We begin today’s roundup with Paul Krugman’s analysis in The New York Times about the right-wing “thought police” that is attacking America’s education system:

Republicans have made considerable political hay by denouncing the teaching of critical race theory; this strategy has succeeded even though most voters have no idea what that theory is and it isn’t actually being taught in public schools. But the facts in this case don’t matter, because denunciations of C.R.T. are basically a cover for a much bigger agenda: an attempt to stop schools from teaching anything that makes right-wingers uncomfortable.

I use that last word advisedly: There’s a bill advancing in the Florida Senate declaring that an individual “should not be made to feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race.” That is, the criterion for what can be taught isn’t “Is it true? Is it supported by the scholarly consensus?” but rather “Does it make certain constituencies uncomfortable?”

And of course, lip service to “local control” in schools also fell by the wayside in Virginia where Governor Glenn Youngkin is proving he is not an independent moderate but is enacting the dangerous, anti-democratic agenda of the modern GOP. As Joan Walsh at The Nation notes:

More on the Youngkin bait-and-switch from The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson:

The first days of Republican executive rule in Virginia should be a lesson for independent voters — like the ones who voted for President Biden, giving him a 10-point win in the state in 2020, then turned around and voted for Youngkin.

Youngkin, Earle-Sears and Miyares might look like something new — fresh-faced and laudably diverse — but so far, at least, they act more like members in good standing within the Cult of Trump. Someday, I hope, the Republican Party will escape the grip of a certain angry pensioner in Florida. Until then, don’t be fooled — and don’t give them your votes.

Over at The New York Times, Michelle Goldberg takes on Bari Weiss and her “done with covid” campaign:

Critics of how liberals have responded to the pandemic sometimes argue that we’ve overestimated our ability to control this virus. But those who think we can escape this excruciating period simply by changing our mind-set are also overestimating how much control we have. America won’t seem remotely normal until it’s a lot less sick.

And on a final note, don’t miss this sobering warning from political science professor Barbara F. Walter:

Her bottom line: “We are closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe.” She lays out the argument in detail in her must-read book, “How Civil Wars Start,” out in January. “No one wants to believe that their beloved democracy is in decline, or headed toward war,” she writes. But, “if you were an analyst in a foreign country looking at events in America — the same way you’d look at events in Ukraine or the Ivory Coast or Venezuela — you would go down a checklist, assessing each of the conditions that make civil war likely. And what you would find is that the United States, a democracy founded more than two centuries ago, has entered very dangerous territory.”