DEAR EDITOR:

Not bad enough that our country continues to fall behind other industrialized nations when it comes to educational growth and achievement. Now we are witnessing firsthand the eradication of America’s Department of Education altogether. But that’s the least of our problems. Get ready as we continue to erase any semblance of democracy.

How, you ask, can this be happening? Well, for openers, look back to what has been happening since the time of President Reagan, circa 1981-1989. During that time and subsequently, R-conservatives have morphed into ultra-conservative nationalists tasked to creating and unleashing Project 2025. This unholy tool of political destruction has been growing in fervor for at least the past several years. Now, spearing this outrageous document and pressing forward with aggressive implementation is none other than 47, that wannabe emperor/king who has vowed to do so, regardless the cost.

With the closure of the Department of Education, schools throughout the country, kindergarten through higher education, are on the reforming chopping block. And here in Ohio, spearheading this travesty is the Statehouse Republican Party, whose HB-6 and SB-1 legislation will complete the task. Locally, here in Youngstown and the Mahoning Valley, who better to implement this egregious reformation than, yes, you guessed it, Bill Johnson, the fraudulently appointed YSU president pro-tem. From the get-go, when Johnson first arrived on his congressional Trojan horse, that was the game plan. What a joke, this so-called educational leader, tool that he has been, with absolutely NO experience in higher education, being tasked with the job of undermining freedom of speech and any form of creative thinking that doesn’t jibe with the MAGA dictates coming from D.C. and Columbus. All these despots have been surreptitiously crafting the dumbing down of intellectual freedom throughout education. Scary, indeed.

Look around, boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen, here in the good old U.S.A., we have front-row seats to the dangerous growth of autocracy and tyranny. Open your eyes, fellow citizens, and be prepared to voice your dissent and then take any civil disobedience to the streets. Saddle up, my friends, the worst is yet to come. Beware, history is repeating itself.

TYRANNY: “Oppressive power, especially oppressive power exerted by government, a government in which absolute power is vested in a single ruler.” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary) Sound familiar, like the ruling autocratic government in D.C.?

TERRY CROGAN

Boardman