EDUCATION IN AMERICA

I have been wondering why the alt right have gotten hysterical about American colleges and why they've been hollering about "snowflakes" and "crybabies." I could not understand what was fueling this animus toward the educated, nor why Donald Trump would appoint someone to run the Department of Education who had no education in education...and no experience either. In fact, Betsy deVos has spent many years and a lot of money trying to dismantle the Department of Education. Why her, I wondered?

After reading the Washington Post this morning, I am beginning to get a clue.

The alt right, represented in this article by Frank Antenori, "a former Green Beret who served in the Arizona state legislature" believes that public colleges and universities should only be funded if they teach courses of study that result in a degree with which a person can make an appreciable income. An art degree, for instance, is a "junk degree." Culture means nothing to them.

According to Antenori, the current situation is that students go to major universities to "get brainwashed and learn how to become activists and basically go out in the world and cause trouble."

The hammer headed "solution" for this alleged problem, according to Republicans, is to cut funding for education, which they have done. Nearly every state has had to cut funding to public colleges and universities since the 2008 financial crisis, according to this article. Exactly how this is supposed to fix the problem is a mystery to me, since all it does is prevent poor and middle class kids from having access to a college education.

I should have intuited the "problem" about education before this. You just have to "follow the money" when trying to understand overblown right wing anger.

For those on the extreme right, the solution to any alleged problem is to cut funding to everything that helps poor and middle class Americans, while giving tax breaks to the wealthy. If they can gin up anger toward some aspect of a public program, no matter how small, that is what they do. They spread lies about "massive fraud" in the welfare system, then cut funding to programs that feed children. In a bid to cut Social Security benefits, Republicans would also have you believe that a large number of disabled people are liars and cheats, when there is no factual basis for this complaint whatsoever.

The inconvenient fact (for the "alt right") is that there are liars and cheats in every walk of life. The percentage is about the same, whether you're a 60 year old disabled veteran in a wheelchair or a billionaire. The only difference is that the billionaire steals more money from the public pocket and is therefore a more successful criminal.

The process of disinformation begins like this. Take a minority of a minority of a minority. For instance, students who are also activists. It is a small number, but in order to whip up the Republican base, you have to turn something into a problem, then exaggerate both the number of miscreants involved and the cost to Americans of whatever behavior is being inflated.

Instead of actually addressing the wisdom of that one class on "climbing trees" Republicans want to dismantle the government agency that regulates educational institutions while at the same time cutting funding. Once again, they are taking a giant hammer to a gnat, and missing the gnat.  They never cared about the gnat to begin with. That is why they miss it...again.

If Republicans really cared about the state of our educational system, they would do something that actually fixes the imagined "problem." That would be the role of the Department of Education.

There are many reasons why an art degree or an English literature degree is not "junk" and why funding the educations of our poor children is crucial to the continued success of the American way of life. It should be obvious that institutions of higher education do not exist for the sole purpose of turning out human machines that produce consumable products, especially since those type of degrees are not EXCLUDED from courses of study.

There is room for every type of person in America, and there is no reason why our educational system should not teach everything on the spectrum, from the artist who makes towers out of tin cans, to the corporately inclined student of business administration.

I do not care for art made from tin cans or cow carcasses. My tastes run to the traditional, but I do not presume to tell other people that their taste has to conform to mine. The sign of a real "nanny state" would be one in which only the left-brained, commerce-inclined children would be fed, while all others are starved.

As a final note, I would remind the reader that the rest of the civilized world provides free education to all its children.

Silver Rose Parnell
(c) copyright 2017
All rights reserved.

THOSE STUPID AMERICANS

Europeans have called us "those stupid Americans" for years, and now we deserve the moniker.

A large number of people no longer believe anything an expert will say. If you're a prominent climatologist with a lot of degrees, awards, and job experience, stupid Americans won't grant you any credibility at all. They'd rather get their scientific facts about global warming from some political know-nothing talking head who has an economic agenda that will benefit the wealthy, the oil companies and big businesses that pollute the world.

If you are a professional economist with multiple degrees in the field, many years of experience in the profession, and a slew of awards, The Stupid Americans will dismiss you as "left wing," which, to them, means everything you say and do is wrong and that you have no facts and nothing to offer. Instead of listening to your expert advice, The Stupid Americans prefer to get their economic advice from know-nothings who have no relevant degrees, experience or recognition in the field.

