Sleepwalking

How important is paying attention? Here's an object lesson that we need to relearn occasionally.

I’m not generally a catastrophist. Things are rarely as bad as some would have us believe, and conversely, things are rarely as rosy as others like to tell us. I’m not Rebecca of Sunny Brook Farm, but neither am I the eternal pessimist. Even though my politics lean left, I try to keep my perspective in the middle, and let the facts in evidence push me in one direction or the other, so when I say I’m alarmed, it’s an unusual day.

That day arrived last week in the form of a Vanity Fair exposé. Consider it a wake up call.  It dealt with tiny Priest River, Idaho, where no one gave much thought to the make-up of the school board, except to say, “Thank goodness I don’t have to sit in those boring meetings.” The complacent townsfolk sleepwalked through a school board election and came to rue the results. A handful of activists dedicated to the destruction of public education won a majority, and promptly cut off funding for facilities, staff and teachers, while reducing classes to a four day week.

The new board rolled out all the arch-conservative anti-ed tropes about transgenderism, boys in girls’ sports (and bathrooms), and my personal favorite, the wholly untrue too-silly-for-words, litterboxes in bathrooms for students who identify as cats. Turns out it’s plenty easy to fool people who aren’t paying attention. (“Well, it sounded true.”)

Now the townsfolks are fighting to take their board back, and it’s an uphill climb. It’s harder to undo than it is to do, just as it’s easier to fool people than it is to convince them that they’ve been fooled (thanks, Mark Twain).

It's a timely reminder that our obligation as citizens extends to being part of an informed electorate.

It’s particularly interesting to see how the Former Guy is trying to spin the jury verdict in the E. Jean Carroll civil lawsuit. It’s remarkable, if not surprising, that even after a total award of $83M, he continues to defame her. He’s been so used to being unconstrained by the consequences of his actions, that he seems to think he’s still getting away with it.

If you were not paying attention, you might believe him when he says that this is “the Biden Justice Department” unfairly going after him while he’s campaigning to be president. The truth of course is that Miss Carroll filed suit as soon as the state of New York extended the statute of limitations on sexual assault. That was while Donald Trump was president, and well before Joe Biden announced his candidacy. But more to the point, this is a civil lawsuit, not a case being brought by any governmental authority. It’s just one individual suing another.

In addition to the whopping judgement in the sexual assault case, his company is defending itself against allegations of financial fraud in New York state that could cost him another $460M, and potentially his business license. Eighty million here, one hundred and forty million there, and pretty soon, you’re talking about real money.

And Trump isn’t the only one hoping we’re sleepwalking. The despicable Alex Jones, the infamous proprietor of Info Wars, continued to assail the parents of the first grade victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, taking none of it seriously including since a jury awarded the parents nearly a billion dollars.

The Fox News Channel thought it could get away with its election lies until it ran out of options and paid the plaintiff, Dominion Voting Systems, $787M, rather than going to trial and having to own up to its dirty dealings under oath in a trial it was certain to lose anyway.

Then there is America’s Leaker, Rudy Giuliani. He of the dripping hair dye must pay $148M to the mother/daughter election workers in Georgia that he so frivolously defamed.

To a one, they all thought themselves above the law, let alone decency, and in the end, gravity prevailed (sooner or later, it always does, even though like evolution, it’s just a theory).

There’s no mystery as to why Trump’s primary challengers thought they could defeat him without calling him out; they were just auditioning to be his VP pick. Only Chris Christie had the nerve to start there. Thank goodness Nikki Haley seems to be ending up there, perhaps too late, but at least she’s trying to wake us up.

It was, after all, Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Richard Price, who told us that for democracy to survive, it depends on an “informed citizenry.” He went on to say that education "is the great parent of science & of virtue: and that a nation will be great in both,” so long as its constituents remain enlightened of the facts.

©2024 Jon Sinton