A video dropped from the sky showing Christian preacher Jason Graber of the Sure Foundation Baptist Church in Spokane advocating for the execution of the parents of transgender kids by a gunshot to the back of the head. This video is echoing all over the interwebs. It is important to realize that managers who oversee news distribution are duty bound to allow only items that attract the greatest number of eyeballs through the filter. Their job performance is judged on this basis. They curate the news minute-by-minute as it happens.
Graber is a small frog in a very large pond. He and his flock are a small group in Spokane. However, I’m sure that his homophobia and anti-trans speech rhymes with what a great many people believe. You do not have to be explicitly pro-gay or pro-transgender to see that these views are a stage-4 malignancy in our democracy.
However, there is nothing new to this kind of vile speech. This is part of hellfire and brimstone preaching that has been in America since the very beginning. Only today it is amplified and distributed broadly in the Mulligan stew of today’s electronic media. Who would have guessed that the invention of the transistor would lead to this?
Plainly this preacher-man does not represent the views of all Christians. Population attributes are generally distributed as a normal distribution or sometimes called a bell curve with extremes on each side. Let’s say in this case that on the left extreme are those of Christ-like temperament of love and forgiveness and on the right extreme are those of hellfire and brimstone temperament. This character is obviously on the hellfire and brimstone end of the curve. In a normal distribution the population of extreme members is low and the bulk of the members are midrange. The mathematical ideal is sometimes called a Gaussian distribution after the great mathematician Karl Friedrich Gauss**.
Brother Graber is very much on the extreme end of the curve, even for a fundamentalist. But the freakshow he puts on causes much rubbernecking on the great interstate highway of life. It makes him look bigger than he really is. Media rewards extremism with large viewership. Look at #45, the Elephant Man of media. You just can’t take your eyes off him.
One weakness of members of the human distribution is that many are liable to believe that his outrageousness is a measure of the purity of his righteous devotion to God. He is devoted alright. To a bronze-age deity who plays favorites and metes out lethal justice to the infidels. Historically, this kind of deity has always held an appeal to people. It so happens that I am not one of them. Tradition can offer great comfort for many. But it can also be unneeded baggage that bogs you down in the muck of obsolete beliefs. It is the imaginary cosmology of Deities, a theory of the universe that sees angels and demons lurking behind every tree. What’s behind every tree? The backside of the tree of course.
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**My blog name, Gaussling, is in honor of Gauss and in no way is meant to suggest that my mathematical abilities are anywhere near his. Au contraire.
It has been announced that Dow and X-Energy will be building a nuclear power plant to feed Dow’s 4700 acre Seadrift, TX, manufacturing facility. The plant will be comprised of a 4 pack of Xe-100 80 Megawatt (electric) High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor (HTGR) pebble bed reactors. The reactors are spec’d to each produce 200 MW thermal and 80 MW electric. The design is referred to as a small modular reactor facility and is part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP).
According to Wikipedia, the history of pebble bed reactor operation is checkered by design and operational problems, many of which relate to the tennis ball sized graphite pebbles themselves. During operation of the pebble bed, radioactive graphite dust is generated leading to eventual contamination problems. Pebbles getting stuck within the equipment are difficult to dislodge and can lead to fracturing in doing so. The reactor needs fire protection because the hot pebbles are combustible when exposed to air.
The HTGR pebble bed design has many features that are very positive. The spaces between the pebbles duct the cooling gas, avoiding the need for coolant piping in the reactor. The absence of water prevents the formation of hydrogen by neutron collisions with the water. Hydrogen generated in a reactor will migrate into metal components and cause embrittlement leading to possible component failure. Overall, the design of a HTGR pebble bed reactor is considered to be much less complex than a water moderated reactor due to the lack of an elaborate water cooling system.
Despite the happy talk about their technology the maker of the system, X-Energy, will have to show how past problems with the pebble bed design have been overcome. Their website gives no clues about overcoming problems encountered in the past. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is a tough crowd and both Dow and X-Energy will have to provide a strong case for safe operation.
