This will be a running commentary on news stories in US media. I am going to try a new format with occasionally much shorter pieces.  And, instead of starting a new “blog” with each News Note, I will edit and add to this one. 

Washington Post, 2/27

 Front Page Headline: “Trump gives Musk his full support”

The article talked about how Musk and DOGE dominated Trump’s cabinet meeting.  In it, Musk justified the need for HUGE cuts in the federal budget by absurd reasoning.  He said:

“We simply cannot sustain as a country $2 trillion deficits.  Just the interest on the national debt now exceeds the Defense Department spending.  If this continues, the country will become de facto bankrupt.“

Is Musk stupid, ignorant, or a liar?  We know he’s not stupid and it is hard to be this ignorant.  You don’t even need Economics 101 to know this is not just bad economics but defies logic.  Relative to GDP, our national debt and debt payments are not excessive compared to many other industrialized countries.  The U.S. debt to GDP ratio is 124%; Japan’s is 251%.  With respect to the $2 trillion deficit, this has been sustainable.  Moreover, the only reason it is at this level is because Republicans give HUGE tax cuts to the wealthy instead of enacting the tax increases needed.

There is no rationale here for the Musk/Trump slash and burn approach to the US government — nor is there any other rationale.  Government expenditures are not bloated.  Relative to GDP they are about 36%, considerably lower than other industrialized countries.  To deal with our social and environmental problems, government spending should actually be much higher!

Washington Post, 3/3/25

On the new USDOE webpage: enddei.ed.gov

“The U.S. Department of Education is committed to ensuring all students have access to meaningful learning free of divisive ideologies and indoctrination [emphasis added]. This submission form is an outlet for students, parents, teachers, and the broader community to report illegal discriminatory practices at institutions of learning. The Department of Education will utilize community submissions to identify potential areas for investigation.”

As with most Trump actions this one is all projection.  Trump is all about promoting divisive ideologies and indoctrination – HIS!  But more than that – it should not be up to the government to police what are divisive ideologies or indoctrination.  Expressing different views from the right on DEI, race, and gender, for example, is not indoctrination but honest difference in perspectives.  Half the country may disagree with those views, but they have no right to impose them on the rest of us.  It’s gotten so bad that grant applicants worry they can’t even include words like “equity.” 

Big Brother lives!

“Trump administration gives warning about ‘gender ideology’ on some government health websites,” reads a headline on CNN’s website (Feb. 14), echoed across many news organizations.  The CDC, FDA, and others were directed to post a notice that says:

“Any information on this page promoting gender ideology is extremely inaccurate and disconnected from the immutable biological reality that there are two sexes, male and female. The Trump Administration rejects gender ideology and condemns the harms it causes to children, by promoting their chemical and surgical manipulation and to women, by depriving them of their dignity, safety, well-being, and opportunities.  This page does not reflect biological reality and therefore the Administration and this Department reject it.”

This notice was apparently a follow-up to an executive order Trump issued on his first day in office titled, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” This order states that it is US policy “to recognize two sexes, male and female,” and all agencies need to remove any statements to the contrary.

This is so awful in so many ways!  Clearly, it is another disgraceful attack on transgender people, an attack that Trump has continued to promote.  But the attack seems even broader, going after the whole idea of gender, as an indicator of identities and norms, being different than biological sex.  Trump’s executive order actually directs federal agencies not to use the term “gender.”  The paternalistic idea that a misogynist convicted of sexual assault like Trump says he is “Defending Women” is outrageous. And against “gender ideology,” what is really meant by that?

I’ve been a feminist since I read Simone de Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex” in the late sixties in graduate school, but I have only followed a little the many perspectives being offered by various schools of feminism and work in the area of women/gender studies.  I had never heard the term gender ideology used and attributed it to my ignorance.  But researching it, it is apparently relatively new in the US and has a longer history in Europe and Latin America where it has been promoted by the Right to broadly attack women’s and LGBTQ rights.  The Right in the US is joining the pack as, for example, a vice-president at Heritage Foundation, Roger Severino, goes after “Biden-era gender ideology” masquerading as “science.”

