Faux "News" 2: U.S. State TV?

[Audrey2]

Regarding last post and Laura Ingram complaining about town hall in Pennsylvania- I didn't want to quote it.

Head bursting into flames...

These are real people with real concerns, not your red hatted zombies. These are not your yes-people, carefully honed to ask softball questions to make you look good. These people represent the rest of us, the ones who want to get at the meat of your issues and the ones that want concrete plans.

Edited September 16, 2020 by Audrey2

[GreyhoundFan]

I'm sure Carlson will be whining about this on tonight's show:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

[JMarie]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I'm sure Carlson will be whining about this on tonight's show:

 

It's his opening monologue!!!!!!

Thirteen minutes of rambling, then four minutes with Dr. Scott Atlas, then three minutes with Senator Josh Hawley (Missouri), who thinks anyone who has had a video removed should be allowed to sue (but they can't because of something but I had already lost interest by this point).

My brain hurts.

Edited September 17, 2020 by JMarie
additional thoughts

[Cartmann99]

1 hour ago, JMarie said:

Thirteen minutes of rambling, then four minutes with Dr. Scott Atlas,

In case anybody needs a refresher:

Former Stanford colleagues warn Dr. Scott Atlas fosters 'falsehoods and misrepresentations of science'

Quote

A group of 78 researchers and doctors from Stanford Medical School took aim this week at Dr. Scott Atlas, the expert President Donald Trump recently added to the White House pandemic response task force, for embracing and peddling what they described as "falsehoods and misrepresentations of science" in his public musings about the coronavirus.

Atlas, a neuroradiologist by training with no background in treating infectious diseases, joined the president's medical advisory staff last month. Before doing so, he made frequent appearances on Fox News, where he often cast doubt on the efficacy of wearing masks and pushed for schools to reopen with in-person learning – positions in line with Trump's own public sentiments.

In a "Dear Colleagues" letter penned Wednesday, the Stanford experts wrote that they have a "moral and ethical responsibility" to push back on Atlas' controversial claims about mitigating the spread of the coronavirus, which they characterized as "opinions and statements [that] run counter to established science" and "undermine public health authorities and the credible science that guides effective public health policy."

ABC News has reached out to Atlas through the White House for comment.

The rebuke from experts at Stanford's medical school, where Atlas was once chief of neuroradiology, marked a significant backlash against one of the president's top advisors. At a White House press briefing in August, Trump introduced Atlas as a new member of the coronavirus task force, calling him "a very famous man who is also highly respected."

In their letter, however, the Stanford experts tick through a set of widely accepted medical conclusions in conflict with Atlas' public statements and alleged private policy suggestions.

Without explicitly tying their list to Atlas' past statements, the set of conclusions -- which are based on a "preponderance of data," according to the letter -- include information about the use of face masks, asymptomatic spread and the risk posed to children.

Their last point, for example, denounces the use of natural "herd immunity," the notion of allowing the disease to tear through the population to build up natural immunity, as "not a safe public health strategy."

Last month, the Washington Post reported that Atlas advocated for the administration to embrace natural herd immunity, citing five unnamed sources. Atlas vehemently denied the report.

"There is no policy of the President or this administration of achieving herd immunity. There never has been any such policy recommended to the President or to anyone else from me. That's a lie," Atlas said in a statement released by the White House.

Atlas doubled down on his defense to CNN's Michael Smerconish on Sunday.

"It's not just a lie, it's an overt lie, it's a disgusting lie, and it's a harmful statement to make. I have never advised the president to push a herd immunity strategy," he said.

Even so, both Trump and Atlas have pushed the concept of letting the virus circulate widely -- at least among young health people -- without using the term "herd immunity." Last month, the president expressed interest in exploring the option of allowing the disease to spread quickly and allow the populace to build up resistance.

"Well, once you get to a certain number, you know, we use the word 'herd,' right, once you get to a certain number, it's going to go away," Trump said on Fox News. "So -- you know -- it doesn't have to be..."

Atlas has also drawn ire for controversial statements about returning children to schools. He has questioned whether children can transmit the virus and complained that the U.S. is "the only country … this hysterical about opening schools."

The Stanford experts noted that, "while infection is less common in children than in adults, serious short-term and long-term consequences of Covid-19 are increasingly described in children and young people."

They concluded their letter by emphasizing the need to exercise "science-based decision-making," and warning that any policy proposals that fall short of that standard could undermine progress in combatting the disease.

