America’s History Shouldn’t Be a Banned Book
The Far-Right Cannot Be Allowed to Tear Pages From It
It’s a month and a half until the next presidential election here in the United States and people are acting like fools. Racism and bigotry abound in 2024 America. It feels as if we’ve gone backward in time a half-century or more.
This is what happens when we elect and support people with white nationalist, radicalized religious agendas.
One of the two main political parties in the United States favors the whitewashing of our history. Similar to what they do with the Bible, they are picking and choosing parts of America’s history and doing away with the ugly, unsavory acts that blemish our spotty past. You’d think we’d have outgrown this shit after almost a quarter of a millennium.
Sadly, no. And other countries are watching. America has become the joker in the world’s deck of cards.
A nation is never truly great until all of its citizens have freedom from persecution. Marginalized citizens have just as much right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as the people trying to take those things away from them. The conservative white nationalist movement is attempting to make life difficult for minorities, women, and LGBTQ citizens.
This is not only evident in the new bills being drafted that erase parts of our nation’s history but also in a record number of anti-LGBTQ bills and laws being passed. Politicians in red states are doing their best to pass cruel, hateful laws that victimize gay and trans citizens. Their right to live their lives in peace and have the same freedoms as others is in jeopardy.
The GOP is also targeting women. By passing bills into law that forces women to give birth to their rapists’ babies, they are sending a clear message to women everywhere:
We don’t care about you. To hell with your bodily autonomy. Your mental health is of no concern to us.
Those aren’t exactly Christian things to say. What would Jesus do? He wouldn’t let rapists choose the mother of their children. That line of thinking is fucked.
Sadly, there is no debating with most of these people. They are convinced that they’re doing the Lord’s work by protecting innocent babies. They believe that life starts at conception rather than at a person’s first breath.
Genesis 2:7 He “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and it was then that the man became a living being.”
A clump of cells cannot breathe. Therefore, the Bible’s definition of life clearly states that the first breath taken by a newborn constitutes life. They are putting the rights of women behind those of a clump of cells. A woman should not be forced to birth her rapist’s baby, under any circumstances.
Nor anyone else’s baby, consensual or not. Her body should be her goddamn choice.
Many states and their politicians understand this basic human right. Sadly, the most conservative red states like Texas, Florida, and my home state of Idaho are run by power-hungry men. They have no problem trying to insert their religious views into state law. They appeal to voters who base their entire belief systems on a 2000-year-old fictional book rather than those who use common sense and science as their guides.
I’m no PhD, but I know that it’s wrong to force women to birth a rapist’s baby. And to tear pages out of our nation’s history book.
Recent bills have been submitted that propose eliminating DEI education from high schools. Some have been passed. Yet others are now targeting higher education. Colleges and universities in conservative red states are now the target of bigoted lawmakers and voters.
When they attack educational institutions with this bullshit, people have to take a stand. Red voters are doing their part to further their bigoted agenda by running for positions in their local school boards. Many of them are winning.
Book bans are happening more and more frequently. Bills are being passed to prosecute librarians who refuse to take banned books from their shelves. Many are quitting jobs they’ve held for years and decades due to this persecution. And who could blame them?
By allowing these white nationalist, conservative pricks to push decent, educated human beings around, we’re telling our children that it’s ok to support ignorance. Who cares if the worst parts of our nation’s history are being whitewashed? The expression, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” fits right into the white nationalist agenda.
They DO want to repeat history. The one that involves minorities, women, and LGBTQ citizens to be subjugated by white, elderly men who hold the power. This is unacceptable in a country that’s supposed to be great, at least in the minds of those holding the power.
What is the solution to this blatant disregard for our actual history? How can we stop the white nationalist, conservative agenda from victimizing women, minorities, and LGBTQ citizens? The damage that’s been done over the past decade with the rise of Donald Trump and his MAGA movement won’t be easy to fix.
It starts with voting. Voting as if our lives depend on it. Because for many of these marginalized citizens, it does. Electing politicians like Trump, JD Vance, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Ron DeSantis is a death sentence for many of the people whom they target with their hateful, divisive bills that they help put into law.
Suicide rates for LGBTQ citizens are far higher than those of straight Americans. Women forced to give birth to rapists’ babies will lead to mental health breakdowns and possible suicides. Not to mention the ones forced to carry babies to term which may cause the death of the mother. Women’s reproductive health has suffered in a post-Roe vs. Wade America.
Some came close to death.
We have to take voting seriously as the presidential election of 2024 approaches. Now more than ever, there is so much on the line. People’s lives matter. History matters. And not just the whitewashed, edited version of American history.
The real stuff. The difficult, shitty parts of it matter. If we don’t learn from the racist, bigoted past of our nation, we’re doomed to repeat it. It’s already starting to happen. We need to protect our national history records instead of allowing them to disappear.
America’s history book may be the next one they attempt to ban.
© 2024 Jason Provencio. All rights reserved.
I am forwarding your article to several friends whom have belief systems similar to mine, friends with whom I have conversations regarding our current state and trying to find action we can take on an individual level. You have made the dangers very clear and it is up to us to make sure that we take the steps to begin dismantling the practices that are now in place, time to give those in power who are the instigators a big kick in the backside!
Can't imagine the level of stress we, the sane, sensible, caring and empathetic voters are experiencing due to the fools who want to drawn everyone with them, and kill our democracy to fulfill their racist desires not realizing that they're actually doing the bidding of the fascist, rapist conman who only wants to stay out of jail and be king for life, and helping cfoligarchs to become yet more obscenely rich while killing women and marginalized groups.