democracy is teetering on a knife edge and some days I don't have a lot of hope.
"they are seriously thinking about leaving the state"
Your friend sounds like a great teacher, and any one of the 49 other states would be lucky to have him. As for Iowa, they can go fuck themselves with a used corn cob.
IIRC — always questionable — Youngkin played it both ways: anti-“CRT”, pro-teaching racial stuff. Not saying he was in anyway sincere but it made it easier for certain voters to vote for him.
So the people who were mad because the Covid school shutdown forced them to participate in the education of their kids are mad because now they have to pay attention to what the kids are reading?
Typically intelligent and eloquent to boot. Depressingly so considering the content.
The Hawn case is particularly disgusting. What initially triggered his dismissal was a parent complained that the Ta-Nehisi Coates essay he assigned conveyed a "somewhat angry, and hateful opinion towards President Trump," and contained words that should not be "introduced to our children by a high school teacher." That would be "pussy," and you can guess who was being quoted.
We live in dark times overrun with benighted people. When Trump lifted that rock, the worst of his fellow sewer creatures were released.
If you haven't read the Coates essay it's here, and it's excellent:
ETA: It gets worse. The Assistant Director of Schools who sent the initial letter of reprimand to Hawn was formerly a county finance official for decades and has no background in education. Her main qualification, this being Scopes-country Tennessee after all, is that she's a right-wing religious nutjob. Here's what she said when she went to work with the Department of Education: "The Lord opened a door, and I had promised Him that if He opened it, I would walk through. Well, He opened it, and I'm walking through."
Sorry to keep flogging this one story but I forgot to include a great interview with the teacher ICYMI (scroll down a page). Sounds like the kind of teacher any school should be glad to have. Here:
I saw a self-described radical feminist critique of plane geometry as emblematic of (or maybe it was 'recapitulating') the patriarchal mind of Ancient Greece, and the step-by-step logic of Euclid hopelessly and exclusively masculine (many misogynsts would agree). This is not a point-of-view anyone's hyping to win elections, though, so it's nowhere near as dangerous a pathogen….
Next from the Republicans: "Jewish Physics, those darn space-lasers, and You!".
the right has always had nothing but scary boogie men, and monsters under the bed to whip the lumpenproletariat into right-think. seems like that 'soon enough' has already happened. witness the idaho guy asking when 'we' can start shooting.
It’s revolting and infuriating, but I think most of us realized after Trump was elected – and was very nearly re-elected: Biden’s 7 million vote advantage gave the illusion of a landslide, but in the battleground states it really came down to only thousands of votes – that the resurgence of white rage wasn’t going to subside quietly.
With the GOP’s (narrow) win in Virginia it is absolutely correct that conservatives are encouraged and will continue to flog this particular horse. When you have no governing plan other than to line the pockets of the wealthy, and all your policies suck ass and are unpopular, fanning the flames of racism has unfortunately always proven an effective go-to electoral strategy.
Yeah, it's racial. (Like I've said before "CRT" is your average Black barbershop/beauty salon on a Saturday.)
When all you have is racial privilege, every problem looks like a slave revolt.
That is such an amazing turn of a well-worn phrase!
Yeah, the Critical Race Theory is Being Taught In Schools grift was always ridiculous and was just a kneejerk reaction to the 1619 Project. But now it has morphed into “CRT is any statement, attitude, or behavior that makes any white person uneasy.” Try clearing THAT bar.
Been working since the 80s at least. The DNC at present is not interested in pushing back against with much vigor.
Blacks and race traitors are the new/old enemy. Just like commies, mooslims and fags, it’s always the “other.” Pure fascism. Also there isn’t an other 50% - they’re all racists. It’s critical RACE theory, not critical physics theory.
*You're* a critical race theory!!!
So true.
I heard this decade described as "the Terrible Twenties" and I think that's about as prophetic as one can get.
Lemme just spitball something here... if you read Beloved for the first time are NOT TRAUMATIZED (in some way) there is something absolutely wrong with your ability to empathize with others.
To create (or maintain) a nation & a hemisphere entirely built on pillage, piracy, rape, torture, & genocide, you need functionaries incapable of empathy, of mercy, of pity. I've wondered if classic models of the British educational system were designed to stamp out human connection & warmth so the Empire would be tidier to maintain. US systems have had a similar part to play, & it seems we're just at a crisis point at the moment: continue traditonal dehumanizations or think beyond them to actual franchisement & equity. This was the instigation that's made RWers gnash their teeves about "Leftist teachers" all those years ago, & here we are, still jumping when they gnash.
