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Thom Hartmann: Trump’s Big-Lie Ad Threatens Our Democracy

By dianeravitch
July 30, 2023 //
23

Journalist Thom Hartmann shows that Trump’s latest ad is an exercise in the Big Lie Technique. It contains vile smears that simple-minded people are likely to believe. It resounds with echoes of fascism.

He writes:

Trump’s people are promoting a new lie-filled fascist advertisement, which even the normally unflappable Frank Luntz called “disturbing.” It follows a fairly ancient pattern of destructive Big Lies that goes back to Renaissance Italy and even the Roman republic and ancient Greece.

German filmmaker Fritz Hippler, one of Goebbels’ most effective propagandists (he produced the infamous movie The Eternal Jew), said that two steps are necessary to promote a Big Lie so the majority of the people in a nation would believe it.

The first is to reduce an issue to a simple black-and-white choice that “even the most feebleminded could understand.” 

The second is to “repeat the oversimplification over and over.” 

If these two steps are followed, Hippler and Goebbels both knew, enough people will come to believe a Big Lie that it can change the politics of a nation.

In Hippler’s day, the best example of his application of the principle was his 1940 movie “Campaign in Poland,” which argued that the Polish people were suffering under tyranny — a tyranny that would someday threaten Germany — and that the German people could either allow this cancer to fester, or preemptively “liberate” Poland.

Hitler took the “strong and decisive” path, the movie suggested, to liberate Poland, even though after the invasion little evidence was found that Poland represented any threat whatsoever to the powerful German Reich. The movie was Hitler’s way of saying that invading Poland was the right thing to do, and that, in retrospect, he would have done it again.

The Big Lie is alive and well today in the United States of America, and what’s most troubling about it is the basic premise that underlies its use. For somebody to undertake a Big Lie, they must first believe Niccolo Machiavelli’s premise (in “The Prince,” 1532) that “the ends justify the means.”

Hitler, after all, claimed to have based everything he did on the virtuous goal of uniting Europe — and then the world — in a thousand-year era of peace, which he claimed was foreshadowed in the Bible. If you believe that a thousand years of peace is such a noble end that any means is justified to reach it, it’s a short leap to eugenics, preemptive wars, torture of dissidents and prisoners, and mass murder.

Believing that the end justifies the means is the ultimate slippery slope. It will kill any noble goal, because even if the goal is achieved, it will have been corrupted along the way by the means used to accomplish it…

In real life, it’s the story of the many tinpot dictators around the world who quote America’s Founders while enforcing a brutal rule, of fossil fuel executives pushing for lax CO2 rules to “help the American economy,” of the legion of lobbyists who work daily to corrupt democracy in the name of GMOs, pharmaceuticals, and the insurance industry (among others).

Here in the US it was used by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to lie us into murderous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and when there was little consequence to them personally or the GOP, Republicans decided to continue the Big Lie strategy and are using it to this day.

Gandhi, Jesus, and Buddha all warned us about this, as did Tolstoy, Tolkien, Hemingway, and Kafka.

Be it “small sins” like the Green Party and No Labels getting into bed with Republicans to get on state ballots, or “big sins” like rightwing think-tanks working to turn America into a strongman oligarchy with their Project 2025, trying to accomplish a “good” by using the means of an “evil” like a Big Lie inherently corrupts the good.

Now the Trump campaign and its allies are encouraging a new series of Big Lies to assail President Biden and the very idea of democracy itself.

With the smug assurance of damage done to the enemy, Republican governors are rewriting American history (the Big Lie that white children are injured by learning about Black history), criminalizing the LGBTQ+ community (the Big Lie that queer people are “groomers”), and throwing millions of people in Blue cities off the voting rolls (the Big Lie of voter fraud).

They are pushing and celebrating nakedly fascist policies, tropes, and memes.

Most recently, a Trump-aligned group rolled out an ad that strings a whole series of Big Lies together. It says:

If I was the deep state and I wanted to destroy America, I would rig the election with a puppet candidate, one that was so compromised that they would never say a word about it. I would create a false flag that allows for mail-in ballots. I would be in charge of the ballot-counting machines. I would create a false flag to blame all who question the results of the election.

If I was the deep state, I would prosecute anyone that went against me. I would sue and prosecute anyone that spoke up about the fraudulent election. I would use my powers to shut down all your internet businesses and bankrupt you.

If I was the deep state, I would make everyone an example why you should never question a Democrat ever winning an election. I would imprison my foes. I would use my corrupt DAs and blackmail judges to destroy you. I would make sure all crimes I ever committed never happened. I would prosecute my biggest competition. I would make sure they could never run for office ever again.

If I was the deep state, I would convince everyone that Ukraine Nazis were good, and women are men.

If I was the deep state, I would own every politician that mattered.

If I was the deep state, I would push my pedophilia ambitions on you.

If I was the deep state, you’d question your sexual identity, but not the medical establishment.

If I was the deep state, you would fear to ever resist me.

If I was the deep state, you would wish I was really the devil.

If I was the deep state, I would say mission accomplished.

Frank Luntz wrote of it, “This is the most disturbing political ad I’ve seen this year.”

Defenders of the Trump campaign are overrunning social media, defending the lies and threats in this new ad and Trump’s previous, “If you fuck around with us…” statements. They claim that Joe Biden is reviving our economy with “socialism and communism,” and Jack Smith and the DOJ prosecuting Trump and the January 6th traitors is some sort of “deep state tyranny.”

There is no equivalence, moral or otherwise, between the work the administration is doing to punish seditionists and rebuild our economy from the wreckage of the Trump years and these sorts of naked appeals to fascism.

Truths and issues — however unpleasant — cannot be weighed on the same scale as lies, threats, and character assassination, explicit or implicit.

Lee Atwater, on his deathbed, realized that the “ends justify the means” technique of campaigning he had unleashed on behalf of Reagan and Bush was both immoral and harmful to American democracy.

