ŷ������

5 ��. Nothing like starting the summer off with some light reading. Lol. If you're like me (and David Byrne), you may look around at the state of our nation and ask "how did we get here?" This book explains it very well. I didn't know anything about the Birchers before this, but after reading this book, I can clearly see that how their playbook for problematic, racist politics in the 1950s and 60s eventually morphed into the Tea Party platform, and now, here we are. Also, learning that some of the group's strongest chapters were in WI, it helps explain how this state became such a gerrymandered shit-show. As a small preview, I present a list of tactics/causes the Birchers vehemently supported in their heyday that may sound familiar to us now:
*Focusing on gaining control of local politics and school boards in order to dictate what can be taught in classrooms in an effort to keep teachers from indoctrinating students in anti-American sentiment
*Anti-union and anti-regulation stances in order to prevent working-class people from adhering to political policies that will be to their own advantage
*Seeing political losses as evidence of fraud, which further galvanizes the base
*Demand for unquestioning policies America-first, supporting police, etc
*Claiming to to motivated by protecting "freedom", when really meaning freedom for their ideas, not civil liberties for those who are not like them---in fact, as few freedoms for those people as possible
*Threatening the press
*Encouraging physical violence against opponents
*Over-the-top rage at and misinformation spread about any public health initiative (in the 1960s they were particularly against fluoride in the water)
*And of course, being ok with making baseless claims, and loudly and proudly being anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, racist, etc.