The Dystopian Future of "The Handmaid's Tale" Is Becoming More Real Every Day

I read Margaret Atwood's book, "The Handmaid's Tale" years ago but, given our current politics, haven't been able to bring myself to watch the Hulu series. Things are depressing enough without adding that to the mix. Lately I've been re-thinking that decision because there are a lot of things pointing to the possibility that the dystopian future Atwood pointed to is becoming more real every day. 

It's not just that we could be about two months away from the Supreme Court gutting or overruling Roe v Wade. We're seeing one red state after another signal that outcome by passing increasingly harsh restrictions on women's reproductive freedom, with Oklahoma outright banning abortion - even in cases of rape and incest.

In addition, right wingers are beginning to openly state that their intent is to go further. Of course, that started a few years ago with the Hobby Lobby case and the application of "religious freedom" to pharmacists who refused to fill prescriptions for birth control. 

But during the confirmation hearings for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Senator Marsha Blackburn signaled the next step when she referred to the decision in Griswold v. Connecticut - which legalized the right to birth control for married couples - as "constitutionally unsound." In other words, once they've taken away access to abortion, the goal is to go after birth control.

What is even more disturbing is that all of that is happening against the backdrop of a push to get women to have more babies and vilify those who chose to remain childless. Former Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan was one of the first Republicans to make the case back in 2017. 

Paul Ryan lays out new Soylent Green agenda. Says women need to have more babies if we want to avoid big Social Security and Medicare cuts. pic.twitter.com/LMdY2msAfN

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) December 14, 2017

In 2020, conservative columnist Ross Douthat wrote an extensive piece titled, "The Case for One More Child: Why Large Families Will Save Humanity." After the release of 2020 census data, the editorial board of the Washington Post joined the chorus.

The [census] bureau found in late December that the nation’s population grew only 0.1 percent over the year ending on July 1, 2021, the slowest rate since its founding...

National policy should promote vigorous population expansion. A more welcoming immigration policy...is an obvious start. The federal government should also encourage more childbirth by making it easier to raise children in the United States.

While I strongly support family friendly policies, the idea that the federal government would take it upon itself to encourage more childbirth (ie, that women should have more babies) is a frightening step in the direction of the dystopian future Atwood warned us about.

The Trump-endorsed candidate in the Ohio senate race, J.D. Vance, has also taken it upon himself to castigate those who chose not to have children. 

Vance chastised four prominent Democrat leaders – Vice-President Kamala Harris, transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, Senator Cory Booker and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – for not reproducing, suggesting that not having biological kids made them bad leaders.

Being childfree, per Vance, means you don’t have a “physical commitment to the future of [the US]” thus shouldn’t have as much say in the direction of the country as parents.

Of course, Tucker Carlson immediately had Vance on his show to expound on these lies. Here's what he had to say:

We're effectively run in this country, via the Democrats and our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies, who are miserable at their own lives and the choices they've made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too...How does it make any sense that we've turned our country over to people who don't really have a stake in it? 

All of his feeds into the right wing's embrace of replacement theory, which is "predicated on the notion that white women are not having enough children and that falling birthrates will lead to white people around the world being replaced by nonwhite people."

As far-right groups have grown across the world, many of their members have insisted that the most pressing concern is falling birthrates. That concern, which they see as an existential threat, has led to arguments about how women are working instead of raising families. The groups blame feminism, giving rise to questions that were unheard-of a decade ago — like, whether women should have the right to work and vote at all.

I am typically the last one to engage in alarmism. But I've had to recalibrate over the last few years as we've seen a steady stream of crazy ideas go from the extremist fringe on the right to becoming mainstays in the Republican Party - all in the blink of an eye (stolen elections, pedophiles, etc.). Given that reality, it would behoove us all to recognize that what Atwood envisioned in the "The Handmaid's Tale" isn't as far-fetched as we once might have assumed.

How the Culture Wars Convinced Putin That the West Was Weak

Kristina Stoeckl and Dmitry Uzlaner, authors of “The Moralist International: Russia in the Global Culture Wars,” have written a fascinating column that provides an alternative explanation for why Putin decided to invade Ukraine. 

Today’s Russian discourse on traditional values is a hybrid of Christian right ideas from the global culture wars and nostalgia about Russia’s great Soviet and even greater imperial and Orthodox Christian past.

