Running at warp speed into government censorship

I finished the book Gaslighting; Recognize Manipulative and Emotionally Abusive People – and Break Free, by Stephanie Moulton Sarkis, PhD. She’s a therapist working in Tampa and a specialist in gaslighting. I bought the book thinking it would describe gaslighting in great detail while standing a ways away and discussing well known gaslighters. But it is much more up close and personal – how to deal with a gaslighter in your life. The term comes from a 1938 play and 1944 movie in which a man convinces a woman she is going crazy because she is told and begins to believe things that are clearly not true. Some of the traits: A gaslighter can be charming, but is overly controlling and abusive. They pit people against each other, they don’t accept responsibility, they mistreat people with less power and use their weakness against them, they obsess over their accomplishments and image, they want you to fawn over them, they con people, they lie, they isolate others as a way to control, the few compliments they give out are more like insults, they require loyalty but don’t give it, and more. Many gaslighters have suffered a narcissistic injury a profound and deep threat to their self-worth or self-esteem. Yeah, that very much sounds like the guy sitting in the Oval Office. And I’m not the first to make that connection. It is one reason why I bought the book. People who have lived with a gaslighter for a long time may not recognize what a healthy relationship looks like. That’s one reason they stay in it. The other is they keep hoping the gaslighter will change, as he says he will do and never does. So most of the book is about what to do when in a relationship with a gaslighter. Short answer: leave. He’s not going to change. The relationship will only get worse. Sarkis describes how to leave and how complete the break needs to be. But sometimes complete separation isn’t possible. Such as when the gaslighter is a coworker, neighbor, your sibling and your parent will try to keep the connection, your ex and you still have to co-parent, or your ex’s new partner. Sarkis then provides a lot of help in how to treat the gaslighter to maintain your own sanity, the sanity of your children, and your reputation. There is also a chapter on what to do when the gaslighter is a politician. The last chapter is if you realize you might be a gaslighter. Sarkis makes a distinction between a gaslighter and one who has learned gaslighting behavior because that’s all they’ve known. A gaslighter will not see they have a problem and will not seek counseling. So if you do recognize such behaviors in yourself you’re not a gaslighter and there is hope to learn how to build healthy relationships. In that chapter Sarkis describes various methods of counseling so that a person can choose what is right for them. Sarkis also lists resources for therapists, attorneys, employee rights, and help for minors, coparenting, domestic violence, and suicide. Thankfully, no one I’m directly involved with is a gaslighter, so this book isn’t directly useful to me. However, it is a necessary and important resource to those who have to deal with one. I will donate this book to a young man I know. Last Saturday on NPR host Alisa Chang spoke to Jude Joffe-Block and Huo Jingnan, also of NPR, about those who criticized Charlie Kirk after his assassinated last week and are losing their jobs. This is three days after Kirk died. Joffe-Block said:

Kirk's supporters and high-profile, right-wing influencers, along with some elected officials, have been mobilizing to get people fired for posting in a celebratory way about Kirk's murder.

Those celebratory comments seem, to me, rather mild, such as saying: hate begets hate, zero sympathy. A reminder, Kirk had made incendiary remarks about races, immigrants, transgender people, and others. The types of people being fired include “teachers, civil servants, nurses, doctors” and I’m sure many others. Whether their firings violate Free Speech depends on the job and what was said, but in many cases no laws were violated. This effort is troubling in an important way. Conservative influencers on social media highlight cases and, the troubling part, Republican officials then call for their firing. One of those was Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn and another was Republican Rep. Clay Higgins from Louisiana. Rebekah Tromble, a First Amendment expert said:

We are running at essentially warp speed directly into maybe an even worse moment of government repression and censorship than we witnessed during the McCarthy era.

Joffe-Block again:

You know, the internet is definitely built for these kinds of crowdsourcing projects. You know, Charlie Kirk himself rose to fame for creating a watch list, encouraging students to report professors they consider to be radical left.

