“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”—George Orwell.
It appears a political revolution by American voters in 2020 is needed to spare our society from the disastrous continuation of the ignorance epidemic that has been loosed on us by Donald Trump. There remains an off chance that he will be removed from office before that time, but that still would leave in place the lickspittles of his administration that include the vice-president and Republican majority of the U.S. Senate.
I have faith that American voters will rise to the opportunity to not only halt destruction of our environment but also defeat the many-headed hydra that is Donald’s agenda to erase liberal virtues from public education and also wipe out other sources of non-conservative thinking throughout this plutocratic white-supremacist gated community he is attempting to establish.
Look around. The dumbing down of our populace is evident at every hand as Donald seeks to drag both intelligence and morality down to his own poxed level and that of his support group. It includes the assault on public education, the never-ending Republican attempts at voter suppression, Donald’s heavy-handed attacks on Hispanics in all possible ways. These are all areas in which people who might be labeled “commoners” are seeking basic human rights—and are likely to to vote Democratic in the future.
Blacks, Muslims, women, Social Security recipients, the sick and ailing all figure into the picture.
Back to the matter of public education. I have experienced public education. I also have extended family all over it. A brother who taught at the university level, a daughter who has been a speech pathologist for an Oregon school district, a wife who was finance director for our own Port Townsend district, five family members on my wife’s side who taught in the classroom, two winding up in administration (a superintendent and a principal) and one in special ed.
I also haunted schools as a member of the press, with both pen and camera, over some 34 years.
One thing we must do in short order is resist the efforts of Donald’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, a big-money sort and big campaign contributor with no special educational qualifications. She’s come up now with a plan for a $5,000,000,000 tax credit that would fund scholarships to private schools. She is disguising it as an opportunity for regular students to make a choice on their schooling. It is just one more shot at enabling well-to-do families to rip off tax-payers and boost their little darlings into blue-nose institutions where they won’t have to associate with the hoi polloi. I smell conservative bias in the matter of classroom learning.
It would be a major assault on already underfunded public education, down here where we’re all pulling oars in the same boat. Put that $5 billion somewhere into public education, Betsy. Like the sort of stuff teachers have been striking for across the country. Let’s enable such teachers rather than kicking them to the curb. Forget pandering the wealthy and promoting conservatism.
Meanwhile, Donald is appointing conservative federal judges as fast as he can, but we’re still getting some major instances of unbiased justice. A federal judge the other day halted an effort to purge voter rolls in Texas. The secretary of state down there was questioning the citizenship of nearly 100,000 voters, few of whom have been actually confirmed as ineligible to vote.
Of the nearly 100,000 registered voters whose citizenship was called into question, only about 80 were deemed ineligible to vote. Same old Republican voter suppression. The news story didn’t say how many of the 100,000 were Hispanic or Black, but we all know that’s been factored in for years throughout the country by Republic legislatures (and in this case a secretary of state). Their efforts always negatively affect voters who look likely to vote Democrat.
Which brings us of course, back to Donald himself—wanting to keep Hispanics seeking to better their lot in life out of our country, and kicking out many of those who already are here.
