Religious Power: The certain endgame

In the history of the world, there never has been a government ruled by the religious right that has not devolved into a dictatorship. That is the certain endgame of religious power.

The first clause in the Bill of Rights states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison said that state support for a particular religion or for any religion was improper. They argued that compelling citizens to support through taxation a faith they did not follow violated their natural right to religious liberty.

Today’s, Catholic-dominated Supreme Court disagrees, and demonstrated their distaste for judicial precedent by allowing abortion restrictions, contrary to other religions’ beliefs.

Thus does the law, in violation of the Constitution, establish the beliefs of one religion over other religions’ beliefs.

Thomas Paine quote: Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion...

The problem with religious power is that everything it does, from the most heinous, brutal, unthinkably cruel, to the banal and even beneficial — everything — is done in the name of God.

So nothing can be questioned and everything is excused.

I have heard the religious right phonies in America speak of their “God-given” right to own guns. Guns? God-given right? Really?

Did God speak to them and say, “Thou shall own guns and shoot them at whomever you wish”? Whose God said that?

For the religious right, everything is “God-given” so do not argue with them. God, is all the reason the right needs for atrocity and abomination.

Their God always is right, though not all other Gods are right. Their God says abortion is a sin. Never mind that your God may not agree. All that counts is their God.

And their God tells them which books to burn, which speech can get you fired, with which sex you are required to identify. Their God approves of slavery, and male domination, even what you can and cannot wear, and which young boys you are allowed to bugger.

That last was in reference to the world’s largest religious right-wing government, the Catholic Church and its absolute dictator, the Pope.

Dare I speak a criticism of him without being subject to a stream of vile hatred. Perhaps not, for his power is “God-given,” so cannot be questioned, though the history of Popes is not one to be admired.

Truth: Once established in any nation, a religious right-wing dictatorship cannot become a democracy without massive protest and bloodshed.

Israel, once the most democratic of all the mid-east nations (a low bar to hurdle), now is learning the certainty of that Truth, because to gain freedom one must overthrow God (theirs), and He (She, It) is a stubborn tyrant.

So long as Israel’s religious right has the leverage to control the engines of power, that nation will become ever more intolerant of anyone or anything not part of the clique. With the relatively young, possibly criminal, Netanyahu in power, things look dim for that tiny nation.

But at least they have some semblance of an excuse for their drift into totalitarianism. They are surrounded by large, brutal nations that would stomp Israel into the ground, the moment they feel they could do it.

People living under that threat tend to gravitate toward the authoritarian who projects a feeling of power, and who promises to protect them. In reality, he will enslave them, but they only will learn the lesson too late to save themselves.

That is the people of Israel’s excuse. What is our American excuse?

We are the most powerful nation on earth in military and economic wealth. We are capable of dealing with any foreign threat. Additionally, we are buffered east and west by mighty oceans, one of which is guarded by our own islands. North and south we are blessed by the relatively benign nations of Canada and Mexico,

As a nation, we are a safe from outsiders as has been any nation in history. So why are we drifting into religious right-wing protectionism?

Are we Americans so weak minded that we are terrorized by the poor, weak immigrant families that, falling exhausted on our shores, ask only to be allowed to work toward the American dream?

Do we Americans really fear those who, confused and embarrassed by their own sexuality, ask only to be allowed to exist as fellow human beings?

Are we so insecure about our Gods that we must set out to destroy all those who worship other Gods?

Are we Americans so ignorant about our resources that we must establish a garrison state to exclude those who have proved they can help us build America?

Are we Americans so stupidly craven that we must arm our persons beyond any rational need, and in doing so, arm every fuming, foaming-at-the-mouth nut, against whom all the guns in the world are no defense?

Israel is in the final stages of its demise. The religious right, with their claims of “God’s will,” are obliterating civil law and replacing it with religious law, and finally to one of religious despotism.

America has replaced its secular Supreme Court with a religious right Supreme Court. Additonally, we now have a docile, amoral political party that agrees cheating and lying are clever, greed is good, and the attempted coup was just a “normal visitor’s day.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis after signing HB7, dubbed the “stop woke” bill, during a news conference in Hialeah Gardens, Fla., last April. — **Naive children used as props. “We don’t know what “woke” is, but we are against it.”**

For all this, we will pay a price.

