An essay in Slate by education professor Adam Laats briefly examines the history of conservative “mom” activists in public schools and points out some parallels between today’s Moms for Liberty extremists and their ideological foremothers. It’s eye-opening, but one comforting takeaway is that it usually doesn’t end well for the organizations founded by political operatives masquerading as crusading moms.
Some of the past schoolboard screechers and book banners were familiar to me, like the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). Others were state-level activists I wasn’t aware of, but it sure seems like Moms for Liberty copy-pasted from their rhetorical playbooks. A few examples from the essay:
In 1963, one DAR member in Mississippi humiliated the group with her violent opposition to a widely used children’s book… (that) told cheerful moral stories about cute baby animals, as when Bobby Squirrel discovered he could get a nut just by asking for one. One local DAR leader, though, accused the book of spreading subversive socialism by teaching children, like Bobby Squirrel, to expect a “collective welfare system.”
(Norma) Gabler had become a national powerhouse in the 1960s by blocking history textbooks and forcing publishers to tell a more conservative story. Though Gabler always called herself just a “Texas homemaker” or “Longview housewife,” she ran a staff of eight, combing through textbook copy to sniff out progressive content.
By the 1970s, Alice Moore…attracted huge support, seemingly overnight… Once on the school board of Kanawha County, West Virginia, Moore ignited a dramatic boycott of a new series of textbooks. She inflamed conservative opinion nationwide by claiming that the books trampled on parents’ rights. Moore warned that the new books would force white kids into feeling guilt and anguish about America’s racism.
Moore’s campaign in particular carries a warning for the Repub political operatives currently doing business as Moms for Liberty. Her campaign spiraled out of control and resulted in a string of assaults, fire-bombings and assassination attempts, which triggered a normie backlash:
Moore disavowed the violence, but she couldn’t escape the fact that her rhetoric had directly caused it. Similarly, when the Ku Klux Klan rolled into town to support the boycott, Moore insisted she had nothing to do with their campaign. She also said she had nothing to do with the burning cross outside the school district’s headquarters in 1975, and it seems very likely she was telling the truth. Yet when the Klan’s local leader articulated his vision for public schools, his language was the same as Moore’s. Just like Alice Moore, the Klan promised to “return patriotism and Christianity to our schools.” They claimed to be joining the national campaign to stop “the breakdown of morals among our children.”
Alice Moore denounced it all, but the damage was done. The boycott—now indelibly associated with the Klan—fizzled. A student march in favor of the controversial books attracted thousands of supporters. The books remained in schools, though parents had to sign a permission slip for a few of the titles.
Laats points out that Moms for Liberty members have allied with militant wingnut goons like the Proud Boys, approvingly quoted Hitler in a chapter newsletter, exposed themselves to mockery with idiotic book ban proposals and have been convicted of harassment for threatening opponents.
As Laats says, this is a recurring phenomenon. But I think it’s especially unfortunate that Repub operatives in Florida ginned up the latest astroturf rebellion to capitalize on political opposition to pandemic safety measures. Learning losses are real, and now the overburdened schools that are trying to claw back progress are saddled with the extra burden of dealing with screaming lunatics at schoolboard meetings.
Laat implies a backlash is inevitable. The only question is how bad things will have to get before public sentiment prompts the extremists to slink back under their rocks. In the Trump era of shock-jock politics, it’s unclear where that floor is.
Open thread.
J. Arthur Crank (fka Jerzy Russian)
I for one am glad that squirrels have to ask for nuts, and that we escaped that socialist hellhole that would have transpired had squirrels not been required to find their own nuts.
ETA: After reading more, Ms. Gabler evidently was nuttier than a pile of squirrel turds.
andy
these people are the worst trash. during the Floyd protests in our little town- one of them, who was on our local school board, encouraged her kind to come armed “just in case.” she got the boot in the next election, but her husband is still a big noise in the county GOP.
Yarrow
What’s the racial make up of these Moms groups? Are they mostly white?
Butch
It always seemed to me that it took a while for the rest of us to take Moms seriously – they just seemed like such a joke at first. I remember seeing videos of the Moms as they left their Joyful Warriors convention – they had no idea what to do when they were confronted by protesters.
andy
@Yarrow: always
Seanly
There’s so much in American history that repeats. Should be working so i haven’t read the article, but off the top of my head there’s also the Temperance Movement, other 19th ct. scolds & antisex freaks as well as various panics about (in no particular order): jazz, rock n’ roll, comic books, Dungeons & Dragons, roller skates, dancing, Satanists, and communists.
This too shall pass. Not a call for complacency as it takes affirmative action to help it pass…
Scout211
OMG! The DAR in the 60s brings back memories of my childhood in Iowa. I had a personal experience with a rabid DAR activist. My teacher!
My 4th grade teacher was a proud member of the DAR and she was an okay teacher, except for social studies. She spent many lessons informing us of the evils of the “commies” and was the jingoistic, pro-America person I have ever known. She was so anti-USSR that she extolled us with fake stories about the dark, scary life of the people who lived in terror in the USSR. Decades later, I still remember the lesson in history in which we learned how evil the “commies” were. Did you know that children in the USSR were warned once when they dropped their pencil in school. Yes. But the second time they dropped their pencil, their entire family was sent to Siberia!
These activists are just crazy, drunk on their own vehemence.
Alison Rose
@Yarrow: Almost entirely. I’m sure they’ve managed to pull in a few WOC here and there, largely so they can point to them whenever anyone calls the groups racist.
stinger
“Schoolboard screechers” — stealing that.
Alison Rose
I feel like whoever it was who started The Onion was just reading some old news articles and was like “Challenge accepted”. JFC.
Also: “force white kids into feeling guilt and anguish about America’s racism” — no one can force anyone into feeling a particular emotion, but like…white people SHOULD feel guilt over America’s racism, for the fucking love of God. Feeling badly about awful things is fucking normal. And not like “white guilt” where we beg Black people to console us, but “guilt” in the sense of repulsion by what has been done by our own ancestors and a recognition that it is incumbent upon us to do what we can to right those wrongs moving forward. Guilt is not always a bad thing to feel. (Says the Jew.)