On Sunday NPR host Scott Detrow spoke to reporter Luke Garrett. They started with a comment by Utah Governor Spencer Cox:

We can confirm that his roommate was indeed a boyfriend who is transitioning from male to female.

That seems to fuel the Republican claim that Tyler Robinson, the shooter, was under the influence of the radical Left. Did Robinson shoot Kirk because of Kirk’s criticism of transgender rights? While the roommate and the rest of the Robinson family are cooperating with authorities, Tyler is not. His motives remain unknown. Cox, even before the shooting, has been a leading voice for peace and calm. He made the rounds of Sunday talk shows asking whether we want to be a nation of civility or violence. He also called people to get off their devices and have real relationships. Republicans have taken up booing him. Garrett said:

So members of Congress have less security than the president and are often in very public spaces, similar to the one where Kirk was in right before he died. And Oklahoma Senator James Lankford said, something has really changed on Capitol Hill. He told CNN that lawmakers have received 14,000 threats in 2025 alone. That's around 50 threats every day.

Lankford called for the temperature to be turned down on Capitol Hill and the White House. On Monday Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos reported that Stephen Miller, the guy behind making sure White House policy is as racist as possible, gave his response to Kirk’s assassination. I won’t quote his nasty words, only that, as Einenkel wrote, the nasty guy administration “would harness the anger over Kirk’s death to dismantle what he described as a coordinated ‘terrorist’ left.” And he’ll do it in Charlie’s name. From what little I know of Kirk and his willingness to debate opponents he would not want the destruction of the Left be done in his name. Then again, he did say some vile things about the left. On Tuesday Emily Singer of Kos reported that AG Pam Bondi declared she will bring the full force of the Department of Justice down on those who spouted “hate speech” against Kirk or any conservative activist. She has no understanding of Free Speech and that any words, except those that defame or that threaten or incite violence, cannot be made illegal. But Bondi contradicts Kirk:

"Hate speech does not exist legally in America. There's ugly speech. There's gross speech. There's evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment," Kirk wrote in May 2024 in a post on X. "Keep America free."

Even when conservative commentators quickly schooled Bondi on Free Speech, she still didn’t get it. I don’t want to find out how loosely Bondi defines “hate speech.” On Monday Einenkel quoted Secretary of State Marco Rubio:

Once a society loses the ability of people with strong disagreements to engage in discourse, then the only option you're left with is either silence or violence. Neither one of which is acceptable. Both are very destructive.

Good to hear it! Alas, one doubts Rubio was talking about his own Republican party and trying to get it to tone down. He was almost surely trying to describe the Left and Democrats. Quite rich from the guy who threatened deportation as a way to silence dissent. Lisa Needham of Kos wrote that Republicans aren’t even pretending to care about Free Speech anymore.

The Republican Party’s commitment to free speech has never been full-throated. Rather, their approach has been more of a “free speech for me but not for thee” sort of thing at the best of times. But in the wake of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s shooting death, even the nominal lip service conservatives give to the First Amendment is wholly out the window. In its place, we now have pretty much every textbook violation of the First Amendment you can imagine. Lucky us.

Needham then gives many examples. That includes the nasty guy calling for an investigation into is funding all that “alleged nefarious liberal slander of Kirk,” I’m sure the answer is “nobody.” We’re all willing to call out Kirk’s harmful comments for free – does that imply Republicans won’t say anything without being bribed? But even if there was a money trail, the conservative Supreme Court ruling on Citizens United should keep the benefactor protected. Singer sums up the situation well with the opening paragraph of a post:

Conservatives have come up with a host of measures they want taken to avenge right-wing activist Charlie Kirk's murder—none of which include gun reforms.

