Republicans are not just rewriting the past — they’re coming for the dictionaries too

In the symphony that is modern American conservatism, harmony is the enemy.

The orchestra consists of conspiracy theorists, bigots, anarchistic libertarians, fascists, misogynists, evangelicals, gun fanatics, anti-environmentalists, nativists, and ultra-capitalists, and each makes their contribution to our 21st-century national anthem of dissonance.

In New Hampshire, where Republicans control the House, Senate, governor’s office, and Executive Council, that frenzied composition scores our days. From the opening pomp of privatized public education, through the “Ride of the Valkyries” inspired assault on immigrants, civil rights, and programs that support social progress and services, every misanthropic stanza follows the downshift beat of our defining anti-tax lunacy and the geographic, social, and economic inequality it faithfully delivers.

While each individual player is largely focused just on the sound of their own instrument, with some horn blasts more blatantly hateful than others, the invisible hand conducting this monstrosity understands the true power of the collective disharmony. The performance is a benefit concert for the modern robber barons, for whom there is no sweeter melody than the battle cry of an electorate at war with each other instead of them.

In isolation, every note is sour. Consider, for example, New Hampshire Republicans’ reignited crusade, in all of its low-information glory, against the state’s Office of Health Access.

Early this year, Rep. Mike Belcher, a Wakefield Republican, proposed legislation targeting what was then known as the Office of Health Equity, among other civil rights programs that Belcher and his band of Republican co-sponsors labeled DEI and therefore “evil.”

One of Belcher’s sympathetic House colleagues, Rep. Jess Edwards, of Auburn, said he had the same initial reaction but then learned that the state Department of Health and Human Services had merely chosen a regrettable name for the office. Edwards said that as it turns out, and much to his own amazement, the office was actually just trying to “remove barriers to make sure we all have an equal access to care.” You know, like equity.

There was also the little detail, bewildered state officials said at the time, that the services provided by the Office of Health Equity — including for refugees and people with disabilities — are required under federal law.

In a rare moment of conservative sanity, a compromise was eventually reached and the office was preserved, albeit under the less-woke letterhead of “Office of Health Access.”

A happy-ish ending? Well, not so fast. Republicans are wise to DEI trickery, they say, so last week they launched another assault on that old office with the new name. On Nov. 12, the House Health and Human Services Committee advanced legislation, despite the bill being “problematic,” to once and for all eliminate the Office of Health Access, federal requirements be damned.

Why would Republican lawmakers waste so much time trying to destroy programs that the state Department of Health and Human Services would just have to recreate elsewhere? Because DEI.

To understand why Belcher and others in his tinhorn section believe DEI is so evil, I suppose you have to consider the definitions behind the acronym. Merriam-Webster says “diversity” means “the state or practice of including people of different races, cultures, etc. in a group or organization.” Equity means “fairness or justice in the way people are treated.” And inclusion means, simply, “the act of including.”

Apparently it’s not enough that Republicans are rewriting the past; they’re also coming for the dictionaries. In the new lexicon, diversity, equity, and inclusion are synonymous with evil. A truly just and equal society, the conservatives argue, would be “morally reprehensible.”

That’s the kind of up-is-down, black-is-white moment we’re stuck in.

There was a time, as discordant as our national history may be, when such moral backwardness would have gotten you remanded to silence at the farthest political fringe.

Not anymore. Now you get a primo chair on the Republican stage, where no measure is too absurd to be amplified.

To the maestro’s ears, it’s all music.

• Dana Wormald, a lifelong resident of New Hampshire, has been a newspaper editor for more than 25 years. He began his career on the Concord Monitor’s news desk in 1995 and later spent more than a decade at the New Hampshire Union Leader. In 2014, he returned to the Monitor to serve as opinion editor, a position he held until being named editor of the Bulletin. Email: dwormald@newhampshirebulletin.com