The conservative vision of the future of America is quite clear. Let’s hide the ugly parts of our history. An eighth grade history teacher was canceled.
Finally, on Feb. 8, 2022, at 4:05 p.m., Wickenkamp scored a Zoom meeting with Superintendent Laurie Noll. He asked the question he felt lay at the heart of critiques of his curriculum. “Knowing that I should stick to the facts, and knowing that to say ‘Slavery was wrong,’ that’s not a fact, that’s a stance,” Wickenkamp said, “is it acceptable for me to teach students that slavery was wrong?”
Noll nodded her head, affirming that saying “slavery was wrong” counts as a “stance.”
“We had people that were slaves within our state,” Noll said, according to a video of the meeting obtained by The Post. “We’re not supposed to say to [students], ‘How does that make you feel?’ We can’t — or, ‘Does that make you feel bad?’ We’re not to do that part of it.”
She continued: “To say ‘Is slavery wrong?’ — I really need to delve into it to see is that part of what we can or cannot say. And I don’t know that, Greg, because I just don’t have that. So I need to know more on that side.”
He left the teaching profession after that load of waffly rubbish.
They hate women. Conservatives have a radical perspective on abortion and contraception.
The House Judiciary Committee in Arkansas was scheduled to discuss a bill that would classify “causing the death of an unborn child” as a homicide. I’m not using the word ‘abortion’ here for a reason—because while the legislation would certainly make abortion prosecutable as a homicide, it goes far beyond that. HB 1174 says that it’s a crime to end a pregnancy by “wrongful act, neglect or default,” language so broad that women who have had miscarriages could be prosecuted for murder if the state decides that they somehow ‘caused’ it. (The bill even specifies that “accidental miscarriage” is not prosecutable, which means that legislators believe there is such a thing as a miscarriage that is not accidental.)
So if a woman miscarries and the state decides that it happened because she lifted a heavy box, or didn’t take her prenatal vitamins—they could charge her with murder. I wrote about this bill back in January, but it’s worth repeating: There is no limit to what a zealous prosecutor could argue ‘caused’ a miscarriage or stillbirth. In fact, cases like this have already been brought forward before Roe was even overturned—for reasons ranging from alleged drug use, refusing medical interventions like a c-section, even a suicide attempt.
But there’s more. Because this bill defines human life from fertilization, women could also be charged with murder for using Plan B or IUDs—which conservatives believe prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg—or undergoing IVF. In fact, legislators removed language that would prevent the prosecution of women who use contraception or IVF:
On the bright side, the future is looking bright if you’re a wealthy white man with a strong bigotry streak.
If “causing the death of an unborn child” is classified as homicide, does this mean that legislators that vote against proper, available healthcare for woman that might lead to miscarriages will be prosecuted?
Life begins at conception? That sounds like a stance to me.
Let’s hide the ugly parts of our history… so that we can go back to doing them again.
Let’s face it. These people want slaves. Oh, they won’t call it that. They’ll use weasel words like “indentured worker” or “independent contractor,” but what they want is someone who will make them money without receiving anything in return.
And these shitheads have the gall to call taxation and vaccine mandates “slavery” when they are the ones slashing labor protections and think there’s nothing wrong with exploiting workers.
@ ^ Akira MacKenzie : Not just for workers but they want women to slaves again and trans and non-heteronormative people “eradicated” in their own genocidal words.
Not just in America. These douchebags want to spread their bigotry everywhere they can.
Murdoch esp has an awful lot to answer for here.
It’s amazing to me to see them practically worship undifferentiated blastocysts but at the same time, as soon as the kid’s born they wouldn’t lift a finger to keep the kid from dying in the street. How about taking care of the kids that are already alive? Then we can talk about the “unborn”.
Ok… if they are going to refer to an embryo or a fetus as an ‘unborn child’, then we should refer to them as ‘undead corpses’.
It’s only fair.
@ #5: If it really was about the unborn, you’d have better pre-natal care.
A theocracy of christians presupposes that the catholics and protestants won’t immediately fall to anathematizing and killing eachother once they are in power. Of course, they’ll kill all the jews, first, because that’s what they always seem to come up with. Either the evangelicals have secret plans to start killing the catholics, or they’re seriously deluded about their ability to cooperate.
