About 60 years ago, my father was on the original local board that consolidated our area rural schools into a consolidated school district. He was so proud of that. By combining resources, they could create one school in a relatively decent sized small town. K-12 were all in the same building. The families and citizens of those rural schools could pool their resources, pay teachers with bachelor’s degrees, buy books, science equipment, teach music, field competitive sports teams, and so much more. Farmers by trade, books, education, and community involvement were the passions of both my parents. This apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

I just read this story today that chilled me to the bone. It is about a Colorado school board that was taken over by ultra-conservatives, who do what ultra-conservatives do. Since the article is a long, but important read, I’ve clipped three short quotes to encourage you to read the rest. They were elected and quickly moved 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.”

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“It is terribly important to be a disengaged citizen, and indeed, a disengaged student,” said David Randall, research director at the National Association of Scholars, a conservative organization that created the standards last year.

As teachers, students and parents began protesting these decisions, the administration barred employees from discussing the district on social media. 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.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/woodland-park-colorado-school-board-conservatives-rcna83311

It is a chilling, but not surprising read. The dismantling of public education is on an agenda, and we the people need to pay attention. They use bullet point talking points that appeal to most decent people

• Family Values (as if no one else has them)
• God (Christian only)
• Rights (theirs only)
• Liberty (theirs only)
• Book Banning (their choices)
• Fear mongering in general and specific “They are coming for your guns.” “They are recruiting your kids to be gay.” “Grooming.” “The war on Christmas.” “The end of the world.” “To teach that history will indoctrinate our kids.” I could go on.
• Defunding, and defaming teachers. An intended consequence of this is that qualified teachers are leaving the profession, harder to find, and uncredentialed/unqualified people are recruited to take their places.
• Reappropriation of word meanings. To be “woke” is bad. “ANTIFA” (literally an abbreviation for “against Fascism) is bad. “Christian Values” – that allow you get to hate (legislate against, shoot) your neighbor if they think or act differently than you do, while further oppressing the “orphan, widow,” and other vulnerable ones. More below.
• Anti-public education/pro-voucher voiced as “parent choice.” It is a backdoor way to defund public education and channel public funds to schools that can freely discriminate, and teach these bullet points as foundations to a good education.
• Well-coordinated and well-funded efforts to stack local, regional, and national offices with extreme candidates who have no interest in a middle or common ground.
• Anti separation of church and state (for Christians)
• An obsession with controlling total strangers’ reproductive organs and activities.
• Agenda. Villainizing opposition for having one, not acknowledging their own, e.g. the gay agenda, the liberal agenda
• Anti-LGBTQIA+ (not just as personal opinions, but to legislate their human and legal rights away,
• Pro-life (until the child is born)
• Anti-science
• Gun violence is a mental health issue (but consistently vote against improvements in mental health services).
• 2nd Amendment is the most important, and freedom of speech (1st Amendment) does not apply to those who disagree with them
• Blaming poor people en bloc for problems not of their own creating.
• If you are not with them you are not patriotic, as if an insurrection, and attempted coup were actually patriotic.
• Dismantling government agencies, services, and programs intended for the common good.
• look up the “Quiverfull Movement” for more on the extreme intentionality of the leaders of these people.

I hope you don’t stop reading because these things sound cynical. They are just observations across time and place. Please read because historically speaking, these issues are extremely important. These are empire collapsing issues. As a progressive Christian, I want to say that their viewpoints are not the only perspective a Christian can have. Nor are they particularly Christian if you look at Christianity through the basic teachings of Jesus, for example, Matthew 25 – “When did I see you Jesus and do – or not do for them? (nutshell) The difference in Jesus’ words to those who did, or did not do for the “least of these” is stark. Jesus’ words of blessing and inheritance are for the doers, and strongest words of judgment, even everlasting punishment are for those who did not.

Our country went through a period when we collectively understood the value of caring for most of our neighbors, and collectively providing a good public education that was accessible to all young people. In those years, regular working-class people could purchase a home and pay it off. College students could work their way through by working a side job. A young adult could move away from home, get an apartment and be self-sufficient. Remember when one parent could reasonably expect and be expected to stay home with children? I will not talk about the obvious issues of racism, sexism, and other isms of the time. This is just about economics.

And then, it started eroding. Today, the federal minimum wage is still $7.25. In general, those “family values” states have not increased it. Can you imagine being a young couple working entry level jobs (because they couldn’t afford college) and having a baby or several, because they did not have the right to decide when or if to have children. A single parent, without outside support, is pretty much doomed to a life of poverty. Poverty for most is intentional.

But it isn’t just about the beginning of life. I have visited people in nursing home rooms that were frankly little better than prisons. I know an elderly person who lives at home and knows exactly, to the month, how long their savings will last. They worked a lifetime and paid into Social Security as the law required, and as a self-employed business owner, paid both halves. Their very modest house is paid off. Social Security benefits do not even pay out enough for a couple hours of regular, nonmedical in-home help. The bullet point people above think the elderly in our country do not need Social Security or that it should be privatized.

All the most vulnerable people in our country are in deep trouble. It will not get better without intervention.

In hindsight, there have been many predictive events in my life. The event that really caused me to take pause, and actually think about the downfall of ancient empires happened about 15 years ago, when the school board in the very conservative community where I was living at the time, decided to take all the elementary school librarians out of the schools. It was the beginning of the downfall of children being equipped to read a variety of books on a variety of topics.

A few years later, an organized group was working hard on our local school board to have LGBTQIA+ student taken out of the classes of protected people in the district “anti-harassment policy.” Yes, that’s a lot of double negatives. Plain-speak, their purpose was to legitimize the harassment of these students. This was not the first time they had been before the board. They had all sorts of books they wanted removed from the library. For the most part, they were home schoolers.