Yarrow
@andy: @Alison Rose: Seems like it would be relevant to point out the racial make up of the groups, then. “The almost exclusively white Moms …” “The largely white Moms for…” “No equivalent group exists for moms who are not white.” etc.
cope
Based on the post’s title, I was expecting pictures. Oh well…
The Liberty Moms don’t really scare me but dealing with them requires an awful lot of energy and resources that could be better spent on other efforts.
Alison Rose
@Yarrow: The full article does:
kindness
Isn’t it curious that each time a conservative fever sweeps up the (white) ‘Moms’ of America the Media runs with it like it’s a real thing. Odd, huh?
rikyrah
Derek W. Black (@DerekWBlack) posted at 6:24 AM on Tue, Aug 29, 2023:
FL’s rejection of AP Af-Am Studies is worse than imagined. Objected to slave trade discussion b/c of potential “oppressor vs. oppressed” viewpoint based on race & “may not address the internal slave trade/system w/in Africa” or “opposing perspectives.” https://t.co/uxX8xZFWB4
(https://twitter.com/DerekWBlack/status/1696484076297850895?t=JyNsonx72BxEnRQISCIf3w&s=03)
Omnes Omnibus
@rikyrah: What exactly is the “opposing view” on slavery that they want to see? Gone with the Wind or Birth of a Nation?
Sister Golden Bear
Editing borked the formatting, reporting.
Sister Golden Bear
Speaking of astroturfed groups, “Protect Kids California” is trying to get anti-trans version of the Prop-Hate constitutional amendment on the ballot. It would:
Banning of transgender youth from sports that match their gender identity, stigmatizing them and often forcing them out of sports altogether. [California Interscholastic Federation has allowed trans athletes since 2013.]
Forced outing of transgender youth to their parents, ensuring that trans kids cannot have safety or privacy in schools if they are not ready to come out to family. Often these policies also include violations of privacy for the student when they discuss their gender identity with school counselors.
In happier news, California’s attorney general sued a Southern California school district Monday over its new policy requiring schools to notify parents if their children change their gender identification or pronouns. Attorney General Rob Bonta called the policy a “forced outing.”
Rusty
It’s worth rereading John Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charley”. In it he recounts going to a protest where white mothers where trying to bar black children from the local school. Their behavior is indistinguishable from the current crop of angry white women. Those women were the grandmothers of the Mothers for Liberty and other reactionary Karens of today. Culture changes but extremely slowly and time is a flat circle.
Alison Rose
@rikyrah:
BASED ON RACE my dudes, what in the actual fuck do you even think slavery was? Holy Lord, my brain is crying. Is everyone on this Florida board high? JFC.
Sister Golden Bear
@Yarrow: Whiter than white bread.
MisterDancer
And then you’ve “made it a race thing,” the worst of sins. Damned if you do, etc.
These people do come ’round every couple of decades, usually astro-turfed out of some right-of-center setup, and ready to play into a host of “concerns.” From Fear of a Black Planet to Think of the Children, it’s a very similar playbook, every time.
Alison Rose
@Sister Golden Bear: Yeah good luck with that initiative, bigots. Even if they manage to get it on the ballot, and even though of course there are transphobes in this state, I can’t imagine enough people voting for this trash.
And yeah, I was glad to see Bonta going after that horrid policy. And someone needs to tell the assholes behind it that some of the kids they out will get beaten or worse at home, and ask them if they support ACTUAL child abuse.
Betty Cracker
In the case of Moms for Liberty, the astroturf dots are easy to connect since two of the founders are failed right-wing schoolboard candidates and the other is the hard-right chair of a local schoolboard and wife of the state’s GOP chairman. Most of the Florida dailies included that info in their reporting, but a lot of the national media did not.
lee
At least in my little corner of Texas the backlash is starting.
We had two of these types running for the local school board. They were soundly defeated (like it was not even close).
What helped is that we already had 2 that squeaked in 2 years prior and are a constant source of embarrassment at board meetings.
lowtechcyclist
@rikyrah:
Well, who the fuck cares? What in God’s name does that have to do with the role of slavery in American history? It would have been the same regardless of what had been going on with them in Africa.
I sense an attempt at justification, ‘see, they were already enslaving each other, so no reason why we shouldn’t have done the same to them.’ Well, yeah, there IS a reason: it’s called “two wrongs don’t make a right.”
No matter how horrible they were being to each other, it just doesn’t matter. It still didn’t justify our coming in from outside and being horrible to them and several generations of their descendants – at least, the descendants of those who survived the Middle Passage to begin with, because all too many of them didn’t survive the trip.
ETA: Ranting at DeSantis and his hired nutcases, not at you.
SPN in CO
I don’t think it’s any worse today than it was in the past. The difference today (as I see it), is that (a) many of us didn’t live through the last rounds of insanity in real time as adults, and (b) the history is finished, and we know what happened last time.
Reasonably, things are likely to unfold in the same way – particularly since the US is a lot more diverse today than it was in the 1960s and 1970s . . . but nothing is guaranteed yet. I predict they will look back at the Trump Era in the same way that many of us look back at the McCarthy Era . . . i.e. our descendants will say “What were they thinking?” . . .
But we aren’t through the tunnel yet, so to speak.
Yarrow
@Sister Golden Bear: Unfortunately, the Katy Independent School District (west of Houston) voted in the other direction.
lowtechcyclist
@SPN in CO:
Remember when people were talking about “the end of history” back in the 1990s? How quaint.
Steve in the ATL
Even more Florida cars than usual in Atlanta today, no doubt loaded with firearms and revanchist perspectives behind those Ron Jon and Salt Life stickers.
Luckily for me, I am off to Mike Pence’s hometown, the unexpected home of much modern architecture and public art. Can’t wait to sample the local wine! (I assume the sarcasm tag is unnecessary for the last statement).
