DeSantis, Inc. Underestimates Donald Trump

Like so many commonplaces one finds on the lips of talking heads, “electability” may prove to be a confection of partisans blinded by their own preferences.

posted by Matthew Boose at American Greatness

The 2024 Republican presidential primary has hardly begun, but a consensus has already formed in conservative media that Donald Trump is toxic and unelectable. This narrative, commonplace but seldom challenged, is being pushed aggressively by pundits who are obviously partial to Florida governor Ron DeSantis. Many of these personalities insist that Trump has an obligation to step aside, and they pretend that Trump is attacking DeSantis unprovoked, despite the governor’s obvious intentions to run.

The DeSantis hype is not limited to media personalities, but their lockstep support of the governor is out of sync with the Republican base, where Trump remains quite popular. The self-satisfied euphoria of predestined victory that has swept across DeSantis, Inc. needs a reality check, and it may just get one before long. The reality is that the DeSantis narrative, with its overemphasis on a facile notion of “electability,” is based on a tendentious and superficial reading of recent history and our present political situation. Moreover, it is a reading the MAGA base overwhelmingly rejects. 

Most critically, the overconfidence of the pro-DeSantis camp often comes paired with a complacency about elections. While some might find it futile to keep pressing the matter, the 2020 election was a sham, and it would be a fatal mistake to trust any man to challenge the Left who willingly echoes their fabricated history of the subject. Yet, this is exactly what DeSantis is now doing, with his own Pollyannish spin. “In my case,” he said recently, “not only did we win reelection, we won with the highest percentage of the vote that any Republican governor candidate has had in the history of the state of Florida.” While not naming Trump, DeSantis, sounding a cutesy, above-it-all tone, left little doubt about his meaning. 

It is not surprising, given DeSantis’ obvious ambition to replace Trump, that he would downplay election integrity and reject Trump’s “Big Lie.” But DeSantis’ position puts him at odds with the majority of Republican voters, even those who are skeptical of Trump, who share his belief that he was robbed of a second term and that our elections remain fatally broken. DeSantis’ measured actions on this issue also leave reason to doubt his commitment to taking on the corrupt establishment. He could easily ban the scourge of no-excuse mail-in voting, for example, but this would require him to change how things have been done in Florida since 2002 (incidentally, when George W. Bush was in the White House.) 

If DeSantis is a once-in-a-lifetime political talent, he hasn’t proven it yet. Trump already has. His 2016 upset was the biggest shock in modern American history, and despite what revisionists on the Left and the Right say, he narrowly “lost” re-election under some of the most adversarial circumstances an incumbent has ever faced. Democrats weaponized hysteria over a pandemic and racial unrest, completely changed the nation’s voting habits, and systematically suppressed a major corruption scandal about Joe Biden. Despite unprecedented headwinds, Trump “lost” by about 50,000 votes. It’s easy to forget now, but many Democrats were outraged at the time that Trump came so close to a second term. 

It’s too early to divine what the political climate will look like in 2024, but a Trump-Biden rematch is not destined to be a repeat of 2020. Democrats seem to have tapped out the COVID “emergency” at last, and Democrats will be left with defending Biden’s disastrous record of failure. Notwithstanding challenges with mail-in voting, the historic, contrived chaos that the shadowy “cabal”—to use the memorable phrase of Time’s Molly Ball—orchestrated to force Trump out of power was an aberration that cannot easily be replicated (if for no other reason than that Trump is not the incumbent). A post-COVID election might also work against DeSantis, who has built a political brand largely as a crusader against lockdowns and vaccines (which he initially supported.) 

The DeSantis camp also underestimates the power of the media to shape, even to dictate, public opinion. Trump has a rare political agelessness, an ability to avoid being defined by the endless ephemeral scandals pumped out by the press. DeSantis, while decades younger, has little charisma and shows nothing of Trump’s killer instinct or his street smarts. While Trump takes the press by the collar, DeSantis appears almost obsessed with tweaking the media, tailoring his stunts to provoke a reaction. He is a slave to the news cycle, in this way, not unlike your typical soundbite-spewing Republican on Fox News. 

