Monthly Archives: May 2021

Its a strange time for the relationship between Republicans and big business.

Important figures in a party that usually toes the pro-business line are instead throwing jabs at the corporate world. The critics include several potential 2024 presidential contenders.

Their barbs will not be well-received in boardrooms or the Chamber of Commerce. Democrats will roll their eyes and allege opportunism. But an anti-elite GOP base that grew even more populist during former President TrumpDonald TrumpHow the United States can pass Civics 101 Elon Musk asks Twitter for skit ideas ahead of 'Saturday Night Live' appearance States now flush with cash after depths of pandemic MOREs time in the White House could reward the pugnacious tone.

Sen. Ted CruzRafael (Ted) Edward CruzGOP wrestles with role of culture wars in party's future Maher on Biden's trillion plans: 'Thank God we got Mexico to pay for that wall' Overnight Defense: Gillibrand makes new push for military sexual assault reform | US troops begin leaving Afghanistan | Biden budget delay pushes back annual defense policy bill MORE (R-Texas), in a phone interview for this column, ramped up his rhetoric, lambasting major corporations for what he sees as a leftward drift in executive suites.

If you look at the CEOs of the Fortune 100, there are very, very few who you could even plausibly characterize as right of center, Cruz told The Hill. They are almost uniformly Democrat. And they have made the decision to enlist their companies in the political agenda of todays Democratic Party, which is controlled right now by the radical left.

Sen. Marco RubioMarco Antonio RubioWill DeSantis, Rubio and Scott torch each other to vault from Florida to the White House? Senate Intel vows to 'get to the bottom' of 'Havana syndrome' attacks Bipartisan Senate group calls for Biden to impose more sanctions on Myanmar junta MORE (R-Fla.) who, like Cruz, ran for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination said in an email: For the past several years, I have been making the case that far too many American companies were prioritizing short-term financial windfalls at the expense of Americas families, communities and national security. More and more people are coming around to that viewpoint, both in the Republican Party and around the country.

Rubio had previously argued, in an April 25 New York Post op-ed, that it was time for a rebuilding and rebalancing of the relationship between corporations and the national interest.

The comments underline how Republicans, and conservatives generally, are grappling with unusual dynamics eddying back and forth between the white working-class element of their support and wealthy, corporate America.

For a start, the dominant figure in the GOP is still a billionaire former president who has portrayed himself as a champion of working Americans since he launched his first campaign from his golden Manhattan skyscraper.

Meanwhile, much of the electorate is deeply distrustful of elites across the board. The pandemic's financial effects, as well as longer-term problems of economic insecurity and wage stagnation, afflict GOP voters as much as their Democratic counterparts. And corporations increasingly weigh in on fractious social issues as well.

Cruzs comments to The Hill were building upon a critique he had laid out in a prior Wall Street Journal op-ed.

Condemning the corporate reaction to the voting law recently passed in Georgia, Cruz wrote that he would no longer take donations from any corporate political action committee.

Liberals argue the Georgia law is de facto voter suppression. Conservatives vehemently disagree and bridle about the fierce corporate backlash, which they see as symptomatic of a larger problem. To their eyes, corporate America is submitting to the same liberal mores that they believe dominate popular culture, Hollywood and much of the media.

I will commend the left. They play this game deadly seriously, Cruz said. About a decade ago they realized there is enormous power in big business and that if they could weaponize corporate America, it would be a powerful tool for enforcing their agenda. And we are seeing that more and more and more.

The Texas senator told The Hill that there were no caveats to his declining corporate PAC donations.

I dont intend to take even a single penny from them, he said. Asked whether he hoped his party colleagues would follow suit, he replied, I did in the op-ed. I encouraged other Republicans to do the same.

Rubio, asked by reporters at the Capitol if he would follow Cruzs lead on corporate PAC money, declined. If they want to support us, that's great. I don't think anyone's contribution guarantees I'm supportive of them, he said.

Still, the chorus of criticism of business is growing.

In addition to the charges from Cruz and Rubio, Sen. Josh HawleyJoshua (Josh) David HawleyGOP wrestles with role of culture wars in party's future Washingtonkeeps close eyeas Apple antitrust fight goes to court TikTok names new CEO MORE (R-Mo.) is pushing legislation that he says would break up the big tech companies and impose tough new penalties on companies that violate anti-trust laws.

There are at least three tectonic plates moving beneath the surface of the GOPs internal debate.

One is the nature of the changes wrought by Trump; a second is the nations ongoing culture war; and a third is the possibility of a significant political realignment.

Trumps populism encompassed protectionism on trade, Twitter attacks on corporate figures who displeased him, and an often-expressed view that working Americans had been screwed over by rich elites.

Cruz, in the phone interview, contended that Democrats exhibit awealthy, arrogant condescension to working men and women [that] is palpable. And in many ways, Donald Trumps election was the direct outgrowth of working men and women saying, Enough is enough. Even Trumps at-times overheated rhetoric is a direct manifestation of just how fed up so many Americans are with Washington trying to destroy their livelihoods.

As for the culture war, issues like wokeness and cancel culture are becoming todays equivalents of political correctness and family values words whose very meaning is debated, but that also serve as signposts to deeper fault-lines in American society.

Seeking to explain why there is intensifying friction between conservatives and big business, Rubio said: Part of that is because these corporations, their CEOs and their boards seem eager to weigh in on behalf of every woke, left-wing social priority.

The Florida senator added, The other part is that people understand that many of these companies are more interested in gaining access to Chinas consumers than being part of thriving American communities.

Beyond all that, the GOP could reap rich electoral dividends if it were to boost its working-class support, especially if it could do so across racial and ethnic lines.

On election night last year, Hawley tweeted: We are a working-class party now. Thats the future.

Rubio soon afterward told Axios: The future of the party is based on a multiethnic, multiracial working-class coalition.

Cruz in Fridays interview contended that the future of the Republican Party is fighting for the working man and woman.

Acknowledging that the rising populist movement on the right was a more recent phenomenon, Cruz added: I think the most important political change of the last decade has been a socio-economic inversion. Historically the caricature, at least, was that Republicans were the party of the rich and Democrats were the party of the poor. I believe that is precisely opposite to where we are today. Democrats today are the party of rich coastal elites and Republicans are the party of blue-collar workers.

Democrats are scornful of such notions.

They accuse Republicans of simply putting a populist sheen on corporatist policies and opposing moves that would improve the lives of working Americans.

When President BidenJoe BidenFires, smoke, floods, droughts, storms, heat: America needs a climate resilience strategy Sen. Susan Collins pushes back 28 percent corporate tax rate, saying jobs would be lost Biden economic adviser frames infrastructure plan as necessary investment MORE and the Democrats passed their COVID-19 relief bill in March a measure that included $1,400 checks for millions of Americans they got zero Republican votes.

Even the purported GOP populists such as Cruz, Rubio and Hawley supported Trump's 2017 tax cuts, which benefittedcorporations and the wealthy though Rubio expressed misgivings about the legislation's drastic reduction of the corporate tax rate. Cruz and Rubio have opposed minimum wageincreases, though Hawley in February pushed to mandate a $15 an hour figurefor companies with annual revenues of $1 billion or more.

Joe Trippi, a Democratic strategist who served as campaign manager for Howard Deans 2004 presidential campaign, snorted derisively when asked about the supposed populist shift in the GOP.

Wait a minute do they still support all those tax cuts? Trippi said. They opposed the $1,400 checks for relief for people. They voted for big corporate tax cuts. And they dont like Biden raising taxes on people who earn over a million dollars. Good luck with that!

Exit polls from recent elections suggest there may be some shifting around of demographic trends concerning income, education and social class. But a true sea-change may still be a distance away.

