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

[LFC]

Jun 22, 2021 21:53:25 GMT goldenvalley said:

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...

I'm 60 and only learned about the Japanese internment. There's a laundry list of revisionist Confederate history that I learned, though, including Lee being the reluctant slave owner (a lie), Lee as a genius on the battlefield (not true), and the Confederacy having the best officers but simply being overwhelmed by Union forces and money (bullshit). No mention of Forrest, enslavement of free-born black soldiers, slavery being the only cause for treason called out (not a word written on states' rights), or how awful and enduring Jim Crow really was. Talk about "white" washed history.

[jackd]

There's no need to teach "critical race theory"; instead, teaching history will be enough.

[Deleted]

Jun 16, 2021 15:40:25 GMT LFC said:

Fixed it for the Congressman.

View Attachment

I strongly disagree with the statement in LFC's post.

First, it assumes that the Asian child is either Chinese or Japanese citizen, living in either of those countries. She could be Korean. She could be American. Or, Chilean or Argentinian for that matter. So it's not natural to assume 2nd Sino-Japanese war would or should be of any interest to her.

Secondly, those kids are just too young to be taught such weighty subjects.

Most importantly, I abhor the idea that one should be taught history, or for that matter any subject, based on one's race and ethnicity  or other forms of identity. The historical periods and events should be taught on their own merits. It's a pernicious idea that identity of the students should somehow drive the choice of topic and the depth of treatment. Should a black student growing up in the US not be taught about the influence of European politics on America because it involved predominantly white protagonists? Or, should the black student be taught only the impact of the same set of politics on black lives, whereas a white student taught only about the impact of the same events on white lives? Pernicious idea, rotten to the core.

[Bact PhD]

Jun 23, 2021 0:06:30 GMT LFC said:

Jun 22, 2021 21:53:25 GMT goldenvalley said:

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...

I'm 60 and only learned about the Japanese internment. There's a laundry list of revisionist Confederate history that I learned, though, including Lee being the reluctant slave owner (a lie), Lee as a genius on the battlefield (not true), and the Confederacy having the best officers but simply being overwhelmed by Union forces and money (bullshit). No mention of Forrest, enslavement of free-born black soldiers, slavery being the only cause for treason called out (not a word written on states' rights), or how awful and enduring Jim Crow really was. Talk about "white" washed history.

I'm not that much younger than GV and LFC. I can't recall when/how I heard about the Japanese internment...in college, maybe, possibly outside reading--? As far as the Civil War goes, I don't have that recollection of quite so much Confederate revisionism, but much was also omitted from the discussions. Jim Crow was covered...kinda - lynching definitely got glossed over. Definitely no mention of Black Wall Street in Tulsa; I never heard of the Rosewood massacre until my early 30s, when I settled a 40 minute or so drive from that site.

Neither of the kiddos is handy to inquire about what exactly they're getting/got in their US History courses. Here, the USH curriculum has been split in 2 for some years, somewhere between when Dear Daughter was in 8th grade and her Junior year in HS (yeah, that was interesting!). Discovery through 1865 gets covered in 8th grade, and Reconstruction up to present day is the HS Junior year course. Dear Son, he of the private prep school, may have an interesting story to tell -- part of their 8th grade end-of-year field trip included a tour of the CW-era military prison in Andersonville, GA.

[goldenvalley]

My kids in CA schools got some education in elementary school on Martin Luther King, Jr. (no gory lynching stuff or burning of towns though) and a lot on Japanese American internment. They have classmates/friends whose grandparents were at the Tule Lake camp when they were small children and they went to a museum that had an internment camp exhibit and lecture. I remember though that my #2 kid said yeah but they weren't killed (Jewish kids know about the Holocaust) so they're making too big a deal about it. At 9, nuance wasn't his strong point. He didn't recognize it was the good guy US that did this to whole American families.

I also noted that this was described as "Japanese internment" instead of "Japanese American internment" until recently. The word choice that really alters the impact of the phrase. These people weren't prisoners of war from the other side as the first phrase suggests.

I also noted that discussions of the missions established in California as being places where indigenous people were abused were muted at best. The way of spreading the word of God and settling the state was not pleasant no matter how much discussion of the lovely architecture occurred.

[andydp]

Jun 23, 2021 16:09:35 GMT goldenvalley said:

I also noted that this was described as "Japanese internment" instead of "Japanese American internment" until recently. The word choice that really alters the impact of the phrase. These people weren't prisoners of war from the other side as the first phrase suggests.

I'm not going downplay or minimize what Japanese Americans and other minorities went through.  It was horrid enough and done to Americans.  

I would like the assemblage to know several thousand Italians were Interned in camps on the US East Coast.  In our defense, according to Geneva Conventions, aliens living in the US would be subject to internment.  Just like US Citizens living in Germany or Italy would be.  At some point a neutral country (Sweden or Switzerland) would negotiate the repatriations.

[Bact PhD]

Jun 23, 2021 16:09:35 GMT goldenvalley said:

I also noted that this was described as "Japanese internment" instead of "Japanese American internment" until recently. The word choice that really alters the impact of the phrase. These people weren't prisoners of war from the other side as the first phrase suggests.

The term I recall hearing at the time was "Nisei" which, according to the Oxford Languages dictionary via Google, is (emphasis mine):

a person born in the US or Canada whose parents were immigrants from Japan.

I'm not sure whether this was an attempt to more correctly define these people as American citizens at the time of their internment, or a way to obfuscate that reality by using a "foreign" term.

[goldenvalley]

Jun 23, 2021 17:47:47 GMT Bact PhD said:

Jun 23, 2021 16:09:35 GMT goldenvalley said:

I also noted that this was described as "Japanese internment" instead of "Japanese American internment" until recently. The word choice that really alters the impact of the phrase. These people weren't prisoners of war from the other side as the first phrase suggests.

The term I recall hearing at the time was "Nisei" which, according to the Oxford Languages dictionary via Google, is (emphasis mine):

a person born in the US or Canada whose parents were immigrants from Japan.

I'm not sure whether this was an attempt to more correctly define these people as American citizens at the time of their internment, or a way to obfuscate that reality by using a "foreign" term.

I'm pretty sure it is the latter.  It is a Japanese word.  The parent(s) born in Japan are Issei.  

Yes Italians were rounded up though you don't hear much about that in CA.  Lots of second generation Italians lived in San Francisco at the time... 

[jackd]

Not Italian descendants who were citizens nor those of German descent. There are a lot of both but particularly Germans. Not so many of Japanese descent. It was easy to pick on them and the West Coast racial bias was intense.  Korematsu was a particularly gutless decision of the Supreme Court.

[LFC]

The Chair of the Joint Chiefs of, Mark Milley, talks to Congress about critical race theory. When they cut to Matt Gaetz I just want to smack the smug off his stupid, ignorant face.

[LFC]

Fascist scumbag Ron DeSantis wants to defund universities that suppress competing ideas.

Florida state colleges and universities that show signs of “indoctrination” may be defunded, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said on Tuesday, as he and others on the right crusade against what conservatives have decided to call “Critical Race Theory.”

DeSantis said that he was trying to stop the state’s colleges and universities from becoming “hotbeds for stale ideology.”

“That’s not worth tax dollars, and that’s not something that we’re going to be supporting going forward,” he added at a press conference held at a middle school in Fort Myers, Florida.

DeSantis, a bombastic Trump supporter up for re-election next year, made the remarks after signing a law that will force state-funded universities and colleges to poll their faculty, students, and staff for “intellectual diversity,” the Tampa Bay Times reported. That survey, the paper reported, will focus on “the extent to which competing ideas and perspectives are presented.”

DeSantis doubled down on that idea in his remarks, saying that many institutions of higher education are “intellectually repressive environments. You have orthodoxies that are promoted and other viewpoints are shunned or even suppressed.”

Translation of that last sentence is that not giving credence to right-wing lies based upon literally nothing and pulled out of some wingnut's ass is bad.

[goldenvalley]

twitter.com/i/status/1407745748909838343


I noticed this from Lawyers Guns & Money.  This is General Milley who was testifying in the House Armed Services Comm.

[Bact PhD]

Jun 23, 2021 20:36:12 GMT LFC said:

Fascist scumbag Ron DeSantis wants to defund universities that suppress competing ideas.

Florida state colleges and universities that show signs of “indoctrination” may be defunded, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said on Tuesday, as he and others on the right crusade against what conservatives have decided to call “Critical Race Theory.”

DeSantis said that he was trying to stop the state’s colleges and universities from becoming “hotbeds for stale ideology.”

“That’s not worth tax dollars, and that’s not something that we’re going to be supporting going forward,” he added at a press conference held at a middle school in Fort Myers, Florida.

DeSantis, a bombastic Trump supporter up for re-election next year, made the remarks after signing a law that will force state-funded universities and colleges to poll their faculty, students, and staff for “intellectual diversity,” the Tampa Bay Times reported. That survey, the paper reported, will focus on “the extent to which competing ideas and perspectives are presented.”

DeSantis doubled down on that idea in his remarks, saying that many institutions of higher education are “intellectually repressive environments. You have orthodoxies that are promoted and other viewpoints are shunned or even suppressed.”

Translation of that last sentence is that not giving credence to right-wing lies based upon literally nothing and pulled out of some wingnut's ass is bad.