Like so many commonplaces one finds on the lips of talking heads, “electability” may prove to be a confection of partisans blinded by their own preferences. DeSantis might look “electable” for now, but he has been playing the game on easy mode. He has been puffed up with endless praise by Fox News, despite facing little resistance in imposing his “anti-woke” agenda. Sure, he has dealt with his fair share of mean headlines, but nothing like the scorched-earth, whole-of-society persecution Trump has endured, and overcome, since entering politics. 

Somehow, despite being investigated more times than any man in American political history and being compared to Hitler virtually every day for the past seven years, Trump is, at this hour, topping Joe Biden in the polls, including with the elusive “independent voter.” This is the man who we are told to believe “can’t win” because he isn’t smooth enough for suburban moms. 

Monday morning quarterbacks on the Right tend to exaggerate Trump’s failures and whitewash the unprecedented opposition he has faced from every angle. That he is still competitive at this stage is a testament to his extraordinary character, which remains, as always, underestimated by his critics. 

X22, And we Know, and more- Feb 7

 

What If RINOs Throw a Republican Party and Nobody Comes?

posted by J.B. Shurk at American Thinker

"RINO" is such a funny acronym. The vast majority of the Republican base use it to disparage the small coalition actually vested with powers in the Republican Party.  The people most proud to call themselves "Republican" are likely the same ones whom most Republican voters would call "Republican in name only."  The RINOs rule, and the Republican voters hate them for it.

I remember seeing Mitt Romney getting booed and heckled at an event in Utah by ordinary Republicans who correctly see him as a backstabber extraordinaire, and Monsieur Pierre Delecto burst into an aristocratic episode of tsk-tsk-ing and why-I-never exasperation while he pointed out that it was he, Mitt Romney, who had been the 2012 Republican nominee for president (before choking to the communist-in-chief) and that his father not only was a prominent Republican and governor of Michigan last century, but also should have been president, too!  (Darn that Goldwater and his defense of liberty against Big Government!)  Leave it to a RINO to immediately refer voters to his family résumé as haughty proof of his ideological bona fides.

Romney is the perfect mascot for a gaggle of Roves, McConnells, Lincoln Project rejects, and Chamber of Commerce globalists à la Paul Ryan.  They are generals without troops, prancing around like the prima donna, blissfully unaware that no one follows them anywhere.  In this way, it makes perfect sense for the majority of Republican voters to despise their own political leadership so feverishly that the Republicans with all the power are also Republicans deemed so fake and unfit to serve that their titles convey authority "in name only."  "Let them dine in their hoity-toity Republican clubs and jeer at the Americans made from sterner, sturdier stuff," Republican voters continue to say, "but we know who they really are."  RINOs might be the upper 1%, but the bottom 99% could not give a fig.

Yet here we are again with the 2024 presidential race kicking into low gear, and the RINOs remain convinced that they can manipulate the Republican electorate into doing their bidding.  Paul Ryan is on a mission to tell anyone unfortunate enough to be within earshot of his nasal scoldings that Donald Trump is too old, too toxic, too much of a loser to be the Republicans' nominee again.  If anyone knows anything about being a toxic loser, it is surely Paul Ryan; it took Donald Trump to actually carry the state of Wisconsin for Republicans in 2016, after native son Ryan was embarrassingly rejected by his neighbors four years earlier.  (Is that why Ryan hightailed it to C-suite offices in New York City, where he could be around like-minded friends?)

As for being too old, well, I have my doubts that P90X Paul could manage 90-minute speeches in the baking sun wearing a full suit as effortlessly as President Trump, but campaign season is just heating up.  There will be no dearth of opportunities for Americans to judge for themselves who is "low energy" and who is not.  Biden, for instance, is low-energy.  That wretched excuse for a man looks like an assortment of old twigs that would struggle to keep a fire going.  The doddering, corrupt fool cannot distinguish his life's Jenga tower of lies from the hallucinations that plague him.  Biden is who Paul Ryan pretends Trump to be.  Trump, on the other hand, pretends to be no one — he is just himself — and Paul Ryan still fails to understand why voters find that quality so refreshing.

So Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney hate Donald Trump.  Turtle Mcconnell and "Turd Blossom" Rove hate Donald Trump.  Almost all of the Republicans in the U.S. Senate and probably two-thirds of the Republicans in the U.S. House hate Donald Trump.  Every corporate board member and Wall Street chieftain committed to draining middle-class Americans' pockets dry while singing sweet love songs to globalism's crony capitalism all hate Donald Trump.

Mexican president AMLO, the drug cartels and sex-traffickers who control the Southern border, the cheap labor–loving U.S. Chamber of Commerce committed to sticking it to America's blue-collar workforce, and the United Nations–World Economic Forum–U.S. Uniparty hydra-headed monster pushing for unlimited illegal immigration across America hate Donald Trump.  Controlled opposition Fox News, taxpayer-funded PBS, the Sulzberger family's New York Times, Jeff Bezos's Washington Post, and all the Big Tech monopolists who conspire with the federal government to censor Americans and manipulate public opinion hate Donald Trump.

The millions of unelected bureaucratic agents of the permanent Deep State all hate Donald Trump.  The Intelligence Community and Department of (in)Justice (any DOJ that persecutes America-loving J6 protesters as "terrorists" and "insurrectionists" is antithetical to notions of justice), which went out of their way to frame the America First president as a Russian spy, criminal, and traitor, definitely hate Donald Trump.  America's enemies in China, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, and wherever communism has reared its ugly head hate Donald Trump.

And I look at this magnificent collection of "elite" hatred toward President Trump, and I think, "My goodness, this man must be doing something right."  As Charles Hurt has often noted, Donald Trump truly has the best enemies!  When you consider that he spent four years doing everything he could to increase American prosperity, self-respect, and security while being constantly hounded by the entirety of the federal government (vivid proof that an unconstitutional Leviathan has usurped Article II's executive power originally vested in the president) — all while taking no salary for his troubles — it is difficult to name another American politician who has given so much of himself for so little in return.  For his efforts, worms like Romney, Ryan, Rove, McConnell, and all the rest could never even muster a simple "thank you."  As Maya Angelou dryly warned, "when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."

Significantly, most Republican voters seem to have taken Angelou's good advice to heart.  Gone are the days when they could be cowed into voting for some squishy Brahmin RINO because Bill Kristol, Steve Schmidt, Michael Steele, Nicolle Wallace, or George Will tells them they must.  No longer will Republican voters endure those who unjustly insult them to their faces and go on national television to apologize to Democrats on their behalf for their perceived cultural transgressions.  After watching Paul RINO and Turtle McConnell waste their majorities, fail to repeal Obamacare's socialized medicine, refuse to fund President Trump's border wall, surreptitiously sponsor the Deep State's efforts to convict Trump as a Russian spy, aid and abet the Democrats' subversion of elections through mass mail-in ballot fraud, and encourage the DOJ's ruthless harassment and persecution of J6 defendants, rank-and-file Republican voters will never trust Establishment Republicans again.

All of this raises the question: why on Earth would those even slightly tainted by the reek of RINO stench think Republican voters will forget the last fifteen years of betrayals and do as they say?  Globalism, Chamber of Commerce, democracy building, open borders, Wall Street, the Federal Reserve, Big Tech censorship, two-tiered justice, corporate wokeism, the Deep State — these are all vile and dirty words for most Republican voters, even as they are openly embraced to varying degrees by the RINO Establishment Class.  Who would possibly want an endorsement from Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan, Rupert Murdoch, or anybody whose fortune is sustained by the greasy quid-pro-quo revolving door between corrupt government offices and corrupt corporate boardrooms?

To be honest, those types of endorsements are now the "kiss of death," proof of a politician's potential for RINO-ness, even if the nefarious condition has yet to be overtly seen.  That is why I like the guy with all the enemies — because he earned their ire well.

‘Conspiracy Theorist’ Is A Slur Meant To Silence Us

The term ‘conspiracy theorist’ is used to halt thoughtfulness and conversation, often under the guise of protecting you from ‘disinformation.’

posted by Stella Morabito at The Federalist

Back in the 1980s, when Bill Casey was director of Central Intelligence, I asked him a direct question related to analysis. In response, he pointed to his temple and said, “Well, you just gotta use your noodle.”

