Connecting the Dots in the Right's Culture Wars
Threats to health, election, and elected officials. Book burnings. Library purges. Critical Race Theory bans. Anti-vaxx. Anti Mask. “New” history. So many outrages, so little time.
Today, let’s play “scare the school boards,” followed by a round of “ban the books,” games gaining increasing popularity as the so-called grassroots “parents rights” movement metastasizes into new areas.
It sure seems odd that all these events are happening at the same time. I’m not really big on conspiracy theories, but I keep seeing the same frightening news items popping up all over the country. And if you look closely, you’ll see the same faces popping up in local news stories on these topics.
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Just one day after the San Diego County Board of Supervisors enacted new rules for public sessions aimed at limiting disruptions, the Poway Unified School Board voted to keep its upcoming meetings virtual.
From the Union-Tribune:
Poway Unified School District trustees have received death threats and have had protesters visit their homes with “stacks of manifesto documents,” according to the superintendent.
In a brief five-minute special virtual meeting Monday afternoon, the school board voted to stay with remote gatherings for its next monthly meeting due to safety concerns.
Superintendent Marian Kim Phelps announced at the meeting that in the past several weeks, board members have received death threats to themselves and their families.
Back in September, an outdoors Let Them Breathe rally was the staging place for demonstrators entering through an unattended door into a virtual Poway School Board meeting. Law enforcement advised the trustees to adjourn. What happened next gained national publicity, as the crashers decided to declare themselves to be the legal school board.
Parent Gabriela Dow told KPBS:
Dow said the protestors had various signs, but none were related to items on the agenda.
“People were holding signs saying ethnic studies are racism and terrorism, that's a whole other situation. Political signs ... Larry Elder ... and so there seemed to be a lot of different topics that this group was all protesting together and disrupted the meeting,” Dow said.
She said she didn't recognize any of the protestors from the Poway community, but she did recognize some of them from the recent San Diego County Board of Supervisors meeting.
Sharon McKeeman, the leader of the Let Them Breathe group, said her organization would never encourage people to crash a virtual meeting, saying they “only” provide signage for rallies. Riiight...
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A school board in Spotsylvania, Virginia made national news this week after members capped off a meeting concerning library books by saying they’d like books including LGBTQ content removed from circulation to be burned.
I think we should throw those books in a fire,” Abuismail said, and Twigg said he wants to “see the books before we burn them so we can identify within our community that we are eradicating this bad stuff...”
...Twigg said he would like to broaden the criteria for identifying objectionable books.
“There are some bad, evil-related material that we have to be careful of and look at,” he said, without elaborating.
Remember that Virginia just finished a gubernatorial election where a non-existent curriculum (Critical Race Theory) was a campaign issue, with the winning GOP candidate promising to “ban” it his first day in office.
Lest you think that book banning and burning is limited to a bunch of hicks in the Old Dominion, state and local officials in Texas, Iowa, Kansas, and Tennessee are also getting in on the action.
School districts in Texas have already removed books with content deemed to be related to Critical Race Theory, and more books are headed out the door, with the suggestion that prosecutions could follow.
From the Dallas News:
Gov. Greg Abbott is directing Texas education officials to investigate whether pornography is available in public schools and to notify law enforcement if such material is accessible.
His directive comes amid a political backlash against books related to race, gender and sexuality. Some parents have railed against books that include scenes of sexual abuse and LGBTQ relationships.
Earlier this week, Abbott called on the Texas Education Agency, State Board of Education and Texas’ library and archives commission to develop standards to prevent the presence of “pornography and other obscene content” in schools — though he didn’t specify what kind of standards. The state agencies said
Texas Republican State Representative Matt Krause has come up with a list of 850 books he’d like to see axed.
You’ll also find lots of award-winning books, like the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron and Harvey Awards Book of the Year The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen.
There’s also This Is Your Time by Ruby Bridges, written by one of the first Black students to integrate into an all-white school.
Book bannings and even burnings are not new in American history. What is new is their frequency, intensity, and success. We are seeing the same books removed across state lines: books about race, gender, LGBTQ identities and sex.
Give these people an inch, they’ll take a mile. And let’s remind all these wannabe church ladies that kids don’t need libraries for prurient pictures; they can always hack daddy’s PornHub account.
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New history, according to the faithful:
https://twitter.com/JasonSCampbell/status/1457835361812496395?s=20
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Also, have you heard about the war on Sesame Street?
https://twitter.com/dougporter506/status/1458905870247477259?s=20
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Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com