Trump's Leap to Fascism Comes Atop of Liberal-Woke Edifice, with Wokists Cushioning His Fall

When fascism comes here, Zionist Judenraete; fanatics aided
by woke liberals in the Universities and media will violate
liberties, and declare their power to prevent the lives of
anyone questioning anything, all in self-defense of course.
The ever widening gap between the government and
the people today casts suspicion on the people,
not Trump's government, in Trump's perverse view.

Free Mahmoud Khalil; Presidential Acts to Protect National Security Are Less Than Credible

Commentary

Madison, Wisconsin — Donald Trump is employing the machinery of government against Americans and permanent residents in State retribution for voicing thought at variance with purveyors of Genocide.

Trump's war against perceived wrong-thought annihilates sacred rights of American Due Process, the First Amendment, Fourth Amendment and cherished valuation of the individual.

His war is worse than the liberal establishment's odious lawfare, and malicious prosecutions launched against Trump by Democrats and liberal political opponents the last four years. It's worse than Democrat Censorship for which this party of parrots can never be forgiven.

Trump builds on liberals' ludicrous notions that truth and falsity of propositions are logically determined by how a proposition makes a reader or listener feel, and the related notion that someone's subjective feeling is equivalent to safety.

No great leap for Trump emulating the Biden-Harris administration determining expression of thought against Genocide is to be viewed with suspicion.

For example, since artist Roger Waters opposes fascism and Genocide in his art and music, Roger Waters must really be an anti-Semite, as determined by the U.S. State Department under Biden, (AP; Reuters).

That the U.S. State Department and Biden-Harris are perpetrators of Genocide is a fact that must go unacknowledged.

Consider as well the case of permanent U.S. resident and college student, Mahmoud Khalil.

As Krystal Ball notes in Breaking Points on the ideological framework of the Biden-Woke bunch employed by Trump today.

Once the pro-Palestine protests were portrayed by the liberal Biden administration as being effectively Hamas, it did not take a large leap to criminalize anyone who was affiliated with them, [pro-Palestine protests].
To throw Visa holders and permanent residents (such as Mahmoud Khalil) out of the country altogether for participating [in protests] or for even liking the wrong Tweet.

Mahmoud Khalil

Mahmoud Khalil is a graduate student at Columbia University School of International Affairs, a permanent U.S. resident, married to a U.S. citizen. Khalil is also a member of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition of student organizations objecting to Genocide against Palestine.

On March 8, Mahmoud Khalil was arrested in New York by agents of ICE, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It's not clear what crime or immigration law Mr. Khalil is alleged to have violated, (New York Times).

His wife, Noor Abdalla, is eight-months pregnant and is due to give birth in April. She was threatened with arrest outside their apartment, though ICE has not followed up yet against her alleged crime(s), (St. Clair, CounterPunch).

ICE, which collectedly resembles a gang of sociopaths with badges, sports a webpage with a front page that three times invites readers to report and phone ICE, should readers see "suspicious activity." Further, the front page features a link to an ICE Tip Form, on which Americans can inform on all manner of suspicious people.

Accusations of fascism cry out from human rights workers, civil liberties organizations and writers at the outrageous arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, now slated to be heard in federal district court in New Jersey, (New York Times).

Congressional Democrats, ensconced in neocon foreign policy and well-versed in employing McCarthyite attacks against Trump after morphing into an anti-free speech Party, not surprisingly offer a muted defense of Mr. Khalil and his family.

Writes Yasmine El-Sabawi, in Middle East Eye:

When Michigan Congresswoman and Palestinian native Rashida Tlaib shared a letter to her social media account on Tuesday, [March 18], demanding that immigration authorities free Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil - a man never charged with a crime - it only contained 14 signatures.

For perspective, there are 220 Democrats in the House of Representatives, all of whom have been unabashedly vocal in their criticism of the Trump administration’s actions on a near-daily basis.

There are 45 Democrats in the Senate.  

