A sixth true thing about education reform

 Nearly 13 years ago, I wrote a very serious and not at all sarcastic blog post titled, “Five True Things About Education Reform,” which holds up pretty well because, like Jesus Christ, education is the same yesterday and today and forever. Now, as then, greedy teachers, evil unions, and lazy poor people are some of the biggest problems with public education in America. But thanks to groups like Moms for Liberty, I've discovered it's high time to add a Sixth True Thing About  Education Reform:

6. Teachers are racist groomers from whom we must protect children.

Shocking but true. Whereas in the late-20th and early-21st centuries, teachers were mostly bad in the screwing-taxpayers kind of way (by demanding to be paid living wages within school systems that have adequate infrastructure, safe conditions, and sufficient supplies), in the 21st century, teachers have begun to reveal a whole new level of evil as they implement their true Secret Agenda: using woke indoctrination to turn kids into trans, reverse-racist, liberal deviants who hate America. Teachers have many tools at their disposal in the pursuit of this agenda, including but not limited to: critical race theory, sex education, social-emotional learning, school libraries, rainbow flags, pronouns, Michelangelo’s David, drag story time, the word gay, posters of Martin Luther King Jr. and Harriet Tubman, rap music, the New York  Times, CNN, condoms, Mickey Mouse, Barbie, the green M&M, Bert & Ernie, Dumbledore, vaccines, masks, Juneteenth, Pride, atheism, globalism, Karl Marx, and of course, history, science, and books. But we have two powerful weapons with which to beat these godless, perverted teachers into submission: Jesus and gerrymandering. Remember what a great man once said: “He alone who owns the youth gains the future.”*

* Hitler, as quoted by Moms for Liberty, a right-wing ed reform group that is not afraid to tell you who they truly are.

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What's goin' on in Oregon?

Why do a bunch of angry white men out West see it as their right to take up arms against a democratically elected government? Why do they think their ideas on land use, or anything else, can justifiably be promoted at gunpoint? Where does such a staggeringly misguided sense of entitlement come from?

I wonder what it’s like to believe with the certainty of divine revelation that you’re supposed to be the top dog in the most powerful nation on Earth, and that anything less is a threat to the very order of the universe? What’s it like to be terrified to find yourself part of a society that is no longer dominated by straight, white, Christian men? I expect these are the feelings that have made the guys occupying a wildlife refuge in Oregon so vulnerable to manipulation by those who profit, both financially and politically, from gun culture, and to the dangerous rhetoric of ideologues who live in a fantasy world of American exceptionalism, rugged individualism, and white Christian privilege.

Who are these batshit, paranoid ideologues who promote the fantasy that accumulating a personal arsenal in modern America is exactly like the American Revolution, because TYRANNY, FORSOOTH!? Don’t they care that their paranoid rhetoric is routinely transformed by the people who swallow their crap into lunatic conspiracy theories about the government carrying out false flag operations to pave the way for martial law and concentration camps and such like?  No, this doesn’t seem to bother the mouthpieces of right wing extremism, probably because it serves their purposes to whip up fear and loathing in their core constituency. (Though I have to wonder, does it really serve anyone’s purpose to make people vote for Donald Trump -- other than Donald Trump’s, of course? But I digress.)

Anyhow, far be it from me to pass up an opportunity to flog my favorite hobbyhorse: that embarrassment of a politician who represents me in Trenton -- New Jersey’s own gun-lovin’, liberal-hatin’, Revolutionary War reenactin’, somewhere-to-the-right-of-Attila-the-Hun, extremist ideologue, Republican Assemblyman Michael Patrick Carroll. Because this speech of his is a great example of the kind of rhetoric behind what’s going on in Oregon.

    “The American revolution would have been impossible were America not a nation of armed citizens. The framers knew that tyranny is always possible, even here, and that tyrants rarely go peaceably into retirement. A people who only stay free so long as they retain the ability to defend that freedom. Put simply, in America, we trust the people. We do not put the entirety of our faith into parchment barriers against tyranny. In many places throughout the world, throughout history, people lived in fear of their government. Our founders understood that prospective tyrants should live in fear of the people, not merely willing, but fully capable of defending that freedom. The idea that we are somehow safer if only folks who possess firearms, the means of defense, are armed bands of disciplined young men working for the government and trained to follow orders without question is so obviously delusional that it’s amazing that somebody could advance it in good faith....
    "Let me ask you one simple question: If your neighbor cannot today be trusted with a firearm, how does donning a uniform change anything?  Now we are one of the very few nations in the world that celebrates a heritage of shooting at soldiers. God willing, no further poet will ever immortalize the deeds of private American citizens fomenting a successful revolution against a homegrown tyranny. But it behooves a free people to be prepared for that eventuality. We don’t celebrate firearms freedoms for their own sake, but for the legacy of freedom and independence that an armed population produced and will if necessary, defend. Firearms freedoms ensure that Americans will be governed, but we will never be ruled.”

Translation: Of course, we don’t want to shoot at our own soldiers, who work for the government and therefore cannot be trusted. But when -- ummm, I mean if -- we don’t like the government anymore, let’s not hesitate to occupy something and wave our guns around like idiots, ignoring the social contract, the rule of law, the principles of democracy, common sense, and any semblance of reason. With liberty and justice for all. Amen.