We might get caught up in a media cycle which thrives on disaster blaming "CRT" for McAuliffe's loss, but y'know maybe even he had been able to campaign on things he had actually accomplished, like incumbents have the advantage of doing usually, VA might have still a Dem Gov.
[Jury's still out on NJ, my state, where there could be a recount, & Murphy the blue incumbent as not yet been able to deliver on recreational MJ, allowed by referendum in 2020, and had only unsexy victories otherwise.]
Update: predictions of narrow win for Murphy but this SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN CLOSE. First task, change this g_dDamned off-year governor election rule. Fuck that shit.
The fact is was so close strongly suggests that CRT was at best a contributing factor in VA and not the driver the media narrative makes it. It looks to me like the same old boring thing that happens every (off) year: Dems don’t show up. In VA the republican got just 300k fewer votes than Orange Julius did last year while McAullife lost 800k relative to Biden. Same in Jersey: 700k fewer Republicans showed up this, but 1.4 million fewer Dem votes were cast. There are ways to address this, like (as you mentioned) consolidating elections and making Election Day a holiday, but that’s boring nuts and bolt shit the media can’t be bothered with.
In Wisconsin, Goobernatorial elections used to be in the same year as Presidential elections, but back in the early 70's they changed it to an off-year election. At the time, nobody thought this would give any particular advantage to one side or the other, it was just seen as a "reform" that would allow the voters to give greater attention to which Goober to vote for.
But that was years before Republicans embarked on their "the fewer votes the better for us" program.
The problem specific to this year is the Democrats have been screwing up again in congress and the media have been hyping this. It is nearly the same thing that happened between 2008 and 2010. The Democratic "moderates" (who are really conservatives) controlled what happened and they will never get punished for it.
As we say insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
Well, I don't want to let McAuliffe off the hook for not being a very good candidate, plus you had some Virginia-specific issues like the fact that Governors are term-limited to one term, and there were probably people who saw McAuliffe running again as somehow not legit (don't know how many, but it didn't need to be a lot).
As for D.C., seems to me it's been at least 4 years since we've had a governing party that actually tried to do some governing, maybe we've all forgotten what that looks like?
Periodic reminder that Virginia closed many of its public schools down and created seg academies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_resistance) rather than abide by Brown vs. Board of Education, and those children are now older voters. CRT, whether or not it's actually taught in schools, is a direct strike at their own history.
At this point I really do blame Manchin and Sinema. I think they're evil nihilists who discovered they could hijack the process and are using it to enrich themselves; there's no other explanation that begins to make sense. But I will also say it would never have come to this if the Democrats had done the right thing right after the Cornhusker Kickback and purged the party of blue dogs, who have been totally fucking useless since the 70s and are now an absolute disastrous liability.
I believe Black turnout was awful. Or maybe I should say understandably so.
"...campaign on things he had actually accomplished, like incumbents have the advantage of doing usually..."
Judging by the post-loss punditry, seems it was the job of the U.S. House and Senate to provide McAuliffe with something to run on, as if the poor man has nothing else he could possibly take credit for.
Well, he took the option of essentially telling the parents of school kids to fuck off.
"What can one mere governor do in a state with a Dem-controlled legislature?"
"if you read Beloved for the first time are NOT TRAUMATIZED (in some way) there is something absolutely wrong with your ability to empathize with others."
That's exactly why I haven't read it. Also why I've decided I really don't need to see any more war movies.
"Conservative state legislatures are passing laws banning . . ."
Teaching evolution because science is a secular religion.
Gay marriage because it makes too many "straight" men get tingly feelings they can't cope with.
The institution of Shari'a law because you KNOW Obama is going to impose it ANY DAY NOW!!!!
Affirmative action because Blacks already have too many advantages.
Teaching CRT because it makes White people feel bad.
cordon sanitaire."
That's funny AF.
Well, yesterday I came out in support of the Progressive side of the party and today I'm all in for charter schools. I'm surprised at myself.
I've always been a good socialist at heart but I'll be honest- I never much cared for the Dem Progressives. Seems like they talked down to me in the same way Conservatives did. Yesterday made it pretty plain though- Same Old White Guy from the Clinton Years ain't gonna cut it. We need young people and minorities to get through this.
Can I wear my Taylor Swift "Squad T-Shirt or do I have to buy a new one for AOC?