This type of Russian cultural conservatism was marginal until around 2010, when it started to migrate to the center of Russian political life — decisively so during Putin’s third term as president. For Putin, the traditional values discourse was a good pretext for political repression — exemplified in the treatment of Pussy Riot — and a shield against rising opposition, which demanded more freedoms...

In the process of “learning” the global culture wars, Russian conservatives not only defined their national identity in relation to a global Christian conservatism, but also acquired a precise vision of the West as spiritually hollow and failing. Christian conservatives flocking to Russia conveyed an image of the West that was torn, weak and doomed, because it no longer had children, no longer had values, and did not even distinguish between men and women...

This account of the West helped give birth to a new Russian triumphalism. Russian media filled with TV shows and “documentaries” on “Gayropa” and “Sodom.” These shows conjured up a caricature of weak “gayish” Western males and women who lost their femininity by competing with men in spheres where they could achieve nothing serious.

Russian media frequently stressed the oddity that many Western democracies nominated women as defense ministers, as if that was the ultimate proof that the West has lost its ability to defend itself. In this collective image of a weak West, Russia depicted itself (to the inside and outside) as the country of strength, the bulwark of traditional families: with strong men, fertile women and children properly guarded against subversive homosexual propaganda.

Franklin Foer captured the way that Putin's rhetoric about the West changed as he began to cast Russia as a leader of the culture wars.

Putin had never spoken glowingly of the West, but grim pronouncements about its fate grew central to his rhetoric. He hurled splenetic attacks against the culturally decadent, spiritually desiccated “Euro-Atlantic.” He warned against the fetishization of tolerance and diversity. He described the West as “infertile and genderless,” while Russian propaganda derided Europe as “Gayropa.” At the heart of Putin’s case was an accusation of moral relativism. “We can see how many of the Euro-Atlantic countries are actually rejecting their roots, including the Christian values that constitute the basis of Western civilization,” he said at a conference in 2013. “They are denying moral principles and all traditional identities: national, cultural, religious, and even sexual … By succumbing to secularism, he noted on another occasion, the West was trending toward “chaotic darkness” and a “return to a primitive state.”

I, for one, don't buy that Putin's world view is grounded in his religious faith. But like the power-brokers on the right in this country, he is more than willing to adopt the rhetoric "as a good pretext for political repression." 

But I also think that - at his core - Putin is a misogynistic, homophobic white nationalist. As such, he agrees with Tucker Carlson that diversity is not a strength, but a weakness. Along with those views comes a belief in the hierarchical top-down dominance of superior white heterosexual men. 

Not only did that lead to the mistaken assumption that, because the West was weak, Russia could defeat Ukraine in a matter of days, it has also led to poor performance of his own troops on the battlefield. Elliot Ackerman tells the fascinating story.

Russian doctrine relies on centralized command and control, while mission-style command and control—as the name suggests—relies on the individual initiative of every soldier, from the private to the general, not only to understand the mission but then to use their initiative to adapt to the exigencies of a chaotic and ever-changing battlefield in order to accomplish that mission. Although the Russian military has modernized under Vladimir Putin, it has never embraced the decentralized mission-style command-and-control structure that is the hallmark of NATO militaries, and that the Ukrainians have since adopted.

“The Russians don’t empower their soldiers,” Zagorodnyuk explained. “They tell their soldiers to go from Point A to Point B, and only when they get to Point B will they be told where to go next, and junior soldiers are rarely told the reason they are performing any task. This centralized command and control can work, but only when events go according to plan. When the plan doesn’t hold together, their centralized method collapses. No one can adapt, and you get things like 40-mile-long traffic jams outside Kyiv.”

In many ways this story brings me hope. Putin badly miscalculated that liberal democracy is inherently weak when the opposite is true. The question that raises is whether the anti-democratic "culture warriors" in this country will be equally wrong.

The Deadly Game Republicans are Playing in Red States

Americans recently got some pretty grim news.

Life expectancy in the United States fell by nearly two years in 2020 to about 77 years amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the sharpest drop compared to 21 other high-income countries, according to a global study.

That is what's happening on a national level. But researchers at Harvard University released a study this month that broke those numbers down by congressional district. Life expectancy across the U.S. varies by about 10 years.

