Happy Circumcision Day!

January 1 is a weird day for the first day of the year.  It is not astrologically significant as in a solstice or equinox.  It is an arbitrary date rooted in other religions as in the worship of the Greek God Janus, and rooted in Christianity as the day Jesus was circumcised, 8 days after his birth.  Ugh.  Not a source of celebration as far as I am concerned.  Clearly sexist as women do not experience this ritual cutting, but last time I checked a New Year’s party is not really a party without both sexes present and no male is asked to verify circumcision at the door.  Regardless, by the mid 1700’s most western civilizations had adopted January 1 as the first day of the new year.  We just as easily could make it any other day.  If I had a vote it would always fall on the spring equinox somewhere around March 20^th, but I do not have a vote.

However the wizards and politicians selected this date, our tradition is to review the year just ending and make projections for the year to come.  Zealots will make resolutions regarding what individual accomplishments they seek to implement in the coming year.  From my point of view anyone who wants to make a change can do so and not have to wait until January 1 to start.  I see most resolutions as statements of future guilt trips.  I don’t do resolutions.  I do evolutions, as in what direction I want to grow, but that is fodder for another post.  I shall begin with observations of the year ending.

2016 was the year truth died at the hands of falsehoods.  Americans chose to believe falsehoods over truth.  I remain in shock and fear.  Trump did not win by a landslide.  He lost the popular vote and in terms of electoral votes he ranks 42^nd among all presidential candidates. This is the same man who said Obama was a Muslim and was not an American born citizen, both falsehoods.  The economy is not in bad shape.  It is in the best shape it has been in over 20 years and all the data support that.  It is the year when accusations of guilt equaled guilt.  Clinton was charged with a record number of legal infringements, millions were spent trying to prove there was evidence that merited prosecution and nothing was found.  And yet, most believe she lied and should be in prison.  I remain amazed that a lie can be told three times and forever be perceived as the truth.  This was the year a candidate for president promised the American people what he would do as president, and as soon as he was elected starting saying he wasn’t going to do those things.  This was a year when fossil fuel producers convinced a lot of people that there was not global warming caused by human behavior, an undisputed fact among scientists who are not on the payroll of fossil fuel companies.  This was the year the broadcast falsehoods of some media outlets that were constantly shown to be perpetrating lies were believed by the American people.  “Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.” Albert Einstein.

2016 was the year that bigotry overcame the goal of equality.  I believe that many Americans awoke in 2009 and realized we had elected our first Black President.  Few in this group would admit to bigotry, but on the other hand took joy in any little criticism of President Obama.  We saw the rise of the KKK in the election and the rise of the Alt-Right, both groups advocating for an America of the Anglos, by the Anglos and for the Anglos.  After years and years of progress in the arena of civil rights we have now elected a man who is clearly a bigot.  His talk of walls, immigrants, judges, etc. are laden with bigotry, hard for other bigots to hear.  He advocates making America great again, but when pressed to identify when America was great he points to the turn of the last century and the industrial revolution, and the 1940’s and 50’s.  He dreams of the Ozzie and Harriet Days, he longs for an Archie Bunker approach to life.  The days he cites as great in our history were in many ways terrible.  Those days were before we integrated public schools, segregation was the norm, women were not expected to work and if they did it would be in clerical, nursing or teaching.  No one could imagine a Black or female president in those days.  Workers were abused and the growth of unions stemmed from those days.  Children and adults with special needs were ignored and sent home, as were pregnant girls.  These may have been a wonderful time for the educated, prosperous Anglo males in American, but it was a terrible time for anyone else.  A return to those days does not advance our culture.  It is not a time when America was great.  It was the stone age of civil rights.  Even worse, our courts have now allowed discrimination based on the religious beliefs of the discriminator, the most twisted ruling in the court’s history as far as I can tell.  Tantamount to allowing people of one faith to kill people of another faith because it is their religious right.

2016 was the year that wealth became a protected class and poverty was attacked.  With the SCOTUS ruling by 5 to 4 in Citizens United that corporations were entitled to the same 1^st amendment free speech rights as individuals thereby opening the door for huge corporate donations to political campaigns.  Such donations were limited prior to Citizen’s United.  Such large donations continue to shape American election outcomes especially in favor of corporations, the wealthy, and opposed to civil liberties and labor unions.  The new President-elect has proposed revamping the tax code so that the wealthiest individuals receive a tax break with more of the taxation burden falling on the middle class.  Talk in Congress of reducing funding for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid out of proposed fear of insolvency would only benefit the wealthiest Americans.  The insolvency is not real in that it exists because Congress continually takes money from those funds to finance other projects, and because the wealthy to do not pay the same share of taxation for these programs as does the middle and lower class.  The rumors of welfare fraud are consistently debunked but not reported.  No study has found more than 1% fraudulent use of the funds, making welfare the least fraudulent of all federal programs, another fact not widely disseminated.  Programs that support the poor and lower middle class are under attack.  Labor Unions are under attack.  For the first time low income Americans have access to medical insurance and 20 million Americans have signed up.  But because conservatives are loath to give credit where credit is due the Affordable Care Act has been subject to conservative attack since its passage.  And the gap between our poor and our rich grows annually as the rich continue to benefit from protected status.

