“This is reparations.”

This story this morning about the campaign in a San Francisco school to destroy a mural depicting George Washington as a participant in the crimes of slavery and Indian genocide immediately brought to mind this other recent story about a trend toward “expunging” the court records of prosecution of homosexuals.

I don’t want to say there’s some kind of nefarious conspiracy behind the fact that the aims of these safe-space progressives are now exactly in line with the long-time aims of right-wing conservatives to erase uncomfortable elements of our nation’s history.

Here’s my theory — and I’m serious: SSPs encounter so much right-wing resistance to their efforts to create a world where no one is marginalized and persecuted, an intractable resistance that over time turns them completely around so that they’ve become fixated on creating that world in the past.

But whatever’s causing them to behave like this, they need to stop.

Victor Arnautoff’s mural in George Washington High School in San Francisco.