I pushed back. As a progressive Christian clergy, I spoke to the board, unraveled the double negatives, and asked them, “Wouldn’t it be appropriate for all students to feel safe in an environment free from harassment?” Why single out some to be harassed? My high school age daughter and I were chased by these people in the parking lot after the meeting and didn’t feel safe until we pulled into the Police Department drive. These people started harassing people at the congregation I served. Nobody likes that kind of conflict.

Do you remember when the Tea Party called themselves a “grass roots movement?” These people in our last community were a proud part of it. They believed they came up with these ideas all on their own. I believe they were being used for a cause much larger than their desire for moral purity in everyone. Maybe individuals on the ground think they are grass roots and protecting family values. Many Christian churches and individuals don’t see these issues as politcal, but faith-based. However, if a Christian tries to argue against their points, they will be called “being political.” There is most certainly a larger orchestration to all of this.

In 2012, we moved to another community in a different state (not unrelated to the above). And we discovered that there was indeed, a playbook. But our new community was a more even red/blue mix. They were a few years behind our former community in using these tactics. They are here now. Now, I can identify it on national news quite easily, and local news, what’s left of it.

Some Identifiers

• When a community board has new ultra-conservative members elected to a majority, and at their first meeting, it appears that they have made some decisions together before the meeting.
• When a governor has the power, and authority to decide to ban the teaching of Black history in public schools.
• When women’s bodily autonomy is taken away by legislative action.
• When any (insert minority) rights are taken away by legislative action.
• When minor crimes committed by (insert minority here) are far more severely punished than far more serious crimes in the business world.
• When corporations are treated as people, but human and civil rights are eroding before our eyes.
• When public input is limited at public meetings, because “the people have spoken because they elected me.”
• When individuals feel empowered to make school boards ban books and authors, and the boards feel those voices are the most important to listen to.
• When a legislator is banned from speaking for language related to their experience as a trans (again, insert minority here) person. This business of banning people from speaking is relatively new to me. Keep your eyes on it.
• When the people who caused and supported the insurrection on January 6, 2021 are writing laws and holding the full faith and credit rating of the United States hostage, until they get massive cuts to the social networks that our most vulnerable need, rather than raising the Social Security Cap in order for the ultra-rich pay into it, or their fair share of taxes. You know that some else is pulling the strings on this puppet show.
• When civil discourse seems nearly impossible and it seems they have nearly won.

The United States and the smaller legislative units of it cannot afford to go in this direction. History tells us a few things.

• When teachers are prevented from teaching a variety of viewpoints by fear tactics, the students themselves learn to use fear tactics, and not education and reason.
• When children are exposed to lots of books and lots of ideas from the earliest age, they become reasonable adults, able to entertain a variety of viewpoints. The opposite is also true.
• Book banning leads to book burning. Book burning is violent and leads to other types of violence.
• When dissent is economically punished, it is not long until it is physically punished. And mortally punished.
• Keeping your constituents in poverty is a well-known tactic to keep your constituency docile. Slavery may not be legal in our country per se, but there are ways around it. Why do you really think Central American migrants are spoken of so hatefully? It is part of the narrative because if their home countries are continuously destabilized* and workers work for pennies on what even our most meager minimum wages offer, we can continue to ship our manufacturing to these places. Red states will keep their minimum wages low.

And finally, a brief observation. In 2004, I travelled for the first time to El Salvador. I was a guest of the bishop and his wife who was a pastor. I saw their people through their loving eyes. I saw a country, still recovering from a horrible “civil” war. Young adults who were raising children, had been children during the war years. I can’t imagine the horrors of having whole villages slaughtered, and the very real fear of the powers that had no regard for their very humanity. The whole country had PTSD! I had a meeting with the bishop and others at the US Embassy. The conversation was about the impact of water privatization on the poor. It was obvious, in the wake of their war, everything had been militarized. Though they had a new democratic government, poverty was still profound, and corruption was still a powerful force.

This was one of my first travels post-9/11. I was unaccustomed to the extra security at US airports. I was not ready for the experience of getting to their country and seeing that absolutely everything was militarized. Inside the airport. Outside the airport. Street police officers and mall cops had military style weapons. The US embassy was a picture of opulence amid squalor. The security to get in and out was extreme. Even the church grounds, which held the Lutheran synod offices, had thick concrete walls around it. There was an entry point with an armed guard. Everyone’s walls either had razor wire or broken glass cemented into the top. The bishop had been kidnapped and tortured during the war because he stood on the side of the poor. We switch vehicles in a covered parking structure. He was threatened with bombings – years after the war.

Is this what we want to become?

Or can we do better?

No one has the luxury of saying “I don’t do politics. It doesn’t matter to me.” History tells us where that leads as well and it’s not good. Today, every small child in El Salvador learns about local politics and real events. Their parents will not have another generation being duped.

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*It is well-documented that the US funded and trained the El Salvadoran “death squads” during their civil war. They massacred whole villages of civilians in El Salvador, but trained in the US, by US troops. This is just one example.. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/01/trump-and-el-salvador/550955/

One of the tactics of this method at that time was to label anyone left of the EXTREME right as a leftist guerilla, (which brings up images of a random bomber or “guerrilla warfar”). In main stream media, you can go back and find articles where the peace-loving champion of the poor, Archbishop Romero, and six Jesuit priests were labeled guerillas. They were all assasinated, along with the priests’ housekeeper and her daughber, a group of nuns – among 75,000 others.

Here’s another article. https://orinocotribune.com/us-continues-its-long-history-of-using-death-squads/

ANTIFA, woke, snowflake, libtard, etc, are not innocent word usages. Its creation and purpose is to dehumanize reasonable people and make others think leftist guerrilla. It’s in the playbook.