AUGUST 2023 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. The Florida Board of Education. The Florida Board of Education approved new state social studies standards,, including standards for African American history, civics and government, American history, and economics. Critics immediately called out the middle school instruction in African American history that includes “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” (p. 6). They noted that describing enslavement as offering personal benefits to enslaved people is outrageous.

But that specific piece of instruction in the 216-page document is only a part of a much larger political project.

Taken as a whole, the Florida social studies curriculum describes a world in which the white male Founders of the United States embraced ideals of liberty and equality—ideals it falsely attributes primarily to Christianity rather than the Enlightenment—and indicates the country’s leaders never faltered from those ideals. Students will, the guidelines say, learn “how the principles contained in foundational documents contributed to the expansion of civil rights and liberties over time” (p. 148) and “analyze how liberty and economic freedom generate broad-based opportunity and prosperity in the United States” (p. 154).

The new guidelines reject the idea that human enslavement belied American principles; to the contrary, they note, enslavement was common around the globe, and they credit white abolitionists in the United States with ending it (although in reality the U.S. was actually a late holdout). Florida students should learn to base the history of U.S. enslavement in “Afro-Eurasian trade routes” and should be instructed in “how slavery was utilized in Asian, European, and African cultures,” as well as how European explorers discovered “systematic slave trading in Africa.” Then the students move on to compare “indentured servants of European and African extraction” (p. 70) before learning about overwhelmingly white abolitionist movements to end the system.

In this account, once slavery arrived in the U.S., it was much like any other kind of service work: slaves performed “various duties and trades…(agricultural work, painting, carpentry, tailoring, domestic service, blacksmithing, transportation).” (p. 6). This is where the sentence about personal benefit comes in.) And, in the end, it was white reformers who ended it.

This information lies by omission and lack of context. The idea of Black Americans who “developed skills” thanks to enslavement, for example, erases at the most basic level that the history of cattle farming, river navigation, rice and indigo cultivation, southern architecture, music, and so on in this country depended on the skills and traditions of African people. Lack of context papers over that while African tribes did practice enslavement, for example, it was an entirely different system from the hereditary and unequal one that developed in the U.S.

Taken together, this curriculum presents human enslavement as simply one of a number of labor systems, a system that does not, in this telling, involve racism or violence.

Indeed, racism is presented only as “the ramifications of prejudice, racism, and stereotyping on individual freedoms.” This is the language of right-wing protesters who say acknowledging white violence against others hurts their children, and racial violence is presented here as coming from both Black AND white Americans, a trope straight out of accounts of white supremacists during Reconstruction (p. 17). To the degree Black Americans faced racial restrictions in that era, Chinese Americans and Japanese Americans did, too (pp. 117–118).

It’s hard to see how the extraordinary violence of Reconstruction, especially, fits into this whitewashed version of U.S. history, but the answer is that it doesn’t. In a single entry an instructor is called to: “Explain and evaluate the policies, practices, and consequences of Reconstruction (presidential and congressional reconstruction, Johnson's impeachment, Civil Rights Act of 1866, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, opposition of Southern whites to Reconstruction, accomplishments and failures of Radical Reconstruction, presidential election of 1876, end of Reconstruction, rise of Jim Crow laws, rise of Ku Klux Klan)” (p. 104).

That’s quite a tall order, especially for a small part of the overall curriculum.

Apparently, Reconstruction was not a period that singled out the Black population, and in any case, Reconstruction was quick and successful. White Floridians promptly extended rights to Black people: another learning outcome calls for students to “explain how the 1868 Florida Constitution conformed with the Reconstruction Era amendments to the U.S. Constitution (e.g., citizenship, equal protection, suffrage)” (p. 109).

All in all, racism didn’t matter to U.S. history, apparently, because “different groups of people ([for example] African Americans, immigrants, Native Americans, women) had their civil rights expanded through legislative action…executive action…and the courts.”

The use of passive voice in that passage identifies how the standards replace our dynamic and powerful history with political fantasy. In this telling, centuries of civil rights demands and ceaseless activism of committed people disappear. Marginalized Americans did not work to expand their own rights; those rights “were expanded.” The actors, presumably the white men who changed oppressive laws, are offstage.

And that is the fundamental story of this curriculum: nonwhite Americans and women “contribute” to a country established and controlled by white men, but they do not shape it themselves.

2. Elon Musk. Musk’s free speech absolutism knows no bounds! On Monday, it was reported that the recently renamed Twitter parent company X Corp. is threatening legal action against a nonprofit that researches hate speech online. According to the Center for Countering Digital Hate, Musk’s legal squad sent the organization a letter in mid-July accusing it of publishing misleading information about the social media platform. Specifically, Musk took umbrage at eight research papers the group put out highlighting the rise of accounts promoting hate speech, and Twitter’s subsequent lack of moderation.

But whereas some of Musk’s early moves to censor critics were frequently seen as the whimsical impulses of a fragile egotist, this new move makes it clear these are the well-worn calculations of someone trying to crush any and all competition in a sociopathic search for profits. Imran Ahmed, the CEO and founder of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, told The New York Times, “Elon Musk’s actions represent a brazen attempt to silence honest criticism and independent research.” Ahmed pointed to the flailing social media company’s desperate need to entice advertisers other than online casinos.

3. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA). Grassley released an FBI FD-1023 Form related to the Hunter Biden investigation. These forms are not intended to be public documents and it is highly unusual to release them publicly. These are the forms that the FBI uses to “record raw, unverified reporting from confidential human sources.” They do not represent the results of investigations, and “recording this information does not validate it or establish its credibility.” 