Whatever you may think of Casey, his pithiness here is instructive. It’s good advice for everyone these days, especially as the term “conspiracy theory” continues to mushroom throughout Big Media, here, there, and everywhere. Team Biden seems to have pushed the term into absolute hyperdrive since he took office.

It’s used even when grand plans are out in the open. For example, participants at the recent World Economic Forum congregation in Davos publicly discussed how we should all be censored and surveilled and tracked. The Orwellian life they’d like to shove on us has been preached for decades by WEF founder Klaus Schwab, prior to his 2020 publication of “The Great Reset.”

But if you point this out you’re likely to be smeared as a “conspiracy theorist.” As Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and many respected pundits have noted, the WEF goal for an unelected elite to rein in the hoi polloi is no theory. Their activists talk about it constantly.

Sure, there are some people who conjure up far-fetched notions of why and how this or that may have happened. But the term “conspiracy theorist” has become a knee-jerk label intended to discredit thoughtful investigation — or just plain observation — by describing investigators as wacky conjurers. This is one of many ways power elites exploit the natural human fear of ostracism in order to induce us to self-silence.

Defining Terms

So let’s use our noodle and explore the term itself and how it is used. First off, “conspiracy” simply means a secret plan. You can’t be a conspiracy theorist if you’re quoting elaborate plans that are public. And unless you’ve been living in a cave, you also know that secret plans exist. We often think of conspiracies in terms of mafia hit lists, embezzlements, or fraud. Such things do happen, you know.

Next, consider the term “theory” or “theorist” as applied to conspiracy. This would be relevant to the person who wonders if there’s a nefarious plan in the works and is investigating. There are legitimate careers dedicated to such things. Actuaries dabble in them, though probably not consciously. Detectives in law enforcement search for a motive in murder cases because it’s their job to speculate in order to solve the case.

Of course, none of the above is what first comes to mind when people hear the term “conspiracy theorist.” Rather, it’s meant to invoke the image of a psychotic who is obsessed with an idea concocted out of whole cloth. For example, “the guy at the corner hardware store has channeled Napoleon to send little men to live in our brains and program us into zombies!” You can surely think of many more examples. The common denominator is detachment from reality — or from what we generally know as common experience of the world.

‘Conspiracy Theorist’ Is a Slur

Casual use of the term “conspiracy theorist” is a smear to halt thoughtfulness and conversation, often under the guise of protecting you from “disinformation.” It’s a staple in any Wikipedia article about anyone targeted for cancellation by Big Tech. Big Media constantly uses the term to discredit anyone who might threaten its narrative. It’s also used constantly in woke academia and by government officials.

The cherry on top is how the FBI has used it to divert public criticism, as with its December statement in reaction to “The Twitter Files.” The FBI statement reads in part: “It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.” (Interesting the FBI referred to itself as “the agency” — a CIA moniker — rather than the standard self-reference of “the bureau.” Hmm.)

“Conspiracy theorist” is now used constantly by just about anyone who wishes to shut someone up by instilling in them the fear of being labeled a kook. In fact, that’s what gaslighting is: psychological abuse that instills the belief that you must be crazy if you simply want to understand why things are the way they are.

Origin of the Term

Pundits often point to a 1967 CIA memo as the origin of the term “conspiracy theory.” The New York Times publicized that memo after obtaining it through a 1976 Freedom of Information Act request. The memo states that the public should be actively dissuaded from straying from the Warren Commission’s conclusion that the John F. Kennedy assassination was the act of a lone gunman. Any other ideas, according to the memo, were conspiracy theories that should be discredited as such in the media.

But some folks take issue with the claim that the CIA memo is the origin of the term. There’s an argument that that very claim is in itself a conspiracy theory. The author of a 2013 article in the Skeptical Inquirer even scoured the internet for sources of the term and found it used in a medical journal dated 1870.

