Respectable white people marvel at the fact that Americans consuming right-wing propaganda inhabit a fact-free world. As a consequence, they do not take it seriously. People who insist on inhabiting a fact-free world are not just ignorant—not when democracy depends on the ability of individuals to associate and organize themselves for the purpose of self-rule. When huge numbers of people inhabit a fact-free world, and collectivist leaders police the integrity of that groupthink, they threaten not only democracy's ability to function minimally, but its survival. Liz Cheney is now being reassimilated into the collective. Democracy itself faces the very same fate. Do not marvel at these people and their fact-free world. Regard them as the danger they are.
I'm used to people inhabiting a fact-free world. I grew up among earnest young Southern Baptists who asked me earnestly (as only young Southern Baptists could do in those days) if I'd accepted Jesus "into my heart." The sub-text was that I wasn't a Southern Baptist (I was a Presbyterian, as foreign to their concept of the world as a Muslim, which was an unimaginable person in those days. Little green men from Mars were more plausible in my hometown.), so I must be in spiritual trouble. I responded to such queries by saying I wasn't sure which ventricle Jesus would fit into.
I just got tired of the question, and responded like a smart ass.
I had people earnestly tell me the leather peace signs attached to my leather sandals (it was the '70's, what can I tell you?) were Satanic emblems. Had I known then what I know now (that the symbol was created in the '50's by a British anti-nuke group), I'd have laughed louder and harder. But the concerned parent was earnest in her concerns; and as clueless as a goose. I soon learned most people are; and that "most people" included me.
I was educated in Texas history by two old women who sincerely believed Davy Crockett looked like John Wayne and died valiantly at the Alamo (new research says he begged for his life before he was executed), and the Alamo itself was a brave stand for liberty. (The Texas battle for independence was all about slavery, which Louisiana allowed but Mexico, which Texas was then a part of, didn't. Even Sam Houston told Travis to burn the Alamo and leave it, and help him in the actual battle with Mexico. Travis was less brave hero than stubborn fool.) I was also taught Marxism was Communism was Socialism was all antithetical to American freedom and the free market capitalism that made America great. This at the end of an era of American socialism that began under FDR and continued through Nixon/Ford (the years I was in high school) and didn't come fully to an end until Reagan replaced Carter.
And there our cycle of boom and bust began with a vengeance, and the stability of the economy since the end of WWII was put through an historical shredder. But nobody acknowledged that fact, either.
So don't begin to tell me about a "fact-free world." I haven't even scratched the surface, and believe me just because your political opponents don't think the world works the way you do, it doesn't mean your "facts" are real and theirs are all falsehoods. Democracy managed quite well during the "Red Scare" (another fact-free assertion of national danger) and Reagonomics (as fact-free as it gets), and even under LBJ/Nixon and the Vietnam War (a military endeavor so fact-free it led to 1968), and political violence in the '70's. We've conveniently dropped the political violence of the '70's down the memory hole, replacing it with John Travolta posing under a glitter ball. Funny, that. We fear the possibility of violence just as our Senators fear the possibility of a filibuster. Either is enough to paralyze the system or the national discussion. Don't begin to talk to me about a "fact-free world." I won't have it. In fact, I'm likely to jam it down your throat.
"Regard them as the danger they are"? And what, you represent salvation and the guide to the Promised Land?
The irony is, this is the title of this commentary: "The GOP's bizarre obsession with 'critical race theory' has almost nothing to do with critical race theory." And this is the opening sentence:
The right-wing media apparatus, which is global in scale, has lately been making a fetish of something called "critical race theory" (CRT). This has prompted academics to defend it. It's not a radical political ideology, they say. It's merely a form of critical inquiry. It is not the boogeyman it's being made out to be. There's nothing to fear.
I've gotta say, that "which is global in scale" passing fancy echoes the "world-wide communist conspiracy" language of my youth. Any minute now we're gonna resurrect the "domino theory" as more countries succumb to "the right-wing media apparatus, which is global in scale."
Feh.
But in the entire article you never get one hint, one reference, one suggestion, about what "Critical Race Theory" is. It is, in other words, as fact-free an analysis as the "fact-free world" it adjudges is inhabited by "the other side."
Go away. Learn something. Live longer. Or maybe just reflect that your experience is not a font of wisdom; that experience itself is not a guide to enlightenment, that maybe you know less than you think you know, that maybe history and reality are far, far more complicated than any story somebody told you, or that you now tell yourself.
Or at least get offa mah lawn. Punks.
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