Hot on the heels of New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ quick default to the routine Democratic Party playbook racism defense comes the utterly predictable response of Board of Supervisors President Shamann Walton to the public voting three uber-woke members of the San Francisco school board out of office this week in the city’s first successful recall election in nearly 40 years. School board president Gabriela López and members Alison Collins and Faauuga Moliga are out after more than 70% of voters rejected each of them.
Like parents in so many other municipalities, parents in San Francisco—yes, even there!—showed that they were mad as hell about school closures and seeing political correctness and leftist indoctrination rule their children’s education, and they weren’t going to take it any more. The real reason, though, according to Walton, was that Donald Trump, racism, and “closet Republicans” with “conservative values” have corrupted the city.
“Trump’s election and bold prejudice brought a lot of that out, even in our Democratic and liberal city,” Walton told the news media. “There are a lot of people who do not want people of color making decisions in leadership, even though the voters said that is what they want.”
Yes, no one can legitimately conclude that the decisions and policies made by elected “people of color” in a particular situation are just wrong because they don’t work. People of color only make the right decisions, sayeth Shamann Walton, a person of color himself. Believing otherwise is proof positive of racism, and besides, Donald Trump.
We’ll see how this strategy—denying basic respect to those with opposing views and instead declaring opponents’ motives to be based on racial hatred rather than legitimate differences of philosophy— works for flailing Democrats in the coming months.
After all, it’s worked so far.
Ethics Alarms 
This is the same bullshit my now thankfully former secretary used to say, “yall can’t stand that a black man beat yo ass. Too bad. He beat yo ass good and proper, and now you gotta listen.”
There is a misconception among school board members, generally, where it is their belief that they have a mandate to hoist their personal politics on the children in their charge. To an extent, it’s not the most outrageous misconception, because they’ve been going at it for a generation, and nothing really happened for them, even as they got more and more blatant and crazy, so what were they supposed to think? It also doesn’t help that they were sent some very strong external stimuli that they were right: Christian parents wanted creationism taught in science class and were rebuked.
But ultimately, it *is* a misconception. Ultimately, they walk a tightrope between their personal convictions and how much the parents were going to tolerate, because at the end of the day, teachers are answerable to school boards, school boards are answerable to parents, and one you poke mama bear, you’re in for a wild ride.
And this is going to be uncomfortable for them. Once you’ve poked mama bear and threatened her cubs, she’s going to flatten you. Now that the parents have wised up to the reality of what their kids are going through, there’s going to be an overcorrection. And they don’t get to complain about it, there was writing on the walls and all kinds of warning signals… Much of this could be avoided. But noooooooooo, they were married to their narrative, Deus Vult, or something. Frankly, they’re still going to feel it in progressive San Francisco, but those people should get down on their knees and thank God that they aren’t in other states.
Papa Worlf doesn’t respond too well to his pups being messed with either.
“Closet Republicans”. That’s an interesting term. In this case, it sounds like an unintended admission that there are a lot of people who hold opposing views, but have been fearful of attacks and bullying if they dared to reveal themselves.
70% of San Francisco voters are closet Republicans, apparently.
No, I wouldn’t buy too much into that rhetoric, it’s a cope against the reality that even in San Fran, progressive politics isn’t nearly as popular as progressives want to think.
This is an obvious example of “Systemic Racism” on the part of the voters. Plus, it clearly presents the “existential threat” that the three might be replaced with more Conservative-minded individuals. So NOW is the time for all good Progressives to unite, to end the “Pariah to School Board Pipeline” of Conservative candidates. They know, after all, that “woke works” (in theory). Therefor they must stop common sense in its tracks, at all costs.
“Closet Republicans” sounds a lot like that “Silent Majority” that roamed the political landscape back in the 70’s.
Maybe other politicians will take notice. The name calling is an indicator that there is no logical, fact-based reason to think that the voters made a mistake in removing them. I am pretty sure that the board of supervisors are subject to the same recall process, and this shows they are aware.
