'Critical Race Theory': From Culture War To Right-wing Straight-up Losing Its Mind

Right-wing works overtime to smear Gen Mark Milley after encounter with Republican Matt Gaetz

Critical race theory — which long has been brewing as one battle in the right-wing's brewing culture war — exploded into a full conflagration Wednesday, as one of right's darlings tried to take on the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff over the academic approach.

The result became the right-wing mediasphere losing its mind over the last 24 hours, over the encounter which took place during a congressional hearing.

Critical race theory (CRT) examines social, cultural and legal issues as they relate to race and racism. However, Republicans have glommed onto it, to ascribe to it all sorts of scary and shadowy implications in order to make it into a culture war bugaboo.

“It’s important that we understand that, because our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and guardians, they come from the American people. So it is important that the leaders now and in the future do understand it,” Gen Mark Milley said of critical race theory. “I’ve read Mao Zedong, I’ve read Karl Marx, I’ve read Lenin. That doesn’t make me a communist. So what is wrong with understanding, having some situational understanding about the country for which we are here to defend?

"And I personally find it offensive that we are accusing the United States military, our general officers, our commissioned, noncommissioned officers of being, quote, ‘woke’ or something else because we’re studying some theories that are out there,” Milley added. “That was started at Harvard Law School years ago, and it proposed that there were laws in the United States, antebellum laws prior to the Civil War that led to a power differential with African-Americans that were three quarters of a human being when this country was formed, and that we had a Civil War and Emancipation Proclamation to change it, and we brought it up to the Civil Rights Act in 1964, took another hundred years to change that.

"So look it, I do want to know. And I respect your service, and you and I are both Green Berets, but I want to know, and it matters to our military and the discipline and cohesion of this military. And I thank you for the opportunity to make a comment on that,” Milley told Gaetz's Florida Republican colleague, Rep. Mike Waltz.

Gaetz, a staunch ally of former president Donald Trump's and reportedly under investigation for sex trafficking and for sex with a minor, didn't leave his debate with Milley there.

He followed it up after the hearing with an ugly Tweet about the general, who previously served as chief of staff of the Army.

"The truth is tough sometimes to hear, isn't it, for some folks. And while the chairman of Joint Chiefs makes an eloquent defense of the truth and stands up for America's military, embattled Congressman Matt Gaetz lobs a despicable tweet attacking the general,” CNN host Don Lemon said on his program. “And I quote here: 'With generals like this, it’s no wonder we fought considerably more wars than we’ve won.' Gross. It's just gross. And should be expected, considering the behavior of this — whatever you want to call him. A congressman denigrating our armed forces.”

“Study what critical race theory is”

Milley made an excellent case for all Americans to engage with new ideas with an open mind, according to the Rev Michael Eric Dyson, a prominent Black author, academic and TV commentator.

"It is utterly reprehensible, but boy, did M-squared, Mark Milley, general push back in a poignant fashion. ‘I’ve read Mao Zedong, I’m not a communist. I've read Carl Marx, I'm not a Marxist.’ If you read a comic book, are you a comic? The point is that this man says we should be open-minded. He encouraged them to study what critical race theory is. He knew its roots better than most of them,” Dyson said. “He knew it was rooted at Harvard Law School with the late great Derrick Bell. Of course, now Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw.

“And all critical race theory is saying as a theory of law is that it’s not about individual acts of bigotry or bias or racism, it is a systemic and institutional network that must be somehow discerned and dismantled,” he added. “And what they're saying is, let’s not point the finger at individual white brothers and sisters and say, ‘Aha, we caught you.’ Let’s look at a system that produces and reproduces the pathology of bigotry. Isn’t this what we’ve been saying after George Floyd?”

Things were somewhat more hysterical over in the right-wing talk sphere, such as Laura Ingraham's Fox News program, where she led off: “Now, in The Angle, we showed you the chairman of the Joint Chiefs lecturing Congress, his very dismissive, arrogant tone about their rightful concerns about racializing the military. Sadly, that wasn’t all.”

Ingraham had Waltz on her Wednesday evening broadcast to discuss the Milley encounter, where she said, flatly, “Congressman Waltz, the chairman parroted the left-wing talking points that teaching CRT is the same as teaching about slavery. Doesn’t this reveal what — he’s just a total partisan at this point!”

Milley, in fact, has never been a left partisan — having been nominated to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs by Trump.