A ten year discrepancy is a pretty big deal, so it is worth exploring the contributing factors. The Reuters article cited above discusses the impact of the pandemic. Charles Gaba has done yeoman's work in compiling data about the death rates from COVID in the bluest to reddest counties. Here's one of his latest charts:

The horizontal axis is the percentage of the vote Trump won in 2020 per county and the vertical axis is the number of COVID deaths per 100,000 residents. The redder the county, the more likely you are to have died from COVID. 

But obviously the discrepancies found in the Harvard study go beyond COVID. We need to look at other factors.

The Third Way recently reported on death rates due to murder and found that, on average, they were 40% higher in the 25 states Donald Trump won in the last presidential election compared to those that voted for Joe Biden. 

A lot of other factors affect life expectancy and show a similar pattern. For example, states with the lowest number of people under 65 who have health insurance include: Texas, Oklahoma, Alaska, Georgia, and Florida. 

When comparing cost, accessibility, and outcomes on health care, the worst states include: Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and North Carolina.

States with the highest poverty rates include: Mississippi, Louisiana, New Mexico, Kentucky, and Arkansas. 

When measuring both educational attainment and the quality of education, states that rank the lowest include: Mississippi, West Virginia, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Alabama. 

One measure that breaks what appears to be a consistent pattern is the percentage of deaths due to drug/alcohol poisoning or suicide. On that measure, the top five states include: West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Kentucky. It's also worth taking a look at the bottom fives states, which include: California, Nebraska, Texas, Iowa, and Mississippi. The differences are pretty dramatic, with at least twice as many deaths per 100,000 in the top five as compared to the bottom five. 

Obviously being a border state is not a major contributor (as many right wingers would suggest) nor is there a clear red/blue state divide. The biggest contributor is likely deaths related to opioid abuse, which are driven by overprescription. 

The overall picture that emerges from all of this (other than that last data point) is that both life expectancy and the various factors that contribute to higher mortality rates are worse in many red states - especially those that once made up the southern confederacy. But Republicans in those states are spending their time persecuting gay kids, banning books, and outlawing abortion. As a result, people are literally dying sooner than they need to.

Republicans Want to "Defund the Schools"

Even though all but a few activists have rejected the notion of "defunding the police," Republicans continue to pretend that it is a core tenet of the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, there is a coordinated strategy on the right to "defund the schools" (they've even got t-shirts).

One example would be the 11-point plan put out by Senator Rick Scott (R-FL), who currently chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee. His blueprint includes this: "We will close the federal Department of Education. Education is a state function." That would eliminate the $79 billion the federal government spends on schools - with funding primarily focused on schools with high concentrations of low income families and special education.

Of course, the more insidious approach to defunding the schools has been the attacks on everything from measures to slow the spread of coronavirus to fear-mongering about the teaching of critical race theory and sexual orientation. The fever pitch of these scare tactics has now led to claims that anyone who doesn't join their "don't say gay" campaign is actually "pro-pedophile."

As someone who has worked to protect vulnerable children for most of my adult life, you can call me skeptical about the idea that a party that has only shown "concern" about children prior to birth is all of the sudden on a bandwagon to protect them once they come out of the womb. And of course, that skepticism is well-grounded. 

One report after another has identified the dark money behind the so-called "parental rights groups" that have been highlighted in the media. There is a clear agenda behind all of that money.

Staffers from such organizations as “Moms for Liberty,” “Parents Defending Education” and the “Independent Women’s Forum” have been featured in right-wing media as “concerned parents” attacking public schools without disclosing their positions in dark money-funded organizations.

These “parent” groups appear to have joined the decades-long coordinated dark money effort to dismantle public education. Rather than focusing explicitly on promoting privatization, they have attacked public schools — going after masking policies, remote learning and evidence-based curricula they dislike.

Chief among these dark money groups is the Koch Network - which is made up of 700 people who each contribute a minimum of $100,000 per year. Here's what one of those donors said about their focus on schools:

“The lowest hanging fruit for policy change in the United States today is K-12,” said Stacy Hock, a major Koch donor who has co-founded a group called Texans for Educational Opportunity. “I think this is the area that is most glaringly obvious.”

Here's what the director of Texans for Educational Opportunity said about the organization:

[T]he group’s main goal is to get Texas lawmakers to create “education savings accounts” — a program under which the state would dole out taxpayer money directly to parents via debit card to cover approved education-related expenses, like private school tuition, tutors or homeschooling materials.