Trump, in both 2020 and 2016, did a bit better with voters earning less than $50,000 per year than his two Republican predecessors had done.

In 2020, Trump won 44 percent of that lower-income demographic, whereas Mitt RomneyWillard (Mitt) Mitt RomneyRomney booed during speech to Utah GOP convention Trump drama divides GOP, muddling message Moderate Republicans leery of Biden's renewed call for unity MORE and the late John McCainJohn Sidney McCainSunday shows preview: Biden hits the road to promote infrastructure proposals; US begins withdrawal from Afghanistan Mark Kelly: I didn't hear plan for border in Biden speech Cindy McCain talks about Hunter Biden, sacrifices and Meghan in new interview MORE had each scored just 38 percent in 2012 and 2008 respectively.

Trump did significantly better with non-college graduates than with college graduates in both his presidential contests. In November, Trump prevailed by two points among non-college graduates but lost college graduates to Biden by 12 points.

There are clearly opportunities and dangers for Republicans in those figures.

But Grant Reeher, a professor of political science at Syracuse University, said the kind of epochal shifts seen in the 1930s, when President Franklin Roosevelt enacted the New Deal, or in the 1960s, when President Lyndon Johnson pushed for The Great Society, were not apparent yet.

Political scientists and pundits have been looking for a fundamental realignment now for 50 years. I dont know what the Mark Twain phrase would be rumors of a realignment can be greatly exaggerated? Reeher said.

Despite the common narrative that Democrats had been abandoned by the working class, the data doesnt actually support that, Reeher asserted. Trump is able to peel off some of those people by redirecting the anger and frustration they feel. But that is different from saying he has realigned the parties. You are looking at significant but marginal changes.

The political stakes in all of this are huge. And Republicans may be trying to thread too fine a needle in their efforts to be both champions of free enterprise and critics of corporate overreach.

But the rhetoric keeps heating up, inflamed by culture-war moments like the recent decision of Major League Baseball to move the All-Star Game out of Atlanta in protest at the Georgia voting law.

Those kinds of moves. according to Cruz, put a lot of Americans in a frustrating place. Look, I dont want to boycott baseball. I like watching the Astros. So I am just pissed off that giant companies that should be focused on providing goods or servicesare instead playing politics.

Woke politics trumps doing their jobs, Cruz added.

The Memo is a reported column byNiallStanage

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Exclusive Cruz, Rubio ramp up criticisms of big business | TheHill - The Hill

The term cancel culture, like political correctness before it, is a comical expression for an ugly cultural pathology. To be canceledan older, closely related term is blacklistedis to have your public persona or influence assailed, typically by a sizable mob, for some real or perceived offense against progressive orthodoxy, whatever that orthodoxy may hold at the moment. For that to happen, you must possess some form of authority in the first place: an academic post, a political office, a role in the entertainment industry, employment with a mainstream media organization, a voice as an intellectual or imaginative writer.

But the targets of cancellation, having derived their legitimacy from consensus left-liberal culture, are typically not very good at defending themselves, or even understanding what happened to them. Often they apologize, despite having said or done nothing wrong, which only emboldens the cancelers. Or they fall back on pieties about free speech and the marketplace of ideas, as if their tormentors still believed in those principles.

One target of cancellation who is able to speak intelligently about it is Jordan Peterson, the University of Toronto clinical psychologist, YouTube lecturer, and author of 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (2018) and Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life, published in March.

If youre an ordinary curious person, Mr. Peterson wont strike you as a likely target for moral outrage. He brings together a dizzying array of texts and traditionsJungian psychoanalysis, the Hebrew Bible and New Testament, Frederick Nietzsche, Sren Kierkegaard and much elseto formulate basic lessons, or rules, about how humans might overcome their natural tendency to lassitude and savagery. His books, podcasts and lectures are impressively argued, frequently insightful and occasionally abrasive presentations of various principles of wise living.

I dont share some of Mr. Petersons philosophical premises and find in his work points of disagreement, but there is much to appreciate and nothing sinister in them. Twenty years ago very few people would have considered him the intellectual subversive and moral monster many now claim him to be. A few rules from his latest book: Do not do what you hate, Work as hard as you possibly can on at least one thing and see what happens, Try to make one room in your home as beautiful as possible.

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The Man They Couldnt Cancel - The Wall Street Journal

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We are frequently asked to go to nonsensical lengths nowadays so as not to offend others with the words we use in everyday conversation and in our writing. New words and phrases are added to our vocabulary almost everyday to reflect a more politically correct (PC) attitude. And occasionally (but not always) these changes are for the better.

For example, to acknowledge both men and women in their ranks, firemen and policemen are now more properly known as firefighters and police officers. But all too often modifications made in the name of political correctness do nothing but suck the very life out of our precious language. Many of the new PC expressions are awkward euphemisms for the more precise words and phrases they have replaced, thereby marginalizing those words.

For example, the word bum has been replaced by the term, homeless person. God forbid we refer to someone as a bum implying that person is a freeloader, a deadbeat, or too lazy to work for a living. But calling him a homeless person removes that stigma while suggesting he would be just like one of us if only social services would give him a house. Come to think of it homelessness might also be referred to as mortgage-free living.

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Meanwhile, it seems the word fairy has been deemed too homophobic. Fortunately, the ever-imaginative language police hit upon the much more acceptable phrase petite airborne humanoid which possesses magical powers while further recommending the word fairy be avoided when referring to these mythical beings no matter how gay they may appear.

Accordingly, the word fat might soon be replaced with the phrase enlarged physical condition caused by a completely natural, genetically-induced hormone imbalance. This is not only difficult to say it is almost impossible to remember. So its quite likely most people will not use it at all. It seems the problem with the term fat is that it is all altogether too explicit, to wit, pinpointing the reason that an obese persons skin appears so swollen is due to a buildup of large amounts of, well, fat.

A secretary is now called an Administrative Assistant. Its interesting to note that the word secretary comes from the Latin, secretarius, meaning confidential officer which for some mysterious reason is now considered a disparaging designation. A swamp is now known as a wetland. Swamps, you see, are full of horrible things like alligators, insects and all sorts of disease. Lets face it; if various environmental groups went around urging people to Save The Swamps we would think they were bonkers. Come to think of it, this might be the very reason the designation rainforest has replaced the word jungle.

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Another thing: we dont argue any more, we share feelings. The term deferred success has replaced the word failure. A sex-change is now defined as gender re-assignment. The expression food insecurity has replaced the word hunger. If something is false it is now seemingly not entirely correct and if you are dead you are metabolically different.

Needless to say, our ability to communicate clearly is eroding with many of these ambiguous politically correct phrases. Our conversations today frequently call for a meticulous selection of neutral nouns, peaceful pronouns, and accommodating adjectives. I believe this approach is all too often misguided. To which the language-police might reply, Its not misguided, Terry. Its simply differently logical.

God help us.

Terry serves up a little food-for-thought each and every week and welcomes your comments:countrysunshine@xplornet.ca

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Twists and turns on the road to enlightenment - The Kingston Whig-Standard

How unsurprising to learn that the assistant minister to the attorney general, Amanda Stoker, raised objections to the Australian Human Rights Commissions Racism, It Stops With Me campaign because it mentions anti-racism, which the senator said is associated with critical race theory (CRT). Stokers intervention, which led to the tender for the campaign being temporarily pulled, signals the Australian rights agenda to join the war on CRT.

While this latest battle in the culture wars might appear to be about academic freedom witness for example the French states attack on academic research on race as flouting the values of the Republic the ultimate aim of the anti-CRT warriors is to destroy the anti-racist movement. It was following the unprecedented enormity of the Black Lives Matter protests around the world in 2020 that the right redoubled its attempts to discredit its demands for justice for Black people by writing them off as the musings of an out-of-touch postmodernist academic elite.