“[C]onservative vision of the future” is kind of an oxymoron. They always situate their Golden Age in a mostly-imaginary past, to which they long to return.
@Akira #3:
They’ve been doing that in prisons for decades. And of course it’s clear who they preferentially want to put into prisons, in increasing numbers, for just as long.
@7. Dunc : ” If it really was about the unborn, you’d have better pre-natal care.”
Truth. Also if they were really “pro-life” they wouldnt support the death penalty – including for women who have abortions or even miscarry their embryoes.
Tennessee repealed protections for interracial marriages and a state legislator has called for bringing back lynching.
Florida law considers gender affirming care to be child abuse and another bill (Florida HB 991) is being pushed through the legislature that would allow anyone to be sued for a minimum of $35,000 if they call a Florida official racist, sexist, or homophobic.
Mississippi is reintroducing Jim Crow laws to segregate towns and police forces via Mississippi House Bill 1020.
West Virginia’s state government rejected a bill that would outlaw child marriages.
Yea, these fuckers are not at all shy about the fascist state they’re creating. And they are creating it, because there is no resistance. The Democratic party is just not fighting back. Whatever token victories are happening with blue states enshrining into their laws protections for abortion access or gender affirming care or rights to unionize don’t really mean much. The people who live in Florida, Texas, West Virginia, South Carolina, Arkansas, etc. are not helped when California or Minnesota or Michigan pass laws to protect people from things that were not going to happen in those states anyway. There needs to be resistance. There needs to be direct action. There needs to be efforts to protect the people who live in fascist-controlled states pushing for the criminalization of peoples’ existence.
Seconding the need for resistance and direct action. I’m so tired of reading post after post of the horrible, genocidal shit these fascists are pushing and enacting into law without calls for action against them. Stop being cowards, stop being bystanders. Me and my found family are trans and are literally being driven to death by these horrible people in power. How many of us have to suffer and die before you all do something of substance? What the fuck ever happened to the lessons of history we learned from WWII about what it takes to stop fascism? What happened to “first they came for the…”? If you aren’t doing anything or encouraging people to, then you’re just helping enable this shitty patriarchal white supremacist dystopia by continuing to play along with the systems of capitalism and authoritarianism that allow them power. Holy shit, at the very least do not accept one single freaking judge appointed by one of the most horrible people to have lived removing the most widespread abortion medication (and the only way for many people in this country to have an abortion) nationwide.
The fact that they are openly calling for the genocide of trans people and have already enacted such laws in several states should be a call to arms for everyone who claims they are an “ally”. Yet most of you seem unwilling to do or even say anything until they’ve already started operating the camps (and just admit it—you probably won’t afterwards either). Pacifism didn’t stop the Confederates, pacifism didn’t stop the Nazis, and pacifism isn’t going to stop the current crop of fascists. Only direct action and civil disobedience can, and that can only work if enough people are on our side and understand we are fighting in self-defense and support our survival. Don’t let them win without a fight, don’t let them cause massive amounts of suffering and death and allow them to continue their reign of terror in perpetuity because you are squeamish about the violence required (but are somehow less so about marginalized people experiencing prolonged physical suffering, existential anguish, and death through less direct and visible violent means of deprivation).
<
blockquote>The Democratic party is just not fighting back.
Of course not. Guns and fighting and violence is beneath the exalted, urban, liberals. America might fall into fascism, but at least Biden , Pelosi, Schumer, et al. will pat themselves on the back for not “stooping to the right’s level” even as they are marched to the gallows.
No, wearing a ribbon, or waving a sign at a protest isn’t ‘fighting back.” Actual FIGHTING is fighting back.
You want a fascist takeover? “Progressive” violence will guarantee that, rapidly.
Only the slow, erratic, and fallible processes of education (in the broadest, extra-academic sense), voting, etc, can produce healthy ad lasting results.
That sure stopped the Nazis. Quit being in denial. They are literally enacting genocide against trans people as I speak. Are we supposed to just accept our suffering and deaths? Some of us are going to fight back, and if you won’t support us when we do, just f off. They won’t stop with us and continuing to withhold the necessary violence against them only allows them to consolidate more power.
