Texas in the national news yesterday:

• Ken Paxton’s lawsuit to attempt ONCE AGAIN to repeal the ACA was tossed by Scotus.
• Greg Abbott commits $250 million of Texans’ money and then begs for donations to build Trump’s wall that takes private land to create a solution that doesn’t work.  Ask the Chinese about that.
• Abbott signs SEVEN bills that unravel 150 years of gun safety laws allowing any idiot to carry a firearm in public with no license, no background check, and no training.
• ERCOT asks us to reduce power usage due to normal summer weather.  This is after Abbott smugly announced that laws that he signed that will do nothing to fix our state power grid has fixed our power grid.

Like one person posted on social media yesterday:

“We are flying electric helicopters on Mars, but Texans can’t run their dryers.  That’s because scientists are in charge of Mars and Republicans are in charge of Texas.”

We are still under a warning that if we’re not sweating, they’re gonna come and take our air conditioning.  It was 97 degrees at my house today.

The day after asking Texans to conserve energy because our power grid was once again about to be over capacity, Abbott announced that $250 million will be pissed away for a border wall that will eventually be torn down if it is ever built at all. This is after refusing to fund upgrades to power grid and refusing to expand Medicaid so that Texans can get the health care they need.  He is a slimy sumbitch, isn’t he?

I am nuclear levels of angry after reading the Tribune’s article of his announcement. He’s basically using 250 million dollars to campaign for re-election. He’s even invited former President Trump to the border, apparently forgetting that Trump is a private citizen. I hope someone shows up with some children that Trump separated from their parents without keeping records so they could be reunited.

Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday began announcing details of his plan for Texas to build its own border wall, starting the hiring process for a program manager and providing $250 million in state funds as a “down payment.”

“Texas will build a border wall in our state to help secure our border,” Abbott said.

The governor did not specify how long the wall would be or where it would be built, saying that those decisions will need to be determined by a program manager after more research.

Greg has to woo the crazies, I guess. I’m so tired of conservatives acting like they’re such amazing stewards of budgets and the economy and then the second they need political advantages they just throw massive amounts of tax money onto projects that are going to be overturned by the courts anyway and cause even more spending on legal defense.

If Greg Abbott has been Governor of Texas for as long as he has and he still does not understand that he does not have the jurisdiction to build a wall between a state and another country, he’s too damn stupid to run for re-election. He will not hesitate to pull funding that helps women and children in the name of “fiscal conservatism” but he will spend hundreds of millions of dollars to double down on his hatred of our Mexican neighbors and the asylum seekers from Central America.

He’d probably win more votes if he just got the DMV to run so that Texans do not have a 5 hour wait – that is the standard wait time in these parts – unless you get an appointment several months in advance or drive several hours to a rural DMV (The rural DMV’s closer to the cities also all have wait times of several hours).

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I do not understand why Texans continue to vote for these incompetent, shady, slimy, corrupt, two-bit asshats-with-less-sense-than-a-doodlebug Republicans.

Abbott did mention that he may crowdfund the wall, hoping for volunteers to give up their land and money to build his political pet project. When Trump’s buddy Steve Bannon did this, he then “funneled” aka stole hundreds of thousands of donated dollars and used them on his own expenses and “lavish lifestyle.” Trump pardoned him for this, of course. I imagine Abbott will use this crowdfunding for his campaign or will create a shell corporation and use that to buy all of his books or run attack ads on his opponent and steal the money that way. Or maybe he’ll use it to build a wall. I’m sure the people with land near the border will just be happy to give it to Greg Abbott.

It’s all a show, it’s political theater, and half of the state will fall for it. Voters have got to step up and say enough. If the ERCOT disaster didn’t do it, I don’t know what will. If this actually works and absolves him of wrongdoing, because Texans are happy that he’s being mean to brown people, well, what does that say about us as a people?

 

My uncle wanted my help. See, this particular uncle is the only other progressive in our family. Most of my other family are conservatives. Mind you, they aren’t bad people. They work hard and generally don’t wish any ill will on anyone. Yet, they are the type of people that peddle this kind of stuff. I absolutely detest labels, but for our purposes here we will call this woman “School Board Karen“. He wanted me to respond to his friends.

For those that don’t want to go down the rabbit hole, this is one of many men and women that go to school board meetings and rant about critical race theory or some other such nonsense that is supposedly being taught to our kids. See, his friends were cheering this woman on.

He wanted me to respond. I could have picked over a dozen videos, but I think this is the one he sent me. I honestly couldn’t know for sure. I call it nonsense not because critical race theory is nonsense, but because this woman exists in a bizarro world that I don’t know. I’ve only done this for 24 years and the first half in a history classroom. I really don’t know what she’s talking about.

I never taught critical race theory or white supremacist theory or anything that could be labeled Antifa, Black Lives Matter, the Aryan brotherhood or any such nonsense. I taught history. In most years I taught World History, but I dabbed my toe in U.S. History once or twice. We did our best to teach the curriculum in front of us and augment it with other authentic history that the textbook skipped over.

I’ve taught in five different school districts and a private school. So, some might be tempted to say that maybe she is describing something that happens in schools you’ve never taught in. Sure. I guess anything is possible. After all, this is happening in another state. Yet, we have to ask ourselves what is more likely. Is it more likely that some rogue teacher or school somewhere is indoctrinating children with crap or is it more likely that Karen needs to take her meds?

