This commentary is by Bob Stannard of Manchester, an author, musician and former state legislator and lobbyist.
Us and them
And after all
We’re only ordinary men
With, without
And who’ll deny
It’s what the fighting’s all about — Pink Floyd
My wonderful wife sent me this article that appeared in The Boston Globe. Before you read another word of this column, please go read this article.
There is a movement afoot in our country and if we choose to be the 80%, we will be rolled by it. “Ten percent of people are very good people, wonderful people. Ten percent are pretty awful. Eighty percent are sheep, and that’s what scares me.” — Kati Preston.
Bad things happen in this world not because of the actions of the awful 10%, but because of the apathy, fear, disbelief of the 80%. I’ve spent a lifetime in politics and like to keep up on current affairs. I have many friends who will say, “Oh, I don’t follow politics, because it’s too hard,” or “Both parties are the same” or whatever their cop-out is for not being engaged with what’s happening around them. I would agree with Kati Preston. The 80% are the people I fear the most.
There is a nationwide group based in Florida known as Moms for Liberty, a lovely Orwellian name for a radical, right-wing organization that garnered support from the late Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, Steve Bannon’s “War Room ” and presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis. To better understand this group’s agenda, please go to this link.
Oddly enough, this group is more interested in diminishing your liberties than enhancing them. Its goal appears to be focused on burying the truth of our history and whitewashing it. It is opposed to any teaching of critical race thinking, mask mandates, and gender identity and sexuality education.
The Boston Globe article clearly demonstrates what’s happening and what’s at stake. Our neighbor to the east, New Hampshire, is becoming a battleground state over what our kids should be taught. Kati Preston, a Holocaust survivor who lost her father due to internment in a Nazi concentration camp, spoke before 150 students. She explained what it was like to lose her father and to escape the horrors of Nazi Germany.
However, the laws on the books in New Hampshire are in conflict, she says: “In 2020, after events including the mass shooting two years earlier that killed 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, New Hampshire passed a law requiring instruction on the Holocaust and other genocides in grades 8 through 12. But then, in 2021, as part of a backlash to the nation’s racial reckoning after the murder of George Floyd, New Hampshire banned the teaching of ‘divisive concepts’ such as implicit bias and systemic racism.”
How are the kids supposed to understand their past if they can’t be open to “divisive concepts”? Our nation was created under division and we are more divided than ever today.
How can we move forward if we don’t thoroughly understand our past, complete with all of the division that has occured along the way? Can we really improve as a society if we bury our heads in the sand and not fully address and understand the ramifications of systemic racism? Do we think that our society is best served by suppressing those who question their sexual identity and hoping that sexual orientation issues just fade back into the shadows where they’ve resided for generations? Is our society better off if we ignore reality?
I don’t think so, but there is a 10% group out there that’s well funded and, under the guise of supporting liberty, is 100% dedicated to ensure that the truth, the reality of our world, is forever buried from future generations. One of the tools this group is promoting is the banning of books.
Fortunately, here on the other side of the Connecticut River, we have a pretty great lieutenant governor, David Zuckerman, who has been going around Vermont raising our consciousness on book banning and the importance of teaching the truth.
While the people of this nation are sitting on the edge of their collective seats, waiting for the next irrelevant segment of the life of Hunter Biden or Hillary’s emails, we have the 80% sitting back, wishing and hoping that all of this nonsense will just go away.
Here’s a newsflash for you. The efforts to take away your rights and liberties are not going to go away.
The 80% sat in silence and refused to believe the truth that Kati Preston’s Jewish dad was executed in a German concentration camp, but he was. Today, our 80% is sitting in silence, hoping that the rise in hate, violence and fascism in America will just go away. It won’t.
You have to stand up for your rights, your true liberties and your freedom, but there is the 10% out there that’s working overtime to take them away. If you think it can’t happen here, you’re wrong.
