The critical thinking thing...

Beau lives in Flori-duh and of course he's aware of the fight Death Santis is putting against education. But this is not a new thing or something that Death Santis invented: it's taken right off the totalitarian palybook:

In many ways, the principles Rufo laid out seem to mirror what's happened in Hungary under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's proudly "illiberal" government — a regime that's become a model to emulate for much of the right. In the late 2010s, as a means of consolidating conservative power and disenfranchising liberal and moderate critics, Orbán launched a campaign against Hungary's institutions of higher education. He drove the elite Central European University, founded by George Soros, out of the country; solicited students to inform on professors who delivered "unasked-for left-wing political opinions"; and defunded and revoked accreditation for university gender studies programs. At the secondary ed level, as The Atlantic's Franklin Foer reported, Orbán's government cut two years off the country's compulsory education requirements, centralized curriculum and instituted new standards for a "patriotic education," under which students learn, for instance, that ethnic homogeneity is a Hungarian value. 

@salon.com

In the conservative dream of American exceptionalism, being a retrograde totalitarian is completely acceptable. The idea of stirring fear led by boogeyman buzzwords like 'woke' and 'CRT' is bringing change to mostly red states, that have people pushing the idea that education is 'elitist' and should be 'reformed'. Also, limiting children's learning and understanding of critical thinking is a slap on the face of those children. They will become easily malleable and absolutely stupid. 

In Rufo's words, leftists who realized the proletarian revolution wasn't coming instead dedicated themselves to "a revolution of the intelligentsia, a revolution of the elites, by seizing control not of the means of production…but through the means of culture and knowledge production." What followed, he said, was the repackaging of the radical ideas of 1968 into ideologies that have trickled down into nearly every institution in society, albeit often through "postmodern" euphemisms like "diversity" or "equity." Today, he argued, "every elite institution in the country that has dominance over knowledge, dominance over culture, dominance over, even, in many cases, material production, has converged on a unitary ideology." 

The first stage for conservatives who want to fight back, Rufo said, lay in convincing the public that such a long-game infiltration had taken place, educating everyday conservatives that benign-sounding ideas like diversity and inclusion were actually codewords for radical leftist ideology, and offering a set of "moral" arguments and language in opposition. Now, he said, it was time for conservatives to move to a new stage of the fight, using the tools of popular outrage and government force to punish institutions that offend conservative sensibilities. 

@salon.com

The next step? Higher education.

Earlier this year, decades of hard work paid off when the court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Conservatives must now do to higher education what they did to the judiciary — and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is showing the way.

Last year, Florida State University was considering naming DeSantis’s education commissioner, former Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran, to be president of the university. But an organization called the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges sent FSU a letter threatening its accreditation if it chose a new president who did not have an academic background.  

Why does that matter? Under federal law, students may only use government loans and grants at those universities that are accredited by one of seven accreditation agencies identified by the Department of Education. No accreditation, no federal student loans or grants. Unless you are like Hillsdale College, swearing off federal money, this is a death sentence for any university.

@msn.com 

Conservatives have been following that playbook in mostly conservative states and they'll keep doing it. And in this case, no matter what Democrats do because the MAGAts want their states to stay conservative and to do that, ignorance is key. If you want a primer on conservative ideology and education, make sure you visit @MichaelinNorfolk. He's got a treasure trove on the topic and does a much better job on going over the issue than I could ever do. Conservatives care about the more liberal states only to feed their grievances, while they advance their nefarious agenda in their own fucked up states. In their mind, ignorance is strength and what better way to be strong (in their minds) than keeping their children as ignorant as possible? Talk about grooming. 

Always remember: everything that the conservatives allege is a projection...

XOXO

P.S. Quoting Emperor Angry Dorito: