Reading for Treasure: Consider These Articles and VOTE!

Reading for Treasure is my list of articles that are worth your attention. Click here for an introduction!

Your vote is critically important. The polls are probably wrong. Here are some articles to think about as we move toward the November elections. I present them without introduction or commentary: 

Mother Jones (Video): “If Republicans Retake Congress in November, Here's What Their Agenda Will Look Like” 

NewsOne: “2022 Midterm Elections: Filibuster, Senate Control And The Importance Of Black Voters” 

Reuters: “Pro-Trump conspiracy theorists hound election officials out of office”

Financial Times: “Ukrainian officials ‘shocked’ as Republicans threaten tougher line on aid” 

The Guardian: “Republicans aim to pass national ‘don’t say gay’ law”

The Bulwark: “Attack Ads Are Darkening the Skin Tone of Black Candidates”

Atlantic:  “We need to take away children” 

New York Times: “Voters See Democracy at Risk, but Saving It Isn’t Priority” 

Wired: “The US Needs to Recognize Intimate Privacy as a Civil Right” 

The Washington Post: “Trump charged Secret Service ‘exorbitant’ rates at his hotels, records show”

CNN: “What could happen if an election denier is running elections” 

NBC: “Johnson's campaign is paying the law firm of a Trump attorney allegedly connected to Jan. 6 fake elector plot”

NPR: “Borrowers who were cut out of student loan relief describe 'a gut punch'”

CNN: “'I'm my own man': Colorado Republican Senate nominee fires back at Trump” 

Scientific American: “U.S. Lost 26 Years Worth of Progress on Life Expectancy” 

I am currently reading Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach by Kelly Robson

The Kind of Person You Are!

You are a good person. You are a person of integrity and strong beliefs. You are a person who is thoughtful and emotionally aware. Sometimes, you get angry. Sometimes, you are disappointed and feel like this country is heading down the wrong path. 

You are not racist, sexist, or any of those things. You work hard to be fair and keep an open mind. You admit that you sometimes judge people, but that is a normal human response. What counts is how you judge - not based on skin color or wealth or religion or any of those things, but on how people function as human beings. 

While you are subject to the whims and impulses that flesh is heir to, you consider yourself logical. You may not be Mr. Spock, but you are reasonable and rational. You consider a situation carefully and look closely at the details, facts, and history before rendering an opinion. 

You are not afraid to admit when you are wrong or to change your point of view when you learn new things. Like many of us, you dislike changing your opinion, but you see it as a sign of growth. 

You see disagreement as a way to discover more about other people and enhance your understanding of them and the world. Such conversations are opportunities to deepen both the relationships and your own perceptions. 

Fairness and consistency are critical. While there are rules that are wrong, for the most part, rules should be obeyed and those who do not obey them should face consequences. Although there are people who feel like they are so special that they should have the right to walk over everyone and do whatever they want, rules should apply to everyone the same way. You have worked hard to be an evenhanded person when dispensing this kind of justice and, although sometimes begrudgingly, accepted it when it was your turn to receive it. 

The only way any of us moves forward is to help one another. You believe in charity, giving, and being your brothers’ and sisters’ helper. People have reached out to you when you needed it and you do your best to pay that forward. 

You stand by your promises. You do what you say you are going to do. You have little respect for those who talk a lot and do very little. You believe that there are obligations that we must fulfill, whether it is to our family, community, nation, or the world at large. Sometimes, you have had to remind people that everything is not just about them! 

Your sense of yourself is not bound up in any one particular thing. You have strong philosophical beliefs, but you are more than that. Your family connections are very important, but that is not all there is to you. You are complex. 

You do not respect people who take advantage of the weak, old, or vulnerable. You will not be scared into decisions or let fear drive your choices. You do not like cheaters, spoiled sports, or bullies. Those who work hard should reap the fruits of their labor while the lazy, entitled, and selfish should not be allowed to profit from others’ efforts. 

You work hard to be honest with yourself. Sometimes, you excuse bad behavior of those you like or are critical of good acts of those you find objectionable, but even as you do this, you realize it is not consistent with how you see yourself. You would not want to be judged that way. 

You are practical. You rarely engage in flights of fancy, except perhaps as a mental exercise or an occasional lark. You believe that the simplest and most straightforward explanations are usually correct and when people have to twist themselves into pretzels to justify or explain something, you are suspicious. 

