Here are some made up words, terms and truths:

¯ R. I. N. O: Republican in name only – term applied when supposedly a GOP member was not aligned with party ideology. Under Trump and since, there is no official Republican Party platform; policy was what Donald Trump said it was.

Platform policy and ideology were open for interpretation. The Party invited in all who would adhere to this arrangement, even those with extreme views; enter Marjorie Taylor Greene, Proud Boys, etc. Trump gas lighted traditional Republicans whose loyalty was to policy and not to Trump.

¯ W. O. K. E.: its origin was from the Black Civil Rights movement “to be vigilant” of social and political issues affecting Blacks and other minorities. It was an adjective. Corporations sympathetic to the “cause” and fearing financial pressures altered policies and plans, i. e. Disney’s LGBT policies, major league sports: NBA, NFL, and MLB with name changes, policies, etc. Florida Governor DeSantis made WOKE a noun, a thing to be destroyed. He declared Florida is where WOKE goes to die, DeSantis’ Florida prohibits any required instruction to any student or employee that makes them uncomfortable due to their race, color, sex, or national origin on account of historic acts of racism. He blocked teaching an African American Studies Class, to name two of his WOKE “things.” Resisting WOKE fits into the non-existing Republican Platform ideology and doing so is political demagoguery, be it from DeSantis or Trump or whoever.

¯ ABORTIFACIENT: Substance or drug that causes an abortion. Controversy of such rages on after the 2022 Supreme Court 6 to 3 decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade. Do women have the right to access such and, if so, when is under debate.

¯ CRITICAL RACE THEORY: systematic racism in our legal system and public policies — Thurgood Marshall in the 1954 Supreme Court’s 9 to 0 Brown vs. School Board case/decision presented negative results of racially segregated public education policies. Recent decades have had more emphasis on minorities’ histories – Women’s History Month (March) and Black History Month (February); the Holocaust Memorial Museum opened in 1993 and the National Museum of African American History and Culture opened in 2016, both are in Washington. D. C. This flies in the face of DeSantis’ attempt to kill WOKE: “attack it – don’t teach it.”

¯ CULTURAL WARS: Blow back resistance to the changes of life, as life used to be or as life is thought it had been. This has resulted in book banning in public schools and libraries, altering textbooks, etc. if such dare to present information contrary to “Father Knows Best” 1950 norms and lifestyles. This is DeSantis. For example, DeSantis said “just teach factual history, not that the Unites States is built on stolen land.” Really? Do Native Americans who lived here well before Christ use the same set of facts as DeSantis to tell their history? Likewise, with Black history or women history or LBGT history.

It is troublesome to know that George Washington, “Father of our Country,” owned slaves, same with James Madison, “Father of our Constitution,” and that Thomas Jefferson, “Father of our Declaration of Independence,” fathered children with his enslaved black mistress, Sally Hemings. But they did. Troublesome or not these are the facts.

The facts of our “assimilation policies'” effect on Native Americans is similar, as well as the facts of our land acquisition by treaty and warfare from the Native Americans and Mexicans. Books have been written about such, books DeSantis would ban from schools libraries.

It is difficult to connect all these “words” to combating inflation, improving public health, doing infrastructure improvement, supporting women’s rights, confronting the border and immigration crisis, promoting justice, dealing with the economy, aiding Ukraine’s war effort, boosting the environment – the issues of last November’s general election but here we are.

It is not difficult to realize why fifteen ballots were needed to elect Kevin McCarthy Speaker. In exchange for votes “never Kevin” Republicans were awarded plum committee assignments from where they will be able to magnify their Cultural War issues and nonsense. Marjorie Taylor Greene denied the 9-11-01 Pentagon attack. She is on the House Homeland Security Committee. Wow. She, also. said if she had led the 1-6-21 attack on the Capitol “we would have won.” Holy Wow.

The small cadre of extreme and strange minded Republicans will, in essence, direct the Republican Party chaos for the next two years. Holy, Holy, Holy Wow.

Don Scott is a North Warren resident.