The Future Lies In The Past

'After Trump comes others': Expert predicts 'Trumpism' has a long future https://t.co/BBVIArZU1U

— Raw Story (@RawStory) April 27, 2023

 There's little debate Trump has been seen a figurehead to extremists, reporter and author Jeff Sharlet said. And, since he left the White House in 2021, that movement hasn't faltered. On the contrary, said Sharlet in the interview, it's only growing bolder and more determined to seize control.

"The struggle is long. Too many people want a happy ending," said Sharlet. "After Trump comes others. I think the Never Trumpers have a much clearer sense of this reality than a lot of liberals and even leftists. And for them, it's more obvious because they lost their whole social world."

Of course, what that means is that their "whole social world" was heading for destruction, and finally got there.  Rick Wilson and most of the Lincoln Project (whom I find useful, but not the deciding factor on all matters political) all benefitted from the conservative politics of George W. and George H.W. and Reagan and even Gingrich and the Tea Party.  Now that what was begun with Goldwater has finally reached fruition and we live in the GOP era of Trump and McCarthy and Gym Jordan and MTG, they wring their hands in despair over what has been wrought in their fair party, the worm that Blake saw in the heart of the rose.  Except they nurtured that worm, and now they despair that it has destroyed the bloom.

Which is just facts.  They rode the tiger that ate them.  Their lament is that they didn't get the happy ending they expected, and their mantra now is "Fuck Around and Find Out."  Because they did.

There is a just inevitability in that.

Locally two positions are up for election on the school board.  Incumbents are not running; they've had enough of the bickering and the name calling and especially the book banning reviews.  Even the "crazies," as I call them, are sick of the book banning.  They implemented a process to review, at Board level ab initio and without recourse to appeal, all book ban requests in the pipeline, and end the process (hopefully) for a while.  Books were percolating up through administrative reviews to the Board, because parents and "concerned citizens" were emulating Trump, taking everything to the Supreme Court.  Or, in this case, the school board; who lacked the power of the Supremes to reject appeals it deemed unworthy of its time.

In short, the "concerned citizens" and the "crazies" fucked around, and they found out.  There are more examples than this.

After the last election, two years ago, when four "crazies" took over the Board, parents from a wealthy, white area of the district began to complain about the design of the replacement school building for their elementary age children.  The building is under construction, and probably some of those children will be in it a year or two, at most.  But a small group of parents was insisting the building be built to satisfy their concerns:  smaller classrooms, with a lower ratio of student to teacher.  Could the district even afford the staff?  Who cares!  We pay taxes!  Serve us!

One of the new board members, green as grass and ignorant as a babe, took up their cause because:  representative government is a heady brew!  He had staff in charge of construction come to the Board to explain why these parents couldn't be accomodated in their quite reasonable demands!  (Staff that was not used to being hauled into a public meeting to explain the elementary facts of school building construction to chowderheads who treated them as the enemy.  It's a good way to run a school district into the ground, and run off the competent people who keep it a good district.) And it was quite reasonably pointed out that sauce for the goose was sauce for the gander, and if this school got its demands met, every school in the district would face similar demands.  And besides, the building had to be built to last at least 50 years; not just to accomodate the ignorant desires of a few whose children would be gone, never to return to that building, in just a few years.    Of course, now there is the imminent risk the district will see such a cut in state funding, and such a rise in inflation, it will have to lay off teachers and staff, up to 50% of current employees; so those parents are not going to get the low student to teacher ratio they wanted, anyway.  It may be their school is one that will be closed, to consolidate with another, in order to control costs.  But at the time this greenhorn Board member insisted the district accomodate a handful of parents in an action that would affect students for the next 50 years.

He finally got the message.  FAFO, buddy.

More recently, another new Board member demanded the district consider withdrawing from a state association of school boards because it is "woke."  This association provides important benefits to members, including liability insurance for school busses; policy information so districts know what the state has recently, and long ago, required school districts to do (like DEI, which is now "woke" to white people afraid of losing their privilege they insist they don't have but want desperately to preserve); and orientation for new board members so they will understand what school boards do (that one particularly rankled, because the new members were told they were not all little Caesars in charge of their portion of Rome).  One school district in the state had withdrawn from this association, and now this member was anxious to prove to her supporters (remember that line about "representative government"?) that she could be crazy, too.

Except the withdrawal, as you can guess, would be very expensive.  You can't run school busses without insurance, and insurance on the open market would be like getting your own health insurance policy without a group or an employer, and also without Obamacare.  Good luck with that.  The lawyer for the district pointed out they'd need a team of expensive lawyers to replace the policy information they'd lose access to, both current and historical.  And so on.  And apparently no one pointed out that, as a member of the association, the district had standing to ask for changes to how the association operated, if they thought the association was off course.

But of course the aim is not to be cooperative, but to be in charge.  You're either with us, or you're against us!  Democracy is messy and complicated.  Fascism and dictatorship is much simpler and easier!  If the association won't do all we demand, junk the association!

That item was discussed at the last board meeting, but the wind had already left the sails in the wake of the looming school finance disaster.  Increasing costs to operate the district is suddenly not such a good idea, especially when the public is paying attention (however briefly) to the issue of school finance (and maybe, finally, learning their tax dollars paid locally don't stay local, or all go to the district, even).

FAFO.

Now there are four candidates for two positions on the board, and they are split again between "crazies" and "not crazies."  And the former are sending out fliers (to select areas of the district; mostly, it seems, to old people easily scared by this rapidly changing world.  Not to me; I'm still not old enough yet, or something.) warning their opponents want schools to teach that blacks hate whites (and should, because whites are so guilty) and teach racism in the name of DEI, and the other shibboleths of the national GOP (and pretty much the state GOP, too).  It's very ugly stuff, and it may win them places on the board.  Which will be when the new "crazies" find out they don't have their hands upon the reins, they've just got chains on their hands, and they're riding on a railroad.

FAFO.

I don't like it, because the school district as a whole, especially the people whose lives are bent on educating and improving the lives of their students (the only purpose a school district exists), will find life harder trying to answer the questions of idiots only slightly less belligerent and ignorant than MTG.  But if the district is going to fail, it will be the fault of people fully as ignorant and belligerent as MTG (Dan Patrick could give her Master classes in being a public asshole in public office). The death blow is going to come because Austin starved them of money in the name of still opposing Brown v. Board, nearly three-quarters of a century later.  Which was probably part of the impetus behind the support of Goldwater; it was certainly behind support of LBJ's "Great Society."  

The past is never over.  It's never even past.