Sooner Or Later

 If you're not up on the politics of Oklahoma, the first thing I should assure you is that if you have been aware of events across this great land of ours for the past year or so, you won't be shocked. Some of you may be familiar with Ryan Walters, the former Superintendent of Oklahoma Public Schools. You might remember him from such hits as, "So there were nude women on my office TV. So what?" Or how about, “We have schools that are teaching kids to hate their country, that this country is evil. You have teachers unions pushing this on our kids… look, this is a very uncomfortable truth, but we cannot allow our schools to become terrorist training camps.” And you may have missed this one: "So we're last in the country in education. Somebody has to be, right?" 

This is the guy who wanted to put bibles in every Oklahoma classroom. 

Not content to be simply stirring up mess in the Sooner State, Mister Walters has decided to take his show on the road. He surprised his bosses and the rest of the state by abruptly resigning as Superintendent in a nationally televised address that came as a shock to locals. The local Fox affiliate offered up their studio to film Walter's appearance and then were denied the opportunity to interview the fleeing former superintendent as he rushed from the building. 

Where was he heading? 

Why off to see about creating “an army of teachers” who will attempt to destroy teacher unions, of course. This announcement came just shortly after Mister Walters' edict that every high school in Oklahoma would be expected to host a chapter of Turning Point USA. Administrators were told that if they did not form a chapter in their school, they would be "violating the law." Exactly what law that might be was not immediately clear, nor was the path Ryan Walters set for himself after creating the punchline for the rest of the country's schools. This is the guy who insisted that teachers coming from "places like California and New York" take an ideological purity test to weed out the wokeness. His vision of becoming the next governor of Oklahoma took a hit when early polling put him in the back of a pack of other candidates. 

So why not get yourself an army of anti-woke teachers and prepare to do battle with ideas like evolution and slavery and climate change and just about anything that doesn't square with the "Christian ideals" in his fever dreams? 

And if it starts to put you in mind of certain other conservative firebrands who make loud plans and pronouncements about how things would be and then shrink back into the mist when it comes time to implement draconian economic policy or resolve conflicts abroad, ultimately it's all just sound and fury, signifying nothing. 

That last bit I learned from a public school teacher. It comes from a play about a brave Scottish general who receives a premonition from three witches that he will be crowned King. You may not be familiar with it if you're in Oklahoma, or some other like-minded land where stories that include witchcraft are banned. "It is a tale told by an idiot."