Certain political beliefs are treated as interchangeable with child abuse

My Friday evening movie, my second of the Freep Film Fest, was Gradually, Then Suddenly, about Detroit’s 2013 bankruptcy. I streamed it from home. As I watched I took a page of notes. Here’s the basics of the story. Back in 2013-14 I wrote about the bankruptcy as it happened, perhaps a dozen posts. I also wrote about it in 2018 after seeing the Freep Film Fest movie Beauty and Ruin about the history of the Detroit Institute of Arts and how it got caught up in the bankruptcy proceedings. This movie focuses on why the bankruptcy happened and the issues around it resolution. Leading up to 2013 Detroit was $18.5 billion in debt. This was the largest city bankruptcy. All city services had been cut back due to a lack of money. Many street lights were out. There were huge numbers of arsons and homicides. Bus service was sporadic. If one called the police it might be an hour before they arrived – if they came at all. The city and its residents were in bad shape. Detroit and Michigan are highly racist. They’re not as bad as the South – here black people can vote – but there is still a lot of oppression. In the 1950 census the Detroit population was 1.8 million. At the time of the bankruptcy it was about 0.7 million. Freeways that were built in the late 1950s made white flight easier. Over the decades the middle class black people fled as well. That meant a great deal of the Detroit population was poor. The tax base dropped. And the city government budget took a big hit. There was also an adversarial relationship between Detroit and the state legislature. There is a law that says the state is to share revenue with cities with declining population to prevent them from spiraling into decline. But the state was increasingly reluctant to approve all of that money. Yes, that’s racism. Detroit’s first black mayor was elected in 1973. Part of the bad relationship was because white people in Lansing were annoyed with the audacity that black people wanted to govern themselves, so reduced payments to Detroit and other black majority cities. In a way that was to show black people couldn’t govern themselves. For a good long time Detroit was essentially a one industry town. The Detroit Three automakers employed a large part of the city’s (and region’s) population. But they tended to squabble amongst themselves for market share while ignoring the gains Toyota and other foreign brands were making. The Detroit Three had to cut costs and shrink their workforces. The Great Recession sent GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy in 2009. (Chrysler had several partners and name changes over the years and I don’t remember which name it held in 2009.) The woes of the auto industry made Detroit’s problems worse. By 2008 Detroit was pretty much out of money. The city fell way behind in making pension fund payments. The mortgage crisis that brought on the Great Recession hit Detroit especially hard. And the problems were made much worse. Detroit wasn’t the only Michigan city with a financial mess. The legislature came up with an Emergency Manager law, which swept aside the democratically elected city government and put in someone with sweeping powers to tear up existing labor contracts. Essentially a dictator. Yeah, the state refused to keep up the revenue sharing and when, because of that, the city couldn’t keep up the state took it over. In 2012 Michigan residents gathered enough signatures to put overturning the EM law on the ballot. The proposal won – and the lame-duck legislature promptly reinstated something very similar with a provision that prevented citizens from overturning it. The EM law was passed because city governments could not balance the books. Sheila Cockerel, who was on the Detroit City Council, said that was true. They were too beholden to political supporters. They spent too much, promised too much, and borrowed too much (though see above about the state withholding payment). I think it was sometime between 2008 and 2012 the city, in a desperate move, did some sort of pension bond swap. The essentially bet that the bond market would move in one direction. And it moved in the other. They lost their bet. Part of this is amazing – Detroit obviously was in debt and didn’t have enough money coming in to cover expenses – and yet institutions were still willing to lend it money with no obvious way for it to be paid back. In one of my previous posts I wondered (based on various presentations I had attended at the time) if those institutions could be convicted of