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Matt Taibbi on school closures — completely rational — and entirely wrong

Jan 4, 2022

[## Matt Taibbi: School closures, not critical race theory, was primary issue for parents in Virginia…

Journalist and podcaster Matt Taibbi said Thursday that Democrats are on the road to losing more support on an issue…

thehill.com](https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/587748-matt-taibbi-school-closures-not-critical-race-theory-was-primary-issue-for?source=post_page-2a861626444d-)

Understanding that all politics is moral, there’s an even simpler way to see this. Rather than understanding the supportive role that public school takes up in society, parents have been primed by decades of unchecked Republican talking points, telling them how morally bad government and public school is, and especially those dirty teachers from that “other” librul group (itself, ridiculous). Rather than the heroic nurturers of future generations they really are, “everyone knows” that teachers are lazy, incompetent and have sneaky intentions to brainwash and indoctrinate your children. There’s a reason “everyone knows” that, and there’s nothing rational about any of it. It’s unchecked moral propaganda, unanswered by Democrats, who always seem to seek badly reasoned rationalizations for their loses, rather than moral understanding.

In this case, Matt Taibbi makes one up, right out of thin air. No it’s not CRT (critical race theory), a talking point that promotes a sense of a moral “truth” (it’s not about the policy, it never is — people don’t vote for policy, ever), no, Taibbi suggests, it’s parents doing the rational thing for their children. Ugh.

This is not complicated. Republicans are using plane old, vanilla in-group/out-group dynamics based on their superior understanding of moral politics. Moral politics explains this so much better than rationalism. It’s a nice sounding story that parents are rational self actors (homo economicus) and are just protecting their children from the educational harm of not being in school (itself a moral argument, if rational sounding). But it’s hilariously untrue.

Parents were pissed off at an unfortunate set of circumstances, and yes, the issue of school closing was a top issue because of it. But it’s the moral story the parties told in response to that, which swayed the outcome, not the reason, not the rationalization. It’s so important to understand why and how Republicans exploited that. Republicans used the opportunity to cash in on their moral positioning to scapegoat Democrats, by making a moral argument, not a rational one. It’s a simple tactic, they’ve used as part of a broader strategy to change American morality, and they’ve been doing it unchecked, for decades. They use propaganda to seed the moral landscape — nonsense like CRT is all about seeding the moral landscape. No one really cares about CRT. That makes it easier to sell their abhorrent policies, like school privatization — get ready for the sell to come (again) when they take back congress in 2022. Remember when those bad-guy (Democrat) teachers and corrupt (Democrat) schools failed your kids in 2021? It’s coming. Will you be ready, Democrats?

Matt Taibbi and the general neoliberal Democratic Party just keep falling for the same basic trick, over and over again. It’s not rational, and Democrats are not losing because reason. All politics is moral.