Our friends to the south are acting crazy - Keith Roulston editorial
Sometimes, living right beside someone and watching their actions from a bit of a distance can just about drive you crazy. No, I’m not talking about my own neighbours, I mean our neighbours in the United States of America.
And no, this isn’t going to be a diatribe on the attention given to ex-President Donald Trump around his recent charges. I’m trying to distance myself from that general madness.
I’m talking about a whole bunch of smaller activities that could have been let loose by the madness that has taken over our neighbours. One example was the three parents at a religious charter school in Florida that complained when a teacher showed their kids a picture of Michelangelo’s 500-year-old statue of David. In case you’re wondering what set the parents off, the statue shows David naked, including male body parts. Horror! The school principal who showed the photo to a Grade 6 class during a lesson on Renaissance art, has been forced to resign.
Or how about the school board in Wisconsin that forbade a Grade 1 class from singing the song “Rainbowland”, originally by Dolly Parton and Miley Cyrus, in their class concert because the lyrics of the song “could be controversial”.
I read the song’s lyrics online and I don’t see how any first grader could be damaged by them, but anything that includes the term “rainbow” is a red flag to some people these days. I’m not sure what they think if nature decides to give us a rainbow after a rainstorm.
Or how about the parent of a Grade 2 student in St. Petersburg who filed a complaint after her school showed the 1998 movie Ruby Bridges. The film tells the true story of the six-year-old who, in the 1960s, became the first Black student in a previously all-white New Orleans school. Watching the hatred the tiny girl had to endure, might show that “white people hate Black people”, the parent argued.
The film has been a staple of school curriculums during Black History Month in Florida’s Tampa-area County of Pinellas. The school board, thankfully, disagreed with the complaint.
In Kentucky, however, a new law gives parents more control over public schools.
There could be many more examples of how parents are changing the rules of what can be taught in schools. In too many cases the complaints of one parent can overrule the approval of 25 or 30 parents.
Old as I am, I keep wondering if I’ve slipped back to the 1960s and I’m reliving the turmoil of that time. Of course the permission was given by Trump who managed to slip in a conservative member of the Supreme Court just before his term ended. In a mere four-year term, Trump named three members of the nine-member Supreme Court (after Republican legislators refused to proceed with a judge President Barack Obama had nominated in his final year in office). The result was a new conservative majority that actually went half a century back in history to overturn a Supreme Court ruling permitting abortion.
As a result, dozens of states have rushed through regulations restricting abortions. Some states have even taken restrictive measures to prevent women travelling for the procedure to other states that still allow abortions.
The same mood has overtaken other areas of the public, like those mentioned at the beginning of this column. As a result, there’s a general disruption similar to the days of the 1960s where liberals were opposed to conservatives who are trying to impose a way of life that is out of touch with how people live, day to day.
All this despite polls that show the vast majority of people support abortion, favour more control of guns and so many other common-sense policies. Despite the polls, Republican politicians move conservative legislation, and too often are repaid by being re-elected.
But now and then there are surprises. In an election in Wisconsin last week, liberal Janet Protasiewicz was named the newest justice on the state’s supreme court. Perhaps unsurprisingly, her opponent Dan Kelly, a former justice on the high court who was running for a return, had a less than conciliatory retort saying “I do not have a worthy opponent to which I can concede.”
For younger readers, all I can say is relax and enjoy the summer weather that is drawing closer. As someone who has lived a long time I can say that there has actually been much turmoil and much division south of the border many times over the years. Trust that common sense will prevail.
There, like here, there will always be people who will represent the opposite view. Still they, as here, are living a better life today than ever in history. I can only believe that will continue.