I teach in a school for students with severe emotional needs. One time, a few years ago, my students had demonstrated positive classroom behaviors for a given period of time, and as a reward, they had asked to go eat lunch in the park. We settled on a day, I brought a bag full of chips, candy, soda and other treats. We were wrapping up the morning, and the anticipated time was upon us.
"OK, guys, I thank you for all your cooperative behavior these past few weeks, your reward time is here! Let's head to the park!"
People began gathering their stuff, when I realized there was a problem.
"I ain't going," said Tommy, a six-and-a-half-foot tall, two-hundred-and-fifty-pound tenth grader.
The Tea Party took a great many seats in the house. Enough to dictate to the mainstream Republicans what their agenda would be. And there is not a filibuster-proof majority of Democrats in the senate. We have seen the results of this over the past couple of years, when a great deal of far-reaching legislation was stopped by a group of ogres who sat on their hands and said "no." Rule by the minority was the name of the game. The Democrats have not behaved graciously, and have been called 'spineless,' but what do you do with a great big kid who refuses to budge?
I called a few other classrooms, but there were no available adults to sit with Tommy, and we can't leave students unsupervised for any reason.
"Tommy, if you can go to Ms. J's room, you don't have to go with us, but then the rest of us can go!" I implored.
"I ain't movin'. You gonna move me?"
The debt ceiling 'negotiations' involved a group of Democrats from the house and senate, who are basically powerless to push forward their agenda. The president tried to include revenues in the 'deal,' but the Republicans said "I ain't movin'. You gonna move me?" With the power in the house, the filibuster in the senate, nothing was going to advance unless the Republicans got their way. And a further big kid sat on his hands in the Republican house telling daring the Republican leadership to move them. They, after all, had stated that they didn't care if the US defaulted. In fact many, including Michele Bachmann and others running for president told us that we should go into default.
Perhaps they have a lunatic plan of crashing the economy and then blaming Obama. And many people would probably even by that. You can't deal with the irrational.
"Well, guys, there are no other adults available to stay with Tommy, so I'm afraid we're going to have to eat lunch at school. I did get you guys some treats, and I promise I'll take all the rest of you to the park sometime, but if Tommy won't move, we can't go." Near riot ensues.
The budget/debt deal was no deal. As one on the Progressive end of things, I am as disappointed as anyone to see the debt being balanced on the back of the poor, ill and elderly, and the middle class. It would make sense to have the wealthy, and the corporations who are enjoying record profits and getting tax rebates pay their share. Orrin Hatch, however, summarized the Republican position when he pointed out the it was the duty of the poor to pay off the debt, and that they just needed to go out and get jobs and start paying taxes.
Obama is not, nor has he ever been a Progressive. He fell victim to a racist view that said "he is black, so he must be ultra-liberal," when everything he has ever said, in his campaign and also as president, has made him out to be a fiscal conservative. But he is not a radical. He has always seen the need to increase taxes for the very wealthy. He had the good sense to push, as his first act as president, for a large stimulus, which probably kept us afloat. As Paul Krugman pointed out, though, it should have been twice as large and included a bail-out for the states, that are currently teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.
Neither President Obama, nor anyone else will be able to force the radicals, who have a stronghold on congress, to do anything. Sometimes there simply is not a way to move a six-and-a-half-foot tall, two-hundred-and-fifty pound, stubborn tenth grader, until they are voted out, and a group of people who can negotiate rationally take their place.
Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Thursday, August 4, 2011
How the Terrorists Are Winning - Written April 2011
I had a discussion at dinner tonight with some friends about airport security before taking Stephanie to the airport. We sort of reluctantly agreed that we had to submit to a number of uncomfortable interventions in order to stay safe, such as scans and searches at the airport. We discussed children being searched, and again agreed that a good place for a terrorist to hide something was on a child, and so forth.
