American Politics Thread

[Big Lutz]

Nah, CRT and "sex books" are imaginary issues.

Both issues have been long documented, as others pointed out it’s why Virginia went red last year.

Political spectrum

Political spectrums or political echiquiers are heuristic representations of different political ideologies and how they relate to one another. It can function as a useful tool for understanding how different ideas, parties and people compare and differ but, like all heuristics, it is an...

rationalwiki.org

The term far left is a label used for political movements, parties, and organizations that champion the abolition of private property and "equality of conditions", i.e., recognize the differences in ability and need of individuals but do not allow these differences to be turned into power. Most of these movements fall under the label of either communist (for which there are an absurd number of "subdivisions"), left-wing anarchist, or sometimes (though somewhat rarely today) socialist. Hard greens may be labeled far-left. If you hear it in American politics, bear in mind that it could be just being used as a snarl word to describe any liberal or at least any liberal who doesn't kowtow to mainstream consensus politics in Washington.

Wait you said you would give me a precise meaning, and then the result is a partisan wiki article? Seriously? I mean if I was looking for a liberal/leftist partisan view of what constitutes the far left that does qualify… so it’s something, I guess I was just hoping for something far more official than a fan wiki.

 

[Volphied]

You don’t really follow many American school board meetings do you?

I've seen enough to know that they're being hijacked by outside interest groups and extremely bigoted and homophobic nutjobs. It's a shame what's happening, but this too will pass and all these CRT/"sex books" boogymen will be rightfully recognized for what they are, a malicious propaganda campaign by the Christian right.

Wait you said you would give me a precise meaning, and then the result is a partisan wiki article? Seriously? I mean if I was looking for a liberal/leftist partisan view of what constitutes the far left that does qualify… so it’s something.

Well, if you'd scrolled further down, you'd see that it's highly critical of American Liberals too, so no, it's not partisan. Also, I find it highly hypocritical of you to complain about partisan sources while you're dumping links to Fox News left and right. Here in Europe, neo-fascist political parties routinely describe anything to the left of them as "far left". As the culture wars cause the GOP to shift further to the right, what once was considered milquetoast Centrism starts to appear like "far leftism" to them. You correctly pointed out that there was a shift in the overton window, but utterly failed to understand that it's the GOP who are shifting. Biden isn't far left, but anyone who looks at the world trough Trump's extremist political views will mistakenly see centrism as far-left.

 

[Volphied]

Well, I have to say that if this is really the only lesson that Republicans will take from their disastrous midterm performance, then I'm looking forward to them imploding in 2024 too.

Zero introspection and clinging to rightwing culture wars will doom the GOP. Gen Z will have no mercy.

 

[Big Lutz]

I've seen enough to know that they're being hijacked by outside interest groups and extremely bigoted and homophobic nutjobs. It's a shame what's happening, but this too will pass and all these CRT/"sex books" boogymen will be rightfully recognized for what they are, a malicious propaganda campaign by the Christian right.

Then it might help to research some of the books being banned such as Lawn Boy and Gender Queer, it also might help to look into some situations where CRT was being used at schools.

Also just to note, here are Muslim parents engaging the local school board about sexually explicit books, because Christian propaganda or something..

Muslim parents clash with LGBTQ+ speakers at Michigan school board meeting

A meeting had to be shut down after hundreds of angry Muslim parents voiced opposition to LGBTQ+-affirming books in Dearborn's schools.

www.newsweek.com

Hispanic Students Were Forced To Learn Critical Race Theory. They Hated It.

