Donald Trump and his allies have begun mapping out specific plans for using the federal government to punish critics and opponents should he win a second term, with the former president naming individuals he wants to investigate or prosecute and his associates drafting plans to potentially invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in … Read more
The Founding Fathers of the United States, tired as they were of aristocrats and despots, designed a system that would empower citizens to govern themselves. In addition to the right to vote, they gave us a public mail system so we could communicate with each other, a free press so we could be informed about … Read more
Some people on Facebook are beginning to rave about a new movie called “The Sound of Freedom” starring Jim Caviezel. The movie purports to be the true story of Tim Ballard, a former Department of Homeland Security agent who rescues children from sex trafficking in Colombia. Caviezel and others have claimed that the movie, which … Read more
Right-wing Republicans, at the behest of their meme masters at FauxNews, are loudly fighting a war against “wokeism.” As usual, they do not bother to define the term. They simply use the terms “woke” and “wokeism” as weaponized catchall terms to represent the fictional nefarious program of the imaginary “evil libs” that they fear. The … Read more
It appears that democracy in the United States may have survived the 2022 election. Perhaps even more important than the Democrats keeping control of the Senate is the fact that all 13 election-denying Republican candidates, in 6 battleground states, for governor, secretaries of state, and attorneys general, lost their races. (The Arizona Attorney General race, … Read more
The most telling symptom of fascist politics is division. It aims to separate a population into an “us” and a “them.” … Every mechanism of fascist politics works to create or solidify this distinction. Jason Stanley Fascists lure honest conservatives into fascism by constantly telling them that “the left” is an existential threat to their … Read more
I am an educator. I have retired from the classroom (actually the school library), but I continue to teach as a Sunday School teacher and through this blog. Educators are on the front line in the ongoing war against ignorance. The battle used to be a relatively gentle one. Every new class of children and … Read more
Of course the militant political group from Afghanistan has not physically invaded the state of Texas, but their essential ideology HAS taken over. Texas is now officially on record as supporting the harassment of women; the open display of weapons in public; attacks on science, doctors, and public health efforts; voter suppression; and right-wing intrusion … Read more