Another check in the fascism box: "Patriotic Education"

Fortunately, the Federal government does not set school curriculum, so this is a symbolic move, meant to drum up support among those who equate patriotism with never admitting your country has ever done anything wrong. Also an attempt to shore up support from folks who are uncomfortable with the BLM movement.

For now, anyway.

These are pretty much people who support him anyway. But God help us all if he wins and gets more stooges on the Supreme Court.

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/17/9141...education-commission-a-largely-political-move

In austere, starkly divisive remarks, President Trump on Thursday said he would create a commission to promote "patriotic education" and announced the creation of a grant to develop a "pro-American curriculum." The move is largely political — a reaction to a growing push by some academics for schools to teach an American history that better acknowledges slavery and systemic racism.

In the speech, Trump decried what he said was a "twisted web of lies" being taught in U.S. classrooms about systemic racism in America, calling it "a form of child abuse." He reprised themes from a speech he gave in July at Mount Rushmore.

"Teaching this horrible doctrine to our children is a form of child abuse, the truest sense," Trump said. "For many years now, the radicals have mistaken Americans' silence for weakness. They're wrong. There is no more powerful force than a parent's love for their children. And patriotic moms and dads are going to demand that their children are no longer fed hateful lies about this country."

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Still, his words are chilling. I don't know how anyone who isn't already down the rabbit hole* of authoritarian thinking can hear him say shit like this and not think it sounds like a fascist.

I think the fact that 43 percent of Americans approve of him suggests that nearly half of our country is down the rabbit hole of authoritarian thinking.

*another kind of hole might be more accurate here

It doesn't help that our Attorney General has his nose firmly plastered to Trump's ass. Of course if he didn't, he wouldn't be AG. Trump purged Jeff Sessions, FFS, because he wasn't blindly loyal enough. Barr is one scary dude in his own right.

"The notion that line prosecutors should make the final decisions at the Department of Justice is completely crazy," Barr said.

"Under the law, all prosecutorial power is vested in the attorney general. And these people are agents of the attorney general. As I say to FBI agents, 'Whose agent do you think you are?' Now, I don't say this in a pompous way, but that is the chain of authority and legitimacy in the Department of Justice."

Barr didn't mention particular prosecutions, but he's faced steady criticism over his decisions to intervene in cases to help people close to President Trump, including longtime political adviser Roger Stone and former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Some prosecutors have quit in response to Barr's interventions. Two current Justice employees testified last summer on Capitol Hill about political interference at a whistleblower hearing.

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He's definitely on board with the authoritarianism.

I do have to say I have admiration for those rank and file "career" line prosecutors and FBI agents who are trying to do their job and serve the American people at considerable risk to their own careers.

What's weird about this is teaching kids about the horrors of slavery and about the US government's mistreatment of Native Americans is hardly new. It was part of my education growing up, and also a thing in popular culture in the 70s, when the TV series "Roots" was very popular, and movies set in the West were starting to have a more sympathetic take on Native Americans.

It clearly didn't turn the kids I grew up with in Orange county into a bunch of America-hating commies. In fact, most of them are pretty darned conservative these days (though the ones I've remained in touch with most are generally exceptions to that, but then it's a self-selecting thing).

Cultural studies programs began to be a thing in universities in the 80s too, and the whole purpose was to study our country's history and culture through different lenses than the white, male norm that had the norm. And yes, there were tedious students who whined why we didn't have "White studies" or "Men's studies" departments, and some of us smacked our foreheads over this trolling back then too. The main difference is it was done either in dorm lounges or via the occasional letter to the editor of the student paper, not all over the internet (which wasn't a thing yet).

I think there's a new emphasis and a starker, more unfettered look at the truth now, and we are are getting a better understanding of the legacy of slavery and the destruction of the Native American economy and culture. But it's not like a bunch of academics decided in the past few years to paint a less flattering view of US history or to turn colleges and universities liberal.

I'd argue that if faculty of colleges and universities have gotten more overtly political in recent years, it is because conservatives have become more and more blatant in their anti-academic views by discounting any research that doesn't produce results supporting their own social and academic agenda. Plus, there's been a tendency for conservatives to cut funding to agencies that pursue basic (as opposed to more applied) science and to the social sciences, arts and humanities as well as public higher education. So academics have become more "liberal" personally, as people's personal politics do tend to follow their own self interest.

There are some faculty at the college where I teach who are actually pretty conservative (one supported Trump in 2016 because he wanted to see a businessman streamline government and run things more efficiently--he's less enthusiastic about Trump now), and they sometimes argue that college is wasteful and we should embrace more focused, vocational-style training rather than trying to turn out more broadly educated graduates. They teach classes of a more vocational nature, but even they don't want to see the college privatized or want the passage of policies that actively harm some of our students.