Sitting at home all week in covid quarantine gave me plenty of time to read In between naps. Newspapers, magazines that were piling up, books…I even read BOOKS! I’m so far behind with books that my compelling reading has been Bill Browder’s Red Notice (2015) followed by Freezing Order (2022). Back to back. Thanks to my sister for recommending them. If you want the inside scoop on Money Laundering, Murder and Putin, look no further. Not fiction and terrifying.

But this morning, while reading my morning digital news, I came across this gem from one of my favorite young opinion writers in the WaPo. When I say young, it’s because I’m OLD. She’s my daughters’ age, middle 30s with a wicked wit. I don’t know about you, but when GOP legislators started showing up at work with AR-15 lapel pins, it about did me in. Now they’ve totally jumped the shark. Congress critters Barry Moore (Aladambama,), Andrew Clyde (GA gun shop owner), Lauren Boebert (COrazy) and the inimitable shapeshifter George Santos have banded together to sponsor Bill HR 1095 making an AR 15 the National Gun of the United States. I have no more words for this insanity. I think I’ll knit today. Reality is too much.

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One of the hallmarks of a fascist state is controlled mass media. In totalitarian states this becomes comical. Supposedly, Kim Jung Un played an entire round of golf and had a hole in one on every hole. Supposedly, he doesn’t ever go to the bathroom. These were ridiculous claims and most people with a pulse can simply set it aside as ludicrous. Yet, if you don’t have access to the internet or to independent news sources you will probably believe a lot of it. Whether the dictator of North Korea is a great golfer or not really doesn’t matter. However, if we look at what is going on in Russia and Ukraine then it becomes deadly serious. Vladimir Putin is apparently taking on Nazism. For 90 percent of the world this notion is ridiculous. It is the ten percent that aren’t getting access to straight news that don’t understand the truth.

People often focus on mass media and the problems with mass media, but we have a bigger problem with smaller media. Print news is a dying business. There are tons of reasons for that. For one, they just have not managed to find a way to maximize new media sources like the internet to their advantage. Moreover, there were some bad business practices that they couldn’t correct. The Houston Chronicle for years could not consistently get us a paper. I’m not sure why. We moved a few different times and had different distributors, but the problem was the same. We subscribed to the Sunday New York Times and the Washington Post, but they couldn’t get that to us either.

We dealt with customer service and they didn’t seem to care until we threatened to unsubscribe. Finally, we did. In addition to the Chronicle there were tons of smaller newspapers that would cover local events. Sometimes it was local sports. Sometimes they were school board meetings and other smaller organizations. This has been noted before. The world really doesn’t change much on top. People can watch C-SPAN and the mass media outlets will always send people to Washington to cover what’s going on. The same is likely true of Austin and other statehouses. When the Chronicle and other papers shut down it means that no one is going to those school board meetings. When no one is there to watch then suddenly almost anything is possible. After all, who is there to stop them?

This is how things happen. It rarely ever starts off big. It usually starts with the grass roots. Small communities rail against critical race theory. Small communities call for the banning of certain books. Small communities call for curriculum to be changed to meet their worldview. When there is no one there to cover it then there aren’t enough people that will know what they are doing. You get the small minority and the small minority is almost always skewed one way or another. So, maybe it isn’t primarily a mass media problem. Maybe it is a local media problem. Democracy dies in darkness.

I’ve probably mentioned this before. Unfortunately, essays blend together and memory isn’t what it used to be. I serve on the pastoral council at my church. Essentially, we just serve as a sounding board for the pastor as he makes decisions that impact the entire parish. The general idea is that we come from different walks of life and different demographic groups so that the needs of the parish are met if all of us are able to throw in our two cents. These are generally well-meaning people that have the best interest of the parish at heart.

We generally lead off the meeting with special intentions that we would like the council to pray for as a whole. Usually, these are personal requests on behalf of ourselves, our family, friends, or people we may know. On other occasions they may be generic pleas for comfort and relief to those suffering such as earthquake victims, victims from the recent tornados in the area, or public mass shootings that happen daily. One of the members always prays for teachers and kids, but does so because we apparently are teaching students about critical race theory, grooming younger and younger kids for a life of lesbianism, homosexuality, transgender, or anything else that I suppose might be imagined.

This person is well-meaning and otherwise very nice. One of my failings as people here have noted is that I am usually a nice and agreeable person. I’m not sure when the right time is to correct people like this. I’m certain it’s not during the group prayer. I’m not even sure it is during the meeting itself. Furthermore, I’m not even sure that anything I would say would have any bearing on anything he might believe.

Leaving personal belief or non-belief aside for a moment, I reckon there are two kinds of people as far as this exact point are concerned. There are well-meaning people that heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend who heard it from another that we were teaching this stuff. It’s the REO Speedwagon method of verifying information. The sad thing is that they will accept as gospel (pardon the pun) what others that have nothing to do with education may tell them. If someone like me in education tells them differently then it is just us trying to save face and make ourselves look good. Of course, the second kind of people are the ones that know full well that they are lying, but continue to lie because it serves their interest.

The second plank of fascism was a disdain for human rights. The insidious nature of fascism dictates that one cannot simply peddle in outright discrimination against particular groups. We need some sort of pretext to make it palatable. So, we pervert religion to act as if God has somehow sanctioned and sanctified this discrimination. This is where Christianity turns into Christian nationalism. This is how Jesus of Nazareth somehow turns into Republican Jesus. God and Jesus become weaponized as a way to justify discrimination in our minds and hearts. This is how normally well-meaning people become bigots and zealots.

What is incredibly sad is the assumption that anyone can be taught to be who we want them to be. At our core we are essentially who we are. Whether we identify as male or female, gay or straight, or anything in between the notion that anyone can choose that for us is absurd. The liars know its absurd. The rest should know better but complain about grooming when hate is being groomed before their very eyes.

Majorie Taylor Greene has called for “a national divorce” between the red states and blue states.

I foresee a few problems here. This not an original idea, you know.  And the last time, Majorie’s home state, Georgia, lost her home, her pickup, and her bass boat in that divorce.

I think the term, “like Sherman marching through Georgia,” is akin to “hell on wheels.”  Majorie also has the problem that both senators from her state are Democrats so there she is standing out like black roots on bleached blonde hair living in a blue state.

Look, Marge, all you mean by woke is that we won’t let you say the N word anymore without getting booed or shamed.  You are just dying to say the N word.

And Honey, you saying “Everybody I talk to says ….” does not impress me because the vast majority of people run the other way when they see you coming.

By the way, if we do this, we get to keep the name, right?

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