There’s a word for people who side with fascists when resistance against fascists from marginalized people happens: it’s called “fascists”. That’s why I’m stressing not only direct action, but encouragement and spreading widespread acceptance of those who partake in it.
Okay Hex and Akira-
What do you consider “fighting back”? What buildings/ bridges do you want to bomb? Which people do you want to unalive? What do you want people to do? You can say “Direct action” what’s that? Stop dancing around it- what’s your plans?
I don’t live in Florida. I live in Minnesota. I voted for people that enshrined protection for trans people. That’s what I know to do.
I wish any of the judges or politicians in power who are pushing genocidal laws were more afraid right now than the trans people who are targets of them. I’m not going to outright say plans or whatever, and you asking people to announce such is so goddamn astonishingly ignorant I don’t know why I’m even bothering to respond.
I’ve already lost a half dozen of my loved ones to these fascists’ queerphobic crusades, and countless more I still care about that I didn’t personally know. My community is currently reeling from a recent string of deaths, and to add insult to injury we have to experience people cheering on their deaths and harassing those who are mourning them. Fuck anyone who refuses to stand up against fascists. You aren’t against violence—you’re perfectly content to let them continue to get away with it. When will it fucking end? Is the trans community just a “necessary sacrifice” to you? You’re no fucking better than those who did nothing against the Nazis in Germany. How well did legal reforms work against them? If you sit by idly while white supremacists continue to gain power, just admit you have chosen to accept the privileges they give you in exchange for the wellbeing and lives of others.
@19
Drive down to Georgia and help burn down cop city in Atlanta. That’d be some good direct action.
Or travel to those various states and participate in marches or sit-ins. Lend your voice to the cause in areas that need to hear that message.
Punch, squarely in the face, anyone who goes to protest drag shows in your area, if you don’t want to make the drive across country. Especially punch in the face the ones they’re carrying swastika flags and doing Nazi salutes. Show up to drag shows to be a guardian and stand in solidarity.
Donate your time or your money to causes and organizations that give refuge for people targeted by these fascist laws – trans people, gay people, people seeking abortions.
There’s plenty of direct action you can do, at multiple different levels, and most of it is obvious to see if you open yourself up to doing things you weren’t already going to do anyway and therefore aren’t inconvenienced by. Voting ain’t shit, because plenty of people in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, etc. voted for the same kinds of politicians you did, too, and it didn’t help them at all. Voting isn’t anywhere near the bare minimum that a moral person can do to make the world safer from fascism and genocide.
I’m just going to close with this and leave this thread for the sake of my mental health: if you’d rather live under white supremacist theocratic rule than support fighting them, I understand where you are coming from, but I don’t like you, and I don’t care about you, because I have no choice but to fight. I’m openly queer, openly trans, I’ve helped build up a wonderful queer community that means the world to us and that has given me such mental and emotional relief that I would rather die than have to return to the closet. I’ve had surgery and require hormone medication to keep my body healthy, and if they take that away from me, it is a death sentence.
The idea that fascism can be stopped through legal means when it is already well on its way to being a fixture is beyond laughable, because they will do what they always do and refuse to follow laws that aim to reduce their power while brutally enforcing those that enable them to hold it. I understand it is unpleasant to admit that the only thing that can stop them is violence, but I would personally rather see a world in which people fought back, even if futile, than one in which they are allowed to control and submit massive amounts of people to misery for their own personal gain in perpetuity. If you’d rather the latter, then there’s no point in me arguing further.
Hex @ # 17, etc: That sure stopped the Nazis.
Street fighting saved the Weimar Republic, huh?
I didn’t, and don’t, discourage self-defense when needed – but the gains made by the LGBTQ+ movement came from persuasion, not “Pink Pistols” ambushing David Dukies.
I do give money to many trans-friendly organization, thank you very much. But you didn’t seem to think that counts as direct action. And I’m not saying I was there, but the 5th Precinct in my city burned down, just fyi.
Which city is cop city? Would you prefer to give me an email address instead if you don’t like this forum for discussion?
Saying “direct action” as also just vague talking until you have a target.
