The Right's Assault on Facts, Data, and Reality

[Traveler]

Jun 11, 2021 20:04:33 GMT goldenvalley said:

Jun 11, 2021 18:56:26 GMT Traveler said:

Fact of the matter is that China covered up. Repeatedly, and to their own people as well. Chinese New Year's  travel and that huge dinner in Wuhan should never have occurred. They already knew that is person to person.  And then they destroyed potentially exculpatory/damning evidence. That is the real story. Which is well worth holding their feet to fire. This thread also belongs in the bug thread.

Somehow all this is used to distract from Trump Administration's handling of the situation in this country.  Why is it that people search diligently for someone/thing to blame but then ignore everything else related to the situation?  Assessing blame doesn't fix the here and now.

US ineptitude is irrelevant to the discussion at hand.  For that matter, I cannot think of any country beside Taiwan, Vietnam, AU and NZ that ended up doing better.   In spite of the idiot's policies.  For sure those made it worse for us, but failure seems to have the modus operandi most everywhere. I blame the maggots more than their leader.  

[LFC]

Jun 12, 2021 14:00:15 GMT Traveler said:

Read that Vanity Fair article I just posted on the actual thread.  The Chinese knew by January 3 that is was human to human.  Which makes their decisions for the next few weeks look really stupid.  As professor LFC notes, chances are they were just inept (as our administration was) in not taking responsible actions at the time.  

Secrecy to save face is something that China and Trump have in common.

[LFC]

A lawmaker in Alabama wants to ban "critical race theory" but has no idea what it actually is. And if that's not bad enough when asked about it he really went off the rails. His final retreat is pure Faux News.

There’s been a lot of talk about critical race theory lately, and I’ve felt at a loss. I’ve heard so many conflicting things about critical race theory, I’ve gotten more and more confused.

So I did what middle-aged white men are prone to do — I asked another middle-aged white man. But not just any. I called an Alabama lawmaker, state Rep. Chris Pringle, R-Mobile, who wants to make it illegal to teach critical race theory in Alabama.

The 2021 Alabama legislative session ended last month, but Pringle is already primed for the next one. He recently pre-filed a bill — almost eight months before the next session is scheduled to start — and he’s been talking it up on the radio.

So what does his bill say?

“It’s pretty simple,” Pringle said. “All it says is you can’t teach critical race theory in K-12 or higher education in the state of Alabama.”

That is a short bill, if not a simple one. But it didn’t answer my question: What is this critical race theory educators would be forbidden to teach? Pringle has seen enough legislation to understand the law requires specificity. Many bills begin by laying out their legal definitions. How would his bill define critical race theory?

“It basically teaches that certain children are inherently bad people because of the color of their skin, period,” Pringle said.

That sounded very serious, indeed. Nazi-like, even. So I asked Pringle if there were any critical race theorists he could point to who have been spreading such toxic garbage?

“Yeah, uh, well — I can assure you — I’ll have to read a lot more,” he said.

I began to get the feeling that Pringle didn’t know as much about critical race theory as I had hoped. Were there other examples he could give me where critical race theory was being put into practice?

“These people, when they were doing the training programs — and the government — if you didn’t buy into what they taught you a hundred percent, they sent you away to a reeducation camp,” Pringle said.

Pringle was a little difficult to follow but this sounded serious. These people — whoever they were— sounded terrifying, and if there were reeducation camps operating in America, that would be big news someone like me should get to the bottom of. I asked Pringle, who were these people?

Pringle is a Realtor, a homebuilder and general contractor and he dug through what he called his “executive suite” (the cab of his pickup truck) looking for an article he’d read. After a few moments of silence, he began to speak again, this time a bit haltingly.

“Here’s an — it doesn’t say who it was, it just says a government that held these — these training sessions …”

Pringle trailed off and I told him that, if he liked, he could send me a link to the article, but then he began to speak again.

“The white male executives are sent to a three-day re-education camp, where they were told that their white male culture wasn’t their —” he trailed off again.

I was worried that we’d lost our connection. These sorts of conversations sometimes end abruptly, but Pringle was still on the line and after a little more hemming and hawing he retreated to a common safe-space of politicians who’ve crawled too far out on a limb: He just wanted to start a conversation, he said.

[AnBr]

This was posted by a Congressional Republican.