A paper is out comparing the resources needed to send women vs men on a trip to Mars. The paper, appearing in Nature publication Scientific Reports is: Scott, J.P.R., Green, D.A., Weerts, G. et al. Effects of body size and countermeasure exercise on estimates of life support resources during all-female crewed exploration missions. Sci Rep13, 5950 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-31713-6.
The paper is worth a look, but I’ve cut and pasted the conclusions below-
When compared at the 50th percentile for stature for US females and males, these differences increased to − 11% to − 41% and translated to larger reductions in TEE, O2 and water requirements, and less CO2 and Hprod during 1080-day missions using CM exercise. Differences between female and male theoretical astronauts result from lower resting and exercising O2 requirements (based on available astronaut data) of female astronauts, who are lighter than male astronauts at equivalent statures and have lower relative VO2max values. These data, combined with the current move towards smaller diameter space habitat modules, point to a number of potential advantages of all-female crews during future human space exploration missions.
A female crew would require less energy and less weight in provisions than men just from the benefits of smaller scale metabolism alone. Looks like hurtling women to Mars is an all-around winning idea.
Malcom Gladwell recently wrote a short essay titled “What I Found at a Mennonite Wedding”. While I don’t hold the iron age theory of the universe that the big religions have, I have always admired groups like the Quakers who practice simplicity and humility. Gladwell relates the idea of “power distance” that he observes at the Mennonite wedding he attended.
Power distance is an anthropological concept developed by psychologist Geert Hofstede. According to Wikipedia, this refers to “inequality and unequal distributions of power between parties“. Somewhat later the term was further refined by the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) project. GLOBE defined power distance as “the degree to which members of an organization or society expect and agree that power should be shared unequally”.
Once you see the definition, it’s meaning seems obvious. The phenomenon appears where individuals and groups seek control over others. It relies on the natural inclination of people to go along to get along or to seek affiliation. The recent MAGA love affair with president #45 carries the distinct smell of a public willing to turn more power over to a single person- the extension of power distance. It happened with Putin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and others.
The connection to the Mennonite wedding is that the wedding party themselves served up lunch to the guests. This is a power distance shortening action meant to recognize and serve the guests as part of the community.
Some people criticize Gladwell for being just a bit shallow in his writings. He seems to write the view from 5,000 ft rather than from an alligator’s viewpoint in the swamp. There is a place for generalization … if you want readers, that is.
Along with the fact that #45 is running for president again is the sickening prospect of two more years of news coverage of his orange face spewing streams of lies, exaggerations and deflections. Broadcasters and news providers in all media can’t resist the bloviating #45 because he attracts admiring eyeballs and those enchanted by the freakish spectacle of human idiocy at its worst.
As bad as the prospect of #45 returning to the White House is the reality check that a large block of the voting public will vote for him again. After 6 years of shameful behavior and nauseating political drama, it is quite clear that most in the MAGA crowd are not put off by his behavior.
A vote for #45 the isolationist is a vote for instability in Europe. Czar Putin will see to it that recovery of former Soviet states will happen. The US cannot be isolationist as Russia executes its land grab. At this period in history, western isolationism by passive acceptance of Russian expansionism is a one-way ticket to Russian authoritarian hegemony. This is an end state that we in the west should be able to agree on.
The world has learned that Russia’s conventional land forces are not so formidable. This is the unexpected downside of the invasion for Putin. However, Russia has always considered that the use of nuclear weapons is part of a continuum rather that preceded by a firebreak as with the west. The Russian talking heads have been keen to remind us of the power of their nuclear triad. Little mention is made of the US nuclear triad that more than matches it. The presence of nuclear sea launched ballistic missile submarines on both sides alone renders a nuclear conflict as suicide for both sides.
