The alleged book ban in Alberta schools is making news across the country. In response to books with graphic pornographic depictions of men performing oral sex upon each other on the shelves of children’s libraries, the provincial government set some guidelines. In a performative temper tantrum, the Edmonton Public School board is proposing to pull over 200 books including 1984 and The Great Gatsby. Legacy media outlets are gleefully and dutifully reporting that the Smith government is banning books, and leftists are making the most of it. Now the Smith government has pulled the ministerial order to create something more specific for the school board to abide by.It's a political stunt by extreme leftists who are literally willing to keep pornography on the bookshelves of children if it scores points against the UCP government they revile. This faux-book ban gives fodder to legacy media outlets and Eastern politicians who try to portray Alberta as some backwater, book-banning, neo-fascist state.The school board members are playing dumb. They are claiming it is impossible to distinguish if a picture of men with genitals in their mouths is more or less appropriate to be presented to children than The Handmaid’s Tale. They are claiming that filtering which books children are exposed to in the libraries would be a form of discrimination against the LGBTQ community too of course. What isn’t these days? Don’t worry. There was heterosexual porn to be found on the shelves too.Premier Smith masterfully held a press conference where a monitor showed examples of the porn that have been gracing the shelves of Alberta schools while offering to hold the hands of school board members to sort through them if need be. Legacy media outlets didn’t show the images from the monitors however, because they are too graphic to be shown on television. The conference can be viewed in full on social media channels, and independent media outlets provided proper coverage, of course. CTV and CBC preferred to maintain the fake narrative of a heinous book ban happening..Think about it. The images were too pornographic to be shown on television, yet people saying they shouldn’t be in children’s libraries are accused book-banning.Rest assured, it’s no coincidence that this battle is shaping up while Alberta’s teacher’s union threatens one of its usual strikes. The narrative is consistent in that the union always claims their grievance is about classroom sizes but demands more pay for fewer teachers as a solution. The more they can villainize the provincial government while they gouge for more pay the better and the Edmonton School Board is more than happy to facilitate the shakedown.Lost in all of this is the question of how the porn got on the shelves of children’s libraries in the first place. Perhaps once the trash is removed from the libraries, people can take a breath and then investigate who was behind curating the material and making sure they lose all access to children and the material presented to them. I can understand the battle between left and right in politics in general. But what is with the obsession with exposing children to explicit sexual content? It’s distressing, dangerous, and unacceptable.In the end though, the people ultimately responsible are the voters who abdicated their democratic duty to pay attention and participate in municipal elections..The lunatics on Edmonton’s Public School board were put there in a municipal election. Many people tend to forget those positions are elected due to few paying any attention to it. Is it any wonder that extreme flakes use that opportunity to get into these positions of responsibility?Turnouts in municipal elections are embarrassingly low in general and they are even worse when it comes to school board trustees. People running for those positions are often acclaimed as nobody wants to bother with what appears to be a dry, low-paying semi-bureaucratic role. That role involves guiding and influencing our children. Which is why it is considered important enough to make the people in those roles face the electorate.This is a civic election year in Alberta.Hopefully, this perverse debacle has inspired voters to take the unusual step of scrutinizing who is on their local school boards and making a choice to vote for sane members for a change. The price for apathy is pretty evident when we see an absurd, pitched battle between a school board and the government over the alleged right to present pornography to children. These nuts must be fired and only voters can do it..The Smith government has made it clear they will intervene if need be. I am happy they are willing to protect our children but am concerned. I don’t want a distant provincial government micromanaging what happens in schools. The point of school boards is to have local accountability and representation in the education system. This will be lost if the provincial government takes over though I understand why it may have to. Do your duty this fall!Get out and vote!Fire the extremists who have seeped in and infiltrated school boards and municipal politics in general. It has been said in a democracy you get the government you deserve. That may be true in general, but in this case our children are getting it and they deserve better.