But as I sat in traffic for a few hours this evening, it sort of gnawed at me, and I realized the way we are handling these threats is allowing the terrorists to win:
I saw an interview last year which fascinated me. It was with the director of airport security for El Al, Israeli Airlines and the Tel Aviv airport. He proudly stated that there had not been a single incident of terrorism on Israeli airlines or any flight originating in or arriving at Tel Aviv airport since he began his tenure some years ago. This certainly seemed quite an accomplishment given the hotbed of terrorism that Israel can be. He said that we were going about security all wrong, and that more technology was not the answer. In the months since, there have been disturbing reports, such as loaded pistols, getting through American airport check points.
This director indicated that they took a much more psychological approach that involved interviewing every passenger. The interview process had allowed them to intercept every weapon of terror prior to passengers even getting to the metal detectors (their only technology.)
I pondered this, and then the question of checking the children.
It certainly seems that subjecting children to these types of checks have some deep implications on a psychological level. We are breeding in them mistrust and fear. In fact, we are breeding mistrust and fear in all of us. The very fiber we have woven as an attempt to counter the terrorist is one of fear.
It goes back to 9/11 and the days after, during which we were instructed to go shopping while George Bush's handlers rifled through the most far sweeping attacks on our personal freedoms in the history of the country, while Dick Cheney hid in a bunker. Congress approved wire-taps on American citizens, gave executive privileges never dreamed of before that allowed the White House to classify almost anything as a state secret, and George Bush never gave a speech again in which he did not use the word terrorist multiple times.
We created a culture of fear and secrecy.
When victims of abuse are being treated, the most common themes they discuss are fear and secrecy. These are the most difficult things from which to recover. The solution to overcoming fear and secrecy is personal power.
Personal power differs greatly from violence and aggression in that it allows a person to become free by the strength of their own convictions. A person with personal power can never be a victim. A person with personal power does not submit to mob mentality. A person with power finds life energizing and uplifting and looks forward to challenges as opportunities.
The culture we are creating robs people of personal power. It makes them look to violence, anger and hatred as the only tools they have for problem-solving. It victimizes people, and makes people who are not even victims feel like victims. It creates a world in which there is a great-deal of mob-mentaily. It makes people feel down-trodden and robs them of their energy.
This is the world we live in.
Our response to the terrorists has not been to show them our personal power and show them how we can move on despite them. It has been one of allowing them to destroy us from within. Two buildings were leveled ten years ago, and we have all but destroyed ourselves over it.
The problem is that when a child is being searched at an airport, she is being robbed of a little more of her power.
Ultimately, it is not the technology. That in itself is nothing. A person who can go through an airport check-point with the pride of his or her convictions is no worse off for having been scanned or searched. But when throngs of people are frightened and demoralized by such things, the terrorists have won.
The good news is that people who come from worlds of fear, abuse, victimhood, and so forth, are not lost causes. Nobody is. They can recover from a paradigm shift. It can take a second, or it can take a life-time.
The sad thing is that politicians have seen how to leverage fear (and now hatred) for political gain and for controlling power - the type of power that is abusive (as opposed to personal power.) This is true of both parties, but certainly one uses it more than the other. President Obama is proud of the number of campaign promises he has been able to keep so far, and that is good. But he has not yet kept his most important. Hope.
My Response to the Statement "Obama is a Muslim and a Communist Trying to Kill America" Scrawled on a Bathroom Wall
Hello, I am Richard Ball. I wasn't going to start a blog, even though my wife has at least 8, but I have been rambling quite a lot in short sentences on Twitter and Facebook a lot lately, and the scrawling I saw on the wall of the men's room in Home Depot made me want to share quite a bit, so I started one.
I'll reveal more about myself as I rant.
So, on the wall of the men's room at Home Depot, someone had written "Obama is a muslim and a communist who wants to destroy America get a clue people." (The lack of capitalization is the way they wrote it.) And in the same handwriting was "Investigate the Fed." This has the obvious fingerprints of a Tea Partier.