Yarrow
@lowtechcyclist: I never understood that. How can history end? Shit will keep happening forever. There will always be new stuff that becomes history. It seemed so pretentious and stupid and condescending all at the same time.
artem1s
Yea, they never slink back under their rocks. They just find a new soapbox to stand on and grift for. School boards and PTAs are unfortunately their natural habitats – seems to me they are the same Heathers and BMOC that were clawing their way up the pecking order in high school (or worse failed to get into the ‘in’ crowd). They have no existence outside their HS glory daze and so spend all their energy fighting off the competition so their own Snotleighs can be the captains of the cheer leading squad. Bullying their peers’ kids is their only goal and aspiration in life. If they home school or send their kids to a religious school and they can’t relive their own failed HS experience vicariously they are even more viscous in their attacks on those who don’t have to live thru the bullying experience. Punching down is their only joy in life. How dare the Woke Socialists deny them and their kids their God given right to beat up and bully the ungodly, brown, liberal, gheys, trans, and/or special ed kids.
Anoniminous
@Steve in the ATL:
FIFY
hueyplong
@Seanly: Try this for American history repetition.
In a 1969 (heavily footnoted and therefore unread by any RWNJ) history of Massive Resistance to the Brown v. Board decision (a book re-issued for some reason in the first year of Reagan’s presidency), the author said this about the one-party South’s reaction to Brown:
“The Southern one or nonparty system … generally contributed toward encouraging localism, confusing voter comprehension of the relation of candidates to programs, eliminating ‘party responsibility,’ inclining campaigns toward contests of personality rather than tests of issues, promoting showmanship in elections and irresponsibility in office, and benefiting the ‘have’s’ of society at the expense of the ‘have not’s.’ During a period of high racial tensions, these tendencies were exaggerated. This situation created an almost unparalleled invitation for demagoguery, further complicating the political analysts’ dream of a rational and orderly process….”
Seems kind of familiar. A perhaps ham-handed short version is that things get scary when crackers get their wills thwarted to literally any degree. Hard to say how different “economic anxiety” is to “anxiety concerning the threat to the Southern Way of Life.”
A thing that jumps out at you is the fact that the segregationists didn’t have FoxNews cheering them on, as they do now.
smith
I’m remembering the halcyon days when we thought such a thing as “peak wingnut” existed. Good times.
RaflW
I think I probably linked to this NBC story soon after it published in May, but worth revisiting as it’s still timely.
Anyway, it’s a long read. But way, way above the depth and quality I usually expect from ABC news. Highly recommended!! (and no paywall)
eta: Really, I just feel like I have to repeat that last bit. They just come right out and say they want sheeple: “It is terribly important to be a disengaged citizen.”
Anoniminous
@hueyplong: They didn’t need Fox News. They had the local radio station(s,) TV station(s,) and newspaper(s) cheering them on while the city, county, and state police and governments rigorously enforced Jim Crow laws.
Eolirin
@hueyplong: It’s not like even Fox is a new phenomenon. You had Hearst and Father Coughlin if you go back a bit further. Coughlin had a bigger reach in his day than Fox does even.
But there was a period where the fairness doctrine tamped down that insanity for sure, even though things like newsletters prevented it from being eliminated. We need to figure out how to do something similar even if the challenges around that are different and more complicated now. The way the First Amendment is being weaponized is extremely dangerous.
hueyplong
@Anoniminous: That’s exactly right, it took tanks and such to gt the job done locally. My schools weren’t desegregated until the 1970-71 school year. But FoxNews helps spread their version of both facts and policy outside their region. The things you mentioned didn’t nationalize the Massive Resistance concept in the 1950s-early 1960s.
Sister Golden Bear
@Alison Rose:
Feature, not a bug, for them. And they don’t see it as abuse to
praybeat the trans away.And yeah, I’d like to think that they won’t get enough signatures to get it on the ballot, and that if it does, it’ll go down in flames. But just the idea that people can vote to take away rights….
Eolirin
@RaflW: Are they seriously trying to get their own voters to disengage? What the actual fuck?
Baud
This post was less arousing than the title led me to believe.
Eolirin
@Sister Golden Bear: I want to believe this has no chance of succeeding, but the way prop 8 went down will always give me pause.
Eolirin
@Baud: For you maybe! Don’t kink shame.
Anoniminous
@hueyplong:
Can’t let the Yankees off. The North didn’t have de jure Jim Crow but they sure as hell had de facto Jim Crow. The worst expression of white mob hate faced by MLK was in Boston.
Kelly
Three nights sleeping on Mom’s couch after a Sunday 1am “I’m down and can’t get up call”. We bought the house next door 10 years ago so a short dash. She’d been having slowly worsening diarrhea since taking antibiotics for a Mohs surgery on her face 3 weeks ago. ER diagnosed C.Diff, xrays for fall damage (just bruises) and plumped her up with 2 IV bags. Moving on her own again. My brother and sister live nearby as well. We’re all retired but still young enough to help so it’s a team effort.
I should have taken her to the ER Saturday. She wasn’t interested. “I’m fine”. She’s 87. Cross country skied ungroomed trails until about 10 year ago. Back packed the Cascades with me throughout the 1970’s. I took her rafting down Grand Canyon three times, a bunch of trips on the Rogue. After we were all on our own the folks sold the old home place in 1980 and became construction migrants in Alaska. Went out to the end of a road and built more road. Dad ran heavy equipment building road with dozers and graders. Sometimes she ran a roller, sometimes she was camp cook. She could cook for 4 or 40 all the same. One outfit they worked for in SE Alaska had a barge with married housing in trailers on the deck, dorm and cafeteria one level down and machine shop below. When Dad died in 1992 she flagged traffic for highway here in Oregon until Social Security kicked in.