“In 1988, fighting Dukakis, I said that I ‘would strip the bark off the little bastard’ and ‘make Willie Horton his [Dukakis’] running mate,’” Atwater said. “I am sorry for both statements: the first for its naked cruelty, the second because it makes me sound racist, which I am not. Mostly I am sorry for the way I thought of other people. Like a good general, I had treated everyone who wasn’t with me as against me.”

But Atwater’s spiritual and political protégés in the Trump campaign soldier on. He and his GOP allies in Congress are using Big Lies with startling regularity, and old Big Lies are being resurrected almost daily, most on social media, right-wing talk radio, podcasts, and TV.

The most alarming contrast in the coming election of 2024 is between those who will use any means to get and hold power, and those who are unwilling to engage in a Big Lie.

History tells us that, over the short term, the Big Lie usually works. Over the long term, though, the damage it does — both to those who use it, and to the society on which it is inflicted — is often incalculable.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Cruelty, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, History, Ignorance, Lies, Propaganda, Trump

Alan Singer: DeSantis’s Effort to Whitewash Florida’s African American History

By dianeravitch
July 27, 2023 //
8

Florida has a sordid history of racism but Governor DeSantis wants that history to be literally whitewashed so that no white students feels “uncomfortable” learning the truth. DeSantis opposes “woke” history that others call telling the truth.

Alan Singer of Hostra University explains here why it is so hard to sanitize Florida’s history of racism.

He writes:

On Twitter, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis posted that “In Florida, we require the truth about American history to be taught in our classrooms. We will not allow schools to twist history to align with an ideological agenda.”

As part of Florida’s campaign against undefined “wokeness,” the Department of Education banned the teaching of a new African American Studies Advanced Placement course. It rejected the course as lacking “educational value and historical accuracy” and for violating Florida law.

Last week, the Florida State Board of Education unanimously approved new standards for how Black history should be taught in the state. The standards are designed to define “anti-woke” education. In its response, the Florida Education Association (FEA) branded the standards “a disservice to Florida’s students” and “a big step backward for a state that has required teaching African American history since 1994.” Eleven Florida civil rights and education organizations including the FEA and the NAACP sent a letter to Florida Board of Education that it ignored. The letter charged that “these standards purposely omit or rewrite key historical facts about the Black experience.” Vice-President Kamala Harris called the Florida standards “an attempt to gaslight us.”

Two of the most controversial clarifications in the social studies standards include a statement in the 6-8 grade guidelines that “Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit” and that instruction in high school on events like the 1920 Ocoee Massacre and the 1923 Rosewood Massacre that occurred in Florida should include “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans,” acts of violence by African Americans that did not occur.

The major problems here are that Africans in Africa were agrarian people who had skills that were robbed from them when they were enslaved, and that enslaved Africans were considered property and any benefit from their skills accrued to their supposed owners. The Ocoee riots and murders occurred when African Americans attempted to vote in the Presidential election. In Rosewood, a mob of hundreds of whites murdered Black people they randomly caught and burned the town.

I found other statements and missing statements in the Florida social studies standards equally disturbing. The two places that refer to the Confederate states and the Civil War don’t mention which side Florida was on and which side African Americans fought for. Segregation is mentioned three times and the Klan is mentioned four times, but student do not learn what role they played in Florida.

But for me as a historian and a teacher the most disturbing part of the standards is the way slavery, and the slave trade are explained. It is intended to take responsibility for the trans-Atlantic slave trade and slavery off the European countries that conquered and settled the Americas. “Instruction includes how slavery was utilized in Asian, European and African cultures,” “how trading in slaves developed in African lands (e.g., Benin, Dahomey),” and “how slavery among indigenous peoples of the Americas was utilized prior to and after European colonization.” Students “[e]xamine the condition of slavery as it existed in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe prior to 1619.”

The lesson being taught in the Florida standards is that everybody had slavery and it was the same all over the world. But it wasn’t. Only the European colonies in the Americas and the new countries including the United States had race-based chattel slavery where enslaved people were no longer considered human, and their status was inherited by their children. Even after slavery ended as a result of the Civil War, Florida and the other states in the former Confederacy instituted laws to keep African Americans in virtual bondage and white Southerners enforced those laws through vigilante groups like the Klan.

Florida has many reasons to want to bury its sordid racial history. In the first have of the 19th century white settlers massacred and expelled Florida’s Native Americans.  Between 1870 and 1950, 311 African Americans were lynched in Florida. Three Florida counties, Lafayette, Taylor, and Baker were especially notorious. Florida had some of the strictest Jim Crow segregation laws. In 1881, it banned interracial marriage and in 1885 it mandated racially segregated schools. The interracial marriage ban was added to the Florida State Constitution in 1944. Starting in 1927, it was a criminal offense for a teacher to teach someone of a different race. At least 50 African Americans were murdered in Ocoee, Florida on November 2, 1920, after local Blacks attempted to vote. On January 1, 1923, white rioters stormed through the African American community of Rosewood, Florida, burning the town to the ground, killing six people, and driving the rest of the population into the forest and swamps to escape.  On August 27, 1960, peaceful Black students conducting a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth lunch counter in Jacksonville were attacked by a mob of over 200 whites armed with baseball bats and ax handles. No African American student was permitted to earn a bachelor’s degree from the formerly segregated University of Florida until 1965.

Solomon Northup was a free Black man living in New York State who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in Louisiana. Northup’s memoir, published after he escaped from slavery, was made into movies in 1984 and 2013. There is a scene in the 1984 PBS version of Solomon Northup’s Odyssey where Master Epps and friends are sitting on the veranda arguing with a Canadian carpenter named Bass about the legitimacy of slavery. Northup is near by trimming hedges and overhears the debate. Bass tells the story of a runaway who was captured and brought to court. The judge is puzzled why the enslaved African attempted to escape when he was fed and not beaten. The African replied “That job’s still there if you want to go ask for it.”

