Fabricated Panic

 

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

Fabricated Panic

That Critical Race Theory is not taught in the public school system has been known by the Left since the first day that the Right turned it into an engineered panic response. The theory sounds to the cognitively biased as a supplement to the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. But then, anything that speaks to the problem of racism elicits panic from racists in the party of the Proud Boys.

What has happened to my once-proud Republican Party? 

I had thought that, after the Joe McCarthy debacle and the civil rights movement, the party and the political right would its ranks of witch-hunters, jingoists, white supremacists, and conspiracy theorists--and they did, for a while. It only took a budding Mussolini to bring out the worst of them again.

I ask my Republican friends if the Republicans will ever return to common-sense politics that made them the favorite of the American people before the party went off the rails. Their answer: The GOP is the favorite of God and that the American people have abandoned God and therefore have abandoned conservatism. It's not conservatism that I question, but the catering to nutcases.

I feel the GOP abandoned me when today's moderate Democrats look like the former Grand Old Party.

See the news story at:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/critical-race-theory-teachers-union-honest-history/

The Militia Circus

 

Photo by Aleks Magnusson from Pexels

The Militia Circus

The Second Amendment did, after all, create the Well Regulated Militia and not the police departments.

Yeah, I know, that's an argument worthy of the three clowns in the image above and the eleven clowns in the Well Regulated Militia described in the Reuters article.

See: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/two-arrested-armed-militia-group-stands-off-with-police-closes-highway-near-2021-07-03/

Power Grab

 

Photo by visuals on Unsplash

Power Grab

A contributor to the AZ Central news outlet summarizes the attack on voting rights by those who would deny those tights in favor of a supposed* strong man authoritarian rule selected by a "committee" of solely or predominately right-wing authoritarian voters. The erosion of voting rights and the recent rule of an incompetent but charismatic president signal the final days of the experiment in democracy.

With the ability to select which voters to give the strongest voice through voter suppression and gerrymandering, we can expect the future day in which we live under an essentially one-party rule with authoritarian rulers representing a segment of society at the helm. Those facing diminished representation might then see restrictions on free speech to cement the ruling party's grip on power.

The shutting down of alternative voices has worked well for religions for thousands of years. It creates the illusion that the words of the powerful are representative of reality through the Argument by Consensus. If a majority of people in a culture can be convinced that the consensus defines reality, rulers then have the minds of the people in their hands. That same procedure routinely puts despots and tyrants into positions of power, as we saw with abundant examples through the twentieth century.

A link to the AZ Central article:

Supreme Court upholds Arizona law, giving voter protections their last gasp