So, Donald's at it again. He only know how to fuck one chicken, so he's going to keep fucking that chicken all the way through election night and likely afterwards.
"That chicken" is the endless culture wars that have fueled the rise of Fox/OANN/Breitbart's hegemony over the GOP agenda. So many people have expressed outrage that 40% of Americans can support a manifestly unfit blob of Adderall, flopsweat, foundation makeup and hairspray as president. If you think a presidential campaign should be a job interview with the American people, supporting Trump makes zero sense. Unemployment is high, the pandemic is raging, Trump is Putin's little puppet, our respect around the world has collapsed, racial anger rages through our streets, the West is on fire...I mean...yeah, it shouldn't be close.
What the "job interview" model misses is that the 40% who support Trump are not looking for a chief executive to manage the country's affairs; they are looking for a gladiator in the culture wars. They are looking for a war chief to lead a counterattack against all the terrible things liberals are doing to the country.
Trump's assault on Clio, the Muse of History, is part and parcel of his campaign strategy. The culture war is "that chicken." Now, I happen to know just a little bit about American history and the teaching thereof. The article mentions the AP US kerfuffle of a few years back. Conservatives freaked out because the "course framework" didn't mention people like Ben Franklin or James Madison, but mentioned people like Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. DuBois. The problem was that they never understood the framework to begin with and what is was intended to do. You can't not teach Franklin and Madison. You don't need to mention Teddy Roosevelt in the framework, because you simply cannot find a textbook that omits him. Instead, the framework was designed to encourage teachers to look past the "usual suspects."
Since the explosion of pent up anger in the spring, we have looked hard at how we teach US History. A few years ago, we ditched our primary source reader to include more BIPOC voices. Most of the documents are still by white men, because - again - you can't really help it in a survey course. You need to read Federalist 10 and 51. You need to read Lincoln's Second Inaugural. But you also need to read a Cherokee chief describing Indian Removal, and Douglass asking, "What to the slave is the Fourth of July?"
For the cultural warriors, any criticism of America - which means anything that doesn't build America up to be a perfect, flawless country - is an attack on America. This simplistic, false and manichean worldview represents the extension of "conservative" thinking that is visible in every other realm. "Tax cuts are always good and pay for themselves and tax increases destroy growth." "Abortion is bad, but so is sex education, because sex outside of marriage is bad." Basically, the attempt is to destroy nuance, which is already under assault from the nature of online discourse.
If you read this essay by the excellent Adam Serwer, it attempts to describe the very real historical argument over the 1619 project. He does an exceptional job of unpacking all sides arguments, those who think the foundational essay was deeply flawed and wrote a letter saying so, those who think it was somewhat flawed and so wouldn't sign the letter and those who think it was spot on. For the record, I disagree with Hannah-Jones' assertion that the Revolution was mostly about preserving slavery. The rest of the essay seemed spot on, though. The argument about the role that slavery played in the Revolution is a good one and historians argue about that stuff all the time.
The point of Trump and the GOP's culture wars is to destroy the ability to see the world in a nuanced way. Because Trump and the GOP's legislative agenda is fairly toxic and their ability to manage the federal government effectively is non-existent, they need to keep their supporters in a frothy lather over things like teaching kids that slavery was bad and we should acknowledge that slavery was bad. The idea that America can be a great country while simultaneously being a deeply flawed country is a critical insight if you want to improve the country. The reality is that the GOP does NOT want to improve the country. They like massive inequality, undemocratic politics and racial injustice, because it ratifies their claims to support the "real America" of white people without a college degree and - incongruously - hedge fund billionaires.
Ever since 2000, it has been striking how almost every issue polls to the Democrat's advantage. Raise the minimum wage? Check. Combat pollution and climate change? Yes, please. Increase access to health care? That would be great, thanks. Raise taxes on the rich? About damned time. Yet, Republicans are able to squeeze out narrow wins by appealing to cultural resentments of white people. Those resentments run deeper than their interests. They will vote to deny themselves health insurance if it means a black person doesn't get it, too.
In 2016, Trump famously said, "I love the poorly educated." No doubt. He and the rest of the Republican party want to make that include everyone.
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