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By Morton Alexander

After years of ignoring Idaho in these pages, their gaudy right-wing circus has caught my attention.

An Aug. 29 Spokesman-Review report titled “Lt. Gov. McGeachin’s task force pushes school choice recommendation,” pictures Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin and Rep. Priscilla Giddings leading their first “education indoctrination” task force meeting at the Idaho Capitol. McGeachin is running for governor, and Giddings is running to replace her colleague as lieutenant governor.

McGeachin’s panel is advisory, shaping proposals for the state Board of Education with regard to diversity and equity. (Both concepts are dirty words in Idaho.) Such activism across the nation is, intentionally, spreading fear among students, teachers and parents about saying anything possibly “unpatriotic.” Simply teaching history and inspiring thoughtful discussion of taboo factors such as racism, capitalism and genocide is condemned as “Critical Race Theory,” “social justice indoctrination” or worse. They prefer “teaching about America’s history of limited government, respect for elders, patriotism and loving the country and American flag, traditional American stories and ‘In God we trust’.”

They propose that the state establish an education savings account for each student. This would award public funds for parents to enroll their kids in public charter schools, private schools, tutoring, on-line learning, college savings, “and more.” Of course, Idaho’s Constitution prohibits spending public funds on religious institutions, including schools. But it serves the larger goal of de-funding public education. Proponents of these cuts would certainly be aghast at cries to “De-fund the Police.”

The article mentions a task force member with four kids in Christian schools testifying that “School choice, where parents could pull their kids out ‘if schools don’t listen’ is the only way to combat critical race theory and Marxist teachings that he claimed are widely taught across all Idaho school districts.” (!) (Idaho?)

Thankfully, there were some liberal killjoys present. A Boise High School junior, Shiva Rajbhandari, courageously told McGeachin and Giddings: “You won’t succeed in silencing student voices, you won’t succeed at bringing Idaho back to the 1800s, you won’t succeed at abolishing public schools, … and you won’t succeed at being elected to the executive branch of state government, which I feel is the true purpose of this.” Bravo!

An earlier (April 4) S-R article showed Rep. Giddings entering a packed hearing room “greeted with shouts of support and applause from militia members, participants in anti-government activist Ammon Bundy’s far-right ‘People’s Rights’ group and anti-vaccination protest organizers.”

Here in Spokane, we have two school board candidates who are listed on the website for the Christian advocacy group “We Believe We Vote.” (I believe there should be a comma in the middle of that title). Both Kata Dean and Daryl Geffken are highly rated for their responses to the organization’s candidate questionnaire. View the questionnaire, and be troubled by them.

I am struck at how this photo of the pair conducting their “hearing” (of “expert” testimony mostly from sycophants) is almost identical in furtive pose and demonic spirit to the iconic photo of their historic political ancestors, U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy and Senate Counsel Roy Cohn (later to be Donald Trump‘s mentor). In the 1950s they instigated a reign of terror in pursuit of “Communists” and other “subversives” throughout the land. The young Robert Kennedy also served on the legal team of McCarthy’s Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Their project to cleanse government and society of troublesome dissenters was so powerful, pervasive and limitless that “McCarthyism” outlasts the medieval Spanish Inquisition and the Salem Witch Trials to describe such persecution.

Sen. McCarthy rode so high on popular sentiment that even President Eisenhower was hands off. I remember witnessing the 1953 funeral procession through my Brooklyn neighborhood for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, convicted and executed as Soviet spies. Their guilt still disputed, today they could be called “intersectional” victims of anti-Semitism and anti-communism.

Big Joe’s downfall came when he took on the U.S. Army. People were glued to the radio and the tube, following the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings. While walking on the street, I could pretty well follow the proceedings by listening through the open windows.

The tide turned with Army counsel Joseph Welch’s famous denunciation. He asked McCarthy before the committee and the nation, “At long last, sir, have you no sense of decency?” Eventually censured by the Senate, McCarthy sank into an alcoholic spiral and soon faded from fame, and life itself.

Recently the Inlander covered the crisis of area hospitals overwhelmed with the self-infected Covidians. Not to mention the self-inflicted wound of understaffing by health care workers who refuse to get vaccinated. Most shocking was that some families of dying patients refuse to see them (even on Zoom) in their last days, because they prefer not to remember them that way! Nice people.

With the unvaccinated now most of those killed, ignorance and superstition are Darwinian forces culling our flock.

Morton Alexander is a retired state employee and community organizer.