PUTNEY — While CRT - critical race theory - is getting headlines these days, CTS is really what's going on.
CTS - changing the subject - is Mitch McConnell and his local minions carrying water for Donald Trump and their attempt to distract from America's - and Joe Biden's - successes in cleaning up the mess that Trump left.
Most of all, President Biden has appreciably calmed things down from the daily rollercoaster of chaos that was the hallmark of the former president.
The United States is on the road to recovery, and that's without one Republican vote in Congress for the bills fueling this turnaround.
What else are they to do, then, but CTS - change the subject - away from America's successes? And Biden's?
Especially since the Republicans have no serious responses to the real issues needing to be addressed.
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Covid, climate change, and racial injustice are the issues, and what is the response from the McConnell forces? Mr. Potato Head, Dr. Seuss, and now fears that we might actually tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about United States history.
Anyone out there who thinks we can hide from our kids the facts - about the Tulsa race massacre, the details about why Southern and Northern Baptists split, or the reason it took 100 years between the 13th Amendment in 1865 and the 1964 Civil Rights Act - is mistaken.
Keeping kids away from the internet and from information isn't working in China, in Iran, or anywhere. It's as unbelievable that people out there - Americans - are trying to censor history and limit information.
It doesn't work with sex education or evolution, and it won't work with trying to hide the facts of life about U.S. history.
And it won't work here, even as a group of Trump sycophants touring Vermont is making a local stop in this area soon.
They're trying to spread their venom here - the belief that we should censor what our children learn about history. Moreso, they don't trust our teachers to provide honest answers to our kids' questions about what's really happened in our past.
Thankfully, the vast majority of Vermonters don't fear the truth, as was manifest in the presidential vote totals of 2020.
We now have a president who tells the truth, who doesn't deal in misinformation and denial, and who recognizes philosopher George Santayana's exhortation: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
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That was why President Biden made the trip to Tulsa, to commemorate the race massacre that killed more than 800 Black people there in 1921. To mourn the dead. And to inform those who were unaware, because most people never learned about this history.
For those needing a definition, or proof of the existence of systemic racism, look no further than the organized efforts to stop teaching about this and other similar facts from U.S. history.
The change-the-subject attempts to censor this history is a clear attempt to block progress and take Vermont back to the “good ol' days”... to a time of legal segregation, misogyny, mistreatment of children, and unbridled environmental degradation.
Fortunately, most of us want to move Vermont and the U.S. forward. It's up to us, then, to reject the race-baiting and fearmongering on things like critical race theory - and to ask for serious policy debates, ones that go beyond Dr. Seuss or Mr. Potato Head.
Do we move backwards to a time of darkness and chaos?
Or do we stay focused on the work that's creating the light of a brighter future ahead, with Vermont and the United States moving forward again?
The best way to do so is to do it together - and to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Let's keep our eye on the prize and not change the subject.