As with the moral panics of the 1990s, which conjured up the strawman of political correctness gone mad and, in Australia, the Black Armband view of history, todays folk devil critical race theory is touted as irrational and dangerous. The core of the rights misrepresentation of CRT is that it preaches hatred of white people to impressionable young people in schools. CRT, it is claimed, contributes to further dividing an already incohesive society, splintered by too many years of misguided multicultural policies which were foisted upon well-meaning publics by minorities determined to live segregated lives. As one of the founders of CRT, Professor Cheryl Harris put it, the aim to discredit and ban CRT, is a ploy intended to gin up the idea that anti-racist work is itself racist against whites.

Of course, these myths cover up the truth, that Australia continues to be dominated by white elites, that systemic racism as manifested both in the out of control incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their deaths at the hands of the state, as well as the everyday discrimination experienced by racialised people across all domains of life, is rife. The attacks on CRT are in lockstep with a white nationalism determined to hold on to power. By representing CRT not only as anti-white but also as encouraging racial separatism, the right cleverly positions itself as the real opponent of racism, determined to give everyone an equal chance in a meritocracy rather than giving racialised people what are painted as demeaning hand-outs.

We can see how this way of presenting things seems like commonsense in a liberal society where, despite all evidence to the contrary, the dominant belief is that, as Scott Morrison put it, if you have a go, you get a go. However, you dont have to look very far in Australia as elsewhere, especially during Covid, to see that the fair go while certainly a nice idea, would be nicer if true.

What is referred to as CRT has little to do with the scholarship actually done in its name. Critical race can be thought of as a toolbox of ideas rather than the rigid ideology that the right portrays it as. Originally developed by mainly African American legal scholars to draw attention to the fact that the law was not colourblind, CRT demonstrates that racism is not a matter of individual attitudes but of systemic arrangements. As Harris puts it, it is baked into the current political, economic, and social system so that racial subordination is reproduced through normal operations, often without regard to intent.

CRT negates the notion of race as a natural biological phenomenon. Rather it is produced and imposed on groups of people who are designated as races. We call this racialisation. Race is best understood as a set of processes and projects of rule. In Australia, race is a key technology of colonialism that justifies the elimination and exploitation of Indigenous people and lands for the benefit European domination.

The attacks on CRT and the argument that it returns us to an earlier era of racial division are part of the refusal to accept the ongoing reality of racist stratification and to insist that any attempt to theorise and teach the facts is to play the race card.

Far from this being the case, it is in fact the opponents of CRT who prefer to keep racial arrangements as they are and to thwart progress on racism which requires a dual approach of systemic change and increased literacy in the history and sociology of race that CRT enables.

Rightwing attacks on CRT, much like the moral panics about the teaching of gender which Stoker also provokes, hold that CRT has become the orthodoxy in the leftwing hegemony of their overactive imagination. In fact, CRT is far from being widely taught at universities in Australia, never mind schools. To start inching towards greater justice in a society founded on racial colonialism, we need more, not less critical thinking about race.

Alana Lentin is Associate Professor of cultural and social analysis at Western Sydney University. She is a Jewish woman who is a settler on Gadigal land. Her latest book is Why Race Still Matters (Polity 2020)

Debbie Bargallie is a postdoctoral senior research fellow with the Griffith Institute for Educational Research at Griffith University. Debbie is a descendent of the Kamilaroi and Wonnarua peoples of New South Wales. Her new book is titled Unmasking the Racial Contract: Indigenous voices on racism in the Australian Public Service (Aboriginal Studies Press 2020)

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We need more, not less, critical thinking about race in Australia - The Guardian

To the critics, its political correctness and self-absorption gone absolutely haywire. To the advocates, its a committed effort toward a more inclusive society that respects the individuality of each person and their right to determine who they are.

There are a few layers to it, says Sonya Epstein, a member of the University of Massachusetts Class of 2022 and an advocate of gender pronouns, which have gained widespread popularity on college campuses in particular.

Gender identity has often been based on appearance or name, explains Epstein. Gender as a whole has been a social construct (shared perceptions that exist only because people in a group or society accept they do). But not all of us conform to that.

The more one delves into it, the more the issue of social pronouns becomes less about a trendy college thing, and the more it challenges some of Western societys most fundamental concepts. To the majority, there are men and there are women and yes, for the progressive among us, there are variations that not just explain but validate the LGBTQ movement.

At the 2019 Iowa State Fair, a student asked then-presidential candidate Joseph R. Biden Jr. how many genders existed. At least three, Biden responded. Provoked by the follow-up question of What are they? he snapped, Dont play games with me, kid.

Bidens first answer produced applause from some, and mockery or horror from others. To many in the progressive movement, though, it represented the elusive nature of defining gender - which is why many want the right to choose their own definition of who they are.

Enter gender pronouns. They have been around for a few years, even if they remain unknown to vast numbers of Americans who are either over 25 or unaffiliated with high school or college life.

For the unfamiliar, it goes like this: Im Janet Smith, and my pronouns are she and her (or whatever choices, possibly including they or them, the individual prefers).

I have to admit that until fairly recently, I would have considered the entire concept rather pointless. Even now, including gender pronouns in personal introductions strikes me as ... well, if nothing else, odd to the ear.

When someone says, Im Tom, and my pronouns are he and him, my instinct is to respond that I could have figured as much. But young people see society differently than my generation does. And frankly, after watching our societys corrupt descent into the intensified, unrestrained spewing of anger, resentment, bigotry and hate over the past several years - Im willing to listen.

I came out as non-binary four years ago, as a junior (at Belmont High School), says Epstein, who has been involved with UMass student government and other activism. It needs to be pushed, no matter how much pushback there is. When I first started, some awful comments were said at me.

In the past year, Epsteins sensed a greater willingness by the university administration to accept gender pronouns. That doesnt mean theyre all entirely comfortable with it, let alone be willing to use their own.

This issue relates directly to transgender individuals, but pronoun practice extends far beyond them. My own brief experience is that women find it more meaningful than men, but I have no data to support that and my daughter, who is in college, says many young men follow its practice, too.

So why, as long as acceptance is extended to those who use pronouns, should it matter to the advocates if other people - in fact, I think, most people - do not?

If everybody does it, then no one is singled out, Epstein said. Thats one of two major arguments for pronoun use, to avoid socially isolating (and often ostracizing) those who do not identify with traditional male-female characterizations.

The other reason is advocates conviction that every individual has the right to be viewed as they view and identify themselves, and not by judgments or stereotypes dictated by others.

Perhaps youve noticed that I keep referring to Epstein as Epstein. Here is current Associated Press style guidance on the use of gender pronouns in news stories:

In stories about people who identify as neither male nor female or ask not to be referred to as he/she/him/her, use the persons name in place of a pronoun, or otherwise reword the sentence, whenever possible. If they/them/their use is essential, explain in the text that the person prefers a gender-neutral pronoun.

Epsteins choice to describe, well, Epstein, is they and them. I know what many of you are thinking: those are plural pronouns.

Thats what I always thought, too, but the dictionary says their use in certain singular references is proper. Dictionaries change, and so do other policies. Last year, for instance, the AP formally altered its racial designation from black to Black.

Colleges are taking pronouns seriously - very seriously. Springfield College is not requiring faculty members to use gender pronouns, but is encouraging they do.

Springfield College has an entire web page dedicated to the subject, with guidelines ranging from What if I mistakenly use the wrong pronouns for someone?, to Pronouns dos and donts.

At least one website, MyPronouns.org, is dedicated to the topic. It says, when we refer to personal pronouns ... we mean that they are pronouns referring to a unique and individual person.

