While Republicans and anarchists were attacking the U.S. Capitol in 2021, Democrats took two Senate seats in Georgia. Tonight right-wing speakers, many of them from the county, wasted the School Board’s time attacking policies that don’t exist. While they were doing that, Warnock won a full term in the Senate from Georgia. I’m not saying we should encourage these people in their political fantasies, because it’s four years until the next Senate election in Georgia. But we ought to be asking about cause and effect.
Making the same analysis with a little more serious approach, the Trump era has seen at least two setbacks in citizen attitudes toward their government. One is the refusal to accept an election loss. The right wing lost badly in November’s School Board election, and yet the speakers tonight acted as if the School Board should listen to them, the tiny minority of vocal screamers. The second setback is the apparent belief that if Trump could insult half the country and win, then they can get up at a public meeting and say anything that pops into their heads with impunity.
More than one speaker attacked board members and the family of a school official. One claimed that it is their perversion of natural law that causes trans teens to commit suicide. Another spent several minutes describing all the things he’d preached about at previous board meetings, as if that were the only thing that had happened at board meetings this year. Others addressed not the board, but the Christian God, ignoring their Jewish and Muslim brethren in the room.
I have to believe that just as Trump’s outrageous behavior contributed to Warnock’s win in Georgia, that the astonishingly ill-informed behavior at board meetings here and in the county contributed to the overwhelming rightist loss in city School Board elections. Their complaints were almost content-fee. They could just as easily have read their favorite poems and that would have had no less to do with actual educational policy. Some came close to that, regaling the board with song and scripture. The same First Amendment that gives them the right to waste an hour of public time says that religion should play no part in government decisions. Admittedly it is silent on the topic of song.
They don’t want to challenge books. They simply want the ones they don’t like removed from the library on their say-so. They don’t want to protect the tiny and vulnerable population of LGBTQ children, but instead accuse educators of grooming students to the lifestyle they’ve chosen. They don’t care if they win elections. They want policies determined not by elections but by the force of their own righteousness.
It wasn’t all rightists. More rational speakers spoke for the side that won the election. So will the School Board.
I guess “rightest” is becoming an abbreviation for f’ing selfish fool. If it was not for the time suckage it would be amusing