Now as far as the Tea Party, I have been struggling with them since their inception a few years ago, and have continuously attacked and apologized to the right. I will publish my apologies later. I apologized for getting so bent out of shape about them, and raising my blood pressure. The reality is that they have been very damaging, and so my apologies did not allow me to rethink my position very long.
"Obama is a Muslim..." has been sort of a rallying cry for Tea Party members. I have two problems with this: the first is that it is a total lie made only to discredit him, and is used in a hateful way probably as a way to really try to say "Obama is a n..." (insert n-word.) He is not Muslim. My second problem with this statement is so what if he was a Muslim? Islam is for many people an admirable and peaceful faith shared by a billion people, some of whom are radicals and terrorists; the same way some Christians are radicals and terrorists.
When people resort to such name-calling, the message I get really is that a person does not agree with someone else's point-of-view, but rather than put any effort into trying to understand either the other person's view or their own point-of-view, they will just use and name or tell a lie.
This, very sadly, seems to be the very basis of the Tea Party - lies and hatred. They have shown a strong tendency to pull ideas, statistics, anything out of thin air, and then say it enough times that people who are too lazy to think for themselves believe them. They are reinforced by the fact that there are an awful lot of people who are unable to think for themselves.
If anyone would like to have a discussion with me about Mr. Obama's (or anyone else's) views. I would gladly engage in that discussion if the person can tell me, specifically, what views, ideas, or actions they dislike. I support President Obama, but do not agree with everything. I am much father left than he is, and I also realize that a person who is as far on either extreme has no business serving in public office. That should be the realm of moderates and compromisers. The Tea Party are far too extreme to have a position that affects other people's lives.
I know a few things about politics. I grew up in a very political family. My mother is a political scientist and Social Studies Teacher by training. I worked in the embassy in Moscow (when it was the USSR) for two years. I studied politics and history in college. My degrees are actually in Music, Art and Education, but as part of the restructuring of education by No Child Left Behind (a law I have a lot more to say about later,) I took an exam in a few areas:
No Child Left Behind in legislation rooted in the idea that teachers and educational institutions are not trustworthy. As restructuring, teachers had to be "highly qualified" in all the areas they teach - that not a bad idea - but they did not believe that degrees were proof enough, so, like the students, teachers had to take high stakes tests. I took the Social Studies test to prove I had the equivalent of a college degree's understanding of the Social Studies, and I scored almost 100% in the areas of Government, Economics and Geography. I scored very well in all the other areas, too. I am "highly qualified" in 9 academic areas, which is almost mandatory to be a Special Education Teacher these days, and that is fine. I get paid the same as people highly qualified in one area, but that is OK. Anyway, just to demonstrate that I have an understanding of what I am saying, and that my criticisms of the right wing are rooted in some sort of reality.
The Tea Party has put forth the simplified idea that the government budget is like a family's checkbook, and that citizens can't overspend, so why can the government?
A better analogy is: The government is like a company that in order to keep moving has to periodically spend money to retrain, retool and expand. Companies call this "investment," and any of the huge corporations being defended by the nearly brain-dead Tea Partiers have been through this process. The old saying in business is "you have to spend money to make money." That is a simplified analogy, too, but is more closely related to the government than a family - although families also borrow money to get educate their members, buy houses, work on their houses and start businesses, too. Furthermore, our entire economic system is based on the idea of borrowing money and paying interest. (I do have some problems with this, since the end result is to slowly funnel the money from the bottom to the top... but it is the basis of our economy.)
The author of the scrawl also referred to Mr. Obama as a Communist. Prior to this, the Republicans used the term "Socialist" toward him as a slander. Obama is a centrist. he is a blue-dog conserva-dem, who is closely aligned to the Republican view, although he supports revenues to actually pay for things.