These forms are not classified, but they are kept in confidence for reasons that are mostly connected with protecting sources. The FBI has made it clear to Grassley repeatedly that releasing the form would have a negative impact not just on this case, but on every case that depends on confidential human sources.

Grassley released it anyway because he has placed what he sees as a momentary opportunity to hurt President Joe Biden over the needs of the FBI and the good of the nation. More than that, Grassley is doing this to forward a story that he knows is a lie.

The document alleging Joe and Hunter Biden bribes was the same as one submitted two years ago by that bastion of honesty, Rudy Giuliani. The document the FBI received was clearly authored by someone who was part of Giuliani’s plot, and it was clearly Giuliani himself who pointed out this document to Grassley and others. The document contains the same false, easily disproved, claims as the story Giuliani submitted and was run in the NY Times. It was obviously written with the sole purpose of providing some faux documentary evidence for the story Giuliani and Trump were pushing at the time. It’s all part of what Trump was trying to get Zelenskyy to say when he made his impeachment-worthy phone call to the Ukrainian leader.

The content of the FD-1023 form is a lie. What’s more, Grassley knows it is a lie. He knows this has all been investigated and found to be baseless accusations. And he knows that releasing this document causes real genuine harm.

Protecting this type of information from wider disclosure is crucial to our ability to recruit sources and ensure the safety of the source or others mentioned in the reporting. Confidential Human Sources (CHSs) are critical to cases across all FBI programs—whether it’s violent crime, drug cartels, or terrorism. It would be difficult to effectively recruit these sources if we can’t assure them of their confidentiality. And without these sources, we would not be able to build the cases that are so important to keeping Americans safe.

Grassley was sent a letter reminding him of exactly this issue and asking him expressly to remind everyone involved to keep in mind the importance of keeping these documents secure. Instead, Grassley did the opposite: He published the FD-1023 in blatant defiance of the FBI’s request.

Why did he do it? He did it for the same reason that Republicans had been seeking release of the document all along, and that was because they knew it would generate headlines like this:

Bidens allegedly 'coerced' Burisma CEO to pay them millions to help get Ukraine prosecutor fired

Grassley purposely released a document that he knew was a lie for the purpose of attacking Joe Biden even though he knew it would put Americans in danger and damage the FBI’s ability to investigate actual crimes of all sorts.

To gain a moment of political attention, Grassley is creating an immeasurable risk. How can witnesses come to the FBI to make a confidential statement knowing that their identities and claims can be revealed for political expediency by someone who has no real interest in the truth?

4. Senator Lyndsey Graham (R-SC). Graham drew some derisive laughter for his recent remarks arguing that Mr. Trump should be free of any criminal inquiry into his attempts to steal the 2020 election, and that instead we should let the next ballot totals decide Trump’s fate. 

“The American people can decide whether they want [Trump] to be president or not.  This should be decided at the ballot box, not a bunch of liberal jurisdictions trying to put the man in jail. . . . And this is setting a bad precedent. And what I fear, is that you’re changing the way the game is played in America. And there’s no going back. We’re in for a very hard time if this becomes the norm.

A good deal of the commentariat erupted that Sen. Graham had this exactly backwards.  As Steve Benen explained, “the United States tried to decide the former president’s fate at the ballot box, and Trump decided not to care. This isn’t some obscure, tangential point; it’s the foundation of the entire scandal.”

Obviously!

Deciding a candidate’s fate at the ballot box is how democracies are supposed to work Up until this point, at least in the modern era, it is inconceivable that a sitting president could remain a viable candidate for re-election if, as with Mr. Trump, he or she openly had attempted to subvert an election, including through repeated lies, intimidation, violence and fraudulent submissions to state legislatures and courts . . . plus hiding retention of classified documents.  How could that not end a politician’s career? 

But the problem today is less Mr. Trump or his threat of future fraud and/or violence.  No, the true threat we face today is that Republican voters no longer consider this disqualifying behavior.   Mr. Trump’s favorability among Republicans constantly hovers around 70%. A recent NYT poll found that only 17% of Republican voters believe that Trump committed a “serious crime,” and 22% of that small group would still vote for Trump anyway. 

Moreover, not enough attention is paid to the sheer size of Trump’s electoral loss.  The 2020 election was not, by way of example, a close election won by the loser of the popular vote and decided by one state (much less by an official 537 vote difference in Florida, as with Bush v. Gore).  No. Trump lost the popular vote by over 7 million votes and over 4 percentage points, and he lost the Electoral College vote by 306-232. This was not a close election.  Thus, the claims by Mr. Trump and Republican voters are not just fraudulent, but outlandish

To not prosecute Trump’s coup attempt would effectively legalize the tactics he employed. It would consecrate a new system in which an election result, even a clear one with multiple states providing a margin of error, would merely be the start of a negotiation. The outcome of the process would be determined not just by the votes but also by which party controls the legislative and judicial channels that will steer it and has the will to power to assert the most favorable claims.

So, the Republicans’ vision of future presidential elections would resemble the shambolic and corrupt Debt Ceiling crises.  And the way we shut down our government periodically, we also can have periods with no plainly elected president (despite plain election results) or even un-elected presidents.

We are in for hard times if future elections, in the end, are decided by the Republican minority. And, make no mistake about it, that’s exactly the kind of system Republicans want.

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And he August IGGY winner is:

For the sheer audacity of their absurd effort, I must give the August IGGY to the Florida Board of Education, along with their fascistic patron Governor Ron DeSantis.