Maybe, with his Presidential campaign flailing, Ron DeSantis should apply for a job like that and get some skills.

Alan Singer, Director, Secondary Education Social Studies
Teaching Learning Technology
284 Hagedorn Hall / 119 Hofstra University / Hempstead, NY 11549
(P) 516-463-5853 (F) 516-463-6196

Blogs, tweets, essays, interviews, and e-blasts present my views and not those of Hofstra University.

“Nations reel and stagger on their way; they make hideous mistakes; they commit frightful wrongs; they do great and beautiful things. And shall we not best guide humanity by telling the truth about all this, so far as the truth is ascertainable?” W.E.B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction in America (1935)

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Cruelty, DeSantis, Evil, Extremism, Florida, Fraud, History, Injustice, Lies, Racism

D.C. Mayor Proclaims “Whistleblower Day” to Honor Those Fired for Telling the Truth

By dianeravitch
July 26, 2023 //
31

Whistleblower Marlon Ray was fired for complaining about lucrative contracts awarded by DC Public Schools to the Relay Graduate School of Education, which is the educational equivalent of a three-dollar bill. Ray was fired along with elementary school principal Dr. Carolyn Jackson-King, who refused to implement Relay’s “no-excuses” model in her school. She said it was racist. They are suing the district.

Yet Marlon Ray, the whistleblower, who is suing the city, somehow persuaded Mayor Muriel Bowser to proclaim July 30 as Whistleblower Appreciation Day, honoring people she fired! Including Marlon Ray.

On July 18, Marlon Ray, a DC Public School (DCPS) whistleblower, secured a Proclamation from D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser designating July 30, 2023 as Whistleblower Appreciation Day.

The proclamation celebrates the origins of whistleblower law in the United States, commends whistleblowers who are often penalized for doing the right thing, and encourages D.C. government employees to know their rights to blow the whistle.

Ray’s case is a perfect example of why these efforts are so important. Fired alongside Ray was Carolyn Jackson-King, former principal of Lawrence E. Boone Elementary, who reported and protested the use of a teacher training program that discriminated against Black students. Ray and Principal Jackson-King, known to the community as “Dr. J-K,” had been highly respected administrators at Boone. Both are now suing DCPS for retaliation.

In 2017, DCPS contracted Relay Graduate School of Education to conduct staff training. Contrary to what the name implies, Relay is not in fact a graduate school. As Education historian Diane Ravitch explained, “[Relay] has no scholars, no researchers, no faculty other than charter teachers. It is a trade school for teaching tricks of test-taking and how to control black and brown children and teach them to obey orders without questioning.”

Relay supervised training and evaluation with 20 DCPS schools – mostly from schools in majority Black and low-income Wards 7 and 8. Jackson-King felt that Relay training contributed to the school-to-prison pipeline by militarizing schools and trying to strip educators and students of their agency.

“Kids have to sit a certain way, they have to look a certain way,” Jackson-King told NPR WAMU 88.5. “They cannot be who they are…Those are all the ways they teach you in prison — you have to walk in a straight line, hands behind your back, eyes forward…I just feel they attempted to control Black bodies.”

Another faculty member at Boone commented on the training asking, “Why should the Black and brown children be subjected to move a certain way or respond to certain commands? They’re not dogs. They’re kids.”

Early in the 2019-2020 school year, Jackson-King shared her concerns with Mary Ann Stinson, an instructional superintendent who began overseeing Boone in 2019. At the end of that year, Jackson-King received her lowest evaluation score in 30 years of teaching: a 2.75/4. She tried to appeal the score, but Stinson informed her that the score meant she would not be re-appointed as principal. She was fired.

Marlon Ray, a 20+ year DCPS employee and the former director of strategy and logistics at Boone, was one of the community members involved in protests after Jackson-King’s termination. He had also filed previous whistleblower complaints, including for the overpayment of Relay Training.

Ray was first retaliated against by Jackson-King’s replacement principal, who reprimanded him for participating in the peaceful protests. He became the only school employee required to work five full days a week in person at the height of the COVID-19 outbreak. Ultimately, Ray was let go in 2021 after being told his position was terminated for budgetary reasons. However, DCPS made a job posting to fill the same position just two months later.

In February 2022, Ray and Jackson-King filed suit against DCPS and the District of Columbia, alleging that DCPS violated the Whistleblower Protection Act and the D.C. Human Rights Act. They seek reinstatement of their jobs.

Both Ray and Jackson-King are prime examples of whistleblowers who risked their jobs in order to do their job correctly. These local heroes stood up for students who were subject to unjust and racist education policy, and who may not have had the information or the power to stand up for themselves.

This makes Mayor Bowser’s recognition of Whistleblower Appreciation Day all the more meaningful. Siri Nelson, Executive Director of the National Whistleblower Center (NWC), who received the mayor’s proclamation alongside Mr. Ray said that “local whistleblowers are critical to increasing governmental recognition of Whistleblower Appreciation Day.”

NWC hopes that the day will help government agencies – local and federal – change the culture of whistleblowing. Whistleblowers support government agencies in accomplishing their mission more effectively and holding them accountable to their own policies. It is therefore vital that they are protected and celebrated.

“This proclamation is the second of its kind,” Nelson noted. “Marlon Ray follows Jackie Garrick who received a similar proclamation from Florida’s Escambia County in 2022. NWC advocates for the permanent federal recognition of National Whistleblower Day and these proclamations show that change is within reach. I thank Marlon for taking this incredible action and look forward to celebrating him and Muriel Bowser’s proclamation on July 27th.”

