The Republican Governor of Oklahoma made a statement during an interview with a local news station that created a social media firestorm. The rumor spread all over social media. It was even shared by MSNBC’s Joy Reid.
The claim: The Republican Governor of Oklahoma has enacted requirements that students must meet in order to graduate from high school.
There are only 3 options:
1. Be accepted into a college.
2. Be enrolled in a career tech school.
3. Enlist in the Army
I fell into the trap of hearing the story and believing it at first—long enough to type out a nice rant. 👇(I could save myself from shame and delete it all, but I’m an honest, real person and if someone doesn’t like that, they can keep surfing. I’m transparent. 🤓
My rant
Basically, if you’re poor, you won’t have a high school diploma unless you enlist in the military.
Oklahoma State College tuition runs around $27,000 per year, including room and board and other expenses. Technical college is cheaper, but it’s still going to cost thousands of dollars.
You can’t graduate and start a business.
You can’t graduate and go work on the family farm.
You can’t move to New York City to become an actor on Broadway.
Well, you can do all of those things, but you won’t have a high school diploma.
If you think this isn’t fascist, please feel free to explain how forcing someone to do something isn’t authoritarian. We’re already going to have the military being deployed inside the U.S. in 2025 to round people up, put them into internment camps, and ship them off to wherever. Families with children born in the United States will be sent back into dangerous situations. Good people will be flown to countries they might not have been to for decades.
If their country of origin won’t take them back, they’ll just be sent wherever.
The Statue of Liberty and our Founding Fathers are weeping today.
Yes, I flew off the handle a bit. Yes, I was a little dramatic, but here’s the truth of what happened. This is the actual statement the Republican Governor of Oklahoma made during the interview:
I’m always talking about classrooms to careers. I want every kid ready for a career, and so I’m thinking about even making it a requirement to graduate from Oklahoma high schools. You’ve got to either be accepted to college, or you have to be accepted into a career tech or you have to be going into the army. You have to have some kind of plan post-graduation to go get a great job.
Governor of oklahoma
Notice that? He’s not saying he wants the students to have a plan after high school to go on and have a bright future and happy life. He said, “to go get a great job.”
Fortunately, this isn’t a reality—yet. I initially believed the story because, let’s face it, over the past few years, Republicans have been passing crazy laws and taking away rights… the requirements didn’t seem strange or too crazy for a GOP governor to mandate!
After all, the party has been inching closer and closer to full Fascism for years now. I suppose in this instance we can be grateful that this is particular story wasn’t 100% accurate. He said it. He had plans for it, but the requirements have not been put in place as of today.