Four more years and America won't be recognizable

In austere, starkly divisive remarks, President Trump on Thursday said he would create a commission to promote "patriotic education" and announced the creation of a grant to develop a "pro-American curriculum." The move is largely political — a reaction to a growing push by some academics for schools to teach an American history that better acknowledges slavery and systemic racism.

In the speech, Trump decried what he said was a "twisted web of lies" being taught in U.S. classrooms about systemic racism in America, calling it "a form of child abuse."

[...]

"For many years now, the radicals have mistaken Americans' silence for weakness. They're wrong. There is no more powerful force than a parent's love for their children. And patriotic moms and dads are going to demand that their children are no longer fed hateful lies about this country."

The federal government does not have jurisdiction over school curriculum.

  NPR

Yet.

"Critical race theory, the 1619 Project, and the crusade against American history is toxic propaganda, ideological poison that, if not removed, will dissolve the civic bonds that tie us together. It will destroy our country," the president said Thursday.

White supremacy on the ropes.

Trump said schools need to focus instead on "the legacy of 1776," when American Colonies declared independence from Great Britain. The newly formed committee, Trump said, will be called the "1776 Commission" — a further dig at The [New York] Times' [1619] project.

[...]

Trump blamed "the left," aided by the media and unnamed corporations, for "a vicious and violent assault on law enforcement" and said violent protests in recent months "are the direct result of decades of left-wing indoctrination in our schools."

In a shot at his Democratic challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden, Trump said he would add a statue of Caesar Rodney to the National Garden of American Heroes park — a proposal he first made in his Mount Rushmore speech.

A statue of Rodney, a slave owner who signed the Declaration of Independence, was removed from Wilmington, Del., this summer amid protests against police brutality and systemic racism. Trump criticized Biden for not speaking out about it.

[...]

Following his remarks, the phrases "Trump Youth" and "Hitler Youth" trended on Twitter, with some likening the president's new education project to the indoctrination of young people in Nazi Germany.

I think that's fair.

UPDATE:

 [...]

(I recall some years ago - at least 3 decades - thinking my sister was overblowing the issue when she complained of fundamentalists infiltrating school boards because that's where they would start to take over the government.  I thought it was impossible in this (that) day and age in America.  How wrong I was.)

 [...]

complete thread

UPDATE:

Princeton historian Kevin Kruse:

UPDATE: