The fact that 'events' like this are tolerated speaks to the deterioration not only of our educational institutions, but the bedrock of our constitutionally limited republic, i.e. "an informed electorate". In it's place we have evolved a body-politic ruled by talking-points, in service of ideological narcissism, and in it's final practical manifestation: fascism. 

George Orwell's prescient description of what he called "Doublethink", anticipated the dystopian endgame we are watching play out in the here and now:

"The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just as long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies – all this is indispensably necessary."