A fascinating study of health care in each state reveals familiar patterns

See this article and interactive map showing how each state ranks in health care overall, based upon cost, access, and outcomes.

First, it is not surprising to see how the southern States (and states that contain citizens who wish they were Southern, i.e. OK, AZ, NV, WY) tend toward the worst in health care cost, access, and outcomes. It is also great the article emphasizes these states all exhibit a hostility toward expanding Medicaid. 

Texas, though part of that ideology, was still a shocker to me because major corporate media are always touting how wealthy it is and such a great place compared to that evil, awful "socialist" California. Here is the comparison: Texas overall 39 of 50/cost 45 of 50/access 42 of 50/outcomes 36 of 50. California overall 23/cost 38/access 16/outcomes 17. 

New Mexico is better than people here in New Mexico think: overall 28/cost 16/access 30/outcomes 36. The reason New Mexico is better than Texas in terms of all three categories is because there is an expanded Medicaid here and a more liberal politics that helps guide people to doctors and hospitals. However, in New Mexico, due to not having enough doctors in poor and rural areas, access and outcomes are not what they should be in a decent society. To the extent this lack of access and outcomes occurs in any of the more urbanized and populated areas, it is because there are still not enough docs taking Medicaid there. In contrast, there are much more doctors in CA willing to take Medicaid in largely poor areas, and so access and results are better. 

That leaves Texas, which probably has great medical care if one is well off or in a steady, good paying job is in Houston, Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio, but it begins to get pretty awful right about Lubbock, and falls off the cliff thereafter. And from what I know of professionals in Texas, many don't take Medicaid and an increasing number don't take Medicare, as they have enough rich people who have supplements to be choosey with.

To me, the most intriguing ranking numbers come from Utah. It ranked overall at 24, but it then had the weirdest rankings: cost 23/access 47/outcomes 4. What it shows is if you are not Mormon and you are a proletariat, you are screwed. And likely you are young, and won't remain there, so the outcomes are still only reflecting how insiders are treated. That's a guess, but based upon enough sociological reading over the years regarding Utah. 

But, yeah, maybe if a disgruntled Californian is not wealthy, going to Texas is not such a great idea. Yes, there is no income tax in Texas, but the property tax rates are more than double of CA and NM. Plus, with the way Texas politics operate, there are still enough people who would rather elect idiotic grifters for governor, such as the current idiotic grifter, Abbott. Say whatever you want about NM, but if one has to leave CA for a place with inexpensive land values, I'll take the Land of Enchantment over the Lone Star State any day.

You may wonder why these states with bad outcomes are really so hostile to Medicaid: As I explained to a former head of the CMA, the reason Republicans won't pay higher reimbursement rates is because that is a way to ensure the program does not meet people's needs and sows frustration. It lets poor white people comfort themselves into believing government will never work for them, and the only reason those "Democrats" want Medicaid is to serve darker skin people. Initially, the doc didn't believe me, but when he went to Sacramento and sat down with various Republican politicians (he was, at least at that time, a Republican himself), he realized I was correct. He remains a dear friend who, now retired, always took Medicaid patients as a civic duty, even when his accountant would tell him he would lose a little money for each treatment of those Medicaid patients. 

I shake my head at the complacency of people who don't want to move to a single payer system right now. And I mean it. Right now.

We lost the war against Afghanistan the moment Jimmy Carter armed the mujahideen

It is awful how the corporate media perceives what is happening in Afghanistan. Yes, just over 2,300 American dead. How many Afghans, though? Wiki keeps a list and it is over 111,000. 111,000. What was the reason the US invaded Afghanistan? To go after bin Laden in the wake of Bin-Laden's attack of the US on 9/11/2001. However, the Taliban was not behind the Al=Queda the 9/11/2001 attack. It was a bunch of Saudis led by a guy the US used to arm, and whose family the US had close ties: Bin Laden. Within a year, though, George Bush (the Second) admitted he no longer thought about Bin Laden as he and Cheney lied the nation into a war against another nation, Iraq, that had nothing to do with the events of 9/11/2001. 

