For Jeff Sessions

To Attorney General Sessions:

Your recent appearance before the Turning Points USA convention created some controversy about whether you joined in the crowd’s “lock her up” chant.  

That question interests me less than what you had to say in your speech. In news stories about the event you are quoted as saying, “Rather than molding a generation of mature and well-informed adults, some schools are doing everything they can to create a generation of sanctimonious, sensitive, supercilious snowflakes.”  I suspect that this comment is meant as a shot at the current generation of progressive teenage activists who have been so much in the public eye.

I've paid a lot of attention to these kids, in part because of my work: I’ve been a high school teacher for close to 30 years, in both public and private schools. And I know some people fret that schools are encouraging students to dwell excessively on minor grievances.

That is not what I see happening.

I see a generation of high school students who will no longer accept the way the government’s obeisance to a fanatical gun lobby has created a palpable threat to their safety at school.   I see a generation of teenagers who will no longer accept second-class status for students of color and LGBTQ students.   I see a generation of teenagers who will not accept their government’s open hostility to commonsense environmental measures. Contrary to your characterization of them, these young people are courageous in ways that call to mind that best of our forebears. 

If there are any teenage snowflakes on the current scene, it is the ones who need a pep rally for their retrograde politics.  Their preoccupation with the legal status of a woman who is out of public life while each week exposes new legal problems for the administration that is actually in power exemplifies the kind of “can’t handle the truth” psychological fragility that makes a true snowflake.

Let me add that if you are really interested in molding a generation of mature and well-informed adults, you will immediately stop working for a man whose public behavior and speech epitomize the very opposite of those qualities.

Sincerely,

Jim Veal