Americans should go to YouTube and find translated video of Russian talking heads spewing the most vile hate speech you can imagine at the Ukrainians and western powers. Polish public television TVP is a good place to start. Many Russian talking heads are speaking in favor of an all out war with the west, including nuclear weapons. Many claim that WWIII has already begun. We have been reduced to non-human beasts deserving of painful death for daring to push back Russian efforts to expand their great empire. Some figures claim that the west is after their oil & gas resources.
The reason I suggest viewing this content is to understand the constant high intensity of their internal propaganda. While there is some open criticism of the military, criticism of Putin himself is religiously avoided. Many say that Putin is surrounded by incompetent people. This is the information environment that the Russian people are subject to on a daily basis. It is difficult to believe that Russian citizens will rise up to overthrow the Putin regime through some kind of a democratic effort. More likely someone around Putin will take over with his blessing.
Russian propaganda is not some side specialty that issues from an office somewhere in Moscow. It is built into the whole governing apparatus and supervised by the GRU. Russia is very effective at not only generating fake news, but also mass confusion about what is happening. A Russian propaganda campaign is actually a layer cake of misdirection through a series of changing stories. People become confused about what is happening and are likely to lose focus.
According to an article in The Hill, the organization Physicians for Social Responsibility published a detailed report on the state of PFAS usage in oil and gas drilling operations including fracking. Note that many if not most states allow drillers to claim that the components of their drilling fluids are a trade secret and exempt from public disclosure. The quantities mentioned in the report are astoundingly large in magnitude. They report that “between 2013 and 2022, drilling operations have injected at least 261 New Mexico wells with 9,000 pounds of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) for use in fracking,” Further, the article states that “During the same period, oil and gas companies injected more than 8,200 wells with a total of 243 million pounds of fracking chemicals — likely including PFAS — kept undisclosed due to “trade secret shields,” per the report.“
[Note: A reader rightly pointed out that 9000 lbs divided by 261 wells works out to only 34 lbs/well in New Mexico. My thinking was that adding PFAS release to an untenable situation where oil & gas operate under loose environmental constraints already was a step too far. The aforementioned 243 million lbs of fracking chemicals gives no indication of how much, if any, PFAS is included. I understand why additives are blended in with drilling fluids and there are many strong technical and economic reasons for it. There must be boundaries on how much pollution we produce- even with oil & gas production.]
Fracking involves the injection of water, sand and certain chemicals at high pressure to fracture and prop open fissures produced in the formation for increased recovery of oil and gas. This is not a new technique. However, the oil and gas industry has seen to it that they can enjoy trade secrecy and immunity from much regulatory oversight while engaging in their operations. Their injection of chemicals into the ground has been subject to precious little oversight in terms of what and how much they can/should pump into the ground. Underground there is no air oxidation, weathering or photodegradation to break down the substances they pump into the ground. The immediate threat may be nil, but over the upcoming centuries, our descendants may drill into groundwater formations that have been contaminated by earlier petroleum operations. We should tread easily being mindful of our future civilization.
This blatant side-stepping of transparency by oil & gas is made possible through lobbying the local, state and federal government. If they get any push back, they drag out the old saw about jobs, jobs, jobs. No official, elected or appointed, wants to be seen acting against jobs. So, all manner of dubious ideas go forward with the blessing of our officials. We citizens fail to vote in sensible regulation because jobs, jobs, jobs. It doesn’t matter that jobs in oil & gas are famously in the feast or famine category, oil & gas companies always get their way.
Everyday I drive by unmanned oil tank batteries silently doing their automated jobs. The work force is reduced to truck drivers or supervisors visiting only periodically. The roughnecks and the crew who laid the pipes are long gone. At work I frequently train new employees who have left oil & gas because it was too unsteady.
Recently a few states have signed legislation to ban products containing forever chemicals within their state. No mention of well injection chemicals, but at least this is a start.