Sometimes you have trouble trusting people. You want to believe that people are naturally good, but that doesn’t fit with all you have experienced. You agree that most people want to be good, but don’t always make good choices for a variety of reasons. You can forgive some of them, sometimes. Forgiving is one thing, but it doesn’t mean that you allow yourself to be duped or conned. 

When you were younger, you would sometimes say and do things to get the approval of your friends or authorities, even when you did not agree with them. You recognize that this is also a normal and human thing to do, but as an adult, you do not conform with the majority when it is not authentic. You are willing to champion an unpopular view when you believe in it and you resist yielding to social pressure.

You would make a good judge. You weigh facts before making decisions. You are slow to anger. You try to see things from the other person’s point of view. The world is not just good and bad, near and far, rich and poor, but is far more complicated. 

When your heroes and leaders reveal their feet of clay, you are disappointed, but not surprised.  You feel uplifted when they make things better, and like a disheartened parent, are saddened when they behave badly. But they, like all of us, should face the consequences of our choices. You strongly believe that no one is above that. No one has the right to get away with misdeeds. No one, you insist, is above the law. That would be unfair and would cause or society to collapse. 

Of course, there are people who think the rules do not apply to them. You have encountered these people too frequently. You pity them as much as dislike them. While it isn’t usually your job to remind them that they are human, too, you have taken perhaps too much pleasure in knocking some of them down a peg or two. 

You vote. You pay your taxes. You obey the laws. You go to the courthouse when you are called for jury duty. You are a good citizen. You believe that we all should support our communities. 

You are charitable. You give to the poor, sick, and those who have had bad luck. You hope you will never be on the other side of that, but you hope that, if you were ever in need, people would help you. 

You could never support a candidate for office who you knew to be cheating, lying, or hurting people. That would not be consistent with who you are. You would never give your backing to someone who was selfish, spoiled, or hateful.  You would not turn your back to all you are and all you hold dear to follow a seductive smooth-talking charlatan! You are not a sucker or a hypocrite! You wouldn’t be able to face yourself in the mirror if you did. 

Watch Out Parents: Big Conservative is Not Just Coming After Teachers and Librarians

We need to talk about how you are interacting with your children at home. What are you teaching them? How are you modeling well? Are you making the right choices - the best choices? Would your legislators and political leaders approve of how you are raising your children? Do you talk about CRT? Are you too accepting of gender non-conforming behavior or ideas? Would you allow your child to use they/them pronouns? If so, Big Conservative might knock on your door for this kind of thought crime. 

We hear about parents’ choice. That is the rationale for a slew of censorship across more than a dozen states. However, which parents? What choices? For the most part, these book-banning (and sometimes burning) movements are aligned with a far wrong wing political agenda. They do not reflect ALL parents’ choices, just a specific conservative religious and usually white one.  

So this isn’t just about parents having a say in what their kids read in school. This is about ideologues having control over your children’s educations. Teachers and librarians were the first to experience this intense scrutiny and vitriol, but this movement will not end with them. 

You may think, what I teach my children in my own home is not anyone’s business but my own – and you would be right as long as what you were doing was aligned with Big Conservative. But if it is not, your behavior might be labeled child abuse and you as a negligent parent. 

Several states banned children who identify as a gender other than the one assigned at birth from receiving any interventions. They criminalized the act of assisting these children from even exploring anything beyond their gender at birth – even if their parents did it! 

So if you are looking at teachers and librarians and thinking, just pick less controversial texts, just make your lessons about the subject area and not about social issues, know this: that same message will be tailored for parents who don’t agree with the censors and extremists. 

Let’s go one step further: How will these wrong wing censors know you are veering away from their prescribed curriculum? Your children will tell them. The idea that children would “turn in” their parents was common in totalitarian and fascist regimes. Whether it was the Hitler Youth, the Soviet Union’s Young Pioneers, or Communist Youth reading Mao’s Little Red Book, this technique has deep roots in authoritarian governments’ control of parenting. 

So as you are confronting those who don’t want their kids to “feel uncomfortable” in school because topics deal with parts of our past that are problematic, this is just the first battle in a larger war for who decides what your child learns – in and out of school. 

As with abortion, immigration, and elections, choice just means sticking with Big Conservative’s point of view; freedom means the right to express opinions that echo specific politicians in a specific party. They are not advocating for freedom and choice, they are creating vehicles to coerce and control – and their reach will not end at the schoolhouse – if we don’t stop it, it is going to ram through the door and enter your house!