So a school referendum failed on Tuesday night in my little outskirts-of-the-Twin-Cities town (Tri-City United – Lonsdale, Montgomery, LeCenter).
Look, I can respect arguments against spending when it’s something optional, such as a community pool or a statue in the town square we could realistically live without. But deliberately underfunding a growing school district while the town itself (if you look at it with your own eyes) is clearly growing? That feels less like fiscal responsibility and more like people no longer taking civic responsibility seriously.
And honestly, this is just another example of MAGA-style politics seeping into local government, and it didn’t happen overnight. We’ve been watching this machine slowly build itself for years. A few years ago, I seriously considered running for school board myself because I was worried a Moms for Liberty activist might win. She narrowly lost to a candidate who had previously made local news for allegedly defrauding an elderly family member through credit card identity theft. So congratulations, I guess, to the town for choosing the slightly lesser of two evils. But that razor-thin margin didn’t exactly restore my faith that common sense will prevail next time. If anything, it showed just how organized and entrenched this movement has become, and why I’m genuinely concerned about where things are headed.
For years now, national grievance politics and online outrage culture have been poisoning local and municipal discussions. Coordinated social media ecosystems, partisan influencers, outrage-driven algorithms, foreign bots, and activist groups have trained people to distrust nearly every public institution, especially schools.
During this referendum campaign, I spent time reality-checking some of the loudest voices in our town’s facebook community “Happenings” group. What stood out most wasn’t the thoughtless disagreements. It was how few reasonable, informed people were even willing to engage publicly anymore. The loudest opposition often came with very little factual grounding, but endless certainty and outrage.
The school district laid out detailed explanations:
“We need funding for maintenance, capacity, safety improvements, HVAC upgrades, staffing, and future enrollment growth.”
And yet the response from many opponents followed a now-familiar script:
- Institutions are corrupt by default.
- Experts are lying.
- Public servants are self-interested.
- Any public investment is automatically a scam.
- Schools are secretly pushing ideological agendas.
None of this emerged organically. It’s been cultivated for years through an endless cycle of online outrage and culture war radicalization.
The pattern is almost always the same:
- Find an isolated incident, misunderstanding, rumor, or edge case.
- Amplify it through partisan media, Facebook groups, TikTok clips, YouTube outrage channels, and talk radio.
- Present it as widespread and existential.
- Use the outrage to emotionally mobilize voters at the local level.
Groups like Moms for Liberty have become especially effective at channeling these national culture wars directly into school boards, city councils, and local community groups.
And suddenly, local conversations stop being about things like:
- budgets
- staffing
- curriculum quality
- transportation
- special education
- maintenance
- enrollment growth
- long-term planning
…and instead revolve around viral internet mythology:
“Schools are putting litter boxes in bathrooms for students who identify as cats.”
“Teachers are secretly transitioning children.”
“Schools are full of groomers.”
“Critical Race Theory is everywhere in elementary schools.”
“Pronouns are the biggest crisis facing education.”
“Climate education is indoctrination.”
“Books mentioning LGBTQ people are pornography.”
“Public schools are run by Marxists.”
“Every diversity initiative is anti-white.”
“Furries are taking over schools.”
“The Boy Scouts has abandoned its values for DEI and wokeness” Can confirm first hand this one’s a flat out lie.
Most of these narratives either stem from isolated incidents distorted beyond recognition or are outright false. But once outrage becomes the point, facts stop mattering very much.
The result is exhausting and damaging. All of this has led to situations like mine yesterday where people refused to fund a school not because of the facts or the greater good, but because of how they’ve been trained to be toxically cynical toward things as innocent as small school districts.
School board meetings become chaotic culture war battlegrounds. Qualified community members stop volunteering, resign, or lose elections to people running almost entirely on anger and suspicion. Public trust erodes. Enrollment declines as more families pull kids out of schools and homeschool over exaggerated fears. Communities become more divided and less capable of solving actual problems.
And the irony is that many of the same people demanding stronger communities, better families, and more local control are actively undermining one of the most important institutions holding communities together: public education.
Trump-style politics absolutely succeeded at energizing people who were previously disengaged from politics. In theory, increased civic participation should be a good thing.
But too often, that engagement is only being fueled by misinformation, outrage algorithms, and manufactured distrust. People arrive at local political battles already convinced that schools, teachers, librarians, public officials, and experts are enemies.
And when a community can no longer agree on basic reality, even fixing a school HVAC system somehow turns into a culture war.
We’re in a really bad spot right now with this. I hope reasonable people start fighting more. Or, some folks would return to reality sometime soon or get bored with all this and go back to watching pro wrestling for their culture and entertainment. Because this isn’t a game and I’m getting really sick of so many acting like it is (the MAGA uncles) or getting so bent out of shape and delusional about literal fake news that they won’t listen to or process any truth or reason (the MAGA Karens).
Yeah, maybe I’m fueling the flames with name-calling, but maybe that’s the only goddamn language they understand.