2016 was the year when winning meant more than integrity.  The notion that all is fair in love and war implies that winning means more than integrity.  We have consistently seen candidates boldly lie and gain in credence at the same time.  When Trump announced that John McCain was a loser because he was captured during the Viet Nam war my jaw dropped.  Trump has yet to reveal his tax returns.  We know he has not paid taxes for years.  Saying whatever it takes to get elected is an announcement that outcome means more than integrity.  Doing whatever it takes to win is an announcement that integrity takes a back seat.  Assuming people of wealth are somehow smarter, more deserving, more qualified to manage industries they know nothing about is another example of winning in one area and celebrating the victory across other areas.  If you lie, cheat, steal, or withhold information to win, there is no integrity.  If making money means more than protecting American citizens then winning means more than integrity.

2016 was the year that we ignored history in favor of delusions.  There has never been an effective wall erected between people to keep one group out and another group safe within.  There has never been a time when trickle-down, supply-side or “voodoo economics” has successfully improved our economy.  There has never been a time where discrimination by ethnicity, race, gender, or beliefs has improved the climate in a company or a country.  The notion that Hobby Lobby and Chick-fil-A can discriminate in their hiring practices because of their religious beliefs is unholy and delusional.  We have been though these times before.  They were not times when we were great.  They were times that we admit now were mistakes.  And yet, the delusional continue to want to return to those times ignorant or oblivious to history. 

And my hopes and projections for 2017?

My hopes: Truth will reign, bigotry will be replaced by efforts to increase civil liberties, wealthy people become engaged in supporting the US and withdraw from political ambitions, integrity means more than winning, and we review our past efforts in light of results and ethics. 

My projections:  I believe that Trump’s audacity and lack of global view will engage us in another military conflict.  I believe that Trump is better able to alienate than he is to ameliorate.  I believe the hostility between income groups, racial groups, gender groups and sexual preference groups will escalate.  I believe 2017 will be worse than 2016.

But as I prepare to celebrate Circumcision Day, rather than be totally depressed and very concerned about our nation, it occurs to me that it would be nice if I lost a few pounds next year.

Regardless, I hope your wishes and resolutions come to be and that yoiu feel OK when you wake up on Circumcision Day.

End of Public Education?

If you are a public school employee and you voted for Trump, this post is for you. 

First, some simple and verifiable facts.  Trump never attended a public school.  All his pre-college education was received in very expensive private schools.  Trump has vowed to end the public school monopoly of education.  He is pro school choice.  His choice for Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, is an unashamed opponent of public education who has never worked in a public school or public school system.  She is a billionaire and believes that charter schools and vouchers are the way to improve education.  Both Trump and DeVos are billionaire “school reformers.”  Both are hostile to public education.  Both want to see money earmarked for public education re-directed to charter school operators and parents via vouchers.

If Trump and DeVos have their way, the dismantling of public schools will not only continue, it will accelerate.  Four years of such an effort will decimate public education.

I suppose that first each of us must decide whether the idea of educating every child in this nation is a good idea.  Should we do as many other nations do and simply give a test at the end of 8^th grade that determines who gets to continue their education and who is done?  Should we do as private schools and charter schools do and simply expel students who are low-performing or trouble makers or are in need of special services?  Should we as a nation accept the notion that not all kids will get a high school diploma?  Should we as a nation accept the notion of vouchers so that people of wealth will not have to pay school taxes and private school tuition?  Should we as a nation accept the notion that public dollars may be used to duplicate the public school system in a charter school system that operates with much more flexibility than public schools?  Should we accept the notion that after years and years of data collection it is obvious that charter schools do not outperform public schools and that they can serve as a new tool for segregation?  If your answers to these questions, or even some of these questions, are “yes” then you voted for the correct candidate in the election.