Marlon Ray will speak at NWC’s National Whistleblower Day event on Capitol Hill on July 27, 2023. Those wishing to attend the in-person event can RSVP here: https://www.whistleblowers.org/national-whistleblower-day

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Cruelty, District of Columbia, Education Industry, Ethics, Evil, Racism, Resistance

Texas: Biden Administration Sues Gov. Abbott Over His Razor Wire Blockade of Rio Grande

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2023 //
56

Governor Greg Abbott deployed 1,000 feet of buoys and razor wire on the border with Mexico to deter immigrants. Many migrants have been seriously injured by the razor wire, but Governor Abbott feels that as a Christian, it’s right to inflict maximum pain on immigrants from Mexico. The Biden administration is suing Abbott because he did not ask for approval before obstructing an international border.

The U.S. Justice Department sued Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday after he refused to remove a wall of buoys in the Rio Grande.

The move was expected after Abbott made clear to President Joe Biden in a letter earlier in the day that he would not remove the barriers and blamed the White House for making him have to take action on the border.

“The fact is, if you would just enforce the immigration laws Congress already has on the books, America would not be suffering from your record-breaking level of illegal immigration,” the Republican wrote.

The U.S. Justice Department had given Abbott until Monday to commit to removing the buoy barrier that they say he has illegally deployed into the river to block migrants. The agency filed the civil lawsuit with the U.S. District Court in the Western District of Texas.

The Justice Department says Abbott violated the federal Rivers and Harbors Act, which requires the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ approval before any barriers can be placed in any navigable water in the United States. Abbott and the Texas Department of Public Safety, which has overseen the project, did not get prior approval from the Army Corps of Engineers.

“This floating barrier poses a risk to navigation, as well as public safety, in the Rio Grande River, and it presents humanitarian concerns,” Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said in a statement announcing the suit. “Additionally, the presence of the floating barrier has prompted diplomatic protests by Mexico and risks damaging U.S. foreign policy.”

In his letter Monday, Abbott denied that anything Texas has done has violated the Rivers and Harbors Act. And the governor argued that the buoy barrier the state is putting in the river is deterring migrants from entering the Rio Grande.

The threat of legal action comes after a Texas DPS officer sent emails to a supervisor warning of injuries that Abbott’s Operation Lone Star has caused migrants. He detailed finding a pregnant woman having a miscarriage tangled in the state’s razor wire, doubled over in pain. He also described a 4-year-old who girl passed out from heat exhaustion after she tried to go through the razor wire and was pushed back by Texas National Guard soldiers, and a teenager who broke his leg trying to navigate the water around the wire and had to be carried by his father….

Customs and Border Protection has warned internally that Abbott’s use of concertina wire is making it harder to reach at-risk migrants and increasing the risk of drownings. An administration official said Monday that agents are now having to cut through multiple layers of razor wire to respond to medical emergencies. They said that in one week alone, Border Patrol agents reported encountering dozens of migrants with injuries, including broken limbs.

“President Biden’s plan to manage the border through deterrence, enforcement, and diplomacy after the Title 42 public health order lifted has led to the lowest levels of unlawful border crossings in over two years,” said Abdullah Hasan, White House assistant press secretary. “Gov. Abbott’s dangerous and unlawful actions are undermining that effective plan and making it hard for the men and women of Border Patrol to do their jobs of securing the border. The governor’s actions are cruel and putting both migrants and border agents in danger.”

Categories Cruelty, Ethics, Evil, Texas

Heather Cox Richardson: Florida’s Distorted Standards for African American Studies

By dianeravitch
July 23, 2023 //
78

The people in Florida who wrote the standards for African American studies had a challenge: how to write them to satisfy Governor DeSantis’ hatred for anything that speaks about racism and injustice. Admitting that whites who enslaved Blacks were racist might make whites today feel “uncomfortable” and would be “woke.” So how is it possible to paper over the brutality and inhumanity of slavery?

Heather Cox Richardson explains how they did it.

The Florida Board of Education approved new state social studies standards on Wednesday, including standards for African American history, civics and government, American history, and economics. Critics immediately called out the middle school instruction in African American history that includes “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” (p. 6). They noted that describing enslavement as offering personal benefits to enslaved people is outrageous.

But that specific piece of instruction in the 216-page document is only a part of a much larger political project.

Taken as a whole, the Florida social studies curriculum describes a world in which the white male Founders of the United States embraced ideals of liberty and equality—ideals it falsely attributes primarily to Christianity rather than the Enlightenment—and indicates the country’s leaders never faltered from those ideals. Students will, the guidelines say, learn “how the principles contained in foundational documents contributed to the expansion of civil rights and liberties over time” (p. 148) and “analyze how liberty and economic freedom generate broad-based opportunity and prosperity in the United States” (p. 154).

The new guidelines reject the idea that human enslavement belied American principles; to the contrary, they note, enslavement was common around the globe, and they credit white abolitionists in the United States with ending it (although in reality the U.S. was actually a late holdout). Florida students should learn to base the history of U.S. enslavement in “Afro-Eurasian trade routes” and should be instructed in “how slavery was utilized in Asian, European, and African cultures,” as well as how European explorers discovered “systematic slave trading in Africa.” Then the students move on to compare “indentured servants of European and African extraction” (p. 70) before learning about overwhelmingly white abolitionist movements to end the system.

In this account, once slavery arrived in the U.S., it was much like any other kind of service work: slaves performed “various duties and trades…(agricultural work, painting, carpentry, tailoring, domestic service, blacksmithing, transportation).” (p. 6) (This is where the sentence about personal benefit comes in.) And in the end, it was white reformers who ended it.

This information lies by omission and lack of context. The idea of Black Americans who “developed skills” thanks to enslavement, for example, erases at the most basic level that the history of cattle farming, river navigation, rice and indigo cultivation, southern architecture, music, and so on in this country depended on the skills and traditions of African people.

