Of Course It Can Have Muppets

I want an Electric Company or Sesame Street for adults. Entertaining, engaging and INFORMATIVE. Something people really want to watch, in short bites - that means even members of Congress and state legislators and local school board members would be able to comprehend it. If we’re not going to give them any kind of fundamental knowledge quizzes before they can run, this is what we can do. And mandate they watch it.

And have teachers on hand to answer their stupid ass questions, because we’re going to get the raised hand followed by “But my preacher said/But my mom said/But my friend said/But, but...” Should U.S. legislators, of any level, still be following ideas they learned on playgrounds before Google was invented and they had to rely on what Billy overheard wrong?

Here are my Top 10 topics:

1. How the government is supposed to work and what it can and cannot do. Bills, court systems, subpoenas from Congress should be obeyed! yes, but also little things like Puerto Ricans are Americans. There are 50 states, 48 of them are contiguous. (Let’s all look up the word “contiguous.”) So we’re throwing in a little geography of the country as well. I think federal level legislators should not only know A LOT about the people they represent, but be able to make a good guess at where other states ARE.

2. American history. The Indians were here first and we stole their land and tried with pretty damn good success to wipe out all their cultures. Which was wrong. Most Black people in America are descended from slaves who were kidnapped, tortured, and abused. Which was wrong. Everything from the police to the revered figures on our money are “traditions” from slave times. Which is still wrong. The white supremacist abuse and dismissal of people of color continues today – BIPOC, Asian, Middle Eastern kids can experience racism, and they do, white kids should be able to hear about it. You cannot solve a problem you cannot acknowledge exists and racism is a problem for all of us.

Note: Critical Race Theory (which is somehow made scarier by calling it CRT and I bet most people scared of it don’t know what those letters stand for) is an incredibly complex methodology of analysis, like Queer Theory, Marxist Theory, Shakespeare Theory, or Feminist Theory – how scared are you now? – that are used in graduate programs and far higher academia than most legislators will ever reach. They’re not floating around to “indoctrinate” kids in grade schools or high schools, and indoctrination is never their purpose. I can promise you most of their teachers have never encountered any of those methodologies themselves, much less know how to apply them. And even in grad school they’re OPTIONAL. If you don’t want to study Critical Race Theory, you don’t. Calm way the fuck down.

3. Women’s reproductive systems. Where babies come from, including a special episode about the reality of menstruation. (Don’t trust anything that bleeds once a month? She bled once a month most of her life so you could be born you evil fucker.) It needs to be stated in the most clear terms that rape can absolutely result in pregnancy. Sperm + egg = fetus. Biology doesn’t care how they came to be in the uterus together at the same time; motivation is immaterial. Also: ectopic “pregnancies” are when a sperm and egg meet and fertilize OUTSIDE the uterus, say on the outside of the uterus or on a fallopian tube. Babies do not result from the growth of a fetus outside a uterus, period. Anything else is science fiction. Which one would understand if one understood WHERE BABIES COME FROM.

4. Men’s hormones. Because you have them and moods too, fuckers.

5. Sex and gender. Let’s hear the actual science in simple terms teenagers understand TODAY. Sexual orientation. Not the same as gender. Both vastly more varied than a binary. Types of relationships. Marriage between one man and one woman isn’t the only option anymore. Love really is love and is what we all want at the end of the day.

6. Climate. Not weather, not a rainy day, CLIMATE. And how it’s damaged and what the government, corporations, and individual people can do to make impactful change. Right NOW.

7. Disabled people are everywhere. And people. “Disabled person/man/woman/child/fabulous nonbinary fashion model” is the phrase most of us use to describe ourselves and we’d like you to say it too. “Disabled person” helps you deal with reality instead of try to avoid it with reference to our “special needs” (our needs are just the same as yours) or the torturous “differently abled” (again, that’s everyone) or “person with disabilities” (yuck – look up the Social Model of Disability and let it go). Yes, I know this is one of my soap boxes. Or soap power chairs. But y’all, with long Covid growing and the simple fact that you could fall off a curb or get hit by a bus or have an aneurysm any minute, unlike many minorities, you could be us any minute. Stop being afraid of us and stop being grossed out or made sad by us. The easiest way to accomplish this is to talk to us. We communicate. Then include us not as a favor to us but as a favor to you. We’re 25% of the population and we have skills and depths you’ve never considered.

8. Who were the gd “Founding Fathers” and why do we care? Should we even care? They were not pure beings translating the Word of God into the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson was a very bad man. It seems easy for us to understand today that men shouldn’t have secret basement families – guess what? And he’s just one of them.

9. The Constitution and Amendments. I’m not going to get all preachy on you (suddenly I care?) but it’s fucked up, always has been, and SCOTUS is a fucking mess.

10. Let’s meet some Americans. A smorgasbord of Americans – defined as “people who live here.” Pretty simple definition, isn’t it? Just people who live here. (And I don’t mean an NPR special, let’s hear from racist Billy at the diner in the almost abandoned town, in his unique vocabulary, about his own take on Jesus, Foreign Relations, and noodling. I mean an actually inclusionary series of profiles about people - and Billy. If you must.)

I understand that one of the many hitches my plan would encounter is time. It would take months to cover all these topics, even in a basic ‘please get how the fucking world works’ way. Which is why I think a quiz would be good. Something broad. Are Puerto Ricans Americans? We could find out a lot. Specialize which episodes are mandated for which legislators.

And if there’s simply no way for them to have time to watch all the episodes they should? They don’t get to run for office. If you don’t have a foundation of basic knowledge, you shouldn’t get to make decisions for the rest of us. And if you refuse to acquire that knowledge on your own, you’re too irresponsible to make decisions for the rest of us.

And yes, these should be available to the public. Billys and Karens, church youth leaders and teachers and IG influences, podcasters, former Q-Anon and MAGA cultists trying to stumble back into the light, and parents who need a little refresher on reality can watch these too.

You and me too. Because we all still have a lot to learn and unlearn.