Little tiny innocent children
All those people shouting “freedom freedom freedom” in response to mask mandates? They’re stooges for the Koch brothers.
There’s a letter to school administrators going around, invoking the sacred institution of Parental Choice.
“I do not believe little kids should be forced to wear masks, and I urge you to adopt a policy that allows parental choice on this matter for the upcoming school year.”
But the heartfelt appeal is not the product of a grass roots groundswell. Rather, it is a template drafted and circulated this week within a conservative network built on the scaffolding of the Koch fortune and the largesse of other GOP megadonors.
That makes the document, which was obtained by The Washington Post, the latest salvo in an inflamed debate over mask requirements in schools…
Ok ok ok but Parental Choice is sacred, you know. If parents choose not to take their kids to a doctor even when they’re desperately ill, that’s their Choice. So is masking during a pandemic. All Choice is sacred, and Parental Choice is Sacred Squared, only more so.
A pair of CDC studies published last month found that schools with mask requirements saw fewer outbreaks than those without them, and that pediatric cases rose faster in counties where schools had made masking a matter of personal choice.
Yes but do we want fewer outbreaks? Don’t we want more? Isn’t the idea that we want fewer outbreaks a fiendish liberal plot to destroy the family and make Critical Race Theory the national religion?
I’m trying to understand how they benefit from this. Is it further division?
Yes I’ve never understood why “Yay disease!” is a Republican or right-wing thing. Maybe it’s just because Trump was so determined to be stupid about it, and they’re carrying on his Tradition? I don’t know. I can’t figure out why the former Josh Spokesgay is such an enraged fanatic on the subject either.
Not all choice. Not women’s choice.
On the level of rhetoric, yes all Choice. They can come up with more rhetoric for why reproductive choice doesn’t count as the sacred being Choice, but Choice is their god.
For a variety of reasons, republicans/conservatives/plutocrats can no longer win in the American political system. The single biggest driver of this is demographic change: old white conservatives dying off; young, minority, and immigrant citizens entering the electorate. This process is slow, but inexorable, and we’re already seeing the effects. For example, Barack Obama–a black man!–was elected president in 2016, and went on to push through a major health insurance expansion. And in 2020, both–both!–Georgia senate seats flipped from Republican to Democrat.
Since they can no longer win in the existing system, Republicans are looking to smash the system (they have nothing to lose) and hope that they can win in whatever comes after it. Riots in the capitol, riots at school board meetings, prolonging a pandemic that is killing millions of Americans: it’s all part of the same playbook. These people will absolutely burn the country to the ground for a chance to be king of the ash heap.
[Minor point, but one of the two Koch brothers died a couple years ago, so technically the “Koch brothers” aren’t a thing anymore (although the surviving brother carries on their work).]
Yeah, maybe a wedge issue. People are legitimately upset about this, so it’s ripe for exploitation. The right are idiots with their “freedumb!” stuff, but the left on one hand doesn’t acknowledge that the risk to kids is very small, acting as if it’s the same risk for everyone, while on the other hand backs teachers’ unions that are fighting vaccine mandates for teachers tooth and nail. Surely vaccinating teachers should be the number one priority, right? Google it and you’ll find teachers are getting exceptions from mandates written into law, and when they don’t they are suing over it.
And, sorry, Steven, but Democrats sitting on their butts waiting for demographics to hand them a permanent majority has failed over and over. Latinos have been drifting Republican for years, and Black males have started to as well. Biden’s had a rough patch with Afghanistan and the border and other issues, so if he were in election against Trump today, well, I wouldn’t like his odds. He’s got a few years to turn it around or yield to a popular successor, so who knows how things will play in 2024, but don’t assume Democrats have it in the bag even in a completely legitimate election.
Steven #5
I assume you mean they cannot win the popular vote? It’s only because of “the existing system” they can still win elections on a technicality and may yet succeed in making to popular vote practically irrelevant.
“Demographics are destiny” was always a myth, some wishful thinking. People aren’t their demographics accept in the land of KenDiAngelo…
Centering IDpol instead of kitchen table issues puts the Dems at a further disadvantage against the systemically stacked deck.
What is identity politics?
I hear the term a lot, and I’ve researched it, and I still don’t know what people mean by it.