When did we lose this Afghan war? One can better say we lost the war the moment Jimmy Carter decided to arm Muslim fanatics who were opposing a secular regime in Afghanistan the Soviet Union (Russia and satellites) had decided to prop up in Christmas season of 1979. The few who read this blog know about the photo that circulates on the Internet of young women at the U of Kabul from the 1960s and 1970s. However, most Americans don't know the story of Afghanistan's king voluntarily giving up power in 1973, a civilian national assembly created with many who were secular, and how the US did not care a fig about promoting that in the 1970s. The Soviet Union, which had a border with Afghanistan, sure did. And while its own designs were largely imperial, they knew it was proper to ensure a secular, modern society that valued women should be promoted. I am so old I remember supporting the Carter idea--at least until around 1984, when I saw an interview on tv with a village or regional mujahideen leader (I thought it was Dan Rather, but now don't believe so), and shuddered, because the guy said, after they kicked out the Soviet Union, they would turn against the US, as we were all infidels, essentially. It is too long to remember exact words, but I remember my own reaction: Oh my God, Alexander Cockburn, the left wing and marginally pro-Soviet journalist was right. These guys are 14th Century minds and the US is giving them 20th Century weapons to start a holy war. 

Yes, I am hoping the US can take as many people out of Afghanistan who trusted us. You know, maybe more than we did as our invented state of South Vietnam finally collapsed in April 1975. But, I see no point in any further American involvement. And here is the final ironic point: The US is really not leaving as we think. Trump and Biden are the same here. Both wanted to replace US troops with mercenaries, the privatized military Clinton had a dream about, Bush II-Cheney deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq, Obama further developed ties with, and Trump cemented. What Chomsky says about US foreign policy remains true: There is a continuity of policies designed to prop up the American Empire, whether the policy is moral or not (mostly not), and whether it is strategically advantageous or not (the US does bad things that don't work to ensure other places where we do bad things continue to work; that is how we continued killing Southeast Asians for multiple decades). 

Nobody on corporate media cable "news" will say any of this, or say it in any understandable way. Anyone who principally relies on corporate media cable "news" is angry, frustrated, and sad--yet unable to comprehend what has actually gone on for the past 35 years, and not able to understand how what happened with US intervention in Afghanistan is part of an overall imperial strategy. Oh, and historically, as at least more know due to social media, the Brits had invaded Afghanistan twice in the 19th Century, staying the first time for 20 years before bugging out, and then a shorter time about twenty years later. Then, the Soviet Union spent a decade there before bugging out. And now the US for twenty years. What Afghan rebels then, more recently, and now do is continually shift alliances that ultimate wear down and confuse invaders. They seem so simple, but they are not simple-minded. What is different now is the Islamic fundamentalist militancy, and how destructive they can be with modern weaponry courtesy of, well, the US. Great job, leaders. Great job. But, the soldiers who are especially right wing will be blaming Biden because they can't remember politics from last week, and can't remember Trump wanting to bug out, and don't know some of their friends are with the mercenaries that will be pushed in or remain if there. And have no idea what the hell I am writing about.

How the corporate media mass produces people such as Ronald Brownstein

Ronald Brownstein is precisely the type of commentator the corporate media mass produces. His take in The Atlantic should only be read with a critical eye capable of translating the elitist bullshit and misreading of the moment, as well as past history. For those who thought Julian Castro was a progressive, start here:

"Sawyer Hackett, executive director of People First Future, the political organization founded by Julián Castro, expressed that view when he told me that in 2022 and 2024, 'it is going to be tough [for Democrats] to run on a message that these people are too dangerous … to be in charge while simultaneously saying, "Hey, look what we’re getting done with the Republicans, Washington still works, look at this infrastructure deal we got done."' He added: 'We’re propping these things up as an example of a functioning Washington while the Republican Party is just moving to the right and becoming more extreme.'" 

Sawyer Hackett? What, no Hispanic, Julian? That is on top of the horrible assessment here. People want action more than bi-partisanship. And as people have learned what was in the corporate partisan (bi-partisan in media parlance) bill, they are outraged. Oh, but Brownstein's framing gets worse. Here is the very next paragraph:

"The scale of biden’s agenda has drawn justifiable comparisons to Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson. But in his posture toward the opposite party, Biden’s model seems to be a very different former president: Dwight Eisenhower. Like Eisenhower, Biden is largely positioning himself as an elder statesman who has transcended the partisan fray. A promise to unify the country has been a central pillar of Biden’s messaging since he first announced his candidacy. And he’s rarely looked as happy as he did in late June when he stepped onto the White House driveway, surrounded by senators of both parties, to announce the tentative deal on infrastructure spending."