Those beyond our shores are not the real enemy.

As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Russia and China will not enslave us and take away our freedoms.

No, that will be done by our own religious right in the name of anti “Woke” laws.

“Woke,” has become a devil in name, though the masses don’t know what it is.

It now can cost you your job, what you learn in school, who your leaders are, what you can read, where you can be. Every law against it is a vague law against free speech.

The right wing, which proudly “freed” people from the hardship of vaccination now wishes to take away the right to discuss the fact of bigotry in America.

Woke is defined by the DeSantis administration as “the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them,” Really? That’s a bad thing to discuss?

Ther ar no systemic injustices in America? Courts and employers treat blacks and whites, Jews, Muslims, and Christians, males and females, old and young, gay and straight all the same?

Are there people who truly believe this?

Religions, by their nature tend to be among the more bigoted groups in America, and to deny it is to accept the bigotry. The bigoted crusade against “Woke” is the latest barrage against democracy, but it won’t be the last.

The religious right never is satisfied. Success at enslavement begets further enslavement.

In religion, facts mean nothing. Proof means nothing. All that matters is who believes it and who claims it, not what it is. Lies are not challenged; rather they are defended blindly, vigorously and with acrimony.

It begins with the thoroughly dishonest and incompetent Donald Trump and continues through such unprincipled creatures as Paul Gosar, Kevin McCarthy, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan, Marco Rubio, Rick Scott, Josh Hawley, Lindsey Graham, Marsha Blackburn, Ted Cruz, John Kennedy, Tucker Carlson, the rest of the Fox News bigotry disseminators, and others too many others to name.

American democracy almost was lost once. Fortunately for America, the Civil War defeated slavery. Now the battle against tyranny rages, again. The rich are exalted. The poor are oppressed. The New Colossus teeters.

The RINOs (in this case, Religious In Name Only) pretend America needs to cut spending for Medicare, Social Security, ACA, and every anti-poverty, pro-poor measure one can imagine, while spending must increase for the military and tax loopholes for the rich.

If the right wing succeeds, the King and his court will prosper. The Pope and his SCOTUS priests will thrive. Israel’s democracy will fade. The rich and their minions will grow more powerful.

The religious right will enslave the left, because far too many of those most affected — the blacks, browns, yellows, reds, gays, Jews, Muslims, immigrants and pregnant women — will have voted for their own subjection or not voted at all.

They then will wonder. “What happened to us.”

They will need only to read history for that answer.

There is an endgame. It is terrible and it is certain.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

Twitter: @rodgermitchell Search #monetarysovereignty
Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

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Why do we allow ourselves to be bullied by lying bigots?

It’s not that we don’t know they are lying bigots. They make no pretense.

Tucker Carlson Doesn't Think Much of Donald Trump—Or His Audience | Vanity Fair — **The truth hurts**

Tucker Carlson laughably called the Jan 6 attempted coup a normal tourist day.

No sane person believes it was “normal” or that those traitors trying to overturn democracy were “tourists.”

The GOP claims the Silicon Valley Bank failure was due to its being “woke,” when not one in a thousand of those right-wingers even knows what “woke” is.

They think it has “something to do with blacks taking over” . . . or something.

Here is an editorial by William Faulk, Editor-in-Chief of The Week Magazine:

Editor’s letter
Did you know that Silicon Valley Bank imploded because it was “woke”?

Or that masks provide absolutely no protection against COVID?

Or that SARS-CoV-2 was created in a Chinese lab by a sinister “bat lady” in cahoots with Dr. Anthony Fauci?

Millions of Americans believe all these statements to be proven fact, despite being unsupported by actual evidence, because that’s what they’ve been told by Tucker Carlson and the far-right infotainment system — which knowingly lies to its audience for profit and power.

Whether it’s peddling stolen elections or mass deaths from vaccines, the recipe is the same: Start with a tiny sliver of information, separate out 99.8 percent of the evidence, inflate with hot air and repetition, and voila! You have The Real Story.

Since the audience wants to believe the lie, it will happily add a big dollop of confirmation bias, transforming misinformation into blind certainty.

Take masking. People who equate masks with tyranny recently seized on a meta-analysis of 78 studies as proof that masks are of no value whatsoever.

