Abbreviated pundit roundup: Republican attacks on education, Youngkin's Trumpian tactics, and more

[Brexiter]

We begin today’s roundup with Paul Krugman’s analysis in The New York Times about the right-wing “thought police” that is attacking America’s education system:

Let’s talk, in particular, about the attack on education, especially but not only in Florida, which has become one of America’s leading laboratories of democratic erosion.

Republicans have made considerable political hay by denouncing the teaching of critical race theory; this strategy has succeeded even though most voters have no idea what that theory is and it isn’t actually being taught in public schools. But the facts in this case don’t matter, because denunciations of C.R.T. are basically a cover for a much bigger agenda: an attempt to stop schools from teaching anything that makes right-wingers uncomfortable.

I use that last word advisedly: There’s a bill advancing in the Florida Senate declaring that an individual “should not be made to feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race.” That is, the criterion for what can be taught isn’t “Is it true? Is it supported by the scholarly consensus?” but rather “Does it make certain constituencies uncomfortable?”

And of course, lip service to “local control” in schools also fell by the wayside in Virginia where Governor Glenn Youngkin is proving he is not an independent moderate but is enacting the dangerous, anti-democratic agenda of the modern GOP. As Joan Walsh at The Nation notes:

In an age of Covid fatigue and frustration with school closures and changing education guidance about the pandemic, Younkin played the reassuring Suburban Fleece Daddy, promising parents he would listen to them and restore sanity to the state’s Covid policies, especially regarding schools...Democrats who voted for Youngkin were indeed naive. In his very first day as governor, Youngkin issued a raft of divisive executive orders that would make Trump proud. One violated a campaign promise. While candidate Youngkin said he opposed a statewide mask mandate for schools, he also said he would not ban them. “Localities are going to have to make decisions the way the law works.” One of his first acts was to ban them instead. Seven school boards have sued to keep their mandates in place.

More on the Youngkin bait-and-switch from The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson:

The first days of Republican executive rule in Virginia should be a lesson for independent voters — like the ones who voted for President Biden, giving him a 10-point win in the state in 2020, then turned around and voted for Youngkin.


Youngkin, Earle-Sears and Miyares might look like something new — fresh-faced and laudably diverse — but so far, at least, they act more like members in good standing within the Cult of Trump. Someday, I hope, the Republican Party will escape the grip of a certain angry pensioner in Florida. Until then, don’t be fooled — and don’t give them your votes.

Over at The New York Times, Michelle Goldberg takes on Bari Weiss and her “done with covid” campaign:

But in general, what’s standing in the way of normal life is Covid, not Covid prevention. In most cases where schools are closing, it’s because too many people are out sick to staff them. The same is true of stores that are cutting back their hours and airlines canceling flights. To have more normalcy, we need less illness. That means doing all the things public health people drone on about, especially getting more people vaccinated and boosted, which still — even with the high number of Omicron breakthrough cases — reduces the risk of infection as well as hospitalization. [...]


Critics of how liberals have responded to the pandemic sometimes argue that we’ve overestimated our ability to control this virus. But those who think we can escape this excruciating period simply by changing our mind-set are also overestimating how much control we have. America won’t seem remotely normal until it’s a lot less sick.

And on a final note, don’t miss this sobering warning from political science professor Barbara F. Walter:

Her bottom line: “We are closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe.” She lays out the argument in detail in her must-read book, “How Civil Wars Start,” out in January. “No one wants to believe that their beloved democracy is in decline, or headed toward war,” she writes. But, “if you were an analyst in a foreign country looking at events in America — the same way you’d look at events in Ukraine or the Ivory Coast or Venezuela — you would go down a checklist, assessing each of the conditions that make civil war likely. And what you would find is that the United States, a democracy founded more than two centuries ago, has entered very dangerous territory.”