There is a breakdown in our society. It’s a wave of what we might call anti-intellectualism. Like most waves, the seeds were sewn long before we noticed the negative effects. Think back to when we were kids. Who were the popular kids in school? I’m willing to bet that most of them weren’t the smart kids. Obviously, there are exceptions to every rule, but those smart kids were likely referred to as “nerds” or “geeks.”

This quickly graduated out of school and seeped into every facet of our lives. The world can be split into people who trust experts and people who don’t. Sure, there are conservatives and progressives. Sure, there are religious and non-religious. Sure, there are bigots and inclusive people. Yet, all of that could possibly be traced back to educated versus uneducated.

Yet, it isn’t even that. Level of education is not a perfect demarcation for these things. It is a lot more about attitude. Do we admit that there are people that know more about things than we do? Do we respect those people for their expertise? Do we respect them even if they tell us something that we don’t necessarily already think? That is somehow the issue here.

I imagine a campaign commercial going something like this. Fade into a family sitting on an airplane as it is about to leave the runway. The “pilot” comes on the intercom and says, “hello, I’m Mr. Smith and I’ll be flying the plane today. We will be cruising at maybe 180 feet. I’m not really sure. I’ve never done this before, but it’s okay. I’m a businessman.”

These commercials write themselves. I would add another. Fade into a man sitting in a room in the hospital. “Hello Mr. Smith, my name is Mr. Johnson. I will be removing your appendix today. We will be cutting a hole in your stomach about yay big (gestures with hands). It’s going to be okay. I’ve never done this before, but it’s okay. I’m a businessman.”

I think the point is abundantly clear. My pitch is a pitch of competence. What we need right now is not bumper sticker slogans that make people froth at the mouth. We don’t need to demagogue certain groups. We don’t need 30 second sound bytes. We don’t need any of that.

What we need is for our energy grid to work. We need our roads to be paved and drivable. We need our schools to be safe and to help our students learn. We need the police to keep us safe without violating our rights. There are hundreds of things people don’t hear about that needs to happen. People need government to work for them. They need people in government that know what they are doing to work for them.

We owe people the dignity of discussing issues like adults. Of course, anti-intellectuals don’t want that. They would rather slap a label on it and make you afraid of it. Complex issues in police reform become “defund the police.” Complex issues of health insurance reform become “socialized medicine.” Complex discussions about the role of race in our history becomes “critical race theory.” Politicians that want to discuss all of these problems rationally become “socialists.”

My pledge is simple. I would never engage anyone on those terms. You can throw in “cancel culture” or “virtue signaling.” I refuse to engage anyone on any of those things until they are defined by the individual leveling the charge. More often than not, when people hear the details they are able to separate fact from fiction. We just rarely give them the details.

So, if we get beyond the labels and sound bytes we can get back to people in government that actually know what they are doing. We have spent our time in Texas worrying about everything but the stuff that matters. We seem to be stuck on wedge issues that seem to have little positive effect on most people at best. It’s time we do better. At least that’s what I would say if I were to run.

Texas Bozo Congressman Chip Roy let the cat out of the bag.  Someone secretly recorded him saying that this whole bipartisanship thingy is hogwash.

NEW–> GOP Congressman on bipartisanship: We want "18 more months of chaos and the inability to get stuff done" pic.twitter.com/yvsGTNkDGB

— Lauren Windsor (@lawindsor) July 6, 2021

It’s just so nice when you have them on tape.

This is one of those topics that seems to be hitting me a lot lately. It is especially acute when holidays like Independence Day come rolling around. People fly their flags and you can see all kinds of posts and personal messages about how much they love freedom, their religion, and their guns. Heck, I love two out of three of those. I’ve talked about the first two, so it is time to address the last one.

A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

Technically speaking I’m not an English teacher. I primarily support English teachers and I did teach it for three years, but I would be remiss to call myself an expert on grammar. At one grammar workshop, the instrusctor admitted that the two weeks we had was not nearly enough time. I’ve always been an intuitive writer, so diagraming sentences is not my strength. That being said, I will give the second amendment my best shot.

It is made up of a dependent clause and an independent clause. The technical term for this is a complex sentence. In this case, the independent clause relies on the dependent clause. In plain English, the right of the people to keep and bear arms is dependent on a well-regulated militia befing necessary for the security of a free state. Obviously, one cannot know precisely whether a majority intended for guns to be necessary in the absence of a well-regulated militia. It should be noted that case law is at the very best divided on this as well.

Ignorance of the law bothers me, but it is understandable. Ignorance of history is also understandable. That bothers me even more as a historian. Blatantly flauting both the law and history in a faux expression of patiotism is enough to make me lose my lunch. The same people that are so gung ho to respect and appreciate the original intent of the framers have no idea how offbase they are.

