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Extremist Makeover [1]
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Date: 2023-05-15
Don’t say you haven’t been warned.
Don’t complain after the fact when your community or school district elects MAGA-embracing leaders who immediately take you down the dangerous and destructive path of religious fervor, nationalism, and anti-government sentiment.
Don’t wring your hands when you see your town bitterly divided or your students cut adrift in an education system ill-prepared to ready them for the realities of the real world.
Just don’t.
These are two cautionary tales of what happens when voters make the fatal mistake of handing the reins of power to Right-wing extremist idiots. This is the possible aftermath of thousands of local elections around the country, each with the potential to erode our democracy -- brick by brick -- and to leave us impotently floundering in a sea of division, ignorance, racism, hate, and stupidity.
And it isn’t pretty.
Ottawa County is located in western Michigan and used to have as its motto the phrase “Where You Belong.” Sounds pretty good. Simple. Welcoming. Positive.
Maybe nothing better symbolizes the hard Right turn that county has experienced since electing eight new members to its board of commissioners who ran promising to “thwart tyranny” than what happened to that innocuous motto, according to an account in the Washington Post.
One of the new members, Sylvia Rhodea, contended that “… the vision statement of ‘Where You Belong’ has been used to promote the divisive Marxist ideology of the race, equity movement.”
“Where You Belong?” Really?
She claimed the current motto was part of a broader effort that aimed to “divide people by race,” reduce their “personal agency,” and teach them to “hate America and doubt the goodness of her people.”
“Where You Belong?”
Rhodea’s proposed solution: change the motto to “Where Freedom Rings,” which, she said
sought to unite county residents around America’s “true history” as a “land of systemic opportunity built on the Constitution, Christianity and capitalism.”
And to show you Rhodea isn’t the only nut in the box of chocolates, her motion easily passed.
As crazy as that story is, it’s only a small part of what’s going on in Ottawa County which, the Post said, “was becoming a case study in what happens when one of the building blocks of American democracy is consumed by ideological battles over race, religion, and American history.”
These folks “were now in charge of a government that they feared, overseeing county employees they did not trust,” the Post said.
Among other actions, the board appointed a service manager for a local HVAC company who has no experience in public health to run the health department. He gained prominence as a critic of mask mandates and has regularly pushed discredited covid treatments, such as the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin. A court ruling is pending in this matter.
The point man for all this is Joe Moss, the board’s new chairman who got into politics because he was upset by things like the previously mentioned motto, school mask mandates for children who were still too young for the vaccine, and the establishment of an office of diversity, equity, and inclusion – which received about $470,000 in corporate donations -- in a more than 80-percent white county that could sometimes seem unwelcoming to minorities, the Post reported.
Moss sees all this as evidence that Ottawa County has been “strategically targeted” by the “Progressive left,” even though the county has consistently voted Republican in presidential races since 1864.
Paranoid much, Joe?
You can read the Post’s story here.
***
In Woodland Park, Col., a conservative slate of candidates won control of the school board 18 months ago. They’ve been wreaking havoc ever since.
MSNBC reports that their actions were part of “a plan ripped from the MAGA playbook designed to catch opponents off guard,” according to an email written by the board’s vice president.
“This is the flood the zone tactic, and the idea is if you advance on many fronts at the same time, then the enemy cannot fortify, defend, effectively counter-attack at any one front,” David Illingworth wrote to another board member on Dec. 9, 2021, weeks after they were elected. “Divide, scatter, conquer. Trump was great at this in his first 100 days.”
“The enemy?” Is this really the mindset you want in running any kind of political entity, let alone a school district where kids are supposed to be getting the best education possible and are preparing for the future in a diverse country?
“I think they look at us as this petri dish where they can really push all their agenda and theories,” said Joe Dohrn, a Woodland Park father and a Republican. “They clearly are willing to sacrifice the public school and to put students presently in the public school through years of disarray to drive home their ideological beliefs. It’s a travesty.”
One travesty is the board’s decision to become the first, and so far, only district in the country to adopt the American Birthright social studies standard created by a Right-wing advocacy group that warns of the “steady whittling away of American liberty.” None of the school’s social studies teachers were consulted before the decision was made.
How bad is this program? The Colorado State Board of Education has rejected American Birthright in October, and The National Council for the Social Studies has issued a rare warning against using it.
But it’s just keen for the Woodland Park decision makers because it emphasizes patriotism, contends the federal government should have no authority over public schools, and – this is the most amazing part to me – says that teachers should not encourage civic engagement, things like registering to vote or petitioning local lawmakers on issues students care about.
No shocker here: The curriculum includes Bill Clinton’s impeachment, but not Donald Trump’s.
Hey Woodland Park students, good luck in the real world, outside of your community bubble, when you have to deal with and compete against people who got real educations instead of the crap you’ve been taught.
Another big issue is the board’s position that the school district should not offer mental health services to students. Ken Witt, the new superintendent, reportedly said, “We are not the department of health and human services.”
Despite the protestations of faculty and students, the board voted that it would not accept voluntary annual mental health screenings of students in sixth grade and above if a proposed law authorizing them would be passed in the state legislature.
Board President David Rusterholtz thinks that’s great, saying that parents should be in charge of their children’s education and mental health – forget the fact that there are times when the parents themselves are a big cause of the problem or unable to make the best decisions on such a complicated subject.
“This is a very important step,” Rusterholtz said. “This is one more standing in the way of big government taking charge of your children.”
He’s got one thing right. It’s impossible for government to take charge of child – whatever that means -- once he or she has killed himself after suffering a mental breakdown.
As far as the district’s employees are concerned, the board seems to think vindictiveness is the answer. At least two staff members who objected to the board’s decisions were later forced out of their jobs, while another was fired for allegedly encouraging protests.
This is causing some folks to get out of Dodge. At least four of the district’s top administrators have quit because of the board’s policy changes, nearly 40 percent of the high school’s professional staff have said they will not return next school year, and the neighboring Manitou Springs district said 47 students from Woodland Park are transferring there in the fall.
“This is an active case study on what will happen if we allow extremist policies to start to take over our public education system,” said David Graf, an English teacher who recently resigned after 17 years in the district.
You can read the MSNBC story here.
***
This whole conservative backlash we’re seeing at all levels and corners of government is based on anti-government paranoia, religious fanaticism, fear, racism, and hatred for the LGBTQ community. This is no thought experiment. It’s actually happening right now, opening a window to show us the world these far-Right extremists are hoping to achieve.
This requires a thorough understanding of all candidates on the ballot, not just the more-publicized races. Once an active, deranged minority to seizes power, nothing good can happen.
You get what you vote for, and you deserve what you vote for.
Consider yourself warned.
***
Thank you for reading my post. You can see more of my writing on my blog: Musings of a Nobody.
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