In reality, 76 of the studies were not about COVID masking at all; the two that were showed that masking did substantially reduce infections.

Other studies have provided strong evidence that good masks block viral particles.

As for the lab-leak theory, there is zero known evidence that SARS-CoV-2 was created in a lab or escaped from one. Scientists have tracked the original COVID cases to people who worked, shopped, or lived near the Wuhan wet market — where SARS-CoV-2 was found on surfaces.

And the “woke” SVB? Its board had 11 members. Ten were white. One was Black, one was gay, and five were women.

In The Wall Street Journal, Andy Kessler wondered if “12 white men would have avoided this mess,” and suggested “diversity” was at fault. No financial institution run exclusively by white men has ever acted stupidly … Right?

One easily might infer that having 11 white men on the board, not “wokenesss,” contributed to SVB’s demise. Is the lesson to have fewer white men on your board of directors?

The answer to the title question, “Why do we allow ourselves to be bullied by lying bigots?” is because too many of us want to believe lying bigots.

There must be something new about their victimization posture that tickles our dopamine. oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphin production, so we accept and believe what we know to be utter nonsense.

America always has had bigotry. Ask the Irish, the Jews, the blacks, the Japanese, et al. But today’s GOP’ with its emphasis on white privilege, has taken it to unfamiliar levels. Overt slavery is gone, to be replaced by something far more insidious. “Woke.”

The anti-Black Lives Matter, anti-Critical Race Theory, “Don’t Say Gay” laws, the record setting incidents of police violence are based on the bigotry that defines anti-“woke.”

The hatred of immigrants, with the false excuse that they bring drugs and crime is based on bigotry.

(The vast majority of illegal drugs are brought in through legal means, and statistics show undocumented immigrants are far less likely than American citizens to commit violent crimes, drug crimes, or property crimes.)

A mob of thousands, from one political party, physically attacking Congress and urged on by a former President, whose appeal largely rests on bigotry, fails the “American dream” test.

Perhaps, the bigotry gives some of us a welcome excuse for mediocrity. “I could have done better, except the “woke” gave my (college, job, neighborhood, food, etc.) to blacks.

Perhaps, it makes us believe we’re in on some secret most of the world doesn’t know. “I heard the sneaky Chinese did it. Pass it on.”

Perhaps, it helps us believe we are protected by a god. “Trump will save us from ‘them’ taking over.”

Perhaps, it gives us an excuse for the hatred boiling up in us — hatred at our inability to control our lives. “They” run everything.

Whatever the reason, formerly intelligent Americans have completely lost their senses, and now support a political party that, in the name of “freedom,” wants to take away freedoms. (Hello, Ron DeSantis)

At better times in American history, a lying, crooked, incompetent like Trump never would have been elected President and already would be in jail, with people clamoring for his long incarceration.

That was then; this is now. There is no lie, regardless of how bigoted, outrageous, and obvious, that the GOP will not support, and that the Trump MAGAs will not believe.

And when you multiply widely accepted bigotry along with widely accepted gun possession, you have mass murders and armed, crazed traitors invading Congress.

Think of the lies these luminaries have spread: Joe Arpaio, Steve Bannon, Maria Bartiromo, Marsha Blackburn, Rod Blagojevich, Tucker Carlson, Ron DeSantis, Lou Dobbs, Michael Flynn, Matt Gaetz, Rudy Giuliani, Lindsey Graham, Marjory Taylor Greene, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Kari Lake, Kevin McCarthy, Rupert Murdoch, Elon Musk, George Papadopoulos, Rand Paul, Roger Stone, Donald Trump.

Will there be riots of the stupid when Trump is arrested? Probably. America has suffered shortages of oil, food, computer chips, steel, lumber, labor, etc., but it has no shortage of bigoted fools.

His defense is a confession”: Ex-prosecutor says Trump's cover story is actually an “admission” | Salon.com — **Is this the best we can do?**

Based on world news, stupid gunners are our #1 export.

We have spoken of the big question: Why do we allow ourselves to be bullied by lying bigots?

The answer: Too many of us empathize with lying bigots.

Now for the small question: Given all the crimes Trump has committed, is this the best we can do? A trial about a payoff for hiding his sex adventure with a porn star?

