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Thursday, March 2, 2023

We're not the bad guys. They are the bad guys: The Teacher and the Fascist

Finishing off DeSantis (for now): 

Things can always get worse.


Well, now I feel as if I know Florida Governor Ron DeSantis a lot better. If you're still here, I hope you feel that way, too. That last one was really long, but I didn't even get to the College Board bullying, or stacking the school boards, or thumbing his nose at Biden's attempt to protect vulnerable schoolkids from harassment and discrimination, or the "grooming" shit, or vouchers and even more vouchers, or 86ing Common Core--which would have been okay if he hadn't replaced it with even dumber dumbness. 

And that's just schools. This is much bigger than schools.

There's also DeSantis's trolling and flexing and bullying over a private army, kidnapping migrants, removing insufficiently servile elected officials, troublesome media (so he went out and got his own), and drag. The list is growing.

For those of you thinking Florida used to be a nice place but now it's a swamp full of Republicans and deserves what it gets, you're absolutely right. For those of you thinking DeSantis is going to stop there... 

DeSantis is not going to stop in Florida. 

Business Insider reports: "Florida is hoping its strict law regulating how race, gender, and sexuality are taught in school will soon be applied to students nationwide as the College Board revamps its African American studies class that the state vocally rejected."

"The Florida of Today is the America of Tomorrow" Kathryn Joyce writes in Vanity Fair. She's writing about the takeover of New College, the cancer that is Hillsdale College, and Christopher Fucking Rufo, but DeSantis has no intention of stopping, not with Florida and not with schools. 

DeSantis aspires to be president--at least--and that would be really, really bad. 

If you support Ron DeSantis because he's a willing protector of your tax tricks and you think "How bad can this be?" or the word "guardrails" springs to mind, take a breath. Then get counseling. If you support him because he's mean to the people you don't like, you should be ashamed of yourself. Either way, if you guys win, DeSantis wins, and if he becomes president, the United States as a pluralistic, multicultural democracy will cease to exist.

That very well may be the plan. 

The fabulous Jennifer Berkshire tweeted out a paragraph from The Big Myth, and it was for me one of those rare moments of clarity, where everything suddenly made sense and cohered in a Unified Theory of Inequality. Here's the tweet:


I immediately ordered the book, but even before I start reading, a few things have become all too clear to me.

Something clicked and school choice and parental rights and book banning joined up with taxes and policing and reproductive rights and the railroad tragedy in Ohio. 

"They believed that men were inherently unequal." Not to mention everyone else. 

They believed it then and they believe it now. The cruelty and the raw exercise of power to discriminate and dominate isn't just a utilitarian strategy. It's the inevitable result of their view of "human nature" and the way the world should naturally be ordered. Is ordered.

Teachers are in the way. We are purveyors of truth and compassion, promoters of equity. We encourage individual agency. We are dangerous to traditional power hierarchies. That hasn't always been the case, but it is right now. 

We are dangerous to DeSantis and his dream of unchecked power. We are dangerous to fascists and because we are dangerous, DeSantis and the rest of the fascists need to drive us out or break us. They do it with shitty pay and poor working conditions and public humiliation. They do it by accusing us of the very things they themselves are doing. 

They break teachers by making us do things we know are bad for our students, sometimes by passing bad laws.

We have this nostalgia for some imaginary old days when teachers were revered professionals who were acknowledged as experts, but that was never really true and it was very much not true in many places and times. The fact that we are experts only makes it more important to eliminate us. The vilifying and scapegoating--we've seen it before and we know where it ends up. 

If you think this sounds overheated, remember that with fascists every accusation is a confession. From indoctrination to discrimination, this "accusation in a mirror" is a calculated strategy, and the objective is precisely what they pretend to be fighting against. We have to recognize the accusations as admissions, declarations of deadly serious intentions. 

Resisting the authoritarian attack on teachers and schooling can not be simply "No we're not" and "That's ridiculous" or  “I do want to stress that no union dues are used for political activities.” This defensive posture limits the discourse and legitimizes the attacks. 

It's crucial that we avoid regarding our enemies as foolish or unhinged, and we have to push pack against those of us who describe them that way. To think of them as merely clowns doing anything they can to hold on to their circus jobs, to fail to take them seriously, would be a big mistake. Huge.


You might say most people aren't paying attention and don't give a shit. You might say most people don't support what DeSantis is doing. You might say it's a small, loud minority, and you may be right. 

It might not be a majority voting for monsters who hate the "right" people and want to hurt them. Maybe lots of people aren't for racists and fascists just because of their racism and fascism. Maybe lots of people vote for the bad guys because of taxes or regulations, or just because the bad guys act tough. 

But it doesn't take a majority. All it takes is enough true believers and enough people who don't give a shit.

Next time we'll take a look at the wizards behind the curtain and where this all ends unless we give a shit. 

Update: It's getting worse. 


Do not imagine that their proposals are too evil or foolish or absurd to become real. This is not a drill. It can happen here. It already is.

Next up: What's next?    





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