So, what is wrong with Socialism? I would consider myself a Socialist. The member of congress I most closely agree with on a regular basis is Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed Socialist. Karl Marx, on whose ideas socialism is based, is the most influential economist in the world. I have spent a lot of time in Europe, and have experienced the standard of living they have in the wealthy, heavily Socialist countries there. I have also lived under the Soviet version of Communism, and saw what a catrastrophe that was. But in countries like England and France and the Scandinavian countries, people pay large amounts of their salaries in taxes, and are rewarded with health care, retirement, vacation time, child care, some subsidies for housing, and so on. These are the things that bankrupt American citizens. Should American families really live one accident away from bankruptcy?
I have also lived in Capitalist America, where children go to bed hungry at night, seniors can't pay the bills and people live paycheck to paycheck, hoping they don't have to go to the hospital. (Hear my bleeding heart?)
I saw a show on CNN last week, where they were complaining that the poor aren't really so poor, and 98% of the poor have luxury items like refrigerators, and that it's really only about 2% of children who go to bed hungry, and that's hardly any! Gulp! Since when is having fresh food a luxury, and why is there even one child going hungry in the US? And 2% of 380,000,000 is almost 8,000,000!!!
Al Gore said on Keith Olbermann's show (and I realize Olbermann is about as left as me, and that that is not representative of the wishes of most Americans...) that people needed to organize against the radical right. I read a print version of the article, and the comments at the bottom were horrifying: Most people completely disregarded the message of the article, and wrote a bunch of insults, basically teasing him about claiming to create the internet, and creating the myth of "global warming." Again, Tea Party tactics - name calling, reacting to the person and not the message (by the way, thoroughly research the history of the internet, and see how involved the Vice President was in getting funding for and pushing forth the idea of computer communication for citizens, based on the military model - and anyone who isn't noticing that about 80% of what is on Twitter and Facebook are complaints about the strange weather - OK, I admit to pulling that statistic out of my rear end, but it is a lot...) So the people criticizing the former VP were not reacting at all to his idea, but were just personally attacking him (I also have some criticisms of him, but approach them as issues.) There were no comments reading things like "Mr. Gore, I believe the US is on a better economic track than it was prior to the Tea Party takeover," and so forth. Just personal assaults.
I carry a copy of The Constitution with me. It is now on my phone, as my tattered, paper copy is hardly readable. I consult it whenever people make reference to it, as is frequently done by the Tea Party. I do not ascribe to a fundamentalist, literal interpretation of it, and realize it was written over 200 years ago, and is subject to the changing times and to amendment. The Tea Partiers are fond of saying that The Constitution says that it is illegal to tax - but it actually does, in four separate places, give the government the charge of collecting taxes. They love the Second Amendment, but cite only the first clause, leaving off the part about the well regulated militia. They have strange interpretations about how it does not call for a separation of church and state, although "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" clearly means that to anyone with any intellect. Michele Bachmann was fond of telling people not to comply with the US Census, because it was not in the Constitution. It is. They love to wrap themselves in a document they misquote and do not understand.
So, in finally closing, I do not necessarily agree with very many of the things I read on the wall of the men's room, but this comment pushed some buttons. People need to think for themselves. Without thoughtful people, a Democracy can simply not work. The Tea Partiers don't mention, probably because they don't know, that the founding fathers they love so much were leary about the idea of Democracy, because they were concerned that the general public would not be smart enough to make good decisions. (This, infact, a main reason for the public education system, that the Tea Partiers so despise...) They are showing this assertion to be true.
As much as I may sound angry at them, I realize that they are merely ignorant and misguided, but to allow the country to suffer because we have handed the reigns to the ignorant and misguided is a serious error.
The country must be run by the tolerant, who can embrace all of us, despite our differences, and where the debate is about substance, not name-calling, and where the scrawling on bathroom walls is not as intelligent as the rantings of our "leaders."
(Oh, and furthermore, in the future I will likely write about how I view politics as a sport, and nothing is real anyway...)
I'll reveal more about myself as I rant.
So, on the wall of the men's room at Home Depot, someone had written "Obama is a muslim and a communist who wants to destroy America get a clue people." (The lack of capitalization is the way they wrote it.) And in the same handwriting was "Investigate the Fed." This has the obvious fingerprints of a Tea Partier.
