Monday Reads: Gaslighting Lousyana Style

L’Apéritif (1908) Raoul Dufy

Good Morning Sky Dancers!

I missed the days when Louisiana was a purple state.  That was back before Dubya’s Turd Blossom decided it would be a great idea if we could just find a way of stopping Black New Orleanians from returning home after Katrina. Of course, they mainly were bussed off to Georgia and Texas, where they’ve helped turned those states purple, which is a good thing. However, we’ve been saddled with the craziest pathetic group of KKK-loving, christianist nitwits ever assembled in one place.

One of them popped up on a Sunday show and proved he was still a Trumpy goose-stepping sleazeball.

Well, that makes about as much sense as what he actually said/didn’t say.  Liz Cheney just lit right into him. This is from Newsweek: “Liz Cheney Accuses Scalise of ‘Attack’ on the U.S. After He Refuses to Say Election Wasn’t Stolen.”

“Do you think the 2020 election was ‘stolen’ from Donald Trump? And in continuing to make that charge…do you think that that hurts, undermines American democracy?” Wallace asked Scalise on Fox News Sunday.

Scalise didn’t directly answer the question. “I’ve been very clear from the beginning. If you look at a number of states, they didn’t follow their state-passed laws that govern the election for president. That is what the United States Constitution says,” he responded.

Wallace went on to ask the direct question two more times, but Scalise responded with his concerns about state’s allegedly not following their local election laws. He also criticized Democrats for opposing controversial election changes pushed through by Republican legislatures in conservative states.

Cat With Red Fish by Henri Matisse

New Jersey never sends its very best to Sunday Talk Shows, either. Chris Christie said this: “‘It depends’: Chris Christie says there are times teachers should be ‘threatened’ via Raw Story.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) asserted on Sunday that there are times that public school teachers deserve to be the target of verbal threats.

During a panel discussion on ABC’s This Week, Christie falsely suggested that Attorney General Merrick Garland was trying to silence parents who disagree with critical race theory being taught in schools.

“It makes him look partisan,” Christie said of the attorney general. “I think he needs to get back to what the Justice Department is supposed to do, which is dispassionately look at the facts like they did after 9/11.”

Democratic strategist Donna Brazile had a different point of view.

“Chris, no teacher should be threatened simply because he or she is trying to do their job,” Brazile explained.

“It depends on what you call a threat, Donna!” Christie interrupted forcefully. “Parents standing up for what they want is not a threat.”

“A threat is when you verbally assault someone and threaten their lives,” Brazile noted, “which has happened across this country. And that’s why the Justice Department decided to take a position on that.”

André Derain, Hyde Park,1906

This comes after a string of attacks on teachers as part of a Tik Tok challenge and those staged by Covidiots. This is also from the great state of Lousyana, as reported in WaPo. “A student punched her disabled 64-year-old Teacher. The attack might have been inspired by TikTok.”  Oh, this is Sleazy Steve’s district btw.

A Louisiana teenager could face up to five years behind bars for assaulting a teacher, an attack that authorities say could have been inspired by a TikTok challenge.Larrianna Jackson, 18, was charged with felony battery of a schoolteacher after a video shared across social media showed her attacking a Covington High School teacher on Oct. 6, police said.

A spokesman for the Covington Police Department, Sgt. Edwin Masters, told The Washington Post that some students and teachers have suggested that the attack was inspired by the “slap a teacher” trend found on social media site TikTok.

“We’re still trying to figure out if it’s isolated or related to TikTok,” he said, noting that soap dispensers have been stolen and urinals have gone missing across St. Tammany Parish in recent weeks. Such antics reportedly have been part of a September challenge known as “devious licks.”

The Teacher is wheelchair-bound and was taken to the hospital. Watch the video if you can but it’s a rough thing to see and hear.  This is from our local Fox affiliate.

.Police say that Larrianna Jackson, 18, was arrested after video captured her physically assaulting the teacher after the dismissal bell rang. Video obtained from another student’s cell phone shows Jackson striking the teacher four times as she’s hurled to the ground.

“I was just devastated to know what our teachers go through on a day-to-day basis just to educate students,” said St. Tammany Schools Superintendent Frank Jabbia. “For this teacher to be having a conversation with a student and then to be assaulted in this manner was very disturbing.”

Jabbia says anyone involved will be disciplined.

The teacher was badly bruised and rushed to a hospital for treatment. She was released but Jabbia says her condition will be monitored over the next couple of days.

“She is hurting,” he said. Jabbia says it’s unknown if the teacher will return to the classroom following the attack.

Jackson was arrested and accused of a felony count of battery of a school teacher. Jackson was transported to the St. Tammany Parish Jail where she will await prosecution.

Still Life, 1906 par André DERAIN

I’m not exactly sure what is happening to civility these days. Still, I believe that politicians and social media standards are setting the bar pretty low for acceptable behavior these days.  There is a high level of burnout for Health Care Workers who have also come under attack recently for just doing their jobs.  The same is true of Teachers. The Capitol Police Force has more  PSTD  than most of their officers experienced while on active duty military service in the Middle East.  Why has this country turned on its Helpers; the people there to help, as Mister Rogers used to call them when speaking to children in need.

