What's At Stake

Come November we’ll be voting in yet another “most important election, ever.” Not to be the wolf who cried “boy oh boy,” but if this isn’t THE one, it has a heck of a lot more riding on it than any in memory. Like, you know, survival. Literal and figurative. Republicans, especially the MAGAfied ones, are making no secret of what’s in store if they take control of Congress. Let’s remind ourselves who they are:

Rick Scott (R-FL), chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, is responsible for getting Rs elected to that body. It’s he whose healthcare company paid the largest fine, ever, for Medicare fraud, BEFORE he was elected governor and then Senator. He just sent emails to Republicans, seeking suggestions for where “illegal immigrants” should next be sent: Barack Obama’s house, the White House, San Francisco, or “other.” 

Funny, right? In fact, the already-sent aren’t illegal. They’re legitimate seekers of asylum, having escaped with their lives, allowed in, legally, to pursue their quest. The kind of people whose life-risking commitment to freedom has made this country great; whose presence in America angers Trumpublicans. Threatens their ability to feel superior, maybe.

But that’s not the issue. The issue is, in what way does loading desperate people onto planes, lying to them, shipping them off in hopes they’ll be mistreated and abandoned, differ from loading people into cattle cars? Sure, there are a few details. But anyone who thinks it’s hilarious, who isn’t appalled by the dehumanization and the oh-so-clever poll, isn’t far removed from those who stood silent or cheered, 75 years ago, in Germany; arms raised like Trumpists in Ohio.

Can anyone still believe “it can’t happen here”? It already is. Cruelty is the point, acquiescence the propagator, Trumpism the fuel. It’s who they are, and, if put in charge, what they want America to become. 

Also who they are: Ted Cruz (R-TX). If they take over, he said, Republicans would impeach Biden “whether it’s justified or not.” To anyone with more brain cells than the number of MAGAgonists giving that Q-anazi salute, there’s no legitimate reason to impeach President Biden. There’s plenty for MAGA Republicans to disagree with. That’s okay. It’s policy. But “high crimes and misdemeanors?” Maybe there’s a copy of the Constitution in one of the boxes Trump stole. That, he'll get back. After he reads it for the first time, maybe he’ll share.

As justification, Cruz floated “failing to enforce the border,” despite the record number of arrests under President Biden, and hundreds of thousands of drugs being interdicted. If scaring people about “rainbow meth” and fentanyl deaths (which tripled under Trump) is good campaign strategy, “rampant crime” is better. Which makes right-wing outrage over the FBI’s arrest, at his home, of a man who punched and knocked down a 72-year-old who was escorting women out of a Planned Parenthood Clinic. Punched twice, till he fell and was injured. “Outrageous FBI overreach,” said Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah), one of many. 

Back the Blue. Blue lives matter. Unless they’re retrieving stolen documents, arresting Trumpists storming the capital or punching protectors of women. If MAGA Republicans take over Congress, there’s reason to believe only white, male, Christian Trumpublicans will be welcome in America.

Okay, Sid, calm down. Stick to the facts.

Flanked by climate-change-, vaccine-, and election-deniers (and a few not-completely-nuts Rs) Kevin McCarthy announced the Republican “Commitment to America,” pending their ascendency to power. Containing many words forming sentences, it promises to solve everything, by spending lots of money (ironic) while making no mention of where it’ll come from. For that, we return to Rick Scott, whose economic plan features a requirement to subject government programs (Medicare, Social Security, food stamps, etc.) to re-approval every five years. One doesn’t need insurance-covered cataract surgery to read between those lines.

The rest of the “Commitment” is full of focus-group-tested promises. “Fight inflation and lower the cost of living.” Hey, who isn’t for that? Double hey: who needs actual plans? Energy independence is on the list, too. Based on their accompanying video, via more drilling. In Russia, evidently, since the video showed pumping there. Climate change? Who cares? Fires, floods, droughts, hurricanes? Fake news. 

How ‘bout this: “Expand parental choice so students can receive the education their parents know is best.” Translation: so long, public education. No child having to learn American history, read challenging books, or become empathetic. And this one is especially good: “Personalize care to provide affordable options and better quality, delivered by trusted doctors.” Any idea what that means or how it happens? Seriously. Read the “document.” Think beyond the headlines. 