[Deleted]

I agree with the Congress person. It's unfortunate this needs to be even stated.

[AnBr]

But who is asking babies to apologize? Smacks of whataboutism.

[Deleted]

It's not just about babies. It's about adults who were not responsible. I don't see whataboutism. It's not a case of a complaint about something balanced by a complaint about a wholly different thing, with the sole intention of deflection. Don't see that at all. Rather it's an explanation based on analogy.

[LFC]

Fixed it for the Congressman.

[LFC]

Jun 16, 2021 14:20:50 GMT LFC said:

A lawmaker in Alabama wants to ban "critical race theory" but has no idea what it actually is. And if that's not bad enough when asked about it he really went off the rails. His final retreat is pure Faux News.

And now Texass goes after "critical race theory" (paywalled) which they likely also don't understand.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) signed an anti-critical race theory bill into law on Tuesday, and Texas become the latest red state to adopt legislation that bans certain topics on race and racism from being discussed in the classroom.

The Texas law is vague and educators have been lobbying against it over concerns that it would have a chilling effect on teachers, especially those who teach social studies, according to the Dallas Morning News. The law will be effective come September and Texas educators are keeping a close eye on how the state board of education might alter social studies curricula in the state.

The law states that teachers can’t be “compelled to discuss a particular current event or widely debated and currently controversial issue of public policy or social affairs” and if they do choose to discuss current events, they must teach both sides of the event with no “deference to any one perspective.”

The law also bars teachers from teaching that “slavery and racism are anything other than deviations from, betrayals of, or failures to live up to, the authentic founding principles of the United States,” the Dallas paper reported.

What this will mean in practice is murky and opponents of the new law fear educators will feel stifled when it come to teaching the real, non-whitewashed history of the U.S. and will shy away from addressing race in the classroom altogether, the Dallas Morning News reported.

Critical race theory — an academic term for scholarship that explores how racism is embedded in U.S. politics, policies and systems, i.e. systemic racism — has become the latest front in the GOP culture war in recent weeks, though former President Trump raised it as a flashpoint grievance for Republicans in a since-rescinded executive order. The new Texas law specifically calls out the 1619 Project — a New York Times Pulitzer Prize winning project that attempted to reframe U.S. history around the consequences of slavery and the accomplishments of Black people. It’s a huge conservative boogeyman.

It’s unclear if educators will take legal action against the new law. But the lawmaker who introduced the legislation had a specific aim in writing the legislation — preventing white guilt.

“We don’t need to burden our kids with guilt for racial crimes they had nothing to do with,” state Rep. Steve Toth (R) told his colleagues, according to the Dallas Morning News.

[goldenvalley]

Jun 16, 2021 14:20:50 GMT LFC said:

A lawmaker in Alabama wants to ban "critical race theory" but has no idea what it actually is. And if that's not bad enough when asked about it he really went off the rails. His final retreat is pure Faux News.

There’s been a lot of talk about critical race theory lately, and I’ve felt at a loss. I’ve heard so many conflicting things about critical race theory, I’ve gotten more and more confused.

So I did what middle-aged white men are prone to do — I asked another middle-aged white man. But not just any. I called an Alabama lawmaker, state Rep. Chris Pringle, R-Mobile, who wants to make it illegal to teach critical race theory in Alabama.

The 2021 Alabama legislative session ended last month, but Pringle is already primed for the next one. He recently pre-filed a bill — almost eight months before the next session is scheduled to start — and he’s been talking it up on the radio.

So what does his bill say?

“It’s pretty simple,” Pringle said. “All it says is you can’t teach critical race theory in K-12 or higher education in the state of Alabama.”

That is a short bill, if not a simple one. But it didn’t answer my question: What is this critical race theory educators would be forbidden to teach? Pringle has seen enough legislation to understand the law requires specificity. Many bills begin by laying out their legal definitions. How would his bill define critical race theory?

“It basically teaches that certain children are inherently bad people because of the color of their skin, period,” Pringle said.

That sounded very serious, indeed. Nazi-like, even. So I asked Pringle if there were any critical race theorists he could point to who have been spreading such toxic garbage?

“Yeah, uh, well — I can assure you — I’ll have to read a lot more,” he said.

I began to get the feeling that Pringle didn’t know as much about critical race theory as I had hoped. Were there other examples he could give me where critical race theory was being put into practice?

