Good morning, Threaders, Threadheads, and all in between. Coffee endures.
Life still isn’t back to normal, whatever that is, so I haven’t been posting regularly. Hopefully that will change soon. I did watch a segment of Rachel Maddow during dinner yesterday that brought back some thoughts. I don’t watch her like before but I was forewarned of this bit and it was worth watching.
It was what I call a Maddow period piece, where she starts with a forgotten history lesson and lands on present day events reminiscent of it. Yesterday it was the American fascist movement drive to end superior education, public and private, that does not conform to its wishes of what education should be. It started in the 1930s and went on to the 1940s and it was then an echo of the antisemitism spreading in Europe. Rachel linked those bygone fascist designs to tonight’s VP debate.
The reason for that is JD Vance has also advocated for the reshaping of our Universities into conformity models or their obliteration from public life. His reasoning is rooted in old ideas being recycled by neo fascist ideologues, among which his right wing blogger friend Curtis Yarvin, a not so obscure anymore proponent of the end of the American democratic experiment in favor of a dictatorship. This is JD Vance’s source of inspiration for our future.
In their minds, our democracy has become so corrupt and inefficient it needs to be completely done away with. Like a tumor. In its place a mixed Pluto-Technocracy with a strong man at the top, a CEO like figure put in place by plutocrats and technocrats to rule as a dictator. As for government as we know it, it would cease to exist and extra constitutional measures would replace the foundation of the rule of law, the rationale being that the constitution is preventing this “evolution”.
No constitution needed. No bill of rights required. A brave new world where wealth and technology replace what they call the failed Western values of democracy and justice. In JD Vance’s own words the “evolution” into a “political religion”. This is what lies beneath the Christian nationalist platform the GOP has turned into. The link to the Universities derives from the end of all things government represent today and the paradigm of the end of education as we have known it.
I understand the point Rachel was making regarding College education and the past and present attempts to get rid of it, especially those who are bastions of critical thinking and engines of humanity applied studies, but she missed the chance to mention today’s biggest threat to that system of knowledge: the same old antisemitism displayed by the far right in the 1930s-40s in the new clothes of far left fanatical ideologues inspired by radical Islam with the exact same goal.
Rachel Maddow is very bright. She didn’t miss it. She just chose to stay silent with the dubious cover of her subject matter: Christian nationalism. She’s right. That is our greatest threat and what we are up against on the ballot very soon. What is it, 35 days from now? To me around 20 days, since we always vote early. But we cannot pretend the threats also present on that ballot posed by third party candidates who embrace antisemitism as a weapon are not there.
I understand that the inclusion of today’s most obvious danger to superior education posed by radical Islam inspired far left groups would be a distraction from the clear Christian nationalist threat running in our body politics’ veins for decades, but Maddow missed the opportunity to close the horse shoe, especially since she started the segment with a very clear identification of antisemitism as the drive for that undercurrent from the start.
This is what I meant when I initially turned away from Tim Walz’s “Weird” approach. Antisemitism isn’t weird. It’s the poisoned root that feeds the hatred from which all others spawn. And it’s not to be ignored when its ugly head rises from the left wrapped in a fashionable keffiyeh and justified by the “martyrdom” of children from a selected breed. I understand why this election is such a close contest. I know TV ads are effective. I know most people are not informed or aware.
But we are. It’s our duty to make this reality known and spread awareness to it. We’ve been doing it and we have to double our efforts. We don’t have much time left so let’s get to work. Do all you can to keep our momentum going and get people out to vote blue up and down the ballot. Stay joyful and hopeful but also aware of what it is we are up against. Millions of kids are voting for the first time this year. Let’s make sure it’s not their last.
How to connect that clear and present danger to the joy in the promise of a brighter future is not easy or uplifting but we must find a way to keep in mind this is not just another election. If we lose it will be our last. Make sure everyone knows this. If that doesn’t get them all out to vote I don’t know what will. Stay focused and strong. There’s a lot more of us than there are of them. All we need to do is vote. So let’s go win this thing.
We’re not going back!