@ 2$
Riiiiiight, because counting on The System and “The Law” stopped the Nazis.
Oh wait! It didn’t! If anything Hitler’s rise to power was perfectly legal with every “i” dotted and “t” crossed!
I’m with Hex. I’m done with liberal hypocrisy.
3rd Precinct, different action at the 5th precinct.
Future CPAC; starts with Horst Wessel Lied.
@25 antigone10 – here are two articles about the huge development of a cop training center that will destroy a forest:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/12/atlanta-cop-city-black-community-protest
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/11/us/cop-city-atlanta-protester-autopsy/index.html
My organization cares about honest, decent people regardless of their race, color, orientation, etc. We are pacific (as in against war). But, we work in many peaceful ways against abuse, destruction, bigotry, murder, hateful speech and actions, etc. WITHOUT resorting to destructive means. I lived through the L.A. riots and was saddened by the destruction of black owned businesses because that was the wrong target.
@shermanj
Thank you for the link about Cop City.
@26 Akira MacKenzie said: Riiiiiight, because counting on The System and “The Law” stopped the Nazis.
I reply: Akira, you are correct in pointing out that the System is broken. Too many powerful Corporate and religion owned arrogant politicians gaming the system with no sense of honesty, ethics of concern for ‘the general welfare’. (Scarizona’s own Sinema was bought by the Banksters per many news reports) We work under the radar. Maybe not as obvious or immediately effective, but, we do achieve some gains toward a more progressive, enlightened caring society for all.
@15. Akira MacKenzi : “Actual FIGHTING is fighting back.”
Your talking about Civil War. Something that’s absolutely destructive and that you may not win and even if you do will come at a horrific cost in lives.
To the general point of this thread, which I’m only jumping into late:
Does anybody here have any ideas or advice about connecting with any organizations in Southern California, for the cause of tech worker unionization?
If you’re willing to sacrifice trans people (and every other marginalized group these fascists are targeting until all you’re left with is a patriarchal white supremacist theocratic fascist state) to prevent a civil war, all I can say is go **** yourself. Might as well let the Holocaust happen to avoid a World War, right? Meanwhile, this happened right next to the town where I was born:
https://thebuckeyeflame.com/2023/03/15/armed-nazis-white-supremacists-swarm-lgbtq-drag-event/
I’m scared for my goddamn life and the life of my family and other loved ones. **** you if you won’t support people fighting them. Do you honestly think things will be better if they are left unimpeded? Pure ****ing ignorance.
Me and my family are literally a target of genocide right now and I have privileged assholes telling me to think of all the people who would be subjected to the misery of a civil war should we not accept our fates of suffering and death without fighting back, while also ignoring that they will continue targeting marginalized group after group until they have complete control. To that I say, anyone who won’t fight alongside with us or support those who do can go **** themselves. If you won’t stand with us in solidarity, you might as well be allied with our oppressors.
Imagine responding to targets of Nazi Germany issuing calls to arms with “Your talking about World War. Something that’s absolutely destructive and that you may not win and even if you do will come at a horrific cost in lives.”
How the fuck is this different?
Fuck you.
Somebody once said that your political enemy isn’t the one who wants to kill you, but the one who is willing to let you die. That’s what I keep thinking of when I see Democrats who talk about how much they want to fight for those who aren’t straight, rich, white men; yet refuse to “stoop” to republican aggressiveness by, say, expanding the SCOTUS or eliminating the filibuster or even stating plainly and repeatedly that republicans are the ones who hate democracy and freedom.
I think it was a German political philosopher in the early twentieth century who later became a NAZI. I might have reversed direct and indirect objects: “not whom you want to kill, but whom you’re willing to let die.” I believe the point stands either way.
And you seem to think that a civil war hasn’t already started. Me and my loved ones are already living in a war zone. Many of us can’t go outside without fearing for our safety. We are being murdered both directly through physical attacks and indirectly through genocidal laws against us. How is it fucking fair that we have to be continually subjected to this (and it’s getting worse every day) so that those favored under white supremacist fascism can go on unperturbed and ignorant?