Really?

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

Twitter: @rodgermitchell Search #monetarysovereignty
Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

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Today’s buzzword: Intersectionality

Word definitions change. Author Lewis Carrol, in “Through the Looking Glass,” wrote this dialog:

“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”

Today’s word is Intersectionality, which Oxford Languages defines as: The interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.

Why the Myth of White, Red, Black and Yellow Persists - BahaiTeachings.org — **Which of these children is at fault for bigotry?**

You are you. You are a minority of one.

As a minority, you have unique characteristics, some of which may subject you to prejudice at various times. As a minority of one, you also are part of larger minorities based on race, religion, age, intelligence, job, wealth, physical abilities, talents, health, etc.

Let’s say you are a man. You are part of the minority called “men,” which doesn’t include other minorities such as boys, girls, women, all deceased people and other living creatures.

If you are a 50-year-old man you live at the intersection of men and 50-year-olds, with each experiencing some unique form of bigotry or oppression.

Perhaps, by virtue of your being 50, you did not receive the job you were qualified to hold. Or, by being a man you didn’t receive that job.

The intersection of maleness and “50-ness” provided somewhat greater disadvantages than either one, alone.. Add race, health etc. to the mix, and you might be a 50-year-old, black, one-legged, gay man, who did not attend college, and is in poor health. (In mathematics, that is known as a “set.”)

Those intersections cumulatively preclude you from many aspects of life that would be enjoyed by someone with fewer disadvantageous intersections — that is, disadvantageous in the eyes of any certain evaluators.

As with all human descriptions, intersectionality can devolve into oppression hierarchies. For instance, who is more oppressed, a black, teenaged, Catholic boy or an elderly white, gay man?

And what sort of oppression are we talking about? Economic? Social? Legal? You may have been involved in discussions centering on the phrase, “You don’t know what it’s like to be {black, gay, female, poor, sick, etc.]. The speaker is attempting to dominate by disadvantage.

It’s “Because I’m _______________ I am worse off than you, so my opinion counts more than yours.”

And it goes even further to: “Because you are not black, gay, female, poor, etc. you can’t really imagine the problems of those who are, so any solutions you may suggest are based on your ignorance and are invalid.”

This devolves to, “The only people who can understand and solve the problems are people who have all those problems.”

And this devolves to: “We people who have all those problems are superior to you people who don’t have the problems.”

In that scenario, the white Christian American male might become the inferior and even the villain. Therin lies the irony, for that is the definition of bigotry — hating people because they are part of a group, or more accurately, not part of a group.

It is the fundamental reason why whites, especially Southern whites, and most especially straight, Southern white men object to teaching Critical Race Theory.

Despite ostensibly being part of the majority set, they feel discriminated against. They feel accused, and so, are resentful. Even with an innocent attempt at objectivity, every story has a good guy and a bad guy who tries to victimize the good guy.

So, it is a conundrum. If we ignore or deny the reality of bigotry in America — if we leave bigotry to its own devices without objection — we long have learned that evil triumphs when good men do nothing.

But if we try to take action against bigotry, without explaining the historical basis for the action, we risk creating even more hatred, resentment, and pushback.

So, perhaps our goal should not be to eliminate bigoted hatred; the goal should be to eliminate bigoted hateful actions. We all carry in our hearts various levels of dislike, but so long as we don’t act on those emotions, we should be considered innocent.

I despise the WWII Germans, Poles, Austrians et al who participated in the Holocaust murders. But I don’t hate those Germans, Poles, Austrians et al who had nothing to do with the atrocities, but were just fallible humans caught up in the evil of the times.

And I certainly don’t hate those of today’s Germans, Poles, Austrians who do not participate in, or countenance, bigotry.

America’s overly sainted founders, from George Washington forward, surely knew slavery was evil. They, in fact, were not saints.

They were men who did many good things and bad things, and I hate the bad things they did. Keeping slaves will forever be a blot on their memory.

It is up to me to weigh the bad and the good, and to decide to condemn or to praise each of them as individuals, and not only as “America’s founders” or as “slave keepers.”

Slavery is evil. There are degrees of evil. Slavery is near the top, right beside murder and torture.