I think I first heard the expression “identity politics” from Nick Cohen when talking about the betrayal on the part of many Western leftists and liberals of the people in the Muslim world who share their values (feminists, gay rights activists, secularists etc.). In his book What’s Left? (2007) he writes:
I have previously framed it in terms of two – not necessarily incompatible, but certainly different – mindsets on the left: On the one hand there’s a mindset that says “we’re all the same on the inside”, emphasizes equal treatment and universal standards, and seeks to get away from boxes, labels and generalizations about what’s appropriate for which group of people. On the other hand there’s a mindset that says “it’s ok to be different”, emphasizes diversity and tolerance, and seeks to rehabilitate stigmatized identities. As I mentioned at the time, I think both mindsets come in both healthy and pathological versions. E.g. are certain jobs considered “women’s work” because they’re seen as low-status (the first mindset), or are they seen as low-status because they’re considered “women’s work” (the second mindset)? I suspect the answer is some combination of both. From such a point of view, “identity politics” can be understood as the pathological version of the second mindset with it’s abandonment of universal norms, it’s obsession with “validating” rather than challenging boxes and labels, and it’s return to different rules for different groups of people.
I think there are several strands in this.
1) Anti-intellectualism and the distrust of expertise. (“I don’t need to listen to egg heads who want to interfere with what I do. Look what they did to my freedom to smoke! They want to take way our cars, too! I don’t believe them.The virus is just the flu.” Never mind that these same people don’t hesitate appeal to their own group of “experts.” If you’re really lucky you can even attract some Loony Left, Big Pharma Phearing anti-vaxxers to bolster your numbers.)
2) Fear of Big Government (“This so-called ‘pandemic’ is a pretext to implant Mind Conrol chips in everyone.I don’t know anyone who’s died.” Resistance is Heroic.)
3) God-fearing people have nothing to worry about. Nor do Manly-Men. (Never mind that “thoughts and prayers” won’t replace a ventilator and lots of medical care, and that people ready to armor up and manifestly capable of carrying multiple guns, and lots of ammo, somehow find a little square of cloth too much of a burden.)
What’s in it for Koch interests?
4) Shutdowns and lockdowns interfere with making money. Anything that gets in the way is bad. If we let people agree with the experts on this, they’ll start listening to them about stuff like climate change. As long as the right, rich, white people are safe, we can sacrifice Granny and Junior to keep the economy going.
It’s not rational, of course. Dead people can’t work or buy things. Really sick people can’t either. If the numbers of sick and dead were higher, it would be harder to do this; Republican attempts to hide these numbers, or claim they are inflated shows an awareness of this.
I know David Koch is dead. Knowing that is not incompatible with saying “They’re stooges for the Koch brothers.” His name is still solemnly uttered by PBS at the beginning of every Nova episode. The Koch brothers are still a thing. A passion for petty “corrections” is also still a thing.
“Look what they did to my freedom to smoke!”
Indeed. Also to the identities of smokers – they ruined those identities. It’s a kind of libel. [eyeroll]
In the days before cars routinely had seatbelts fitted in the rear, and we went to great trouble to have them fitted to ours, a neighbour said that she didn’t need child restraints in her car for her son, because he was well-behaved.
I think that there are people who have led such charmed lives that they’ve developed a kind of mind-set which, even if those people have never heard of the concept of ‘karma’, leads them to believe in a just world and bad things only happening to bad people. They truly believe (probably encouraged by their religious leaders) that their children will be safe from a pandemic, simply by being brought up as good little Christians; and that doing what secular scientists advise them to do is to obey the wiles of Satan (who is testing their faith and commitment to obeying Jesus).
Well, it’s all of piece with this isn’t it?
I’m sure it goes back further than Ike as well. Probably deeply embedded in the overlapping circles of ‘fundamentalist religious nutter’ and ‘don’t trust the rich, educated, and powerful ever’ early settler Venn diagram.
If he’s so well behaved, then he’s not going to disobey the law that says F=ma, whereby he becomes both a ballistic projectile, and one of God’s Special Little Angels, at the same time.
Exactly, not Bruce. I was gobsmacked. I mean, what do you say in the face of such sublime ignorance?
That is pretty much the attitude regarding the “immune system.” The immune system can’t do magic on every virus or no one would ever get sick. If an acai berry drink could prevent every disease and source of inflammation, kill every virus or work as an antibioitc, that would be a miracle. Also, if we could drink something to make our bare fingers strong enough to turn every nut and bolt, we wouldn’t need wrenches.
They can’t see masks as a tool to give the immune system a foot up, or vaccines as a key copy that unlocks the immune system’s reaction to a specific virus.
Give your immune system a hand, don’t make it try to do all the work or you’re breakings it knuckles.