fraud for misrepresenting the deal. Alas, I’m pretty sure that wasn’t pursued. This makes me think the institutions were working towards a scheme to suck money out of black people to give it to white people – which is what happened. Perhaps to them it was worth several million (or billion) to make the black people of Detroit even more impoverished. It’s a supremacist thing. The city owed money to two primary groups, the financial institutions and the retired city workers on pension. Even though the state constitution said pensions were sacrosanct, it also said they were contracted. And courts said that contracts could be voided, which meant pensions could be cut. That put the pensioners, mostly black and for whom the loss of a pension could mean life or death, up against big bankers, who were rich, mostly white, and for whom the loss of a few millions, maybe billions, wouldn’t make a whole lot of difference in their solvency and way of life. The conflict between pensioner and bank came down to the debt owed to the banks was secured and the money owed to pensioners was unsecured. And law puts secured debt first. This also annoys me because the banks – the financial institutions – knew the bet was risky. And they knew their money would be valued as more important than human lives. The story turned to the city’s assets. There were only two worth enough to matter. One was the water system. Detroit owned it, though it served the entire metro region and beyond. It also needed a great deal of repair and upgrading. The only way to pay for improvements was to raise rates and many Detroiters already had problems paying their water bill. It wouldn’t help pay the banks. However, the bankruptcy resulted in more regional representation on the water department’s board. The other big asset was the Detroit Institute of Arts. Yes, owned by the city. It’s collection was assembled at a time when Detroit had a lot of cash. Even though museums follow a code of not selling their art because it could end up in private collections and removed from public view, the pressure was on and appraisers came for a look. Soon the way out of bankruptcy was framed as pensioners v. art. Of course, many pensioners said sell the art. But as the earlier movie about the DIA stated, the money from the sale of the art would have not gone to the pensioners, it would have gone to the banks. Some people rightly framed the conflict between pensioners and the banks, but it wasn’t the usual view. A Grand Bargain began to shape up. Community foundations were urged to “buy” the DIA and its art, though the value they contributed was far from the value of the collection. Once that was mostly in place the city went to Lansing and pressured the legislature for a match. One of the arguments was this deal would be less than what the state would pay out in supplemental assistance to help all of those who become impoverished. There was a lot of resistance, but the money was approved. Then attention turned to the pensioners. Though the city was being run by an unelected administrator the pensioners voted on whether to accept their part of the deal. They were told their pensions would be cut and they would lose health insurance, but this is the deal we have and if you reject it any future deal will be worse for you. They approved it. And the deal was done. As for the investors, some got a quarter of what they were owed, others got a tenth. Thankfully, the deal included enough money for the city to restore and upgrade services. The city’s downtown and midtown areas are thriving, though many neighborhoods have seen little improvement. And the city’s finances are stable. Laura Clawson of Daily Kos reported the library board of Enid, Oklahoma has created a policy of not making exhibits about sex, sexual perversion, sexual orientation, gender identity, and several other categories related to sex. For now, the books can stay on the shelves, but they can’t be highlighted. That has meant the cancellation of two programs. One is the Shameless Romance book discussion club. The other is Sexual Assault Awareness, which sounds important. Displays for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day might be canceled. The language the library adopted is directly from a bill introduced in the Oklahoma legislature that is currently stalled. I’ve written that the library in Llano County, Texas has pulled books from shelves. Marissa Higgins of Kos reported several citizens filed a lawsuit against several county commissioners, the library system director, some library board members, and a county judge.