But even in the most heinous of acts, we cannot judge by absolutes without knowing circumstances. Soldiers commit murder, but depending on circumstances, they can be heroes.

We all have sinned at various times, and we ask only to be judged by the totality of our lives. Christians ask forgiveness; Jews pray for atonement.

Keeping slaves today is quite uncommon. So, by what logic can a large group of people, alive now, be blamed for past slavery?

Similarly, by what logic can any group of people be blamed for anything unless the goals of the individuals in that group correspond with the blameworthy facts.

Should all blacks be blamed for black crime or should the blame rest specifically with those who participate, aid, abet, or countenance black crime? Should all Republicans be blamed or credited for Donald Trump’s heinous actions, or should the blame or credit go to those who aid, abet, and countenance his actions?

Bernie Madoff was a Jew and a Democrat. Are Jews and Democrats to be blamed for his crimes? Donald Trump is Presbyterian. What does that say about Presbyterians?

Nothing, actually.

The answers are obvious, but that begs the question, how to inform without leveling blame. How can America learn of past crimes, so these crimes can be anticipated in the future — and still not level blame at groups of innocent people?

Governor DeSantis, and those of his ilk, burn the history books. His mantra is, “Florida is where woke comes to die.”

One dictionary describes “woke” as: “Alert to injustice and discrimination in society, especially racism.” Another describes it as: “Aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice).”

Is there anything objectionable in these definitions? Is social justice what DeSantis proudly wishes to exterminate? What is his problem with “woke”?

Is the problem one of blame? More likely, DeSantis believes “woke” is not mere history, but rather is a device to empower blacks by blaming all whites for the injustices many blacks have endured and still endure.

Rather than clarify that deliberate or unintentional misunderstanding, he has chosen to deny the need for education — the “throw out the baby with the bathwater approach, and has banned lessons that would alert students to injustice, discrimination and racism.

For political purposes he has redefined “woke” to mean “blame today’s white children for yesterday’s slavery.” He hopes to gin up white fear, hatred, and resentment that will translate into votes for him.

And while he’s at it, he also hopes to gin up fear, hatred, and resentment at the entire gay community by claiming they are trying to “groom” (a favorite word among the anti-gays) straight children into being gay.

And he has succeeded, primarily because of latent bigotry and ignorance.

THE SOLUTION

“Intersectionality,” as a concept, is neither good nor bad. It is a description.

But somehow, it has become a code word for both sides of the bigotry debate.

Intersectionality refers to the fact that bigotry is not simple. It is composed of many parts and directed toward multiple aspects of the human condition. If, for example, you are a black, gay, Muslim, and someone hates Muslims, they will, by extension also hate straight blacks and gay blacks, and gay or straight Muslims.

That is how the contagion of bigotry spreads: From intersection to intersection.

All hatred is based on fear. It is quite rare to hate without fear involved.

DeSanitis’s hatred for “woke” is based on his fear of being blamed for racism. His anti-woke, bigoted book-burnings, like all witch hunts, comes from his fear of knowledge and blame — his two “witches.”

While it is not feasible to eliminate bigotry, a first step in reducing it is to reduce the fear, specifically the fear of being blamed. All “woke” courses should begin with, and emphasize:

**Can a label help prevent fear and hatred?**

This should be framed and hung in every history class and pasted as a label in every history book.

Then “woke” and Critical Race Theory will be able to accomplish their educational mission without pushback from those who feel accused. History is important.

As George Santayana famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” If we don’t teach our children about “bad” events in America, they will be condemned to repeat them.

We will see repeats of slavery, school segregation, Tuskeegee experiments, Japanese internment, mass shootings, Salem witch hunts, attacks on Congress, bigotry against blacks, Muslims, Jews, and gays.

For children to learn right from wrong, they must learn about both right and wrong.

So-called “woke” and CRT teach that, but the lessons must be taught without accusing those being taught.

Only then will we be able to eliminate the pushback against learning America’s real history.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell Monetary Sovereignty

Twitter: @rodgermitchell Search #monetarysovereignty Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

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Fear and loathing, and denial in America.

Hatred, i.e. loathing, along with its companion, fear — you cannot hate without fear — is the strongest emotion humans have. Evolution has made it the emotion that most often precipitates an immediate, thoughtless, violent reaction.

