No More 'Good Guys'?

When we look at the world today, it is undeniable that the most powerful countries are led by evil men. Russia's Putin, Amerika's Trump and China's Xi  JinPing readily come to mind, as does Benjamin Netanyahu leading the nuclear State of Israel. And I think it would be to declare the obvious that none of the aforementioned care about their people, except as means to certain ends.

While we expect authoritarian rulers to see their people as fodder, I have never really had a sense until now of a specific war being waged against the people of the U.S. by its government. To be sure, almost all American governments have cruelly abused their poor, their disenfranchised, their minorities. And of course that demographic has always provided the bulk of fodder in all of Amerika's post-WW11 military misadventures. However, one could almost have believed the abuse was rooted in the American disdain for the downtrodden (see the American Dream) as well as its historically racist nature.

However, to me it now appears that a wider battle is being waged by Amerika against its general population,  a kind of social eugenics, in which a wide swath of a credulous population will be gradually eliminated, While it might seem a conspiratorial thought, there is evidence to support my odd thesis.

Consider, for example the changes at the National Institutes of Health, led by the unhinged Bobby Kennedy Jr. Unqualified ethically, morally, intellectually or temperamentally, Kennedy, with the tacit permission of Trump, is doing his damndest to undermine the health of Americans. Claiming he wants to make America healthy again, he has systematically cut all manner of research grants.

Between late February and early April 2025, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) executed an unprecedented wave of grant terminations, impacting a total of 694 active grants. 

The broad distribution of terminated grants demonstrates a systemic reshaping of NIH’s research portfolio. Nearly every institute experienced cutbacks, but the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) bore a disproportionate share of the reductions, accounting for 30% of the total funding loss. This notable concentration of cuts suggests targeted policy shifts or budgetary realignments that may adversely affect ongoing efforts to address persistent health disparities among minority populations.

Then, of course, there is Kennedy's broad undermining of confidence in vaccinations, recently claiming, for example, that healthy people have no need of vaccines. It is a position that led to him being excoriated this past week during a senate hearing over his tenure thus far:

The Senate’s second-highest ranking Republican, U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-WY)—a physician—delivered a blistering rebuke of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., accusing him of advancing vaccine policies that undermine public health. Republican Senator Bill Cassidy—also a physician—also harshly questioned the HHS chief.

“Secretary Kennedy, in your confirmation hearings, you promised to uphold the highest standards for vaccines,” Senator  Barrasso began. “Since then, I’ve grown deeply concerned.”

"The public has seen measles outbreaks, leadership with the National Institutes of Health questioning the use of mRNA vaccines, the recently confirmed director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fired. Americans don’t know who to rely on,” Barrasso exclaimed.

How many more will die or become permanently disabled because the NIHS is led by a lunatic?

And that lunacy is filtering down to the state level. Florida, under the banner of freedom for all, has made a decision.

Florida will move to end all vaccine mandates in the state, Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo announced Wednesday.

The move would make Florida the first state to end a longstanding – and constitutionally upheld – practice of requiring certain vaccines for school students.

The state health department will immediately move to end all non-statutory mandates in the state, Ladapo said at a news conference. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who was also at the event, said state lawmakers would then look into developing a legislative package to end any remaining mandates.

Ladapo [a Black man] said that every vaccine mandate “is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.”

Now, there is much more evidence I could adduce to support my contention, but let's cut to the chase. Who benefits if there is a substantial die-off of Americans? It is the real movers and shakers of society, the powerful elite, who neither respect nor need "the masses" and really don't care for the 'burden' of taxation to take care of them. With large numbers ultimately eliminated, that burden will be much reduced.

You might quite legitimately ask, "But what if substantial numbers of MAGATS perish? Who will vote for Trump or his successor if not the credulous? To that I can only say such a question is predicated on the belief that meaningful elections will continue in Amerika. That is an assumption I am not, at this point, prepared to grant you.

A Headlong Rush To A Dark Past

It seems more than passing strange that here we are, in the 21st century, but all signs are that Amerika is nostalgic for earlier times, when faith in God's intervention (see Paula White) was strong, and science was regarded with deep suspicion. 

With measles cases burgeoning and vaccine rates plunging, perhaps that benighted country is expecting some sort of divine intervention to keep them healthy. Consider the latest developments at the FDA, which is under the aegis of Robert Kennedy, Secretary of Heath and Human Services and a notorious vaccine skeptic:

Especially chilling was the dismissive and Orwellian tone of HHS about Marks's departure:

“If Peter Marks does not want to get behind restoring science to its golden standard and promoting radical transparency, then he has no place at FDA under the strong leadership of Secretary Kennedy,” a spokesperson at HHS said.

