How about some optimistic news? These right-wing idiots have become caricatures of themselves, fulminating over the most absurd and trivial things, and believing that they are justified in radical action against fundamental American ideals, like schools and libraries. Stories about school board meetings where some angry nitwit stands up to rant about the “wokes” are commonplace, like this one in Florida.
At the meeting, right-wing parents and a minority of the school board amplified the usual attacks: Pornography in classrooms, indoctrination, wokeness. Watching them, it was impossible to avoid the sense that they were relishing every second of the tumult they’ve unleashed.
At the meeting, Shannon Rodriguez — a favorite of the right wing Moms for Liberty that led the attack on the Disney movie episode — kept robotically repeating phrases like “woke ideologies” and “woke agenda,” not even slightly disturbed by any sense of obligation to define their meaning. She proudly brandished her solidarity with boycotts of Bud Light and Disney as a badge of anti-woke heroism. Another conservative parent practically shouted, “You have awakened the entire alpha male blood of this country!”
It’s all fury for the sake of fury — they’re getting high on their own outrage. It has an effect, though. Fifty teachers in Hernando County, where this meeting took place, are resigning (come to Minnesota, we’d love to have you here). Ron DeSantis is basically destroying the educational infrastructure of the state, all in the name of stoking that moronic subset of the population that vote for him, and there are signs that the citizens are waking up.
But the real story of the night was the response. Again and again, parents and students forcefully defended teachers. They cast the right’s attacks, the censoring of educators and the removal of books as the real threats to education.
“War on woke?” one student said pointedly. “More like war on your children’s future.”
“It’s me and my fellow students who are feeling the effects of this,” said a second student. A third said the removal of books from classrooms is what’s really “indoctrinating students.”
Things like this are happening all over. As Sarah Jones of New York magazine reports, liberal parents in states as far-flung as New York, North Carolina and Montana are organizing local groups, pressuring school boards and running for office to challenge the right’s education takeover.
We can’t get too over-confident, though. Keep in mind that Hernando County elected DeSantis with a 41 point margin, and would probably re-elect him if a vote were held today. It would probably be by a smaller margin, though, and that’s where we are at — we need to keep chipping away, pointing out how incompetent and destructive the Right has been, and try to get incremental advantages that weaken them.
May the backlash swat the demagogues like bloated leeches under a steamroller.
The people DeSantis and his ilk are talking to know very well what “woke” from their mouths means to them. It’s a code word for “Jew” and “N-word” and “gay” and “trans” and everyone they will eventually put in the ovens once they take power. The answer is to not let them take power. Can America do that?
It’d be a far more efficient expenditure of effort to simply root out the basic cause through a briefly labor intensive action.
When they start to speak what passes for them as a mind, hang, draw and quarter them in the traditional manner.
A few heads on pikes, the village idiot will swiftly learn to stay out of the village square.
For the more recalcitrant cases, one can then get a bit more unpleasant.
I recommend a bronze bull. Set it on their toes and leave.
If low on bronze, shooting works. Shoot them out of a circus cannon aimed at the local sewage treatment plant compost pile. Given the ubiquity of guns in this country, there should be plenty of circus cannons about.
Too much labor? Just attend a meeting with these drivel fests after having a few cans of beans and sit next to them. Yes, it’s a lot more cruel than the recommended method, but highly effective and the hydrogen sulfide removes their capability to blather. And hair.
They hate the very idea of pubic education. Every policy the Republicans offer is designed to destroy it.
Hernando County isn’t too far from where the Dade Massacre took place. Seminole history is super woke.
This.
Teachers leave, people who want their kids to get real educations leave, and you’re left with a population lacking the critical thinking skills and socialization required to understand what went wrong, having only the sort of unfocused anger that makes them easy to manipulate. They can then be turned on what’s left of the education system. It’s self-reinforcing and it bakes in the inequities desired.
Fighting back is good, and maybe there is still hope, but those kinds of self-reinforcing systems that feed back on themselves tend to have tipping points, and I fear we might be past that in Florida, Texas, and all those red states where nobody lives but still have their allotment of two senators and disproportionate numbers of electors in the Electoral College.
Without public education, the “American Dream” is simply out of reach for anyone not born on third base.
Via solarbird:
Cat Valente: There’s No Such Thing as a Smart Fascist
I hope for an honest, decent constructive society. But, ere is where the rightwingnuts want to drag this pitiful nation:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/1/2172650/-Marjorie-Taylor-Greene-details-the-House-agenda-that-will-never-happen
The Rightwingnuts now want to: ‘get back to the agenda they ran on in the 2022 election: vengeance and destruction’ Georgia embarrassment Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene posted an ‘agenda’. WTF!
This is where the fight needs to happen: they’ll elect DeSantis over any Democrat, because the ‘R’ wins no matter what.
So the real fight, as it is in so many counties across the nation, is at the primaries.
Granted DeS can’t run again for Governor (well, unless the legislation gives in to yet another demand of his, as they have to everything else he’s ever asked for*), but there we are.
This is the real problem of Florida: the legislation has not said no to ANYTHING he’s asked for, “conservative” principles be damned. That is the true Florida nightmare, that the entire party has been in lockstep with him.
feralboy12 @ 6, electors is based upon the number of congresscritters for each state, with the House being based upon population numbers. The Senate was created to counter states with large populations, giving small population states an equal voice in our government.
So, the more people leaving a state, the lower the number of electors and Representatives. That’s a Pyrrhic victory in and of itself.
Backlash against the regressive reichwingers? The paste-chewing, science-denying bible- thumping Christianists & corporate 1% selfish money & property & resources hoaders & Climate Criminals especially seems long overdue and right now kinda feels like it can’t be severe enough.
[StevoR, your sentiment is clear to me, but what you’ve actually written if parsed literally kinda expresses the opposite.
Just saying]
@11 StevoR said: Backlash against the regressive reichwingers? The paste-chewing, science-denying bible- thumping Christianists & corporate 1% selfish money & property & resources hoaders & Climate Criminals especially seems long overdue and right now kinda feels like it can’t be severe enough.
I reply: I had no trouble understanding the full meaning of your sentence. I found no contradictions in its expressions. I, too, feel it is important to include those multiple details of why they should face a backlash. Your sentence, as expressed, adds credibility to your comment and shouldn’t cause any problems for the literate people we find here.
Removing naughty books from schools? ROFL!
https://youtu.be/wba55_mBbNg
birgerjohansson, was thinking of that story myself.
The bible, a book rife with good examples of bad examples.
But, where else can you find text that champions murder, torture and rape in God’s almighty mercy?