Lack of context papers over that while African tribes did practice enslavement, for example, it was an entirely different system from the hereditary and unequal one that developed in the U.S. Black enslavement was not the same as indentured servitude except perhaps in the earliest years of the Chesapeake settlements when both were brutal—historians argue about this— and Indigenous enslavement was distinct from servitude from the very beginning of European contact. Some enslaved Americans did in fact work in the trades, but far more worked in the fields (and suggesting that enslavement was a sort of training program is, indeed, outrageous). And not just white abolitionists but also Black abolitionists and revolutionaries helped to end enslavement.

Taken together, this curriculum presents human enslavement as simply one of a number of labor systems, a system that does not, in this telling, involve racism or violence.

Indeed, racism is presented only as “the ramifications of prejudice, racism, and stereotyping on individual freedoms.” This is the language of right-wing protesters who say acknowledging white violence against others hurts their children, and racial violence is presented here as coming from both Black and white Americans, a trope straight out of accounts of white supremacists during Reconstruction (p. 17). To the degree Black Americans faced racial restrictions in that era, Chinese Americans and Japanese Americans did, too (pp. 117–118).

It’s hard to see how the extraordinary violence of Reconstruction, especially, fits into this whitewashed version of U.S. history, but the answer is that it doesn’t. In a single entry an instructor is called to: “Explain and evaluate the policies, practices, and consequences of Reconstruction (presidential and congressional reconstruction, Johnson’s impeachment, Civil Rights Act of 1866, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, opposition of Southern whites to Reconstruction, accomplishments and failures of Radical Reconstruction, presidential election of 1876, end of Reconstruction, rise of Jim Crow laws, rise of Ku Klux Klan)” (p. 104).

That’s quite a tall order.

But that’s not the end of Reconstruction in the curriculum. Another unit calls for students to “distinguish the freedoms guaranteed to African Americans and other groups with the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution…. Assess how Jim Crow Laws influenced life for African Americans and other racial/ethnic minority groups…. Compare the effects of the Black Codes…on freed people, and analyze the sharecropping system and debt peonage as practiced in the United States…. Review the Native American experience” (pp. 116–117).

Apparently, Reconstruction was not a period that singled out the Black population, and in any case, Reconstruction was quick and successful. White Floridians promptly extended rights to Black people: another learning outcome calls for students to “explain how the 1868 Florida Constitution conformed with the Reconstruction Era amendments to the U.S. Constitution (e.g., citizenship, equal protection, suffrage)” (p. 109).

All in all, racism didn’t matter to U.S. history, apparently, because “different groups of people ([for example] African Americans, immigrants, Native Americans, women) had their civil rights expanded through legislative action…executive action…and the courts.”

The use of passive voice in that passage identifies how the standards replace our dynamic and powerful history with political fantasy. In this telling, centuries of civil rights demands and ceaseless activism of committed people disappear. Marginalized Americans did not work to expand their own rights; those rights “were expanded.” The actors, presumably the white men who changed oppressive laws, are offstage.

And that is the fundamental story of this curriculum: nonwhite Americans and women “contribute” to a country established and controlled by white men, but they do not shape it themselves.

One senses the hand of advisors from Hillsdale College in this prettified version of U.S. history.

To read the standards, open the link and see the footnote.

Categories Censorship, Corruption, Cruelty, Curriculum, DeSantis, Ethics, Evil, Failure, Florida, History

Jennifer Rubin: Florida Is the State Where Kindness and Decency Go to Die

By dianeravitch
July 19, 2023 //
47

Jennifer Rubin is a super-smart journalist-lawyer who became a regular columnist for The Washington Post, where she was supposed to express conservative views. However, the election of Trump changed her political outlook. Here, she writes about how Ron DeSantis’ hate policies are hurting the state of Florida.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and his obedient Republican legislature have made bullying and attacking the vulnerable the hallmarks of their governance. Whether it is “don’t say gay” legislation (and retribution against Disney for supporting inclusion), denying medical care to transgender youths, muzzling teachers and professors who address systemic racism in the United States, firing a county prosecutor who dared object to DeSantis’s refusal to protect women’s bodily autonomy, or shipping unwary immigrants to other states, Florida has become not where “woke” died but rather where empathy, decency and kindness go to die.


DeSantis’s stunts frequently fail in court and cost taxpayers money. But his MAGA war on diversity and tolerance might be negatively impacting the state in other ways.


DeSantis likes to brag that more people are moving to Florida than ever. Not so fast. “An estimated 674,740 people reported that their permanent address changed from Florida to another state in 2021. That’s more than any other state, including New York or California, the two states that have received the most attention for outbound migration during the pandemic,” according to the American Community Survey released in June tracking state-by-state migration.

Moreover, Florida already is one of the states with the oldest average populations, and the MAGA culture wars risk alienating young people and the diverse workforce the state needs. In February, USA Today reported, “Florida may be the most moved to state in the country, but not when it comes to Gen Z. They are the only generation that chose to exit Florida, with an outflux of 8,000 young adults, while every other generation moved in.”

In addition, evidence points to a brain drain from Florida universities and colleges, although data is hard to come by. Records show “an upward tick in staff departures at some of Florida’s largest universities. … Across the State University System, the murmurs are getting louder: Some Florida schools are having trouble filling positions,” the Orlando Sentinel reported. “At the University of Florida, 1,087 employees resigned in 2022 — the only time in the last five years that the number exceeded 1,000.” Record numbers of faculty are not returning to University of Central Florida, Florida State University and the University of South Florida. This is hardly surprising, given DeSantis’s assault on academic independence and his suggestion that students go out of state if they want to study topics such as African American studies.

In addition, some businesses might be getting cold feet about spending convention dollars in the Sunshine State. The Sun Sentinel reported, “Broward County has lost more than a half-dozen conventions as their organizers cite the divisive political climate as their reason to stay out of Florida.” If the trend continues, the significant share of jobs and state revenue attributable to convention business could shrink. DeSantis and his supporters counter that tourism is still booming. They insist low taxes will continue to attract the wealthy and businesses.