"Failure to follow the science – or deliberately misrepresenting the science," the letter continues, "will lead to immense avoidable harm."

Atlas is a senior fellow at Stanford's conservative Hoover Institution.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

You couldn't make this up.

[Flossie]

10 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

You couldn't make this up.

I noticed there's no response to the above post, possibly because there's no introduction to the story or additional links provided.  So I went looking and found several stories from the last day referring to Trumps latest plan to put his stamp on America.  He wants to stop the 'left-leaning indoctrination' of America's schoolchildren and replace it something more to his liking.  Stop teaching students that racism is wrong, slavery was a bad thing, or 'that the United States was founded on principles of “oppression, not freedom.” '

He wants to create the "1776 Commission" with an end to promote a “pro-American curriculum that celebrates the truth about our nation’s great history,”, and influences schools and teachers to follow their guidelines towards a "better education" for American students.

Read on:

Spoiler

 

Trump alleges ‘left-wing indoctrination’ in schools, says he will create national commission to push more ‘pro-American’ history

By Moriah Balingit and Laura Meckler

September 17, 2020 at 2:38 p.m. PDT

President Trump pressed his case Thursday that U.S. schools are indoctrinating children with a left-wing agenda hostile to the nation’s Founding Fathers, describing efforts to educate students about racism and slavery as an insult to the country’s lofty founding principles.

Trump, speaking before original copies of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence at the National Archives, characterized demonstrations against racial injustice as “left-wing rioting and mayhem” that “are the direct result of decades of left-wing indoctrination in our schools. It’s gone on far too long.”

The federal government has no power over the curriculum taught in local schools. Nonetheless, Trump said he would create a national commission to promote a “pro-American curriculum that celebrates the truth about our nation’s great history,” which he said would encourage educators to teach students about the “miracle of American history.”

Trump is calling the panel the “1776 Commission,” in what appeared to be a barb at the New York Times’s 1619 Project. The project, whose creator won a Pulitzer Prize for its lead essay, is a collection of articles and essays that argue that the nation’s true founding year is 1619, the year enslaved Africans were brought to the shores of what would become the United States. Trump said Thursday the 1619 Project wrongly teaches that the United States was founded on principles of “oppression, not freedom.”

“Patriotic moms and dads are going to demand that their children are no longer fed hateful lies about this country,” he said. “American parents are not going to accept indoctrination in our schools, cancel culture at work or the repression of traditional faith, culture and values in the public square. Not anymore.”

As he campaigns for reelection, Trump has repeatedly cast education that examines the nation’s failures as a betrayal, seeking to rally his base and tap into hostility toward protesters who have taken to the streets to denounce racial injustice and police brutality.

His argument casts any criticism of the United States, even of slavery, as unpatriotic. It stands in sharp contrast to American leaders such as President Barack Obama, who spoke more frankly of the nation’s shortcomings, painting it as a country constantly striving to perfect itself.

Trump’s speech Thursday was a continuation of a message he has pushed since the Fourth of July, when he declared at Mount Rushmore, under the gaze of George Washington and other titans of the presidency, that children are “taught to hate their own country” in public schools.

In a lengthy speech to the Republican National Convention, he pledged to “fully restore patriotic education.” And last month, when reflecting on the unrest that had erupted in U.S. cities over police brutality, he also blamed schools.

“What we’re witnessing today is a result of left-wing indoctrination in our nation’s schools and universities,” Trump said at a news conference. “Many young Americans have been fed lies about America being a wicked nation plagued by racism.”

American roots

Yet educators and students say that Trump is wildly out of touch with what happens in public school classrooms, where the United States is still held up as a beacon of freedom and  a moral leader.

Trump’s gambit seeks to turn local schools — already beset by a global pandemic and many other problems — into another front in the culture war he champions, positioning history teachers as opponents of American greatness along with kneeling football players, police misconduct protesters and racial-sensitivity trainers. It fits neatly into his argument that presidential rival Joe Biden and other Democrats want to “Abolish the American Way of Life,” as Trump tweeted in July.

The president also has worked to rewrite what federal employees learn in racial sensitivity training. The White House compelled agencies to cancel trainings that mentioned the words “White privilege” or frame the United States as “an inherently racist or evil country.”

Trump’s campaign defending American history arrived as protests against police brutality and racial injustice began roiling the country. While many Americans work to reckon with the nation’s racist past, Trump and other conservatives are working to preserve a narrative that casts the United States as a moral leader, as virtuous and as exceptional.

