The Real "Cancel Culture" Scheme By Republicans Revealed


While Fox News, rightwing hate radio and Republican politicians have been all over the "canceling" of racist Dr. Seuss drawings (by the family foundation) and Mr. Potatohead (by toymaker Hasbro), they've been quite vigorous in pursuing "cancel culture" in other areas.
Over the past few weeks, for example, they have gone out of their way to try to cancel any sort of assistance to the tens of millions of Americans wiped out or thrown into serious crisis by Trump's incompetence in handling the Covid pandemic.
When the Democrats finally got legislation together to rescue America, every single Republican in both the House and the Senate used every procedural move they could to cancel it (including forcing a public reading of the bill) and, in the end, every single one of them also voted to cancel it.
And now they're trying to cancel our memory of their opposition: Republican Senator Roger Wicker just tweeted out a brag on how the Covid Rescue legislation will help restaurants in his state of Mississippi…even though he trash-talked it and voted to cancel it.
But that's just the beginning.
Republicans have been trying to cancel the minimum wage ever since it was enacted in the 1930s; more recently they've successfully canceled every attempt to increase that wage for well over a decade.
Republicans have done their best to cancel American's health care, from multiple lawsuits going all the way to the Supreme Court to cancel Obamacare, to nearly every Red state, to this day, refusing to expand Medicaid for their lowest-paid working people.
Along those same lines, Republicans have fought to cancel unions ever since the 1920s. In the 1940s they passed the Taft Hartley Act over President Harry Truman's veto, which gave individual states the right to cancel unions; nearly every Red State in the union has now taken them up on this, crashing union membership in America from about a third of all workers in 1980 to fewer than 6% of the private workforce today.
Republicans have worked hard to cancel educational opportunity for Americans, from elementary school through college. While Republican President Dwight Eisenhower built brand-new schools all across the United States in the 1950s, everything changed when Reagan came into office in 1981. He appointed Bill "You could abort every Black baby in this country and your crime rate would go down" Bennett as his Education Secretary and you can draw straight line from there to Betsy DeVos trying to cancel public schools all across America and replace them with for-profit private academies.
Republicans have been working since 1980 to cancel a woman's right to choose an abortion, and have even fought, in hundreds of legislative and legal cases, a woman's right to use birth control. Most recently, Republican State Representative Bryan Slayton introduce into the Texas legislature a law laying the death penalty on any woman who gets an abortion. He doesn't specify whether they should be killed by firing squad, hanging, or lethal injection, but when I asked a Republican candidate at CPAC some years ago which technique should be used to execute women who get an abortion, he simply said, "That's up to the states."
Republicans have also been trying to cancel the workplace, political, and social rights of women for two-years-short-of-a-century. The Equal Rights Amendment simply says: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." It was written by Alice Paul in 1923, and finally passed Congress on March 22, 1972, but still had to be ratified by 3/4 of the states. Republicans in state after state fought it for decade after decade until it finally passed that threshold last year; now a federal judge says that too much time has passed and Congress needs to start all over again. So far, they've succeeded in canceling it (SCOTUS is next).
Republicans have been trying to cancel your clean air since the 1970s when the Environmental Protection Agency came into law after Congress ignored Richard Nixon's threatened 1970 veto. Every Republican administration since then has done everything they could to weaken it.
Similarly, in 1972, Richard Nixon vetoed the Clean Water Act, although Congress overrode his attempt to cancel our right to clean water. more recently, Donald Trump was quite proud that the first consequential piece of legislation he signed was a resolution that allowed coal mining companies to dump their waste directly into rivers, flooding the water supplies of downriver cities with toxic mercury, cadmium and other substances that are neurologically destructive to children.
Pretty much every Republican legislator alive today has spent most of their careers trying to cancel the right of LGBTQ Americans to get married. At the state level, there have been hundreds of attempts that go beyond even that, trying to cancel adoptions and foster parenting.
Over the past year, Republicans have used intentional policy (refusing to mandate masks) and public statements like "it's just like the flu" to give the US the highest Covid infection and death rates in the world, cancelling the lives of over a half-million of us while countries like Taiwan and South Korea have seen only dozens or a few hundred deaths.
They're even trying to get average Americans to cancel getting the Covid vaccine, presumably to help President Biden "fail" at containing the epidemic. As Parker Beauregard writes at Blue State Conservative, "I draw the line is shots for chicken pox, shingles, flu, HPV, and now Covid. Statistically speaking, none of these viruses are going to be my undoing, and the risk of injecting unknown substances into my body to impart potentially helpful immunization doesn't stack up against my body's God-given and nature-made defense mechanisms."
And the Governors of Texas and a few other states are trying to cancel the lives of thousands of their own citizens by eliminating mask mandates and forcing restaurant and bar owners to become their own "mask police," which will be an absolute customer service mess for any business that wants to protect its employees.
In Oklahoma, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives just voted to cancel the lives of Black Lives Matter and other protesters. They passed a bill that would decriminalize killing "protesters" by driving a car into a crowd if the driver/killer was "fearful" about the crowd. This is just the latest variation on the Florida GOP's "Stand Your Ground" law that gave George Zimmerman the "right to kill" Trayvon Martin because he was Black and therefore "looked threatening" to Zimmerman.
Perhaps most troubling, the GOP is all about canceling your vote. At least if you're poor, Black, Hispanic, a college student, or a Social Security voter. The Brennan Center documents how over 200 pieces of legislation that cancel your right to vote are working their ways through 40 state legislatures at this very moment; Georgia just passed two of them that would outlaw "Souls to the Polls" and mail-in voting, and Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds just signed another big Republican cancel-your-vote piece of legislation this week.
Meanwhile, Republican appointees on the Supreme Court let Republican Secretaries of State cancel the voter registrations of over 20 million Americans in the last dozen years, and let them enthusiastically reduce the number of voting machines and voting locations, particularly in Black, Hispanic and working-class neighborhoods, to cancel their right to easily vote in less than five or six or 10 hours. Georgia just passed a law to cancel your right to receive a bottle of water or slice of pizza while standing in those obscene lines.
It turns out that America actually does have an issue with "cancel culture." Our problem is that the media has been focusing on the wrong one.
-Thom
Originally posted on thomhartmann.medium.com.
Comments

