For those with moderately long political memories, and/or some built-in skepticism toward left-of-center depictions of political reality, the fall 2021 freakout over contentious school board meetings sounded an awful lot like the summer 2009 freakout over contentious congressional town hall meetings.
Both took place in the first year of a new Democratic administration replacing a Republican presidency that had soured at the finish line. Both were staged against a backdrop of sharp national crisis and upset. You had similar pundit assertions about the citizen pushback in question being rooted in either grassroots "white supremacy" (2009, 2021) or corporate overlord "astroturf" (2009, 2021); you had vastly inflated and journalistically repeated claims of violence (2009, 2021), heightened federal law enforcement alertness toward the potential dangers of domestic dissenters (2009, 2021), then a bit of an immediate tonal shift after a surprise GOP victory in a usually safe Democratic electoral contest (2010, 2021).