If, on the other hand, you answered “no” to these questions then I surely hope you did not vote for Trump.  A source of real anger and confusion for me is the perpetrated belief that lack of expertise, training, education, knowledge and experience means less in the governing of public schools than wealth.  It is as though one earns a billion dollars and becomes qualified to “fix” public schools.  It is as though one wins an election and becomes qualified to “fix” public schools.  Both theories are seriously flawed.  Neither the wealthy and/or the winning candidate is qualified by the nature of their victory or wealth to make rules governing the medical profession, engineering profession, legal profession, or even ship-building or airplane manufacture, carpentry, plumbing or welding.  And yet we continue to listen to uneducated billionaires who propose a gross array of improvement and reform strategies.  If this were not so ludicrous it would be hysterical.  It is for me a declaration of ignorance to declare I can fix something that I do not understand and admit I do not even know what I do not know and that I do not need to learn.  Why in the world would we listen to the ignorant in an effort to improve the educational system?

Most sad to me is that it looks like we are going to get more money siphoned away from public schools and placed in the hands of the CEO millionaire charter schools and the pockets of wealthy parents who currently still pay school taxes.  As money leaves public education the number of public school employees will also drop.  As money leaves public education the performance outcomes of the most challenging students will drop.  As money leaves public education to flow to charter and private schools we are robbing the poor to feed the wealthy.  Even if charter schools outperformed public schools, which they do not, the real ethical question for me is how are those students remaining in public schools performing after the money has flowed elsewhere?  If charter schools and vouchers were the savior they are lauded as being we should see an improvement in the performance of all kids, those in charters and in private schools and in public schools. But if we see what we continue to see is that public school students suffer when money flows elsewhere, then simply backing strategies that we know harm a majority of the kids in the US is, by definition, immoral.

Unless you are OK with a “yes” answer to the questions in the fourth paragraph.  If you are, then you really do not believe in public schools at all.  If you are an employee of a public school and do not believe in public schools you should probably resign, or do so before your job is cut as the money flows elsewhere.  This nonsense must stop.  I for one want to see every single child in this nation receive a top-notch education in ways that do not line the pockets of charter school CEO’s and wealthy parents.  Unless there were an equal number of seats in charter and private schools to serve all the public school kids there will never really be school choice.  Such a rally cry is just money-driven smoke and mirrors.

Please support public education.  You can do so by opposing more charter schools and vouchers. You can do so by not voting for people who do support charter schools and vouchers.  It is too late for now to cast your vote for President, but in the next two years you will vote for school board members, and state and national legislators.  If the 300,000 employees of public education in Texas voted with one mind they would determine the election outcome.  It is time we do so.

Trump is Not New

Just read an interview with Steve Bannon, Trump’s appointed Chief of Staff.  He went on and on about how Trump gets it, he is a nationalist, that the globalists eliminated America’s middle class and created an Asian middle class.  He claims this is new thinking.  He wants to re-shape the Republican Party to align with Trump’s view.  Bannon believes this is revolutionary, new and in the best interest of the USA.

Poppycock.

There is absolutely nothing new in such beliefs or in the strategies triggered by such beliefs.  In fact, they are the oldest beliefs in the U.S.  Isolationism, protective economic practices, nationalism have been with us from the very beginning.  Add to such thinking a dash of prejudice and the belief that somehow white males should rule, and you have the exact arguments made in the following settings: 

Prior to the Civil War such arguments were made by southern legislators regarding the economic impact of freeing the slaves.  Their sense of globalism was the entire US.  Their sense of nationalism was the southern states.  Read George Fitzhugh’s position in 1854 and it sounds like Trump.  They rebelled and they lost.  Human rights prevailed over provincial thinking.

In 1918 the Republicans in Congress voted against the Treaty of Versailles effectively rendering the League of Nations without power.  They were isolationists and nationalists and did not want any part of an international organization dedicated to resolving international conflicts.  Read Henry Cabot Lodge’s speeches in 1918 and he sounds just like Donald Trump.

In 1939 the US was very reluctant to enter World War II.  94% of the American public opposed such entry into foreign entanglements on the heels of World War I.  The height of this isolationism was embodied in the Neutrality Act.  Hitler attacked Poland in 1939.  America did not join the war until 1941 with the attack on Pearl Harbor.  Though Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, Republican opposition to entering the war in Europe was very vocal.  The America First organization espoused tenets of isolationism and protectionism that read just like a Trump stump speech.  This organization had 600 chapters and hundreds of thousands of members. 

And on and on.  Trump’s ideas are not new.  They are old.  And they have shown failure at every step of the way.  Plans grounded in nationalism and isolationism and scientific denial and the persecution of minorities have historically failed.  If we must endure another round of such efforts here and now let’s at least admit this is not new, this is not making America Great Again.  The Trump platform is returning to failed policies of the past.