There is little sign that the rest of the country is enamored of censorship, book bans or anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment. The question remains whether DeSantis’s act wears thin at home.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bigotry, Character, Civil Rights, Cruelty, Democracy, DeSantis, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Florida, Higher Education, History, Injustice

Trump Plans to Increase Power of the President If Re-Elected

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2023 //
54

The New York Times describes a frightening plan developed by Donald Trump’s administration-in-waiting to consolidate power in the President’s hands. The plan would give the President direct control of independent agencies. Trump believes he didn’t accomplish his goals because the “deep state” restrained him.

Donald J. Trump and his allies are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government if voters return him to the White House in 2025, reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands.

Their plans to centralize more power in the Oval Office stretch far beyond the former president’s recent remarks that he would order a criminal investigation into his political rival, President Biden, signaling his intent to end the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence from White House political control.

Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.

Mr. Trump intends to bring independent agencies — like the Federal Communications Commission, which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies, and the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces various antitrust and other consumer protection rules against businesses — under direct presidential control.

In addition, every federal employee would serve at the pleasure of the President.

He intends to strip employment protectionsfrom tens of thousands of career civil servants, making it easier to replace them if they are deemed obstacles to his agenda. And he plans to scour the intelligence agencies, the State Department and the defense bureaucracies to remove officials he has vilified as “the sick political class that hates our country…”

Some elements of the plans had been floated when Mr. Trump was in office but were impeded by internal concerns that they would be unworkable and could lead to setbacks. And for some veterans of Mr. Trump’s turbulent White House who came to question his fitness for leadership, the prospect of removing guardrails and centralizing even greater power over government directly in his hands sounded like a recipe for mayhem.

“It would be chaotic,” said John F. Kelly, Mr. Trump’s second White House chief of staff. “It just simply would be chaotic, because he’d continually be trying to exceed his authority but the sycophants would go along with it. It would be a nonstop gunfight with the Congress and the courts.”

The agenda being pursued has deep roots in the decades-long effort by conservative legal thinkers to undercut what has become known as the administrative state — agencies that enact regulations aimed at keeping the air and water clean and food, drugs and consumer products safe, but that cut into business profits.

Categories Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Trump

Florida: Veterans Drop Out of DeSantis’ State Guard After It Turns Militaristic

By dianeravitch
July 15, 2023 //
23

The Miami Herald reported that military veterans are dropping out of the Florida State Guard after learning that they were preparing for military work. Given DeSantis’ authoritarian instincts, many critics were concerned that he might use it for illegitimate purposes.

When the first recruiting class of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ new Florida State Guard showed up for training last month, they had varied experiences and expectations.

Over 30 days in June, teenagers out of high school and retired military veterans came to Camp Blanding, the National Guard base near Jacksonville.

Many were told they would volunteer for a revived State Guard with a non-military mission: help Floridians in times of need or disaster.

Instead, the state’s National Guard trained the volunteers for combat. Khakis and polos were replaced by camouflaged uniforms. Volunteers assured they could keep their facial hair were ordered to shave. And they were drilled on how to rappel with ropes, navigate through the woods and respond to incidents under military command.

When DeSantis announced in 2021 he wanted to revive the long-dormant State Guard, he vowed it would help Floridians during emergencies. But in the year since its launch, key personnel and a defined mission remain elusive. The state is looking for the program’s third leader in eight months. According to records reviewed by the Herald/Times and interviews with program volunteers, a number of recruits quit after the first training class last month because they feared it was becoming too militaristic.

Weeks into that inaugural June training, one volunteer, a disabled retired Marine Corps captain, called the local sheriff’s office to report he was battered by Florida National Guard instructors when they forcibly shoved him into a van after he questioned the program and its leadership…

In a statement, Haas said the State Guard was a “military organization” that will be used not just for emergencies but for “aiding law enforcement with riots and illegal immigration.”

“We are aware that some trainees who were removed are dissatisfied,” Haas said. “This is to be expected with any course that demands rigor and discipline.”

Three former members told the Herald/Times the program veered from its original mission.

“The program got hijacked and turned into something that we were trying to stay away from: a militia,” said Brian Newhouse, a retired 20-year Navy veteran who was chosen to lead one of the State Guard’s three divisions. The original leadership team envisioned a disaster response team of veterans and civilians with a variety of practical skills, according to Newhouse. Two other former military veterans, who asked not to be named for fear of potential consequences and later quit, expressed similar concerns over a change in the State Guard’s mission.

The Florida legislature gave DeSantis $10 million to hire and train 400 members of the state guard. Unlike the National Guard, which can be called up for federal duties, the state guard answers only to the governor.

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article277245833.html#storylink=cpy

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article277245833.html#storylink=cpy

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article277245833.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Accountability, Democracy, DeSantis, Ethics, Evil, Florida, Hoax

John Thompson: A Warning about Domestic Terrorism

By dianeravitch
July 10, 2023 //
29

John Thompson, retired teacher and historian, reviews a new book by Jeffrey Toobin about the connection between the horrific Oklahoma City bombing of 1993 and the January 6 insurrection.

Thompson writes:

Jeffrey Toobin’s Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism has been published just in time. Based on the evidence in 635 boxes of case files, and interviews with more than 100 participants, Toobin draws a “direct line” between the Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people, and the January 6 insurrection. Moreover, he shows how digital technology has made right-wing extremism more dangerous.”

Dog whistle heard ’round the world. When Donald J. Trump decided to kick off his latest presidential campaign on March 25 with a rally at Waco, Texas, he was issuing a call to the far-right fringe that was earsplitting, even by his own standards. It wasn’t simply the location but also the timing: a month shy of the 30th anniversary of April 19, 1993 — a date that marked the fiery, deadly end of the 51-day standoff between the F.B.I. and David Koresh at his Branch Davidian compound near Waco.