According to the lawsuit, the plaintiffs tried to check out several books that had been removed from the system and were denied access to those texts. They believe their constitutional rights have been violated because public officials censored the books based on their content. They also believe the public officials did not give proper notice or opportunity for the community to comment on the decision. “When government actors target public library books because they disagree with and intend to suppress the ideas contained therein,” the lawsuit states in part. “It jeopardizes the freedoms of everyone.” Rather brilliantly, the suit also points out public libraries are not places of government “indoctrination” where people in power can “spoon-feed one-sided information” and dictate what people are allowed to read and discover.

I had mentioned Florida is including math books in its list of books to be banned. Higgins explained a bit more.

We now have a few examples from math textbooks that allegedly include references to CRT and social-emotional learning (SEL), as reported by CNN. Social-emotional learning, as some background, helps students learn how to solve problems and make decisions while managing their emotions and using empathy. Sadly, it’s easy to see why conservatives would want to stomp this sort of learning out—imagine if their minions developed a hint of empathy for the marginalized people they love to hate? Suddenly they’d have to work a lot harder to get votes. In a more advanced application, social-emotional learning is valuable for adults, too, when it comes to us understanding how and why we engage with others (as well as ourselves) in various situations at home, work, or with friends. For white people like myself, for example, this could mean an opportunity to identify and take accountability for microaggressions or racial bias. ... One example shared by the Times includes a word problem where, in addition to the obvious math, students are able to learn how to support a friend who is scared about crossing a bridge in the jungle. Students learn that they can help the hypothetical friend by building up their confidence and supporting them, which is probably why conservatives are upset about it. ... Ah, yes, because nothing distracts from learning like … developing basic social skills, compassion, and real-world problem-solving. Guess kids should go back to copying multiplication tables on the blackboard and call it a day?

Clawson discussed what Christopher Rufo has been up to. He’s the guy who laid out the plans for the GOP to turn Critical Race Theory into a battle cry. His latest efforts are to turn “grooming” into a toxic accusation against Disney (for opposing Florida’s Don’t Say Gay law) and anyone else he can figure out how to tar it with. And, like a Bond villain, he likes to explain what he’s doing. For his efforts he got a nice puff piece at the New York Times.

But as [Don] Moynihan, a political scientist at Georgetown University, wrote at his Substack, it goes deeper. In Rufo’s usage, “this language is largely not about sexual abuse of children. Rufo is much more likely to describe ‘grooming’ in the context of kids being exposed to ideas he dislikes rather than actual sexual abuse. In other words, sharing certain political beliefs — usually centered around recognizing the status of historically marginalized groups — are treated as interchangeable with child abuse, its perpetrators akin to child abusers.” “The reservoir of sentiment on the sexuality issue is deeper and more explosive than the sentiment on the race issues,” Rufo told the Times. In translation: He thinks he can ride anti-LGBTQ bigotry even further than racism. ... Rufo is part of a broader Republican movement to end public education, something he’s strategically laying the groundwork for with each new campaign he wages. CRT, grooming, social-emotional learning—all of these are buzzwords intended to weaken support for public education. Disney came into it because of the company’s opposition to the Florida Don’t Say Gay law banning the teaching of anything that might imply to children that LGBTQ people are acceptable members of their communities. Rufo laid out his approach in an April speech at Hillsdale College, titled “Laying Siege to the Institutions.” In it, he called for a “narrative and symbolic war against companies like Disney” in which “You have to be very aggressive. You have to fight on terms that you define.” On schools, he was explicit: “To get to universal school choice, you really need to operate from a premise of universal public school distrust.”

Prairie Pilot of the Kos community proposed ways to diffuse the challenge that someone is a “groomer.” One could respond with sentences such as:

I want to groom the children of our country to build on this nation’s promises of equality and justice.

Some of the commenter are worried this will backfire. The word may already be too poisoned with its association with anti-LGBT hatred. Smiff added:

I worry that the R’s will just spam ads out of clips of Dems saying “I want to groom our children…” and say “See? I told you so...”

Chepe added an alternate use:

I’ve started talking about “Christian groomers” trying to inculcate hatred, ignorance, and denial of reality into unsuspecting children.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, quoted late night commentary. Here’s a bit of it:

If you think Florida is overreacting now, just wait until they find out that math can be non-binary. —Trevor Noah

When Disney began to build Disney World in Florida, all those decades ago they worked out with the state what is known as the Reedy Creek Improvement District. Over the land it owned (and it looks like over some of the surrounding neighborhoods) Disney is its own local government. It provides its own fire service and sewer treatment. In exchange Disney does not pay local property taxes. Because Disney is now working against a favorite Republican project, that Don’t Say Gay law, there is now an effort to overturn that Reedy Creek agreement. Hunter of Kos reported that Disney isn’t worried. State law says the District cannot be dissolved if there are outstanding bond debts – and there are, about a $1 billion worth. So the state, or maybe Orange County, would have to take over that debt – causing a steep rise in local taxes. That would be a big financial gift to Disney. Another barrier is the county would also have to pay for fire and sewer service. This “retaliation” looks pretty good from Disney’s point of view.

