The REAL reason conservative Evangelicals are mad at Big Bird

 Apparently, Big Bird has a Twitter account. That's silly, but it's a thing, and not as silly as Ted Fucking Cruz being a senator.

Apparently, Big Bird tweeted (haha) that he'd gotten his vaccine, and Cruz tweeted back that this was an example of government propaganda being aimed at kids.

It's ridiculous, on the face of it, that an elected representative of our government, one of the most powerful people in the country, is picking a Twitter feud with A FUCKING MUPPET.

But it's actually understandable that a prominent Republican has beef with Sesame Street. Because, let's be honest, Sesame Street has always promoted a value that is the single greatest threat to today's Republican Party:

Learning.

It's just a fact that the more educated people are, the less likely they are to vote Republican. 

And no, this isn't because the colleges are deliberately trying to make your kids more liberal. I went to a conservative Evangelical college whose professors were tasked with trying to make me more conservative. But sadly for them it didn't work because they also encouraged me to read the Bible... and everything I found there pushed me further and further from both Evangelicalism and conservatism (which are at this point, essentially, the same thing).

 But even if I hadn't been reading the Bible (like they told me to), they made the fatal mistake of allowing me to learn that there are other ways of thinking besides the one I was raised with. 

And once a kid learns THAT, they might end up learning ANYTHING. 

Once a kid learns that there are reasonable people who have reasonable arguments for a stronger social safety net, and for allowing LGBTQ people the same rights everyone else has, and for allowing women to have abortions, and for believing different things about the Bible, and even for not believing in the Bible at all... they just might realize that those people and arguments are more reasonable than the ones that have been telling them otherwise.

The kid might learn that unquestioning obedience to conservative pastors and politicians is not the road to freedom, but the road AWAY from freedom. 

The kid might learn enough about history to realize that conservative policies and politicians have always failed to deliver on their promises, and have also always opposed allowing more people to have the same rights that they do (see: slavery, suffrage, civil rights, gay marriage, etc...) while liberal policies and politicians have always made the economy work better for normal people, and always promoted increasing access to rights.

The kid might learn enough about science to realize that Young Earth Creationism is laughable bullshit.

 The kid might learn enough about science to realize that all the paranoia about vaccines being dangerous or ineffective or a violation of liberty is ALSO laughable bullshit. 

The kid might learn enough about music to realize that CCM is the worst, shittiest music on the market, and learn enough about literature to realize that even the most profound lyrics in CCM are, like, high school poetry class levels of writing; while even the silliest song by Zeppelin (a) is vastly superior musically and lyrically, and (b) does not lead to demon possession like their youth pastor said it would.

The kid might learn about other religions, and how similar they are to his own despite the fact that he's always been told they are wrong, perversions of the truth, even demonic in origin. He might learn that all the stuff he's been taught to hate in Islam is exactly the stuff that Christianity did first, and worse. He might learn that all the stuff he's been taught to admire in Christianity is exactly the stuff that other religions did centuries before the year 1 C.E. He might learn that the thinkers who developed the scientific method became more able to do that as their countries became less controlled by religion. He might learn that there is no verifiable proof of the existence of any deity ever healing the sick, but plenty of verifiable proof that viruses exist and vaccines fucking work.

The kid might learn that other countries have had universal health care for decades, and that even the most conservative politicians in those countries never argue that government-funded health care doesn't work - only that it's costing too much and needs to be reined in. In other words, even the most far-right politicians everywhere else in the world know that the basic idea works, and works better than privatized for-profit healthcare. Only in America can you find supposedly "moderate" conservatives who are so far to the right that they would fight against doing it at all.

The kid might learn that the Netherlands has government-funded abortion on demand and has decriminalized all drugs, and yet has lower rates of teen pregnancy, abortion, and addiction than we do... because they have policies that make it possible for a single mom to raise a kid, and allow addicts to seek treatment rather than incarcerating them.

The kid might even learn some Critical Race Theory and discover that white supremacy is designed not only to keep black and brown people down, it's ALSO designed to keep poor white people down. After all, someone who thinks "I'm poor, but at least I'm better off than THOSE guys" will be less motivated to say "I'm poor, because my employer won't pay me enough. I should work with other poor people of all races to force the bastards to pay me more."

Once you let a kid start learning, they might learn ANYTHING.

And ANYTHING they learn will make them less likely to fall for the Republicans' bullshit.

So it's no wonder Ted Cruz and his ilk don't like Big Bird telling kids that their conservative Evangelical parents are wrong about vaccines. The kids might start to wonder what ELSE their parents (and pastors and politicians) are wrong about.

If you're afraid that people might learn things that contradict what you say is true... it's because you've been lying.

And if the survival of your movement depends on your ability to lie to children, then your movement deserves to die.