Their efforts sometimes overlap with those who seek to preserve monuments to Confederate military leaders and who cast them as heroes despite their fight to preserve the institution of slavery.

On Thursday, Trump said he would erect a statue of Caesar Rodney, who cast the tie-breaking vote to declare independence from Britain in 1776, in a “National Garden of American Heroes” that he hopes to establish. Rodney was also a enslaver, and a statue of him was removed from a city square in Wilmington, Del., in June.

For many on the right, any narrative that challenges American exceptionalism is by default, anti-American.

“Instead of emphasizing that America was built on slavery, we emphasize that America was built on liberty,” said Noah Weinrich, spokesman for Heritage Action, the lobbying arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank.

Others say that leaves out the nation’s history of inhumane treatment of Black Americans, women and immigrants.

“They don’t want us talking too much about America’s flaws,” said Albert L. Samuels, chair of the history and political science department at Southern University. “Let’s not deal with the fact that many of the framers were slaveholders.”

'Ghosts of our country's past'

For schools, the pressure campaign is more about politics and the bully pulpit than federal policy. What issues get taught in classrooms are “always local decisions,” said Arne Duncan, who served as education secretary under Obama.

When it comes to setting curriculums, Trump “has no ability to do that. He’s a fraud.”

But Trump’s line of attack is part of a decades-long thread of conservative activism targeting public schools, said Andrew Hartman, an Illinois State University professor of history who studies culture wars. Conservative parent activists have attacked schools for teaching sex education they regard as immoral, for example, or assigning books they view as too lurid.

“This has become a bedrock of the conservative movement since the ’70s — that the public schools are secular, that the public schools are liberal or even radical and that the public schools are destroying the fabric of America,” Hartman said.

Albert Broussard, a professor at Texas A&M who specializes in Afro-American history and has written history textbooks, viewed Trump’s comments less as a serious policy proposal and more as an effort to stoke his base. Broussard believes it’s a backlash against recent efforts to present a more varied narrative of U.S. history.

“Trump plays to this idea of White grievance and White fear and White insecurity,” Broussard said. “The country’s population has changed racially and ethnically . . . I think that will continue to provoke anxiety among some people.”

Educators expressed bewilderment with many of the president’s comments.

“I am not teaching my students to hate America,” said Chris Dier, a high school teacher in Louisiana who was the state’s 2020 teacher of the year. “We are teaching our students to embrace our country, even the things that are negative. We’re choosing not to ignore the ghosts of our country’s past.”

Emma Chan, a 16-year-old student at a New Jersey private school who has had her history research published in a student journal, said her history courses had inspired neither love nor hate for her country. It was more complicated than that.

“I don’t think that there’s anything that’s so perfect or so evil that we can exclusively love or hate it,” Chan said, “especially with something as complex as a country with a history that’s so convoluted.”

To her, casting criticism of the United States as unpatriotic is unfair.

“You can love a country and feel it’s worth defending and still criticize it,” Chan said. “I think pressing for change is a patriotic things to do.”

Broadening education

Trump’s fight for schools to emphasize American exceptionalism is running up against efforts by students and teachers to include more voices and perspectives in history education. Students have rallied around the country to urge their schools to teach more Black history, and to assign more books by Black authors.

Amina Salahou, a rising senior at Nottingham High in Syracuse, N.Y., is part of a campaign to “decolonize education.” As the daughter of African immigrants, she complained her history courses have been too myopic.

“We definitely just learned about White America,” Salahou said. On the contrary, Salahou and other students want to see courses that highlight the achievement and contributions of Black Americans and feature the voices of marginalized people.

“Decolonization curriculum means advocating for greater or equal representation of different perspectives,” Salahou said. “It means giving students a chance to see themselves in history.”

It is not the first time that debates over what is taught in history class have drawn national politicians into the fight. The College Board, which administers exams for Advanced Placement courses, in 2014 decided to update the framework it provided to those teaching its Advanced Placement United States History course.

The changes led to an explosive debate between conservative and liberal factions of school boards. It also drew the attention of the Republican National Committee, which condemned it because it “emphasizes negative aspects of our nation’s history while omitting or minimizing positive aspects.” Conservative Ben Carson, now the secretary of housing and urban development, told an audience in 2014 that by the time students finish the course, “they’d be ready to sign up for ISIS.”