Good gravy. What a freakin’ mess. It seems like everywhere investigators look, they find perfluorinated alkyl residues- drinking water, fish, people, etc. These fluorinated substances are known as PFAS, PFOS, PFOA, PFHxS or perfluorohexane sulfonic acid, and PFNA or perfluorononanoic acid. The “per” in front of perfluorinated just means that the molecule has as many fluorine atoms connected as possible.
According to the National Association for Surface Finishing, PFAS “properties are useful to the performance of hundreds of industrial applications and consumer products such as carpeting, apparels, upholstery, food paper wrappings, wire and cable coatings and in the manufacturing of semiconductors.“
I will use the term “PFAS” to represent any and all of variations in this small molecule category of perfluorinated substances.
The EPA has kicked into overdrive and is ginning up new regulations, including drinking water standards. “EPA’s proposal, if finalized, would regulate PFOA and PFOS as individual contaminants, and will regulate four other PFAS – PFNA, PFHxS, PFBS, and GenX Chemicals – as a mixture … PFOA and PFOS: EPA is proposing to regulate PFOA and PFOS at a level they can be reliably measured at 4 parts per trillion.” This is around the detection limit for these compounds.
PFAS can be present in our water, soil, air, and food as well as in materials found in our homes or workplaces, including:
Drinking water – in public drinking water systems and private drinking water wells.
Soil and water at or near waste sites – at landfills, disposal sites, and hazardous waste sites such as those that fall under the federal Superfund and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act programs.
Fire extinguishing foam – in aqueous film-forming foams (or AFFFs) used to extinguish flammable liquid-based fires. Such foams are used in training and emergency response events at airports, shipyards, military bases, firefighting training facilities, chemical plants, and refineries.
Manufacturing or chemical production facilities that produce or use PFAS – for example at chrome plating, electronics, and certain textile and paper manufacturers.
Food – for example in fish caught from water contaminated by PFAS and dairy products from livestock exposed to PFAS.
Food packaging – for example in grease-resistant paper, fast food containers/wrappers, microwave popcorn bags, pizza boxes, and candy wrappers.
Household products and dust – for example in stain and water-repellent used on carpets, upholstery, clothing, and other fabrics; cleaning products; non-stick cookware; paints, varnishes, and sealants.
Personal care products – for example in certain shampoo, dental floss, and cosmetics.
Biosolids – for example fertilizer from wastewater treatment plants that is used on agricultural lands can affect ground and surface water and animals that graze on the land.
Details on specific molecular pharmacology mechanisms are a bit thin. The perfluorinated part of PFAS is chemically quite inert and very hydrophobic, but often the perfluorinated group is connected to something polar like a carboxylic acid as with PFOA which can give surfactant properties. Most of the utility of PFAS comes from the fluorinated part. About the only way to get a chemical reaction with perfluorinated organic hydrocarbons is to contact them with alkali metals like sodium or potassium, or even with magnesium or aluminum. The last two are probably less reactive than the alkali metals. The good news is, precious few have alkali metals lying around to blunder into contact with TeflonTM.
All of this toxicity talk seems to be at the “increased this” or “decreased that” correlation stage presently. Another table from the EPA website-
Current peer-reviewed scientific studies have shown that exposure to certain levels of PFAS may lead to:
Reproductive effects such as decreased fertility or increased high blood pressure in pregnant women.
Developmental effects or delays in children, including low birth weight, accelerated puberty, bone variations, or behavioral changes.
Increased risk of some cancers, including prostate, kidney, and testicular cancers.
Reduced ability of the body’s immune system to fight infections, including reduced vaccine response.
Interference with the body’s natural hormones.
Increased cholesterol levels and/or risk of obesity.
Along the way to the consumer are the PFAS chemical manufacturers and their customers that formulate the PFAS into their products. Then there are the retailers who sell PFAS-loaded products to the consumer. The benefits of perfluorinated materials are often revealed as claims for non-stick, repellency or fire retardancy. At some point the whole chain will have to back off on their repellency marketing.
