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By Melvin Brinkley

Politicians are weaponizing CRT, but their outrage is disingenuous to the nth degree.

Their version of Critical Race Theory is a ridiculous cluster of claims about anything — literature, textbooks, movies, etc. — that makes them uncomfortable about the topic of race. Trump has already told his followers to lay down their lives for this contrived crisis. I have to give him credit, though; what Trump and many others like Tucker Carlson do is akin to a magic trick. They can take a cup of conspiratorial crap and turn it into billions of barrels of bull excrement.

The “legitimate political discourse” of the National Republican Convention — to include this strategy but is not limited to attacking with bear spray and blunt objects any law enforcement officer who stands in their way when they are trying to disrupt an official government procedure that is mandated by the Constitution of the United States — is now being applied to a newly imagined MAGA crisis.

The newest fabricated crisis about CRT endangers teachers, administrators and school district representatives. Trump has told his followers to lay down their lives to combat CRT. This is the same incendiary language Trump used when he ordered his acolytes to disrupt a congressional procedure on Jan. 6, 2021.

How many innocent people will be killed and injured this time over another contrived crisis? Don’t teachers, principals and school district representatives have a hard enough job already? Now they’ve got to worry about offending anyone who might think their worldview is being challenged by what is being taught to their children in the classroom.

Technically speaking, CRT is only taught in law schools. The accusations about CRT being taught in any class below a graduate level is disingenuous. However, I firmly believe critical thinking is an essential tool everyone should strive to have some competency in.

If children are not taught to think critically and to discern on their own what is true and what is not true, then they will be easier dupes for any demagogue who has a bully pulpit. For instance: Without critical thinking you might become an easy mark in the con where you pay tens of thousands of dollars to enroll in a university that is not a university in any way, shape or form. I am referring to Trump University — just to be clear.

Evidently the real fear of the MAGA high command is the fear that their constituents might start thinking critically— and as we say in poker lingo, that’s the “tell.” If Trump’s MAGA mob had a high level of critical thinking, then maybe they might be able to see through the MAGA high command’s self-serving palaver.

One thing is for sure: Trump is not going to stick his neck out for anyone or any issue — as was clearly evident the last time he pulled this stunt of asking others to lay down their life for his aspirations.

 

Melvin Brinkley, a retired Veterans Affairs and Air Force chaplain now living in Davis, California, graduated from Suffolk’s John F. Kennedy High School in 1973. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1977 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant that year. He also holds a Master of Divinity from Emory University. His email address is chaplainmel@gmail.com.