In the Orwellian doublespeak, the White Christo Fascist radical Republicans say they are ripping “woke” and “CRT” out of public school curriculum in order to prevent indoctrination and grooming, but in actuality, their curriculum mandates are designed to indoctrinate and groom young people into their White Christo Fascist flock © Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com
By Karen Rubin, News-Photos-Features.com
Republicans are falling over each other trying to show who is more racist, more misogynist, more embracing of political violence and authoritarianism.
Trump even published his “to-do” list if he manages to re-take the White House, which involves designated himself the “Unitary Executive” (the Federalist Society theory that Supreme Court justices Alito, Roberts, Gorsuch, Thomas, Barrett and Kavanaugh embrace when a Republican is in office, like giving George W. Bush leeway to torture and hold people without charges in Guantanamo Bay, and allowing Trump to implement the wholly unconstitutional Muslim Ban, while barring Democrat Joe Biden from mandating masks or vaccinations to control a deadly pandemic, or implementing student debt relief.
Ron DeSantis seeks to make the leap from Florida Governor to president with promises of ripping out “wokeness” from the root, making illegal Diversity, Equity, Inclusive policies that have helped turn the ideals of this nation into the values we live every day.
And now, the radical reactionary White Christo Fascist “Republicans”, who condemned “cancel culture,” “censorship” (First amendment!), and “indoctrination” are going whole-hog to whitewash the teaching or reading of American history with literal hogwash with an aim to actually indoctrinate and groom children into robotic White Christo Fascists in the same way Germans were cultivated to become good Nazis capable of committing genocide. And they are aided and abetted by a White Christo Fascist Supreme Court super majority that has an Orwellian concept of “colorblind Constitution,” “equal protection,” and a “post-racial” society.
If ever there was “proof of life” of systemic racism, misogyny, bias and bigotry in 21st Century America, it is Florida’s new mandated education curriculum that teaches slavery had its benefits and laws that threaten teachers with losing their license if they dare answer a student’s question regarding gender identity or slavery, not to mention localities which are firing librarians and cutting off funding for public libraries if they dare display books that might cultivate empathy and understanding of someone else’s life experience. Parents Rights! Whose parents?
It echoes in the Oklahoma court’s dismissal of reparations for the three remaining survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre that torched the entire black neighborhood and left 300 dead – spurred by a young black man’s alleged “flirtation” for a white woman (debunked). That was followed by the present school superintendent outrageously declaring that “the color of their skin” was not the basis for the massacre by white supremacists. And now Florida inserting into its mandated curriculum that both sides committed violence. (Senator Tuberville called white supremacists “plain ordinary Americans”, while GOP Sen. Wendy Rogers called white nationalists “patriots.”
Why is it that young people are so accepting of diversity – of race, ethnicity, gender? It’s because for 40 years, we have seen the cultural shift in media, schools and in our daily lives. Young people from the Midwest may still be amazed at meeting their first Jew at college, but they are meeting, even living in the same dorm room at college. Television shows (even Hallmark!) regularly feature mixed race, even same-sex couples in their romances – Blacks and Gays are even occasionally the heroes (wonder how long that will last after this backlash). Movies and commercials (Bud Light!) prominently show Blacks, Latinos, Asians (I can remember when there were none). So seeing people in these roles – doctors, POTUS, corporate tycoons, general - is no big deal, not like the 1965 “I Spy” TV series that was bold in pairing Bill Cosby with Robert Culp! Or the Star Trek episode that featured the famous “kiss” between Uhura (Nichelle Nichols, in a role where a woman, a black woman no less, had a key position on the bridge) and Captain Kirk (William Shatner). No one bats an eye now.
And that’s the trouble for rightwing extremists desperate to be able to continue to discriminate, perpetuate systemic racism that keeps vast segments of the population powerless, and go back to the halcyon days (Make America Great Again!). Imagine Senator Rand Paul asserting that universal healthcare would be akin to slavery but forcing a woman to carry a nonviable fetus or give birth to her rapist’s child, that isn’t slavery.