Just for fun, the only substance that a gecko’s foot cannot stick to is PTFE.
So, should all use of PFAS substances be abolished? I think that applications can be prioritized according to relative importance. Fire retardancy is a health and safety related use and is a very important attribute in certain circumstances like fire extinguishing agents. Liquid fuel fires are special because spraying water on burning fuel will result in the fuel floating on top of water and continuing to burn. Foam is used because it can float on top of the fuel and smother it. A thoughtful evaluation of retaining PFAS agents for a select few applications like fire suppression should be made.
Using PFAS to prevent grease stains from soaking through fast food wrappers, water repellency or stain resistance on carpets is likely a basket of applications that we can live without.
In doing background reading for this I found something very interesting. There is such a thing as “Teflon Flu”, also known as polymer fume fever. When a perfluorinated non-stick coating, say, on a pan is subjected to temperatures of around 450 C, the coating begins to decompose and will generate vapors that are hazardous.
We should all remember that TeflonTM is a Chemours trademark and refers to a polytetrafluoroethylene polymer (PTFE). PTFE is a macromolecule unlike PFAS substances. PTFE is in the same persistence class as a “forever substance,” but as an insoluble solid polymer it is not mobilized at the level of molecules so migration into the cellular architecture isn’t viable path as with PFAS. The PTFE polymer is extraordinarily useful in the world and has many, many uses as a polymeric, chemically inert material and should not be cast into the dumpster with its cousins, the PFAS compounds.
The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) reports that it has seized xylazine and fentanyl mixtures in 48 of 50 states in the US. They mention that while fentanyl is responsive to naloxone, xylazine is not an opioid. Consequently, an overdose of a fentanyl/xylazine mixture may not respond to naloxone as expected.
DEA says that the great majority of fentanyl in the US comes from the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels in Mexico, with the raw materials coming from China.
Xylazine is used in veterinary medicine as a sedative with analgesic and muscle relaxant properties. It would be interesting to see what the sulfur brings to the table as far as biological activity goes. You have to go to a bit of trouble to put the sulfur there so it must do something.
Ordinary drawing of xylazine free base.Ball and stick rendering of Xylazine absent the hydrogen atoms. Dark blue, Nitrogen; light blue Carbon, yellow, Sulfur. The conformation is not optimized.
One reaction scheme for the preparation of xylazine is shown below. It is from expired US patent 4614798A (1985), Example 1, assigned to Vetamix. This prep uses acetic anhydride which is a List II chemical in the US. An acetamide intermediate is prepared from the aniline which is then reduced with sodium hydride and treated with carbon disulfide to give the reactive isothiocyanate intermediate. Finally, 3-aminopropanol adds to the isothiocyanate carbon to give the thiourea alcohol. Acid catalyzed cyclization by displacement of water by sulfur gives the xylazine product. This is some good meat-and-potatoes heterocyclic chemistry.
List II chemicals are subject to few serious reporting requirements in the US as seen in the table below. I suspect that the DEA benefits from good will disclosures. Following acetic anhydride shipment would be a good start in finding illicit labs in the US for several illegal drugs including xylazine, but it seems to be made in Mexico. Raw materials from China and drugs from Mexican labs add up to a very hard problem. Hard to tell how the cartel boys are making xylazine just from the internets.
A few years ago I found myself wandering through the Denver Museum of Nature and Science where I happened upon a robotics exhibition. In terms of the museum arts and sciences it was well conceived and executed, complete with a topical gift shop in the exit. All of the displays were accessible to the public in terms of language or hands-on widgetry. At each hands-on exhibit there stood a determined 5 to 8 year old yanking the controls around in a frantic effort to steer the robotic device away from the wall of the test area while onlookers yawned, waiting their turn. A visitor might have concluded that the purpose of the robot was to become stuck against an obstacle- a task it performed well.
