Well I'm back. I needed a little sabbatical to refresh the mind. I was trying to clear my head of all things Trump but that's pretty hard to do. He's back on the campaign trail, rehashing his many grievances and adding a few new ones, like the critical race theory that has become the talk of conservative radio and television. No one seems to know what it really is but it sounds bad and that's enough in the neverending cultural war these so-called Christian warriors perpetuate.
Anyone who acknowledges it is immediately cast as the bad guy. Poor General Milley came under fire last month when Tucker Carlson called the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff a "stupid pig" for promoting CRT in the military. Gen. Milley was quick to fire back but his defense of teaching critical race theory in the military was kind of odd. He likened it to having some situational understanding about the country for which we are here to defend." Noting that he also read Marx, Lenin and Mao but that it didn't make him a socialist. Hardly a rousing endorsement.
The Left hasn't done a very good job explaining what it is, so the Right digs in deeper in their mischaracterization of the theory to get white folks all riled up ahead of the midterms. Trump himself likened it to "psychological abuse."
Not surprisingly, the theory has been around for quite a while. It originated in the writings of several American legal scholars in the 1970s and gained some momentum in the 1980s as academic scholars began to use the theory more broadly to describe the racial inequalities in the country which were (and still are in their minds) the result of institutional racism. You can quibble with CRT, but it is not as pervasive as conservative pundits like Sean Hannity would like you to think. Just to make sure, conservative states are outlawing critical race theory in their high school curricula.
The problem with discussing it in an open forum is that minds are already set. Republican strategists are really good at putting liberal strategists on the defensive by casting such terms in as negative light as possible. It takes much more effort to explain what it is rather than what it isn't, especially when you have to go up against PragerU.
These conservative pundits and so-called think tanks are drawing directly from Soviet ideology in making demons out of thin air in an effort to defend their privileged state. More and more it seems the conservative right wing is working with Putin's Kremlin in an extensive propaganda effort that knows no bounds. RT and other Russian backed social media networks are similarly taking aim at CRT and the 1619 Project, which the Republicans tried so hard to discredit in the 2020 election cycle. This is all about sowing racial discord while accusing the other side of doing so by promoting these new educational approaches.
We saw this with the Black Lives Matter movement. After a brief moment where the overwhelming majority of Americans seemed to empathize with the way Blacks and other persons of color are treated by the police, the conservative media very quickly twisted the issue by stressing the incredibly difficult situations most police have to face and the number of fallen officers while on duty. Hence, Blue Lives Matter was born.
Michael Brown has been all but forgotten by the mainstream media, replaced with George Floyd, who we all got to see choked to death by Officer Derek Chauvin after Floyd had tried to pass a counterfeit 20 dollar bill in a convenience store. It was especially hard for conservative pundits to explain away this incident, but that didn't stop them from trying.
Critical Race Theory has reemerged in academic circles largely in response to incidents like these. We see Blacks brutally murdered by police for the slightest infraction, while white mass shooters get apprehended with little more than a peep. This points to an inherit racism in the way police approach alleged black criminals.
We see some progress in convictions. The cop who shot Michael Brown had no charges brought against him, even after a follow-up probe into the shooting death, whereas Derek Chauvin faces 20+ years behind bars, pending appeal. He's not the only cop to be sentenced. Amber Guyger faces 10 years in jail for the shooting death of Botham Jean over mistaking his apartment for hers.
The institutional racism in these cases isn't so much within the city police forces as it is in the police unions, which staunchly defend their union officers at every turn, no matter how heinous the crime. The Minneapolis Police Union Fund covered Chauvin's legal fees to the tune of $1 million and no doubt are covering his appeal expenses. These unions also help bankroll the Blue Lives Matter movement and other propaganda efforts to defend the institutional racism within their ranks.
It seems that Critical Race Theory's biggest crime is calling attention to these incidents and the great efforts institutions like police unions will go to defend their officers, regardless of the overwhelming evidence that points to their explicit assaults on persons of color. Despite nearly 60 years since the passage of the Civil Rights Act, we see much of the same institutional racism in the police ranks that past CR leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. had to face on a daily basis. Not to mention the many other persons of color who suffered at the hands of brutal police officers like Bull Connor. It doesn't seem Fox News wants to tell you about that.
One reich wing site defined critical race theory as the belief that "all white people are racist". Naturally those delusionals could not point to any source in order to back up their ridiculous claims.
ReplyDeleteWhile you are correct that "Republican strategists are really good at putting liberal strategists on the defensive by casting such terms in as negative light as possible. " I always find that I can easily defeat any reichster in a debate by simply challenging them to prove their claim. All those half witted morons with their brains up their butts do is to repeat their claims without offering the slightest evidence to substantiate their idiocies. Then I make it a point of showing their shortcomings. Works all the time. I always defeat the delusionals in every forum I post on that way. In fact when I do so I often say "too easy" meaning that the jackbutts make it so easy because of their endless and mindless stupidities.
True that they are delusional, but they are very good at baiting the mainstream news into these arguments by bringing them on their talk shows. As a result they get to reach a wider audience. I would like to see the mainstream news pay less attention to these morons.
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