Undoubtedly, as it embraces theocracy, the Benighted States of America believes it has a secret weapon in God. Consider Paula White, the head of Trump's White House Faith Office. In a recent 'sermon' at a Florida megachurch, White offered 

that Trump has been anointed by God, to help Christians shape American culture and change the world.

“Thank you for being there for the president,” she says.

“You have nations to reach. You have territory to take.”

“Here is where the fight begins.”

This 'religion' amplifies a malignancy that is bred in the American bone: U.S. exceptionalism:  

This ministry’s followers are some of the 30 per cent of Americans who are said to sympathize with Christian nationalism, an ideology that’s rooted in the belief that the United States enjoys special favour by God, and that seeks to bring religion into every aspect of civil life. Podcaster Bradley Onishi, a noted critic, says the movement favours a specific brand of Christianity worshipping what he calls a “straight white American Jesus.”

Critics say that Christian nationalism is a fervent and dangerous movement that twists the religion to promote authoritarianism. “It’s all about hatred ... a front for racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, misogynist feelings,” Rev. Laurie Hafner, a leader of Mosaic Miami, an interfaith community that advocates for social justice, told the Star.

For non-Americans, this is a particularly threatening mindset.

 John Faragher, an emeritus professor of history and American Studies at Yale University .... said the idea that “the Lord Almighty is on our side” is a theme that goes back to the beginning of the idea of America.

For Canada and other countries in the region, the long-standing idea that it is America’s right and “Manifest Destiny” to expand across all of North America is particularly troubling, Faragher said.

Nineteenth-century leaders used Manifest Destiny as a rationale to expand westward, adding Oregon and Texas in 1846 and purchasing Alaska in 1867. U.S. politicians and citizens also used it to call for America to claim control of Canada. Manifest Destiny is an ideology taught uncritically to Florida’s seventh-grade civics students as part of history, in a new textbook issued by Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, and reviewed by the Star.

Politics and religion have always been a dangerous combination, and it is the theme of this entire post. For RFK, it is the religious fervour with which he embraces opposition to vaccines and other medical developments that have saved countless millions. For White, it is a potent weapon to wield against all those who oppose groupthink, collective conformity, and American imperialism.

None of this can end well for anyone. 

 

History's Judgement

If you don't know the tragic story of Emmett Till, you can click here to read something I posted about him a few years back. It is the kind of history that Ron DeSantis doesn't want Florida students to know about, as I noted in a recent post.

Fortunately, Joe Biden's administration is making it harder to forget the ugliness of American racism.

President Biden on Tuesday will establish a national monument honoring Emmett Till, the Black teenager who was abducted and killed by white supremacists in 1955, and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, who helped galvanize the civil rights movement by bravely displaying her child’s brutalized body for the world to see.

The Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument will span three protected sites in Illinois, where Emmett was born 82 years ago, and in Mississippi, where he was killed at the age of 14 after being accused of whistling at a white woman.

The monument stands as a sharp rebuke to those who would have Americans forget or ignore their innate racism. 

Since Mr. Biden took office, more than 40 states have introduced or passed laws or taken other measures to restrict how issues of race and racism are taught, according to Education Week.  

Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, referenced Florida’s new standards on Monday, saying the Till monument was arriving “at an important moment.”

“Let’s not forget what we’ve seen these past several months, as we’ve witnessed extreme officials in Florida and across the country lie about American history — the most recent example shamefully, shamefully promoting a lie that enslaved people actually benefited from slavery,” she said. “It’s inaccurate, insulting. It’s hurtful and prevents an honest account of our nation’s history.”

This isn't the first time the White House has invoked the memory of Till's horrific murder. 

During a White House screening of the movie “Till” in February, Mr. Biden told the crowd that he chose the movie because “history matters.”

“To remember history is to shine a light on the good, the bad, the truth and who we are as a nation,” he said at the screening. “And our history shows that while darkness and denialism hide very much, they erase nothing. They can’t erase the past, and they shouldn’t.”

He also said that signing the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, which made lynching a federal hate crime, in March 2022, was “one of the great honors of my career.” 

Despite what some would have people believe, history matters, and it renders judgements. To revise and pervert that history, as so many in the U.S. seem intent on doing, is yet another stark illustration of the ongoing systemic racism that continues to cripple and diminish that nation in the eyes of the world. 

