Putin’s Coup

Abortion has been, and continues to be, a vital weapon in the Republican toolbox, a means to gain control over a multitude of less savory objectives. With this hot button, they have been able to whip up energy within their ranks. Over the last fifty years, a growing mob of zealots have taken to the streets and the halls of government with placards showing the pitiful fetus so wronged by evil women and their fiendish abortion doctors.

The truth is that the flap over abortion was never as much about the ‘unborn baby’ as it was about political capital. Powerbrokers saw right away that this issue aroused emotion like nothing else. Yet what the Republican Party stood for, then as now, also enshrined racial prejudice, but it had become impossible to openly advocate for white supremacy.

The mass migration of voters from Democratic ranks to the shelter of the Republican Party began not with Roe v Wade, but with the 1952 Brown vs Board of Education decision and followed more decisively with the Kennedy-Johnson push for civil rights. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbade discrimination on the basis of sex as well as race in hiring, promoting, and firing. The Act prohibited discrimination in public accommodations and federally funded programs. It also strengthened the enforcement of voting rights and the desegregation of schools.

Police dogs, held by officers, jump at a man with torn trousers during a non-violent demonstration, Birmingham, Alabama, May 3, 1963. Police officers used both dogs and firehoses to break up the rally.

After the 1964 Civil Rights Act, many white, conservative Southern Democrats became Republicans. The South had been mostly Democratic before 1964; it was mostly Republican after (although on the local level continued to be heavily Democratic for decades). Many “values voters” became Republicans.[1]

The 1973 Roe v Wade decision legalizing abortion did not have nearly the same impact as the Civil Rights Act as far as political response. For a time, other issues sidetracked voter attention, such as the winding down of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal that shoved Nixon out of office. The Arab oil embargo also diverted public interest with skyrocketing gasoline prices. In reality, the behind-the-scene Republican strategists were slow in coming around to a full understanding of how to use the abortion issue to represent the real interests of conservatives.

*https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/05/25/supreme-court-must-undo-harms-that-flowed-its-roe-v-wade-overreach/*

Early in Reagan’s presidency, developing tactics on the abortion issue spread through the nation in the hands of then-fledgling evangelical groups wielding signage of dismembered fetuses (remarkably mature for the gestation dates named) and demonstrations by women crying for the lost babies or, more heart-rendering, testimonials by women who had obtained abortions and later regretted it. (This vanishingly small group remains an active feature of anti-choice campaigns. One could sum up their position as yet another demonstration of ignorance.)

At first, Democrats yielded ground on the matter, not firmly convinced enough about women’s right to bodily autonomy to take a firm stand. Lamentably lacking in early opposition to the anti-abortion crowd were strategies to fight back with their own weaponry, for example, citing Biblical scriptures showing that personhood began at birth.

After God formed man in Genesis 2:7, He “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and it was then that the man became a living being”. Although the man was fully formed by God in all respects, he was not a living being until after taking his first breath.[2]

Democrats have finally taken a stronger stance on the topic, linking the party to “their support of ‘human rights’ and of groups whose rights have been long suppressed – African Americans and other minority groups, women seeking to vote and enjoy full property rights, LGBTQ people and immigrants.”[3]

To Republicans, the abortion issue is a coded message about the party’s stance on longstanding prejudices, not only uppity women but also African Americans and other minorities, LBGTQ people, and non-white immigrants. Without having to advertise racism or other prejudices, Republican strategists can push voters to champion the rights of the fetus while avoiding the party’s full agenda.

It is not the facts of an issue which drive evangelical voters. As a general rule, evangelicals don’t embrace facts. Their hands are full of Bibles, which they don’t precisely understand, but they do hear what preachers tell them. What the preachers tell them is intended not to elucidate the facts but rather to stoke FEAR of God’s wrath. And, in these narrow hallways of evangelical mentality, God will punish them if they don’t stop women from killing fetuses.

It’s not that evangelist preachers are pursuing a goal they understand in terms of social policy. Their vehement sermons about abortion and their endorsement of specific political candidates derive from their urgent personal desire to make money off of Jesus. Evangelicals are an easy mark. See, for example, the fundraising headline at Focus on the Family’s website: “SAVE 2X THE BABIES FROM ABORTION! Double Your Gift to Save Lives!”

The more insidious objective of the Republican agenda is to continue shifting power to corporations and the super wealthy while the frontmen lure evangelical voters with the promise of a Christian nation. Sadly, evangelicals lack any understanding of the threat posed in religion as government, a condition that increases exponentially as more private religious schools and homeschooling take the place of public education.

