Those who have been with Filosofa’s Word for a few years already know that every so often I get what I call “mind bounce”, defined as a state where there are just too many marbles loose in my mind to focus exclusively on any one topic. When that happens, it’s usually best to just let the mind loose to bounce from one thing to another for a bit, so that is what I’ve done here today … BOUNCE ON, MIND!
Don’t ban guns – BAN BACKPACKS!!!
A public school district in Flint, Michigan, has banned backpacks because … well, y’know … guns. A gun can be concealed in a backpack as was the one carried by a six-year-old child and used to shoot his teacher in Newport News, Virginia in January. So, let’s ban children from carrying backpacks and there will be no more school shootings, right? Um … well, y’see, most school shootings are not carried out by students, so … it’s rather like barking up the wrong tree. However, 100% of all school shootings were carried out with people wielding guns … not backpacks, but guns. Oh, and whaddabout pockets!!! Perhaps next, schools can outlaw pants, coats and jackets with pockets!!!
Another strikeout for Justice Thomas
Once again Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has found his way into the news. This time, it turns out, Harlan Crow … the same collector of all things Nazi who funded many extravagant vacations and trips for ol’ Clarence and his traitorous wife Virginia … funded a private school education to the tune of $6,000 per month, for Thomas’ grandnephew, Mark Martin, who Thomas was “raising as a son.” According to ProPublica’s exposè, Crow footed this bill for “about a year.” But then, there was another private boarding school that Crow may have also subsidized for the grandnephew, and it is estimated that if he paid for the entire four years at both schools, the total would have been around $150,000. Ol’ Clarence and his family have been living the “lifestyle of the rich and famous” without actually being rich … or famous, until recently.
Rolling in dough …
Just during that one single terrible pandemic year of 2020, the Institute for Policy Studies documents, the world’s 2,365 billionaires saw their wealth increase by a full 54%, as U.S. billionaires saw their net worth surge 62 percent by $1.8 trillion. Average billionaire wealth worldwide increased 27% in that one year alone. Elon Musk (532% increase in wealth during the single year of 2020), Mark Zuckerberg (86% increase), or Jeff Bezos (65% increase). And yet, Republicans literally howled with indignation that President Biden wanted to help the average Joe recover from the financial trauma of the pandemic era.
Quick! Hide your children!
The Florida legislature passed a bill Thursday that will let the state take transgender minors away from their families if they are receiving gender-affirming care. Think about that one for just a minute … the state can take your child away from you because they are transgender and are receiving medical care. WHAT’S NEXT, FLORIDA??? Okay, so let me get this straight. Today, in Florida, you cannot explain even to college students that some people love a person of their own biological gender, you cannot teach about the history of this nation, your retirement plan cannot include investment in industries that support green initiatives to save the planet, and you cannot seek medical help for your transgender child. Way. To. Go. Florida. NOT!!!!!!!!
Filosofa ponders
Just a short bit of filosophy from Filosofa …
I don’t understand this thing called “freedom” anymore, at least as defined by Republicans. I don’t have the freedom to make my own healthcare decisions, simply because I am a woman. My grandchildren don’t have the freedom to learn the true history of their nation, including the genocide of the Indigenous People, the enslavement for centuries of Black people and the continued racism against them even today. Today’s schoolchildren don’t have the freedom to learn about different cultures, but instead are lied to about their own. And the child who is being raised by two dads or two moms isn’t allowed to talk about it in school. How is this “freedom”?
Filosofa's Word 
Another idea: ban the schools = no school shootings … I mean while we are at bizarre ideas anyway, right?
Freedom for me is a) nothing left to lose (personally) and b) live and let live (in society).
We would actually only need one law or regulation: Do unto others, as you would have others do unto you.
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Hey, there’s a great thought!!! Then no school clothes and supplies to buy every year, keep our kids safe (not to mention ignorant) and save money at the same time!