Sometimes, of course, pronouns can answer questions before they need to be asked, as with unisex names. When youre called upon to speak with Sam, Bailey, Dana or Jamie, youre left to wonder - or to guess. Thats part of this, but its not what is driving a movement where a generational divide looks inevitable.

Why do we have to go along with this? a fellow Baby Boomer asked me.

Why not? I responded. It hurts no one. It gives identity to people who want respect and ownership of their own identity. I dont usually embrace change, either, but if the only case against it that its never been that way before, thats not good enough as a stand-alone argument to me.

That said, I dont intend to ever do it, and I hope the Sonya Epsteins of the world understand. Whether others do or dont, it doesnt offend or bother me. It doesnt cause to me to lament where America has gone wrong.

In a nation whose strength is its diversity, we havent exactly been treating each other with respect, decency and kindness through time-honored techniques lately. Maybe this will help.

Ron Chimelis is a staff writer for The Republican. He may be reached by email to rchimelis@repub.com.

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Young Americans have reason to think gender pronouns matter: Viewpoint - masslive.com

Black Lives Matter's history from Trayvon Martin to George Floyd

From Trayvon Martin to George Floyd, the Black Lives Matter movement continues to highlight Black lives lost to police and racial injustice.

Just the FAQs, USA TODAY

The Oklahoma House on Thursday passed legislation to prohibit public schools and universities from teaching critical race theory, which examines the way race and racism touchaspects of American history, politics and culture.

The bill, which passed 70-19after hours of discussion and debate, now heads to Gov. Kevin Stitt's desk.

House Bill 1775would prohibitthe teaching of a laundry list of topics, including that one race or sex is inherently superior to another, and that an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive.

The debate among lawmakers stirredfar-reaching arguments about racism, history and societal inequalities.

When a Republican legislator compared the social movement Black Lives Matter to a terrorist organization, a Black lawmaker from across the aisle loudly booed. Rep. Justin Humphrey, R-Lane, also calledthe Ku Klux Klan a terrorist group.

Other legislation: Stitt signs bill to ban abortion if SCOTUS rules

The bill by Rep. Kevin West, R-Moore, and Sen. David Bullard, R-Durant, is similar to legislation being proposed in a handful of other GOP-led legislatures across the country.

The trendcomes as the United States is grapplingwith its complicatedracial history amid widespread calls for racial justice andgreater recognition ofdeep-seated racial inequalities.

Nationwide, there's also growing conservative criticism of political correctness and "cancel culture,"in which public officials or groups are shamed for supporting someideas.

West called HB 1775 an anti-discrimination measure to keep schools from teaching racial stereotypes.

Make no mistake about it, hesaid. Were in a fight for the future of our children and our grandchildren. The theories and tenets of critical race theory, that curriculum … that goes against everything this nation was founded on and everything that we, as a nation, have fought so hard to keep.

"The right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness has no color, has no sex.

Some critics say critical racetheory is based in Marxism.

House Democrats said HB 1775 is an attempt to whitewash history and alleged the bill is a political stunt so Republicans have something to tout on the campaign trail.

"This is one of those bills that will pop up on campaign mailers when it comes to next year's elections," said House Minority Floor Leader Emily Virgin, D-Norman.

When questioned about the bill, West said tenets of critical race theory are being taught in Oklahoma schools and universities, but gaveanecdotal examples that lacked specifics. Without giving details, West said he'd read stories about first-grade studentswho were forced to deconstruct their racial and sexual identities.

Others are reading: Feds extend REAL ID enforcement deadline again

House Democrats expressed concerns that the bill could preventstudents from learning abouttheTulsa Race Massacre, the Trail of Tears or the Osage murders parts of Oklahoma history in which race inherently playeda role.

West said the bill would not prevent the teaching of history, nor would it prevent sexual harassment and misconduct trainingthat some college students must undergo.

This bill will in no way stop the teaching of history or anything currently in our Oklahoma education standards, including curriculum that shows historical examples of racism or genocide, West said in a statement. This bill simply says that teachers cant force a student to answer that they are inherently racist or sexist or that they must feel personally responsible for things perpetrated in the past by people of a similarraceor gender.

HB 1775 also seeks to prevent Oklahomas public colleges and universities from engaging students in any form of mandatory gender or sexual diversity training or counseling.

If signed into law, the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education and the State Board of Education would be tasked with creating rules for schools and colleges to follow the law.

College news: Southern Nazarene students start petition to stop potential ban on kneeling during anthem

Virgin, who represents Norman,said she thinks the University of Oklahoma has major objections to the bill.

"They have taken huge strides in making sure that everyone feels welcome on their campus," she said. "That's what freshmen orientation programs are about, is making it clear that this is an inclusive space and an inclusive environment and no one should be made to feel that they don't belong."

HB 1775 included an emergency clause, which means the law could take effect immediately if signed by the governor.

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Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt to decide on bill to ban teaching of critical race theory - Oklahoman.com

Elections will take place across the Black Country and parts of Staffordshire on Thursday

Across the Black Country and parts of Staffordshire more than a dozen parties will be represented when voters head to the ballot box on Thursday.

There will also be plenty of independents hoping they can get elected without the backing of a party machine.

Among the parties standing this year are Reform UK - the new name for the Brexit Party, the Black Country Party, Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, Workers' Party of Britain and Chase Community Independents.

Ukip, a major electoral force in the region up until a couple of years ago, has just a handful of candidates entered this year.

Bill Etheridge, economic spokesman for Ukip, said his party were at the start of a rebuilding process after some "difficult years" following the departure of former leader Nigel Farage.

He said the party was committed to ensuring Brexit resulted in more than just a "superficial change", and would continue to promote British values and oppose "the old enemy political correctness".

The former MEP and Dudley councillor said: "We're on the road back and I would expect the candidates we have this year to do very well as there is clearly still an appetite for Ukip in the Black Country.

"We have been restricted in what we can do campaigning wise because of Covid and these elections are really a springboard for us to move on.

"I think we will start to see more people joining the party in the months ahead."

The Black Country Party, which was founded in 2019, has a new leader in Nick Gregory after Stuart Henley stepped down and joined the Tories.

Black Country Day founder Steve Edwards is one of five candidates standing for the party in Dudley this year and is bidding for the Brockmoor and Pensnett seat.

He says he wants to offer an alternative to mainstream party politics, which had done nothing positive for local areas across the borough.

Mr Edwards said he would offer "a voice on the council which is being shouted by someone who loves the area and has seen the best and worst of Brockmoor and Pensnett".

"I am not just showing up for an election, this is where I was born and raised, my kids home," he added. "It is where all my friends and family are from.

"If I didnt think we could change things I wouldnt put myself forward, but I do think we can change everything. Just like we did with Black Country Day."

In Walsall former Labour councillor Pete Smith is the sole candidate not representing a political party.

Standing in Blakenall, he is campaigning on local issues including bringing back the much-missed Walsall Illuminations, and says politicians in the borough have become detached from the people they represent.

"The present system isn't working to the best advantage of residents," said Mr Smith, who served on the council for 20 years.

He is calling for "local neighbourhood grass roots democracy" where residents can have more of a say in how public money is spent in their areas.

Having run Labour close in previous elections Mr Smith is convinced he has a chance of victory. "Sometimes David can beat Goliath," he said.

Over in Cannock Chase Paul Woodhead is leader of the Chase Community Independents, a breakaway group that currently has five councillors and features former members of Labour, the Greens and the Lib Dems.

Councillor Woodhead, who is standing in Hednesford South, said his party wants to see greater collaboration between politicians and communities around the district.

"If you get that right then some of the more difficult decisions that councils have to make are easier for people to understand, because they have been involved in the process," he said.