I’ll have to admit that my response to the email was short and terse. I honestly don’t have much of a response to what this woman is saying. It’s just so ludicrous that you almost don’t want to interrupt her. You quietly make a distress call to the local mental hospital and wait for her to run out of gas. The problem isn’t this woman. The problem is that many feel the need to respond to it with anything other than laughter or scorn.

Somewhere along the way we have lost sight of something. Just because a number of people believe something, that doesn’t make it true. Not every opinion has value just because a certain number of people have it. Yet, people like our governor respond to it. They respond by creating a patriotic curriculum that does exactly what this woman is suggesting. Except, it does it to reinforce this woman’s point of view.

‘Murica is the greatest country there ever was and the greatest country there ever will be. Racism and bigotry only exist in the mind of the liberal. Events like the civil war weren’t about slavery and events like the Tulsa massacre didn’t happen. Lynching and riots weren’t about racism or even if they were, racism is long gone now.

That’s what they want us to teach. This is all in the guise of teaching students the “real” history about America. So, they want to guard against stuff we don’t teach by teaching stuff that didn’t happen. My wife is fond of saying that science doesn’t care about your feelings. Neither does history. I have no doubt there are rogue history teachers out there that try to indoctrinate their students with a political ideology. I’ve never met one and I’ve worked with a lot of them. I certainly don’t think there are enough to make a huge stink about a non-existent socialist plot to indoctrinate our children. God forbid we take the mic away from Karen, it’s ‘Murica after all.

“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”–Yoda

Quoting fiction and popular fiction at that is not necessarily the most high brow way to diagnose a problem, but occasionally it fits. I have been interested in the concept of issue framing ever since I read a book by Thom Hartmann called Cracking the Code. Admittedly, his book didn’t address this absolutely on the nose, but he danced around it plenty.

Parental politics is simply the name I’ve given it, but the concept is clearly not mine and unlike certain ex presidents, I refuse to take credit for things that came decades before me. Parental politics refers to which stereotypical parent dominates our political point of view. Daddies tend to worry about certain issues and mommies tend to worry about certain issues. If you can cause people to worry about the daddy issues you get them to vote conservative. If you can get them to worry more about the mommy issues then they tend to vote more liberal.

Obviously, this assumes certain gender roles and it assumes personality archetypes that are likely outdated. Of course, that by itself is a hot button issue. So, I will simply highlight the subtle difference between the word fear and the word worry. They sound the same, but they are just different enough to make all the difference.

I worry about having a roof over my head. I worry about whether I can feed my family. I worry about what might happen if I lose my job or suddenly get sick again. If I don’t worry about those things then I worry about those around me. What happens to people that don’t have a warm bed at night or a hot meal at the end of the day. Worrying and being afraid can sound similar, but they aren’t the same.

People who fear, fear the other. They fear black people coming into their neighborhood and ruining their way of life. They fear people south of the border from coming up and stealing their job. They fear those same people bringing drugs that will enslave their children. They fear terrorists that don’t look like them bombing their kids schools, a shopping mall, or some other public building.

They fear transgender kids coming into their bathroom or putting on a dress and joining their daughter’s basketball team. They fear teachers indoctrinating their children with silly notions about racism or inclusion. They may even fear that all of this will spread to their children and they may be turned gay. As Yoda said, fear leads to hate. Everyone worries. It’s what makes us human. Some of us hate and that is much worse.

Daddy is the protector. At least that’s the moving stereotype. He protects us from intruders. He protects us from those that would do us harm. He protects us from those we would hate. So, if you can get people to fear and you can get them to hate then you can get them to vote conservative. So, the active game for conservatives is two-fold. First, you convince people that there is something to fear. Then, you convince them that you alone can protect them from it.

That’s why we promise to build walls. That’s why we promise to protect our children from predators in the bathroom. That’s why we blow up the issue of human trafficking. That’s why we demagogue immigrants, people of color, and members of the LGTBQ+ community. If there were nothing to fear then there would be nothing to hate. If there was nothing to fear or hate then we wouldn’t need excessive protection.

Moms care. Obviously not all moms care, but if we are to giving into stereotypes then they do. Moms worry. Moms nurture us. Moms take care of us. So, therefore moms care about the government programs that do those things. They care about how we do in school. They care about our health. They care that we are eating right and taking good care of ourselves. If we give into the stereotypes than they also care more about the people around us. They realize that we are only as good and as safe as the people around us allow us to be.

If the whole idea of the moms and dads doesn’t make sense to you then simply think of the difference between worrying and being fearful. What are we worried about? What are we afraid of? If we focus on our worries we tend to be more progressive. If we focus on what we are afraid of we tend to be more conservative. Remember, fear leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. Yoda taught us that one.

Picture it: California. 2019. California lawmakers pass a bill allowing college athletes to profit off of their own likeness. They cannot be paid by their team, but they can endorse products, lease their image, profit from jersey sales, the whole nine yards. (Actually, for football that should be the whole 50 yards, right? I’m more of a baseball gal).

Despite Greg Abbott’s never-ending quest to claim how much California sucks, two years later he signs the same bill that originated in California. If only Johnny Manziel had a time machine.

I’m posting this mostly to foster discussion because the people that come to the beauty salon know way more about college sports than I do –  I’m a Mean Green Eagle and a Houston Cougar and unless they make headlines I mostly tune out.

My first and last opinion on the matter is this: My liberal populist heart is sated just a little bit this morning. Regardless of the impact on the sport itself, for once, the little guy can get his share of the take. For those college athletes that put their all into sports only to be sidelined with injury before they ever make a dime, perhaps they’ll have a chance to profit off of their work, even if the career ends before it gets a chance to begin. What say y’all?