Until this year she’d she her doctor once a year, he’d say “You’re amazing, keep doing what ever it is you’re doing and see me next year” No prescriptions. January she got bed sores huddling under the blankets while the power was out for 3 days. My brother, 5 miles away, had power. No need to go over there. It wasn’t that cold and she was out of the wind and rain. “I’m Fine” The docs all noticed the sores and I finally talked her into seeing a dermatologist. Basal cell on her cheek and shoulder. Both removed successfully this month. As my brother said “It’s gonna be a ride”
Gin & Tonic
@Baud: That’s a failure of your imagination.
Anoniminous
@Baud:
Moms always go wild.
That’s how they become moms.
Gin & Tonic
So the GrayZone (if you don’t know, you’re lucky) started some kind of GoFundMe, whereupon GFM blocked it “while they are investigating.” Now the Greenwaldosphere is hyperventilating about the threat to press freedom. I fail to see how this threatens GZ’s ability to publish the lies they are known for, but maybe I’m not thinking as clearly as the acolytes.
Bupalos
I know this is a colloquialism that doesn’t really intend to mean what it actually says, but I still wish we could amend it. Both because I think it’s one of those places where the tyranny of language itself leads us down a path we don’t mean to tread into a kind of anti-science, and because the literal implications are existentially terrifying.
I think the actual historical way to state this would be something like the following: There are durable common impulses in human beings that remain mostly stable through centuries and eons. Human nature is so slow to change it appears permanent. Comparatively, the conditions human beings exist in are in constant and accelerating flux. When the collision between the relative stability of human nature and the chaotic flux of human conditions produces a reaction that follows rules which we can partly describe, we call that “history repeating.” The meta kicker here: We ourselves fill in some gaps and erase some lines to impose a heightened sense of that pattern.
A good and existing colloquial encoding of this uselessly complex description might be “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” The meta kicker added on that would be “the more things change, the more we see what stays the same.”
Cameron
Feeling guilt and anguish? I’ve been told by people much wiser than me that the appropriate response is, “Fuck your feelings.”
RaflW
@Eolirin: Yes. I mean, U.S. conservatives have noted that it is kind of a pain for Putin to stage his fake elections & pass laws to waive term limits, etc. Why bother when it is everyone’s birthright to just be ruled by emperors or kings?!
Eolirin
@Gin & Tonic: I am so frustrated by how screechy these assholes get over supposed free speech issues that are more about platforming concerns. It’s not like they’re getting blacklisted by payment processors which is a legitimate existential threat. They just have to do a little more work to get funds or get their messages out.
Especially given how many of these people are perfectly fine with segregation, which is the ultimate in deplatforming.
Betty Cracker
@Kelly: She sounds amazing! I hope she recovers fully. It’s great that you and your siblings are close by to help out.
raven
@Rusty: Yep
Jay
So here, last night, we had rain,
and a massive thunder and lightning storm.
The air smells like burning peat, so there are local forest fires here.
Eolirin
@RaflW: It’s not like they’re going to get everyone else to disengage along with them and we aren’t yet living in a kleptocracy where that doesn’t matter. It’s a great way for them to permanently eliminate their politicial power.
CliosFanBoy
@Yarrow: Yes, with some token POCs along for the ride.
Jay
Both New Brunswick and Saskatchewan have climbed on the anti-Trans train of late.
JCJ
At LGM there was a post after the Hamilton County Indiana chapter had used the Hitler quote referring to these nutbags as “Moms for Lebensraum”. A very appropriate name. I also like “assholes with casseroles”
JCJ
@Steve in the ATL: Don’t know if there are any wineries in Columbus, but I recall there being one outside of Bloomington if you are looking for somewhat local grapes
Old School
….
Michael Bersin
The Venn Diagram of Right wingnut Orthodoxy is a Circle
Let’s see, anti-vaccine, anti-mask, library books, drag queens, and homeless people – this so far in our part of the world. All by the same people.
Villago Delenda Est
They’re all fascist swine. Wipe them out. All of them.
Alison Rose
@Sister Golden Bear: Oh, I know. But I would like to see them confronted over it and be forced to answer whether or not they care that these children might go home to get beaten or kicked out onto the street. I want them to say it out in the open on TV. Show their actual true colors.
UncleEbeneezer
Hmm, I feel like someone has noted this connection before, repeatedly, lol…
Here are a couple comments I made earlier this year. Seriously though everyone should read Mothers Of Massive Resistance. It really shows how all of this shit has happened before and this just updating the old playbook for more modern fights (over CRT, Transgender Athletics etc.). Everything we’ve seen in these horrible school bullying by “parents rights” advocates is right out of the old playbook. And remember that Transphobia is one of many branches of White Supremacy/Patriarchy:
Mothers of Conservatism is also a very good read (though not as great as MOMR) that covers similar territory…
trollhattan
@Scout211: It’s…interesting the older ones and their spawn are so openly pro-Putin, who after all got his start as a high-ranking Actual Commie and is trying to reconstruct the Soviet Union.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Sister Golden Bear: I expect you have a good chance of beating this measure. We managed to beat a far more circumspect anti-trans bill in MA a few years ago and your aggregate election results tend to look a little better than ours.
Almost Retired
The Moms for Liberty have an amazing knack to be on the wrong side of every issue. They came out against mental health services in schools. Nice. Something about a parent’s right to have their children’s mental illnesses go untreated?
The fascist gooberati have co-opted the terms “liberty” and “freedom” – any organization with those words in its name is highly suspect. They’re most of the way there with “eagle.” And I think they’re doing it to “Moms.”
Therefore, if I were to encounter “Moms For the Freedom and Liberty of Eagles,” I would assume it was a right-wing insurrectionist group, and not an association of amateur female ornithologists in support of free-range raptors.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Mental health treatment is antithetical to their version of liberty.
You need someone to talk to? That there’s communism…
eclare
@Kelly:
Oh, C diff is tough, even for a much younger person. The wife of a friend was in the hospital for weeks, in her forties. Best of luck to your mom.