“These people, when they were doing the training programs — and the government — if you didn’t buy into what they taught you a hundred percent, they sent you away to a reeducation camp,” Pringle said.

Pringle was a little difficult to follow but this sounded serious. These people — whoever they were— sounded terrifying, and if there were reeducation camps operating in America, that would be big news someone like me should get to the bottom of. I asked Pringle, who were these people?

Pringle is a Realtor, a homebuilder and general contractor and he dug through what he called his “executive suite” (the cab of his pickup truck) looking for an article he’d read. After a few moments of silence, he began to speak again, this time a bit haltingly.

“Here’s an — it doesn’t say who it was, it just says a government that held these — these training sessions …”

Pringle trailed off and I told him that, if he liked, he could send me a link to the article, but then he began to speak again.

“The white male executives are sent to a three-day re-education camp, where they were told that their white male culture wasn’t their —” he trailed off again.

I was worried that we’d lost our connection. These sorts of conversations sometimes end abruptly, but Pringle was still on the line and after a little more hemming and hawing he retreated to a common safe-space of politicians who’ve crawled too far out on a limb: He just wanted to start a conversation, he said.

Here's the thing.  This isn't a subject to be discussed or analyzed.  It's just a bad thing and anytime someone says CRT, then everyone else must shut up and nod in agreement and/or boo and hiss. 

[jackd]

If they don't know what it is, then no-one can be penalized for teaching it because they will never know it was being taught.

[Bact PhD]

Jun 16, 2021 20:21:31 GMT jackd said:

If they don't know what it is, then no-one can be penalized for teaching it because they will never know it was being taught.

On the contrary, the Pandora's Box gets opened, because then the definition gets made up as we go along, especially for those of us in states where ANYbody can call into question ANY materials used in courses. Despite certain assurances, I anticipate Open Season on US History curricula.

[LFC]

Next up on the "I have no idea what critical race theory actually is but I'm sure I hate it" train is the Republican governor of Nebraska. These guys aren't even performing at the level of trained chimps.

Republican Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts this week came out against the teaching of critical race theory -- and then went down in flames when he tried to explain what it is.

The Omaha World-Herald reports that Ricketts told radio listeners this week that critical race theory was "Marxist" and "really un-American" and then issued a jumbled explanation for it.

"So, the critical race theory -- and I can't think of the author right off the top of my head who wrote about this -- really had a theory that, at the high level, is one that really starts creating those divisions between us about defining who we are based on race and that sort of thing and really not about how to bring us together as Americans rather than — and dividing us and also having a lot of very socialist-type ideas about how that would be implemented in our state," Ricketts said.

In reality, critical race theory looks at various laws and customs and analyzes them through the lens of racial power in the United States.

One classic example of critical race theory at work is criticism of sentencing laws that delivered harsher penalties for possession of crack compared to possession of powder cocaine, even though the two are variants on the same drug. At the time drug sentencing laws were written in the 1980s, Black people were more likely to be arrested for possession of crack than white people, who were more likely to be consumers of cocaine than crack.

Jeannette Jones, an associate professor of history and ethnic studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, tells the World-Herald that Ricketts's definition of critical race theory is like nothing she's ever read.

"I think most of the people who are using it (the term) now don't even know what it is," she said. "So, when they're asked to define it, they don't even know how to define it."

I think the new GOP slogan should be "We're all Louie Gohmert now."

[jackd]

"Definition gets made up as we go along": even in "Southren" states like yours, the law won't let them do that. . . . at least so far. It's something about "due process of law" or something like that.

[Bact PhD]

Jun 16, 2021 20:46:35 GMT jackd said:

"Definition gets made up as we go along": even in "Southren" states like yours, the law won't let them do that. . . . at least so far. It's something about "due process of law" or something like that.

Oh, that's soooo quaint... (/s)

In all seriousness, "so far" may be the operative. Given that there are several states, Flori-DUH among them, that have passed laws the last few years permitting any crackpot who has an objection to anything in a public school curriculum to raise a stink about it, "the law" may just give the crackpots license to do precisely that -- make it up as they go along -- and could prevail.

[LFC]

Why the panic over "critical race theory" is the perfect right-wing troll

The article basically says that the right has no idea what it is and that it doesn't matter. This is yet another Big Lie so they can crank up the outrage machine again.

The American right is currently in an utter panic over "critical race theory" being taught in public schools.