Everyone has been tired and burnt out from living in the U.S. for the last five years.  Again, we were treated to the torment of a Donald Trump Rally in Iowa.  The worst of the worst was on display yet again.  CNN’s Dean Obeidallah describes it this way “The most alarming Trump rally yet.  Highlights from the rally are also available at the link.

Saturday’s rally in Iowa, though, was different. This one was attended by longtime Iowa US Sen. Chuck Grassley, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, Iowa Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Ashley Hinson, and other mainstream Republican officials. Some of these very same people, who just nine months ago were slamming Trump for his role in the Capitol riots, were now only too happy to be seen supporting him. This is politics at its worst — and at its most dangerous for our democracy.

The most hypocritical of the bunch is Sen. Grassley, who on January 6 was escorted by his security detail to a secure location to protect him from the pro-Trump mob that had laid siege on the Capitol. Grassley, who voted to certify the 2020 election, made a veiled reference to Trump in his statement, noting that the lawsuits filed after the election had failed and that “politicians in Washington should not second guess the courts once they have ruled.”

In February, however, after Trump’s impeachment trial for allegedly inciting the January 6 insurrection (allegations which Trump has denied), Grassley was even more direct with his criticism. He said in a statement that “President Trump continued to argue that the election had been stolen even though the courts didn’t back up his claims,” and “belittled and harassed elected officials across the country to get his way.” Grassley added that Trump “encouraged his own, loyal vice president, Mike Pence, to take extraordinary and unconstitutional actions during the Electoral College count.”

Grassley continued bluntly: “There’s no doubt in my mind that President Trump’s language was extreme, aggressive, and irresponsible,” sharing his view that all involved in the attack — including Trump — “must take responsibility for their destructive actions that day.”

Flash forward to Saturday, and there was Grassley beaming as Trump offered a “complete and total endorsement for re-election” for the 88-year-old Senator. Grassley responded, “If I didn’t accept the endorsement of a person that’s got 91 percent of the Republican voters in Iowa, I wouldn’t be too smart.”

To Grassley, it was “smart” to accept the endorsement of the man who spent Saturday’s rally spouting the same falsehoods that led to the January 6 violence that caused Grassley to hide in fear. Trump’s litany of dangerous election lies at his Iowa rally ranged from irresponsible claims he won Wisconsin “by a lot” in 2020, to lying that the results of the recently released Arizona audit support his false claim that he had actually won that state. He even declared that “First of all, [Biden] didn’t get elected, OK?”

The crowd responded to Trump’s buffet of lies by chanting, “Trump won! Trump won!”

It would be sad to think that Trump and Trump’s behavior–like gaslighting, lying, and promoting angry violent responses to everything–is the rubicon we’ve crossed for our social interactions.  It seems, however, cruelty and gaslighting are about all you see on both social media and the regular press with very few folks calling it out for what it is.

It is burning out the empathetic among us.  These are the very people we rely on to care for us at all stages of our lives.  I see this in my own family and in myself. It’s those of us that that do people work that are taking the brunt of it. Every one of us has studied, gone to school, and worked to become society’s public servants.  If only the Republican politicians approached their duties the same way.  At the very least, they could uphold their oath to the Constitution and most seem incapable of that even.  It would behoove them to think of this medical commandment “First, do no harm”.

Meanwhile, I’m basically feral and staying home. I haven’t had the T.V. on all day or last weekend, and watch less of it all the time. I read. I play silly video games. I’m just glad my parents haven’t lived to see all this and I fear for our children and grandchildren. Several major Republicans spoke this weekend.. One basically okayed abusing teachers. The others just gaslit the nation on lies about our elections.

I’m bereft. I miss simple kindness.

I am working on a spontaneous gift for my daughter and granddaughters. A friend is downsizing her collectibles and offered up a cookie jar that’s a beautiful spotted little bear.  I am picking it up on Wednesday.  I have a recipe box that I started in 8th grade.  It contains handwritten instructions for my favorite cookie recipes in bright peacock blue and pink ink with hearts where dots should be.  I’m giving her my originals.

My daughter is thrilled and said she did not have my mother’s chocolate chip cookie recipe. That recipe came from a neighbor in Ponca City and it is forever Mrs. Daniels’ chocolate chip cookies. I’m also giving her the one that came from our Cleaning lady of 30 years.  Dr. Daugter said she had become interested in decorated cookies so I am also sending three generations of cookie cutters and my mother’s decorating kit that came from Italy.  She learned how to decorate cakes when I was little. I have all her tips and a book. The Italian lady across the street from us in Council Bluffs taught her.  Both my mother and I gave our daughters designer cakes So, it’s the little things like these that make me smile.  Generations of women helping each other and passing things forward.  At least we can still share those small things on a most local level.

You take care and embrace all the small pleasures that you may find!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?