Perhaps most outrageous to me in Trump demanding that an absurd note be put on public health websites is that the Federal Government can pick a side in what is, at the very least, a cultural and scientific disagreement and call it official US policy!  The attack on so-called “gender ideology” is an attack on freedom of speech and thought!  But so is Trump taking over the Kennedy Center.  So are federal and state assaults on teaching critical race theory, DEI, or ethnic, black, or women’s studies

George Orwell was unfortunately prescient.  Big Brother is telling us how and what to think.

Politics is usually a lot of give and take, certainly so in the U.S.   Sometimes pieces of major legislation get through Congress, but they are not earth-shattering and don’t change our society much, even the New Deal.  Local and state politics is much the same, also give and take.  But this country doesn’t change rapidly, nor do most democracies.

Yet, here we are, with a sea change, a transformation of our society happening overnight.  Trump’s political blitzkrieg is reshaping every government department drastically, destroying many, changing radically what government does in the U.S. and trying to eliminate much of it.  Project 2025 was only a warmup.  Its far-right proponents are getting more than they ever hoped for and faster than they ever dreamed possible.  How can this be happening?!

Well, in part, the majority of the country voted for this.  But we’ve had elections before, never with anything close to the consequences of the shift we are experiencing. How can Trump get away with this?  Well, we’ve given him the House, the Senate and the courts.  Republicans in Congress know that much of what Trump is doing is illegal, not to mention outrageous and immoral.  They know that he is usurping the role of Congress in most things he is doing.  But they don’t care, nor do most Trump supporters — surveys show that Trump voters, by and large, approve of what Trump is doing. 

In theory we have a government of checks and balances so nothing can move too swiftly (how many of us are nostalgic for the years of Congressional gridlock).  But this depends critically on one person – the President – acting with some restraint.  During Trump’s first term he had many adults in the room with him to check his impulses.  Now there are no adults in the room – every Trump appointment is a right-wing sycophant and even if the judiciary could provide some checks, they move too slowly to stop the emperor’s edicts from happening – and even when they act, Trump talks of ignoring them.

More to the point, the right has no desire to stop this from happening.  This is their dream!  Overnight he is changing the U.S. into some version of their image of what our society should look like.  The right in Congress, in the judiciary, and in the public are ecstatic, as are most of our oligarchs.  Trump is remaking the USA.  They may not agree with all that he is doing but, by and large—at least for the moment – they are very happy.  It doesn’t matter that he is a narcissistic bully with delusions of grandeur and the impulse control of a 6-year-old.  Maybe they get things that are little extreme even by their standards – like turning Gaza into a Trump resort – what else can you expect from a 6-year-old real estate mogul?  Or deciding he should be culture czar by taking over the Kennedy Center. But the right can live with that and maybe all that is good too.

We’re in deep trouble.  Hopefully, in 4 years (or perhaps 2) enough people will realize that Trump has not helped most people and hurt too many.  But reversing the damage Trump is doing will be very difficult.  I do admit that I would have been happy if this tsunami of change had happened on the left side of the political spectrum.  If someone like Bernie Sanders had been elected and had the power of an imperial presidency to implement things like single-payer health care, early childhood and community college education for all, true national service, a 4-day work week, a universal basic income, etc. – it would be the left’s dream come true.  But till Trump 2.0 the world never worked that way.  Now it does.

The fires in LA are horrific.  Rather than blame them in large part on California’s ecology fueled by climate change, Trump and his ilk on the right see two other sources.  One, incredibly, is DEI – if only there were more white male firefighters the results would have been better.  What utter nonsense! 

The other source of the fires being out of control are California’s Democratic politicians, starting with the governor, Gavin Newsome, and the LA mayor, Karen Bass.   Also ridiculous.  Newsome and Bass are not to blame, although there may be a kernel of truth that politics has played a part.  If there had been more investment in firefighting capabilities – personnel and equipment – it may have been possible to have gotten the fires under control more quickly.  That’s hard to say and experts disagree. 

Regardless, one important question is why hasn’t there been more investment in fire-fighting capabilities?  It’s easy to blame Democrats, but, as LA councilwoman Traci Park put it, “this is decades of chronic underinvestment.”  Why have there been decades of chronic underinvestment?  The answer is clear: neoliberalism! 