That the two major American political parties are united in committing Genocide and evisceration of foundational liberties of free expression and free speech in America ought be causing everyone's fascism detectors to be blinking red.

Mahmoud Khalil, dictating a letter to the Columbia Spectator, pens his determination to carry on this weekend. Writes Khalil:

In his last message to a world that betrayed him, the beloved Palestinian journalist Hossam Shabat said, I did all this because I believe in the Palestinian cause. I believe this land is ours, and it has been the highest honor of my life to die defending it and serving its people.

So too do we believe that it is the highest honor of our lives to struggle for the cause of Palestinian liberation. The student movement will continue to carry the mantle of a free Palestine. History will redeem us, while those who were content to wait on the sidelines will be forever remembered for their silence.

I'm with Mr. Khalil.

Far worse than 1970s elites pronouncing an excess of democracy by the Peace and Civil Rights movements, today, liberal elites have declared there is no objective truth; and the American people must fight it out against themselves using their imposed subjective identities as shields and weapons. 

If many deplore Trump for his fascism, (and rightfully so), wokists and Zionists should be counted among other perpetrators.

University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point Surrenders to Scott Walker's Politics of Stupidity

University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point Greg Summers,
provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs,
declares learning anti-social and non-productive in
a "reimagining" of the Stevens Point curriculum gutting
the humanities and social sciences in a crazed proposal
(UW-Stevens Point press release, March 5, 2018).

Wisconsin-Stevens Point University bureaucrats propose surrender to advancing anti-education forces

Madison, Wisconsin—To the extent Wisconsinites value clean water, critical thinking, empirical analysis, democracy, facts, logic, reason, history, government transparency, examination of society, and a determination to eviscerate the proposition that the "present is a process without an alternative" (Ali), Wisconsin's Lost Decade of 2011-2019 has been a nightmare.

Witness this week the terms of surrender announced by Bernie L. Patterson, Chancellor of University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point in a depraved email with a proposal pregnant with allusions to a vague "changing landscape" of higher education in which UW-Stevens Point must not be "left behind" as this institution assumes a "repositioning will help us adapt to a new, more focused identity for UW-Stevens Point in the 21st century."

Time to put on the waders.

What Patterson omits is that Wisconsin Republicans and only Republicans have gutted funding for the University of Wisconsin System as the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents is now almost entirely composed of Scott Walker appointees committed to the destruction of the University of Wisconsin system. Reagan-era cuts to student funding are another culprit left unidentified as 10,000s of young Wisconsinites are faced with less and less choices in life.

If someone thirty years from now is trying to figure out why these changes were being made, there is no clue in the memo and public statements made by Patterson and other University administrators.

Why Patterson and other Stevens Point administrators decided the most prudent course of action is to paint over these obscenities with syrupy gloss is mystifying.

From a UW-Stevens Point, March 5 news release announcing the proposal of administrators:

"Discontinuing the following programs is recommended:"

    American Studies
    Art - Graphic Design will continue as a distinct major
    English - English for teacher certification will continue
    French
    Geography
    Geoscience
    German
    History - Social Science for teacher certification will continue
    Music Literature
    Philosophy
    Political Science
    Sociology -- Social Work major will continue
    Spanish

This proposal ultimately will revert UW-Stevens Point to the Normal School it once was. Other UW-System schools will not be too far behind. Will there still be a College of Letters and Science? How are teachers meant to function without History, English, Geography?

This proposed policy at Stevens Point is being considered ultimately because the Democratic Party of Wisconsin is run by bureaucrats defined by tribalism, group-think and political incompetence that would shame a seventh-grader running for student council. Criticism is not well-received and as a protector of higher education in Wisconsin, the Democratic Party is moribund.

Working to Defeat Proposal

Alumni are working to kill this proposal.