But whether the term “conspiracy theory” predates the CIA memo — even by a century — is irrelevant. It has always been used as a derogatory term. And its pejorative usage in public discourse exploded after The New York Times published the CIA memo in the 1970s. The unprecedented reach of the internet then allowed for the exponential proliferation of the term to denigrate anyone who has a different opinion from the propagandistic narrative.

In short, the CIA memo was the clear turning point in usage, no matter who first may have coined the term. Ever since The New York Times article (clearly not since the 19th century) we have been bombarded with the term to shut us up about any legitimate concerns we may have. Constantly. In Big Media. In Wikipedia. In social media. In politics. In academia. In medicine. In filmmaking. Indeed, wherever big propaganda is propagated, which is pretty much everywhere.

That’s not to say that far-fetched theories don’t exist. Obviously, they do. But the usage of “conspiracy theorist” as a constant slur and effective gag order got its start with the publication of the CIA memo.

And, yes, it can be used on both the left and the right. So when you come across the term, forget about politics. Ask yourself if it’s being used with evidence to back up the claim. For example, we now have plenty of proof that the Russia-collusion hoax boiled down to the dissemination of a conspiracy theory on the part of Democrats in Congress.

On the other hand, if no real argument is offered to back up the use of the term, then you know that “conspiracy theory” is nothing more than an ad hominem silencing device.

But you should decide which is which and speak up about it. You just gotta use your noodle.

New Disney Cartoon on Slavery May Be the Wokest Thing I've Ever Seen

Bonchie reporting for RedState 

While Disney gains its monetary success on the backs of widely viewed shows like “The Mandalorian,” the company continues to spin those profits into politically charged children’s programming.

As RedState reported last year, leaked videos of an all-hands-on-deck meeting showed executive producer Latoya Raveneau bragging about how she has a “not-at-all-secret gay agenda,” adding “queerness” to shows for kids.

That came in response to a Florida law that banned the sexualization of young children by teachers and administrators in schools. Why did that represent an existential crisis for Disney? One can only conclude that the once revered children’s network has changed its primary mission to injecting wokeness into future generations, not providing quality entertainment.

Given that context, it’s not surprising that the reboot of “The Proud Family,” a children’s show from the early 2000s, would push the envelope. But truly, this may be the wokest thing I’ve ever seen.

You’ll be less than shocked to learn that this is another show produced by Raveneau and to get the full effect, you really have the watch the clip. I say that because it would be easy to just assume people are calling this Critical Race Theory because it merely mentions slavery. That’s not it at all, though. Sure, one might question whether such a topic is suitable for a show aimed at children aged in the single digits, but if that were all this is, it would be a mundane disagreement.

Rather, this takes wokeness in children’s programming not just to another planet, but well into another universe. Jarring cuts with various questionable claims are interspersed with black children raising their fists and shouting “Slaves built this country!” over and over. That is then parlayed into a demand for financial reparations.

And we the descendants of slaves in America have earned reparations for their suffering and continue to earn reparations every moment we spend submerged in a systemic predjudice, racism, and white supremacy that America was founded with and still has not atoned for.

Slaves built this country.

In another section, it is asserted that Abraham Lincoln did not free the slaves and that “Emancipation is not freedom.” Other generalized claims include the idea that slavery made “your families” rich, a statement pointed at all white Americans, and that slavery built the banking and shipping industries.

There are several problems here, beginning with the fact that it’s just incredibly divisive and harmful to teach children eight generations removed from slavery that they are oppressed victims due to the suffering of their ancestors. Anyone who watches that clip and is impressionable is going to walk away thinking they have a right to be angry at and punish those that don’t look like them. Personally, I think that’s a pretty screwed-up thing to teach children.

It’s not just the top-level result of such content that is the issue, though. It’s also that many of the claims being made are just flatly untrue. It is a grossly inaccurate simplification of American history to teach kids that “Slaves built this country.” Slavery contributed to parts of the early economy in the United States, but it did not build the country into what it is today (or even what it was a hundred years ago).