Yes, in a previous comment I mentioned the line from the song “Me and Bobby McGee” that goes “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”. Live and let live is and has always been my motto. Why does it matter to one person, who another person chooses to love, or whether they are Christian, Muslim, Jewish or atheist? Just live your life and let others live theirs. There is value in everyone …
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I couldn’t agree more …
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Jill, thanks for the mind bounce. For those who want to whitewash history and ban a few books, here are few important lessons, out of many, that we should never forget.
the Jim Crow period officially began less the ten years after the Civil War, when a wanna-be president agreed to stop reconstruction to garner southern votes.
if one wants to see the worst of the Jim Crow period, listen to Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit,” which the FBI tried to ban from radio stations, read about the coup in Wilmington, NC where whites unseated elected black officials, the Tulsa, OK massacre of the black Wall Street, the Birmingham church bombing that killed four black girls, or the Woolworth sit-in in Greensboro, NC which launched a movement.
the US used its power to create fear of Native Americans to cause genocide and steal their land; Native Americans fought back, but that only made it worse as they were outgunned and outmanned. Even today, the US government will try to seize the land reserved for Native Americans for rights of way investments.
Senator Joe McCarthy perpetuated and propagated a communist witch hunt using fear and bullying, not being fearful of just making stuff up. It took Edward R. Murrow, a well-thought of news broadcaster, and Joseph Welsh, Special counsel to the US Army to call McCarthy out for his indecency and show Americans what a fraud he was.
the US government for about a dozen years fired anyone who was known to be gay or lesbian regardless of job performance. We lost many excellent public servants as our government let go many people based on who they loved. This unreported history was called the Lavendar Scare.
All of the above reveal America at its worst. We must highlight these history lessons, not mask them. If people feel bad about them, good. They should feel bad about them. History is often not pretty. We can never let folks try to hide history or try to repeat it, like folks named Trump, DeSantis, Abbott, et al want to do.
Keith
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Thanks, Keith! I’m glad you enjoyed sharing in my mind bounce! I was pleased today to read that Illinois just passed a law to withhold funding from institutions that ban books! This is what we need more of!
Oh yes, our history is filled with examples of Jim Crow, times and places where people died for the crime of being Black. And our treatment of the Indigenous People, or Native Americans … was as far from our finest moment as you can get. If we fail to teach these things, how can we expect to improve through the coming generations? How can we expect tomorrow’s leaders to understand what “equal rights” actually means? Throughout our history there have been examples, many of which you’ve pointed out, of “man’s inhumanity to man”, and so the answer is to … ban the books that tell about it??? Keep on making the same mistakes over and over and over??? There is even a growing portion in this nation who worship the Nazis, apparently not having learned a damn thing from the history of WWII and the Holocaust. I shudder to think what comes next, my friend.
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Jill, thanks. The fact that people are looking at Nazism as an option is prima facie evidence that we must teach history, the good, the bad and the ugly. Nazism is one of the ugliest parts of our history. It is a word that evokes the worst people can do to each other. Jim Crow is another one of those examples.
I was watching Jeopardy last night and a very smart man who happened to be Black got many history questions right, but what surprised me is he did not know the answer to the Birmingham bombing question. All Americans need to know this ugly history, but especially Black people. Racist White people did these kinds of things. We should not give hall passes on teaching this just because it hurts people’s feelings to hear it, as we can never tolerate such evil again whether it is Nazism, Jim Crow, slavery Native American genocide, Apartheid et al.
Keith
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As a child, listening to my grandparents, great aunt & uncle, and my parents relay first-hand knowledge of the Nazis, I never dreamed the movement would take root ANYWHERE ever again, let alone here in the U.S. And here we are today. Sigh. And YES … this is exactly why an education that includes everything, even the horrors, is so important. One thing I’ve noticed is that with each new generation, the lessons of the past dim. Eventually, there are none who can tell the story firsthand and it loses some of its depth or urgency. If we stop telling the story altogether, we WILL definitely repeat the past, only this time with more advanced tools for killing the maximum number of people.
What you said about the man not being able to answer the question about the Birmingham bombing floored me! It wasn’t so long ago that it should be lost already. I well remember it … 1963 … I was 12 years old, not really old enough to understand, and yet … somehow I did. We MUST teach the past without leaving anything out! Rather than hurting young people’s feelings, it should strengthen their resolve to make the world better! Sigh.
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“How is this “freedom”?”
It isn’t.
