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Pay attention

We’re under attack.  Make that, renewed attack.

From the right.  Make that, far-right.  And the battleground is not some far off place where their blathering can go unheard.

No, they’re local.  As local as meetings of your school board.  Or city fathers.  Or county fathers and mothers.  Folks you’ve elected to guide your schools.  Or, community.

One such small group of dissenters is “Mothers for Liberty.”  Another is “City Fathers.”  And, there are more.  All positioning themselves to “bring down” whatever goes against their way of “thinking.”  In other words, to counter your way of thinking when you voted to fill those elected leadership positions.

The far-right angst so prevalent in Congress, at the moment, has long roots going back to wherever you live.  They’ve become like ants at a picnic.

The “Mom’s” group, for instance.  Opposed to some of the books your kids read, put in their hands by wiser people on school boards or citizen committees of the local library after much study and discussion.  You may already have such a noisy bunch in your backyard.  And, if they’ve been sort of “under cover,” the season for their “hatching” is now.

Rather than propose something new, they come empty-handed.  They come to “destroy” what they see as “wrong” in classrooms or other operations of local school districts.  They want to “cleanse” but offer no replacement curriculum or plan for your consideration.

That seems to be the way with anything or any group coming from the rightward “fringes.”  Break, obliterate, blowup what they don’t like without offering substitution of any replacement materials.

From the U.S. Congress down to your school board or city hall.  We seem to be under constant attack about something.  Go to any school board meeting these days.  City council sessions.  County commission gatherings.  Chances are you’ll hear voices raised against this, that and the other.

Voices seeking not to join the discussion, but to overpower it. Voices not wanting to join in conversation, but to silence it.  To drown out any voice but their own.

I’ve been to city council and school board meetings over the years.  Hundreds and hundreds of ’em.  And, what I’ve witnessed, time and again, is whoever is in charge will usually be open to listening to the voices for awhile.  Will be patient with diversion from the printed agenda.  Will let interveners  have their “say.”

That was then. This is now.  Folks like “Mothers for Liberty” have their own agendas.  Somewhere, someone – unidentified at the moment – is cranking out those agendas.  And, marching orders.  “Moms” groups in Florida or Arizona or Portland are being told what to say, how to say it and what to do if they meet resistance.

People who don’t like what these groups stand for – which is often far-right thought and destruction – may have to start attending some meetings of their local governing boards and councils.

And, they may have to organize some sort of resistance to said groups because their kids’ education is on the line.  Governance of their own communities is under attack.  In subtle ways, lifestyles are being challenged.

All of that by folks who don’t think the way you do.  Don’t have the same values you have.  And, who don’t seem to care that they offer nothing to replace what they want to destroy.

Yes, we are under small attacks.  But, taken together, they represent a war of sorts.  A war on our thinking – on our values – on the way we live.  And, how we live.

Time to pay attention.

(image/Wikimedia Commons)

 

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