Why? Because slavery is an evil, atrophying institution that stunts the growth of a nation instead of accelerating it. In the case of the United States, it locked generations of slaves and non-slaves alike in abject poverty. Slaves were obviously not paid while their forced labor then crushed the market for the labor of non-slaves. Compounding the situation, because most slaves weren’t allowed to be educated and the vast majority of non-slaves at the time were so poor they couldn’t afford to be, generations of advancement were lost across the board.

Slavery was not good. It had no redeeming qualities. It did not “build this country.” Instead, those who perpetrated it mired the country in place for decades for the benefit of a very select few. It wasn’t until after the Civil War and the abolition of slavery that the United States actually began its march to global dominance beginning with the industrial revolution.

Lastly, even if one wants to ignore everything I’ve just written, the “Slaves built this country” line also suffers from a math problem. There were a little over three million slaves in the United States in 1850 (the last pre-war census taken). In comparison. there were 23 million Americans in total. Non-slave-owning adults made up the vast majority of that number and almost all of them worked hard labor jobs in relative squalor, with the largest populations of people residing in non-slave states. In other words, they also “built this country,” and it does not downplay slavery to admit that context.

It is cut-and-paste Critical Race Theory, straight out of the ridiculous and false “1619 Project,” to teach children that slavery was the deciding factor in America’s success and that because of that, those who had no part in it are actually part of a systemic conspiracy of oppression. It is a cynical attempt at personal gain by some in modern society that actually ends up glorifying a grotesque institution. If that’s what Disney wants to promote, then parents should vote with their wallets. Letting kids be kids is apparently not a priority for The Mouse.

This is a scene from a Disney+ kids cartoon called The Proud Family.

THIS IS WHAT YOUR KIDS ARE WATCHING. pic.twitter.com/lmO5pfIarH

— Graham Allen (@GrahamAllen_1) February 5, 2023

Public Schools Are Avoiding CRT Ban With Trojan Horse Of ‘Social Emotional Learning’

Social Emotional Learning, or SEL, is the primary weapon leftists use to politically indoctrinate our children at public schools.

Stephanie Lundquist-Arora reporting for The Federalist

On Jan. 30, several students attending West Springfield High School (WSHS) in Fairfax County, Virginia, told their parents about a disturbingly racist video they were forced to watch at school. These students, coming from all racial backgrounds, took issue with the fact that the video displayed white people, illustrated as cartoon mosquitos, taking bites out of people of color with their “microaggressions.” In the end, the video concludes that white people don’t understand microaggressions because they do not often experience them.

Similarly, in December 2022, during an eighth-grade civics class at Irving Middle School, a feeder to WSHS, a substitute teacher randomly announced to the students that black people had to go through things that white people didn’t — and that “white folks just didn’t understand.” When I notified the school’s principal about the incident, she said she would “look into it” and then never followed up with me.

Across the county, students of all ages repeatedly are receiving a troubling message: White people are clueless and/or perpetrators, and people of color are victims. A Fairfax County fourth-grade teacher, whose classroom is marked as a “safe space” and decorated with a transgender flag, spent an excessive amount of her instructional time regarding our nation’s founding focused on the races of people in the pictures. Another elementary school teacher, on the other side of Fairfax County, went as far as having students role-play slaves and landowners to demonstrate the “economics of slavery.”

Institutionalizing Inequality in Public Schools

Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) Superintendent Michelle Reid and current school board members are working diligently to direct funds from the district’s $3.4 billion budget to integrate these messages into curriculum and institutions. They proudly claim that their foundational goal is “equity,” which includes “closing student achievement gaps … expanding perspectives [and] creating the space for courageous conversation.”

FCPS hires speakers such as Ibram X. Kendi, paying him $20,000 for a one-hour Zoom call, to pontificate on his dangerous “anti-racist” argument, that the remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. FCPS further employs “equity specialists” as administrators in each of its five regions.

There also are designated staff, paid an additional $700 annual stipend, to act as an “equity lead” in each school. The designated “equity lead” enlists the help of student equity foot soldiers, called Student Equity Ambassador Leaders (SEALS), to “inform and support collaborative learning teams” in the schools. Within the district’s equity web, lessons like the one on microaggressions are spun. Rogue actors, like the substitute teacher, further seem to have institutional support when they make statements perpetuating the white-equals-oppressor narrative.