Now as far as the Tea Party, I have been struggling with them since their inception a few years ago, and have continuously attacked and apologized to the right. I will publish my apologies later. I apologized for getting so bent out of shape about them, and raising my blood pressure. The reality is that they have been very damaging, and so my apologies did not allow me to rethink my position very long.
"Obama is a Muslim..." has been sort of a rallying cry for Tea Party members. I have two problems with this: the first is that it is a total lie made only to discredit him, and is used in a hateful way probably as a way to really try to say "Obama is a n..." (insert n-word.) He is not Muslim. My second problem with this statement is so what if he was a Muslim? Islam is for many people an admirable and peaceful faith shared by a billion people, some of whom are radicals and terrorists; the same way some Christians are radicals and terrorists.
When people resort to such name-calling, the message I get really is that a person does not agree with someone else's point-of-view, but rather than put any effort into trying to understand either the other person's view or their own point-of-view, they will just use and name or tell a lie.
This, very sadly, seems to be the very basis of the Tea Party - lies and hatred. They have shown a strong tendency to pull ideas, statistics, anything out of thin air, and then say it enough times that people who are too lazy to think for themselves believe them. They are reinforced by the fact that there are an awful lot of people who are unable to think for themselves.
If anyone would like to have a discussion with me about Mr. Obama's (or anyone else's) views. I would gladly engage in that discussion if the person can tell me, specifically, what views, ideas, or actions they dislike. I support President Obama, but do not agree with everything. I am much father left than he is, and I also realize that a person who is as far on either extreme has no business serving in public office. That should be the realm of moderates and compromisers. The Tea Party are far too extreme to have a position that affects other people's lives.
I know a few things about politics. I grew up in a very political family. My mother is a political scientist and Social Studies Teacher by training. I worked in the embassy in Moscow (when it was the USSR) for two years. I studied politics and history in college. My degrees are actually in Music, Art and Education, but as part of the restructuring of education by No Child Left Behind (a law I have a lot more to say about later,) I took an exam in a few areas:
No Child Left Behind in legislation rooted in the idea that teachers and educational institutions are not trustworthy. As restructuring, teachers had to be "highly qualified" in all the areas they teach - that not a bad idea - but they did not believe that degrees were proof enough, so, like the students, teachers had to take high stakes tests. I took the Social Studies test to prove I had the equivalent of a college degree's understanding of the Social Studies, and I scored almost 100% in the areas of Government, Economics and Geography. I scored very well in all the other areas, too. I am "highly qualified" in 9 academic areas, which is almost mandatory to be a Special Education Teacher these days, and that is fine. I get paid the same as people highly qualified in one area, but that is OK. Anyway, just to demonstrate that I have an understanding of what I am saying, and that my criticisms of the right wing are rooted in some sort of reality.
The Tea Party has put forth the simplified idea that the government budget is like a family's checkbook, and that citizens can't overspend, so why can the government?
A better analogy is: The government is like a company that in order to keep moving has to periodically spend money to retrain, retool and expand. Companies call this "investment," and any of the huge corporations being defended by the nearly brain-dead Tea Partiers have been through this process. The old saying in business is "you have to spend money to make money." That is a simplified analogy, too, but is more closely related to the government than a family - although families also borrow money to get educate their members, buy houses, work on their houses and start businesses, too. Furthermore, our entire economic system is based on the idea of borrowing money and paying interest. (I do have some problems with this, since the end result is to slowly funnel the money from the bottom to the top... but it is the basis of our economy.)
The author of the scrawl also referred to Mr. Obama as a Communist. Prior to this, the Republicans used the term "Socialist" toward him as a slander. Obama is a centrist. he is a blue-dog conserva-dem, who is closely aligned to the Republican view, although he supports revenues to actually pay for things.