Trump Won. What Lost?

I love America.  I love democracy.  I firmly believe in the notion that the citizens of this nation speak at the polls and the majority rules.  But I also recognize that belief is based on the assumption of an educated electorate.  Trump won the election, and in doing so made clear to us not only who lost the election, but what lost in the election.  So this morning as I reel in shock and pain, these things are obvious to me:

• Inexperience won over experience and expertise and knowledge.

• Bigotry and prejudice won over civil liberties.

• Fear won over reason.

•  “Right” think and “right” belief won over pluralism, openness and support of diverse beliefs and thoughts.

•  Anger won over understanding.

•  Reprisal won over forgiveness.

•  Dictatorial thinking won over democratic thinking.

•  Isolationism won over global thinking.

•  Past won over possible futures.

•  The US government as our enemy won over the US government as protector of its citizens.

•  Chauvinism won over liberation.

•  False economic assumptions won over reality.

•  Support for the few won over support for the many.

•  False campaign claims won over the truth.

•  Retreat won over progress.

•  Ignorance won over enlightenment.

•  Closed doors and hearts and minds won over open doors and hearts and minds.

The Trump Presidency begins in January with Republican control of both houses of congress.  For the next two years the full responsibility for the progress or failure of our nation, our economy, our standing in the world, and the status of the poorest among us lies at their feet.  We will learn, as we have so many times in the past, that such philosophy when implemented benefits the rich, hurts the poor, triggers global conflict, and accelerates immoral market tendencies over decency and human liberties.  I hope we are OK in two years and have a chance to fix the problems that are coming.  But that will be up to the voters.  Again.

Two Donalds

You may remember Donald Sterling.  He was the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers.  In 2014 he was taped without his knowledge making racial slurs against African Americans.  These were not public statements.  These were statements made during an argument with his girlfriend.  When the tape got out it was labeled “scandalous”.  Sterling was fined $2.5 million dollars and ejected from professional basketball forever.  Wow. 

Donald Trump can stand at a public podium, covered by all available news sources, and intentionally make racial slurs, make slurs against women, make slurs against the disabled, etc.  He is not fined.  He is not banished from politics.  He is selected as the Republican nominee for President of the United States.

Times change.  Do values?

Clinton and Trump: Down to the Wire

The 2016 Presidential election ends next week.  None too soon for me.  I am sick of watching our nation tear itself apart over the most outlandish campaigns and candidates of the modern era.  This is one for the books and that book becomes the only one I would support burning.

We have a choice between a man who does not believe he can do anything wrong, say anything wrong or ever lose, and a woman who is very scared that someone might find out she did something wrong.  The man harkens back to a time as the model for future greatness that was a terrible time for anyone other than Anglo Americans with steady income and no disabilities.  The women dreams of a future time free of discrimination and rife with opportunity.  Their separate visions of the future are telling, and the model they would use to move toward their vision is equally telling.

Even when Trump was way behind in the polls his response was the polls are wrong.  Even when it appeared clear Clinton would win, he said if Clinton won the election must be rigged.  The man cannot fathom failure or misstep.  There is no compromise in him because he has never had to compromise.  He has never been put in a position other than the boss.  At the risk of being drafted, where he surely would not have been the boss, he dodged.  He does not want to be President as much as he believes he should be the boss of the USA.  He can insult anyone he wants because he is the boss.  He can assume any political or economic position he wants because he is the boss.  His model for male/female relationships was formed in the 1950’s when a woman’s place was in the home or on her back.

Clinton on the other hand has been shaped by the expansion of civil liberties in the 1960’s.  Women, children, minorities have all been the focus of her life’s work and work she has.  She is a Washington insider which may sound like a curse to many and a blessing to some.  She knows how to get things done.  But she carries baggage.  It is not the baggage of discrimination or misogyny, it is the baggage of mistrust arising from her emails, her handling of Benghazi while Secretary of State, and a bunch of random quotes taken out of context from speeches made years ago.  The American people are having a hard time forgiving her for lack of transparency while she claims to be the most transparent candidate. 

The main difference in the shortcomings of the two candidates is that Trump’s shortcomings are revealed via the words out of his own mouth and his own behaviors, while Clinton’s shortcomings are part of the narrative of the Republican Party who argues she is hiding something.  After months and months of hearings and investigations no agency has found any evidence that merits the prosecution of Clinton.  And yet the narrative has become so strong as to be believed by many.