Neoliberalism is an ideological doctrine that believes the market and business know what’s best for the economy and society and that government is bloated, self-interested, and inefficient, if not downright deep state evil, and needs to be minimized.  Neoliberal ideology has swept the world since the Reagan-Thatcher era in the 1980s.

Neoliberalism has undermined trust in government and has severely limited the ability to fund local, state, and federal government programs.  Fire fighting is just one example of many.  Into this neoliberal mess comes the Department of Government Efficiency which is basically saying neoliberalism has not been sufficiently mean-spirited.  DOGE takes neoliberalism an order of magnitude further proposing massive cuts in government spending, programs, polices, regulations, and workers.  And directing those cuts are Elon Musk and his fellow billionaires – the oligarchy as Biden pointed out.

DOGE is supposedly about making our government more efficient but what does that mean?  For example, is it efficient for local governments and federal aid to cut firefighting services?  Given the LA fires, many of us might think this is a bad idea, not “efficient” at all. What really is the meaning of efficiency?

I am an economist who has spent his 50-year career arguing that the economist idea of efficiency is bankrupt, meaningless.  In theory, to an economist, doing something that is efficient means a program or policy that provides benefits for some, but most importantly, no losses for anyone!  If no one is hurt and at least some people gain, it is seen as a program or policy worth doing.  But, of course, this is never the case!  Any government action always has winners and losers. 

So what can the idea of efficiency mean in practice?  Perhaps most sensibly and most broadly, efficiency should mean answering the question: “is it worth it?”  In the abstract, economists talk about actions that have a net gain, that somehow we judge that the benefits of the action exceeds its costs.  They often try to measure this net gain in money terms but this is just foolishness.  What is needed in practice is a judgment call weighing the pros and cons, plusses and minuses, along many dimensions.  This is usually accomplished through government processes led by our political representatives in the three branches of government

DOGE’s promise to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget is not a call for efficiency.  It is a call for the wealthy in our society, the oligarchy led by people like Musk, to implement their judgement as to the benefits and costs of any government program or policy.  And they don’t seem very interested in the benefits, just in cutting the costs.  Any careful, rational look at benefits and costs of government programs would actually call for expanding some.

Obviously, we can disagree on what are public needs that government programs and policies should address better, but my list of what is underfunded includes: our global climate emergency, environmental health, public health, education, roads and other infrastructure, homelessness, housing, malnutrition, poverty, space exploration, peace-making, immigration, and so much more.  While policing and military expenditures have problematic aspects, police officers and our service men and women are underpaid.  There is considerable room for increasing government expenditures as a percent of GDP – the U.S. spends 36% on government while many of our OECD partners spend much more.

But instead of a rational examination of the broadly conceived benefits and costs of such government investments, we are getting the perversion of the idea of efficiency to mean a cursory look by the oligarchy into what they see as the benefits and costs – that is, to them and their rich friends – of government programs and policies.  The Orwellian Department of Government Efficiency is the culmination of almost half a century of neoliberalism through which the wealthy can now openly decide what government should do.

I am an economist who has worked for 50 years in so-called developing countries around the world.  Recently I was talking to a colleague who said that on average, today, unskilled agricultural workers in African countries receive $2 – $3 a day for their work, many at the lower end.  Two dollars a day!  In today’s world!  When I first started working in these countries, these wages weren’t much different.  That is the outcome of a capitalist market system – outcomes for which no one takes responsibility – it’s just the workings of “the market.”  People work incredibly hard for this pittance, many doing back-breaking, health-destroying labor like cutting sugar cane.  Capitalism leaves billions of people at its margins, barely surviving.  How can we call a system like that efficient, let alone fair or just?   That, to me, is criminal.  Capitalism is criminal. 

To me this connects us to why many people are voting for Trump!  Capitalism is not just criminal because of poverty, because it leaves so many people living in desperate conditions, even in rich countries like the U.S.  Capitalism also keeps a little-bit-better-off underclass in very insecure and difficult circumstances.  Data on individual income is not easily calculated but reading through some of the statistics I think it likely that 40% – 50% of the U.S. population receives the equivalent of $25,000 a year or less.  This is barely survivable in our wealthy country, only at the margins and in fear of financial disaster at any moment.  People in this situation will barely improve it over their entire life.  Moreover, the equivalent of this kind of purchasing power for a huge segment of the US population has been true for my professional lifetime, the past 50 years.    Capitalism maintains this class, here (and abroad).  That is also criminal. 