This is awful history on top of an awful present understanding. How is Biden's agenda like FDR's or LBJ's when Biden has already reneged on almost every substantive promise? And where he won't facilitate or participate in rallies that go after recalcitrant senators, such as Manchin or Sinema? Does anyone honestly think FDR or LBJ would let Manchin and Sinema rule the roost as they have since January 2021? As for Eisenhower, I wish Biden was Eisenhower on domestic policy, at least, as Eisenhower vetoed defense bills and was clear about pushing for a real infrastructure program, the Highway National Defense Act. 

What explains Brownstein's framing other than personal corruption? It is not as if Brownstein is bribed with a paper bag of money. No. It's just about his being placed into the Wise Man chair in elite DC connected circles. He is groomed as the new David Broder. It is a corruption of status and access, and, among the NY-DC-LA set, personal celebrity. He knows what he is saying is wrong from a historical perspective at least, and is pushing a courtesan or mandarin narrative for the present moments. In Brownstein's relative youth (he is 63), he worked for Ralph Nader--so therefore, he KNOWS. What is so extraordinary how he, and these other courtesans and mandarins, can blithely walk by the climate disaster, and not think of their children--and continue to push bi-partisanship and incrementalism.

Moving on from the Democratic Party to the Movement for a People's Party

In the wake of the Nina Turner defeat, and win for corporate power, in Ohio's 11th Congressional District this week, I have finally had to take heed to my own misgivings about the Democratic Party across most of our nation. And this morning, a friend, on and off FB, reminded me of a Joe Biden ad that sent a very nasty implication that anyone supporting Medicare for All was insulting Joe Biden's dead son, Beau, who had the best health insurance in the world, unlike most Americans. When reading the article explaining the language used in the ad, and not merely watching the ad, the online magazine Vice makes a persuasive case Joe Biden meant precisely that.  I am now ready (though I have given $50 or so last year) to join others in building the Movement for a People's Party.  I agree with Brie Joy Gray it may be better for progressives to run OUTSIDE the Democratic Party, as it is clear the party powers would rather have a compliant nothing (I watched a debate with her and was struck by how dull and uninformed she was), and corrupt, Shontel Brown, in Congress than an empathetic, intelligent, and exciting Nina Turner. And if someone wants to say "spoiler," then try to explain the progress made when each Democratic Party administration and Congress follows a further right wing Republican one. Ten years ago, it was Max Baucus, Harry Reid, and for awhile Joe Lieberman who blocked the progress.  Today it is Sinema and Manchin.  It is part of a game of finger pointing and virtue signaling--all while doing next to nothing to move our nation to where even the majority of Americans want.  

The argument "We have to save the Supreme Court" has been lost. The current president campaigned on a public option last year and, once elected, promptly broke that promise.  Biden won't take action on student debt except at the margins of those who went to truly fraudulent college-businesses. His moves on climate change are hardly sufficient. Etc. To say, "Well, Trump was and is worse!" does not get us anywhere policy-wise. It is, instead, more of a debating point--and one I agree with, but that is now no longer enough. Too many progressives and liberals who said they would work to push Biden "left" have been AWOL, or worse running interference for Biden and progressives in Congress as if they were celebrities and this was an argument which Kardashian we like least or best (Don't ask me which one as I don't follow them, and they all seem awful).

The Democratic Party's brand is toxic in so many States, and Biden's administration is not making anything better in that regard.  This is not simply a matter of public policy but of strategy. The strategy of voting for lesser evils continues to fail as the Republicans move further and further right into outright fascism, white supremacist nationalism, and unhinged conspiracy theories.  

Yes, I can still maintain my hope that the Dem Party in NM may become an exception, as has Nevada's Dem Party.  But, for at least 40 states, that is not true at all. My advice is to give to the Movement for a People's Party for them to get on the ballot in those states, and to come out for rallies for movements, whether it is BLM, climate change organizations, student debt relief, M4A, etc.  Change is more in the streets than at the ballot box, as Dems insist on their failed neo-lib strategy, and saying the Republicans will regain control of the House and Senate in 2022. That is not only an abdication of leadership, but a failure of policymaking--as again, a strong voice from the party on issues Americans are either ready to embrace or have already embraced would strengthen Democratic prospects. But, no corporate Dems have shown they would rather lose than win with Bernie type policies.  So, I have decided it is time--again--to say two can make that strategic move. 