Like I said the other day, the Republican Party is 2 factions. The Conservatives and the Fascist (Trumpsters). The Fascists out number the Conservatives by a large number.
Wonder if Doorknobs and Cuz watched Biden yesterday. After 4 years of the baffoon I would think that they would be ashamed to critisize Biden and his Administration. Of course they say forget about the past.

It's time to cancel the CONS, once and forever! They never supported the American people, just went along with the program as they shapeshifted into the Party of Putin. Now all they pose is a clear and present danger to what is left of our democracy [small d], our civil/human rights and most importantly the levers that control our health as is evidenced by their gross malfeasance and abysmal failure with regards to COVID and 529,000+ dead Americans exactly one year later! Did I leave out pursuit of "happiness"?
Rump is to blame and negligent homicide is his game!

Legend, I will address you only once and that applies to a few others here, one of whom accuses me of bothsidesium and cannot seem to survive the hour unless they get in the last word every time.
None of you have any idea as to my politics. I am/was not a Trump or Biden supporter. One was a bloviating narcissist and the other a feeble old man with dementia. Bad choices both, and yes, I do see good in both sides, and in my world congress should work together for the actual good of the American public instead of hiding payoffs inside a two trillion dollar covid rescue bill that only 9% involves actual virus relief. If you can't pass your agenda without hiding it in a 600 page covid relief bill, maybe your agenda is awful.
As for all the attempts to erase or redefine American history, it is not there for you to like or dislike. It is there for you to learn from it and if you are offended, even better because then you are less likely to allow it to repeat.
I now expect to read the wrath from a few manure salespeople with a mouthful of free samples.