Many of these people, our fellow citizens, not surprisingly, support Trump.  I have liberal friends who don’t understand how Trump can be supported by half the population.  One big reason, as has been said before – “it’s the economy, stupid.”  Financially, so many people are worse off than they were before the pandemic, when Trump was President.  Inflation has raised food and gas and housing prices, the essential things of life.  Prices were better under Trump and life today is more precarious than ever.  It is little wonder that so many people are angry and voting hoping to change things.  Never mind that inflation had nothing to do with Biden or his sensible spending bills.  Inflation was global, mostly a consequence of the pandemic and supply chain fragilities.  Never mind, that the US did better on inflation than most rich countries.

You combine being financially worse off with the fear has been stoked by Fox “News” and their ilk – especially the fear of immigrants, a changing culture, and crime — and voting for Trump does not seem crazy.  Add to that the feeling that Democrats look down on this “underclass” and this lack of respect drives even more to Trump’s corner.  Never mind that he’s a narcissistic fascist who may upend our democracy, he ‘wasn’t so bad his first term’ so many people are willing to take a chance on a second term.

This precarity is global.  Capitalism maintains an underclass around the world, not just the abject poor.  By some estimates, 50% to 80% of the people on this planet live in precarious circumstances!  Trump is far from alone in authoritarian right-wingers who are garnering a lot of support from this global underclass who live with severe financial uncertainty and struggles and whose lives are not improving no matter which party is in power.  It is no wonder that we have the right making frightening gains throughout Europe and elsewhere.

We live in a world with vast human and natural resources, yet we live in a system that does not share them fairly.  There are, of course, debates about whether there are slow improvements in poverty and social mobility but, regardless, capitalism has long maintained and continues to maintain a huge proportion of the world living in precarious conditions.  These people very reasonably are very unhappy.  But they will get no relief from any successes of the right wing.  It is the system that must change.  Capitalism is criminal.

“From the Washington Consensus to the Berlin Declaration” is the headline of a June 27^th Project Syndicate column by Dani Rodrik, Laura Tyson, and Thomas Fricke.  They are talking about a statement put forth by 80 prominent economists and others, the authors above being among them. After a three-day “Winning Back the People” summit in Berlin in May this Declaration was issued and has at least several hundred signatories.   Rodrik and his colleagues depict it as a “paradigm shift in mainstream economic thinking.”

The so-called Washington Consensus has dominated international development policy for decades, calling for private sector solutions to social problems and concomitant reduction of government activities and spending.  The underpinning ideology has been the market fundamentalism that is the hallmark of neoliberalism.  For a long time, dissatisfaction with the harmful effects of these neoliberal policies has prodded a search for a post-Washington Consensus, but one has not been forthcoming.  The Berlin Declaration is seen as a start.

The Berlin Declaration is relatively short.  It argues that the multiple crises the world faces – authoritarianism on the rise, climate change, “unbearable” inequalities, global conflicts – need to be met with major government interventions.  They include a big emphasis on industrial policies and strategies in all nations, targeting the creation of good jobs, attention to a “healthier” globalization, more taxes and redistribution.  In sum, the Declaration wants to change the role of government, or as Rodrik & Co. put it, “change the balance between markets and collective action avoiding self-defeating austerity.”

The Berlin Declaration is nothing new. It basically states the long-term position of liberal “neoclassical” economists that a market system in capitalism needs substantial intervention by governments to achieve an equitable and efficient economy and society.  Neoliberals won the government intervention debate for the past 40+ years.  The Declaration is hoping for a reversal.  While the policies recommended would be a vast improvement over those of today, there are two major problems with the Declaration:  its diagnosis and its solutions.

I find its diagnosis strange.  The basic problem is seen as a widespread “popular distrust” of government’s ability to solve our crises leading to a “real or perceived loss of control over one’s own livelihood and the trajectory of societal changes.” This “sense of powerlessness” has driven people around the world to elect right-wing politicians and parties and support cut-back-the-government austerity policies.