“A whole section of slavery and how evil we are. A whole section about Japanese internment camps. A whole section about how we wiped out American Indians with no mercy,” Carson said.

Educators said they have begun teaching a more inclusive version of history not because it’s mandated but because it’s what students want. Jennifer Hitchcock, a high school teacher in Virginia, once assigned an account by a Filipino soldier battling U.S. occupation during the Spanish-American War, describing what Filipinos endured as American forces attempted to pacify the island. Students were transfixed and wanted to know more.

“The whole adage of not repeating the mistakes of our forefathers is the one that I hear over and over from my students,” Hitchcock said. “They just don’t want to make the same mistakes.”

 

I can only guess what Trumps version of American history would look like when it comes time to teach The Trump Years.

[front hugs > duggs]

Sorry again for the extreme hyperbole, but this is starting to feel more and more and more and more like Nazi Germany....

[fraurosena]

7 minutes ago, front hugs > duggs said:

Sorry again for the extreme hyperbole, but this is starting to feel more and more and more and more like Nazi Germany....

That's because it is...

[GreyhoundFan]

1 hour ago, Flossie said:

I noticed there's no response to the above post, possibly because there's no introduction to the story or additional links provided.  So I went looking and found several stories from the last day referring to Trumps latest plan to put his stamp on America.  He wants to stop the 'left-leaning indoctrination' of America's schoolchildren and replace it something more to his liking.  Stop teaching students that racism is wrong, slavery was a bad thing, or 'that the United States was founded on principles of “oppression, not freedom.” '

He wants to create the "1776 Commission" with an end to promote a “pro-American curriculum that celebrates the truth about our nation’s great history,”, and influences schools and teachers to follow their guidelines towards a "better education" for American students.

Read on:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Trump alleges ‘left-wing indoctrination’ in schools, says he will create national commission to push more ‘pro-American’ history

By Moriah Balingit and Laura Meckler

September 17, 2020 at 2:38 p.m. PDT

President Trump pressed his case Thursday that U.S. schools are indoctrinating children with a left-wing agenda hostile to the nation’s Founding Fathers, describing efforts to educate students about racism and slavery as an insult to the country’s lofty founding principles.

Trump, speaking before original copies of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence at the National Archives, characterized demonstrations against racial injustice as “left-wing rioting and mayhem” that “are the direct result of decades of left-wing indoctrination in our schools. It’s gone on far too long.”

The federal government has no power over the curriculum taught in local schools. Nonetheless, Trump said he would create a national commission to promote a “pro-American curriculum that celebrates the truth about our nation’s great history,” which he said would encourage educators to teach students about the “miracle of American history.”

Trump is calling the panel the “1776 Commission,” in what appeared to be a barb at the New York Times’s 1619 Project. The project, whose creator won a Pulitzer Prize for its lead essay, is a collection of articles and essays that argue that the nation’s true founding year is 1619, the year enslaved Africans were brought to the shores of what would become the United States. Trump said Thursday the 1619 Project wrongly teaches that the United States was founded on principles of “oppression, not freedom.”

“Patriotic moms and dads are going to demand that their children are no longer fed hateful lies about this country,” he said. “American parents are not going to accept indoctrination in our schools, cancel culture at work or the repression of traditional faith, culture and values in the public square. Not anymore.”

As he campaigns for reelection, Trump has repeatedly cast education that examines the nation’s failures as a betrayal, seeking to rally his base and tap into hostility toward protesters who have taken to the streets to denounce racial injustice and police brutality.

His argument casts any criticism of the United States, even of slavery, as unpatriotic. It stands in sharp contrast to American leaders such as President Barack Obama, who spoke more frankly of the nation’s shortcomings, painting it as a country constantly striving to perfect itself.

Trump’s speech Thursday was a continuation of a message he has pushed since the Fourth of July, when he declared at Mount Rushmore, under the gaze of George Washington and other titans of the presidency, that children are “taught to hate their own country” in public schools.

In a lengthy speech to the Republican National Convention, he pledged to “fully restore patriotic education.” And last month, when reflecting on the unrest that had erupted in U.S. cities over police brutality, he also blamed schools.

“What we’re witnessing today is a result of left-wing indoctrination in our nation’s schools and universities,” Trump said at a news conference. “Many young Americans have been fed lies about America being a wicked nation plagued by racism.”

American roots

Yet educators and students say that Trump is wildly out of touch with what happens in public school classrooms, where the United States is still held up as a beacon of freedom and  a moral leader.

