Self-Government is not a Video Game - column

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Self-Government is not a Video Game

In a poorly-written article featuring cluttered sentence structure, botched parallelisms, unnecessary and inappropriately-placed adverbs, and inadequately sourced quotations, a scrivener alleges that a physical education teacher in Florida was punished for refusing to watch a girl change clothes in the boys’ locker room.

The article appears in numerous InterGossip outlets but given that there appears to be only one source recycled over and over and that the InterGossip is unreliable we must first consider the possibility that the article might not be true, or if true that the narrative is not accurate – remember the story about the purportedly homeless man who was said to have given a stalled driver his last twenty dollars so that she could drive safely home. Yes, cue the tears and the $400,000 dollars given through a Go Loot Me site on the InterGossip. In the end, the narrative was demonstrated to be a money-grubbing hoax and the perps’ next teary-eyed story will be to a judge.

But let us say, for the sake of an argument, that the narrative, one of those tiresome LGQBT-and-a-buzzard-in-a-peach-tree things, is in substance correct. If – IF - a school board in Florida hired an LTBGQ-something liaison (whatever that is), and if – IF – the school board gave the liaison-person authority over restrooms, locker rooms, and the duties of teachers, then who should the people be mad at?

Yes, I know that should read “with whom should the people be angry,” but let it stand.

If – IF – these inappropriate things happened, the people of that school can only be mad at / angry with themselves, for the people are the school.

Governance of a public school district is both democratic-with-a-small-d and republican-with-a-small-r – that is, through open elections (that’s the democratic-with-a-small-d part) the people wisely and prayerfully choose the trustees of their local school board. The elected school board then controls (that’s the republican-with-a-small-r-part) the school district’s properties, sets policies, and hires and fires all of the people’s servants, from the superintendent to the nice folks who tidy up late into the night. Depending on state and local laws, the school board also establishes the assessment and collection of taxes, lots of taxes, on private property.

And yet Americans tend not to bother with the most important elections of all, those for their local school board.

Some of those who won’t vote for their trustees will, if the gossip is salacious enough, herd up and appear at a school board meeting with signs and petitions and protestations of outrage at the purported enormities of a board they didn’t bother to elect.

Yelling at the school board is not democracy; voting is. Twootering on the InterGossip is not democracy; voting is.

We don’t know what happened at a school in Florida, but we can know what decisions our own trustees make by showing up at our school board meetings or by reading about them in the local newspaper.

Democracy is not a spectator sport, nor is it a video game; it is the exercise of the rights of a free people by free people voting.

Don’t complain; vote.

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