On Fox News, there's been an explosion of hysterical coverage, complete with contradictory segments where hosts claim they "don't see people for skin color" before whining that "the United States of America elected an African-American as president of the United States" and "the biggest entertainers, the biggest sports stars are African-Americans." Republicans who otherwise claim to be defenders of free speech are busy trying to pass laws canceling any kind of talk they deem "critical race theory," which, in practice, amounts to bans on talking about historical facts. Across the nation, white parents are crowding school board meetings, melting down over this "critical race theory" thing they've heard so much about.

Yet with so many white people across the country in a total freak out over "critical race theory," it appears few, if any, of them could even explain what it actually is. That's because, despite what Fox News is telling them, critical race theory — the actual academic framework that was developed in law schools to understand the historical reasons our legal system perpetuates racial inequalities — is not, in fact, being taught to 3rd graders or even 11th graders. Claims otherwise are a complete lie, ginned up by right-wing propagandists who are desperate to keep the GOP base whipped into a racist frenzy.

But even though the whole panic is built on a foundation of sand, it would be unwise of liberals to shrug and dismiss this particular bit of agitprop.

It is important to note that the fabricated fury over "critical race theory" is a cleverly constructed right-wing troll. Liberals who want to respond with a quick, easily digested rebuttal are instead boxed into a frustrating corner. Because pointing out that critical race theory is not being taught in public schools is a trap, as it could be construed to imply that there's something wrong with critical race theory. And any straightforward defense of critical race theory implies that schoolchildren are somehow expected to understand graduate school-level academic theories. But in fact, the real issue at hand is that conservatives don't want white kids to learn even the most basic truths about American history.

To understand what's really going on under all the scare-mongering, it's important to know that when conservatives talk about "critical race theory," they aren't talking about the actual academic framework developed by law professors. Instead, as Sean Illing at Vox explains, "conservatives have appropriated critical race theory as a convenient catchall to describe basically any serious attempt to teach the history of race and racism."

Yep, it's all a cover to stop actual American history from being taught so the white-right-wing snowflakes don't feel butthurt. Poor babies.

[Deleted]

Yeah, what is it and why is it important to know? I much rather ignore it, though. It comes out of social science departments of universities. How valuable could it be anyway? As if social science has any theoretical basis for anything! Conjectures and projections are the best they can hope to attain.

[LFC]

Another discussion of the Republican bastardization of critical race theory for fun, profit, and political gain. (Paywalled.)

What An Actual Expert On Critical Race Theory Makes Of The GOP Freakout

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) signed his state’s effort to shut out anti-racism education into law on Tuesday, making Texas the latest to adopt legislation that bans certain topics on race and racism from being discussed in the classroom.

The legislation doesn’t define — or even mention — the term “critical race theory,” but there’s no doubt what the bill is actually about. Efforts to craft bans on so-called “critical race theory,” have emerged as one of the latest manifestations of an uninformed culture war. The effort has been brewing for months, following anti-racism demonstrations that were sparked across the country in the wake of the killing of George Floyd.

The GOP freakout over a theory has bubbled up in the form of proposed legislation in at least 21 states, according to a survey by the publication EdWeek.

But Columbia law professor Kendall Thomas told TPM that the brouhaha from Abbott and others has a lot more to do with upcoming elections than it does with kids in school. (Abbott just happens to be up for reelection next year.)

“As I’ve been watching these skirmishes unfold in various parts of the country and in Washington, I’ve been struck by how much of the terms of the debates and decisions that purport to address critical race theory have very little to do with critical race theory at all,” Thomas said.

“The Republican Party has been given a set of talking points that it’s weaponized for a culture war, to tee up the 2022 midterm elections and beyond,” he added.

One of those talking points appears to be an assertion made by Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) who declared in the GOP response to President Joe Biden’s address to Congress in April that “America is not a racist country.”

Thomas, who is a co-founder and director of the Center for the Study of Law and Culture at Columbia Law School, has praised critical race theory for providing an alternative to assigning individual blame or guilt in discussions of racism and instead provide a bird’s eye view on how institutions put race to work in ways that reproduce inequality.

He does not recognize his field of study in the right-wing caricature, and said assertions like Scott’s have stunted the possibilities presented by critical race theory.

