The worst tornados in memory, hit six states this week, resulting in many deaths. But the real news was the political reactions to the devastation. Even though most of the devastated states were GOP based; Joe Biden immediately pledged help for the hard- hit localities. This brought to mind Donald Trump and the way he dragged his feet on every disaster that happened during his administration. The idiotic Rand Paul sent a message to Biden asking for help for his embattled state. This is the same asshole that after hurricanes Sandy, Harvey, Irma and Maria, petitioned congress to withhold emergency aid to states that he didn’t live in. If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a dozen times Paul’s neighbor should be forever condemned for not getting the job done when he had he chance.
*******
Education was in the news this week and the Republicans, wanting to get into the discussion but having nothing to say decided to make a big deal about Critical Race Theory.
Of course CRT is not taught in any of our grade or high schools. It’s a graduate level college area of study, but that doesn’t stop the nasty little blowhards who need any kind of platform to gain attention, and who all know the study area guaranteed to generate an audience is racial relations.
The big question seems to be: Can history that includes racial content be taught objectively? Jalani Cobb, professor at Columbia and a serious player in this area of discourse, doesn’t think it can. I’m thinking he better be wrong, because if history, any history, can’t be taught objectively we have no business teaching it at all. Professor Cobb’s position is based on a long record of subjective methodology in the teaching of all history. Why would racial history be any different? In fact it is usually worse.
There are many parts to this puzzle. Black educators legitimately complain that the black experience has been edited from most of our history, but many of those same people want black history to be taught singularly as black history. It is taught that way now as a college elective but there is so much to teach in a grade or high school curriculum that there just isn’t time for a
Specific focus like Black History, especially in a curriculum that usually doesn’t even include Civics, probably the most important subject that can be learned after reading and writing. What we must do, in order to present history in a true light, is incorporate in the curriculum a view of people of color that is as broad and all inclusive as any view of whites that is being portrayed. That will not be easy. We need some new texts, something like a “True History of America,” that will teach racial history, not as an adjunct of local political thought, but as a series of events that happened, supported by serious and factually correct research.
Right now, it’s obvious to everyone who can think, that what we learn of our history has a great deal to do with who teaches it, and where you learn it. Local, social and institutional prejudices have everything to do with what is taught, what we learn, and how we learn it.
I went to a Catholic grade school. The same teacher that taught us about the evils of slavery also applauded the great work being done by Joseph McCarthy to eliminate the immanent communist threat lapping at our shores. It never occurred to this lovely old nun that Tail Gunner Joe was the antithesis of everything America stood for, only that he was an anti-communist and the Catholic Church was against communism. That’s the big problem with education and it always will be. That’s why Professor Cobb believes as he does.
*****
With a new version of the COVID virus sweeping the country it’s no wonder that the voices of ignorance are raised in anger and protest against President Biden. These are the same idiots, and I use that term advisedly, that voted twice for a cheap chiseling small time con man who lost both popular elections and only became president one of those times because of a major flaw in our voting system called the Electoral College.
Needless to say, these clowns aren’t close to intelligent enough to recognize that the appearance of one new variant after another is due mainly to their own and their fellow travelers avoidance of the vaccines that could prevent them from getting the disease and spreading it to others, thereby extending the lives of the various viral mutations.
They spend their time accusing our current administration of failing in its promise to end the pandemic without understanding that it is they who are the cause of the continuing infection. The vaccine has been proven to prevent infection in a majority of cases. In most of the rest it significantly reduces the severity of the infection. That alone should indicate, even to the most recalcitrant denier that vaccines are the way to go.
The big argument, outside of the insane ones about all kinds of natural vaccines like horse medicine, is that no one can force these people to do something they don’t want to do. In fact we are forced to do stuff we don’t want to do all the time, especially when it is for the greater good. That is especially true of vaccines. We have, for over a century, been forced to take vaccines for any number of diseases in order to go to school. We must take a test to legally drive a car or perform any number of other tasks. I guess our main problem with getting people to take the vaccine is, we expect human beings to have a level of intelligence and responsibility that will comprehend the value of the vaccine and their responsibility not to give the virus to other people. We seem to remember a time when people possessed these values but that appears to be long gone, driven over the cliff by the likes of Donald Trump and his coterie of weak-willed, self-serving scum.
But maybe there’s a good side to all this. If enough of the deniers refuse the vaccine they won’t be around to vote for the inane degenerates clogging up the GOP side of the ballot. Not wishing for anything, you understand, just pointing out an interesting possibility.
****
And while this nation is engulfed in madness, across the world Vladimir Putin is shukin’ and jivin’ to a military beat as he lines up a couple of hundred thousand Russian troops along the Ukrainian border. What the hell is this guy thinking? Does he really expect us to believe that he is going to invade Ukraine? That’s madness! The fact that we let him grab Georgia and Chechnya doesn’t mean that we will let him take all of Ukraine. Even if we want to, we couldn’t because that would lead to him walking into all the nations of Eastern Europe, just the way Hitler did 90 years ago.
Putin knows we don’t want to engage in a hot war and neither does he. For one thing he just can’t afford it, but mostly he will lose too much support at home. What he’s really worried about is another round of sanctions aimed at him personally, along with his billionaire cronies. Add that to a complete shutdown of oil sales and Biden has the stick to stop the child from misbehaving. Europe, mostly Germany, will bitch and moan about not getting Russian oil, but there are plenty of other places that will gladly supply them. Sure it will take longer and cost more but the EU knows that Putin must be stopped right where he is. If we give him an inch he will have no problem taking a yard and he will jump right through that hoop.
Three things that would improve the voting mess. One, everyone who is a legal resident (or has an approved green card) may vote, either by mail or in person. (Of course, that includes getting rid of the idiot postmaster general as soon as possible.)
Two, the electoral college, in reach state, no exceptions, would vote for the person who had the most votes. Each state would be responsible for accurate election but since the president is a federal election, that would be the final judgment. No more of these phony “audits.”.
Three, candidates for anything, can represent the state and county they live in, one residence, one county, one candidate for the particular office. (Also a majority voting system at all times. When the vote is called for, the majority, even if it’s one vote, should prevail.)