Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Thursday, July 6, 2023

The Minivan Taliban

 Woof, that's a good epithet.  Scott Lemieux looks at the "Moms for Liberty" which is a name that may break irony for good. These moralistic busybodies are what we mean when we say "white privilege." I'm not a huge fan of that phrasing, because I don't think it really moves people in ways that are positive. It works on people who already believe in it, but it doesn't convince those who need convincing, But boy howdy does it fit this Kavalcade of Klownish Karens. 

Like many Rightist groups, they like to coopt the language and organization of left wing protest groups, so they call themselves "parent's rights" group. However, their conception of "rights" is much the same as the Assembly of Religious Experts on the Supreme Court: my right to discriminate. 

What began as protests against masks in schools has morphed into protests against teaching accurate American history and - somewhat inexplicably - social emotional learning. I suppose if your kids are learning to be empathetic and kind, that precludes them from ever becoming Republicans. Sadly, in much the same way that the NRA gets undue credit for the GOP wave of 1994, the Moms for Bigotry are given undue credit for Glenn Youngkin and the 2021 off year election wavelet. They've been especially focused and successful at stacking school boards with lunatics.

The source article for Lemieux is more granular in its examination of this group. They are the poster child for Hofstadter's "Paranoid Style." This whackaloon, through-the-looking-glass take on America sees Marxists and Maoists behind every effort to create a fairer, more just society, or even just basic kindness. Needless to say, the Moms for Bigotry are all in for Trump and Trump's combative politics.

These are comfortable White women cosplaying as revolutionaries who trying to stop...revolutionaries. I don't know, it's all so depressingly stupid.

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