Change means moving beyond the political duopoly known as Democratic and Republican Parties. And no longer worrying about being a spoiler.  The corporate Dems have spoiled their own beds, and it is time, as Seward, Chase, and Lincoln did in the 1850s, to move to a new party away from a party that was feckless and hopelessly divided. 

Critical Race Theory begins with analyzing the contexts of Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

Irami nails this point in ten minutes (he starts out saying two minutes, but realizes it is gonna be longer). To me, it is less about saying something that frankly sounds silly to me--"We are now going to do 'critical race theory'"--than it is about teaching history with multiple layers of information, and with a strong recognition that one must use context and factual analysis as tools to evaluate historical trends and events. In other words, no flabby thinking, and no simple answers--while, on the other hand, one may make historically sweeping judgments based upon a rigorous analysis. Here is my earlier commentary on "critical race theory."

Contrary to what Irami may or may not have intended, in his discussion of Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and how Bell rightly saw the important historical contexts that led to that decision, I can actually make an argument that Chief Justice Earl Warren was, at least in part, motivated by morality, and his own guilt atonement for his role as CA Attorney General in locking up Japanese-Americans in the early part of 1942 in WWII (One sees this in the great bio Jim Newton wrote of Warren; a great biography, I may add). It does not negate at all the arguments Derrick Bell made, and Irami summarizes, about the context in which the US Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. It is simply that there can be an internally motivated moral reasoning that led the justices to behave as they did in that moment. 

More specifically, I can also argue about the moral effect of the decision, which I did to an old WASP lawyer who was mediating a case I had in San Luis Obispo, CA around 1996 or so. The mediator had been a new lawyer in the early 1950s, and had been a young associate at the law firm where John W. Davis was a leading partner. Davis had been a long-time right wing, pro-racist policy senator, and a failed Democratic Party presidential candidate in 1924. He was also a highly respected and seasoned trial lawyer who had argued over 50 cases to the US Supreme Court, and was arguing the Board of Ed's position in the then-Brown v. Bd of Ed. litigation. Davis was arguing the US Supreme Court must continue to defer to southern legislatures in enforcing segregation laws, and the court had no business interfering with state legislatures' decisions in that regard. The mediator said said he had an opportunity to speak personally with Davis during the litigation, and saw the original briefs for the school board as they were being prepared for submission. He said Davis told him the argument was ultimately one that demanded the US Supreme Court respected the limits of judiciary, and avoid burdening courts to have to oversee such broad policymaking, counting how many of each race were in each school's classes,  and how to actually judge equality across equipment, buildings, books, and personnel. As we know, he added, the courts did get bogged down, and the use of the phrase "all deliberate speed" became a ready excuse for many bad judges, and some good ones, to delay justice--and we know, he also added, justice delayed can become justice denied. The outcome, too, by the 1990s, had been many schools eventually returned to heights of segregation by race--mostly because the courts did not have the courage to challenge racist housing patterns, for starters. The old mediator, and by then retired lawyer, said all of this, and with a sigh, said, Maybe old John Davis was right after all. 

I smiled, and replied as follows, again paraphrasing after 35 years have now passed from that conversation: I said, I get the idea about judicial limitations--and agree with what was happening and been happening, as I just finished at the time Jonathan Kozol's Savage Inequalities, released a few years earlier in the decade, specifically 1991. However, I said part of the law's power is moral. Brown v. Bd of Ed, I said, is a decision which had a strong moral basis, which then gave emotionally based moral protection to those engaged in peaceful protests, something the protestors did not have before. Without Brown, the Southern State governments--and the Klan, local police, and local businesses--could no longer use the law as a moral judgment, i.e. phrasing what they did, including their illegal acts of violence, within a framework of upholding and maintaining "tradition." After Brown, these officials were suddenly on the moral defensive, and now had to deal with individuals having federal rights that gave moral authority to those rights. I then said, if you look at the early 20th Century, before Brown, there had been strong civil rights agitations and movements, but they were easily vanquished and repressed, often with violence that those committing the violence thought they were committing in the name of upholding traditional values, which, though the tradition was racist, nonetheless had a moral imprint based upon the law and community standards. After Brown, however, the civil rights movements were strengthened because Brown's import now required, or at least empowered, federal judges to overrule state laws that discriminated, and, most important, hold state officials accountable to ensure protection of individuals' federal rights, including a right to an equal--not separate and unequal--education, etc. 