Trump’s gambit seeks to turn local schools — already beset by a global pandemic and many other problems — into another front in the culture war he champions, positioning history teachers as opponents of American greatness along with kneeling football players, police misconduct protesters and racial-sensitivity trainers. It fits neatly into his argument that presidential rival Joe Biden and other Democrats want to “Abolish the American Way of Life,” as Trump tweeted in July.

The president also has worked to rewrite what federal employees learn in racial sensitivity training. The White House compelled agencies to cancel trainings that mentioned the words “White privilege” or frame the United States as “an inherently racist or evil country.”

Trump’s campaign defending American history arrived as protests against police brutality and racial injustice began roiling the country. While many Americans work to reckon with the nation’s racist past, Trump and other conservatives are working to preserve a narrative that casts the United States as a moral leader, as virtuous and as exceptional.

Their efforts sometimes overlap with those who seek to preserve monuments to Confederate military leaders and who cast them as heroes despite their fight to preserve the institution of slavery.

On Thursday, Trump said he would erect a statue of Caesar Rodney, who cast the tie-breaking vote to declare independence from Britain in 1776, in a “National Garden of American Heroes” that he hopes to establish. Rodney was also a enslaver, and a statue of him was removed from a city square in Wilmington, Del., in June.

For many on the right, any narrative that challenges American exceptionalism is by default, anti-American.

“Instead of emphasizing that America was built on slavery, we emphasize that America was built on liberty,” said Noah Weinrich, spokesman for Heritage Action, the lobbying arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank.

Others say that leaves out the nation’s history of inhumane treatment of Black Americans, women and immigrants.

“They don’t want us talking too much about America’s flaws,” said Albert L. Samuels, chair of the history and political science department at Southern University. “Let’s not deal with the fact that many of the framers were slaveholders.”

'Ghosts of our country's past'

For schools, the pressure campaign is more about politics and the bully pulpit than federal policy. What issues get taught in classrooms are “always local decisions,” said Arne Duncan, who served as education secretary under Obama.

When it comes to setting curriculums, Trump “has no ability to do that. He’s a fraud.”

But Trump’s line of attack is part of a decades-long thread of conservative activism targeting public schools, said Andrew Hartman, an Illinois State University professor of history who studies culture wars. Conservative parent activists have attacked schools for teaching sex education they regard as immoral, for example, or assigning books they view as too lurid.

“This has become a bedrock of the conservative movement since the ’70s — that the public schools are secular, that the public schools are liberal or even radical and that the public schools are destroying the fabric of America,” Hartman said.

Albert Broussard, a professor at Texas A&M who specializes in Afro-American history and has written history textbooks, viewed Trump’s comments less as a serious policy proposal and more as an effort to stoke his base. Broussard believes it’s a backlash against recent efforts to present a more varied narrative of U.S. history.

“Trump plays to this idea of White grievance and White fear and White insecurity,” Broussard said. “The country’s population has changed racially and ethnically . . . I think that will continue to provoke anxiety among some people.”

Educators expressed bewilderment with many of the president’s comments.

“I am not teaching my students to hate America,” said Chris Dier, a high school teacher in Louisiana who was the state’s 2020 teacher of the year. “We are teaching our students to embrace our country, even the things that are negative. We’re choosing not to ignore the ghosts of our country’s past.”

Emma Chan, a 16-year-old student at a New Jersey private school who has had her history research published in a student journal, said her history courses had inspired neither love nor hate for her country. It was more complicated than that.

“I don’t think that there’s anything that’s so perfect or so evil that we can exclusively love or hate it,” Chan said, “especially with something as complex as a country with a history that’s so convoluted.”

To her, casting criticism of the United States as unpatriotic is unfair.

“You can love a country and feel it’s worth defending and still criticize it,” Chan said. “I think pressing for change is a patriotic things to do.”

Broadening education

Trump’s fight for schools to emphasize American exceptionalism is running up against efforts by students and teachers to include more voices and perspectives in history education. Students have rallied around the country to urge their schools to teach more Black history, and to assign more books by Black authors.

Amina Salahou, a rising senior at Nottingham High in Syracuse, N.Y., is part of a campaign to “decolonize education.” As the daughter of African immigrants, she complained her history courses have been too myopic.

“We definitely just learned about White America,” Salahou said. On the contrary, Salahou and other students want to see courses that highlight the achievement and contributions of Black Americans and feature the voices of marginalized people.