Virginians were aware of these problems in public education and carried their grievances to the state’s gubernatorial election in November 2021. Then-Democrat candidate Terry McAuliffe made the fatal mistake of claiming, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” Voters disagreed. Republican Glenn Youngkin, emphasizing the importance of parental rights, won in an upset. Gov. Youngkin’s first order of business on day one was to implement Executive Order 1, a ban against teaching divisive concepts, including critical race theory, in K-12 public schools.

The Trojan Horse of ‘Social Emotional Learning’

FCPS and other maneuvering school districts in Virginia work around Youngkin’s executive order with the Trojan horse of “Social Emotional Learning” (SEL). The name sounds innocuous. Few would object to actual social and emotional health education, especially considering children’s mental health crisis, largely caused by pandemic policies such as prolonged school closures.

But SEL curricula have a duplicitous goal. Lisa Logan explains in a PragerU video that its real purpose is to “redistribute power to promote social justice through student engagement in school and civic life.” In other words, SEL is the primary weapon leftists use to politically indoctrinate our children.

Upon request following the microaggressions lesson, the WSHS student services director forwarded parents the 2022-2023 study hall schedule, which is where the students’ SEL and “equity” lessons occur. There are 12 scheduled SEL lessons, and six of them are explicitly on “equity,” a word that embodies anything but equality.

Although there is supposed to be an opt-out process for these lessons, there is currently confusion between WSHS parents and administrators. It is unclear if there is even a systematic opt-out procedure in place. In my experience, FCPS buries opt-out information in an email and requires a multi-step process in which parents have to print forms that students must submit to counselors. The objective in erecting opt-out hurdles is clear: Maximum student participation in the SEL indoctrination surveys and lessons.

To that end, in September 2021, with its Covid relief funds, FCPS signed a $2.4 million five-year contract with Panorama Education. The for-profit data-mining company holds contracts with public school districts home to an estimated 25 percent of America’s students. Its invasive surveys pose questions far outside the bounds of academic or emotional relevance, including: “How often do you think about what someone of a different race, ethnicity, or culture experiences?”

With multiple questions like this one, Panorama prides itself in the ability to “help you see the whole child.” The purpose of the FCPS contract with Panorama is “to screen ‘all’ Fairfax children and conduct psychometric evaluations and create psychological profiles.” Perhaps psychological profiling aids Fairfax County school board members and Superintendent Reid to indoctrinate our children more effectively and efficiently.

Equity Is the Priority Over Academics and Safety

With all of the dysfunction in FCPS, it is negligent and arguably criminal that the school board invests so many of its resources into psychologically profiling students and equity programs.

In the past year, during school hours, the district experienced a sexual assault in a bathroom, a suspected drug overdose, a stabbing, a teacher arrested for possession of child pornography, and the arrest of a middle school counselor, who was already a registered sex offender. Meanwhile, students suffer plummeting post-pandemic test scores, and decreased learning and grading standards, for the expressed sake of equal outcomes. There are clearly other areas, such as academics and safety, on which FCPS school board members should focus.

The Need for Competition

Divisive concepts should not be a priority or taught at all. Parents do not send their children to school to learn under the guise of equity that they or their friends are bloodsucking mosquitos because of their race. Like many families across the country, Fairfax families are trapped in the public school prison. Sadly, we can complain to the chef about the bad food, but he simply winks at us, mentions his is the only restaurant around, and tells us he’ll see us tomorrow. We need options and the public education system monopoly clearly needs more competition.

It’s time to do some soul-searching about the purpose of public education. We need to discuss what we as parents want for our children, and what we as taxpayers collectively are willing to fund.

In January, a school board member in Iowa claimed on Facebook, “The purpose of a public ed is to not teach kids what the parents want. It is to teach them what society needs them to know. The client is not the parent, but the community.” But the indoctrination of America’s children is a violation of parental rights, and systematically dumbing them down is counterproductive for the future of our nation. We need to strive for academic excellence in schools — sticking to the “three Rs” — and push all the politics out of the classrooms.