Don’t let the leftists memory-hole their madness

Did the last five years, call it “the age of woke,” really happen — or were they just a fever dream?

Apparently we all imagined a time where COVID and cancel culture collided to oppress us.

No one was shunned for saying really obvious and true things, schools weren’t closed indefinitely under pressure from teachers’ unions, and race conflict wasn’t pushed on Americans from every direction.

At least that’s what the left would have us believe.

On Wednesday when National Public Radio CEO Katherine Maher testified in a congressional hearing, she stumbled on some basic questions . . . involving her own opinions.

“Do you believe that America is addicted to white supremacy?” Rep. Brandon Gill asked her.

Maher grimaced as if she found that belief ridiculous, but at last admitted, “I tweeted that.”

“But as I’ve said,” she added, “much of my thinking has evolved over the last half decade.” 

That’s just five years — and Maher is no teenager, whose opinions change on a whim. She’s in her 40s and runs a media company with thousands of employees. 

Gill continued: “Do you believe that America believes in black plunder and white democracy?”

Maher, feigning confusion that anyone could hold such a bizarre position, responded “I . . . don’t . . . believe that, sir?”

Yet Gill told her she had tweeted that very statement in 2020, in reference to “The Case for Reparations,” a lengthy polemic by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Maher denied ever having read the piece. Gill noted that Maher’s own tweet claimed she was “taking a day off” to do so.

It was a satisfying exchange for those of us who spent the last five years pointing out the insanity emanating from the left. We’ve gotten all too few of them.

Mostly, we’re still just getting gaslighting and denials.

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten was a key villain of the COVID years.

In blue areas where politicians jumped at Weingarten’s whim, schools stayed closed longer. Where her influence was limited, schools opened. These are the facts.

But to hear Weingarten tell it, she was a champion of the open-the-schools movement.

Last week, Weingarten told CNN host Brianna Keilar, “As you know . . . I wanted schools to be reopened as early as April of 2020.”

“Right,” Keilar said. And that was it. History rewritten before our eyes.

The woman who kept millions of kids out of school — primarily poor kids without alternative education options — was recasting herself as the hero and getting away with it.

Keilar knows it’s a lie, but the rewrite works in her favor.

In August 2021, in one of the most noxious news segments of that time, Keilar and co-host John Berman reported that four teachers in Broward County, Fla. had died of COVID in a single day.

They cast the blame on Gov. Ron DeSantis, a favorite punching bag, for opening the schools in defiance of Weingarten’s pressure and not forcing mask-wearing.

What they left out: Schools hadn’t opened yet in Broward County. The teachers had died on summer vacation.

Now, we’re told, both Weingarten and Keilar wanted schools open, and we’re crazy for thinking otherwise.

This week also saw The Atlantic’s Jonathan Chait pretend that leftists are undergoing some kind of COVID reckoning while conservatives are not.

Perhaps because the leftists got everything about COVID wrong, then forced the dumbest rules on the rest of us and have never apologized for any of it?

Oh no, Chait assures us: “Liberals got some things about the pandemic correct and other things wrong, and over time, many of them have disavowed or at least moved away from their wrong beliefs.”

Where? When?

Chait himself spent the last few years spreading conspiracy theories about COVID vaccination rates in Florida because he was so invested in his twisted narrative. Has he ever admitted that he was deluded?

What about all those who were shadow-banned or kicked off social media, fired from their jobs, shunned within their industries for saying things that were true all along?

Did they get an apology? Do they get reparations?

The last five years happened, much as the left may want to wipe the slate clean.

There’s an impulse to simply move on, without any accountability or apology for their lunacy. As a famous woman once said: What difference, at this point, does it make?

But it matters very much. We’re still living in the thick of so many of the left’s bad ideas and policies.

Biological boys are still playing in girls’ sports — and every single Senate Democrat this month voted against a law to stop it.

They’re waving away some of their madness, but certainly not all.

We can’t let the left simply pretend the last five difficult years didn’t happen. It’s time to challenge outright the lies, the rewrites, the scoffing at ideas they once considered mandatory.

Those who pushed the very worst policies, and forced them on the rest of us, can’t now get to claim otherwise.

Karol Markowicz is co-author of the book “Stolen Youth.”