These kinds of future technology exhibits are always popular at the museum. The lead-up to the exhibit is given all of the ballyhoo that the museum could afford. The theme of the exhibit is supercharged with the promise of a brighter tomorrow through the use of snazzy technology. If automobiles can be tied in, so much the better. It is a celebration of the triumph of technology for the everyman. The subtext was that only by the clever application of technology will we continue to improve our lives. These wonderful robots with their mechanical limbs and primate form would free humans from the dangers and tedium of the work-a-day world.
As I threaded my way through the exhibit I was struck by a sad realization. We’re celebrating the replacement of people with automation. The exhibit was a valentine to all of the entrepreneurs, engineers, investors and vendors who are trying their best to render obsolete much of the remaining workforce. This planned obsolescence has been going for many, many years.
Despite being against our own best interest, we patrons excitedly embrace these “futurama” style exhibitions, perhaps because secretly all of us believe that we will evade the job title of “obsolete”. Absent in the exhibit was a display on what the redundant workers would be doing with their involuntary free time. Fishing or golfing no doubt.
The top-level beneficiaries of robotics are the owners of the factories that make and use them. The driver is that robotics properly done may extend margin growth into the future. A way to overcome foreign competition is by reducing overhead, especially labor costs. Robotics and AI are economic bubbles in the same manner that computers and smart phones have been. The early adopters could enjoy a competitive advantage by the way they use their resources. Profits are unlikely to be channeled into hiring because, well, they’re profiting from the use of robotics. Once automation becomes normalized, there is no going back.
Insider business tip: Healthy companies match labor to the demand for product. More demand, more labor. Increased profits may go towards growth and acquisition, or it may go to the stockholders or to bonuses for management. But rarely if ever a price reduction to the public. If you are making a dandy profit and sales are strong, why hire or reduce prices?
The secondary level beneficiaries will be the consumer who will likely be oblivious to the fact that widget prices have not risen lately. Lower overhead does not automatically result in price savings for the end user. Extra margins will be absorbed by the manufacturer or seller. Just as likely, extra margins may be consumed by the manufacturer in wholesale price negotiations with retailers in the eternal battle for retail shelf space.
Many will offer that the history of man’s use of tools from the stone axe and wheel to AI driven automation is/was inevitable. The ascent of mankind is driven in part by our ability to use tools and develop a command of energy. It is difficult to think of a progressive industrial technology that did not result in the reduction of labor contribution to the overall cost of production. Nobody mourns the loss of the mule team and wagon, steam locomotives, or whale oil. We celebrate obsolescence and we take rapid progress for granted. Technological triumphalism is what we all celebrate.
But we should remind ourselves that there exists a substantial negative aspect of the story of technological progress. It is the very thing it enables: the reduction of labor hours per unit of production. The drive to raise profit margins is relentless, partly because the cost of doing business rises always rises and eats into margins. Labor costs in particular are always front and center in the mind of business owners.
The situation today is different than when Henry Ford developed his form of mass production. Then there was a smaller population with a significantly larger fraction of people living on farms capable of growing their own food. Many common goods and services were in the hands of local business operators who produced locally and distributed locally. Restrictions on manufacturing and business operations were less onerous than today allowing for greater flexibility in methodology. It may be fair to say that mass production is now widespread and optimized to some degree as a whole. Early automation with just limit switches and relays has given way to microprocessor-controlled process machinery. What is happening presently is the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI). This is the natural progression of technology.
However, we can look a step or two ahead further and ask the question, when will an AI system take over the total management of a factory? When will an AI system have human subordinates? How tight of a leash would we allow an AI system to have on the management of people? The presence of slack in the organization no doubt makes many job descriptions tolerable. What if AI tightened all of the slack in business operations where every half second is accounted for? Would people consent to working for an AI? Companies like Amazon are getting close to this, but there is still human oversight. Extrapolating, it is easy to predict that one day, very quietly, human management will disappear at some level and in its place will be an AI system.