Ultimately, each and every one of you is going to need to make a choice on whether or not you’re going to stand in solidarity with trans and other marginalized people who are being targeted. Me and my loved ones don’t have the luxury of making that choice and if we are to survive we NEED true allies. And true allies don’t sit by idly, choosing to avoid most of the conflicts we are forced to face while we are being exterminated.
Hex, you are in iting violence.
You refuse to accept there are alternatives.
You assume no one here is doing any thing.
Stop it.
I’m always leery of the claim that “if you’re not with us, you’re against us”.
(Very Biblical, but)
Similar, but better would be the “First they came for…”.
“The counterfeits of the past take assumed names, and are fond of calling themselves the future.” – Victor Hugo, Les Miserables
@ Hex, #14, and like-minded others
Have you ever seen the famous “Don’t chatter!” poster by Nina Vatolina?
Yes, the right in the US and some places abroad intends to exterminate LGBTQ+ people. Yes, everyone needs to spread that message far and wide. Everyone needs to understand that that’s what the Republican Party (and ideological equivalents around the world) intends, and everyone needs to not be allowed to forget it.
Places like this are good places to plan peaceful protests. Places like this are good places to discuss legal strategies. Places like this are good places to coordinate with elected representatives, or to engage in the political process.
Places like this are not good places to discuss everything, dig? If you’re not familiar with that poster, look it up. Read the poem. Ruminate on it, in light of our current situation in the US.
Yeah, the culture wars are a thing. Not just in the USA.
In Australian news: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-15/examiner-editor-mark-westfield-leaves-role-after-trans-letter/102096490
I am all in favor of ruthlessly mocking fascists.
Call out their inability to define “woke”.
Call out their many and varied contradictions, and their hypocricy, and their inability to get numbers and other facts right.
Demand they explain how Noah managed to get one million beetle species into the Ark and mock them when they are unable to reply.
“Woke” is like “paradigm” -very few know the definition of it, but it does not stop people from using the word.
And kooks that will not come out and condemn slavery should be called “Klan enablers”.
@ Hex : various : I do stand with you – tho I am an Aussie not an American typing here.
I do NOT suggest leaving the fascists or Repugs unimpeded. Saying no physical military style violence is NOT the same thing.
No, no I don’t. That is NOT what I’m suggesting.or saying here at all.
“Is the trans community just a “necessary sacrifice” to you?
No. No, it isn’t. Does that mean advocating violence? I don’t think so. There are alternatives. Violence in self-defense? Sure. Civil War type violence attacking others? Not so much.
@ Hex : various : I do stand with you – tho I am an Aussie not an American typing here.
I do NOT suggest leaving the fascists or Repugs unimpeded. Saying no physical military style violence is NOT the same thing.
No, no I don’t. That is NOT what I’m suggesting.or saying here at all.
“Is the trans community just a “necessary sacrifice” to you?
No. No, it isn’t. Does that mean advocating violence? I don’t think so. There are alternatives. Violence in self-defense? Sure. Civil War type violence attacking others? Not so much.
@43. vucodlak : “Have you ever seen the famous “Don’t chatter!” poster by Nina Vatolina?”
This? :
https://www.tate-images.com/DK0520-Don%27t-Chatter-Nina-Vatolina%27s-famous-poster-on-the.html
I presume that’s the one?
@39. Hex :
You have them and people will stand by you and I will stand by you. As much as I can from the world’s biggest ocean away. (I gather you are American? Red state?) This doesn’t mean I’m always going to agree with everything and that we can’t discuss tactics and pro’s & con’s of various courses of action.
Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela. They didn’t stand idly by – but nor did they use violence or military force. We’ve seen in Viet Nam, In Iraq and in Ukraine the limits of what military brute force can achieve. Let’s be smarter and do something that works* please?
Political action, economic action, diplomatic action, educational & re-educational action. Those are what I suggest we try at least first with violence only as a very last resort. Do you think these things aren’t worth doing? Can’t make a difference?