The democrats are the political party who cried racism. The pool of people who care about “racism” as defined by the left has a hole in the bottom. The villagers are ready to let the liars be eaten by wolves.
Like a lot of cries of racism this doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. As of 2019 865,000 people were registered in as living in the San Francisco area. According to 2020 election results 56,000 of them voted Republican. Even though the recall had low turn out, this would have had to have significant democrat support to pass.
I think some in the media have realized this because politico blames it on special interest money.
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/california-playbook/2022/02/17/what-the-sf-school-board-recall-doesnt-mean-00009719
This reminds me of the way in which people are even now referring to Brexit. Having actually seen a documentary explaining the motivations behind it, I can safely say that anyone who thinks xenophobia is the only possible reason for Britain to leave the European Union either hasn’t done their research or subscribes firmly to naïve bureaucratic socialism.
The people who promote conflict, distrust, and the idea that opposing concerns are invalid at best and lies at worst… do they actually believe that themselves? Or are they evil themselves? Is this a “chaos is a ladder for the strong to climb” sort of thing? Would their behavior change if they actually believed it was possible to build a society dominated by ethical principles rather than by corruption? Do they think to themselves, “We can’t make a healthy society, so we might as well take advantage of how unhealthy it is?”
I’m still working on simplifying my content creation method so I can make it easier for people to create and share constructive visions for the future. In the meantime I’m also attending some more Braver Angels events to see how they’re doing it and how I can multiply their successes.
Good, EC. The biggest problem is, I think, that complex balancing cannot be explained in simple terms to those whose critical thinking skills are minimal. Once, those who could be published could be presumed to have the level of education, training and erudition to be up to the task. No longer, as far as I can see, and the shortening of attention spans make it extremely difficult to get a detailed, nuanced analysis heard.
That’s why I’m here: to make nuance easy!
With only four symmetrical groups of four concepts each, we’ve got enough nuance to describe the basics of any public problem, especially ideological conflict, in a way that people can immediately start thinking critically about it.
1. Four fundamental liabilities that can describe any obstacle we face
2. Two tradeoffs for each liability, representing walking headfirst into the liability or making sacrifices to avoid it
3. One constructive virtue per liability; these change the situation over time so that costly tradeoffs become less and less necessary
I’ve got more concepts for brainstorming specific solutions, but this will get us started.
Scarcity is the liability of predictable material limitations. You’re pushing a cart and there’s a hill in your way that will take a certain amount of effort to cross.
Disaster is the liability of unpredictable material interference. You’re pushing a cart and it breaks.
Stagnation is the liability of predictable motivational limitations. You’re pushing a cart and you’ve used this path so many times that you’ve created a rut and it’s hard to change direction.
Conflict is the liability of unpredictable motivational interference. You’re pushing a cart through a narrow covered bridge and there’s someone else pushing their cart the other way. Who will back out and let the other person pass?
All problems can be described by at least one of those concepts. The foundation for describing problems and solutions in broad strokes is incredibly simple. Adding the details is more of an art (or rather, a collection of arts), so the more people we can equip with the foundation to practice those skills, the better.
The best part about starting from basic concepts is that it makes exciting yet appropriate metaphors very easy. All we need to do now is show people how it’s done.
This San Franciscan can say that the result of the recall was pure racism. Our large Asian-American population was outraged when the Board of Education removed the merit-based admissions requirements for our academic high school which has been heavily Asian for years. The voters may be Democrats but they are not willing to buy into the “success is a symptom of white supremacy” philosophy because it threatens their children’s success by removing any merit measurements. Remember that California voted down the last attempt to reinstate affirmative action in 2020 but the electorate still bought a number of Democratic sponsored measures which can only be described as woke and stupid. I have 7 decades on me and have watched this political schizophrenia develop over the last 30 years and I still can’t figure out why they’re not all committed.