Roger Moore
@lowtechcyclist:
I think there are two interlinked ideas here. The idea is to demand changes in the curriculum that water down the subject material in ways people serious about it would never accept. If they refuse to accept the changes, great; you successfully blocked the subject you want to avoid from making it into the schools. If they accept the changes, also great; you’ve succeeded in watering down the syllabus with a bunch of irrelevant, whataboutism that absolves Whites of their responsibility for any of this stuff.
Ruckus
@J. Arthur Crank (fka Jerzy Russian):
OK. Sir I coagulate you for making me laugh out loud at the first thing I’ve read this morning!
Punchy
Since the “loudest” is always the most extreme (and versa-vice?), these movements always end in absurd hyperbole and wanton recklessness, as each person seeks the spotlight (“$$$potlight”) and to do so, must therefore become more crazy than the person before. Rinse, repeat.
At some point they’ll be asking to ban biology texts for the mere crime of teaching natural selection and evolution, and that’s when the movement will crash and burn.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
One of only two plays they have left. The other? Just say the explicitly hateful thing.
CaseyL
If anyone’s interested in following the sentencing of the Proud Boys convicted of sedition, Brandi_Buchman is love-tweeting on Twitter/Nitter. And Laffy, who may or may not be the same person, will post updates on Mastodon.
The Court is on a lunch break at the moment and will return at 1:45 Eastern time.
JaySinWA
A congelation is in order for your comment.
Ruckus
@cope:
but dealing with them requires an awful lot of energy and resources that could be better spent on other efforts.
I believe that is actually one of their goals, you have to spend way too much time with their crap, it takes over everything else.
Steve in the ATL
@eclare: did she ever recover fully? People I know who had it have never been the same.
Mr. Bemused Senior
Not just Commie, KGB! Sheesh, what are they thinking? [don’t bother answering]
Also, not just CCCP, imperial Russia! Bring back the Tsar! Pogroms! Good times!
Jeffro
It would be kinda funny to start a group like the Liberty Freedom Eagles (or similar), put out flyers with the exhortation to “save America! here’s how!!” and have a QR code…
…that leads them to the “no one’s treading on you, sweetie” merch site. =)
Jay
@Almost Retired:
I would assume it was a cage farm operation breeding protected eagles for the sexual satisfaction of ReThugs and Billionaires.
The Pale Scot
The first band of hurricane weather arrived. Reminding me of hurricane parties at L.B.I. NJ in the 80’s. Standing on the beach guzzling Mescal with boards in our hands singing our version of Black Flag’s “TV Party”, We’re gonna have a hurricane party tonight
katdip
The one thing the article doesn’t point out is how successful (or not) these raging “moms” were in changing policy. What gets me sad and worried is how quickly gerrymandered red states have turned the deranged screeching into legislation that directly threaten LGBTQI+ kids, parents, teachers, librarians with jail time or more. Even if Moms for Fascism implodes like its ancestors, those policies will live on to harm innocent people. Certainly can’t count on the 5th or 11th Circuit or SCOTUS to protect against that abuse.
RaflW
@Eolirin: I see no flaw in your argument, and frankly, hope it comes to pass!
If I recall correctly, several decades ago many of the more devout evangelicals in the US were actually low-propensity voters. They didn’t think they should sully themselves with the mundanity of how government functioned. It was ‘over there’ to them, and of little interest.
A return to that sensibility would suit many of us just fine.
JaySinWA
@Jay: The free range edible eagle with blood infusions for your betters.
Jeffg166
@Kelly: Be happy she is mobile. I am sure she thinks age is a great bother.
eclare
@Steve in the ATL:
She got back to some sort of normal, but it took months.
rikyrah
I like Hoes for Hitler
(thank you, Philadelphia)
for these wretched people.
RaflW
@Old School: Scalise should thank his lucky stars he has excellent health insurance coverage. My mom died of MM back in 1996 when treatments were not as well developed or successful. It cost a ton, but my dad also happened to have good insurance (and resources to cover deductibles, out of network b.s., etc).
I can’t stand him as a politician, but wish him well personally. I just also want these jackasses to acknowledge that what they get from the medical system is extremely unfairly distributed!
(My aunt and my grandmother, each of whom was unrelated to the others except by marriage, also had MM. It did eventually take my aunt, but she had a much longer and less exhausting survival as treatments had improved, and she was older and thus MM tends to progress more slowly. Grandma was just ‘smoldering’ MM in her late 80s. Fun memories. NOT)
Hoodie
My son’s girlfriend is a relatively new high school teacher in the Atlanta area. The first week of this school year she had a get to know you session with her students and the subject of pronouns came up. It was brief and she didn’t think anything of it – these are 16 year olds. Some asshole from one of these mom’s groups (as usual, she did not even have a kid in this school) got wind of it and complained to the school system. Surprisingly, the superintendent (who ran as a conservative) and the principal backed up the teacher.
The middle school where my wife teaches is currently dealing with one clown who is harassing the principal (who works his ass off) about his “parents’ bill of rights.” This is causing the principal to have to constantly confer with system lawyers and hold meetings with teachers to make sure they don’t do anything that could be construed as a departure from state curriculum, however minor. We have another friend who is on the county BOE and tells us that they are regularly besieged by these dopes, but it is generally about the same 5 or 6 people who regularly appear with the same bullshit.
/Democracy is great, but it’s ridiculous that a handful of people can cause this type of disruption. I guess that’s because most parents are too busy to pay attention to all this stuff until it really gets out of hand, but we are close to the point in many areas. There is a growing teacher shortage in our district because a lot of people have either retired early or are leaving early so they can start different careers where they don’t have to put up with this bullshit. The middle school where my wife teaches is a very desirable place to work, but they still have unfilled positions. A friend at NC State says that all of the colleges are going gangbusters – except for the College of Education, which is suffering from declining enrollments. The GOP state legislature is no help because they are either lunatics like these activists or cynical assholes who cater to this crowd.