So, what is wrong with Socialism? I would consider myself a Socialist. The member of congress I most closely agree with on a regular basis is Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed Socialist. Karl Marx, on whose ideas socialism is based, is the most influential economist in the world. I have spent a lot of time in Europe, and have experienced the standard of living they have in the wealthy, heavily Socialist countries there. I have also lived under the Soviet version of Communism, and saw what a catrastrophe that was. But in countries like England and France and the Scandinavian countries, people pay large amounts of their salaries in taxes, and are rewarded with health care, retirement, vacation time, child care, some subsidies for housing, and so on. These are the things that bankrupt American citizens. Should American families really live one accident away from bankruptcy?
I have also lived in Capitalist America, where children go to bed hungry at night, seniors can't pay the bills and people live paycheck to paycheck, hoping they don't have to go to the hospital. (Hear my bleeding heart?)
I saw a show on CNN last week, where they were complaining that the poor aren't really so poor, and 98% of the poor have luxury items like refrigerators, and that it's really only about 2% of children who go to bed hungry, and that's hardly any! Gulp! Since when is having fresh food a luxury, and why is there even one child going hungry in the US? And 2% of 380,000,000 is almost 8,000,000!!!
Al Gore said on Keith Olbermann's show (and I realize Olbermann is about as left as me, and that that is not representative of the wishes of most Americans...) that people needed to organize against the radical right. I read a print version of the article, and the comments at the bottom were horrifying: Most people completely disregarded the message of the article, and wrote a bunch of insults, basically teasing him about claiming to create the internet, and creating the myth of "global warming." Again, Tea Party tactics - name calling, reacting to the person and not the message (by the way, thoroughly research the history of the internet, and see how involved the Vice President was in getting funding for and pushing forth the idea of computer communication for citizens, based on the military model - and anyone who isn't noticing that about 80% of what is on Twitter and Facebook are complaints about the strange weather - OK, I admit to pulling that statistic out of my rear end, but it is a lot...) So the people criticizing the former VP were not reacting at all to his idea, but were just personally attacking him (I also have some criticisms of him, but approach them as issues.) There were no comments reading things like "Mr. Gore, I believe the US is on a better economic track than it was prior to the Tea Party takeover," and so forth. Just personal assaults.
I carry a copy of The Constitution with me. It is now on my phone, as my tattered, paper copy is hardly readable. I consult it whenever people make reference to it, as is frequently done by the Tea Party. I do not ascribe to a fundamentalist, literal interpretation of it, and realize it was written over 200 years ago, and is subject to the changing times and to amendment. The Tea Partiers are fond of saying that The Constitution says that it is illegal to tax - but it actually does, in four separate places, give the government the charge of collecting taxes. They love the Second Amendment, but cite only the first clause, leaving off the part about the well regulated militia. They have strange interpretations about how it does not call for a separation of church and state, although "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" clearly means that to anyone with any intellect. Michele Bachmann was fond of telling people not to comply with the US Census, because it was not in the Constitution. It is. They love to wrap themselves in a document they misquote and do not understand.
So, in finally closing, I do not necessarily agree with very many of the things I read on the wall of the men's room, but this comment pushed some buttons. People need to think for themselves. Without thoughtful people, a Democracy can simply not work. The Tea Partiers don't mention, probably because they don't know, that the founding fathers they love so much were leary about the idea of Democracy, because they were concerned that the general public would not be smart enough to make good decisions. (This, infact, a main reason for the public education system, that the Tea Partiers so despise...) They are showing this assertion to be true.
As much as I may sound angry at them, I realize that they are merely ignorant and misguided, but to allow the country to suffer because we have handed the reigns to the ignorant and misguided is a serious error.
The country must be run by the tolerant, who can embrace all of us, despite our differences, and where the debate is about substance, not name-calling, and where the scrawling on bathroom walls is not as intelligent as the rantings of our "leaders."
(Oh, and furthermore, in the future I will likely write about how I view politics as a sport, and nothing is real anyway...)
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