The mechanism for women moving more into positions of authority – in the workplace, in government – has been their freedom to make decisions in their lives (still restraining, still a glass ceiling, still earning only 80% of what a man earns, still only 25% of the Senate) – a train that this radically reactionary Supreme Court succeeded in derailing.
The mechanism for racial and ethnic “minorities” for breaking cycles of poverty (like not having legacy home ownership) have been affirmative action at higher education, corporate diversity recruitment programs, and government Women and Minority Owned Business grants and incentives, and employer support of radical ideas like child care, flexible work and remote work (after COVID, it will be hard for employers to deny new mothers an opportunity to work from home, as it was denied my generation).
These have been successful in actually breaking cycles of poverty, raising people up and into positions of authority– which is the “justification” and the reason why justice John Roberts and his White Christo Fascist supermajority have overturned affirmative action in colleges. The SCOTUS6 are gearing up to next overturn affirmative action by employers, just as they have overturned women’s reproductive freedom and next are turning to restrict contraception – all, laughably under the aegis of “equal protection” when the purpose was to create a more level playing field on a vastly unequal battlefield.
In fact, 13 Republican attorneys general have already sent notices to Fortune 100 company leaders warning them against using race as a factor in hiring and promotion, based on the SCOTUS ruling ending affirmative action in college admissions.
Who wants to bet that if it comes to the Supreme Court, the SCOTUS6 who argued that affirmative action violated “equal protection” will dismiss any suit challenging Legacy and Big Donor admissions, saying a private entity can admit whoever they want, using whatever criteria they want (but not race).
SCOTUS have bestowed their blessing to discriminate on race, gender and on religion, telling a website designer even before she started up her business, she was free to deny service to a same-sex couple. Now imagine landlord or employer refusing to rent to a mixed race or same sex couple. Or Imagine now an unwed mother being refused a job or apartment or even healthcare because of “religious conviction” she is an evil Jezebel.
And imagine a doctor, nurse, EMT refusing to give lifesaving care because they have religious objection to their lifestyle. You don’t have to imagine because that is already the law in Arkansas (signed by Governor Asa Hutchinson, now campaigning to be president), giving doctors permission to refuse to treat someone because of their religious or moral objections. Not to be undone, Governor Ron DeSantis, who also wants the power to inflict his bigotry on the rest of the country, in May signed SB 1580, a “License to Discriminate in Healthcare” bill allowing healthcare providers and insurers to deny a patient care on the basis of religious, moral, or ethical beliefs; healthcare employers can discriminate in hiring, and medical Boards are barred from disciplining doctors for spreading misinformation.
You would think such laws could not possibly stand in America. But think again.
Indeed, that is the essence of making it illegal – threatening prison and loss of license - to give care to a woman undergoing a miscarriage. That’s regardless of their own religious or moral objection, but the government-in-power, with the force of law and the ability to abuse it.
They have now used legalized intimidation to make sure these vastly unpopular policies become normal by basically using the law to threaten doctors and teachers with loss of their license and even prison regardless of their own religious or ethical beliefs; that threaten friends or family with prison for helping a woman obtain abortion medication; prosecuting women who miscarry for bad behavior, and actually incentivizing vigilantes to hunt them down.
Roberts and his White Christo Fascist supermajority used the same contrived rationale – that we are living in a “post racial’ society” – to overturn affirmative action to overturn the bulk of the Voting Rights Act when Obama became president that Congress had just renewed (what’s that again, about leaving it up to Congress to enact laws?), and now uses that rationale to overturn the laws that follow after the 14th Amendment, intended to address centuries of treating humans as chattel property (just as they are doing to women, in overturning reproductive freedom). How funny that Alabama has defied the Supreme Court’s edict to redraw its Congressional map, based on upholding the fragment of the Voting Rights Act that remains. (What do they care, they got 2022 and will likely get 2024 based.)
