It was bound to happen, but somehow we are all surprised anyway. The facts on the ground don’t seem to match what is happening in Austin. I know you’re shocked. The largest school district in the state is about to take on the governor and I’m sitting here with popcorn.

They aren’t the only ones. We recently got the electronic message from our local superintendent. They won’t be one of them, but he did manage to throw some shade on the governor before the message was done. It was clear that they likely would have had a mask mandate had there not been an executive order expressly forbidding it.

It is becoming increasingly more difficult not to call the governor an idiot. It is becoming increasingly more difficult not to call anti-vaxxers idiots. I’m not going to try anymore. Peruse social media and they are the jackasses that keep asking you if you’ve done your research on the vaccine. They are the ones that ask you if you’ve accessed the Google machine when the CDC talks about how we should continue to mask up.

They are the ones that spout off “alternative facts” about the vaccine. They probably came from OANN, Newsmax, or Fox News. Maybe they watched a video from the same guy that claimed his pillows cured cancer. At this point I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired. I’m sick and tired of being tolerant to nonsense.

There are no acceptable alternative views on this. Not every viewpoint is valid. Somewhere along the lines we somehow confused tolerance and open-mindedness with allowing every jackass with a computer to spout off bullshit that doesn’t make any sense. So, I’m sorry the governor is offended. I’m sorry if local government entities need to treat his little executive order like the toilet paper it is. Actually, I’m not sorry.

Figuratively speaking, he needs to sit down and shut up. Anti-vaxxers need to sit down and shut up. Either you can get the shot or you live in isolation. It is high time we started requiring it. Don’t pussyfoot around these people anymore. They are idiots and no amount of tolerance or consideration for their feelings is going to make any bit of difference. They are idiots pure and simple.

I’m sure the governor and lieutenant governor are going to flap their gums about nonsense when HISD votes on their mask mandate. I don’t give a shit. It is time for them to either do their jobs or sit down and shut up. The time for tolerating fools is long gone.

Watching politics evolve (or devolve) over the past few decades has been an out of body experience. Of course, social media has been made a lot of this easier to see than before, but it isn’t the cause of any of this. The seeds have always been there.

Two things on social media brought this to a head this week for me. One was a church sign that said that faith trumps facts. I’m paraphrasing there, but that was the basic message. We’ve been in a fact free environment for quite awhile, but the difference is pretty clear. It’s not that we can’t agree on policy. That’s as old as time itself. It’s not even that we can’t agree on facts. That’s more recent, but it has been going on for awhile. It’s that we can’t even seem to discuss issues that most people would agree are real issues.

The state of Texas has been ground zero for this phenomenon longer than most of the country. We’ve passed looser gun laws seemingly every term. We’ve protected girls in bathrooms. We’ve banned transgender kids from playing sports. We’ve passed stiffer and stiffer abortion laws. It isn’t so much that these policies are wrong (which they are). It’s that they don’t have any impact on 99 percent of the people. Bad policy is bad policy. These policies are a waste of everyone’s time.

It is disheartening to not only lose a debate over a key issue, but to fail to have the issue addressed at all. Three years ago I was diagnosed with diabetes. Since then I’ve spent time with six different doctors to manage the impacts of that disease. I’m not sure if single payer really is better than a private/public mixture of insurance. I certainly think after dealing with my own stuff that I’d prefer single payer. I don’t mind opposition. I mind not even having the conversation.

The same is true for the infrastructure in the state. Is is better to have highways that stretch across 20 lanes or is it better to have a robust public transportation system that includes buses, commuter trains, light rail, and other options? Again, it isn’t that some have differing opinions. It is that we can’t seem to have the conversation.

Another couple of memes brought this home. One had someone question the CDC and asked why we don’t do our own research. Another seemed to indicate that progressives were somehow ushering in the beginning of fascism. We could be having a robust debate about how to properly implement the CDC’s recommendations. Instead, we have Earle doing a Google search and declaring himself smarter than the people that have studied disease and its spread patterns for their entire lives.

I’ve spent time here on education and matters of faith. It’s frustrating for some, but at least there are conversations. We can’t fix the problems of the 21st century without conversations. We can’t debate the environment, education, safety protocols, infrastructure, or anything else if we can’t even acknowledge that they are issues. When did this all happen because I don’t remember it always being this way?

I was perusing social media last night when I stumbled upon a picture in one of the groups I belong to. It was a teacher convocation in Lubbock. They say a picture speaks a 1000 words and this picture was speaking volumes. It showed hundreds of teachers packed into a cafeteria and not a single one was wearing a mask.

Unfortunately, the picture is difficult to find or I would have posted it here. It seems Lubbock ISD took the picture off of their social media when they got blasted in the comments. Convocations are feel good events for central office administrators. Teachers and campus level administrators have never gotten a whole lot out of them even in the before times.

I remember one particular year where the district brought in the woman from “Dangerous Minds” and had her speak. In another year we had an Elvis impersonator (actually that might have been the same year). We’ve also had the superintendent ride into the room in a toy school bus. These events obviously preclude us from doing over a hundred things more worth our time.

I admittedly never took classes in campus leadership for my masters, but counselors did take a few courses in common with future principals. One of those should have been Communication 101. There are things that should be communicated face to face. There are things that should be communicated in an email. Obviously, there are things that don’t need to be communicated at all. In the age of COVID, convocations should be a thing of the past.

It is hard to call wearing masks and practicing social distancing civil disobedience, but in this state I guess it qualifies. Texas seems to be in a race with Florida and Louisiana for brain dead governance. Abbott has to be in the lead here because if he doesn’t get you with COVID then you always have the opportunity of freezing to death. He truly is an equal opportunity jackass.

It is high time we take the talk of freedom seriously. He has banned school districts from mandating masks, but he cannot bar us from wearing them ourselves. He cannot bar us from encouraging others to do the same. In order to do that they would have to outlaw masks outright. I can’t imagine he would want to go that far, but I’d put nothing past him at this point.

Meanwhile, there is no real reason for district wide meetings to take place in person. We managed to get by with Zoom last year. We didn’t even hold in person faculty meetings. Again, it goes back to Communication 101. If the goal is disseminating information then we need to consider how we can do that efficiently and safely. Our governor may be stupid, but there’s no reason why the rest of us need to be.

I know you’ve heard about a runoff in Texas last week over filling a vacant congressional seat. The odds on favorite was the wife of a deceased congressman because she had Trump’s endorsement, his $100,000 contribution, $1.2 million from Club for Growth, and all manner of MAGA mannerless rants.

However, Susan Wright lost.  Polls until election day had her up by as much as ten points.  But, then there was a report from the field …

It was from a campaign worker at a polling place, and they said the kinds of voters who were showing up had “definitely changed.” How do you know that? Langston asked.

“Because they’re all wearing masks,” the worker replied.

Oh y’all, Matt Gaetz.

Gaetz: I got the Florida variant. I got the freedom variant. It affects the brain. pic.twitter.com/U4XGhbVqph

— Acyn (@Acyn) July 31, 2021

Meanwhile, in a little thing we like to call reality —

Florida reported 21,683 new COVID-19 cases — the most in the state in a single day since the pandemic began, per data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Saturday.

Since the pandemic began, y’all.  Click this link to see how they’re already putting up tents.

Ya know, when a guy’s total knowledge of Greek is fraternity names, he might not be the sharpest knife in the drawer.