I gotta tell you, I’m proud to be an American. We were willing to risk all to fight for our independence. We created what is still today the gold standard for representational government. We fought to expand our land. Everyday people put their lives and existences into their own hands, and stretched out into the great plains to increase our food base. Intrepid explorers like Lewis and Clark lit out, braved unexplored wilds, and took us to the California coast.
Brave Lawmen like Wyatt Earp made sure that things didn’t get out of control on the new frontier. We built a railroad to span the continent, and then we fought a war against each other to ensure that all men were entitled to freedom and the right to vote. And then we fought legally and socially for another century to ensure that the gains were not lost.
Are we perfect? Of course not. We’re obstinate, clannish, stubborn, and set in out ways. But every single time the chips are down, we come together to keep this beautiful experiment chugging along the tracks of democracy. While we are all different, we are all bonded by a common experience, a common base. We are all Americans, and at one time or another, we’ve all had to eat a little crow.
But now the GOP wants to take that all away. They are a dying party, and their base is older, almost 100% white, lower educates, and terrified of the rising tide of minorities that will make them the minority in 20 years. And in order to try to ensure their own minority rule, today’s GOP is ready to literally rewrite the history books to ensure that their base at least has a comfortable last landing.
It all started with the GOP’s discovery of Critical Race Theory. Critical Race Theory is an incredibly complicated legal theory that is taught only in graduate law school classes. To an Irish Catholic like me, it is a way of tying everything back to original sin. But the GOP turned it onto its head to mean that it was a way to make white people feel bad for things that happened, but that they didn’t actually do. In other words, it was a totally nonsensical way to soothe their base with victimization and white grievance.
And it worked. Incoming Virginia GOP Governor Glen Youngkin’s first Executive Order was to ban the teaching of CRT in Virginia schools, even though it wasn’t being taught.
But now, Youngkin and other GOP state legislators across the country with control of the state houses have joined a battle to stop old, racist white Americans from feeling bad about anything! Youngkin announced a toll free number for Virginia parents to call to report teachers who teach anything that make white Virginia students feel uncomfortable. Fortunately, Tik-Tok is already calling on users to flood the line with bogus complaints.
Other GOP states are following suit, but getting even worse. One GOP state is requiring that if teachers have books about the Holocaust, then they must provide books that provide an alternative point of view. Other states are proposing, and passing laws that make it illegal for teachers to teach anything that makes a student feel uncomfortable. Journalist David Corn has called it the snowflakeization of America.
The Democrats have to fight this battle tooth and nail. The GOP wants to homogenize out history into some kind of bland pablum that allows white people to feel absolutely not guilt or shame for anything in our history. According to today’s GOP, no white person should ever have to feel guilty about anything that has ever happened!
This is blatant, self serving sophistry. The GOP wants to ensure their older, white, racist base that they are blameless. But that base is a pale minority of the American electorate. Court ruling after court ruling has shown that this country is moving on from blatant racism. And yet the GOP wants to saddle the country, at least the parts they control, with some lame ass revisionist history.
Democrats at every level, local, state, and federal, need to call this out. They have to state that history doesn’t lie, that the sins of the past are what they are, and that we have to own up to them. Because the polling shows that the vast majority of Americans understand, and are at peace with out checkered history. I honestly don’t believe that the vast majority of white suburban soccer moms out there don’t want their kids to grow up without a pure and unvarnished understanding of our history.
Some motherfuckers always want to keep ice skating uphill. The Supreme Court is going to basically trash Roe v Wade, which 70% of America wants upheld. And now the GOP wants to rewrite American history for their shrinking base. Time to put this front and center, and let the majority of America decide.
Murf, I really do wish people would stop simply implying that it’s only OLDER white people behind these measures as most of the folks involved aren’t exactly ready for Social Security. Youngkin is 55, true, but that’s still a relative youngster. DeSantis is only 43. Marjorie Taylor Greene is just 47. Lauren Boebert is just 35! And, as I noted on another story, Madison Cawthorn is a mere 26!!! ALL of these people embrace the same “Don’t you dare call all white people racists!” mindset (even though absolutely no one of any real political importance is doing any such thing; they’re simply calling out the racists as racists). And looking back at the exit polls for the 2020 elections, on a national basis Trump won the white vote in ALL age groups (53% of the 18-29 group; 57% of the 30-44; 61% of the 45-59; and 57% of the 60+) which he couldn’t have done if there wasn’t a significant “aggrieved white” factor playing among even younger white voters–the same voters that so many Democrats claim will be “the future.”
Joseph and Murf – it’s true what Joseph says. As a precinct chair I recently received a list of registered voters in this precinct; it shows how many of 3 generals and primaries, the last 3, that each registered Dem in this precinct voted in. Many of the 3/3 and 2/3 and 3/3s (all of the generals and at least 2 of the primaries), are in their 60s, 70s, and even 80s. I would venture to say more than younger voters. If I make it to March I will be 68. So no, not all of us old sick folk are rethugs, many of us are stalwart Dems that need the younger among us to start picking up the slack that some of us like me are suffering due to medical issues. Age is no indicator of love of democracy!
Just last night a new for this season sitcom came on-American Auto-dealing with not CRT but the “OMG we’re offending x” problem. They took it to ridiculous lengths but it was pretty funny. Still, one of the characters mentions that having an interracial couple will offend a segment of society who might just buy an auto with the punchline being essentially “we should cater to segregationists”? Funny stuff in that context right? Less funny in reality-ville or at least the reality the G.Q.P. nitwits want to live in.
Not sure what to do but ridiculing them might be a good move. Ridiculing them on Prime-time, national, television might even be better.
…or at least call it a f*cking shovel.
Also call a Traitor a Traitor! Traitor Tot and many other republiQanons truly are Traitors. And especially all of the J6 insurrectionists! And every last one of the J6 insurrectionists should be getting sentences measured in DECADES, NOT days or months!!
Why is it that the members of the fascist party get to call names whether the moniker is justified or not, yet the democrats are seemingly afraid to do so? Do they realize that although u have2 scrounge up votes, the easiest way is to recognize ur audience & PLAY TO THEM! What? The majority of us that feel like we’ve been in the dentist chair for the past 5 yrs getting root canals without painkiller have grievances too goddamnit. Also someone needs to scare the shit out of the 93 million that sat on their arse ,& didn’t vote. The beauty is all u have to do is tell the fucking truth!
” Fire all ur guns at once. Explode into space!” Time for some preaching.