"The plan is not yet a done deal. The proposal to discontinue programs must be reviewed by a campus governance committee, then the chancellor and UW System Board of Regents. Perhaps some feedback to decision-makers at the school is warranted. Provost Summers can be reached by email at gsummers@uwsp.edu or by phone at (715) 346-4686​," notes Justin Weinberg in Daily Nous.

What does UW-Stevens Point offer students?

In a 2016 Summer reunion at Stevens Point honoring David R. Wrone, professor emeritus of history at UW-Stevens Point, some 30 former students gathered to hail Wrone and his dedication to critical thinking and the value of disputation in the class room.

The gathering was attended by notable Wisconsinites including peace and social justice activists, Al Jenkins and Jackie Captain.

From notes by Jackie Captain on reflections of a liberal education at the Wrone event:

By Jackie Captain

I was part of the generation that was fortunate enough to have two layers of influence from Doctor Wrone. At Lincoln High School in Wisconsin Rapids, we had Fred Dahm, Fred Ginocchio, and Jim Kellerman as teachers and thus were exposed early to humanism, pacifism, and righteous outrage at injustice.

Their influence informed the way I viewed the world and the way I interacted with it; questioning as akin to breathing, breathing meaning activism.

With this background, I strongly believe that the purpose of a classical liberal arts education is to prepare a student to be a good citizen; a well-rounded individual who takes an active part in civic life, with an obligation to stand up for justice and recognize the humanity innate in every person.

Under Dr. Wrone, we read Plato’s Republic and Harold Weisberg’s Whitewash; we invited Sidney Lens, Sam Day, Michael Harrington, Erwin Knoll, Harold Weisberg, and others to meet with our colloquia; we created the Symposia on Survival (SOS) and through a grassroots movement helped to stop the building of a nuclear power plant in Rudolph, Wisconsin.

In Dr. Wrone’s classes, we learned about the critical thinkers of the past and extrapolated their integrity to shape our future. We learned that we couldn’t stand complacent in the face of injustice or inequalities. We learned that it was our moral duty to stand up for the downtrodden and speak truth to power in any way we could. What we learned at the knee of Dr. Wrone was the basis for how we react to every event in our lives.

This is why I when I moved to Madison for graduate school, I was active in the divestiture and anti-apartheid movement; stood up for the Sandinistas, the nuns in El Salvador; worked to try to stop forced registration for the draft; protested the first Gulf war; protested the second Gulf War; worked for Tammy Baldwin, Mark Pocan, Russ Feingold, Barack Obama, and Bernie Sanders. 

This is why I experience moral outrage at the events that were first highlighted in Ferguson (and that now are nearly a daily occurrence throughout the United Sates) and support the Black Lives Matter movement.

It isn’t necessary a carefree life but it is one guided by morality and an intense sense of what is right and wrong. It is not a life filled with cynicism but one guided by skepticism and critical thought. It is a life lived with curiosity and an optimism that a single person can change the world for the better.

What Dr. Wrone left us with was a classical liberal arts education at its finest and that has made all the difference.

Liberal arts, activism, humanity, injustice, racism. To the extent we ignore living and settle into complacency, fascist movements are forever busy, working to take over.

Republican Tax Scam Would Devastate Universities

"Advocates for colleges and universities came out swinging"
against Republican anti-education/tax scam, (Leonor, Politico).

Madison, Wisconsin—Republicans and only Republicans are pushing their massive anti-people initiative that transfers wealth from people to corporations and billionaires.

The Republican and only-Republican tax scam, H.R.1 - Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, is a disaster to Americans, and a dose of plutonium to America's colleges and universities, long a Republican Party target, (H.R. 1: Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Gov Track).

Critical reporting in the Wisocnsin State Journal this morning by Mark Sommerhauser highlighting what this Republican atrocity would do to Wisconsin higher education:

"Our concern from the start has been that the tax bill that was being rushed through Congress would make it more difficult for low- and middle-income families to finance a post-secondary education, and at the same time, undermine the financial stability of ... colleges and universities," said the bloodless Terry Hartle, a spokesman for the American Council on Education, who does not seem to realize what the sweeping Republican measure means for public education.

