Peter Greene describes his latest gambit. He is pressing for the adoption of his “Stop WOKE” act.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is doing his level best to wreck education in his state by politicizing every education policy. It’s a textbook illustration of fear-mongering and race-baiting. How low can he go without scraping his head on the ground?
Greene writes:
Florida owns the Number One spot on the Public Education Hostility Index, but Governor Ron DeSantis is not willing to rest on his laurels. You may have already heard about this, or you may have passed over the news because it’s Florida, but some bad news needs to be repeated, particularly when it comes from the state that launches so many of the bad trends in education.
DeSantis has borrowed from Texas, where a new abortion banhas come up with a clever way to circumvent rules about what a state can and cannot enforce. Now upheld by SCOTUS, the law makes every citizen a bounty hunter, with the right for “anyone to sue anyone” suspected of being in any way involved in an abortion (in a rare display to restraint, Texas exempts the woman getting the abortion from the civil liability).
The idea of insulating the state is not new to education privatization efforts. Part of the reasoning behind education savings accounts is that it let’s the state say, “What? We didn’t give taxpayer dollars to a private religious institution. We just gave the money to a scholarship organization (and they gave it to the private religious school). Totally not a First Amendment violation.”
So here comes DeSantis with his “Stop WOKE Act” (as in “Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees”– some staffer was up late working on that one). This is legislation he’ll “push for” because of course a governor doesn’t propose legislation–he just orders it up from his party in the legislature.
The proposal comes wrapped in lots of rhetoric about the evils of “critical race theory,” which DeSantis defines broadly and bluntly: Nobody wants this crap, OK? This is an elite-driven phenomenon being driven by bureaucratic elites, elites in universities and elites in corporate America and they’re trying to shove it down the throats of the American people. You’re not doing that in the state of Florida.
Along with vague rhetoric about learning to hate America, DeSantis brought in crt panic shill Christopher Rufo for his pep rally. And of course he trotted out some highly selective Martin Luther King Jr. quotage, because, hey, he’s totally not racist.
But the highlight here is creating a “private right of action” for parents, an actual alleged civil rights violation. Anyone who thinks their kid is being taught critical race theory can sue (and this will apply to workplace training as well). Parents who win even get to collect attorney’s fees, meaning they can float these damn lawsuits essentially for free– watch for Florida’s version of Edgar Snyder--attorneys advertising “there’s no charge unless we get money for you.”
Allowing parents to file lawsuits would have the effect of making the operating definition of crt even vaguer–it’s whatever Pat and Sam’s mom thinks it is. You can say that using a bad definition that loses the lawsuit would limit this vaguery, but that misses the point–the school would still have to defend itself in court, costing money and time…
Open the link and read the rest.
Greene predicts that teachers will not feel free to teach about America’s racist past. I agree with him.
A few nights ago, I watched a PBS documentary about the life of Marian Anderson, who was hailed in her lifetime as one of the greatest singers in the world. She toured the capitals of Europe to great acclaim. Yet for most of her life, she sang to racially segregated audiences in the United States. The documentary showed that Hitler admired America’s segregationist laws and practices and saw them as a model. Today, those who remember Anderson’s name know her as the black woman whom the DAR (Daughters of the Revolution) prohibited from performing in Constitution Hall in 1939, D.C.’s premier concert hall. D.C. was rigidly segregated. Instead she sang at the Lincoln Memorial to a crowd of 75,000 people. Her opening number was “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.”
I expect that no teacher in Florida would show that documentary in class. It may be factual, but some students’ parents would complain and sue the teacher for exposing their children to CRT.
https://www.pbs.org/video/voice-of-freedom-crx5pq/
PBS American Experience
The Southern press came up with other forms of address in order to avoid paying Anderson any type of deference; “Artist Anderson” and “Singer Anderson” frequently being used.
This type of treatment was symptomatic of the pervasive racism of the time. It finally came to a head in 1939 when Marian’s manager and Howard University tried to secure a performance for her at Constitution Hall in Washington D.C.
The Daughters of the American Revolution, who owned the Hall, refused to accommodate Anderson. The rebuff was widely publicized when Eleanor Roosevelt, herself a member of the D.A.R., publicly resigned from the organization in protest.
And FDR was asked if was was OK for Marian Anderson to sing at the Lincoln Memorial, which had never been used for a performance before, and he answered in the affirmative and added, according to the documentary, “She can sing from the top of the Washington Monument, if she wishes.” The program points out that the Lincoln Memorial was dedicated a few years earlier to a racially segregated audience, and the lack leaders of the city left, in protest. No mention was made at the dedication ceremony of his role in ending slavery, just his success in unifying the Nation.
STOP WOKE +
Screaming Trumplodyte Ogre Persistently Warping Our Kids Education
STOP WOKE =
Scatterbrained Trumplodyte Ogre Perniciously Warping Our Kids’ Education
“the school would still have to defend itself in court, costing money and time”
A Hawvid trained lawyer using the the threat of legal suits to intimidate people.
What a surprise.
Probably learned that from Douchowitz.