In other words, the "low hanging fruit for policy change" is all about diverting taxpayer dollars away from public schools so that parents can send their kids to private and religious schools. 

Here is what Christopher Leonard, the author of “Kochland, the Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America,” identified as the network's political philosophy:

Government is bad. Public education must be destroyed for the good of all American citizens in this view.

So the ultimate goal is to dismantle the public education system entirely and replace it with a privately run education system, which the operatives in this group believe in a sincere way is better for everybody. Now, whether you agree with that or not as the big question, but we cannot have any doubt, there's going to be a lot of glossy marketing materials about opportunity, innovation, efficiency. At its core though the network seeks to dismantle the public education system because they see it as destructive. So that is what's the actual aim of this group. And don't let them tell you anything different.

A dismantling of our public education system is what these dark money groups are all about. That fits in nicely with the goal of Christian nationalists, who make up the majority of the MAGA base. As Katherine Stewart documented, one of the founders of that movement is Rousas Rushdooney, who taught that the federal government is an agent of evil and public education, according to the Bible, is a threat to civilization.

We can expect that the attacks on public schools will continue. The most recent iteration of that started with fear-mongering about critical race theory. It then moved to claims that teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity amount to "grooming." Christopher Rufo, who has been at the heart of these scare tactics, has now moved on to claims that public schools are breeding grounds for child sexual abuse. 

[T]he facts reveal that too many American public schools have been hunting grounds for sexual predators. Parents fearful about abuse in schools are not falling victim to a “moral panic” or “QAnon messaging”; they are using their intuition to assess a real danger to their children.

Rufo goes on to cite data about the number of children who are sexually abused by school personnel. What he doesn't tell you is that the number (6.7%) is actually a less than the percentage of children who are sexually abused in society (10%). He also doesn't tell you that approximately 30% of children who are sexually abused are abused by family members. That number goes up to 50% for children under 6. 

The sexual abuse of children in our culture is horrifying no matter where it happens. But here's what we know about how to prevent it:

Research shows that the two most effective ways to prevent abuse are education and training of adults and skills training in children. When school-based programs are used in conjunction with parental involvement, they produce more benefits than either approach does individually...

When focusing on children, the goals are to increase their knowledge and use of strategies that prevent victimization and to create an empowering atmosphere that leads to increased disclosure rates. Studies indicate that the likelihood of a child reporting abuse is a significant deterrent to perpetrators, and perpetrators may be less likely to victimize a child with high self-esteem who appears less vulnerable.

Issuing gag orders about what can/can't be talked about in school and/or completely dismantling public education are good ways to ensure that more children are sexually abused. 

Most Republicans aren't being open about this agenda to defund the schools. Instead, they continue to fan the flames of fear-mongering that undermines public trust in our institutions as a way to eventually eliminate them. I would suggest that it's high time we put a spotlight on what they're up to. 

One Chart Tells You All You Need to Know About What's Wrong With Our Politics

I am usually the one warning people that things are more complex and nuanced than we are led to believe. And yet, I'm here to tell you that this one chart from a recent Navigator poll tells you almost everything you need to know about what's wrong with our politics.

The question was: "Below is a list of issues that have been in the news recently. Please indicate how much you have seen, read or heard about each one."

I'm not even going to comment. It is all right there in depressing detail. 

The "Three Amigos" are Finally Getting Some Much-Deserved Recognition

In the run-up to the 2022 midterms, there's been a lot of talk about the "shellacking" Democrats took in the 2010 election. But we're also approaching the 10th anniversary of the 2012 elections. While that one included the re-election of Barack Obama, Democrats also gained back two of the six senate seats they'd lost in the 2010 midterms. Even more than that, 2012 gave us some of the new leaders of the party.

• Chris Murphy (D-CT) won the seat vacated by retiring Joe Leiberman
• Angus King (I-ME), who caucuses with Democrats,  won the seat vacated by the retirement of Olympia Snowe
• Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) beat Republican Scott Brown
• Tim Kaine (D-VA) won the seat vacated by the retirement of Jim Webb
• Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) won the seat vacated by the retirement of Herb Kohl

In addition, Brian Schatz (D-HI) was appointed to fill the seat vacated by the death of Dan Inouye, and in a 2013 special election following the death of Frank Lautenberg, Cory Booker (D-NJ) was elected. 

