School's Out

I’ve been homeschooling my son since March. He is seven years old, and he’s obsessed with dinosaurs and the pyramids of Egypt. So most of our curriculum revolves around velociraptors, King Tut, or a combination of both. And yes, King Tut fighting velociraptors would be an awesome Bruckheimer movie.

However — and this may shock you — I cannot replace a trained teacher who actually knows what he or she is doing. So just a few months ago, I was hopeful that our local schools would at least partially open, and my son could continue his proper education and socialize with his friends.

In retrospect, that idea seems so naïve that perhaps I should be the person in my house who is heading off to second grade soon.

Although to be fair, I did not believe at the time that my fellow Americans would be so foolish, so reckless, so gobsmackingly selfishthat their insane actions would cause the pandemic to not only linger at lethal levels, but soar to deadly new heights. Even at my most cynical (and I can be crazy cynical), I still thought we had a chance at joining the civilized world by cobbling together some kind of semi-organized, barely coherent plan for self-preservation.

No thank you. We would all rather die.

Despite the clear statistical and anecdotal evidence that it is idiotic to open schools now (when the situation is actually worse than when we closed them in the first place), our rejected Veep character of a leader is insisting — even demanding — that we flood kids back into their classrooms and hope for the best. Of course, in this scenario, hoping for the best means “only a hundred kids die and maybe a couple thousand teachers, tops.” Hey, we can’t let the science get in the way.

The president apparently believes that reopening schools and further spreading the virus will boost his chances of reelection. No, I don’t understand the logic either. But keep in mind that this is the same guy who thought sending in federal troops to rough up protesters would somehow make suburban moms vote for him. So who knows what the hell he’s thinking.

In any case, Trump’s bellicose stance on schools is one of his least popular positions (and the guy has lots of opinions that people just hate). In fact, a majority of Americans oppose the administration’s demands for schools to reopen, with an overwhelming 65% against “cutting funds to schools that do not physically reopen, as Trump had threatened.” And of course, school districts from LA to Chicago have ignored the president’s whining and made plans for virtual learning instead.

Yes, even some of Trump’s hardcore supporters draw the line at sacrificing their own children just so he has a better shot at winning North Carolina. Sure, they’ll happily sacrifice other people’s children, but not their own, so maybe there is an upper limit to the cult’s power.

Now, this whole scheme — to call it a “plan” is absurd — is yet another example of the Trump Administration’s general incompetence. After all, there is no national strategy for reopening the schools, no real guidelines on how to do it safely, and no ideas for how to deal with a viral outbreak in the classroom. Call it the return of Republican magical thinking or “no exit strategy, part two.” Either way, it illustrates how conservatives cannot think even one step ahead, no matter how predictable, logical, or necessary that step might be.

But wait — it gets worse.

Because in addition to the haphazard flailing from the White House that we’ve seen so many times before, this debacle in the making is fresh proof of the administration’s complete indifference and/or active contempt for the well-being of Americans.

It also reinforces the conservative disdain for education in general, and for public education in particular. Republicans are always freaking out that their children are being “indoctrinated” by teachers who point out that climate change has a scientific basis and that the Tulsa Massacre actually happened. More specifically, this administration has not been shy about its goal of making sure that only rich kids going to private religious schools actually get instruction. 

Speaking of instructors, I’m still trying to figure out how, according to the GOP, teachers are lazy morons and a scourge to America, but they also should be trusted with firearms (you know, to defend against all those school shootings that are the price of freedom). And in today’s world, teachers should be happy to die of coronavirus if it means kids can get out of their parents’ hair for a few hours.

And speaking of kids, conservatives have made it clear that they really don’t care about educational excellence (that’s something those socialist losers in Finland inexplicably prioritize). To the GOP, school is just glorified daycare, which allows parents to work, which keeps the economy going, which is the most important thing in the universe. And since we should all be willing to die for the sake of the stock market, opening schools is a natural extension of the Republican death cult.

As a final insult, we hear that we cannot possibly take even minimal efforts to safeguard classrooms because it would cost too much. This argument is never — as in never, never, never — made when we are talking about, say, a new aircraft carrier or a pile of bombsthat can blow up a continent or invading a foreign land. For those items, we have infinite cash. Also, we can always cut taxes for millionaires, but hand sanitizer is a fucking handout.

As a not-so-wise man once said, “It is what it is.”

Fully Colonized

It’s the little things that make us happy. Like the sound of children laughing, or the taste of ice cream, or the toppling of grotesque statues of treacherous slaveholders that are then dragged through the streets and thrown into rivers or hammered into oblivion. Things like that.

But while we’re all happy that monuments to Confederate generals are being yanked down across America (just a few decades too late), there remain some dicey issues about who should or should not be honored.

