Fundamentalist evangelical Christianity functionally is no different than the Taliban of Afghanistan, and is no more Christian than the Taliban is Muslim. These are very sick people who have distorted a religion of compassion, into one of male dominance, fear, resentment, and hate, just as the Taliban has done in the Muslim world. They live in a dark world of willful ignorance, and self-righteous sadism. The article will horrify you. Still, I urge you to read it because this nasty christofascism is a major trend in the United States, and it is shaping the lives of tens of thousands of children in the coming generation.
Oliver Beall walks with his mother, Christina Beall, outside Round Hill Elementary School as Aimee Beall walks ahead. Credit: Matt McClain / The Washington Post
ROUND HILL, VIRGINIA — They said goodbye to Aimee outside her elementary school, watching nervously as she joined the other children streaming into a low brick building framed by the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Christina and Aaron Beall stood among many families resuming an emotional but familiar routine: the first day of full-time,in-person classes since public schools closed at the beginning of the pandemic.
But for the Bealls, that morning in late August 2021 carried a weight incomprehensible to the parents around them. Their 6-year-old daughter, wearing a sequined blue dress and a pink backpack that almost obscured her small body, hesitated as she reached the doors. Although Aaron had told her again and again how brave she was, he knew it would be years before she understood how much he meant it — understood that for her mother and father, the decision to send her to school was nothing […]
Andrew Lapin, Reporter - The Jerusalem Post (Israel)
Stephan:
I start each day by trying to find good news, not one offs, but trends fostering wellbeing. To be candid, there aren’t very many because most of the cultural trends in the United States are in decline. Instead, what I find our stories like this one centered on stupidity and willful ignorance. These education trends particularly alarm me, because they have an impact not just in the moment but for generations. Between the pseudo-Christian home schooling, and the christofascist gutting of public education and public libraries all of this is being set-up to assure indoctrination not education, and that condemns millions of children to inadequate training to prepare for what climate change is going to do.
Among the many books that conservative parents have recently asked their children’s schools to remove is a lushly illustrated version of the most famous Holocaust diary.
The graphic adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary, published in English in 2018, has found itself at the center of a growing number of controversies involving book removals from school libraries. A small number of passionate activists have pushed for the book to be removed from schools in Florida and Texas, calling it “pornography” and even “antisemitic.” Sometimes, they’ve succeeded.
The movement to police children’s literature — particularly graphic novels — on the basis of race, sex and gender has encompassed thousands of different titles, and it has grown to become a potent political force with potential reverberations for the 2024 presidential race. The official who has played one of the biggest roles in enabling parents to challenge school library books, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, is now running for president.
To defenders of the illustrated book — including the foundation created in Frank’s memory, historians and Jewish groups — the inclusion […]
Missouri has led the way in the control of women. Controlled by christofascists who are rigging the election system to assure they stay in power. Other Red states will follow and the difference between Red and Blue states will become ever more pronounced. The result will be an internal emigration out of the state, and a decline in the quality of medical care for women, as OB/GYN physicians move to Blue states. In the coming years we are going to see the decline of Red states to a point where they will become like two different countries.
Signage outside the Planned Parenthood Reproductive Health Services Center in St. Louis, Missouri Credit: Angela Weiss / Getty / TNS
Missouri’s political leaders have already reached into the personal medical decisions of women across the state, and have attempted to reach into the ballot process to prevent the public from reversing the state’s extremist abortion ban. Now they’re also reaching into Missourians’ very pockets, in a few different ways, using tax dollars to continue to push ideologically based anti-choice messages that polls show majorities of Missourians don’t want.
What exactly is the point of spending potentially more than $1 million in state funds over the next four years on a marketing campaign designed to convince women not to seek abortions, when that choice is currently almost entirely illegal in Missouri anyway? And what is the justification for spending millions more on tax credits to reimburse citizens for donations made to anti-abortion organizations that employ sometimes controversial methods?
Literally minutes after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, Missouri became the first state in […]
America’s healthcare is ranked as the worst amongst the developed nations of the world, and part of the reason for that ranking is the obscene cost of prescription drugs in the U.S.. And behind all of that is the corruption of our Congress. Biden, to his credit, although he is getting very little acknowledgement for his work, has been trying to block the greed of the pharmaceutical corporations. Now the dark money is pouring into the Congress to rent Republicans to thwart what Biden is trying to do. Here a major aspect of this story.
The Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America building facade in Washington, D..C. Credit: Bill Clark / CQ Roll Call
The U.S.’s largest lobbying group, the conservative U.S. Chamber of Commerce, has become the second prominent group to file a lawsuit to stop a plan for Medicare to be able to negotiate the prices for a handful of drugs, joining pharma giant Merck in alleging that the plan is unconstitutional.
The group announced in a statement on Friday that it is filing a lawsuit against Health and Human Services, the agency that administers Medicare, putting forth a dubious, Big Pharma-backed argument that allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices is tantamount to “price controls” — an argument that health experts have debunked. They say in their press release that allowing patients to access lower prices would “harm patients” and “limit access to medicine.”
The lawsuit argues that the plan, as put in place under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), violates the separation of powers. Similarly to Merck’s lawsuit, it also argues that the plan violates the First and Fifth […]
Elizabeth Urban, Staff Writer - The Messenger News
Stephan:
In both the U.K. and the U.S., as this report lays out, Right wing politics and the pandemic have devastated public education as teachers flee the profession. In the Red states, and particularly in rural far right districts where MAGAt fanatics seek to gut the libraries and complain about teachers it is getting harder each year for a child to get a decent education. Schools have been politicized more than they ever have in our history. Then add to that the obscene costs of a college education. The result? American is going to become in this generation even more poorly educated than is already the case. Now add to that the weaponization of disinformation, and you see how easily it is becoming to manipulate people with their fears, and resentments.
Credit: Nikada / Getty Images
A significant number of teachers are leaving the education field due to the trifecta of politics, challenging work environments, and the lingering effects of COVID-19. Both England and the U.S. have witnessed a surge in educators leaving the classroom.
The latest workforce survey from England’s Department of Education (DfE) revealed that 40,000 teachers resigned from state schools in 2022, alongside an additional 4,000 who retired. Meanwhile, in the United States, the departures surpassed typical rates with Washington experiencing its highest teacher resignation in 30 years. Maryland and Louisiana noted more exits than in the previous decade, while North Carolina reported a significant increase in mid-school-year departures, as per USA Today.
Educators and teachers’ unions in both the U.S. and England attribute this trend to politics. The contentious discourse around school policies, including curriculum content and COVID-19 restrictions, has reportedly added significant stress. Teachers advocating for enhanced school safety measures, such as masking, experienced backlash from local communities.
Politics also influenced the decision of Kimberly Biondi, a former English […]
