By Calvin Hill
It is easy for comedian Bill Maher, columnist Peggy Noonan in her Wall St. Journal op-ed, and a series of talking heads on MORNING JOE to amplify the progress made in America over the course of history while vilifying those voters who claim that things are as bad as ever and call it “progressophobia.” Most older voters, and those better educated, would agree with them without debasing those who are younger and angrier about seeing things they have lived with their entire lives, and the improvements in their more recent lives being rolled back in front of their eyes.
As a major free speech advocate, Maher should understand that for Americans who have seen black quarterbacks in the NFL their whole life, what happened to Colin Kaepernick is the equivalent of a southern black losing his job simply because he registered to vote. For all of Maher’s din over “cancel culture,” it was Donald Trump, the Republican Party, and Fox News primetime hosts that began that phenomenon by degrading free speech into a lack of patriotism. For tens of millions of Americans who witnessed the Obamas in apian effigy and other derogatory depictions at numerous Tea Party rallies, the desegregation of water fountains is hardly the point. And just because the educational system has done a poor job of teaching Americans about the fate of Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman, the Tulsa Race Massacre, (there were many others), or that Ida B. Wells was run out of Tennessee for writing and advocating for anti-lynching legislation, seeing George Floyd murdered, Walter Scott shot in the back, or 12 hour voting lines restricted to black precincts does not make them progressophobic as much as angry.
One of the progressive advancements Maher correctly points out are those among the LGBTQ community that have become accepted. However, their return to being discriminated against, once again, by the courts, in the name of religion, should not be dismissed – quite shocking when considering Maher’s occasional screeds during his many diatribes concerning followers of the Almighty.
Legitimate concerns about the state of the union should not be downplayed or denigrated as progressophobia simply because white publications no longer advertise the public lynching of an “uppity nigra.” We recently saw the highest turnout in a US Presidential election, ever. We have seen women rise to their Congressional Party leadership. We have seen women run for Vice President – and now one has succeeded. After all of the progress and advancements stated in Maher’s commentary and heralded in Noonan’s op-ed and the talking head scrutiny on MORNING JOE, all of them are worried that we are looking at the end of democracy as we have known it. Americans have had a good run, for some, and a lot more after 1965. Yet the concern that it could end is at a fever pitch. Are Maher, et.al. suffering from democraphobia?
Eight years of a Barack Obama presidency awakened a pre-progress white blacklash that brought about four years of damage and cruelty to children, a blatant disregard of science, even by Republican doctors in the US Senate, appeasement of international enemies, a Hitlerian elevation of lies and divisiveness, and media entities willing to fill their coffers by doing their best interpretations of Joseph Goebbels to advance those lies.
For all of the talking heads and hosts who are seriously concerned that this democracy could end, as we know it, in 2 to 4 years, progressophobia is not your, or our, problem. And it is as ill advised a slogan as ‘defund the police.’ The bigger problem is seeing educated people following a man so stupid his sister said she had to do his homework. When history maven, Newt Gingrich, who once touted the same health plan as Hillary Clinton and once claimed we should even consider giving public school children laptops to help prepare them for a 21st century education, now advocates for a man too stupid to know that the 7th POTUS was dead before the Civil War, he is a bigger problem. When the Republican Party leader didn’t know that Frederick Douglass was an abolitionist, or that he died over 120 years ago, and also lauds Communist and authoritarian dictators while eschewing democratic allies, it is a much bigger problem than opposing and belittling the speech of Americans who don’t know that Bill Russell could not stay in the same hotel as Bob Cousy.
Democrats have been constantly bad at narrative. Why they continue to hire the same consultants, managers and spokespersons instead of people that can fashion a simple slogan that does not require dozens of explanations from dozens of people is absolutely frustrating. A poor slogan has Ted Cruz scaring Americans that teaching children about all of America’s history is a Marxist ideology. That the Republicans are using this messaging as their response to ‘critical race theory’ is a sign that they are united in their opposition to teaching truths, or that the wholesale ignorance of Donald Trump has fatefully infected the GOP. Sen. Cruz should be made to explain any validity to his charge of Marxism in the teaching of America’s history regarding race. Bill Maher, Peggy Noonan and the cast of MORNING JOE must demand that the son of a Cuban parent explain how a more complete education of American history is the same as life under Fidel Castro. I would posit that Critical Republican Theology is bending toward Communism as they race to be a one party vote counting authority.
The safety and security of our elections, while essential to our democracy, is not our only concern. We had a safe and secure election, and because of a lie by a man of ignorance, that’s about to change. Over 600,000 people have died in this country because of another series of lies by this man. And, apparently, they forgot to child-proof the White House for Mr. Trump because his inane solution to stem the tide of a viral pandemic involved ingesting substances clearly marked NOT TO BE TAKEN INTERNALLY.
The nation’s Capitol was overrun by people who believe that Jewish space lasers were responsible for California wildfires, Hollywood actors and Democratic leaders murder children and drink their blood, and that their whiteness, and the Second Amendment, gives them the sovereignty to act on those beliefs sans evidence.
It is folly to insist that young people with a less than stellar education on American History will aid the downfall of the American experiment. It is by design that even decently educated people didn’t know about Tulsa, Rosewood, etc. So, it is not so-called progressophobia that will be the end of this democracy – just ask Liz Cheney. Better yet, ask Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and the FBI agents who saved her life.
The Op-Ed Alternative 