from the King-Bumblefuck-the-Orange dept
When schools finally re-open to everyone and COVID is behind us (est. 2025), students will possibly have the chance to join their friends in some good old-fashioned American reeducation. God bless this autocracy.
For all of his socialism bashing, Donald Trump and his admin staff sure seem to want to align the United States with the great Communist dictatorships of the past and present. Trump welcomed America to join him in the erection of a police state and just kept going from there. Cops received even more presidential coddling and the Administration decided the state of free speech might improve if the federal government directly meddled with social media moderation.
Then there's the erection of walls and the increase in inland Checkpoint Charlies as the result of the president's focus on brown people from foreign lands. Protests against police brutality have been met with Gestapo tactics designed to limit the effect of people uniting against fascism. And the President's hatred of a free press, "closed" defamation laws, and non-sycophants has been noted repeatedly.
The latest Presidential proclamation is as problematic as his call for flag burning prosecutions. In reaction to people sensibly suggesting a lot of this country's "greatness" is built on the backs of slave labor and racist policies, President Trump has developed a plan for patriotic indoctrination of the nation's students. A new Executive Order mandates the formation of a committee to push for more jingoism in our schools. Better red-white-and-blue than dead, indeed.
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in order to better enable a rising generation to understand the history and principles of the founding of the United States in 1776, and, through this, form a more perfect Union, it is hereby ordered as follows:
Here's some of the "as follows," written in the way so few Executive Orders have historically been written. Taking a cue from stunt lawyer Larry Klayman's legal complaints, the Order lays on the overheated rhetoric early and often.
The American founding envisioned a political order in harmony with the design of “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” seeing the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as embodied in and sanctioned by natural law and its traditions.
[...]
[I]n recent years, a series of polemics grounded in poor scholarship has vilified our Founders and our founding. Despite the virtues and accomplishments of this Nation, many students are now taught in school to hate their own country, and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes, but rather villains. This radicalized view of American history lacks perspective, obscures virtues, twists motives, ignores or distorts facts, and magnifies flaws, resulting in the truth being concealed and history disfigured. Failing to identify, challenge, and correct this distorted perspective could fray and ultimately erase the bonds that knit our country and culture together.
This would be laughable if it weren't delivered by a sitting President. I mean, it's still pretty laughable but there's considerable executive power behind it.
The "bonds that knit this country together" are white people and their preferred religions/traditions, as far as I can tell. Any suggestion founding fathers and other political figures may have embraced racism and/or trafficked in the slave trade is apparently going to be excised in favor of a more flag-humping narrative. Also presumably on the chopping block is the history of our nation's law enforcement agencies, which were instrumental in ensuring the slave trade went uninterrupted and openly engaged in hostile acts against blacks and other minorities once slavery was abolished. The latter practice continues to this day.
Without whitewashing the past, the nation's future is in jeopardy, the President argues.
A loss of national confidence in these principles would place rising generations in jeopardy of a crippling self-doubt that could cause them to abandon faith in the common story that binds us to one another across our differences. Without our common faith in the equal right of every individual American to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, authoritarian visions of government and society could become increasingly alluring alternatives to self-government based on the consent of the people. Thus it is necessary to provide America’s young people access to what is genuinely inspiring and unifying in our history, as well as to the lessons imparted by the American experience of overcoming great national challenges. This is what makes possible the informed and honest patriotism that is essential for a successful republic.
I've got news for Trump. A whole lot of America has already "abandoned faith" in the "common story," primarily because the story isn't "common." It doesn't cross race lines and it's never been available to everyone. The idea that America is a meritocracy is ridiculous. Donald Trump is a prime example. He's a rich white man whose fortune was derived from the rich white man who raised him and gave him his fortune. It's been buttressed by favorable bankruptcy laws and a bank that now regrets propping up the finances of the most powerful man in the world.
America does offer more freedom than most countries, but the percentage of people bootstrapping themselves into financial security is a much, much smaller percentage than those who have never had to worry about financial security and have done little more than parlay their considerable riches into immense amounts of personal wealth that generally benefits no one but themselves. Any suggestion the government might want to spend less money on unwinnable wars (Terror, Drugs, etc.) and more on social services that might prevent millions of struggling Americans from going under is treated with disdain usually reserved for the long-dead Soviet Union. Meanwhile, banks run by billionaires are bailed out, even as the mortgage holders they fucked into insolvency are ignored.
Then there's this set of sentences, which sure as fuck sounds like some Maoist treacle.
Vigorous participation in local government has always been America’s laboratory of liberty and a key to what makes us exceptional. The best way to preserve the story of America’s founding principles is to live it in action by local communities reasserting control of how children receive patriotic education in their schools.
The reeducation will continue until the President's morale improves.
To that end, a bunch of current and former government officials from a number of federal agencies are being ordered to do a bunch of committee stuff and report to the President within one (1) year on how to better bathe the nation's children in red, white, and blue. Someone has to locate the "core principles" of this country's founding and connect them to the "blessings of liberty" and put all of that into a three-ring binder that had better say something about "forming a more perfect Union" if the committee members know what's good for them.
The committee also needs to plan a really kick-ass semiquicentennial celebration for the USofA. Given the President's predilection for shows of power by foreign authoritarians, this will presumably include a parade of military equipment and personnel. There are also some latent threats about funding, suggesting schools with less-than-patriotic curriculum will get the federal shaft for refusing to participate in this embarrassing charade.
This is a lousy cover of Lee Greenwood's inescapable hit d/b/a an Executive Order. This is a call for mandatory patriotism targeting the most impressionable minds in our population. This is dangerous stuff and there's no adult in the (Oval) room willing to call bullshit on Trump's masturbatory fantasies. Hopefully this will all be behind us by the end of January 2021. But if Trump retains power, we're in for a lot more flag-waving at order-point. And things like this ironically make it that much harder to be proud to be an American.
Filed Under: donald trump, executive order, history, indoctrination, patriotism, propaganda, schools