Listen to the dissidents because they speak of what is to come

From a post on Monday Hunter of Daily Kos reported Ukrainian’s most reliable source of new armor is Russian supply lines. Even better than supplies from the West. A deputy commander sounded like his battalion does shopping trips. They come to a Russian supply column and shoot at the first vehicle. When it explodes the Russian soldiers flee. And the Ukrainians get all this nice equipment. Yeah, it’s old. But quite reliable. As for the equipment Russia sends to Belarus by train for use in taking Kyiv, well, the Belarusian railway workers are sabotaging the trains or tracks. Kos of Kos did updates by battlefronts. In the one for the front around Kyiv Kos wrote the Ukrainians are doing a good job of pushing back the Russians who are northwest of the city. Kos also showed images of FIRMS, NASA’s public satellite service that tracks forest fires. It is also good at tracking fires from war, which helps track military front lines. There is a lot of action along the western flank of those northwestern Russian troops. In Hunter’s update from Monday noon, there is a tweet from Nexta TV with a report that Russia’s only tank manufacturer has stopped production because of a lack of parts. Kos wrote about the status of the front in the South. Ukrainians appear to be pushing Russia back from Mykolaiv to close to Kherson. Still too soon if Ukraine plans to liberate Kherson. Kos referenced a report by CNN to say Russian troops around Kherson are afraid to retreat because anyone falling back is shot. Then he noted a naval officer was killed on land. A look at this officer’s job description prompted this from Kos:

OMG. This was a guy in charge of other guys whose job it is to shoot battlefield deserters and anyone retreating. I’m going to guess he got fragged. Why else would a high-ranking naval officer be anywhere siege fighting? So if these ghouls are really in Kherson, and why wouldn’t they be, Russian rank-and-file troops may need to clean some house internally before they can surrender. Whatever minimizes the bloodshed, let’s hope that’s what happens.

In a Tuesday morning report Mark Sumner of Kos noted some things that aren’t happening. No amphibious assaults on Odessa. No troops from Belarus (though some fighting for Ukraine), no troops from Syria. Russia isn’t winning, isn’t capable of winning. So why would Belarus and Syria want to support a loser? And that will create a lot of instability in countries within Putin’s sphere of influence. Visegrád 24 tweeted an image of someone holding a sign with the words:

Russian troop pronouns are Were/Was

Pundits have been saying that it doesn’t matter if Russia loses in the short term. It will win in the long term simply because Ukraine will run out of bodies before Russia will. Sumner took on that debate. There’s more costs to a war beyond bodies. And with bodies coming home there is a limit to what the citizens will tolerate – even in Russia. Besides, the idea that one side has more bodies to throw at the problem hasn’t helped the US win any of its conflicts in the last 60 years. A few days ago I wrote about a video that Arnold Schwarzenegger created so he could speak to the Russian people. The question was whether the video would get past Russian internet blocks. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that Arnold must have gotten through and enough people viewed it that Russia felt the need to condemn it. That task went to powerlifting champion Maryana Naumova. She said Arnold was being hypocritical – but didn’t address Arnold’s issue. Kos discussed what might happen if Ukraine is able to encircle Russian troops. He shared the story of the sole member of a Russian tank crew who was persuaded to turn over his tank in exchange for $10K and Ukrainian citizenship. See above about retreating soldiers as to why this would be a great deal. Igor Kossov of the Kyiv Independent wrote a day in the life story:

For weeks, Oleksandr and his friend Andrii have been driving into the war zones outside Kyiv, running critical supplies in and getting people out. Oleksandr reckons they’ve evacuated over 250 civilians and I believe it. In the one day I spent with them, they evacuated seven. They also help deliver power banks, food and medicine, help rescue left-behind pets or, when it’s too late to save someone, bring out bodies to get a proper burial in Kyiv and hopefully serve as evidence in some future court of human rights against Russia. “When people sit for over a week without light, internet or news, they come out and ask us ‘is Kyiv still ours?’” Oleksandr says. “We reassure them, yes, Kyiv is ours, everything is good there, look, we brought you some bread.” Today, they let me tag along on one of their daily missions. While Oleksandr gave me permission to share, I’ve kept both their last names hidden for security purposes, as they don’t plan to stop sticking their necks out any time soon.

Kossov then described the adventures of the day. Dartagnan of the Kos community wrote about how Putin came to power. Back in 1999 the Russian leadership, including Boris Yeltsin, were seen as highly corrupt and Yeltsin was hitting the bottle. His “Unity” movement was heading for defeat in elections. How might they rally the people to his side? The best way is, of course, a national emergency. They increased tensions with Chechnya, which lashed out. But that didn’t affect public opinion. They needed more violence. So there were bombings of apartment buildings in Moscow, Buinaksk, and Volgodonsk. The bombings were blamed on Chechen terrorists. Yeltsin resigned at the end of 1999 and Putin became acting president. He was formally elected in March 2000. He campaigned on (and acted on) seeking revenge on Chechnya. His approval rating went from 31% in mid August to 78% in November. There is strong evidence that the bombs at the apartment buildings were set by the FSB, the successor of the KGB – of which Putin was the head. Of course, there were denials. But Putin would not be where he is now without those bombings. His reign quite likely began with violence. Dartagnan wonders when the US intelligence community will open its files on these bombings. Garry Kasparov wrote Winter is Coming. Mig Greengard tweeted the last paragraph:

My last policy recommendation is to listen to the dissidents, even if you do not like what they have to say. They are the ones who reveal to us the dark realities of our societies, the realities that most of us have the luxury to turn away from. Listen to the dissidents because they warn us of the threats that target minorities first and inevitably spread to the majority. Every society has its dissidents, not just dictatorships. They speak for the disenfranchised, the ignored, and the persecuted. Listen to them now, because they speak of what is to come.

On to other things. Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Jessica Grose of the New York Times who discussed a Gallup poll of school satisfaction (I added emphasis):

“73 percent of parents of school-aged children say they are satisfied with the quality of education their oldest child is receiving.” More parents were satisfied in 2021 than they were in 2013 and 2002, when satisfaction dipped into the 60s, and in 2019, we were at a high point in satisfaction — 82 percent — before the Covid pandemic dealt schools a major blow. Digging deeper into the Gallup numbers revealed that the people who seem to be driving the negative feelings toward American schools do not have children attending them: Overall, only 46 percent of Americans are satisfied with schools.

73% of parents like our schools. That drops to 46% of all Americans like our schools. Which means the ones who don’t like our schools, who don’t have children in these schools, are a pretty large and noisy group. To me that means they’re getting serious funding from rich people like Betsy DeVos who want to destroy education for everyone who can’t afford it on their paycheck. Einenkel reported that on March 9, the Kingsland Branch Library in Llano County, Texas fired librarian Suzette Baker. The reason was she did not comply with directives to remove certain books from the shelves. She was cited for “creating a disturbance, insubordination, violation of policies and failure to follow instructions.” Einenkel wrote:

Suzette Baker, however, has become one of the first people to have her right to work taken away because of true governmental censorship. Not unlike our public schools, public libraries are some of the most important institutions for nurturing a healthy, democratic society. I can and will argue that the public library system is the single most important institution in our democracy in that anyone, of any background, of any economic situation, can access any and all information—both analog and digital—for free at their public library. It is no coincidence that the more conservative and fascistic elements our country have tried to crush public libraries for many years.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in a Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, included a video from Science & Nature showing a zero G race between Usain Bolt and a couple astronauts.