DRAMATIC PROOF FOR THE INANITY OF SANITY - COLLEGIATE DIVISION

There's nothing like having a look at another's pissing match to appreciate the inanity of sanity.

First, let me preface this by disclosing that I have NO connection to my case-in-point. It simply popped out at me from the front page of the Austin American Statesman this morning:

Sorting this out is besides my point. For the morbidly curious, AAS staff reporter Benjamin Wermund does an admirable job mucking through the miasma in detail, intimating many fetid tidbits untold. In brief, it is what I term a "stinkus" - a stink-circus or, if you prefer, a malodorous parade accented with unsavory goobers. 

I will, however, sketch this in broad strokes.

The Khabele School had a pretty good thing going.  It was a good school with a whole lot of good teachers, good parents, good students, good will plus money enough to go around. Add in celebrity appeal, and you have a very happening little school!

Then, as happens time-and-again, there was a budget shortfall. This raised pressure and issues.

From there on out, here's the generic pattern that such conflicts typically follow:

There was a disagreement. The disagreement was not agreeably resolved immediately. It festered. The disagreement expanded as people peripheral to the initial disputants were drawn in. All parties agreed that this was an important dispute - important enough not to let go of.  Lines were drawn, then crossed. Escalation ensued with appeals to moral and legal reasoning. Accusations and aspersions began to fly. Opponents had apparently violated assorted sundry moral and legal codes. Regardless of how easily it may have been to resolve at some early juncture, this became intractable. In the end, someone had to win and someone had to lose. 

The only specific I'd like to point out here is the appeal to social media. Check the "Transparency for Khabele" Facebook page. Imagine the effort it took to draw together this detailed chronology and "documented evidence." 

This is HEAVY. I can feel the unhappiness, leavened with a heartfelt desire to confront injustice, driving this. 

Taking a great, big step back - which is only possible for disinterested observers such as myself - it seems that having this end up on the front page of the hometown newspaper is, er, somewhat less-than-desirable.  It would seem that almost ANY outcome that DID NOT end up there would be preferable.  Is that reasonable to say?

Now assuming that we're all reasonable....

The ONLY reasonable explanation for this outcome is the INANITY OF SANITY. 

Sanity is banal, boring. We like to get worked up about things, then they work us. We go insane, and feel the better for it even if it is for the worse. That's why crazy things like war and lesser conflicts are "a force that gives us meaning" as Chris Hedges so astutely observed. 

Crazy as it is, this just makes sense to us. 

###