The Truth Will Set Us Free
If we can see it
“Evidence continues to emerge showing far-left instigators infiltrated protests on Capitol Hill.” - OAN Newsroom
Actually, no.
In the turbulent wake of Wednesday’s domestic terror attack on the U.S. Capitol, a kind of national reckoning has ensued. Calls for removal of the president by 25th Amendment or impeachment are growing louder by the hour. Resignations from members of the administration are piling up like unpaid bills in America’s struggling homes.
The immediate inciters - Trump, Trump, Jr. and Rudy (combat!) Giuliani - are being properly condemned, even by many Republicans. The breathtaking opportunism of Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley has been (temporarily) rejected.
All of this is too little too late. It is like calling on the bullpen in the top of the ninth inning when you’re behind 17-0. Or dialing 911 when the fire has consumed nine floors of a 10 story building. We’ve had a band of arsonists roaming the republic for years and it is only when cameras captured them pouring gasoline and lighting matches did the Elaine Chaos, Mitch McConnells, Lindsay Grahams and Betsy DeVoses declare, “Enough is enough!”
In this time of reckoning it is imperative that we look beyond these shiny objects. The Trumps, Cruz, Hawley, Giuliani and others who despoil the republic do so because we invited them. We should not be distracted by their assault on democracy. We should admit that they are the product of democracy. We can strip them of power through impeachment, indictment or moral indignation but, like poison ivy clipped at ground level, a new toxic crop will emerge because the roots run deep.
The thugs who overran the Capitol, and their crude counterparts across the country, are not the primary problem either. The Proud Boys, racists, and white nationalists have been in our neighborhoods and playing soldier in the woods for many decades. Trump and Trumpism just made it comfortable for them to come out and strut around with impunity. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center and others who track hate crimes and similar statistics, the Trump era has seen 15-20% increases in identifiable incidents, but the number of violent thugs remains a tiny slice of our population. The most generous estimate of the number of Proud Boys is about 5,000. There are 2.5 million Girl Scouts in America, just for perspective.
No, the problem is the other 74 million or so enablers of Trumpism, the vast majority of whom would not riot in the Capitol or join the Proud Boys. They are parents of many of those Girl Scouts. They are your neighbors, the lovely people who own the local coffee shop, your insurance agent, and the pleasant folks in the next pew. They too bemoan violence, denounce prejudice and bring muffins to the bake sale, blissfully denying that the Proud Boys and white vigilantes are their spawn. They too believe the election was rigged because that smart man Tucker Carlson said so and had proof.
This is an education blog, so I might hasten to the point.
The diverse stewpot of conservative Americana and the thugs that arise from the kettle like flatulent bubbles are heated by the same flames: a large and growing number of media sources that deceive and manipulate for immense profit: Fox News, OAN, Newsmax, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin and Parler, the unfiltered, ultra-right alternative to Facebook and Twitter. These sources of information are as polished and convincing as was the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite several generations ago. Except they lie for money.
It is this consortium of misinformation that captures the minds of people like Ashli Babbitt, the woman/Air Force veteran whose brain was so addled that she gave her life on a Capitol window sill for a cause crafted of tissue-thin propaganda, like the tale of a pizza shop where Hillary Clinton trafficked children.
For most of my life, political debates were fed by the same stream of facts. Now it’s nearly impossible to argue with a zealot on the right because they are armed with the “truth” - and often a weapon or two. As Kellyanne Conway said, they have alternative facts.
It is tempting to suggest a legislative remedy to counter the propaganda, but it is a First Amendment morass we ought not enter. Rush Limbaugh has as much right to opine as I do.
(It’s rather cosmic than my spellcheck produced “opium” when I typed “opine.”)
Progressive educators have always placed the intersection of school and society at the center of their mission. Preparing young folks to engage in our democratic processes should be the primary purpose that animates all education.
In that mission, America’s schools have miserably failed.
Our new Education Secretary, and every local administrator, should press for a comprehensive civics curriculum, requiring literacy in the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.
And we must prepare emerging adults who can sort wheat from chaff and tell the difference between shit and shinola.(a nod to older readers)
A few years ago my prescient 17 year-old (then) granddaughter won a Bernie Sanders essay contest among all Vermont students. Her essay was an eloquent call for a national curriculum in media literacy. As a teenager she was already aware of the potential dangers of citizens whose “truths” were gleaned from dubious sources dressed up in credible-looking fonts and graphics. Manipulative and deceptive nonsense is no longer identifiable by its amateurish production values. One must have highly honed critical capacities, and school is where the sharpening must begin.
This is also among the many reasons unaccountable charter schools, particularly religious schools funded by tax dollars, are anti-democratic. In classrooms where the Bible is inerrant, evolution is weak theory and Earth is only thousands of years old, it’s hard to suggest that Franklin Graham and Sean Hannity are not really telling the truth.
With heavy irony I suggest that the truth will set us free. If and only if we guide the rising generation to know it when they see it.