I would like to see the Democratic party and POTUS Biden come out many, many times more strongly than it hitherto has.. I am also very disappointed that they haven’t. Biden should call a traitor a traitor and arrest and impeach Trump and his gang and especially Trump’s Treason SCOTUS in my view. They committed perjury, they treated Congress wth contempt and every legal charge in the book that can be thrown at them should be. They should lose all their secret service protection and be told that. They should – in brief – be forced to resign and their decisions including repealing Roe Vs Wade be ruled null and void and their term as SCOTUS illegitimate based on their appointment by fraudulent deciet and perverting the course of Justice and contempt of Congress.
SCOTUS should be refashioned and never allowed to be partisan political again. The Federalist Sciety should be declared domestic enemies and pervertors of the course of Justice since they are trying to an impose courts to rule their way. Murdoch should be jailed for treason too along with Fox news hacks and they should shut down the domestic enemies of the USA that are far reichwing media outlets and reprogram those deliberately lied to and brain-washed by them. Change the laws so that happens.
Deliberately lying to misinform the public should become a major crime with serious consequences.
The Electoral College must be scrapped and ended and the rule of the Bible Belt rural states rendered a historic bitter memory with one vote having one value nation-wide. Californians need to have their votes counted as equal as Wyomingites not have a situation where Wyoming voters have over triple the voting power. (See : https://www.huffpost.com/entry/its-time-to-end-the-electoral-college_b_12891764 Doubt if anything much has changed since there?)
Gerrymandering and voter suppression need to be stopped. Corporate Political Action Groups should be banned from spending obscene sums of money to swing elections. A ranked ballot or preferential voting or run-off voting system of some sortneeds to repalce the current anti-democratic mess to remove the 3rd party spoiler effect (exhibit A : Nader robbing Gore of the 2000 POTUS election) from distorting the vote. More such things too.
So.
Major political and legal reforms.
By popular demand. By the POTUS and a Democratic congress legally (not militarily) purged of Repug traitors like MTG, Moscow Mitch and Gaetz. Consequences for those behind Jan 6th including Trump and more need to be serious, immediate and overwhelming and they should die behind bars spending the rest of their lives there. (No death penalty – just life imprisonment meaning that.)
That’s what I want and am advocating for. That’s what I think will make a difference.
What part of that do you disagree with and think isn’t a good alternative to starting a massive amount of bloodshed and destruction with unpredictable results aside from people dying on a massive scale? Hex? Akira MacKenzie?
Do you think the side that keeps screaming rabidly about the Second Amendment and guns and the side that has been calling for a civil war so “The
SouthTraitor Slaver states will rise again” is unprepared for violence and wouldn’t welcome it and respond many times more violently and brutally even than now?Do you think you can predict what a Second American Civil War would truly mean and what its aftermath might be? Even if we “win” it?
@38. Hex :
It isn’t. It isn’t fair or right and I can only begin to imagine how you feel.
I do NOT want fascists , White Supremacists and Trumpists (to repeat myself, twice) to go unperturbed.
.* See for instance : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandhism
As a fossil guano deposit has been found i Oregon – left behind by a colony of pterosaurs- I suddenly know what to call these post-MAGA extremists; the fossil guano party.
PS. “Unperturbed” does NOT equal murdered or facing physical violence that causes deaths and serious injuries.
Thought experiment : Would this famous classic ‘Blues Brothers’ – “I hate Illinois nazis!” – movie scene still work if instead of the nazis diving over the bridge and being uninjured but embararssed and very much perturbed they’d all been hit and killed or badly injured by the Blues Bros instead there?
drsteve @ #33, maybe try CODE-CWA? Or the Tech Workers Coalition?
Just in- a textbook publisher has adjusted to Texas legislation by altering a passage about Rosa Parks so it is not evident why she was required to give up her seat.
Next up; Martin Luther King was really angry about “something” in the fifties and sixties.
#26 Akira MacKenzie
It didn’t. Neither did violence.
I’m tired of this lie.
No, it was not completely legal. To begin, the last election was filled with violence and intimidation. Then, the Nazis started imprisoning communists and socialists – that’s what the Dachau concentration camp was originally created for. And when voting on the law to give Hitler absolute power, these imprisoned representatives were counted as absent without excuse, to make the remaining representatives be enough of a quorum. And even then, there was massive pressure on the non-Nazi representatives; large numbers of SA were watching the session, and SS was stationed outside.
Legal? Not even close.