“Today’s Republican Party finds well-educated people inconvenient.”

To be complete, they also find people who are not racists, misogynists, anti-Semites, poor, etc., inconvenient as well.

Fast forward to present day, since ACLU’s lawsuit against Dr Robert Karas and the Washington county jail, Karas has filed a motion to dismiss ACLU’s lawsuit against him.

Karas’s actions encapsulate not only the horrific history of the carceral system in the American south, but also the continued exploitation of vulnerable communities, including inmates of color.

As one inmate said receiving news about the ivermectin treatments, “I’m scared. If you were so willing to put something in my pills and give me a pill without my acknowledgement, you could do the same thing and be deceptive and put it in my juice, my food … I can’t trust any of the medical staff. I can’t trust any of the guards.”

Arkansas jail’s ivermectin experiments recall historical medical abuse of imprisoned minorities

Still, it is possible to trust that the parents in McMinn County are acting in what they believe is the best interest of their children, and also to recognize that these parents are being manipulated by toxic and dangerous political forces operating at the state and national levels. Here in Tennessee, book bans are just a small but highly visible part of a much larger effort to privatize public schools and turn them into conservative propaganda centers. This crusade is playing out in ways that transcend local school board decisions, and in fact are designed to wrest control away from them altogether.

This dovetails with what I’ve been saying for a while, ever since I read Diane Ravitch’s Left Back. Today’s Republican Party finds well-educated people inconvenient.

http://www.chris-winter.com/Erudition/Reviews/Learning/Ravitch_D/Left_Back.html

The author observes:

As Whitney Kimball Coe, director of National Programs at the Center for Rural Strategies, pointed out in The Daily Yonder, many people in McMinn County itself are outraged by their school board’s decision, and are trying to counter it with library donations and community discussions about antisemitism and even plans to run for the school board. And, as Ms. Coe points out, national news stories that paint all rural Tennesseans as illiterate antisemites don’t help those efforts.

“If you must write about us, at least give a damn about us,” she writes. “Outrage is the quick and easy response if you’re not committed to the sum of us; that is, if you’re only committed to signaling which side you’re on and don’t really care about communities outside your bubble.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/07/opinion/culture/maus-tennessee-book-bans.html

“Not one student has died in a mass reading but the right is attacking books instead of guns.”

Here in MI we have the state QOP folks pushing a bill to make schools put their curriculum online because “there’s currently no way to find out what’s being taught in schools”. That, with a candidate for some state seat telling voters that when they go to the polls they need to take there guns with them so there’s not another stolen election.

It’s impossible to see how someone could defend what’s become of the old republican party, but we know some low-lifes will try.

The used price of Michelle Obama: Political Icon has soared past the new price.

JFC, you have to wonder just how stupid the people who want those banned are — especially when you see the book summaries and the”reasons” the morons who want them banned give.