And There It Is
A few hours after I posted about the increasingly confident assumption among local government officials that the public has no right to criticize them, I learned that the National School Boards Association had released the report from an investigation into the infamous letter the association sent to Joe Biden — requesting federal law enforcement “domestic terrorism” investigations into parents who criticize local school boards. Here’s the full report, if you’d like to read it yourself:
The news media needed about a minute to find the most striking paragraph, in this description of an early draft of the letter (referring to former NSBA Interim Executive Director Chip Slaven):
So yes, the leadership of the NSBA started with, first, the idea that criticizing local government officials is terrorism — but then also offered the solution of assigning the military to police local school events. Can you imagine the reaction in a community to troops descending on a school board meeting? (Can you imagine the reaction of military commanders, receiving the request to send them?) The tone-deafness, the disconnection from well-established social values and political norms, approaches the level of psychosis. Though the report doesn’t directly address the point, a timeline in the final pages suggests that Slaven removed the language about the National Guard from the letter only after circulating it for comments from other NSBA staff — which suggests that someone else in the organization quietly let him know that he had requested something particularly insane.
Now: Chip Slaven is an attorney who arrived at the NSBA after doing staff work for a governor and a congressman. He was chosen to run a national political advocacy organization because he had the right c.v for the job, with a background in reasonably high-level political jobs.
Elite self-hypnosis: the descent of highly credentialed people in positions of considerable responsibility into a deranged state in which they have completely lost touch with reality and ordinary values.
We are led by people who are completely lost.
And morally bankrupt...an understatement.
They're not lost; they're nuts. This bears repeating: Every community should build coalition to change the rules of their local board - which should be composed entirely of the parents of children attending school in that district. NO TEACHERS, NO ADMINISTRATORS AND NO ONE CONNECTED WITH THE DOE OR THE GOVERNMENT OR ANYONE NOT HAVING CHILDREN IN THE SCHOOLS. That's how you end this insanity.