LETTER: Snake oil sales up this quarter
“The deadly plague of Marxism is invading schools!” “Critical Race Theory is teeming with hate!” The GOP blares on, proving once again that the entire identity of modern conservatism is built around frothing with rage in the general direction of the opposition.
I can’t blame them, though. GOP voters need something to fear and snarl at to stay alive, so if they don’t have that, then, by golly, they’ll make one up!
“Marxist” teachers are the latest boogeyman. Because of “news” channels that provide two minutes of background information and spend the next 20 minutes telling you what to think about it, Marxism, like communism and socialism, has lost all meaning. Nowadays, all three of those words mean “something I dislike,” and are swallowed down without thought.
While Marxist teachers are fictional creatures, like the transgender toilet monsters, militant vegans, busloads of antifa, and the government gun grabbers out to get us since JFK ran for office, the GOP swears they’re in Washington County! And they’re teaching first-graders to hate each other based on skin color!
Where are these first-graders? If it’s happening here, where’s the proof? Remember playing “telephone” in school? How many lengths down the gossip chain are these people from the classroom?
They want people to confront school board members and candidates to find out where they stand on “Marxist” CRT. Maybe it’ll play out like in Commack, N.Y., where, in the ultimate irony, the school board was discussing critical thinking, and some members of the audience threw fits because they thought that was secret code for CRT.
All because little Billy might learn that you don’t have to be wearing a hood and burning a cross in someone’s yard to be racist. The horror!
Their apocalyptic hoopla only distracts us from things we should fear: Bioterrorism, cyberterrorism, government debt, government surveillance, big-tech monopolies, climate change … the list goes on. I’d recommend the National Intelligence Council’s “Global Trends: 2040” as a good starting point, but, hey, why learn about real problems when you can invent fakes and sell yourself as the cure?
Greg Matthews
Washington