During the 2020 fall semester, Kali Fontanilla—a high school English language teacher working in the Salinas, California, school district—noticed that

reason.com

MN student says class was given secretive 'equity survey'

Fourth-grader, Hayley Yasgar, says her Minnesota class was given an 'equity survey' but were told by their teacher not to tell their parents when they didn't understand the questions they were given.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Well, if you'd scrolled further down, you'd see that it's highly critical of American Liberals too, so no, it's not partisan. Also, I find it highly hypocritical of you to complain about partisan sources while you're dumping links to Fox News left and right. Here in Europe, neo-fascist political parties routinely describe anything to the left of them as "far left". As the culture wars cause the GOP to shift further to the right, what once was considered milquetoast Centrism starts to appear like "far leftism" to them. You correctly pointed out that there was a shift in the overton window, but utterly failed to understand that it's the GOP who are shifting. Biden isn't far left, but anyone who looks at the world trough Trump's extremist political views will mistakenly see centrism as far-left.
View attachment 165618

Just to point out I am using Fox News to just highlight events happening, not to precisely define something. Furthermore it has been documented that the left has moved further from the center than the right over the past decade. It is also why Democrats are having a growing problem with the Hispanic vote.

 

[zoroarctic]

I've seen enough to know that they're being hijacked by outside interest groups and extremely bigoted and homophobic nutjobs. It's a shame what's happening, but this too will pass and all these CRT/"sex books" boogymen will be rightfully recognized for what they are, a malicious propaganda campaign by the Christian right.

This is spot on. I noticed the panic over CRT resembled the Intelligent Design controversy of the mid-to-late 2000s. Turns out the same people are involved, and it's all astroturfed.

 

[ShieldFan]

Then it might help to research some of the books being banned such as Lawn Boy and Gender Queer, it also might help to look into some situations where CRT was being used at schools.

Also just to note, here are Muslim parents engaging the local school board about sexually explicit books, because Christian propaganda or something..

Muslim parents clash with LGBTQ+ speakers at Michigan school board meeting

A meeting had to be shut down after hundreds of angry Muslim parents voiced opposition to LGBTQ+-affirming books in Dearborn's schools.

www.newsweek.com

Hispanic Students Were Forced To Learn Critical Race Theory. They Hated It.

During the 2020 fall semester, Kali Fontanilla—a high school English language teacher working in the Salinas, California, school district—noticed that

reason.com

MN student says class was given secretive 'equity survey'

Fourth-grader, Hayley Yasgar, says her Minnesota class was given an 'equity survey' but were told by their teacher not to tell their parents when they didn't understand the questions they were given.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Just to point out I am using Fox News to just highlight events happening, not to precisely define something. Furthermore it has been documented that the left has moved further from the center than the right over the past decade. It is also why Democrats are having a growing problem with the Hispanic vote.

Schools should be teaching math and english, not this "critical race theory". I'm sure most parents don't want to see their children being exposed to this trash promoted by democrats and their doormats. It's not up to the government and schools to decide about these topics in my opinion.
I'd rather homeschool children than send them to a public school whose books are written by some "enlightened" liberal from the West Coast or New York. Also they support muslim immigration, but they forget that muslims are way more conservative than the average southern baptist in Alabama.

 

[zoroarctic]

Also they support muslim immigration, but they forget that muslims are way more conservative than the average southern baptist in Alabama.

I'm really struggling to understand how this is relevant.

 

[Volphied]

Schools should be teaching math and english, not this "critical race theory". I'm sure most parents don't want to see their children being exposed to this trash promoted by democrats and their doormats. It's not up to the government and schools to decide about these topics in my opinion.
I'd rather homeschool children than send them to a public school whose books are written by some "enlightened" liberal from the West Coast or New York. Also they support muslim immigration, but they forget that muslims are way more conservative than the average southern baptist in Alabama.

Poll: Half of Americans Know Little About CRT, What’s Actually Taught in Schools

Survey finds 'vacuum of knowledge' partisans can exploit, broad support for controversial topics in HS, little backing for instruction on LGBTQ topics

www.the74million.org

Almost half of Americans have never heard of critical race theory, or say they don’t know anything about it, according to a poll administered by a group of researchers at the University of Southern California. Nearly all of those surveyed scored poorly when quizzed about the central tenets of CRT, as the graduate school-level theoretical framework has become commonly known.