Sommerhauser offers specifics. The Republican House and/or Senate bills contain measures that would, among other anti-education aims:

-  hike taxes for grad students, treating graduate school tuition waivers as taxable income

- blow up student debt by eliminating the popular student loan interest deduction

- eliminate the federal deduction for state and local income and sales taxes for individual taxpayers that socks the middle class and pressures state government to again slash support for public higher education

Don't expect Sen. Ron Johnson, (R, Wisconsin), to anything that sounds the alarm on this threat.  Rep. Paul Ryan and every Wisconsin Republican is on board the effort to take money from anyone daring to attend college.

This monstrosity is brewing in a Congressional conference committee.

The Wisconsin Republican congressional delegation supports these anti-education measures to ensure public higher education is starved.

Effective opposition must come from the Democratic Party which has a less-than-impressive record.

To see a record of the carnage congressional Republicans are inflicting on America, tune in to Bernie Sanders on social media.

And by the way, Hillary Clinton, thanks again for refusing to step aside in 2016 and sticking us with Donald Trump, appreciate this.

Buried in the Republican tax plan are hidden provisions designed to stick it to the poor and working class while the rich and corporations get billions of dollars in breaks. pic.twitter.com/b5vvNogzBZ

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) December 8, 2017

Christian Nutbags—Killing Public Schools for god

Scott Walker is the face of the religious right in Wisconsin

The presidential election of 2016 highlights the scenario that most everyone thought could happen, but guessed it wouldn't.

The election of Donald Trump is the consequence of the mass base for fascism that has long defined white America and opportunistic rightwing money willing to use the white, 'liberal-Jews-did-it' lunatics populating rural Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Never could figure out why so many otherwise bright political commentators pass on describing rightwingers for what they are. In any event, it is not merely the white-christian-gaping-puke vote that propelled Trump into office. Rightwingers need funding and organization.

Rightwing money is forever busy, post-Citizens United, (Cornell University Law School).

Rightwingers, the white-supremacist Alt Right, are here.

They are staffing up poll worker rosters, municipal committees, school boards, state legislatures, and gubernatorial seats, and so consider Betsy DeVos, Trump's nominee for the United States Secretary of Education, (Zernike, NYT).

Rightwingers are dumb, they're bigoted and mean, and buoyed by Trump in a way most of us will never understand, they are now unmoored declaring: 'They're in charge now.'

DeVos wants to eviscerate public education, a long-term project of the Evangelical rightwing still resentful of biological evolution, climate change, rules of inference, and empirical science.

Those know-it-all liberals, Universities, pubic education, civil rights, god is watching and the rightwing will burn it all down, though likely in Wisconsin at least, you won't read about it in your daily newspaper.

Look, if Wisconsin can normalize Scott Walker and the radical religious right, (and Wisconsin has), the United States can normalize Trump, DeVos and other assorted loons.

Here's a cautionary tale of Betsy DeVos and the coming demise of public education from a pro-public school voice in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

By John Thompson, NonDoc

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma— Yes, the Donald Trump nominee for the U.S. Secretary of Education is the same Betsy DeVos who cheered the defeat of SQ 779 and helped fund pro-voucher candidates for the Legislature. She’s the same Amway heiress who pushed the expansion of Oklahoma City’s KIPP charter school

And that is just the tip of the iceberg.

Betsy DeVos wants to make America’s public education sector into a national version of the starved Oklahoma school system. The founder of the American Federation for Children wants to complete the full ALEC, Koch Brothers, Walton Foundation for-profit, privatization agenda in our state and the rest of the nation.

But it is even worse than that.

DeVos’ political ties like a who’s who of conservatism

As the Mother Jones analysis reports, Richard DeVos Sr. “was an early member and funder of the Council for National Policy, a secretive network of hardline conservative leaders founded by Left Behind author Tim LaHaye.”

