I'm more than a little shame-faced. I'm downright embarrassed, mortified even, at myself and myself alone because I fell for the guy's claptrap.
One-time Presidential candidate Ron DeSantis blew all kinds of air into the trial balloon by questioning the righteousness of literature and social studies teachers throughout the nation, who he claimed were poisoning minds and souls by spoon-feeding the nation's youth unabashedly WOKE materials, by pushing LGBTQ at them, even "grooming" them for unspeakable things.
And that's not all. He went after librarians. That's right--librarians. It's not easy to villainize the school librarian, or the peaceable staff downtown. I mean, you've got to go out of your way to make them out to be as depraved as DeSantis wanted to make you believe they were. But he did--and scored some significant results.
And the whole CRT thing, too, clear and present danger, an issue that grew out of some Southern swampy mess that established a clean and clear premise: there is no such thing as racial prejudice in America because here in the land of the free and the home of the brave we took care of all of that with the Civil War. I mean, look at Oprah.
The monster was fed energetically by concerned parents who looked at their kids' education and found it riddled with ideas they thought way, way, way beyond the pale. It was as if the American public had simply assumed that teachers and librarians weren't lecherous, deranged libs. Doggone it, it was time for parents to take back the classroom and retool it with the values of, say, Donald J. Trump. America needed to arm itself with MAGA to kill off WOKE. Florida, De Santos claimed, was where WOKE went to die.
And I fell for it. I did. I'm so sorry. I thought DeSantis' WOKE silliness worth fighting.
Nope. According to its own progenitor, the whole thing was a bit of a "false narrative." Not long ago, none other than DeSantis chided the Florida public for going too far with the whole book banning thing, told them to cool their jets, to let up a little because the whole thing was devolving into sheer madness.
After all, some included the Bible on the list of objectionable books, and the dictionary. DeSantis says some of the objections schools and librarians face are an "abuse of the process" undertaken "to score political points."
Well, he should know.
And I believed the guy, when, dang it, it was all politics.
Long live WOKE. May MAGA rest in peace.
2 comments:
Garrison Keillor once said we'd all be better off if we all started the day by giving thanks for just one thing. I'll try.
Don't be too hard on yourself. The Right's culture warriors are masters of manipulation and subterfuge. Sadly, they've had lots of practice the last few years. They truly don't want to govern, but instead try and throw sand in the gears of the rest of us.
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