Indeed, it’s fair to ask, “What should be done with statues honoring Spanish conquistadors and missionaries, and what do these statues represent for Latinos — whose ancestry includes this Spanish legacy?”

Yes, depending on our DNA, we Latinos are a mixture of both the oppressed and the oppressor. For example, my family is from El Salvador, but our name originated in Spain. This is a common conundrum. The fancy way to express the twisted nature of our heritage is to state that “Latinx people are both the protagonists in historical justice and the progeny of colonization."

OK, that all sounds deep — and distressing — but this is largely academic, right? Surely, there is not an undercurrent of bigotry and/or self-loathing within Latino culture when it comes to racial issues. Is there?

Well, the truth is that, historically, many Latinos have “embraced white identity versus mixed identity to avoid further discrimination at the hands of white people.” Personally, I’ve known Hispanics who have happily checked the “white” box on the census and not thought twice about it.

The problem with this attitude is that it frequently becomes a conduit to prejudice against black people. Keep in mind that “anti-blackness has deep and complicated roots throughout Latin America, where fair-skinned people are frequently viewed as the ideal and receive better treatment.”

And if you’re thinking that this mindset is just another one of those silly immigrant traditions — like hating dishwashers — you’re wrong. For many Latino families, antipathy toward darker skin has “often carried over to the United States, where some believe that assimilation is the path to equality.” And for the second generation, “assimilation” often means, “becoming white.”

For proof of this phenomenon, just look at our perpetually tongue-tied, rage-filled president, whose hostility toward Latinos and fear of immigrants are so well-known that only the most delusional or partisan can deny it. 

Currently, almost 30% of Latinos plan to vote for the guy who called them “rapists,” and who has spent years building a shoddily constructed wall to keep brown-skinned people out. Yes, more than one out of every four Latinos is a MAGA supporter. That is nearly triple the percentage of his African American support.

You may be tempted to dismiss this as a polling error that sampled far too many right-wing Cuban Americans. But in truth, Latinos for Trump is a very real thing. And his base of Hispanic support has remained fairly consistent for his entire term.

Now, the president’s “relative resilience with Latino voters can be easy to overlook because he is losing these voters by a large margin” (which is certainly good news). However, Trump “is losing them by less than he did in 2016, which is strange at a time when his numbers are otherwise falling.”

It’s beyond strange. It’s fucked upside-down and backward.

So what are the reasons for this embarrassing anomaly? 

Well, we’ve heard that many Latinos don’t “know” Joe Biden, which is odd, considering his name came up once or twice during the Obama years. We’ve also heard that many Hispanics were big fans of Bernie Sanders, and if they can’t feel the Bern, they’re fine voting for the lunatic who advises chugging bleach. And of course, there are those aforementioned right-wing Cuban-Americans and the fact that Latinos are not a monolithic voting bloc.

But none of those reasons ring fully true.

Because, in truth, many Latinos who support Trump are no different than other conservatives. They are so loathe to admit that they were fantastically, astronomically, stupendously wrong that they are willing to burn America down rather than acknowledge reality. 

And many other Hispanics see nothing offensive about Trumpism. For them, white supremacy is only a problem for blacks and dark-skinned immigrants. It’s not an issue for those who have successfully “assimilated.” Right? 

In essence, Trump is for all those Latinos who look at a statue of a conquistador and think, “Yeah, I’m that guy.”

Where Is That “Well-regulated Militia” Now?

You really have to give a shout-out to the Founding Fathers. Yes, they were hypocritical slave owners who stole land from the Native Americans, and they routinely drank toilet water and thought mastodons roamed the Pacific Northwest. But they still had some pretty good ideas.

For example, they gave us the First Amendment (a definite highlight). And they also gave us the Second Amendment, a bizarrely worded clause that has defied simple interpretation for almost three centuries now, and which makes the United States the only industrialized nation in the world where it’s easier to get an assault rifle than preventative healthcare.

Now you might ask, “What’s so great about that?”

Well, the whole point of the Second Amendment, according to hardcore advocates of gun rights, is that it is bulwark against government tyranny. Americans are constantly told that if it weren’t for citizens packing heat, the U.S. government would herd us all into labor camps at gunpoint… although it’s unclear who would be doing the rounding up, or why, or how rednecks with shotguns could prevent that from happening, or why the citizens of Japan or Great Britain or Canada don’t require this kind of protection.

Yeah, the details are a little fuzzy. But the point is that we have to guard against tyranny. 

Well, I have good news for all those militia types who have spent their lives hoarding AR-15s and shrieking about government oppression.

This is your chance. The tyranny is here.

