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Date: 2024-09-18 Page is: DBtxt001.php txt00021614

US POLITICS
A DANGEROUS DYSFUNCTION
A disparate group of billionaires, Republicans, televangelists and white supremacists has found common cause

Photo by Brendan Stephens on Unsplash

Original article: https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/book-burners/

Burgess COMMENTARY
The points made in this article resonate with me, but, like most articles of this kind there is little about what to do about the problem.
Much of the same problem existed in the late 19th century and thinkers like Marx, Engels, Mill and others concerned themselves with a similar issue in their time and suggested a possible ... or essential ... way forward. The people ... the proletariat ... needed to have a voice in how their country and their lives were run. This would come about by revolution ... an uprising of the masses.
I don't advocate for violent revolution, but I do think it is time for some serious rethinking of modern priorities. I also think it is helpful to be aware of some of the important trends in different places around the world ... and also to be aware of the proliferation of misinformation that permeates almost all communication.
At my core I am something of a purist and a conservative free market capitalist. I am also a believer and user of data about the socio-enviro-economic system that we all inhabit. The 'state' of the world is not good ... nowhere near as good as it could be and should be. In my view, a bit part of the problem is that profit is the dominant metric of success in the free market capitalist system and only applied in terms of money and economics and mainly for the benefit of owners. Most all of the other metrics are in service to and subservient to the profit metric.
The design of conventional financial accountancy to report profit is very solid and has withstood the test of time ... several centuries. Accordingly, a system of better metrics should embrace this very solid foundation and simply expand it so that it incorporates the state and impact of the social and environmental dimensions of the system as well as the money profit economic dimension.
There is a reason why many of the people with wealth, power and influence are scared stiff of better metrics and a serious system of accountability. It is no accident that there is push-back against 'socialism' and 'communism' and a demonization of anything that smacks of fairness and a decent sharing of the product of the modern highly productive modern economy.
For some reason ... I am thinking about 'Les Miserables'. I wonder why?
Peter Burgess

A disparate group of billionaires, Republicans, televangelists and white supremacists has found common cause

Thom Hartmann

February 01, 2022

The moral panic currently sweeping America about Critical Race Theory (CRT) has been covered ad nauseum by the press and commentators across the political spectrum. That’s what typically happens with moral panics (more on that in a moment).

What nobody is talking about, though, is the why of this particular issue at this particular time. As a result, we’re mistaking the tool for the goal.

Moral panics, when driven by politicians, are usually just tools. This CRT moral panic is a tool being used by a coalition of interests to achieve their own goals, none of which have anything to do with teaching or not-teaching the history of race in America.

Here’s how it works:

Imagine you’re part of a group of libertarian billionaires who don’t believe in public education and who see any such sort of taxpayer-funded effort to improve “the underclasses” as an absurd waste of the tax dollars you “worked so hard to earn” and the “gummint” now wants to take away from you “at the barrel of a gun.”
Imagine you’re a leader in the Republican Party who’s seeing the average age of the Fox audience — 70 — as a threat to your own political longevity because old white people don’t go into politics and you need 30- and 40-year-olds to learn their basic political skills locally (like on a school board) so you can groom and propel them up into state or federal politics.
Imagine you’re a multimillionaire white evangelical preacher who’s looking for an issue you can use to more tightly bind your congregation — your donors — to you by portraying yourself as a crusader who’s going to save their children from a horrible fate.
Imagine you’re a white supremacist militia leader who’s looking to expand his base by bringing in white middle-class adults and therefore you need an issue to get yourself into the headlines “taking on authorities” but that won’t also end with you going to jail.
Imagine you’re a Republican politician who’s looking at a serious challenge in the upcoming primary elections and you need an issue that’ll be both popular and energizing for your base voters, even if the larger population doesn’t much care, because base voters are all you care about in the upcoming primary.

These are the goal-oriented “crisis actors” who’ve brought us the moral panic around Critical Race Theory that has now morphed into a book-banning frenzy.

It has deep roots.

The movement to entirely privatize public education in America began in a big way after the 1954 Brown v Board Supreme Court decision that ended legal racial segregation in our public schools. Entire counties shut down their schools and a new industry of all-white “Christian academies” popped up all over the country.
Talk radio in the 1970s (I was in the business then) was often dominated by arguments against unionized public schools funded by property taxes, with the mantra of “I understand about paying taxes for police and fire, but I don’t have kids so why should I pay?” or “My kids are grown now, why should I pay?”
The Charter School industry evolved out of this with Reagan’s encouragement and in some parts of America now dominates the education scene. And a moral panic about CRT is made-to-order to take down what’s left of our taxpayer-funded unionized-teacher-run public schools.
This is now big business. In Washington, DC, for example, there are now as many charter schools making profits for their investors as there are public schools. The continuing existence of free public education represents a lost profit opportunity.

The text being discussed is available at

and

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