How to deck a Neoliberal:
Regarding comments by Ta-Nehisi Coates in defense of the journalist denied university tenure for her work on The 1619 Project…from federal levels as noted with Trump’s executive order for a competing 1776 commission, to state levels like ongoing efforts by the Texan government of many years to literally rewrite history books, what’s proposed by the rightwing version of cancel culture in education means the 1619 project is not even up for debate, leaving it to students themselves to later willfully seek out rebuttals to the foundation stones they were given. Implying they should leave school without a full education, showing the evolutionary reticence of political party leaders especially and fantasists generally.
I’ve theorized before how news media should be culturally treated as a continuous education for adults, even made answerable to the US Department of Education, and with rarely well-intentioned voices urging both sides of a given issue be addressed by commercial media and then angrily voicing concern when anything approaching that actually happens, then schools as well should discuss matters like this rather than not address them at all or only promoting one side to a given story. Right or left, media and education must not at all be about being confronted exclusively with what captured audiences already know or with what they feel comfortable with, or else they’d learn nothing outside their limited personal experiences of the world. It cannot be the function of governance to either promote or dissuade any ideas, because prohibiting speech or mandating approval of speech is censorship either way. Free speech cannot guarantee or deny audiences and it cannot guarantee acceptance or denial of said speech, as a free society means each and everyone must have the power to choose for themselves.
All that said, Coates exploited his own journalism credentials from retreading the steps of Dr. Cornel West for unbeknownst millennials, to pursue his dream of writing comic books, specifically Captain America and the Black Panther, with the work accomplished for a Caucasian editor in chief who notoriously faked an Asian-American identity for himself over years to score his own writing jobs. Coates is currently contracted to write a new Superman movie, with the focus on a black version of the character as created by Grant Morrison, a white man, when the late black writer and editor Dwayne McDuffie had a much less stereotypical Icon right there in the same corporate IP years prior. One not simply cashing in on a President’s popularity but which explored the kind of world where a black superman might exist. Coates may understand the history of the 1619 Project contested bits and all, but he would seem to be actively working against utilizing lessons learned from that knowledge in practice. If principles must be so readily dropped just for playing make-believe, all the more cause to retain them.
How to deck a Neocon:
The reactionary John Ziegler, presumably playing the Trent Reznor line “I do not want this” on repeat in his background, offers readers 10 questions all amounting to his crippling fear of responsibility, questions which have been thoroughly addressed away from the Fox news ticker, thus conveying his disdain for research. No matter how much the most vocal patriots wish it were so, endangering fellow Americans is actually not a civil or basic human right. Being legally prevented from impairing the equal rights of others to life, liberty and pursuits of happiness is not itself an infringement of any established inalienable right, because nobody’s fragile ego or personal comfort zone or bias or fetish or quirk or whim is more valuable than human life. Should your very own life, liberty and pursuits of happiness depend fundamentally on lessening or obliterating those same rights for others, you are a codependent, a sadomasochist, a heliocentric preteen and a far cry away from the self-sacrifice which counters the 7 deadly sins that Christians used to preach about. Before finding themselves willing and able to 180 and embrace for the chance to get Prosperity Indoctrinated, in service not to the country or to any greater truth, to no legal or moral code, but to the mere ego of selfish desire.
Pandemic masks do not guarantee immunity, but they do help. Washing your hands does not guarantee immunity, but it helps. There’s plenty of reasons to avoid crowds even without epidemics but it also helps. Doing all of these things in conjunction makes one far less likely to contract it than indulgences like going to a Trump rally clogged with hundreds of bare-faced ego-centrists. And the pandemic persists in this country because *so many* made selfish exceptions for themselves in contrast to actual quarantining, as though mild inconveniences were simply too much to ask for the well-being and continued livelihoods of others. Your favorite sporting event was likely unsafe explicitly because you all held that idiocy in common. Entertainment itself is a privilege rather than life-saving, and contrary to American mythology, absolutely nothing about the service industry is essential. Even wolves are capable of protecting their food supply without servicing the excesses inherent to capitalism.
His final about wearing masks after vaccination- you can be masked and vaccinated, but a contaminated gas-pump or ATM buttons means you can bring the goodies to work or school or church or home nonetheless. People can be carriers without showing symptoms themselves. Those who survive it can have side-effects lasting months or longer, and when immunity is not guaranteed for everyone as we don’t all make the same levels of antibodies, even surviving it can allow them to catch it all over again, because antibodies we do manifest are not eternal and don’t fight all the growing mutated strains with the same tenacity. It’s unreal circumstances, but the lazy Zieglers of the world are not helping anybody by maniacally insisting there must be a magical on/off switch to every issue or every small step for mankind in the right direction is all suspect and worthless, as opposed to the reality of this requiring years of perseverance and steadfast mindfulness. The human dilemma is a lifetime of worry. And if scruples can be so easily neglected simply for indulging the proliferation of make-believe, all the more reason to never abandon them.