“What the approach offered by critical race theory gives us the opportunity to do is to ask ourselves what it would mean to imagine ourselves as an anti-racist country and then to act on that imagination in ways that allow us to see and address the colorblind racism that continues to shape and distort our society,” Thomas said.

Thomas said that discussions under the guise of the theory have perhaps more than anything provided a closer look into what he called efforts by Republican lawmakers to weaponize what people don’t know and promote fear.

“This is a political project that is about stoking racial fear and racial distrust to distract Americans from the failures of people like Governor DeSantis,” he said. (Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) had insisted during a Board of Education vote in his state last week that critical race theory would teach children “the country is rotten and that our institutions are illegitimate.”)

“It’s crucial to pay attention to the threadbare motivations behind this — which are political marketing, self promotion and monetizing racism,” Thomas said. “This is a case where they’re trying to make money by selling racism under the guise of these anti-CRT initiatives.”

While some GOP lawmakers who have cast critical race theory as liberal attempt to undermine American institutions, Thomas said it is in fact their efforts that put at risk some of the nation’s core values.

“I don’t think telling the truth has ever undermined American institutions,” Thomas said. “Critical race theory is inviting the country to participate in a conversation that the founders would very much recognize as being at the heart of our aspirations as a democratic republic. That’s the legacy they bequeathed to us.”

[LFC]

Derek Chauvin was convicted on April 20. Isn't that ... interesting.

[goldenvalley]

Jun 17, 2021 1:54:06 GMT LFC said:

Derek Chauvin was convicted on April 20. Isn't that ... interesting.

SQUIRREL

[LFC]

Jun 3, 2021 15:34:54 GMT LFC said:

I'll go out on a stout limb and say that Rand Paul is lying like he has over and over and over again. He thinks screeches that he has nailed Fauci in some gotcha' moment over emails. As wrong (i.e. flat out lying) as Republicans have been on all things COVID and everything else I'll call bullshit right now and correct myself if I have to later. It's just the most sensible course to take.

Waddya' know. It looks like Paul, Cotton, and especially Tucker Carlson were lying their asses off about Dr. Fauci all along, making false accusations on the flimsiest of bullshit. If these people didn't lie they'd have nothing to day ... and our nation would be the better for it.

Nearly 3 million people tuned in to Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show on the evening of June 2, a number equivalent to nearly 1 percent of the country. Among the things those viewers heard from Carlson that night was a staggering accusation of duplicity if not illegality on the part of the country’s top infectious-disease expert, Anthony S. Fauci.

Carlson accused Fauci of lying under oath, of lying during a news conference and of being somehow implicated in criminal activity based on the contents of a number of emails released publicly under a Freedom of Information Act request. Those emails included a heavy dose of redacted sections — one such section itself prompted Carlson’s speculation about criminality — but included enough Lego pieces for Carlson to build what he wanted to build.

What evidence was there, for example, for Carlson to imply that Fauci believed that the coronavirus had been created in a Chinese lab and, further, that it was a product of “gain of function” research, something Fauci denied during a Senate hearing? It centered on a Feb. 1, 2020, call among a number of researchers. The evening before the call, a scientist named Kristian Andersen emailed Fauci, saying in part that “some of the features [of the coronavirus] (potentially) look engineered.”

On the morning of the call, Fauci emailed his deputy about wanting to check in, including an attachment titled, “Baric, Shi, et al - Nature medicine - SARS gain of function.pdf.” And then there was the call itself, a discussion that Carlson claimed was declared to be “top secret.”

I’m making this sound more innocuous than Carlson did. (You can read what he said, if you wish.) It’s the nature of my medium versus his that it sounds more innocuous. He can contextualize his statements with intonations and facial expression that I can’t. His presentation included a number of grainy-emails-with-block-yellow-highlighting graphics that are useful for both validating claims and leveraging the aesthetic of a piece of evidence from a criminal trial.

Carlson necessarily can’t dive as deeply into this subject as I can, since television conveys information far less densely than does the written word. (It would take you a lot longer to read this paragraph out loud than it would to simply read it to yourself, for example.) But he didn’t give it much effort, and the result was that those 3 million viewers probably would have been left with the impression that Carlson had proved remarkable dishonesty on the part of Fauci.

He did not.

On Tuesday, The Washington Post published a report looking more closely at that Feb. 1 call.

“On that teleconference — the first known effort by senior U.S. and international health officials to determine whether human engineering or a laboratory leak might explain the emergence of the virus — most of the experts, including Fauci, concluded that the virus had probably evolved in nature and was transmitted from an animal to a human,” our Yasmeen Abutaleb and Shane Harris report. "... The effort continued over the following weeks, when the scientists unanimously concluded there was no evidence of lab manipulation.”

That assessment of the call was given to Abutaleb and Harris by Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health. There’s no valid reason to assume that it’s untrue. It’s corroborated by research published in mid-March 2020 that determined that the virus “is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.” The first name listed among the researchers who staked their reputations on that document is Kristian Andersen’s.

This research was publicly available when Carlson put together his June 2 broadcast, but there’s no indication that his team sought it out. After all, his claim that Fauci had lied during a Senate hearing was based on the filename of an attachment Fauci sent in an email. That filename may well have been a reference to 2015 research not obviously related to the coronavirus that emerged in 2019 — research that was also something Carlson’s team could have dug up.

[LFC]

Andrew Sullivan sadly continues to swirl down the drain of right-wing outrage. Now he's on board with screeching about critical race theory and believes we're trying to make white kids feel guilty about being white, or some such bullshit. He's basically taking the same path that Dreher did years ago. Another decade or so and I suspect he'll be holding onto reality with his fingertips for show but the majority of what he writes will be far from both being conservative and being attached to reality. Read at least this part and see just how easily this could be delivered by Tucker Carlson as his own.

The stories in the mainstream media this past week about the broadening campaign to ban critical race theory in public schools have been fascinating — and particularly in how they describe what CRT is. Here’s the Atlantic’s benign summary of CRT: “recent reexaminations of the role that slavery and segregation have played in American history and the attempts to redress those historical offenses.” NBC News calls it the “academic study of racism’s pervasive impact.” NPR calls CRT: “teaching about the effects of racism.” The New York Times calls it, with a straight face, “classroom discussion of race, racism” and goes on to describe it as a “framework used to look at how racism is woven into seemingly neutral laws and institutions.”

How on earth could merely teaching students about the history of racism and its pervasiveness in the United States provoke such a fuss? No wonder Charles Blow is mystified. But don’t worry. The MSM have a ready explanation: the GOP needs an inflammatory issue to rile their racist base, and so this entire foofaraw is really just an astro-turfed, ginned-up partisan gambit about nothing. The MSM get particular pleasure in ridiculing parents who use the term “critical race theory” as shorthand for things that just, well, make them uncomfortable — when the parents obviously have no idea what CRT really is.

When pushed to describe it themselves, elite journalists refer to the legal theories Derrick Bell came up with, in the 1970s — obscure, esoteric and nothing really to do with high-school teaching. “If your kid is learning CRT, your kid is in law/grad school,” snarked one. Marc Lamont Hill even tried to pull off some strained references to Gramsci to prove his Marxian intellectual cred, and to condescend to his opponents.

This rubric achieves several things at once. It denies that there is anything really radical or new about CRT; it flatters the half-educated; it blames the controversy entirely on Republican opportunism; and it urges all fair-minded people to defend intellectual freedom and racial sensitivity against these ugly white supremacists.

What could be more convenient? NBC News “reporter”, Brandy Zadrozny, even decried parents’ attempts to discover through FOIA requests just what their children are being taught — and argued this week that, “for longtime ultra conservative activists, CRT is the opportunity of a lifetime.” CRT, she explains, is not a threat at all, and there is no proof that it is even being taught. It’s “just a catch-all term repurposed as a conservative boogeyman.” She goes on: “it harnesses pushback against 2020’s racial justice movement, covid denialism, and depends on a base still energized by Trump and misinformation, looking for political power.”

I’m sure the MSM will continue to push this narrative indefinitely. They are still insisting, after all, that “white supremacy” is behind hateful attacks on Asian-Americans, and that soaring murder rates are purely a function of Covid19. And you can see why: this dismissive take is extremely helpful in avoiding what is actually happening. It diverts attention from the stories and leaks and documents that keep popping up all over the place about extraordinary indoctrination sessions that have become mandatory for children as early as kindergarten.

It drags on quite a bit after that but the fact is that he is now clearly blind to the right's use of "critical race theory" as outrage porn. He can't even put it into context with the endless string of outrage porn claims from the right including the anti-gay ones that he so clearly (and conveniently) understood when they were the screech of the day.

