Mark McNease on Topic: A Million More Marthas

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The World Needs Heroes: Meet Martha Hickson

 

We went to the Hunterdon Democratic Committee spring brunch on Sunday. That’s the county we live in. One of the panel speakers was the amazing Martha Hickson, a school librarian and fierce advocate for kids’ right to read. Her story is harrowing and full of heroism, as she survived a MAGA onslaught to fight another day, and another. She was the 2022 recipient of the Lemony Snicket Prize for Noble Librarians Faced With Adversity, and she speaks with the kind of dedication and experience we need in these book-banning times. Children are not property. ‘Parental rights’ include the right to have your children given access to knowledge. And fire must be fought with fire, which Martha has an abundance of. We need a million more (we’re working on it!).

Ronnie Three-Fingers and the Mind-Eating Bacteria of the Right

If you’re reading my Substack, you know I land somewhere between Audra Lourde and Noam Chomsky on the political/social meter. It’s complicated: I’d love a flat tax just so we didn’t have to endure the complexity of tax filing every spring; I don’t like people who work the system, whether they’re billionaires or low-rent grifters; I’m godfree and tend to agree about religion with the late Christopher Hitchens, if slightly less strident; and I loathe what’s left of the Republican ‘Party’ that has been transformed by extremists into a seething pestilence of white Christian grievance.

What I don’t understand is the current obsession with transgender people and those of us who support them. I believe most people who expend energy hating trans people have never met any. One of my most influential and inspiring friends was the late Stephanie Mott. She was trans, committed, kind, soft-spoken, fierce, and certainly one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met. I know when I’m in the presence of an extraordinary mind, and Stephanie had one.

I’m also aware that the ‘Right’ needs donors and activists, however minimally intelligent they are, to drive voter engagement and keep the cash flowing. The carefully manufactured trans-hate now engulfing the ‘Right’ is deliberate: focus group-tested, refined, and sold to the perpetually anxious Republican American as a matter of parental rights and protecting children.

It’s bullshit. It’s always been bullshit. When they were driving voters to the polls to stop same-sex marriage, it was bullshit. When they started banning the phantom of CRT in kindergarten, it was bullshit. When they moved on to banning books by queer authors or with queer characters, it was bullshit. And when they hit a home run attacking the very idea of a transgender human being, it was vicious, cruel, very effective bullshit.

Hatred exists as an emotional state in need of a justification. Eventually they will move on to hating some other marginalized group. The imagination is an extremely powerful thing, whether it’s imagined transgender bats flying down to transmit their trans-ness to unsuspecting children, or the vast population of imaginary people they believe fetuses to be. For now, huge swaths of America are reacting to carefully nurtured fears of nonexistent enemies. It gets them to vote, and it opens their wallets. If you ever wondered what a zombie apocalypse looks like, look no further.

As Much As I Despise Trump …

 

The whole ‘Ronnie Three-Fingers’ thing amuses me. For all the horror on offer in the Republican electorate, I’m at least enjoying the infighting and name-calling by the top-tier trash talkers. Ron DeSixweeks? Do his kids call him Pudding Pop? It’s been said that DeSatan is Trump with brains (courtesy of our flaccid, parroting media). I disagree. DeSantis is Trump with absolutely no entertainment value. Dull, mean, cruel, and greatly overvalued. If he chokes on his fingers, please withhold the Heimlich maneuver.

And Now, We Go on Vacation

We haven’t flown since before the pandemic. I can’t say I’m all that thrilled to trudge through an airport again, but it’s the only sensible way to get from one coast to another. Tomorrow we’ll be on a flight to Los Angeles, then on to Ojai and Vegas. If I can stay in the moment, I’ll have a great time … and I plan to. Your next Substack sweet treat will be coming from the Chantico Inn and Suites, Ojai, California!

 

Today’s parting shot …