I am oh so worried about this election, not because of whomever the winner is, but because this election will more than anything in recent history reveal America’s core values.  A Trump victory will send a loud and clear message regarding civil rights, inequality of wealth, consumer oriented protection agencies like OSHA, Office of Civil Rights, FDA, etc.  Those agencies will be abandoned while taxes on the wealthy will decrease.  Trump has said he will end the “monopoly” of public education.  Holy Cow.  It will also say that what Trump has said and done is forgivable, and perhaps worse, supportable.

The mere fact that the candidates appear to be running neck-and-neck down to the wire is as discouraging a piece of news as I have heard in a long time.  It should never have been close.  It should never have been Trump.  The fact that it is both is the scariest thing I can think of on Halloween.

Politically Correct is Morally Correct

It has been difficult for me to understand much of what is happening politically and socially in our nation right now.  In so many ways I am naive.  But with the latest discussion regarding Trump’s comments about women some of the fog in my mind has cleared.

My childhood included seeing three restrooms and two water fountains everywhere I went:  Men, women and colored, White and Colored.  I grew up in the Ozzie and Harriet world.  I grew up when every elected official south of the Mason Dixon line was a Democrat.  I grew up when smoking was cool.  My family did not own a TV until I was 8 years old and the shows were all black and white.  I grew up when the CEO and Congress were all men, almost all white men.  I grew up seeing the riots in Watts and at the Democratic convention in Chicago.  I grew up when there was both a draft and a war and women were not part of the effort except in voluntary support roles.  I grew up at a time when the locker room talk among high school boys and those men who did not mature beyond high school was similar to Trump’s comments.  I grew up at a time it was just assumed that women and Blacks were somehow inferior to white males.  I grew up in a time when people with special needs were ignored and kept at home.  I grew up in a time when being homosexual was a deep, dark secret.  I grew up in a time where using slang words for Muslims, Blacks and women was OK.  It was politically correct to use discriminatory language for any group that was perceived to be sub-white male:  wet-backs, niggers, fags, retards, pussies, camel jocks, and on and on.

I am naive in that I thought as a nation, as a pool of human beings, we had progressed beyond the acceptance of such nonsense in the 1950’s through the confrontation of such nonsense in the 1960’s to a world of accepting diversity, to a world where we all recognize that every race, every ethnic group, both genders, and people of various sexual preferences have the potential to make major, positive contributions to our world.  Contributions that are not grounded in characteristics determined at birth and religious belief or absence thereof, and determined by zip code.  More than that, I thought we had reached a time when we recognized the inherent worth of humanity.  I have been foolishly wrong.

I get it now when Trump says “Make America Great Again.”  He wants to return to the time when white men ruled and there was no such thing as being politically correct.  He can wave his arm and make derogatory remarks about all women and individual women and that should be OK.  He can wave his arm and make generalized statements regarding immigrants to this country.  He can mock people with special needs.  He can wave his arm and make generalized statements about any group that in his 1950’s mind merits a slang term. 

Political correctness, that is eliminating bias and discrimination from our speech and our behavior, is in fact moral correctness.  If one believes we can prejudge entire groups of human beings and lump them under some derogatory heading, then one feels freed from both political correctness and moral correctness.  And people who still harbor those old 1950’s notions that were part of our heritage at the time have not matured socially or morally.  Women did not earn the right to vote until 1920, and even then the vote was very close.  It was not until 1900 that women throughout the nation could own property separate from their husbands.  Blacks earned the right to vote in 1870, 50 years before women.  It has always been assumed in this nation that white males, especially white males who own property, have the right to vote and control.  Political correctness is our effort to express our moral correctness.  Any effort to return to the days of discriminatory language and behavior is, by definition morally wrong.

I hear pundits including women saying ignore Trump’s comments in all these areas.  Boys will be boys.  Poppycock and balderdash.  To forgive Trump is to sink to a moral depth we should have escaped by now.  To forgive Trump is to return to the time where discrimination was politically acceptable.  Such a regression is immoral.  It represents a culture and belief system that is immoral.  It represents our bigoted childhood which we should have abandoned long ago.  It should never, ever be the model we wish to re-establish.  It is wrong.

So, if it bothers you that I carefully edit my language to exclude discriminatory nouns and adjectives it is because I believe human beings regardless of characteristics deserve our respect.  Anything we say or do that implies some humans are inferior to or subordinate to other human beings is morally wrong.  Political correctness is moral correctness.  Abandoning that is not returning to a time of greatness.  It is sinking to a depth of moral morass from which we should have escaped to higher ground long ago.