Roger Moore
@Eolirin:
Yes, but segregation happens to other people, while deplatforming might happen to them. I’m surprised you have so much trouble with this critical difference.
Betty Cracker
@The Pale Scot: I’ve been looking at the radar off and on all morning as the storm makes its way further into the Gulf, and it looks like it’s tracking further west than predicted. Good news for my area but bad news for the Panhandle.
Punchy
@JCJ: The Etsy Army
Kelly
A recent advance in C diff treatment is probiotic Saccharomyces boulardii. It’s a yeast so not killed by the antibiotics necessary to control the C diff. Friendly to the good gut biome and keeps the C diff crowded out. The discoveries about gut biome over the last several years are amazing.
JWR
A fun little bit from Meidastouch:
There’s something weirdly hilarious about that last sentence. “Call up the towels!”, or some such.
Roger Moore
@Hoodie:
Democracy is great; North Carolina should try it sometime. The problem is you have a gerrymandered, veto-proof Republican legislature that votes for all kinds of crap the general public doesn’t support, like empowering a few busybodies to harass the local schools.
kalakal
@The Pale Scot:
Looks like the first band is due here in about an hour
@Betty Cracker: Yes, it does seem to be a bit further west which is also good for us. Still going to be nasty around here but a bit less than it looked 24 hours ago
Betty Cracker
@Hoodie: I think you’re right that it’s a relatively small number of people causing most of the havoc. I saw an article earlier this week about the situation in FL, where if someone complains about a book, districts remove it from the school library until someone reviews it. Just two people were responsible for the vast majority of the complaints received so far. It’s just not sustainable to empower cranks like that.
john b
@katdip:
Hi from NC where our biggest school districts (which don’t support these state measures) are having to comply because if they don’t, there’s a big lawsuit / litigation target on their backs
ETA: My youngest started Kindergarten yesterday and in his first school library visit was told that they couldn’t check out books yet. What they didn’t tell him was that the reason was because the school is confused about what they can / can’t do and are scared shitless of getting sued by a lunatic.
Calouste
@trollhattan:
Putin is not trying to reconstruct the Soviet Union, he’s trying to reconstruct the Russian Empire. He definitely has his eyes on Poland
Betty Cracker
@kalakal: The question is when will the steering current that is supposed to push it east kick in. I won’t relax until it’s north of my latitude, which should be sometime tomorrow morning.
UncleEbeneezer
@Roger Moore: North Carolina is one of the places where this Massive Resistance movement of conservative, white, women activists spawned. Mothers of Massive Resistance chronicles four prominent women who pretty much created the template for “parents rights” bullshit in schools. One was in Pasadena, one was in North Carolina. I forget where the other two were from.
Kelly
@Betty Cracker:
@eclare:
@Jeffg166:
Thanks!
Soprano2
@lee: Same thing happened here; there are 3 of these people on our board now (two of them are male, but same MO). The ones who ran last April were soundly defeated in favor of pro-education people. One of my Jazzercise teachers who is also a schoolteacher in the Springfield system told me that at the school year kickoff meeting where all of the school board members are introduced, it was obvious that there is one the teachers absolutely hate, because she only got a smattering of applause while the rest were applauded normally or vigorously. She’s the first one of the cranks to get elected. One of the others was a “stealth” candidate – he didn’t reveal his true agenda until he got elected as a “normal, concerned parent”. He was kind of like Glenn Youngkin in that way; now he regularly goes on local right wing radio and espouses all this stuff. I don’t think he’ll get re-elected if he runs again.
Roger Moore
@Betty Cracker:
Yes and no. It’s true there are a handful of people lodging the most complaints, but that has always been true. What’s different now is state governments have passed laws that empower the complainers. Without those laws, school districts would be able to dismiss the complainers as the isolated whiners they are.
Hoodie
@Betty Cracker: Maybe Dem pols should do more to bring to light that the GOP is enabling these nutcases. We’re all for parents, but these clowns are chasing teachers away and it’s negatively affecting your kids’ education. That would seem to be a winning issue in the suburbs. Most people can’t send their kids to private schools. In our area (which is heavily suburban) there is not near enough capacity and most of them are overpriced garbage that caters to the biggest donors.
Ruckus
@Eolirin:
There is only one way to tramp it down. And in a country based upon the concept of freedom that really didn’t exist when it was formed, that concept is that it can be explained and it’s power can be reduced but it will never be eliminated. That is part of the point of this country, people get to be assholes. This is just the current assembly of assholes. We can be better, and most are but in a country such as this one the only way to counter the shitmongers is to expose them for who and what they are. There will ALWAYS BE shitmongers in a free country, and they will always have to be countered. Fortunately there are far more counter shitmongers in the world, people who see that these people are the crap stuck to the bottom of our shoes. In a free country they get to be who they are, but so do we. These are the people that we get warned about by decent people that recognize that there will ALWAYS be shitty people that “think” the world should be only one way, their way. They cycle around every so many years because they lose and then it takes a while to regroup, they lose and the cycle goes on. Humans are somewhat complex and we will always have those I call shit stirrers, who have decided that the world doesn’t fit their asinine concept of life and has to be changed. You get two types of worlds in humanity, one with shit stirrers and one with followers. The one with shit stirrers is better because there are far fewer of them and they are easy to recognize. But either way the mass of people have to deal with them.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Now they’re fixated on how government functions, to the end that it not be concerned with the mundanity of environmental stewardship or protecting at-risk people from abuse.
Those are issues of this world, not the kingdom of heaven and, therefore, of little interest.
Baud
@Ruckus:
Nominated.
UncleEbeneezer
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: They also have historical animosity towards mental health professionals/institutions because there was a brief time when Psychology floated the idea of Racism being a mental disorder that evil Liberals would use to commit Conservatives to Asylums against their wills. It was like the “FEMA Camps” persecution fantasy of the 50’s and it was a pretty big thing:
patrick II
From the Washington Post:
As usual, there is profit, even if the average MAGA isn’t aware, that motivates conservative “movements”.
WereBear
@artem1s: Yes, I’ve noticed the whining about who they are allowed to bully NOW.
kalakal
@Betty Cracker: I hear you. The farther West & North the better for me he said selfishly. I’m not going to relax until it’s well north, the trailing bands are going to be hitting us for quite a while after it passes
The Pale Scot
@Calouste:
The Poles will fuck the orcs up. And for that I will show up with my decrepit geezer ass
wjca
@Alison Rose:
They might manage to get something passed, if it was very narrowly tailored. Say restricting athletes to their gender at puberty. (A microscopic number.) Maybe. But they are incapable or anything but going whole hog. Which means, in California anyway, they’ll get nothing.
The upside is, it will siphon off time, energy, and money from issues and, more importantly, candidates, where they might have had a (negative) impact.
WereBear
It’s considered to be an outgrowth of honor culture, because they were allowed no internal growth, and a man’s image was all.
Add the slow burning fuse of resentment and we find the origin of “Hold my beer.”
Jay
The solution in places where the nut jobs have taken over, empowered by the State Ledge, is pretty simple.
Just close the schools.
Keep the taxes.
There is a worker shortage after all.
oatler
@Jay:
“How soon can you be in Washington?”
Eolirin
@Roger Moore: I’m not surprised, I’m frustrated. Slight difference. :p
CaseyL
@Kelly:
A friend of mine, also in her 70s, had an intractable case of C diff – I think a few courses of steroids were needed to get it under control. But for a while there she was housebound.
Your Mom sounds absolutely amazing! I can only hope to be that independent and feisty at her age.
I hope she recovers fully and soon.
Jeffro
Very true here in Virginia.
Also true. There are steep declines in enrollments in traditional university teacher prep, and school divisions are hiring teachers they never would have considered just a few years ago. It was getting bad before the pandemic; it’s much worse now.
These under-trained teachers coming through the pipeline via “alternate routes to certification” and scammy online providers. These folks not only don’t teach well, they don’t stay long in the job. (Which yes, is an odd complaint – if they’re not good, you wouldn’t want them to stay in the job long, right? But they are just replaced by another not-great short-termer, over and over)
Big pay increases are needed, and then there need to be additional big bonuses for teaching in high-poverty schools and hard-to-fill areas like special education.
It works, too! There was a piece about it in yesterday’s Richmond Times-Dispatch.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Another example of the “turnabout is fair play” fallacy from the Republicans. Some of them must sincerely believe our side is as authoritarian as they are and just waiting for the right moment to turn the screws.
Baud
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
Not unreasonable. An authoritarian mindset is a fundamentally human problem, even though it reveals itself more intensely among conservatives.
Steve in the ATL
@Jeffro:
You sound like the guys who sit across the bargaining table from me every week!
Baud
@Steve in the ATL:
Just replace them all with high school football coaches. That’ll teach em.
Jeffro
@Steve in the ATL: well, it seems to work for every other occupation… =)
hueyplong
@Steve in the ATL: Yeah, and he’s got about the same chance of success, right?
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Baud: I can understand why someone might think that way. There’s probably some internal bias there suggesting “if I think this way, others must too.”
And center and left authoritarians exist. But people really should look to who’s actually getting elected. No Democrats are finding a lot of political success promising to jail or execute their enemies.
This connects also to the way Republicans get judged by their highest theoretical ideals, no matter what their elected officials do and Democrats get judged by their most (perceived) extreme activist no matter what their elected officials do.
Baud
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
Agree completely.
eversor
@Yarrow:
Yes and mostly CHRISTIAN. You can’t stop being white. You can top being Christian. And just as we de Nazi people we can de Christian them. It’s that or we get ruled by them. The younger generations get this.
Steve in the ATL
@hueyplong: “you’ll get nothing and like it!”
/Judge Smails
Eolirin
@Steve in the ATL: If the people who paid you were actually worth the money they siphon away from the workers who actually make their companies function your services would be a lot less needed.
No one gets rich and everyone gets paid (a living wage) should really be our starting point in terms of how we structure businesses. That it’s not is a large part of why we have so many problems.
Citizen Alan
@Anoniminous: At my RWNJ sister’s house, there’s a radio in the garage that plays “SuperTalk AM” or whatever it’s called 24-7. When it’s not playing Mississippi State sports coverage, it’s 100% right wing propaganda.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@eversor: Gross.
Now that I’ve pied this one, I should learn to avoid the toggle.
ETA: If a commenter were constantly making bigoted remarks like this about any other group, would they still be allowed to post here?
Matt McIrvin
@Seanly: The “human trafficking” panic, which is largely disconnected from the fight against real human trafficking, is an echo of 100-year-old panics about “white slavers”.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Baud: isn’t “crush your enemies, see them driven before you …” a plank of the Baud 20XX platform? Or maybe the theme song? I forget.
Steve in the ATL
@Eolirin: I shouldn’t admit this, but every union I negotiate with gets a fair deal. Clearly I am not good at my job!
And there is nothing I can do about executive comp….
Citizen Alan
@Old School: I’m very sad to read this. Not because of Scalise’s cancer, but rather because of my abject lack of compassion over Scalise’s cancer. I think the thing I hate the most about Republicans is how thoroughly they’ve taught me to hate them.
wjca
Kind of wondering (not!) if DeSantis’ campaign will publicly give thanks for Hurricane Idalia. Since, with a candidate who repulses people when they meet him in person, any excuse to stay off the campaign trail is a blessing.
Steve in the ATL
@Citizen Alan: you still sleeping on an air mattress while your furniture enjoys summer at the Shore?
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Citizen Alan: I felt bad about my initial reaction myself.
COVIDCancer is good for you and treatments are an attempt at government control. Do what your party knows is right, Scalise, and leave this in the hands of god.I don’t like that autocorrect capitalizes god for me, among other things. My god only bears capital letters at the beginning of a sentence, thank you very much.
