A Reminder For Liberals To Enjoy The 4th Of July
And some thoughts about the ongoing Critical Race Theory controversies!
Have a great 4th of July tomorrow!
There’s a lot of vitriol in our culture and society, but take a moment to reflect on how America is still a great nation to be proud of, and a nation of which to feel accomplished serving as contemporary stewards!
One thing that’s unfortunate about our current culture war battles is how reflexively some conservatives can argue that America has been perfect since the Civil Rights era (untrue), and that everyone who ever critiques our society or suggests there are real lingering effects of systemic racism and casual bigotry are communist, America-apologizing traitors… and how reflexively some liberals can argue that America is the worst perpetrator of injustice ever (untrue), and any display of patriotism is intrinsically an act of white privilege or historical erasure.
It’s terrible politics and branding for Democrats to let Republicans grab a wildly undeserved monopoly on civic pride, and there is absolutely no good reason to let Republicans culturally appropriate the US flag for their own narrow-minded, ethno-nationalist ideas of whatever the f*** they think “again” means in their MAGA slogan.
Fittingly, the past couple weeks’ controversy centered on the emergence of Critical Race Theory (CRT), and it’s quickly becoming the #1 Republican political wedge issue. Say what you will about America’s moral progress, social justice warriors should take comfort in how abstract and scholastic conservatives’ newest cultural crisis is. Past decade’s race-baiting wedge issues included integration of the military, interracial marriage, desegregating schools, bussing, housing reforms, etc., which are, of course, much more immediately and physically oppressive than high-brow intellectual debates on now dismantling subconscious biases in our civic institutions.
I actually had a little Twitter spat with one of the guys behind the BabylonBee satire site this week, who was describing CRT, I thought hyperbolically, as having an endgame of a full on communist revolution, and I disagreed, asking rhetorically, “Is it really a wild idea to study and have conversations about how descendants of slaves who were persecuted for decades for having any modicum of professional success and then red-lined in over-policed communities white-flighted into economic/political dead zones now have societal problems that exist even if they're not being lynched anymore?”
That’s basically the impression I get of CRT’s intent, but, of course, my standpoint awareness is that of a white person who doesn’t feel personally attacked by nuanced discussion of racial discrimination and resentments.
I do think this tendency of conservatives calling everything they don’t like or don’t understand “communism” is like a new Godwin’s Law, the famous Internet adage positing that, the longer online discussions go on, the more likely it is that one debater will be compared to Adolph Hitler or Nazis.
So, if you would allow me a bit of fun, eponymous indulgence, I’d like to coin MacIntyre’s Law, an adage asserting that as online discussion grows more complex and nuanced, the probability that a conservative will claim the opposing view is “communist” approaches 100%.
It is interesting to note how excessive conservatives’ fear of CRT has grown, considering it’s literally taught nowhere in America outside a few elective classes in a few academic programs in an even smaller number of universities. The whole reason CRT got started as an academic area of study to begin with was precisely because universities have a minimal number of POC professors, and do not adequately examine the role that race plays in our society, if universities examine it at all. I can’t help but notice that at every school board meeting protest we are seeing featured on the news, the school board in question responds emphatically and unambiguously that CRT is NOT taught at their school and they have no plans to begin discussing if it should be.
Speaking of the partisan political appeal for conservatives, however, it’s a little suspicious how planned and funded these protests are, with the protesters all arriving with high-quality signs featuring uniform slogans… There’s no doubt Republicans are salivating at the opportunity to blow up this CRT controversy into a Tea Party 2.0 ahead of the 2022 midterms, and big GOP donors are getting involved with funding to brainwash their less informed voters to further fear and hate Democrats for being “radial socialists” than they already do so that Republicans win back the Congress to pass the Republican agenda to… cut taxes on rich people.
In response, Democrats need to be careful about their messaging on CRT, and not allow themselves to get bludgeoned by the GOP and conservative media’s fake outrage machine. It will be easy for Democrats to allow themselves to get cornered into having to defend everything the most outrageous CRT iconoclasts say, and get deep into the weeds on the topic that 3-minute cable news interviews make impossible to adequately discuss, and get accused of hating white people or supporting neo-Marxism by Republicans who are opportunistically unwilling to engage in overdue debates about such complex racial issues.
To be clear, there are a relatively few people espousing CRT theories trying to make academic careers out of it, and furiously writing and publishing books with increasingly absurd claims that everything in life, no matter how mundane, is somehow indicative and expressive of white privilege and racial oppression, and that turns their own ideals and theories into trollish, pedantic, unserious spamming for social media attention. It’s not helpful, but remember that the whole point of academia is to gather a cornucopia of big, new, wild ideas to debate and expand our perspective.
Democrats and Republicans alike can feel relieved that the debate is primarily on Twitter, and average voters haven’t heard of it. For all the neo-Marxism fear mongering Republicans do accusing Democrats of apocalyptic radicalism, it’s conspicuous that Joe Biden won the primary and is currently the president, in large part thanks to Black voters, who are, quite frankly, much more moderate and racially calm in politics than white people.
Furthermore, some CRT advocates do have some bad ideas. There is a tendency to demand that objectivity doesn’t exist, and that people’s opinions only matter according to their socio-economic demographics, and that basically makes good-faith debating and discussion impossible. Also, the idea of structural determinism often doesn’t reflect the commendable strides America has made in equality since slavery, Jim Crow, Civil Rights, and the incredible acceleration of very real social justice in recent years that has made last summer’s BLM protests, as one example of progress in societal consciousness, the biggest, most widely participated in civil rights demonstrations in US history. These are the topics that give conservatives their slippery slope white-slavery heebiejeebies, and conservatives do have some valid points about the inherently undemocratic exclusivity of these concepts.
In contrast, CRT's epistemic importance of narrative, standpoint awareness (as long as its non-exclusive), and intersectionality are GOOD ideas that help develop the cultural empathy that allows for real social understanding, forgiveness, and peace. You have to be pretty stupid and closed-minded to get offended and feel existentially or culturally offended when you’re asked merely to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. That’s about the most basic moral possible, one we are expected to learn as children. It’s also hard to deny that these conservative protesters holding signs accusing CRT of causing “the REAL racial resentment” are blatant historical echoes of past decades’ protesting conservatives holding signs accusing the desegregation of schools causing “the REAL racial resentment.”
Racist conservatives can’t protest Black kids’ existence in public schools anymore (and property tax-based funding and charter schools have helped re-segregate education), so now they’re protesting their kids having to learn about the existence of racism:
When will racist conservatives except the reality of Black inequality??
Anyway, thanks for following my train of thought, and I hope you have a great 4th of July tomorrow feeling happy to be an American. We have a great country, and there is so much in our history to be proud of, despite our problems and past sins. I recommend you relax tomorrow, and just think happy thoughts, because, in recent years’ culture war battles and hyper-partisanship, there is a tendency on the Left to ruin the fun of holidays and civic events by sourly reminding everyone all the ways in which our society is not perfect.
So get all your critical analysis, woke posturing, and America-apologizing out of the way today, and just chill tomorrow!
Some personal notes:
I got my book Satire In The Trump Years: The Best Of The Halfway Post on the shelf in two physical book stores in St. Louis! So if you happen to live in STL, and want to get the most politically absurd and funny book I’ve ever written while supporting local book stores, head to Subterranean Books or Left Bank Books!
I also got another non-political comedy piece published, this time by The Haven, which publishes on Medium. The premise is “Book Endings If They Were About Donald Trump,” and you can read it here!
Here’s a sneak peak, imagining if Donald Trump was the titular character of Sophie’s Choice:
Recounting to a novelist his Holocaust experiences, Trump reveals that the Nazis tried to make him pick between Don Jr. and Eric, but he called them “losers” and suggested the Nazis just send both to the showers. Then Trump explains he has no regrets, and would give himself an A+ for parenting.
Media Recommendations:
Al Franken’s podcast is usually pretty good with his insights into the Senate, and this week he had a good interview with the author George Packer on “how it got so bad in America, and how it could get slightly better.”
Packer describes how America is secretly made up of four separate nations: “The Rich Right-Wing Bastards, The Smug Liberal Elites, The Pissed-Off Not-so-Bright Tea Partiers, and The Woke Social Justice Police,” and offers a few suggestions on how we can coexist more peacefully.
I highly recommend the book Grant And Lee: A Study in Personality and Generalship, by J.F.C. Fuller. The author is an unbiased British military historian who combs through primary sources and battlefield reports to illustrate how the popular Southern myth of General Lee being the greatest general ever is really just a myth, and how General Grant really does not get the credit he deserves. It’s a great, quick plane or beach read for your summer vacation if you’re a fan of history.
Fuller’s most beautiful description of Grant: “Grant was an enigma, his story as great as Napoleon’s, as startling as Lenin’s, yet enigma he lived and died as one of those inscrutably simple men who from time to time appear in history, who manifest at some critical moment, and who being oblivious of their own greatness and desiring no renown, set fire to an epoch; not by spectacular volcano belchings, but like a grey ember which is red hot at the center.”
That’s a great quote!
Now time for a poem:
Dearborn
the dumb islamophobic moron
watched hours of videos online every week
of the dangers of muslim immigration
so he decided to take a trip to dearborn michigan
and see for himself the burgeoning caliphate
no doubt plotting his murder and his nation’s overthrow
so he drove and stopped at a middle eastern grocery
but was surprised to see the shelves in order
white customer regulars asking for the usual
and family employees diligently restocking.
hungry from the drive
he walked up to the deli line and ordered a sandwich
and watched to see if they’d spit in his veggies
but saw no sign of sabotage or other danger
and the cashier smiling at him in her hijab
handed him his sandwich
along with an unordered bag of chips
and when he looked at her confused
she told him it was on the house
and to pay for it forward for someone else
to brighten the day of another of god’s children
and to have a great day himself.
the dumb islamophobic moron thought to himself
what a case of bad luck
to walk into what must be the only non-terrorist
middle eastern grocery in all of michigan.
Thanks for your digital attention!
—Dash MacIntyre