How Do You Spell Hate? T-E-X-A-S.
This is Donald Trump’s America. There are rulers, and there are the ruled.
Edwin Eisendrath hosts It’s the Democracy, Stupid on Lincoln Square and WCPT820 AM/Heartland Signal. He’s the former CEO of the Chicago Sun-Times, a long-time management consultant, a former Chicago Alderman, HUD Regional Administrator and teacher in Chicago’s public schools. Subscribe to his Substack.
This is where all holocausts begin. The notion that some people are destined to rule and others to be ruled. The idea that maybe those others are not people at all.
“I’m glad he’s dead.” That’s what Donald Trump said asked about the passing of Robert Mueller. Mueller was a revered public servant whose final job was to look into Russia’s attempt to interfere in the 2016 election. Trump’s remark was ugly, but he suffered no consequence for it.
“Charlie Kirk was going to hell.” That’s what Ellie Fischer, a law student at Texas Tech and founder of the school’s NAACP chapter is reported to have said. The school investigated and issued a formal reprimand. The investigation wasn’t a one-off. In the weeks after Kirk’s assassination, the Texas Education Agency opened investigations into more than 100 school districts looking for inappropriate comments about the murdered agitator.
Texas law requires every college campus in the state to erect a statue of Charlie Kirk. Kirk was an effective MAGA propagandist, making it safe for a new generation of Americans to engage in racist, homophobic, and antisemitic hate. The law requires each statue to be 8 feet tall. Kirk must be shown with “an aura of destiny and posture of defiance.”
This is Donald Trump’s America. There are rulers, and there are the ruled. The rulers get statues. Those who object get investigated. And that is just the start.
As Erin Reed reported, the Chancellor of Texas Tech sent out a memo earlier this month. It provides directions for purging LGBTQ+ issues. Not purging of individuals who are gay. Not yet. But gone are any discussions that allow for the possibility that everyone isn’t a straight man or woman. Gone is any discussion of the movement that led to legalized gay marriage. Gay marriage itself can only be mentioned in upper-level public policy courses, and then only “if the analysis is strictly objective legal or policy analysis and lacks advocacy for contemporary matters.”
To be gay in Texas is not yet a crime. But to acknowledge that people are gay just might be. When a group becomes invisible in the eyes of the law, no member of that group can expect the law to protect them.
The Chancellor’s memo covers only Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) guidelines. Sometimes SOGI content is historically intrinsic to the topic. About that the Chancellor writes, “If a syllabus or course materials cover a specific historical movement, author, or event where SOGI is inextricably linked to the subject’s historical significance (e.g., the Harlem Renaissance, the AIDS epidemic, Alan Turing), faculty may teach these subjects; however, the instruction must remain focused on objective literary/historical analysis, not contemporary SOGI advocacy.”
It is perfectly in keeping with the hateful ideology behind all of this that the policy calls out the Harlem Renaissance but not, say, ancient Athens. When you start throwing people away, the target list is ever expanding.
The memo is full of prohibitions. The placement of Kirk’s statue is a mandate. How long before conversion therapy, now protected by the Supreme Court, is mandated for anyone “accused” of being gay?
Texas has about as many gay people as all of Wyoming. Yet the state is trying to make them invisible. If you are gay and in Texas, I’m betting you’ve thought about how to fight back and even whether to move away.
It isn’t just Texas. Everything is at stake in November. These people cannot, must not, remain in power.
I will never understand how a state with such a large non-white population, with major blue cities, and a lot of good caring people, has become so dominated by far right wing Republican hate mongers like Patrick, Paxton, Abbott and others. Was the Democratic Party that asleep at the wheel or did something else happen?
It's what Dixie always wanted. Texas isn't a state, it's a corporation.