Toobin provides a balanced analysis of both – why McVeigh was not a “lone wolf,” and how conspiracy theories went overboard. But, he was influenced by multiple propaganda networks and violent insurrectionists who even preceded the Ruby Ridge violence. McVeigh “would talk about his belief that an ‘Army’ of fellow believers was somewhere out there, but he admitted that he never figured out how to reach them.”

Toobin had reported on the McVeigh prosecution for The New Yorker, and now understands that he and other journalists were too focused on “the trail of evidence presented in the courtroom,” instead of stepping back to grasp McVeigh’s “place in the broader slipstream of American history.” Today, he warns of the dangers of not coming to grips with the great threats that have grown worse since then.

Toobin gives credit to President Bill Clinton who quickly understood that, “This was domestic, homegrown, the militias. … I know these people. I’ve been fighting them all my life.” However, Merrick Garland, now the Attorney General, led a prosecution that “actively discouraged the idea that McVeigh and Nichols represented something broader — and more enduring — than just their own malevolent behavior.” Toobin now believes, “This was a dangerously misleading impression.”

After interviewing Garland in 2023, Toobin concluded:

Garland appears to see the courtroom — and the law — as an almost sacred refuge from the tumult of modern life. The law, he believes, must be protected from not just the vulgarities of show business but also the passions of politics. This is why he has proceeded with such caution in the Trump investigation and especially why he has said so little about it in public.

There is much to be commended in this kind of reticence, because it projects fairness and even-handedness. But there is a cost, too, in Mr. Garland’s approach. As attorney general, Mr. Garland is responsible not just for bringing cases but also for warning the public of ongoing threats, including from political actors like Mr. Trump and his allies. The question is whether Mr. Garland’s silence protects the law but also misses the chance to defend democracy.

Today, Toobin says that criticism of Garland for the slow pace of the investigation of Jan. 6 “seems unfair, or at least premature.” But, he concludes, “it is fair to question why Mr. Garland continues to be a quiet, if not silent, public voice about the Trump investigation.”

As the Times’ Szalai notes, when bringing this history together, “It’s almost as if Toobin were addressing his book to Garland, as a cautionary tale.” Homegrown provides reminders of how Rep. Newt Gingrich told Republicans to describe Democrats as “sick, pathetic, traitors, radical and corrupt,” while describing himself as standing “between us and Auschwitz.” Rush Limbaugh, who McVeigh followed, said the “second violent American revolution” was “just about … a quarter of an inch” away. Toobin recalls book titles such as Sean Hannity’s Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism and Liberalism, and Ann Coulter’s Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism.

Now, when the Department of Homeland Security finds social media being used in 90% of US extremist plots, Toobin writes: “More than any other reason the internet accounts for the difference between McVeigh’s lonely crusade and the thousands who stormed the Capitol on January 6.”

Oklahomans are likely to be especially interested in two other aspects of Homegrown. Toobin takes a deep dive into McVeigh’s lead attorney Stephen Jones, as well as Jones’ conflicts with the rest of his defense team and McVeigh. The $20 million federally funded defense budget paid for Jones’ continuous off-the-record discussions with journalists and his trips around the world, ostensibly to find evidence of conspiracies.

Also, Toobin notes that state trooper Charles J. Hanger arrested McVeigh for carrying a handgun without a permit as he drove away from the bombing. But, “If Hanger had stopped McVeigh under the new law,” Toobin writes, “he could not have arrested him. … All Hanger could have done was give McVeigh a ticket.”

Getting back to the key lesson that Americans should not ignore, right-wing extremists have launched a “widespread wave of violence.” Toobin shows that today’s insurrectionists are McVeigh’s “ideological successors.” These threats to democracy are driven by:

The obsession with gun rights; the perceived approval of the Founding Fathers; and the belief in the value and power of violence. These feelings were replicated, with extraordinary precision, in the rioters on January 6 as well as many of the other right-wing extremists who have flourished in the quarter century since the bombing.

Given the evidence against Trump, we will likely have to deal with extremists’ violence as the prosecution proceeds. I sure hope A.G. Garland will have read Homeland if or when he has to explain the interconnected roots of rightwing violence.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Evil, Extremism, Fascism

Heather Cox Richardson: Moms for Liberty Signals the GOP’s Dumb Extremism

By dianeravitch
July 8, 2023 //
106

Heather Cox Richardson writes about the recent Moms for Liberty convention in Philadelphia, which drew the leading Republican presidential candidates. An unusual feat for an organization founded only two years ago. By contrast, she says, there is a forward movement across the nation, spurred by Biden’s successful economic policies. Will the public fall for fear or vote for progress? To read the footnotes, open the link.

She writes:

For more than a week now, I have intended to write a deep dive into the right-wing Moms for Liberty group that held their “Joyful Warriors National Summit” in Philadelphia last week, only to have one thing or another that seemed more important push it off another day. This morning it hit me that maybe that’s the story: that the reactionary right that has taken so much of our oxygen for the past year is losing ground to the country’s new forward movement.

Today the jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics pushed ahead of them by showing that the U.S. economy added 209,000 jobs in June. The rate of job growth is slowing but still strong, although the economy showed that the Black unemployment rate, which had been at an all-time low, climbed from 4.7% to 6%. Since Black workers historically are the first to lose their jobs, this is likely a signal that the job market is cooling, which should continue to slow inflation.

In the Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin called out the media outlets so focused on the idea that Biden would mismanage the economy and that recession was imminent that they have ignored “29 consecutive months of job growth, inflation steadily declining, durable goods having been up for three consecutive months, 35,000 new infrastructure projects, an extended period in which real wages exceeded inflation and outsize gains for lower wage-earners.” As reporters focused on the horse-race aspect of politics and how voters “felt” about issues, she noted, “[w]e have seen far too little coverage of the economic transformation in little towns, rural areas and aging metro centers brought about by new investment in plants, infrastructure projects and green energy related to the Chips Act.”