Remedies for the current crisis would include regulations that deny diplomas to any student, homeschooled or otherwise, who cannot pass examinations proving understanding of American history and government, among other subjects required of public school students. If U. S. citizens cannot begin adulthood on the same page, we have no hope of continuing as a nation.

One thing such an education would ensure is the awareness that the Republican/evangelical drive toward a Christian nation is a form of sedition, “an overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that tends toward rebellion against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent toward, or insurrection against, established authority.”

Vladimir Putin personally authorized a secret spy agency operation to support a “mentally unstable” Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election during a closed session of Russia’s national security council, according to what are assessed to be leaked Kremlin documents. *https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/15/kremlin-papers-appear-to-show-putins-plot-to-put-trump-in-white-house*

Equally tragic is while Republican power brokers chortle over wins for the One Percent, they have failed to recognize the puppet master profiting from their maneuvers: Putin.

Trump’s victory lap over the demise of Roe v Wade unveils one of the subtle purposes of Vladimir Putin’s support. The Russian ploy to undermine U.S. society gained a witless ally in Trump, who pulled his best con job in his election to the presidency, aided and abetted by the machinations of Russian interference.

What has now been made clear is that Russian trolls and automated bots not only promoted explicitly pro-Donald Trump messaging, but also used social media to sow social divisions in America by stoking disagreement and division around a plethora of controversial topics such as immigration and Islamophobia.

The overarching goal for Russia, during the election and now, analysts say, is to expand and exploit divisions, attacking the American social fabric where it is most vulnerable, along lines of race, gender, class and creed.

“The broader Russian strategy is pretty clearly about destabilizing the country by focusing on and amplifying existing divisions, rather than supporting any one political party,” said Jonathon Morgan, a former state department adviser on digital responses to terrorism whose company, New Knowledge, analyzes the manipulation of public discourse.[4]

Russia’s desired outcome in the months before Donald Trump’s election in 2016 was not simply to see him elected. It aimed, instead, to more broadly “undermine the US-led liberal democratic order” (in the words of a January 2017 intelligence assessment), an effort that Russia believed would be aided far more by Trump’s election than Hillary Clinton’s. This overlapped with its desire to “provoke and amplify political and social discord in the United States” (in the words of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III), leading it to weigh in not only on electoral politics but cultural fights — investing in amplifying and exacerbating contentious social debates.[5]

[1] https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_realignment_in_the_United_States

[2] Also Job 33:4: “The spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.”

Ezekiel 37:5, 6: “Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.”

Exodus 21:22: If a man causes a woman to have a miscarriage, he shall be fined; however, if the woman dies then he will be put to death. It should be apparent from this that the aborted fetus is not considered a living human being since the resulting punishment for the abortion is nothing more than a fine; it is not classified by the bible as a capital offense.

[3] https://www.npr.org/2022/05/08/1097118409/the-leaked-abortion-decision-blew-up-overnight-in-1973-roe-had-a-longer-fuse

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/14/russia-us-politics-social-media-facebook

[5] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/24/bump-russia-american-unity-undermined/

How to Grow More Ignorance in Arkansas

Arkansas continues to shoot itself in the foot with the recent passage of new regulations governing home schooling. As a new year begins, public hearings on the latest revisions are open only through January 17. After the public comment period, assuming comments fail to arouse concerns at the Arkansas Department of Education (under the leadership of evangelical Christian Johnny Key), the new rules will be submitted to the state Education Board for approval.

Members of the evangelical right have taken an increasingly militant stance about public education. Partly white flight from integration, partly concern over exposure to gay or minority students and the so-called liberal agenda, and partly public school difficulty in maintaining high educational standards in the face of inadequate funding alongside demand for extraordinary services in mainlining students with special needs, reasons abound for conservative parents to seek alternatives.

But by far the greatest reason for parents choosing to homeschool is their determination to teach religion. Evidently church alone isn’t enough to satisfy this need.

According to the surveys conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, 91 percent of homeschooling parents are more concerned about the environment of schools and want to offer a religious (64 percent) and/or moral (77 percent) alternative.

Smaller-scale studies of parental attitudes have found the same thing, from the conservative fathers who try to form a moral cocoon around their children, to African-American families who want to foster a sense of racial pride in their children, to “quiverfull” families trying to have enough children to Christianize the United States by demographic transformation.[1]

Obviously none of these interests coincide with the need for good citizenship in a blended American society.

In Arkansas, where fundamentalist religious teachings flourish under the guidance of such groups as the Family Council (a conservative research, advocacy, and education organization), the self-explanatory Clark County Christian Home School Organization, and the even more self-explanatory Texarkana Organization for the Resolute Christian Homeschoolers, state lawmakers have signed off on the radical Christian agenda.

On the surface, it might seem a worthy effort to give parents more control over the education of their children. After all, parents love their children and want what’s best for them. The problem lies in the parents’ judgment about what is ‘best.’

Is it best for parents to be the sole instructor and judge of their children’s education? Is it best to prioritize religious beliefs over the U. S. Constitution? What if parents don’t care much about history or math or computer skills, but prefer their children only understand the Bible?

What is the responsibility of the state to ensure that it doesn’t end up with a significant number of young adults incapable of holding down a job, getting along with their neighbors, or functioning as a thoughtful voter?

The latest round of regulations, promulgated during the 2017 legislative session, clarifies requirements for homeschoolers moving in or out of the public schools and in particular their participation in sports and other extracurricular programs. (Never underestimate the importance of football—and, to a lesser extent, other sports—as the state’s second religion.) As the numbers of homeschoolers have grown, so has the burning need to allow an overlap of public school football and homeschoolers.

Most importantly to anyone concerned about the nation’s future and the potential for our very own religious war, the new regulations remove the state entirely from any oversight of homeschoolers.

“[The statute] eliminates all state-mandated testing and reporting of courses taught and grades earned.”[2]

No one will know if home schooled students are learning any of the reasoning skills or basic facts essential to the maintenance and advancement of our society. No one knows or apparently even cares whether the parents are capable of teaching or well-educated themselves. Most of all, no one seems to care that isolated segments of the population are being given free rein to seclude themselves harboring potentially seditious motivations.

Parents wishing to cloak their children in fundamentalist Christian beliefs can blithely ignore scientific evidence of the earth’s geologic age or evolution of species. They can sidestep entirely the subject of human reproduction and its greater context in biology. Thousands may emerge from their ‘education’ with no knowledge of how babies are made or the use of birth control, much less how lifetimes of suffering might be avoided through pre-natal testing.

No one will know if students are learning that government is evil. No one will interfere if children are taught to ignore the political process or the vital responsibilities of citizenship. The state is stepping back, washing their hands, of the original dictates of the nation’s earliest leaders who recognized the importance of education. Will any of these children, or their parents for that matter, comprehend the urgent truth in the statements of our Founding Fathers?

George Washington: “The best means of forming a manly, virtuous, and happy people will be found in the right education of youth. Without this foundation, every other means, in my opinion, must fail.”

James Madison: “Learned institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.”

John Jay: “I consider knowledge to be the soul of a republic, and as the weak and the wicked are generally in alliance, as much care should be taken to diminish the number of the former as of the latter. Education is the way to do this, and nothing should be left undone to afford all ranks of people the means of obtaining a proper degree of it at at cheap and easy rate.”

James Madison: “What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of liberty and learning, each leaning on each on the other for their mutual and surest support?”

Thomas Jefferson: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. …Educate and inform the whole mass of the people… they are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.”

Surely not all homeschooled children will turn out to be close-minded religious zealots incapable of reasoned understanding of complex issues such as immigration, minority rights, or the nuances of gender and sexual orientation. But as the numbers of homeschoolers continue to increase in Arkansas and the state continues to back off any meaningful oversight, the potential for rabidly ignorant and potentially treasonous segments of our population increase exponentially.

[From a 2012 article in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette]: The latest count of home-schooled students in Arkansas shows about 400 more students are learning at home compared to the previous year. The Arkansas Education Department said 16,405 students completed the 2011-2012 school year as home-schooled students. That’s compared with 16,003 in the prior year. …State records show that in 1986, 572 students were home-schooled in Arkansas. By 1992, the number was 3,140, and by 2002, 12,497 students were being taught at home. The 16,405 children home-schooled last academic year is equal to 3.5 percent of the state’s 468,000 public school students.[3]

The count in 2017 was 19,000.

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To voice your concerns, view the draft rules at http://bit.ly/2BTClJb or email your thoughts to ADE.RulesComments@arkansas.gov

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Yes, I’ve blogged about similar topics before.

The Poverty of Conservatism

Conscious Evolution

Treason in the Name of God is Still Treason

A Sword Cuts Both Ways

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[1] https://newrepublic.com/article/122987/does-homeschooling-make-children-more-religious

[2] “Home-school rules redo gives parents more rein,” by Cynthia Howell. Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Northwest Arkansas edition, December 30, 2017. Page 5

[3] “Number of home-schoolers in state rises again,” Associated Press. Arkansas Democrat Gazette, September 10, 2012.