If righties want to fuck up schools let's just open our own. They got the Charter School scam already set up. Evidently you can open a school to teach any kind of dodgy shit you want and get fat government checks for it.
If they're gonna fuck up public schools use the same system to open up places where kids can actually learn stuff. Won't take long before the white folks are working at Jiffy Lube and the kids that someone cared to teach are in charge of the accounting department and IT.
Cordon Sanitaire- Ha!
I'd argue there's nothing wrong with charter schools except their intended use as a destroyer of public education for reasons you can guess. But it's an ill wind, as they say, and I hope some poor kids get advantages from it; as a poor kid who had such advantages, how can I not? Glad you liked the joke.
You know, one would like to believe the unhinged, deranged cohort — the part of the GOP that’s the target of their leaders’ bullshit — would snap out of it and revert to something of a sane norm and one would clearly be wrong.
Minor quibble: McCarthyism (at least implicitly supported by Truman) can’t be the OG attack on the commie symps — the OG attacks on the reds were ca. 1919. And actually predated the Russian Revolution in the late 1800s.
And I dunno; I’m enamored of the commies calling us decadent. If we weren’t back then, we clearly are now. And Xu’s crackdown on zillionaires, well, I’m jealous. I guess I’m becoming a commie symp in my old age. Gonna have to start tracking down red Depends soon…
Conservatives like to say that Facebook being liberal (I know, I know, but that's their story), the social credit scheme in Red China is likely to be replicated by left wing social media corporations. That's always been ridiculous, but the anti-CRT movement shows that the American social credit scheme will actually hinge on identifying race traitors.
What that left wing social media corporations? That said, I’m sooo anxious to join Truth Social.
And to be clear, I was referring to Xu putting zillionaires on relatively short leashes Ma, for one), making companies behave Didi for one) and making zillionaires pay for their greed-fueled bad acts (the pig that mismanaged Evergrande (?)). None of which would fly here, in the greatest oligarchy the world has ever known.
Not an endorsement of the commie system, just things I appreciate about it. Well, envy.
Didn't China execute someone over corruption a few years back? Can you imagine the volume of pea soup spitting out of spinning heads that would entail, if such a thing was considered here?
Lol as the youngs. I’d settle for equitable taxation instead of where the obscenely wealth live highly on debt which is tax-free or deductible.
My point is that this is an area in which the godless Chinese commies put to shame which, of course, we’re incapable of feeling because we’re exceptional.
Agreed. The over the top "thou protest too much" of the wealthy class speaks volumes, though. I'm convinced wealth causes insanity because 1. you are surrounded by a$$ kissers and it goes to your head and 2. you lose sight of what kind of money it *really* takes to survive.
Add to that insanity: the drive to accumulate an obscene amount of wealth and the greed that rots empathy and generosity. Every one of those pigs should be grateful they’re living here and, being grateful, pay their equitable share of taxes.
"Soon we’ll get an essay in the New Republic about how health care reform is critical race theory."
You thought that was a joke, but Commentary got there first https://www.commentary.org/christine-rosen/social-justice-is-coming-for-your-doctor/
Social justice warriors are too late. For profit hospital chains got to doctors three decades ago.
You couldn't pay me to read that, but I'm going to make a wild guess that someone has discovered there are certain - ahem - disparities in the delivery of health care, and someone else decided we might try to do something to address that, cue the racist panic attack from Commentary.
Well, now that Virginia's AP Literature teachers have been scared off of ever assigning Toni Morrison, I'm sure the lives of the people of Virginia will improve immeasurably.
That's what gets me about people who actually base a vote on this shit, just like the folks who voted for Trump because that wanted store clerks to stop saying "Happy Holidays", they've got no idea what government actually does, so they don't even know what to ask for.
Democratic voters, God love 'em, know how to act like an actual interest group, demanding practical things that could materially improve their lives, but I suppose that comes from believing government can actually do stuff.
Here's how they base their vote. I think we know exactly what this guy really doesn’t care care for…
https://twitter.com/Phil_Lewis_/status/1455266135142711310
True, but I also think he's been trained to think that asking the government for stuff is just fundamentally wrong (and something "those people" do) so he never connects any of the problems that he or his kids are having to anything the government can do. Maybe he's got a daughter who's being bankrupted by child care costs or health care costs (or maybe his kids are being bankrupted by elder-care costs) but he's never going to think of that as something the government could do something about.
So what's left to base his vote on? Racist bullshit like this, of course.