Also of note is that today is Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s first day of talks with top Chinese officials in Beijing, where she will also talk to U.S. business leaders. At stake is the Biden administration’s focus on U.S. national security, which includes both limiting China’s access to U.S. technology that has military applications and bringing supply chains home. China interprets these new limitations as an attempt to hurt its economy. Yellen is in Beijing to emphasize that the U.S. hopes to maintain healthy trade with China but, she told Chinese Premier Li Qiang, “The United States will, in certain circumstances, need to pursue targeted actions to protect its national security.”

Meanwhile, China’s faltering economy has led to new rules that exclude foreign companies, leading U.S. businesses to reconsider investments there. Chinese leaders have tried to reassure foreign business leaders that they are welcome in China, while Yellen told U.S business leaders: “I have made clear that the United States does not seek a wholesale separation of our economies. We seek to diversify, not to decouple. A decoupling of the world’s two largest economies would be destabilizing for the global economy, and it would be virtually impossible to undertake.”

The success of Biden’s policies both at home and abroad has pushed the Republican Party into an existential crisis, and that’s where Moms for Liberty fits in. Since the years of the Reagan administration, the Movement Conservatives who wanted to destroy the New Deal state recognized that they only way they could win voters to slash taxes for the wealthy and cut back popular social problems was by whipping up social issues to convince voters that Black Americans, or people of color, or feminists, wanted a handout from the government, undermining America by ushering in “socialism.” The forty years from 1981 to 2021 moved wealth upward dramatically and hollowed out the middle class, creating a disaffected population ripe for an authoritarian figure who promised to return that population to upward mobility by taking revenge on those they now saw as their enemies.

In the past two years, according to a recent working paper by economists David Autor, Arindrajit Dube, and Annie McGrew, Biden’s policies have wiped out a quarter of the inequality built in the previous forty. And at the same time that Biden’s resurrection of the liberal consensus of the years from 1933 to 1980 is illustrating that the economic problems in the country were the fault of Republican policies rather than of marginalized people, the extremism of those angry Republican footsoldiers is revealing that they are not the centrist Americans they have claimed to be.

Moms for Liberty, which bills itself as a group protecting children, organized in 2021 to protest mask mandates in schools, then graduated on to crusade against the teaching of “critical race theory.” That, right there, was a giveaway because that panic was created by then-journalist Christopher Rufo, who has emerged as a leader of the U.S. attack on democracy.

Rufo embraces the illiberal democracy, or Christian democracy, of Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, saying: “It’s time to clean house in America: remove the attorney general, lay siege to the universities, abolish the teachers’ unions, and overturn the school boards.” Radical right activists like Rufo believe they must capture the central institutions of the U.S. and get rid of the tenets of democracy—individual rights, academic freedom, free markets, separation of church and state, equality before the law—in order to save the country.

Because those central democratic values are taught in schools, the far right has focused on attacking schools from kindergartens to universities with the argument that they are places of “liberal indoctrination.” As a Moms for Liberty chapter in Indiana put on its first newspaper: “He alone, who OWNS the youth, GAINS the future.” While this quotation is often used by right-wing Christian groups to warn of what they claim liberal groups do, it is attributed to German dictator Adolf Hitler. Using it boomeranged on the Moms for Liberty group not least because it coincided with the popular “Shiny Happy People” documentary about the far-right religious Duggar family that showed the “grooming” and exploitation of children in that brand of evangelicalism.

Moms for Liberty have pushed for banning books that refer to any aspect of modern democracy they find objectionable, focusing primarily on those with LGBTQ+ content or embrace of minority rights. During the first half of the 2022–2023 school year, PEN America, which advocates for literature, found that 874 unique titles had been challenged, up 28% from the previous six months. The bans were mostly in Texas, Florida, Missouri, Utah, and South Carolina. A study by the Washington Post found that two thirds of book challenges came from individuals who filed 10 or more complaints, with the filers often affiliated with Moms for Liberty or similar groups. And in their quest to make education align with their ideology, the Moms for Liberty have joined forces with far-right extremist groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, sovereign citizens groups, and so on, pushing them even further to the right.

Although the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled Moms for Liberty an “extremist group” that spreads “messages of anti-inclusion and hate,” the group appeared to offer to the Republican Party inroads into the all-important “suburban woman” vote, which party leaders interpret as white women (although in fact the 2020 census shows that suburbs are increasingly diverse—in 1990, about 20% of people living in the suburbs were people of color; in 2020 it was 45%).

When Moms for Liberty convened in Philadelphia last week, five candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, including Trump, showed up. Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley told them: “When they mentioned that this was a terrorist organization, I said, ‘Well then, count me as a mom for liberty because that’s what I am.”

But here’s the crisis for the Republican Party: Leaders who wanted tax cuts and cuts to social programs relied on courting voters with cultural issues, suggesting that their coalition was protecting the United States from radicalism.

But the Republican embrace of Moms for Liberty illustrates dramatically and to a wide audience how radical the party itself has become, threatening to turn away all but its extremist base. A strong majority of Americans oppose book banning: about two thirds of the general population and even 51% of Republicans oppose it, recognizing that it echoes the rise of authoritarians.

As historian Nicole Hemmer points out today for CNN, Moms for Liberty are indeed a new version of “a broader and longstanding reactionary movement centered on restoring traditional hierarchies of race, gender and sexuality” that in the U.S. included the women of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s and segregationists who organized as “Restore Our Alienated Rights” (ROAR) in the 1970s. Hemmer observes: “The book bans, the curricula battles, the efforts to fire teachers and disrupt school board meetings—little here is new.”

In the past, a democratic coalition has come together to reject such extremism. If it does so again, the Republican marriage of elites to street fighters will crumble, leaving room for the country to rebuild the relationship between citizens and the government. When a similar realignment happened in the 1930s under Democratic president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Republican Party had little choice but to follow.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fake, Fascism, Republicans
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