The architect of the attack on Critical Race Theory said the quiet part loud

[StarfishSaver]

Link to tweet

[CurtEastPoint]

1. How does someone that young get to be so twisted and nasty?

[wellst0nev0ter]

8. He was mugged by homeless people, maybe

He used to be apolitical until he did a documentary on the poor.

[Act_of_Reparation]

2. Not surprising, really.

People are so eager to have their beliefs confirmed they'll line up behind literally anyone. Faith healers, psychics, mediums... even those who have been exposed barely suffer for it.

[StarfishSaver]

3. True

But it's really disappointing how many progressives have bought and are helping to sell this snake oil.

[Scrivener7]

4. Showing that this is a VERY concerted and coordinated campaign to introduce a concept,

twist it, and thereby discredit it.

We can rail against the irrationality of believing the twisted definition of CRT all we want. And we can rail against the unfairness of what the republiQans are doing all we want.

But we will not get anywhere until we figure out how to counteract these assaults on rational thinking. I say it all the time: we need a good PR firm and a disciplined PR approach that will counteract this nonsense when it arises.

We all need to get schooled in how to do Psaki-speak.

[StarfishSaver]

6. First step: Progressives need to stop reflexively accepting the lies and learn what CRT is

Second step: Stop telling Black folk that we need to stop making white people uncomfortable by telling the truth

Third step: Figure out a way to educate their fellow white people and if that requires coming up with new language and terminology that they must use to be understood, so be it. But don't tell black people how and when we can tell our own stories.

[Scrivener7]

9. I think we are talking about two different things. I am in no way suggesting

that anyone needs to stop making white people uncomfortable by telling the truth. What I am talking about is neutralizing the distortions and lies so that the truth is heard.

I am pretty sure you and I agree on the message. But republiQan propaganda is preventing that message from getting into people's minds. (And I think we do need to distinguish here between white people and republiQan white people. Because republiQan white people are always going to try to block the truth and they are always going to be offended that the rest of us talk about uncomfortable things. They will always feel they are oppressed by the truth.)

But we know how propaganda works: the more times a statement is heard, the more people think it is the truth. It doesn't matter if it is true or not. If people hear it more frequently, they are more likely to think it is true.

RepubliQans actually have people whose job it is to craft the message that people should fear CRT (or whatever their current McGuffin is in the moment.) Then all the republiQans get the memo - literally, a memo of talking points! - and they all, with great discipline, spout it in every appearance, word for word. We have seen it a million times. They get their talking point marching orders and then they all go out like an army and flood the media with those talking points, all of them using the same words and phrases.

We need to learn how to do this, and we need to learn how to do it better than they do. The method is clear. We just need the discipline to apply it, and that takes someone to organize it at the higher levels of politics.

If every Democratic politician had come out, as soon as CRT started to be the new republiQan McGuffin, with the same carefully crafted message about how the republiQan fear mongering about this is ludicrous, and if every Democrat talked about what CRT really is, not only would the nonsense have been neutralized, but there would be more people out there who understand CRT and understand why it is a worthy and necessary field of study. THAT is the message that would have been pounded into people's heads.

That is the way to tell the truth and make people hear it.

[StarfishSaver]

15. I wish you were right

But, in reality, when we start talking about "messaging" of this sort, as sure as day follows night, the obsession over shaping messages that don't make certain white people in any way uncomfortable takes over and exercise then devolves into scolding Black people not to talk too loudly or too much. "Shhhhhh ... Just until after the election and then you can have your voices back. But right now, we need to get these skittish white people into the tent and you're scaring them away..."

And yes, it would have been nice if every Democrat had jumped out to defend CRT or at least kept their mouths shut until they knew what they were talking about. But many Democrats - including a whole lot of people on this board - jumped right in to prove how "unwoke" they are by joining into the mischaracterization of it and made it very difficult to ever correct the narrative. That's why I said the first step should be to shut up and learn.

[brush]

7. We need to label the republicans the "Insurrectionist" party over and over and over...

24/7 until the mid-terms. Just as they flipped several House seats by labeling us with "defund the police" and socialism in 2020, we need to take a page out of ther playbook and call them the "insurrectionist" party loud and clear, daily.

[Scrivener7]

11. Yes. We need to learn message discipline. RepubliQans have it. We don't. We need it.

[wellst0nev0ter]

12. This should be the easiest honking culture war to win

You'd be arguing from a position of overwhelming strength

"Education is good"

"Racism is bad"

"US had a racist history"

"White nationalists suck"

This isn't complicated unless you CHOOSE to make it complicated.

(not arguing against you, just ranting)

[Scrivener7]

13. YES! Exactly. Here's another one: trying to overthrow the government is bad.

That should be how every rational (i.e. Democratic and Independent and Lincoln Republican) American is seeing things. THOSE ideas should be uppermost in all minds.

But they're not. Instead, we are obsessing over myths: caravans, death panels, the idea that CRT is a bad thing, and a million other distraction lies.

[mcar]

5. Joy Reid got him on that on her show last night

He was sputtering and barely coherent.

[CurtEastPoint]

10. oh, pishposh. His Twittershit says HE owned HER! Liars. All. All the time.

[mcar]

14. Ha! I was thinking he'd say just that

when I heard it last night. He couldn't admit he was beat by a woman.