Betsy’s father was also a founder of the conservative, Christian, anti-choice Family Research Council. Her brother founded the infamous Blackwater private-security company. Disgraced Texas congressman Tom DeLay advanced their agenda under the informal name of the Amway caucus.

Other DeVos allies include gambling tycoon Sheldon Adelson, Texas investor Harold Simmons, activist attorney Jim Bopp, general counsel for the National Right to Life Committee, who also was the chief architect behind the controversial 2010 Citizens United case and, last, Vice President-elect Mike Pence, of course. DeVos also used the Oklahoma Right to Work experience to inform her campaign to break unions in Michigan.

Intertwined conservative zealotry

And that brings us back to the imminent threat that the DeVos/Pence/Trump team represents for Oklahoma. A recent Oklahoman editorial praised the role of business leaders, who invested millions of dollars in a “wide range of education reforms, including vouchers, charter school expansion, merit pay and more.” Responding to a presentation by a reformer from Pence’s state of Indiana, the Oklahoman proclaimed, “The lessons of Indiana apply not only to education reform in Oklahoma, but to all conservative policy areas.”

A national exposé by Media Matters explains how those intertwined, mostly hidden, corporate-funding networks have choreographed an extreme, anti-government campaign. It notes:

Betsy DeVos is also the co-founder and current chair of the boards at the anti-teachers-union state advocacy groups Alliance for School Choice and American Federation for Children (AFC) and a close friend of teachers union opponent Campbell Brown, who also serves on AFC’s board. DeVos also sits on the board of [Jeb Bush’s] the Foundation for Excellence in Education. Through the DeVos Family Foundation, the DeVoses have given millions to anti-teachers union and pro-privatization education groups.

Here’s the real danger DeVos represents: She is not just a run-of-the-mill corporate school reformer who promotes “public charter schools” under the auspices of bringing disruptive innovation to public schools. She pushes a for-profit privatization agenda that is doing for schools what privatized jails and prisons did for nonviolent offenders; what privatized water systems did for the citizens of Flint, Michigan; and what Blackwater’s mercenaries did for Iraqi noncombatants (and the American soldiers who faced the retaliation sparked by Blackwater’s abuses).

Even Oklahoma reformers shy away from DeVos’ platform

The reformers I know personally are uncomfortable about the Christian Right component of DeVos’ and Pence’s ideologies. They’d prefer not to think about the way that 80 percent of the charters in DeVos’ Michigan are for-profits, or the way that Pence’s Indiana vouchers break down the constitutional separation of church and state (as well as the homophobic dimension of that state’s movement). Reformers who are actually connected to schools tend to distance themselves from the multitude of scandals spawned by for-profit charters and virtual schools.

Not many Oklahoma reformers feel comfortable with online charters like ABLE Charter School, which the state ordered to close. As Oklahoma Watch reported in July, “Of the 93 students enrolled at the start of the school year, just 12 remained in the [ABLE] program for the full year.” After all, virtual charters are perfect examples of schools that collect state funds for as many students as they can recruit, but they don’t have to keep those students for long.

Neither do Oklahoma reformers like to think about the three-year investigation into our state’s Epic virtual schools. Epic is the state’s largest charter, serving more than 8,000 students, but it can’t even document its attendance rate. Neither does Epicseem able to answer charges filed in California for predatory practices and that state’s findings that the Oklahoma-based charter is “without any transparency, accountability and oversight.”

Two kinds of reform

Non-educators and educators alike have failed to fully distinguish between so-called “public charters,” which are pushed by people who at least hope that they will figure out ways to hold choice schools accountable, versus private charters, which don’t have to try to make that claim.

Still, I admit to paying more attention to the charter supporters with whom I can converse and try to persuade and/or collaborate than to the real powers behind the corporate reform movement and their “dark money.”

