The Times they are a Changing

By David Glenn Cox

Alabama Governor Kay Ivey has removed her director of Early Childhood Development, for using a nationally recognized book. A book the Governor says has “Woke” tendencies. The book dares to mention such radical subjects as inclusion and acceptance and so is out in Alabama kindergartens. Such woke tendencies are not acceptable in Alabama schools.

Kindergartens shall be in alignment with other Alabama schools and teach nothing. They can barely teach reading and writing in twelve years. So, such obscure concepts as acceptance and inclusion will only confuse the children.

It’s only madness, the paranoid fear advertised and perpetuated on Fox News. If Florida is doing it! Then Alabama must do it too! They don’t fund the schools, and they don’t give a shit about the schools. But if there is a chance to score some political points over schools. Then, they’re all over schools!  And well gee, Florida is getting all kinds of headlines. And Texas is putting up the Ten Commandments in classrooms. Sure, that will help!

That’s all that was missing from the classroom that and proper state funding. It is the misguided belief that Jesus helps education more than state funding would. Why without Jesus in the public schools Alabama would probably be fiftieth in education instead of forty-seventh. When I attended High School in Alabama, the Supreme Court had ruled a decade before to remove prayer from public schools.

But do you think Alabama would let a little technicality like a Supreme Court ruling stop them from having prayer in schools? No, it wasn’t a prayer. It was called a devotional. A reading from the Bible every day to raise their spirits and inculcate the children with the love of Jesus. Allowing the children to overcome their horribly underfunded school system through the love of their savior.

Ever since Darwin they have held reservations about public education. Teaching science, despite the teachings of Jesus, has alienated many in the State of organized confusion that time forgot. Alabama leads the nation in trash dumps and landfills. States from all over the country prefer to send their trash to only the best of Alabama landfills and public education helped to build that industry.

This is their game, to underfund the schools and blame the lack of Jesus for the student’s failure. GE built a plastics plant in Lowndes County. And not one resident from Lowndes County could pass the math portion of the application. Dang it, Jesus! I know the Ten Commandments, isn’t that good enough? 6 x 7 is 48!

The elementary school my son attended was only painted on the front side of the building. The back side of the school not visible from the street had peeling paint falling off; Jesus was slacking and wasn’t helping with the paint problem. And without Jesus they would have to fall back on money to fix the problem.

They can get away with such crap because if you’ve never attended a good school, you don’t know you’re in a bad school. They want the public schools to stick to the three R’s, Reading, Right Wing and Religion. Ignorance is self-perpetuating and a self-fulfilling prophecy. Alabama has been behind the sticks in education for fifty years. And nothing is going to change that. So, the largest export from the state will continue to be its young people.

The Tennessee GOP worries that they’ve energized the youth against them. Clarence Thomas has said by his silence. “Fuck you! And you can quote me on that, Fuck You!” Chief Justice John Roberts declines to testify before Congress about court ethics. “You heard the man! He said, Fuck you! Do you need that explained to you?”

The Republican war on American civil liberties continues unabated. Yet Abortion and guns move into the center ring. And it seems these young people after surviving school shootings themselves. They don’t believe that thoughts and prayers are sufficient.

The Republican Party worries about the next generation. They can see the writing on the wall. And so, plan to make it as difficult for young people to vote as possible. Only by banning books and closing libraries and Universities can the Republicans hope fight the “Woke” tide with their “Woke” open acceptance of people different from themselves.

Young people don’t watch Fox News and so don’t drink the Kool Aid. The youth sees the lunacy of Donald Trump and are appalled. They see the bigotry of Ron DeSantis and are enraged. They see the corruption and bigotry of the Republican Party and are disgusted by it.

I’ve always used the example of Selma, Alabama. In the forefront in the fight against civil rights in the 1960s, Selma eventually became a ghost town. No manufacturer wanted “Made in Selma” on their product.  And likewise, this is Florida’s future.  Why should people from the frozen North want to retire in bigoted Florida? A state with high insurance rates, high crime rates, bigotry, anti-Semitism and Hurricanes. A clown of a governor with something new and stupid to say most every week.

For retirees the low cost of home prices and the low taxes plus a congenial climate make Alabama an attractive alternative. But there’s only on small catch. It’s Fucking Alabama, and no one wants to live there because it is Fucking Alabama! It’s Florida Stupid or Texas Moron! It’s Arkansas or Oklahoma, do you need that explained to you?

There is a pendulum to society and it was the puritanical 1900s that brought about the roaring twenties. The harder they try to force the youth to conform to their own out dated moral landscape the more the youth will rebel against them.

You know how young people are. They have developed an attachment to this rap musician they’ve recently discovered. Some young people are going so far as to call him the father of Rap music.

The times they are a changing and for Republicans, that’s real bad news.

“Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin’
And you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
The battle outside ragin’
Will soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin”  – Bob Dylan