The Grand Old Distraction

Don’t count on power-jockeying Republicans right now. (Plus, my town’s school board fight against Marxist critical race theory.)

The press wants everyone to talk about Marjorie Taylor Greene and the supposed “extremist” wing taking over the GOP. Media wants to elevate Marjorie Taylor Greene and is using her as a cudgel to divide the right. Both media and Democrats demand that Kevin McCarthy strip Greene of any committee assignments. Regardless what McCarthy does the press will still abuse him and the Republican minority, but if he doesn’t discipline Greene the media will use it to cast the GOP as the “party of extremism.” The current narrative: “House Republicans brace for party clash over Cheney and Greene.” No, the fight is between Liz Cheney and McCarthy for future control of House Republicans. Greene is a pawn.

Even then, I cannot be prevailed upon to care. No one should be surprised, I wrote about this last week.

Look, I’m a free speech purist. I also believe that if someone should resign (barring criminal activity) the voters should do it at the ballot box. That said, these are the Democrats’s dumb rules, so if Greene has to go for lFacebook posts she liked a couple of years ago and saying some crazy things then Alexandria Ocasio Cortex has to go for (again, Democrats’s rules) inspiring a guy to attack an ICE facility.

Willem Van Spronsen, 69, declares early on in his manifesto that “evil says concentration camps for folks deemed lesser are necessary. the handmaid of evil says the concentration camps should be more humane,” using a term usually reserved for Nazi Germany’s death camps, but introduced in the border-security debate last month by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

If Greene must go, so must AOC, who also says crazy things. So must Maxine Waters who says crazy things. Nancy Pelosi, Bernie Sanders say crazy things— if you’re unwilling to practice consistency of position then don’t expect your position to be acknowledged. Lack of consistency betrays genuine concern.

Relatedly, shame on the Republicans who see this circus as an opportunity to advance themselves. I have no reason to think that Adam Kinzinger is anything but a nice person but as I said on radio today, I shouldn’t know more about Kinzinger’s gripes with the GOP than I do his position on making tax cuts permanent. I shouldn’t know more about his party-power grievances than I do on his plans to bring forward national reciprocity. It’s not the media’s fault — his timeline is full of press write-up retweets about himself. C’mon. Please stop pretending that voters underserved by their Republican party the past four years, voters unwilling to permit the left to dictate standards they themselves will never meet, is the same thing as allowing extremists to run the party, or even indicative of such. These are completely disparate arguments and people should stop conflating them. I’ll write more on this later.

Republicans are MIA right now.

As I write this I’m simultaneously covering my school board meeting.Here is my Twitter thread (and article, thank you Twitchy) on the goings-on. Our school made national headlines because apparently our board — after violating Texas’s Open Meetings Act and hiring a fancy law firm at taxpayers’s expense — hired a PR firm called Sunwest Communications who stand accused of planting hit pieces with their press contacts to smear parents who opposed the critical race theory curriculum the board tried to push through earlier this year. This is a draft of the plan. Originally the board, with the aide of progressive activists, wanted to defund the SRO program we voted on not long ago and divert the funds to critical race theory programs. They also seek to establish a way to track “microaggressions” and make them a permanent part of students’s records. From the plan:

Action Step 1: Create a process for campus administrators to include incident notes to document microaggressions and discriminatory behaviors in the discipline offense history for students in the Skyward Management System.
Action Step 2: Establish a communication process for campus administrators to share incidents of microaggressions and discriminatory behaviors to the Student Services Department for tracking purposes.
Action Step 3: Report monthly SCOC discipline data to the School Board in executive session.
Conduct year- to-year analysis to reduce the total number of incidents involving microaggressions and incidents of discrimination by campus.

They define “microaggressions” as such:

On November 2, 2018, the School Board held a public meeting to hear input from parents of students who have experienced microaggressions, acts of racism or hate speech.
NOTE: Microaggressions are defined as everyday verbal or nonverbal, snubs or insults, whether intentional or unintentional, which communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons based solely upon their marginalized or underrepresented group membership.

They want taxpayers to pay six figures for a newly-created Director of Equity and Inclusion. Additionally:

Establish stipend and budget for Campus Culture Coach program.
Embed diversity and inclusion training for students as an “enrollment to graduation”
Expand the Dragon Tip Line/Carroll ISD Let’s Talk app to include equity and inclusion as a category to communicate concerns.
Establish an equity and inclusion grievance process system
Conduct an equity audit of curriculum, programs and policies in Carroll ISD.
Work with Consultant to Conduct Comprehensive Equity Audit
Hold staff accountable for equity and inclusion work by adding a cultural competence domain/indicator to the evaluation/appraisal process for all staff.
Strengthen wording and consequences in the Student Code of Conduct (SCOC) for hate speech, racial slurs or acts against individuals or groups of individuals based on race, religion, ethnicity, gender, sex, sexual orientation or disability.
Establish a process for documenting, reporting and tracking SCOC offenses.

Much of the proposed cost is “TBD.”

As I wrote in my last book, Grace Canceled, racism is a moral failing, a sin. It’s also a moral failing, a sin, to falsely accuse others of racism as a mode of controlling them. The latter is the favorite tactic of those who insist on calling this critical race theory abuse “education.” This fellow is one of the leaders of the community movement to push it in our district. Here he is arguing for it:Björn, Dem of Texas – #BLM @txswede2010@stlouistopitt @DLoesch Are you in St Louis, or Pittsburgh? Does anyone, anywhere, care what you think? At least with Dana we know that some horny gun owners listen to her every word. WTF are YOU doing???? And though both of you disagree, indoctrinating kids to be anti-racist is an excellent goal.February 2nd 2021

This is the daily abuse thrown at parents who ask civil questions about this plan or who object to it.

By “teaching diversity” advocates don’t actually mean diversity, the sort which created this rich nation. They mean indoctrinating one group with the lie that they are lesser people, victims no matter their hearts or their strengths while lying to another group that they bear an original sin no matter their kindness and decency. Also, it’s funded by taxpayers and if you object you must love bigotry or something.

I’ll leave you with this eloquent argument:Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ @realchrisrufoImagine if we had one person in Congress who could make the case against critical race theory with such eloquence and passion. Hats off to you, @KemiBadenoch. October 20th 20204,024 Retweets9,842 Likes