Demonstrating the renewal of Democratic leadership, that list includes the 2016 Democratic vice-presidential nominee as well as two 2020 presidential candidates. But I'd like to focus for a minute on the senators I've come to call the "three amigos" - Murphy, Schatz and Booker.

I first learned about Cory Booker by watching the documentary series, Street Fight, that captured his run for Mayor of Newark in 2002.

Booker lost that race, but went on to win in 2006. He served as mayor of Newark for 7 years - with his second term cut short by the death of Lautenberg and his run for the senate.

Of course, Booker went on to run for president in 2020, but never gained much traction - even though he consistently out-performed the other candidates during the debates. 

Nothing, however, catapulted Booker into the national spotlight more than the way he handled the confirmation hearings for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. I'm not the only one who noticed the way he demonstrated what it means to be an ally. Charles Blow recently wrote a column titled: "Cory Booker, 'You Had Our Back.'"

That “our” contains multitudes. It invokes all those who have left this world, or remain in it, who live or lived with the gnawing truth that “I’ve always had the talent, but I never had a chance.” That “our” is Black people. “Our” is Black women.

Judge Jackson’s achievement is her own, earned and deserved, but she rose on and was covered in the prayer power of millions of Black women...

During the hearing, Booker delivered an impassioned speech in which he avowed: “You have earned this spot. You are worthy. You are a great American.” Jackson pushed up her glasses and wiped away tears. Booker’s affirmation had touched the tender spot.

One month after Chris Murphy was elected in 2012, the horrific shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School took place in the congressional district he had previously represented. In many ways, anguish over that event shaped his early tenure in the senate. 

I remember first noticing Murphy when his response to the shooting at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida was to take his frustration about the lack of progress towards commonsense gun safety measures to the floor of the senate for a rather spontaneous 15-hour filibuster. Eventually, 40 Democratic senators joined him. 

Last week Murphy got frustrated once again and took to the floor of the senate. This time it was about those who are using their power to bully transgender and non binary youth. His message to them was simple: "Stop it! Grow up!"

Last night I just had enough. I’m sick and tired of transgender kids getting bullied. So I went to the Senate floor to call out the adults who relentlessly and shamelessly target these kids.

I hope you’ll watch this. pic.twitter.com/COK6QSGZy4

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) April 8, 2022

Almost no one was paying attention to Brian Schatz back in 2018 when Gabrielle Debenetti wrote about how the senator from Hawaii was working behind the scenes to develop a consensus among Democrats on issues like health care reform, student debt relief, and climate change. 

“I want Democrats in the Senate, Democrats running for Congress, to rally around an aggressive, progressive agenda. And it’s not a gotcha, litmus test–style agenda, but one that, if we enact it, would be on a scale that is equal to the problems, and has the ability to actually motivate voters. They know that we are in unusual times, and that being aggressive, and clear, and not doing half-measures is what these times call for,” explained Schatz, folded into a leather armchair in his office, in the back corner of the seventh floor of Capitol Hill’s Hart Senate Office Building, with bright blue fish-patterned socks poking out of his navy suit. “I also think it’s the best way to win.”

I first noticed Schatz when, in the run-up to the 2020 election, he teamed up with Murphy and Booker to raise millions of dollars for Democratic candidates on Twitter - and had a lot of fun doing it. Here's just one example:

Murphy: I just texted with Jaime [Harrison]. He says GOP $$ are flooding in and he needs help. Race is legit tied and Pence is holding a superspreader rally there today for Graham. We raised $125K last night. @brianschatz can we get that to $250K by end of day? He needs it.

Schatz: This is great news Murph. I will text Booker to see if he can boost too because he’s not as extremely online as we are.

Booker: Wow, NO YOU DIDN'T! @brianschatz didn't your Mother ever tell you... "Don't mess with Jersey." That said, your text did help. And YES! Please pitch in and help!

Schatz: Oh I don’t consider “extremely online” to be a compliment. Also just wanted to say that a few years ago Cory visited the suburbs in Honolulu and it was terrifying. We had vegan food and went snorkeling. It was a nightmare actually. He was saying hello to strangers and hiking too. At one point he spoke at a political event and was given a lei and took pictures with people. Mayhem.

That's when I started referring to these guys as the "three amigos." It's clear that they are not only friends...they know exactly what they're doing! 

