Earlier this week, when I heard that a House GOP rep from Ohio was resigning effective this month, I thought good riddance and hoped his decision to thin the GOP’s already narrow majority was due to the stress of serving in the chaotic shit-show that is the least productive Congress in nearly a century. But it turns out Rep. Bill Johnson is resigning to jump on the GOP’s edu-grift bandwagon. The Daily Beast:
A controversial Republican congressman known for his 2020 election denial and anti-abortion stances is retiring this month to take a plum gig as the president of Youngstown State University in Ohio…
His appointment to the job—which carries a $410,000 salary, free housing and a complementary car—was decried by many YSU faculty, students, alumni, and donors, who objected to both his political views and his lack of experience in the education field.
He also received pushback during a November press conference announcing the career change, after doubling down on his plans to overhaul the institution to get rid of its alleged liberal biases.
“We want students to be educated, not indoctrinated,” he said at the time.
Johnson is lying, of course. As we know from other right-wing takeovers of K-12 public school districts and colleges, such as the DeSantis/Rufo-orchestrated ruination of New College of Florida, far-right enemies of public education are wildly enthusiastic about indoctrination as long as they get to do the indoctrinating.
Ultimately, their goal is to destroy public education and redirect the funds to private Christian schools and wingnut-owned charter and home school curricula grifts. But meanwhile, the unqualified political hacks they put in place to “transform” the institutions make out like goddamn bandits.
In the thread under John’s Tempe update post last night, I read some comments about right wingers collecting the Harvard and Penn presidents’ scalps. Someone noted that wingnuts really ramped up their campaign to destroy higher education when women began outnumbering men on campus.
That sounds about right. Educated women are less likely to settle for abusive, controlling men as mates, which is bad news for right-wing males. Also, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives enrage wingnuts for obvious reasons. It’s not enough that their bought-and-paid-for SCOTUS blew up affirmative action in higher ed — they want to delegitimize the very notion that systemic biases exist.
But I’ve got to think a main motivation for the attack on higher ed is the fact that college-educated voters are increasingly gravitating toward Democrats. If I recall correctly, in many recent elections, education levels have been more predictive of voter behavior than any other factor, including income.
Couldn’t Republicans try to figure out why they are losing college educated voters and adopt policies to lure them back? Haha, no! That would mean confronting the extremist morons who are no longer just the foot soldiers in the conservative movement but now comprise its officer corps and generalissimos too. It’s easier to just destroy public education instead.
Will voters put up with it? So far, they have in Florida, which failing presidential candidate Ron DeSantis says is “where woke goes to die.” But the lack of national enthusiasm for his candidacy, plus the electoral backlash against anti-woke agitators outside of far-right strongholds, provides hope that the rest of the country is where this dumb woke panic finally goes to die.
Open thread.
PS: I hope y’all’s new year is off to a better start than mine. I’m dealing with some life-disrupting (but not life threatening!) health issues that have and may continue to affect my output here. Fuck you already, 2024!