The last paragraph repeats the trope of "Universites are a hotbed of liberal ideology" that's been repeated since the "Red Scare" days. Moreover, Flori-DUH has historically spoken with forked tongue when it comes to "intellectual diversity" -- look up "Johns Commission" if you're so inclined. In light of that, this so-called "survey" scares me. I can only hope that the inevitable lawsuits result in this shit getting struck down by a court before we have universities repeating Trumpian propaganda under pain of de-funding.

[pnwguy]

Jun 23, 2021 20:36:12 GMT LFC said:

Fascist scumbag Ron DeSantis wants to defund universities that suppress competing ideas.
Translation of that last sentence is that not giving credence to right-wing lies based upon literally nothing and pulled out of some wingnut's ass is bad.

"Why are our universities suppressing Flat Earth Theory? IT'S BEING CANCELLED!!! If they don't Teach The Controversy, these Marxists institutions should be defunded and their faculty fired!"

[LFC]

Faux News and in particular Tucker Carlson are major spreaders of CRT lies and it's infecting people who are showing up at school board meetings believing all manner of things.

As Zadrozny explains, the culture war over CRT—inflamed by Carlson and Fox News—has started to infect local school boards, with conservative parents “invading and swarming” budget meetings and going on curriculum witch-hunts. Just as COVID-19 anti-maskers attacked local health departments armed with talking points from Fox News, we’re now seeing the same thing with disgruntled parents opposing diversity initiatives in schools. Forget the fact that no one is actually teaching critical race theory or cultural Marxism to third-graders—the Fox feedback loop has created a maelstrom of misinformation at the local level. And well-organized rightwing groups are making sure that if any cranky parent—or longtime GOP operative—has a complaint about their school, well, they’re likely to get linked up with Fox producers faster than you can say “Howard Zinn” and invited as a guest on Tucker’s show.

In light of the f***ing obvious I'd just like to repeat a couple of things Andrew Sullivan wrote. This is more egregious than most examples and illustrates why I've given up on him. He is in a mental breakdown of some sort, one that makes him cling to the motes and ignore the beams. Bold mine.

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.

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.

[Deleted]

I'm getting mightily irritated by all this talk about CRT. FFS shutup and adopt OLED.

[goldenvalley]

They want to "cancel" CRT!!!! Whatever that is. This seems increasingly frenzied perhaps to distract from the fact that the Arizona audit is not yielding anything.

[RichTBikkies]

Jun 25, 2021 0:45:44 GMT @probabilistic3 said:

I'm getting mightily irritated by all this talk about CRT. FFS shutup and adopt OLED.

Alphabet soup! I'll google these two this time, but please. guys, indulge this here ignorant foreign-devil.

[Deleted]

Jun 25, 2021 10:56:58 GMT RichTBikkies said:

Jun 25, 2021 0:45:44 GMT @probabilistic3 said:

I'm getting mightily irritated by all this talk about CRT. FFS shutup and adopt OLED.

Alphabet soup! I'll google these two this time, but please. guys, indulge this here ignorant foreign-devil.

CRT = Cathode Ray Tube

OLED = Organic Light Emitting Diode

Once in a while you should step away from the mathematical abstractions and join us in the world of physics and engineering. 

And, once again, RTB destroys my joke by asking for an explanation.

[RichTBikkies]

Jun 25, 2021 12:38:21 GMT @probabilistic3 said:

And, once again, RTB destroys my joke by asking for an explanation.

That's the only thing I'll ask your forgiveness for.

But, fair do's, my merely asking for an explanation doesn't destroy your joke. Your (or my) giving one would, though. You might have taken the line that not getting the joke revealed me as a negligible human being in some sense or other, for example a humourless nineteenth-century Scottish Presbyterian.

A lost opportunity there, methinks.

[RichTBikkies]

Jun 25, 2021 13:19:46 GMT RichTBikkies said:

You might have taken the line that not getting the joke revealed me as a negligible human being in some sense or other, for example a humourless nineteenth-century Scottish Presbyterian.

Just for the record, I'm not humourless, not nineteenth-century, not Scottish and not Presbyterian. A bit like the Holy Roman Empire which was once described as "not holy, not Roman and not an empire".

[LFC]

DeSantis's attack on companies' free speech to protect free speech gets blocked. Apparently Republicans now believe that they can force any company they don't like to allow any speech they do like on their platforms. Once people can comment you have no control what is published on your own pages ... unless, of course, you're a Republican.

A controversial Florida law that would have prohibited certain social media platforms from banning political candidates or “journalistic enterprises” from their services has been blocked, hours before it was set to take effect. The law, which was largely seen as a response to perceived censorship of conservative politicians and media, was the first of its kind to be signed.