"National politics gets in the way of all of that, because fundamentally people want to disagree with an idea just because someone from another party has come up with it.

"By working together you get the best ideas and come up with a solution that works for everyone."

Graham Eardley is standing in Walsall Council's Pelsall ward for anti-lockdown party Reform UK, the new name for the Brexit Party.

The party has five candidates in Walsall, and Mr Eardley said that if elected, they will be able to vote how they see fit on council issues to enable them to "truly represent their local community".

"We're standing to win, and with the state of the main parties at the moment we think we have a good chance of doing that," he said.

"We don't believe in putting asylum seekers in four-star hotels, and we believe the time for lockdowns has long since passed.

"People want to see the economy moving again and we're all for that."

Polling stations open in Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall, Wolverhampton and Staffordshire on Thursday morning.

See more here:

Local issues on the agenda for minor party candidates across Black Country and Staffordshire - expressandstar.com

The Repositorys publishing Jonathan Vanboskercks opinion pieceon Disney World (April 27) was both disappointing and tone-deaf in the same time period of Derek Chauvins conviction for murder.

To quote Mr. Vanboskerck, Full disclosure: I am a Christian and a conservative Republican … He made abundantly clear in the article that he disapproves of people with tattoos, creative hairstyles and other expressions of individuality in their personal appearance. He attributes the changes at Disney businesses to political correctness, not to the fact that the world has moved on from his world view of what he wants to see everywhere. He proclaims his need to take offense at his fellow humans and any suggestions of his racism.

The truly sad statements that he makes about Splash Mountain and Song of the South in that venue indicate that he has no intention of ever considering what otherpeople might see, hearor feel when specific references are made to slavery having been a pleasant existence. On the Jungle Cruise and Pirates of the Caribbean similarly demeaning depictions of once-accepted movie characters have been eliminated. He states that this makes the parks less fun.

Instead of his plea to the Disney company to "return to the values and vision"of the past, may I suggest that he examine his position of white privilege and open his eyes to the daily insults that others experience. Contrary to his view that Disney World will make less money, I am hopeful that these small steps in the direction of eliminating racism in all its forms can make the parks be fun for everyone, which they certainly have not been.

I call on the editorial staff of the Repository to refuse to publish further articles that promote racist apologists like Jonathan Vanboskerck.

Wendy Lichtenwalter,Jackson Township

See the rest here:

Letter to the Editor: Columnist's view on Disney World was disappointing - Canton Repository

On Thursday, April 8th, the Society of Fellows hosted a remote lecture via Zoom delivered by Dr. Kiarina Kordela entitled Biopower From Here to Eternity. I attended this event at the behest of our President, as he thought it up my alley, and indeed the premise was greatly intriguing to me, and I would have attended regardless of assignment had I caught the email the first time around. I like to think he nudged me in the direction of Dr. Kordelas talk to make up for the last time I was sent on assignment to a campus event, a two-hour talk and the future of some obscure (or not, I wouldnt know) subcategory of gene editing, in which I was the only undergraduate in attendance, and of which I understood not a word.

Similarly, this time around I was once again the only undergraduate student, to my knowledge, in attendance, though only just; one recently-graduated 20 also sat in. I am happy and relieved to report to the reader that I did, in part, comprehend the context of the lecture, and so will be able to more adequately cover the event in question. My apologies to anyone unfortunate enough to have read my coverage of the biology event, and may this article offer some meager condolence.

I found the meeting felt more like a dinner party, one to which I was lucky enough to be invited and as such stood, enraptured, in the corner of the room, thirstily imbibing the impassioned discussion of the great minds before me, rather than another Zoom meeting.

The event was small and intimate, or as intimate as one can get in a Zoom meeting room, and we totalled nine, including Dr. Kordela herself. It was organized and hosted by Dr. James A. Godley, a postdoctoral scholar of the Society of Fellows here at Dartmouth, whose dissertation examined the religious structure of mourning and grief in postbellum America, a subject matter that became quickly cogent to the meeting toward the close of the event. Dr. Kordela in turn comes from Macalester College in St. Paul, where she is a Professor of German and the Director of the Critical Theory Program. The content of her lecture was developed, for the most part, in her book, Epistemontology in Spinoza-Marx-Freud-Lacan: The (Bio)Power of Structure, which was published in 2018.

Dr. Kordelas insight in this context comes primarily from her synthesis of the works of Spinoza, Marxist economic theory, and contemporary psychoanalysis in the vein of Lacan. She finds that Marxs conception of commodity fetishism maps quite nicely on to Spinozas depiction of being and extension, or being as self-actualization, and thus the monism of Spinoza offers insight into the dynamics of linguistic structuralism and contemporary political discourse. For in Spinoza, being also includes the power of self-actualization, not the mere physical moment of being, and thus commodification must capture both being and power, or body and extension. The being is converted, under a capitalist framework, into Value, an abstraction of the being, and thus linguistic structuralism arises as capitalism arises in order to offer a framework for dealing with abstractions. Power, then, becomes the object of, and is subsumed in, biopower, the control governing bodies or systems exert over bodies.

I have read a fair amount of theory in my day, from the obfuscating and tedious words of Hegel, to the existential pragmatism of Fanon, to the winding and illuminating histories of Foucault. I find that, among these writers and thinkers, the most memorable of them stand out not only for their ideas but for their grasp of writing, for their employment of narrative, for their craft. Dr. Kordela places herself squarely among the best in terms of oratory; she weaves stories of her own discovery of the ideas she discusses with the ideas themself, she embellishes with humor and charisma, and she leads her audience on a journey alongside her, as opposed to beating them over the head with her theory. As a result I found the meeting felt more like a dinner party, one to which I was lucky enough to be invited and as such stood, enraptured, in the corner of the room, thirstily imbibing the impassioned discussion of the great minds before me, rather than another Zoom meeting.

Particularly engaging was the fact that the subject matter of the meeting was at all moments tied to the present and beyond. This became immediate and explicit as the basics of her ideas were cemented and their utility in examining contemporary political discourse and the figure of Trump became central. She traces the development of various biopolitical technologies and their attempt to repress power through the offer of what Lacan calls the semblance de jouissance. Political correctness, she notes, stood as a powerful technology of power wielded in liberalism, one around which political discourse revolved certainly since the mid-twentieth century and perhaps before. Yet Trump emerges, shocking everyone, as an appeal to sovereignty, a political technique more akin to the demagogues of the 18th and 19th centuries. His explosion onto the political scene and subsequent election enabled the release of a jouissance of racism, of populist xenophobia and anti-intellectualism, all sentiments that had been previously repressed for generations under political correctness.

Political correctness, she notes, stood as a powerful technology of power wielded in liberalism, one around which political discourse revolved certainly since the mid-twentieth century and perhaps before.

The important thing to note is that in either of these cases biopower above all values life (or perhaps vitality in the case of Trumpism), values power, the extension of the body. It aims to erase mortality, to obfuscate death among statistics and abstractions, to, as Dr. Kordela notes, prevent the body from risking itself for some greater aim. The fear of death, she illustrates, ultimately means that some form of exploitation must always be accepted by the body.

It is here the project takes a radical turn, and though it may be inappropriate to deem it utopian, it feels so in spirit. Professor Klaus Mladek, of the German Studies and Comparative Literature departments, who is in attendance (and is also, I add in the spirit of transparency, one of the best professors I have had the good fortune to learn under in my time at Dartmouth), brings up the term melancholic revolution. This is a phrase he has coined, or helped coin, and comes from a project he is currently co-authoring with Professor George Edmondson of the English department entitled A Politics of Melancholia. The project, as I understand it, and my sincerest apologies to Professor Edmondson and Professor Mladek if I misrepresent, aims to show melancholia to be not a malady of the individual but a manifestation of the spirit of a community, a necessary response to and powerful tool against coercive forces. The melancholic revolution describes a resistance of the community that is fueled by their very melancholia, a despair which stands in opposition to the fear of death and thus hopes to shrug off the chains of biopower.

