When I saw Kevin McCarthy present the Republican’s new so-called “Parents’ Rights” bill proposal – that’s largely founded on the principle that angry parents who explode at schoolboard meetings are the ones who really need protection, not the members of the schoolboard who are being attacked – I had an immediate reaction to something I’ve been posting on social media. And I was so happy to see Alex Wagner open her show on MSNBC yesterday with a similar comment. It's how the bitter irony of all this is seemingly lost on Republicans. The “outrage” by these angry parents and voiced by Republican officials is that parents know more about what’s best for their children when it comes to educating them than the government does. Putting aside that the schoolboard members are elected, so if you don’t like them, you can vote them out and that they are professionally-trained educators and parents are not, what leaps out is that the Parents’ Rights bill is very specifically the government getting involved with what and how schools can operate and teach. But far more to the point, the extreme right seems to be adoring the actions by Ron DeSantis in Florida when it comes to schooling, and all of that is as government-involved in educating children as could possibly be. Creating laws about what books can be in school libraries, creating laws about what can be taught at schools that don’t make children uncomfortable, creating laws about what A.P. classes can be taught at schools, creating laws that allow the government to appoint directors of state colleges. It’s almost like you couldn’t get the government more involved with Florida schools if you tried. And the extreme right is in heaven, the extreme right is looking at Ron DeSantis as the possible man to lead their party. Right now, I get the sense that dictionaries all over the country are fighting among themselves to determine whether “hypocrisy” or “irony” should be the first word used to describe all this. What I liked, too, in Alex Wagner’s discussion on the subject is that she asked her guest, Jelani Cobb, dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, if he thought that we had passed the point of calling things like DeSantis’s effort to control education merely “culture war” and instead saying that it was now fascism. And Cobb agree, yes, that it was. For a long while now, I’ve been referring to it as fascism. (And explained at great length why it was.) And it’s been infuriating when I see the media and analysts calling it the more polite term of “authoritarianism.” We have no problem reporting on Republicans calling Democrats “socialists” for the past 70 years, but – “fascists” for today’s fascist Republicans? Heavens no, they’re authoritarians. It’s culture war. So – good for Alex Wagner and Jelani Cobb. Yes, we’ve passed the point (long ago) where this can now be called fascism. And, again, here in detail is why. By the way, stick with this video. It's an official music video, and so you likely think you know where it's going with this 1970 song, but I suspect it will surprise you.
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AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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