You see, we now have a president who is in office only through a constitutional fluke and who has never been the American people’s choice. And this president has spent his entire term undermining our democratic norms and using the White House for personal gain. He has sold out to foreign dictators, ignored the murder of our troops, and dismissed any calls for accountability or transparency. And to top it off, his incompetence and hubris in the face of a pandemic has led to needless death and economic turmoil.

Doesn’t all that send a chill down your freedom-lovin’ spine? It should. But ok, maybe you gun-toting patriots out there believe that this is not enough to take up arms against the government. 

Well, how about the fact that, just last week, the president deployed federal law enforcement officers in “unmarked vehicles to drive around downtown Portland and detain protesters”? These government shock troops are “driving up to people, detaining individuals with no explanation about why they are being arrested, and driving off.”

I mean, heavily armed government agents with no ID are grabbing citizens and shoving them into cars, with no respect for law and order. These brazen violations of civil rights “are more reflective of tactics of a government led by a dictator, not from the government of our constitutional democratic republic.”

Come on, all you Clive Bundy clones. There are literally jackbooted thugs marching around Portland! Unarmed moms are putting up more of a fight than you are! What are you waiting for?

OK, maybe I’m a little confused.

You showed up, armed and ready, when governors asked you wear a mask. But you don’t issue a peep when unidentifiable storm troopers are breaking the bones of veterans.

And perhaps you missed our president’s latest executive order, which is in direct violation of the Constitution? Or maybe you didn’t notice when he implied that he might ignore the results of an election and stay in office illegally?

I mean, all that is Despotism 101. And yet you do nothing.

Do you really want to prove that liberals are right when they say that threatening to fight your own government is paranoid delusion? Do you actually want progressives to point out that despite your tough talk, you are happy to fall into line behind a wannabe fascist prone to Orwellian doublespeak?

If so, maybe you can go ahead now and admit that your problem isn’t “government oppression.” It’s the fear of change, of an evolving country, of people who don’t look like you gaining more respect and power.

So the next time you feel the urge to issue a manifesto or proclaim your supposed principles, do the rest of us a favor.

As you stand there clutching your gun, just consider, for a moment, that nobody believes you. Because it’s all nothing but lies.

Full of Beans

To be honest, I’ve been boycotting Goya for years. Not for political reasons, but because their canned salty slop sucks.

Regardless of motive or rationale, however, I appear to be one of those unhinged progressives who want to cancel everyone and everything for the slightest digression.

Yes, as you know, “cancel culture” is the direct heir to “political correctness.” 

Of course, PC was always overblown nonsense — an imaginary threat and convenient scapegoat. Many of the ideas that conservatives labeled as “political correct” were just basic decency. And many of the people who proudly proclaimed that they were “not PC” were just belligerent assholes. And it didn’t help that the individuals shrieking the most about snowflakes and being oversensitive were themselves the most easily triggered Americans alive.

However, right-wing culture warriors are not idiots. They’re dangerous, hate-filled lunatics, but not idiots.

So they have been working hard on replacing the antiquated “political correctness” with the new, hip “cancel culture.” In both cases, it refers to the right of conservatives (usually white men) to say or do whatever they want without the fear of consequences, or even criticism.

But in truth, “the right and the left both cancel; it’s just that today’s right is too weak to do it effectively.”

Indeed, our old friend Ted Cruz recently proved this point by ranting about cancel culture. Cruz mocked all these outraged Latinos who are sickened by the Goya CEO’s grotesque praising of Trump.

This, of course, is the same Ted Cruz who called for people to boycott the NFL when players started taking a knee. But attempting to get Colin Kaepernick fired or shouting for Nike boycotts was apparently not canceling someone.

Aren’t you happy to have that cleared up?

In any case, our scattershot president has railed against cancel culture at times. Naturally, this is hilarious coming from a guy who wants to cancel anything that even mildly displeases him.

But he’s old, so he keeps coming back to the original term: “politically correct.”

And what, exactly, has Trump identified as PC outrages?

Well, he believes that removing the Confederate flag or tearing down Confederate monuments is PC, as is changing the name of the Washington Redskins. And just a few years ago, most Americans agreed with him on both counts. But now, weirdly enough, they do not, which proves that much of what was considered politically correct in the 1990s is now regarded as goddamn common sense. So all that screaming and yelling in defense of antebellum symbolism and racist monikers was totally worth it. I’m sure there are no regrets there — nope.

But the biggest symbol of the insidious reach of political correctness — in the conservative mind, at least —- is the facemask.

No doubt you’ve seen or heard of brave patriots across the nation who shriek about freedom and refuse to wear the mark of the weak-willed lemming (i.e., a facemask). They often seem to do this while spewing insults and threats at minimum-wage workers, or throwing tantrums so crazed that even toddlers might say, “Wow, time out.” But that’s another story.