And then, unless you believe the election was stolen, climate change is a hoax, and you want a national abortion ban, overcome any inclination to vote for any Republican. Including a pretty lady who says Democrats are “working overtime” to raise prices, and who, after winning her primary, scrubbed her website of election fraud claims and abortion bans.

Voucher Groucher

One thing I've always admired about Republicans is their ability with messaging. Take a complicated issue, boil it down to a dark reduction of few words, misleading though they may be. Empty the subject of all meaning, until it fits perfectly inside the head of a teabagger. Abortion: pro-life. Raising taxes: punishing success. School vouchers: let me choose my future. Democrats, meanwhile, partially because they acknowledge complexities, partly because they care about actually workable solutions which of necessity require lots of words, party because they're nothing if not disorganized, and partly because they're painfully inept, would lose the bumper-sticker wars if they were claiming the sun is hot.

Once again putting first things last, newly enabled by the recent elections based on fear and disinformation, teabaggRs are turning their attention to one of the above: school vouchers.

I'll admit from the outset: I'm a little prejudiced in favor of public schools. I had the good fortune to attend nothing but good ones, including the first high school in the US to offer four years of Russian (you know, when such things as language were valued), of which I partook. My wife has been on the local school board for fourteen years, in a district where more than fifty languages are native-spoken; and I've seen from close up how devoted to and successful they are at engaging and attending to all the kids, from ESL to alternative high schools, to remedial programs, to gifted and accelerated ones. All that, despite the punitive and paradoxical demands of NCLB.

From my cynical point of view -- born of a keen sense of reality, I'd argue -- the school voucher movement is mainly and mostly about getting the rest of us to pay for religious education. Whether it be overtly religious, or merely the Texas-style pushing of right-wing anti-science and ahistorical propaganda, it's the same thing: teabaggRs want their kids to be as clueless as they are. They want their kids systematically robbed of the ability to think for themselves, lest they acknowledge reality. Not to mention they don't want them hanging around with any non-white or non-Xtian or non-hetero or immigrant kids.

And they want me to pay for it.

Well, they argue, as it stands, kids are already being propagandized, in public schools; and, on some level, I'd agree it's true, by some definition. They're being taught to open their minds, to accept differences among people. They're being taught science which is discordant with biblical literalism. And, yes, they're being taught a version of American history that's at odds with the tricorner view. The version that includes certain truths that might cool hot tea.

You can lead a teabag to water but it won't dip itself. I think it's important to a society that wants to move forward to have curious and original and open-minded people, ones in whom their education has been sewing seeds rather than digging up roots; and replacing them with petrification. There are plenty of examples of societies in which the latter occurs; need I mention them?

In this society, an obligation to provide public education has always been paramount. There's plenty of room for arguing what constitutes proper education; and it's certainly true that we're failing to provide it for many. On the other hand, I'd argue our brightest are as bright as any; and the data that show us failing include our attempts to educate all, including -- especially -- the ones that most surely will not be attending teabagger-planned voucher-based schools.

Which, of course, is the teabaggRs' point: we don't want our kids slowed down by those, you know, other kinds of children. It's not wholly unreasonable. Indeed, it'd be easier to argue against vouchers if we weren't being overtaken by those to whom any tax is anathema, by whose votes public education is being forced into further decline. (Almost as if that's their aim, huh?) But what's their end point? Poorly-funded public schools, containing only the hardest to educate, attracting the least interested teachers (there'll always be exceptions but how many?) And fancy private schools, basking in high selectivity and low accountability, cranking out creationist global-warming deniers who believe Paul Revere was protecting the Second Amendment by ringing bells.

We can't keep people from building schools and bathing their kids in mindlessness. But from where I sit, we shouldn't have to pay for it. Teabaggers have plenty of sources for funding their schools, including the billionaires behind their so-called grass-roots movement, and the ones getting tax breaks from their monetary dogmata. Without a public nickel, they could be swimming in cash. So go where the money is. Keep your hands in their pockets, where they've always been, whether you knew it or not. (Takes a better education than you want, to have noticed.)