The old lawyer, when I finished that response, sat back, and smiled. He then said, and I can only paraphrase from so long ago, That is the greatest response to John Davis I have ever heard in all my years. He added he wished Davis could hear that himself, as he thought even Davis would be impressed with the response. He added, in his own experiences with Davis, he wondered if Davis was really racist, which, at that time, I was not in quite the position of personal knowledge of Davis to refute (However, subsequent reading would have allowed me to do that, too). He noted Davis died not long after the decision, and Wiki tells me it was in 1955, meaning less than a year later. I remain very touched by the good faith of the old lawyer in recognizing an argument he had not considered, and how he did not go to his ego to try and refute the point with glibness or clever cynicism, which are hallmarks of bad faith argument litigating. He recognized the moral basis for racial equality, the moral basis for integration and helping people directly who had been harmed through societal norms, and believed in the legal formalism that requires good faith attention to context, as opposed to the Chief Justice Roberts "I'm just an umpire calling balls and strikes." No, Chief Justice, not even the umps do that with any true precision, and such a statement belies so many levels of reality as to be ultimately in bad faith. Hence, CRT is necessary to test and expand understanding against a too often shallow formalism.

Zionism who claim anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism are themselves conflating Zionism and Judaism

This past Saturday, May 15, 2021, The Wife and I attended a pro-Palestinian protest in Albuquerque. It was a friendly and communal atmosphere, and we are honored to know two of the speakers at the rally, Samia Assed and Alan Wagman, the latter my closest friend in New Mexico. We also had a chance to catch up with another friend, and political activist here in New Mexico, Steve Cabeides, who was doing video work at the rally, which video is here. I am guessing there were about 500 or so people altogether who appeared.

Do I agree with every speaker's point and every shouted slogan? No. However, I do strongly believe we must end the nonsense about the Israeli-Palestinian issue being a "conflict," instead of saying what it is, which is Israeli oppression and displacement of Palestinians. I strongly believe it is past time for the United States to stop enabling Israeli oppression of Palestinians. We as Americans should first and foremost demand the US end all military and economic aid to Israel. All of it. And also demand an end to Israeli Defense Force cooperation with local police departments throughout the US, as the US local police don't need any additional tips on how to treat a domestic population as enemies in a war. Our local police departments have shown they are already quite capable of such misconduct and abuse.

We need to be clear the US, and the corporate powers-that-be in our nation, use Israel as its attack dog and first-use testers for advanced technological weaponry, as part of the US military-industrial complex. It is not in our interest as regular Americans, and as human beings, and is not even in Israel's interest to have such a relationship between Israel and the US. Israel has become more and more identified with forces and ideologies that are anathema to Jewish Rabbinic tradition since the Romans dispersed many Jews following Jesus' crucifixion and the Roman-Judean wars. The Israeli Jews are increasingly a people who believe in a land-based Judaism, which is more Maccabean than anything else. Rabbinic Judaism, since the first centuries after the Roman dispersal of Jews, has been a universalist religion, whose logic led to ultimately supporting a society based upon not imposing one primary religious belief nor one primary ethnicity over another--and does not rely on holding a particular piece of land based upon its religious beliefs. 

It is an irony of the Zionist project that many Jews would never have embraced Zionism at all, but for the European Christian centered anti-Semitism and eventually the Holocaust. Judaism should never be conflated with Zionism, as Zionism is merely a Euro-centric political movement reacting to European anti-Semitism, and Zionism's most successful leaders, Ben-Gurion, Weizmann, and Jabotinsky, were suffused with European racist and settler-colonialist tendencies in their private journals and sometimes their public speeches and interviews. Zionism is a political-nationalist movement, not a movement based in theology.  As Reb Saunders says late in The Chosen book, and I believe the film, the Messiah was supposed to lead the Jews to Judea (Palestine), not Ben-Gurion. Reb Saunders says: "God will build the land, not Ben-Gurion and his goyim." Ironic, considering how Evangelical Christians are primarily the Zionists leading on the apartheid Netanyahu is in the process of completing--and ironic for me to quote a culturally backwards, anti-feminist and anti-homosexual mind such as Reb Saunders.