Kelly
@Citizen Alan: More poinigtly most of my old highschool buddies have gone down the right wing rathole. A small highschool in timber and farm country.
Eolirin
@Steve in the ATL: To be clear that wasn’t meant as a dig at you. I’m sure you do as good as job as can be done. Was more that you’d have a lot less work if the system wasn’t tilted toward undervaluing labor so management can get rich.
It’s a cultural problem. One that we’re going to need to try figure out how to make progress on, collectively as a society, because it creates so many of the other issues we have.
Steve in the ATL
@Eolirin: well said—agree on all points
Citizen Alan
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
True that. In 2016, I watched the Green Party Debate on Youtube (sponsored by RT, natch) for laughs. By the 30 minute mark, I wasn’t laughing, because it was clear that everyone running for President as a Green literally thought the Presidency was an absolute dictatorship. One ridiculous woman said that as President she would completely abolish private gun ownership by executive order “in the first 100 days!”
Miss Bianca
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
@Almost Retired: CO recently passed legislation mandating that students aged 12-18, I believe, had the right to see a mental health counselor in school without parental consent. The RWNJs on our School Board freaked out about this and said they wouldn’t abide by the ruling, citing “parents’ rights.” Apparently, they are following Woodland Park’s example in this, as well as in wanting to push the “American Birthright” social studies agenda noted above.
I dunno, it’s almost as if this all this “parents rights” crap is being choreographed from afar somewhere…
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker: These are like the “undecided voter” interviews where the undecided man in the street always turns out to be the county Republican Party chair, or some such thing.
Citizen Alan
@Steve in the ATL: No, it mostly came in about 2 weeks ago. They have apparently lost 1 full size mattress,1 glass table top, and 1 small painting that I paid $25 at an art festival twenty years ago. I finally got a human being to answer and tell me how to start the complaint process.
Omnes Omnibus
Trials and tribulations of Trump’s lawyers.
hueyplong
@Steve in the ATL: My comments about how evil you are, are also tongue-in-cheek. For many, many years I represented insurers and lenders, and obtained judgments in favor of them on facts that would disgust everyone here.
Miss Bianca
@eversor: Can you just stop being eversor?
@Omnes Omnibus: OK, that tickles *my* funny bone!
Joe Max
There is no bottom. Right wingnut insanity is like the event horizon of a black hole: that which falls into it falls infinitely, because there is no such thing as “peak wingnut.” Whatever floor you think they’ve reached, they will tunnel under it.
CaseyL
The sentencing phase of the Proud Boys trial continues, with the judge reviewing the evidence (and, holy hell, it is damning evidence, much of which I hadn’t heard before) and noting that a jury could rationally conclude the Proud Boys were engaged in an planned, strategized, and deliberate armed rebellion. (This is legalspeak for “no, your clients aren’t going to get new trials. The jury did its job based on the evidence.”)
The reporting is somewhat on the droll side. Here is one of Buchman’s comments:
When Bertino – recall, who pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy – said “fuck the blue” and “they chose their fucking side, let’s get this done” this evidence also leant to jury’s reasonable conclusions of guilt.
(Ya think?)
louc
Another book to read about these kinds of moms in history is “Why Busing Failed” by Matthew Delmont. It looks at how white mothers in the 70s appropriated the language of the civil rights movement to push against desegregation and busing.
In the 1980s, I was a reporter who had to cover education during AIDS hysteria. A mother who claimed to be a nurse (sound familiar?) wanted to make sure any HIV+ child was banned from school. She claimed HIV could be passed along through saliva and spitting. Of course, she also didn’t want any sex ed other than abstinence.
George
Late to this party, but just to say that all of my four children were in Kanawha County schools when Alice Moore’s campaign was in full storm.
Some of the kids marched in favor of the books.
No doubt encouraged by parents.
That has to happen now here in Florida.
Slightly aside, support Nikki Fried
Matt McIrvin
@Alison Rose: Well, haters got Prop. 8 passed in California at a time when I wouldn’t have thought they could manage it. Of course it was probably the last possible historical moment to do it.
RaflW
@wjca: Wait till the animatronic Desantbot1860 has to feign compassion and worry while touring some damaged areas. That won’t go well, I’m betting.
(Model number reflects the unit’s desired cultural year baseline)
Ruckus
@JaySinWA:
Hey! I never said I could spell. And my lysdexia precludes me from putting words in the correct order or often using the correct word.
Is it my fault that someone thought that everyone could/should have a computer and be able to communicate properly using it?
You should see my comments before I edit them if you think they are hilarious after that.
VFX Lurker
I think that particular school board movement was called “intelligent design.“
sab
@Kelly: At least your siblings are there to help. Nothing is as stubborn as an elderly parent resisting help.
Chris T.
@eclare: Yeah, the “diff” in “C. diff.” is short for “difficile”, meaning difficult (to treat): see https://www.cdc.gov/cdiff/index.html for details.
Paul in KY
@Yarrow: Does a bear shit in the woods?
Paul in KY
@Alison Rose: The Jew is correct. Any white person should feel some shame & embarrassment for what white people did and upheld back in the Jim Crow and before days.
Paul in KY
@Yarrow: I would also say these ‘moms’ were upper middle class to upper class females. Ones that had servants and whatnot.
Women with less resources than they were too busy working their damned asses off to have time to be a psycho scold.
Paul in KY
@Omnes Omnibus: Well now, uncompensated working African Americans weren’t always ‘sold’…Sometimes they were traded around. Sorta like what goes on in our professional sporting leagues, dontchaknow…
Paul in KY
@RaflW: That is some fucked up shit right there.
Paul in KY
@Kelly: Hydration is a big key. When they get dehydrated, they get dizzy and fall. My mom (97) has done the same thing (fall) a few times this year.
Your mom sounds like a complete badass, but age comes for us all sooner or later. Best wishes to her and you on best possible outcome!
Paul in KY
@UncleEbeneezer: It was probably a front group or was secretly funded by L. Ron Hubbard/Scientology.