(A recent news radio show interviewed a Virginia poll-watcher who stated that the teaching of Critical Race Theory-CRT- may turn several prominent affluent suburban voters against the Democrats in coming 2021 gubernatorial race. He mentioned Loudon County in suburban Washington as a key area for this rising discontent among Democrat voters; FYI.)
To beat Critical Race Theory, We Need Critically Hostile Institutions
By TechBroTito and ErinSmith
The current struggle against Critical Race Theory is in danger of failing much like California’s legal fight against illegal immigration, and for similar reasons. In California’s case the citizens passed ballot measure Prop 187, which banned illegals from accessing state resources. The courts quickly halted this law before implementation, and Democratic officials refused to appeal the ruling rendering it a dead letter. More recently, by the same law, Californians decided they didn’t support gay marriage and voted against it, only to have the popular will of the people overruled in “Our Democracy.”
The lesson here is that a singular push back on a radical agenda like passing a new law or regulation is insufficient without deep structural reform of the institutions themselves. History suggests that when the bureaucracy and elite oppose the public, the former usually win. They won with Prop 187, and their current obsession with the anti-white blood libel of Critical Race Theory suggests a similar outcome if this crucial lesson isn’t taken to heart. The loss of control in immigration in California, cannabis laws, even controlling marriage is at the heart of understanding why the right always loses, and why the smartest GOP strategists seem to be connected to California. The right wing people who have seen California’s tactics for overruling right wing pushback, and know the same tactics will be used nationwide. If the states are the laboratories of democracies, California is the Wuhan Institute of Viral defeats for the right.
Ultimately, ideas only get implemented and enforced if the people in charge have some incentive for doing so. When California again tried to stop the leftward move of the state and elected Arnold Schwarzenegger- who literally called legislators Girly-Men- they preempted Trump, and the right wing strong- arming of the nation by over a decade. Surely an action hero and cigar- chomping, HUMMER driving, woman-groping entrepreneur could stop the inevitable march of the left. But just like Trump, Schwarzenegger found he could do nothing without the agreement from the legislature and his aides, and so gave in, truly becoming a Republican in Name Only. Why did Schwarzenegger seemingly give up without a fight? Because people elected a strongman who has the powers of a Student Class President that were elected by popular campaign to “vote for Pedro” but the rest of the student council have decided is a sworn enemy.
Simply banning CRT indoctrination -whether by legislative act or seizing control of a schoolboard- is unlikely to have a sustained effect if a woke DoJ civil rights division, Human Resources department, or school accreditation association obstructs or simply refuses to comply. They have learned that eventually the public will tire or get distracted, at which point they can return to their mission. If not, surely a sympathetic Hawaiian judge can be summoned in extremis. The student council understands all the bylaws and ways to corrupt, hamstring, and make Pedro, or Schwarzenegger, or Trump, or CRT, look stupid and ineffective, or boringly lose the parts that made Pedro/Trump/Schwarzenegger/Rufo different and thus lose popular support.
They are a table of guys who play poker together, know each other’s tells and play at a table of the casino together to win against each other. Sure, you can get a chair next to them and bring more chips to the table than any of them. They will all work together and at best make you walk with less chips than you had, if not bust you out. The casino tolerates this collusion. The dealer does too. The only thing left is to understand the entire system itself has to change. That means you have to replace the dealer. You have to replace the pit boss. You have to eventually replace, or specifically target one player on the bench to bankrupt, and to get the other players kicked for collusion. If you continue to play the game like having more chips matters when you have pit bosses, dealers, and all the other players allied against you, you won’t know when your corrupt dealer serves a hanger to the corrupt player you’re trying to break. If you don’t know who the sucker at the table is, then it is probably you.
All this is to say, you can’t elect a student council president and change the student council. Critical Race Theory will be renamed Dissident Ethnic Ideology (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion tie-in!) and continue to be taught under a new name. Without penalties, content committees, firing principals, teachers, and changing institutions or creating new ones that the old institutions answer to, the fight against critical race theory will end just like proposition 187, or proposition 8, or Donald Trump’s own Executive Order banning critical race theory, or travel ban, or every other popular effort: degraded, demoralized, and destroyed by processes and institutions specifically meant to make normal people give up in frustration.
If you don’t know who the sucker at the table is, then it is probably you.