I have posted my historically based views regarding Zionism before, starting here, here, here, and here. I also believe it would be useful for a lot of American Jews, who themselves are continuing to confuse their religion with a foreign nation behaving badly, to watch or re-watch Thor: Ragnarok for an allegory relevant to our current historical moment. I would not say Israelis will or should lose their land, as did Thor's people. I would say those Israeli Jews who truly have goodwill may find many Palestinian Arabs who share their goodwill, and that, Netanyahu and the majority of Israeli voters who have destroyed the two-state solution as a practical solution, should seek to embrace the bi-national state Herzl envisioned in his novel, New Old Land, and prominent American Rabbi Judah Menges also embraced during the 1920s and 1930s.  

Finally, there are two Jewish Currents magazine essays well worth reading.  The first is from Peter Beinart, who has completed his journey from Iraq War II advocate and near zealot Zionism to a post- and even anti-Zionist position, this time eloquently writing about the Palestinian right of return/compensation issues. The second Jewish Currents magazine essay is about the US Communist Party, Zionism and the creation of Israel, which is surprising even to me.

Postscript: Last night, I finished what may be A.B. Yehoshua's final novel, The Tunnel, now thankfully translated into English.  It is another wonderful and thoughtful book from Yehosuha. As I survey the tragedy of Zionism, I see more than ever why many US centric literary critics compare Yehoshua to William Faulkner, a novelist who wrote movingly about people within a tragic, racist southern American society. I admit I have never been a Faulkner fan, but I am seeing, more than ever, how that comparison has persuasive merit.  As I joke, I have been saying for the past couple of years I have been completing my reading of Yehoshua and Amos Oz as a sort of shiva I sit for Zionism and what Israel has become.

There should really be no controversy over Critical Race Theory

So the new flavor of the past year for right wingers who wish to talk about anything but climate change and class- and race- based systemic economic inequality is Critical Race Theory (CRT), which I have been reading about since the 1980s, starting most famously with the now late, often great Derrick Bell (who has been dead for nearly a decade now), and Mari Matsuda, who I have some vague memory of being critical about something she did or said many years ago--but I can't remember what, and is frankly, at this point, irrelevant.  I decided this morning to look up CRT in Wiki to see what I am missing in this recent media generated controversy, as I just can't get much excited about this controversy beyond seeing the current controversy over CRT as another right wing diversion tactic. 

CRT is already in many curricula in history textbooks I am seeing, and most importantly for my claim-of-authority here, using. I see today's textbooks as an immense improvement over textbooks used in the early 1970s when I was in high school. What I see in CRT is a demand that we recognize how law was used in our society to create racial stratification, and how culture created and reinforced that stratification, in a manner which directly led to depriving those with darker skin of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness--and, over centuries, ensured those with darker skin had far less access to money and power, which reverberates into today. In short, it ain't just about slavery, folks. 

To the extent the textbooks use personal stories, i.e. "storytelling," the personal stories in the textbooks reinforce, or a part of, informative factual details and evidence-based conclusions. I don't see any essential falseness in the stories, though we know an individual person's perspective may include information that is not able to be verified or can be outright wrong (I recall how my late Aunt Rose and still living Uncle Jack argued, often with anger, over whether the jail building the Polish pro-Nazi police forced them into during WWII, with the intent to execute them the next morning, was a one story or two story building. They escaped, because the building was new, and they used a spoon to push out a couple of large bricks to get out. However, their argument over their memory, and the destruction of that jail before the war was over, leave the singular fact about the building highly uncertain). We also know when a Holocaust survivor is interrogated by a lawyer for a Holocaust denier, the facts of a particular incident can become hazy and inconsistencies arise. Does that mean the Holocaust didn't happen, or that the entire testimony of so many should be disregarded?  Of course not.  Also, the fact we whose families hail from southern and eastern Europe and Russia, and who arrived here 120 years ago, have had far more success in American society than those brought in chains from Africa two and three hundred years ago, is a continuing issue, NOT one that is ancient history with far less relevance to day to day life today.