Despite headlines about anti-CRT protests and legislation, the poll’s findings “suggest a vacuum of knowledge — especially among lower-income individuals and those with lower levels of education — into which partisans on either side may be able to influence people’s understandings and beliefs about what CRT is,” the researchers state. “Additionally, it calls into question what exactly Americans are reflecting on when they express their beliefs about the role of CRT in public schools.”

Critical race theory

Critical race theory (CRT) is an analysis of how society views race and how it intersects with systemic institutions in the United States. This in turn became the perfect new boogeyman for the far-right to scare white people with in the early 2020s. It has also become a Republican campaigning...

rationalwiki.org

Given the happenings of certain events, right wing politicians and pundits have made CRT a major enemy in their fight against the recent wave of progressivism. This mainly involves making people think that children are being taught to hate white people, and that they're all racist.

As espoused by Republican politicians, the denouncements of critical race theory are basically a disinformation campaign, that acts a dog whistle to signify resistance towards racial justice. The target of critical race theory attacks certainly isn't the advanced academic-level legal framework developed at Harvard Law School. In fact, a common feature demonstrated on surveys on critical race theory, and even shown in discussions with the pundits and politicians that decry it, is just how little people know about what it really is. Far from being a "bug", however, the obscurity is a key reason why the theory is being utilized by Republicans as a tool to generate outrage and anger among those that subscribe to white identity politics.

In practice, the Republican-style "critical race theory" targets grade level public school teachers, and pressures them not to bring up social justice subjects such as diversity, anti-racism, and inclusiveness. Essentially, the core of the bills is the desire to prevent discourse about racism in America's history, and much more. (In October 2021, one superintendent in Texas even suggested that in order to comply with recently passed anti-CRT legislation, teachers should teach "opposing views" of the Holocaust.) As advocated by Republicans, "critical race theory" laws act as "educational gag orders", which, at its core, violates the principles of the First Amendment guarantee to free speech, and can ironically be seen as a Republican push to embrace the very sort of "cancel culture" that many of its populist pundits decry.

Unsurprisingly, "critical race theory" also is being used as a flimsy excuse by some racists to demand that books written by and about people of color should be pulled from school libraries. Similarly unsurprising, "critical race theory" is also being used by some bigots to target school library books that are entirely unrelated to race, but still fall afoul of the conservative culture war, such as books dealing with LGBT issues. In one Tennessee county, an activist group inappropriately named Moms for Liberty even used "critical race theory" to bizarrely target books written about seahorses and Galileo.

Before Republicans started pushing the critical race manufactured outrage, practically no grade level teacher was teaching the academic framework (naturally, since the framework is aimed at the graduate / postgraduate level). Ironically, however, some grade school level teachers, having looked at the framework after the Republicans chose to howl about it, have chosen to incorporate elements of actual critical race theory into their classroom. After all, despite the manufactured controversy, a vast majority of Americans still approve of teachers teaching about the ongoing effects of racism and slavery in the United States.

In the summer of 2021, the manufactured controversy (which was an obsession with Fox News in particular) led to many incidents at school boards where a select few loudmouths, egged on by critical race theory disinformation, attended meetings to nonsensically yell at school board members about the subject (at least, what they thought the subject was about), sometimes even issuing death threats or getting arrested for disorderly conduct. This merely continued a trend in America of unruly school board meetings, that also was amplified by misinformation-fueled loudmouths getting outraged at school board members over face masks and other COVID-19 public health measures.

Even though teaching CRT is generally restricted to the post-graduate level at colleges due to its high reliance on abstract and complex concepts that aren't appropriate for most grade-school students, it hasn't stopped perpetrators of the moral panic from targeting about 900 school districts in the United States. The effect of such targeting is not to remove something that isn't there (CRT), but to try to politicize and control the history curriculum. For example, 46% of Republicans, the main perpetrators of the panic, oppose the teaching of the history of racism.