While I agree that there are many disaffected citizens who feel powerless, loss of control is a very individual characterization of what are system problems.  Moreover, at an individual level, that powerlessness is underlay by widespread fear – fear of economic precariousness, of immigrants, of crime, of others of different races or ethnicities, of your culture and way of life being changed.  Right wing platforms, like Fox “News” in the U.S., and social media more generally, are stoking those fears every day, 24/7.  At bottom, many support Trump and other right-wing neo-fascists, because their lives are difficult enough right now and they are afraid that all these things will make it worse in the future.  Restoring faith in governments, in collective action, is a very tall order in these circumstances.  Industrial and redistributive polices, even if they could be enacted in this still very neoliberal environment, will change minds and hearts with great difficulty.

Moreover, the solution of the Berlin Declaration is still capitalism, a kinder, gentler capitalism to be sure but with the world still run by a corporate global elite and their hangers on who populate groups like the World Economic Forum and the Trilateral Commission.  It is doubtful they would allow the government intervention foreseen in the Berlin Declaration and, even if they did, it is unlikely that these policies alone can put much of a dent in the global polycrisis we face.  Many of the Declaration policies are good ones, but they will only be successful if we develop alternatives to out-of-control markets and corporate domination as I and many others have argued.

Today’s Washington Post (11/12/23) had two articles that reminded me that the U.S. is a plutocracy– as is the entire world.  The first’s headline was, “Trump courts donations from oil barons, who thrived during his first term.”  It was all about oil billionaires like Harold Hamm who last month donated $200,000 to a pro-Trump super PAC – after earlier calling for Trump to drop out of the race and donating money to his rivals.  Apparently, Hamm and other right wing oil billionaires have been hedging their bets but are joining the Trump bandwagon now that he seems unstoppable, plus he has been courting them by talking about how he will trash the environment to their benefit.

The second headline was, “Rich in Friendship: The patrons of Clarence and Ginni Thomas.”  It told of how rich and influential right-wing billionaires, like Harlan Crow and H. Wayne Huizenga, have given the Thomas’ globe-trotting vacations and financial support.  Plutocracy can be defined as a “government controlled exclusively by the wealthy, either directly or indirectly.”  That is really what we have.  At a surface level in the U.S., you see it in the fact that Senators and Representatives are generally very wealthy.  But more to the point, all their reelections are financed by large money donors.  Even Supreme Court justices seem to be greatly influenced by the rich.  Even if all these leaders, Democrats as well as Republicans, are not completely bought and paid for, it is big money that has a major influence over what political positions they and the country take.

The real problem can be seen even more clearly globally.  Leftist critics like me are often accused of being conspiracy theorists, saying that the world is being run by some capitalist ruling elite.  But the left doesn’t need or usually use conspiracy theories – we live in a world where structures – capitalism, patriarchy, racism – operate in the interests of those with power and money without the need for conscious collusion.

But let’s not be so quick to dismiss conspiracies, or, at least, conscious collusion.  What else is the World Economic Forum that gathers the rich and powerful in business and politics in Davos each year?  They meet openly and privately to consider national and global politics and economics, followed by their great direct and indirect influence on governments around the world.  What else is the Trilateral Commission?  How many people have even heard of the Trilateral Commission?  They are the same rich and powerful people who go to the World Economic Forum each year but who keep their annual meetings private, outside of the scrutiny of the media or public.  In the U.S., what else is the Bohemian Grove retreat in California, amazingly still an all-male enclave for the rich and powerful?

And make no mistake about it, they want to and try to run the world.  In 2010, the World Economic Forum unveiled its Global Redesign Initiative to begin a corporate takeover of the United Nations.  They have been succeeding in moving the UN away from governance by countries to governance by “stakeholders,” with business being the most prominent.

Many of these plutocrats know each other, work together, socialize together.  Last year I attended a talk by Richard Wolff, the phenomenal critical political economist, who argues that the plutocrats are not some faceless mass, but are identifiable, perhaps the 1% of the 1%, perhaps just 10,000 individuals who are on the Boards of Directors and CEOs of major corporations and their big shareholders.  These people make the major decisions about our economic and political lives.  We need to recognize, confront, and stop the plutocracy!

