 Here are five totally made-up crises Republicans have invented to distract from the real crises facing Americans today, the growing concentration of wealth, the worsening climate crisis, and the undermining of our democracy. Fake crisis number one, anything they claim is woke. And we reject woke ideology. Don't ever apologize to the woke mob. Everything woke turns to shit, okay? Although Republicans struggle to define what woke even means. Woke, woke, woke, you know, it's like just a term that you use half that people can't even define it. They don't know what it is. They're constantly using it as a weapon to combat anything that seeks to foster tolerance and acceptance. Pride flags, woke, Rosa Parks. Green M&Ms, the wokeest. Fortunately, most Americans think being informed and aware of social injustice, which is what being woke really means, is a good thing. Fake crisis number two, the panic over trans people. Transgenderism is in fact satanic. Trans people just want the right to exist safely as their true selves, like everyone else. And despite the lies spewed by some Republicans, there's not a shred of evidence that they're a threat to anyone. But they become easy scapegoats for the GOP who vilify them and threaten to criminalize their very existence. Fake crisis number three, critical race theory. Critical race theory in education. It's a racist curriculum used to teach children that somehow their white skin is not equal to black skin and other things in education. Now in reality, critical race theory is mostly taught in universities, like quantum physics or philosophy. It's really not taught in K through 12, nor is it dangerous. It's merely a framework to understand the role that race and racism have played in shaping America's laws and institutions. But Republicans have deliberately turned this obscure academic phrase into a weapon to silence any discussion of race they don't like. Unfortunately this includes teaching many basic historical facts. Fake crisis number four, couch potatoes. Republicans are whipping up anger over welfare recipients supposedly abusing the system. Well, I don't think hardworking Americans should be paying for all of the social services for people who could make a broader contribution and instead are couch potatoes. The reality is most people who collect benefits already hold jobs and work exceedingly hard. Like Ronald Reagan's claim about so-called welfare queens, the couch potato myth is a cruel racial dog whistle. In fact, the vast majority of Americans who receive government benefits are white. We should be asking why so many jobs pay such low wages that workers need government help to get by. Fake crisis number five, out of control government spending. Another lie, apart from mandatory spending like social security, Medicare and Medicaid, government spending has actually fallen more than 30% in the past 50 years as a percentage of our total economy. Yes, the national debt is a problem, but in recent years, among its biggest drivers have been the Bush and Trump tax cuts, which have added nearly $10 trillion to the debt since their enactment. All five of these so-called crises have been manufactured by the GOP. They're entirely made up why? To deflect attention from the near record share of the nation's income and wealth now going to the richest Americans. As the wealthy pour money into politics, largely the GOP, they don't want the rest of America to notice they're rigging the economy for their own benefits, that their greed is worsening the climate crisis and they're undermining our democracy. So the game of the Republican Party and their major donors is to deflect attention to use fake crises to disguise what's really going on. Let them get away with it.