The lecture comes to a close, and I leave these comrades of the melancholic revolution, Kordela with her radical insight, Godley with his preoccupation with mourning, Edmondson and Klaus with their melancholic revolution, and, though merely exiting a Zoom meeting, feel myself a bit lighter on my feet, a bit more equipped to throw my grief into the collective melancholia.

The rest is here:

Dr. Kiarina Kordela and the Comrades of the Melancholic Revolution - Dartmouth Review

You know who's not canceled? The endless parade of conservative pundits and politicians complaining about "cancel culture." You know who is canceled? George Floyd is canceled. Breonna Taylor is canceled. Ma'Khia Bryant is canceled. Andrew Brown Jr. is canceled. They are the true victims in America's longest-running culture war. Anyone who tells you different is just gaslighting. You want "cancel culture"? America isplagued with cancel culture. And no one is more American than conservatives, as they never cease reminding you.

Despite earlier boutique appeal,the term "cancel culture" had only faintly registered with the broader public before the July Fourth holidaylast year (Google trends), when then-President Donald Trump gave a speech at MountRushmore, warning of "a growing danger that threatens every blessing our ancestors fought so hard for," and saying that his opponents' "political weapons" included''cancel culture' driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees."

It was a ludicrous accusation coming from the man who's signature line "You're fired!" was the quintessential expression of actually-existing cancel culture. More recently, Trump had beenthe main driver of the cancellation of NFL Colin Kaepernick, demanding not just that the NFL quarterback befired, but driven fromthe country. Thatabsurdity prompted CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale to post a list of people or institutionsTrump had called out to cancel on Twitter over the years, ranging from corporations like AT&T, Appleand Macy's to newspapers like the Dallas Morning News and the Arizona Republicto liberal commentatorslike Paul Krugman and Tourand even conservatives like Karl Rove, Rich Lowry, Charles Krauthammerand Jonah Goldberg.

But now that Trump himself has been canceled by the votes of 81,268,924 Americans, "cancel culture" has become a go-to weapon of choice for Trumpian conservatives, fueled by a branded string of stories in conservative media, including the New York Post, Breitbart, the Daily Caller and the Daily Wire. With Trump himself no longer dominating news cycles 24/7, there's a huge void to fill. Conservative "cancel culture" panic helps fill that void by providing a shared cookie-cutter framework to both fuel and give shape to that panic which is in fact a genuine cultural panic about the white right's loss of power to impose itsworldview, and resulting judgments, on others. To hold onto power, conservatives arecommitted to building the "cancel culture" narrative, casting themselves as victims along the lines of my December Salon story on perceived victimhood.

A meaningfully meaningless term

As Media Matters editor Parker Malloy argues, regarding the terms "cancel culture,""woke"and "identity politics": "Whatever real definitions these words had before they were co-opted by the right have been diluted to the point of meaninglessness." For conservatives, thatmeaninglessness is a feature, not a bug. Those wordsmean whatever a right-wingaccuser needs them to mean in the moment. They are talismanic terms, representing the verycultural power the right feels itselflosing in today's rapidly changing world. "Cancel culture" in particular has a profound Orwellian or even Nietzschean power: a transvaluation of values, transforming a moment of existential loss into one of triumph, at least for as long as we let them get away with it.

There are, however, two modest constraints on meaning we can observe: the notions that cancel culture is something new, and that it comes exclusively from the left. The reality is exactly the opposite.For as long as culture has been changing, conservatives have tried to stop it bysuppressing or demonizinganything that challenges their worldview. Not all conservatives, of course, and not in all ways. But this has been a central thrust of conservative thought, not just in the modern political era, when the terms "liberal"and "conservative"emerged, but as far back as ancient Greece, as Eric Alfred Havelock showed in "The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics."

In American history we can see dramatic examples of conservative cancel culture in the Alien and Sedition Acts, in the 4,743 post-Civil War lynchings to terrorize and suppress black political power, in the post-World War I Palmer Raids, in which 10,000 were arrested and 556 deported, in the McCarthy era, during which hundreds were imprisoned and 10,000 to 12,000 Americans lost their jobs including the long-neglected anti-gayLavender Scareand in the FBI's COINTELPRO Program, which targeted the 1960s civil rights and anti-war movements, labelling Martin Luther King Jr.'s SCLC as a Black nationalist "hate group." Trump's obsession with canceling people he fears fits squarely within this historical tradition. After all, his political mentor and second father-figure was Joe McCarthy's lead investigator, Roy Cohn. We shouldn't be the least bit surprised or confused by the cancel culture hysteria being promoted today as a front for the same evils it pretends to be fighting against.

Still, the term itself is newcompared to this centuries-long history, so it warrants clarification. In early April, the Washington Post's Clyde McGrady provided an excellent guide, "The strange journey of 'cancel,' from a Black-culture punchline to a White-grievance watchword."McGrady offersa concise cultural history, from legendary songwriter/producer Nile Rodgers' experience with a bad date, rendered into the 1981 Chic song "Your Love Is Cancelled"to its appearance in"New Jack City" a decade laterto 2000s songs "Hustler's Ambition" by 50 Cent and "I'm Single" by Lil Wayneand finally to Black Twitter.

"Declaring someone or something 'canceled' on Twitter was not really an attempt to activate a boycott or run anyone from the public square," McGradyexplains. "Saying someone was 'canceled' was more like changing the channel and telling your friends and followers about it than demanding that the TV execs take the program off the air."

It's worth highlighting that Rodgers' bad-date experience at the root of all this sprang from his working-class common man rejection of tossing his cultural weight around:

[A]t heart, he was still a humble kid whose parents had struggled with drug addiction and who felt fortunate to have made it as far as he did. So, when his date asked the matre d' to remove people from a table so they could sit there instead, Rodgers bristled.

Her attempt to use his celebrity to push people around was a dealbreaker. "No, no, no, I don't do that," Rodgers remembered explaining. "I don't play that card."

In short, canceling everyday people in the way that conservatives portray "cancel culture" to work wasthe exact opposite of what motivated Rodgers to coin the term in the first place, as well as how it's been used on Twitter. Think aboutthat anytime you hear the term used.

You should also think of everything conservatives are doing or trying to do right now to cancel the views of those they disagree with. The following are just a few prominent examples. In each case, it's about those who wield power "canceling" or at least trying to cancel those who would challenge them. Their efforts to cancel democracy at the ballot box (with 361 bills in 47 states as of March 24) and in the streets (81 anti-protest bills in 34 states as of April 21) are deadly serious threats to American democracy.

But the right's most persistent, long-running cancel-culture attacks center on education. As Fairness and Accuracy In Reportingnoted on William F. Buckley's death, "Buckley's career began in 1951 with the publication of 'God and Man at Yale,' an attack on his alma mater that urged the firing of professors whom he felt were insufficiently hostile to socialism and atheism."

Cancel culture in education

In March, Boise State University abruptly suspended all 52 sections of a required general education course, "Foundations of Ethics & Diversity," citing "allegations that a student or students have been humiliated and degraded in class on our campus for their beliefs and values." Suspending 52 sections of a required course without investigation for perhaps a single student complaint is of course wildly out of bounds, as pointed out by John K. Wilson at the Academe blog:

Even if one instructor had done something terrible in one class, that would only justify (in the most extreme cases) suspending that instructor temporarily and finding a substitute to continue the class. It could not justify suspending all 52 classes in which there was no evidence of any misconduct.

