23 | June | 2011 | Existential Ennui

Tags

abortion, American History, Atlantic Slave Trade, Clarence Thomas, David Barton, founding fathers, GOP, Michele Bachmann, right-wing Christianists, SCOTUS, Women's issues

It’s been apparent for some time that some of our states have been engaged in revising history to say what they feel more comfortable with. Spurred on by pseudo-historian David Barton, such Republicans as Michele Bachmann and Mike Huckabee have given new versions of our country’s beginnings that soften substantially the evils that we have faced from our past.

Bachmann has an entirely new version, based on Barton’s made up nonsense for instance, on slavery. We are now told that the Founding Fathers were intent on ending slavery and even that one of the impetuses for migration to this continent was to get away from British slavery practices. This shocks Britain no doubt, since they ended slavery decades before the US, and moreover faced American intransigence in their efforts to stop the movement of slaves across the Atlantic.

This would be bad enough, but of course it doesn’t end there. School districts across the south are revising their curricula to reflect a “whiter” and more religious orientation, whether it be history or science. This is perhaps where Barton and his religious firebrands do their worst damage–deeply infecting the next generation of Americans with a mindset that is incorrect. Colleges thus become more and more, correctors of misinformation rather than furthering the knowledge of their students.

The link today relates to the Atlantic Slave Trade. It revisits some older work that is still considered some fifty years later as being basically sound research. The review is carried on the link from History Today, and there is an internal link to the original abstract, published in 1958. It’s good to be reminded of the truth.

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For some time now, the rabid Right-wing Christianists, the ones who say “do as I say, not necessarily as I do,” have aimed their vitriol at Planned Parenthood. Screeching about fetuses and murder, these crazed nut cases have offered a trade–their votes to the GOP in return for a GOP assault on all things PPH.

Planned Parenthood, as most people know, does so very much more than abortions. It is often the only means of general women’s health in communities that are loaded with poor women. They screen for cancer, offer birth control, and in general provide free health care to low-income women who are in dire need. They counsel teens and help them avoid pregnancy.

Yet, state after state is denying funding to PPH in hopes of retaining the Christianists in the voting booth. And the toll is horrific. In all too many states, PPH is being forced to close their doors, and thus turn their backs on women and their health needs. Zander has a couple of excellent posts on the subject.

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Don’t expect much to ever come of this. The SCOTUS is one of the most insulated branches of government. It is definitely not self-governing in the sense that the Congress is (ethics investigations, censures, expulsions). Individual justices who are miles apart ideologically, go to extraordinary lengths to get along, since the work of the court is so intimate in its nature.

Abe Fortas was one of the few justices who was “forced” to leave the bench for his unethical relationships with those who gifted him. I’m not sure that we live in the same times today. The far right tends to glam onto any dark face that talks like them, as proof of their lack of bigotry, so they are likely to raise a loud defense today against the increasingly scandalous behavior of one Clarence Thomas.

Thomas has for years now been gifted and supported by those who ultimately find themselves before his court. And he votes accordingly. It remains to be seen whether he will even bother to recuse himself from cases in which he has financially benefited. The man remains one of the most successful grifters in the country.

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We consider Michele Bachmann and idiot, but she is not the same kind of idiot as Sarah. Sarah is both stupid in general and has no particular desire to learn anything. She is simply engaged in self-promotion. Not so Michele. Michele is a true believer in all the right-wing Christianist crap from being anti-gay to creationism, PPH to God whispering in her ear and leading her down the right path. This makes her willing to rely on the stupid (if wishes were reality) blabberings of Barton and others of his ilk. She is also a savvy politician, and absolutely loves the game and is willing to learn the basics of economics and domestic policy.

This all makes her dangerous. If you read nothing else today, don’t miss Matt Taibbi’s fine piece at Rolling Stone today. Her minions love her with the same crazed devotion as Sarah’s do, yet she is Politifact finds her statements the most untruthful of any politician. Beware. I beg you to read this. It is long and every paragraph is filled with so much insanity, that you will be chilled to the bone. This woman is fifty times more dangerous that Sarah could even contemplate.

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