Most reformers whom I know personally support the private governance of charters and charter management systems (CMOs), but they would reject the total privatization of public schools — just as they would oppose the privatization of prisons, social security and the military. I’m sure that some local reformers will be tempted to support Trump’s and DeVos proposed $20 billion campaign for public and private, non-profit and for-profit schools, but others will refuse to cooperate with the racist, sexist and xenophobic administration.

‘Choice’ options under DeVos would threaten OKCPS, [Oklahoma City Public Schools]

Here’s the big irony: Corporate reformers who have demonized teachers, unions, education schools and school boards have often spoken privately of their mixed feelings about uniting with right-wing reformers. They did so, I’m often told, because they believed it was necessary for Democrats to prove their toughness by battling unions and other loyal Democrats. The Obama administration, for instance, adopted an ALEC-lite, Scott Walker-lite and Betsy DeVos-lite education agenda in an effort to keep the far-right from completely destroying public schools. In doing so, they inadvertently opened the door to mass charterization and an American president with strong support from the alt-right.

Now, we must prepare for the second half of the “one-two punch.” Under a DeVos administration, “choice” options will be defined as including the unchecked expansion of vouchers, for-profit charters and virtual schools. If conservative, neoliberal and liberal supporters of “public school charters” don’t reconsider their relationship with DeVos, Pence, Trump and the rest of the ALEC/Koch brothers agenda, the future of the OKCPS, (Oklahoma City Public Schools), is even more in doubt.

[Dr. John Thompson is an award-winning historian and an award-winning inner-city teacher. Now retired, he is the author of A Teacher's Tale: Learning, Loving and Listening to Our Kids.]

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University of Wisconsin Faculty Hits Walker-Appointed Board of Regents

University of Wisconsin System faculty carry the fight in defense of
public education and the Wisconsin Idea against Scott Walker
and state Republicans

That an anti-intellectual, corrupt Wisconsin governor would degrade Wisconsin's 167-year-old, massive public research institution is so repellent that this week the faculty of the University of Wisconsin-Madison declared "no confidence" in the University System's Board of Regents.

Similar resolutions are expected around the state at other UW System institutions including Milwaukee and Eau Claire, (Schneider, Capital Times).

The Board of Regents is overwhelmingly composed of members vetted for allegiance to Republicans' anti-public education objectives, (Mal Contends).

Most alumni and Wisconsin citizens acclaim the University System. It's part of the Wisconsin culture.

"I applaud the actions of the faculty. The UW System has been built over generations, and to watch a disingenuous and benighted governor and his political party try to tear down our university system hits at the heart of our state," said Jackie Captain, (MA in Art History, (1986)), a native of Wisconsin Rapids.

Walker's project has drawn derision from across the country as well, (Talking Points Memo).

Writes Josh Marshall in a follow-up piece on Walker and higher education last summer:

A big part of what is happening here is that, to people like Walker, Madison is an anchor of Wisconsin liberalism. But not just liberalism in the partisan political sense, also scarier things like empirical thinking and new ideas. And it's not just the humanities. What really comes out in this article is how much of the scythe is aimed at the sciences.

Walker hopes, and some UW administrators fear, that open discussion of Walker and the Republican Party of Wisconsin's efforts to destroy the University of Wisconsin System will hasten its demise, hence the best public relations strategy is to keep what Republicans are doing hush-hush. There is also an attendant fear not to antagonize the vindictive governor.

This is of course a foolish strategy, and UW administrators ought be appealing loudly and publicly to a population that does not share Scott Walker's aversion to letters and science, the arts and public education.

Such a campaign each day could feature an accomplishment of the University of Wisconsin System and daily testimony from alumni pitched aggressively to local daily newspapers and broadcast news always hungry for inexpensive local coverage. Social media is certainly under-utilized.

While behind the scenes the UW-System staff are working and mobilizing supporters to a limited extent, a total and innovative mobilization has not been achieved to this point.

War has been declared on public education by Wisconsin Republicans. It's past time to employ all the resources available against the enemy.