The senator from Hawaii finally got some well-deserved national attention last week when he took on Josh Hawley.

Senator @brianschatz absolutely lays into @HawleyMO on the Senate floor. Worth a watch: pic.twitter.com/5weRBy0za2

— Sam Jeske (@Sam_Jeske) April 7, 2022

One of the things that seems ubiquitous with Democrats is that they spend a lot of time complaining about their party. Two of the standard complaints these days are that party leadership is old and doesn't do messaging effectively. I often wonder if any of these naysayers have actually paid attention to people like Booker, Murphy, and Schatz.  

Chris Wallace Demonstrates Why It's So Important to Teach Real American History

This exchange between Chris Wallace and Nikole Hannah-Jones captures the challenge we face in this country right now.

Chris Wallace Goes At Nikole Hannah-Jones for Claim Greatest Generation 'Violently Suppressed' Black Voters in Heated CNN+ Exchange https://t.co/6q1RyKcwzi via @mediaite pic.twitter.com/X95MhXtt7e

— Tommy moderna-vaX-Topher (@tommyxtopher) April 7, 2022

There are several reasons why that exchange is so important. One of them is that Hannah-Jones didn't call Wallace a racist. As a matter of fact, she handled the exchange by providing him with some history and avoided getting personal or hurling insults. Given that so much of the discourse emanating from right wingers these days is nothing more than performance trolling, it is helpful to note that an alternative is still possible.

Secondly, Hannah-Jones provided Wallace with the kind of history lesson that many on the right want to ban from our public schools. It seemed to make him uncomfortable because that is what happens when when the myths we've been taught are exposed. 

One of the issues many people have been struggling with lately is how to honor the achievements of our founders while recognizing the racism that was embedded in both their personal lives and the form of government they bequeathed to us. One doesn't negate the other. The same is true for those Tom Brokaw labelled "The Greatest Generation." Yes, they defeated the most evil alliance in our lifetime. But that doesn't absolve them of racism. One doesn't negate the other.

To further the history lesson Hannah-Jones began, perhaps someone should send Wallace the report produced by the Equal Justice Initiative titled, "Lynching in America: Targeting Black Veterans." 

No one was more at risk of experiencing violence and targeted racial terror than black veterans who had proven their valor and courage as soldiers during the Civil War, World War I, and World War II. Because of their military service, black veterans were seen as a particular threat to Jim Crow and racial subordination. Thousands of black veterans were assaulted, threatened, abused, or lynched following military service.

The disproportionate abuse and assaults against black veterans have never been fully acknowledged. This report highlights the particular challenges endured by black veterans in the hope that our nation can better confront the legacy of this violence and terror. No community is more deserving of recognition and acknowledgment than those black men and women veterans who bravely risked their lives to defend this country’s freedom only to have their own freedom denied and threatened because of racial bigotry.

That is what Black veterans in this country have faced. When it comes to the racism of the Greatest Generation, Hannah-Jones knows her history well enough to be aware of the fact that J. W. Milam - one of the men who brutally murdered Emmett Till - not only served during World War II, but received combat medals. She's also probably aware of the fact that Medgar Evers, who stormed the beaches at Normandy, was gunned down by Byron De La Beckwith, who’d served at Guadalcanal with the Marine corps.

Wallace also seemed perplexed by the idea that, following World War II, young 20-somethings could be racist. On that one, I tend to agree with Michael Harriot.

Far be it from me to write about the mistreatment of white men, but the notion that old white people are the most virulent kind of white supremacists is problematic in many ways. It’s why every generation seems to believe that their generation of white kids will magically disinherit themselves from the white supremacy perpetrated by their forefathers. 

Just take a look at the young faces of those who, a mere 15 years after the end of WWII, brutalized protesters for simply sitting at lunch counter.

The same is true for the attack on freedom riders.

Does Chris Wallace really think that the troopers involved in beating protesters on Bloody Sunday were all old white racists?

I don't know Chris Wallace's heart so it's not for me to decide whether he's "a racist." But the best we can say is that he is demonstrably ignorant. After all the privileges afforded to him in his life, that is a choice. One can only hope that this exchange with Hannah-Jones sparked a glimmer of curiosity.

But this is a perfect example of why it's so important to teach America's real history in schools. It seems that, 75 years after the end of World War II, we're still raising up young people to be racists in this country.