In this episode of “When Democrats Eat Their Own”…

Blasting Democrats over any number of issues, including misrepresentation, radical leftism, bald-faced lying, and blatant hypocrisy, the keystone genetic trait of Democrats everywhere, provides one of life’s most satisfying and rewarding experiences. OK, perhaps a bit hyperbolic, but you get the point.

But when Democrats blast Democrats, that’s really good stuff, right there. Such was the case on Friday when a “loyal, left-leaning Democrat” blistered her party over its unconscionable — and continuing, in communities across America — COVID-related school lockdowns.

Democrat author Angie Schmitt, in an op-ed for the left-leaning The Atlantic on Friday titled Why I Soured on the Democrats,” observed: “Covid school policies set me adrift from my tribe.” Ooh, let’s read on.

"Many liberals and institutional leaders thought that no one could fault them for being too cautious, especially when it came to children. But I can, and I do," writes Angie Schmitt. https://t.co/E6gqIJgf62

— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) January 7, 2022

Schmitt began:

Until recently, I was a loyal, left-leaning Democrat, and I had been my entire adult life. I was the kind of partisan who registered voters before midterm elections and went to protests.

I hated Donald Trump so much that I struggled to be civil to relatives on the other side of the aisle.

But because of what my family has gone through during the pandemic, I can’t muster the same enthusiasm. I feel adrift from my tribe and, to a certain degree, disgusted with both parties.

Profound? No. Surprising in her honesty? To say the least.

“I can’t imagine that I would have arrived here,” Schmitt observed, “not [as] a Republican, but questioning my place in the Democratic Party.”

Late that summer, the Cleveland school system announced that it would not open for in-person learning the first 9 weeks of the semester.

I was distraught. My family relies on my income, and I knew that I would not be able to work full-time with my then-5-year-old son and then-3-year-old daughter at home.

Still, I was accepting of short-term school closures. My faith in the system deteriorated only as the weeks and months of remote learning dragged on long past the initial timeline, and my son began refusing to log on for lessons.

Schmitt not only understood her young son’s aversion to online learning; she said: “I couldn’t blame him.”

Despite his wonderful teacher’s best efforts, online kindergarten is about as ridiculous as it sounds, in my experience.

I remember logging on to a “gym” class where my son was the only student present. The teacher, I could tell, felt embarrassed. We both knew how absurd the situation was.

So, what happened? Where were the other kindergarteners? They “vanished,” wrote Schmitt.

Children who had been present every day the year before in preschool, whose parents I had seen drop them off every morning, just vanished.

The daily gantlet of passwords and programs was a challenge for even me and my husband, both professionals who work on computers all day.

Schmitt hoped someone in “our all-Democratic political leadership” would take a stand against the madness on behalf of Cleveland’s 37,000 public-school children and “seem to care about what was happening.”

“Weren’t Democrats supposed to stick up for low-income kids?”, she asked? Yeah, no; Cleveland promptly closed school playgrounds for an entire year.

We are in a fundamentally different situation than we were in March 2020, when the coronavirus was sweeping around the world, @FareedZakaria writes.

"We do not need lockdowns, school closures or onerous travel restrictions." https://t.co/AyPIJZ9eb2

— Washington Post Opinions (@PostOpinions) January 10, 2022

The late Rush Limbaugh was fond of saying he knew Democrats better than they know themselves. So do I. And watching a disgruntled Democrat blister “the home team” about a significant part position is a sight to behold, indeed.

After Cleveland schools failed to fully open for months, Schmidt enrolled her son in a charter school that was open for full-time in-person instruction, explaining her trust with public schools was “broken.” “Compounding my fury was a complete lack of sympathy or outright hostility from my own ‘team,'” she wrote, continuing:

Throughout the pandemic, Democrats have been eager to style themselves as the ones that “take the virus seriously,” which is shorthand, at least in the bluest states and cities, for endorsing the most extreme interventions.

[Not quite. It’s actually shorthand for “exploit the ever-loving hell out of, solely for poltical expediency, not to mention a naked power-grab.”)

By questioning the wisdom of school closures—and taking our child out of public school—I found myself going against the party line. And when I tried to speak out on social media, I was shouted down and abused, accused of being a Trumper who didn’t care if teachers died.

On Twitter, mothers who had been enlisted as unpaid essential workers were mocked, often in highly misogynistic terms. I saw multiple versions of “they’re just mad they’re missing yoga and brunch.”

Again, Schmitt identified a quintessential tenet of liberals across the fruited plain: resentment of those who refuse to live on the liberal plantation but should, in their eyes, principally conservative Blacks, women, members of the LGBTQ community, and wayward Democrats themselves.

These “traitors” are to be castigated, ridiculed, dismissed, and outright destroyed if necessary. Any form of disloyalty to “The Party” is not to be tolerated. Remind you of various other “parties” throughout history? Me, too.

Speaking of “science,” as reported in July by McKinsey & Co. in an article titled COVID-19 and education: The lingering effects of unfinished learning, COVID school lockdown during the 2020-2021 school year had a significant impact on all age groups. Emphasis, mine::

Our analysis of COVID lockdowns shows that the impact of the pandemic on K–12 student learning was significant, leaving students on average five months behind in mathematics and four months behind in reading by the end of the school year.

The pandemic widened preexisting opportunity and achievement gaps, hitting historically disadvantaged students hardest. In math, students in majority Black schools ended the year with six months of unfinished learning, students in low-income schools with seven.

High schoolers have become more likely to drop out of school, and high school seniors, especially those from low-income families, are less likely to go on to postsecondary education.

And the crisis had an impact on not just academics but also the broader health and well-being of students, with more than 35 percent of parents very or extremely concerned about their children’s mental health.

McKinsey & Co. also determined that continued fallout from the pandemic “threatens to depress this generation’s prospects and constrict their opportunities far into adulthood,” including “undermining their chances of attending college and ultimately finding a fulfilling job that enables them to support a family.”

Meanwhile, Angie Schmitt, who became completely disillusioned with her “home team” and its disregard for the impact of school lockdowns on children, in the end — like all good Democrats — remains steadfast in her support of the Democrat agenda.

None of this has shaken my support for the Democratic agenda, which I still endorse wholesale. What I’ve lost is my trust that the party is truly motivated to act in the interests of those they claim to serve.

Yeah, I got nothin’. That is the best example of illogical “logic” I’ve seen in quite a while.

Then again, Democrats gonna Democrat.

RedState related articles:

Schools Should Be Open and School Choice Should Be Universal

AOC Comes Down With COVID After Partying in Florida

Eric Clapton’s “Heart of a Child” Powerfully Addresses COVID Lockdown-Fueled Depression

What Schools Are Doing to Kids in Response to COVID-19 Is Child Abuse