[LFC]

Ted Cruz flashes back to an even more racist time in America to attack critical race theory.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) over the weekend drew criticism when he said that critical race theory was just as "racist" as the Ku Klux Klan.

As Princeton historian Kevin Kruse writes at MSNBC, Cruz's comparison is nonsensical given that critical race theory is an academic concept while the KKK was a terrorist organization that has been responsible for political violence throughout the United States.

What's more, Kruse notes that the Texas senator's attempt to equate critical race theory with the KKK echoes arguments made in the 1950s and 1960s by segregationist politicians who would often argue that the Klan and civil rights activists were both two sides of the same extremism coin.

"In Louisiana, Democratic Governor Russell Long in 1956 blamed racial troubles in his state on 'extremists' he saw in both the NAACP, which was seeking enforcement of the Supreme Court's rulings against school segregation, and the White Citizens' Councils, which was working furiously to block its implementation," writes Kruse. "In South Carolina, Judge J. Henry Johnson told a grand jury in 1958 that both sides of the civil rights struggle were to blame for racial turmoil in the region. 'The NAACP is just as bad as the KKK,' the segregationist asserted, because he believed both as 'violence inciting organizations.'"

Kruse argues that equating the NAACP with the KKK is a deliberate attempt by people who favor maintaining the racial status quo to position racist policies as a sensible middle ground between two polar extremes.

"It's bad enough that Cruz slanders [critical race theorists]," Kruse concludes. "But it's even worse that he uses the exact same line of argument against them that those segregationists did."

Cracker Cruz. Has a certain ring to it.

[LFC]

Newsmax and Michael Savage hop on the crazy train as they shriek and wet their underoos over critical race theory. Dress warmly before reading. It's a blizzard of snowflakes.

Far-right talk radio host Michael Savage took conservatives’ latest moral panic to a bonkers new level during a Monday night Newsmax appearance, warning that the teaching of so-called “critical race theory” in schools is akin to “exactly what was done to the Jews in Germany” and is the “road to the death camps” for white people.

Republicans and right-wing media have been mired in a months-long freakout over critical race theory, an obscure legal academic framework that conservatives now use as a catch-all term for any racial-equity training or anti-racist school curriculum. At the same time, NBC News recently reported that the battle over CRT that has invaded local school boards is largely an astroturfed effort funded by well-connected national political organizations and right-wing activists.

Prior to interviewing Savage on Monday night, Newsmax hosts Steve Cortes and Jenn Pellegrino griped that the left was trying to deny that critical race theory exists while claiming they” have the receipts to prove” that it is “permeating all of our culture and our schools.” They then turned to Savage, a provocateur long known for his inflammatory and offensive rhetoric, as their expert on the subject.

After taking issue with NBC News anchor Chuck Todd dismissing the right-wing outrage over CRT, saying he’d like to “reach through the screen and smack him in the face,” Savage then delivered an overheated diatribe about how the schools are literally abusing white kids.

“And now they're beating up white children in schoolrooms,” he fumed. “And I’m not going to mince words. You can cut me off if you have to. I know you probably agree with me. I can't take this anymore. And there's only one solution to it—sue the goddamn schools if they do it to your child for child abuse, and you will win.”

He went on to assert that “children are being humiliated and hurt and damaged for life” by critical race theory, which he claimed was “nothing but racism towards white people.” And all-but-inevitably, Savage then invoked the Holocaust and Nazi Germany.

“The same kind of thing started in Germany. The Jews were no good. The Jews did this. The Jews did that,” Savage dramatically exclaimed. “The next thing you know they were being excluded from swimming pools. They didn't put them in concentration camps overnight.”

He continued: “I studied this intimately. I am Jewish. I know how this starts. Attacks on white people is exactly what was done to the Jews in Germany in the 1930s. Don't fall for this garbage. This is the road to the death camps. Stand up to these bastards and sue them!”

[goldenvalley]

And in the reality based world I can tell you that in my youth (I'm 60 now) I had no idea that Japanese American families were rounded up and forced to live in nasty circumstances, never heard that the town of Rosewood, FL or Black Wall Street area in Tulsa OK were destroyed, the true extent of lynching in the South or the nature and extent of violence over desegregation of schools in places like Boston. I want to sue somebody too for not ever being taught this history...