Hate/fear is the emotion that moves us and saves us when a predator attacks.

Donald Trump repeatedly taps into white people’s hate/fear of non-white, non-Christian, non-America-born people with his support for white supremacists, his talk of Mexican “rapists,” Muslim terrorists, Christmas elimination, and most recently, Critical Race Theory (CRT).

He has convinced a large segment of the white Christian population that despite having most of the power, most of the money, and most of the votes, they are under dire threat from minorities.

Trump is, in every sense of the phrase, a hate monger. Bigotry and racism are the children of hate/fear.

Trump has assembled a long record of comment on issues involving African Americans as well as Mexicans, Hispanics more broadly, Native Americans, Muslims, Jews, immigrants, women, and people with disabilities.

His statements have been reflected in his behavior—from public acts (placing ads calling for the execution of five young black and Latino men accused of rape, who were later shown to be innocent) to private preferences (“When Donald and Ivana came to the casino, the bosses would order all the black people off the floor,”) per a former employee of Trump’s Castle.

Trump emerged as a political force owing to his full-throated embrace of “birtherism,” the false charge that the nation’s first black president, Barack Obama, was not born in the United States.

His presidential campaign was fueled by nativist sentiment directed at nonwhite immigrants, and he proposed barring Muslims from entering the country.

Bigotry and racism are common in America and in every other nation. They are human failings. But we never should feel acceptance for these twin horrors. We should oppose them wherever and whenever we can, else they devour us.

Today, they debilitate our nation. They weaken us. They remove potential producers and consumers from the economy.

Chest thumping and flag-waving do not make America great. The Trump followers who attempted a coup in Washington waved dozens of American flags. They were traitors to America.

Greatness comes from how we treat the least powerful among us.

Ask any thinking person, and they will tell you they oppose bigotry and racism. Even Donald Trump claims that. But they merely deny the obvious. One would have to be totally uninformed not to know that blacks and Latinos in America — and to a lesser extent, other minorities — receive unfavorable treatment by the law.

Those who argue against that truth are insincere. For them, no amount of fact will undo their prejudices.

Children are not born bigoted. They must learn it.

They must learn it from their parents and extended family, and they must learn it from their friends. “Learn” is the operative word.

The only cure for learning is re-learning. To cure bigotry, children must be taught the evils of bigotry. They must be shown the meaning and the implications of bigotry.

Where can this learning take place? Clearly, not in their homes, because that either is where they learned bigotry in the first place, or for whatever reason, their homes have failed to provide anti-bigotry learning.

Now, we have the Republican party, the party of white supremacists, and Trumpism, claiming the teaching Critical Race Theory (CRT) is racist. Their hypocrisy is not to be surpassed.

CRT is not an accusation as the Trumpers claim. CRT is a revelation of reality. It is a reality that bigots fear.

Critical race theory is a study in academia based on the concepts of systemic and institutional racism. Systemic racism refers to how the government has discriminated against Black, Indigenous and other people of color through unjust policies concerning housing, employment, criminal justice, education and more.

From the conception of slavery in America, to the Jim Crow laws that segregated Black people, to the disproportionate criminalization and brutality against Black Americans, racism and white supremacy have persevered in the U.S. through law.

Even if some discriminatory laws or policies are no longer in effect, they can still impact families for generations.

“From who lives where to the disproportionate consequences of COVID,” Crenshaw said, “these are all current ways in which racial disparities are produced.”

Only a bigot or a fool could deny that the law in America too often has supported racism.

Slavery once was legal. Blacks were not counted as full, legal humans for voting purposes. “Separate but equal” was enshrined in the law. Racial gerrymandering has grown nationally, especially in the south. Today, the Republicans are doing everything they can to reduce black voting. Police brutality against blacks is commonplace. Drug laws emphasize drugs most often used by blacks.

Can any honest, thinking person deny it? Yet the white population is being told that educating our children about the true history of these laws constitutes a threat to white America.

CRT constitutes a threat only to ignorance and systemic bigotry.

By fomenting hatred and fear, Trump has gained millions of votes among the ignorant and the frightened. The GOP is following his lead.

