Needed: "cynical knowledge"

What people call "Critical Race Theory" should, in my view, be a component of a larger program of what Chomsky calls "intellectual self-defense." Or, if you prefer, what a professor of mine (r.i.p. Robert Lawless) called "cynical knowledge." This is a realization, developed through scientific observation and analysis of the facts of US history, that the pablum we are fed from almost all sides of our culture about how gloriously wonderful and beneficent the US has always been is no more than the "propaganda" and "mind control" that we deride when we see it in other nations.

We only have to look at the people jumping on Rep. Ilhan Omar for suggesting that the US has done bad things to realize that we desperately need this kind of knowledge. Otherwise, we just keep doing bad things, like ripping little kids away from their parents at the border, surely a Crime Against Humanity.