“We’re pleased the court ensured that social media can remain family-friendly by delaying Florida’s law from taking effect on July 1,” Steve DelBianco, president of NetChoice, an industry group that was one of the plaintiffs suing to overturn the law, said in a statement. “This order protects private businesses against the state’s demand that social media carry user posts that are against their community standards.”

The law was proposed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in January, shortly after then-President Trump was banned or suspended from multiple social media platforms — most notably Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube — for encouraging the January 6 insurrection of the Capitol building. The law also came after years of unfounded complaints from conservatives that Big Tech companies unfairly moderate their speech, and after the failure of Trump’s own multi-pronged attack on Section 230, a federal law that allows online platforms to moderate user content how they see fit. Research, however, has shown that platforms do not discriminate against conservative content. If anything, they do the exact opposite.

The Stop Social Media Censorship Act easily passed Florida’s Republican-majority House and Senate. DeSantis signed it into law in May, a move he celebrated on the same social media platforms he claims are unfairly censoring conservative politicians and made such a law necessary.

Among other things, the law would have fined social media platforms $250,000 per day for banning candidates for statewide office, and $25,000 for candidates for lower offices, and allowed the state and individuals to sue platforms if they feel the law had been violated. Additionally, any content that was “by or about” a candidate could not be “shadow banned,” or hidden or suppressed from the view of other users. The law only applied to social media platforms that did business in the state (basically, had users in Florida) and had an annual revenue of $100 million or at least 100 million monthly active users globally. Platforms owned by a company that also owned a theme park in the state were exempt.

That last sentence is pure Republican.

[LFC]

Remember when "cancel culture" was a bad thing? Not so much in Texass anymore so long as you're cancelling the "wrong" culture.

No cancel culture or censorship to see here! Just a state official bragging about having a book event cancelled because the work in question challenged his beliefs about history.

Well, okay, maybe a little censorship: Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) on Friday openly bragged about ordering the cancellation of a book talk at a state history museum.

The co-authors of the book “Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth,” were set to discuss their work in an event hosted by the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin on Thursday, but just hours before the event was set to take place, they were told that the museum had backed out under pressure from its board, The Houston Chronicle reported Thursday.

The Chronicle noted that the board of directors of The State Preservation Board, which oversees the Bullock Museum as well as the Texas State Capitol and other sites, includes the state’s governor, lieutenant governor, speaker of the House, and other Republicans.

Sure enough, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) claimed credit for the cancellation on Friday.

[goldenvalley]

It isn't cancel culture when you agree with the cancellation.(?)

[LFC]

Another day, another fake outrage from the right who (not surprisingly) are lapping it up and repeating it without doing even a modicum of research to see if it's remotely true (it's not).

Right-wing talk radio host Clay Travis defended the faux controversy over the U.S. Women’s National Team supposedly showing disrespect to a 98-year-old World War II veteran during the national anthem, telling Fox News on Tuesday that the false story was “emblematic” of where we are as a nation because a “huge percentage of American sports fans totally think it’s believable.”

Following right-wing media’s weeklong fit of anger over U.S. Olympian Gwen Berry’s podium protest during the national anthem, Canadian conservative ragebait site The Post Millenial kicked off another outrage cycle when it accused the soccer team of “turn[ing] their backs” on World War II veteran Pete DuPre as he played “The Star-Spangled Banner” before their Monday match with Mexico.

The story was quickly picked up by other conservative news sites and attracted online anger from the usual suspects, only for the women’s team’s communication reps to expose the story as completely bogus.

“Not true. No one turned their back on WWII Veteran Pete DuPré during tonight’s anthem,” the soccer squad’s communication team posted. “Some USWNT players were simply looking at the flag on a pole in one end of the stadium. The players all love Pete, thanked him individually after the game and signed a ball for him.”

The team’s reps also posted video of each player personally thanking DuPre after the game and signing a ball for him. Additionally, DuPre apparently has a close relationship with the team as he’s played the national anthem before other U.S. Women’s games.

Dreher got in on the action though he at least added an update about being corrected by a reader. He should have apologized for spreading slander and pulled the piece but that's not really his jam. Instead he apologized for the mistake and immediately attacked another athlete.

The US Soccer Federation has said that there was no protest at this event, that players were simply facing in different directions haphazardly. That being the case, I apologize for drawing the wrong conclusion. We are accustomed to the women’s soccer team protesting at public events (e.g., they did so last year), and the disgraceful recent Gwen Berry protest have put a lot of us on edge. Still, I was wrong, and I apologize. I would have done better to put Gwen Berry there; her protest was unambiguous:

Gwen Berry, BTW, did protest but not a WWII veteran which was Rod's opening outrage. What a piece of shit. He should take his own advice and "live not by lies" or in this case false equivalence.