AI has to be taught. Will there be standards of behavior built-in governing how AI interacts with its human subordinates? Will everyone want their companies managed by an AI programmed to have a Jack Welch profile? My god, I hope not.
Another awful thought is the possibility of government and the military run by AI. Let that roll around in your mind for a bit.
There is a need to get back to basic principles here. What is our purpose in life? For most I think it is to love and be loved as well as to participate in some kind of rewarding activity. We all want to be useful and to leave behind some kind of legacy. There is no doubt that the replacement of human labor by AI-driven systems will continue to move forward, encroaching on all of our lives. Ultimately this is driven by a few people at the top who will reap the rewards to the greater concentration of wealth by a few trillionaires. Is concentrated control of limited resources a good thing? Is there any choice?
There is also a large fraction of the population that is not very progressive or forward looking at all. While they enjoy the devices and comforts of advanced technology, they neither understand or care about what is needed to develop a drug or design a new semiconductor chip. Behind our modern civilization is an educated and skilled workforce. However, the US is comprised of many people who are anti-intellectual by nature. This trait has been there all along and will into the future.
In some ways these people are disruptive to the progress and stability of the American experiment and, as of this writing, it isn’t at all clear how this will play out. The USA may well not be a stable enough environment in the future to sustain the continued, very expensive growth of technology. Technological advance requires highly educated workforce who can afford the training to get there. Just to stay even with what we already have, the pipeline of educated people needs to be full.
Forward looking people, the ones who want to sustain our advanced civilization, must step up and be counted or the thing will expire. For all of its problems, the US has nonetheless been a productive incubator of innovation and a great many positive aspects of advanced civilization in the form of a noisy, somewhat chaotic liberal democracy. The goose that laid the golden egg is still alive. Shouldn’t we keep it going?
>>> Warning. This essay contains liberal political content. No chemistry here. This isn’t a “balanced discussion” of political values. I am flatly calling foul on WASPish conservatives who I maintain are destabilizing what has been an imperfect but productive US culture. <<<
No, the great knob of Florida isn’t DeSantis, although it is an amusing thought. Anybody remember when electronic devices had selector knobs that you would twist a certain number of clicks to the desired setting? The knob was constructed with detents that would hold the knob to a specific place in the rotation of a selector switch. It is a nice little simile for many things in life. For this writing, I refer to how the WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) Republican party (GOP) of the US state of Florida is methodically clicking the legislative knob toward their ultraconservative model of the social order. This is to be expected, I suppose, except that lately Florida is taking very large steps in the direction of banning many resources and services that were previously not the subject of legislation. DeSantis is backed by a substantially older, low information base of Republicans.
DeSantis’ thin-skinned punishment of Disney, Inc., makes him a very waspish WASP. But Mickey was clever. He had the board write up an agreement containing the Royalty Lives Clause before the governing board was dissolved. What a hoot!
Knobs are clicking all over the country. States with similar Don’t Say Gay bills in progress are: Arkansas, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan and of course, Missouri. This issue seemingly fell out of the sky in the last few years and has spread like wildfire. Sexuality has always summoned the Puritan in Americans, but homosexuality conjures images of the worst kind in them. Conservative leaders are leaping over one another to click the big knob while the MAGA people have their time in the sun.
[Side note] A old friend has been breathing fire on Facebook about the “liberal agenda” including imminent loss of the 2nd amendment and confiscation of guns. As usual, George Soros is blamed. Imagine the folly of attempting to confiscate guns in the US. It would be a complete disaster with widespread chaos and casualties. It ain’t gonna happen. Wackos with firearms and mass shootings will remain a baked-in feature of the US cultural landscape as far as anyone can see going forward.
