Though it is not to be found the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the debilitating condition of "Trump Derangement Syndrome" (TDS) has gripped countless Hillary voters, particularly among the celebrity class, intelligentsia, and bourgeois left, causing them to experience psychological terror, panic, and grief in the wake of the election.  The symptoms of TDS have manifested themselves across the continent in riots, marches, hysterical tweets, internet rants, Hollywood celebrity grandstanding, physical attacks on Trump supporters, direct confrontation of Trump family members, and what the honorary Women's Studies Ph.D.s on The View have called "electile dysfunction."

One would have hoped that sufferers of TDS would not allow their disorder to spill over onto innocent children, but as I discovered in a letter from the chief executive of my daughter's school board, TDS has come to a school near you.

A politely worded correspondence arrived at my home during the school holiday break, in which one of my local education officials wanted to ensure me that I as a parent can be confident that my child's school will be on the cutting edge of the immigration debate, which was a hot topic during the 2016 presidential race.  In the event that I might be a monolingual hispanohablante, this one-page treatise was provided in English and en español, thus the symptoms of TDS graced mi casa in two languages.  After wishing me a "joyous winter holiday" – thereby checking off the multiculturally appropriate greeting box on the politically correct Newspeak checklist – the gentleman writing to me proffered the following diversity committee-approved assurance:

I know that for many of you the coming year is causing fear and uncertainty due to the   recent presidential election.  Many of you have asked what [our schools] will do to support our students and families in the face of this new reality.  In this regard, I want to reiterate [our schools'] historic commitment to providing a high-quality education to every student who walks into our schools, regardless of immigration status.  We pride ourselves on operating schools that offer safe learning environments where every student and family is welcome and respected.

We have not and will not ask for your family's immigration status, nor will we share your personal information with others.  If you are asked to share your personal information or sign any petitions, please use caution and be sure you know to whom you are speaking and for what purposes your personal information will be used.

In the months ahead, we will provide all our students, families and staff with access to information, resources and support services related to immigration and Deferred Action of Childhood Arrivals (DACA).  If you have suggestions or have resources to share with others, please talk to your principal or parent engagement specialist.   

How exciting it was for me to be made aware that the public school bureaucracy was hard at work – not at devising better education for my offspring, mind you, but in keeping vigilant that my fellow taxpayers and I would continue to have our confiscated resources spent to ensure that our school system is a safe haven for illegal immigrants!

Mr. Administrator could have taken this opportunity to celebrate that the United States continued its tradition of free elections.  He could have mentioned that in spite of the unrest across the country, the Electoral College completed its constitutional assignment of electing Donald Trump as the 45th president without incident.  He could have noted that, while President Obama and his team are conducting themselves petulantly and disruptively during the interregnum period, America is enjoying a relatively quiet process leading toward the peaceful transfer of power from one presiding officer to another.  Unfortunately, the writer chose to expose me and the other parents in my cohort to his TDS, manifested in his demagoguery regarding the immigration issue as he played up the alleged "fear" caused by The Donald.  

In addition to confirming the existence of TDS as a genuine mental health concern, this letter is prima facie evidence of the depth of corruption, lawlessness, and anti-Americanism in our nation's public sector.  From the local to state to federal levels, we can count on armies of bureaucrats fighting a battle against the very people they are paid to serve – that is, the tax-paying citizens.

TDS is a disease caused in part by the left's deconstruction of America, a process that has been a long time in the making.  The ideas in the letter from which I quoted above have roots far deeper than in the open-borders culture of the Obama administration.

To arrive at the point when a school administrator, triggered by TDS, feels compelled to alert the parents in his jurisdiction that he will not participate in efforts suggested by the incoming president to actually follow immigration law, we need to go back at least to 1982, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Plyler v. Doe case, which can be summarized as mandating that:

... undocumented children and young adults have the same right to attend public primary and secondary schools as do U.S. citizens and permanent residents. Like other children, undocumented students are obliged under state law to attend school until they reach a mandated age.

Over thirty years of public policy supporting the use of taxpayer-funded education for illegal aliens hastened the onset of the letter-writer's TDS.  He indicted himself as not caring about federal immigration law, while at the same time he adopted an affinity for the constitutionally questionable DACA program, which President Obama implemented by fiat and which was put on hold by a federal court in 2015.  This public official, paid by citizens the fruit of whose labor is legally stolen by city, county, state, and federal taxing authorities, goes on record as a willing proponent of a policy under legal scrutiny by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.  He is in favor of continued public spending on services to people who broke immigration law.  By offering this information in Spanish, he made it all the easier for these same individuals to be armed with information that will keep them out of the way of accountability to law enforcement.  Essentially, my child's school is a sanctuary campus.     

Q: Under what sane system of governance does a local public service department follow a policy to provide supports at taxpayer expense to people not legally entitled to be in the country in the first place? 

A: Only under one afflicted with a mental health condition associated with liberal progressivism.

This case demonstrates that the plague of TDS has infected the public school system and has scuttled the idea that one can send his children to public school for educational purposes.    

John Steinreich has an M.A. in Church History from Colorado Theological Seminary and is the author of two Christian-themed nonfiction books, The Words of God? and A Great Cloud of Witnesses.  His works are available on Lulu Press and on Kindle.