Fighting the Reprobates

THE GREAT STATE of Arkansas is governed, like most conservative southern states, by Republicans who are currently trying to ram through the state legislature a massive education bill which, among other things, would prohibit, and criminalize the teaching of Critical Race Theory in public schools, and would divert funds for public education to private education. These poisonous, regressive, nonsensical provisions accompany other provisions in the bill, su ch as pay raises for teachers, which are seemingly beneficial to society. But neither censorship nor taking money away from public education benefits society. Banning books, burnign books, and stifling knowledge is what fascists do. If nothing else, the Republcians, nationally, are doing a good job of impersonating fascists, by supporting Trump, suppressing votes, strying to steal the presidency, and a few sundry other thigns of that nature. Or maybe its not an impersonation. when Americans behave like or become fascists, its shocking, and alarming. America's right wing, your average conservative Christian Republican, has for dedades been criticizing and attacking public education, idiotically claiming that America's public schools are breeding grounds and indoctrination centers for radical, progressive, liberal, socialistic, atheistic ideology. Public eduacation, of cours,e is essentiallly socialiam, and in America, is among many shining examples of successful socialism, which is another reason conservatives criticize and attack it. and yet, America's right wing, never lacking hypocrisy, is always eager to divert public funds to private education, usually in the form of bouchers for non affluent students, in effect making public education public education, at least to a degree. Hell, if the roponents and adminisratorswithin private education really want to give underprivilaged children the same opportunties to get a good private education as America's wealthy children, why not simply provide scholarahips? Better, it seems, to mooch off the public system, while attacking it. All over America the right wing is passing laws, or tyring to pass laws, banning Critical Race Theory, which is nothing but history, and banning mention of gay people, while banning books by creating in essence an "Index of Forbidden Books", like the Catholic Church of old. A backlash to all this far right lunacy is springing up in Arkansas and elsewhere, mainly among teachers and former teachers, notably. We must maintain enough faith in America's essential goodness to believe that sooner or later all of this idiocy will be swept into the dustbin of history, so to speak. The sooner, the better.