Donald Trump has consistently demonstrated this by appointing people to his cabinet who are completely unqualified. Take the Department of Education, for one. He appointed a woman who has no education and no experience in the field. What she HAS done is spend a lot of money trying to ELIMINATE the Department of Education. The fox is in charge of the hen house, and The Stupid Americans love it.

Facts don't seem to matter in this culture because our egos have become so inflated that each of us considers ourselves the arbiter of everything that happens around us. Uninformed opinions get the most air time on Fox & Friends, wacky conspiracy theorists are quoted in debates, and your crazy uncle George, whose only platform used to be the once-a-year Thanksgiving Day dinner table, suddenly has a blog and is spewing a daily load of garbage into the world.

Humility, once touted as a positive virtue and something to which the religious once aspired, is now trampled under people's feet as they hurry to jump onto the nearest soap box to loudly belch their opinions.

Catholics are even criticizing our Pope, the leader of the faith. They're behaving as if the Pope is required to answer to THEM, rather than the other way around. These people refuse to be lead by their betters because they are oblivious to the fact that they HAVE any!

Instead of electing a president with experience, dignity, gravitas and good character, we have been saddled with a sex pervert with multiple assaults in his background who brags that he grabs women "by the pussy" and kisses them without asking. He insults every minority group, women in general, and basically everyone except his rich white male cronies, whose benefit he has in mind with every proposal that he trots out. With health care, he pushed a bill that would be more expensive for the poor, the elderly and the ill. With the tax "reform," he cuts 1.5 TRILLION dollars from Medicaid and Medicare (once again hurting the poor, the elderly and the disabled) while giving immense tax breaks to his wealthy cronies. He even criticizes war heroes who had the bad taste to have been captured and tortured for years by our enemies. "Winners" don't get captured, and Trump likes winners.

The Stupid Americans, meanwhile, are so thrilled to have someone in office who doesn't know what he is doing that they defend his every move, his support of the Nazi march in Charlottesville, his every criticism of the poor, minorities, and victims of sexual assault, as well as his constant twitter storm of lies. The gathering evidence of his campaign's treasonous relationship with Russia, though well substantiated, is dismissed by The Stupid Americans as "fake news" because the legitimate, credible prosecutor has a good reputation going back decades and he has a "professional relationship" with someone that Trump fired. Only people who have NO experience or who have a BAD reputation or who don't know anyone in government are given any credibility in the dim brains of The Stupid Americans.

Senate candidate Roy Moore may STILL win Alabama because he refuses to step down after SUBSTANTIAL allegations of pedophilia have cropped up with 4 women he molested when they were barely into their teen years. Substantial proof exists to prove that Roy Moore did, actually, molests these young girls, but the stupid Americans refuse to believe it. Roy Moore, himself, is painting himself as a victim of "political" motives and vows to never give up! Styling himself as some kind of crusader who has been wrongly maligned, he has whipped up his buddies into calling for the PROSECUTION of the girls that he molested! This is why girls are so hesitant to come forward and report their rapists - because society rapes them over and over again in the process.

This is what you get when you reject professionals, when you reject experts, when you reject truth itself.

The stupid Americans are so gullible, that all you have to do is label something "left wing" and, no matter how factual the information from that source, The Stupid Americans will dismiss it entirely. Apparently, they believe that all the employees of all the news outlets and all the top universities and all the experts are "in on" a great left-wing conspiracy to report nothing but false stories. Yep. Millions of people have called and spoken with one another in order to hide "the truth" from the rest of the American people. The only "truth" that The Stupid Americans will believe is that which is illogical, far-fetched, ridiculous, completely devoid of proof, and advocated by someone with no education or experience in the field.

The whole world is watching our system of government disintegrate like a sand castle at high tide. When The Stupid Americans have managed to completely dismantle our government, Russia or China or some other power can step in and take over. Both of those countries are skilled at propaganda.

It would be easy to enslave The Stupid Americans by whispering lies in their ears, like a smooth talking pimp. All the Russians would have to do is tell them how SPECIAL they are, how only THEY know the real truth of life. It worked on Trump. It will certainly work with his devotees!

After they pump up the egos of The Stupid Americans, the foreign power will get The Stupid Americans to put the chains on their OWN wrists and ankles, and then chase down all the other Americans and force them to do the same!

In America, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, this is true. That does not mean, however, that your opinion is worth anything.

Don't take my word for it, though. Get advice from the EXPERTS. I would be happy with that.

Silver Rose Parnell
(c) Copyright 2017
All rights reserved.