I’ve been busy with other things and haven’t blogged in quite a while.  But watching Bill Maher’s return to his Real Time show (9/30/23) after 5 months away incensed me so much that I am writing this.  Bill had Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as his opening guest.  DeSantis is a right-wing ideologue who is destroying public education in Florida and, in many ways, out-trumps Trump.  Yet, for the most part it was a love fest.  Bill approved of DeSantis’ anti-vax and anti-mask stances, saying DeSantis had gotten the covid response right and the federal government response was all wrong.  Bill has been harping on this for years.

And Bill absolutely loved DeSantis’ anti-woke stance, agreeing that “woke ideology corrupted institutions” with Bill saying, “you’re right, we’re on the same page.”  This is the DeSantis who prohibits public schools and universities from giving straight talk about racism and gender, from paying attention to diversity and equity, from offering ETS’ AP high school course in African-American Studies, and from teaching women and gender studies.  This is the DeSantis who is leading a witch hunt to ban books throughout Florida.  Bill has been on an anti-woke crusade for years (see many of my previous blogs), and he seems to have met his ideal politician.  It was truly a disgusting segment.  Mehdi Hasan, MSNBC commentator said, “Bill Maher chummily ‘interviewing’ Ron DeSantis on vaccines and wokeness is my definition of hell.”

But the worst part of the show was the discussion with panelists Mary Katharine Ham and Sam Harris.  Ham is another right-wing ideologue whose book, End of Discussion, has a subtitle that says it all: “How the left’s outrage industry shuts down debate, manipulates voters, and makes America less free.”  Sam Harris, podcast host, is one of Bill’s many favorite guests who are neither left nor right but offer some mixed muddle that accords with where Bill sees himself.  The discussion really highlighted Bill’s sexism and racism.

Bill is incensed that Nancy Pelosi and another Congresswoman criticized efforts to oust Dianne Feinstein before she died, saying, “when women age, they get pushed aside, when men age, they get a promotion.”  Bill asks rhetorically when has that ever happened?  Try news anchors, Bill, probably very true in much of the business world too.  Bill then goes on to criticize Gavin Newsome for saying he will appoint a Black woman in Feinstein’s place.  Bill whines, ‘do we need this sort of identity politics as opposed to appointing the best person?’  Both guests agree.  Ham even calls it racism.  Harris goes on to argue there was a time when affirmative action was defensible but no longer.

Bill goes on to cite a study that says that in 2021, following BLM and other protests, 94% of the 300,000 vacancies in 88 companies in the S&P 100 went to people of color, clearly believing that this affirmative action has gotten out of hand.  But Bill ignores the part of the study that says most of these positions were for laborers and service workers not senior roles.  Moreover, the study points out that the share of executive, professional, and managerial roles held by people of color in these companies only grew by 2%.  And Bill doesn’t acknowledge other studies that report that Black professionals in 2020 only hold 3.2% of executive or senior leadership roles and less than 1% of CEO positions in Fortune 500 companies.

Bill then goes on to dismiss the criticisms he is sure he will get for having 3 white people discuss racism.  To me, the criticism has validity, but it’s not just 3 white people, it’s 3 white people who deny racism is a real problem anymore.  Bill essentially calls racism a “zombie lie.”  I know he can find Black people who agree with him, and he has.  The biggest problem with the show is that he thinks he is open to discussing all views, but he rarely has guests who challenge him.

Bill then went on to discuss the movie Barbie and the scene where she goes to Mattel headquarters and confronts what the movie calls “The Patriarchy” – the all-male Board of Directors of Mattel.  Bill then makes the point that the real Mattel Board of Directors is half women, so this is another “zombie lie.”  Bill goes on to say that in 2021 45% of Board seats in Fortune 500 companies went to women in 2021—so aren’t things getting pretty equal?  He says he got a lot of criticism for saying that but none of his critics disputed his statistics.  Well, how about the fact that only 31% of those Boards are composed of women in 2022 and only 7% are non-white women.  Bill never goes beyond the surface statistics that he thinks make his point!  As an aside, Bill said “I don’t know, maybe we do live in a patriarchy.”  Wake up Bill, there is no maybe!

