Senator Tom Cotton and Cancel Culture

    Tom Cotton, the Arkansas senator, introduced a bill last week to prohibit federal funds from being used to teach the New York Times’ 1619 Project, which looks at the legacy of slavery in the US, in elementary and secondary schools.

    The bill notes that “an activist movement is now gaining momentum to deny or obfuscate [the history of America’s founding] by claiming that America was not founded on the ideals of the Declaration but rather on slavery and oppression.” Cotton later asserted in an interview that “the founding fathers said [slavery]... was the necessary evil upon which the union was built, but the union was built in a way, as [Abraham] Lincoln said, to put slavery on the course to its ultimate extinction”.

    So while the founding fathers said the union was “built” on slavery, according to Cotton, he is against the 1619 Project’s position that America was founded on “slavery and oppression”. One could get into the semantic differences between a country “built” on slavery and “founded” on it. But the crux of Cotton’s dispute is that he wants America depicted in a blindingly positive light. This points to a larger issue: conservative resistance to teaching any version of history that upends the myth of American exceptionalism. The power imbalance that has historically censored opposing versions of this mythological America is the real “cancel culture”.

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    Cancel culture is whiny grievance punditry and right wing troll blather for clicks, eyeballs and distraction. It plays best with the angry, clueless or wingnuts of the right. Objective, divert attention from the the GOP once again looting the nation for the rich, cutting taxes and regulation on big corporations, banning the appearance of top federal healthcare experts before Congress during this pandemic, expunging the facts and history of slavery from public education, opening public lands for exploitation by GOP corporate donors, breaking every institutional norm and sworn pledge in their oath of office while they run the biggest lie factory and cover-up in history. 

    All while Trump and Barr go with a warped ideological  "scorched earth" governing policy of intentional incompetence so our nation is so enfeebled, divided, adrift, indebted and politically and economically broken that it may take 2 terms of total Democrat control to, with luck, get even half way back to the national prestige, social stability and economy they inherited from Obama/Biden in 2017.


    "Cancel culture" nihilistic angry violent Republican Trump variety, this is not "Goya beans" nonsense (there have been no reports of grocery store employees having guns pulled on them or shot for stocking shelves with Goya beans):

    Walmart has told employees that they should not prevent a customer from entering the store if they refuse to wear a mask. Walgreens said that “for the safety of our team members” the company would not bar customers without masks from its stores. Lowes also said it would “not ask our associates to put their safety at risk by confronting customers about wearing masks.”

    Many shoppers and workers say the retailers’ reluctance to police their customers’ mask wearing ultimately renders the new rules toothless and will perpetuate the spread of the coronavirus. And workers find themselves thrust onto the front line of a cultural and political war over masks that can lead to ugly confrontations and, at times, violence. link


    Tom Cotton: The 1619 Project is an affront to sensibilities. The Project will destroy civil society. It is canceling the imagery of brave Confederates fighting to uphold slavery. Just let things stay the way they are.

    Online shopping looks better all the time..
     


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