Across the country, the conservative movement is obsessed almost exclusively with culture wars. Whether or not this will have any national traction remains to be seen because so far, culture wars haven’t done much for Republicans in the election results department. The fake, overblown cultural issues do seem to allow them to pretend they have actual policies that help people economically (outside of the top 1 percent).
Locally, culture wars seem to do the job for ambitious right-wingers who want to raise their profile and move up the rungs of the MAGA/NeoCon ladder. You have to remember that that ladder is slippery with swamp slime and the bigger and more bigoted and fascistic the moves, the higher the mountain of praise heaped on you. Just ask Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Right now, the big move in for conservatives is to do away with what they call critical race theory, or CRT. This isn’t something being taught to children, and is really just a boogieman catch-all phrase for American history that includes Black people and the history of racism in our country and its institutions. In order to pretend this is something beneficial for constituents, people like Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin have even set up “hotlines” where distressed parents can drop a dime on teachers and adults who deign to tell children facts and uncomfortable stuff about our country’s history.
A new Republican bigot has stepped up to the microphone in the hopes of making a racist name for himself: Tom Horne, the Republican superintendent of Public Instruction in Arizona.
RELATED STORY: Glenn Youngkin quietly shutters CRT 'hotline' because he didn't get the responses he wanted
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The Arizona Republic reports that Horne made a promise when he was running for superintendent of Public Instruction, and he is coming through. This week the Arizona Department of Education launched a new “Empower Hotline.” How are citizens empowered? They can report “inappropriate lessons that detract from teaching academic standards such as those that focus on race or ethnicity, rather than individuals and merit, promoting gender ideology, social emotional learning, or inappropriate sexual content,” according to the government website. You can also see a photo of Horne trying to smile without allowing the bile to fall from his mouth!
The Horne administration considers social and emotional learning, as well as diversity and equity, to be “Trojan horses” for critical race theory instruction.
The rollout of the state school system’s CRT hotline comes at the same time Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed a conservative education bill that purported to stop the teaching of CRT in K-12 schools, saying, “Today I vetoed SB1305. It is time to stop utilizing students and teachers in culture wars based on fearmongering and unfounded accusations. Bills like SB1305 only serve to divide and antagonize. I urge the Legislature to work with me on the real issues affecting Arizona schools: underfunded classrooms, a growing educator retention crisis, and school buildings in need of repair and replacement.”
Like all Republican education things, such as anti-trans and anti-gay bills, these culture war maneuvers do have an actual big business policy attached: hurting labor in the form of teachers unions and therefore debilitating public education in the hopes of privatizing it. President of the Arizona Education Association Marisol Garcia told the Arizona Republic that conservative stunts like Horne’s “continues to politicize and disrespect educators and their profession and the relationships that they have with their families.”
RELATED STORY: DeSantis’ law banning CRT is effective nationwide, muzzling professors who teach about race