Feb 022023
 

The rise of the extreme right should have us all worried.

Am I being paranoid? Were those who warned about the rise of Hitler and the Nazis paranoid? Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean nobody’s out to get you. Not every conspiracy theory is bugnuttery. All conspiracy theories begin with facts, but a few remain in the territory of truth.

The Religious Right has been planning for decades to take over this country and pervert it into a theocracy. They are suppressing voters, dumbing down our education system, bleeding social programs white in order to feed the insatiable maw of Defense. They are increasingly injecting religion – specifically, evangelical Christianity – into government. While women struggle for better wages and reproductive rights, while POCs fight for economic and voting rights, while LGBTQ people battle for civil and human rights, the Religious Right seeks to squelch these movements, spreading vicious lies that anybody who is not a straight, white, Christian man or a submissive white woman is a tool of the Devil who seeks to upend this country and ram socialism (which they ignorantly equate with Communism) down everybody’s throat. Meanwhile, they seek to ram their twisted, narrow morality down everybody’s throat. Qui parle.

One look at Florida and you can see where the rest of this country could be headed. Governor DeSantis has not only banned books but also yanked Black studies from school curricula. Librarians are under threat for refusal to pull banned books from the shelves. How else will DeSantis attempt to squelch education and knowledge in his state? Welcome to Florida, please set your watch back 70 years.

I recently discovered a shocking article about a community of home-schoolers who are endeavoring to turn their kids into “wonderful little Nazis.”  I yi yi yi yi! They call Robert E. Lee a “grand role model for young, white men” and Martin Luther King Jr. “the antithesis of our civilization and our people.” That is how hideously twisted their minds are. People who harbor such attitudes would gleefully carry out another Kristallnacht and pass Nuremberg-style laws. Their victims will be numerous, and could easily include people just like you. Yep, you.

Fortunately, there is good news. Progressives and Leftists are rising up and fighting back. When news of overturning Roe v Wade was leaked, the number of women registering to vote spiked. The more liberal states are passing laws to counter the RR’s evil machinations. In the 2022 midterms, the “Red Wave” that right-wingers hoped and prayed for turned out to be a red ripple. Republicans gained only a slim margin in the House, and Democrats hung on to the Senate. Rafael Warnock held off Herschel Walker to keep Georgia’s Senate representation blue.

Even while we hope and work for the best, we need to prepare for the worst. Never, never, NEVER think a horror like Nazi Germany couldn’t happen here. We must accept that even our votes and efforts may not be enough to prevent the extreme right wack jobs from taking over. Ergo, we need to plan what to do Just In Case. Where will we go? Whom can we trust? How can we resist? (Ever notice that, in dystopian movies and novels, there is little if any mention of a domestic resistance movement? Did they forget the Maquis?) And if we have to flee, where will we go?

Let us counter the Religious Reich as much as we can, in every way we can.

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