 

[Volphied]

This is spot on. I noticed the panic over CRT resembled the Intelligent Design controversy of the mid-to-late 2000s. Turns out the same people are involved, and it's all astroturfed.

Astroturfed indeed. The Koch propaganda network has latched onto the CRT moral panic the same way dark money previously flowed into the ID nonsense of the 2000s.

Carlos Maza did an excellent video where he explains what CRT is, what it isn't, and why Republicans are hellbent on misusing the term in order to create a moral panic.

 

[RileyXY1]

CRT is a fake moral panic created by the GOP in order to force schools to remove lessons pertaining to racism, diversity, and inclusiveness. They want kids, especially white kids, to grow up with feelings of bigotry and hatred to guarantee that they will vote Republican when they're adults. The purpose of the GOP's war on education is to ensure that the generation to follow Gen Z is the most bigoted, hateful, and Republican generation ever.

 

[Big Lutz]

If it is a fake moral panic that did not start until 2020/2021 then where did all this literature come from in 2018 and prior talking about how to adapt CRT for public schools?

By 2018, CRT ideas had become so widespread within the field of teacher training that Gloria Ladson-Billings and others were able to compile a four-volume set, Critical Race Theory in Education, which was promoted as a “mini-library” (and priced at $1,785 US). It contains 82 scholarly articles on how CRT can be applied to education, many of which discuss how it can be applied in US primary and secondary school systems.

Yes, Children Are Being Taught Critical Race Theory in K–12 Schools in the US - Areo

Last year, the idea that American schoolchildren at state schools were being taught some of the tenets of critical race theory (CRT) became a major political flashpoint. The Republican candidate…View Post

areomagazine.com

Oh and here is a Detroit school superintendent saying that CRT is deeply ingrained in the education curriculum.

 

[Big Lutz]

CRT is a fake moral panic created by the GOP in order to force schools to remove lessons pertaining to racism, diversity, and inclusiveness. They want kids, especially white kids, to grow up with feelings of bigotry and hatred to guarantee that they will vote Republican when they're adults. The purpose of the GOP's war on education is to ensure that the generation to follow Gen Z is the most bigoted, hateful, and Republican generation ever.

I am just curious and honestly I am not trying to start a debate on this I am just wondering what your opinion is, how far should classrooms go?

Should primary and secondary schools talk about white privilege and white supremacy in everyday life, and how it benefits students? Thus making white students feel as if their hardships are not as valid as others and should be singled out based on skin color?

Should students be forced to address their own individual privileges either out loud or on paper and made to feel guilty about that? ( This includes students as young as eight years old ) Identity Politics in Cupertino, California Elementary School

Should students be asked to address what privileges they believe other students have?

These are all examples of lessons that have caused outrage over the past few years.

Because if you are looking to make a generation as the most bigoted and most hateful, all you have to do is beat them down over and over again telling them how hateful and privileged their life is and how their problems do not matter. How because of their skin color or sexuality or religion they have less social currency. That is what causes a generation of people to turn to extremism to validate themselves.

 

[ShieldFan]

CRT is a fake moral panic created by the GOP in order to force schools to remove lessons pertaining to racism, diversity, and inclusiveness. They want kids, especially white kids, to grow up with feelings of bigotry and hatred to guarantee that they will vote Republican when they're adults. The purpose of the GOP's war on education is to ensure that the generation to follow Gen Z is the most bigoted, hateful, and Republican generation ever.

The GOP represents tens of millions. I can assure you that most people in Alabama and North Dakota don't want to see their children taking lessons with a woke/liberal teacher - and rightfully so. "GOP's war on education" - ... so republican voters are just adults full of hate and bigotry? Most republican supporters I know are honest and hard working people.

 

[colours]

going to lock this thread. discussion hasn't really gone anywhere productive and i don't foresee that changing.