It’s no surprise that our president long refused to listen to scientists, doctors, epidemiologists, economists, and a majority of the American people by insisting that he would not wear a facemask. Yes, it is the most effective, simplest way to limit the infection rate. And there is no real constitutional issue with asking people to mask up. And no other country in the world has our bizarre, obstinate, illogical, sociopathic opposition to facemasks.

The point is that wearing a mask is something wimpy liberals do, so donning a mask or practicing social distancing is clearly politically correct.

And then this past weekend, Trump finally wore a fucking mask.

His capitulation means that all the bellowing and fury directed at facemasks was complete idiocy on a homicidal level, and that we have lost a chance to make real progress against coronavirus. Or maybe the president just caved to PC pressure and cancel culture because it’s so, you know, all-powerful. Who can tell which is true?

(Hint: It’s the former, not the latter.)

There can be no doubt that the conservative hatred of facemasks has directly lead to the proliferation of Covid-19. Right-wingers despise imaginary enemies — political correctness or cancel culture — more than they fear a lethal virus.

Keep in mind that liberalism in the form of PC, at its very worst, is annoying and self-righteous. But to my knowledge, cancel culture has never killed anyone.

In contrast, hardcore conservatism — whether through intentional attack or misguided hubris — has now killed thousands of people.

Can anyone blame Americans if they want to cancel it?

Come On Get Happy

Good news!

America is once more open for business, with a thriving economy, a healthy populace, and a vibrant culture that is spilling out onto the streets of every city in our bounteous, invincible nation. Nonstop laughter threatens to deafen us. Our happiness and joy is at maximum exhilaration. Truly, these are the best of times.

Wait, you say that you’re looking out your window, and you don’t see any of that?

OK, it’s true that the coronavirus is rampaging anew across the country, with spiking infection rates in multiple states. It’s true also that the federal government has basically given up fighting the virus, and is now urging Americans “to plow headfirst into a deadly crisis that is racking up horrific numbers of dead in an unprecedented abdication of presidential leadership.”

And yes, every industrialized nation in the world is staring at us, collective mouths agog, shocked at our floundering inability to protect our citizens and our apparent zeal for societal suicide.

But those are the only negative things going on, so don’t get all pessimistic.

Oh wait — there is also the fact that our economy is still near Great Depression levels, and the insistence that we needed to reopen our states has only backfired spectacularly, causing more damage than if we had simply behaved like responsible adults instead of spoiled children, and myriad experts predicted that this exact horrific situation would occur.

Sure, if you look at it that way, it’s a little frustrating.

However, it’s not as if the president of the United States ignored a hostile power placing cash bounties on the heads of our nation’s soldiers, possibly leading to the murders of many troops. And then that chief executive, who has exhibited nothing but disdain and contempt for the military that his party supposedly reveres, then lied about being informed of the Russian plot, and followed up by kowtowing (yet again) to a malevolent dictator for his own unknown, incomprehensible reasons.

Well, maybe that kind of, sort of… actually happened. 

But hey, at least everyone is rallying around the need for cultural change. I mean, nobody is still denying that racism is a major crisis, and it’s not as if furious, frazzled white people are panicking that their unquestioned dominance is now actually being questioned, and responding by shrieking and vandalizing and freaking out, even drawing guns on black people over the slightest provocation.

OK, maybe a little.

However, it’s a tribute to the American spirit that our nation’s citizens are still displaying that upbeat, can-to attitude that…

Hmmm, it seems that in truth, Americans have not been this unhappy in at least a half-century. And “an overwhelming 89 percent of Americans say they are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the country.”

Well… fuck it. I got nothing.

Except for this little tidbit:

“Black and Latino Americans are significantly more optimistic than they were last year that life will be better for future generations than it is now.” 

Yes, the percentage of African Americans who believe in a brighter tomorrow has doubled over the past year, and the percentage of Hispanics who agree with that sentiment has also increased to the point that white people — specifically white Republicans — are now the least optimistic about the future.

And here you thought Trump was going to make life better for his followers.

In any case, why are African Americans and Latinos cautiously optimistic about the future?

Perhaps it is because Latinos, in particular, tend to maintain positive attitudes. Or maybe it’s because ethnic minorities have a lot of experience dealing with calamity and dark days, so we roll with the horror better than most. Or perhaps it’s because many of us believe that the nation is finally addressing its long-simmering, long-ignored racial issues, with the possibility that real change will finally occur. Or maybe we just figure the country bottomed out when Trump got elected, leading to today’s inevitable quagmire of disaster, and things can only get better from here out.

Regardless of cause or rationality, it’s hope. And it’s about all we have going for us.