The Worst Government Possible, on Purpose
I worry less about Kim Jong-Un than I do Betsy DeVos. The North Korean dictator, for one, doesn't have dominion over the educational futures of nearly 51 million elementary and secondary students and countless more in college. Barring a nuclear attack, of course, the wealthy charter-school champion is poised to play a much larger role than Kim will in determining the future of United States. The sophomoric invective he directs at us pales in comparison to the utter disrespect that President Trump demonstrated by nominating her to lead the Department of Education in the first place. To build a United States government of the worst people, one must not merely be amateurish. It requires a special hatred for America to form a kakistocracy.
DeVos earned every bit of the hell she caught for botching her 60 Minutes profile last Sunday night. Even aside from her inarticulate espousal of insane Trump proposals like arming schoolteachers, DeVos flaunted the kind of casual incoherence that was funnier ten years ago when Sarah Palin ruined herself with that Katie Couric interview. It was difficult to laugh as CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl flummoxed DeVos, a dogged advocate of "school choice," with rather basic questions about her alleged areas of expertise. It was difficult to muster even the kind of nervous snicker that you might let squeak out when a colleague or classmate embarrasses themselves by being unprepared for a presentation. The Secretary of Education not only failed the test; she clearly hadn't cared enough to study.
Regarding public education, she told Stahl, "We have invested billions and billions and billions of dollars from the federal level, and we have seen zero results." Stahl immediately noted that test scores have improved over the last 25 years and that DeVos was quite literally avoiding reality to adhere to her charter-school absolutism. She then tried to say that her priority was "investing in students, not in school buildings, not in institutions, not in systems," surely news to the Baltimore students who continue to freeze in their dilapidated classrooms due to a lack of heat. DeVos has been in office for 13 months now, and she exhibited a rather cursory relationship with information that she should have mastered by now.
Those who have yet to hear (or sound) the deafening alarms about this administration use words like "polarizing" rather than "dangerous" to describe Trump officials like DeVos, still nurturing notions that this president and his Cabinet can actually operate the franchise they've been trusted with. The reality is that the United States is now learning to live without a functional president or government. They are out of ideas, save those that feed the cultural insecurities of their base. "Infrastructure Week" has become a punchline. Puerto Rico has been abandoned, as has Flint. What makes all this worse is that this was the plan, born from Trump's lack of knowledge, varied bigotries, and intellectual incuriosity. We Americans are on our own, and what we saw Sunday night from DeVos was only a reminder.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/jamil-smith-betsy-devos-trump-worst-government-possible-on-purpose-w517857?utm_source=rsnewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=daily&utm_campaign=031418_11
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