“Decolonization curriculum means advocating for greater or equal representation of different perspectives,” Salahou said. “It means giving students a chance to see themselves in history.”

It is not the first time that debates over what is taught in history class have drawn national politicians into the fight. The College Board, which administers exams for Advanced Placement courses, in 2014 decided to update the framework it provided to those teaching its Advanced Placement United States History course.

The changes led to an explosive debate between conservative and liberal factions of school boards. It also drew the attention of the Republican National Committee, which condemned it because it “emphasizes negative aspects of our nation’s history while omitting or minimizing positive aspects.” Conservative Ben Carson, now the secretary of housing and urban development, told an audience in 2014 that by the time students finish the course, “they’d be ready to sign up for ISIS.”

“A whole section of slavery and how evil we are. A whole section about Japanese internment camps. A whole section about how we wiped out American Indians with no mercy,” Carson said.

Educators said they have begun teaching a more inclusive version of history not because it’s mandated but because it’s what students want. Jennifer Hitchcock, a high school teacher in Virginia, once assigned an account by a Filipino soldier battling U.S. occupation during the Spanish-American War, describing what Filipinos endured as American forces attempted to pacify the island. Students were transfixed and wanted to know more.

“The whole adage of not repeating the mistakes of our forefathers is the one that I hear over and over from my students,” Hitchcock said. “They just don’t want to make the same mistakes.”

 

I can only guess what Trumps version of American history would look like when it comes time to teach The Trump Years.

 

Guess where he got the idea?

 

[GreyhoundFan]

5 hours ago, Flossie said:

I noticed there's no response to the above post, possibly because there's no introduction to the story or additional links provided.  So I went looking and found several stories from the last day referring to Trumps latest plan to put his stamp on America.  He wants to stop the 'left-leaning indoctrination' of America's schoolchildren and replace it something more to his liking.  Stop teaching students that racism is wrong, slavery was a bad thing, or 'that the United States was founded on principles of “oppression, not freedom.” '

He wants to create the "1776 Commission" with an end to promote a “pro-American curriculum that celebrates the truth about our nation’s great history,”, and influences schools and teachers to follow their guidelines towards a "better education" for American students.

There is an excellent and scary thread on this type of "education". The unroll is quoted below:

Quote

"Patriotic education" is Stephen Miller's fascism + Mike Pence's fundamentalism. Some years ago, I took a course in "patriotic education" for my book THE FAMILY. I spent a season reading its textbooks & talking to its teachers. Here's what to expect... A thread.

It'd be cliché to quote Orwell were it not for the fact that fundamentalist intellectuals do so w/ such frequency. At a rally to expose the “myth” of church/state separation Orwell was quoted at me 4 times: "Those who control the past control the future." 2/

1st time I heard Orwell quoted at a patriotic education rally was from William Federer, author of America's God & Country, which then had sold 1/2 mil copies--cherry picked, distorted, & fabricated quotes for students "proving" U.S. founded as Christian nation... 3/

"Patriotic educators" teach that Jefferson's wall of separation between church & state is misunderstood. It was meant as a "one-way wall," Federer claimed, to protect church from state, not the other way around. 4/

The first pillar of American fundamentalism is Jesus; the second is history, and in the fundamentalist mind the two are converging. We heard that at the White House "History" conference, the notion we need more Christ in our schools, that our past is Christian... 5/

"Patriotic education" is a fundamentalist concept. Just as fundamentalist religion supposes that divine truths are literal & determined by (white male) authority, so fundamentalist history discards the ongoing work of knowing the past. 6/

"Patriotic education" proposes, as did the White House conference, that the Constitution is divine, "god-breathed," as some say, & thus impervious to expanding ideas of rights. That's the religion behind Clarence Thomas' constitutional "originalism." It's false. 7/

Textbooks already written for "patriotic education"--those used in Christian nationalist schooling--emphasize Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which declared “religion” necessary to “good government” & thus to be encouraged through schools. This is cherry picking. 8/

The Christian nationalists aren't wrong that Protestantism was a central part of education for much of U.S. history. It wasn't until the 1930s that public ed veered away from biblical schooling. Because the 1st amendment. Because liberty of conscience. 9/

When I began reading the Christian nationalist school curriculum over a decade ago, it was already being taught to more than 10% of U.S. kids. That number has grown, a lot. It's big enough now to make a bid for control of least some public schools. 10/

