This could be used, nearly word for word, as a “defense” of some Southern state’s glorification of the Confederacy:
Alabama has always been a lightning rod for criticism by people who would never set foot in the place. If you don’t like this policy, you can vote out the state legislators who made it at the next election. Oh, you’re not an Alabama resident? Well, I guess you can bitch about it on a message board if you really can’t think of any better use of your time.
We used to have a saying when I lived there about this sort of LW RO; “If you can’t vote here, don’t emote here”.
If you think San Francisco’s policy is defensible, then defend it. Appeals to localism (like “states’ rights”) as a means of “refuting” the moral or political concerns of outsiders are no more convincing by the left than they are by the right.
Well, only by insisting on an extremely tenuous parallel between official state glorification of acts of treasonous sedition for the sake of an abominably inhumane oppressive social system, and the changing of some school names commemorating public figures from a historically racist period who themselves espoused many racist views.
Similarly, “Mind your own business about my telling my kid not to eat ice cream off the floor” and “Mind your own business about my locking my kid in the trunk of a hot car” are not morally equivalent as “defenses” or “refutations” of “the moral or political concerns of outsiders”.
Her position as a national politician and her right-wing kookitude give her quite a lot of influence on the overall political culture and voter views. I don’t want lies about Jewish Space Lasers and school-shooting “crisis actors” being spewed unchallenged into the credulous ears of ignorant Trumpists, so there’s no valid “Mind your own business” defense against my criticizing Greene.
She can only influence “voter views” if people are sucked in by nonsense. Why would anyone let themselves be influenced by one Congresswoman (out of 435) from another state?
Because she’s a rabid Trumpist conspiracy-theorist loon, and lots of conservative Americans are very willing to be sucked in by the nonsense of rabid Trumpist conspiracy-theorist loons these days?
I mean, I don’t really know why so many conservative Americans are being so anti-rationally loon-friendly, but it’s a phenomenon that certainly works in Greene’s favor as a politically influential figure.
On the one side, some school board members who are merely seeking to change the names of some local schools so that they’re no longer commemorating some public figures from a horrifically racist period in America’s past.
On the other side, an elected Congressperson who explicitly advocates completely delusional conspiracy theories like Jewish Space Lasers starting forest fires and notorious school shootings being faked by “crisis actors”.
Attempting to “bothsides” that comparison to pretend that they are even remotely equivalent in terms of irrational nuttiness is a pretty irrational project in its own right.
(Mind you, that’s not to deny that there are some anti-rational loony views espoused by many American liberals (although not by most liberals, and not only by liberals), such as the antivaxxer movement, “crystal healing” therapies, and so forth. But in terms of both sheer numbers and degree of delusional nuttiness, American conservatives these days as a group are far, far deeper into the wacky woo weeds than American liberals are.)
Dunno. Do you know why so many conservative Americans are so treason, sedition and domestic-terrorism friendly?
For example, the voters who elected Representatives, Senators and a President who have welcomed and participated in the efforts of a foreign adversarial country to undermine democracy in America and foment civil unrest?
But I’m sorry - we were discussing the far more important topic of a small group of people in one city considering the renaming of a few dozen schools.
This may have an excuse. As I recall, in San Francisco, anyone who attends, or has a child attending, a San Francisco public school is allowed to participate in a school board election, even if they are not allowed to vote for any other office in the same election (for example, because they are not citizens).
In general, your point is valid. Specifically, however, “San Francisco” is constantly used by right-wingers as shorthand for “liberal faggot commie nigger-lover place”.
Remember how when the Democrats held their convention in SF in 1984 and the Pubbies spent the whole election season talking about “San Francisco Democrats”, nudge nudge wink wink, we can’t say what we really mean on TV but all you good white Christian people know what we’re talking about"?
Years of exposure to this trope has trained me to roll my eyes when this stereotype is trotted out, even when, as in this case, the stereotype seems to be accurate. I wonder if this would be a national news story if it were happening in, say, San Jose.
I’m not sure how to parse this other than “non-citizens are anti-rationally loony friendly”. Is that what you mean to say here?
Or is it “voters from other countries may be more sensitive to the fact that the schools they are sending their children to are named after people that made comments insulting to people like them (or worse)”?
I’m happy to defend the policy of the SF School Board to review the names of their schools. I personally would have drawn the line in a rather different place than they did, allowing some mitigation for historical significance. I can see why a population with a different ethnic and political makeup than mine would draw the line where they did, even if I disagree with it.
The difference between the SF story and the hypothetical “Alabama naming schools after Confederates” situation is that there is nobody harmed by removing Lincoln from a school. It may be unnecessary, it may be stupid, it may be something you disagree with, but there isn’t a single person who can claim any sort of harm from it. Walking into Jefferson Davis Elementary as a black kid is very different.
I also share your disdain for the right-wing sneering at “San Francisco Liberals (IF You Know What We Mean)”, or “New York City (Except For A Brief Period Immediately After The 9/11 Attacks)”. Or that time Sarah Palin was going on about the “real America”.
As to whether this story would have gotten as much traction if it had been San Jose–yeah, probably, but of course there’s no way to know.
I’m uneasy about what seems to me to be the move to a hardcore identity politics by so much of the left (even as the right has been increasingly captured by a really vicious strain of identitarian politics that’s frankly misogynistic, xenophobic, racist, Christian Dominionist, etc.). Pragmatically, I don’t think this sort of thing (re-naming things that are named after Abraham Lincoln) will play particularly well outside the rock-solid “base” of the Democratic Party. Therefore, I don’t think this is the way to maintain control of the Senate and the House and the White House and the state legislatures, let alone expand the party–and the Democrats must not let the Republican Party come roaring back in '22 and '24, because the Republican Party is still the party of a fascistic cult of personality for the worst human being to have ever held the office of President of the United States. I have also read convincing claims that this entire re-naming process was shockingly slipshod, with the people involved just reading Wikipedia articles and in some cases asserting things that are exactly the opposite of historical fact.
And that leads to my last point: The slide of the Republican Party into becoming what it is today didn’t start out down in this swamp of cruelty and hatred and outright lunacy. It started out with a seemingly rational party (albeit one whose policies and priorities I didn’t agree with), run by rational adult-type people. And now look at it! Those of us on “our side” need to damned well make sure that we don’t allow “tu quoque” arguments and whataboutism (which under the circumstances are as seductive as they could possibly be) to keep us from seeing if our side is beginning to lose its way. This country cannot afford to have two batshit crazy parties. (We really can’t even afford to have one, but I have no idea what to do about the GOQP.)