Or to say it in American English: It ain’t. 😉
I’m such a fancy bilingual bishie.
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Actually, we rarely say “ain’t” here, except when trying to be funny! No, it isn’t freedom … only for some, but definitely not for all.
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Ok. So me’s smarter now, innit?
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i honestly don’t think i could cope with all of this s.it on a daily basis. my heart constricts regularly with sadness, shock, and the mind boggles. how is all of that even humanly (in brackets!) possible?
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It does take a toll, my friend, both physically and emotionally. There are days I wonder how the human species has survived this long. Sigh.
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The backpack solution sounds as if it translates into:
‘Look. We are doing something’ ‘Something’ being a move which will inconvenience a a lot of kids. Of course kids being kids they will use other items to carry their ‘stuff’. These will naturally carry their own status- like carry bags from stores and brands which are ‘trending’….and you can still carry a small handgun in.
If it has the word ‘Thomas- as if Justice’ or billionaires or Florida State my forlorn response these days is …’Yeah-yeah. Business as usual’.
‘Freedom’ arguably one of the most flexible words in the English language along with ‘Liberty’ ‘Rights’ and ‘Truth’. These are all words which these days are linked to ‘I’ (as in first person singular) and ‘Me’ (as in first person singular objective pronoun). They are rarely used in conjunction with ‘You’ (second person pronoun) and almost never with ‘They’ (third-person plural subject pronoun), unless it is in an accusatory sense, when defending the position of the person using ‘I’ .
These words are also associated with the words ‘Irresponsibility’ ‘Intolerance’ and ‘Ignorance’
Extract from – ‘ A Realist’s Guide to 21st Century Grammar’
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Yep, you hit the nail on the head … “See, we are doing something … we’ve banned backpacks! See, we do care!” Never mind that school shooters are typically NOT students, and come in from the outside, such as in the Uvalde shooting.
Even after I posted that, I saw another Thomas thing … a person (I cannot remember his name and it’s late) gave a large sum to Clarence Thomas’ wife, the insurrectionist, and that, too, went unreported. That person had a case pending in front of the Supreme Court at the time … a case that he won. Surprise.
Yeah … ‘freedom’. Whose freedom? Freedom to _____________ or freedom from _______________??? As the line in the song “Me and Bobby McGee” goes, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose …”
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In some parts of the world folk yearn for freedom from:
Fear
Hunger
Want
We miss that sometimes (often) in The West.
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Or at least those of us who have never known fear, hunger, or want miss that far too often. Some in this country know them all too well.
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Indeed, and they are the ones who truly are losing their freedom.
In democratic systems on both extremes of the political divide ‘Freedom’ boils down to ‘The Right To Take Away Freedom From Others’
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True … well, for some they never knew true freedom to begin with. Just walking down the street is dangerous if you happen to be Black. Sigh.
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It wasn’t supposed to be like this…..or so we thought back in the 1960s to 1980s.
This is why we have to be constantly vigilant against the toxic erosions which are Intolerance and Ignorance (on all sides of the political divide)
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Yeah … sigh. Do we need to repeat the entire decade of the ’60s? I thought we had learned so much, but … what happened?
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Hate, Ignorance and Opportunism never rest Jill.
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Don’t feel bad, Jill, what you’d, observed here, is also, happening in the country where I’m living in, and the trend of the world seemed to have become, the popularly voted DICTATORS, taking over the people’s lives, and we the people still got, what’s, coming to us, as we were the ones, who’d, voted them, into, office here.
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I know you’re right … it is happening throughout the western world. It began with the immigration ‘crisis’ as a result of the Arab Spring movement, and has steadily gained ground since then, to the point that today we are faced with more and more democratic nations leaning toward fascism. What, I wonder, will it take to turn the tide?
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You got me on that first one, so, if we want to prevent ourselves from choking, we should all, STARVE to death, right? Based off of what you said up there, that, is what would, occur, right? And, the Americans are still, allowing these, BRAINLESS politicians dictate how the policies would, go…
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Exactly!!! Don’t eat, then you won’t choke! Yes, we still allow these brainless twits to make the laws, to tell us what is and is not acceptable. And they have said, in so many words, that our children’s lives really don’t matter to them. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr …
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