Some thoughts.

I just have a few thoughts before I let you get back to you regularly scheduled life.

Remember when riht-wingnuts were trying to tell us all that climate change wasn't a thing and it's all a hoax?

"Record-breaking temperatures have soared well past 100 degrees across the Pacific Northwest, where the area is trapped beneath a blistering "heat dome."

In a region where average temperatures are closer to the 70s this time of year, houses can be seen with blacked-out windows covered with blankets to help with the heat. The area's normally mild summers mean many households don't have air conditioning."

The historic heatwave is bringing with it fears about what could follow over the rest of this summer. "

It's not only the Northwest, the entire country is gripped in a serious heatwave. It's hot as hell (no pun intended) in damn near every state in America right now, and we're still in June. 

Isn't it funny how republicans are outraged about Gwen Berry, but were totally cool with the January 6th insurrectionists? 

"Sen. Tom Cotton is calling for Olympic hammer thrower Gwen Berry to be removed from the Olympic roster for turning her back on the U.S. flag during the national anthem over the weekend.

“I don’t think it’s too much, when athletes are competing to wear the Stars and Stripes, to compete under the Stars and Stripes in the Olympics, for them to simply honor that flag and our anthem on the medal stand,” the Arkansas Republican and former Army infantry officer told Fox News. “If Ms. Berry is so embarrassed by America, then there’s no reason she needs to compete for our country. She should be removed from the Olympic team.” 

These are the same folks who were down with MAGA rioters beating police officers with the American flag, and storming the capitol of the United States. The former guy's supporters are threatening to start a civil war and this clown is worried about an Olympic hammer thrower exercising her Constitutional right. 

Finally, there is a new imaginary threat to America, and it's called critical race theory. It's funny, because I'm pretty sure that ninety percent of the people crying a river about it have no idea what it is. It's just the latest tool in the right- wing arsenal to create a wedge between the American people and throw red meat to their base. And, as it turns out,  this isn't new. 

"By Talia Lavin, MSNBC Opinion Columnist

In the mid-1960s, in Orange County, California, a consortium of right-wing groups went to war against a textbook. Their ranks included concerned parents, right-wing members of educational societies, and members of the John Birch Society, a far-right extremist group that had risen in prominence by fearmongering about an internal Communist threat in the United States. The textbook in question — "Land of the Free: A History of the United States" — was the work of three progressive historians in response to a 1963 call from the Congress of Racial Equality’s Berkeley chapter to teach more inclusive history in elementary schools. It was a time when the Civil War was almost exclusively taught as a “states' rights” issue, a framing that elided or whitewashed the realities of slavery.

According to historian Elaine Lewinnek, who memorialized the controversy in a 2015 Pacific Historical Review article, "Land of the Free" sought to integrate the struggles and triumphs of minorities throughout U.S. history. Critically, it opened with an admission that the United States had not lived up to its purported ideals from the very beginning, excluding Black people, Native Americans and women from the franchise, and from representation in office for the vast majority of its existence.

Once the book became a mandatory part of the California state public school curriculum, the backlash from right-wing groups was swift and fierce. One John Birch society representative told The New York Times that the book would give white schoolchildren “a guilt complex.” Hundreds of parents aired their grievances to California’s educational authorities, Lewinnek found, protesting at school board meetings. They denounced the book for “stirring up past injustices,” “overrepresenting” Black contributions to American history, and being “unpatriotic” and “communist.” A shadowy extremist group funded a filmstrip attacking the textbook’s lead author, and called their work Education or Indoctrination?

Fifty-four years later, that exact title would be reflected in a headline for the right-wing website The Daily Signal: “Education or Indoctrination? ‘Anti-Racist’ Teaching Sweeps K-12 Schools Targeting ‘Whiteness,'” the site blared in December of 2020." [Link]

Whenever you tell the truth about American history you risk pissing off some folks who would like us to forget the ugly side of it. It's not un-American to tell the truth. It's un-American to run away from it and pretend that aspects of our history that we don't like didn't happen.  

That's all folks.