If you would like to know more about the monument and Emmett Till's fate, go to the 17:50 minute mark of the following:

 

UPDATED: Who Needs Reparations?

According to the 'new' history to be taught in Florida, it may be African Americans who owe white America reparations, given the 'benefits' that slavery conferred upon them.

Sound ludicrous? Not in Ron DeSantis's world.

Florida’s public schools will now teach students that some Black people benefited from slavery because it taught them useful skills, part of new African American history standards approved Wednesday that were blasted by a state teachers' union as a “step backward.”

The Florida State Board of Education’s new standards includes controversial language about how “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit,” according to a 216-page document about the state’s 2023 standards in social studies, posted by the Florida Department of Education.

I can't help but wonder if working endless days under a hot sun with no pay might have been one of those skills. Or perhaps the liberal application of the lash was an extended character-building exercise meted out generously by selfless plantation masters? Revisionist history offers a myriad of possibilities.

And lest we forget, the race massacres were apparently a two-way street:

Other language that has drawn the ire of some educators and education advocates includes teaching about how Black people were also perpetrators of violence during race massacres.

 That language says, “Instruction includes acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans but is not limited to 1906 Atlanta Race Riot, 1919 Washington, D.C. Race Riot, 1920 Ocoee Massacre, 1921 Tulsa Massacre and the 1923 Rosewood Massacre.”

 The Florida Education Association, a statewide teachers’ union representing about 150,000 teachers, called the new standards “a disservice to Florida’s students and are a big step backward for a state that has required teaching African American history since 1994.”

The union said it is troubling that at the high school level, the standards conflate the 1920 Ocoee Massacre, when at least 30 African Americans were killed for attempting to vote, with “acts of violence perpetrated by African Americans.” And in middle school, the standards require students be taught slavery was beneficial to African Americans because it helped them develop skills, the union said.

Ron DeSantis, the architect of these changes that prove everything Orwell warned us about, is frequently quoted as saying "Florida is where woke goes to die." Anyone with even a modicum of critical intelligence, I'm certain, would prefer to be 'woke' rather than imprisoned in a dystopian dreamscape fueled by the distortions of Florida's Ministry of Truth. 

UPDATE: Can Ron DeSantis explain how being enslaved was beneficial to Celia?

In 1850, a fourteen-year-old girl in Missouri named Celia was purchased by enslaver, Robert Newsom. Over the course of five years, he repeatedly raped her. On June 23, 1855 while pregnant with her second child, Celia defended herself against more abuse, resulting in the death of her enslaver and rapist. During Celia’s trial, Newsom’s grandson William Powell testified. Powell testified that Celia had complained that Newsom repeatedly demanded sex and that she had approached other Newsom family members in a vain attempt to stop the rapes.  Powell also admitted that Celia told him that her attack on Newsom came from desperation and that she only intended to injure, not kill. Celia was found guilty. An appeal was filed. The Missouri Supreme Court ultimately ruled against her appeal. On December 21, 1855 at 2:30 P.M., the state of Missouri murdered Celia on the gallows. Are we going to teach children this history? Or are we going to continue to whitewash history because it makes some people uncomfortable?

H/t Calés McGinnis 

 

Things Ron DeSantis Doesn't Want People To Know

JAMES BALDWIN addresses the University Of Cambridge during his epochal debate with William F. Buckley in 1965.

Oratory and content of the very highest order. To listen is to learn.

H/t Michael Warburton

Keeping both Black and white people ignorant of their history is the main strategy of the Florida governor. God help the Americans if he becomes their president.

UPDATED: Complementary Videos

I think the readers of this blog will have no problem understanding why the second video naturally follows the first one:

NowThis

@nowthisnews

'He wants to create a kind of passive, ignorant population' — Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat is sending out a warning about FL Gov. Ron DeSantis, comparing him to authoritarian leaders of the past

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Scott Galloway

@profgalloway

Message of the year: How do you spot an idiot? Look for the person who is cruel. The kindest person in the room is often the smartest.

@GovPritzker

Unfortunately, given the breadth and depth of idiocy that characterizes our species, there will be those who take deep umbrage at Governor Pritzer's observations.
UPDATE: Here's what happens when the philosophy of someone like De Santis is chosen over that of Pritzer:

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Ahmar Khan

@AhmarSKhan

James Chow was in the UWaterloo gender studies class, where a professor and two students were stabbed in a hate-related attack. This is the most detailed explanation and recounting of events from any witness so far — it’s a must listen. The events are terrifying.