Last week, in an effort to blame a president for his administration’s failings before a disaster occurred, a Washington Post editorial stated that Donald Trump is “complicit” with a hurricane. Such a statement should set off alarm bells, but not for its pathetically inane level of political bias. That the Post would not only consider such an editorial for publication but actually publish it is a testament to the pitiful state of American education. And it’s time for Trump to demand a Republican-controlled Congress hold nationally televised congressional hearings to deal with what has become an existential threat to our republic.

According to dictionary.com, the definition of complicit is “choosing to be involved in an illegal or questionable act, especially with others.” Thus, the Post’s editorial board is asserting that the president of the United States and a storm are partners in crime. It is impossible to believe the board isn’t fully aware that such an assertion is a complete non-sequitur. Nor can we be expected to believe they seriously think that if Trump only fell into line with the progressive worldview and kept America in the economy-crushing Paris Accord, that Hurricane Florence would either not exist, or would have turned to sea instead of making landfall.

We suppose it’s worth something that at least the editors knew the word “collusion” was spent.

How contemptuous of the American public’s acumen are the Post’s editors? Last February, the same paper revealed that many nations who signed the Paris Accord are failing to meet its goals. Moreover, the U.S. is currently the world leader in cutting carbon dioxide emissions. Thus, one can conclude the most reasonable motive for publishing such unadulterated garbage is the editorial board’s smug conclusion that a mis-educated public will buy it.

Their contempt is hardly unique. “Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits,” writes former Select Committee on Intelligence member Angelo Codevilla. “These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters — speaking the ‘in’ language — serves as a badge of identity.”

And what kind of education do ordinary Americans get? “For our K-12 school system, an honorary membership in the Third World,” writes columnist F.H. Buckley.

This divide produces immense polarization between a ruling class that believes it is entitled to rule — irrespective of elections — and an American public they believe is “retrograde, racist, and dysfunctional unless properly constrained,” as Codevilla puts it.

Codevilla wrote that piece in 2010. Last week, video of a post-election meeting of Google leadership and employees revealed the utter contempt these self-appointed Masters of the Universe have for anyone who runs afoul of the progressive social canon. Moreover, company co-founder Sergey Brin and CEO Sundar Pichai refer to project “Jigsaw,” which was an effort to use their search engine — the one with a 90.88% worldwide market share — to redirect “extremists” to content tailored to change their opinions.

Extremists according to whom?

Google’s arrogance is matched by Twitter. The social media service that both exploits and epitomizes America’s increasing infatuation with semi-literate communication has determined the highly accurate term “illegal alien” — used in federal law and at the Supreme Court — violates its “Hateful Content” policy.

Unfortunately, both companies are plowing fertile soil, courtesy of a unionized educational cartel that is a de facto arm of the Democrat Party. This contemptible decades-long alliance has turned America’s classrooms into dumbed-down, progressive indoctrination factories.

It’s time for a national accounting. For example, it would be highly illuminating to put officials at John F. Kennedy High School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on national TV and ask why they are teaching students a gender-bending, anti-white worldview, courtesy of a “Diversity Toolkit” that contains a confidentiality clause that keeps inquiring parents at bay. Or maybe a Vernon, New Jersey, middle school teacher could explain why she skipped commemorating Sept. 11 to teach a fictionalized account of a Muslim boy bullied because his name was Osama. Maybe officials in numerous cities and states who boast of increasing graduation rates could explain why a whopping 40-60% of high school “graduates” need remediation classes in English or math — or both — before entering college. Or why only 36% percent of eighth-graders are proficient in reading, and only 34% are proficient in math.

How is failing to teach more than six in 10 children basic skills — year after year — even remotely acceptable?

Because it aligns with the American Left’s long-term strategy, which is now bearing fruit: When one turns out a sufficient number of semi-literate, semi-numerate, and ultimately government-dependent students — the majority of whom are contemptuous of a nation they know next to nothing about in terms of civics, history or the Constitution — an increasing infatuation with socialism, and countless other permutations of a “by any means necessary” agenda, including the effort to unseat a duly elected president, become eminently reasonable.

The deleterious effect on the nation has never been clearer. The orchestrated ignorance is profound, enduring — and multi-generational.

Thus in Hollywood, a community that once turned out thoughtful, well-constructed, clever, literate and oftentimes pro-American entertainment now floods the nation with a degenerative sludge-fest of anti-intellectual detritus, often accompanied by moronic moralizing.

Our universities have become de facto kindergartens, where social justice warriors make the now seamless transition from their helicopter parents (educated by the same system) and “everyone gets a trophy” lifestyles to campuses replete with safe spaces, trigger warnings, and utter contempt for the First and Second Amendments, all enabled by cowardly or complicit administrators.

Corporations have abandoned sensible business practices for leftist-oriented virtue-signaling policies that alienate customers. Moreover they embrace monocultural hiring and firing practices that amount to nothing more than political blacklisting.

And as for what Codevilla called our uniform ruling class, a public-be-damned lack of statesmanship, and a boundless level of self-interest are its two most “uniform” characteristics.

Nonetheless, nationally televised congressional hearings are the best vehicle for staging the battle to save the nation. It is one of the few venues where the filter of an equally corrupt mainstream media is least likely to be imposed — and where the rogue’s galley of scam artists, activists, and propagandists purporting to be educators can and must be taken to task in no uncertain terms.

The public must be made to understand that every serious problem with which this nation is afflicted has education as its common denominator, and that “sunlight” — as in the white-hot lights of national TV exposure — is the best disinfectant.