Well, to be fair, the entire Republican agenda is an attack on common decency.
Another example of the War on Decency from Texas:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/george-floyd-texas-governor-withdraws-pardon-recommendation_n_61c50383e4b0bb04a62ed31b
Stop W.O.K.E. is another tool that encourages people to attack teachers and public schools. It is more red meat to DeSantis’ vile base. DeSantis will ride any wave he believes will serve his ambition.
Governor DeSatan.
With 20 thousand needless deaths in Florida since May you would have thought that some Floridian would “stand their ground”. Or at least filed a complaint with the ICC.
Bolsonaro does not have much over DeSantis.
These guys are idiots but they’re not stupid.
They are riding a red wave of hate and discrimination. They are still riding the wave of the exPres who normalized blame, attacks, and outrage from the outlier to everyday life.
A strange analogy – but a significant problem in our area is disregard for red lights (I’m serious), speed limits, and anything that requires patience or personal responsibility. We all knew that you could run a red light and rarely get caught – but still in the middle of the night on an empty street – we would still sit at the light.
That’s what the gop has done. They realize they can do and say whatever they want and get away with it. There are no decency police and being responsible is out the window.
And, gross as it may be, what the exPres said in the access hollywood video is exactly what he did for four years and still at it through these fools in office and scared of him conservatives who dare not stand up to him.
And, they tripped over the best strategy ever: go local. Blame in on mask mandates and internalized racism and phobias.
All politics are local as the expression goes – and there’s nothing more local than elected board members followed only by city and county councils. You want to get suburban moms to join your fight for restrictive election laws, redistricting, social supports and more – get them on your bandwagon and they have done that in the local PTA. Make parents think their schools are being infiltrated by government overreach and liberalism and they will join your cause.
And our acceptance of standards-based low cognitive regurgitation curriculum hasn’t helped. Where is the outrage of high school students and college campuses? When kids don’t have to think – aren’t pressed to contest and debate – aren’t challenged and motivated by the power of their once held curiosity and figuring things out – well…
Florida. Texas. Instead of kool-aid they are handing out conspiracy theories and fear – soon to be followed by scapegoating – soon to be followed by…
So sad. If you want to see full-on indoctrination, check out any religious school.
This Miami Herald opinion piece may be under a paywall, but it explains the stupid priorities of the GOP.
If you have Apple News+, it’s available there.
“What’s one more deadly school shooting when the real danger to kids is a book? | Opinion”
https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article256407261.html
This article was posted here.
How many elected Republicans are fascists? I just Googled that and the search came back with 2.12 million results.
A few results on the first page of that Google search were:
Business Insider: The Republican Party has embraced American fascism.
LegalForm.blog: The US Republican party Will Continue Its Christo-Fascist …
The Daily Beast: Howard Dean: The Republicans Are Now a Neo-Fascist Party.
VOX: Nazis and white supremacists are running as Republicans
Then there is this from VoteVets:
Add to that a recent sentence in an email I got from Sanders’s political organization. People are finally catching that we need to speak clearly: “[Manchin’s] selfish decision could lead to actual fascism because it means that Democrats will fail to deliver on popular proposals before the midterm elections.”
EVERYTHING Insantis is doing right now has this objective: securing the nomination for the Presidential race of 2024.
So, this is his reading of things. Expect A LOT more of this agitprop.
Just eliminate all history/social studies classes, at least anything contemporary (after the birth of Christ) and no historical fiction in ELA. Forget current events or op ed pieces.
Unfortunately I think this is the goal – keep the general population ignorant.
ignorant and thus very easy to manipulate
Insantis is an ambitious fellow. And quite a long while ago, now, he figured out that in Flor-uh-duh, the way to feed his ambition was to pay Trump’s Mini-Me, a role that he has played almost as slavishly, servilely, as did choirboy Pence the Dense.
Now, ever since the Medieval Church cooked up Satan, the great sin attributed to this source of all calamity and woe has been Pride–a medieval tradition summed up a couple hundred years later by Milton: “better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.” And ever since the Church created this arch nemesis, there have been stories about him that go like this: To achieve earthly gain, some poor slob pledges himself to the Devil, whom he then serves utterly, but in the end, the Devil repays this service with destruction, damnation.
And so it is, of course, with Trump. Like the archetype of all villains in the comically dumb medieval stories, Trump embodies all the seven deadly sins–greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth, but his Primo Peccadillo is pride–technically, clinically, malignant pathological narcissism. And when Insantis started holding fund raisers for his upcoming Presidential campaign, Trump turned on Insantis as surely has he did on the embarrassingly groveling Pence (Trump did nothing as his mob of insurrectionists erected a gallows for Pence outside the Capitol–this after Pence brought being a toady and sycophant to the highest level ever achieved).
Here’s the deal, of course: The Trumeteers think of Trump as a man of faith, but he worships only Mammon and himself. Trump is saying that he’s going to run again, but it’s hard to imagine, given the state he’s in, that this will happen. But if he does, it will be interesting and fun to watch Jabba the Trump and Former Mini-Me and current aspirant to assume the Orange Mantle debate.