Shedding light on the over-reaction, The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education reported, "The cancellation of the classes comes after more than a year of lawmakers' efforts to rein in classes at Idaho universities and colleges." But the legislature wasn't acting on its own, as Wilson made clear:

The Idaho legislators are being pressured by right-wing nonprofits who demand censorship of liberal ideas on campus. A December 2020reportfrom the right-wing Idaho Freedom Foundation and the Claremont Institute declared that "eliminating social justice initiatives at Idaho's universities is necessary for meaningful reform, as well as disrupting their ability to provide stable careers for social justice advocates." The report called for the state legislature to act by "penalizing universities that continue to emphasize social justice education." This report urged the state legislature to violate academic freedom and ban classes it deemed too liberal: "Direct the University to eliminate courses that are infused with social justice Ideology." Leading right-wing think tanks are actively demanding a ban on courses based on their ideology. This is an example of conservative cancel culture far more extreme than anything pushed by left-wing activists.

The report doesn't just call for eliminating individual courses, however. It calls for the elimination of five whole departments Gender Studies, Sociology, Global Studies, Social Work andHistory that it claims are infused with "social justice" ideology. (A sixth blacklisted department has since been added: Criminal Justice.) Eight other departments (later updated to nine) are on a watch list of sorts, judged to be "social justice in training." What conservatives want here is strikingly similar to what Viktor Orbn has done in Hungary, where he's just announced the privatization of 11 public universities, to be run by political allies.

Boise State's recklessly illegal actions are just the tip of the iceberg. On April 15, Education Week reported that Republican lawmakers in eight states (including Idaho) have drafted bills restricting how teachers can discuss racism and sexism. "The bills use similar language as an executive order former President Donald Trump put in place to ban diversity trainings for federal workers," it reported.

Georgetown political scientist Donald Moynihan saw all this coming years ago. In a New York Times op-ed just before Trump took office,Moynihan then at the University of Wisconsin focused attention on what was really happening where he worked.

"At least three times in the past six months, state legislators have threatened to cut the budget of the University of Wisconsin at Madison for teaching about homosexuality, gender and race," his article began. All the discussions focused on the dangers of "political correctness" (the buzzword of choice before "cancel culture")bore no relation to his own experience teaching at public universities in three states over 14 years. "Students can protest on the campus mall, demanding that policies be changed; elected officials can pass laws or cut resources to reflect their beliefs about how a campus should operate," he wrote. "One group has much more power than the other."

I asked Moynihan about how he came to write that piece when he did. Here's what he said:

I was first engaged on speech issues when the then-governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, proposed to remove "the search for truth" from my university's missionstatement. (He would later claim it was a typo.) He thenreduced tenure protections for faculty and new policies that would have made it easier to bring guns on campus. Republican politicians would talk about free speech on campus, but seemed to be intent on eroding the conditions to protect such speech. Politicians were also willing to target faculty members. The chair of the Assembly Higher Education committee started monitoring faculty syllabi and calling for the firing of faculty whose courses he did not like.

That was when I spoke out. It seemed deeply unfair that state officials would so blatantly use their power to determine what was, and what was not, acceptable speech. ...

Soon after a Ben Shapiro talk was interrupted for about 10 minutes the legislature proposed and the conservative Board of Regents adopted a new set of policies that they said protected free speech but effectively forced campuses to punish students for protest. Our Board of Regents was almost uniformly conservative appointees who seemed to see it as their job to attack the institution they had been appointed to represent.

I'll have more to say about Shapiro's role below. But it's part of a broader campaign. "Conservatives have been successful at demonizing the people who work on campus faculty, staff and students as threats to free speech," Moynihan told me. "Attacking universities became a staple of the far right, propelled by an entire ecosystem of media funded by donors like the Koch or DeVos families, such as Campus Reform. [More on them below, too.] Tucker Carlson had a themed segment called 'Campus Craziness.'"

Worse than that, Moynihan said:

The mainstream media bought it. It wasn't just on the right. Journalists at the Atlantic or writers in the New York Times told us that students were becoming dangerously intolerant, and faculty were brainwashing them. My op-edin the Times was one of the few that pushed against that general narrative. The dominant narrative, even in places like the New York Times, was that conservative speech was being suppressed, and the students and faculty were the villains. Someone counted this! They found that over an 18-month stretch, there were 21 op-eds about the suppressionof conservative speech but just three, including mine, on conservative threats to speech.

Remember: Moynihan's op-ed ran just days before Trump took office, having made complaints about "political correctness" a recurrent campaign theme.

"Once the general narrative was established, even trivial examples students at Oberlin complaining about food names - were presented as serious and representative threats to speech," Moynihan continued."There were also a series of college tours by people like Milo Yiannopoulos, Ann Coulter andBen Shapirowho said offensive things designed to enrage people, and then generated protests and interruptions thatembellished theirbrands asfearless free-speech champions."

In March 2018, Sanford Ungar reported on results from the Georgetown Free Speech Tracker:

[M]ost of the incidents where presumptively conservative speech has been interrupted or squelched in the last two or three years seem to involve the same few speakers: Milo Yiannopoulos, Ben Shapiro, Charles Murray, and Ann Coulter. In some instances, they seem to invite, and delight in, disruption.

At Vox, Zack Beauchamp put a finer point on it:

What Ungar is suggesting here is that the "campus free speech" crisis is somewhat manufactured. Conservative student groups invite speakers famous for offensive and racially charged speech all of the above speakers fit that bill in a deliberate attempt to provoke the campus left. In other words, they're trolling.

Trolling takes other forms as well, as Alice Speri reported for the Interceptin early April. Her story carried the subhead, "Campus Reform and its publisher, the Leadership Institute, are siccing armies of trolls on professors across the country." Campus Reform purports to expose "liberal bias and abuse on the nation's college campuses," but regularly relies on misrepresentation, first to elicit faculty comments and then to mis-report them, making them seem as sinister as possible. "Over the last several years, Campus Reform has targeted hundreds of college professors," Speri reported, "leading to online harassment campaigns, doxxing, threats of violence, and calls on universities to fire their faculty."

A Trinity College assistant professor, Isaac Kamola, "has tracked more than 1,570 stories posted on Campus Reform since 2020 and surveyed the 338 individuals they targeted." He "found that at least 40 percent of respondents received 'threats of harm' following a Campus Reform article, mostly via email and social media." She goes on to say, "Less than half the people surveyed by Kamola reported receiving support from their universities' administrations, and more than 12 percent reported facing disciplinary action as a result of a Campus Reform story. Three people said they lost their jobs."

In short, they were canceled.And no one put them on national TV to talk about it. That's just one more way in which conservativegaslighting about cancel culture advances the very thing conservatives claimto beconcerned about.

"Having created the narrative of the intolerant liberal campus as a problem, conservative politicians could propose a solution," Moynihan continued. "They could make a case for why their policing of speech on campus was actually protecting free speech. They effectively persuaded many that politiciansshould be trusted to monitor speech on campus, more than the people who lived on campus and have historically done a pretty good job of protecting speech."

But none of this matched reality."Wisconsin has a long history of protest and counter-protest on campus, some of it quite violent. The idea that students had suddenly become aggressiveseemed clearly wrong to me," Moynihan recalled. "These terms I kept hearing just did not fit with my experiencewith the students I engaged with. The gap between my lived experience on campus and what was being portrayed in the media was large."

At the same time, "I looked around the world and saw a very disturbingtrend: Authoritarian governmentsin places like Hungary, Turkey and China were policing speech on campus as part of their effort to stifle dissent, using many of the same tools that U.S. state legislatures are adopting," Moynihan said. "For example, a bill in Florida encourages studentsto record and monitor their professors to expose their views. What could be more chilling to speech in the classroom? This is the same tool that China uses to control universities: Student informers report any dissent against the party."

