We rail at the clear and unaltered censorship with which the Russian government is hiding its depraved perpetrating of a war in Ukraine. And it's working. We have seen, in broadcast interviews, how control over media outlets allows Putin to prosecute the war while his own people wander about uninformed.
The only difference between there, and here, is that state and local governments are doing exactly the same thing, only piecemeal. But censorship it is.
Any local school board, or state legislature, that prevents the teaching of critical race theory, or limits discussion of LGBTQ issues (as Florida's bill is due to be signed by Gov. DeSantis very soon now), does the same thing: A government prohibits the airing of things that people are thinking about and talking about.
I don't see how that makes the states of Florida, Tennessee and 39 others that are trying to extend prohibitions, any different than Russia at the present time. Freedom of thought is being intercepted. Plain and simple.
After having read an article about it in USA Today recently, it's pretty clear, too, that the prohibitions are not trying to stop anything that's false, obscene, or irresponsible, though the prohibitioners may claim such. They're trying to stop the truth, the uncomfortable, sometimes ugly truth, from disturbing someone's image of the country as a beacon of liberty.
Well: For some people, it will always remain that way. But just about all of those people were, and are, white. People of color can't possibly see the United States of America as the fulfillment of all of their dreams; too many of them have been blocked.
If you think for a moment, though, that the Republican Party is behind all this--well, you'd be exactly right.
None of the state legislatures that are planning, or have already, limited discussion of critical race theory in public school classrooms are controlled by Democrats (granted, not very many of those). There must be something wrong with them, I guess.
Nope. The Republican Party is now branded with, and is standing for, the same political correctness that conservatives used to brand Democrats with. This kind of it is stultifying, ridiculous, and in a strong sense, is itself unpatriotic.
It's unpatriotic because it flies in the face of what Republicans have always said they favor above all else: Freedom. This just isn't the kind of freedom they prefer to discuss, evaluate, or accept.
Somehow, they are threatened by people who wish to discuss our history responsibly, accurately, and fully. They must be living in caves and assume that the rest of us are, too. How else can they possibly think that they can manipulate children's minds so that they won't pick up the racism that's already out there?
They want them to ignore it, I suppose. To ignore the delays that Jim Crow caused to give minorities opportunities that they've deserved for decades. But then, a thoroughly Republican-controlled Supreme Court will, apparently, do so by cancelling affirmative action, which has lasted about sixty years or so.
This go-backwards-and-start-over habit has strangled any decent Republican thinking. It has taken it hostage. It wouldn't be a bad definition of the intimidating cult which has emerged.
The pretense simply won't work. But if you take a decent approach to teaching about racism out of schools, you will further humiliate and anger those of other races. You will cause resistance to it inside those schools. You will restart what is unnecessary there. All will know it. The response will be staccato and inadequate because all will also know that regardless of how people feel, there isn't much they can do about it.
Just another way in which, despite its contrary rhetoric, the Republican Party is trying to ruin America. Ronald Reagan started it by defiantly kicking off his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964, a clear slap in the face of that movement. He fooled, and is still fooling, lots of people.
Teachers need to unite so that the children cannot be fooled by this latest stunt. It is another ploy by a desperate party that is losing the clash of ideas, and that wishes that the other side is instructing kids in unAmerican, unpatriotic, sneaky ways. But it is the Republicans who are doing exactly that. The difference is that their propaganda attempts to make white out of black and reality into vague, meaningless fibs that, once uttered, will become paeans to tokenism and remove the meaning of the whole business.
That's exactly what Vladimir Putin is trying to do to his invasion of Ukraine--twist the meaning behind opaque references, in the hopes that he will be able to operate without significant public protest. To do that, he must enforce rigid censorship. There must be no discussion, no exchange of ideas.
The rest of the world has wised up, though. We must also do so about the censorship of racism here, resisting its willy-nilly imposition within state legislatures spooked by twisted meanings and intimidation by a real, live boogeyman who, for the present time, has only the power of influence--which is real power indeed.
Be well. Be careful. Get a good flashlight in case the grid is attacked. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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