Bill endlessly has made the point in previous shows that the left doesn’t acknowledge that things are much better today – and, of course, there has been progress – but Bill uses this to pillory the left and, as above, deny that racism and sexism are significant problems in the U.S. today.  The real zombies in today’s world are people like Bill and others on the right, they need to wake up.  That’s why they are all so scared of “woke!”

This was published as an op ed in The Baltimore Sun, April 5, 2022

I am an economist and a professor of international education policy at the University of Maryland, College Park. I teach about critical race theory (CRT) in all my classes. In one course I look at education issues around the world and their relationship to a country’s economic and social development. CRT is very relevant to understanding the nature of inequality in education and society. I even teach about CRT in my introduction to research methods course, where it is very relevant to understanding why many people argue research is not objective.

CRT essentially says that racism is much more than individual prejudice; it is embedded throughout society’s institutions, policies, structures, and cultures. Of course, not everyone agrees with that, but everyone doesn’t need to. It is widely taught because it is a valid perspective that is held by many. Defenders of CRT are making a mistake when they argue that it is mostly an academic subject in law schools. CRT is taught around the U.S. in graduate and undergraduate courses across many fields — in all the social sciences and many professional fields including public policy, education, communications, nursing and more. I’m not saying it dominates or that other perspectives aren’t being taught, but CRT has made great inroads because, to many, it makes sense and helps explain a lot about our past and current world.

It’s also a mistake to argue CRT isn’t being taught in our public schools. While few schools may mention CRT, across the U.S. all schools teach something about race and racism. Many teachers understand racism as systemic, as more than individual prejudice, and many share those perspectives in their classrooms. Thanks goodness they do! It is shameful that so many states are enacting laws or policies to ban CRT or control how racism is taught. The idea that education should not cause children “discomfort” is absurd. “History is not therapy,” as Timothy Snyder, Yale University historian, points out in an article titled The War on History is a War on Democracy. Good education often does and should cause discomfort.

The rhetoric attacking CRT is also shameful, as well as absurd. Sen. Ted Cruz called it a “bigoted lie, every bit as racist as Klansmen in white sheets.” Chris Rufo of the Manhattan Institute, who is responsible for weaponizing CRT for the right, said CRT is “a revolutionary program that would overturn the principles of the Declaration and destroy … the Constitution.” What nonsense.

Jan. 27 was International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Commentators rightly pointed out how people forget, how we need to teach its horror to every new generation, and how Holocaust education should be mandatory. Slavery was the original sin of this nation. We need to teach every generation the horror of slavery and its aftermath continuing to the present day. CRT should also be mandatory. While there is much good and beauty around us, we also live in a nation and a world of entrenched inequality. Women don’t have equal rights. LGBTQ people do not, either. People with disabilities face discrimination. People of different races, ethnicities, nationalities and religions confront bigotry and intolerance in country after country. Prejudice by individuals is rampant, but it is more than that. These inequalities are built into systems, structures, laws, policies and cultures everywhere.

There has been progress. Slavery, torture and genocide are no longer considered acceptable in most of the world. Attention to human rights is on the table. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals approved by the United Nations in 2015 offer a vision and a promise of a world without hunger or climate catastrophe, and with access to basic public services, clean air and water, and much more. But unfortunately, the goals are more rhetoric than reality.

Humanity is really at a crossroads. If we are to thrive – and perhaps even to survive – we have a lot to confront. Racism is a scourge in the U.S. and in many other parts of the world, perhaps everywhere. CRT offers insight into why this is so and what might be done to change it. CRT connects racism to other problems we face. Teaching about CRT thus becomes an important part of educating our children, youth and adults for a better world.

Steven Klees (sklees@umd.edu) is Distinguished Scholar-Teacher and Professor of International Education Policy at the University of Maryland, College Park; he is also author of the blog and book titled “The Conscience of a Progressive” (Zero Books, 2020).

Just when you think things can’t get any crazier comes the charge of “grooming.”  Grooming is “when someone builds a relationship, trust and emotional connection with a child or young person so they can manipulate, exploit and [sexually] abuse them.”