The modern Christian Right--without which there would be no Trumpism--began not in national politics but on school boards. Those elections matters. The Right knows that. Those dismissing "patriotic education" as 2020 tactic are themselves ignoring history... 11/

A popular jr. high "patriotic education" textbook begins: "“Who, knowing the facts of our history, can doubt that the U.S has been a thought in the mind of God from all eternity?” Trump, ystrdy: "the fulfillment of a thousand years of Western civilization." 12/

That's from a textbook called "The American Republic for Christian Schools," published by Bob Jones University Press, a major Christian nationalist education publisher. You may remember Bob Jones as the fundamentalist school that banned interracial dating until 2000. 13/

Emphasis at White House history confab on private property. Here's a Christian nationalist high school econ textbook: “One must never come to see... free market as an end in itself. [It] merely sets the stage for an unhindered propagation of the gospel of Jesus Christ.” 14/

"Patriotic education" likely wldn't exist w/out a man named Rousas John Rushdoony--the most radical Christian nationalist & "biblical capitalist" you never heard of. He thought of himself first & foremost as a historian, "correcting" secular, socialist education. 15/

Rushdoony taught the modern pioneers of Christian nationalist ed to teach "providential history," such as the “Protestant Wind” with which it says God helped British defeat Spanish Armada so that the New World would not be overly settled by agents of the Vatican. 16/

Rushdoony also established as bedrock Christian nationalist history idea that secular democracy is defiance of God--that real democracy means submitting to God's will as expressed by his "chosen one," the strongmen He puts in power. Sound familiar? 17/

"History is God's working in man," the director of a popular Christian nationalist education publisher told me. In fact, he preferred to call U.S. history "heritage studies." Trump loves that word, "heritage," too. (Maybe it has something to do w/ the $413 mil he inherited?) 18/

"Heritage studies," or "patriotic education," is a cult of personality. History matters not for its progression of “fact, fact, fact,” Michael McHugh, a pioneer of modern Christian nationalist ed, told me, but for “key personalities.” It's the strongman view of the past. 19/

Trump ystrdy spoke of history as an "unstoppable chain of events"--culminating in him. This isn't a '20 campaign tactic. He's been talking "history" more & more for over a year, chipping away at Rushmore's remaining raw granite to add his name, his "key personality." 20/

Trump doesn't need to know the particulars of Christian nationalist "history" to make it point to him. He surely doesn't know John Witherspoon, the only pastor to sign the declaration, from whom Christian nationalists derive a kind of "democratic" divine right to rule. 21/

Another "key man" already established in the Christian nationalist schooling that's the basis for "patriotic education" is Trump's fave general, MacArthur--fired by Truman for almost sparking WW III. That's who "patriotic ed" wants our boys to be. 22/

If "patriotic education" wants our boys to be "violent men [who] take it by force," as a popular Christian nationalist Bible verse puts it (Matthew 11:12), what does it dream for girls? That they be *subject* to what Christian nationalists--& Stephen Miller--dub "chivalry." 23/

Another "key man" in "patriotic education" is Sgt. Alvin York, a WW I hero repurposed by Christian nationalism as the greatest Christian sniper in U.S. history. "God uses ordinary people," teaches the lesson. Reminds me of a popular Trump t-shirt I saw reporting ralies... 24/

"Patriotic education" proposes he greatest "key men"--Washington, Lincoln, &, now, Trump--as divine. Popular Christian nationalist art often depicts them attended by a ghostly Christ or angels; & texts offer "proofs" of their chosen-ness. This is also known as "fascism." 25/

During Iraq War, Christian nationalists erected 100s of billboards depicting a U.S. soldier backed by a ghostly Washington. Now it's cops, heroes in nationalist imagination of a new war, backed by angels & patriotic ghosts. 26/

As w/ Texas state legislator other day, "patriotic education" repackages defeats--the Alamo--as victories & men who renounced U.S.--Confed. generals--as American heroes. "America" in nationalist imagination *isn't* united; it's "red states," it's whatever strongmen say it is. 26/

"Patriotic education" has always meant preparing for war as a lens through which to view world, whether the Civil War then or a prospective one now. "Boys, are you ready for warfare?" asks one homeschooling video, "Putting on the Whole Armor of God." 27/

Such terms come straight outta R.J. Rushdoony. Christian nationalist apologists, "responsible" conservatives, insist Rushdoony was fringe. & yet he was in many ways father of 2 major ideas: Christian homeschooling, & "providential history"--aka modern "patriotic education." 28/