Canceling democracy at the ballot box

Trump's refusal to accept his defeat in the 2020 election was the epitome of attempting to cancel democracy. But it was only an intensification of processes already underway. Republicans have only won the popular vote for president once in eight elections since 1988. They have not represented a majority of voters in the Senate since 1996. Their $30 million REDMAP project in 2010 created the most sweeping partisan redistricting of the House in US history, as former Salon editor in chief David Daley recounted in "Ratf**ked." Baseless claims of voter fraud have been repeatedly invoked in justifying and motivating voter suppression efforts. More broadly, a new study of state-level democratic backsliding since 2000 found that "Republican control of state government, however, consistently and profoundly reduces state democratic performance during this time period."

Still, what's happening now goes considerably further. A majority of Republicans refuse to believe Biden legitimately won the election, leading to an avalanche of new voter suppression bills 361 bills in 47 states as of March 24, according to the Brennan Center, which reported:

Most restrictive bills take aim at absentee voting, while nearly a quarter seek stricter voter ID requirements. State lawmakers also aim to make voter registration harder, expand voter roll purges or adopt flawed practices that would risk improper purges, and cut back on early voting.

Sharply underscoring the cancel culture motivations the conflict between established state power and shifting public opinion the report continued: "The states that have seen the largest number of restrictive bills introduced areTexas(49 bills),Georgia(25 bills), andArizona(23 bills). Bills are actively moving in the Texas and Arizona statehouses, and Georgia enacted an omnibus voter suppression bill last week."

The most infamous aspect of the Georgia law is its restriction ongiving waterto people waiting in long lines to vote. But as election law expert Rick Hasen explained in a New York Times op-ed, there's something even more sinister involved, a "new threat of election subversion" that "represent[s] a huge threat to American democracy itself." Specifically, "The Georgia law removesthe secretary of state from decision-making power on the state election board," which is aimed at Brad Raffensperger, who refused to "find" 11,780 votesto overturn Biden's victory. "But the changes will apply to Mr. Raffensperger's successor, too, giving the legislature a greater hand in who counts votes and how they are counted," Hasen explained.

It's hardly an isolated case, he noted:"According to a new reportbyProtect Democracy,Law Forwardand theStates United Democracy Center, Republican legislators have proposed at least 148 bills in 36 states that could increase the chances of cooking the electoral books." More precisely, the press release says:

Many of the bills would make elections more difficult to administer or even unworkable; make it more difficult to finalize election results; allow for election interference and manipulation by hyper-partisan actors; and, in the worst cases, allow state legislatures to overturn the will of the voters and precipitate a democracy crisis. If these bills had been in place in 2020, they would have significantly added to the turmoil of the post-election period, and raised the prospect that the outcome of the election would have been contrary to the popular vote.

This is what a real cancel culture crisis looks like. And it's 100% conservative from top to bottom. There are of course some individual conservatives who strongly object but nowhere near enough.

Canceling democracy in the streets

But democracy doesn't begin and end at the polls. The First Amendment protects basic freedoms that make meaningful democracy possible, including "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Republicans have been busy trying to cancel our democracy on this front as well, with81 anti-protest bills introduced in 34 states during the 2021 legislative session, "more than twice as many proposals as in any other year, according to Elly Page, a senior legal adviser at the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law," the New York Times reported on April 21. (Those laws are tracked here.)

"Republican legislators inOklahomaand Iowa have passed bills granting immunity to drivers whose vehicles strike and injure protesters in public streets," the Times reported. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. "We've seen at least 15 bills introduced that would create new immunity for drivers who hit protesters with their cars," Page's colleague Nick Robinson told Democracy Now! on April 26. Thatjust one of many objectionable features in a recently-passed Florida bill that Gov.Ron DeSantis signed while claiming it wasas "anti-rioting." The ACLU of Florida characterized it instead as "anti-protest."Just three people would be enough to constitute a "riot" and 26 wouldconstitute an "aggravated riot," potentially facinglong prison sentences.

"Under this new bill, let's say you just go to a protest, and a handful of people kick over a trash can. Just by being part of that crowd, you can be arrested and prosecuted for rioting and face a felony," Robinson explained. "Actually, under the law, no one actually has to commit any violence at all. If there's just a danger to property, then people can be arrested for rioting."

In short, thisa naked governmental power grab, meant to squelch popular protest, and aimed specificallyat Black Lives Matter protesters. How do we know? Florida lawmakers said as much, and they included a provision blocking any Florida city or county from cutting police budgetswithout explicit permission from the state.

Conservative anti-protest cancel culture is nothing new, of course. The Palmer Raids were supposed to headoff a Russian Revolution-style violent uprising, but only turned up a total of four pistols from thousands of arrests. More recently, Republican state lawmakers have focused on criminalizing climate activism, as the Brennan Center reported in March:

Since 2016,13 stateshave quietly enacted laws that increase criminal penalties for trespassing, damage, and interference with infrastructure sites such as oil refineries and pipelines. At leastfive more stateshave already introduced similar legislation this year.

The laws are based on post-9/11 national security legislationto protect vital physical infrastructure, "but moststate critical infrastructure lawsfocus more narrowly on oil and gas pipelines," the Center noted. "While protecting critical infrastructure is a legitimate government function, these laws clearly target environmental and Indigenous activists by significantly raising the penalties for participating in or even tangentially supporting pipeline trespassing and property damage, crimes that are already illegal."

And there's one final conservative cancel culture twist: the question of who's calling the shots:

Many laws are modeled ondraft legislationprepared by the American Legislative Exchange Council, also known as ALEC, a powerful lobbying group funded by fossil fuel companies likeExxonMobil and Shell.

Cancel culture In Congress

Those are three broad areas where conservative cancel culture is both widespread and deeply dangerous to democracy. But that's hardly the whole story. Consider what's happened with two key Biden appointments, Vanita Gupta, for Associate Attorney General, and Kristen Clarke to head the DOJ Civil Rights Division. Both were subject to dishonest, racistright-wing smear campaigns, as CNN reported, and Gupta was confirmed 51-49, with just one Republicanvote(Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska)on April 21. Both were relentlessly portrayed as dangerous extremists, when they've actually been leaders of mainstream civil rights organizations the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights (Gupta) and Lawyers' Committee on Civil Rights Under Law (Clarke). Both were attacked for supposedly being anti-police (no racial stereotyping there, right?) even though both had been endorsed by police organizations, including the Fraternal Order of Police (Gupta) and the Major Cities Chiefs Association (Clarke).

The attacks on them were part of a broader pattern of attacks on nominees who are women and/or people of color, including Xavier Becerra (Health and Human Services), Deb Haaland (Department of Interior)and Neera Tanden (Office of Management and Budget). Becerra was confirmed 50-49 with Sen. Susan Collins of Maine as his only GOP vote while Tanden's nomination was withdrawn.

All this is simply accepted as normal now, but it's prima facie evidence of a concerted conservative cancel-culture effort to stifle the voices of key Democraticconstituencies. It's visible in the broad reach of voter suppression efforts, of protest suppression efforts and curriculum suppression efforts as well. They've all but given up on advancing anything like a governing agenda. At the Atlantic, Ron Brownstein observed:

With their opposition to President Joe Biden's infrastructure plan, Republicans are doubling down on a core bet they've made for his presidency: that the GOP can maintain support among its key constituencies while fighting programs that would provide those voters with tangible economic assistance.

To accomplishthat, they have to cancelreality itself. No problem Republicanshavebeen doing that for decades. The only difference now is that they've stopped doing anything else.

Link:

Conservatives claim to hate "cancel culture" but it's the heart of the right-wing agenda - Salon