If we look at the Bill of Rights we see that both the second and third amendments address large standing armies directly. This was the forefathers biggest fear. They addressed it in multiple amendments and one of them is seen as a throwaway now. Students always asked me why it was even there. Admittedly, the idea of how the framers felt about private gun ownership of guns on their own is murky at best. It is hard to separate people from the realities they exist in.

In addition to large standing armies encroaching on people’s freedoms, they were virtually useless in defending private citizens. So, guns were in fact necessary. Yet, today we have the largest standing army (counting advanced technology) in the history of the planet. So, we are supposed to follow the letter of the law and the original intent of the framers on guns and yet we should ignore it on large standing armies. Furthermore, how would the framers have felt about the state of policing we have now?

So, it is wrong to infringe on the rights of private citizens to own and operate guns, but it is perfectly fine to trample all of the framers and their desire to limit large standing armies. The same folks that argue for private gun ownership and against limits on the same also argue for more defense spending and are first in line to argue for more policing and against police reform. Interesting isn’t it?

There is nothing worse than hypocrisy. If one wants to be an originalist they need to be an originalist. If one wants to pick and choose what precepts they want to follow they need to be up front about that. That’s the world most of us live in. We allow circumstances to mold our beliefs on any number of issues. As long as we admit that we can have discussions in good faith. It should be added that case law is consistent on legislatures rights to regulate gun ownership. If we can stop wrapping ourselves in the flag long enough maybe we can finally have some frank conversations about private gun ownership.

What I came to tell you about kinda slipped in under the rug because Alex Jones and Joe Budden are having a Twitter / podcast fight.  Yeah, if you’re like me – and Lord I hope so – you have to go look up who Joe Budden is. It’s a generational thing.

But, here’s my story:  Guess who the Alex Jones lawyer for the Connecticut Sandy Hook lawsuit has ask to depose?  Never in a million years would you guess it.

Hillary Clinton.

Yeah, Hillary Clinton is at fault for Alex Jones sending unbelievably horrible people to the homes and places of work of Sandy Hook parents to threaten them.

“The defendants in this case believe that this suit was filed six years after the shootings at Sandy Hook as part of a vendetta inspired, orchestrated and directed in whole or in part by Hillary Clinton as part of a vendetta to silence Alex Jones after Ms. Clinton lost the presidential race to Donald J. Trump,” the court filing reads. “The litigation is brought and pursued in bad faith as part of a partisan effort to silence Mr. Jones for reasons wholly independent of the merits of the plaintiffs’ claims.”

The last part of the article quotes my son, who filed suit in Texas on behalf of some of the parents.

The state of Texas (and many others) want to bar me and other teachers from teaching critical race theory in the classroom. We’ve never really called it that, but it is hard to talk about justice without bringing up race. At least, we should bring up the disparity between rich and poor. Considering our long and rich history it would be difficult to separate race from that.

A perfect illustration is the law enforcement philosophy of “broken windows.” Essentially, as I understand it, the idea is that if you arrest and prosecute small time criminals then you have more success preventing the big ones. It’s a philosophy that makes a great deal of sense. After all, most parents view parenting the same way.

If you get on your kids for the small stuff then they know there’s a line they can’t cross. All kids love to push boundaries. The ones that have those boundaries are usually better off. So, why shouldn’t policing and prosecutions work the same way?

In order for “broken windows” to work equitably you would have to harshly punish all crimes. Imagine a parent wailing on their kid for pushing the neighbor kid, but giving them a high five when they swindle them out of five bucks. No good parent would operate like that and most people naturally assume the justice system doesn’t either.

Except that’s not how it works and we all know it’s not. Justice never seems to work that way. The indictments of the Trump organization this week illustrate this point perfectly. According to the reporting, this pattern of alleged fraud had been going on for 15 years at least. The fact that Trump was crooked was the worst kept secret in New York. Wouldn’t his smaller financial crimes qualify under the broken windows theory?

Obviously not. So, instead we waited until everything became too hard to contain. The horse has left the barn. The toothpaste is out of the tube. The train has left the station. Feel free to insert your own euphemism here. This is usually the course of white collar crimes. They are just as illegal and while they may not physically harm anyone, they can cause just as much damage in other ways.

The drug war is yet another example. Let’s ignore for the time being whether throwing the book at an addict is a good idea or not. It is hard to ignore that not all drug offenders are treated equally. Those busted for cocaine have not gotten nearly as much punishment as those busted for crack. We shouldn’t even get started on the marijuana debate. There is considerable evidence that the disparity was purposeful. Yet, even if it wasn’t we can’t ignore the effects.

