When you love free speech so much you feel moved to ban "woke" speech
Because Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Professional Liar, will happily tell you what words you can no longer use
Most Americans simply want to live their lives in freedom and peace, but we are under attack in a left-wing culture war we didn’t start and never wanted to fight. Every day, we are told that we must partake in their rituals, salute their flags, and worship their false idols, all while big government colludes with Big Tech to strip away the most American thing there is—your freedom of speech. That’s not normal. It’s crazy, and it’s wrong.
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, free speech warrior
You might be like me, näive enough to believe that free speech means that you can say whatever pops into your pointy little head. Well, kemosabe, I’m here to tell you that in the brave new Right-wing world, there’s little that’s genuinely free. So, while people like Arkansas Gov. and professional liar Sarah Huckabee Sanders claim to be a champion of free speech- “free” ain’t what it used to be.
In fact, “free” to a Far-Right Republican like Gov. Huckabee Sanders means one is “free” to speak in a manner she approves of. And she’s ensuring Arkansas’s state government won’t be kowtowing to the forces of woke by proscribing certain words and phrases from official state documents and communications.
With all that is going on in the world right now, you might think that the governor of a whole-ass state would have more things on her mind than just policing the speech of everyone who works in her government. But no! No, Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ big priority this week was a new plan to bar government employees from using inclusive language. Or, as she deems it, “woke” language. Probably because of how very much she loves free speech.
The terms Huckabee is most riled-up about are those meant to be inclusive to trans men and non-binary folks who are able to get pregnant. Some of the terms, I must admit, even I haven’t heard before, so it’s hard to imagine that they are running so very rampant in Arkansas government that Huckabee felt the need to come in and put a stop to it. It’s almost as if this is some performative shit meant to boost her profile in the culture war.
Ya think? It’s not as if Gov. Huckabee Sanders has much to offer in the leadership department. She’s doing nothing to make Arkansas a better place to live…unless you’re a White Conservative Christian cisgender heterosexual. And she’s hardly a champion of edumication, having already declared that African-American Studies is a Liberal plot to teach students to hate America.
Damn, she’s figured it out….
So, if you’re wondering, here’s the list of language Gov. Huckabee Sanders wants to see “de-woked”:
a. Rather than “pregnant people” or “pregnant person,” use “pregnant women” or “pregnant mom.”
b. Rather than “chestfeeding,” use “breastfeeding.”
c. Rather than “body fed” or “person fed,” use “breast fed.”
d. Rather than “human milk,” use “breast milk.”
e. Rather than “birthing person,” use “birth mom.”
f. Rather than “laboring person,” use “birth mom.”
g. Rather than “menstruating person” or “menstruating people,” use “woman” or “women.”
h. Rather than “birth-giver,” use “woman.”
i. Rather than “womxn” or “womyn,” use “woman.”
Remember, as Gov. Huckabee Sanders told us in her response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address,
Every day, we are told that we must partake in their rituals, salute their flags, and worship their false idols, all while big government colludes with Big Tech to strip away the most American thing there is—your freedom of speech.
Right, because REPUBLICANS are the ones who should rightly be stripping away “the most American thing there is—your freedom of speech.” And so she’s determined to do everything in her power to ensure that, starting in Arkansas, that’s precisely what will happen.
If you, like me, wonder how Republicans will protect your freedoms by restricting them…well, Josef Goebbels may be dead, but the GOP channels his teachings daily.
To be clear, no one asked her or anyone else to do any rituals, salute any flags or worship any false idols. That is all made up. And hell, I learned in elementary school that just because someone puts a flag in front of you, that doesn’t mean you have to salute it (although the teacher may ask you to stand in the back of the class).
What they don’t get to do is be shitty to other people without consequences or discriminate against anyone in an official, illegal way. That’s literally it! That is all! Other than that, they are free to do as they please. They’re the ones who want everyone to practice their religion, salute when they tell them to salute — and actually try to pass laws to make this a reality (or claim, wrongly, that such laws already exist).
Of course, if you, like most of the Christian Nationalist wing of the GOP, believe that God is a Republican and that America is a Christian nation, you probably think you have the right to force your faith upon those who don’t share it. Religious intolerance is one of the basic tenets of the American Taliban, but if you believe your faith is #1, you probably don’t see anything wrong with impressing it upon others by force of law…or worse.
Christian Nationalists and the American Taliban are the best advertisements for atheism. But they lack the self-awareness and the compassion to understand that being an asshole doesn’t fall under “What Would Jesus Do?”
The Christianity I was taught as a child wasn’t about controlling how others believe, act, or speak. Culture warriors like Sarah Huckabee Sanders never got the memo. They persecute those not like them as if The Handmaid’s Tale was an instruction manual instead of a dystopian novel.
And people wonder why I became an atheist….
It’s curious how many of the Right’s culture war issues are rooted in wanting to feel special. They want kids to be compelled to practice their religion in schools, they want store clerks to wish them a “Merry Christmas,” they thought that same-sex marriage would make their own marriages “less special,” they were upset about the phrase “Black Lives Matter” because they heard that and thought “Does that mean MY life doesn’t matter?,” they love nationalism and talking about how they live in the greatest country in the world and are the “Real Americans,” they’re constantly fretting about white people being “replaced,” they fall for absolute dumbasses like Donald Trump who just keep telling them how wonderful they are — and I will believe until I die that much of the opposition to abortion is rooted in male fear that their own mothers wouldn’t have loved them enough to sacrifice their lives for them.
This is why the mere idea, the mere spectre of this kind of language is so upsetting to them: it’s inclusive of people they have decided should be excluded, and they just can’t feel good unless they are excluding someone.
When you live in an “either/or” binary world, there can’t be one thing without another opposed to it. You can’t have good without acknowledging the existence of evil. There can be no black without white, nor day without night.
For people like Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, there can be no “special, godly, and righteous” people without “sinful, evil, and selfish” people. And so they must ensure that the world recognizes them as unique and The Other as “less than.”
So transgender people, atheists, Liberals, “woke” people, and the LGBTQ community must be relegated to “less than” status. Without being treated as secondary or “less than,” special people like Gov. Huckabee Sanders would have no basis for comparison and no one to elevate themselves above.
In another day and age, we might have referred to people like Gov. Huckabee Sanders as Philistines. I think variations on “Christian asshole” will do just fine today.
What I fail to understand is why so many people feel compelled to and justified in controlling the speech, behavior, and beliefs of others. It’s as if they feel profoundly uncomfortable with the idea that some folks don’t share the “correct” beliefs. Thus, the heretics must be forced to conform by enlightened representatives of the One, True, and ONLY faith.
Someone should remind Gov. Huckabee Sanders of the separation of Church and State. While they’re at it, they should reacquaint her with the fact that while she’s free to believe as she wishes, she doesn’t have the right to force those beliefs on anyone nor to use the power of the State to aid her in that pursuit.
Oh, and before I forget…forbidden speech is not “free speech,” no matter how many layers of cheap propaganda you wrap it in.
But, then again, if you believe God’s a Republican, all things are possible….
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Sarah (up c)Huckabee is one of the least qualified persons in the world to try and legislate what most Americans want (which mostly includes all of the things she wants to forbid.)