Sorry you lost me at I see good in both sides. Sure there is corruption and self motivated manauvers to stay in office but thats about it. The GOP has shown no vested interest in 99% of America. That far outweighs anything the Democrats have done.

Wrong on not knowing your politics -- you are judged by your own words.
Wrong on getting the last word -- how would anyone know that nobody else would post a succeeding post unless one is clairvoyant?
Wrong on Biden -- a slanted, subjective opinion not based on any evidence other than being a popular meme on the far-right.
Wrong on anyone (assuming you mean Democrats/liberals/progressives) trying to erase history -- Republicans/liars have been trying to "revise" history for decades. Or haven't you been paying attention?
Wrong on the COVID-relief bill -- everything in it targets those people and institutions, including states and cities, most devastated economically by Trump's criminal negligence on both the pandemic spread and the resullting economic collapse.
Right that you will be called out for posting misinformation, disinformation, and mal-information.
And it is spelled "bothsidesism," with which many of your statements drip. (Look up the logical fallacy explanations.)
Thanks for being one of our best customers of manure.
Cuz, The other day you said that you agreed with They Australian voting system. They have ranked choice voting. Which is excellent. We do not. You have to pick the best of 2 choices and go with that. You cannot play to be a Libertarian or a Middle of the roader, when your posts have leaned to the far right. Be honest with yourself and us. The American system will not change in my lifetime unless you get money out of politics and the Republican Party will not allow that. If the Republicans get much more control they will re-write the Constitution to something much worse than we have now. So pick your side and do not pretend.

Mr Legend,
Why do you feel threatened by me? Is it because I have more choices in my life than you. Maybe jealousy would be a better word. Why are you jealous of the way I live my life? Is it because I choose not to depend on the government for my existence. Why do you feel you have attack everything I say? Is it because I'm happy. Why don't you try improving you life, instead of trying to bash others. It's much better to pull yourself up to my level, than trying (and failing) to pull me down to your level.
This is your post Doorknobs, not mine"
"As of March 8, Biden has issued 38 executive orders, has not given a single press conference, and doesn't intend to give a State of the Union Address. Those aren't the traits of a Democracy. We have a dictator, a monarch, who places himself above the representives of "we the people".

That's correct, and I stand by it. Why does it threaten you?
You are the negative one. With no backup or reference for your claims.
I love how those who purport to hate the Press are now siding with the few right-wing opinionators who are asking why there hasn't been a Press Conference yet. Of course, he's answered questions from reporters in informal settings lots of times and has even had a Town Hall meeting. Gosh, maybe it's because we are in the middle of a national emergency - an economic and health crisis that he inherited coupled with a PANDEMIC that kinda complicates things? Of course, we should all forget about the ONE Press Conference that the "stable genius" gave in his first year and bloviate over the lack of an "official" gotcha gab fest that is surely the OMG "scandal" of enormous importance. Yeah, just gaslight the sane into thinking that they're the ones creating all of the threats and scandals when made-up crap comes out of the quackadoodles who under some kind of psychic transfer of info say that Biden has no intention of ever giving a "State of the Union" address. Actually, if he does give one during his first year in office, it would actually be a rarity since no President has actually given a "State of the Union" speech in his first year in office since 1964 when LBJ did so after the Kennedy assassination. But, you know, the spreaders of lies and deceit continue their constant rain of BS.
Informed voters who respect truth could make this whole issue of proper governance really simple by "canceling" (the wingnut word of the day, evidently) as many worthless Republican politicians as possible every chance they get.
Perhaps someday a third party of moderate conservatives (Are there any left in the hierarchy of power?) will arise to supplant the failed Republican Party and to engage in reasonable debate with the Democratic Party about how best to help We the People who aren't millionaires and billionaires feeding at the trough of taxpayer largesse under the present system of socialism for the rich.
Maybe then Kyrsten Sinema, Joe Manchin, and Dianne Feinstein (if she's still alive and not too senile, bless her) could find a home that would better suit them.