That’s where something like critical race theory comes in. Whether society’s inconsistencies and inequities are purposeful or an unhappy byproduct of good intentioned law is an open debate. History doesn’t care about feelings. We report the facts of what happened and their results. Others can debate motives and the like.

Naturally, others will point to the treatment of Bill Cosby and videos of successful African Americans as proof that this disparity doesn’t exist. Yet, Cosby is a perfect example of how it does. What kind of justice did his victims get? Ultimately, we have to ask ourselves why. What’s the common denominator here?

Unfortunately, one cannot distinguish between the impact of race and the impact of socioeconomic status. They are often one in the same. My daughter asked me if a billionaire could ever really be brought to justice. I hemmed and hawed, but couldn’t give her a satisfactory answer. It’s hard to talk dispassionately about justice without being able to give a clear answer to a child’s question. They have a way of cutting through the malarkey.

George HW Bush; George W Bush; Dan Patrick; Ted Cruz; Allen West; Dan Rodimer; Chad Prather.  What do these individuals have in common?  First, they either held, hold, or are running for political office in Texas.  Second, NONE of them are actually from Texas.  HW and W were well known Connecticut blue bloods who wrapped themselves in the Texas flag to run for federal office.  Ted Cruz is from Calgary, Canada. Allen West, who was born in Georgia and went to Congress from Florida, was oddly elected chair of the Texas Republican party and recently resigned to run against Abbott for Texas governor.  That leaves Dan Rodimer, from New Jersey, and Chad Prather, also from New Jersey.  What a coinkydink.

You can correctly characterize all of these men as carpetbaggers; most were/are shitheads.  What separates Rodimer and Prather from the others, though, is that not only are they shitheads, they’re also posers, dressing up in cowboy costumes and talking with that fake gnarly drawl that those who are not from Texas believe is how native Texans talk.  While it’s true that many Texans do talk with that drawl, we also recognize a poser pretending to be from Texas.  And, it mightily pisses us off.  These two clowns really piss me off.

Rodimer is just your everyday weirdo who decided he wanted to be in Congress after he failed at being a professional wrestler, so he moved to Nevada where he ran and was beaten badly after allegations of domestic violence surfaced.  So, he had the great idea of moving to Texas, changing his voice, donning a cowboy hat and renaming himself “Big Dan” Rodimer to run again for Congress.  His chances faded pretty quickly when the Washington Post picked up his story and showed the ad he made pretending to ride a bull using a stunt double.  The ad was simply awful, even cringeworthy.

But compared to Prather, Rodimer is a minor leaguer of fakes.  Prather is the world champion of loudmouthed, boastful, smartass 5-inch-brim-hat-wearing fakes.  He styles himself as a comedian and a “fast-talking, observational humorist”, but has scrubbed his New Jersey roots from his online persona.  In fact, he’s damn near scrubbed all of his past from his online persona. Besides having an online gig on Glenn Beck’s The Blaze website, he’s a YouTuber, usually done from the front seat of his big I-Have-a-Tiny-Penis pick’em-up truck, and he’s a dynamic self-promotion machine.  His videos are a fast talking stream of bile delivered with a smile, whining about “libruls”, Biden, Pelosi, and everyone not Trump.  The most irritating thing about him is his boasting about being “Unapologetically Southern”, not understanding that those of us actually from Texas don’t consider ourselves southern, but Texan.  The South is NOT Texas.  He’s also more than happy to let you mistake him for a native Texan, which he most certainly isn’t.  He got my attention when he announced he was running for governor against Abbott because he got pissed off when Abbott mandated masks for 5 minutes last year before caving to Trump and dropping the mandate WAY too early, contributing to the 53,000 deaths in Texas from the virus.  Prather’s entire platform is made up of two planks: “I’m pissed off about masks”, and “I need to sell some T-Shirts”.  That’s it.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  Texas is a most welcoming state and we love for people to move here.  But we need REAL people to move here who are respectful, hardworking, and sincerely wanting to put down roots.  Clowns like Rodimer and Prather are NOT who we’re looking for, and we goddam sure don’t want them trying to represent us in Austin or Washington.  Add Allen West and Dan Patrick to this toxic waste, and Texas looks worse if that’s even possible after the damage done by Abbott, Cruz, and Cornyn.  Here’s how bad it is in Texas Republican politics right now…the primary race is made up of a Trump Mini Me (complete with a failed Wall policy), and two carpetbaggers, West and Prather.  Jesus.

My message to these posers?  Leave us alone and go back to wear you came from.  We have enough problems and we have to get Abbott out of office, but we most certainly don’t need any help from these fakes.  So, #NoPosersinTexas