“Woke” Update 2
Given the decades of Republican and so-called conservatives’ efforts to establish absolute power and wealth into the hands of (guess who?) the wealthy, including themselves, it seems this mania to attack whatever is “woke” was inevitable. It’s undefined by those same Republicans and so-called conservatives so that they can use the term just as playground brats would, to ridicule others.
Paul Krugman has given us some definition of what “woke” is, as used by these hateful culture warriors (the brats). In his essay Wonking Out: Conservatives Face a Rude Fiscal Awokening [sic], he explains,
“So now we know what many conservatives mean by being woke: It means showing any concern for and offering any help to, Americans who are victims of adverse circumstances.”
That means that many of We The People, those whose safety and security we claim to protect, are instead blown off by Ron DeSantis, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan and the rest of the frothy-mouthed usual suspects.
Those suspects aren’t just brats. They are thugs.
Parents Rights
The so-called “parents rights” temper tantrums polluting our Republican controlled states have resulted in faculty firings, book bannings, book burning, race negating, history denial, bullying, board of education upheavals and more. These tirades long ago reached a level of refusal of learning that is gut wrenching to any thinking person. This is, in fact, a denial of education and learning.
Public education is for the public. All of it. It isn’t just for kids whose parents are an angry, frothing few. Surely, parents have the primary responsibility for their children’s education and should have a voice in what that looks like, even when parents don’t know much about educating kids. But public education isn’t just for a small minority of vocal thugs who want to force their narrow, angry beliefs on everyone else.
So, for parents who think the statue of David is pornographic; for parents who think Toni Morrison’s writings are racially offensive or harmful to their fragile White children; for parents who don’t want their kids to know that not every other kid is exactly like them; for parents who think their kids should be told only that Rosa Parks was a woman on a bus, this without mentioning that she was Black; for parents who want to micromanage every classroom and who just can’t abide a complete education for their kids; there are two simple solutions: either home school your kids or send them to a private school more in line with your narrow notion of education.
And you can pay the entire bill for either of those options with your own money. Vouchers transferring public education money to private schools are a scam and an offense to the Constitution.
But don’t worry. The public schools will be there for your kids when you run out of anger and money, just as the Framers intended – even if Betsy DeVos, Ron DeSantis and their private, for-profit school CEO buddies don’t like that.
Covid
“If you are up to date on your vaccines and you get treated with Paxlovid, if you get an infection, you just don’t die of this virus,” [Dr. Ashish Jha] said. “Almost every one of those [Covid] deaths [of un-vaccinated people] is preventable. And yet people are still dying [at the rate of 200 – 500 per day]. And that is the power of misinformation. That is the power of disinformation that we all have to work on countering.”
- – Dr. Ashish Jha, coordinator of the White House Covid response team,
- speaking to an audience of physicians at a
- conference near Boston, Friday, March 28
Even as our people die, Republicans in Congress and big megaphone blatherers continue to do diaper-clad political performances to incite an angry army of malcontents (dunno where I saw that, but I sure like it) to self-harming craziness.
It’s safe to say that we have an large part of our population that has been trained over decades to see themselves as victims of some other group of Americans, so they’re angry. They are angry to the point that they won’t do the simple things that are necessary to save their own lives, let alone the lives of Granny, their kids or the check-out lady at the supermarket. They prefer anger over continuing to live.
That’s a lot like our gun safety refusers, who love their guns more than they love their own kids – or yours.
And That Connects With . . .
The alt-right (aka, radical extremists) have been hyper-crazificating for at least three decades to get Americans to distrust and hate:
government
healthcare professionals
healthcare insurance
journalists
democracy
the media
all politicians with a “D” next to their name
all politicians regardless of party who don’t toe the extremist line
the courts
elections
any Democratic president
truth, justice and the American way
anybody not just like themselves
And if there are real, Earth #1 facts that refute the distrust and hate disinformation, it is labeled fake news or assigned some other form of reality dismissal. This is blind acceptance of propaganda to the point of self-reinforcing, evidence-free belief in the unbelievable. Here’s an example.
Take a look at this chart from a recent Gallup survey.
The study was done following Vice President Harris’ visit to these three African countries. You can see that roughly half of the respondents approve of our job performance there, which means that roughly half of the respondents disapprove.
Questions:
- What percentage of US adults can find any of those countries on a map, even if the countries are labeled?
- What percentage of US adults can name even one US policy regarding these nations?
Bolstered by their ignorance, half of surveyed adults disapprove of the work of our government. Hint: they were propagandized to disapprove, to believe the unbelievable.
Here’s another Gallup chart showing President Biden’s approval rating at just 40% (green). It also shows that 56% disapprove of his job performance (orange).
We can ask survey respondents the same type of questions as for the African countries and the results would yield the same kinds of answers: they really don’t know any reason for their negative opinions except that a lot of very loud, self-serving people have been exhorting them to distrust and hate, to believe the unbelievable.
Too many of our citizens have been trained that way all their lives. That sadly defines our challenge to restore our institutions, our values and our country to something that resembles a democracy.
“We live in an age of explicit disinformation—that is, disinformation that is publicly confirmed as disinformation yet still succeeds as disinformation.”
David Corn, Our Land newsletter, April 4, 2023
Court Watch
Perp walked, finger printed and indicted on 34 felony counts in New York. √
That’s one.
Today is a good day to be the light.
______________________________
- Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
- Fire the bastards!
- The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.
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Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
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