Too often, too many of us want to assume conservative critics are litigating the arguments against CRT in good faith. Too often, such critics are not. CRT critics often describe some minor anecdotal story of some teacher at some school (which is funny, because the critics are so concerned with "storytelling" overwhelming fact-based analysis) and then use that anecdotal story to present an argument based upon a "parade of horribles" style against CRT as a whole.  What conservatives most appear to fear is that we who are white skinned are taught to better come to grips with how our nation got to where it is, how white people, individually, had certain advantages available as long as the people were deemed white, and how our history is not one steady, inevitable movement toward progress--nor is our history largely based upon a benign or neutral intent, design, and procedure. 

I tend to be harsh against flabby thinking, which means I will definitely have criticisms of how CRT is taught, who teaches it, and what language and evidence is used in describing past events or how our society functions. However, I find the idea that CRT should be deemed dangerous or controversial is little more than a ginned-up media debate designed to divide and divert us from the macro economic and climate change issues--and how our institutional and cultural racism causes a disproportionately negative effect on those who are not, again, deemed white. It is not those using CRT in history or literature classes who are the dividers, as much as those who think CRT is some existential issue being foisted upon our nation to undermine our society. We do need to be critical with regard to understanding and evaluating the extent to which structural racism plays a continuing role in our society. We must not sweep systemic and historical racism under a rug of feel-good "we're all equal" rhetoric, which is where conservatives' rhetoric is at, which is ironic on top of being cynical. Remember MLK, Jr.'s most famous portion of his 1963 speech was about his "dream," which for much of conservative rhetoric is converted into some objective fact based upon passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. If we read the conservatives' arguments, they often wax rhetorically that anyone talking about continued systemic and cultural racism is somehow the divider. 

This is why I am not against CRT in the abstract, or how it is often used.  Yet, I would like to think even Mari Matsuda can remain critical of CRT in particulars. And heck, from what I have seen in various world history textbooks about US actions against Korea and Vietnam, or how they discuss Karl Marx, and the rise of capitalist power in British and other societies, we need more critical theories and evidence based evaluations. History is a continuing argument, but we should demand more good faith from those participating in the argument. Those arguing against CRT, particularly politicians and corporate media commentators, are too often not arguing in good faith.

UPDATE May 11, 2021: Read this article in The Atlantic in this context over the controversy over CRT, and realize, again, how right wingers, particularly from the southern region of the United States, prefer storytelling from perspectives with far more lies than truth, and yet have the audacity to criticize CRT.  It is almost as if these apologists for the Confederacy are racist. :)

UPDATE: May 29, 2021: Irami Osei-Frimpong has a slightly different take, in that he is saying CRT is dangerous and controversial precisely because it upends the myths white folks have told themselves about the history of the United States of America.  He appears to be saying, "Yeah, white man!  This is the truth you hide!  You better be afraid!  Be very afraid!"  For me, I guess I am more hopeful that we are only providing higher levels of truth, and owe it to ourselves, as a society with so many different people, to finally come to grips with our racist legacies, and help each other.  I had a quibble with him, too, about the extent to which slavery played a role in the American Revolutionary period of 1774-1776, which I largely based my view on Sean Wilentz's essays in The Atlantic and New York Review of Books, with Wilentz's partial criticisms of The NY Times' 1619 Project. God knows I have, over the past decade or more, had my disagreements with Wilentz's Neo-liberalism and professional-managerial-class assumptions, but I found him fairly compelling here.  I posted this at Irami's YouTube page and he kindly responded, accepting my argument the coalition was diverse, and cited to Robin Einhorn's American Taxation, American Slavery (2008). Einhorn's book posits the hostility to taxation is rooted in wanting to maintain the right to own slaves, which again is focused more southward than in Massachusetts, where anti-tax fervor was more about commerce and trade, and how British taxes were operating in a manner that undermined freedom and power of colonists. I do agree with Einhorn that there is a definite connection between the slaveocracy and its descendants who are highly anti-tax in philosophy.  Another person responded by citing to the highly polemical The Counterrevolution of 1776 by the great Gerald Horne. I am a major overall fan of Horne's work on a variety of subjects, but I again found that particular book much more polemical than it should have been because, once one moves north of New Jersey, the argument about the centrality of slavery becomes far more difficult to sustain as a thesis.