Honestly, I often feel like the creationist wars are an irrelevant distraction when there are greater threats to our civil liberties and political system…I mean, it’s hard to get worked up about some pathetic god-botherin’ dweeb getting onto a school board on a platform of transparent lies and superstitious nonsense when fascist jackboots are stomping in the streets and white nationalists are murdering people.

But that’s what they count on. Oh, you’re worried about racism in the highest offices in the land? Perfect time to pack state houses and city councils and schoolboards with assholes while you’re not looking. It never ends. And then in a few years we all look back and say, “why didn’t you pay attention to local races?” and we have to remind ourselves that the roots matter.

So. Florida has a new Board of Education chairman, Andy Tuck. He’s another of those petty theocrats who doesn’t trust science but still insists on being in charge of education. This Andy Tuck:

School Board Vice Chairman Andy Tuck said Thursday, “as a person of faith, I strongly oppose any study of evolution as fact at all. I’m purely in favor of it staying a theory and only a theory.

“I won’t support any evolution being taught as fact at all in any of our schools.”

Brandon Haught is reluctant to call him a creationist. I’m not. Someone who thinks the established, well-substantiated science of evolutionary biology should not be taught in school is a creationist, a science-denier, and someone who should not have any responsibility in managing a classroom at any level.

Censoring science in the public schools is just one step on the road to creating another generation of Fox-News-watching, MAGA-hat-wearing, science-denying fuckwits who will work to wreck the country while declaiming their patriotism. This is how we get an electorate that puts the worst people in high office.