This gets wonky: Rushdoony in turn studied a turn-of-the-century Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper. Kuyper was complex--but 1st Rushdoony, then Watergate felon Chuck Colson, & now today's Christian nationalists--twist his thought into a proof for nationalist education. 29/

They take Kuyper's idea of "presuppositionalism"--in essence, subjectivity--as proof that neutral governance is impossible. Then they declare that subjectivity an objective "fact" to conclude that govt can only be for God or against him. Trump on Biden: "against God!" 30/

Even tho he was an anti-Catholic Christian nationalist, modern "patriotic ed" pioneer Rushdoony loved JFK's rhetoric for its framing of U.S. as a redeemer nation (JFK: "God's work must be our own.") So, too, QAnon now cherry picks JFK for prophetic proof of Trump's glory. 31/

A big part of my course in "patriotic education," like Christian nationalist education in general, was consumed by Stonewall Jackson--who got more ink in U.S. History For Christian Schools textbook than even Lee, much less Grant (forget all about Douglass). 32/

A nationalist magazine called Practical Homeschooling used to (& may still) offer instructions for Stonewall Jackson costumes in honor of his birthday. A text called Stonewall Jackson: The Black Man's Friend is--well, hell, do I need to explain how f'd up that is? 33/

What's up w/ Stonewall Jackson & Christian nationalist education? The modern version partly began w/ him, when Rushdoony discovered a forgotten bio that framed him as fighting NOT for slavery, or the South, but the supposedly Christian ideals of the founders. 34/

Within "patriotic education," Confederate generals like Stonewall Jackson aren't the traitors they objectively were, they're men who transcended partisanship in the service of Christian ideals. Christian nationalists do denounce slavery, too. Lotta cognitive dissonance. 35/

"Cognitive dissonance" is maybe a good place to pause this thread on Christian nationalist roots of Trump's "patriotic education" initiative. My 6th grader's remote classes are over; time for homeschooling. We *won't* be studying Stonewall Jackson. 37/

 

[mamallama]

BTW, back in the innocent days of W I feared that this was what would come of the No Child Left Behind Act and decided to home school (among other things). And no it's not hyperbole to compare this to Nazi Germany.  My dad grew up in Germany in the early days of HItler and I know if he were alive today he'd be frantic because of the similarities.

[GreyhoundFan]

Yeah, the idea of irony is well beyond the understanding of Faux employees, commentators, and viewers:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Pretty sad

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I guess there's no actual news to report...

[Audrey2]

This is not Fox News, but the equivalent of it. Rush Limbaugh is weighing in on the supreme Court seat. This is absolutely disgusting period as usual I'm not quoting the whole thing as it has embedded tweets.

Rush Limbaugh calls for GOP to skip hearings for Trump SCOTUS pick and go straight for floor vote

https://www.yahoo.com/news/rush-limbaugh-calls-gop-skip-211928363.html

Spoiler

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh called on Republicans to skip a confirmation hearing for whoever Donald Trump nominates to fill the Supreme Court Justice seat left open following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  

The long-time radio host called for the move during his show on Monday.  

"I want the Judiciary Committee - that could be great if [the confirmation hearing] was skipped," he said. "We don't need to open that up for whatever length of time, so that whoever this nominee is can be Kavanaugh'd or Borked or Thomas'd. Because that's what it's going to be, especially when it's not even required."  

Mr Limbaugh's arguments are rooted in fear that the Democrats will do everything in their power to undermine the character and qualifications of a Supreme Court Justice nominee picked by a Republican president. 

I am so angry I don't even know what to say. while we know that democracy has been dying, to skip the formal process and automatically put the name up for a vote by the whole Senate is beyond words.

[JMarie]

3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I guess there's no actual news to report...

Well, they do claim to have lots of exclusives that no other network is discussing, so....

[GreyhoundFan]

He shouldn't insult Karens by calling Laura one...

 

I despise her snotty and mocking tone.

[GreyhoundFan]

Every time I think they couldn't go lower, Faux and Friends finds a new level:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I can't stand Laura's nasty tone:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Two self-important white males making fun of women:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I can't stop laughing:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

In case your local Target is still having trouble keeping toilet paper in stock...

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Yeah, my thoughts exactly:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I wonder if Faux will ever mention his taxes, except to say the NYT is a ebil Obama and Hillary mouthpiece.