"Now that there’s some heat over that, school officials are claiming Whitfield was ousted for being bad at his job"
I often think we let this sort of change in narrative slide far too easily.
Wouldn't changing their story like this mean they were either lying initially or they're lying now? Both can't be true. And it's a bit too self-serving to write off as an honest mistake if you ask me.
And Iowa is out here circling the drain. 3 Qanon freaks were elected to the school board of an ex-urb just north of Des Moines. I know a high school Social Studies teacher there, he has been vocal about his progressive views of teaching and he's developed software to support that. He spoke at school board meetings as a union rep, as a teacher and as a parent and has written op-eds. He's young and eloquent and passionate, and now he's a target. He woke up yesterday to several abusive and threatening messages on his personal Facebook page. I was actually reading about them in a Twitter thread at the moment he deleted it. The FBI has been contacted. He's worried about his wife and two young children and they are seriously thinking about leaving the state. In the neighboring ex-urb anti-maskers won the night. I think Democracy is teetering on a knife edge and some days I don't have a lot of hope.
Oh! And deer in Iowa have Covid.
And the people have Chronic Wasting Disease.
"they are seriously thinking about leaving the state"
Your friend sounds like a great teacher, and any one of the 49 other states would be lucky to have him. As for Iowa, they can go fuck themselves with a used corn cob.
I doubt all of the other 49 would be interested in a teacher like that.
Well, "would be lucky to have" and "interested in having" aren't really the same thing, I wish we always wanted the things that are good for us.
I stand corrected. If you’re right and I’m a decrepit dotard.
I assume we're in agreement on "Iowa can fuck itself with a used corn cob."
Like many others.
Actually, democracy pretty much died a couple of decades ago sorry.
Maybe this is the GOP's unconscious, or not-that-unconscious, strategy:
1. Racism is bad, yes, but it's wrong to teach it to students, because it makes them feel bad.
2. So we don't teach it.
3. If we don't teach it, it's not *necessary* to teach it, by definition.
4. If it's not necessary to teach it, maybe it's because racism isn't bad, and there's nothing to teach.
You could recite this "reasoning" to a crowd of thirty million MAGA choads at a Trump rally, and all of them would burst into applause.
IIRC — always questionable — Youngkin played it both ways: anti-“CRT”, pro-teaching racial stuff. Not saying he was in anyway sincere but it made it easier for certain voters to vote for him.
So the people who were mad because the Covid school shutdown forced them to participate in the education of their kids are mad because now they have to pay attention to what the kids are reading?
And are threatening to homeschool!
Typically intelligent and eloquent to boot. Depressingly so considering the content.
The Hawn case is particularly disgusting. What initially triggered his dismissal was a parent complained that the Ta-Nehisi Coates essay he assigned conveyed a "somewhat angry, and hateful opinion towards President Trump," and contained words that should not be "introduced to our children by a high school teacher." That would be "pussy," and you can guess who was being quoted.
We live in dark times overrun with benighted people. When Trump lifted that rock, the worst of his fellow sewer creatures were released.
If you haven't read the Coates essay it's here, and it's excellent:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/the-first-white-president-ta-nehisi-coates/537909/
ETA: It gets worse. The Assistant Director of Schools who sent the initial letter of reprimand to Hawn was formerly a county finance official for decades and has no background in education. Her main qualification, this being Scopes-country Tennessee after all, is that she's a right-wing religious nutjob. Here's what she said when she went to work with the Department of Education: "The Lord opened a door, and I had promised Him that if He opened it, I would walk through. Well, He opened it, and I'm walking through."
Matthew Hawn has the Lord to thank.
Sorry to keep flogging this one story but I forgot to include a great interview with the teacher ICYMI (scroll down a page). Sounds like the kind of teacher any school should be glad to have. Here:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/08/matt-hawn-tennessee-teacher-fired-white-privilege/619770/
...contained words that should not be "introduced to our children by a high school teacher."
Right, introducing our kids to words like "pussy" is the President's job.
MATH used to make me feel uncomfortable.
I saw a self-described radical feminist critique of plane geometry as emblematic of (or maybe it was 'recapitulating') the patriarchal mind of Ancient Greece, and the step-by-step logic of Euclid hopelessly and exclusively masculine (many misogynsts would agree). This is not a point-of-view anyone's hyping to win elections, though, so it's nowhere near as dangerous a pathogen….
Next from the Republicans: "Jewish Physics, those darn space-lasers, and You!".