We live in a frustrating time. I mean the term "dumbing down" was coined some time ago but wow, does it apply to where we are now. Never in my lifetime have I witnessed a more ignorant and flat out stupid mass of humanity. I am sort of lucky living in Massachusetts we have far less of this idiotic crap but I meet a lot of people and speaking to them...well...I do encounter some serious dumb in my travels. Also sadly in the new neighborhood I moved to, some clown down the street has posted signs all over his yard screaming nonsense like "TRUMP WON!", "NO MASKS, NO MUZZLES", "DESTROY CRITICAL RACE THEORY!", "STATE GOVERNMENT IS CORRUPT!", "VACCINES ARE FAKE!" among other words of wisdom.
Julia wanted me to confront the guy and I said I could do that but I asked her what sort of outcome she would expect. I said if he was dumb enough to post those signs up all over his yard, proudly letting the world know he was some sort of spastic moron, what would come of my conversation with him? I would not have a breakthrough where I suddenly change his, admittedly tiny, mind and he would have this amazing epiphany...it would more likely degenerate into me insulting him, laughing, and ending in a fistfight where I get arrested and/or shot. I would not expect rational conversation with a guy that covers his yard in idiotic signage.
I've had these conversations with Trump cultists and Q Anon nuts already. I had a couple invite me out to dinner because I was a "liberal" and they wanted to ask me how I could be such a thing. I've gone out to lunch with a racist Trump supporter with two people of color sitting at the table with us, and tried to sort through that nonsense. In those situations the conversation did not deteriorate into just taking sides and name calling but nobody left the table with their minds changed.
People don't easily let go of racism and it would seem they also don't easily let go of embracing their own ignorance or stupidity in the form of buying into any nonsense no matter how ridiculous that gives air to their beliefs.
To a certain segment of our society now if you are a doctor or scientist you are no more than a voodoo priest...or in reality even worse than that because they would probably believe a voodoo priest before they would believe you.
They don't understand science so, like voting, they will not accept it. With voting they will only accept a result if they, or someone that sounds as insane as they do, gets to go and count every vote at least half a dozen times...and even then if the result does not change to the outcome they want, well, they still will believe you have fooled them somehow.
The default position of these people is that every election we have ever held in our history (except the one where Trump beat Hillary Clinton) is no longer valid because they, or some lunatic like Mike Lindell, has not been able to count all the votes themselves.
These loons have sunk to a position where everybody, except the con artists that shout the lies they like to hear, are trying to fool them and are out to get them. They sit there squinting their eyes in disbelief of everything they see and hear that they can't prove themselves sitting in their own kitchen...which means all science, all medicine, all technology, all news, because they can't create a vaccine, cure an illness, create the internet, count every vote, and investigate every news story themselves.
Trump made it simple for them. If you don't like it and it does not line up with what you want to believe...call it fake. That is a far easier way to look at the world than actually having to learn something.
The only schools where Critical Race Theory is mentioned are law schools. They don't teach it or even goddamn mention it in grades K-12 nor do they mention it in college UNLESS you are in a law course. All Critical Race Theory is, is a way to evaluate how our judicial system was treating people of different races that they came up with in the 1970s. It has had no effect on anything nor does it. It just sounds like something that would upset a racist so the Republicans throw the words out there because they are INENTIONALLY TRYING TO APPEAL TO RACISTS BECAUSE THEY ARE A PART OF THEIR FUCKING BASE.
It was that child molesting moron Matt Gaetz that triggered the racist loons by asking about it being mentioned to military officers in their classes. This somehow led to fucking racist idiots everywhere thinking this was being taught in every school across the country and they wanted to raise their racist flags (and put signs in their yard) to show off how fucking stupid they were.
So, when you get someone going off on Critical Race Theory they are essentially just showing off who and what they are. In some ways the Republicans are doing us a favor with this because they are helping to expose the racists in their party. The truth is that most people that are upset about Critical Race Theory don't even know what it is.
It would be hilarious if it did not create a situation where idiots decide they want to kill people over it or keep their children out of school because of it.
I'm babbling again, I know, but the bottom line here is the enemies of this country and democracy have a very simple plan and they have been executing it to perfection on at least 35% of our society.
1. Create and promote mistrust of the media.
2. Create and promote mistrust of the government.
3. Create and promote mistrust of our educational system.
4. Create and promote mistrust of science.
5. Create and promote mistrust of your fellow Americans.
These steps result in division, violence, the rise of nationalism, through dumbing down a large segment of the population. The anarchy that may result from this creates the belief in some of the population that we need to throw out our political system, abandon democracy, and allow a strongman to seize control of the nation. The mistrust of our electoral systems, the segments of the population that practice vaccine avoidance, the hatred displayed toward immigrants and people that do not share your beliefs (no matter how insane those beliefs are), the bile spit at our educators, and the calling for executions of our elected officials are not good signs. These are warnings about a slide in the wrong direction and should trouble anybody with even mild comprehension of these indicators.
We have politicians all around the country that are intentionally pushing this anarchy with the intent to destroy our nation. They are changing the laws to diminish the value of voting, allow for them to chose who holds office instead, and to fully and completely corrupt our institutions.
Which as Heath pointed out here did hold under Trump's attack on them but Trump being out of office did not end that attack. It continues more ramped up than ever. Trump's presidency was about failures but what it did succeed in doing was to show corrupt Republicans how to attack our institutions openly in order to destroy them.
These institutions can hold, if they are strong, but under Trump and McConnell they were savagely weakened. So, can we sustain this next wave of attack? Trump blasted a hole in the side of the ship, in our panic as a nation, we rapidly went to work attempting to fix the hole but at the same time Republicans saw the way to sink the ship is to blast several holes in it at the same time. We won't be able to stem the tide if they succeed.
They are coordinating across the country with governors like Abbott in Texas and DeSantis in Florida, an absolutely crazed state Republican party in Arizona and most of the federally elected Republicans either turning full on fascist or being too afraid of their own party to speak up.
It should be clear that we don't need a majority of our population and elected officials to go insane for the country to be destroyed and democracy toppled, we only need a percentage of them to do so for that to happen. I want to say 30 to 35% of them is a number that is way too high and puts us on an uncomfortable precipice.
How do we solve this is the refrain and I know that trying to get through to some idiot that thinks his baby is going to be taught Critical Race Theory by some liberal teacher that is betraying the white race and in their mind probably deserves to be executed...well...that's a big lift.
You can't get through to these people with the media, they already don't trust the media.
You can't have educators educate them because they already don't trust the educators.
You can't get them vaccinated or get them to wear masks because they don't trust science.
You can't get them to support democracy because they don't trust their government and electoral systems.
Welcome to the United States in 2021.