From the 11/6/21 Chicago Tribune:

The GOP is supercharging a message over race and education that helped catapult Republican Glenn Youngkin to a win in Virginia’s governor’s race Tuesday. (By Thomas Beaumont, Aaron Morrison and Will Weissert Associated Press)

Republicans plan to forcefully oppose race and diversity curricula — tapping into a surge of parental frustration about public schools — as a core piece of their strategy in the 2022 midterm elections, a coordinated effort to supercharge a message that mobilized right-leaning voters in Virginia this week and which Democrats dismiss as race-baiting.

Coming out of Tuesday’s elections, in which Republican Glenn Youngkin won the governor’s office after aligning with conservative parent groups, the GOP signaled that it saw the fight over teaching about racism as a political winner. Indiana Rep. Jim Banks, chairman of the conservative House Study Committee, issued a memo suggesting “Republicans can and must become the party of parents.”

“Party of parents” is a euphemism for “First scare ’em then pretend to protect ’em.”

Those “parent groups” who voted Republican are the same parent groups who taught their kids to be bigots. The home and the neighborhood are the primary places where bigotry is learned.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy announced support for a “Parents’ Bill of Rights” opposing the teaching of “critical race theory,” an academic framework about systemic racism that has become a catch-all phrase for teaching about race in U.S. history.

“Parents are angry at what they view as inappropriate social engineering in schools and an unresponsive bureaucracy,” said Phil Cox, a former executive director of the Republican Governors Association.

Democrats were wrestling with how to counter that message. Some dismissed it, saying it won’t have much appeal beyond the GOP’s most conservative base.

They pointed to Republicans’ use of the “defund the police” slogan to hammer Democrats and try to alarm white, suburban voters after the demonstrations against police brutality and racism that began in Minneapolis after the killing of George Floyd.

The Democrats and Republicans have widely different agendas. The Democrats speak of improving healthcare, expanding Social Security, defending voting rights, and lifting people from poverty.

The GOP Fascist Party Of No Ideas preaches “change nothing,” fear everything, anti-vaxing, cut taxes on the rich, and hatred of immigrants and non-Christians.

This is the fascist party that denies global warming, refuses to take action against air and water pollution, tries to eliminate health care and other benefits for the poor, fights against plans for clean, renewable energy, but instead aids the use of coal, and tries to hinder electricity-producing “windmills.”

This is the fascist party that ignores species extinction in favor of immediate business profits, and fights against a minimum wage, and paid family and medical leave.

We are caught in a battle between compassion and fear, and sadly, but predictably, fear now is winning elections. The electorate has changed from “us” to “me only,” and from planning for the future, to “now-only.”

Evolution has not rewarded compassion with the same urgency as hatred and fear. We don’t have a powerful, knee-jerk, instant reaction to morality as we do to terror.

Decency simply is not as strong a survival motivator as loathing. And the immediate present always is more powerful than the future of the human

Perhaps, part of the problem may be that whites understand the pain the law has inflicted on blacks, and now fear that the blacks will retaliate. Who better to understand the effects of hatred than fearful haters?

My own fear is that as the white voters lose population dominance, white fear will grow, and increasingly, the laws will be twisted to countenance racism.

Our right-wing Supreme Court, together with right-wing lower courts and a right-wing Congress, will need only a right-wing President to make the transformation complete.

America will indeed become a bigoted racist nation, not just ideologically, but legally. The Statue of Liberty will be a cruel joke.

And we will have no way to return.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty
Twitter: @rodgermitchell
Search #monetarysovereignty
Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

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THE SOLE PURPOSE OF GOVERNMENT IS TO IMPROVE AND PROTECT THE LIVES OF THE PEOPLE.

The most important problems in economics involve:

Monetary Sovereignty describes money creation and destruction.
Gap Psychology describes the common desire to distance oneself from those “below” in any socio-economic ranking, and to come nearer those “above.” The socio-economic distance is referred to as “The Gap.”

Wide Gaps negatively affect poverty, health and longevity, education, housing, law and crime, war, leadership, ownership, bigotry, supply and demand, taxation, GDP, international relations, scientific advancement, the environment, human motivation and well-being, and virtually every other issue in economics. Implementation of Monetary Sovereignty and The Ten Steps To Prosperity can grow the economy and narrow the Gaps:

Ten Steps To Prosperity:

The Ten Steps will grow the economy and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and the rest.

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

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