Young column: Behold: a Red Scare of a new hue

Not that I was sapped of outrage. There are, however, only so many minutes of any day one can be aghast.

So, as I pored through the long list of words lusty totalitarians now deem verboten by our newly enthroned junta and its strongman, El Tangerino, my eyes grew heavy.

(I write satire, but this you can verify in The New York Times.)

Terms like “all-inclusive,” “confirmation bias,” “cultural sensitivity” and so many more – all are “automatically flagged” for expungement from government literature, web sites and wandering thought streams.

In reporting these unallowed words, the Times admits the list — 298 words and phrases – is an undercount. Don’t you know it?

Anyway, just when I got past the R’s – like “racism” — and to the U’s –“underserved” — I drifted off.

I awoke in a stifling hearing room at the U.S. Capitol: Washington hearings to punish and ostracize public servants for the crime of terminology – a term once known as “speech.”

The Cotton Hearings, named after the cardboard senator from Arkansas, were in their 52nd week with no end in sight. Sweaty White House advisor Stephen Miller was at his side, the Roy Cohn of what he relished as his “McCarthy Moment.”

The country was in the midst of the Orange Scare, the effort to identify, condemn and throw rotting produce at people found guilty of “wokeism,” “environmentalism” and any prohibited form of science or American history.

Those so identified lost whole careers, having been Orangelisted.

So there we were at the Cotton Hearings. In the committee’s crosshairs at the moment was a high school history teacher.

“Madam, students have reported that you used the term ‘racial inequality’ in class. True?”

“Yes, Senator, and I am sorry about that.”

“Your president will be pleased to hear your penitence. Why would you be sorry?”

“Because ‘racial inequality’ doesn’t do justice to the history of this nation. So, throw the book at me. Up yours. Vote Democrat. I resign.”

It took a moment to restore order.

“Strike those comments from the record,” said Stephen Miller.

“You goons are good at that,” shouted the now-former teacher as officers escorted her out.”

Next up was a college biology professor.

“Sir, you stand accused of using ‘global warming’ to describe the state of the climate.”

“That’s a fact.”

“That you said it?”

“Yes.”

“That’s it’s a fact? Or that you said it?”

“Yes.”

“But it’s not a fact,” said the senator. “It’s a woke construct to make white people with high-clearance pickup trucks feel guilty. Is it not?”

“Whatever,” said the professor. “It’s a fact.”

“You have not given a sufficient explanation for your actions. You stand guilty of climate hysteria. Your college will be stripped of all federal research funding.”

“Wait. Some science funding was left after the first two weeks of this clown show?”

“Mr. Musk will check that and make sure it’s all gone.”

“If you didn’t have tenure, we would have you pilloried on the lawn within sight of our great president.”

“Just leave my hands free so I can flip him the bird day and night.”

Next up was a college administrator.

“Sir, you are accused of the repeated use of the phrase ‘inclusion.’”

“Sure, I have. I was doing this job long before you got yours.”

“Did you use the term after our president issued his anti-DEI edict?”

“I haven’t kept a word diary on campus. Maybe I said it to my golfing group.”

“An impertinent dodge,” said Cotton. “Put it this way: Have you, or anyone with whom you have associated in higher education, repeatedly used the term ‘inclusion’?”

“Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?”

“Decency is what we are all about,” said the senator.

“Tell that to your president the next time he kadonks a porn star and pays her hush money. I’m out of here.”

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.