Used to be, the radical right wing could be counted on to be squarely against “big government”. But now we find them burying their heads into public education like a tick. Recent legislation in Florida and other like-minded states is aimed at censoring library books and curriculum having “controversial” content, namely any mention of LGBTQ+ lifestyles, alternative gender designations and any history or social studies that might suggest white complicity in past inequities (critical racial theory, CRT). This controversy is a longstanding conflict with conservatives that, like IBS, has flared up again. This time, however, they have new vocabulary such as “woke” and “CRT”, and rancid mouthpieces like Tucker Carlson to continuously beat the propaganda drum. Joseph Goebbels would have loved Tucker.
One overreach by the GOP is the matter of their public attack on gender affirming care for minors suffering from gender identity issues. Republicans have put their cloven hooves down on this (ok, this was sarcastic). In the Republican view, minors should only receive treatment by way of “curing” gender identity issues by conversion to the heterosexual, birth gender side. The alternative is to just tough it out until they reach adulthood. The associated personal strife and suicidal risk connected to gender identity issues are unpersuasive to conservative WASPs.
Public schools have a mandate to provide a quality education for all students, including those with special needs. Public school teachers and their districts want teach students how to overcome life’s challenges and take advantage of opportunities. Gender identity issues can spiral into learning difficulties or even suicide. Parents are frequently at their wits end dealing with it and look upon the public schools to provide the right environment, specialists and curriculum. Very often, the parent(s) of troubled kids do not have the financial resources to provide treatment for their students nor can they take time from work. The schools have limited resources as well but they try because they are expected to.
The GOP image of gender affirming care is a manufactured bugaboo, much like so-called CRT or wokeness have been. It is another rallying cry for the angry and disenfranchised. Republicans know that they can readily frighten some fraction of low information conservatives into voting Republican by claiming widespread pedophilia, gay-anything, evolution or just general liberal leanings. Legislative knobs are clicking all across the country over this matter. Grand Poohbahs of the soon-to-be Christocratic States of America (Ok, that’s satire) are loudly proclaiming that there is a liberal agenda to turn kids gay. Just as absurd, some believe that seeing or hearing a drag queen could harm their immortal souls.
The LGBTQ+ issue, if you can call it that, is a straw man devised to sideline people into a state of outrage. That said, however, I can’t think of a pedagogical reason for extensive exposure to sexuality in general as a subject matter in classrooms with any more than a passing mention in grades K-9. In my view, however, for grades 10-12, discussion or readings on sexuality as a sociological phenomenon should not be out of bounds. Parents who object to even this could send a note to the teacher excusing their child from this topic. Deeper study can be left to college level. The acknowledgement that alternative pairings between people or gender identity even exists is not an invitation to join in. Kids have always sought out ‘forbidden” information. If they don’t learn from knowledgeable sources, they’ll pick up odd versions of it elsewhere.
We had a similar problem years ago with sex ed in the schools. More than a few imagined that the Kama Sutra was the textbook and spoke out aghast that kids will have exposure to this. In reality, the topic was based on biology and how reproductive systems work. Sexually transmitted disease was gently introduced as something to watch out for. The histrionics at local school board meetings could be intense. No, we’re not teaching little Johnny and little Susie how to do it. They’ll figure that out on their own.
Behind this is longstanding momentum from the large, assertive and well-funded conservative evangelical wing of the GOP. Their strategists and grandees know that if they repeatedly state that public schools are teaching LGBTQ+ lifestyles or CRT, low information voters will reliably panic and vote GOP. They’re right. There are large numbers of low information voters who are easily swayed by GOP hyperbole and outright lies. Schools are just a step stool for GOP power grabbing. Religious indoctrination and basic morality are firmly the responsibility of the family.
The public schools are for learning the massive amount of information that is of a secular nature. You know, like accounting, drivers ed, wood shop, spelling, math, PE, foreign languages, chemistry, physics and biology to name a few. You know, the things that the Bible is silent on. For crying out loud, God gave us brains and expects us to fill in the blank spaces.
Lamentations on Chemistry 