There’s a phenomenon out there which is awfully peculiar to watch as it happens. It’s perhaps not exclusive to Democrats but they sure do make a pattern of it.

Namely, they’ll deny something is happening right up to the point where they start claiming it’s a good thing.

One of the classic cases of this has to do with Critical Race Theory.

Several Democrat talking heads have made a great deal of money pushing this stuff, which is a dog’s breakfast of academic theory, arising from Marxist critical theory – that’s a rabbit hole unto itself, but essentially it starts with the presumption that everything about capitalist Western society is wrong and it all needs to be torn down by whatever rhetorical means are necessary until the resources are available to tear it down kinetically (that’s the stage at which the refuseniks and insufficiently-committed revolutionaries are liquidated and tossed into mass graves) – holding that everybody is racist.

That America is a systemically racist country and that white people, and straight white men in particular, are oppressors. And that because of that, black and brown people can’t get a fair shake in this country.

Understand that the facts surrounding Critical Race Theory are virtually nonexistent. The only real determiner of success in America isn’t race but behavior. In fact, black people with successful habits have it easier than anybody given the overt preference shown to them in hiring, in university admissions and all kinds of other venues.

But the same people who would push Critical Race Theory on you are for making lots of public policies that disincentivize and dissuade black people from having successful behavioral habits.

Which brings us back to Critical Theory in general, and the fact it’s designed to destroy Western society. Critical Race Theory is just the use of race to accomplish that goal, something it tends to be pretty successful in doing.

But Republicans finally got wise to CRT and in red states at least, a lot of work is being done to scrub it out of the education business. In Florida, for example, Gov. Ron DeSantis imposed a wide-scale ban on CRT in all of the public institutions he could. For his trouble he was called a racist and alternatively that he was looking for nonexistent bogeymen.

At the same time you have school systems and HR departments in public-sector institutions pushing DEI, which is an actionable form of CRT, and “anti-racist” programs and practices.

It’s utterly bizarre to watch these people turn themselves into pretzels attempting to both impose this poison on the public and avoid scrutiny for it.

So yesterday, Jeff Landry drops an executive order largely mimicking what DeSantis did with CRT…

Governor Jeff Landry signed an executive order preventing the use of critical race theory in Louisiana’s K-12 public education system.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) includes divisive teachings that instruct students to view life through the lens of race and victimhood. Governor Landry believes students should be learning about American exceptionalism and the principles embodied in State and Federal Constitutions of the United States of America that recognize the equal value of every individual.

“This executive order is a much-needed sigh of relief for parents and students across our state, especially as kids are heading back to school. Teaching children that they are currently or destined to be oppressed or to be an oppressor based on their race and origin is wrong and has no place in our Louisiana classrooms. I am confident that under Dr. Brumley’s leadership our education system will continue to head in the right direction, prioritizing American values and common-sense teachings,” said Governor Jeff Landry.

And here’s the order…

Of course, the standard media writeup (we’ll use the one from Fox 8 in New Orleans as a good example) is heavy on the same types of criticisms DeSantis caught when he did his CRT order. Landry is looking for bogeymen. So says state rep Royce Duplessis, who deals in race cards all day long…

State Sen. Royce Duplessis (D-New Orleans) says Landry’s executive order was unnecessary, because CRT is not being taught in K-12 classrooms.

“The governor first needs to understand what critical race theory is, and understand that it’s not being taught in schools,” Duplessis said. “But (he) also needs to understand that if the attempt is to stop history from being taught, then that is wrong.

“Our kids need to learn history. Our kids need to understand and appreciate the history of this nation, no matter how difficult it might be.”

Nobody is suggesting that we stop teaching schoolkids that there was slavery in America. Or that there was segregation in America. Those things happened. There is a pretty big difference between teaching that history and then teaching that all the white people are Simon LeGree-style monsters just itching to oppress the darkies, which is pretty much literally the garbage that Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DeAngelo and the other CRT grifters out there are pushing.

Duplessis is lying when he says CRT isn’t taught in K-12 in Louisiana. Prior to the Louisiana legislative getting involved there were several examples.

But it’s a sneaky thing. CRT isn’t in the curriculum. They don’t teach CRT as a class in itself. Instead it’s in the pedagogy – meaning how classes are taught. And within that, it’s all over the place.

And these people know this. They celebrate it, at least until the conservatives raise questions about it. It’s just like how Democrats for 20 years used to brag about the “browning of America” through mass, and often illegal, immigration, and what that demographic shift would mean with respect to future elections – right up to the point where people like Tucker Carlson started calling them out about it, and then of course this became the uber-racist and fantastical Great Replacement Theory.

The Fox 8 report contains an astonishingly clear case of this gaslighting from a couple of academics they rolled out…

Fox 8 spoke to Tulane Law School professor Stephen Griffin and Loyola Law School professor Robert Garda about the meaning of critical race theory.

“It’s an academic perspective on the role of race in, really, the constitutional law,” Griffin said. “It’s essentially focused on how the Constitution, the role of slavery, how we overcame slavery, but then how problems of racial discrimination have persisted.”

Garda said, ”That’s a big question because critical race theory is a broad study subject matter. At its core, it is about understanding how racism in the United States has shaped law and policy. So it is not about how individuals are racist. It is about how past racism is embedded in many of our policies and laws.”

As debate over critical race theory has risen around the country, many academics have said it is normally not taught before graduate school.

“It is absolutely reserved for graduate studies in law schools,” Garda said. “It is a complicated subject. For example, I teach the 14th Amendment, which is the Equal Protection Clause, which is the foundation for critical race theory. And we barely touch on it, even in my law school class. So, the idea that it’s being taught in K through 12, it couldn’t possibly be. Because it’s far too complex for a K-through-12 education system.”

Griffin said he is no expert on educational curriculum but said, “To my knowledge, it really couldn’t be taught in the K through12, because it requires, for example, an advanced understanding of American history to even understand what the theory is about.”

Garda said he fears Landry’s executive order will have a paralyzing effect on educators in the state.

“The law concerns me, because of the chilling effect it may have on teachers and how they teach,” he said. “The five prohibitions here may prevent a teacher from even talking about something as inherent and foundational in our American history as slavery or redlining in the 1930s, because a student may perceive that in a way that it’s not being taught.”

Yeah, OK.

So no elements of the 1619 Project, which is distilled CRT, were utilized in Louisiana’s schools before Landry, School Superintendent Cade Brumley and the state legislature dropped the hammer on this?

Everybody knows that what Griffin and Garda are saying, about how CRT is some graduate-level theory only taught in law schools, is total BS.

The good news here is that Jeff Landry doesn’t care what Royce Duplessis and Robert Garda think. If this order can be properly policed, it’ll improve education in this state by making sure the kids don’t get poisoned by “anti-racist” racism and the schools don’t end up becoming training grounds for the next generation to hate each other and the country.

Duplessis thinks that effort is racist…

“So, blocking history, banning books, coming up with culture war, divisive ideas around CRT, things that aren’t even being taught is really just an attempt to grab headlines and cause more division,” he said. “It’s absolutely not coincidental. We know this is part of a larger, national agenda to promote these conservative principles which are only meant to divide us.”

He’s boring, isn’t he?