| First of all, thank you once again, Wade, for your brilliant and comprehensive analysis of what’s going on. Each of your paragraphs could be expanded into an entire essay in and of itself. I’d like to respond but the scope of your topics and analysis make it so overwhelming that I just will say, kudos to you. Janet, there is much to respond to in what you wrote, but overall, you are very misinformed. Your facts are just plain incorrect. I cannot address every single point, so I will only address just three of your erroneous points, in order to make my point about your misinformation. I will also refer you to links that will help you to become more factually and correctly informed. #1, the Equivocation Fallacy: Republicans of the 1800s have absolutely nothing to do with the Republicans of today. That the past and the present Republican party bears the same name indicates absolutely nothing about its content nor its character nor its policies. To wit: The parties switched sides in the early 1900s. The Republican Party today foments and campaigns on racist policies and practices against both black and brown people, to the point that it has innocent children in concentration camps at the border, in horrific, inhumane conditions, more concerned about tracking raped girls periods to prevent them from having abortions than providing basic hygiene or tracking their parents to reunite families. (That’s just one example; there are literally hundreds of thousands more.). As for the early twentieth century switch and why, I’ll just leave a couple of links here to educate you as to the general historical background of the switch; there are far more out there for you to read if you’d like to pursue this research: #2, the Koch brothers decades-long stealth takeover of the United States government: Read Jane Mayers' Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires behind the Rise of the Radical Right. #3, that BLM, antifa, and other leftist protesters are inciting violence: Almost all of the protests are peaceful demonstrators exercising their first amendment rights. Nor are these groups in any way at all “anarchist” - they just don’t like the fascism and racism that is rising in our country. Antifa literally refers to being “anti-fascist” and is “a moniker, not a single group with an organizational structure or leader.” It is an adjective, not a noun. Right wing social media and right wing media are propagating the myth that these are groups are violent, yet evidence shows that white nationalists and opportunists have infiltrated the protests to instigate violence. Trump's failures on the economy and the pandemic has caused him to move to campaign as the “law and order” president, but this too is failing as his “secret police” (for example in Portland, where federal agents were unmarked and unnamed) are attacking and hooding and capturing unarmed peaceful protesters, pulling them into unmarked vans, and the federal agents are the ones causing the violence themselves, against moms and Catholics. (They’ve since been driven out of Portland, and guess what? No more violence.). These feds are just another photo op for Trump, akin to his tear gassing peaceful protesters in order to walk across the street and raise a Bible (which I doubt Mr. Two Corinthians has ever opened) upside down outside of the Episcopal church in front of the White House.
Your gross misinformation is because of the what’s happened to the media today — which was supposed to be the fourth estate, part of the executive, judicial, and legislative branches’ checks and balances on each other — but has failed miserably at its job ever since the FCC Fairness Doctrine was repealed: Because of that, news outlets of any source - TV, newspapers, magazines, internet — can report anything they want. So we now have two completely different realities, and half of American live in one reality conveyed by one side of the aisle, while the other half lives in an entirely different reality conveyed by a different side of the aisle. Oh, wait, who said, fifty years ago, that that would happen? It has never been more important that Americans today have to be critical thinkers to evaluate news sources and information they come across to find out what the truth really is. But critical thinking and civics classes no longer exist in our high schools, so few Americans have any idea how to evaluate the media. Hence the great divide that Percy writes about - not just two sets of attitudes about the same set of facts, but completely different sets of facts, completely different realities entirely. My hope is that you will find better, more accurate sources, and become a better critical thinker concerning the constant bombardment of lies and misinformation that propagate in America. As for Lauren’s poem, I have another poem (there are many versions, here’s just one):
America is in a crisis. Percy would not have been quiet, and he wasn’t. He spoke out in his novels, even before this happened. Karey Karey Perkins, M.A., M.A.T., Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Department of English 296A Turner Hall, South Carolina State University Orangeburg, SC 29117 kperkin1 AT scsu.edu | 803-536-7016 www.scsu.edu Member, Institute for Studies in Pragmaticism Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409-0002
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