You can file this under “and this is the kind of crap that got Donald Trump elected.”

The job of government is to serve the citizens, not to indoctrinate them into victim identity ideology.

We have choices of where to worship, to read politically persuasive literature or hear debates if we wish to weigh dogmas. Sadly, we have no choice but to interface with the government we have.

Should you be forced through ideological re-education sessions to merely access your government?

Say you want to learn about the Denver mayor’s plan for yet another debt proposal. You go to the city’s official presentation on it. But, before you can hear anything about it, you’re force-fed a heaping spoonful of identity politics and white guilt.

Pandering through ‘acknowledgements’

Baseball games begin with the national anthem. Denver presentations on policy begin with dubious, race-pandering propaganda.

At the mayor’s recent presentation, his staff first put up their “Land Acknowledgement” on a PowerPoint slide and recited it aloud:

“The City and County of Denver honors and acknowledges that the land on which we reside is the traditional territory of the Ute Cheyenne and Arapahoe Peoples … We also recognize that government, academic and cultural institutions were founded upon and continue to enact exclusions and erasures of Indigenous Peoples. May this acknowledgement demonstrate a commitment to working to dismantle ongoing legacies of oppression and inequities …”

Interesting there’s no mention of the oppression among Colorado-area indigenous tribes, the human trafficking and slavery because of tribal wars, and what, by any measure, would be labeled war crimes by the Comanches to their enemies.

To learn about a proposal to put you further in debt, you must hear without rebuttal that we continue to exclude and oppress indigenous people. It might be a wonderful point for academics and activists to debate. There is no place for brainwashing prerequisites to simply interface with your government.

This steaming pile of white guilt is common in progressive governments. Friends of mine brought their daughter to a student orientation at Colorado State University only to get a similar preamble. Sensing what kind of education CSU values, they left. Their daughter goes to an out-of-state school. Way to keep ’em here Colorado.

Denver doubles down on ideological indoctrination with a second acknowledgement recited to their political prisoners, a “Labor Acknowledgement”:

“We acknowledge that our country’s economy, infrastructure, and resulting generational wealth would not exist as they do today without the stolen and forced labor of enslaved Africans who suffered transatlantic human trafficking, chattel slavery, and Jim Crow. We acknowledge how these dehumanizing practices have social legal and economic legacies that continue to haunt to this day.”

It might make for a good PhD dissertation for a student to argue slavery, not industrialization and innovation was the economic engine that resulted in generational wealth, or even that wealth today is easily traced to pre-Civil War policy. To present it as fact at a governmental forum is North Korean-like forced propaganda.

And you’d think there might be even a casual mention that, since its founding, slavery has been illegal in Colorado, or how Coloradans gave their lives fighting with the Union to end slavery.

Playing by progressive rules

Since the progressive left is weaponizing virtue signaling at taxpayer expense, may I reasonably suggest the right now do the same thing. What’s good for the goose and all.

Maybe more sensible cities, I’m looking at you Centennial and Aurora (maybe Colorado Springs, if there’s any sanity left), to start your meetings with a Capitalism Acknowledgement:

“We acknowledge that Colorado’s wealth, abundance and unending individual opportunities would not exist without the brave people who risked their fortunes and their very lives to bring industry and opportunity to our state.”

Or, perhaps, a Taxpayer Acknowledgement:

“We government workers and elected officials acknowledge that the services we provide, and our very jobs, are made possible only by the confiscation of citizens’ hard-earned treasure, and, therefore, we will only use these resources for enumerated, core governmental services.”

Someday, Colorado voters, as the nation did electing President Trump, we’ll get sick of this in-your-face virtue-signaling on our dime, and will elect a new regime. And, when they start putting up “Acknowledgements” to a Christian God, our white Founders, or capitalism, you on the left will have no right to complain.

But you will be able to proudly say, “We taught them how to do that.”

Jon Caldara is president of the Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.