We may never know what motivated Thomas Matthew Crooks to become Trump’s would-be assassin, but as we seek answers, we must recognize the role educators across the country have played in perpetuating a discourse that fuels animosity and normalizes political violence. Specifically, many educators have portrayed Trump as an existential threat to America. Moving forward, a narrative shift is essential.
Days before the attempted assassination, retired Seattle teacher Michael McSweeney penned an editorial in the The News Tribune, expressing concern that Trump may win the presidency again, issuing a dramatic “apology” to former students, admitting he had misled them about the U.S. government’s checks and balances. “I lied to you because I never could have imagined one person as evil and dangerous as Trump could ever be elected president,” McSweeney wrote, echoing the ideological stance many educators have taken since Trump rode the golden escalator.
In 2016, when I was a freshman history student at the University of Southern Mississippi, professor Dr. Tyler used her lecture on World War II to draw a comparison between Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan and Hitler’s rhetoric, alleging that Hitler said, “Make Germany Great Again.” How could impressionable students interpret this intellectually dishonest comparison as anything other than equating Trump with an evil dictator?
This sentiment wasn’t unique to my college in South Mississippi.
A year later, College Fix reported that University of Southern California professor Charles H.F. Davis defended controversial tweets that included obscenities directed at President Donald Trump and calls for the destruction of “whiteness” and the “white supremacist heterosexist patriarchy.” Davis, then an assistant professor and Chief Strategy Officer at the USC Race and Equity Center, argued that Trump’s rhetoric and policies embody oppressive systems. His Twitter background photo showed a black woman shooting a pig dressed in a police uniform.
Even after the horrific events of this past weekend, this rhetoric persists.
Louise A. Kelly, an associate professor of exercise science at California Lutheran University, posted on Facebook her hope for another assassination attempt, even wishing to assassinate Trump herself. Stacey Patton, an associate professor at Morgan State University, wrote that she hoped the attempt was successful and argued that killing Trump would be justified because “Republicans are racist”—minorities did incredibly well under the Trump administration.
The same rhetoric surfaced in Crooks’s neck of the woods. In 2019, a Pennsylvania middle school teacher had to apologize to parents after assigning homework in which students pretended to be refugees amid a scenario where President Trump was attempting to seize control of the country.
Without a doubt, this education has profoundly warped the minds of young people everywhere.
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