It echoes in the Oklahoma court’s dismissal of reparations for the three remaining survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre that torched the entire black neighborhood and left 300 dead – spurred by a young black man’s alleged “flirtation” for a white woman (debunked). That was followed by the present school superintendent outrageously declaring that “the color of their skin” was not the basis for the massacre by white supremacists. And now Florida inserting into its mandated curriculum that both sides committed violence. (Senator Tuberville called white supremacists “plain ordinary Americans”, while GOP Sen. Wendy Rogers called white nationalists “patriots.”
The Supreme Court’s radical reactionary anti-democratic supermajority justified its decision overturning affirmative action in college admissions as being through the lens of a “colorblind Constitution.” But the fact the policy and similar ones were intended to redress society that was anything but colorblind – not in housing, hiring, paying, schooling, voting or prosecuting – and that, despite some slow progress, remains so, was completely dismissed. It recalls Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s remark that eviscerating the Voting Rights Act “was like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm.”
When you think about it, affirmative action (and cashless bail) are less costly and less extreme methods to level a horribly, historically and systematically unlevel playing field than, say, reparations.
Consider this: A study by California to determine how much reparations would be owed because of systemic racist laws that prevented returning World War II soldiers from benefiting from the GI Bill, getting mortgages, buying houses in “restricted” neighborhoods, getting jobs, getting help at hospitals, getting a public school education with equal resources as white schools, calculated the bill at $1 million for a Black American 71-years old. (What is the compounded interest on 40 acres and a mule?)
“What the court was really signaling was that it intended to let racial imbalances born of both historical and current injustices be locked in and go unchecked,” Charles Blow wrote in the New York Times. “Affirmative action, however imperfect, is at least an acknowledgment of racialized imbalance and injury, and an attempt to lessen their effects. The court, with this decision, was washing its hands of racial discrimination that is not overt, conscious and codified, knowing full well that American racism, having evolved into ever more elegant forms for centuries, no longer requires articulated animus in order to be brutally effective. Enslavement evolved into convict leasing and then to mass incarceration. Lynching evolved into a racially skewed death penalty apparatus. Poll tests and literacy tests evolved into racial gerrymandering, voter ID requirements and restrictions on the day, times and methods of voting,”
The radical MAGA Republicans are campaigning (crusading) to send “wokeness” (that is, respect and empathy for diversity, equity and inclusion) to the ash heap of history.
“Wokeness is a new secular religion that says your identity is based on your race and sexuality,” declares Vivek Ramaswamy another Republican who wants to be president. “This is destroying America in front of our eyes.”
“Critical Race Theory is a religion without forgiveness. CRT promotes the evil, despicable Big Lie that whites are — everywhere and forever — the permanent oppressors of Black people,” stated Fox News contributor Deroy Murdock. “CRT has earned an icy, windswept spot atop the ash heap of history.”
Get the conflation of “wokeness” (that is, respect for other people’s dignity, value, equality) with religion?
Really, “wokeness” is destroying America? Other Republican wannabes have said that feminism – in fact, women’s suffrage – destroyed America and want to repeal the 19th Amendment. And whenever there is a climate disaster, there are those who blame homosexuality for bringing on God’s wrath, rather than their obeisance to Big Oil, and is, of course, destroying America.
What they are really saying is they want to reverse the brief episodes of humanism in our national governance and social interaction, when we actually moved closer to realizing the ideals of our founding.
“One thing I’d like you to consider,” writes Jamelle Bouie in the New York Times (The Slave Trade Didn’t Come Out of Nowhere), “is the extent to which racial distinctions and racial divisions are rooted in relationships of class, labor and property, even when they take on a life and logic of their own. And if that’s true, I would like you to think about what that means for unraveling those divisions and distinctions, and consigning the ideology of “race” to the ash heap of history.”
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