Recently, David Mamet, well-known American playwright, who when interviewed by Mark Levin on Fox News (4/10) said: “What we have is kids not only being indoctrinated but groomed, in a very real sense, by people who are, whether they know it or not, sexual predators….That has always been the problem with education.  Teachers are inclined, particularly men because men are predators, to pedophilia.” Thank goodness these remarks provoked a lot of outrage.  Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, spoke for teachers everywhere, calling Mamet’s remarks “a repulsive demonization of the very people who have been a lifeline to our kids.”

But, unfortunately – and unbelievably – Mamet is far from alone.  Fox News, with hosts who are right-wing conspiracy theorists like Mark Levin, has become an echo chamber for grooming accusations.  Laura Ingraham calls public schools “grooming centers” and tells parents to send their children to private schools. Tucker Carlson, the most watched Fox commentator, did a segment on this where the banner at the bottom was: “Democrats are losing their minds because parents want to protect their kids from grooming.”

Of course, Fox News and the Republican Party are in synch, as usual.  Feeding the controversy is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ “Parental Rights in Education Bill,” dubbed by the critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which limits what can be taught about sexual orientation and gender identity in early grades. DeSantis’ press secretary Christian Pushaw calls it anti-grooming legislation. She charges: “If you’re against the Anti-Grooming Bill, you are probably a groomer, or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4-8 year old children. Silence is complicity”

The controversy was further fueled as the Walt Disney Company, a major Florida institution, opposed the bill and is calling for its repeal.  DeSantis immediately threatened Disney with revoking laws that have favored it.  Republican Senators like Marsha Blackburn (TN) concurred.  Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene went further: “The immoral, disgusting, evil left is attacking our children. They are child predators. I’m not kidding you. Look at what is happening at Disney right now. Disney wants to completely take your children and they want to indoctrinate them into sexual, immoral filth.”  Even President Biden has taken a position, calling the Florida bill “hateful,” only to be accused by a host of One America News, Chanel Rion, as “the groomer-in-chief.”

This insanity goes far beyond the Florida legislation.  I would hope that most people who saw the hearings for Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson were appalled by Republican Senators Josh Hawley (Missouri) and Ted Cruz’s (Texas) attempt to paint Justice Jackson as soft on child pornographers and pedophiles.  Three brave Republican Senators voted to confirm her.  Congresswoman Greene tweeted: “Murkowski, Collins, and Romney are pro-pedophile.”  As are presumably all the Democrats.  Not all Republican legislators have said such awful and ridiculous things – but there has been little in the way of denial.  And, in this case, DeSantis’ press secretary is right: Silence is complicity.

What were the outrageous extreme views of QAnon have moved from the fringes of the Republican Party to its center.  Before QAnon, Pizzagate was a more-than-fringe conspiracy that emails by associates of Hillary Clinton contained coded messages from Democratic National Committee members sponsoring pedophilia and a sex-trafficking ring.  Ordering a cheese pizza, the initials CP stood for “child porn.”  As if that wasn’t crazy enough, QAnon added baby-eating and blood drinking to the pedophilia charges and applied it to the whole Democratic Party.

As an educator, I feel very sorry for our teachers.  Their plight just gets more and more difficult.  The teaching profession has been under attack for decades.  Teachers have been blamed for everything from low test scores to the state of the economy.  Surveys of teachers used to report that a high percentage of teachers would like their children to become teachers.  In recent years, that percentage is abysmally low.  Legislators have increasingly treated teachers as workers to be monitored and controlled.  The recent controversies over school closures, vaccinations, and wearing masks have led to attacks on schools and teachers. Legislation making it harder to teach about racism and history makes it more difficult for teachers to do a professional job.

It is hard to write about all this without feeling both a deep sense of despair and anger.  How did the United States, most particularly, the Republican Party come to this?  How do we as a nation survive this?  I can’t respond to those questions here.  But I believe that the world, over the long haul, is changing for the better.  More people identify as anti-racist. More people are comfortable with different sexual orientations and identities (over 20% of Generation Z identifies as non-binary!).  Yes, all this makes many people anxious, and the Republican Party is playing on that anxiety, but I believe good sense will win out – eventually!