Yo, Miss! (No. 12)
Sweet Little Lies
We can’t stop people from lying to us. However, once we realize we have been intentionally deceived, we do have the power to disengage.
Yet, I have even found myself so invested in a friendship or a relationship that I have turned a blind eye to lies. I am sure some of you reading this right now have done the same. Come on, don’t lie to yourself and admit it :)
(Spoiler Alert: It never ends well.)
I do not think it is a tremendous leap to apply this personal anecdote of mine to what is happening with the the cult of MAGA Republicans.
Admittedly, I do not have enough space (or the degree) to fully psychoanalyze all of this in a truly comprehensive way. However, there are a few must-have ingredients in this toxic stew of letting yourself get played.
In order to stay deceived by an obvious lie (or a set of lies), you need to be personally invested in it. You have perhaps already built your entire life and community around bonding over these lies. If you were to question it all, you would also have to shed yourself of many of the people in your life.
You must immerse yourself in an ecosystem that ONLY supports your worldview that is not grounded in reality and facts. That way, you will not be challenged to see the cracks in the stories - because omg are there cracks because you are believing outright lies.
You were already feeling vulnerable in your life. You were probably looking for someone to bring calm to the inevitable chaos that comes with living. Suddenly, you could nestle yourself into a nice warm blanket of sweet little lies.
When I read the comments section in my TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter posts about events like “The Big Lie,” the January 6th insurrection, or the deplorable education and book bans convulsing our nation, it never ceases to amaze me how much the MAGA trolls have embraced and continue to mimic all the lies. They are as confident in their warped reality as I am in the actual reality.
Even when we have evidence like:
According to the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit: “In the two-week period after Fox News declared Joe Biden the president-elect, the network questioned the results of the election or pushed conspiracy theories about it almost 800 times, including by using Dominion as a scapegoat. Fox became an outlet that aired Trump campaign lies about Dominion voting machines getting hacked without any evidence.”
I guarantee that anyone who is still in the MAGA camp has found a source, including Fox News, that has refuted the truth about these lies.
And, the list goes on and on…
So, you can only imagine my surprise when my truth-telling TikTok about the Arizona Superintendent of Public Schools Tom Horne’s “Empower Hotline” was broadcast on a Fox News Segment. Horne claims the point of the “Empower Hotline” is to allow people to report on teachers who have lessons that focus on race or ethnicity, promote "gender ideology," "social emotional learning," or inappropriate sexual content. My TikTok called out this hotline as fascist and intended to promote a white supremacist agenda in Arizona classrooms by erasing the stories of non-white and LGBTQIA+ people in American history.
I was shocked Fox News even played my full TikTok. However, they framed it as a reaction from “a woke Arizona teacher” - yes, I now teach in Arizona according to the fantastic Fox News fact checkers. Even though there was truth in my criticism, Fox News framed it in a way to portray me as one of those one-dimensional educator enemies of the state obsessed with making students hate America, teaching “that CRT,” and convincing every child to become a drag queen.
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Horne responded to my TikTok by saying “race is completely irrelevant,” that he’s “the opposite of a white supremacist,” and some other word salad proving he is either actually a white supremacist, completely blind to the history of America, and/or fully dedicated to his political grift. It makes me sad that young people are getting caught in the crosshairs of these people bringing politics and THEIR racism and homophobia into schools. Kids deserve to learn an honest history and teachers should feel supported teaching it.
But Republicans continue to lie to their followers saying that teachers are “indoctrinators,” “groomers,” “racists making everything about race,” and “bringing their politics into their lessons.” If anyone actually spoke to a real-life teacher or stepped foot into an actual classroom, they would realize that none of this is happening. However, no one really wants to learn the truth.
Why? There are a plethora of reasons, including, but not limited to:
The world feels like an increasingly confusing and chaotic place to certain white people.
In the United States, more humans are questioning the patriarchal and white supremacist systems that have been a part of this country since its inception.
Change is scary. Losing your power is scary. Racism, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. are easy places to go. Believing the lie that your skin pigment or ethnicity or religion or sexual preference or gender makes you superior is both empowering and comforting to some people. Way too many people.
So, one way that they are trying to regain control of the narrative is by mandating what is taught in America’s public schools. They prefer whitewashed stories (aka lies) over the complex and chaotic history of America.
The truth sets you free, but facing it is messy, painful, and can potentially change the hierarchies of power in this country that have rewarded whiteness.
Here is a great lesson from AntiRascistAPUSH.com that does a great job breaking down the concepts of racism and race: “Let’s Talk About Race: It’s Not Real, But Racism is”
I highly recommend this resource, whether you’re an educator or want to educate yourself or others about this topic.
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xoxo Sari